by Derek Nelsen
At Pedar’s house, Magnus heard Vidar brag that he had Ivar make over twenty before he got him exactly what he wanted.
Vidar was warming up against his boy army, the one Erik had helped raise and Ubbi had beaten and trained with his bloody sticks. Although some of those boys had just received their souls the day before alongside Erik, none had them displayed. Instead, they wore silver arm rings over the right arm of their new blood-red coats. Tor recognized the design of the arm rings—they were fashioned like the snake on the shield. It was Jörmungandr, the serpent that strangled the world while it chased its own tail. Vidar’s father had the world serpent as his symbol, too—only his was a yellow serpent on a black field. The difference was a statement. Vidar had no intention of going back to serve in his father’s army. He was starting his own, and he was starting it there.
This display was an organized effort, of course. It wasn’t as if half the village randomly decided that the holmgang would be the appropriate time to show off their new wealth and allegiance. This was Vidar’s way of showing he was already the new champion here. Regardless of the outcome of this duel, Vidar had already won.
As half the village polished their rings in public, like girls showing off new bridal gifts, some younger men who would be warriors, those who just a month before had barely proven their ability to properly use a rake, now bore their own new shields on their backs, looking less comfortable with the appendage than Orri the turtle wearing Vidar’s wagon wheel.
The Holmgang
Tor needed to get his head straight. He needed to protect his sons, and the gods knew he could use the three gold coins he would get for payment. Little as it was, the winner of the holmgang always received a payment. It was a formal way to show the honor debt had been paid and force the loser to publicly acknowledge he’d forfeited his right for revenge. If Tor won, he could give Toren, Erik, and Magnus one each as insurance on their journey. He hated to send the boys off without something, and Vidar’s coin would spend well in the Sogn.
Tor's shield man was his oldest son, Toren. Tor spent little enough time training him for the job, but Toren knew what to do. He was to hand his father the next replacement shield for each one Vidar broke. First, shield one, then two, then three. That was it. The shield man was not to interfere beyond ensuring their man was armed and shielded between breaks in the fighting.
Instead of training himself, Tor spent most of his time focused on Toren, Erik, and even Magnus when he could make it. Tor had shown his boys how the sword fighting games they’d played with sticks their entire lives—the ones that cracked fingers, shoulders, and shins, combined with muscle memory they had honed following their father’s seemingly ridiculous rule that they only use hatchets when chopping firewood—had done much to prepare them for actual combat.
Tor knew his family would never be safe as long as Vidar was alive. He needed first blood to end the fight, and he planned to make it come from Vidar's shaggy throat. He had to kill the giant. He might have to kill Ubbi and Orri, too, depending on their response. But right now, he had to focus his energy on Vidar. He would do what should've been done the day the Vikings arrived.
All of Tor’s shields were made of linden wood wrapped in goat rawhide and centrally mounted oak handles, very similar to the way his father taught him. Except for using goat. Their small hides cost his shields valuable size, but it was all he had.
Because of the power of Vidar, shield one was the thickest, and edge-wrapped with an iron band made from what was left over after Magnus made the bosses. The problem was Tor only had enough iron to make two. The third shield had a wooden boss, like the practice shields. The iron needed for those bosses alone cost his farm his best shovel and a garden rake. The plan was that if Vidar broke shield one, Magnus would rush to repurpose its boss onto shield three, hopefully before Vidar broke two. The shields were plain, but the axes were sharp and polished to a mirrored edge.
Ubbi hefted one of the red and black shields into Vidar’s right hand, and the giant spun Ice Breaker with practice strokes that were long and strong—definitely shield splitters. If the giant got a clean shot Tor was likely to lose his shield with a single blow—if not his arm.
The fight would end on first blood, a common rule put in place to avoid holmgangs from being just a public way to murder a weaker man under the protection of the law. But that did not mean men did not die in these types of duels.
Bor Jonsen etched lines in the snow outlining the boundaries where the two would play at war. Bor drew a circle with a rake tied to a rope, the other end held by his son, Bjornie, in the center, who spun on his heels as his father walked the line.
There with their parents to see the spectacle, children at play held hands and spun each other around to carve out their own little arenas. The older ones held pushing contests to see who would be the last one standing inside. The biggest always won.
Tor bent down, picked up a handful of snow, and put some of it in his mouth, then ran the rest across his forehead and along the back of his neck. It was cold and dry, and steamed when it touched his fiery skin.
It was weird to see Old Erik standing in as the new village law-speaker, just one more reminder why Tor had to win. If the priest stayed gothi there would be more rituals, more sacrifices to the gods, and less meat for the table.
Old Erik stated the rules for all to hear. This was a required practice yet wholly unnecessary. The village had been rehashing the rules, even asking Old Afi for clarification, near every day since the challenge was made. Even though he had never seen one before, Bor had taken it upon himself to make sure everyone he met understood how this holmgang would work. He even visited Halfdan’s shop in the village to correct the butcher, to keep him from continuing to spread gossip about rules that just didn’t exist.
The rules were simple and clear and had not been changed since the initial agreement. Each man could bring three shields and their choice of two weapons. The duel ended at first blood or request for mercy. Shield men were there to help change broken shields and step in to protect the challengers from bloodlust or revenge blows after either man claimed mercy or victory. They did not fight, and until there was a claim, they stayed out of the circle for fear of disqualification. The holmgang could only be stopped by the gothi.
When Old Erik stepped out of the ring, Tor noticed something odd. Vidar’s shield wasn’t wrapped in rawhide, not even leather. Ivar the master carpenter must not have been able to get his head beyond the wood, and Vidar probably didn’t think it mattered with the boat hull he was using for a shield.
Tor and Vidar stepped inside the circle.
From behind the massive shield, Vidar raised Ice Breaker high, it’s iron edge sharp and glinting in the sun—and then he brought it smashing down. Had it not been for the iron ring wrapping the shield’s edge, the very first stroke would've taken Tor’s arm off on its way through. The giant rained down blows like he was hacking branches off a tree. Tor’s plain shield splintered with every heavy impact.
Tor staggered back and propped his shield up with the length of his axe. This additional spine gave it added strength and Tor more control. He braced himself as Vidar once again brought down his sword. The shield absorbed and deflected the powerful blows that sounded like claps of thunder, each sending a ringing through Tor’s arm and down his spine as if he were a clanging cymbal.
Vidar’s face tightened in frustration, and he changed tactics, alternating blows from sword to shield. The first great slap from Vidar’s shield sent Tor flying onto his back, sliding half his body outside of the circle.
"This man is truly a coward,” scoffed Vidar. "Make him stay in the ring." The giant's breath was a white fog. The young boar was winded, not that he hadn't earned it, for he had sent a barrage of heavy blows down on Tor as hard and fast as he’d ever felt before.
That first shield and the initial flurry lasted less than a minute.
Tor looked at his shield—Vidar had turned it to pulp. When he raised his
arm for a hand getting to his feet, half of shield one flopped to one side, hinged on its goat hide wrapping. That skin was the only thing that kept it, and his body, from being splintered into a hundred pieces in the snow. Tor swung his axe for the first time when he knocked his cramping hand free from the wilted shield’s handle. Toren quickly grabbed what was left of it and gave it to Magnus so he could start repurposing the boss. Tor’s head was spinning, but he forced himself to focus. He had to figure this out.
The next two shields didn’t have an iron ring protecting the edge. If he let Vidar drop blows down on the edges like that again then the second shield wouldn’t last long enough for Magnus to get the iron boss onto shield three and it was going to be a quick day. Tor eased back to his feet. He shook the feeling back into his arm as he whispered to his son through a cloud of heavy smoke.
“Shield two.”
As his son handed him his second shield, Tor exhaled slowly and steadily to calm his heart and breathing. He had to buy some time. “Fire the handle,” he said. “I need a better grip.”
Toren warmed the resin along the handle over the fire, then handed his father the second shield. “Aagghh!” Tor grimaced as he dropped his tormentor. The iron boss had roasted the knuckles on his left hand, and he punched the snow for relief. The ice cold was soothing, and the pain helped him focus. This was no time to roll over.
Vidar paced back and forth like a frothing, wild animal, glaring at Tor as if intimidation was in play. It wasn’t. Tor would stick to his plan.
Tor tapped the inside of the boss with numb fingers. Ironically, it was there to protect his hand. Then he remembered, shield two’s boss had been a tight fit. The whole shield was lighter, no iron wrap and not quite as thick as the first. It wouldn’t last a barrage like the first one, but neither would he.
Toren began to whisper advice in his father’s ear, but Tor pushed him aside and raged into an offensive.
Tor swung the axe hard across his body, aiming for Vidar’s sword hand. The giant backed up and twisted to throw his shield to his weak side. Tor swung through and then back across to the underside of Vidar’s shield, hoping to catch him in the leg.
Although he went in with aspirations of taking the giant's head, cutting off one of Vidar’s toes would be first blood enough, at this point.
With a sweeping backhand, Vidar came across his chest with his heavy shield and planted it center mass across Tor’s. The speed created a howling wind as if from a North Sea storm. Tor slipped but stayed on his feet, running in a wide circle toward Vidar’s weak side. By the time he gained his footing, his back was turned. Quickly, he spun around. Sliding to one knee to decrease his exposure, Tor raised shield two just in time to absorb a hammer blow from the Viking’s sword.
There was no deflection. The edge of shield two felt the full brunt of the giant’s power. There was a loud crack as the sword made its cut. Tor saw daylight as shield two split.
The giant cried in anger as he tried to wrench the blade from where the boss had stopped its progress. The blade stopped just shy of stripping Tor of his fingers, its tip a handbreadth away from his left eye.
Tor did not hesitate. Taking his long-handled axe around the front of his shield, he hooked its beard across Vidar’s blade, then cranked down hard on the handle. The action levered the tip of the sword skyward and away from his face before the giant thought to lean against its pommel and pierce Tor through to the back of his skull. When Tor cranked the sword tip up its handle wrenched down, slapping the giant’s knuckles into the bottom of the shield and pulling him off balance and down to one knee. Vidar howled in anger and pain, then stood, pulling Tor to his feet.
Vidar’s face contorted as he jerked back and forth to free his sword. Tor growled in pain as he clutched the shield’s handle with a cramping hand, the inside of the iron boss raking his burned knuckles with every slip of his feet. At the mercy of the merciless, Tor skated back and forth across the circle until the snow turned to mud. With each yank the Viking made on his sword, the tip sawed closer and closer to Tor’s head, but before it could make a cut, Tor dropped his full weight down on his axe, its beard an iron hook. Tor’s full weight slid down Ice Breaker to the guard. Each time Vidar’s knuckles rapped into the shield the sound echoed like an enemy pounding at the door.
Finally realizing what was happening, Vidar drove forward and dropped his full weight across Tor’s shield, pinning him down into the snow. Tor heard something crack under Vidar’s weight, but it wasn’t any of his bones. He was helpless and blind. His shield covered his face like the lid of a casket. All Vidar had to do was pull out his seax and stab Tor’s exposed legs.
To make sure Vidar kept his attention off the seax, Tor pushed up hard on his axe to try to catch the stubborn oaf across jaw. It was the only thing he could do.
Vidar screamed down defiantly at Tor through the shield’s crack, then put his knee on it, crushing the air from Tor’s lungs like water from a sponge as he struggled to get to his feet. Vidar slammed his heavy left boot down on shield two, pinning Tor deeper into the snow until his back found the frozen earth. With hard, downward thrusts Vidar’s boot batted Tor against the cold ground like a child bouncing on his parents’ bed.
Finally, Vidar slammed down his right foot on the shield as if jumping on a table, and with a jerk of the handle and a stomp of both feet the shield snapped in two. The giant raised the captive sword like Arthur freeing Excalibur from the stone, the king from one of Kiara’s favorite stories.
With both feet, the giant surfed both pieces of Tor’s shield down either side of his chest. As the weight left his chest, Tor managed to draw in enough breath.
“Shield!” He coughed out.
The giant growled and stood over Tor, as if considering whether to drop his blade or his shield across his buried opponent’s face. But at the word, Toren, the shield man, tripped and skated into the circle and fell against Vidar in his hurry, knocking the giant angrily aside. Magnus was still hammering away to attach the iron boss onto the third shield.
Vidar stared at the boy, and Tor’s heart stopped. He could read those thoughts. Vidar was considering whether he should drop his cold blade through both their necks, starting with the son. Ubbi ran inside, but the giant stopped him cold, planting his lightly scratched wagon wheel of a shield in the tongueless Vikings chest.
“Is there no justice in this village? His man is not allowed to interfere!” Vidar huffed. The struggle had taken a lot out of him.
Then Old Erik stepped up to Vidar. “This needs to be done the right way. Show yourself the bigger man.”
Vidar scanned the onlookers for support, but the field was quietly watching as Toren helped his father flounder to dig himself out.
Tor heard “Mercy!” murmuring through the crowd. “This needs to stop,” came from others.
Vidar dropped his shield and stabbed the tip of his sword into the icy ground. Both hands went to his knees. His breathing was labored, and every inhale sounded like a winter gale whistling through the slat walls of a curing barn.
“Orri!” Vidar coughed and spit. “Get me my drink.”
Orri shuffled through Vidar’s things. Halfdan handed Vidar a cup, but he knocked it to the ground.
“In my coat you worthless pig!”
Orri shook the coat up and down and started lifting and tossing everything in the pile as if to let Vidar see there was nothing there.
Toren finally helped his father find his feet. Toren started over toward Magnus to steal away number three when his father held him back. Magnus held up a finger, kept his head down, and continued to work with his hammer and file. Behind Magnus stood Erik, looking as proud as a dog chewing on a dead squirrel. Then he flashed a smile and a glimpse of the red flask before hiding it back into his coat.
“Erik!” Vidar yelled frantically.
Erik jerked his head up like a boy caught stealing chickens, when Old Erik entered the circle. Tor watched his son breathe again, then slink back and toss the
evidence behind a tree.
“It’s all back at my cabin,” Old Erik whispered to Vidar. “If you can’t win this, then I chose the wrong man, and you get nothing.” Then Old Erik looked at Tor as if he didn’t care what he heard. “So, do what your father couldn’t, and end this now.”
As Old Erik left the circle Vidar snarled at Orri like an angry dog. He pulled out his seax and scowled at his quivering hand. Then he took up Ice Breaker with his shield hand and swung the two in tandem to get the feel of this lighter, quicker setup.
“Give that anchor to the turtle,” Vidar panted, “and keep your eyes on the sons.” Ubbi nodded and rolled the heavy shield away.
Tor calmed his breath and looked down. There was an outline of his body imprinted in the snow, and the arena was littered with chips and slivers of his first two shields. Orri the turtle cowered behind Vidar’s abandoned shield like a whipped dog. It had hardly been scratched.
“Call for mercy,” Kiara pleaded with Erik from outside the line.
“Watch what you say, girl.” Vidar coughed and spit something green into the white, powdery snow. “Remember to whom you belong.”
Tor shook out his shield arm while his eldest son collected the shield numbered three from Magnus. Magnus reluctantly gave it up after quickly slapping it two more times with his hammer.
Shield three was Tor’s last and his lightest. Half as thick as the first.
“If either of your two sons steps foot inside this circle,” Vidar said to Tor between heavy breaths, “by rights I will take their heads immediately after taking yours, coward.”
“Toren,” Tor said, “don’t let Ubbi or Orri interfere.” Tor’s elbow raged from the abuse it'd taken on the back of the shields. But there was no blood, and he was glad for the ease with which he could raise the lighter shield.
