The Norseman

by Jason Born

  I poked my head above water one last time and saw them in the distance laughing. I was closing my eyes when I saw an oar blade come into view and strike me hard on the head. Anger welled inside me and I swatted at the blade with my newfound strength. When I got a hold of it, I jerked it down and held tight, pulling myself partially out of the water and turning. I faced the weathered strakes of a longboat and heard laughing from behind the gunwale. Someone behind the hull held the oar tightly for me while I scrambled up to the deck and jumped to my feet. I reached for my saex but found that I didn’t wear it. In fact, I wore nothing at all – I was completely naked.

  I saw strangers at first, then I saw familiar faces with smiles surrounding me. Tyrkr stood with both hands on the oar on which I had climbed. Thorgunna stood behind Erik’s old thrall and behind her, I could not believe my eyes, stood Leif. Leif Eriksson had returned to me in my time of need. He held his hand on the top of the head of a red-haired boy of about five years old. Leif’s own hair was now a wild red like his father’s and he flashed me a smile, “Let’s go home, Halldorr.” And then I realized that he didn’t come because of my loss but because we had been gone from Greenland for thirteen years. Our time of exile was over and he came to retrieve me home.

  Exhausted and lacking food, I fainted on the spot.

  Leif’s wife, Thorgunna, was a superb nurse. She fed me weak broth for the first two days of their stay, then reintroduced food slowly so that within one week of Leif’s return my body had done much healing from my self-induced starvation and binge drinking. Within three weeks I was almost to my old self again, capable of fighting and wrestling, though I lost more matches than before my bleak and blurry winter. Within one month, I could even draw my bow to my chin. I had lost so much strength that it would be most of the summer before I could again bring it to my ear.

  The angry stoicism I promised myself left me when my old friend returned and I cried when I told them my tale of Kenna and our little Olaf. They listened as friends should and even Leif joined in my tears. Their shared grief aided my recovery, but when they revealed that Thorgunna had miscarried twice since their son’s, Thorgils, birth, I saw in their lives that my life could go on after loss.

  Olaf waited until I was my old self before hosting a great feast for Leif’s return and I was grateful because the food was magnificent. Any sooner and my stomach would have sent the rich meal back the way it came. A handsome steer was slaughtered and turned on the spit all day, basted in exotic spices that came from the southern realms, creating flavors I had never tasted. Bread was made from wheat flour and dipped in honey. Salmon, herring, cod, and haddock were prepared. Boiled eggs, potatoes baked in the hot coals at the edges of the cooking fires, and bowls of nuts added to the pleasure. Honeyed, baked apples from the previous season made a delicious dessert. Ale washed it all down, but I drank like one who was responsible. While my friends Cnute and Einar and Leif all drank to silliness, I had no desire to do so. I drank enough for two lifetimes and used the drink only to wash down my meals. Never again, that I recall, have I ever consumed enough to become drunk.

  As folk arrived for the feast, Cnute and I both made it plain to Leif that we would not return to Greenland with him. I served Olaf, my third father, as his most trusted Berserker and would do so until one of us died. Cnute, my fellow Berserker, was even more adamant about not returning, though he spewed negative views of Bjarni, our old nemesis, rather than indicating any duty here in Norway or to Olaf.

  The mention of Bjarni made my blood boil, but made Leif flash a dangerous smile. “Halldorr, remember when we went hunting for reindeer that day we met the skraelings in Greenland?” I nodded as I thought of Bjarni’s thievery and lies. “I told you then that we would go a-Viking together. And we did.”

  “And so?”

  “And so I’ve come to accept that I can see things about you and me before they happen. Remember I saw the death and blood at Fridr Rock that day.” I nodded for he had known it before it happened, but he spent the night on a barrow-mound, after all, talking to the spirits of the wild, obtaining the ability to divine the future. I wasn’t sure if such a gift could continue throughout one’s life. I was especially unsure if the gift could continue once the One God entered your life. Cnute looked like he would be sick during our conversation, but I shrugged it off as too much ale the night before or bad cheese for breakfast. Leif continued, “Well I have had another vision about us. We discover new lands together. We name them and settle them. We rule them. And since I aim to return to Greenland and buy Bjarni’s boat, Thor’s Treasure, to land in those places he so easily dismissed on his voyage all those years ago, I expect that you’ll have to come with me.” Cnute did throw up.

  Leif was doing it again. Talking with surety in a world where there was none. Utterly confident. He hadn’t changed. But he was right about his predictions in the past. Did he have the ability to control destiny where I just accepted mine? Did he produce a pattern that the Norns had to follow? Or did he take the fabric they wove and adjust it to his liking? I asked myself these ridiculous questions in the awkward pause that followed his pronouncement and Cnute’s vomiting. Then I decided, no! No man harnessed the power to control fate or shape his destiny. Leif lost two babies of his own. He would have woven another path for them. Leif didn’t have that power. He merely saw his fate ahead of time. While other men are finding today’s fate out today, Leif is learning tomorrow’s. No control. No benefit. Just different days, but it allowed him that confidence of knowing what comes, even if he doesn’t command the future.

  I stepped out of the way of Cnute’s wretching and said, “Leif, the One God or the gods will have to change my path for me then, because I intend to stay with Olaf.”

  He just smiled his self-assured smile and answered, “Halldorr, then they will change your path, because I am not returning to Norway again in my life. You’ll go with me, but don’t know it yet. I have no plans to change your mind.” A murmuring at the end of the hall began as Olaf stood, preparing to give a speech. Before he spoke, Leif finished his talk with a mischievous grin, “Let’s see if these Norns of yours have sewn a way for Olaf to send you with me.”

  I furrowed my brow and asked, “Did you arrange something with him ahead of time?”

  “I didn’t, but won’t it be fun to see how you find yourself returning to Greenland?”

  Oh, how he frustrated me. The confident boy had grown into a confident man and I crossed my arms looking irritable as Olaf began, “Welcome Norsemen! Tonight we sit in a great hall built by your hands. We sit in a great city built by your hands. We sit in a great kingdom built by your hands.” And swords, I thought. “I called for a feast tonight to celebrate the return of one of my best warriors. He served in Ireland, Maldon, and London. He’s led and killed for the Norse way, but then Leif found himself in the bed of a woman and could not find his way out!” Men laughed and cheered. “So he left us to make babies and get fat. But now he returns and you know what he had the audacity to do? He tried to pry away two more of my best men.” Good-hearted boos and hisses filled the smoky hall. I gave Leif a skeptical look and he returned it with a good-natured shrug. “That’s right! You should react that way, I did. I told Leif, the favored man of Greenland, that he’ll not capture Cnute and Halldorr, for these men are happier killing and subduing peoples, not the harshness of rocks and snow. I told him that I had work for them to do, yet. More on that work in a moment. So I told Leif no, he’ll not have my men. But there is work that must be done in Greenland; hard work that is befitting the son of the jarl of Greenland. Most of you know that a seer told me that I would reign as a king. Look! Here I am! He also told me I would become a Christian and convert many people to the One God! Look! I have. But there is one area filled with Norsemen that goes on living the heathen ways. Greenland. We cannot stand for that, and so Leif will take with him a priest and they will see to it that a proper church is built and that the old gods are left behind. And in a show of the good faith I shal
l bestow upon him two thralls as gifts. You all know them for they are often seen running errands for me because they are both swift of foot. Haki, the Scotsman and his sister, Haekja will help spread the gospel like no one of us can. They are devout in their faith, even Crevan acknowledges that.

  So, back to the other work we have to do. Now that Halldorr sees fit to arrive at most functions fully clothed and upon two feet,” the men laughed at my expense, predictably, “now that Halldorr is ready, his king can leave the confines of Kaupangen to secure further alliances with an old friend. As a youth, I travelled through Wendland many times and had the occasion to meet their king on several of those journeys. We became friends. And though we had a disagreement in recent times about betrothals and weddings, our correspondence would indicate we are still friends. He and I have agreed on meeting once again to discuss how we can better cooperate between our two kingdoms and so I need my Berserkers with me when we leave to meet Burizlaf next week. I still hold out hope that he will see the truth in the One True God.”

  I nudged Leif in the ribs and gave him a wink that said that perhaps he couldn’t read the future after all. And Olaf finished his speech, “So let’s raise our mugs and cups and drink. Let’s eat until we look like oxen. Let’s celebrate the spread of the faith and the spread of a greater Norway among the Norse and the world!” We obliged the king’s finish and downed our ale. And I ate until I was sick.

  So certain was Leif that I would accompany him to Greenland by some twist in the threads of fate, that he delayed his voyage. He and his family stayed in my home while I journeyed with Olaf. I promised Leif nothing, in fact I again told him I would not travel with him, but I assured him that he and Thorgunna and Thorgils could stay as long as they wished. Years would be acceptable to me. Tyrkr and the rest of the crew stayed behind in Kaupangen as well, sleeping under cloth tents aboard Dragon Skull.

  Since I now had a trusted guardian in my home, I decided to leave the chest containing the book, hacksilver, and other treasure that I stole from our raid on Sweynsey nine years earlier. I took only what I could carry on my back or belt.

  As Olaf promised we hoisted our sails and left Kaupangen the following week. The weather was fine for sailing with a fair wind. We would make excellent time to Wendland and King Burizlaf if the skies remained the same. Olaf commanded Long Serpent with its gold covered prow and stern. After all the years and campaigns, he finally had replaced his old, tarnished, well-worn personal armor with shining gold regalia. His helmet was gold. He carried a gold shield as if its soft metal would protect him from the axe strike of even an old woman. His mail shirt was new and doubly shined after it received an elbow-wrenching scrub from his household thralls the previous evening. Covering his mail shirt was not the white tunic with dried blood and ale stains and the dragon emblazoned across the front. Instead he wore a short, bright red kirtle with an indigo blue cross on both the front and back. I stood next to my lord with my own best battle dress of a newly polished helmet and mail and my own new red tunic which I received as a gift from Olaf. All of his Berserkers: Cnute, Einar, Ox-foot, Vikar, Thrond Squint-eye, Wolf the Red, Kolbjorn, and Bersi the Strong, received the gift of a solid red tunic. Mine was the only one with a matching cross to Olaf’s, though my cross was white so that we could easily be distinguished in the fright of battle. Crevan, who suffered from gout at that time, sat on a pillow with his bare foot resting on a pack in the hold. I had seen many disgusting objects in my fighting life, from dung-filled bowels spilling to the ground to the kidney that splashed on the deck in the fight against Haakon, but seeing his swollen, big toe perched at the end of his ghostly white legs that stuck out from beneath his robes made my stomach turn.

  The two Thorkels commanded the Crane and Short Serpent (which is what we had come to call the original Serpent). Thorkel Dydril was a long-time sailor with Olaf and fought with us at Maldon and London. He captained Crane with animal ferocity. He frequently screamed at and frequently clubbed his crew to get his way. This Thorkel drank too much, which was becoming viewed as a sin by our Christian priests, but he fought and killed. He loved the thrill of a sea battle and the shouting and crying that came with it. He bragged that his blood was water – saltier than the sea. The other Thorkel, Thorkel Leira, commanded Short Serpent. He was young. Well, he was younger than I was at the time, about twenty-five. He had yet to prove himself as a leader of men, but he was confident and fought well aboard Serpent during our battle in Agdenes Fjord for the crown of Norway. Around the drinking hall he often said how he would die a happy death if he could be given the chance to slam the beard of iron spikes positioned on Short Serpent’s prow into an enemy’s port side to watch her send some foul devils to their watery grave. Of course, this was drunken bragging, but it was necessary for a commander to say such things. Thorkel Leira just had to carry out his wish to be considered a hero.

  Meili, my father-in-law, commanded Hail Fury for Olaf this day. He had spent less and less time at sea of late because his joints didn’t work as they once did, but he wanted to get away from his Auda, who still grieved for my Kenna. Meili’s sea-worn personality didn’t understand long spans of sorrow and it was best for both that he spend time on the waves for a season. From my perch on Long Serpent I would watch him occasionally as he handled the rudder, grimacing whenever a shot of pain went through his hands.

  We sailed southward along the coast, harassed the Isle of Most by attending mass there and visiting with Erling and the town elders, and tarried in Vik for just one day while Olaf’s uncle prepared his own ship to join us on the expedition to Wendland. His ship was impressive in its own right with nearly thirty benches, though the construction would have infuriated my crushed-faced shipwright friend, Thorberg. It sat too high in the water and at an angle, no less, which meant they didn’t even get the ballast correct. The strakes bowed in places which meant it would leak like a sieve in anything but the mildest conditions.

  With our miniature fleet of eleven ships, we left the Vik for the short trip to Wendland. We sailed southward past the coast of Sweden and on the second day we sliced between Dane lands on Sweden’s tip and the big Dane island of Zealand. Sweyn Forkbeard’s capital, Roskilde lay some miles to the west of where we sailed, but we caught a glimpse of Copenhagen, the new town he settled adjacent to the sea. Cnute made the best observation, saying that it looked like a water-logged hovel and would no doubt amount to nothing. Once past Zealand, the flotilla turned southeast to cross the Baltic Sea and within just one more day, scratched the shores of Wendland.

  As Thyre had said of him, Burizlaf was old, over sixty. He was certainly a heathen, not a follower of the One God, as he proudly displayed the hammer of Thor amulet about his neck. I wondered why that made him so bad since I too, wore something similar just a few years ago. She reported Burizlaf drank too much, which he did on several nights of our meetings with him, but no more than many men. His once-betrothed also said he stunk of urine, but I never noticed the smell, possibly because he was in the company of so many other men and our own smells whenever I saw him. He was as bald as any man can be. Two or three stray hairs jutted out from his head which he either plucked out with his fingers or shaved with his eating knife when they grew back. His nose was long, probably due to his age because I have heard it said that a man’s nose keeps growing throughout his life. The question of why it was the nose and not the organ between our legs made me laugh to myself.

  He welcomed us at the shore where he and his band of household bodyguards arrived the week prior and camped in great tents awaiting our arrival. I was surprised at how warmly he welcomed Olaf after my lord stole his wife. When Olaf jumped onto the beach, Burizlaf quickly approached and gave him a bear hug that Olaf returned. They loudly slapped each other’s backs and then drew away from one another still holding each other’s shoulders. “Old friend, Olaf, I didn’t think I would live long enough to see you again. It is a delight and you are welcome anywhere in my kingdom.”

  “The same to
you, old warrior; I thank you for the invitation,” said Olaf.

  Then Burizlaf’s face turned to a distressed frown, “Olaf, I was genuinely saddened to learn of Thyre’s death. It’s tragic when a good woman leaves us along with a young one.”

  Olaf immediately choked for a moment and then in a quivering, soft voice said, “Thank you for your kind words, friend. And I thank you for not dissolving our friendship over this.”

  Burizlaf’s face wrinkled more than it already was into a fatherly smile. He took off Olaf’s gold helmet and tussled his hair like he would a child’s then said, “Olaf, we are both growing older, especially me. I no longer have time for grudges. You have always been fair and just with me. I choose to believe you when you say that Thyre wished to marry you and not me. I am truly saddened by your loss.” Then he changed his tone and raised his voice, “Olaf let’s hunt today! There is a little wood nearby where I haven’t been in years, but recall that it has the best hunting in northern Wendland.”

  For a week we hunted and celebrated and camped at the shore in our tents. Political alliances were not even mentioned during this time. Two old friends shared stories and remembered the excitement of younger days. Lies were told and all those present knew it, but didn’t care. The tales improved with age.

  After that week we mounted the horses we received from Sigrid the Haughty and rode inland with Burizlaf to an unpronounceable city named Szczecin. Most of our men stayed behind with the ships. Crevan was among them for his gout made any walking excruciating. But, our ride was easy around an immense bay and then a lake that Burizlaf called Dabie. Burizlaf’s capital was further east, but he had a fortress in this town and used it often when travelling. A river called the Oder flowed north past the city up to the Baltic Sea.