Viking Dead

by Toby Venables

  "What's going on?" he asked. He thought he had caught odd words - it was not the Latin his uncle was teaching him, but the Byzantine Greek that was spoken so widely in this region.

  "They are saying there is plague of some sort on board, that we should stay away," said Svein.

  "Then, should we not just go around?" said Bjólf. Svein said nothing.

  There was barely any distance between the two vessels now. Olaf called out again, even more cheerily this time. Svein chuckled at his words. "Now he's saying we have many healers on board, who can release a man from his sickness."

  "Do we?" said Bjólf, bemused.

  "Oh, yes," said Svein. "Though it may not be quite the release they are after."

  Bjólf frowned. But before he had a chance to even ask the inevitable question, Svein had drawn his sword.

  "Better get ready," he said, bracing himself against the gunwale.

  With that, the helmsman leaned hard on the rudder, bringing her right alongside the Arab ship. The crewmen on the halyards dropped the yard, several more on the deck reefed the sail in one rapid, fluid motion, and the hull of the dragon ship butted violently against the Arab's bow. As it did so, to Bjólf's utter amazement, Olaf launched himself from the gunwale and landed heavily with both feet upon the enemy deck. A space instantly cleared around him, like a stone dropped among swarming ants. For a moment the man stood, regarding them in silence on the swaying deck, towering over all around by at least a forearm's length. Bjólf could make out their faces now - gnarled and seasoned, much like Olaf's crew, but with skin of every hue from the palest brown to the darkest black - what some of the older Norse crewmen referred to as 'blue men.' Among them were expressions ranging from nervous dread to simmering defiance. One stepped forward, speaking rapidly, and, Bjólf thought, with barely contained agitation, despite a fixed smile, gesturing repeatedly at something on deck, something Bjólf could not see.

  "They are telling him to return to his ship, that it is too late for healing," said Svein. Then, craning his neck, added: "It appears the Nubian fellow at their feet is already dead."

  Bjólf raised himself as far as he dared, high enough to glimpse a long body in robes of white and tan, stretched out and motionless on the Arab's deck, the dark skin of his face tinged with a deathly, ashen pallor. But already hooks had been thrown over the side of the Arab ship, pulling it tight alongside, and other members of Olaf's crew were now clambering over, while Olaf himself continued to smile at the increasingly nervous Arab sailors.

  "Stay close, young cub," said Svein. "I promised your uncle I would keep you alive." And with that, he too slipped over the side. Bjólf followed, his hand on the old sword his uncle had given him and which, as yet, had not shed blood, his eyes nervously scanning the rows of faces that greeted them. Their fingers twitched towards weapons, their tense bodies edging back and forth, keeping their distance from the silently invading Northmen.

  Bjólf felt his knees shake. Cold beads of sweat trickled down his sides. Now, with his ship behind him and his feet on this unknown vessel, he had never felt so exposed. He wished to turn - to check his ship was still there, at least - but did not dare.

  Looking around slowly, still smiling, Olaf picked up a pail from the deck, and took two steps toward the dead Nubian, ignoring the shouts of the Arabs' leader. Others inched away at his approach. Then, as he looked back at the dead man, Bjólf happened to notice that the deathly pallor of his face was entirely absent from his hands. Finally, he understood, and knew for certain what was to come.

  "Time for the cure," muttered Svein. Olaf hurled the contents of the bucket over the Nubian's face. The man roared and leapt to his feet in a fury, easily matching Olaf for height, shaking his head violently, white powder running off his face, his gold-ringed hand grasping a huge curved sword that had been concealed beneath his body. Eyes blazing, he lunged forward, and as one the Arab crew flew at the invaders.

  Several fell in that first moment. Less armoured than their Norse opponents, with no helms upon their heads, a few among the Arab pirates succumbed immediately to well-aimed blows. A single strike of a sword or axe to the head was usually enough to settle the matter, but many of the viking's body blows were turned by concealed armour. The fighting that followed was intense and bitter. For Bjólf, it lived as a confused memory, the details of which were fractured and blurred. He remembered men wrestling for their lives all around him, falling in spilt blood, the white robes stained red. He saw Olaf dispatch one with a swing of his axe, catching the small wiry man with the flat of the blade against the side of his head with a sickening crunch and propelling him clean overboard. Near Olaf's feet was the big Nubian, motionless, blood on his head. Then Bjólf was buffeted by something - other men, struggling in each other's grips - throwing him off his feet and knocking the wind out of him. Someone stepped on his left hand with all his weight. He felt a bone crack. Through the pain, he recovered his senses and looked up to see the Nubian, somehow up again and almost upon him, staggering, his blade raised. As it swung wildly at him, Bjólf scrabbled desperately backwards. Something caught his forehead a glancing blow. He crumpled, his head swimming. Afterwards, he remembered being suddenly on his feet again - how, he had no idea. There was a ringing in his head, and he was blinded in his left eye, but he was up, alive and alert, his sword still in his hand. The chaos continued all around, and the Nubian swung at him again. Having no shield, Bjólf parried with his sword. The two blades met with a jarring crash, sending both singing out of the their owners' hands to clatter on the wooden deck. Bjólf staggered back as the Nubian went at him again, hands reaching out towards him, grabbing his throat. He could smell the man's sweat. To his left, he was dimly aware of Svein, sword drawn, trying to fight his way towards them, but suddenly blocked by a small man with a halberd, screaming at the top of his lungs. No help was coming. Without thinking, Bjólf unsheathed his knife and lashed out blindly. The Nubian's eyes suddenly widened, his grip on the boy's windpipe loosened, and with a horrible, rattling groan he slid to the floor, taking Bjólf's knife with him, stuck fast between his ribs. Bjólf stared into the man's face as he gasped his last breath, the life leaving his eyes.

  In minutes it was over. Every Arab pirate was dead. The deck swam with blood. In a daze, Bjólf watched it wash back and forth with the roll of the ship. He felt the gash on his left brow from the tip of the Nubian's sword, realising now that it was only the blood in his eye blinding him. A lucky escape. Olaf's men relieved the hold of its plunder, which was considerable. His own crew had got away with only minor injuries. Tonight, they would celebrate. Bjólf would be singled out for special treatment; he had made his first kill. And he was alive. They would drink mead, and sing songs, and make oaths. Olaf would honour him with a new sword - the sword once meant for the son he never had.

  The memory faded, but some things remained. Through the middle of Bjólf's left brow there would now always be an angled scar where no hair grew. His right hand would ache in cold weather. And for years he would dream of the face of that Nubian, rising from the dead to kill him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE GREY LAND

  As the sun rose, the Hrafn made its slow, steady progress inland, a half-crew keeping a slow stroke on the oars. The grey walls of the deep fjord towered above them on either side, shrouding them in shadow, and, despite what the raven had promised, offering no place to make a landing, and precious few signs of life. Save for some smears of slimy green algae close to the water's edge, no growing thing seemed to have gained a foothold on the steep, forbidding crags. Occasionally, a large bird flapped and cried out at the brow of the cliff, and the eyes of the men flicked nervously upward, scanning its broken edge. Weapons were kept ready for fear of other eyes watching, but mostly it was the unnerving, dead stillness of this place that made them tense, and kept them keen. Even Kjötvi, though still weak, was awake and alert. Then, after a while, just when it seemed the sun might break into the depths of this lifeless chasm, another thi
ck fog rolled in. Different, this time, seeming to come not from the sea, but to creep out from the landward side, to seep out of the rock itself, heavy and tinged with sickly yellow. It clung to their clothes and made all aboard shiver.

  For a long time, no one spoke. Only the sound of the oars accompanied their progress. They hugged the shore on the port side, close enough to keep it safely in sight, but just far enough to keep their oar-tips clear of the rocks. The surroundings were beginning to have a strange effect on all aboard, making them sullen and listless. The lack of any other sound save those of the ship itself had a curiously disorientating effect. Bjólf could not even judge the passage of time with any certainty, and found himself counting oar-strokes in an effort to combat the sense of disconnection from the world.

  Gradually, the terrain began to change. The cliff wall became less sheer, more broken. Here and there, in the few, tiny bays where life had at some time taken hold, twisted roots wound their way through fissures in the rock. Occasionally, there were spiked, leafless limbs of trees - grey as the stone to which they clung - that reached out and trailed the tips of their warped, gaunt branches in the water, some choked with the sinewy remains of old, colourless ivy. At the port bow, Bjólf scanned the forbidding land for even the slightest offer of a place to make landfall. But everywhere the cliff was too sheer, the rocks too treacherous. He heard a grunt at his shoulder.

  "This is bad," said Gunnar, speaking in a whisper.

  "We'll find a place," said Bjólf. "It's just a matter of time."

  Gunnar shuddered. "You follow a raven, you should not be surprised that he leads you to a land of the dead."

  "That bird saved our skins, Gunnar." He turned to his old friend, frowning. "What's wrong with you?"

  Gunnar could not place the feeling. He shrugged. "Maybe it was a bad omen. Coming from nowhere, out of that fog."

  Bjólf sighed. "Gunnar, this ship is called 'Raven.' We have a raven on our sail. The weather vane atop our mast is shaped like a raven's wing. If you're really so superstitious about that particular bird, you joined the wrong ship."

  "They're different! We all know what the raven is. A Corpse-Picker. A Death-Follower. And he doesn't just follow death; he casts death's shadow. It's no coincidence the All-Father has them in his service." Gunnar pointed discretely towards the heavens once more as he spoke, as if afraid someone out there might notice."

  Bjólf laughed. "Gunnar, I can't believe the Old One sends his personal ravens to earth just so they can have a peck at Kjötvi's leg."

  "Ah, you're mocking me!" barked Gunnar. "You don't know what schemes are being played out, what fates we may have spun for us." He shook his head in dismay. "You never did have respect for the old religion."

  "What faith I have is in these two hands," said Bjólf irritably, raising them before Gunnar's glowering brow. "And I have no time for omens." He turned them, then, in a conciliatory gesture. "I've no greater respect for any man, Gunnar. You know that. But... It's just a bird."

  "It's not just -" began Gunnar, but thought better of it. He had never won this argument, and never would. "I'm just saying. One should not tempt fate."

  "Fate will come whether I tempt it or not," said Bjólf, his voice as hard as steel. Gunnar kept silent. Upon this one point, at least, both could agree. Bjólf thought for a moment, then added: "Anyway, it was a crow."

  Gunnar growled, doggedly refusing to crack his face at the joke.

  "Hoy!" hissed a voice.

  In his position high on the prow, Fjölvar was pointing up ahead. As Bjólf peered into the murk, he could just make out the beginning of a long bend in the waterway off to the starboard side, and with it another change in the landscape. The sheer cliffs - whose dominance had evidently been diminishing for some time behind the fog - were finally giving way to a gentler shore, the dead rock to ever more thickly tangled forest, whose boughs and thickets overflowed and tumbled into the water. Up ahead, the overhanging foliage - as dense as Bjólf had ever seen - still presented an impenetrable barrier to their landing. Yet here and there, where the knots of vegetation occasionally thinned, there were glimpses of a swampy land beyond, bringing the hope that landfall could not be far away.

  "There!" said Fjölvar. His eyes were sharper than most, but finally Bjólf saw it: a tiny sheltered bay, little more than the length of their ship, where the small closely-knit trees stood back a little from the water's edge and presented a thumbnail of solid ground - albeit covered in thick tangles of bramble, hawthorn and mossy roots. At the nearest end, half in the water, was a huge boulder that seemed to bear no relation to its surroundings, as if dropped there by a passing giant. Bjólf gave the signal to Úlf, at the helm, to take them in.

  "This forest is old as the hills," he said to Gunnar. "Must be teeming with game."

  "I'd feel better if I could hear it," said Gunnar, still evidently unnerved. He turned and hauled up a length of rope from the deck, at the end of which was a large iron hook, and slung it over his shoulder. "Nevertheless, I volunteer to go ashore, if only for the forgotten pleasure of relieving myself on dry land."

  Úlf steered the ship into the tiny, still cove as Bjólf's crew shipped their oars. Gunnar made ready at the gunwale, and as the hull rasped and crunched against submerged stones and roots, he made a jump for the strip of shore. It was not the most elegant of landings. He came down short, his feet splashing in the filthy, green water hidden beneath the mesh of roots and creepers, then, in trying to step forward to steady himself, snarled his toe in the tangle and pitched forward, landing heavily on his front and barking his shin on a tree root. The crew guffawed.

  "Dry land, Gunnar!" called Bjólf.

  Gunnar struggled to his feet, hauling the ship's line back over his shoulder and muttering to himself as he fought through the knee-high web of foliage to firmer ground. Finally, he rose up onto what was evidently a solid bank, veined with thick, tuberous roots, made a great show of stamping his feet upon it, then turned and raised his arms in triumph. All aboard the ship gave a cheer.

  Suddenly aware of the uncertainty of their surroundings, Bjólf turned and gestured for quiet. The laughter died down, the occasional lingering chuckle echoing away to nothing in the still air. "Now, just get on with it!" he called.

  "First things first..." replied Gunnar, throwing the grappling-hook and line on the ground and hitching up his tunic. The foliage steamed as he emptied his aching bladder. "Ah, that's better. You can't beat a good piss in the open air with the earth beneath your feet!" He shuddered as he finished, the muffled sniggers of the men behind him and the splash of his own water before, and another sound caught his attention.

  It came from within the trees.

  At first, he thought it must be the groan of the ship's timbers, somehow cast ahead of them by the strange nature of this rocky fjord. Then, he heard a distinct movement directly ahead. He stared hard into the dark shadows of the forest, trying to penetrate them, but could see nothing. Fastening his clothes, he stepped forward gingerly, pushing apart the thorny outer branches at the forest's edge.

  "Gunnar?" The voice was Bjólf's.

  Without looking back, Gunnar raised his hand in acknowledgement, but it was a gesture that also called for silence. If there was game here, he didn't want to scare it off. What he wanted most was to sink his teeth into it. His mouth watered involuntarily at the thought of its succulent flesh. As he took a step forward into the woods themselves, he frowned deeply, his eyes becoming slowly accustomed to the gloom. There was a dead, still atmosphere amongst these trees - like none he had ever encountered - the boughs of the trees, where they were visible at all, covered in clumps of ancient moss, dusty, crumbling layers of lichen and the choking, skeletal remains of old ivy. A sudden, sickening stench of organic decay wafted over him. Some stinking bog in the forest's interior, he supposed. He shuddered again. A twig snapped to his right. Whatever it was, it was near, but the vegetation was so close, so dense and dark, he was barely able to glimpse anything beyond a coup
le of paces. Stupid, he thought. What can I do about it now, anyway, with no spear and no bow? He was about to turn back when something big crashed unsteadily through the thicket with a great, unearthly groan, its face suddenly emerging from the mass of thorny suckers and grey leaves, barely an arm's length from his own. Gunnar, who had seen every terrible thing that deprivation and savagery could deliver, reeled in sickened horror at the sight of it, staggering backwards through the bushes and clear out of the woods to the thin, tangled strip of shore.

  He had only a fleeting moment to take in what he had seen.

  It was the face of a man - or what had once been a man - its skin quite gone, like something flayed alive. But he could hardly believe that what lurched towards him in those woods was actually alive. The veins, sinews and musculature were not only uncovered, but bloodless, misshapen and eaten away like rotten, wasp-gnawed fruit. It was - he could not doubt it, for he had seen enough of them in his life - the face of a long-dead corpse. Beneath it, hung in limp, wet rags, was a body so ravaged that the impression was of a skeleton barely held together by its liquifying gobbets of grey, slimy flesh, its extended right forearm so stripped of meat that he could clearly see between the exposed bones. Yet its hand grasped, its yellowed eyes without lids twitched in their sockets, staring madly at him, and its lipless mouth snapped, the blackened, loose teeth clattering horribly against one another. Gunnar had hesitated just long enough to see it take two quivering steps towards him.

  Greeted by the comical sight of the big man tottering wildly backwards out of the undergrowth, Bjólf broke into a laugh. "Gunnar?" His old friend stopped dead. Bjólf's smile faded. "Gunnar...?"