by Jason Born
I pointed to a group of young men a little younger than Leif and shouted, “You boys, run with all your might and bring back many axes, knives, swords, whatever you can find!” Away they ran.
Erik was helping Leif organize the men and a ramshackle line began to form. My current position was between our line and the invaders. The Norsemen began to hurl rocks at the attackers. This simple maneuver caused a brief pause in the attack until more skraeling came around the sides of the rock. They must have been hiding in the paths behind Fridr Rock waiting to strike.
Freydis! Where was Freydis? I scanned the meadow-turned-battlefield with a feeling of terror. An arrow grazed my left arm leaving a half-inch deep furrow. The force spun me to face our forming line and then I saw Freydis joining the men in hurling rocks. I wished she would run, but she was Erik’s daughter and always ready for a fight. Cnute approached still clutching the blood-soaked rock in his hand. I looked for the boys running to fetch the weapons and saw that they still hadn’t even reached the village. We needed something now or this was going to be the end of a Norse Greenland. Then I remembered the axes.
It was a long shot but Erik had hurled at least six axes out into the fjord. I saw two of the skraeling warriors break off from their main group to come for Cnute and me. Without thinking I grabbed Cnute’s arm and sprinted toward the right side of our line, shouting to him, “The fjord, we must get into the fjord! Axes!”
We reached the stones on the shingle and nearly passed our line when I heard Freydis screaming, “Coward! You Coward! A warrior never runs!” While still running I looked to her and saw that she must think we were retreating. I didn’t have time to correct her insanity or negotiate my bravery, so I kept running. Without stopping at the water’s edge I took two steps into the glacial fjord before diving in. The icy water nearly stole the breath from my lungs. After two strokes into the water, I heard Cnute splash in behind me. We both pulled with all force until we reached the small iceberg that today’s axe had bounced off. It would serve as a good landmark for Erik’s strength in throwing axes.
Taking two quick breaths, we each dove. I reached the bottom and clawed for an axe handle. My lungs soon began to burn and I was forced to the surface empty-handed. Cnute was just on his way down a second time as I breached the surface. I sucked in enormous breaths and dove again. At the bottom again I stretched out both arms wide scratching along the bed of the fjord. Nothing! I surfaced the second time and dove a third. When I came again to the bottom I started to realize just how foolish this may have been. I squeezed my eyes tight and prayed to Thor to provide me a weapon. Each hand then fell onto the unmistakable handle of a battle axe. No, there were two handles now in my left hand. I gave a scream under water and scrambled to the surface.
I was still shouting when my head burst above the surface. Cnute was there looking cold, wet, and defeated. He brightened when I handed him an axe. I felt a renewal of energy and towed my body through the water with my hands, each holding an axe which might help save my people. We reached the shore and must have looked like sea gods entering the battle because the skraelings closest to the Norse line looked at us with fright. Freydis was at the far right of our line repeating what Cnute had done earlier. She was on her knees repeatedly hammering a skraeling face with a sharp stone; blood and tissue spattering her own chest and face.
I shouted to Leif and tossed him the third axe as we ran past the line into the invading line. It was only now that I realized there must have been about one hundred men in the opposing army, none of them warriors. After the initial success of their attack they did not press and capitalize on their advantage. They were now apprehensive and confused, not well organized. I bellowed out a mad scream and slammed into the nearest set of skraelings. Cnute and Leif both followed. My axe blade found an enemy’s left shoulder and cracked his collar bone. He went down with an unintelligible shout. The swinging of my axe increased in frenzy and I hacked down two more men. The first of these two was dispatched with a two-handed upward thrust into a man’s groin. The second man found my axe buried to the poll in his skull. I tugged on the handle but could not dislodge it. Instead I just dropped the handle and the man’s head slammed into the ground still holding the axe.
I looked to my left and the boys who ran to the village to recover weapons had flown past our line and entered the fray shouting like the angry horde they had become. They carried wooden pitchforks, eating knives, and harpoons. This broke the skraelings and they fled, in ones and twos at first, then entire groups of men turned and ran up the hills surrounding Fridr Rock. I placed a foot on the dead man’s head and pulled my axe free with two hands. We had survived.
We gave a half-hearted pursuit to the top of the hill; still without adequate weapons. Upon reaching the top we saw the skraeling men entering their boats in a small river that fed a neighboring fjord. They would be gone before we could mount a successful counter attack so Leif told two boys to stay at the top of the hill to watch the invaders go. The rest who had made the ascent slowly plodded back down to Fridr Rock.
When Cnute, Leif, and I reached the rock Erik was already holding a small discussion with Sindri, the leading men of the community who were still alive, and Bjarni, whose blue cloak remained pristine.
“The number of our dead could have been worse,” said Erik as we walked into the circle of men.
“One is too many if it could have been prevented by controlling your son and this bastard friend of his!” Bjarni shouted. “I told you all this would happen.”
Sindri added, “My wife is dead!”
Erik spoke softly in response, “Sindri I am sorry for the death of your wife. We all lost someone today.” Erik looked down at the line of Norse bodies the living men were building at the base of Peace Rock. I looked at my bloodied axe and decided the name had become an irony and then thought that it had actually become a tragedy. A girl of about eight with beautiful flaxen hair carried in long braids ran back from the village and lay across her unmoving father’s chest weeping, the broken shaft of a spear still jutting from his side.
“Permanent banishment!” shouted Bjarni. “That is the only responsible punishment. I would say execution, but know that your favoritism in the judging process will prevent that.”
Erik looked to Sindri who nodded his agreement. He looked to Leif and me. Cnute stood several steps behind us. “What do you have to say in your defense?” Erik asked in a hopeful tone. He was in a difficult position; he wanted our response to be such that he had options.
Leif spoke immediately, “Father, I have disgraced you. I attacked a group of men without permission and it brought pain and death upon us all. You know it was not my intention to bring this, but the blood you see today is rightly on my hands.” Cnute gave an audible gasp while I looked at Leif in disbelief.
I shouted, “Did you see who did the fighting just now? Did you see who helped drive those people off? It was Leif, and it was Cnute, and it was me! I didn’t see Bjarni during the battle at all.”
“That’s irrelevant!” shouted Sindri. Erik gently put his hand on Sindri’s shoulder in an effort to calm him.
“In my life, my father and I have been exiled from Norway. I have been exiled from Iceland. I fear there is no answer to this question other than banishment,” said Erik slowly. “My unfortunate experience has been that three years exile is standard for these types of events.”
I remember thinking that three years sounded like a lifetime to be away from my adopted father, scoundrel though he may be. No reindeer hunting. No walrus. To be away from what I spent the previous years building.
Bjarni was calm now and carried a sinister curl in his lips as he spoke, “Erik, I know this is a difficult decision to make, but I believe these good men of our community surrounding you will agree that three years is entirely unacceptable for such a grievous and preventable error in judgment.” We all looked around at the men to read their faces. Most were agreeing with Bjarni with nods or otherwise menacing glances at
Leif and me.
I had a glimmer of hope, though. I had seen a look on Erik’s face when he had made up his mind. He carried that look now and set about defending his position. “My father, though he thought it justified, directly took the life of other Norsemen and he only received three years exile. These boys have directly killed no Norseman. I, myself, killed . . .” his voice trailed off as he looked at another body set carefully in the line. I followed his line of sight to where the lifeless form of Erik’s companion, Ingridr Alfsdottir, now rested with a blood stained dress from a wound I could not see. Erik’s eyes closed slowly and he let out a deep sigh. Now even Erik lost someone close to him. “The sentence will be one year of exile for every Norseman and Norsewoman killed.” He then stepped past us and walked toward the village.
“What about Freydis?” I called. “We are to be married.”
Erik stopped without turning suddenly remembering his promise. Then a voice that sounded possessed by a god from the icy underworld of Hel screeched from the top of Fridr Rock. “I cannot marry you! I will not marry a coward; one who runs to play in the water during a battle. One who may think of himself as a warrior because he killed a couple helpless skraeling dogs. You brought this upon us. You think that I, the daughter of the jarl of all of Greenland, would marry the bastard son of a dead bastard? I wouldn’t let you slip your tiny, limp stick in me for one thousand overpriced, gold brooches.” She looked crazed. Her face was streaked with so much blood that it nearly matched her hair. The once brilliant gold brooches were now covered in skraeling bone and brain fragments. Everyone remaining in the meadow looked to her, then to me, then to Erik.
“There will be no wedding,” said Erik, looking to the village, and continued on.
Thirteen. Thirteen dead Norse. Two women, one boy, ten men of fighting age. Thirteen years in exile. Thirteen.
Three generations. Thorvald, Erik, and now Leif all exiled from their homelands for deaths they brought and the lives they took. Leif, who tried so hard to escape the fate of his family wound up with the harshest punishment of all. Fate. Leif, who did not kill a single Norseman. Leif, who had become decidedly happy since the massacre at Fridr Rock.
Today. I stared at the side of the hearth from my floor with the silent tears of a young boy streaming down my face. I didn’t want to leave. Until today I had fooled myself into believing that Odin or Thor or Erik would help me find a way out of my punishment; a punishment for something for which I felt I was innocent. Yet the punishment began today. My fate.
Leif lay sleeping with a small, content-looking grin on his face next to Tofa in my bed. Leif had joined me in my home since the verdict at the Thing. Tofa came to join us for the past several months. When I declined her advances over the Yule festival, Tofa moved onto Leif who initially turned her away. But she was persuasive and experienced. So she spent the last weeks of winter teaching Leif about the pleasure of a woman. All the while, I sat silently wondering what happened to Freydis.
There was no reason for Freydis to treat me this way. I was wronged. But it didn’t matter. Several men, but mostly a man named Torvard had spent the winter in her arms. None of it mattered. Truth didn’t matter. The truth was that we fell upon the skraeling and a fight started. No one else was there. I can’t explain the attack at the rock. I wanted to stay with the man who made a blood oath with my father. He had become my father. I still believed I loved Freydis. I wanted to stay in godforsaken Greenland. But what I wanted didn’t matter. My fate.
Erik declared that we would leave at the spring equinox. The day had arrived. Some men in Eystribyggo came forward during the dark winter and declared their intent to join Leif and me on our adventure. I did not think of it as an adventure, it would be my prison, but the company would be welcome. Erik offered the thrall Tyrkr to come along. Cnute volunteered to join us as his relationship with his former captain had soured so. All told there would be a total of twenty-two men.
Now standing, I shoved Leif who rose quickly. From under a blanket, Tofa watched us ready ourselves for our journey. She lay on her side with her head propped up on her right hand, a pendulous breast exposed. We ate hard boiled eggs left from the spring festival last night. Also last night, we loaded our luggage aboard a longboat, called the Charging Boar, provided by Erik. Now, I made sure I had my saex, my bow, and my tarnished sword. Leif too, secured his weapons and we left without a word to Tofa who rolled over to return to sleep.
Leif and I were the last to arrive at the ship. No one was there to see us off. Anyone who cared or felt we were wronged was already on board. Not long after boarding, the tide gradually lifted our keel off the shingle and we were afloat. Leif asked the men to haul up the sail and we gained speed as the wind rounded out the square cloth. The sun would be high by the time we could navigate our way out of the wide fjord. The men all looked back to the lives they were once building in Eystribyggo. I looked back to my little home at Brattahlid and thought again of Freydis. Leif, however, looked forward. He perched himself in the prow and looked like he himself was willing the ship to slice through the water.
As the fjord curved and forced Magnus, our blonde-haired rudder man, to turn to port I stared back one last time. And another tear came to my eye. On a hill off our starboard side stood Erik, Thjordhildr, Thorvald, and Thorstein – my family - watching us begin our exile. Thirteen years.
So with our stern to the fjord and our bow toward the sea we set out to the unknown.
MALDON MAPS
PART II – Raiders!
991 A.D.
CHAPTER 4
Today we would meet with Sweyn Forkbeard, King of the Danes. He and a small flotilla of ten longships arrived with the morning tide in the harbor of Dyflin. Since our arrival almost four years earlier, I had been told that the wild men from whom we took this city called it Duiblinn which is supposed to mean “black pool.” Truthfully, I did not care what they called the city. It was my city, it was a Norseman city. It belonged to the Norse just as all the plunder we had so easily taken from our English, Irish, and Scottish slaves belonged to us.
The thrall auction was located in the center of the marketplace which occupied a tear-shaped district in the heart of the city. The auction was busy this morning with the return of a raiding party from the interior. Their twenty captives added to the one hundred who arrived last week from a successful strandhogg across the Irish Sea. It was Monday and the thralls would be auctioned to the highest bidder. The thrall standing on the block now was a young man of thirteen and looked like he would fetch a fair price. He would grow into a good servant, or die. The line of those waiting to discover their new masters and the fates that came with them, wound out of sight beyond the crowd. I saw that many of them were young women who would, no doubt, be used by their new masters for work and pleasure.
At least one hundred fifty men stood or sat around the auction block to bid on or just observe the wares. I was among them and accompanied Olaf Tryggvason, who sat on a rough bench in the marketplace next to his brother-in-law, Kvaran, the King of Dyflin. The two were talking about how they would deal with Forkbeard when they met with him for the mid-day meal at Kvaran’s residence.
“Well what does he want?” asked Olaf. In his life he had been a royal prince, a refugee, a slave, a Viking pirate, and now a powerful warlord. One year after Leif and I arrived, Olaf came to Dyflin for a Thing called by Kvaran’s sister, Gytha. She was recently widowed when her jarl husband was killed and so Gytha was in search of a man. News of the Thing spread far and wide. Norse, Swede, and Dane suitors presented themselves to her. I was in the crowd watching as even Leif presented himself. It was Olaf, himself a widower, who captivated Gytha. Every man stood in his finest clothing trying to impress the woman, but Olaf came in weathered battle dress, stained with mud and dried blood. Without explanation she asked to speak with Olaf privately. They were wed within the month. And he was able to add to his wealth with the lands that came with her.
“Alliances I’m sure. That’s a
ll we kings ever seek. Deals,” answered Kvaran with not a little indifference.
“I’ll give him an alliance if it suits me,” said Olaf to no one in particular. “What do you say, Halldorr?”
“Profitable, lord. As long as it’s profitable,” I answered.
“Did you hear that, Kvaran? This man knows what he wants. And I tell you he always gets it!” I had never spoken to anyone about Freydis since we left Greenland. It was a part of my life that was dead. As far as Olaf knew, I did always get what I wanted. He continued, “I’ll not make any alliances with the man or his Danes until the price is right. I’ve got no need for him.” He reached down and laid a hand on his ever-present dog, Vigi.
The dog was a large cattle dog with long black, brown, and white blotched fur. Olaf bought him for one small gold ring from a peasant shortly after marrying Gytha. He had been raiding for provisions and was driving several small herds of cattle down to the shore to his waiting ships. A brave peasant came up to Olaf and asked if he could have just his own cattle back. Miraculously, Olaf agreed, so the peasant sent his dog among the herds. Olaf watched in amazement as the dog sorted only the peasant’s cattle out. He was certain of it because they all bore the same mark of the peasant. When the dog was done Olaf asked the peasant if he could have his dog to which the man replied, “Surely, lord.” As a token of friendship and payment Olaf gave him the ring.