The Valhalla Saga

by Snorri Kristjansson

  He stretched and rolled his shoulders, felt his fingertips and ran his hand through his long, lustrous hair. The power swelled in him, begging for mischief. ‘This is nice and all,’ he said to his silent audience, ‘but I think we can do better.’

  He closed his eyes and thought of a sound he wanted to exist in the world and a moment later hundreds of throats joined with a chorus of howling wolves.

  ‘LOKI!’

  Valgard smiled and turned to the South. ‘That’s more like it. Let’s go.’

  STENVIK, WEST NORWAY

  LATE DECEMBER, AD 996

  The clouds had cleared, a weak sun had crawled from its hiding place and the work groups had assembled. The men were eager to get to do something – anything – and the old man was proving to be a competent taskmaster. Finn was ashamed to admit it but he was all too happy to leave King Olav alone for a little while, and not at all disappointed to have handed over charge of the ship-building. From the moment they’d landed the king had been very wound up over something or other, and he’d got into the habit of looking over his shoulder all the time and praying at least twice as much as he did before – obviously something had happened in Trondheim, but who knew what? Finn knew he owed King Olav a lot, but it was beginning to feel a little like suddenly living with a caged wolf. He’d started feeling very poorly too, and had been keeping to his chambers; that had started about the time Finn had bumped into Fjolnir, so the king had not yet met his ship-builder.

  Finn looked down at the work party from his vantage point up on the wall. They scurried around the white-haired figure who’d set up shop just above a slope down to the water. He heard Fjolnir barking, ‘Over there!’ and pointing as a burly raider swung the timber he carried around and inched away from the water-line. He moved ten feet, then twenty, then thirty, as the old man kept bellowing, ‘Further!’

  They’d salvaged a load of burned planks from the old town and a team had been sent to hew down nearby trees – the old man had told them to grab the first ones they saw, for now at least. ‘Stop!’ he shouted, and said something more; his voice carried on the wind but Finn couldn’t make out the words.

  Then he cried, ‘No, that’s just right.’ He turned, looking up, and Finn raised his hand to confirm, although, from down here, the framework they were building looked nonsensical, with odd struts sticking out all over the place with no sort of obvious connection.

  ‘We’re done,’ Fjolnir shouted from below. ‘Time to go!’

  Finn rushed down the steps and out through the south gate. When he got there, Fjolnir had already rounded up a working team and outfitted them with ropes. ‘I asked Finn for the strongest men he had and he gave me you lot,’ he said to the hefty warriors with a cheeky grin, ‘so we’ll just have to make do with what you ladies can carry.’ The men smiled back and Finn felt a pang of envy. He had to work for every moment the men allowed him to lead them and it galled him to see men like Fjolnir, who did it effortlessly. ‘Right – let’s go while we have the light,’ Fjolnir said.

  They followed the northern road into the forest, and Finn had to suppress a wince wherever he saw broken branches or nicks in the timbers; every shadow held a memory of the raiders from Stenvik ducking and weaving through their home turf, leading their pursuers into the darkness. An awful lot of his men had gone into the forests around Stenvik, blades at the ready.

  Few of them had come back.

  And somewhere in this forest were graves for two grey-haired fighters: graves that he felt certain would be as empty as eye-sockets on a corpse.

  But with every step the ominous forest became less of a worry, for the white-hair up front not only appeared to know exactly where he was going, but looked like he was actually enjoying being out there. ‘Right, boys, time to get our feet wet,’ he announced from the front just as he extracted a foot with a wet slurp.

  The men grunted unhappily, but they still followed him out into the bog, trying to choose their footing carefully. Everyone knew stories of unlucky travellers sucked down to their deaths, trapped by one careless step.

  Up ahead, Fjolnir was walking like a farmer in his own yard. ‘Watch out left,’ he shouted a moment before one of the men shouted in alarm as the ground sank under his foot. The men on either side grabbed him and yanked him up; he was covered up to mid-thigh in bracken and stinking bog-slime.

  ‘Happens in a moment, boys,’ Fjolnir warned them, then he held up his hand and slowed down, and it looked to Finn for all the world as if he was feeling for something with his feet. ‘And . . . there we are!’ he shouted. ‘All eyes on me!’ Moving quickly, he walked to one side. ‘These spots here’ – he gestured to his left – ‘and here’ – some quick steps to the right – ‘are safe. Come on.’ He gestured peremptorily and the men moved cautiously into a wide line separated from each other by a space the width of three men. ‘There’s a bank here – feel for it with your feet.’

  Finn watched from the back as fourteen hardened warriors poked their toes into the marshland like children testing the water.

  ‘Now it’s time to get our hands wet,’ the old man said with a hint of relish in his voice. He bent down and plunged his hands into the bog, then turned to the next man in line and snapped, ‘Grab this!’

  Confused, the man pushed his hands into the bog and Finn saw the muscles in his arms bunching; he’d definitely found something. Fjolnir was striding along the line of men, and it looked like he was measuring with his feet. Then about forty feet further along the line, he stopped and dropped to his knees.

  He looked at the kneeling warrior. ‘Ready?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘HEAVE!’

  The two men strained, and very slowly, they pulled their arms out of the bog. Their hands clutched thick, slimy tendrils – no, ropes. As they pulled, the ground between them shuddered – and slowly but surely, a pair of long, water-slick planks rose with them.

  ‘There you go!’ Fjolnir shouted over his shoulder at Finn. ‘There’s your ship!’ Without prompting, the other warriors started rooting around, shouting commands at each other, and Finn backed up and watched as hewn timber was pulled out of its dank, smelly storage. Within moments a handoff line had formed and soon the timber was being stacked up on the bank of the marsh.

  ‘I talked to some of Sigurd’s shipwrights up in Trondheim,’ Fjolnir said, appearing suddenly at Finn’s side, and he had to bite down hard to hide how jumpy he was. ‘They told me they kept the wood they didn’t use in the bog so the cold and the sun didn’t get to it.’

  ‘Wise,’ Finn said, ‘but what about the measurements? Will it be enough?’

  ‘We’ll find a way to stretch it,’ the old man said, grinning, as the timber stack beside Finn grew steadily.

  The first men left with planks and returned with the rest of the boat crew. Finn found himself drifting along, half-dazed, with Fjolnir in the lead shouting commands, suggestions and well-judged abuse at the men, who answered in kind, punctuated with blasts of raucous laughter.

  An idea snuck into his head. We might just do this.

  *

  Down on the beach, hammers struck and axes sliced. Fjolnir was everywhere at once, instructing and encouraging, and under his watchful eye the wood quickly took on shape. He’d brought a carpenter with him, a thick-necked sort with a hammer and a shock of blond hair who kept himself to himself. Finn was enjoying looking down at them, scurrying around like ants by the water.

  Einar Tambarskelf’s voice broke his gaze. ‘Well met!’

  ‘Well met,’ Finn replied.

  The young man took the steps two at a time and stood beside him. ‘He wants to know how it’s going,’ he said.

  ‘See for yourself,’ Finn replied.

  Einar looked down towards the beach, muttered something unintelligible and made the sign of the cross. ‘It’s . . .’

  ‘Yes it is,’ Finn said
. ‘And it’s coming on quickly.’ He looked for Fjolnir to point him out, but the white-hair was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘It certainly is,’ Einar said. ‘He’ll be pleased.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Not well,’ he admitted. ‘Fever. Confusing dreams. Keeps talking about a grey man of some sort – we’re hoping it’ll clear soon, but to be honest we can do little but feed him broth and hope.’

  Finn spat over the edge of the wall. ‘Our Lord will guard him,’ he said.

  ‘He will,’ Einar said. He clasped Finn’s hand and left.

  ‘Broth and hope,’ Finn muttered. ‘That’s a fucking way to win a kingdom.’

  Below, Fjolnir emerged from behind the rising gunwales of the ship and raised his hand in salute. Finn saluted him back.

  Then he looked again: the old man appeared to be giving him some kind of signal: one hand raised, fist clenched, three fingers extended.

  Three days.

  *

  The longhouse smelled of sickness and Finn found himself wanting to knock out a wall just to get some air in. However, broth and hope seemed to have worked on the king because his health was definitely improving.

  ‘Is this the honest truth, Finn?’ he said, eyes wide open and a grin forming. ‘You’re not just telling me what I want to hear?’

  ‘No,’ Finn said. ‘I – we’ve – worked as hard as we could, for the glory of the Lord’ – he crossed himself– ‘and we believe we’ll be ready to launch her tomorrow.’

  The king stared at him for a moment, then he barked a harsh laugh and slapped his thigh so hard it made Finn wince. ‘Tomorrow! Finn Trueheart, you are a soldier of the Lord and your place in heaven is most certainly assured! And the sail?’

  ‘I started them on the sail two days ago. It too will be ready tomorrow.’

  The king frowned. ‘Three days? How many people are sewing?’

  This time it was Finn’s time to grin. ‘Two hundred,’ he said. The look on King Olav’s face was almost enough to make him laugh. ‘I have seen the fate of those who displease you, my Lord,’ he said.

  The king grinned. ‘I shall go out tomorrow and watch the launch,’ he said. ‘And if everything is going as you say it is, I need you to do another thing for now.’

  *

  Dawn crept over the eastern treeline and filled the world with grey. Finn yawned, worked his jaw to get the stiffness out, rolled his shoulders and looked down on the work.

  Laid out in a line stretching to the east and west of Stenvik Pier were the raiding ships, loaded with men and ready to go: thirty-nine ships in all, sixty men to a ship. The only space left on the coastline was to the west of the pier, a gap roughly the width of five ships, crossed with logs laid side by side, running parallel to the waterline.

  ‘Finn!’ The king’s voice rang out from below.

  ‘Up here!’ the big soldier shouted, looking down upon his king’s face. It was gaunt and drawn, but lit from inside.

  ‘I’m coming up!’ If the illness had weakened him, he made a good show of hiding it. Quick, sure steps took him up to the edge of the stairway. ‘Is it ready?’

  Finn looked down at the beach. ‘Yes, it is.’

  King Olav took the final two steps with his eyes closed. When he opened them his lips parted slightly and he drew a deep breath. There was silence, then a faint hiss as he exhaled slowly. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he whispered.

  Finn still couldn’t bring himself to call it a ‘ship’; it was a monster, plain and simple, half again as long as the biggest drake he’d ever seen and nearly twice as wide. Each of the fifty-six benches had space for four rowers. They’d had to walk for a day to find a tree old enough for the mast; he could wrap his arms around it, but his fingers didn’t meet at the other side. The sheer weight of the thing meant that they’d had to reinforce the struts that held it in place after the first set had snapped in three places.

  It was terrible in its beauty.

  ‘This is how we show them,’ King Olav said beside him. ‘This will make them understand. We have used words. We have used actions. But this – this display – this is what they’ll understand. They will fear the Long Wyrm.’

  Fear, Finn thought. That sounds about right.

  *

  The ground underneath King Olav’s feet gave him strength, energy and a lift in his step. The West Gate tunnel smelled of cold air and damp stone; it filled him with life. At this moment it was the smell of strength, of full lungs and wind in the sails, and he held on to it. The light at the end was the white of sun through clouds. Through the stone arch lay the support of a thousand men, the mightiest warship ever built and a clear mission to go and spread the Word of the Lord. He pushed away any thought of what might lie in the North and stepped through.

  Finn watched the king exit the tunnel. The roar of the men carried over the wall but quickly died down as the king’s voice rang out. Finn didn’t need to hear the words any more; he knew that song by now, and how it would light a fire in the men’s eyes; he knew how they swelled every time they felt King Olav’s fervour.

  ‘He’s good, isn’t he,’ Fjolnir said at his side. The carpenter was behind him, scowling beneath thick red eyebrows.

  ‘For God’s sake, man,’ Finn growled, dagger half out of his belt. ‘How are you still alive, the way you sneak up on people?’

  Fjolnir just smiled. ‘I make noise when I need to,’ he said.

  ‘The Long Wyrm is a beautiful ship,’ Finn said.

  ‘That she is,’ Fjolnir said. ‘She will take you where you need to go.’

  ‘What do you mean – you?’ Finn said.

  The old man smiled again. It was a lopsided thing, his face, as if his head were permanently cocked in amusement.

  A surge of annoyance took Finn, and he had to exhale to stop himself from punching the smirk off the whitebeard’s face. ‘We’re launching – right now.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Fjolnir said; ‘of course we are. You go on ahead now,’ he added. ‘I just need to go and see to some things.’

  Finn looked around, and suddenly the walls in Stenvik felt taller. His chest pulled in so hard that he could feel his heart crash into his ribs.

  ‘The sea,’ the old man said next to him, ‘the open sea. Can you imagine the delights? The freedom?’

  Going down to the ship became the most important thing in Finn’s world and he turned and walked at speed towards the West Gate tunnel. ‘Don’t be late!’ he said over his shoulder to the old man. ‘You’ve got very little time.’

  ‘I know,’ Fjolnir said. ‘I know.’

  *

  The cold stone in the tunnel seemed to suck up the sounds from outside and Finn felt like he was underwater. Something pushed him away from Stenvik; there was no going back now. He had to get to the Long Wyrm.

  The light from outside touched his feet and traced a line up his body – and just like that, he was out and a weight lifted off his chest. The king, standing by the mast of the Long Wyrm, was dwarfed by its size. On the beach, two thousand men and more were lined up, at least five deep, captains and crew, all of them staring at the king.

  ‘—and they will be judged!’ King Olav concluded triumphantly.

  The roar was deafening: every one of those men was raring to go, to get out of their walled prison.

  ‘Men – to your ships!’ the king roared, and the group on the beach exploded into focused activity, all except for one crew which remained still on the beach, surrounding the line of logs that led to the water.

  The king turned to Finn. ‘All yours,’ he muttered, a smirk on his face. Moving swiftly, he put a foot down on a strut and leapt over the side and into the Long Wyrm, disappearing from sight for a second.

  Finn heard some indistinct muttering, but he pushed it out of his mind. Instead, he cleared his throat. ‘Right, you lousy lit
tle fuckers!’ He had to stop himself from smiling. He’d hand-picked two hundred of the hardest fighters and the strongest rowers from the pool of thousands, and the bulging arms and wide shoulders before him suggested he’d picked right. He’d need them all, too. They’d estimated that the beast weighed nearly three times as much as a regular ship.

  ‘As we rehearsed. First shift left, second shift right!’

  On command, the men split into two even groups and lined up on either side of the ship. Finn looked around nervously. Where the hell was Fjolnir? Too late, too late. He could feel King Olav’s expectations through the hull of the ship.

  ‘Back supports – off!’ he shouted.

  Two gruff voices replied, ‘Back supports off!’ and behind him, wooden struts clattered to the ground.

  ‘Middle supports – off!’ More wood fell. He could hear the shouts going up and down the line as the men leaned into the ship, holding her steady, effectively balancing on a plank no more than the width of his hand. These men had all launched ships before – but none that could crush a whole crew if they tipped over. Finn could feel himself sweating despite the cold. ‘Front supports – away!’ Behind him, the grunting intensified as the men strained together to keep the ship balanced.

  Finn drew a deep breath. This would be the most important command he ever gave. ‘Now – push!’

  A deep-throated growl rose from the throats of two hundred men. Feet dug into the cold ground and the ship inched forward.

  ‘PUSH!’

  The growls turned to roars. Another inch. And another.

  ‘PUSH!’

  The keel of the ship scraped onto the first log and the vibration travelled through the ship, giving power to tired legs. The men were screaming at each other now, cursing up a blue streak, growling like bears, and the ship moved. The next log even rolled a little before the weight of the ship pushed it into the ground, but it was enough to get contact with the next, and the next. The men picked up speed, stepping faster. Muscles bunched and the roar was a continuous thing now, like a giant beast claiming its territory. Faster and faster the Long Wyrm went, heading towards the water. As Finn watched, a man lost his footing, but the man next to him delivered a rib-cracking elbow that was hard enough to send the man spinning away from the rush of bodies and the scraping keel. One way to save a life, Finn thought.