by C. R. May
Erik kissed the blade, throwing his brother a wink as he wiped Svasi’s blood from his beard with the back of his sleeve. ‘She is a hard bitch, but she knows her work.’
A man had retrieved the head of the king and was busying himself fixing the grim trophy to the point of its own war banner. Moments later he was at Erik’s side, and the cry of triumph rolled around the battlefield once again as it was raised alongside Erik’s own. Erik’s guard still flanked him despite the overwhelming victory, and he was pleased to see their eyes quartering the field, searching out any sign of danger; aware that even a wounded man or lone bowman could still snatch disaster from the very jaws of their success. Together they walked the few feet to the top of the mound and looked away to the East. The last remnants of the beaten army were nearing the town gates, the same portal they had marched through to expected victory only a short time before. Ragnar Jarl had drawn up out of bowshot of the men on the walls and his men were yapping at the heels of the beaten Finns, herding them like so many sheep lest they stop to think and decide to make a last stand. Despite the arrival of the other ships and their crews, the Vikings were spread out over a large area; a determined counterattack spurred on by the watching women and children lining the walls could easily cause them unnecessary casualties. The day was won, and Erik found that he approved of the wisdom of his jarl.
A cough sounded at his elbow, and Erik looked down to find one of Skipper Alf’s men waiting for permission to speak. Erik shot him a grin as the euphoria of the moment swept him up, despite the nagging voice at the back of his mind which was trying to warn him that all was not as well as it had seemed a moment before. ‘Hall!’ he said at the sight of the man’s pinched expression. ‘Cheer up. We won the day!’
Hall grimaced, but forced a smile. ‘Congratulations lord, no man in the army ever entertained the thought that you would fail to lead us to victory.’
Erik caught the mood at last, and the smile fell from his face as he realised why the man was stood before him. ‘Alf?’
‘The Skipper is too weak to move, lord. He respectfully asks if you could spare him a moment at the time of your greatest victory.’
Ragnar Jarl sucked at his teeth as he turned Erik’s question over in his mind. Finally he exchanged a look with his styrisman, and Erik saw the doubt which passed between the Halogalanders before he turned back and gave a shake of his head. ‘I cannot recommend that we try lord,’ the jarl said with obvious reluctance. ‘I would be failing in my duty to you if I did.’
Erik made to question them again, but the looks on the faces of those of his crewmen who were closest to him told him that they too sided with experience over foolhardiness.
Ragnar opened his hands and gave a shrug. ‘Even if the gods allow us to double the cape we should be thrust into the teeth of the gale. There is no land between there and the shores of Iceland, the rollers are as high as gable ends, even on what passes for a calm day this time of the year. With this?’ He shook his head. ‘We shall be little more than driftwood before the day is out.’
Erik nodded that he understood. ‘So we make for a sheltered bay and set up camp for the winter?’
The ghost of a smile lit Ragnar’s face for the first time in days as he saw that his king was coming around to his way of thinking. He gave the side strakes of the ship a pat. ‘Build low walls and we have ready-made roofs. We can use your little skipsbåt to fish the waters of the bay when the weather allows it and the men can hunt the forests. We already have some provisions aboard, and the big ship barrels we can top up with melted snow for fresh drinking water. I doubt that even Ski Finns will dare to attack an army such as this, even if they discover us before the spring.’
Erik looked out beyond the mouth of the bay which Ragnar called Varangerfjord to the ocean beyond, and gave an inward sigh as he looked again on the windblown chaos there. Rollers as dark as slate were driving northeastwards, witches fingers of spray and spume flying from the crests. There was no way that his flotilla could beat westwards against such power. ‘Have you a place in mind?’
Ragnar indicated to the West with a flick of his head. ‘If we follow the coastline the fjord narrows. It is a sheltered spot and off the beaten track, ideal for our needs.’
The first autumn storms had hit early that year. They had hardly buried their prows into the rollers beyond the White Sea when the first wintry showers had come on from the North. Within days the droplets had turned to sleet, sleet to snow as they had beat their way northwestward; Erik’s hope that the coastline would begin to trend to the South dashed with each headland doubled. The prevailing wind had slowed their progress to a crawl, and each night when they had pulled the ships ashore to make camp they had covered a little less distance. The hours of daylight were growing less and less with each passing day, and it was no longer unusual to make camp for the night within sight of last night’s stopping place. They had barely edged into the calmer waters of Varangerfjord when the gales had redoubled. It was impossible to sail into the teeth of such fury and everyman aboard knew it; Ragnar’s plan was the only one which offered a reasonable hope of survival, and Kolbein worked the steering oar to bring the Draki into Orm’s slipstream as the crews ran out the oars and began to brail up the sail lest the gale shred them to ribbons.
By the afternoon of the second day land appeared to the Northwest as their journey neared its end, snow capped peaks above a mottle of reds and golden browns as the fauna of the North prepared to endure the coming freeze. The gales had lessened as they rowed, but everyman was a seasoned seafarer and none were fooled. Once the season of storms had begun the next blow would follow soon after; heavily laden and built for speed, the long narrow hulls of the skei in particular would be lucky to survive. A last night’s stay on the indented shoreline which edged the southern limit of the fjord and they were striking out across the calmer waters of the inner bay. Unlike the low lying coastline which they had clawed their way along thus far the land here climbed away towards the uplands, and soon Ragnar was leading the ships towards a small sheltered cove.
Erik looked about him as the sound of keels grating on gravel filled the air. The cloud cover had thickened that day, moving down to shroud the distant peaks in a mantle of grey. The snow would move down the flanks by morning, the giantess Skadi, the winter huntress, would already be skiing the heights. They would have to move fast.
18
FIMBULWINTER
Erik rolled onto his back and stared at the arch of the ceiling for the thousandth time, tugging the russet fur of a musk ox up to his chin as the winds howled and sighed outside. He was thankful at least that his own bolthole was roofed by the long, sleek hull of a skei. Unlike many of the others, huddled together beneath the upturned hulls of the snekkjur, the rowers in the larger ships sat upon their own sea chests while at sea not the thwarts, the cross beams which braced the hull and doubled-up as a rowing bench. This small mercy at least allowed them to stand almost upright while sheltering from the ferocity of the northern winter. But while no man there would describe either as the height of comfort, everyman agreed it was preferable to an eternity spent in Ægir’s hall of the drowned, which had been the almost certain outcome had they not taken Ragnar Jarl’s advice and abandoned their attempt to drive their hulls into the teeth of the storms.
Despite his surroundings Erik found that he was smiling as he ran his eyes around the space. Dully lit by the guttering light of a single seal blubber candle, the grunts and farts of almost a hundred men were sounding all around him, turning the air in the upturned hull of the Draki into what he was sure he would have considered a lethal soup of fumes at any other time. All of the ships had been carrying bundles of furs home from the lands which bordered the White Sea: bear; white fox; reindeer; even a goodly number of the highly prized furs which the folk in Christendom called miniver. The furs had been put to good use that winter as blankets to help ward off the cold ground and colder air as they slept, and Erik snorted as he imagined the thoughts
of the eventual owners in the South if they ever knew.
Raised a few feet from the hard ground on walls of logs and turf, the hulls had made excellent shelters. Interior fires of course were impossible due to the build up of smoke in the cramped space, but the bungs which sealed the oar holes could easily be removed when the weather allowed to let a modicum of air and light into the dwelling space. The deep cold was still a problem, but Ragnar and his northerners had explained how they always heated rocks from the seashore around the cooking fires when living off the land this far north, and each man had used the hot stones to heat his bed for a good part of the night.
The scrunch of snow beneath booted feet drew Erik’s attention across to the thick bearskin which covered the doorway, and he watched as the pale northern light threw a jagged rectangle across the sleeping men as the cover was drawn aside and quickly closed again to conserve the heat. The guard hesitated for a moment as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom before picking his way carefully across to the place where the king lay.
Erik pulled himself up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as the man came across and knelt at his side. ‘It has happened again, lord.’
Erik’s expression betrayed his surprise, but the spearman nodded his head and grimaced. ‘It’s unmistakable.’
‘I will be along,’ Erik replied as he fished about for a boot. As usual Anlaf and Thorstein were alert to anything which concerned their lord, and the pair were already waiting at the doorway when Erik arrived there. They exchanged a look but kept their thoughts to themselves as Thorstein held the bearskin aside for the others to exit the shelter. In the open Erik made his way across to the rear, loosening his breeks to take the first piss of the day. Moments later the others were at his side, and Erik gave a shrug as the three men made deep holes in the snow. ‘There is no need to rush, Alf is not going anywhere in a hurry.’ Bladders emptied, the three crossed the open space between the shelters to the place where a small knot of early risers had gathered. The group looked up, taking a rearward pace as they recognised the king for who he was. Erik surveyed the grave before flicking a look up at the man who had summoned him. ‘This is how you found it?’
The guard nodded. ‘Yes lord, I thought that you should see it before we replaced the stones.’
Erik drew in a deep breath as he ran his eyes across the scene. ‘We carried Skipper Alf’s body away with us for a reason,’ he said finally. ‘Not so that he could be dug up and carried away by animals. What do we think? A bear?’
‘That is the only animal that I can think of that has the strength and guile to come here and move the rocks aside, lord,’ the spearman replied. ‘I know that there are few men standing watch,’ he added defensively. ‘But I cannot see how something so large would get by us, not with last night’s moon.’
The mention of the moon caused his companions to exchange worried looks, and Thorstein spoke at his side. ‘Bears could be up and about at this time of the year, lord,’ he said with a glance towards the lightening sky. ‘But why would a bear bother trying to dig up a corpse when we have fish down there on the drying racks?’
Erik looked down towards the beach. Half a dozen frames had been constructed as soon as they had set up camp, several months before at the start of winter. Despite the occasional dangers posed by sea ice and the permanent darkness of midwinter, men had been using Erik’s small ship boat to fish the waters of the fjord almost daily. Only the onset of really severe weather had kept them hunkered down in their shelters until the blizzards blew themselves out. The constant supply of fresh fish, added to the reindeer and seal meat which the hunting parties had brought in, had not only kept them fit and hale but their spirits high through the dark months. Now with the spring almost upon them, just as thoughts were turning back towards hearth and home, a new problem was rearing its head. Erik looked again at the men gathered around him. He could sense that something was going unsaid, and he asked them to put words to their thoughts. The men looked at their boots as they waited for another to speak, but eventually their discomfort drew a reply. ‘The moon was full lord,’ one said with obvious reluctance.
Anlaf answered the statement with a laugh, but another of the hirdmen finally rediscovered his tongue and backed up his friend. ‘It’s been a month since the last time, lord. The moon was full then too and we are in Finnmark.’ The man cast a furtive glance towards the nearby hillside before continuing. ‘Who knows what moves about out there in the shadows?’
He was about to scoff at the men’s fears when he realised that it was a thing which could quickly cause problems. Hundreds of men in the prime of life had been cooped up all winter, men used to a life of sea raiding and outdoor work. Even the smallest thing could set them to bickering among themselves like fishwives; he needed to show that he was taking their worries seriously. ‘Anlaf, you remember the man who spoke Finnish? Where we killed the shaman with the little wooden statue of the hunter’s god last summer?’
‘The Romsdaler who helped you speak to the priests at Perminia? Sturla?’
‘That’s him,’ Erik replied, ‘the one with the Saami wife. He seems to know a lot about this kind of thing, nip down to the Falki and get him up here. Maybe he can help lay these lads’ fears to rest.’
Erik began to move the stones back onto Alf’s temporary grave as Anlaf trotted down to the Romsdal shelter. He had in mind the perfect place for the old Skipper’s remains; it was the sole reason that Alf’s body had not joined the other Norwegian dead on the battlefield pyre outside Perminia the previous year. Sealed inside a cask of ale Alf had been left to overwinter in a hole dug from the permafrost, where the extreme cold would help to preserve the remains until they could carry it home in the spring. The other men pitched in, and the stones were already back in place when Anlaf returned with the spearman. ‘Here he is, lord.’
Erik shot him a smile of reassurance. ‘We may have a problem, Sturla. We think that a bear is trying to dig up Skipper Alf.’
Sturla looked from Erik to the gravesite and back again, and the king’s heart sank a little as he recognised that he was not going to receive the answer he had hoped for. The Romsdaler sucked his teeth as his eyes flitted across the ground before them. ‘That is not bear work,’ he said finally with a shake of his head. Sturla walked to the far side of the mound, and they all watched as he raised his head to scan the hillside. Thorstein attempted to lift the mood, but his lighthearted comment only seemed to darken it. ‘The boys here think that we have an eigi einhamir, a man not of one skin; a shapeshifter.’
Sturla seemed not to hear, and Erik watched the fear begin to creep into the men as they followed the hunter’s progress. Suddenly he fell to his knees, and laying his head low to the ground proceeded to blow the loose snow from the track. ‘Here it is,’ Sturla said as he traced the outline of a footprint with a forefinger. ‘A dusting of fresh snow blew in to cover his tracks, but this is where he came in.’ He raised himself to his knees and shook his head. ‘It’s not a bear; too short. But it’s too big for a man and the wrong shape for a wolf.’ Sturla splayed the fingers of his hand above the footprint to prove his point. ‘Besides,’ he added squinting up at them, ‘what sort of man would be walking about barefoot in the snow?’
Erik decided to confront the problem as he watched the colour drain from the hirdsmen’s faces. ‘There are four hundred of the meanest bastards I have ever clapped my eyes upon within pissing distance of this spot, men who destroyed an army in less time than it would take to describe the attack. If we have a shapeshifter, I think that he will rue the day that he decided to invite Skipper Alf to dinner.’
The first smiles lit the faces of the men at the graveside that morning, and Erik called across to Sturla as he climbed back to his feet. ‘Tell us what you know about these things, and I will decide what is to be done.’
Sturla brushed the snow from his hands on the seat of his breeks as he came across and pulled a face. ‘There are three types lord. The ones that cast a spell so that they ap
pear to be something they are not we can obviously discount.’ Erik raised a brow in question and Sturla explained his reasoning. ‘If that was the case, the footprints would be recognisably man-like. Then there are those whose spirits go forth, we call them sendings, but their body remains elsewhere in a trance.’
Erik nodded as he began to take up the thread of the thing. ‘Which we can also discount, because spirits don’t leave footprints, man-like or not; so you think that it is the third kind then?’
Sturla nodded. ‘There are those versed in shamanism who by donning the skin of a beast, take on the attributes of that animal. It’s usually a bear or wolf, a bit like our berserks:’
‘When thou, as a wolf,
wanderest in the woods,
knowing not good fortune,
nor any pleasure,
haying no meat,
save rivings of corpses.’
Erik made a comment as the faces of those around him dropped again. ‘Where did that come from?’
‘It’s something that my old ma used to chant on winter nights, when the moon was full lord.’
Thorstein cut in as Sturla smiled innocently. ‘It must have been fun in your house. I will lay odds that your father was a hunter too. I bet he used to disappear for weeks on end every winter up onto the fells?’
Sturla looked surprised. ‘As a matter of fact he was, he taught me all I know; he never stuck around during wintertime.’
Thorstein kept his face deadpan as Erik stifled a laugh. ‘Funny that…Who would have thought?’
‘Well, last night was the second night of full moon, so it will still look full tonight,’ Erik said. ‘Do you think that our nátt-ganga will return?’