Viking Warrior

by Judson Roberts

  “Never, if you can avoid it, use your sword to parry another blade. That is what your shield is for. Sometimes, of course, you will have no choice. A cut may come at you from an unexpected direction and catch your shield out of position, or sometimes you may have to defend yourself when you are not carrying a shield. If you must block another sword’s cut with your own sword, be sure you catch the attacking blade with the flat of your blade, not its edge. The flat is slick and hard, and a striking edge will slide off of it, not bite into it. If two swords strike hard against each other edge to edge, the best that can happen is both edges will be badly chipped. At worst, such a blow can break a blade, even a fine one.

  For three solid days, I practiced cutting until I’d sliced to pieces every young tree growing in the vicinity of the estate. After the first day, I bore a large, circular shield while I practiced. Harald showed me how to hold it by its grip in the center behind the iron boss, and how to adjust the shield’s long strap over my neck and shoulder so I could let it hang, my shoulders supporting some of the weight, whenever I was not actually maneuvering it in combat.

  “For now,” Harald explained, “I want you to practice holding your shield as if you were in single combat. Hold it tilted, like this, with the bottom edge angled forward and the top slanted back toward your head. Crouch behind it. This extends the shield’s protection farther out from your body than if you hold it straight up and down. It will also help you deflect your opponent’s strikes off as glancing blows, rather than receiving them as solid hits that might damage your shield, or even cut through it. When fighting in a shield-wall, of course, it often is necessary to hold the shield straight up and down, for in the shield-wall there is little room to maneuver, and each man must help guard his fellows who fight beside him. But we will practice that later. Battle is different than single combat in many ways. You must learn the skills necessary for both.”

  Though I was large for my age and my muscles were used to hard labor, by the end of each day of Harald’s training, my arms and shoulders felt exhausted, and I welcomed the failing light of evening. Yet even at night, lessons of other kinds continued. Sigrid and Harald taught me to eat with the manners of a noble, rather than the manners—or lack of manners—of a thrall. And at every evening meal we drank ale.

  “You are a warrior now, and high-born,” Harald explained. “When you dine with others, they will serve you ale or mead, or perhaps even wine. It is important to develop a tolerance for strong drink, so you do not become a witless fool when it’s served to you.”

  Each night, after we ate and the table had been cleared, Harald and the other housecarls who lived and supped with us in the great longhouse would tell me of battles they’d fought in or had heard tales of. Hrorik’s warriors, who were Harald’s men now, would line up nuts across the tabletop to show the positions of the armies, and how they’d maneuvered, and would explain to me the tactics that the commanders had employed to achieve victory, or the errors they’d made that had brought them defeat.

  On the morning of the fifth day after the funeral Harald announced that we would begin sparring practice. This day our “swords” were long, thin oaken slats, padded with wool, then wrapped with leather. Two old and battered helms and two shields completed our gear.

  All morning we practiced cuts and parries at slow speed. “Strike at my head,” Harald would say, or “Make a low cut at my legs.” I would swing my weapon as he directed, but slowly, and he would demonstrate how to parry the cut with his shield, and how to follow with a counterattack. Then Harald would make the same cut at me and I would practice the parry and counterstrike.

  We rested briefly at mid-day and fortified ourselves with slabs of buttered bread and long draughts of cold water. When we’d finished, Harald grinned.

  “Now, little brother,” he said, “your real training begins.”

  After we’d rearmed ourselves, Harald faced me and said, “Halfdan, defend yourself.”

  He moved toward me, his weapon at ready. The words he’d taught me sprang into my head: “Distance is the key to both defense and attack. You cannot hit what you cannot reach.” I retreated as he advanced, keeping my eyes focused on his sword.

  Suddenly he lunged forward and cut at my head. Swinging my shield up and over, I knocked his blade aside and cut low at his extended leg. Harald pushed his own shield downward, blocking my blow, then we both leapt back out of range.

  Harald laughed. “Excellent, Halfdan. Excellent!” he exclaimed.

  This time he began circling me, periodically feinting with his shoulders as if he was preparing to strike, watching my reactions to his movements. As before, I watched his sword hand, which I knew must move to initiate any real attack.

  Or so I thought. His sword hand never moved, but suddenly Harald charged at me. Too late, I back-stepped furiously, still watching for the attack to come. When it did, it was not with the sword. Harald crashed against me, shield against shield, and knocked me sprawling to the ground. As I struggled to get up, his sword arm finally swung. Desperately I tried to block the blade with my own, but Harald changed his aim in mid-stroke and his oaken slat smacked across my forearm. Though the wooden blade was padded, the pain made me gasp and my weapon sailed from my grip. A split second later, a second blow descended on me, clanging against the side of my helm and knocking me flat to the ground, my head spinning.

  Harald laughed again, although it sounded as though it was coming from a distance.

  “Do not feel discouraged, little brother. It takes many bruises to learn the skills of a warrior. This was an important lesson. Anything—a shield, butting with your helm, kicking, even throwing a rock or handful of dirt—can be used to attack with. If you become too focused on only the obvious weapons, such as your opponent’s sword, you may leave yourself open to some other assault. Had this been real combat, and my sword steel rather than practice, my first blow would have severed your arm, and with my second cut I’d have struck through your neck, not against your helm.”

  Over the days that followed, I took many more hard blows than in all the beatings I’d ever received as a thrall. Yet all were accompanied by Harald’s good natured laughter and an explanation or a lesson. I did not regard my pummelings as beatings. Those times were, in fact, some of the happiest days I’d lived, for as we worked together Harald and I grew ever closer as brothers and comrades. Harald laughed often and complimented me, and seemed to genuinely enjoy my company. Secretly, he had always been my hero. Now he was my brother, too, and—best of all—he seemed glad that I was his.

  I was a quick learner. Within a fortnight I had developed sufficient skill to defend successfully against all but the most persistent and skilled of Harald’s attacks. A week later, I won my first victory.

  I made my plan while we sat drinking water and catching our breath. We’d just completed an unusually long exchange, where we’d traded blows fast and furiously, none striking home, until finally Harald’s wooden sword had thumped across my ribs. While my fingers tenderly probed my newest wound, Harald tilted his head back and gulped down a long swallow of water. Then he looked over at me and chuckled.

  “You look very serious. What grave matter do you contemplate?”

  “The imbalance,” I replied. “I have many bruises and you have none.”

  As was his wont, Harald laughed. “View them as love taps, little brother. Why, my affection for you has grown so great that your body is virtually covered with signs of my love.”

  I strapped on my helm, and stood. “It’s a method of showing love I would share with you,” I said.

  We squared off again. I launched an attack by lunging forward and swinging a low cut at Harald’s legs. He reached down with his shield to block it, while swinging his sword in a high cut that arced downward toward my head.

  My attack had been a feint, though, with little force behind it. When Harald lowered his shield to parry, I stepped in close and hooked my sword arm over it, pinning his shield to my chest and immobi
lizing it. As I did so, instead of parrying his sword cut by sweeping it aside with my own shield, I raised my shield over my head like a roof, and let Harald’s hand and blade thump down flat across it. It must have seemed a clumsy, hasty block, borne of desperation. I hoped it did. Ever quick to react, Harald began to whip his blade around the edge of my shield to strike, for my entire side was now left open and unprotected by my unconventional maneuver.

  For once I was quicker. Still holding my shield level, I punched it straight forward. Its rim struck the front of Harald’s helm, ringing it like a bell. His eyes crossed and he staggered back, both arms dropping limply by his sides. I lunged forward and rammed the tip of my padded sword into Harald’s stomach, driving his breath out with a whoosh, then completed my victory with a solid thump across his back when he doubled over.

  When he regained his breath and wits, Harald was-if possible-even more excited by my victory than I was. That evening in the longhouse, he told the story over and over, to Sigrid, to Ubbe, and to the other housecarls—to anyone who would listen.

  “Halfdan was truly born to be a warrior,” he would say in each retelling. “These were not moves I taught him.”

  Harald and I sat at table, a pitcher of fine Frankish pottery filled with ale between us, long after the dishes and remnants of food had been cleared away, and most of the rest of the household had retired to their beds. We had refilled the pitcher several times, for Harald was in an especially jolly and talkative mood that night.

  “I must show you my sword,” Harald suddenly said. “It is a very fine one, and very special.”

  Harald staggered off to his bed-closet and returned with a long, narrow bundle, wrapped in sealskin. He unwrapped it and revealed a long sword in its scabbard. I’d seen it hanging at his waist many times before, but had never paid particular attention to it. The scabbard was wood, covered in deerskin tanned to a buttery soft finish and dyed a dark brown. The chape that covered and protected the toe of the scabbard, and the scabbard’s throat where the blade entered, were of silver, cast in a complex design of intertwined serpents. Three evenly spaced, wide bands of thick cowhide, died a dark green, decorated the scabbard’s body. On the band immediately below the silver throat of the scabbard, two straps were attached as hangers.

  The sword’s handle was simpler than I would have expected on a fine weapon. I’d seen swords worn by Hrorik and others with hilts that were intricately carved and decorated with silver or copper or gold. On Harald’s sword, the hilt and pommel were of simple iron, though I could see that the workmanship on them was very good. No hammer-marks or pitting had been left by the smith who’d forged them, and the finish of the metal was smooth and highly polished. The hilt was a simple straight bar, as long as my longest finger, tapered to a point at either end. The grip was wood, wrapped with leather, and the pommel was made of two large, heavy pieces of iron. The piece closest to the grip was a bar, similar in design to the hilt, but only half as long. Attached to it by two heavy rivets was a large, heavy oval of iron, divided into three lobes in the fashionable style. The surface of the iron on the hilt and pommel was simply decorated with a pattern made of small holes drilled into the metal and blackened with carbon from the forging process.

  “This is Biter,” Harald said, and slid the blade from its scabbard. When he did, I saw that he was right. It was a very fine sword indeed. The blade was pattern-welded. It had been forged by hammering together bars of steel and iron, beating them at high heat into a single piece of metal, then folding that hammer-welded bar back upon itself and repeating the process hundreds of times until the blade was composed of a single piece of metal made of thousands of thin layers of steel and iron. Such blades were supposed to be almost unbreakable, and could take and hold the sharpest of edges.

  Since I was ten, I’d served as a helper for Gunnar, the blacksmith on Hrorik’s estate, whenever he’d needed to fire up his forge. It was one of the benefits my clever hands and quick mind had won me. Gunnar had told me about pattern-welding and of the legendary swords made with the technique. Gunnar, of course, did not possess such skills—he said only a few specialized blade-makers, most of them located deep in the eastern Frankish Kingdom, did. Gunnar, though, was skilled at working metal, and could readily forge farm tools or simple weapons or hardware needed for harnesses or ships and the like. Over time he’d taught me all he knew.

  “Hrorik captured this blade when he led the first great raid on the Frankish trading center at Dorestad,” Harald explained to me. “When the city was sacked, Hrorik came upon a sword-maker’s shop and took its contents as plunder. It contained mostly completed swords, of good quality, but nothing extraordinary. He found, however, five pattern-welded blades such as this—blades only, not finished swords. Any man wealthy enough to afford such a blade would wish to choose the design and decoration of the hilt himself. The Frank who owned the shop willingly surrendered the swords and blades in exchange for his life, and he told Hrorik the five blades had been made by a famous swordsmith who lived on the Rhine River, deep in the Frankish heartland.

  “Two of the blades Hrorik kept for himself. A third he presented later that year to the King of the Danes, and the remaining two he gave as gifts to two of the chieftains who’d accompanied him on the Dorestad raid. By such generous gifts, alliances are often forged.

  “One of the blades Hrorik kept was made into a sword for himself. That was the sword that accompanied him on his voyage to Valhalla, on the death ship. The funeral fire consumed it, and it will serve no other man. This blade Hrorik gave to me as a gift, at the Jul feast in the year I turned eighteen. I spent much thought on the design of the handle. Though I considered a rich hilt and pommel decorated with silver like Hrorik’s, in the end I decided on simple iron, finely executed, to reflect the purity of purpose of so fine a weapon.”

  Harald passed the grip of the weapon across the table to me.

  “Hold it,” he said.

  I knew by its size that this sword must be at least as heavy as the practice sword I’d used to slay so many saplings with, yet it felt half the weight.

  Harald smiled broadly at my surprised expression. “The magic is in the balance,” he told me. “The swordsmith at Hedeby who hilted the blade for me made two other lobes for the pommel, each of which I rejected, before he made this one. This pommel has just the right weight to counter the weight of the blade, balancing it perfectly in the hand. Perfect balance creates a sword that feels lighter than its actual weight—and is quick to strike or recover.”

  Harald was in an expansive mood that night. He drank much ale, and because he was pouring and his high spirits were so contagious, I did, too. I sensed some subtle change in his attitude toward me, but not until late into the evening did my mind realize the sign my ears had earlier registered. That evening, and thereafter, Harald addressed me as “Halfdan” or “my brother.” Never again did I hear the words “little brother” pass his lips.

  7 : The Bow

  In the days that followed, we continued to work with the padded practice swords and shields, and I continued to improve. As weeks passed, more swiftly than any I’d ever known, the land was transforming around us. Though by count of days from the Jul feast it should have still been winter, everywhere signs of spring began appearing. Branches of the trees tipped themselves with buds, waiting to open into tiny new leaves. Above us in the sky, flights of birds passed daily, returning to the north after their winter sojourns in southern lands. The first shoots of the earliest plantings sprouted into bright green rows in the fields, to be carefully tended by the thralls under Ubbe’s watchful supervision. All around us, the folk of the estate welcomed the reawakening of life, while Harald taught me my lessons of killing and war.

  Harald began to vary my studies now. I learned to fight with a spear, using a long, wooden shaft with a padded leather sack tied over its end. I learned that with its quick jabs, a spear could often strike more swiftly than the slash of a sword, and its reach was far greater. I qui
ckly discovered, though, that maintaining distance when fighting with a spear was, if possible, even more critical than when using a sword. If a swordsman was ever able to press forward inside the reach of the spear’s point, an opponent armed with a spear might as well be unarmed.

  Other days, Harald enlisted the help of Ubbe, the foreman, and others of the estate’s housecarls. We formed two short shield-walls of four men each, and fought mock battles all day with padded weapons, so I could learn the skill of fighting while holding a position in line with warriors to either side of me.

  One afternoon, a stranger rode onto the estate and sat for a time watching us spar from his horse’s back. He wore a mail brynie, and carried a helm tied to his saddle and a shield slung across his back. Harald halted our practice, and we walked over to where the stranger waited. Harald and I were both dressed in simple woolen tunics, and were using our battered practice helms, shields, and padded wooden swords. Though clearly we were warriors, we no doubt looked to be no more than simple housecarls.

  “Greetings,” the stranger called out, as we neared him. “My name is Arnulf. I bear a message for your chieftain, Hrorik, from his kinsman, Horik, King of the Danes.” I noticed that the stranger held a single arrow, painted red, in his hand.

  I saw that Harald was eyeing the arrow, too. He unstrapped his helm and removed it, then wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm.

  “You have a long ride still to travel, to deliver your message to Hrorik,” he replied. “He lives now with the Gods in Valhalla.”

  Harald’s answer clearly surprised the stranger, but did not appear to dismay him. Perhaps his duties led him to call on many chieftains. Among the warlike Danes, no doubt some were always dying.

  “How and when did he die?” Arnulf asked. “The king will want to know. He knew nothing of this when he dispatched me, but I’ve been traveling for many days now and have covered much ground.”

  “In England,” Harald answered. “We raided early, because of the mildness of the winter. It was a large raid—our fleet numbered forty ships. It surprises me the king does not know of the outcome, for one of the chieftains with us was Haakon, one of the king’s sons. Few on that ill-fated voyage survived. Did Haakon escape?”