Demon of Scattery

by Poul Anderson

  Behind her, Ranulf cursed and tried to push her aside. Brigit’s foot slipped, and she went down in mud. The serpent poised to strike. Ranulf snarled a challenge.

  She looked up at the grinning head and cried, ” Hold! It was I who called you in Brigit’s name. In the name of Mananaan Mac Lir who answered, I command you, hold!” She struggled to her feet and staggered forward. The head lowered. An eye glared at her. She took yet another step, made a fist, and smote the muzzle once, twice, thrice. The beast flinched back.

  She heard a shout close by. Halldor stood in the churchyard, pelting rocks. His left hand gripped his sacrificial hammer. The creature hissed and turned toward the annoyance. Halldor retreated backward, a step at a time, edging toward the high round tower.

  The beast’s front coil crushed gravestones and crumbled crosses. It flickered a tongue toward the chapel door. Halldor tossed another rock.

  The creature slid toward him, angered.

  “Halldor—” But Brigit could only croak.

  “He lives, then,” said Ranulf, behind her.

  “He does that,” Brigit whispered, “but for how long?” She lurched back into the doorway.

  As it passed another wicker hut, the beast’s tail curled. It ripped the door from its hinges, hooked around a doorpost, and, with splintering wood and men screaming, the hut crashed down. Another coil surged against the chapel wall, but the stones held firm. As Brigit and Ranulf watched, Halldor retreated toward the tower, Cata behind him.

  XIII

  HALLDOR HAD IN MIND TO STAND against the worm, as Thor will stand against Jormungandr at the Weird of the World. He bore no hope of winning over it, but he might—he barely might keep it in play long enough, even hurting it a little, that men would regain their wits and take shelter in the tower. There it could not reach them, and maybe it would not abide at the base until the food stored within was gone. Maybe some of them would have enough steadfastness toward their old skipper that they’d carry Ranulf along.

  Through lancing rain and pelting hail, he saw young Lambi Hurtsson seized, slain, eaten. The rest had scattered every which way. Raising its wedge of a head, the troll fixed eyes on Halldor and began to glide near.

  Beneath wind-shriek he heard it hiss. Venom dripped thick and yellow from its fangs.

  Then suddenly it veered. For several wild heartbeats he did not know why. A twist of the man-high coils showed him Brigit. She’d been hidden from him by that bulk. Now she fled, and it followed. He remembered amidst the thunder that snakes are drawn by the movement of prey. “Hold still!” he shouted to her. The storm shredded his words. Yet after fleeing, stumbling, fleeing onward, she did halt. Like a post she waited in her mired and soaked garb, and the beast slithered on past her.

  After another to-and-fro billowing of the vast body, Halldor saw why.

  Ranulf stood in the door of his hut, leaned against the jamb, feebly waving a sword in his left hand.

  Halldor groaned. He started thither, to die beside his boy. Or, no; as he tripped on a gravestone that the giant had knocked askew, the thought flickered that he might gain its heed, bring it back toward himself. Other stones lay broken by the weight, in flinders that he could throw.

  But Brigit—Brigit was going to Ranulf! She was defying the worm!

  Bewilderment rocked Halldor’s being. First he had supposed she’d raised the thing herself in avenging witchcraft. Surely her rede about sailing around the island had been an ill one. When it chased her, he had wondered in a flash whether she might indeed be blameless. Last he saw that she did have some kind of power over it… though she was using that to save Ranulf, whom she hated—

  Meanwhile Halldor had been casting chunks of crosses and chiseled words against those glimmery scales. He had been howling curses and taunts. Baffled of the son, the dragon turned once more against the father.

  And they had gotten so close to the tower that folk could withdraw there no more. Halldor would die for naught. Thereafter the troll would squirm about, feasting. Well, many old tales said that men who fell bravely would meet again at the board of the gods. Halldor had his doubts about that, but—

  Lightning blazed from end to end of heaven. Thunder rolled, shaking the earth, like the wheels of a mighty wagon. Halldor caught his breath.

  His fingers closed tight around the hammerhaft. It was as if that flash had shown him what he could still do.

  He whirled about and ran for the tower. It was terrible not to see how close behind his foe was. He heard only waterfall hiss and rasp of belly-plates over stones, squelp of mass through mud, ever more loud.

  Wind and rain were befouled with smells of snakeflesh and poison. He must not lose time by looking over his shoulder.

  Ahead loomed the grey height. Strange, he thought in a hidden part of himself, strange and maybe just, that he who had rooted out the rightful owners of this building, must seek it like a hunted animal.

  The scaffold leading to the overhead doorway stood hard by the boulder where he had slain a horse to his gods. Rain had washed away the blood of that offering. In time, it would wear off the graven sign of the gods themselves. But, flickered through Halldor, a man can only do whatever lies within his strength, in whatever span the Norns give him. He scrambled up the frame and past the now empty entrance.

  Beyond, the room was chill, dank and dark. The stones fended off much of the storm-racket outside. He stopped to gasp.

  The scaffold crashed to bits before the snake. The height was not too great to get down from, but Halldor did not await that he would ever do it.

  Gloom thickened when the armored neck reared athwart the opening. The snout battered; a shiver went through Halldor’s footsoles. But the monks had wrought well. The tower was unscathed. The beast could not get more than the end of its muzzle inside.

  Rankness stung Halldor’s nostrils. He rallied his will. “Thor with me!”

  he roared, and swung the hammer. It crashed upon the plated mouth, iron head driven by a seaman’s arm. Hissing seethed. Venom splashed. A drop struck Halldor on the wrist and burned like a hot coal. He smote at a fang, and saw chips fly off its bone whiteness.

  Again. Again. The dragon withdrew. The room filled with storm-sky’s grey, till lightning glared afresh. Halldor saw the gleam of it flame off the scales beyond. Thunder banged.

  He must keep the worm here, mindful of none but him. Then maybe, maybe his folk could get to his ship and bear Ranulf to safety on the mainland. But if he stayed in this room, where he could not be caught, the hunter from the deeps would soon turn elsewhere. Besides, that crack of fire above the graveyard had kindled in him the littlest, wildest of hopes for himself, too—

  A ladder leaned against the trap leading up to the next floor. Halldor swarmed aloft. He pulled the ladder after him, and so went onward. The higher he climbed, the more the gale was muffled, for here were naught but narrow windows. He heard echoes of his hasty footfalls and even his harsh breathing. It was as if the ghosts of the monks stirred in the murk around him.

  He went on upward.

  At the top, below the roof that turned against heaven like a shield boss, he must halt for breath. From mouth down into lungs, he blazed and withered. He drank gulp after gulp of the wet air of Ireland, and slowly his knees stopped shaking.

  He went to the window and leaned out. At once the weather was everywhere about his head. Wind, rain, hail smote him in the face; it yowled, it roared, it seared. He laid hand above brow and squinted. The snake still writhed at the bottom of the tower; but he saw its neck weave back and forth, in search of easier prey.

  He must draw yonder unblinking eyes his way. He shouted. The sound was lost. And had he not heard that snakes are deaf?

  The hammer—He got it past the stone frame that squeezed him. His left hand clutched a rough sill for steadiness. His right hand whirled the hammer on high. When it had gathered speed, he took aim and let go.

  Earth, the mother of Thor, hauled it ever faster downward. It dwindled in his ken, became
a lost speck.

  It smote.

  He could only see that it struck somewhere on his head, for that jerked backward, down, up, around. Jaws gaped, tongue flickered. “Here I am!”

  he cried, and waved both arms to beckon.

  The monster saw. It raised its lean skull, higher, higher, until he made out—with a leap in his breast—that his hammercast had split the flesh.

  Blood ran forth, red across black, and mingled with the rain.

  The wound was not deep, but the beast was in a Fimbul-cold rage. It could not reach him, though it lifted so near that he whiffed once more its venom. The head lowered, swung out of his sight beyond the wall. It came back on the other side.

  The worm was coiling itself around the tower, hitching itself up toward him.

  Halldor felt a grin on his lips. This was as he had wanted.

  He must stay leaned out of the window, to keep that dim mind aware of him. When the dragon got this far, which would not be very soon, he could duck inside. He could do his best to anger it further; he had a sheath knife at his belt, if nothing else. In the end, of course, when it began to give up, he must go back to it and be taken, to buy more time. Unless by then Sea Bear had gotten clear…

  An odd peace waxed within him. The storm that battered his upper body seemed far off. Memory lifted and drifted, as if the one of Odin’s ravens which bears that name were hovering nigh. The green hills of Thrandheim; the fjord-walls elsewhere in Norway that went sheer to the clouds; Father, Mother, sisters, brothers, kinfolk; Unn, the children who had lived and the children who had died, their house, their strivings together; Brigit, eldritch and lovely—

  Startled, he spied the adder head coming around the tower again, no more than a yard below him.

  He looked into lidless eyes, the maw underneath, the coils beyond: into death.

  He raised his face heavenward and said, quite softly, “Thor, old friend, fare you ever well as long as the world may stand.”

  White-hot came the blaze. Halldor never heard the thunder, though it toned through the stones of tower and church. An unseen whiplash cast him backward, down on the floor and into the dark.

  —He groped his way toward wakefulness. First he knew how hard the planks were on which he lay, and how he hurt in every inch of himself.

  Worst was his ears. They were full of blades, and they keened, and that was all he could hear.

  Bit by bit, the shrilling faded away. At last he could sit up. He began to make out noises. They were dull. It crossed his mind that, while he’d surely recover most of his hearing, it would never be as sharp as it had been.

  Well, a man grows old.

  When the ache in him had ebbed enough, he clambered to his feet and sought the window.

  The wind had shifted; rain blew straight in. But it was a softer wind, a milder and hail-free rain. The day was brightening. The storm was almost over.

  Halldor looked down. A smear of scorch zigzagged across the wall the monks had built. At its bottom, blackened, smoking, bereft of life, the snake sprawled.

  He was still too dazed to feel more than a very quiet gladness. So the least of his hopes had come into being. Who knew how much was the work of a god, or of which god? Halldor the Weatherwise did not. He knew merely that lightning often smites whatever raises itself too high.

  XIV

  BRIGIT LEFT RANULF CROUCHED in the hut. Of his babble she could only identify the repeated name of Christ. She walked to meet Halldor. The rain had softened to a fine mist; wind had died, so that the river could be heard lulling past. The air had grown warmer, and her garments smelled of drenched wool. Almost, this homey scent drowned out the rankness of the dead monster. Cata’s corpse was yet no more than a deeper shadow beneath the phantomlike tower. Brigit drew near the chapel.

  The Irish captives who had sought sanctuary there had begun to venture forth into the great stillness. Likewise Norsemen straggled into sight from the ends of the island whither they had fled, but they hung back, they shuffled and sidled, droop-headed. They had been afraid.

  No fear showed on the face of the man who stood foremost among the Irish. Rather something cold and terrible. Sturdy, he was, redheaded, clad in the soiled rags of what had been a fine tunic: a freeman farmer, once well-to-do, such as Brigit had known all her life. She started when he hailed her. “Are you satisfied, Lochlannach’s whore?”

  “What?”

  He spat on the ground before her. “So you’re thinking we none of us saw? Think you we were too beaten down, too despairing of God to keep eyes in our heads? We watched. I know that you lay in the tent of the heathen chief. I saw you steal forth into the dark, and I remember tales of how holy Senan once cleansed this island of the very thing that you brought back. Eamon was my brother, you harlot. Was it your apostasy drove him to his death?”

  Brigit flinched back, though he made no move toward her. Behind him others of the ragged band muttered. She stammered: “But you cannot be understanding! What I did—and I’m not sure just what that was—I did to help you, to drive away the invaders, avenge our slain, restore honor to our outraged. You would all have been sold into slavery!”

  He clenched his fists. “You lay with the enemy. You did not make him force you, as our faithful women did. And you called on pagan powers, trafficked with the Devil—you, once a bride of Christ!”

  A woman stepped from behind him. A mantle covered her head, and her garment was mudstained. “Your pagan lover slew my man,” she said,

  “then his men used me, and laughed when I fought them. What they did not take of our household goods they burned—and brought me here as captive!” She threw back her cloak, loosed her hair, and sank to her knees.

  “Upon you, Brigit, adulterous bride of Christ, I set the widow’s curse: May you find no peace in this your native land. May the grass spurn you, the stones turn against you, may you be cast from every door, and may God Himself show you His back!”

  Brigit retreated, shuddering. The woman pointed at her and rose from her knees. “So be it.” She covered her hair. Her fellow captives stood and stared.

  As the woman spoke, strength had drained from Brigit. The Shannon breeze clawed her face. The land burned like coals under her feet, and the air choked her.

  Tears were thick and bitter in her throat, but somehow she could not shed them. In a mad way there passed through her, the snake, the great snake, tons of it there must be. What can they do? Carve it up and cast it in the river before it grows too rotten? Or try to eat it, perhaps? She began to laugh. Whatever happens, no man of the Church will ever chronicle the heathen doings on this holy isle. The great bones will be sunk in the river, and later generations will forget. But oh, in the meantime, the stink! She turned from her countrymen and ran toward the tower.

  At its base the serpent sprawled lightning-blackened and dead. Halldor stood beside the altar of his own god. Upon it he had laid the hammer, still dark with blood; but he waited, arms folded, quiet in his countenance.

  “How fares my son?”

  “He is unharmed.” She halted before him and met his eyes. She said nothing about Ranulf’s soul.

  Halldor nodded. “I thought so. I feared the poison—” Brigit saw an angry red burn on his wrist. She knew herbs to heal it. A wry, weary grin made creases around his lips. “Aye, that was a dragon to match Fafnir, that you called up from the deeps, Brigit.” He raised brows over sea-blue eyes. “You did that, did you not?”

  Dumbly, she nodded and stood braced.

  He sighed. “I can hardly blame you. Sorry I am to have lost my oath-brothers, yes, many good men.” Pause. “But of course, to you they were foes who came from nowhere, men you’d never harmed yourself. This was no blood feud, it was war.”

  Slowly he reached toward her, until his right hand lay on her shoulder.

  “After a war is done,” he murmured, “peace may be made.”

  She shivered, but her tone held steady, and she looked him full in the face. “What is it you are saying, the
n, Halldor?”

  Again the sad smile crinkled his features. “I know not altogether what.

  Still—oh, I mourn my friends and followers who went down. I’ll see to it that their families get a rightful share of the plunder that Sea Bear carries home. But… you may remember, I’d no need or wish to carry on this viking cruise of ill weird. I’d won enough. Only my oath bound me. Now I can take my son home.”

  Brigit stiffened. “And my countrymen, as well, to sell as slaves?”

  Halldor looked a long while at her before he said, “No, that’s not needful, if you don’t wish it. Let them stay here—” a slight chuckle— “and clean up the wreckage and the carcass. There’ll be folk along eventually to take them home.”

  “You can be… kind… in your own way, Halldor.”

  His grip upon her shoulders tightened. “I’ll return you to your father’s hall, if you like, and offer him alliance—” She began to tremble. “Why, Brigit, what’s wrong?”

  She must clench her teeth, and still the shaking would not stop until she drew close and laid her head on his breast. He put his arms about her.

  “I am cursed, damned from the land, named whore and apostate. Ireland itself is poisoned against me, and I can live here no longer!”

  His clasp about her tightened. Gladness leaped in his words: “But you can have the freedom of Norway!”

  “I can what?” She raised her head and looked at him again.

  He drew back just a little, but held her waist. His gaze searched her for that which he could not altogether understand, and awe was in it. “Come with me,” he offered slowly. “But only if you will, Brigit. If not, I’ll take you to wherever in Ireland you want—somewhere you’re not known—for you’ve dealt with mighty Powers, Brigit, and something of them must be in you yet. But if you’d come with me—henceforward I’d be no more than a peaceful trader, and the luck that’s in you would sail in my ships. You…