The Great Pagan Army

by Vaughn Heppner

  As Bjorn readied the Twelve, large numbers of Danes went into the woods north of Paris. They felled countless trees, dragged them back and began construction of a fortified camp near where the dragons lay beached. Others cheered as they rowed across the Seine and swarmed the southern countryside. Some rode south to loot villages, farmsteads and if they could wooden-walled villas. They roamed through the empty vineyards, searched abbey barns and abandoned slave huts. They dug trenches before all the paths and trails leading toward Paris and build earthen redoubts behind those trenches. At the Rus Siege Master’s suggestion, they raised wooden platforms and placed the onagers where they would do the most damage to those in Paris. They also dug trenches, built redoubts and catapult platforms on the north side of the city. They dragged rowboats overland and into the eastern half of the Seine, patrolling upriver of Paris, ensuring that no rafts or boats smuggled supplies into the city. The noose thus tightened around Paris.

  All the while, Bjorn, Grimar, Heming and the others sharpened their spears and axes and quaffed honey mead.

  Heming frowned as he studied the abbey, the complex of church, chapel, cloister, gardens and barns. This church boasted a tall spire, a bell tower, although the bell had along with other abbey valuables been spirited away into Paris. The Twelve sat sprawled around a cracking fire. Discarded mead-skins lay amid gnawed pork bones and radish sprouts. Swords and axes glimmered in the firelight. It was a cloudy day. The rasp of sharpening stones against steel matched belches and the loud boasts of berserks pretending nonchalance and indifference.

  Then Egil spoiled it by saying: “That’s not what I heard. If you open a saint’s grave and peer at his concentrated bones you’ll go blind. In their holiest shrines this White Christ stands strong.”

  Three other berserks pelted Egil with pork bones, but his words troubled them.

  The term ‘White’ Christ didn’t come because of the color of Jesus’ skin. The word hvitr (white) meant cowardly or effeminate in Norse. Christ was peace loving said the Frank priests, one who loved peacemakers. Warriors spit upon such a one. Fighting was valorous and manly. “Your liver is white,” was a way of calling a Viking a coward. Red Thor, beloved by the Northmen, had flashing red eyes, a great red beard and spilled the red blood of his foes. In addition, a baptized convert wore a white robe for a week and added to the sense of the White Christ name.

  “Drink!” roared Bjorn. “Drink to Odin! Do you think the Lord of the Dead cares a piss for a man on a cross?”

  “This Christ is a god,” said a berserk, “and like Odin he hung on a tree.”

  “Bah!” Bjorn said. “Odin hanged himself on the Yggdrasil Tree. He climbed up and hanged nine days and nights. Roman soldiers, men, nailed this White Christ onto the cross. They plucked his beard and beat him with whips. He lasted hardly that day. Then they buried him.”

  “He rose from the grave,” said Egil.

  “To wreck vengeance?” asked Bjorn. “Bah! These stinking priests tell us he still bears the marks in his hands and in his side.”

  “Odin is blind in one eye,” Heming said. “He still bears marks.”

  The Twelve grew silent.

  Heming became wary. They had accepted him since he ate the wolf’s heart. He had raged with them against serfs and fleeing knights, but he brooded too much when sober and acted like them only when drunk. Thus, he drank often, because he hated the thoughts that dogged him. He hated brooding about luck and thinking about deeds that sometimes he considered might be wicked. He had drunk much mead today. Because the truth was, he also feared entering this abbey. Bjorn had surprised him and his father at a smaller abbey, one less powerful than Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Twenty years ago, Ivar Hammerhand had found the cup of Attila at an abbey in Luna. Abbeys were bad luck, ill fate for him.

  “Odin traded his eye,” rumbled Bjorn. “He wished for wisdom. He won a sip from the spring of Mimir, which sits at the root of the Yggdrasil Ash-Tree. The cost was an eye.”

  “I’m just saying he’s wounded like this White Christ,” Heming said. “Maybe this Christ won something as he hung on the cross.”

  Bjorn angrily shook his head. “Odin hanged upside-down, self-pierced by his own spear. For nine days and nights, he gazed into Niflheim’s depths. Pain, hunger and thirst tormented him, but he did not die. He fought for secret knowledge and won it. He gained rune magic. He cut those runes onto his spear Gungnir and on the teeth of his horse and even on his thigh. He gained power. This White Christ, what did he gain?”

  Heming shrugged. “I don’t know, but his followers are everywhere.”

  “Mice are everywhere!” Bjorn said. “Does that mean we should act like them or praise their ways?” He rose drunkenly and picked up his axe. “There’s a holy shrine of Christ’s! Are we going to sit here all day and fear it? Who here is Odin’s man?”

  The berserks surged to their feet, bellowing, Heming among them. Alcoholic fumes mingled with rage; the presence of Odin walked among them.

  “Follow me!” shouted Bjorn.

  Danes on the southern side of Paris paused as they dug their ditches. They paused as they packed dirt into earthen ramps. They stopped chopping boards out of logs and quit hammering and building the onager platforms. They nudged one another and jutted with their chins or pointed with their fingers at the Twelve, the Great Army’s most fearsome berserks. From within the city church bells began to clang. Franks shouted from the South Town’s walls.

  Twelve shaggy warriors trotted onto abbey land. None was handsome or even ruggedly good-looking. Most were scarred like Heming. The wolf he’d slain had badly torn his left cheek and it still looked it. When he grinned or laughed his missing tooth become obvious. They bore no armor, shields, fluttering silken cloaks or golden armbands. Wolf-skins, ratty bear cloaks and worn leather breeches made up their attire. Worst of all or perhaps strangest and most eerie was their bearing. They had been marked by Odin, chosen, selected to carry his ecstasy of battle. It showed in their eyes, the fierce stare, the look of a killer, a wanton, pitiless butcher. It showed in the lines in their faces, grim and graven. They walked with death. They cultivated fury and the spirit of destruction.

  These twelve barged into the church. Bjorn kicked open the door and twelve wild-eyed beasts of Odin piled in. Grimar pointed at a beautiful stained-glass window no doubt imported from distant lands. On it, a man led a donkey upon which sat his wife holding a child. Grimar threw a stone, shattering the glass scene. Brutal laughter filled the church as the berserks spread out, hewing with axes and smashing with borrowed, iron-headed mallets. That drew out an old and feeble monk, a saintly soul so devoted to his post that he had refused to leave it. Several berserks made a game of pushing him back and forth between them, until they tired of it and hewed him to pieces, using his blood to paint runes on the walls. In the abbey graveyard, berserks smashed tombstones. They dug up the grandest tomb. There Egil snapped his sword, trying to pry open an old stone casket. He cut his hand doing it. They pulled down their breeches and defecated onto dug-up bones, stomped on and shattered them and then egged on a quite drunken Heming to climb the spire.

  “Are you Odin’s chosen?” shouted Bjorn. “Are you his eagle come to roost on his enemies?”

  Heming had found a missed barrel of wine and torn it open. Red juices stained his chin and he had trouble focusing.

  “Let’s show those Christians what we think of their god!” roared Grimar. “Let’s show them what Odin’s champions are going to do to their town.”

  Staggering and reeling, with the Twelve at this back, Heming climbed the wooden stairs of the bell tower. He slobbered words. He hated abbeys. They were bad luck. Behind him, his companions roared laughter and gave him shouts of encouragement. These were his blood-shedding brothers. None could face them in battle. He thought of the monk his father had slain with a thrust to the heart. That monk had been brave and chanted prayers to Heaven. The thought of it brought fury to his heart. He didn’t know why. He charged up the stairs. They crea
ked and groaned in the darkness. He burst up the trapdoor and from the height peered at Paris. The city bells clanged. Frankish throngs watched from the walls. As the berserks pushed up into the bell tower with him Heming began to shed his clothes.

  “This is what I think of Paris!” he bellowed. Naked, he reached out and grabbed the eaves of the bell tower.

  “Where are you going?” laughed Grimar.

  “Up there,” Heming said, pointing. “I’m going to climb up to the spire.”

  Berserks shouted encouragement, but not Grimar. He looked out the bell tower and at the ground far below. “Wait, Heming,” said the lean berserk. He drew a knife and cut the rope used to ring the bell. (The monks had not taken it, just their beloved bell.) Grimar tied the rope around Heming’s chest. “Now go, Heming. I’ll play it out and catch you if you fall.”

  Heming clambered onto the ledge, his bare arse aimed at the Franks of the city. Then he scrambled up, and from below came the shouts of Vikings. Their voices seemed to propel him, to lift him up as he scratched and clawed his way onto the roof. He climbed to his feet, walked up the steep incline and soon clutched the spire. With his fist, he broke off the cross and hurled it earthward. Then, in full view of the people of Paris, he grabbed his member and began to urinate.

  A few moments later, the berserks howled with glee.

  “Heming is making it rain!”

  As the wind blew upon him, Heming began his descent. It was then he slipped, shouted in surprise and crashed arse-first onto the roof. He slid over shingles, shouting. He fell off the bell tower, and he would have plunged to his death, but the rope tied around his chest bit hard and jerked him to a halt.

  “He makes rain and now he’s flying,” Grimar said, who began to haul him up.

  To show that he was still game (and still very drunk) Heming flapped his arms like a bird as he roared with laughter.

  ***

  The Northmen laid siege to Paris. Instead of storming the walls, they now let despair and eventual starvation begin its slow and frightful work. It would be weeks before the next assault.

  37.

  By the time they reached Besancon, Peter had worn out his sandals. In the Upper Kingdom of Burgundy, in the Jura Mountains, a starving pack of hounds crowded them against a boulder. Enrico the drunken sub-deacon brayed louder than the donkeys as Peter hurled rocks with stinging accuracy. A big brute of a beast, a skeletal dog of hell, rushed in. Lupus bashed its brains. Unfortunately, his last swing shattered the axe against a rock, but by then the pack slunk back into the pines.

  It was worse in the famine-struck valley. A man sold meat in a village near Lake Neuchatel. A crowd of gaunt-eyed wretches thronged the seller, tinkling trinkets and treasures into his hands for a plateful of raw pork. Then a baron in tattered furs barged through the crowd and kicked over the meat basket. Grim-faced knights hauled the seller to his feet.

  “You dug up this carrion from the ground!” shouted the baron.

  The seller hung his head.

  “Its food!” cried a woman. “It doesn’t stink like carrion.”

  “Food?” shouted the baron. Hair sprouted from the mole on his cheek. He drew his sword and laid the edge on the seller’s neck. “What sort of food, eh? Confess!”

  The seller became mulish, puckering his toothless mouth.

  “You,” said the baron, pointing at Peter. “Come here.”

  Peter obeyed. He was hungry, too. The three of them had been here four days, waiting for the snowstorms to lessen.

  “Take his confession,” ordered the baron. He had a terrible scar on his right cheek.

  “My son,” Peter said. “Where did you gain this meat? You must confess. Your lord commands it.”

  The seller, dirty-faced and thin, with black hollows around his eyes, gave Peter a ghastly smile. “I was so hungry, father.”

  “I’m only a monk,” Peter whispered. “I’m not—”

  The baron shoved him. “Quiet. Just take his confession.”

  “You were hungry?” prodded Peter.

  The seller nodded. His toothless smile was demented. “I dug it up, father. I hadn’t eaten for so long.”

  “Was it poisoned? Is that why the meat was buried?”

  In wild delight, the seller looked out over the crowd. He raised his voice. “I dug it up from the graveyard. Its man-flesh you purchased. That of Godfrey the peddler.”

  A woman shrieked. Starving men groaned.

  The baron dragged the lunatic into the middle of the market. With chains, they bound him to a stake, one link digging against his cheek, turning it white. Peter prayed for his soul as the fire began to cackle.

  ***

  Three weeks later, the three of them rested as they descended the Great Saint Bernard Pass. Icy winds howled about them. The donkeys huddled against a cliff while Peter and Lupus crouched around a fire. Both wore heavy forager’s cloaks and thick woolen mittens. They shivered, with donkey blankets and bundles heaped against them. They had a bag of spoiled barley for the beasts, and three dark loaves left for themselves. Racing clouds stole the daylight. Shrieking gusts blew against the pines, making the trees bow to nature’s majesty. Without Lupus’s canny ability at snaring rabbits, they might have been feasting on bark—or the flesh of the dead.

  “Did you see him lurch off his donkey?” Lupus said. The squat Lotharingian hunched over the flames, half for warmth and half to protect the precious fire. Sudden gusts whipped snow into their faces. At those times, the flames ducked low against the logs. As soon as the winds lessened, however, the flames leaped up again as if to spit and jeer at the weather.

  Hunger robbed Peter of curiosity. The ache in his belly tormented him almost as much as thoughts of Willelda. “I fled,” he muttered. “I left her in the hands of barbarians.”

  Lupus squinted at him one-eyed. “Don’t beat yourself, eh. I told you she’s fine, better off than us.”

  Peter shook his head.

  “What could you have done, eh? Take up your axe, slip into their camp and free her? You tried that and look what happened.”

  Peter shucked off his mittens and held his bony hands over the flames.

  “What’s he keep in there?” muttered Lupus. He meant the bag under the sub-deacon’s blanket. The bag—a leather satchel—had the seal of Rome on it. The Pope’s protection guarded Enrico’s belongings. Enrico did not usually wonder off like this and leave his satchel behind.

  Their Roman companion was noble born, a son of that glorious city. He had narrow features, a nose like an eagle’s beak and a slit for a mouth. He had princely leather boots, long, fine fingers that had surely never seen hard labor and an aristocratic sneer worthy of his ancient lineage. He claimed Julius Caesar as an ancestor. In moments of danger, Enrico cried out to him as if the olden warlord had been a saint of Heaven. Often, like today, the sub-deacon reeked of wine. Then his eyes became red and mean and his movements and gestures became slow and sure. Peter had caught the sub-deacon lying seven times. Twice Lupus had threatened Enrico with violent death. That all boded ill for acquiring a relic.

  “Let’s take a peek,” suggested Lupus.

  “And break the Pope’s seal?” asked Peter, horrified.

  “Bet he keeps a special elixir in there. Sure. A drop, two drops mixed with snow-water turns it into wine.” Lupus glanced around. They hid in a hollow, with alpine mountains all around. The slopes were dense with snowy pines. “He went to mumble his prayers,” Lupus said with a laugh.

  Neither of them had ever heard Enrico pray, other than his shrieks to Julius Caesar.

  Lupus pulled aside the blanket. The leather satchel lay exposed. With an oath, the Lotharingian ripped it open. Puzzled, he pulled out a tiny bundle and uncurled the leather wrap. In the cloth lay a shiny silver denier with a side portrait of Charlemagne. Lupus freed others. More coins.

  “Here’s his elixir,” snarled Lupus. He pulled out every coin, and then he pulled out something else. “Is this a letter?”

  Peter
scooted over and took a leather folio bound by cord and shut with a red wax seal. It showed a pilgrim on a donkey, both monk and beast with a bowed head. Peter looked up in wonder. “This is Engelwin’s lost stamp.”

  “Eh?”

  “He was the former Bishop of Paris, before Gozlin. I recall priests saying that…” Enlightenment filled Peter. “I heard rumors that Judith took some of her father’s things, the Bishop’s stamp among them. I never believed it. Judith is too saintly to be a thief.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Peter shook the letter. “She must have sealed this with her father’s stamp. Yes! She made me pledge that I would see Enrico safely to Rome. He must be her courier.” He frowned. “Is this for the Pope?”

  “Let’s open it. I hate secrets.”

  “…No.”

  “Maybe she’s trying to pass this off as from her father,” Lupus said. “She could have used Count Odo’s seal, right. You’d be doing the Pope, or whoever this is addressed too, a favor.”

  Before Peter could decide, a wild cry alerted them. Enrico lurched into the hollow, his arms flapping and his mouth spewing Roman profanities. Lupus jumped up and from the folds of his cloak whipped out a gleaming knife. A half second later Peter leaped to his feet.

  “Stand back!” snarled Lupus. The Lotharingian focused on the sub-deacon, who had wisely halted and stood panting in hatred.

  “You broke the seal,” slurred Enrico.