Viking Warrior

by Judson Roberts

  I heard a quiet gasp behind me, and turned to see my mother standing there, staring at Hrorik’s wounds, her hand over her mouth. If the second sight had warned her of his coming death, it apparently had not told her of its cause.

  Harald spoke quietly to Gunhild, who stood pale and silent, gazing at Hrorik’s ravaged body.

  “Anyone but Hrorik would have died long before now,” he told her. “I doubted even he could survive the voyage, but his will to return home has kept him alive, though barely. It cannot keep him in this world much longer, though. His lung is pierced and will not stop bleeding."

  I watched Gunhild closely to see what she would do. She and Hrorik had argued violently shortly before the Red Eagle had left our shore. The argument had been, as usual, about Derdriu, my mother. I wondered if the sight of Hrorik, helpless and dying, caused her heart to feel sorrow or if her anger burned still.

  Gunhild stepped forward and gave Hrorik’s face one brief touch, and said simply, “Husband.” Her voice was calm, and no tears fell from her eyes. I could not read her feelings from her face. She looked at Harald and said, “Since you have invited the entire village to sup with us this night, I suppose I must get to work. I’m sure you will not prepare the meal to feed them.” Thus, even in the moment of learning her husband was soon to die did Gunhild’s thoughts run to herself.

  Gunhild turned to where I’d been standing hidden by the shadows, or so I thought, since I’d followed Harald and Hrorik into the longhouse.

  “And you, thrall, stop standing there like a witless fool. If there was time, I would send you into the forest to help find more food for our table. But we have no time. Go to Ubbe and have him slaughter a yearling calf. Skin it out and cut it up for me. And be careful to save the blood for sausage; I’ll have no waste. I want the meat cut into chunks no bigger than that,” she said, holding her hand up and making a circle with her thumb and finger to show me the size she wanted. “We’ve cabbage and carrots and barley, and with as many as I have to feed, and as little time as I have to prepare, it will have to be a quick stew that I fix. But there will be food for all.”

  By dusk, the longhouse was filled with guests. At Gunhild’s direction, my mother and the other serving women had set up the feast tables and benches out in the center of the floor. Down the entire length of the hall, oil lamps had been lit and hung from the posts that supported the roof. The shields, helms and weapons of those warriors in the Red Eagle’s crew who were housecarls and lived on Hrorik’s estate had been hung along the walls of the long-house above their sleeping positions on the platforms. Their hacked and battered condition gave mute testimony to the fierce struggle we were to hear of.

  Hrorik was too weak to sit at table. He remained lying on the platform opposite the main hearth. Hrorik’s daughter, Harald’s sister-twin Sigrid, sat at his side, periodically holding a cup of ale to his lips.

  My mother and the other serving women scurried between the hearth and the tables with bowls of food, supervised by Gunhild. The remainder of the slaves, who, like me, for the moment had no work to do, sat wherever we could find space on the far ends of the seating platforms along the walls or on the floor. While Gunhild wasn’t watching, Mother handed me a heaping bowl of the stew that the guests were being served.

  After I gulped it down, I edged as close as I could to the head table where Harald sat, and eagerly waited for him to begin his story of the Red Eagle’s ill-fated voyage. For me, such tales of adventures and battles in distant lands were food for dreams. With the heartlessness of the young who have not yet suffered themselves, I cared not that for many it would be a tale of sorrow.

  After every guest had been served, Harald stood. He cut a fine figure, tall, strong and straight, with a natural beauty to his features. He and his twin sister, Sigrid, were accounted by all to be the finest looking man and woman in the district. They must have inherited their looks from their mother, Helge, for where they were slender and graceful, Hrorik looked like one of his ancestors could have been a bear. Harald smiled easily and laughed often, and was the kind of man other men hope to count as their friend. Young women were more likely to dream of capturing his heart or warming his bed.

  Since coming ashore, Harald had bathed and changed his clothing. His long hair and closely trimmed beard, freshly washed and combed, gleamed in the flickering light from the fires and the oil lamps like fine yellow gold. He was wearing a crimson tunic over dark trousers. I thought he surely must look as fine as any jarl or son of a king—not that I’d ever seen such, but I’d heard them sung of by visiting skalds. The room quieted and Harald began to speak.

  “Usually when all of us from this estate and the village gather together here in Hrorik’s hall, it is for the occasion of a feast day, to welcome the change of season or thank the gods for their bounty,” he began in a solemn voice. “We have known each other all of our lives, and we have joined together many times to celebrate. We must join together now to mourn our losses and to give each other comfort. We come together this night to grieve for and honor those who are gone.”

  As he spoke, Harald turned this way and that, looking into the faces of the people gathered in the long hall. He did not speak in the formal style a skald uses to recite a tale or song. Instead, he spoke with an easy, natural voice, as one would use to tell a comrade of what he’d seen or heard.

  “Normally at a gathering such as this,” he continued, “I would not be the one to address you. Normally it would be our chieftain, Hrorik Strong-Axe. But these are not normal times. Hrorik, our chieftain, lies gravely wounded, and many more are dead. Earlier today, down at the shore, I promised that this night—in this longhouse—I would tell you what befell our ship and crew. The time for that telling has come.

  “As you all know, we set out to go raiding early this year. The winter was a mild one, far warmer than usual. Because of the weather, we had an opportunity to cross the sea and surprise the English in the last weeks of the winter, rather than waiting for the spring when they would be watching the sea for raiders. A gift of fate, we thought it was. It was a great raid we were joining, over forty longships filled with Danish warriors, and other Vikings from Ireland were to join us after we reached England.

  “We had favorable winds after we cut across Jutland on the Limfjord and struck out across the sea,” Harald continued. “No ships were lost in the crossing. After reaching England, we sailed west across the southern edge of its shores, harrying the coastline as we passed. We did not tarry anywhere long, though, for we had a rendezvous to keep with the ships joining us from Ireland. We had planned to meet on the west coast of England in a great bay that opens there from the mouth of a river the English call the Severn.

  “We reached the great Severn bay several days before the full moon, the date set for our meeting with the Vikings from Dublin. We stopped and camped on the bank of a small river near the mouth of the bay, and thought to rest there until the ships from Ireland arrived. But the Norns planned a different fate for us.

  “Early on the second morning after we’d made land, one of our sentries came running into camp, calling for the chieftains. He’d been approached by a leader of the English who wished to enter our camp in peace and parley with our leaders.

  “Some of our chieftains suggested we should allow the Englishman to enter our camp, then kill him. Others countered that to do so would be foolish and wasteful, and argued we should take the English leader captive, then try to ransom him to the West Saxon king in whose lands we were camped. In the end, though, it was Hrorik’s counsel that prevailed.

  “‘Think what you are saying,’ he told us. ‘If this Englishman enters our camp, will he not be doing so only because we give him our oath that he may enter in safety? Is there a man among you who would choose to be known as an oath breaker? Is there any man here who would trade his honor for silver?’”

  Harald paused, and took a long drink of ale from the silver cup that stood in front of him on the table. No one spoke; all eyes were
on him. He wiped his mustache with the back of his hand, then continued.

  “Though he was our enemy, the Englishman impressed us all when he rode into our camp. He wore no helm and his pale, yellow hair and beard gleamed like fine gold in the morning sunlight. His mail brynie was long, almost down to his knees, and its iron links must just recently have been polished, for they sparkled like silver in the sun. A shield, covered in hide that had been painted white, was slung across his back. A sword hung from his belt in a richly decorated scabbard, and in his right hand he held a spear, its butt braced against his stirrup.

  “‘I am Eanwulf, appointed by King Ethelwulf of the West Saxons to be ealdorman of Somersetshire,’ he told us. ‘I have come to propose an agreement.’

  “It was Hrorik who stood and answered him. ‘I am Hrorik Strong-Axe, a chieftain of the Danes. I am not the leader of these many chieftains who are here before you, for we are each our own men, but I have been chosen to speak for all. You say you have come to propose an agreement. What do you want of us—and what are you willing to offer?’

  “‘What I want from you is your lives,” the Englishman answered, “and what I offer you is the edge of my sword, and the point of my spear. I and my people have had the misfortune to learn the ways of you Danes in recent years. You are pirates, murderers and thieves.’

  “The Englishman proposed battle,” Harald explained. ‘My army is not far,’ he told us. ‘They can be here by noon. Let us come together on the shore in a place where we can join in proper battle. There we will fight, and may the victory go to the warriors whose deeds earn it. If you seek to plunder our land, prove your right by force of arms.’

  “As the Englishman turned his horse and prepared to ride away, his parting words were, ‘Enjoy the morning. It promises to be a fine day. It is the last that most of you will see.’

  As Harald continued with his tale, I closed my eyes and tried to picture the scene he described to us. Harald was skilled at spinning tales, and as he recounted how our warriors had prepared for battle—sharpening their weapons and donning their armor, marching in ship’s companies down to the beach where they formed a shield-wall—I felt almost as though I was there with them, waiting for the English army to arrive. I wondered if any had felt fear or had worried that they would not live to see the night. I knew that if I had been there I would have.

  “The Saxon army marched out of the forest and onto the beach, and also formed into a shield-wall,” Harald told us. “They formed their line down the beach from us, farther away than a long bow shot. It appeared our numbers were roughly equal. Their leader, the Saxon nobleman Eanwulf who’d ridden into our camp and challenged us, rode back and forth in front of them as they formed their line. Whenever he raised his spear overhead and called out to them they roared out his name, chanting ‘Eanwulf, Eanwulf!’

  “The battle began slowly. A group of lightly armed Saxons—poor men they must have been, for most were armed just with slings, with only a few bows among them—ran out from the English line and began launching their missiles at us. We laughed at so weak a show. While our front rank stood firm, shoulder to shoulder, our shields overlapping, our second and third ranks closed in right behind and raised their shields overhead, creating a roof. The Saxon slingers’ stones thudded harmlessly off the shield-fort we’d created, and their arrows thudded into its walls. Meanwhile, those of our men who carried bows stepped back behind the line of our shield-fort and sent their arrows arcing over our line toward the Saxon skirmishers, who had no wall of shields nor armor to protect them. Soon the beach between the battle lines was littered with the bodies of fallen Saxons, and those not felled by our fire retreated behind the English shield-wall.

  Harald paused here, and shook his head. “I have fought in seven pitched battles, raiding against the Franks and Irish and Saxons,” he told us, “and in many smaller fights besides, but never have I known a battle to begin like this one did. Long our two armies stood facing each other, shouting challenges and jeers. We pounded our spear shafts on our shields till the beach itself seemed to shake with the sound, like a forest trembles with thunder that heralds an approaching storm. Hrorik held us back, though our men were eager to fight—perhaps he sensed some unseen danger the rest of us did not perceive. The English army waited long, hoping that we would come to them, but when we did not, the Saxons finally began advancing toward our line.

  “Even then, though, the English did not rush against us, trying to break through our battle line by the force of their attack. Instead, they edged up to us slowly, until we stood, shield-wall facing shield-wall, little more than an arm’s reach in between. Still they did not attack, and we stood thus for what seemed a long time, staring into each others’ eyes, shouting challenges and battle cries, while on each side warriors stabbed out at each other in quick jabs with their spears, much as swordsmen do at the start of a duel to test their opponents’ skill.

  “A tall Saxon thegn, with long arms that gave him a dangerous reach, stood in the English line across from Hrorik. He must have been one of their wealthier warriors, for he wore a mail shirt, though most of the English were armored with only helm and shield. His spear flicked out and back like a serpent’s tongue, jabbing high at Hrorik’s face, or darting low towards his legs, but each time Hrorik was equally quick, deflecting the spear’s blade with his shield.

  “The Saxon was unable to harm Hrorik, but his attacks angered him, like a yapping dog angers a bear by snapping at its heels. When the Saxon jabbed his spear forward again, Hrorik released his shield’s handle, letting it hang from his neck and shoulder by its strap, and darted his hand out toward the spear like a falcon strikes at a bird in flight. He caught the spear shaft just behind its metal head, and, with a grunt, jerked the spear forward with all his might, pulling the Saxon out of the English line. Then did Hrorik show why he is called Strong-Axe, for the steel blade of his great axe flashed brightly in the sun as it arced down, cleaving through the Saxon’s helm and splitting his head down to the jawbone.

  “The Saxon standing in the English line beside the dead man turned and watched his companion fall, startled by his fate. As he watched his comrade die, I lunged forward, low, my shield raised to cover me, and with my sword, Biter, I cut his legs from under him.” As Harald described his attack, he crouched and lunged, acting it out for us.

  “Roaring now like some great, wild beast, Hrorik charged forward into the hole he and I had cut in the English line. I, and those of our crew standing closest to us, quickly followed him. We broke the English line there like a speeding arrow breaks the iron rings of a mail brynie, our warriors driving forward in a wedge that forced aside the linden-wood walls of the Saxons’ shields, while our spears and swords reaped a bloody harvest inside their lines.

  “Seeing our attack, all of our ships’ companies gave a great cheer and surged forward against the Saxon’s shield-wall. Like a great wave we struck them, and our steel sought their life’s blood, hewing and stabbing. English blood stained the white English sand red, and the battle seemed to be ours.

  “Then I looked up and saw, not twenty paces away, the Saxon leader Eanwulf. He was standing behind the main battle line of his army, surrounded by heavily armed warriors of his household guard. A rider was beside him, leaning low in the saddle, shouting to be heard. I could not hear the rider’s words over the din of battle, but at his message, Eanwulf smiled a grim smile, then nudged one of his companions and pointed beyond the fight raging in front of him, toward the river that lay behind us.

  “As he did I heard cries of alarm from among our own forces. Men were shouting, ‘The ships! The ships!’ At their cries I turned and looked behind me. From two separate points, in the direction where our ships were moored along the river’s banks, columns of dark smoke were rising above the trees.

  “Up and down our line our chieftains tried to regain control of their frenzied men, and pull them back from the fight. ‘Fall back!’ they cried. ‘Re-form the shield-wall and fall back! Fal
l back toward the ships! We are attacked in our rear!’”

  Many in the hall of the longhouse gasped at hearing of the assault on the ships, and murmuring spread across the room. All knew that the greatest danger that could befall a raiding party was to lose their ships and become stranded in a hostile land. Death or slavery was certain to follow. Harald waited for the talking to subside, then continued his grim tale.

  “The English, only moments before on the verge of breaking, now found new courage and rallied, surging forward against us as we fell back. ‘Eanwulf! Eanwulf and Osric,’ they cried, and from their new battle cry I realized what had happened. We fought not one English army, but two, and we were caught between them.

  “Though in desperate danger, our army fought bravely. The Saxons attacked furiously across the front of our shield-wall, but we held as we fell back toward the ships, step by step in an orderly retreat. Hrorik and the other chieftains shouted their orders and warnings above the din of battle. ‘Hold formation! Maintain the shield-wall! Retreat to the ships!’ they cried, and though the battle was clearly lost, as men we were not beaten.

  “Then behind us, three more plumes of smoke billowed up above the tree line along the river. Three more ships were dying under Saxon torches. It was then that one of the ship’s companies betrayed themselves and all of their comrades through their cowardice. Their fear and weakness doomed us all.”