The Midgard Serpent

by James L. Nelson

  He stepped forward along the weather side until he came to the aftermost shroud. He grabbed onto the thick, taut line and using it to balance stepped up onto the sheer strake. He could feel the tar in the rope, soft and warm under his hand, as he leaned outboard as far as he could and looked east toward the fleet crossing their course.

  Two, three, four…five… he counted. Five ships to his six. Maybe two hundred men to the more than three hundred he still had after all the blood-letting of the past months. If it came down to it he and his men would prevail, he was sure of it. But if Harald and his crew were off on some idiot venture, unable to help, or in need of help themselves, then that might change everything.

  I hope the boy has a good reason for this, Thorgrim thought, though he could not imagine what that reason could be. Still, he knew he was holding onto that hope as firmly as he was holding the thick hemp shroud. If Harald was acting as stupidly as he seemed to be, it would reflect badly on the boy, stain his reputation throughout the fleet. And it would reflect badly on his father as well, the man who had given him that command.

  And then he would have to decide if Harald should no longer be master of Dragon, a decision he did not care to make.

  He looked back at the unknown fleet to the east. No change that he could see, no change of course, or position of the ships, or the set of the sails. He considered asking Starri if he had seen anything but he was too angry to tolerate the ribbing Starri would give him about his eyesight. Thorgrim found it ironic, and not in any amusing way, that the one man aboard with the keenest vision was also the only man in the fleet who would dare mock him for his own poor eyesight.

  Then he heard Starri shouting from the mast-top, a wild, whooping shout of exhilaration.

  “Whoa! Yes, yes! Ya-ha!” he called. Thorgrim looked up. Starri was looking north toward Harald’s ship and waving his free arm in the air.

  “What is it, Starri?” Thorgrim shouted.

  “Did you not see that! It’s a whale, Thorgrim, a whale! Harald’s gone to kill himself a whale!”

  Whale?

  “Harald’s killing a whale?” Thorgrim shouted back.

  “Well, he’s hunting one!” Starri called down again. “But right now the whale seems to be winning! Just smashed in half of Harald’s ship with its flukes!”

  The corner of Sea Hammer’s sail was blocking Thorgrim’s view of Dragon, so he hopped back down to the deck and made his way aft in a few long, hurried strides. He leaned on the leeward rail and looked out over the water toward Harald’s ship. It was nearly a mile away, and to his eyes looked more like a smudge of gray and black than a ship and its sail. If Dragon had suffered damage he had no hope of seeing it from that distance. But as far as he could tell she was still on her waterline, and showed no sign of going down.

  “Harald, you blockhead, if you lose your ship because of this fool notion, and live to get home, I swear by the gods you’ll never leave the farm again!” Thorgrim said out loud, too angry and frustrated now to keep the words inside. And just as he finished with that promise he saw the whale’s tail rising up out of the water again, like a sea god rearing in anger. Thorgrim knew what it was despite the distance. In his years of seafaring he had seen flukes often enough to recognize them even from so far away.

  He squeezed hard on the edge of the sheer plank as he watched the tail hang motionless, just for the briefest of instances. He had no doubt that the whale could crush Dragon under the power of the downward stroke. And even if it didn’t sink the ship outright then it might shatter her badly enough that she would flood and go down before Sea Hammer or any of the others could reach her.

  Down came the tail and Dragon’s mast rocked violently as if trying to wave the whale away. Overhead Starri whooped again and all along the leeward rail the men, who had abandoned watching the distant fleet in favor of this new amusement, all shouted or moaned in sympathy or called for Harald and the others to kill the great beast.

  Thorgrim released the sheer strake. He stood upright, his lips pressed hard together. He looked out toward the fleet crossing their track and then back at Dragon. Reflexively he wanted to turn downwind, run to the northward, come to the aid of Harald and the men of Dragon. But if he did that then he would be further dividing his fleet, putting them in greater jeopardy. Perhaps these newcomers had no interest in attacking a superior enemy, but if they discovered they could pick off half the fleet then they might change their minds.

  “This is your doing, Harald,” Thorgrim said, as if his son was right in front of him. “You get yourself and your men out of it.”

  He left the rail and stepped back to the center of the small raised deck aft. Armod was still holding the tiller. As Thorgrim took his place Armod looked at him and said, “Lord Thorgrim?” as if wondering why Thorgrim had not yet given the order to turn and go after Dragon.

  But that was something Thorgrim did not intend to do, and he did not care for Armod’s prompting. He looked at Armod with an expression both angry and uncompromising and watched the man start to squirm under the gaze.

  “Hold this course,” Thorgrim said and Armod nodded and looked forward, suddenly very intent on maintaining a true heading, his eyes fixed on the water beyond the bow.

  No change, Thorgrim thought, watching the fleet of strangers ahead. All but the last ship in the line had crossed Sea Hammer’s path, crossing from her starboard side to her larboard. If he had not slowed Sea Hammer down the two fleets might have become entangled, but as it was there was at least a mile between them.

  He looked over his shoulder. Blood Hawk and Oak Heart were close up astern of his ship now, a hundred feet or so between them, and the smaller vessels right behind. If these strangers meant to fight then they would have to fight all of Thorgrim’s ships at once.

  Except Dragon.

  Thorgrim frowned. He wanted to look off to larboard to see what Harald’s ship was doing now, but he also knew that would just make him more angry still, and that would not help matters. He resolved to keep his eyes forward when Starri called out again, another wild, undulating shout of enthusiasm.

  Harald, son of a bitch, Thorgrim thought. Whatever Starri was shouting about had to concern Harald, and despite his resolve Thorgrim turned and looked. He looked just in time to see the massive tail coming down once more, but this time it came down more directly on top of Dragon’s stern. The after end of the ship was driven down, lost from sight in a great burst of spray, and Thorgrim sucked in his breath.

  And then the tail slid off and Dragon came bobbing up again and Thorgrim could not help but feel a flash of pride. He had built Dragon, he and his men at Vík-ló, and no miserable fish was going to sink her, no matter how big it was.

  That feeling did not last long. Almost immediately it began to dissipate and the anger began to reassert itself. Then, before the anger worked itself up to gale force, it was swept away by surprise and confusion. Dragon had been rolling and pitching violently as she recovered from the blow of the whale’s tail, but now she was making headway again, driving forward as if her sail was set to a stiffer breeze than Sea Hammer was finding.

  Thorgrim was not at all sure what was happening because he couldn’t see much detail from that distance. He could see Dragon’s hull and her sail, and he could see that the ship was moving, her speed building, but that did not seem possible. Already her speed seemed all out of proportion to the easy wind blowing from the south.

  “Ha!” Starri shouted. “They’ve hooked the bastard, Night Wolf! I’ll bet my life they have a hook in the beast and it’s pulling them along! Oh, what a ride!”

  This announcement brought a swell of shouting and laughing and pointing from the men lining the larboard side. Thorgrim could see them smiling as they looked over the water, and he thought he saw some of them placing bets, Harald against the whale, he imagined. He thought of telling them all to get up to the starboard side, maybe tell them, by way of excuse, that their weight was needed to counter the heel of the ship. But that would
be petty and untrue and the men would know it. And Thorgrim knew it would not help his mood anyway, so he kept his mouth shut, his eyes forward.

  He could see only water. Both Dragon and the strange fleet were now hidden behind the sail where Thorgrim could not see them. And that was fine.

  “Night Wolf!” Starri called down from aloft. The wild enthusiasm was gone and there was a different note in his voice now. “The lead ship of this fleet, this strange fleet, they seem to be heading for Harald and his whale!”

  That Thorgrim could not ignore. He crossed over to the larboard side and leaned outboard, looking past the tight leech of the sail. He could see Dragon, still moving at a surprising speed, bobbing and twisting, dragged along, apparently, by the enraged whale. But he could not see the lead ship of the other fleet. He hopped down from the after deck and leaned over the side, looking under the foot of the sail.

  Starri was right. The ship had clearly altered course. The whale had pulled Dragon closer to it, but the ship was turning now, her yard bracing around as she turned, her bow pointing more directly at Dragon and the whale.

  “Son of a bitch!” Thorgrim shouted in frustration. It was just as he feared. These strangers would not dare attack Thorgrim’s fleet, but neither would they resist the chance to snatch up a single ship that was cut off from the rest. And now he had no choice but to go to Harald’s rescue.

  “All right, you whore’s sons!” he shouted down the rail at his gawking crew. “Get on the sheets and braces! The rest of you get your weapons, armor, shields! It looks like we’ll have to go save those blockheads aboard Dragon!”

  The men moved fast. They, too, had heard Starri’s call and they anticipated this order. They ran to the sheets and the braces and loosened off the bar-taut ropes. Thorgrim turned to Armod on the tiller.

  “Fall off to leeward!” he ordered. “Right at them!”

  Armod nodded and pushed the tiller away and Sea Hammer turned north, the distant shore sweeping past. One by one the ships of this strange fleet came into sight around the edge of the sail as Sea Hammer took up her new heading. Above them the yard swung round until it was perpendicular to the centerline of the ship and Sea Hammer was running downwind.

  Starri came sliding down the after shroud, hit the rail and dropped to the deck, like a bird going from one branch to another. He was smiling. Thorgrim imagined he had been smiling for some time now, with all the amusements of the morning, but nothing would excite him quite like the prospect of a fight.

  Down the length of the ship men were pulling on leather armor or mail shirts, for those fortunate ones who had such luxuries. Starri, however, pulled his tunic up over his head and flung it away, revealing his lank, sinewy body, which was all hard muscle and scars. It was how Starri in his berserker’s madness chose to go into battle. Leggings, two battle axes, and around his neck the split arrowhead he wore on a cord for luck. That was it.

  Thorgrim glanced at the wicked scar near Starri’s shoulder, the result of a spear thrust while fighting in Ireland. That one, Thorgrim had thought, would be the end of him, the voyage to Valhalla that Starri so craved. But no. The gods would toy with Starri just as they toyed with him.

  Louis de Roumois came aft at his usual, unhurried pace. He wore his sword but no helmet, no mail. He stopped at the break of the after deck and looked up at Thorgrim.

  “We’re going to rescue young Harald, is that what I understand?” he asked.

  “If he needs rescuing, yes,” Thorgrim said, wondering yet again why he bothered to answer this man’s questions. Perhaps because Louis was the only one with the guts to ask. Except for Starri, but Starri was insane.

  “You’ll bring your ship next to the other?” Louis asked. “We’ll go aboard them, fight them there?”

  “Yes,” Thorgrim said. “What else would we do?”

  Louis shrugged. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” he said. “Fighting on ships.”

  “It’s much like fighting on land,” Thorgrim said. “Kill the other fellows. Don’t let them kill you.”

  Louis nodded. “Except when you fall down on land, you stay put. Here you might sink.”

  “If you’re unlucky,” Thorgrim said. “Is that why you aren’t wearing mail?”

  “Of course. I’ll take a sword through my heart before I sink down to the bottom of this God-forsaken ocean.”

  Thorgrim nodded. “Probably a good choice. Not that the gods ever give us a choice as to how we die.”

  With that he was done with Louis de Roumois. He was about to fetch his sword, Iron-tooth, and his mail, when he saw Failend there, on the weather side. She was wearing the mail Thorgrim had given her, mail made for a boy, and the seax he had also given her, an edged weapon that seemed scaled for her. Small as she was, the big knife looked more like a sword in her hand. She was holding Thorgrim’s mail shirt, and Iron-tooth and the belt on which it hung.

  “I brought these for you,” she said unnecessarily.

  “Thank you,” Thorgrim said. It had been this way for some time, since Failend had become his lover, and not his captive. Before a fight she would bring him his mail and his sword. At night she would share his bed. But she had stopped doing the latter, and he was somewhat surprised she was still doing the former. What thoughts were going through her mind, what feelings she had for him, Thorgrim did not understand.

  And, as usual, he had neither the time nor the inclination to think about it.

  He took the mail shirt and slipped it over his head, thinking as he did of Louis’s choice to not wear mail in a sea fight. Once, during a battle not long after coming to Ireland, Thorgrim and an adversary had gone overboard. Thorgrim had not been wearing mail; his opponent had; and that had made a big difference in who lived and who died. But this time he would take his chances and make an effort to stay onboard.

  He settled the mail, wound the belt around his waist and buckled it. He looked out past the bow. Dragon had stopped now and she was rolling in the ocean swell, no longer made fast to the whale, apparently. Thorgrim thought he could see the whale’s back, a dark line against the dark ocean, water foaming white around it.

  The ship, the lead ship from this strange fleet, was bearing down on Dragon and the whale, her sail full, her sharp bow cleaving the water. She was a couple hundred yards away from Harald’s ship and closing quickly. Sea Hammer was more than twice that distance away. If these strangers were coming to fight, Harald and his crew would have to hold them off by themselves for some time before Thorgrim’s men could come to their aid.

  He looked up at Sea Hammer’s sail and he knew there was nothing that he could do to make his ship go faster. All he could do was wait, and the waiting filled him with impotent frustration. And the frustration turned quickly into fury as he remembered that it was his own son who had put him in this situation, created all this unnecessary bother, when all he, Thorgrim, wanted to do was to sail across a stretch of water to the far shore.

  A collective shout went up from the men and Thorgrim looked forward. The strange ship had turned and seemed to come to a stop, like it had hit something, and that something had to be the whale, since Dragon was floating free several ship-lengths away.

  Now what? Thorgrim thought. Was that an accident? Had they not seen the whale? Or did they mean to do this?

  Sea Hammer rose and dipped as the swells passed under her and she raced toward the two ships ahead, now both nearly motionless in the water. Thorgrim’s men were crowded together at the bow making it hard to see, but rather than order them away Thorgrim stepped down from the afterdeck and moved forward and the men parted and made room for him.

  He stepped up onto the foredeck and looked around the tall stem, frowning as he tried to understand what he was seeing. The sea ahead was churning, breaking white, and two ships were rolling in the chaotic water.

  “They’ve lanced it!” cried one of Thorgrim’s men, a man named Thorkel. “We used to hunt these things back home, I’ve seen this often! They got a lance in it
, and now it’ll swim in circles before it’s dead. They better stay clear!”

  Thorgrim watched, fascinated, as Sea Hammer came swooping down on the odd scene, her bow rising and dipping as the following sea made it lift then fall away. He could see the whale clearly now, or as much of it as was visible above the water and the churning foam. It was indeed thrashing around in a great circle, rolling and twisting, slamming its tail up and down with quickly diminishing vigor. The white water around it was stained pink with the dying creature’s blood.

  The whale had, until that moment, been moving away from the two ships, but now in its death throes it turned and began moving back toward them, toward Dragon most directly.

  “Get your oars out, get clear of there!” Thorkel shouted toward Dragon, though there was no possibility of his being heard. “I’ve seen them take ships near as big as Dragon down with them at the end,” he added to the men looking on.

  But the time to watch was over, Thorgrim knew, and now it was time to act. “The lot of you, get away from the bow so I can see!” he called out. “Stop staring with your mouths hanging open and get ready to fight!”

  He turned and hurried back to the helm, unwilling to let Armod do the tricky job of bringing Sea Hammer alongside the other ship. He stepped up onto the afterdeck and Armod handed the tiller over and Thorgrim swung in behind it. It felt good in his hands, it felt familiar. The afterdeck, the view forward: it was all familiar, and that eased his mind in a world that seemed to make no sense.

  He felt the stern lift, gentle and smooth, then dip under him as the bow came up. The strange ship was straight ahead and not more than a hundred yards away, the whale still kicking in the space between that ship and Dragon.

  “Get ready to clew up the sail!” Thorgrim shouted, and a handful of men set down shields and spears and axes and ran to the lines they would need to loosen or haul. Thorgrim waited for one more swell to pass under, for the wind and water to give the ship that one last push.