Swords v. Cthulhu

by Jesse Bullington

  The men rousted the miller, his wife, sons, and daughters, killing only the one girl who dared to fight back. Grislae found a horse, harnessed it to a wagon and brought it around for the spoils. By daybreak, the wagon was heavy with grain — and some metal — and on its way back to the Reinen. They reached the ship unmolested, loaded slaves and spoils into the hold, and were back into the waters of the marsh and approaching open sea by midday.

  Spirits on the Reinen soared as the sails bellied with wind and the sea spray dampened beards. “Hale we went forth, and hale we returned, heavy with plunder and the blessings of Aesir and Vanir!” Heingistr shouted at the shore, exultant. “We have come to this fat shore, all the high holy gods protect us!”

  As if in answer, Snurri moaned. A fever had settled upon him, and he slumbered heavily, cradling his hand to his chest. When he woke, he would dip the bloated green hand in a bucket of saltwater — the old remedy. It did not seem to work. “We are cursed by Yig,” Snurri mumbled, eyes cloudy. “It will be the death of us —”

  “Shut up,” Hoensa told the delirious man. “You are snake-bit and addled. Do not speak of these southern gods.”

  “ — the children of Yig — ”

  Hoensa snatched the bucket of saltwater and dumped it on Snurri’s head. “Clear your mind, man. We are to sea.”

  “ — cursed, we are — ”

  Heingistr said, “Put him below, where his delirium cannot poison our good cheer.” He slapped the mast and looked to the men of his company. “We are heavy! This shore is rich and ripe!”

  Wen and Urtha, with Hoensa’s help, moved Snurri into the hold, near the livestock. They looked wan and dejected when they returned.

  “The ravings of the ill and infirm do no favors to the brave,” Hoensa said, as he stepped on the deck and took a deep breath of salt-spiced air. The wind was up and Reinen’s sail full, the shore passing at a good clip.

  Urtha, shaking her head, said, “I will tend him, and the slaves. I am afraid for him.” She paused, looking to the distant shore.

  “Snurri bears a tattoo of Jorgumandr on his chest, the great serpent eating its own tail. He told me once that the völva seer saw his doom in a serpent’s mouth, so his father tattooed him there,” Hoensa said.

  “Loki’s brood,” Urtha said, pursing her lips as if tasting something bitter. “Inconstant and wicked.”

  “We shall see. Snurri is strong, if nothing else,” said Hoensa, looking toward the feverish man.

  “And stupid as rocks,” Urtha said.

  Urtha joined Wen at the covered stern of the Reinen and spoke with her softly. The seas were high, swells pitching the longship. Some of the men chanted the Glymdrápa in rough but strong voices, laughing as Fjolnir fell into the mead and drowned:

  “Doom of Death!

  Where dwelled Fróthi

  In mead-measured spacious and windless wave

  The Warrior died!

  The Warrior died!”

  The seas grew, and Heingistr brought the Reinen in to shore, to find port and send out scouts. “When the seas are high, the North is nigh,” he said, looking at the shore, avidly.

  Beneath them the livestock bleated and the thin moans of Snurri filtered through the air-grate. His breath had taken on a rasp, as if the fever had settled in his lungs, and Urtha gave Hoensa worried glances when she came up from the hold.

  They paced the shore for two days, until the swells let up, and finding a river, made their way up it until the water was barely brackish. They moored her on an old pier, half-rotten — despite the livestock hold, the Reinen’s draft was shallow. They set up camp in the burnt-out ruin of a fishing hut; victim, possibly, to one of their or their cousins’ forays. Heingistr sent Grislae, Hoensa, and an unblooded lad named Knut to survey the area. They found farms and a small village with a moss-covered church, all within a half day’s walk of the Reinen — it was still morning, and so they set forth immediately.

  With the full company save the wives and Snurri, they took the village, killing all the men and the women who fought. Any boys and girls old enough to labor in the field, or bed, were taken as slaves. Grislae felt the exaltation of war and battle as she came into the hamlet and heard the screams of the villagers, pleading. She killed a woman in her home — a farmer’s wife who hid something in her cellar. She heard muffled weeping from below as she stood in the dim house over the woman’s body.

  Grislae found the trapdoor and went down among the crocks of butter and sacks of grain, where she found two chubby, red-cheeked children. She dragged them out into the street and put them to the sword for all of the company of Heingistr to see, and the gods as well. The raiders found a wagon and drove it to the stone church, killing the high priest and his servants there, and taking their gold.

  “We do not burn! We will return one day,” Heingistr laughed, as he came through the church’s shattered door, carrying a chalice and a cross. It was late afternoon and the slanting golden rays made the spoil and slaughter seem kissed by the gods. “Kill the goose, take the eggs, one day another goose will make its home in the nest.”

  Spoil-weary, they trudged alongside the pilfered wagon, leading a string of slaves back to the Reinen.

  “The spring planting was especially hard on Willa and the children, after the late freeze,” Uvigg said to Hoensa, who walked beside him, axe in hand. Uvigg patted the slats of the wagon trundling beside them. “So my share of this will be a great boon. The boys grow tall and thin now that their manhood is in sight, and we can buy a cow and some goats to keep them in milk and cheese.”

  “They’ll be raiding with us soon enough,” Hoensa said, resting a large hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “Yes!” Uvigg said, smiling. Then frowned. “Though Willa won’t like being left alone with the girls during the summer months.”

  “Leave the boys behind and bring her.”

  “We have spoken of that — she was always fierce and deadly with bow and blade. But she would not shame her sons by leaving them behi —”

  Uvigg gurgled and pitched forward, feathers and arrow-shaft protruding from his throat. It took but a moment for Hoensa to bellow warning and heft his axe. A great cry came from up the path, and men with shields and swords raced down a hill toward them.

  The blooded company of Heingistr was hard to surprise and fierce in battle. But many of their number were unblooded. At the first sound of attack, Grislae’s sword was in hand. She crouched, keeping her legs flexed, waiting for the first man to come near enough to kill. No farmers, these men — they bore shields with a scarlet rooster crowing; the men of Risle the captive had spoken of. Accoutred in boiled leather, the soldiers carried steel blades instead of farm implements.

  The captives — boys and girls all — cried miserably in their foreign tongue, no doubt pleading to be freed.

  Arrows filled the air like maddened wasps, buzzing and hissing. Grislae felt a flashing burn across her cheek, and raised her hand to find that half her ear was gone, ripped away by an ill-aimed arrow and further torn by scarlet fletching. Before she could register the bright pain, a man with a bristling mustache leapt forward, swinging a longsword. Grislae parried with her own, but the blow shivered her arm, wrenched her about, and she fell sideways upon the earth. She scrabbled away on all fours, levering herself with one hand and digging the other into the ground with her fist, still holding her sword, the man fast behind her. She scrambled under the stolen wagon and was up and crouched, ready to strike on the other side when the man rounded the corner. She put her blade in his groin and then ripped it away, cutting red roads in his flesh. He fell, pumping blood.

  The next man she took from behind, as he exchanged overmatched blows with Svebder.

  Grislae moved on, looking for others to kill. Blood surged in her, her cheeks hot, the ruin of her ear forgotten. She moved easily, her sword an extension of her arm. A terrible finger to point out those to be received by Hel.

  Outnumbered. Other Northern raiders must’ve visited t
hese shores, Grislae surmised, and recently. The company of Heingistr was overmatched. But still fierce. There was a moment when the soldiers drew back, and Heingistr, bleeding freely from his chest and arm, rallied his men. Those who remained clustered tightly around the stolen wagon, and as the remaining soldiers mustered the courage to attack, they were met with angry cries and angrier blades.

  When Heingistr fell to his knees, the company broke, abandoning the wagon of spoils. Hoensa grabbed Heingistr, despite the man’s stature, and pulled him away, off the road and into the wood. Grislae came after. One of the soldiers marked their exit and followed.

  Grislae met the soldier in the wood. He bore a shield and sword, a helm, a studded leather tunic and gauntlets. Bright eyes and an exultant expression, now that the company of the North was routed and their spoils lost. A smile spread across his face like pitch upon the water; he said something in this country’s bubbling, liquid language, gloating. Before he could finish, Grislae stabbed him in the throat, and whatever else he might have said was lost in blood. He went down, wrenching her sword from her hands as he did.

  He fell, lying face up, hands at his throat. Grislae stood over him, looking down. Placing her boot on his face, she pulled the blade from his neck and spat on his face when it was free. The gob of spittle landed on the man’s open eye. He did not blink it away.

  Turning, she rejoined Hoensa, shouldering Heingistr’s weight to flee to the Reinen.

  It took hours to get back to the longship. Soldiers combed the forest and the shore. It was only the evening fog that seeped from the earth and the river’s surface that saved them. Many times Hoensa and Grislae had to hide in the dark, holding their breath, ready to muffle Heingistr’s moans, as men bearing torches searched for survivors of the company. But the light from the soldiers’ own torches blinded them. Grislae and Hoensa were able to slip away and move downriver without incident, bearing Heingistr between them.

  It was raining by the time they reached the burnt-out fishing hut and pier where the Reinen was moored. Urtha looked at them with a terrified expression, her constant companion Wen nowhere to be seen. Wen’s absence struck Grislae. She did not like the woman — nor Urtha — but she’d grown accustomed to her presence, and seeing Urtha without her disturbed Grislae in ways she could not puzzle out.

  Once, when Grislae was a girl, her father took her to the Midsummer festival in the woods outside of Heingistrhold, and she became separated from him, lost. As she wandered through the trees, standing like silent sentinels around her, she felt a tugging at her stomach, as if some invisible tether drew her onward, and found herself standing at the mouth of a cave. The air was thick there, and she felt a sinking dread, as if the world was worn thin, frayed. In the darkness of the cave mouth, something crouched. Something beyond her ken, beyond all ken. She felt as if at any moment all of creation would unravel and some great horror would stand revealed. It was only when some of the men from Heingistrhold found her, paralyzed with fear, that the feeling dissipated.

  As Grislae looked at Urtha, and the Reinen beyond, she felt that way again.

  “What has happened, husband?” Urtha asked. She had banked the fire while they were gone.

  “Great misfortune,” Hoensa panted. “We were attacked by soldiers. Many of our men drink in golden Valhalla. But for now we wait for whatever survivors make it back to the Reinen. I will keep watch here. Take Heingistr on board and tend his wounds.”

  “Nay,” said Urtha. “I will not. The Reinen is cursed! It teems with serpents. And Snurri, he is…”

  “He is what?” Grislae asked.

  “He is changed,” she said. “Wen entered the livestock hold and she—” Sobbing took her.

  “I do not care if Fenrir himself is on board. If we stay here, we will die,” Hoensa said. He drew his sword and watched the dark line of trees wreathed in fog. “While I would welcome a warrior’s death, I would not have you hurt, Urtha, my love. And I won’t abandon what men might make it back here. We will wait until we cannot wait anymore. Go to the Reinen.”

  “No,” Urtha said. “I cannot board the ship again. You do not know —”

  “I will take Heingistr,” Grislae said. She cared not for the arguments of man and wife. Her ear was on fire now she had the opportunity to consider herself. It throbbed and oozed blood that ran in a dark slick down her neck. She sheathed her sword and, bending, lifted Heingistr’s full weight onto her shoulders, an oxen carry. He did not moan or make any exhalation as she did, though he was still warm. Once on board, she would determine if he still lived. He was a great weight, but no match to her will. She carried him down the pier and aboard the Reinen.

  The longship’s deck was empty, devoid of man. Or snake. Grislae carried him down the length of the deck to the covered stern, where she started a touchwood fire with stone and steel in the sheltered cooking brazier, warming water to wash his wounds and her own.

  From the shore, there came the sound of men calling to one another, and a cry. The thin yellow light of torches drew shifting lines through the fog. Grislae raced to the side of the Reinen, where the lusty company of Heingistr had disembarked only hours earlier. There, on the shore, lay the bodies of Hoensa and Urtha, heavily feathered with arrows, and joined together forever in death. Hoensa died, at least, with steel in his fist.

  Turning, Grislae sprinted back to the stern, drawing her sword as she ran. She cut the anchor line just as the arrows began to fall. The sound erupted like giant rune stones being cast upon a mead-hall table. Rolling underneath the covered cooking area, she watched as a deadly flight of arrows impaled the deck, the oar benches, the gunwales, the upright oars, each one quivering. Crouching, she grabbed a shield from the Reinen’s bulwark, and holding it angled toward the shore, Grislae sprinted to the Reinen’s prow before another flight of arrows could fall. Her sword fell upon the second anchor line, severing it clean, and she threw herself against the gunwale facing the shore.

  A long moment passed. The longship Reinen did not stir in the river. Grislae felt a scream building behind her breast, a yelp of frustration and rage. She held it back with clenched teeth. There were cries of men from the shore, and another vicious rain of arrows.

  “Fuck you, you fucking sheep!” she yelled, allowing some of the titanic anger in her to spill out. Just a little. She had so much more to give. The shield clattered on the deck as she snatched an oar from its mooring hole, half-crawling toward where the pier met the Reinen. On her knees, one foot braced upon an oarsman’s bench, she peeked up, planted the long oar on the soft wood of the pier, and pushed. Her body thrummed and creaked with stress and inaction. “Odin,” she said, but could not be sure it came out as words. Torchlight came from the burnt fishing hut. There was a cry and another flight of arrows fell. Thunk thunk thunk thunk.

  Almost imperceptibly, the Reinen moved.

  More arrows flew. But these were different. They rose burning, trailing oily black smoke. The soldiers of Risle had wrapped their arrows with pitch-soaked rags. And now the Reinen was itself feathered with fire. More cries came from the shore, and the clomp of many boots sounded on wood. Torchlight neared.

  The distance between the Reinen and the shore grew, bit by bit. And grew further as the Reinen was caught in the faster currents of the river.

  More burning arrows fell, but hissed as they were extinguished by the river. Soon the husk of the fishing hut, the soldiers of Risle, and the accursed shore all diminished, disappearing in the fog. The muffled cries grew faint. Then there was only silence, the sizzle of burning pitch arrows, and the gurgle of the river as the Reinen floated downstream to the sea.

  “Grissssslay,” Snurri called from beneath her. “Grissssslay. Come.”

  Grislae turned slowly on the empty deck, listening with her sole remaining ear.

  “What has become of you, Snurri?” she asked.

  There was a long silence. She moved to the prow and reclaimed her dropped sword.

  “Snurri, I would have an answer,” she
said. Some of the bulwark was beginning to burn where the arrow had ignited it. Her first inclination was to draw up a bucket and extinguish the spreading flames, but Snurri’s voice made her pause.

  More silence, but for a rustling and the crackle of flames.

  Grislae returned to the covered stern. Touching Heingistr’s neck, she found no thrum of life there, no stirring of his blood. Grabbing a handful of acrid-smelling touchwood, she stuffed it into her tunic and picked up the jar of oil the women had used for cooking. Her sword held in her off hand, she slowly descended the narrow wooden stairs into the belly of the longship.

  It was dark in the Reinen’s hold. Crates of spoils, casks of provender, and barrels of fresh water lined the hull walls. The slaves they had taken were all missing, along with the goats. Firelight from the deck fell in patches through the grating, illuminating a shifting, undulating floor that was all too familiar to Grislae. Snakes. Countless snakes, writhing and churning in a mass, falling into the bilgewater below and slithering up again.

  “Snurri,” she said. “What has become of you, Snurri?”

  “At firssst, I thought it a cursssse. But now, I realize, a blessssing. I am become…” Snurri’s voice came soft and low. Something moved in the darkness. The longship Reinen pitched slightly, as if a great stone had been rolled from one side of the hold to the other. The stench of fish and the familiar scent of death from the shadowy interior of the ship, along with a wet, scraping sound.