Winter Serpent

by Davis, Maggie;

  Thorsten Jarl led the ships up the mouth of a coastal river, and they soon found a populous clachan of the Neills. But the sack of Inishmurray had already alarmed the Irish, and the villagers were well-prepared. A force of the tall guards from the king’s fort at Claiggion were hidden in the settlement, waiting for just such a Norse raid, and they fell upon the Jarl’s raiders from the rear, closing the trap.

  Knut Broken Tooth had been left at the river to guard the longships and the path of retreat; after some time had passed he sensed that all was not going well. He rushed to the aid of the Viking band, scattering the Irish warriors from Claiggion. The men of the Neills and the king’s warriors fought well, but they could not match the battle ferocity of the Northmen, even outnumbered as the raiders were, three to one.

  In their rage at being so nearly thwarted, after the Neills had been routed and had taken to the swamps, the Northmen burned all the buildings of the village and carried off all that could be moved. They took so much that most of it had to be abandoned for lack of room in the longships, but the Northmen would leave nothing for the Neills to recover. They threw what they could into the sea and slaughtered the livestock.

  The women and children were herded together on the beach near the ships, and the crews took their pick of the women who pleased them. There was a great deal of haggling before the terrified captives as to the value of a woman during the long winter when weighed against the sacks of grain and fresh meat which were greatly needed. It was finally decided by Sweyn Barrelchest that no women would be carried back except the two best-looking. The Northmen fell like wolves on those remaining. In the midst of the debauch the children and older women were put to the sword, the Northmen noting with satisfaction that their screams would carry to the places where their kinsmen were hiding, to impress them with the justice of the Northmen, who wreaked vengeance for the ambush.

  It was agreed later that the fairest woman of the village was the one who had been captured by Horsa during the thickest of the fighting. It had appeared that she was the wife of the chieftain of the Ui Neills, for a very strong, heavy-set man in fine clothing had followed after Horsa, who carried the woman on his shoulder, and had attacked him desperately. Horsa had thought this an annoyance. He dumped the woman on the ground in order to give himself free swing with his battle-ax, but she crawled about, grasping at his legs, seeking to trip him, and he was hard-pressed to fend off the chieftain’s blows and elude the woman at the same time. After a brisk exchange of blows Horsa had chopped the man’s arm off at the shoulder, sending a bright stream of blood over them both. But with his good hand the Irishman had deprived Horsa of his prize, for he ran the woman through with his sword as she lay on the ground, and they died together. Horsa could not contain his dismay at this, for he had thought the woman exceedingly beautiful and he had not got his share of gold at the church, so intent had he been upon her capture.

  Knut Broken Tooth, who had come to their relief so ably, did not return on the longships. As he led the ship’s guard to the church, a villager had come at Sweyn from behind, swinging a broadsword. The blow had not cleft Sweyn’s skull as was intended, but instead had fallen straight across Knut’s hands as he thrust forward his shield to protect Sweyn from the attack. The hands were lopped off, still attached to the leather brace at the back of the shield. Sweyn had not seen this; he only noticed that Knut fell.

  After the fighting was over, the older Viking found his crewman sitting with his back against the stone wall of the church, the stumps of his arms held out before him, gushing blood. Both men could see that there was no hope. Knut’s face was already ashen with the drain of his life’s blood, and he could barely manage a whisper for his chieftain. He would never return, he said, even if he were granted life, for he would not willingly choose to be a cripple.

  They left him in the church, and Sweyn took the shield with the hands thrown inside and bore it back to the ship, where he lashed them again in lifelike grasp on the crosspiece. Later he bore this gruesome relic into the log hall in silence and hoisted the shield with the hands on a rope to the beams where it hung forever after to remind them of the indomitable Knut and his act of loyalty.

  Doireann would not look at it. She was sick of the stories which they relished and which continued for some weeks without diminishing. After the outline of the raids had been told, each man came forth to add his personal narrative, and so long did this go on, and the boasting with it, that Doireann was exhausted by the subject and thought of the long winter evenings which would stretch onward with the same recountings of their exploits.

  There was little consolation in the stories for her, for the Northmen made it clear in their repetitions that it was the Jarl, the much feared berserkr, whose luck and valor had brought them such rewards. His luck had changed, they reiterated, and would bring them great fame and riches in what was to come.

  Thus did she learn that they gave Thorsten Jarl full credit for their luck and their success. It was he who had directed the attack upon the monks at Inishmurray, and his fierce battle-cries which had urged the Northmen forward against the resistance they had found there. It was the Jarl who had insisted they turn from the coast to go inland along the river where the spoils lay, and the Jarl who held firm against all odds until Knut had arrived to aid them. Credit was given to the others—to Sweyn who had taken the steering oar of the lead ship and had guided them safe through the reefs of Mallinmore, to Bengt who had struck sail and ordered oars out speedily for the returning sackers so that they should not be caught in the flood tide—but it was acknowledged over all that it was the Jarl who held and led them. All other deeds were bold and well-conceived, but were not allowed to over-shadow the mighty presence of the leader. Only Ulf glowered, for he was not yet healed of his galled pride, but Thorsten overlooked his sulking, as he ignored Gunnar’s dissatisfaction with the sharing of the Irish girl.

  The crews taunted Horsa loudly about his dead Irishwoman, drowning out his complaints that his share was now the shortest of the lot. Each time his story was told to the accompaniment of Horsa’s dismayed expression, the hall shook with the Northmen’s familiar senseless howls of laughter. “Where is your treasure, Horsa?” they called to him. Raki stood on the table holding his nose to show that Horsa’s share was now too rotted to bring into the house.

  With the confinement of winter weather the Northmen fell into an easy sloth. Their time was spent in lounging about, with little pretense at the work of the camp, telling and retelling the tales of the raid, and drinking heavily. The Northmen slept much during the day, and this gave them a restlessness and wakefulness for the nights which Doireann hated. It was often dawn before the drinking bouts and the surly fights which sprang from them died down.

  As they became more housebound they were subject to fits of brooding. They were fond of referring to themselves as a “melancholy race,” a phrase Doireann had heard more than once in their songs and narratives, and she found this to be true. They were as pettish and sullen as women for days at a time, and, when drunk, would weep copiously over little or nothing. The Jarl was no exception. Doireann avoided him as did the others when he sat hunched over the fire, forgetting to eat, deep in the abyss of his mood.

  He had been sunk in his brooding for days when, one evening, she happened to pass by the table, noticing him at one end, apart from the dice players, his arms stretched out before him on the board, his head lying sideways between them. The hall was full of men but it was fairly quiet, Raki and a group of the most restless ones having taken themselves outside to go fishing. She thought the Jarl drunk or asleep and went to step around him, but he raised his head and spoke to her. She paused.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I thought I would go to bed,” she answered, surprised.

  He motioned for her to sit down and she did so, facing him. He studied her for a while without speaking.

  “Is it all right with you?” he asked at length. Still baffled by his interest
, she nodded. “And with the child?”

  She frowned.

  “Yes, I think so. As much as I am able to tell. He… it, is very active. Especially when I would sleep.”

  He seemed satisfied. His eyes were bloodshot with drink, sullen with the mood which had lain upon him the past days. He thrust his cup of ale at her and she took it uncertainly and swallowed.

  “I will tell you a story,” he said suddenly. “What?” she said.

  “I will tell you a story about the Tree of Life.” She could only stare at him.

  “This Tree of Life,” he went on gloomily, “is called Yggdrasil. It is the ash tree of the world. The crown of it is in the sky and its three roots are so: one among men, one among the frost giants whom Thor defeated, and one in Hel. From the crown of the tree drips the dew that supports the world of nature, the trees, the grasses, and all the living creatures. Yet at Yggdrasil is also the Council of the Gods and at its base flows the spring of Urd, whence emerge the maids of fate whom men call the Norns. Young and beautiful are they, like yourself, but they are all-knowing beyond the comprehension of men, and destiny is on their beauty. Nidhugg the dragon gnaws at the roots of the tree. Like all that is evil, he seeks to destroy the worlds of gods and men. But this is not the only sadness. The hart eats the leaves from the crown of the tree, and on one side it is attacked by decay.”

  He paused to see if she was listening.

  “Yes,” he continued, “the Tree of Life struggles, but the Norns at the base water it from the spring which flows nearby, restoring it, and it stands in all its splendor, ever green.”

  Doireann stared back at him.

  “There is not much sense in this, is there?” she said.

  “Of course there is sense in it. The story tells the tale of life. The Tree is life and it is timeless and all-enduring.”

  “I understand this,” she said wearily. “But, considering the attackers, the struggles of the tree are pointless.”

  “Pointless? This sounds like some of the talk of the Irish who are always looking for a meaning to things. Who said that life should have a meaning, or a point?”

  She was silent, but he intended to pursue the thought to its ending.

  “Life has no point, it is true. There is no meaning to it beyond man’s duty to himself.”

  “A man has no duty, then, save to himself?”

  “I did not say this. A man has duties in his life. But first he has this duty to himself that he should be resolute, honorable, and strong; this is the wisdom of life as it is taught us. Why should he search for further meaning? In the end the Winter Serpent will devour the earth, the gods of Midgard will fall, as is foretold, and all shall be destroyed.”

  “What is that?” she said quickly. “This serpent who will destroy your gods?” He looked at her with a touch of irritation.

  “Yes, this is a thing now such as none of the Gaels or the men of Britain could understand. The Norse are the children of the Winter Serpent; he sends them forth to challenge the tribes in the west who are Christian. But he exists on his throne in the ice caves to remind us that all that is now shall yet return to the night of eternal silence. They are only fools who long for their dream of Valhalla, this other life after they are killed. This is nonsense. In the most ancient of tales, which are the true ones, it is told that man is only the bird flying from the cold night into the warm-lighted hall and out again into the never-ending darkness.”

  “Then why should man bother himself with his duties to be honorable and resolute?” she countered.

  He considered this.

  “Some things are known to be good, and some to be evil,” he muttered. “Evil lies in evil, dies in evil. Among these may be classed also the mad and the damned.”

  She started to speak but he overrode her.

  “The damned may also be those who are cursed through no fault of their own, but by plan of their destiny. The mad and the accursed, fine brothers are they, who wish for death and have it not. To them is given only one hope: that when they die they will be reborn in the spirit of some other. One child among their children may have their father’s soul and be free of his curse.”

  He picked up her hand from the table and held it in his.

  “Pray to your gods that this child you bear me may have my spirit yet be free.”

  She tried to pull her hand away.

  “I cannot pray to my God!” she cried out, and the dice players looked up. She lowered her voice. “My God has abandoned me to yours.”

  He drew up his lips in a mirthless laugh.

  “And mine has abandoned me also. My name, you know, means ‘he who is protected by Thor.’ But it has been a long day since I have sacrificed to him, now that I have given my vows to those others.”

  He held her fingers up to the dim light of the fire and studied them.

  “This should be the hand of a Norse woman, tall, fair, and accustomed to the ways of Norsemen. It should be the hand of a Jarl’s daughter, her blood proper to mingle with that of the Inglinga, not an alien girl who should still be in her mother’s house.”

  She succeeded in pulling her hand away from him.

  “I do not know what Sweyn has told you of my life, Thorsten Jarl, but I have never known a mother nor yet her love and protection. All I have known is the spite and evil of my foster brother the toiseach of my clan, and the helplessness and shame of being first in his power and then cast among foreign men and taken as your wife unwillingly. I have known hatred and it has made me strong. Someday I will kill Calum macDumhnull and strew his entrails for the sheep to trample, and see justice done my enemies.”

  “This is foolish talk for a woman, especially one who turns pale at the sight of blood and is sick when Sweyn tells his drunken tales.”

  She looked levelly at him.

  “It is no idle vow,” she assured him.

  They were both glum in the silence that followed. A barrier lay between them as wide as the table and as thick, and far more impenetrable. The irony of it was that she carried his son and it was her child also, and this fact was as real and recognizable as any enmity, any lack of understanding between them.

  7

  Donn macdumhnull was not clever. He left this to his brother Calum, yet it seemed that it was always he who was forced to think himself out of Calum’s mistakes. Donn considered himself a fighter, not a thinker, and because of this he made a good captain

  of the warriors of Cumhainn, a good leader of the garrison at the dun fort over the mountains.

  “Give me a good spear, a good fight, or a proper hunt,” he was fond of saying. “I leave the talking and the conniving to the others.”

  So he began to sweat and to curse from his seat by the window of the fort when he saw the new arrivals coming out of the forest on the track from Dunadd. He had enough guests already that day; the open stone broch was crowded with hunters and travelers seeking a night’s lodging, and the circular tower would hold no more. In the small room behind him there were some hunters from Loch Eti in search of wild boar and an itinerant monk from Ireland on some holy journey or other which always occupied holy men, and Donn’s small store of conversation had been fairly well strained. Pleasant talk was hard enough for the slow moving, slow talking Donn, and now this new band of visitors meant more of the same, and something else besides.

  These newcomers were the Ard-Ri’s men, warriors from the house of the High King at Dunadd, and to deal with them Donn would need cunning and a good memory for what Calum macDumhnull had told him to say. He had hoped against all that this thing would not come to pass, that the Ard-Ri, clever Alpin, would not send his warriors into Cumhainn to find out what had occurred with this gossip of Norse camped in the lands of the macDumhnulls. But now they were here, and it could not be said that their coming was unforeseen. This was like Alpin, to keep his eye on his districts and be ready to meddle when it could bring him gain. All Dalriada knew the Ard-Ri’s ambitions and how he fancied himself a ruler in the all-powerful
style of Charlemagne of the Franks.

  Donn snorted to himself. The Scots of Dalriada were not the Franks nor the Neustrians, and Alpin was only chief over many chiefs. Alpin was clever and wished to see himself king over a great kingdom of both Scots and Picts from sea to sea, with all his chieftains and tuaths obedient to him, and send his captains here and there like a mighty lord over all. Here was his band of warriors coming now out of the forest to find what might be wrong in the land of the macDumhnulls, to find the loose end of the stick so that the Ard-Ri might put his hand on it and wield it.

  But not this day, Donn thought to himself. Not if he could be crafty and thwart them. The Red Foxes still ruled in Cumhainn, and did not need the Ard-Ri’s hand in their affairs.

  The warriors from Dunadd were mounted on fine, spirited horses. The leader of the King’s men was having some difficulty keeping his mount in hand long enough to blow his bronze horn before the wooden stockade.

  Donn stuck his head out of the top of the stone tower and glowered down at them.

  “Blow, blow,” he muttered to himself. “Blow your head off, you fancy cock, you wild-looking devil. I see you here, Comac Neish, and it’s trouble you mean, and well I know it.”

  He pulled back into the room where his guests were squatted by the hearth, warming their hands. The stone walls of the broch were crowded with spears and the big bows of warfare. There was not much room left now. The latecomers would overflow onto the beds of rushes pushed into the corners. Donn shrugged. The fort was no great hall, and he made no pretense at hospitality. The Ard-Ri’s men would have to cook their own meat at the hearth and share the beer out of the common bowl. He could not bother himself with such things, for he must think on what he would say to Comac Neish, the Ard-Ri’s liege man, who was an Irishman with a quick tongue and a quicker sword hand. What would he say if Comac talked about in circles concerning Northmen and Muireach’s daughter? How could he keep from betraying Calum macDumhnull and his plots, his infernal plots which were always trapping him, forcing him to talk, talk, when he had nothing to say?