Viking Saga

by Mark Coakley

  "Take this, Tor!"

  Halfdan tossed the sword in the ice-hole, splashing out some freezing water and floating ice-chunks. It sank to the unseen muddy bottom.

  "Take this, Freyir!"

  Tossing in the other sword.

  "Take this, Freya!"

  Now a shield sank down into the grey swamp-water.

  "And take this, Baldur!"

  The other shield was tossed in.

  The crowd cheered.

  Yngvild and Siv were close by, with Yngvild describing the action.

  One of the wolf-masked captives on the ice sometimes wriggled.

  The other was still.

  People in the crowd around Halfdan chanted, "Feed the gods! Feed the gods!"

  It was near noon.

  Halfdan shouted, "Death to Sogn! Death to Sogn!"

  The crowd roared as they watched Halfdan bend and grab the back of the jacket of one of the captives, the one who was moving on the ice. Halfdan dragged him towards the ice-hole.

  The noise of the celebrating crowd drowned out the sound of frantic screaming from under the tooth-grinned mask as the captive tried to wriggle away from Halfdan's strong grip on his jacket.

  Children squealed in excitement.

  "Wolves can't swim!" someone yelled loudly, making many others laugh.

  "Give it a bath!"

  "Feed the gods!"

  Halfdan yelled, louder than anyone, "Take this, Odin!" as he held the face-down head of the captive over the hole in the bog-ice. The crowd went quiet, and for a moment the captive's mask-muffled screams could be heard, then Halfdan dunked the wolf-head into the ice-hole and held it underwater.

  When the struggling stopped, Halfdan dragged the other captive over. This one did not resist. "Take this, Odin!" And the sacred swamp drank the life of another sacrifice, as it had done for many generations.

  When the ritual was done, Halfdan handed out gifts of sweets and toys to the children.

  Everybody was happy.

  The dead captives were flopped onto sleds by slaves and pulled to Eid, where their meat would be cut away and boiled into Yule stew, the traditional meal that marked the end of the celebrations.

  Chapter 18

  A SURPRISE

  In the darkness of the morning, Halfdan's army (now over a hundred well-trained fighters) and an equal number of men called in from around Fjordane (much less trained, and on temporary military service) gathered in a snowy field outside the rebuilt town wall.

  These unpaid recruits had been training for days in using spears and bows to support the army's core of professionals, in expectation of a spring-time war against Sogn. It was well-known that the war-ships now being built would be used in the spring for an invasion of Sogn.

  To the recruits, Halfdan and his veterans were heroes. Young men from little farm-towns, some of them in the kingdom's capital-town for the first time, listened with awe to exaggerated stories of Halfdan's escape from the hall, and the fight at the waterfall, and the now-famous battle of the beacon.

  Halfdan stood on a little stage in front of the armed men. Gem-covered silver rings glittered on his hands. Standing beside the war-chief were Atli, the second-in-command, and Haki the Berserk.

  Halfdan shouted, "Today we are going to do something called 'wet training'. If you recruits do well at it, there will be a big outdoors party afterwards, with lots of beer for all!"

  The army cheered so loudly that startled birds flew from a nearby tree.

  Halfdan shouted, "Wet training is not about the right way to use your weapons. By now, you should all know proper spear-use: never swing it side-to-side, always stab forward. Today's training will not take long, but it will involve something that some of you might find hard — learning how to kill. Most folk do not want to kill. Until I got used to it, neither did I. It can feel strange to use a weapon on somebody who seems just like you. That feeling can freeze your arm, putting yourself and all of your blood-brothers at risk. Today we are here to learn how to ignore the feeling that says not to kill. Because if you can't kill the foe, then you are the foe. My officers will chop down any coward who hangs back in battle."

  The recruits were taken to the other side of the town, where the snowy field had been set up for wet training. There were dozens of man-shaped, man-sized dolls — like those little girls played with, but much bigger — tied to wood posts. The dolls had realistic faces painted on the front of their heads. Clumps of horse-fur, looking like human hair, were glued to the tops of the doll-heads. The dolls had been dressed in shoes, pants and shirts. From a distance, the big dolls looked like folk.

  Each recruit was told to stand on the snow in front of a doll, spear in hand.

  Halfdan shouted, "Imagine that this is a foe!"

  The impressionable recruits did as their war-chief ordered.

  "Now stab him in the guts!"

  Most of the recruits, without hesitation, lunged forward and shoved their iron spear-tip into the doll. Inside each of the dolls was a pig-bladder filled with pig-blood. At each recruit's stab, the bladder in the doll burst and the pig-blood sprayed out and ran down the oak spear-shafts and dribbled to the snow.

  "Good! But what about you? and you? and you?" — pointing at recruits with clean spear-tips.

  The young men who had hesitated, feeling pressured by their war-chief and the gaze of the others, all now did as they were ordered, poking into their dolls and spilling the hidden pig-blood inside.

  All except one. This young farmer from Stryn held his unbloodied spear in trembling hands, as he stared with a ridiculous expression at the doll before him.

  Halfdan went to him and said, "What's your name?"

  "Torvald, my lord."

  "Why are you not stabbing this foe in front of you?"

  "I can't."

  "Why?"

  "It doesn't feel right."

  "Don't you think that a fighter should be able to kill?"

  "I'm a farmer, not a fighter."

  "I rule this kingdom, and I say that you are a fighter — my fighter. You will kill for me."

  "It is wrong to kill men."

  "What?"

  "It is wrong to kill men."

  The fighters who heard that started laughing, some mocking Torvald with girlish voices.

  "Don't hurt his very favourite dolly!" one mocked.

  "He just wants to kiss it!"

  "Mommy, mommy!"

  Halfdan said, "Wrong to kill men? That's crazy-talk. The gods want you to kill. I want you to kill. And girls, especially the cute ones, all want a man with enough balls to do his duty. Why do you think you were put on this world? You are going to stab this doll! Or be very sorry. Now!"

  Torvald moved his shaking spear-tip towards the doll's belly, touching it, but not hard enough to pierce its shirt.

  Halfdan said, "Stab it, don't tickle it."

  Torvald was blushing in shame and emotion, but could not stab the doll.

  Somebody said, "What's the problem? It's not even a real man."

  "I can't," Torvald gasped.

  "Then there is only way that you can serve me and the kingdom," Halfdan said.

  "How?"

  Halfdan turned away from Torvald and said loudly to the others, "The first man to stab this coward will get a silver piece and a job in my bodyguard!"

  After a shocked moment, almost a dozen recruits rushed towards Torvald, raising spears dripping with pig-blood. They all tried to be the first to stab Torvald. As Torvald crumpled without a complaint to the snow, other recruits ran at him — he was stabbed again and again.

  The strange young farmer from Stryn lay dead in a parch of red snow, staring blankly up at the grey sky.

  Halfdan congratulated Beren, whose spear-tip had been the first to pierce Torvald.

  One of the other recruits, also from Stryn, was weeping into his hands.

  Halfdan shouted, "Wet training is over. Time to celebrate! The party is at Baldur's Field. Most of you know the way to get there, and those who don
't, follow me!"

  The army cheered and banged their weapons onto their shields.

  They walked away from the field to a trail into the forest, leaving Torvald's snow-sprawled body behind.

  A single crow flapped down to it.

  At Baldur's Field — a flat place near the bend of the river running into Eid — there was a surprise.

  No beer.

  Instead, the fighters found a huge pile of supplies: knapsacks, skis, bagged tents, iron pots, bags of food, barrels of food and salt-milk and water, weapons, bundles of arrows and more. Most of it was piled onto sleds small enough for a single man to pull.

  Halfdan stood on a barrel of salt-milk and shouted, "Sorry for the disappointment! No party!"

  Groans from his fighters.

  "The most important part of war is tricking the foe," Halfdan continued. "We've made King Njal think that we are going to wait until spring to sail on the new war-ships to attack him. But we're not waiting for spring, not waiting for war-ships. We're going to ski to Sogn, across the glacier. Now!"

  Chapter 19

  THE BATTLE OF THE FROZEN RIVER

  On the feared glacier called Nis, which covered the mountains between Fjordane and Sogn, cold wind bit at scarf-covered faces and gnawed into layered wool clothes. The Fjordane army skied across plains of old ice, pulling heavy sleds and carrying wooden poles with iron hooks for pulling men from cracks. They sometimes stopped to pull strips of fur onto their skis for shuffling uphill.

  It was much colder than down at the fjord.

  The glacier was covered by powdery dry snow, swirling over pale blue ice. The brown tips of the mountains in all directions were gripped between white chaos below and low grey clouds. Brown gravel made occasional dark streaks in the blue ice and dry white snow. Some parts of the glacier were jagged and deeply cut.

  The army skied in a long single line in the middle-part of the glacier. There the ice was usually flatter and safer.

  Occasional boulders were somehow balanced on pillars of ice.

  The blank white face of Nis was lined with ice-cracks. Snow swirled down to dark depths, some with ice-spikes waiting at the bottom. Covered with a thin bridge of snow, some of the cracks were invisible.

  In some places, the winter sun had melted the ice into patterns of scooped bowls or sharp-tipped waves. Here, the surface would be too rough for skis. The two hundred or so Fjordane fighters walked slowly and in a single file across these rough places with strips of notched reindeer-bone tied to boot-soles for extra grip. Moving was very slow and took a lot of effort. Everybody was tired.

  The air was so thin that even thinking took effort. Many men had constant head-aches. Most faces were scabbed with frost-sores. Every day, fighters fell on slippery ice and twisted an ankle or broke a wrist.

  At night, when the fighters lay in their wind-whipped leather tents, they would often hear the SNAP! of nearby ice-cracks splitting open. Sometimes they heard a thundering boom echoing from distant cliffs as the ice-field shook. Some mornings, men would step out of a tent to see that a new ice-crack had yawned open nearby.

  They all wore back-harnesses to pull their heavy sleds. Each man was also roped to the men in front and behind.

  Scouts led the way, probing the surface ahead with the long-handled hooks. In good weather, it was usually easy to see any cracks hidden by snow. The snow looked slightly greyish over solid ice and more blue over hidden cracks. In darkness or fog or when snow was falling, the cracks were hard to see. The safest way to move was by stabbing the snow ahead for hidden cracks at each step.

  When a crack was found, Halfdan would decide whether to find a way around or jump across. Before jumping across a crack, each fighter would throw across their sled and pack and weapons. After checking the ropes attached to the man in front of him and to the man behind him, the fighter would hop over the blue gap. Occasionally, one would stumble in and have to be pulled out.

  By the eleventh day, four fighters had died of injuries or sickness. Each body was put into a scraped hole in the ice, along with weapons. After a chanted prayer, they were covered with ice-chips.

  Almost everybody was hurt or sick. The cold wind never stopped its screaming. Gritty snow blasted into eyes. Frost-bite ate some of their toes.

  Haki lost a toe.

  One night, sleeping in a little tent he shared with Atli, Halfdan awoke to the sound of laughter outside the tent. Grabbing his ice-hook, Halfdan went outside. In the darkness, a man waited. He wore a long red-silk gown, and thick silver bracelets. His thick beard hung under a cruel, sneering face. It was King Njal! One of King Njal's hands was empty; the other held the severed head of King Lambi by the beard, so it hung upside-down. King Lambi's head was not fire-burned or damaged; in fact, it seemed alive. King Lambi's face grimaced with intense emotions; he was trying to speak. King Njal barked at Halfdan, "Coward!" So Halfdan lifted his ice-hook overhead and tried to hit King Njal with it. The foe-ruler laughed, dodging the swipe of the bent and sharpened iron at the shaft-end. Halfdan swung it again and missed again. Laughing, King Njal turned and ran away. Halfdan chased him through the cluster of silent tents. King Njal led him away from the tents, finally stopping on a flat patch of glacier-snow. Stars and comets blazed overhead. Halfdan swung the ice-hook. King Njal grabbed it with his free hand. With an effortless-looking twist of his wrist, King Njal snapped the wooden shaft. The iron hook and some of the broken shaft was held in one of King Njal's hands, while King Lambi's animated head hung from the other. King Njal sneered, "How are you going to hurt me now, black troll?" Without thought, Halfdan said, "I don't need to hurt you — you are already hurt." King Njal looked down at his leg. On his left thigh, the wool of his pant-leg started to bulge. Something swelled inside the pant-leg, growing and growing. The bulge burst, and the heads of dozens of poisonous snakes twisted out. The long brown snakes growing from the leg started biting at King Njal's body — one reaching high enough to sink its fangs into King Njal's tongue. King Njal tried to strike the snake-heads with the end of Halfdan's ice-hook, but the vipers were too many and too strong. They lashed around as they bit him again and again. King Njal dropped King Lambi's head to the dark snow. King Njal fell to his knees, loudly panting. The reptile-reek of the snakes was disgusting. King Njal's eyes bulged from his grimacing, pain-twisted face. Then, still trying to hurt the snakes with the ice-hook, he vanished. Only King Lambi's head remained. Halfdan picked it up. It was still trying to talk. Halfdan lifted it close to his ear, straining to hear the weak whispers from the moving lips. With effort, Halfdan could hear the faint words. King Lambi was saying, "Nothing," over and over. "Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing," the head babbled, its eyes rolling around. "Nothing!" Halfdan awoke, in his tent, to the sound of Atli snoring beside him. A dream. What had it meant? He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. In the morning, Halfdan found that the shaft of his ice-hook was broken, and its iron tip was missing, just as in the dream. Halfdan told Atli about it. Atli suspected magic.

  In the afternoon of the twelfth day, everybody had taken off their skis and put on bone boot-grips to walk on a narrow strip of flat ice between an ice-wall on one side and a deep drop on the other. The track was steep and narrow and slippery. It was hard for even a healthy man to keep on his feet. A small stumble would usually lead to a slide into the ice-valley, until being caught by a rope. Every time a man fell, it caused danger and delay.

  Boots stomped the snow on the trail into dry grainy slush. When a fighter stumbled and tried to stand, he often fell back down again.

  Sometimes a sled would fall off the side of the trail. Each falling sled would yank a roped fighter after it, down into the deep ice-canyon. It was hard and scary work to pull a dangling man and sled back up.

  One time, a rope broke. The Fjordane-man fell to the bottom. His body looked tiny. A red stain spread around him on the jagged glacier.

  Halfdan halted the army for prayers, before the dangerous trek continued.

  On top of an ice-r
idge, they saw that the ice-field was starting to slope down. Far ahead was a gap in the range of massive, bare-rock mountains. Through the gap, the sight of evergreen forest and fjord-water.

  The lower parts of the glacier was strewn with scattered bits of rock. They started to occasionally see the white antlers and bones of reindeer. Occasional puddles of liquid water.

  As the filthy and exhausted army trudged downhill from the ice-cap, there were more and more rocks to avoid. Brown plant-stems stuck out from the sun-pocked snow. They crossed a place where wind had blown the snow off the bare rock. After sleeping and skiing and walking on ice for twelve days, the rock felt strangely solid underfoot.

  Soon, they were skiing through low bushes and thin trees.

  As they approached the town of Sogndal — capital of the kingdom of Sogn — they met the foe, waiting for them on the far shore of a frozen river, where the river curved in a "C"-shape. Snow-burdened pines and spruces and an occasional oak-tree lined both sides of the river. The river-ice was bare in some places, covered with drifting snow in others.

  Snow was falling.

  Archers started the battle. Each Eid archer stood on the shore of the frozen river by a sharpened wood stake stuck into the ground to stop charging horses. These recruits had bundles of arrows stuck tip-down into the snow, close to hand.

  As arrows started flying through the snow-storm, whistling across the rivers in both directions, Halfdan and his crowd of fighters jumped from the shore to the river-ice and started running behind raised shields towards the other side. Many fighters slipped where the wind had blown the snow away. Other Fjordane-men fell, clutching arrow-shafts, staying down.

  The waiting foe rhythmically pounded their weapons on their shields. The river-ice shook. Snow swirled down. Bronze war-horns blew!

  Fjordane arrows made gaps in the Sogn shield-wall. Most of the Sogn-men had to hide their faces behind their shields to block the stinging bits of wood.

  Fighters on both sides used shield-straps to support most of the weight of their heavy shields until they got close to the fighting. Then they would shrug off the shoulder-strap and use their left arm to carry and swing the shield.