The Wolf in the Whale

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  How long had she lived with my family before she escaped to join these red strangers? Long enough to be tattooed and learn some of our language. Not long enough to forget the harm we’d done her and her people. She would want me dead, and the villagers seemed equally suspicious of Brandr. Neither of us was welcome here. We needed to leave. Now.

  The woman’s bark container caught my eye. When I’d drunk with her, I’d shared her dreams.

  I looked at Brandr.

  If I could enter his memories, I might know more of Kiasik. I couldn’t throw away that chance, no matter the danger.

  I threw a handful of the flowers on the fire. Too many. The smoke rose up thicker and more acrid than before. Choking on the fumes, I took a deep swig of the bitter liquid, more than I’d intended, and handed it to Brandr, motioning for him to do the same.

  “You have to trust me,” I urged as the world began to spin around me once more. “Please!”

  He looked at me, wide-eyed, but did as I asked.

  Ingharr doesn’t heed the red man’s screams. The knife sticks for a moment in the skraeling’s rib cage, but Ingharr rocks it back and forth calmly until it moves again.

  “He’s the best,” old Olfun whispers beside me. “Never kills the man until it’s done.”

  Bile rises in my throat. At least Galinn’s not here to see this. I never thought I’d be grateful for his injury, but I’d almost rather he suffer from a skraeling’s arrow wound than witness this.

  Ingharr’s almost finished now. Gently, more gently than I’ve ever seen him do anything, he pries the ribs apart, his muscles bulging with the strain. The red man opens his mouth to scream again, but no sound comes out—Ingharr has just ripped the lungs from his body. He spreads them wide, one on each side of the skraeling’s back, and nails them to the wooden cross. Like the wings of a dying bird, the lungs pump weakly for a moment and then lie still. The red man, his mouth still open in a silent scream of agony, is finally dead.

  “All glory to Thor!” Ingharr shouts, drawing his sword and raising it high.

  “To Thor!” we respond.

  This is not my first spread-eagling. Nor shall it be my last. There are two other skraelings left to be killed.

  The other two die faster. Soon there are three trophies pinned to crosses, lungs spread wide. Blood courses down their bellies like paint, putting the streaked red of their stained skin to shame.

  “Do you really think the red men won’t try to avenge this?” I ask Ingharr as we walk back to Leifsbudir. Blood splatters the long blond beard he braids with such pride.

  “You’re worried about a group of skraelings, Brandr? You, who’ve seen the Vikings vanquish Picts and Celts and Slavs across the world?” He laughs and hefts his sword in his hand. His muscles bulge, engorged by the weeks of hunting seals, cutting timber, and rowing along the coast searching for grapes. “You’re no better than our supposed leaders.” He looks around us, suddenly cautious, but only Finnbogi the Icelander walks nearby. The other Greenlanders are out of earshot. “Thorvard Einarsson is a mewling coward,” he mutters. “Freydis Eriksdottir is a greedy fool. He would run from the skraelings, and she would trade with them.”

  Ingharr’s disloyalty isn’t surprising. I’ve seen the way he watches the couple. He envies Thorvard his bed and Freydis her power.

  “Brandr’s right,” Finnbogi says. The Icelander’s pale face looks more drawn than usual. None of those from his house—myself included—have eaten well, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Ingharr and his Greenlanders are flushed with health in comparison. Still, the hollows beneath Finnbogi’s gray eyes are even darker than usual. “The skraelings will be back.”

  “And this time we’ll strike them down before they attack!” insists Ingharr.

  He doesn’t mention that we struck the first blow, killing two skraelings when a trade went bad. He’s not the type to see anything beyond his own pleasure and pride. Now there’s a blood feud, no less dangerous than those I remember from my childhood in Greenland. One man kills another in a drunken brawl and there’s a blood price to pay. Back and forth, spreading destruction from one settlement to the next until a meeting of the Althing finally settles it forever.

  Ingharr is wrong to compare this war with the pillaging of a Celtic village. There are always enough Norsemen to overpower a village. We have the advantage of faster boats, stronger swords, and the berserker rage. But Ingharr, for all his bluster, is no Viking. Just a puffed-up Greenland hunter with dreams of a warrior’s glory in Valhalla. And Freydis may be the daughter of Erik the Red, but she’s only a woman. She had never even left home until a year ago, when she decided to lead this expedition of foolhardy Greenlanders. Her husband, Thorvard Einarsson, is a dullard. Ingharr is right about that. Thorvard carries a war hammer like a Viking, but I doubt he knows how to use it. Finnbogi and the Icelanders are mere merchants. Good sailors and ready for adventure, but they don’t like to get their hands dirty with cutting timber and milking sheep, and they don’t have the stomach for the sort of bloodshed a real Viking is used to.

  If any of our leaders knew what they were doing, they’d seek out the skraeling village and kill them all. That’s the only way to stop this endless cycle of reprisals.

  But I don’t have the heart to tell them that. I’ve seen enough bloodshed in my life. I thank the gods above that at least those fur-clad skraelings in the north are too far away for further strife. It’s hard enough to worry about our red neighbors.

  I’m almost back to Leifsbudir when I hear the shouting.

  Ingharr starts to run. He’s slow despite his massive strength, still cautious of his right side, where one of the fur-clad skraelings left a nasty scar. I pull ahead of him. I’m the first to see the battle.

  Four of the red men’s narrow birchbark boats are pulled up to the shore. Dozens of their warriors run through the settlement, brandishing bows and spears. Two Norsemen lie dead at the shoreline—I can’t tell who. Another, Magnor Tyrkirsson, is screaming like a child, clutching a gaping wound on his arm. We’re in trouble. Magnor’s one of the few Greenlanders besides Ingharr and me who knows how to handle a sword.

  The Icelanders’ house is too far away from Leifsbudir. The sailors there probably don’t know what’s happened. But where are the rest of Freydis’s men? There should be at least twenty Greenlanders here to protect the longhouse and the livestock.

  I’m running now, shouting in fury. I feel the berserker rage rise up, the blood rushing into my face, turning my cheeks to flame and my vision red. No. I push it away. I stumble to a halt. That isn’t me anymore.

  I did not come to Vinland to kill red men. I came to get away from the killing.

  More screams.

  I have no choice. I cannot let my companions die.

  Running once more toward the shore, I can see the Greenlanders now, cowering like whipped dogs in the shadow of their wood-and-turf longhouse.

  Then I see Freydis herself. Loosed from its wimple, her red hair twists about her head like angry snakes.

  “Pitiful wretches!” she cries. Not at the attackers, but at her own cowardly men. “If I were a man, I’d fight more bravely than you! Why do you flee? You should slaughter them like sheep!”

  Like a shield-maiden from legend, she strides through the settlement. She holds a dull weaving sword made of ivory, a tool for tightening cloth on a loom, but raised aloft in her hand, it looks like a Valkyrie’s gleaming sword. She needs only a wolf-mount to make the image complete. She rips her green tunic with her free hand, baring one full white breast. She strikes her chest with the flat of the blade. “Come, skraelings! Fight ME!”

  Freydis’s men need no more urging. They burst from their hiding places, swords and axes aloft. Soon I’m caught in the crowd, my own steel sword unsheathed. Behind me the others raise a battle cry. The skraelings won’t know what hit them.

  One of them runs toward me, a crude stone ax raised to strike. His eyes and teeth are bright white in his red face. I don’t t
hink of right or wrong. Only of survival. I swing my sword with both hands. Steel connects with flesh, then bone. The stone ax flies from his grasp. I don’t wait to watch him fall.

  Thorvard Einarsson screams for help, swinging his war hammer uselessly at three skraelings armed with spears. A stone-tipped arrow whistles past my ear as I rush to Freydis’s husband. The arrow thuds into the ground ahead of me, and I reach to yank it from the earth as I run by. I hurl the arrow toward one of the skraelings around Thorvard. It lodges in the soft flesh of the red man’s upper arm and he drops his spear.

  Before I can reach the group to finish the task, Freydis herself is there, still holding her ivory sword. She swings awkwardly with both hands, taking one skraeling unaware in the backs of his knees. He crumples to the ground.

  Thorvard strikes out at the third skraeling, who dodges the blow with a disdainful sneer. But when the red man sees Freydis, breast still bared, gray eyes burning, he flees for the safety of his boats.

  Soon all the skraelings are on the run, abandoning what loot they plundered from our storehouse. Bolts of cloth and iron nails drop to the ground as they leap into their slender boats and paddle for their lives.

  A few of our men jump into our own rowboat to follow after, but the skraelings’ nimble craft are far swifter.

  I know we won’t capture them.

  The count of the dead is not large. Four skraelings. Two Norsemen. Magnor will join that number if we don’t cut off his arm. Nothing compared to the carnage I’ve seen when we Vikings come to other lands. But still, our dreams are shattered. To men from a treeless world, Vinland has been a paradise of furs and timber and wild grain ready for harvest. Now it will never feel safe again.

  As I’ve done so many times before, I clean the blood carefully from my blade. Sheathed on my back, my sword’s a familiar weight I am both eager and loath to shed. The thought of the red skraeling I just killed reminds me of the fur-clad man whose head I took far to the north. I can still hear the screams of the women and children in their strange snow hut. I remember the skraeling who crawled from behind the whale to watch me holding Galinn. I can’t remember his face, but I remember the way he held that harpoon—and the way he lowered it. I’d let the kid live. A small mercy in a day of death.

  My blade is clean again. But blood still stains my hands.

  Glory to Thor of the crashing thunder. Glory to Odin of the raging battlefield. Glory to Tyr of the flashing blade. So Galinn always says—my brother who speaks to the gods. He worships them with song and saga, not with sword. Would he still praise them if he knew what it felt like to kill? Still, I thank Odin that Galinn is safe in the Icelanders’ house, a forest separating him from Leifsbudir and the carnage here. His wound heals, his hope grows—even as mine slips away as surely as the red men in their birchbark boats.

  “Omat, wake up. We’ve got to get out of here. Come on, kid. Come back to me.”

  I knew the voice. Now, for the first time, I understood the words.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The birchbark hut swam into view.

  Brandr’s face hovered above me, his relieved smile flashing in the dark.

  “There you are. I thought I’d lost you.” He sounded weak, as if suffering from the same dizziness I did. Then, in his halting version of an Inuk’s words, he added, “Good Omat. Good. Go. Go.”

  “Yes. I understand,” I whispered in Norse. My thick tongue struggled with the foreign sounds as they hadn’t when I’d lived Brandr’s dream, but I knew the right words. “We need to go. Where is your sword? My spear?”

  “Odin’s eye! How can you speak like that?”

  “No time,” I said, shaking my head. Even that much movement sent my brain spinning. “Your sword?”

  “They took it, don’t you remember? They left us our packs, but not our weapons.”

  So many other people’s memories filled my mind that I barely had room for my own. I groaned in answer. “We must leave. Red men…” I searched my dream for the word I needed. “Are not dullards.”

  He grimaced. “True. Word of my people must’ve spread.”

  “They do not like my people, either.”

  “So I gathered.”

  With Brandr supporting my head, I sat up gingerly and leaned against the bark wall. “Hut can break. Can you make carnage? Red men are there.” I gestured to the opening. “Not there.” I motioned behind us.

  He tapped the bark thoughtfully. “Carnage, huh? And then what?”

  I shrugged. “We run.”

  “You can barely stand!”

  “And you can barely walk.”

  “Not much of a plan.”

  “No,” I conceded.

  “What about your dogs?”

  “Wolves,” I corrected, remembering the word from the vision. “Wolfdogs.”

  “Oh.” He looked at me with new respect. “Well, can you call to them?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “But what?”

  I couldn’t explain my hesitation to him. The old red woman’s dread had lodged itself in my own mind—I couldn’t shake the image of slavering sled dogs tearing her dwarf family apart. No, not dwarfs, I reminded myself. People. People just like me.

  But Brandr was right: we needed my wolfdogs. We’d walked right into the feud between the painted men and the Norse. Our only hope was to fight our way free.

  “I will call. Ready?” We didn’t need more discussion than that. Despite our new words, we still shared our old unspoken understanding.

  Brandr slung his pack over his shoulder, then hunched over in the low room. He braced his shoulders against the thin bark ceiling. The support posts for the hut were sunk deep into the ground, but Brandr flashed a smile at me, all confidence. “Ready.”

  I shoved the old woman’s bag of liquid and container of dried flowers into my own pack and lashed my parka back in place. Then I rose on unsteady legs, rubbed my face to clear my thoughts, and tried to remember what it felt like to run with Singarti across the valley. I took a deep breath and threw back my head, a howl tearing from my throat. Long and low it began, rising pitch by pitch. A wolf’s cry of need.

  At the same time, Brandr pressed up with all his strength. The hut jerked once, twice, then lifted clear off the ground. He stood to his full height, lifting the entire hut over his head, then bent his knees and tossed it away with a loud roar that nearly eclipsed my own call. Carnage.

  Faint, but already getting louder, the wolfdogs’ howls blended with our own. My pack was on its way.

  Brandr ripped his sword from one stunned guard, and I toppled the other painted man to the ground, yanking my weapons free. In the twilight, White Paw and Sweet One’s dark forms appeared mere blurs as they barreled through the village, but Floppy Eared galloped like a streak of white lightning, headed straight for us. They bounded through the camp, knocking over the flimsy bark huts, snapping at the red warriors and their outstretched spears.

  Overwhelmed by the mayhem, our captors paid Brandr and me little heed as we made our escape. Still woozy from the dreams, I slung my arm around the Norseman, and he wrapped his around me. The wolfdogs protected our retreat, snarling at anyone who came near.

  A sharp keening rose behind us. I turned briefly to see the old woman kneeling before my three wolfdogs, her hands tearing at her face, her voice rising in a wordless cry of rage and fear. Floppy Eared balked, whimpering. No human had ever screamed at him like that before. Sweet One, too, stopped snarling and tucked her tail. She lay down before the woman and offered her stomach, begging forgiveness.

  “No! Come!” I screamed. Brandr added his own cries. White Paw nipped at her siblings, then turned and ran to us. The other wolfdogs leapt up and followed.

  My fear for them cleared my mind. “I’m fine,” I said to Brandr, extracting myself from his arm. I’d lost track of what language I spoke, but he understood. “Run?”

  He nodded grimly. “I can try.”

  I reached my hand for his.

  We let the w
olfdogs lead the way, trusting their vision in the quickly darkening forest. Brandr limped, but he did not complain, did not falter. Spiked branches lashed our faces as we ran, hidden perils in the gloom. My oft-repaired boot soles offered little protection against the rocks and roots beneath my feet as we lurched through the forest hand in hand. But my wolfdogs bounded forward with ease, Floppy Eared’s outstretched white tail darting before us like a guiding star. My panting breaths almost, but not quite, masked the sound of our pursuers. While we crashed through the dense forest, the painted men moved silently, but I could hear them calling to each other.

  In the starlight filtering through the branches, I saw the black circles that shadowed Brandr’s eyes. He gasped for breath between tight, pale lips. Even with his long legs, his limping strides grew shorter, slower. He wouldn’t last much longer.

  Suddenly the night darkened as clouds rolled across the sky, blotting out the stars. The gray world turned black. Floppy Eared’s white tail disappeared ahead of us.

  The voices of the painted men grew louder, angrier.

  Slowing the pace of our flight, I squeezed Brandr’s sweaty hand in my own. I didn’t know which way to go. I pulled on him until I could feel, rather than see, his head bending toward mine. I pressed my mouth against his ear and whispered, “They do not see, but they hear.”

  His bearded cheek rasped my face as he nodded. Then a wet nose thrust itself against my free palm. I reached out, feeling White Paw’s familiar skull butting my leg. I tangled my fingers in her ruff and bent to whisper, “Silent, little one. Be silent.”

  Very slowly, White Paw moved forward, her broad paws soundless on the forest floor. I trailed like a duckling, Brandr’s hand still seized in my own.

  The angry voices of the painted men grew fainter. Finally only the forest sounds remained: the whisper of wind in the branches, the hoot of an owl, the rustle of some small animal among the fallen leaves. The clouds rolled away; the starlight gave no sign of our pursuers. I still wanted to get as far away from the camp as I could before dawn. But even as I hastened my pace, Brandr’s hand slipped from my own. He sat down heavily.