by Mark Coakley
Most of Halfdans full-time fighters held three light throwing-spears in the same hand they used for their shields. When they got near the foe shield-wall, they slowed to throw these throwing-spears forward. Some of these stabbed into the foe-shields and some bounced away. Some throwing-spears missed the shields and poked into a man.
The foe threw spears too.
When the attackers had almost reached the foe shield-wall, the archers on both sides stopped shooting.
Haki — not carrying a shield, a bear-skin fur covering his huge shoulders — was the first to reach the foe's shield-wall. He swung his ax with power, roaring.
The wood and iron and flesh of Halfdan's ragged shield-wall hit hard with a hammering noise into the Sogn army's shield-wall; the ice under-boot shook, as the iron-bristling battle-walls grinded at each other.
Men tried to keep their shields upright and overlapping those on either side.
Spear-fighters held their long spikes overhead and jabbed forward over shield-tops at faces. Sometimes a spear-fighter would duck down to stab under the shields at boots and knees.
Sword-fighters shoved their shields forward and from side to side. When a foe's shield had been pushed aside, the sword-man would stab forward through the narrow gap between the shields. Sword-men also tried to chop at the hands and the spear-shafts of spear-fighters.
Swords and spears rattled on shields in the crowded shove-battling after the first fierce contact. Men leaned into their shields, feeling the hands of other fighter on their backs, pushing, as those at the front tried to heave their shields forward.
Haki struck down many, and stayed unhurt. Nothing touched him. Other Fjordane-men, seeing Haki's luck, followed him with roars that imitated his. (Haki's way of roaring was itself an imitation, of a bear.)
Haki's dripping ax chopped a path through legs and arms and backs, the rest of the Fjordane-army following him towards the brown river-bank of frozen mud.
Sogn spear-men charged through the falling snow at Haki. Haki danced around spear-tips and axed them both down. His Eid-forged weapon mowed through crowds of unlucky Sogn-men towards the foe's banner. It was marked with a picture of a red-tongued wolf's face.
Halfdan fought bravely in the heart of the shield-clash. He shoved forward with boots scrabbling for grip on the gritty trampled snow over slick ice, his sword stabbing at the foe shield-wall from beside his arrow-filled shield.
Men shouted insults, threats, prayers.
Others made wordless howls as they tried to kill strangers.
The smells from torn, steaming bodies.
Snow swirled in the south wind. It drifted down onto fighters and the dead, soon lightly covering the cooling dead.
For a long time, heavy and sharp iron hacked and clanged and men killed and they died. Metal-on-metal blows made clanging rackets and sometimes a shower of brilliant orange sparks. The crunchy slush turned red. The Sogn shield-wall started to stagger backwards, their bruised and sweaty faces looking grim. They were losing.
Now, let us tell of what happened in the battle to a young recruit called Venn the Gentle, a farmer from Stryn. This man had wept at the end of the wet training, because the stabbed recruit left behind on the snow, Torvald, had been his older brother. He was big and strong but, like his brother, he hated violence. Despite his normally-peaceful character, Venn hated Halfdan. During the harsh trek across the glacier, Venn had ached for revenge.
As the battle approached, and the Fjordane army skied through dim forest, Venn thought of Torvald and wondered how his parents had reacted to the news.
When he got to the top of the snow-bank over the river-bank, an officer yelled into Venn's dreamy face, "Wake up! Get your skis off and jump!"
Venn followed the mass of other fighters dropping onto the snow-sheeted ice.
As the armed mob shuffled across the ice, the strongest fighters pushed to the front, while weaker or timid men drifted towards the rear. Venn was far at the back, and slowed even more when arrows started tapping his shield. Around him, Venn saw arrows appearing in the ice and an occasional Fjordane-man.
Venn was so scared that he forgot to throw the throwing-spears. He was still clutching them when he found himself crammed and gasping for breath in the shoving crowd behind the front line and pushed forwards by hands on his back. The top-edge of Venn's shield slammed back onto his bearded chin. He dropped his throwing-spears. His left hand now only held the strap of his shield. It was too crowded for Venn to even lift the long stabbing-spear in his right hand, never mind using it. Even if he could raise the awkward stick, there were too many Fjordane-men between him and the closest foe for him to actually reach one. Venn tried to see ahead through the staggering crowd of iron-bristling men. Over the shields, Venn saw glimpses of strangers' bearded faces glaring with hate.
A red-faced Fjordane officer shouted at Venn, "Push! Push the man in front of you! Push!"
Venn started pushing the back of a man who was pushing a man who was pushing a man who was fighting at the front of the shield-wall.
Venn kept his eyes shut and pushed. He tried to stay to the rear of the shield-wall, but not so far back that he was at risk from arrows and throwing-spears. He felt sick. He had not used his spear yet. He had not tried to.
He saw dead men of both armies, sprawled on red river-ice.
Venn slipped on a piece of flesh on the snow, almost falling. He saw a piece of lung by his boots.
Venn tasted his own tears.
For some reason, the shield-wall battle split into two separate fights with an almost-empty gap in between. Venn found himself standing almost alone in the gap, with no Fjordane-fighters between himself and the Sogn camp. Two Sogn sword-men behind wolf-painted shields were also in the gap. They grinned as they strode fast towards solitary Venn. Venn whimpered and looked to each side. Every nearby Fjordane-man was too busy fighting to be likely to help him.
When the two sword-men got close to him, Venn whimpered behind his trembling shield and tried to jab his spear forward.
One of the veteran Sogn-men chopped his sword at its shaft, breaking it.
Venn dropped the rest of the spear-shaft and said, "I surrender!"
Both enemies said, "Ha!"
They lunged at him.
As they did, a spear plunged into the side of one of them. The foe gasped and fell to the blood-sprayed ice, groaning and clutching the spear.
Halfdan followed his spear-throw with a sword-charge at the other foe threatening Venn. Halfdan hacked and hacked at the desperately-defending Sogn-man.
Halfdan barked, "Stab this man!"
Venn blinked.
Halfdan said, "You! Help me!" Halfdan was hurt on his shoulder and face and back. His sword-arm was tired and his shield was almost cracked in two. He shoved the rattling pieces of the shield into the Sogn-man's shield and blocked the foe's sword-stab with the blade of his Eid-forged sword.
Venn lifted his spear and wailed a high wordless cry as he stumbled past Halfdan's back to stab at the foe. Venn's spear-tip poked into the foe's shoulder.
"Good!" Halfdan said.
The Sogn-man dropped his spear and his shield lowered.
Halfdan barked at Venn, "Finish him!"
Venn hesitated.
Halfdan said, "Now!"
Venn snarled and lunged, poking his spear into the foe's belly.
The foe clutched at the spear-shaft, slowly kneeling to the red snow.
Halfdan swung his sword up, swung it down. The foe's head spun to the river-ice under twin sprays of blood. The headless kneeling body collapsed.
Halfdan saw the almost-undefended camp of the foe ahead, and the taunting banner, and he ran forward with a crazed yell.
Venn yelped, "My lord! Do not leave me!"
Venn started running after his whooping war-chief, then tripped over the headless body and fell onto the snow, landing by the bodiless head.
He crawled towards the closest pile of drift-snow.
Later, as the battle kept on
raging, Venn was still hiding there. He stank of his fear-piss.
When he finally raised his head from the snow-pile to look around, he saw that the battle had moved away. The fighting was now mainly on the far shore, at the bottom of a forest-covered hill.
Venn dropped his head back down. He started sobbing and fell to his side on the crunchy snow. Pulling legs to chest and pushing hands over his face, Venn trembled and moaned, "Torvald," his executed brother's name, again and again.
The Fjordane shield-wall soon shattered the Sogn shield-wall at the bottom of the little hill. On a tree-trunk by the top of the hill, the wolf-face banner of Sogn attracted the glory-hungry Fjordane-men.
Halfdan followed Haki's whooping, ax-swinging charge uphill through the swirling snowfall. Halfdan tried to protect Haki as the berserker cleared a path through the foes with a chipped, unstoppable ax.
Somebody threw a spear at Haki, who caught it in mid-air with one hand, then threw it back. The spear tore right through its owner's torso, then into a tree-trunk; the dead Sogn-fighter hung limply from his spear stuck in the tree.
Another foe jabbed a spear at Haki's belly. Haki jumped, spreading his legs over the spear-tip, then dropped down onto the spear-shaft, knocking it out of the foe's hands.
Haki swung his ax back over his head, killing a foe behind him, then swung it forward, chopping through the helmet and skull and jaw of another foe, scattering teeth all around.
Both of Haki's arms were bloody to the shoulder.
None of the gore was his.
Some Sogn-fighters started fleeing away over the hill-top and south.
"It is all over!" some shouted.
Near the top of the hill, Haki found a dead young man in very expensive-looking clothes and armour. The body had an arrow stuck deep in the jaw.
Haki kicked the body and shouted, "This must have been their leader! I bet it's Egil!" He ripped down the wolf-face banner hanging above the body. He snarled, "Death to Sogn! Death to everybody!" He spat out a mouthful of pink spit onto the banner. Then he tossed it aside and went back to crazed violence.
The last of the Sogn army now turned and tried to get away. Tossing aside weapons and helmets and armour and pride as they fled. Some climbed trees. Archers found them, brought them back to earth.
Haki screamed, "I can't be killed, you doomed losers!" as he chased panicked foes into the dim evergreen forest.
Fjordane won the battle.
And the war.
(Local Sogn-folk soon re-named the river "Battle River." It's still called that, even to this day, in memory of Halfdan's famous victory.)
Despite Haki's efforts, some of the hurt or surrendered foes were alive. Halfdan and Atli questioned the prisoners and got some news.
The fancy-clothed body, that Haki had found under the foe's banner with an arrow through the jaw, had been King Njal's younger son, Bjaaland the Proud.
King Njal's older son, Egil the Beard-Puller, had run away from the battle as soon as it was obvious that the Sogn forces were losing. As he had scrambled up from the river-ice to the frozen mud of the shore, a spear thrown by a Fjordane-fighter had hit Egil in a buttock. Egil had fled into the forest with a bleeding ass.
King Njal had died a few days ago, in Sogndal, from his infected leg. The tooth-scratch from the fire-blackened skull had slowly, painfully killed him. King Lambi had revenged his own death!
Atli said, "Fate is strange."
Halfdan said, "What do we do now?"
"I suggest we do the same here as we are doing in Fjordane," Atli said. "Njal is dead, one of his sons is dead too and his cowardly other son is probably in Sweden by now. The Sogn government is gone. You need to rule this kingdom as a war-chief until a king is elected. And at election-time, if you put yourself forward, you can be elected king of both here and Fjordane. If you want that. Unite the two kingdoms, under your rule."
"Could I really be elected?"
Atli shrugged. "The nobles will complain, each of them thinking he has a better right to be king than you. But the nobles are divided and don't have many fighters. As long as you rule well for the next few months, the nobles are not likely to be able to agree on single candidate or to stay united behind him."
"I don't think that I want to be a king. I'm a fighter and a poet, that's all."
"You don't have to decide or declare anything now. Rule Sogn and Fjordane well until it's near election-time, then decide if you want to try to become king."
"Fine."
The town of Sogndal fell to the Fjordane army without a fight.
"Where is he?" Halfdan said.
"Where is who?" a Sogn-man said.
"Njal!"
"He is dead."
"Where?"
King Njal's huge burial-mound of frozen dirt was twice as tall as a man and longer than a whale. Halfdan ordered slaves to build a huge fire on it. When the fire had burned long enough to thaw the mound, Halfdan ordered the slaves to put out the fire and "dig him out." It took the group of Sogn-slaves most of the night to reach King Njal's body. "Be careful," Halfdan said. "I don't want him to fall apart." King Njal's body had been buried in a war-ship. The body was sitting on a tall, decorated chair on the buried ship's deck. Also found inside the burial-mound were piles of furniture and treasure and a sacrificed slave-girl. "All I want is Njal's body," Halfdan said, standing on the lip of the open grave above the slaves digging inside. "Leave everything else down there. Let the slave-girl sleep in peace." King Njal's body was carefully dragged up from the broken grave. It was pale grey and stiff and — a week after burial — already rotting. It was wrapped in a red silk gown, which was ripped in parts by the shovels of the sweating slaves. King Njal's grimacing, yellow-bearded face showed unbearable pain. Held clutched in King Njal's hands was an iron ice-hook with a splintered wood shaft — the one that had disappeared in the dream on the glacier! They questioned a Sogn-man — learning that the night of Halfdan's strange dream had been the night of King Njal's death!
"So it was his ghost I fought," Halfdan said, holding the broken piece of ice-hook and staring at it with wonder.
Atli said, "I knew magic was involved."
Halfdan said, "King Njal predicted what I was going to do." He looked down at the foul, reeking corpse sprawled on dirty snow. He kicked its grey face. "But Njal wasn't strong enough to stop fate."
"Nobody is."
Halfdan pulled the silk wrapping away from the body's left leg. There was a sudden sickening smell, as they looked at the deep hole that disease-demons had chewed from King Njal's thigh; now filled with scabs and crusty pus and dozens of squirming white maggots.
"Look what King Lambi did," Halfdan said, pleased.
King Njal's body was thrown into a pen with seven pigs. They refused to eat it at first. But when the pigs were denied their regular feeding, the hungry beasts changed their minds. They ate all of King Njal except the skeleton, breaking open the larger bones to lick out marrow.
Slaves burned the bones, dumped the ashes in an out-house.
Then the king-fed pigs were killed. Their bodies were tossed into the hole in the burial-mound. The hole in the grave was filled in again with dirt. The anonymous slave-girl and the seven king-fed pigs would sleep together in the huge grave built for King Njal — and they continue to sleep there, undisturbed, even to this day.
Atli said, "Why are you doing this?"
Halfdan could not explain, other than by saying, "I had to do something. I couldn't let his ghost stay in there, safe, laughing at me! No, can't allow that."
"You need rest," Atli said.
"Later."
Halfdan, very drunk, startled the shovel-carrying slaves when he raised his face to the cloudy night-sky to yell, "Lambi! Is that enough? Are you proud of me? Is it finished? Is that enough revenge? Am I free now?"
There was no answer.
Halfdan, drinking constantly, had Atli organize the occupation of the defeated kingdom. Halfdan had ordered a "no looting, no rape" policy, "to giv
e the Sogn-folk no reason to rebel against us". Again and again, Atli had to try to discipline Haki for forbidden acts involving Sogn's treasures or girls.
Halfdan was usually drunk and distracted. He complained about missing Yngvild and Siv. He sent messengers to them and to his relatives in Os, inviting them to visit Sogn as soon as the winter ice-bergs melted and sailing was safer. Halfdan, bored and lonely, spent much time boozing and making poems with disreputable local characters in King Njal's impressive hall. The Sogn-hall looked much like King Lambi's, with long feasting-tables and a long fire-place stretching from the heavy, oak-wood front doors to the platform at the other end for the king's table. Like in King Lambi's hall, the heads of King Njal's defeated foes sat on shelves on the ceiling-posts.
(King Lambi's head was not there among them; after the tooth-scratch, King Njal had ordered the black, grinning skull tied to a rock and dumped into Eid's fjord. The head of King Lambi rests on the sea-floor and plays no more part in this saga.)
Most nights, as the winter in Sogndal slowly passed, Halfdan sat in the Sogn-hall on King Njal's throne — which had two posts rising from the back, each carved and painted to look like Tor's laughing face — chanting poems with new friends and guzzling imported wine until very late.
What now?
Chapter 20
INTERVIEW WITH THE BISHOP *
[Complete and unedited transcript of interview between Bishop Higbold of Bambury and Sister Leoba of Melrose, April 17, 793.]
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Sister Leoba of Melrose? Please come in. Yes.
SISTER LEOBA: [Unintelligible.]
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Please come in. We are Bishop Higbold.
SISTER LEOBA: [Unintelligible.]
BISHOP HIGBOLD: Please speak louder, we cannot understand.
SISTER LEOBA: I can't see much. My eyes hurt. The light hurts after so long in the dark. Are we alone, Your Reverence?
BISHOP HIGBOLD: We are with our scribe, Brother Ecgfrith, who will write down what that we say this morning. Both of us are sworn to confidentiality. This interview is as confidential as a confessional. Sit on the other side of this desk, please. You can blow that candle out, if the light bothers your eyes.