Viking Revolt

by Gavin Chappell

‘What did you hear?’ he asked in a low voice, kneeling beside Bjorn’s crouching form.

  ‘Movement, from towards the crag,’ Bjorn replied. ‘Movement among rocks. Footsteps?’

  ‘Stay here,’ said Gest, gripping his hand axe. ‘I’ll move closer. If you see anything, call out. And I’ll do the same. If I don’t return, get back to Asgeir and tell him what has happened.’

  Keeping low to the ground, he made his way across the moor. Before he was expecting it, the scree slope at the base of the crag came into sight. He crossed the heather and came to the edge of the scree. High up above him was one of the cave mouths. Round balls had been placed on stakes before the entrance. His eyes narrowed. That reek was very strong now.

  He looked back across the windswept moor. It was a long way now to the woods’ edge where Asgeir and the others waited. The dark outline of Bjorn was visible closer by, watching the cliffs.

  Gest shivered. The wind was stronger now, bringing with it an icy chill. It blew straight down from the great ridge of high fells in the interior of the country, the Kjolen, where no man dwelt other than the hardiest of outlaws, but where trolls were rumoured to live in multitudes. But trolls dwelt here in Rogaland by the sea, if that stench that came on the wind was anything to go by.

  Had he found their cave?

  He could not go back to the others without a clear story. He would have to creep closer, see if he could find any token of the trolls. He had expected fires to be burning in their caves, but perhaps such folk had no need for them. Or maybe they had fires deeper within.

  He picked his way up the scree slope. He had to go slowly and cautiously. A slight slip and he might trigger off a landslide. It was a long time since he had learnt how to walk in silence, under any conditions. But his skills were tested to their utmost during that ascent.

  He reached the mouth of the cave. As he had suspected, the white balls atop stakes were human skulls; they gazed blindly down at him, grinning menacingly. The rank stench was very thick here, but he could see no token of habitation. The cave mouth was dark and empty to his eyes.

  He moved closer. Rocks fallen from the cliff above fenced off the cave mouth, but he could slide his way between two of them. This brought him into the cave proper, and a high arched roof towered above him. It was very cold in the cave, but at least he was out of the wind.

  From deeper within came the dripping of water. He wondered how far he was from the mouth of the shaft that they had traversed underground with such hardship. All was cold and lifeless. The ground underfoot was slimy. Despite the overpowering reek, he could detect no signs of life.

  He moved further inside, regretting now that he had not brought a torch. Nerving himself to speak, he hissed, ‘Hild! Hild, are you in there?’

  Only the hushed resounding of his voice gave any kind of reply. Dwarf speech, men called it, saying that dwarfs dwelt within rocks and mockingly mimicked the words of men. He gripped hold of his axe handle and went further into the darkness, left hand extended. After only a short time, his groping fingers found a hard rocky wall. Frowning, he traced this along, and the cave opened out. Here the stink was stronger.

  His feet struck something lying on the floor and it rattled with a grisly sound. Kneeling down, he felt around for it and his fingers touched what felt like bones, though whether of man or beast he did not know.

  A cry came from outside, a distant wailing on the wind. It was Bjorn, shouting to warn him! He ran towards the dim patch of starlight that marked the entrance to the cave. The starlit boulders resembled teeth in the gaping jaws of some terrible beast.

  Something moved in the starlight, moved into the gap between two of the rocks. Gest gagged. The reek was almost overpowering. He gripped his hand axe firmer and strode forward.

  —16—

  With a snarl, the newcomer flung itself at Gest.

  Gest leapt to one side as another waft rushed over him, and cut in low with his axe, catching the dark figure a glancing blow. It scrambled back, lashing out as it did so with a hand that was jagged with talons.

  Gest winced as something as sharp as a thorn tore through the flesh of his forearm. Pain lanced through his mind but he focused on the snarling figure that rushed at him through the darkness a second time. He lifted his axe for another blow but the thing ran in under his raised arm and seized him round the chest. Gest gripped his opponent by its scrawny shoulders then looped his ankle round his enemy’s, and tried to bring it down.

  But the attacker struggled out of the hold and shoved Gest backwards. As he hit the ground, his head connected with a rock and stars exploded in his mind. Before he could fully recover his senses, the thing was on top of him, scratching and biting. One hand scrabbled round for the axe he had dropped, the other he lifted to fend off the attack.

  Sharp teeth sank into his arm and he cried out. The thing worried at him like a dog with a rat. His groping hand could find no sign of his axe haft, but he brought his fist up to strike the attacker a blow. It snarled through the fold of Gest’s skin that it held in its mouth but did not let go. Gest felt as if he was fighting a wild beast, and yet the limbs that gripped him were those of a man, a man who had not been eating well lately. They seemed brittle as old sticks, and yet there was an iron strength to them. The strength of madness.

  He seized one bony arm and forced upwards with both arms. After a struggle, he flung the thing to one side, and scrambled away. But as he did so his attacker seized his foot and hauled him back. He rolled over, and kicked out.

  He could see nothing more than a darker patch of darkness amidst the darkness of the cave. But his foot connected with something bony and hard, and he heard a muffled grunt, manlike in its piteousness. The grip on his ankle weakened. He snatched it free, then scrambled to his feet, searching the ground for his fallen hand axe. In the gloom he could still see no sign of it.

  The creature sprang, and Gest was bowled over by its sudden rush. Again he fell flat on the ground, his unseen opponent forcing him down. One paw slammed at his face, the other seized him by the throat, jagged claws sinking into his flesh. Gest lashed out with his fists, raining the ribs of his enemy with blows. It was like striking a fleshless skeleton.

  The thing roared and angrily seized his throat with both hands, crushing with two thumbs on his windpipe. Gest scrabbled at the claws that gripped him as his vision blurred and his lungs blazed. He was growing weaker, and still he could not prise the savage hands from their grasp around his throat.

  In a sudden gleam of light, he glimpsed the face of the troll leering down at him, drool dangling eagerly from its mouth. He was going to die. This was it, this was the end. So sudden, so unexpected, so futile. His career in the Gestasveit had brought him to nothing more than this pass, throttled by a troll in a hole under the earth.

  The light grew, and the troll turned its head abruptly, peering into the darkness beyond the cave. Gest heard shouting from outside, the pounding of footsteps.

  He broke free and dashed across the floor of the cave. With a wailing howl, the troll galloped after him. Gest bled from several deep scratches, his throat was bruised and sore, but he was not undeterred. He would find his axe, and he would kill this troll.

  Someone shouted out, a familiar voice, but he did not turn to see who it was. Where was that hand axe? He heard the troll’s footsteps. The new grey light that had illuminated the cave glinted on metal. He dived for it as the troll raced snarling after him, and seized it in his hand.

  It flashed in the rays of the newly risen sun as he turned, seeing the troll for the first time in the cold light of day. Even as the sword he had seized from the ground—bewilderingly, it was his own sword, the sword the troll had stolen so many days ago—ploughed into his attacker’s neck, sending the head flying across the cave, he saw that it was no monster, no terror of the night. It was only an old man, clad in the briefest of rags.

  The decapitated torso clattered to the ground, spurting blood in crimson fountains. The head landed amongst t
he rocks by the cave entrance where Bjorn stood with Asgeir and the others, their faces fearful. Gest gasped for breath, staring about him. He tore a rag from the body of the troll and wiped the blood from his blade.

  How had his sword got here? Clearly, the troll—if troll it was—had brought it back here. Perhaps in the dugout boat he had found drawn up in the cave down below. Presumably the troll had come to the burnt out steading in search of pickings. He it must have been who had gnawed at the corpse of Thorstein, and scrounging around the ruins had become a habit.

  On that one occasion he had scrounged himself a sword. But why then had it not used it in the fight against him? He glanced back at the fallen figure. But this had been no troll, he reminded himself. What kind of man would dwell up in a mountain cave all alone? Surely he was mad.

  ‘Neighbour!’ said Bjorn, who had picked up the fallen head and was peering at it. ‘You have killed the troll? Was there only one?’

  Gest saw a shaft that led downwards at the back of the cave. It was heaped high with boulders. He had a feeling he knew exactly where it went. Asgeir joined Bjorn and both examined the severed head.

  ‘That’s no troll, as any fool can see,’ Gest said, his words harsh and clear in the dawn lit cave.

  He crossed over to join them, and gingerly took the gory remnant from Bjorn. He looked into those sightless eyes, studied the lines of the face. It looked oddly familiar.

  ‘I’ve seen a face like this before,’ he murmured. He looked at Asgeir. The other men were crowding into the cave, peering over the man’s shoulders for a look at the severed head. On Asgeir’s face was a look of dawning recognition.

  ‘But where is your leman?’ Bjorn asked suddenly.

  Gest tossed the head to Asgeir who caught it reluctantly, gazing down at that face with an expression of horror on his own. Then he turned and scanned the cave, which was growing easier to see in the light. He had expected to find Hild crouching in one corner, perhaps bound with rags. But there was no sign of her. No sign that anyone had ever dwelt here other than the troll—the old man—whose reek still hung thick in the still air.

  ‘You killed the troll!’ Hogni and Egil shouted in amazement. ‘The troll that killed so many folk!’

  Gest shook his head, still searching the floor of the cave. ‘That was no troll,’ he told them. ‘Look at it. If that’s a troll, then so am I. So could any of us be.’

  ‘It’s said,’ Bjorn mused, ‘that men have become trolls. Run from settled lands and taken to living on their own in the wilderness. They’ve lost their identity as men, and become more like beasts.’

  Gest’s foot stubbed against something half buried in the cold sand of the cave floor. He crouched down and brushed the sand away.

  A skull grinned back up at him. A small skull, but human.

  ‘That’s not the only one,’ said Bjorn, joining him in his investigation. ‘There are more bones over here.’

  ‘The remains of children,’ Gest said, seeing a litter of small leg bones and arms bones, skulls and ribcages. ‘These must be the children the troll carried off. But some of these bones are those of beasts.’

  He turned back. Asgeir had sat the severed head upon a rock. ‘So our “troll” lived on the flesh of beast and man. But who was he?’

  ‘I think that must be clear,’ Asgeir said darkly. ‘Don’t you recognise that face? You weren’t here in the old days, but you must see the likeness.’

  ‘Earl Sigvaldi,’ said Bjorn. ‘It looks like the earl, but much older. So he was the troll who raided my lands.’

  Gest’s eyes narrowed. ‘The earl’s father?’

  The old man who had renounced his throne after King Harald Finehair won his famous victory at Hafrsfjord, and fled away into the wilderness. So this was what had become of him! And Gest had killed him. Killed Earl Sigvaldi’s father.

  ‘But what of Hild?’ he said.

  Bjorn looked dark. ‘Perhaps the troll—Surt—killed her. Like he killed all the rest.’

  Gest rooted curiously amongst the bones. Bjorn came to join him while the others gathered in the cave mouth. As he did Gest’s foot squelched on something flabby. He peered down and saw that he had stepped on the carcase of a child. Its face was half gone, and in places the body had been gnawed upon. He looked up.

  ‘Bjorn,’ he said urgently.

  For a moment Bjorn was silent. Then he knelt and gathered up the remains.

  ‘It’s her,’ he said, his voice choked. ‘My bairn. My Dagny.’

  He wept in silence.

  ‘There’s nothing else fresh enough to be Hild,’ Gest muttered, after more searching. ‘Even if Surt had eaten every scrap of her flesh, these remains are old.’ He looked up at Bjorn. ‘I don’t think she was ever here.’

  ‘But we were told…’ Bjorn protested, looking up mournfully from his child’s corpse. He placed the remains on the ground reluctantly, arranged the putrid limbs neatly.

  Gest drew him aside. ‘Thank you for coming to help me,’ he said.

  ‘I went back for the others,’ Bjorn explained. ‘I didn’t know what had happened, but I knew there would be strength in numbers. We’d heard that there were hundreds of trolls… who would have thought it was one crazy old man?’ He looked grim. ‘Asgeir was sure you would be dead,’ he added. ‘I had trouble persuading the rest to come with me.’

  ‘They thought my death inevitable?’ Gest asked.

  Bjorn nodded. ‘It’s almost as if… that was what they had in mind all along.’

  They walked outside. The sun peeked sleepily over the eastern fells, a red ball of flame whose light seeped slowly across the moors, turning the fjord waters far below red as blood. From up here, they had an unrivalled view of the surrounding lands.

  Mountain peaks strode on the eastern horizon, westward the shores of Gandsfjord gave way to woodland, beyond which were the waters of Hafrsfjord. Gest was surprised by how close the fjord lay to the king’s steading. Those tangled woodland paths had led him astray, and it had seemed that Hafrsfjord lay much further away. No longships were visible upon its calm waters. Beyond it was the open sea.

  Asgeir and the others had followed them outside, and now sat lazing in the sun. It had been a hard night for all of them. Gest himself was weary. But Bjorn’s words confirmed his own suspicions.

  ‘It was Asgeir who killed Ivar,’ Gest murmured. ‘Killed him before I had a chance to question him. To learn more about the vikings who he had joined.’

  ‘You think he’s in league with them?’ Bjorn asked hoarsely. ‘And he thought he would get rid of you, too, by egging you on to fight the trolls?’

  ‘It seems likely,’ said Gest. ‘I’m a king’s man. Like Thorstein before me. They got rid of Thorstein… but told these tales of trolls to escape the blame. Perhaps they wanted to do something like that with me… I’m sure that it was not trolls that burnt the steading. You say this Einar guards the fjord mouth, and lights the beacons if vikings are sighted. Where is his steading, from up here?’

  Bjorn shook his head. ‘You can’t see it from this spot,’ he said. ‘Come with me round here.’

  He indicated the cliff that led around the curve of the crag. Other cave mouths yawned in the rock, the ones Gest had seen from across the fjord. From further round they would be able to see further west, towards Boknafjord mouth. Gest took a last look at the others before he followed Bjorn. Most of the warriors were sitting idly among the rocks in the cave mouth, but Asgeir was talking urgently to two cronies, looking in the direction of Gest and Bjorn.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Bjorn a moment later.

  They stood on a windswept shelf of rock, out of sight of the cave mouth, with a view of Gandsfjord below them entering the wide waters of Boknafjord, the fells, and the far off sea. In the mouth of Boknafjord was an island called Kvitsoy. Bjorn told Gest that it was the location of the beacon that could be seen from one end of the fjord to another. The island was a part of Einar’s lands, which lay on either side of the fjord. Beyond it, f
ishing boats stood out to sea.

  Gest shaded his eyes with his hand and pointed. ‘So Einar, if he were in league with the vikings, could have turned a blind eye to a vessel of war sailing in from the sea’—he traced the possible journey—‘past your own lands to the strand north of my steading. If it was in the middle of the night, the attack could have been carried out in no time, Thorstein slain, and the vikings away to sea before the thralls could reach Earl Sigvaldi.’

  ‘What of your leman?’ Bjorn asked. Gest was still looking out to sea. ‘There was no sign of her amongst Surt’s other… victims,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘I don’t think Hild was ever here,’ Gest told him evenly. ‘I think she was abducted by our enemies, and it was put about that the trolls had her. I doubted the tale, but I came here partly to regain my standing in the eyes of the folk. I think I can claim that I have done so now, freeing them from their night terrors. What the earl will say when he learns that the troll was his father, or that his own father carried off your bairn and killed her, I do not know... But I think that my search for Hild—and for answers—will continue elsewhere.’

  Bjorn followed his gaze. He tensed suddenly, seeing what Gest was looking at.

  Off in the distant haze where the islands dotted the sea, he saw what looked like a sail. Then another. And another. And yet another! Dozens of ships, at anchor off a distant island.

  Gest lowered his hand. ‘We must return to the earl,’ he said, without commenting on what they had seen, ‘and bring him the sad news.’

  Without another word, he led Bjorn away.

  —17—

  They trotted up from the strand where the ship now bobbed at anchor, towards Earl Sigvaldi’s stronghold. By now it was mid-morning, and folk were at work in the fields around the settlement, readying the ground for the spring planting, while the garth was quiet and almost deserted. The hoofs of the horses drummed on the packed earth of the trackway as the two men on guard duty opened the gates to let them enter.