Swords v. Cthulhu

by Jesse Bullington

  To Urtha she said, “I bear his shield, sword, and helm. Not his name.”

  “Nor his hair,” Wen said in a fruity voice, looking at Grislae’s pate.

  “Nor what hung between his legs,” Urtha said, squinting.

  Grislae shrugged and ran a hand over her stubbly head. The incessant itching of lice had driven her to take a knife to her once long locks, as she had not the inclination to waste silver on lye. She’d found she liked the fierce look of her shorn head. And that the young men from the neighboring farms had stopped leaving loaves and flowers by her door, which was just as well. She would never wed.

  She crossed her arms in front of her and frowned at the two women. “I have come to raid. Heingistr has not a problem with it. Have either of you?”

  Wen only frowned but Urtha, the wide-faced leader of the two, said, “I’d warn you to stay away from our men, but I imagine they’d rather fuck sheep than bed with you.”

  Grislae smiled. “That hole in your face would be the perfect arsehole,” she said, as she unslung her sword and stowed her bindle, “if it wasn’t for all your teeth.”

  There was a moment of quiet. Wen looked shocked. Urtha scowled at Hoensa, her husband, for support. Hoensa shrugged and looked back toward the shore.

  “Rill would rather fuck sheep than just about anything,” Uvigg said, and the still hush of the sea was broken by the laughter coming from the longship.

  “There,” Heingistr said, jabbing a thick finger into the mist. “Marshes. There will be a channel. And beyond, farms.”

  Grislae bent her back to the sea.

  The channel opened into a sheltered bay where they moored the Reinen that night. No lights from home fires nor watchmen’s torches shone in the dark, and the mist pressed too close to spy any smoke breaking the heavens, or stars peering through.

  “Snurri, Hoensa, take one of the new ones — Grislae — and scout.” Heingistr nodded his head inland. The men began unlimbering a goat from the hold of the Reinen, and Wen and Urtha whetted their knives. Snurri cursed and belted on his sword, put his helm on his head. Hoensa’s eyes glittered.

  “No shield,” Snurri said to Grislae as she took up her gear. “We move fast and it will only slow you.”

  They made their way inland, walking swiftly and crouching low. The men moved easily, familiar with each other and their rhythms. Grislae kept up without much struggle — her time on her father’s farm had kept her fit and strong — but was alarmed by the amount of noise the men made as they moved through the forest: snapping limbs underfoot, grunting, cursing under their breath.

  Grislae moved in almost absolute silence, lightfooted. The land rose, and she passed through cut forest and into fields. It was warm, her skin beading with sweat.

  They came upon a farm, low slung and dark, no smoke coming from the roof.

  Snurri, sweat streaming into his beard, whispered, “We will wait here, and watch.” He hopped over a fallen log and kneeled behind the low brambles between the farm and where they crouched. Before Grislae and Hoensa could join him, he cried, “Ach!” Flailed and rolled on the ground. When he rose, he stomped like a maddened horse. “Snake! Gods protect me!”

  “Odin’s eye, you’re one big fucking baby,” Hoensa said. He peered at the house. “Sound a battle horn next time.” He drew his sword and looked at Grislae. “If someone was there, we would know it by now, thanks to Snurri. Let’s take a look.”

  Hoensa moved forward, what meager light cut through the dark, cloudy sky glinting off his helm. Grislae followed, drawing her sword. After a moment, the shaken Snurri lumbered after them.

  The farm had a thatched roof, wooden walls, and rough-hewn timber shutters. The door was open. Entering, the three were swallowed in darkness. A thick matting on the floor of the farmhouse cushioned their steps. Only the faintest intimations of rooms were apparent to them. Grislae smelled more than saw the cold hearth on a far wall. The scent of bread and meat told her it had been occupied but recently. But there was another smell, an old smell, sour and stinking of death, mingling with the odors of farm life. From all around came a rustling sound too, and that put her on edge.

  “I have a fire steel and striking stone,” Grislae said, moving toward the back of the room. The close air was hushed, but there was a light susurration, as reeds stirring in the breeze.

  Snurri, hulking in the darkness, said, “I don’t like this place. There are no people here. They will have taken their wealth wherever they have gone.”

  “Let us see what we can see,” Hoensa said.

  At the hearth, Grislae removed the fire steel and stone from the pouch at her belt and struck a spark. The flash revealed a bundle of kindling hay near the wall by the hearthstone; she soon had a small fire burning in the sooty hearth. She stood and stepped away from where the shifting yellow light spilled across the farmhouse, the brilliance blinding after their long trek through the night.

  Through her watering eyes, the floor shimmered. Snurri gave a small exhalation, “Uff, dip me in sheep piss.”

  “What, Snurri?” Hoensa asked, hearing his tone. “What is it?”

  “The brood of Jorgumandr,” Snurri said with a curiously flat inflection. “Snakes. More snakes.”

  Hoensa and Grislae blinked away tears, peered at the floor. It shifted and gleamed in the fickle yellow firelight. As Grislae watched, it writhed and wriggled in a lazy expanse. Looking down, she saw many small snakes strike at her high boots with their vicious mouths.

  “Ergi! These damned serpents!” cried Snurri, whipping his hand about as if to rid himself of a fly. He began stomping indiscriminately, and Hoensa joined him. The small fire crackled in the hearth, the floor rustled, and for a long while there was naught but the sound of the men’s heavy breathing and bootfalls as they crushed the snakes.

  Grislae grabbed the remaining cord of kindling hay and stuck one end in the fire. Then, sword in one hand and flaming straw bundle in the other, she shook out her legs and moved. “The door,” she said. “There is nothing here but vermin.” Raising high the makeshift torch, she turned around in a circle. Everywhere, every open bit of floor, shimmered and writhed. “You will stomp all night and never kill them all. Come.”

  It took a moment for the men to stop. Snake-fear and kill-lust kept them stomping the writhing mass. Grislae shrugged. She left the farmhouse, entering the sodden night. Hoensa and Snurri followed. She was reaching to set the thatch roof on fire when Hoensa placed a hand on her arm and said, “I think not. There are other farms full of fat children, food, and gold. Best not to warn them Heingistr’s company is here until we are upon them.”

  “I am bit,” Snurri said, holding up his hand. When they said nothing in response, he patted his body from collar to crotch. “Ach, I can feel them slithering all over me.”

  They moved away from the farm, taking a muddy road that led beyond the house and beside a furrowed field. The mire sucked at their feet. They had reached the far tree line when the light of torches filtered through the trees.

  Doughty men with ruddy faces carrying axes. Farmers, all. They tromped down the road, speaking in a round, fluid language Grislae could not make out. Their hushed tones were agitated; something had disturbed them.

  Crouched behind a mossy rock jutting from the forest mulch, Grislae readied herself to strike. Hoensa, who had hidden himself behind a thick oak, held up a hand — Wait.

  The farmers neared. Snurri, poised behind a log, withdrew his sword. Grislae gripped hers tighter.

  Hoensa shook his head and pointed back to the farmhouse. He mouthed, No. Wait.

  They let the farmers continue on, passing a few paces away, unaware that the company of the North hid so close.

  When the farmers had crossed the field, Grislae said, “Why did we let them pass? We could have killed them and taken their gold.”

  “I’ve killed scores of farmers and they never carry gold. They hide it away in their houses and will not yield it until you put a blade to their son or daughter’s th
roat.” Hoensa shook his head. “We’ve raided these shores for generations. These would not be out here in the dark, unless some greater fear than that they hold for us was not pushing them on. I would see what it is that frightens them so.”

  Snurri sucked on the back of his hand. “Would that we had found a mill or hamlet, killed the men, fucked all the wives and daughters, and took their livestock and metal. Not this. The countless brood of Jorgumandr and thrice-cursed farmers.”

  “Stop complaining, Snurri,” Hoensa said. “We will circle around and see what we can see.”

  They stayed beyond the tree line and made their way around the field and into view of the farmhouse. The farmers were clustered outside the door, arguing. One of them pointed inside and gave a blistering speech in their bubbling language, but one word was prominent, due to its hard sounds and angles: Yig.

  Soon they came to agreement, and the farmers set their torches to the thatched roof. Within moments the house was burning. Light spilled out, illuminating the field, the forest, and the spot where Heingistr’s scouts watched.

  “It must be those wretched vermin,” Snurri said. He sucked at the back of his hand again. “What is yig? Snakes?”

  “I don’t care what it means.” Hoensa stretched, swung his sword experimentally. “Let us kill who we can and take the others as slaves. And find more farms to raid. No?”

  Grislae nodded, gripping her sword.

  The Northerners fell on the farmers from behind as they watched the house burn. Snurri let forth a terrible scream as he ran, so by the time Grislae came near, the men had turned to face them, startled. Hoensa’s sword took one in the arm, deep, and the man fell. Hoensa wheeled toward the next man, who raised his axe.

  In the shifting yellow light from the burning roof, Grislae found herself facing a burly farmer whose expression lacked sufficient fear to suit her. He whipped his axe in a tight circle, but she rocked back on one leg, letting it pass, and then sprang forward in the wake of his missed blow. She spitted him through the belly, and once his face showed the death-fear, she smiled and ripped the sword free, turning to face the others.

  Snurri clubbed a man in the face with the pommel of his sword, dropping him, and Hoensa had killed another. The last farmer bolted into the dark and Hoensa sprinted after him.

  “They are strong but none of them know how to fight,” Snurri said, and sucked hard at the back of his hand. “You did well, Boy-Lover’s girl.”

  Grislae ignored him. The farmer he’d clubbed stirred and moaned through a bloody mouth. She stripped one of the dead of his belt and tied the moaning man’s hands as Hoensa returned, breathing heavily.

  Snurri and Grislae looked to him and he nodded. “They will be alerted by mid-morn at the latest, when their men do not come home to their soft beds. Let us take this one back to the boat and hear Heingistr’s words.”

  They roused the battered farmer, bound his mouth, and marched him back to the Reinen. Heingistr, Wen, Urtha, — Hoensa’s wife — Rill, and Uvigg waited for them. Soon the other new men roused from their slumber on the Reinen’s decks, coming to join them by the fire on the shore.

  “We saw the light,” Heingistr said. “You must have good plunder to have burned the first farmhouse you came across.”

  “We did not burn it,” Snurri said. He waved a hand at the new slave, who had collapsed on the shore near the fire. A pot hung there and the smell of goat stew lingered in the air. “This one and his friends did the burning. The farmhouse was overrun with snakes.”

  “Snakes?”

  “Countless snakes,” Snurri said, and looked to Grislae and Hoensa for support.

  Hoensa nodded. “There were many.”

  “I am bit,” Snurri said, holding up his hand. It had swollen like a sack of barley soaked by rain.

  Heingistr’s face remained impassive. “Uvigg, your father took a slave woman from this region. Do you know their tongue?”

  “Some,” Uvigg said.

  “I would put questions to this man, and then you can take him to the hold.”

  Uvigg unbound the captive’s mouth and gave him water.

  “He’ll be shitting teeth for a moon,” Hoensa said.

  Heingistr questioned the toothless farmer about nearby holdfasts and villages. There was a fortress, far inland, ruled by a lord named Risle with a crowing cock as his family sigil, but far enough away to not be a concern. Closer there were farms, but the real prize was a mill five miles inland. Quickly, Heingistr and company decided on a course of action — to leave with enough men to take the mill, the miller’s fat wife and daughters, and all of their grain and gold, and be back at the Reinen before the tide turned. Many of those newer to the company grew excited. Urtha kissed Hoensa fervently, and Heingistr began sharpening his axes.

  “What of this thing they kept saying?” Grislae asked. “This yig?”

  Uvigg put questions to the captive in his language. The man raised his hands as if warding off a blow. Uvigg withdrew a knife, and with a casual motion picked at the dirt under his own fingernails, and repeated his words. The slave answered haltingly.

  “Some local haunt, maybe? It has been long since I’ve spoken this tongue, and truly the man’s accent is fucked beyond repair. He’ll eat soup for the rest of his life,” Uvigg said. “Some sort of serpent, like Jorgumandr, except not so fierce, nor so divine. He spoke of the ‘children of Yig,’ and ‘Yig’s retribution.’ All sheep shit, in my judgment.”

  Snurri stirred. “Maybe it is their name for Jorgumandr.”

  “These people do not worship the same gods as normal folk. They have their wounded man and their mother and the sightless ones and the forest,” Uvigg said. “They know nothing of Valhalla and Yggdrasil. They are blind.”

  “But fat,” Heingistr said. “And we will take what is theirs. Hoensa, ready the men.”

  “Grislae will come too. She handled herself as well as Snurri, at least,” Hoensa said.

  “That is not a high sheaf to hide in,” Rill said. Snurri bristled.

  “She split a farmer without hesitation. A big fellow,” Hoensa said and gave Grislae a nod.

  “Then she is with us.” Heingistr turned to her. Pulling a knife from his belt, he cut his forearm and cupped the blood that ran there. He slapped Grislae, a big open-handed blow, catching her mouth, cheek, and ear in his massive hand, sending her reeling. She sat down forcibly, motes of light swirling at the edges of her vision. “Get up, Ordbeg the Boy-Lover’s girl. You are blooded now and one of my company. Get up,” he said, and taking her arms, raised her from the ground, the stag-faced prow of the Reinen behind him, looming.

  She tasted the blood on her face, some of it hers, streaming from her nose, some of it Heingistr’s. The eyes of the company were upon her, blooded and unblooded alike.

  “My name is Grislae,” she said. “I put aside my father and his name.”

  Heingistr remained still and everyone was silent except for the soft moaning of the captive.

  “So it will be, Grislae No-Man’s Girl,” Heingistr said. “So it will be.”

  “Grislae,” she said.

  There was a long silence where the men waited expectantly for Heingistr to react to her last words, to see if their company’s leader would take it as a challenge. A big grin split his beard and he extended his hand still mired with blood.

  “You will shoulder many names in this world, Grislae,” he said. “As long as your sword strikes and your heart remains true, you are one of my company.”

  She gripped his forearm in friendship. For the first time in her life, Grislae was happy. The feeling was so foreign and short-lived, she was only aware of it once it was gone.

  Of the thirty-three in Heingistr’s company, they left a third with the Reinen, Wen, and Urtha, and took twenty-two inland to raid the mill. Heingistr was concerned that the burning farmhouse might draw others, and so men were needed to guard the longship. Grislae and Hoensa led them past the farmhouse, Snurri staying behind to tend his greening, un
usable hand.

  They followed the road away from the smoldering farmhouse and inland, past sucking muddy fields and dark forest. The wind picked up and the clouds cleared, leaving gashes that allowed the milky half-light to filter onto the face of the land.

  At the first farm there were two women and a boy. They boy tried to fight them with a cudgel, so Uvigg killed him. They bound the women and left three men at the house to take what spoils they could from the premises. The rest of the company moved on.

  They found a small river — one that, Uvigg told them, ran into the marshy bay where the Reinen was beached — and followed it south. Two more farmsteads they came across — one, rich with livestock and grain, where three young men and a girl fought them when the door was kicked in. The girl, no more than thirteen, chose to defend her home with a butcher’s blade, so Grislae ran her through. The girl looked surprised once her widening eyes fixed on Grislae’s face, and she pawed at Grislae’s breasts as she died, as if looking for some kind of succor there. The rest of the farmer’s sons, and the other daughters hidden in the cold room below the kitchen, they took for slave stock. The men of Heingistr’s company looked at Grislae with new eyes.

  The next farm was empty, possibly alerted by the screams and shrieks of their neighbors. They left four men to round up with the scattered flock.

  The sky lightened. Soon the sun would rise.

  Thirteen men and one woman moved inland, toward the mill. The sky bloomed in the east and illuminated the water vapor in the air, shining through the trees like the golden fog of Valhalla.

  The mill was guarded by men bearing axes, cudgels, and a single rust-eaten sword, doubtless their families and other precious things barricaded inside. Svebder had unlimbered his bow and feathered two of the men before they knew Heingistr’s company was upon them. In the blood-spiked rush toward the mill, Grislae found herself yelling wordlessly. She killed two men, taking one through the throat as he swung a hammer at her — she received some of the blow on the meat of her shoulder — and speared another through the back as he grappled with Hoensa. It was over quickly, and she came out on the other side with a calmness she’d never known, as if all the wheels of heaven had locked and the braid that was her fortune and destiny were complete.