The Last Berserker

by Angus Donald

  A new session began.

  Afterwards, dusty, sweaty, a little bruised but pleasantly tired and sharing a jug of fresh ale, Bjarki told Tor about the Warcraft session and Hymir’s backhanded compliment. He was expecting Tor to be pleased with him but she was strangely silent. He asked her what was wrong and, after only a little pestering, she said: ‘It’s this – this thing we do every night. We’re preparing to be Barda. To be less than Rekkar; to be second best.’

  ‘It’s better than being servants,’ said Bjarki. ‘And much better than being sent home.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Tor. ‘I came here to be a greater Rekkr than my father. I don’t want to be a stupid camp guard – doing boring patrols, fighting in the shield wall with all the other oafs. I want mine to be a name to remember.’

  ‘Maybe you will be – no one knows when the gandr will—’

  ‘Helga came back to the Lodge this morning,’ interrupted Tor, the hot words now spewing out. ‘Six weeks she was out there in the forest, six fucking weeks – gods know how she survived. She is half the weight she was, half-healed cuts and scratches all over her body. And very strange in the head; in the way she talks now. But the Wolf came to her in the end. Her gandr came. She has been examined by the Lodge and will undergo the Fyr Ceremony the day after tomorrow in front of everyone in the Groves.’

  Tor was talking very loudly now. ‘She will be made Rekkr. And what am I? I’m personal tutor to the world’s ugliest and most dull-witted oaf.’

  Bjarki ignored the insult. ‘I know. I heard about Helga. And she’s not the only one doing the Ceremony. Ivar Knuttson – the fellow who bit me, remember? – he has made his Voyage, too, just three days, apparently, and the Boar spirit came to him; he’s passing through the Fyr at the same time as Helga. But, here, listen to me, Tor: her success doesn’t mean you’ve failed.’

  ‘You don’t understand. You can’t understand. My father was a great man – they still tell stories of Hildar Torfinnsson in the halls of Svearland. I grew up with glorious tales of him ringing in my ears: Hildar the Rekkr, who charged alone and broke the shield wall of the King of Vestfold’s jarls…’

  Bjarki said nothing. He had nothing to say. He knew nothing of his own father or his mother. He had been abandoned as a three-month-old baby by the gate in the palisade of the village of Bago – that is what he had been told by the hersir Olaf Karlsson, anyway – unwanted, a useless mouth that some young mother did not wish to feed, or could not. Even old, childless Thialfi had not wanted to take him on as an apprentice fisherman. They had drawn straws in the village – every freeman was made to draw – and Thialfi lost.

  They sat together in silence as the shadows lengthened.

  Finally Bjarki got up. ‘See you tomorrow – at the Fyr Ceremony.’

  Tor said nothing.

  ‘I’m grateful, you know,’ said Bjarki. ‘For your help. And if it is any comfort, I will always remember your name – for your kindness to me.’

  Tor sighed. ‘That’s nice, oaf. But it’s not exactly a seat beside the All-Father in the Hall of the Slain, is it?’

  Chapter Eight

  The forging of a Rekkr

  Bjarki was late for supper and the board inside the Bear Lodge that held the evening soup had long been cleared away. He was resigned to a hungry night when Gunnar waved him over from the far end of the longhouse and produced the heel of a rye loaf and a lump of hard yellow cheese from under his cloak that he had saved especially for his hungry Little Brother.

  As Bjarki sat eating contentedly Gunnar gleefully gave him the gossip.

  ‘Some folk are saying he’s a fake,’ he said. ‘A liar. That he cheated during the Voyaging and went to a village just outside the forest where he hid in a pigsty for three days. That’s his Boar spirit – a farmyard porker.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The one who tried to eat you in the Fyr Pit – Ivar Whatsisname.’

  ‘Knuttson. They say he’s a fake? How can that be – the Lodge Father must have examined him, and the Boar Lodge Dreamer, too.’

  ‘Maybe they did. But we all know the stories. It wouldn’t be too hard to make up a convincing tale. A giant boar that came snuffling round you in the dead of night – a conversation in a deep and holy, but still thoroughly porcine, voice. The Boar calls you to become one of his chosen warriors. “You are to be my Rekkr, Ivar Knuttson, I claim you as my own!” I’m sure I could make a tale like that sound pretty authentic – I bet Ivar could too.’

  ‘But that would be sacrilege. Surely the gods would severely punish anyone who did such a terrible thing.’

  ‘I sometimes wonder, Little Brother, whether you are deliberately trying to be stupid. You can’t be that naive. Gods do whatever they like.’

  Bjarki said nothing. He took another mouthful of bread and cheese.

  ‘We know he took the Red Spot before your bout with him,’ Gunnar continued. ‘We both know he will bend rules to get what he wants.’

  ‘I don’t like him either but I can’t see him doing something so wrong.’

  ‘Have it your own way – maybe he’s pure as a field of snow and is as beloved by the Boar spirit as he is by that pen full of household swine.’

  ‘I would prefer to believe that,’ said Bjarki.

  ‘Although I do know that the Boar Lodge is down to two Fire Born – and they’re desperate to create some more. We have five, as you know, and the Wolf Lodge has four. The Boars must feel they’re falling behind us.’

  ‘I thought the Boars had more than two Rekkar. What happened?’

  ‘They sent two svinfylking west to Theodoric. The Duke of Saxony sent a message to Skymir requesting troops for an attack on the Franks’ new fortified church at Deventer – you heard they had the cheek to build another one of their temples on Theodoric’s land, on the east bank of the Ijssel?’

  ‘The Far-Traveller said something about it.’

  ‘Well, Theodoric offered to pay well for the service of some Rekkar. The Mikelgothi sent him two Boar Lodge Fire Born and a dozen Barda.’

  Bjarki was aware the Rekkar often fought as highly paid mercenaries. It was, after all, the main source of wealth for the Groves. The lavish food and drink they all enjoyed daily came from the bags of silver and the wagonloads of fresh provender that were provided for the Groves folk by grateful clients.

  There were also the offerings in gold and silver donated by the local people wishing to honour the old gods of the forest. Beside the Thing House, where the Grove leaders met in council, there was an ancient stone building that was stuffed with bags of coin, broaches, rings, swords, pins, buckles and plates. They called it Odin’s shrine, to mark the place where the god was said to have rested after his nine-day ordeal on the One Tree, but it was more like a royal treasury. No one was allowed to enter it but the Mikelgothi.

  ‘Both the Fire Born were killed?’

  ‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard. Truly heroic deaths, a fine bloody battle for the skalds to recount in all the mead halls for years to come.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’ll tell you if you admit Ivar Knuttson is a lying, cheating shitbag.’

  ‘I’m not going to say that. I’ll ask someone else to tell me the tale.’

  ‘All right. Admit that it’s just possible he cheated.’

  ‘Tell me the saga of the two Rekkar – I know you secretly want to.’

  ‘Admit the possibility of there being a possibility that he cheated.’

  ‘Fine. There is a possibility, of a possibility, of a possibility…’

  ‘Was that so difficult?’

  Bjarki punched him in the upper arm – hard. ‘So… tell me now.’

  So Gunnar gave him a detailed description – some of it perhaps even true – of the battle in which the two Rekkar had perished. After the attack on the church at Deventer, which was a long, bloody fight but successful in that the offending Christian outpost had been burnt to its foundations, the Franks sent swift cavalry after the
retreating Saxon army in reprisal. There was an ambush sprung by a contingent of cabellarii, as the Frankish armoured horsemen were called, on part of the retreating Saxon force. The enemy had charged in overwhelming numbers. Hundreds of cavalry against a handful of Saxon infantry, many wounded or exhausted from the battle the day before.

  Many of Duke Theodoric’s troops were surprised and surrounded. They formed a defensive circle. It was a fine, heroic last stand, Gunnar said. A flock of ravens circling above the dead and dying, turning the air black with their wings. The two Rekkar, the last two men standing, slaughtered dozens of the Franks before succumbing to their terrible wounds; the final words on their lips a plea to the great Boar spirit to take notice of their magnificent deeds.

  Bjarki nodded approvingly.

  ‘Or maybe they just got heroically drunk after the battle, fell over in the dark and broke their silly Boar necks. You’ll admit, it’s a possibility…’

  Bjarki punched his arm again – but much harder this time.

  * * *

  The Fyr Pit had been transformed. During the day – a rest day, a day of complete idleness for all the Lodges, declared so by the Mikelgothi herself – something that looked remarkably like the shell of a small dragon-ship, with a high, carved prow at the end nearest the Irminsul, had been constructed inside the ashy pit. This ship, though, was not filled with fighting men eager for plunder and glory but with stacked lengths of cut wood, drenched in oil.

  The whole population of the Groves of Eresburg had turned out at dusk to witness the Fyr Ceremony. The Mikelgothi wore a long black robe and held in her right hand her long, black iron staff of office. Her face was painted a shocking white with a chalk paste and three triangles were drawn in fine black charcoal across her forehead – one for each of the three Lodges.

  Every Rekkr who attended had donned the armour particular to his or her Lodge. Bjarki saw that Angantyr’s shaven head was covered in a helmet made from a huge bear’s skull, reinforced with bolted-on plates of iron, his red face framed below and above by the jaws and long yellow teeth of the long-dead animal. Angantyr stood to the right of the Mikelgothi, at the north end of the Fyr Pit, a heavy bearskin cloak hung down his broad back, almost to his heels. His brawny forearms were encased in thick fur vambraces, and heavy leather greaves were bound to his shins above his stout leather boots. Apart from a soft leather loincloth, the rest of his body was naked, his lean, muscular torso, upper arms and thighs glistening with bear grease, his scars – so many scars! – discreetly highlighted with a fine charcoal dust.

  He looked terrifying. Bjarki felt a pang, knowing in his heart that he could never be so magnificent, so filled with the true essence of the Bear.

  The two candidates for the Fyr Ceremony were completely naked.

  They stood at the far end of the square pit, the furthest side from the Irminsul, at the rear of the ship, and they could not have looked more different from each other. Helga had lost about half her body weight in the six weeks of her Voyaging, her breasts sagged flatly on her emaciated chest, her once glossy blonde hair had turned to limp grey, and she looked at least ten years older than she had before her ordeal. She was standing still with two Wolf Lodge gothi positioned at her flanks. Her expression was dull, vacant; face smooth and blank as if her mind were in a faraway place.

  Ivar, on the other hand, seemed to be bursting with youth and vitality, he was still a little overweight, if the truth were told, his white limbs were fleshy, doughy even, a thick roll of fat hanging over his private parts. But he was bouncing on the balls of his feet like a man about to embark on a foot race, and eager to begin. His jaws were moving slowly but constantly as if he were chewing something very tough, like a particularly obstinate piece of gristle. The two Boar gothi beside him had their hands firmly on both his shoulders as if restraining him, as if he were, in fact, their prisoner.

  The Fyr Ceremony began with a prayer to the Irminsul, to watch over this ultimate test of courage, and to the three spirits of Bear, Boar and Wolf, imploring them to watch from the Otherworld and give aid to the men and women who sought their approval and wished only to humbly serve them.

  There was a hymn, sung in the old forest tongue, which was only partly comprehensible to Bjarki, even after months of lessons in that dead language – but which he noted that Gunnar belted out with excessive enthusiasm. And then the four-note humming began, an exercise that all members of the Lodges learnt and used to summon the gandir to this mortal realm.

  Bjarki hummed along with the rest of the folk gathered by the Fyr Pit, feeling the vibrations in his throat ripple out through his chest and into his limbs and out into his whole body, to his very toes and fingertips – it was an odd sensation, as if his whole frame were an iron bell, gently but repeatedly struck with a padded hammer.

  He could see no sign of Tor, but assumed she was with the rest of the Wolf Lodge gathered on the side of the Fyr Pit adjacent him. He and the folk of the Bear Lodge were on the north side, nearest the Irminsul, the Wolf Lodge always took their place on the west, the Boars always on the east.

  The humming finished and the Mikelgothi launched into another long prayer – speaking about the holy cleansing fire burning away their corrupt human shells and allowing them to be reborn in the form of their true selves.

  However, Bjarki was not giving the Mikelgothi’s wise words his full attention. He was looking at Ivar – who was wide-eyed, full of energy, head jerking as he looked from side to side. Bjarki thought about what Gunnar had said to him the night before. He wondered if Ivar had once again taken a strong dose of Red Spot or one of the other varieties of mushrooms and toadstools that some Rekkar used before battle to bring them to a frenzy.

  Each Lodge had considerable stores of dried herbs and plant medicines, gathered by their gothi: some were poisonous fungi. But in the Bear Lodge, at least, they were kept locked in a chest in the Lodge Father’s quarters. For a moment, Bjarki wondered if that might be the cunning path to take. If he took a dose of Red Spot himself, would that help him become a Rekkr? He immediately dismissed the idea as unworthy. He remembered Brokk’s words that night by the hearth: ‘You take the Spot first time, you always need the Spot. Every fight. Every battle. Every time. You’ll never find your gandr.’

  No, absolutely not. If he could not find his gandr by natural means, he would resign himself to the life of a humble Barda. And that was not so bad. Truly it wasn’t. It was a better life, anyway, than he’d endured in Bago.

  There were a dozen servants from all three Lodges now down in the pit with burning torches. They were setting fire to the black oil in the ship, the wood beginning to crackle and smoulder, a thick choking smoke now rising.

  Skymir the Mikelgothi said: ‘Let both candidates prepare their bodies for the ordeal of Fyr; and let the first to test herself in the sacred flames be Helga Haraldsdottir, of the Wolf Lodge, on my command, let her step forward and willingly offer her life to Wolf spirit…’

  She stopped abruptly. Bjarki’s eye was drawn to the far end of the pit. Ivar Knuttson had thrown off the restraining hands of his two warding gothi. He stepped forward to the edge of the pit, raised his hands and called out in a huge voice: ‘The Boar calls me. The Boar compels me. I throw myself into the sacred fire, the cleansing Fyr – and into your loving care, Great Spirit!’

  He jumped on to the rear deck of the burning dragon-ship and began to walk quickly along its length, through the black billowing smoke.

  There were immediate shouts of protest from all sides of the Fyr Pit. The fire had only just been set, mere moments ago. It had not yet fully caught the planks of the ship, nor the oil-drenched stacks of wood inside the belly of the craft. There were thick drifts of oily smoke, but little yet in the way of flames and heat.

  ‘Told you he was a cheat,’ whispered Gunnar into Bjarki’s ear.

  Ivar had already reached the carved dragon’s head and now he leapt out on to the ground, where two servants immediately drenched him in cold water, dipping b
uckets into barrels and hurling the contents over the youth.

  Ivar lifted his hands in the air: ‘The Boar claims me,’ he yelled. His fat, wet naked body, though a little sooty, seemed to be untouched by the flames.

  ‘This is all wrong; he went in far too early,’ shouted Angantyr, pointing an accusatory finger at Ivar. ‘He cannot truly be named Fire Born.’

  The Boar Lodge Father was suddenly at hand, resplendent in a boar-skull helmet with long up-curling tusks, thick pale leather vambraces and greaves, and ankle-length cloak made from tough hairy pigskin. ‘Do not disparage the Boar!’ he yelled. ‘Ivar Knuttson has shown himself Rekkr.’

  ‘He mocks the gandir!’ Angantyr raised his fists, menacingly.

  ‘You lie! He walked through the Fyr. He has completed the ordeal.’

  For a moment it seemed that the two Lodge Fathers – Boar and Bear – would throw themselves at each other, both exploding into bloody violence.

  The tall, skinny form of Skymir the Mikelgothi stepped between the two huge men, holding out her iron staff horizontally to keep them apart.

  ‘Ivar Knuttson has walked through the Fyr,’ said Skymir. ‘He passes the test. He is Fire Born. Look! Helga Haraldsdottir will make her attempt.’

  Every eye around the Fyr Pit was drawn to the far end, where Helga, naked as a baby, had stepped forward. She raised her hands, gave one long piercing scream and leapt into the roaring blaze on the dragon-ship.

  The flames had by now fully caught the wood stacked in the body of the ship. Bjarki could barely see her through the crackling flames. Helga ran at full tilt down the centre of the burning ship, her bare feet moving in a blur. He saw her long trailing grey hair catch in the heat and explode in a single brilliant flash, but by then she had crossed the fifteen paces of the ship’s length and was at the far side, and leaping desperately for the edge of the pit.

  She made it, just, and was immediately drenched by the two servants by the water barrels; she lay gasping on the ground, curled in a protective ball as they poured bucket after bucket over her steaming body.