The Midgard Serpent

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The Midgard Serpent Page 51

by James L. Nelson


  “I don’t think she’s dead,” Louis said. “But I don’t think she wants to come back. They didn’t steal her, you know. She went to Winchester on her own.”

  Thorgrim looked away. He considered that. He looked back at Louis. “I know she went on her own,” he said. “I don’t know why.” These were questions he had very much wondered about, and he knew that Louis was the only one who might have an answer.

  “I think maybe she was tired of being a heathen,” Louis said.

  “She was never one of us…not when it came to her gods, at least.”

  “God. One God. And I think she missed Him. You know, Thorgrim, she didn’t choose this life, the life of a raider. ‘Going a’viking’, as you people say. Not at first. She did come to love it, in her own way. But love rarely lasts forever.”

  “Hmm…” Thorgrim said. He understood what Louis was saying. He himself knew full well that one could grow tired of the raider’s life. Looking back now he could see the uncertainty that had been creeping into Failend’s spirit, the way her enthusiasms would wax and wane.

  I should have seen it then… he thought. But actually he had seen it then. He knew that. He just had not given it much thought. And now she was gone.

  He was casting around for the next question to ask, the best route to understanding what had happened, when his attention was drawn to something going on on the top of the wall, something attracting the attention of the men posted there. He stood and felt the pull of his flesh against the stitches, the sharp stab of pain, but he ignored it. He reached out and Harald handed him his tunic and he slipped it over his head. He was tugging it down into place when Hall came hurrying over.

  “Lord Thorgrim? There are riders. From Winchester, I think.”

  “Took them long enough,” Thorgrim said. “You and Louis get the hostages ashore and line them up. I’m sure these whores’ sons will want to see them.” The English captives had been stored aboard Sea Hammer under guard since their return. “Harald, come with me.”

  Thorgrim headed off toward the wall with Harald walking beside him. They climbed up the ladder, stepped onto the top and looked down. There were two dozen or so armed men on horseback. The two closest to the wall, their horses side by side, were dressed in shining mail and helmets, and their horses were better equipped than most of Thorgrim’s men.

  Behind them, a young man held a pole and banner aloft. Behind him the mounted warriors stood in two lines, and behind them was a horse-drawn cart. Thorgrim doubted it was carrying silver, but for the sake of the hostages he hoped it contained Godi’s corpse.

  One of the Englishmen spoke first, a string of incomprehensible words. Thorgrim turned to Harald and said, “That man on the left…don’t we know him?”

  Harald stopped, mouth open, and looked down. He took a moment, then turned back to Thorgrim. “Yes,” he said. “He commanded the army we fought last, I think. The ones who blocked up the channel.”

  “But he’s the one who honored his word in the end, right? The one who had the ships removed?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Thorgrim nodded. That was good. Here was at least one Englishman who had already shown that his word was worth something.

  “This other one,” Harald said. “He says he’s come to talk with us. But he says he must see the hostages first.”

  “Of course,” Thorgrim said. He gestured to two of his men who stood nearby. “Get this ladder on the outside of the wall so these dogs can climb up.”

  The ladder was lifted and set down again as the two men climbed down from their horses. Behind them the one with the banner jammed the pole into the ground so it stood upright, then climbed down as well and lifted a bundle off his saddle.

  The three men then climbed to the top of the ladder and stepped onto the wall. Thorgrim could see their curious eyes moving over the longphort, looking for weaknesses, counting the number of men. Then the ladder was shifted back and Thorgrim led the way down the other side and across the hard-packed dirt to where the hostages stood in a long line.

  Thorgrim smiled at the sight, and almost laughed. Here were the lords of the land, but they did not look too lordly now. They had not been harmed, he knew that, but still they looked like beaten dogs. Their once fine clothing was rumpled, torn and filthy. Hair and beards and moustaches were in disarray. They looked like men trying to cling to some dignity through their fear, anger and despair.

  “Here they are,” Hall said. “But they don’t look worth a hundred pounds of silver a piece to me.”

  “No,” Thorgrim agreed. “We’ll how much these bastards want their own back, or if they’ll settle for their heads alone.”

  The two men who had been sent to negotiate had stopped and were looking over the line of hostages. No one spoke. Then the one man’s eyes fell on Louis, standing at the far end of the line. Thorgrim saw the man pause, saw his and Louis’s eyes lock. There was a moment of silence, then the man spoke. A moment more and then Louis replied.

  “What are they saying?” Thorgrim asked.

  “I don’t know,” Harald said. “They’re speaking Frankish.”

  Frankish… Thorgrim thought. Perhaps this was part of all the strange dealings that Louis had had back in Winchester, his being pulled from the prison, his escape.

  I’ll find out later what this is about, Thorgrim thought. Beat it out of Louis if need be.

  And then they were done, apparently. The one who had been talking to Louis turned to Harald and spoke, in English this time.

  “He says the hostages look well enough,” Harald said.

  The man then turned to the boy who held the bundle and nodded toward Thorgrim. The boy stepped up and held the bundle out to Thorgrim, but Thorgrim did not take it. Instead he nodded to Hall, who stepped over and took it for him. Hall unwrapped the canvas cover to reveal the swords that Thorgrim and the others had lost.

  Hall pulled Iron-tooth from the bundle and handed it to Thorgrim, and then found Oak Cleaver and gave it to Harald. He wrapped the rest in the canvas once more.

  The man spoke again. “He says the king has agreed to your ransom,” Harald said, “but we must wait until the silver can be collected. A week at least, he says.”

  Thorgrim nodded. He had never expected that so much silver could be delivered in just a few days. Even a week seemed very fast. He wondered how often they would beg for more time, and how many heads he would have to cut off to make sure they were not trifling with him.

  Then the man started speaking again. He and Harald went back and forth and then Harald turned to Thorgrim.

  “He says he cannot deliver the girl…Failend, I suppose. He says he does not have her, that she and Louis overpowered a guard and escaped. He says you should ask Louis where she is.”

  Thorgrim was silent, thinking about those words. Thorgrim had already asked Louis and Louis had told him pretty much the same thing. Thorgrim suspected this fellow was telling the truth. And he guessed that Louis was telling the truth about Failend not wanting to come back.

  They didn’t steal her… he had said. I think maybe she was tired of being a heathen…

  If these English bastards did find Failend, would they have to drag her back against her wishes? She was skillful and clever. If she wanted to return to him, to this life a’viking, then she probably could, even without his help.

  He had taken her prisoner once: he would not do it again.

  “Very well,” Thorgrim said. “Tell him he has a week to gather the silver. One week, and the silver had best be here,” Thorgrim said again and waited as Harald translated the words.

  One week… One week to defend this longphort and wait on the riches to flow from Winchester. One week for Failend to return, if returning was what she meant to do. One week before he could sail again, the bows of his ships pointed toward East Agder. He was closer now to his home than he had been since first reaching Ireland.

  Home. It was like the horizon, it seemed. Always in sight, always impossible to reac
h.

  Historical Note

  At the time of King Æthelwulf’s reign, England, or Angel-cynn, was by no means a single, united country. Indeed, the name Angel-cynn itself doesn’t appear during Æthelwulf’s time, but rather in the writings of his son, Alfred.

  Ninth century England was divided into seven kingdoms: Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Northumbria. Of those, Mercia had earlier been the most powerful, but by the time Æthelwulf assumed the throne of Wessex, that kingdom had come to dominate the others in the south.

  The history of England had been, until then, one of constant struggle among the various kingdoms. By the end of the eighth century, however, a new threat loomed: the Norsemen, whom the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records first appeared in 789. That year three longships arrived on the Isle of Portland on the southern coast of England in the kingdom of Wessex. The shire reeve was sent to investigate, and, in the course of what might have been a misunderstanding, the Norsemen killed him. It was the first of many, many bloody encounters between the Vikings and the English.

  For the next sixty years the Vikings continued to plunder England, Ireland and Frankia. Prior to becoming king, Æthelwulf himself led men in battle against the Vikings on several occasions, with mixed results. But for all the terror the Northmen brought to the shores of England, their raiding was not so disruptive that it had much impact on the affairs of the kingdoms. But starting in 850, that began to change.

  In 851, the twelfth year of Æthelwulf’s reign, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records five Viking attacks on the shores on Æthelwulf’s Wessex. That same year Northmen overwintered in England for the first time. It was a harbinger of things to come, the first step on a road that would lead to the Northmen ultimately taking as their own a huge territory in north-east England known as the Danelaw.

  In that same year of 851, Æthelwulf led an army composed of men from all over Wessex against a large force of Norsemen who had sacked Canterbury and London. The victory he achieved solidified Æthelwulf’s place as the preeminent ruler among the kings of the various kingdoms of England. The coin on the cover of this book is one minted by Æthelwulf, and features his likeness with his name above it.

  Still, the Viking incursions did not stop, or even slow, but continued to increase in size and intensity. Ultimately the problem of defending the kingdom against massive armies of Vikings would not fall to Æthelwulf, but rather to his sons, in particular Alfred.

  In 853, Æthelwulf sent Alfred and his older brother Æthelred to Rome to meet with the pope. Some historians, with the advantage of knowing that young Alfred would eventually become Alfred the Great, have suggested his being sent on that pilgrimage was a mark of how highly he was regarded by his father, but that is unlikely. It’s more probable that the two youngest were sent because they were considered the most expendable.

  Æthelwulf himself set out for a pilgrimage to Rome in 855, bringing Alfred and a large retinue for company. Some historians, even during the Middle Ages, considered Æthelwulf as excessively pious and irresponsible, leaving his kingdom at a time when Viking incursions were becoming larger and more prevalent. Other historians have suggested that Æthelwulf’s departure signaled his confidence in the strength of Wessex, whose armies had scored a number of victories against the raiders (though, to be sure, they had also lost quite a few).

  One aspect of Æthelwulf’s pilgrimage was unique — he was the first Anglo-Saxon king to make that journey while still king. Prior to that, every monarch who traveled through Frankia to Rome had been in exile, either deposed and driven from England, or having given up the crown in order to die in the Holy City. Æthelwulf, however, had left his son Æthelbald as ruler of Wessex, and Æthelberht in charge of Kent, with the assumption that they would hand the kingdoms back to him on his return. That went about as well as one might expect.

  On the journey home in 856, Æthelwulf spent several months in the court of Charles the Bald of West Frankia. The connection between the two kings had become closer and more involved as they both faced the increasing threat of Viking attacks. Æthelwulf’s dealings with Charles were no doubt facilitated by Æthelwulf’s notary, a Frank named Felix, who was responsible for the king’s official letters and perhaps much more than that.

  While at the court of Charles the Bald, Æthelwulf, who was by then in his forties of fifties, did yet another unprecedented thing: he married Charles’s 13-year-old daughter Judith. It was not the age difference that made the marriage so surprising in the eyes of contemporary observers and historians today, but the fact that Carolingian princesses virtually never married. Instead, they were usually given over to religious life, where they would not inconvenience the dynasty with any children who might have a claim to the throne.

  What’s more, Æthelwulf’s marriage, which introduced Charles’s bloodline into the royal lineage of Wessex, was looked on as an act of subordination to the Frankish king, not what one would expect from a ruler who was secure on his throne.

  Upon his return to Wessex, Æthelwulf discovered that his son Æthelbald had no intention of giving back the kingship. Rather than start a civil war, Æthelwulf agreed to divide the kingdom, with Æthelbald ruling one part and Æthelwulf and Judith ruling another. This was agreed to, and Æthelwulf reigned over his now much reduced kingdom until his death in 858.

  While Æthelwulf was struggling with Viking incursions and rebellious sons, King Halfdan of Norway was apparently expanding his rule though political alliance and military conquest, though the truth of Halfdan’s history is hard to pin down. Primary source material for Medieval English history is scarce enough — in the less literate world of Viking Age Scandinavia it is all but nonexistent. For the story of Halfdan and his times, historians must look to the Sagas, which are of questionable accuracy, being written many hundreds of years after the fact.

  To the best of our knowledge, Halfdan the Black was born around 810 and became king of Agder when he was eighteen or nineteen years old. He spent the next thirty years increasing his kingdom and his wealth before drowning, around the year 860, after his sleigh fell through the ice. Like Æthelwulf of Wessex, Halfdan is perhaps best known for having a son who would be considered the one to unite the scattered kingdoms of his land into a single country. Just as Alfred the Great is thought of as the king who unified England, Halfdan the Black’s son, Harald Hårfagre — Harald Fairhair — is considered, by the writers of the Sagas at least, to be the first King of Norway.

  Acknowledgements

  My sincerest thanks go out to the usual suspects: Steve Cromwell for the cover, Alistair Corbett for the background, and Chris Boyle for the maps. The acknowledgements might get repetitious but my appreciation for all that you folks do to make these books look as good as they do is deeply held. Thank you to Kim Reeman for her sharp eye with copy editing – you saved me from a few embarrassments.

  Thanks to Nat Sobel, Judith Weber, Adia Wright, and all the folks at Sobel Weber for their hard work on behalf of these and other books.

  Thank you to all the good folks at Maine’s First Ship who help keep me sane by helping me forget about writing every once in a while. They include but are by no means limited to Orman Hines, Jeremy Blaiklock, Lori Benson, Rob Stevens and of course the Rigging Gang, Bob Ireland and David Bellows.

  And my deepest thanks are reserved for my family: Elizabeth Lockard, Nathaniel Nelson (the IT Department of Fore Topsail Press), Jonathan Nelson (the Graphics Department of Fore Topsail Press), Abigail Nelson, Stephanie Nelson, and the COO and CFO of Fore Topsail Press, Lisa Nelson, to whom this book is dedicated. Thank you all, now and forever.

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  Other Fiction by

  James L. Nelson:

  The Brethren of the Coast:
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  Piracy in Colonial America

  The Guardship

  The Blackbirder

  The Pirate Round

  The Samuel Bowater Novels:

  Naval action of the American Civil War

  Glory in the Name

  Thieves of Mercy

  The Only Life that Mattered:

  The Story of Ann Bonny, Mary Read and Calico Jack Rackham

  The French Prize

  Glossary

  adze – a tool much like an ax but with the blade set at a right angle to the handle.

  Ægir – Norse god of the sea. In Norse mythology he was also the host of great feasts for the gods.

  Angel-cynn - (pronounced Angle-kin). Term used in the writing of Alfred the Great and the Old English Chronicle to denote both the English people of Teutonic descent, namely the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, and the land they occupied. This seems to be the only term used to denote the country of England until the Danish conquest, after which the island was referred to as Engla land.

  Asgard - the dwelling place of the Norse gods and goddesses, essentially the Norse heaven.

  athwartships – at a right angle to the centerline of a vessel.

  beitass - a wooden pole, or spar, secured to the side of a ship on the after end and leading forward to which the corner, or clew, of a sail could be secured.

  berserkir - a Viking warrior able to work himself up into a frenzy of blood-lust before a battle. The berserkirs, near psychopathic killers in battle, were the fiercest of the Viking soldiers. The word berserkir comes from the Norse for “bear shirt” and is the origin of the modern English “berserk”.

 

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