Magnus

by Joanna Bell

  "What?!" I asked again. "Oh my God! What is going on with you guys?"

  Patty had flame-red hair, teased so high it brushed against the Datsun's roof, and a pink plaid button down shirt on. "It's just some British band," she repeated. "Like Chad said. What was their name again, Judy? Def- something?"

  My ears perked up at the exact moment that the tension in the car seemed to crystallize.

  "Def?" I asked. "Like – Def Leppard? Are you guys taking me to a –"

  I didn't even manage to get the sentence out before Judy screamed "YESSS!" over the seat at me and Christie joined in with:

  "Pyromania World Toooooouuuur!"

  "No way," I exclaimed, refusing to believe it. They were toying with me. They had to be. Def Leppard was my favorite band and I hadn't even managed to see them when they were in Los Angeles.

  "Way," Judy giggled.

  "Yeah," Patty added. "Way."

  "Stop it," I pleaded, holding one of my hands up only to see that it was shaking. "Stop it. Please. I don't know what you're trying to do but please don't pretend we're –"

  Judy handed me something. A piece of paper. A ticket. I looked down at it and read the words out loud:

  "Brass Ring presents Def Leppard... Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, Sunday June 12th. Twelve dollars and – oh my God. OH MY GOD!"

  I put my hands over my face and screamed for joy before grabbing Judy's arm and shaking it, demanding to know why she hadn't told me.

  "Because I wasn't sure you were going to be able to come and I didn't want you to feel too bad if you couldn't."

  "So this is real? We're actually going to see Def Leppard? I tried to go see them in L.A. and the tickets were sold out. I love Def Leppard – I love Joe Elliot! Like, I know every single word off Pyromania – that's how much I love them!"

  The night was, quite simply, the best of my life up until that point. Because I did know every word of every song, and packed into a venue full of people who also knew them I managed to lose myself in a way I hadn't been able to do since the incident with Josh Muller. I lost myself in the volume, the music, the big hair and smiling faces and banging heads until I was breathless with happiness.

  When it was over, and we filtered out into the warm night with the sounds of the music still echoing in our heads and the smell of weed smoke filling the air, I grabbed Judy and pulled her into a tight hug. I didn't need to explain why. Not to her, not to anyone else. Because she already knew.

  "Thank you," I whispered as we hung out next to the car, talking to other concert-goers, naming our favorite moments, not yet willing to let the evening go.

  "I knew you were gonna love it," she whispered back. "I waited in line for hours for those tickets!"

  The drive home to River Falls took a lot longer than it had in the reverse direction. Just getting out of Buffalo took over an hour. By the time Steve dropped me off at the end of Bill and Brenda's driveway, dawn was just beginning to break.

  "Don't call me," I said to Judy through the passenger window. "I mean, you can but –"

  "Your aunt," she replied, sighing. "I get it. How about I drop by the Grocery King tomorrow? Maybe you can come out with us again next weekend?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. We usually just party here in town, though – you might think it's boring."

  "Oh no!" I started, before I saw her smile and realized she was joking. "Ha ha, real funny. But I would love to, uh, to hang out next weekend for sure. I'll probably see you tomorrow or sometime this week, then?"

  "Yeah, cool. Did you have a good time tonight?"

  "Are you kidding?!" I whispered, worried about waking my relatives. "I had so much fun! It was awesome, Judy!"

  "Good. Yeah, it was awesome, wasn't it?"

  I stood at the side of the road and watched the Datsun's lights fade into the early morning gloom as Steve drove away, and then I turned towards the house.

  Chapter Four

  Magnus

  I made my way down to the bay on the day before we set out on the first summer raid. Most of the ships were out of the water, turned upside down on the pebble beach. Shirtless thralls worked in the sunshine, using rough rags to spread sticky black pitch along the wood. As I approached one turned to me with a respectful nod.

  "Don't worry, Magnus, we'll have the fleet ready to sail by the morn."

  "I'm not worried," I replied, "as I know you and your men to be skilled and hard-working."

  In truth, I didn't much care if the ships were ready the next day or not. My brother had shown no growth or maturing since the previous disastrous raids and my father had shown no new willingness to admit that his oldest son was simply not up to his duties. It was a foregone conclusion that a successful summer of raiding depended almost entirely on our good luck – and I've never liked the feeling of leaving my destiny entirely to luck. So as far as I was concerned, the thralls could set the ships alight if they so chose.

  Not that I was about to say such a thing out loud.

  I was about to walk away when the thrall said something else under his breath – something I didn't quite catch.

  "What was that?" I asked, turning back.

  The man would not meet my eye. "It's nothing. Sometimes my tongue seems to wag all on its own. Do not concern yourself with the thoughts of the lower people."

  I knew the thrall – Ingvar or Engvald or something like that – and I knew him to be a competent man. I wanted to hear what he had to say. "No," I began, turning to face him fully. "What is it you said?"

  Seeing that my interest was real, and understanding – as a man does – that lying would just dishonor him, the thrall spoke the truth.

  "I was just noting that if skill and hard work were the measures of a higher man, it would be you sailing the ship to the Jarl's right, and not your brother."

  The thrall had smartly kept his voice low, understanding that if others had overheard him disrespecting the next Jarl to that next Jarl's brother, I would have no choice but to whip him. As it was I knew right away that I was expected to feel a great wound had been delivered to me to hear insulting words spoken of my brother. The man in front of me flinched away, expecting violence.

  But I did not feel violent. I felt nothing but kinship with the thrall, who through no fault of his own was shirtless on a beach rubbing pitch into the ship's under-boards whilst duller men ate venison at high tables and spoke of the glory that was to be theirs in the coming raids.

  "Do not cower," I told him, in soft tones. "As it is not for thralls to disparage a Jarl's son, so it is not for a second son to agree with a thrall. And yet here we are. Tomorrow the ships sail for the Kingdoms of the Angles – see that their boards are solid, and the pitch applied well."

  The man looked up at me then, and a moment passed between us briefly – a simple moment, not of a Jarl's second son looking down on a thrall, but of two men regarding each other, recognizing their sameness even as they went about their different lives.

  "Aye, Magnus. I'll see the ships are right for sailing. A Godswind to you in the morning."

  We sailed at dawn, and the women and children and elderly people saw us off. The Angles knew the people of the North by then, but they were too thinly distributed, and too close to the coast, to do much about us. Their lords tended to stay just slightly further inland, in estates with high wooden palisades and earthen ramparts to protect them. But the peasants and their villages often sat in full view of the open sea, usually defenseless, and it was from them that we took the fullness of our spoils – grain, meat, animals, people.

  My mother was especially fraught that morning. So much so that I questioned her as she clung to me and planted kisses all across my cheeks and forehead.

  "Have you dreamt the future, Mother?" I asked. "Is there some terrible event you have foreseen? Why do you have that look on your face when it is just the Angles we mean to meet?"

  She shook her head quickly. "No, son, I have not dreamt the future. I just worry more and more these days, as i
t becomes clearer and clearer that..."

  That Asger is a fool? I wanted to finish the sentence for her, but did not.

  "I'll take care," I replied. "I'll heed Father's orders, and I'll keep a watch for danger. Do not trouble yourself, we'll be home before the moon is full once again."

  I kissed my mother's cheek and turned to walk away and then at the last minute she grabbed my wrist and pulled me back so she could whisper in my ear.

  "Do not get yourself killed for nothing, my boy! I understand you mean to keep watch for your brother as well as yourself, but I tell you now do not lose your life for his! Please, Magnus!"

  I nodded, even as I knew that sacrificing myself in favor of Asger was exactly what my father would expect of me, if a relevant situation were to arise.

  It was as if I was being torn in two between understanding my mother's love for me, her desperate wish to keep me safe, and resenting her for asking me, a second son with little power, to take decisions she knew were not mine to take.

  If my life is so important, I wanted to say, why have you said nothing to the person who can really do something about it? Why haven't you spoken to Father?

  But I was no longer a child, and I no longer lived in a world where my parents were without flaw or fault. So instead of saying anything I simply gave my mother another respectful kiss on the cheek and turned to go to my ship.

  The sun that shone brightly as we sailed out of the bay soon hid itself behind a bank of gray cloud, and the sea took on a familiar greenish-gray hue. It stayed that way the next day and the next, until the mist on the third morning thinned and we found ourselves once again blessed with the feeling of warmth on our faces.

  The wind had been cooperative and sure enough, we spotted land almost at the high point of the day. The blood quickened in my veins as our ships approached, a reaction that felt as natural as the quickening in other parts of a man upon finding a naked woman in his bed, or meat on his table after days of thin eating.

  The usual way was to sail along the coast until we spotted a village – and sometimes to forgo a smaller one on the chances that we would soon happen upon something larger and more bountiful. So when my father's ship took up the lead and we began to sail north, following the contours of the land itself, all seemed to be as it was meant to be.

  Asger's ship was just in front of mine, and slightly to the left. He, like myself, stood at the bow, his eyes studying the shoreline for the little huts of the peasants or the tell-tale columns of smoke from their cooking fires rising high into the air.

  He spotted the man at the same time I did – I saw his body tighten out of the corner of my eye. It was just one man – no huts, no smoke. Just a man. And he spotted us only a short while after we spotted him, because he stopped whatever it was he was doing and stood up to peer out at the sea, as alert as a deer on the edge of a wolf-infested wood.

  "FATHER!" Asger boomed – gesturing to the man on the shore – who turned and fled back into the forest as soon as he realized what – and who – it was he was seeing. "Father!"

  Before my father could respond, I waved my arms at Asger and shouted to him across the waves. "Brother, it is but one man! We should wait until –"

  "VOSS!" Came the reply, before I had even had time to make my reasoning heard. "It's been three days, Magnus! Why must you constantly buzz in my ear like a fly? We will –"

  "Surely we will come soon upon a village!" I yelled back, conscious that Asger could not be made to feel challenged. The moment he felt challenged was always the moment he settled fully into his foolishness.

  But it was too late, he was already directing his ship towards the shore. Beyond, my father was watching, and when I saw him make no move to stop Asger from setting ashore at a point where he had but spotted a single man, I set my jaw grimly and turned to my own men, gesturing for them to follow their Jarl.

  I hung back on the beach as my brother drew his sword and gave the command to attack, watching my father's face as he tried to remain composed. At once the air filled with the sound of weapons being unsheathed and unbuckled from belts, of arrows being drawn from quivers. And then, a pause. An awkward pause, as the men waited for instructions on what, exactly, it was they were to attack. A moment later, after giving his firstborn a hard look, my father stepped forward.

  "Keep your weapons to hand – we will follow the coast until we come upon a –"

  "Father!" Came Asger's response. I could feel the discomfort of the warriors as they watched the drama of father and son play out in front of them. "Did you not see the man? He was right here, on the beach – do your eyes grow weak with age? We must give chase!"

  My father, the Jarl, saw that Asger was about to order his men down the narrow path in the forest, and simply held his hand up towards us, indicating that we were to stay where we were.

  Asger caught my eye, then, and I could see that he did not understand what was happening – or why. I looked away.

  "We must give chase!" He repeated, lifting his own sword his over his head and prompting the Jarl, finally, to lose his temper.

  "Give chase?" He bellowed, approaching Asger until the tips of their noses were almost touching. "GIVE CHASE?! Am I right in thinking you are about to set a company of Northern warriors on the trail of a single man?!"

  My brother stepped back, as if a great gust of wind had suddenly blown him full in the face, and shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was smaller and quieter than before.

  "But Father – didn't you see –"

  "Of course I saw! It seems I see much more than you, my son, despite your jibes about my age. What I saw was – as you said – a single man. Now what is it you think a single man can carry that we would need, that might be worth sending out best warriors in pursuit of?"

  I knew the look on my brother's face, then. I recognized it. I had seen that look from the times of my earliest memories. His eyes got wide and his mouth hung open and he looked from side to side, giving the impression of a man who was truly baffled. The worst of it was, I don't think any of it was an act.

  "But Father – surely he will lead us to a –"

  "What if he's a swineherd? A messenger doing a spot of fishing before he continues on his way? And how long of a start has he got on us now, Asger, as we stand here without horses? Do you think, if there is a village nearby, that this man has not gone straight there to warn of our approach? What did I tell you about the element of surprise? What have I told you A THOUSAND TIMES about the element of surprise!?"

  It was only then, after having it laid out in front of him the way one might lay out a simple explanation to a small child, that my brother understood. His lower lip protruded. I could see he was angry, desperate to fight back. The men, embarrassed for him, joined me in looking away.

  And then, to spare his son further humiliation, my father declined to order us back to the ships and sent us north, on foot, to look for a village.

  Throughout it all, I said nothing. Even as I knew my father understood that even if we found a village, it would be a great trial and inconvenience to carry any goods or prisoners back down the coast to the ships, I said nothing. It was not my place to say anything, and to do so would only have caused more confusion in the ranks. Still, my brother's idiocy, on display before we'd even met any Angles, set my blood near to boiling.

  The sun was near the horizon when we found what we were looking for. A small group of peasant huts, not large enough to be called a village, set stupidly close to the shore so all we had to do was walk around a headland to be immediately upon it. A woman knelt before a stream, filling a pot with water, and it was she who spotted us first. I watched as the whites of eyes flashed and she opened her mouth to scream, and my father gave the order to attack.

  The Angle peasants' luck was bad that day, to be in the way of a band of Northmen whose bloodlust had been kindled and then dashed once already, and whose swords now craved flesh. It would not have taken a quarter of our number to subdue the village, but my
father knew the men needed a release. Into the tiny hamlet we poured, hacking and slicing and killing until blood spattered our faces and then, when there were no more people to kill, standing around and looking at each other, not quite sure whether such a victory was worth celebrating or not.

  It was in the process of gathering the loose pigs – some of whom I had to exhort Asger's men not to kill, explaining that they were our pigs now, and to kill them would mean taking food out of our own people's mouths – that we found the stone dwelling. At once, I knew what it was. The learned men, the monks, lived in such dwellings. And they often held stores of silver and gold for the local people – sometimes even the local lord. I shouted for the Jarl but time was of the essence – the monk's building was guarded, and I did not want to give anyone the time to flee with the treasure.

  I killed the first guard myself, driving my sword through his neck as his eyes bulged wide in his face, and then the second as my men took care of the rest. And then I stormed inside, eyes searching for a chest or a trapdoor or anything that might indicate where the valuables were. On a small table at the other end of a long, narrow room, my eyes came to rest upon something that glinted in the light. Gold?

  "Go upstairs!" I shouted to my men. "And down! Turn everything over, take everything of value. Go, now, and we can return home with our heads held high!"

  A great clattering followed as my men carried out my orders and I approached the little table, upon which I now saw a smattering of silver items – rings and woven necklaces and a pile of hammered coins. Just as I was about to reach for them, the table itself seemed to shake and I stepped back, lifting the thick cloth and peering underneath.

  A boy cowered there, of an age not that much younger than myself, and as soon as he saw me he held up a single hand in submission.

  "Please," he begged. "Please, Sir. I am but a poor messenger for the ealdormen – the silver is not mine – the silver is – please, please don't kill me!"