Viking Dead

by Toby Venables

  Privately, many scoffed at him for wasting such precious commodities. Others simply laughed at his ways. Once, when he was too young to know better, Atli had asked his father if it wouldn't be a good thing for his mother to come back. Wasn't that what they all wanted? A weird terror burned in his father's eyes. "Try to understand," he said, his voice trembling. "It is not they who come back, but something else. Something terrible." His eyes widened. He spoke in a hoarse whisper, as if afraid of being overheard. "You would wish to see her again. You would welcome her in when she came knocking at night. But it would not be the mother you knew. Imagine a lumbering, soulless mockery - heavy with the stench of decay, her body bloated, distorted, monstrous in proportion, her heart empty of feeling, her head a foetid shell, her eyes dead as a fish's, her only emotion a blind envy for the living whose flesh she is driven to devour, crunching the bones, drinking the blood in great gobbets..."

  The image haunted Atli's nightmares for years.

  Then, in his eleventh year, he had come to his current realisation. It was fear, not anger, that drove his father. And that, ultimately, was why he hated him. It was not because he was a bully, (not only was he bigger than Atli was, but bigger than most of the men in the village), nor because he thrashed him on a regular basis. He hated him because he was a coward. Atli knew that he bore the brunt of the man's frustrations only because he could not offer any resistance. His father beat him not just because of what he did or didn't do, but because of all the other people and things in life that he was too afraid to confront - chief among them, Atli had begun to suspect, himself. His own weakness. The weakness to which the father knew his son's eyes were no longer oblivious. The weakness which Atli doggedly refused to inherit.

  He trudged to the edge of the river and stared momentarily at his own indistinct reflection in the water, then kicked another pebble and watched the ripples break it apart.

  Vaguely he wondered what was going on back at the village. Not long ago there had been a distant clamour of shouting from that way - some sort of argument that was best avoided, probably. Recently, a fight had broken out over a pig which had wandered into a neighbour's house and eaten a cabbage that had been cut for dinner. Bera, the woman of the house, had demanded compensation for her loss. Yngvar, the pig-owner, had countered by accusing Bera of trying to steal his pig. After a lot of shouting, during which Bera had cracked Yngvar across the temple with a wooden ladle, it ended with a rather fearful Yngvar conceding that his pig had probably wandered of its own accord and Bera accepting a quantity of pig dung - some of which had already been deposited in her house - in payment for the cabbage. Such were the heady thrills of farm life.

  Now, Atli could see there was also a thick column of dark smoke coming from that direction. Perhaps they weren't so desperate for his kindling after all. Gripping his bundle under one arm he crouched down to pick up a smooth, wet pebble, and hurled it at the water. It was swallowed instantly with a loud plop. He screwed up his face in frustration, grabbed another, flatter stone and, crouching lower this time, aimed it at a shallow angle. It skipped once, twice, three times.

  Good. But he knew he could do better. Seven was his record. It needed a certain kind of stone, though. His eyes darted about the shore by his feet, among the wet pebbles and grit and occasional patches of green weed that waved in the lapping water. A perfect stone caught his eye - nicely smooth and flat, with a notch in its edge for his forefinger. He snatched it up, aimed, and let his arm sway back and forth for a moment, rehearsing the arc of the throw. Then... Snap! Cracking his whole body like a whip, he let the stone fly. He knew from the moment it left him that it was a perfect throw. The shimmering stone skipped across the smooth water, dipping like a dragonfly, weightless - three, four, five - until finally enveloped by the fog. In the stillness of the afternoon he could still hear its sound: six, seven, eight, nine... ten?

  That couldn't be right. Yet still it kept going. He'd lost count, but stood, holding his breath, ears on stalks. He could still hear the surface of the water being broken. A fish? No. A steady rhythm. He'd swear to it. But different now. Surely the fog must be playing tricks? No, there was definitely something. Another sound, that had at some point merged with the first. Slow and steady. And not receding, but coming closer.

  Atli fought against the images of wraiths and phantoms that suddenly flooded his mind. His father had warned him the fog brought terrible things. It was the cold breath of Niflheim - of Hel itself. Who knew what horrors travelled within it? Atli got a grip of himself. Such things were not real - or, if they were, they were not part of his world.

  But the sound kept coming all the same.

  A sequence, continually repeating, echoing weirdly in the dull air. A splash of water. A hollow clunk, like wood against wood - but somehow multiplied. A creak. Then again. Splash. Clunk. Creak. Over and over. He bit his lip, frowning hard, straining to penetrate the grey murk. He knew this sound - but couldn't place it. It grew closer. His mind raced. The hairs on his neck prickled in slow recognition. Involuntarily, he began to take slow steps back from the water.

  Then a great shape loomed out of the fog.

  The head and neck of a dragon.

  Gliding straight at him in a moment of surreal silence, the dragon's huge bulk bit into the grit and pebbles of the shore and drove part way up the bank with a crunching of wood, stone and water before coming to rest just yards from Atli's astonished face. He was dimly aware of the loose bundle of twigs falling one by one from his enfeebled hands. High up and to the left, a figure emerged from nowhere and landed heavily on the rocks and shingle. A tall man, broad-shouldered, beardless, but spiked with blond stubble, ice-blue eyes glinting behind the eye-guards of a steel helm.

  Run, said a voice in Atli's head. Run as fast as you can. But he could not move.

  The man took three steps towards him - mail-coated, rings shimmering in the feeble light, circular shield strapped to his back, gold-hilted sword drawn and ready - so close that Atli could make out the pattern-welding on the gleaming blade. A hint of a smile flickered across the man's face, his sword point hovering barely an arm's length from Atli's chest.

  Another figure - a giant of a man - heaved itself over the right side of the ship, making the ground shudder as his feet sunk into shore. This one was equipped much like the first, but for his simpler helm whose rim rested on his heavy brow, and the dew-damp fur of some grey creature wrapped across his shoulders and tucked into a wide leather belt. Dark, deep-set eyes peered from amongst unruly black hair and beard, fixed intently on the boy. He spat in his palms, and, holding Atli's gaze, reached over his left shoulder and drew forth a broad-bladed axe.

  Behind him, another man landed on the shore. And another...

  One by one they spilled over the sides and crunched and splashed down onto the riverbank - twenty, thirty, more - until the grey stone beach and misty shallows around the dragon's oaken hull were filled with men, some trudging shoreward from the deeper water, emerging from the fog like ghosts - grim-faced, steel-helmed, girt with hide and mail, until, finally, it seemed the whole river's edge shimmered with the glint of weapons.

  Though he had never seen such a thing in his whole life, Atli recognised them instantly.

  Not ghosts.

  Worse.

  Vikingr.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE CREW OF THE HRAFN

  Bjólf Erlingsson took another step towards the boy, eyes fixed on him, sword steady. He gave a nod towards the ground. "You dropped your sticks, little man."

  A rumbling laugh ran through the assembled men as the lad crouched and began to gather up the scattered firewood. Bjólf watched the farm boy with amusement as he tied up his bundle - stick-thin legs and crude, ill-fitting clothes, no doubt cut from the roughest, itchiest, shittiest blanket in the place; the blanket even the dogs rejected. The look of it, the smell of it... It all seemed so familiar. It was at times like this he was reminded exactly why he'd left that life behind all those years ago. Tru
e, the plundered cottons and silks to which he had since become accustomed may have meant him facing danger and death on a daily basis, but it seemed a fair trade. Hel, how those bloody blankets had itched!

  "Are you from the village?" he demanded. The boy nodded hastily, jumping at the sound of the man's voice. Bjólf rested his sword casually over his shoulder - looking momentarily like a wayfarer with his bundle of belongings - and scanned the treeline ahead, taking note of the path that disappeared into the wood. He nodded towards it. "How far?"

  "Six hundred paces..." In spite of his obvious efforts, his voice sounded thin and reedy.

  Gunnar Black-Beard shifted his axe from one hand to the other. "Hm. The boy can count."

  Fisherman, thought Bjólf. Counts the fish for his father. He knew all about that. Most of his men knew it, in one way or another. And those who denied it most perhaps knew it keenest of all. Bjólf turned back to the lad. "You have animals there? Food? Valuables?"

  "Animals... and food. Not the other."

  "We'll have to make do with that," sighed Gunnar.

  Godwin snorted dismissively, resting his hands and chin on his massive axe. "Everywhere the same. You'd think there was no decent treasure left. How's a man to make a living?" A few of the men muttered at his words.

  "Have I ever let you down, Godwin?" Bjólf shot back. He didn't give him a chance to answer, but turned to the boy again.

  "Any weapons there?"

  He shook his head.

  "Then we go," said Bjólf. And with that he made a sudden move towards the boy, his sword raised threateningly over his shoulder.

  I'm dead, thought Atli. I've told him what he needs, and now he's going to kill me.

  In the moment that followed, he involuntarily pictured the heavy blade slashing downward and across in one movement, the catastrophic moment of contact stretched out into a slow, dream-like sequence - the sword's edge striking his left shoulder, parting the flesh, shattering the bone and not stopping until it had come clean through to the opposite side of his chest, severing his head, shoulder and right arm in one continuous action.

  Curiously, it was not fear that took hold of him in that weirdly suspended moment, but a kind of anger. With tears suddenly stinging his eyes, he inwardly cursed his own inability to act - cursed this last, lost opportunity - and wondered abstractly whether he would remain conscious long enough to gaze up at his own lopsided, headless corpse, its insides still pumping, and see it sway and fall.

  Without warning, the beardless warrior thrust out his left hand, ruffled his hair with a gruffly dismissive laugh, and gave a nod to the giant alongside him. Then, to Atli's great surprise, the entire party of men began to move rapidly up the shore, the ring of metal against metal filling the damp air. Slowly, the realisation dawned that the man had no intention of spilling Atli's blood on the dull, grey stones of that lonely beach. There was, as far as Atli was concerned, a far more terrible fate in store.

  He was going to ignore him.

  Atli couldn't stand it. With a mixture of anger and desperation, he whirled around to the rapidly receding throng and called out: "I could lead you!"

  As one, the group stopped. The captain turned and stared at him. There was a chuckle and a murmur among the men. "And why would you do that?"

  Atli felt his face flush red. He strove to find an answer, but under the hard stares, no words came. Then one among them spoke up - his voice little more than a hoarse whisper, his words clipped and strange. The men fell silent at the sound of it.

  "My people tell a story of a boy who offered to lead raiders to his village..." The owner of the voice stepped forward, drawing a long, curved knife from a fringed leather sheath on his belt. His general shape was unremarkable - a little shorter in stature than the majority of the men, perhaps - yet his appearance was unlike anything Atli had encountered; his clothes and cap made of skins from no animal Atli had ever seen, and his dark body-armour - like the segmented carapace of a cockroach - formed from toughened strips of hide sewn together in wide bands. The man's hair was dark, his nose upturned, his hairless face broad and flat with skin the colour of beeswax. The wide eyes that now bored into him seemed permanently narrowed, as if in the glare of the sun, and, as the figure loomed closer, the complexion that had appeared smooth from a distance revealed itself to be so covered with spidery creases that Atli could not honestly tell if the man was twenty summers old or a hundred. Something in his otherworldly aspect caused Atli to shudder. As the thin blade swayed near the boy's pale, exposed neck, the man bore his teeth in a strange smile. "He led them to their deaths..." The breath stopped in Atli's throat as if it were held in the man's fist.

  "Enough!" called the captain, giving an abrupt flick of his head. Wide-Face acknowledged it with a sly grin and turned slowly away, silently sheathing his blade. Atli, suddenly able to breathe again, gasped, his head swimming.

  The beardless warrior stared at the boy for a moment, his eyes seeming to narrow behind his eye-guards, then turned back to his companion. He didn't need to speak. They'd known each other too long for that.

  "Personally, I'd sooner have him where I can see him," said the giant, shrugging.

  The captain nodded slowly, then made a sudden, exaggerated half bow, and extended his arm dramatically towards the woods as he did so. An invitation. Atli stared at him for a moment, incredulously. "Lead on, little man."

  At their captain's gesture, the men parted. It was true. He really meant for him to lead them. Atli stumbled nervously past the silent ranks, his bundle of sticks still tucked under his arm - all eyes again upon him. As he advanced, he was now able to take in the grim array of figures for the first time; no longer the shadowy, grey shapes that had emerged from the fog, but distinct, real. Faces that were scarred and weatherbeaten and spoke not only of years lived, but of miles travelled, of things seen, of battles fought. All men who worked the earth and the sea were hardened to life, with muscles like twisted rope and faces carved from aged applewood - but these had something else, something that Atli had not seen.

  They had no fear.

  Those closest now stood out to him, startling in their detail. There was, of course, Long-Axe - the one they called Godwin - bare-chinned and impressively moustached, his blackened helm with long bronzed nasal and cheek-guards, and his mail coat almost to his knees; and the unnerving Wide-Face, the ageless one, dressed head to foot in animal hides, still fingering his knife, his eyes glinting darkly. There was Curved-Sword - a slender, fine-featured man in long robes and armoured hauberk like the scales of a fish, his helm pointed, his short hair black, his skin dark, his sword long and thin and curved like a scythe, and near him - in utter contrast - One-Ear, wearing quilted body armour reinforced with leather and no helm at all, his face and head shaved to stubble, his lips scarred, his shield rim battered, his spear notched, and his left ear missing its top third, looking for all the world as if someone had taken a bite out of him. Opposite them, Red-Hair, his rust-red mane and beard standing out sharply against his thick cape of green wool, clasped with an ornate bronze brooch, his helm and breastplate of dark, hardened leather, a spiked mace slung over his shoulder, and near him, Two-Axe, barely taller than Atli, but at least three times as wide and built like an ox, his face entirely obscured by a masked grimmhelm, his armour of tarnished metal plates joined with leather thongs, and, unlike all the others, no shield - just a heavy axe hanging from each large, calloused hand. And, perhaps weirdest of all, there was Grey-Beard, a gaunt figure of a man in heavy, brown, hooded robes, simple conical helm on his head, from his belt hanging not only his sword but such a variety of knives as Atli had never seen in one place, in his hands a long ash spear, in his face a dark, puckered hole where one of his eyes should be - a vision, it seemed to Atli, of Odin made flesh.

  They formed a terrifying company. Yet, as Atli walked, a confidence grew in him - increasing with each step. They trust me, he thought. I have their respect... It was the first time he had inspired such a thing in any man
, let alone such men as these. But as he reached the head of the troop, there was a sound of movement immediately behind him. Before he had time to react, he felt something whip around his neck and pull tight. Clawing at it, he turned in shock.

  With his free hand, the captain was twisting the decorated scabbard of his sword, from which issued a thin, looped leather strap - the baldric from which both sword and scabbard, until recently, had hung - now taut like a ship's rope.

  Atli was tethered like a dog.

  "My apologies," the man said with a smile. "But you know these woods, and doubtless can run a good deal faster than us in your attire..." The men laughed once again, and once again Atli felt the blood rush to his face. "Now, lead on. Where you go, we follow."

  And with that, he gave the strap a sharp flick. "Hyah!"

  Atli staggered forward in a daze, his mind only now starting to grasp the grim reality of what was about to happen.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE VILLAGE AT TWO-RIVERS

  As the company moved swiftly up the beach toward the trees, Atli looked back to the river. The swirling mist was creeping onto the shore now. From it, the tall slender prow of the longship stood like a lonely sentinel.