The Raven's Table: Viking Stories

by Christine Morgan

  To the cord, called Gelgja, Gleipnir was tied

  Fenrir, fettered such that he could not fight free

  Howled wild howls and bit wide in his wrath

  Teeth gnashing until his mouth was sword-struck

  Slicing his gums so that the wolf’s blood ran red

  Then it was that a fury filled Fenris-Wolf’s heart

  He summoned his son, known as Hati, moon-chaser

  The hater, the enemy, black wolf of the night

  Brother to Skoll, who gives chase to the sun

  In Hati and in Hati’s sons he stirred madness

  A ravenous craving to devour and destroy

  A blood-lust, an unspeakable hunger for flesh

  Sated only by making them eaters of men—

  ***

  “Vjan!” Gottar’s voice crashed through the hall like a hammer blow on an anvil.

  They all were startled, young and old alike. The baby let out a sound somewhere between a wail and screech, then began to cry. Even the crone, Lindis, deaf as a stump, dropped her hand-carders so that the fluffs of fleece fell smutty in the soot and dust.

  Gottar strode past them without acknowledging their distress. “What, by Thor’s thunder, are you doing, telling them tales such as this?”

  Children scattered, all except for Gottar’s own.

  Hrugar looked as if he would have liked to join the scatter, but Ferilke stayed where she was, beside the old man, and this seemed to have shamed Hrugar into staying as well.

  Ferilke. Gottar could hardly look upon her without seeing the face of her mother, Ulrika.

  “There’s no harm in tales—” began the old man.

  Gottar clenched his jaw. “Men are dead, livestock slaughtered! Wolves roam the woods! And you sit here spinning tales of Fenrir?”

  “It’ll be a caution to them to not stray far from home.”

  “It’ll be night of no sleep, if they’re up all the night with the terrors!”

  “I’m not afraid,” said Ferilke.

  Hrugar’s eyes were wide, but he bobbed his head. “Nor am I, Father! They’re just stories.”

  “Well, of such stories, we’ve had enough!” Snorting, Gottar turned away.

  The storyteller had gone from placatory to indignant. “These tales serve a good purpose!”

  Gottar spun to face him. “To cause panic with foolish superstitions? To distract men from their honest and profitable labors?”

  “Not all in this world can be reckoned by money!”

  “All that matters can be,” Gottar told him. “You’ll see for yourself; tomorrow in the clean light of day, when this rogue wolf lies dead like any other, they’ll laugh at themselves for their meaningless fears.”

  ***

  Outside the fence of logs and brambles, a lone goat bleated plaintively in the dusk. The moon rose fat and full, shedding a silvery shimmer through the night mist.

  The men and boys waited. Hands gripped tight to the hafts of pitchforks and rakes, palms sweating, knuckles aching from tension. Their expressions in the torchlight were drawn and grim-set.

  They had dug pits in the fields, covering them with stretched hides pegged down and disguised by a thin layer of dirt. Beneath these were stakes, rough-hewn ends jutting upward.

  A goat, tied by a rope, continued bleating.

  Women served meals that went largely uneaten. Children fretted, too overwrought for sleep. A hushed expectation hung in the air.

  Clouds crept across the sky, veiling the moon’s white face, obscuring its pale shine. The goat’s bleats then became screams. A huge shape moved swift in the shadows. There was a sudden violent commotion, the goat brutally silenced, a thudding crunch followed by a pained, piercing howl.

  Men rushed from the village, armed with their tools and torches, to the place where one of the pit traps had collapsed.

  They brought ropes and chain, intending to haul up their prize from the hole after they stabbed and hacked every last trace of life from it. But when they peered into the pit, they saw only the goat’s bloodied carcass impaled across the many stakes.

  A hot, snorting chuff of breath made them turn.

  The wolf sprang among them, teeth flashing. It tore flesh from bone and ripped away one man’s scalp, leaving a ragged hairy flap. His skull gleamed all along the side of his peeled head. Some men stumbled into their own traps, sharp wood punching into their throats and guts.

  Pitchforks jabbed, scythes and cudgels swung, and two men tried to sling chain over the beast. But a twist of the wolf’s body yanked the end from one of the men’s grasp. The other held on, shouting for help. A weak link gave with a crack; iron flung against the man’s chin with such force that his lower jaw shattered into a dripping red ruin.

  With a leap and a bound, the wolf fled from the field, leaving corpses and carnage in its wake.

  ***

  So many had died. Youths and men alike, gutted, dismembered, lifeless in pools of blood. Others lived, though for how long remained uncertain. Few had escaped only with scratches and fewer still had survived unscathed.

  Gottar himself was among the latter. The wolf had merely knocked him aside in passing.

  A mother whose barely-bearded twin boys had fallen beneath savage bites wailed over their corpses. As for the rest, their lamentation had to be set aside for later. Too much else remained that needed to be done.

  The wounded were brought to the center of Vidrtoft. The dead were lowered into the very pits intended for the wolf.

  Vjan, bent over his gnarled walking stick, moved to and fro among the gathered, offering words of comfort.

  With some, he joked and was jovial, telling them they would have proud battle scars to boast of. With others, he made promises to see that debts would be settled and messages given. He spoke quietly of the gods or warmly of times past.

  It was only much later that Hruga, Gottar’s woman, burst through the door to ask, frantic, if anyone had seen her son, Hrugar.

  A quick search was made, the children questioned, but it soon became clear that both Hrugar and Ferilke were gone.

  ***

  “You see?” Ferilke said. “I told you. I was right. You shouldn’t have doubted.”

  “I didn’t,” objected Hrugar. “I came along, didn’t I?”

  They had slipped from the village during the bustling activity, Ferilke confident no one would notice their absence until mealtime at least. It was an easy matter for her to guide Hrugar through gaps in the fence, cross the fields, and enter the forest.

  In the dense trees, Ferilke unloaded the dried meats stolen from the town’s stores and waited. Finally, the wolf had come. Sun-dapple and leaf-shadow played over its pelt, dark grey streaked with silver and ivory and black.

  Ferilke withdrew a long, thin ribbon of silk.

  The wolf’s amber eyes regarded the ribbon warily.

  “Just like in Old Father’s story,” she said. “No iron chain or leather strap… this will be as nothing to one of your great strength. You could break it with ease.”

  The wolf’s eyes narrowed. Its lips skinned back, baring sharp, bloodstained teeth.

  “Open your mouth, then,” Ferilke coaxed the wolf. “Let Hrugar put his hand between your jaws.”

  Hrugar jumped back. “What? Why?”

  “To prove our trust and good will, as Tyr did,” she said.

  “What if I won’t?”

  “Then you’ll be a coward, not brave like Tyr.”

  “You wouldn’t tell!”

  Ferilke pointed at his chest. “I would and I will.”

  Hrugar looked from the waiting maw to his hand, curling his fingers again. “It’ll bite me.”

  “Only if it can’t break the band.”

  “But, in the story—”

  “That was Gleipnir, made by dwarves,” she said, impatience becoming exasperation. “This is a plain silk ribbon my mother wore in her hair.”

  Still, the wolf waited, slaughter on its hot, damp breath, amber gaze fixed u
pon the boy.

  Hrugar slowly extended his arm. His hand shook, fingers trembling as he unclenched to slide them between the sharp, pointed rows. He glanced once more at Ferilke, pleading.

  “You see?” she said to the wolf. “We trust that you mean us no harm, so you must trust that we mean none to you in return.”

  She crouched and brought the silk band close to the wolf’s foreleg. The fur was warm and soft to the touch. She slipped the ribbon once around and tied a loose knot just above the broad paw.

  “Ferilke…” whined Hrugar.

  “Hush.” She began to stretch the ribbon toward the other foreleg.

  The wolf’s jaws snapped shut with a vicious crunch. Skin ripped and blood sprayed. Hrugar shrieked.

  Ferilke recoiled from the wet, red spatter across her face. She landed hard on her back, struck breathless as much by the impact as she was by what she saw happening before her.

  Hrugar attempted to pull his arm free, but the wolf held fast, clamping down all the harder so that there was a terrible grinding and cracking of brittle bones.

  “No!” Ferilke cried, but the wolf paid no heed.

  More blood gushed as the boy struggled in the relentless toothy grip. Urine soaked the front of his breeches. His free hand slapped madly at the wolf’s furry head. He fell, feet tangled, to thrash and kick upon the ground.

  “I didn’t bind you! I didn’t finish! And it’s only silk, it would have broken!”

  To this, as well, the wolf paid no heed. It stood over Hrugar, powerful shoulders bunched. It gave a mighty wrench of its neck. With the gruesome tearing of meat and gristle, the boy’s hand came loose from his arm, trailing veins and tendons, vanishing in a single gulp down the wolf’s gullet.

  ***

  Gottar, angrier than he’d been in years and more afraid than he was willing to admit, stalked grumbling through the trees.

  This was all the girl’s doing, of that he was sure. She’d goaded the boy into it, willful creature that she was.

  It was unfair and unwarranted, he knew, to hate the daughter as much as he’d hated the mother. Ferilke had been little more than a toddler at the time, blameless. But now the wretched girl might cost him his son. For that, he could hate her as freely as he’d grown to hate Ulrika.

  She had been opposed to the marriage, in love with some woodcutter whose father was poorer than her own. What began as unhappiness soon became bitterness. Not even the birth of their child had softened her resentment.

  When Gottar had forsaken their cold and unwelcoming bed for Hruga’s, Ulrika had taken this to mean she could return to her own lover’s arms without consequence.

  That was an insult Gottar’s pride would not bear.

  At the boy’s first shriek, Gottar’s anger and weariness were forgotten. He plunged ahead, hearing more screams, Ferilke’s cries, and a terrible guttural growl.

  Hrugar lay on his back, blood spouting crimson from his stumped wrist. The wolf’s forelegs straddled the boy’s body, muzzle burrowing beneath his chin.

  A raging madness fell over Gottar, such as he’d not known since that day he’d followed his faithless wife to meet with her lover in a similar wood-grove. He’d meant only to give them both a sound beating. He had not intended to drive the man’s head again and again against a boulder, but he did not stop until blood smeared across the stone. What else could he have done but finish the act, conceal the crime, and let folk think instead that Ulrika and her lover had run off?

  Gottar flung himself on the wolf, fists flailing. The boy’s screams ended in a bubbling gurgle. Gottar tore clumps of hair from the wolf’s pelt and pummeled its body. The wolf uttered a roar. It spun, hurling him aside.

  When he raised his head, it was to see Ferilke huddled nearby, arms wrapped around her knees. Her face was tear-streaked, eyes brimming with piteous fear. He lunged at her and swung his arm. Twice more did his fists strike his daughter’s face before the wolf’s jaws hamstrung him.

  Gottar rolled sideways. His vision filled with the gaping black maw of the wolf’s mouth.

  ***

  Ferilke moaned, waking with the slow, sludgy struggle of one fighting her way through a mire. Her surroundings were dark and unfamiliar. Warm, though, and the earthen smell was strange but not unpleasant.

  She blinked until she could see clearly. She heard water trickling, chuckling over pebbles. She heard the wind sighing around the pine boughs.

  Her head hurt with a low, dull throb. She sat up carefully, then felt at her face, finding it swollen and bruised, and remembered the blows from her father’s fists, the stickiness of blood still drying on her skin.

  A shadow briefly blocked the cave’s opening. A shape entered, ducking under roots. Not a wolf but a woman… naked except for a length of silken ribbon hanging from one wrist.

  They looked at each other. The woman’s amber gaze was intent. Her head tipped to the side so that her hair swept in a long fall over her shoulder—hair the same chestnut color as Ferilke’s.

  “Mother?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Yes.” The woman nodded. “Yes, Ferilke.”

  Ulrika knelt beside the bed of soft moss where Ferilke sat. She untied the ribbon and held it out. Ferilke took it, running it through her hands.

  “Mother,” she said, this time more sure. They embraced. “I thought you were gone. That you’d abandoned us.”

  “So your father would have had it. He beat me and left me for dead. The sons of Hati found me. They saved me, took me with them, made me their wolf-wife.” Ulrika laved blood from the girl’s brow with rough strokes of her tongue.

  “Wolf-wife?”

  “We traveled far through the forests. We roamed high in the mountains where the snow never melts. We raced in meadows, the grass standing tall as our shoulders. I was one with the pack. I hunted. I howled.”

  “And now?”

  “And now,” she said, smiling at her daughter, her teeth strong, pointed. “Now, at last, I have come home.”

  AT RAGNAROK, THE GODDESSES

  That, which has long been foretold,

  has now come, and has begun

  That end-of-days upon the world,

  that dooming twilight of the gods

  Winter after wind-frost winter,

  no summers in between the snows

  The age of wars, the rage of swords,

  for greed and hate to kill mankind

  Brothers shedding brothers’ blood,

  bonds by battle broken, sisters’ sons kin-slain.

  The Sun and Moon wolf-swallowed,

  the stars gone dark, the Earth to shake

  Trees fall and mountains tremble;

  the seas surge and heave, serpent-stirred

  As Jormungandr rises, and the dread ship,

  loosed from its moorings, sails

  Flame and venom fill the skies,

  which split apart as giants ride and Bifrost cracks

  From root to leaf Yggdrasil shudders;

  not even the mighty ash tree is without fear.

  All this and more, in prophecy,

  was by volva, seeress and sybil spoken

  How Thor and Odin, Frey and Tyr,

  would go to meet their fates, their deaths

  They know that which awaits them

  when Heimdall blows the Gjallarhorn

  And Valhalla’s shining doors swing open,

  yet the foretelling is incomplete

  Neglecting Asgard’s distaff,

  as if war were the sole province of gods and of men.

  The second of Frigg’s sorrows comes

  when gold-helmed Odin falls

  Her first was for murdered Baldr,

  handsomest of gods, her son

  Held by Hel in cold Niflheim,

  where Frigg goes to find and free him

  Hel’s hosts have gone but not Hel herself;

  she waits for Frigg in ambush

  The queens of the Aesir and the dead meet,

  and are each other�
�s end.

  Sif, that fair-haired grain-giver,

  reaps with sickle-blade a new harvest

  Over Thor’s body,

  defending it from the giants, corpse-despoilers

  Cowards more emboldened now

  that the feared thunderer lies dead

  Who see little threat in Sif of the wheat-sheaves

  until far too late

  Heads fly and blood spills,

  and still she fights when the final fires rage.

  In cat-drawn chariot, Freya rides,

  banner flying, beautiful and fierce

  Half the war-dressed Einherjar are hers,

  valiant men Valkyrie-chosen

  She leads them to the vast battle-plain;

  their shield-wall spans across it

  Her sorcery strikes her foes,

  her cats cry the kill-lust, sharp claws flashing

  As Frey, her brother, faces fiery Surt,

  and her treasured daughters hide.

  Sigyn, faithful and long-suffering,

  stayed by bound Loki with her basin

  Catching in it the painful poison

  that dripped down upon his face

  When up he springs,

  the iron chains of Narfi’s guts all snapped asunder

  And leaves his wife, to go to war,

  without a word of thanks or kindness

  The snake which hung there strikes her;

  its fangs pierce deep, and Sigyn dies.

  Idunn guards her immortal apples,

  Skadi’s mountain crumbles to the sea

  The Valkyries take to the field, mail-clad,

  bright-speared, shrieking frenzy

  While Frigg’s handmaids wail the funeral dirge

  as the world’s pyre burns

  In dark ashes the Norns sigh,

  that which was foretold has come and gone

  For Ragnarok at last is done;

  only renewal and rebirth remain.

  WITH HONEY DRIPPING

  Between the snow-capped mountain peaks and the dense dark-timbered woods, above the smooth and glassy ribbons of the deepest blue fjords, in a green and mossy meadow where the wildflowers grew, grazed the Goat-Girl’s shaggy herds under a pale spring sun.