Norseman Raider (The Norseman Chronicles Book 4)

by Jason Born

  “We go to take a mint and bring home even more treasure,” I said.

  Godfrey’s longboat had pulled ahead. Charging Boar followed close behind, to starboard. The three stolen ships followed in a third line, more or less abreast of one another.

  “I thought Godfrey wanted an army and revenge,” said Tyrkr. “He’s got his army. Now all we have to do is scurry to wherever this Dal Riata is and kill a few of them for revenge.”

  I shrugged. “I guess kings always want more coins. It will make gathering up men and arms easier.” I justified Godfrey’s actions as if I understood affairs of state. In truth, I knew nothing and was along for adventure and a treasure of my own. I hoped to survive long enough to spend my small share from Anglesey and what would come from Watchet. If I managed that, I thought I would retire to Man and find a fat woman to hump. Perhaps I could buy the rocky farm from the blind farmer who had presented his case at the Tynwald. I thought I could count on both Godfrey and Killian to speak a fair word for me.

  Then I remembered that we had to not only run to Watchet, but that Tyrkr was right. If I made it through the raid on the mint, I had to survive our retribution on the Dal Riatans. I sighed, deciding then and there to give up my dreams of a farm and family. I would be a raider, dead or alive. I would be like a ship on the sea. I would put up my sail and catch the wind, allowing it to blow me where it would. The norns wove my fate. That’s what I decided.

  I’ve made many such ‘decisions’ in my life. They were steel in my heart at the moment I made them. They were stone and iron. I’ve abandoned all of them as if they were but thin parchment. As the years went by, I abandoned this decision, too. But that day I was a raider.

  I looked up at the flag on the mainmast. It hung limp. There was no wind. Still, the backs of strong men propelled us on to a mint. I had no idea what a mint looked like. My people had yet to mint a single coin. We used money. All of it, however, came from foreign shores. We’d dump ourselves onto one of those shores and I’d seize my next chance for glory.

  . . .

  The daylight was lasting longer which made for more time to travel – a good thing for eager King Godfrey. It made the men rowing grow ever more exhausted, however. I took my turn at the rower’s bench, my youthful back heaving against the heavy seas. I and my fellow Greenlanders fared well enough. Godfrey’s more experienced raiders performed ably, of course. They never complained, except where experienced soldiers were expected to whine. Their backs rippled. Their hands clenched. The grate-slap wore on.

  The Welshmen, new to the world of professional seamanship, coped with less success. After the first full day of rowing, we sidled the small flotilla into a cove. Killian and Godfrey assured me we were still in Wales. The Welshmen could not have cared if we had rowed all the way to the icy fjords of Hel or the fiery depths of the Christian Hell. As soon as the boats skidded or the anchors dropped, they collapsed to the decks, moaning. They weren’t a fat or lazy lot. They were fine at whatever their vocations had been thus far, I’m sure. But they weren’t seamen – not yet anyway. Their sore backs and shaking arms would make their shields and spears feel heavy when the raid began.

  Godfrey took pity and allowed them to bypass watch that first night. This made his experienced men hate him, but his new Welsh crews love him. I suppose that is forever the lot of a ruler. Even a parent of more than one child, I imagine, will always anger one with a decision in favor of the other. And what was Godfrey but our father, our patron?

  In the quiet of that night, the only sound was the crashing of waves elsewhere along the shore or the small lapping of the sea against our hulls. I wondered about my father – my first father. How would life have been different had he survived? Had he, Olef, raised me? Would I have even remembered that my first, true father ever ran with a man called Erik? Erik was exiled along with his own father from Norway. Erik was, in turn, exiled from Iceland. Both banishments for the same reason – murder. Would I have ever had an occasion to cross paths with a king, let alone serve one? Or, would I have been rutting with a fine woman under the hides of animals that I had taken? Would I, aged twenty-one winters, already have two or three children of my own?

  I was still wondering about the past when I heard Killian’s voice echo across the waters. “Wake yourselves, the king wishes to depart with the tide before the sun arrives. Move! Slough off the joy of your dreams.”

  Several men from the surrounding boats grumbled, to which Killian replied, “Oh, my brothers, you know what the friend of Job says, ‘The mirth of the wicked is brief.’ What are we but wicked, Christian or pagan alike? Now, you may complain, but then with your lips flapping you may miss time for a morning meal.”

  The mumbling halted and men stirred to life. I ate some of the stores of bread from Man. It was dark and I didn’t bother to see if it was moldy. I’m sure it was. Bite after bite crawled down my gullet. I washed it down with a pot of ale.

  We rowed nearly straight southward for most of the day.

  We saw a fishing boat. When its crew saw us approaching, they promptly turned and raced back toward the protection offered by shore and civilization. We laughed at them, for had we wanted to, Godfrey’s ship alone could have overtaken the fishermen in moments, put them all to the sword, and taken their catch. It seemed like a lot of trouble, though, especially when the true prize of our sea romp would be worth so much more.

  We turned to starboard when we saw a large promontory of land, the last large peninsula of Wales, the Welshmen said. It took many long hours to navigate around it as we kept the land to our port.

  Godfrey drove us long into the night, something that again caused grumbling, but I understood. He shouted over the waves that tomorrow would bring us to Devon, Watchet specifically, if the maps were to be believed. He wanted us there early and fresh. Better to work hard today and rest for the night rather than work at the oars all day before immediately sliding into a beach and battle. Eventually, even the king was tired. He had spent time at the rowing bench to goad his followers into working harder. By the faint moonlight we found a broad, sandy beach for the night’s camp. So tired were we that none of us bothered to see if we ran straight into a village. Godfrey had such distaste for the defensive abilities of Welsh settlements that he would have still blindly slid into shore even if we weren’t exhausted. Afterward, he did have the sense to place several watchmen around the hills that led down to the beach.

  Night passed uneventfully. Morning came. We covered ourselves in armor and belted on our weapons. We gave the Welshmen their weapons, a gesture that immediately improved their morale. Our rowers went to work, facing aft. It would be our last glimpse of Wales as we again struck a southerly course. Soon, I would lay eyes on England for the first time in my life.

  It would be a strandhogg, not at all like my first ever raid on Anglesey. There, we went ashore, hoping for stealth in order to steal a hidden treasure. We ended up with treasure in a wholly different manner, of course. But Watchet, I’d soon learn, would be more like every other raid that I’ve experienced.

  It was to be rapid, loud, and deadly.

  . . .

  We rowed on to Watchet through thick fog. I cursed and heard other men cursing the weather, for though we knew that the town and mint were just a short distance south, the fog might find us coming ashore ten English miles or ten English feet from our target.

  For his part, Killian spent the time shouting encouragement over the rhythms of our oars. “What a blessing is this mist,” he’d say. “God gave the Egyptian pharaoh a plague of frogs. He gives the English a plague of fog.” And then he added, “And raiders!” I think he said it more to keep the tired Welshmen rowing, but his booming voice did serve a more immediate purpose. Since we could not see a fadmr in front of our noses, we could certainly not lay eyes on the other boats. As long as we could still hear the priest’s wailing to port, those of us on Charging Boar knew our small fleet was together. There was no guarantee that, though we remained near one anothe
r, we sailed a true course.

  I had just settled my back at rest against one of the T-shaped oar racks in the ship’s center. Aoife, my slave who had yet to perform more than the most modest of tasks for me, sat next to me. I had given her the remainder of ale from the bottom of my pot. She sipped at the meager ration and licked her teeth to clean the film of sleep from their surface. “You know, Halldorr,” she began.

  “You ought to call me master or sir or even lord,” I said unconvincingly.

  To my surprise the girl paused and gave my suggestion some thought. She drained the last of what was now her ale and blew out a large breath through puffed lips. “I think not, Halldorr. If we are to be fellow warriors, at least I as your skjoldmo for a short while, then we ought to speak as equals.” I chuckled at her being a shield girl, which is what skjoldmo meant. But I suppose that her use of the word at least partially explains why many years later, in a land not yet discovered by my people, I would call my own little daughter Skjoldmo.

  “Then call me what you will,” I said, resigned.

  “I shall,” she chuckled precociously. “You know, you never thanked me for saving your life in the battle at the keep.”

  “My life?” I asked. I remembered how I had slowly drained the life from Aoife’s attacker with my forearm pressing into his throat. “I saved yours.”

  Killian continued his calling out. “My Welsh cousins, carry on! We go to invade and harry the English. We give them blood, for blood begets blood. They’ve drained yours. It is your day to drain theirs.”

  Godfrey shouted in response. “That’s quite enough, priest.” He sounded disgusted with Killian. I laughed when I thought of the bickering pair. “You’ll ruin whatever advantage the fog cover has given us.”

  Killian, in typical fashion, would not back down so easily. “And King Godfrey, is it better to sneak into shore and find out that yours is the only longboat in an area surrounded by prickling spears? Or, would you rather come to Watchet with your entire armada intact?”

  Godfrey swore to the norns for putting the priest in his path. Then he answered, defeated, “Carry on, priest.”

  He did.

  Aoife slapped my mailed chest with the back of her hand. “So you are under the mistaken impression that because you killed the man with your hands that you saved my life?” She didn’t pause for my answer. It was just as well. “Yet you forget that you wouldn’t be sitting here today had I not rammed your saex into his groin. He would have chopped you in half. Pierce and twist, that’s what I did.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with the sure-minded creature. With an overdramatized bow of my head, I said, “Young Aoife, I thank you for your gallantry. Without you I would be dead.”

  “I know,” Aoife answered plainly. She scratched at a louse in her hair. “Do you think that man would have died even without your strangling?”

  “In time. He would have bled to death. You cut a man in the groin and there’s almost no stopping the flow.”

  “So, I’ll count him as my first kill. I told Godfrey, and then you, that I intended to kill a man, or two.”

  “Docks!” Killian screamed from port.

  I rolled to my feet and was promptly sent back to the deck when Charging Boar hammered into a firmly placed dock piling. We didn’t strike it head on, but careened starboard, the port side bouncing along the post. The first three rowers on the port side received a swift smack of the oar handle into their noses as the blades snapped to the unflinching will of the stationary dock pillar.

  “Ropes!” called Leif. “Get us moored here!”

  I knocked down a Welsh rower as I seized the coiled rope aft. After forming a kind of large lasso, I tossed it to the post that would otherwise quickly fade into the distance. I allowed the cord to snake overboard as I tied it off to a cleat. At once the excess length was used up. It snapped taut as fast as a feral dog’s nip, sending many of us to the deck planking again.

  “Pull us in!” Leif yelled. He held a separate rope and was throwing a loop toward another post that had come into view through the morning mist. Godfrey was relaying similar orders. The calls from Raven’s Cross sounded nearby, but I could see neither them nor the other boats.

  Shouts from ahead echoed as well. Later, Killian told me it was English, a bastardized tongue formed from the words of Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Britons, Danes, and Celts. When he told me this, I remember thinking that I would do my part to add some trusty Norse words to their thieving language. That morning though, I understood little of it. I could only tell that the calls that raced over the waters carried a fair amount of agitation. Our noisy entrance into England did not go unnoticed. The alarm had sounded.

  The rowers, even those with misshapen noses, fished their oars out through the oar holes and stowed them on the T-shaped racks while Leif and I hauled us ever closer to the dock. Behind me, I heard the familiar rap of shields being hauled up to the arms of their owners. I heard spears and swords clattering as men pushed for position on the rocking longboat. Aoife wedged next to me and without asking what to do recoiled the excess rope that was accumulating at my feet. She was a smart beast.

  As soon as the port side strakes were an ell away from the dock, men began leaping over Charging Boar’s gunwale. They landed with thuds and without orders began forming a shield wall, inching their way further onto the dock and the unknown dangers that lurked ahead toward land. The hull crunched into the pier. Leif and I retied her off to the cleats. Aoife jumped over and then Leif and then me.

  Leif and I pressed through our men to assess the situation. I snatched a Welshman by his hair and tugged him so that his shield was held more tightly to the next man’s in the shield wall. We had clearly made it to England, hence the English. We had obviously made it to a town, hence the docks. What was less clear was whether or not we had even landed at Watchet.

  To my left, I could just make out Godfrey’s ship. They were now moored to a separate rickety dock that jutted out parallel to ours. To my right, past Charging Boar, I could see nothing but dark water and more fog. Ahead I could see the dock on which we stood disappear into the mist. The general, dark, looming form of a hillside or town lay beyond.

  “Are we all here?” shouted Godfrey.

  “Charging Boar is here!” answered Leif. “Where is here?”

  Godfrey ignored the question. Brandr’s voice rang out from the other side of Godfrey. “Dancing Stag is here!” Dancing Stag was the makeshift name Brandr had given one of our newly stolen boats.

  “Snake’s Revenge is here!” called Loki, who had transferred to that boat to be her captain.

  Several moments went by. “By Hel, where is Randulfr and his crew?”

  “We’ve no time to find out,” Killian shouted. “We’re here, wherever that is. We must move quickly and use what surprise we have left.”

  “Move up the docks to the shingle. We assemble there and sweep in,” Godfrey called.

  We jogged forward, holding our shields high to prevent a lucky archer from making an improbable kill from out of the mist. Our feet thundered across the docks until we rattled out onto a rock strewn beach. As soon as our small shield wall met that of Godfrey, I leaned down to Aoife who had remained at my heel. “Find that other ship and lead Randulfr back to us.”

  The girl was a fine addition to our raid. Of course, I didn’t think so at the start. Of course, I protested her presence. But after I gave her my order that morning on the shingle in England, without the least bit of questioning or wavering, the dirty Irish girl grabbed my nose and cranked it. “I’ll bring those men, but don’t go killing all the Englishmen before I get my shot.” Aoife finished by shoving my nose back into my face and tearing off down the shore.

  Godfrey had stepped in front of our assembled army. He gave no speech though I had wanted one. Instead the King of the Isles did what was expected of a wicked Norse warrior. He drew his lightweight war axe from his belt, hefted his shield, and turned his back to us.

  “Let us take wha
t we will.” He spoke in an almost hushed tone. It was quiet, but grave, determined. Without waiting for any answer, Godfrey stepped forward and disappeared into the fog. The army behind him exchanged glances and then followed their king into the mist and into the growing din of the unknown.

  . . .

  We moved forward slowly, our leather boots slipping over the smooth, rounded stones and crunching the remains of the dead shellfish that littered the shingle. It took longer than I had expected to cross the shoreline, for it was deep when measured from the docks to wherever the town began.

  And there was most certainly a town. It was most certainly a garrisoned town because in the fog I heard a growing number of shouts from whomever we would oppose. They were not the terrified screams of simple villagers, though those could be heard farther on. No, these were the disciplined calls of men with military experience. They were quick clips, shouts, and growls. And, unlike most raids on civilian targets in which I have since participated, these voices drew closer, rather than farther. They grew louder rather than softer.

  Then the noise became like a roiling nest of serpents.

  A spear smashed into the face of a fellow Greenlander. His blood spattered my neck before his body toppled backward. A host of grunts from the fog brought dozens more spears. Most were not well aimed, but still, Welshmen, Norsemen, Manx, and Greenlanders all fell with missiles jutting from legs, arms, or worse.

  Godfrey continued marching forward and so the rest of us moved on behind him.

  I will now share with you a secret. I was more than a little frightened of what we would see in the heretofore unseen enemy. Though I had fear, I was experienced enough to show none while in the shield wall. I was intelligent enough to mention nothing about it later. What type of raider would I have been had I whined about my anxieties in the thick of battle or even in its aftermath? I’ll answer that. I would have been a festering wound on a useless limb, good for nothing but amputation, deserving nothing but scorn.