Berserk Revenge

by Mark Coakley

19: THE BATTLE OF THE FROZEN RIVER

 

  On the feared glacier called Nis, which covered the mountains between Fjordane and Sogn, cold wind bit at scarf-covered faces and gnawed into layered wool clothes. The Fjordane army skied across plains of old ice, pulling heavy sleds and carrying wooden poles with iron hooks for pulling men from cracks. They sometimes stopped to pull strips of fur onto their skis for shuffling uphill.

 

  It was much colder than down at the fjord.

 

  The glacier was covered by powdery dry snow, swirling over pale blue ice. The brown tips of the mountains in all directions were gripped between white chaos below and low grey clouds. Brown gravel made occasional dark streaks in the blue ice and dry white snow. Some parts of the glacier were jagged and deeply cut.

 

  The army skied in a long single line in the middle-part of the glacier. There the ice was usually flatter and safer.

 

  Occasional boulders were somehow balanced on pillars of ice.

 

  The blank white face of Nis was lined with ice-cracks. Snow swirled down to dark depths, some with ice-spikes waiting at the bottom. Covered with a thin bridge of snow, some of the cracks were invisible.

 

  In some places, the winter sun had melted the ice into patterns of scooped bowls or sharp-tipped waves. Here, the surface would be too rough for skis. The two hundred or so Fjordane fighters walked slowly and in a single file across these rough places with strips of notched reindeer-bone tied to boot-soles for extra grip. Moving was very slow and took a lot of effort. Everybody was tired.

 

  The air was so thin that even thinking took effort. Many men had constant head-aches. Most faces were scabbed with frost-sores. Every day, fighters fell on slippery ice and twisted an ankle or broke a wrist.

 

  At night, when the fighters lay in their wind-whipped leather tents, they would often hear the SNAP! of nearby ice-cracks splitting open. Sometimes they heard a thundering boom echoing from distant cliffs as the ice-field shook. Some mornings, men would step out of a tent to see that a new ice-crack had yawned open nearby.

 

  They all wore back-harnesses to pull their heavy sleds. Each man was also roped to the men in front and behind.

 

  Scouts led the way, probing the surface ahead with the long-handled hooks. In good weather, it was usually easy to see any cracks hidden by snow. The snow looked slightly greyish over solid ice and more blue over hidden cracks. In darkness or fog or when snow was falling, the cracks were hard to see. The safest way to move was by stabbing the snow ahead for hidden cracks at each step.

 

  When a crack was found, Halfdan would decide whether to find a way around or jump across. Before jumping across a crack, each fighter would throw across their sled and pack and weapons. After checking the ropes attached to the man in front of him and to the man behind him, the fighter would hop over the blue gap. Occasionally, one would stumble in and have to be pulled out.

 

  By the eleventh day, four fighters had died of injuries or sickness. Each body was put into a scraped hole in the ice, along with weapons. After a chanted prayer, they were covered with ice-chips.

 

  Almost everybody was hurt or sick. The cold wind never stopped its screaming. Gritty snow blasted into eyes. Frost-bite ate some of their toes.

 

  Haki lost a toe.

 

  One night, sleeping in a little tent he shared with Atli, Halfdan awoke to the sound of laughter outside the tent. Grabbing his ice-hook, Halfdan went outside. In the darkness, a man waited. He wore a long red-silk gown, and thick silver bracelets. His thick beard hung under a cruel, sneering face. It was King Njal! One of King Njal's hands was empty; the other held the severed head of King Lambi by the beard, so it hung upside-down. King Lambi's head was not fire-burned or damaged; in fact, it seemed alive. King Lambi's face grimaced with intense emotions; he was trying to speak. King Njal barked at Halfdan, "Coward!" So Halfdan lifted his ice-hook overhead and tried to hit King Njal with it. The foe-ruler laughed, dodging the swipe of the bent and sharpened iron at the shaft-end. Halfdan swung it again and missed again. Laughing, King Njal turned and ran away. Halfdan chased him through the cluster of silent tents. King Njal led him away from the tents, finally stopping on a flat patch of glacier-snow. Stars and comets blazed overhead. Halfdan swung the ice-hook. King Njal grabbed it with his free hand. With an effortless-looking twist of his wrist, King Njal snapped the wooden shaft. The iron hook and some of the broken shaft was held in one of King Njal's hands, while King Lambi's animated head hung from the other. King Njal sneered, "How are you going to hurt me now, black troll?" Without thought, Halfdan said, "I don't need to hurt you -- you are already hurt." King Njal looked down at his leg. On his left thigh, the wool of his pant-leg started to bulge. Something swelled inside the pant-leg, growing and growing. The bulge burst, and the heads of dozens of poisonous snakes twisted out. The long brown snakes growing from the leg started biting at King Njal's body -- one reaching high enough to sink its fangs into King Njal's tongue. King Njal tried to strike the snake-heads with the end of Halfdan's ice-hook, but the vipers were too many and too strong. They lashed around as they bit him again and again. King Njal dropped King Lambi's head to the dark snow. King Njal fell to his knees, loudly panting. The reptile-reek of the snakes was disgusting. King Njal's eyes bulged from his grimacing, pain-twisted face. Then, still trying to hurt the snakes with the ice-hook, he vanished. Only King Lambi's head remained. Halfdan picked it up. It was still trying to talk. Halfdan lifted it close to his ear, straining to hear the weak whispers from the moving lips. With effort, Halfdan could hear the faint words. King Lambi was saying, "Nothing," over and over. "Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing," the head babbled, its eyes rolling around. "Nothing!" Halfdan awoke, in his tent, to the sound of Atli snoring beside him. A dream. What had it meant? He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. In the morning, Halfdan found that the shaft of his ice-hook was broken, and its iron tip was missing, just as in the dream. Halfdan told Atli about it. Atli suspected magic.

 

  In the afternoon of the twelfth day, everybody had taken off their skis and put on bone boot-grips to walk on a narrow strip of flat ice between an ice-wall on one side and a deep drop on the other. The track was steep and narrow and slippery. It was hard for even a healthy man to keep on his feet. A small stumble would usually lead to a slide into the ice-valley, until being caught by a rope. Every time a man fell, it caused danger and delay.

 

  Boots stomped the snow on the trail into dry grainy slush. When a fighter stumbled and tried to stand, he often fell back down again.

 

  Sometimes a sled would fall off the side of the trail. Each falling sled would yank a roped fighter after it, down into the deep ice-canyon. It was hard and scary work to pull a dangling man and sled back up.

 

  One time, a rope broke. The Fjordane-man fell to the bottom. His body looked tiny. A red stain spread around him on the jagged glacier.

 

  Halfdan halted the army for prayers, before the dangerous trek continued.

 

  On top of an ice-ridge, they saw that the ice-field was starting to slope down. Far ahead was a gap in the range of massive, bare-rock mountains. Through the gap, the sight of evergreen forest and fjord-water.

 

  The lower parts of the glacier was strewn with scattered bits of rock. They started to occasionally see the white antlers and bones of reindeer. Occasional puddles of liquid water.

 

  As the filthy and exhausted army trudged downhill from the ice-cap, there were more and more
rocks to avoid. Brown plant-stems stuck out from the sun-pocked snow. They crossed a place where wind had blown the snow off the bare rock. After sleeping and skiing and walking on ice for twelve days, the rock felt strangely solid underfoot.

 

  Soon, they were skiing through low bushes and thin trees.

 

  As they approached the town of Sogndal -- capital of the kingdom of Sogn -- they met the foe, waiting for them on the far shore of a frozen river, where the river curved in a "C"-shape. Snow-burdened pines and spruces and an occasional oak-tree lined both sides of the river. The river-ice was bare in some places, covered with drifting snow in others.

 

  Snow was falling.

 

  Archers started the battle. Each Eid archer stood on the shore of the frozen river by a sharpened wood stake stuck into the ground to stop charging horses. These recruits had bundles of arrows stuck tip-down into the snow, close to hand.

 

  As arrows started flying through the snow-storm, whistling across the rivers in both directions, Halfdan and his crowd of fighters jumped from the shore to the river-ice and started running behind raised shields towards the other side. Many fighters slipped where the wind had blown the snow away. Other Fjordane-men fell, clutching arrow-shafts, staying down.

 

  The waiting foe rhythmically pounded their weapons on their shields. The river-ice shook. Snow swirled down. Bronze war-horns blew!

 

  Fjordane arrows made gaps in the Sogn shield-wall. Most of the Sogn-men had to hide their faces behind their shields to block the stinging bits of wood.

 

  Fighters on both sides used shield-straps to support most of the weight of their heavy shields until they got close to the fighting. Then they would shrug off the shoulder-strap and use their left arm to carry and swing the shield.

 

  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. Venn 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, "No man can hurt me, 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 give 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?