AlexKeto.com

Here are the first three chapters of I, Beowulf, my novel about the hero of epic Anglo Saxon poem. Feel free to critique it.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE 

The Known World

 

From the cliffs perched on the edge of the bogs, I see the far limits of the known world. Moors ooze to the west while oak forests bar the tracks north and south. The sea rumbles to the east. Somewhere, beyond my vision, the ocean plunges off the end of the earth. Or so I’m told.

Halfway to the shore, the sun reflects off the newly-laid, golden thatch of Jorgen’s mead hall. Behind a circular earthen dike topped with a log-stake palisade, a few dozen houses and huts nestle next to the hall for protection.

Beyond the palisade lie the fields and pastures carved out of the forests one iron-wood oak tree at a time. Warlords conjure grandiose dreams, but it is the relentless, ant-like thralls who transform the world. 

The tan cake of earth leavened with shards of white flint lies barren. Dark brown lines of moist dirt mark where the thralls with their ox teams have scratched the surface. I watch one thrall goad her oxen up one row and back down the other while her husband guides the plow behind; wooden shuttles on a loom.  

Hedgerows dense enough to stop a lust-driven bull divide the fields and pastures. Two triangular fields stand out from the checkerboard, the remnants of a distant feud between identical twins who hated the sight of the other. The story goes that the dispute cost the brothers so much money, they had sold themselves as thralls. Any time some one talks about human dignity, I try to bring up these brothers.

Pig sties are scattered across Jorgen’s land like brown agates. With their solid rock walls, the sties put the precarious thrall huts to shame. I’m not saying we value pigs more than thralls. I’d never say that, particularly if one of the saps was within earshot. No, we tell the thralls that it’s because the pigs can root their way out under wood walls. Of course, so could the thralls if they put their minds to it.

On the shingle-stone shore stands the tannery. Great vats of lye, chicken turds and human piss and a dozen other noxious things soften the pig, horse and cow hides. The rawhide awning stretched over the barrels is black from the fumes. Because of the filth and the stink, not that many warlords want to get into the leather trade. And that’s precisely the reason Jorgen did. The profits will be immense, Jorgen promised, but I haven’t noticed much gold lying around.

Jorgen is my lord, and my known world is Jorgen’s March. Jorgen is a Wendt and so are his other thanes. I am a Geat and so are my thanes. Jorgen overlooks this. Most of the time.   

Further down the shore and protected from the stench of the tannery by the sea wind is the blacksmith, another Jorgen gold-mine idea. A reasonable man will exchange a ridiculous number of gold arm rings for a finely-wrought sword; after all, his life may depend on the blade not snapping. Too bad the finest sword smiths are the Franks, not Wendts.

Still, year after year, with the promise that the final technological breakthrough is just around the corner, Jorgen buys iron ore from the Franks. And year after year, our newly-forged blades turn out as brittle as skim ice on a pond. Jorgen shouts and screams it’s the fault of his smiths, that they are mentally defective, or that they aren’t trying. But it’s because the Franks mix rat droppings and sand into the ore they sell. Why would they pass on the pure ore? I pointed this out to Jorgen once. He peered at me with his hooded eyes as if I were some creature from beneath a log and said, “You don’t understand the Big Picture.”   

Which was true. At the time, I didn’t. Later, I understood Jorgen just likes to see people working. Other people, mind you. The harder people around him work, the better Jorgen feels. Success is not important as long as sweat drips from brows and thrall children manning the bellows collapse before the furnaces. Besides, each setback gives Jorgen a chance to do what he does best, feeling sorry for himself. He cherishes each and every cracked forge or a blighted field of oats. With a gloomy smile, he waves to the departing ore ships carrying his gold stocks back to the Franks.

When the setbacks mount up, Jorgen gets a cagey look and begins ripping out large tufts of hair from his beard while crying that he is cursed with lazy ingrates. He moans that he is poor because he’s sacrificed everything for the good of his Thousand-Year-March. All his thanes and thralls, except for me, rush over to reassure a preening Jorgen that he is most loved. Jorgen laps it up. This usually shuts him up for a month or two.

As far as I can tell, the only Big Picture issue in Jorgen’s life that ever counted is the fact he married the heiress to this March. Before that, he was just another Wendt spear man knocking around, looking for a steady job. Now, he struts about boasting that his bloodline will be ruling this March for the next thousand years: typical warlord claptrap.

                                                ***

Saxons. Our hostile neighbors to the south, and if you believe some, our kith and kin on some second cousin twice removed level. Despite this tie, they’d like nothing more than to murder us, enslave our children and rape our wives. Of course, we’d do the same to them if given half a chance so I don’t hold it against them. But how do I explain the vast gulf between us? What makes them the other?  

Let me explain it this way: we’ve hauled two boats up onto the shore for the winter. We call them snake ships. When we named them that, we tried to conjure up an image of how these sleek ships slide and slither through the great waves with shocking speed before striking a hostile shore. An entire world and all its implications are contained within the name.

But the Saxons are a literalistic people lacking imagination. They call our ships “long boats.” boats. Long boats! Of all the possibilities, the Saxons took a look at the situation, scratched their heads, and came up with that!

Another example: they call a rooster a “waker-bird.” What we call a hen, they drag out into “female-waker-bird.” I once asked a Saxon thane why they don’t just come up with a separate word, like hen? He looked at me and replied, “Because it is a female-waker-bird.”

Sometimes, in my dreams, all the Saxons have cubed-shaped heads. Their language sounds like dogs barking.

To the north, beyond our last fields, lies the forest. Somewhere in the midst of the lush ferns and oaks is our boundary with Haakon’s March. For a Swede, Haakon is a smart man. Hell, for any man, he’s pretty clever because he knows what people want, and what people want is not to be bored. And the easiest way to do that is for people to obliterate themselves on mead. Instead of pounding brittle iron into dust or stirring great vats of chicken turds, Haakon raises wild flowers which, more or less, grow themselves. Along the edges of his florid fields, he’s placed hundreds and hundreds of beehives and each little thrall bee is making honey for the old Swede.

You can hear the deep, throbbing hum of Haakon’s March at least two miles away, and the air is almost black with bees. No one has ever invaded Haakon’s March. Even a berserker would rather have a leg hacked off than be stung a thousand times. With the honey, he brews oceans of mead which he trades to the Franks for their swords and mail armor.

Once all our cheap, homemade swords break and our chain mail hauberks rip, Haakon sells us his stock of Frankish swords and armor for our hams and bacon. Sometimes, if he’s feeling randy, he demands one or two of our prettiest women. What’s depressing is our women line up in droves to be sold. Ah, who can blame them?  

As far as I can tell, neither Haakon nor his people do a lick of work. Naturally, Jorgen despises Haakon. He calls Haakon “old nectar boy.” Not that Haakon gives a damn what Jorgen thinks. When you’ve discovered how to be immensely wealthy without working, you tend not to give a damn about much of anything. 

                                                          ***

Even before I dig my heels into the flank of my horse, he’s backstepping and turning to go back down into the forest. He knows the routine as well as I do. With the sea ice breaking up along the shore, this is the day Per and Johan, Jorgen’s two other liegemen, and I scour every inch of the March with our thanes to hunt the wolves made bold by their winter famine, the fur-manged bears emerging from their winter dens, and the occasional trespassing Saxon. Tomorrow, we turn our swine loose in the forests to forage on their own until autumn. By then, having sharpened their tusks on oak roots, the pigs will be good and feral. We’ll hunt them down, herding the sows we need back into their sties and culling the rest with our ash spears. The outraged defiance of the boars is our sport.

Last week, Eisner the priest, who also styles himself a seer of futures, spent a day or two sober enough to cast his collection of aged chicken bones inscribed with runes before the great fire in the mead hall. Raising his gaping mouth to the rafters, he moaned a bit and put on a good show of shaking. Then he announced he could see the moon and stars in perfect alignment, and tomorrow, of all days in the year, was the one and only day it would be propitious to turn the pigs loose.

Who’s going to argue? We have to do it sometime, and his performance makes for good drama and entertains the children in a horror-struck sort of way. Mothers always warn their young ones that if they don’t behave, they’ll tell old Eisner to snatch them. Privately, the mothers promise Eisner that if he so much as looks at their children sideways, they will cut his bollocks off and make him eat them. The warning stems from an unfortunate incident a number of years ago involving the priest and some farm animals. No one talks about it.

Eisner also announces the arrival of the winter and summer solstices, and informs us of the spring and autumn equinoxes. Sometimes Haakon’s priest seems to believe these dates fall on different days from Eisner. Then again, Haakon’s priest can read and write. Not that it matters. The only two dates that count are the days we turn the pigs loose and days we drive the pigs back in.

You see, smoked ham and bacon feed us in the lean months. Lard greases the axles of our wagons and fuels our fitful lamps. The bones we carve into flutes, chess men, and needles. The thick raw hides reinforce our shields. The softened skins make up our boots. The dung fertilizes our fields. In truth, whatever we style ourselves, we are the People of the Pigs.

But if the foundation of our life is pigs, the mortar of our life is mead. Our wooden beehives stand in clusters of two or three all across the March. On hot days of summer, the rising and falling of the buzz sounds like some monstrous creature breathing. When dusk falls, armed with smoke pots, we rob the hives of honey but never find much. I believe the tannery fumes and the smoke from the blacksmith stunt the bees. Jorgen tells me I’m just not seeing the Big Picture. Every year when our honey harvest falls short and the mead barrels wind up half full, Jorgen is back at it tearing his beard and moaning as we wind up shipping half our hams to Haakon.

There is comfort in our perpetual failure. It saves us from the stress of being successful. That’s the Big Picture.

As far as I know, and no one has told me otherwise, nothing has ever changed on Jorgen’s March. And nothing ever will. I am a liegeman to Jorgen, and my son will be a liegeman to his son.  All that thousand-year-nonsense Jorgen talks about may well turn out to be true. After all, I’ve never seen a mosquito suspended in amber fly free.

                                                 ***

All this contemplation makes me thirsty so I reach for my ale skin (of course, it is made from a pig’s bladder) which hangs from my saddle and take a deep draught of the blood warm liquid.

I hand the skin to Danica who has ridden to the top of the cliffs with me. Danica shoots me an inviting look with those vivacious green eyes of her, but she takes only a sip of the ale. Cool and comfortable in a green linen dress fastened with gold brooches on each shoulder, she’s not quite as pretty as she thinks she is, but she is pretty enough for me. 

You have to be careful around her. The finger-thin ten-inch dagger hanging from her waist can slip through the seams in our toughest leather armor. Her face, framed by red hair, is not in complete proportion because her nose ends in a slight acorn of flesh, but I find this appealing. Perfection is overrated. Usually, it lacks character.

I sidle my horse up against hers so that our knees touch and give her a look that says, Let’s spread our horse blankets under the sun in a shielded dip. The pigs can wait. 

With a kick of the heels, Danica backs her horse away because she knows what’s on my mind right now. “You can see Aethling’s hall from here, you know.”

“Yes? So?” I guide my horse closer to hers.

“What do you mean, so?” Her mouth forms into a redbud pout. “A great hall standing to our south. All that Saxon land just sitting there. Why don’t you do something about it? What are you waiting for?”

We’ve had this conversation so many times, why does she never tire of it? “It would take more than my five thanes and I to take Aethling’s hall.”

“I really doubt Jorgen, or Haakon to the north, would be all that upset if someone stormed Aethling’s hall and drove those blockhead Saxons a bit further south,”

She says this with utter conviction; too bad it’s not even remotely true. Jorgen, Haakon and the other warlords to the north want a border squabble right now about as much as they want a good dose of plague. Wars cost money and don’t do much for business. Even worse, you have to be somewhat sober to pull off a good war, and, with all those barrels of mead lying around, Haakon isn’t sober very often. For that matter, neither are many of the other warlords.

“Five thanes, that’s all. A hall burning takes a few more than that.” My sudden ardor for Danica cools to mild resentment. Often times, when we are alone in our hut by the great hall, she stands on one foot on a stool, twirls and says she really ought to be a queen.

“You know Beowulf, what you really need in life is a good kick in the ass. Honestly, you are such a waste.”

“Uh-huh.” I’m not even going to parse her last sentence. The meaning is just too redolent and expansive of utter nihilism. Danica is one of those people who believe they have a right to go through life telling others what they think of them. Funny breed, if you ask me. I don’t go around talking about her never-to-be-mentioned stint as a thrall after Elmie’s March, where she was born, was overrun. All I’ll say is she’s a serious working girl and climbed her way back to the status she was born into. A noteworthy accomplishment in itself if you ask me, but for some reason, Danica thinks it should all be hush-hush.

“It would be possible if you had a couple more of these.” She leans out from the saddle and taps my new gold arm ring. Jorgen gave me this one during the winter’s starving time when he sent me north to buy two wagon loads of mead barrels from Haakon to keep us going.

For three days, Haakon and I sat under the flickering torches in his mead hall hammering out the details because, as usual, Jorgen was trying to cadge the barrels on non-existent credit. It would have been cheaper and faster to have just sent me north with enough ham and bacon to make the sale but, then, Jorgen wouldn’t be sure I would be sweating like I do in front of that blasted mead hall fire if we were properly prepared. Besides, Jorgen wouldn’t have the chance to moan about Haakon’s extortionist loan rates. On and on it went as Haakon thought through all the details of the transaction. You wouldn’t have given Haakon credit for his shrewdness by watching him down mug after mug of mead but rather than befuddle him, the alcohol seemed to fire up a congenital avarice in the Swede. His father wasn’t called Harold the Stingy because people liked him.

For the record, besides being a human mead skin, Haakon didn’t even look all that bright either with his right eye forever aimed at the tip of his nose and that curving red scar on his forehead. With the drunkard’s mushy memory, every night Haakon recounted the same story about how he got the scar and the single cross eye from a Saxon’s sword and, “I swear on my mother’s bones that was the last thing that Saxon ever did.” On the third night, even one of his own liegemen, Fres, couldn’t take it any longer and told me a mule kicked Haakon in the head when he was eight. This put Haakon into a sulk until, two mugs of mead later, he’d forgotten about it and told me the Saxon story again.

So much for the sanctity of mother’s bones.

If a mule did kick him, the beast pounded into Haakon’s skull a grisly determination to continue negotiating long past the point any other man would break and beg for mercy. This is the real reason Haakon is rich. I agreed to his terms just to stop having to hear his Saxon story for the tenth time. Then he scratched a boil on the back of his thin neck and added, almost as if it were an after thought, that Jorgen would have to send two dozen pigs along with the two wagons of hams to act as collateral on the loan. Another pause and then, by the way, that means two dozen pigs per wagon. I fled his hall just as the human leech cleared his throat and again croaked “by the way…” I made it to the door before he managed to steal my boots as part of the bargain as well.

Not that I had anything to worry about when I returned to Jorgen’s hall. No matter what deal I cut, Jorgen would have done what he did which was to erupt into soul-wrenching groans as he snatched tufts of hair from his beard. All of which meant he was thoroughly enjoying his suffering at Haakon’s rapacious hands. He even announced at the evening feast that because of my ineptitude, he, Jorgen, had lost half his gold, at least, and our March faced imminent ruin.

“We all wind up thralls! We all wind up thralls,” Jorgen wailed. 

No one paid the slightest attention. They’d heard it before. Later, Jorgen took me to his sleeping chamber by the bier and handed me a gold arm ring: his way of making up for humiliating me at the dinner. Humiliatingly enough, I accepted it. On the other hand, I can’t touch a man’s opinion of me, but I can wear his gold arm ring.

“We really got one over cross-eyed Haakon this time, didn’t we?” Jorgen grinned and clapped me on the shoulder.

“No, we didn’t. Truth is, Haakon reamed us because we’re inept and deserve it. Anyway, I didn’t hear you had much good to say about it out in the hall.”

“Of course, I did. I praised you to skies. What are you talking about?”

“Did you hear what I said?” Danica’s voice brings me jarringly back from my memories. “Sometimes I think your mind goes completely blank.”

I shrug and look out over the distant green-tinted sea. A calm sea. During the winter, it turns shades of blue-hued gray as the storms howl down from the north. When it means to hunt you down, it becomes black tinged with roaring white froth. “Actually, love, what I need is not a gold arm ring necessarily, but just gold.”

“And, you know, in another month or two, the trade ships will begin arriving from the north. Sometimes those ship captains, if they are heading south, will want to pick up a few thanes for a raid or two. You can always sign up for that, can’t you?” Danica’s voice becomes a bit breathless as it always does when she is volunteering me for something that might be lethal.

 “And if the Saxons came north while my thanes and I are gone…”

She dips her chin and her eyes drift half shut as if she is falling asleep. She does this when she calculates odds and angles, something she is very, very good at. I have learned to be wary of this look.

“Well, it wouldn’t be that bad.”

“It’s a moot point anyway. Jorgen will never agree.”

“Maybe not, but you’ll never know unless you ask, will you?”

I don’t bother to explain. Yes, Danica is very, very good at working out the odds and angles. But the truth is, and I’m not trying to brag here, she isn’t quite as good as me. The real problem is that it’s not about defending the March, like Jorgen claims. It’s about preventing my thanes and I from looting enough gold to be free of him. Turning my face up towards the sun, I close my eyes so that I see red blood through my eyelids and feel the warmth on my face.

What invades my mind is the image of Aethling’s hall, and without meaning to, I formulate hazy plans about how in a few years, if everything goes right, I might hoard enough gold to hire a few more thanes, maybe cut some sort of deal with another liegeman. I’d need to work on the logistics, of course, but maybe Fres, Haakon’s story-telling liegeman, would come along. We could do a fifty-fifty deal on thralls and gold with my side bringing the hams and his side the mead. Fres might be treacherous enough to betray his warlord but trustworthy enough to do business with. You don’t go around telling tales on your warlord if you’re happy with him. Still, that’s a very small needle to thread, isn’t it?

I open my eyes and sigh. Maybe Danica is right. Might be nice to sit at the head table for once and not on the benches. Lift a finger and some thane comes scurrying.

On the other hand, warlords tend to wind up slumped face first in a bowl of porridge, a ten-inch stiletto sticking out between their shoulder blades. I turn to her, “What if one of Aethling’s liegemen is on his horse on the cliffs to the south looking at Jorgen’s hall and his woman is telling him to burn it? Did you ever think about that?”

“No, Beowulf,” she says in disgust. “Only you would think of that. God, you really do need a good kick in the ass.”

                                                         ***

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 My Thanes

 

Jorgen pounds his table with the hilt of his dagger. The laughter and talk in the hall dies away as the thanes turn their mead-muddled faces towards him. The flickering light of the open fire in the center of the hall lends him a dramatic air. Silently, beneath the flickering light of the torches set in the walls, the two thrall servant women carry the jugs, filling the mugs whenever a thane turns one upside down in the air to show it’s empty.

I sit, as always, leaning against one of the posts holding the thick oak door. I like the feel of the foot-square post covering my back, and the exit just a foot away. Studs of iron bolts and iron band protected the door and the posts from axes and a bolt digs into my back. My five thanes sit on either side and across the table from me. Danica leans on my left shoulder.  She is fingering the new gold arm band.

Jorgen raises his silver mug inlaid with gold filigree above his head, locks his eyes on me, and says “Skol.” I nod and raise my mug too.

We do this every evening because the iron bands of ritual are what keep our own fragile world from fragmenting. As I’ve mentioned, I and my thanes are not Wendts as Jorgen and the other thanes in the hall are. We are Geats. It shouldn’t matter but it does, like a small stone beneath your heel in your boot. Jorgen acknowledges us first to keep the other two liegemen from getting the idea that the Geats are out of favor. Also, since we are the smallest band, it keeps the other liegemen off-balance. More than one March has fallen when the liegemen turned on each other and forgot to keep their minds focused on their enemies across the border.

Jorgen shifts his gaze to Johan, a bluff man with a face that looks as if it’s been battered with a rock. Johan lords it over nine thanes because he’s quicker with his fists than any of them. Jorgen and Johan toast each other. Next is Per. Per is the quiet one, and those are the ones you have to watch. Or so they always say. Per commands seven thanes.

With twenty-three of us, Jorgen’s hold on the March is at once tenuous and secure: if he had twice the number, just supplying gold arm rings, mead, and pork would break him. But less than twenty-three warriors and he wouldn’t be able to turn so many Saxon or Swedish women into widows.  

 “I toast my three liegemen, and I start with Beowulf because the number of thanes under a liegeman has no bearing on his service to his lord.” Jorgen grins and winks at me so that I know he is lying. “And I move to Johan because his band knows no rival in its strength. But always, I look to Per as the balance in the scales.”

Silver and gray have replaced the brown in his beard. His stomach, once flat and rippled, now bulges under the linen jerkin and rampant gold thread beasts.

“On you three liegemen, I will build the foundations for a March that will last for a thousand years.” Jorgen’s right hand twitches and a messianic fire glows beneath his overhanging brows. He is about to launch on what I call his “now and forever” speech.   

At his right hand sits his second wife, Gerd. The first wife, the one with the money, died three years after she married Jorgen. Very thoughtful of her, if you ask me. Gerd is a young, docile thing with a round, moon face set with vague hazel eyes. When spoken to, she never raises her voice, and reacts to anything surprising with a chirped “Oh!” Most things surprise her.

Hunching over the table on Jorgen’s left is Didrik, the sole product of Jorgen’s first marriage.  Didrik glances out from beneath his brows, trying to look fierce but he’s fooling no one because he tends to stick out a quivering lower lip if he doesn’t get his way. When he’s angry, which is most of the time, his face flushes scarlet. As Jorgen knows well, a warlord who can’t hide his thoughts doesn’t last long and sometimes I can’t help but feel a sense of pity for the old man. When it comes to a thousand year vision, Didrik is the cow dung in the mead bowl.

Jorgen’s two other sons by Gerd are Karl, six and Sigurd, eight. They lean against each other, heads down, half asleep under the pounding waves of their father’s endless oratory. Unlike Didrik, they are as clever as weasels and fight like cornered lynxes. There is more spirit in the pair of them than in all the drunken thanes before them combined.

I know this because one of my jobs is to train them on swords. Mostly it consists of my dodging the poorly aimed blows of their wooden swords. If they leave themselves absurdly open, I sneak in a stinging slash with my willow goad. I’ve never seen them cry even when the whipping willow raises a welt. Instead, they know to press in with wooden shield and wooden sword focused on the single goal of annihilating me. Revenge always takes away the sting.

Olaf, one of my thanes, bears a long red scar down one cheek. He’d been taunting Karl when the boy drew his eating knife. Olaf snickered at the six-year-old and said “Nah, nah, pansy boy.” Quick as a snake, Karl slashed Olaf’s face open. Sigurd is jealous of Karl’s attack on Olaf and has vowed if one of my thanes so much as squeaks wrong, he’ll make sure the point of his dagger comes out the back of their skulls. None of my thanes taunt the boys any longer. You can’t train this homicidal instinct into a man; he is either born with it or he’s not. They will see the red mist.

If Jorgen has any hope of a thousand-year March, it rests on the narrow shoulders of those two boys. But, Jorgen hates the boys in a cold, quiet way that almost no one notices. Except the boys themselves. Why does he hate them? Because when it comes to love, Jorgen only loves himself.

As for Olaf, he doesn’t mind the cut at all. He’s found the scar sort of becoming. Nothing like a fine dueling scar when you’re dandling some fresh bud of a girl on your knee, is there? He bleaches his moustache and beard with lye, and greases back his hair with lard in the fashion of all the pretty boys. With his muscles, Olaf would be a fine fighter if he weren’t as clumsy as a bow-legged ox. I always put him on the far left of my shield wall. You have to have a good man covering your right hand, your sword hand.    

In contrast to the hellions Karl and Sigurd, training Didrik was a disaster and lasted only a week. Each whistling whip of my willow goad brought out a squawk and that jutting, quivering lower lip until Didrik announced it was beneath him to be trained by a mere, stinking liegeman. For political reasons, I let the comment slide. Later, when Jorgen heard his first-born’s complaint he sent Didrik off to Denmark where a lord had a noble son who could be a sparring partner. That lasted a few months until we began to hear ugly talk about the two boys spending too much time together in the hay mows.

When Didrik returned, Jorgen made a show of prancing his heir around and daring anyone to fight him now. But there was no need to -- Per, Johan, and I had promised our thanes that anyone who touched a hair on Didrik’s head would be skinned alive and doused with salt water.

Afterward, Didrik stayed out of fights saying that all that was beneath him. Now, he says he knows tactics and strategy which is a joke. When it comes to a shield wall, there are only two strategies: the first is to stay alive and the second is to kill the man in front of you. 

One of the thrall girls nudges my shoulder and gestures with the jug. I nod and she leans over as she fills my mug brushing her breasts up against me. Danica gives the thrall a poisoned look. I gesture with my thumb to Olaf, and the thrall girl shifts her attention to him. 

The slave girl knows better than to approach my thane Delling. Delling just doesn’t like girls, if you know what I mean. You wouldn’t think a man as small as Delling would be deadly, but Delling is very, very fast. And a man you can’t hit with a sword is a man you can’t kill. I always put him on my right side in the shield wall because I couldn’t care less who or what he likes as long as he keeps me alive.  

“And how will my March thrive for a thousand years? I’ll tell you how! It is not based on men and arms, it is based on the strength of family!” Jorgen leans forward with the knuckles of both hands on the table. The thanes around me nod and yawn contentedly. Jorgen’s thoughts aren’t challenging, which is how we like it when our stomachs are full and the mead is flowing.

“Family loyalty and the bonds that can’t be broken. The trust that exists between father and son and between brother and brother.” Jorgen launches into a tale about a brother who comes across his younger sibling caught in a mire on the moor lands, and how he does everything he can to save the boy. Nothing works until he lies face down in the ooze forming a human bridge to the boy. The younger brother is saved but the older boy drowns. “How great is the bond?” Jorgen demands to know. “And that is the people we are! And the people we will be for a thousand years.”

Breca, another of my thanes, begins to blubber quietly between sips of mead over the tragedy, the glory, the ineffability of self-sacrifice. It is just too much for him to take in. Scratch him on the arm, and purple emotion pours out, not red blood. Loyal as they come, but he needs to be told what to do. Still, I wouldn’t trade him for ten Wendts.  Before a battle, he’s the one chewing on the top of his shield, frothing white spit while his eyes go unfocused. I’ve seen the great brute single-handedly break a Saxon shield wall with his double-handed ax. He’s the main reason we outnumbered Geats are still alive on the March. 

Next to me, Danica listens with obvious, rapt attention, back-bowed inward, breasts jutting outwards, but she’s just playing to Jorgen. And he’s sneaking more than a couple of glances at her. Danica says she only plays up to Jorgen to help me. She says it shows how thoughtful she is of me. Gerd despises Danica because even though Gerd has a cow brain between her ears she’s not that dumb.

Rolf, my fourth thane, rolls his jet black eyes above the deep pouches and stares at the ceiling. He notices me looking at him and sticks a finger down his throat in mock gagging. I nod. We sneak in this exchange every time we hear this story. Then, Rolf always snatches up his mead mug and downs it in one throat chugging go. I’ve never seen Rolf completely sober, but I’ve also never seen him drunk.

Burr is my last thane. He hasn’t paid any attention to anything. Instead, he’s playing with his newest pet, a chipmunk he’s somehow managed put a leash on. He’s got an acorn and is trying to teach the rodent to roll over. Surprisingly, he’s making progress and the chipmunk is actually lying in its back with its four paws in the air. I’d like to say he’s one of those guys who has a way with animals, who can get into their heads, but he’s not. He just does weird stuff like put leashes on chipmunks.

Jorgen pauses and looks from one end of the hall to the other, then from inside his leather tunic, plucks out an old dagger and holds it up by the tip. Even from the end of the hall, I can see the gold filigree running down from the hilt and along the blade. The polished amber on the end of the hilt flashes in the firelight.    

“Family!” Jorgen roars. “This is the foundation of our people, and now I present Didrik, who has come of age, with this blade so that he can defend his family, his father, his mother, and his brothers.”

On cue, Ivar, the little Rus prick, picks up his harp, and amid the hubbub, belts out a song of praise about Didrik, calling him the mighty shoot springing upward from the seed of the towering wolf oak. For a thousand years, the House of Jorgen will reign!

As I’ve mentioned, Ivar is a Rus which means that you always make sure he walks in front. Never turn your back on him. Ivar believes everyone hates him, and he specializes in composing paranoid ballads. You can always count on the hero, usually a gods-fearing Rus, being knifed in the back in the midst of some complex conspiracy for no good reason. Ivar thinks everyone hates him because he is Rus. This is wrong. Everyone hates Ivar because he’s a jerk.

The thanes, who have been given a glimpse of immortality, thunder the table with their fists and the mead mugs jump.

Breca is beside himself, rocking back and forth, tears cascading, and gripped again by his own maelstrom of joy and grief and ecstasy. Danica jumps up clapping as fast as she can. She pauses only long enough to jab a thumb into my ribs to get me on my feet also. 

At the center table in front of the great fire, Jorgen nods happily because, despite himself, Ivar’s poem helps Jorgen believe in his own private, lunatic dream which is, that in the end, he will cheat death. I don’t begrudge Jorgen this at all. I want to believe the same thing and so does everyone I know. The final dream that only dies when we do.

All eyes turn toward Ivar, hungry for his next wan thread of comfort. All that is, except the two thrall girls, who ply back and forth along the benches with their pitchers of intoxicants, endlessly pouring the golden mead. Only they are deaf to immortality and glory. They were born slaves and will die slaves.

I look back at the center table as Didrik runs his thumb gently along the gleaming edge of the knife testing its sharpness. As Ivar plucks the last note on his harp, the thanes jump up, pounding each other on the back amid wild howls of approval.

All is good and the mead is flowing as Didrik sits in silence testing the dagger’s edge. 

                                               *** 

The soft gray light of dawn filters through the open triangle window tucked beneath the gable of my hut. The wolf skin quilts keep the frost at bay. Danica has her toes jammed between my shins to keep them warm. I lean my head back. Through the open triangle, I can see the sky is a corpse-white, which means the mists have rolled down from the moors again. The air is wet and cold.

Outside, water drips from the edges of the sodden thatch as the fog billows past. From the doorstep of my hut, the great hall’s roof is dark with moisture. Along the eaves below the roof, the writhing dragons and snakes painted in gaudy yellow, green and red are subdued by the gloom. The animal images and the magic runes scrawled beneath the eaves are there to keep the trolls and banshees away. It must work. I’ve never seen one.

But there are other explanations. For instance, our priest Eisner claims lightning bolts are really just Thor taking potshots at trolls.

“What trolls?” I ask.

“He’s a very good shot,” Eisner grins.

Our black hearth tree stands amid trampled earth dead center of the circular palisade providing a spot of shade during the summer when the thanes gather to while away time when they aren’t on patrol. Eisner has a long-winded explanation of how the tree symbolizes our concept of the concentric circles of cosmos. Dead center, around the tree of life, is Asgard, home of the gods. Beyond this ring is Mitgard, where men live. And beyond that is Uitgard, a nasty sort of places with beasts and giants.

“And you thanes live here, next to the hearth tree like gods while the freemen are beyond the palisade and the thralls are relegated to outer boundaries. It shows you are gods on earth,” Eisner says.

I nod even though it’s nonsense. We live in the palisade by the hearth tree because the thralls don’t have the swords to force us to the outer boundaries and we do. And when the Saxons storm in, who’s going to the Great Beyond first? Us standing of the firestep or those poor, dumb bastards out there getting it in the neck?    

As if this conjures him out of the fog, Eisner appears, staggering out of the mists looking drawn and ill with his silver hair hanging in thick, greasy icicles down his forehead.

“Good morning, priest,” I call to him.

“What’s good about it?” Eisner demands as he pulls his robe aside and empties his bladder into a tanner’s tub.

“Oh, I don’t know. The fact we didn’t die in our sleep maybe?” I join him at the tub.

Wrapping his black robe around himself like the folded wings of a bat, Eisner grunts and makes his way to the great hall to draw his first mug of mead for the day. Says it steadies his nerves.

I start to follow him, but then notice that Pug, my thrall, is already tending my horse – feeding it and getting it ready for the day. Even though I haven’t told Pug we’re going out on patrol, he knows. He’s like a dog in that way. He senses things.

I know Pug has a proper name. The problem is, Pug can’t remember it. I found him six winters ago on the northern coastal road standing barefoot in the snow and on the brink of a severe case of frostbite. Standing no higher than my elbow, he was dressed in a rough spun, brown wool robe that came down to his knees and matched his skin color.

At first I thought he might be one of the Saxon priests we sometimes find wandering about whipping themselves or rubbing ash and mud into their hair.  As fast as a blacksmith’s hammer striking an anvil, I pounded him with questions: Who are you? Where do you come from? What are you doing in Jorgen’s March? In response, he turned his round face and wide-spaced eyes up at me, blinked twice, and fell over. 

I could have left him there, lying in the snow. Most would have – not out of callousness but because of an ingrained paranoia that this was a setup; a spy placed here by the Saxons. For all I knew, there was a pack of the bastards hiding behind the trees right now hoping we’d do the stupid thing: bring this kid home, make him one of us, and let him cut our throats in the small hours.

The only flaw in this thinking is that the Saxons just aren’t that clever. Dismounting, I check to see if he is still breathing then scoop him up and lay him across my saddle. I tell Rolf to ties his hands and feet together, just in case.

I need not have bothered. He was still out cold when we carried him into the great hall and dumped him on the ground in front of the fire to thaw him out. Squatting next to him, I gave him a shake. When at last he stirred and opened his eyes, I asked again who he was. Again, he didn’t answer; but this time he seemed to be giving it some thought. 

“We should kill him,” Rolf said.

“Kill him? After we went to all the trouble of dragging him back here? What’s the sense of that?” I give him another shake. “Come on. Quit faking and talk.”

To my surprise, Pug struggled to sit, then stand, then shaky still he fetched a jug of ale and a mug. He poured Rolf a drink and handed it to him.

“Useful little bastard, aren’t you?” Rolf grinned as he took a sip of ale and let out a sigh. He rubbed Pug’s tangle of matted brown hair. Pug wiggled his bottom in delight like a dog wagging his tail. A moment later, Rolf shouted at Pug, “Goddamn you!” Rolf pointed to his index finger. A louse was crawling up towards Rolf’s first knuckle.

If Pug had given this second gift to Rolf first, he wouldn’t be alive today.

We stripped off his vermin-ridden robe and burned it on the fire. I tied Pug by his hands to the back of my horse and frog marched him to the river where we scrubbed him down with eye-watering lye and ash soap. I watched in astonishment as he turned from brown to white. With my dagger, I shaved his head and sent his shocks of hair with their lice and lice eggs swirling out to sea. I threw him some worn-out, boy’s clothes to cover himself with. I can’t remember why I chose Pug as his name, but it seemed to fit given his broad, flat features.

Rolf always jokes that if it had been him that tossed Pug his clothes on the frozen river bank, he would have Pug’s loyalty now.

I doubt it because there is a bond between Pug and I that I don’t talk about with my thanes. He can’t remember his family and neither can I. I have no brothers or sisters and my only recollection of my parents are vague ghost images. Growing up on the March, no one explained what happened to my father. Most likely, he died of some form of a plague which among us is an embarrassing end even though it happens often enough.

Pug walks my horse up to me and hands me the reins. 

“Thank you, you silly old fool,” I say. He grins and wiggles his bottom. He likes nothing better than a bit of praise and is particularly fond of being called a “silly old fool.”

The more useful Pug becomes, the guiltier I feel. Something in me now prompts me to say,  “You know, Pug, it’s not really fair that you’re a thrall. I could give you your freedom. You’d be able to go wherever you want to go. Do whatever you want to do.”

“Where would I go?” Pug asks, his eyes widening.

“I don’t know, maybe back to where you were born. Go back to your own people.”

 Pug screws up his face pondering the idea. He looks like he might burst a blood vessel. After what seems like an eternity, he announces “No.”

“What do you mean no? You mean you don’t want your freedom?”

“No, I mean I still can’t remember where I came from so I have no place to go.”

“Yes, I see,” I note. “Well, I could probably buy a small patch of land for you within the freeman zone. You could stay on the March if you wanted to as a freeman.”

“That would be good,” Pug nods. “But…”

“Yes?”

“What would I do?”

“Farm the land, raise a few sheep or pigs, do some trade. Whatever you like,” I suggest.

An expression of despair washes over Pug’s face. Then he brightens. “Could I work for you?”

“I suppose. But you could still have your own land if you wanted it.”

“Where would this land be?”

“I think Jorgen might be willing to sell a field by the foot of the cliffs. It’s looking pretty ratty, but with a little effort, you could make something of it. We could ask him. Would you like to?”

“Too far to walk.” Pug shakes his head.

“What do you suggest?” 

“Well, if I’m going to work for you, then the best place is right here.”

I shake my head. Just then, Breca emerges from the hall, stretches his arms and lets out a long yawn. He shuffles over to the tanner barrel and turns his back to us. He fumbles with his front and tilts back his head amid the splashing of his pee. The seconds add up, and then it’s a minute, two minutes and he’s still going. It’s why we call him “pumpkin bladder.”

“Get the men up,” I tell him. “Jorgen wants us out on a patrol.” To Pug I say, “Tie my horse up and start walking the others. And make sure you eat – it might be a long day.”

Inside the hall, the crisp night air has flushed out much of the smoke from last night’s fire which is now a heap of ashes with dull red embers. Thanes lie curled and comatose under dull, gray wool blankets drawn over their heads; scattered, snoring rocks. One of the thrall women carries in a staggering load of firewood. She drops the logs with a clatter onto the rushes spread across the floor of the hall and pauses to wipe the sweat from her forehead with the grimy sleeve of her tunic. She cocks her head when she notices me watching her and gives me a speculative once over but I shake my head. With her jet black hair, high cheek bones, and gray eyes, she was probably born in the east. One of Johan’s thanes has been making eyes at her. Maybe she won’t be a thrall for much longer.

The noise has woken the thanes, and one by one, they moan and come reluctantly to life, yawning, scratching and muttering. The eastern thrall places four logs on their ends with the tops resting against each other on the dying fire. She slides dried leaves and twigs between them, and blows on the embers. A tongue of flame flares up and one of the leaves crackles. She swings a blackened cauldron hanging by a chain from the roof beam over the fire.

Breca walks past, his immensely broad shoulders jostling me. He pauses before the first gray blanket mound and kicks it. “Get up.” A moan erupts from within. The thane’s head appears. One of Per’s men. Breca ignores him and moves onto the next gray mound. He leans over and pulls the blanket from over the man’s head. Rolf shuts his eyes tightly, groans, and clutches his temples. Breca kicks him in the ribs. Rolf’s cheeks bulge, he clambers to his feet and staggers to the door of the hall. Outside, I can hear him retch. It makes no difference. Rolf will ride patrol today if I have to chain him to the saddle.

I take my shield down from where it hangs next to the door, always within easy reach of my place on the long bench. All of the thanes’ shields hang from the walls, rows and rows of flower blossom reds, greens, blues, and yellows, all with a different design. A red adder on a yellow field decorates Breca’s chipped and worn shield. My mark is a jagged white bolt of lighting on black. Rolf’s is an overflowing blue mead jug. He has a sense of humor.   

Jorgen, his gray and silver hair a tangle hanging down one side of his head, steps around the corner from his sleeping chamber, yawning. If you ever want to know whether a lord is a man or a deity, just watch him first thing in the morning before they’ve suited up in the armor of dignity. Jorgen has one hand on his hip rubbing away a night ache, and he smacks his lips.

I spot Ivar huddled in the corner clutching his harp. The conversations, the crowing rooster, and the noise of the thanes taking down their shields from walls hasn’t woken him up. I sidle up to him, grip his head between my hands, and shake him like I would shake a lamb. His eyes fly open in his pale green face, and he struggles to free himself. I’ve never much cared for our poet.

“Ivar, why is it you never sing a heroic epic about waking up?” I ask and let his head go.

“There is nothing heroic about waking up,” he mumbles. I can smell the stale ale on his breath.

“In your case, I would make an exception.” I walk back out of the hall to fetch my armor, sword, and ax from my hut. The one rule Jorgen enforces is that no weapons are ever allowed in the hall. Having a lopped off head from a drunken brawl land at your feet at dinner doesn’t do much for your appetite. Shields, yes, because an eating dagger is just as lethal as an ax.

In the hut, Danica is up. She sits in front of the polished steel plate hung from the wall, combing out her hair. “What’s Jorgen want from you today?”

“We’re riding up to the moors and coming back down the Wolf’s Den Valley track. With the pigs just out, he wants to make sure the Saxons stay on their side of the river.”

“Right.” Danica leans her head to the side and brushes out her hair on the side. She knows Jorgen will have men riding the March until the Spring plowing. During the planting season, all the thanes on both sides of the border hang up their shields, and an armistice of sorts exists.  

“See you. Be back this evening,” I kiss her on the top of her head.

“Love,” Danica says. “Try not to get killed.” She air kisses but remains focused on her mirror.

On my way back to the hall, I toss Pug my chain mail hauberk. The weight of the armor nearly buckles his knees, and he totters under the load.

“Give it a roll in the barrel, would you? Bit of rust along the right side.”

Pugs grins and nods. We have barrels half-filled with sand. The only way to scour chain mail is to place it inside and let the sand abrade it off.

In the hall, the thanes are all on their feet or sitting at the benches spooning down their oat and barley porridge. Rolf is tucking into a mug of mead and already the color has returned to his cheeks.

“Jorgen wants us to take Karl and Sigurd with us,” Breca tells me as I shuffle past the cauldron with my bowl out. The eastern girl thrall gives me a dollop of the gray mass. Not much when it comes to taste, but it will last until dinner. “Says it will be good training for the little princes.”

I nod and eat quickly. “Right. But no ponies of their own for them. I’ll take Karl on my horse and you take Sigurd. I don’t think we’ll see any Saxons, but I want to keep those two close just in case.”

Breca makes a fist and taps his first knuckle to his forehead, the sign of homage. Outside, the sheep begin to bleat as one of the thralls drives them out into the fields. It’s time for me to get my thanes on their horses.

                                                ***

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                    CHAPTER THREE

                                                           Aethling

Never underestimate the effect of an initial impression. Right now, with the unseen sun low in the sky, water from the fog drips off our shields and spears. But I have come to realize it’s our helmets, which cast skull-like shadows across our faces, which instill the proper fear in the Saxons. With our nose guards and eye socket rings, our helmets double as masks. Wearing them, we become less human.

I hoist Karl onto the back of my horse. Breca raises up Sigurd. It is time to begin their training. I kick my horse with my heels and turn him towards the gate in the palisade, but Rolf calls out. Turning, I see Didrik slinking along the great hall towards the tannery tub, trying to fold his shoulders in on themselves as if that will make him invisible. He probably thought we’d left by now and couldn’t restrain himself any longer.

“Coming along with us, Didrik? Can’t seem to remember the last time you did patrol,” Rolf calls.

Didrik ignores him and faces the tub, fumbling with the laces on the front of his gray, woolen trousers.

“Up to you, Didrik,” Rolf pauses to lift his ale skin. “But just so you know, your two younger brothers have the courage you lack. They’re coming.”       

Even with his back to us, you can see Didrik’s black anger making him shake. He accidentally pees down the side of one of his own legs.  

“Oh ho,” Rolf bores in relentlessly. “The little hero, no surprise…”

“That’s enough!” I cut across Rolf. Just what I need, the heir to the March royally pissed off. Or, more accurately, pissed on.  My thanes laugh.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” I demand of Breca.

“Nothing, nothing is the matter.” Breca looks down and fiddles with the reins of his horse. I can see the smirk just under the nose guard of his helmet.

“Keep it that way,” I snap. The smirk fades. 

Didrik laces his trousers up and turns with a look of hatred on his face. His cheeks glow with an angry flush and his lower lip sticks out. You can see the mess he’s made of himself but looking at it is somehow an obscene invasion of the shred of dignity he has. I’m afraid he might burst into tears.

I kick my horse into a trot and lead my thanes out of the gate before Didrik can start weeping. Pug, who has been waiting for me, falls into a trot beside my horse.

                                                 ***

Just past the last of the sheep folds, Ivar overtakes us at a gallop and brings his horse up along side mine. He’s wearing only a boiled leather jerkin, and the overly-large steel helmet on his head keeps sloshing around.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I need some material for a new poem.” Ivar pushes his helmet back on his head. It slides forward again over his eyes. He pushes it back a second time. “You think we’ll run into anything?”

“I’ve seen men who’ve known three days before they go into battle that they won’t survive. You might think they are just in a funk, and they botch the battle, but many of them never fought better than right before they are killed. Some men can see the future,” I point out.

“Right, right,” Ivar agrees hopefully.

 “Too bad I’m not one of them. All the future is a gray land to me.”

 We turn onto the pig track and begin climbing towards the moors. On either side, the fern fiddle heads are just poking up from the loam. By mid-summer, the fronds will be chest high.

Rolf spurs his horse forward so that he is riding beside Ivar also. 

“You think we’ll do something heroic today?” Rolf asks.

“I hope so,” Ivar says.

“I’ll tell you what I hope. I hope that if we form a shield wall, you’ll be right next to me. Want to know why?”

“Why?”

“I’ve always wanted to know what a poetic death is. Seeing as how you are a poet, I figured you might just come up with some interesting last words or metaphors as you try to stuff your guts back in your belly. Of course, you might be preoccupied, but it’s a risk I’m prepared to take.”

“I didn’t bring my shield,” Ivar says.

“I noticed.”

We cross a clearing that would have been carpeted in blue bells if the pigs hadn’t gotten there first. Now, brown scars are raked across the earth from the pigs’ tusks. For the first time, I catch a strong whiff of pig dung.

“We’re riding to the moors in the first light of a cold dawn.” Rolf comments. I look over at him and he has an evil expression.

Ivar takes up his harp which has been hanging from his saddle. He plucks a couple of notes. “By dawn’s frigid air, we rode towards fates unknown, a band of thanes in silver steel…”

“You left out the pig crap,” Rolf interrupts.

“What?”

“Look down, you fool. We’re riding on a pig track, and when you ride on a pig track, you are riding in pig crap.” Rolf clears his throat. “Along side me is a twit, who doesn’t know he’s riding on crap!”

 “Rolf,” I tell him. “Can you take a break?”

“I’m not the one who is trying to make this patrol into some epic heroic deal,” Rolf counters. “What’s all this nonsense about dawn’s lumpy air or whatever he called it?”

“I said frigid air.” Ivar says. “Frigid. It means cold.”

“Why not just say it then? By dawn’s cold air?”

“Doesn’t sound as good,” Ivar mutters. 

“Oh yeah? Hey, Breca! What’s the temperature like?” Rolf calls to the berserker in front of him.

“It’s a little cold,” Breca says.

“There! You see? Why can’t you ever tell the truth Why do you always have to make things up?”

“Poems and songs should be heroic,” Ivar says.

“Meaning that real life isn’t? And that’s why you have to make things up? Are you saying that to be heroic is to lie? Are you saying all heroes are nothing but liars?” Rolf demands.

 “Of course not! It’s not lying, it’s just, well, poems talk about an inner truth. An alternative truth.”

“Hey, Breca! What’s the alternative to cold?”

“Hot?”

Rolf turns back to Ivar. “So now you’re saying that for this poem of yours to be heroic, you ought to say by dawn’s hot air, aren’t you?”

“No! That’s not what I’m saying. Hell, all I said is by dawn’s frigid air and…”

“All right, all right, have it your way. Say, by dawn’s frigid air if you want. Why do you get so uptight all the time? Is that a defense mechanism poets’ use? Afraid of some constructive criticism?”

We ride on in silence, the suck and pull of the horses hoofs in the mud and dung and the clink of metal armor and stirrups the only sound. From up ahead, I can hear the river which marks the border with the Saxons.

                                                         ***

  “Oh ho! Do I see a handful of pricks?” The challenge booms across the river.

I look over. Aethling is an ox of a man draped in chain mail to his wrists and down to his shins. His brown beard spreads like a fan across his chest as he stands in the stirrups of his horse shaking a sword at us.  I count the men on horse back emerging from the damp, green wood behind him: nine.

“Did you hear me?” Aethling turns to the men lined up on either side of him looking for support, but they’re slumped on their horses. They don’t appear to like the wet fog anymore than we do. I overhear Aethling mutter, “Show some spirit, why don’t you? Call him a name or something.”

“Morning,” I shout.

“Morning?” Aethling sneers. “It’s a good morning if you want to meet a coward, like you. Unless, of course, you’re man enough to cross the river and fight.” 

“Why would I do that?” I shake my head.  

“Are you afraid? Aren’t you a man?”

“How many pigs are you turning loose this year?” I ask to change the subject.

“What’s it to you, you Norse turd?”

“Look, Aethling, if you want to trade insults, try to use some imagination, would you? I mean, this level just doesn’t do any of us any credit.”

“Come on, you woman!”

I sigh. Breca and Rolf watch Aethling with bored expressions. Delling takes his helmet off and scratches his head while Olaf takes the opportunity to pluck a comb from his jerkin and give his beard and moustache a quick tidying up. Burr is focused on a passing butterfly.

“Are you just going to take it from him?” Karl demands. I can feel him shaking with rage. He’s of the age when a boy can’t stand being called a woman.

“Of course I’m going to take it,” I tell Karl. “Why should I care what a Saxon says?”

“But he has insulted you!” Karl’s voice hits a high note of indignity. “What about your honor?”

“If I started a fight over every stray word tossed at me, I wouldn’t be walking on this earth for long.”

“Bah!” Karl exclaims.

 “Look, if we ride into the river, we are dead men. They’ll cut down our horses with arrows before we’re half way across. Then we’ll be staggering around in the water in our chain mail. Wisdom,” I tap the side of my steel helmet with my forefinger, “you must learn how to be smart as well as how to knock heads.”

“In this case, Karl, wisdom is just another word for dishonor,” Ivar mutters under his breath.

“If you feel that way, Ivar, why don’t you plunge that horse of yours into the river?” I ask in a reasonable tone. “Maybe you can bash Aethling over the head with your harp. That would be heroic.”

“Maybe he can sing one of his poems to the Saxons and bore them to death,” Rolf grouses. Olaf and Delling laugh while Breca tries to figure out the joke. It takes him a bit, but he laughs, too.

“What are you Norse turds laughing about now? I’ll jam that laughter back down your throats!” Aethling shakes his sword at us.

“It’s nothing Aethling, just a private joke,” I shout back.  

Aethling nudges his horse with his knees to turn it. I can tell he’s not really interested in a fight. And why would he be? What would be the gain? The other Saxons also bring their horses around to head back into the forest. Shouting insults at us holds the same significance for Aethling as a dog marking his territory with an upraised leg.

Karl’s body convulses, and I hear a sob. I reach back and slide him around to my front.

“What’s the matter?” I ask.

“He called us women, and you just let it happen.” Karl’s face is red with frustration and anger. “The Saxon is right. You are a coward.”

“Ja, but watch how you talk,” Breca admonishes Karl.

“And you!... you!...you!” Karl stutters. “You’re just a big, dumb oaf!”

We are all left speechless at Karl’s minor speech. And then we start cracking up.

“And you’re a coward!” Karl turns on me as fast as an adder.

“All right, little man,” I tell Karl coolly. “Let’s do it your way, shall we?” I put both hands on the sides of my mouth and shout across the river. “Aethling! Oh craven son of a disloyal thane, who have you double crossed today while smiling in their face?” I can see Aethling moving his lips as he repeats the insult, trying to decipher it. “Breaker of oaths, treacherous spawn of a witch and hunchback, you who are of crippled spirit and crippled body. By the gods, you are destined to prowl the caverns of hell.”

“What’s he talking about?” Aethling turns to one of his Saxon thanes. “What the hell does spawn mean?”

“I have heard of your mead hall, carpeted with the bones of your feasts and the dung of your dogs like a Troll’s den. You gnaw your food like a wild animal, devoid of culture, reason, and intelligence. You drink your vats of mead and snore amongst the swine with ropes of drool lying on your beard.”

One of his warriors leans over and with a cupped hand whispers into Aethling’s ear.

“Dung house? Is that what you said?” Aethling screams. “You said my mead hall is covered with dog dung?”

I can see the tendons of his neck jutting out underneath his helmet. His whole body is shaking.

“More or less. But I think you missed the better parts. I’d be more worried about the… ”

“Kill the bastard!” Aethling shrieks and kicks his heels into the horse. The animal bolts into the freezing river raising a bow wave of froth. His men mill around on the bank, torn between their duty to follow their warlord and the knowledge it is pure madness to charge us through the river. I take the bow from the side of my saddle and nock an arrow. I can see red gashes appear on the horse’s sides where Aethling rakes him with his iron spurs. The poor beast’s eyes are rolling. It almost breaks my heart what I have to do, but we can’t really afford to kill a Saxon warlord on a whim, not even this one. The political repercussions would take years to sort out. 

I pull the bow to full stretch, but just before I release the arrow, the horse drops down as his right front hoof disappears in a pothole in the river bed. Even from the bank, I can hear the popping of the bone in his forelock, a sickening sound that sends a shiver down my legs. 

The horse pitches muzzle first into the river. Aethling flies forward landing in a sprawl of legs and arms in the freezing water. He surfaces, blowing water from his mouth like some beached whale, and staggers to his feet. The dunking seems to have sobered him up. He wobbles there, looking around with wide eyes and as streams of water pour down from under his steel helmet. His men on the far bank are looking at the sky, the trees, the ground, anywhere but at him. His horse thrashes feebly trying to fight its way back onto three legs, but the current keeps knocking it over.

“See you,” I say and wheel my horse around.

We continue our climb upwards towards the moors. From behind us, Aethling’s demented insults echo in the forest. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ivar turning back.

                                              ***

There may be glory in keeping the March border safe from my lord’s enemies. I wouldn’t know for sure. Probably depends on how you look at it. But there is no glory in caring for your horse after a patrol. It is just an hour-long set-piece of work that can’t be rushed or overlooked.  First, I lead him by the reins without his saddle or blanket for three circuits around the palisade to allow him to cool down. In the bier in the back of Jorgen’s hall, I sweep out the old straw and clodded manure and spread new straw. While I’m doing this, I let him drink half a bucket of water. You have to be careful. Left to his own devices, he will bloat himself on a barrel of water before he quits. I also give him four handfuls of oats, again, not too much. I check each hoof, lifting each one in turn onto my thigh. I dig the balls of rock hard mud mixed with stones out with an iron pick. Then I rub him down to clean off the sweat and brush him.

My horse is called Chestnut, after his color. As far as names go, Chestnut isn’t exactly what you’d expect for a Geat warrior’s stallion. I could have swerved towards the religious by calling him Slepnir after Odin’s mythical eight-legged steed. Or Lightning, if I wanted to brag about his speed. I could have been like Olaf who calls his mount Skull-Crusher because he says it is trained to kick with its iron-clad front hooves. Not that the horse kicks anyone but Olaf. Olaf also calls his sword Saxon-Splitter when it would be more accurate to call it Mostly Harmless.

Better to be accurate than pompous.

I fill a bucket of water for myself, strip down, and wash myself with our soap of lye mixed with ash. The soap makes my eyes water and stings, but I do this once a week on Freya-day. I never get used to frozen baths. In winter, I have to stand next to the mead hall fire for half an hour before I can even feel my feet. The Saxons don’t hold with baths. I’ve noticed that we have a fair number of Saxon wives among the thanes. As far as I know, no Norse woman has gone over to the Saxons. Naturally, our thanes like to boast of their irresistibility and their prowess in bed. But after talking to some of the Saxon women, I know it’s about the baths because other than that, they say all men are just the same when you get down to it.

After my bath, I walk through the door of the bier into the hall and take my accustomed seat at the end of the bench closest to the entrance door. Danica is waiting for me, and she combs out my hair and braids it. She says it makes me look smarter than if my hair is loose down to the middle of my back and blowing every which way. I wouldn’t know about that, but I do know that more than once, a Saxon has grabbed a fistful of loose hair in a shield wall. Even worse is to be in a fight and suddenly have a swathe of hair tumble down in front of your eyes leaving you blind as a sheep dog. Better to tuck the braid down the inside of your hauberk.

It would probably be even better to cut it off. Olaf did that once. A week later, while out on patrol, one of Aethling’s men asked him if he had mange. To make it even worse, the Saxon was serious and sympathetic. Olaf grew his hair back after that. Practicality measured against conformity, I suppose.

When I’ve come in from a patrol, the last thing I want to do is to talk. I’d rather catch my breath over a tankard of ale and enjoy not being in a saddle bounced this way and that. Which is why I give Ivar the curse eye as he spots me and sidles over, clutching his much abused harp to his chest. He reminds me of a dog I once had who became so overexcited when I showed up, he tucked almost his entire rear end under him and had to crab walk over.

“You’re going to love my poem tonight,” Ivar announces, sitting across from me.

“That’s Breca’s seat, you know.”

Ivar snaps his head from one side to the other half-expecting to see the immense berserker right behind him. “He’s not here so it’s no big deal.”

“Yes, it is a big deal. That’s Breca’s seat.”

“Well, it can wait until I tell you about this epic. It’s about today, and Jorgen’s going to love it,” Ivar says in a low voice and winks at me. “Could mean another gold arm ring for you.”

“If Breca comes, I’m not going to lift a finger,” I warn. “He’ll thump you for sure.”

“Wait, would you? Listen to what he has to say.” Danica gives my braid a shark jerk. “What’s this about another arm ring? I wouldn’t stick my nose up in the air at the chance for another arm ring if it were coming my way.” She stops working on my hair, sits next to me and makes a show of draping her arm over my shoulder. “Ivar, tell us, why would it be worth another gold arm ring?”

 “The epic is about how you tricked Aethling into charging into the river.”

“I didn’t trick him. I was just trying to teach Karl how foolish it is to waste time with a dim wit like Aethling.”

“That’s perfect!” Ivar crows. “Teaching the princeling the knowledge of men! Couldn’t be better! A gold arm ring for sure, that’s what I say.”

“Oh, what utter garbage!”

“Beowulf, you always denigrate your achievements. You are always putting yourself down. Stop putting yourself down, you stupid idiot!” Danica hisses. “Besides, if you earn another arm ring, it will drive Ingvil crazy.”

Let me explain: Ingvil is the wife of Jorgen’s liegeman Per, and if Ingvil were taken by the Saxons and roasted on a spit, you can bet Danica would be helping to gather the firewood. To be fair to Danica, Astra, which is Johan’s wife, would do the same.

“It’s your love of your lord and devotion to duty that inspired you to take the princeling under your wing with your guidance.” Ivar says with a grin so wide I can see his molars.

“No!” I bellow and hit the table with my fist. “That is not what happened! You’re not going to make it into something it wasn’t!”

“Just watch me!” Ivar ripostes. “Besides, I’ve worked on it all day. It’s perfect.”

“Sounds exactly like what happened,” Danica says evenly. “And the way I’m hearing it, it’s worth a gold arm ring to me.”

 “You’ve made up some fairy tale! Some maudlin, romantic caricature of events!”

“Let’s just say it is what should have happened, might have happened,” Ivar hedges. “If I sing it enough times, it will be what happened because that’s all people will remember. Even the men on your patrol will believe it.”

“Lies!”

“Art!”

“Remember that poem he did two months ago about the love between Hedda and Delling?” Danica says dreamily. “By Odin’s hairy arse, but it brought tears to my eyes.”

“Off the record,” Ivar admires the manicured nails on his right hand. “I was bouncing Hedda every time Delling went on patrol. Not the Delling minded. He was trying to make time with Offa, Johan’s thane. But see how complicated things become when you look at them too closely? What I sing about is the way things should be.”

“But… I always thought that Delling and Hedda were a perfect couple,” Danica says. “A real fairy-tale marriage.”

“Fairy tale! Delling doesn’t like girls, remember?” I snort. “The only thing fairy tale about it is that it exists at all. Hedda was pregnant by Gat and Delling was willing to do her a favor by making her legal as long as she didn’t sleep in his hut with him. What a joke!”

 “Who are you to judge?” Ivar prods me in the chest with his index finger. “Don’t think for a moment that you’re fooling any one with this claptrap about helping out Karl. You’re just looking out for old Mr. Number One, that’s who! Lending a hand in the education of a princeling is nothing more than pure greed! When you’re old and useless, I’d imagine it might be very nice to have that same princeling, now a warlord himself, extending his hand of protection over you. For old time’s sake, for nostalgia, for all that crap! Maybe he’ll find you some cushy job like being his chief food taster.”

“You think being a food taster to a warlord is cushy?” I stammer.

“You’ll take what you can get when you’re washed up!” Ivar sneers. “Not a big market for arthritic warriors who can’t get their sword up. You’ll look back on this day and tell yourself, Ivar the Poet made me who I am.”

The thought sickens me. “That’s not why I did it!” I hit the table with my fist again.

“So you say, but let me tell you, bucko, it ain’t doing you any harm right now to offer up these lame protests either. Know what we call ‘em in the trade? The cries of the reluctant warrior, that’s what. And everyone is a sucker for the reluctant warrior. Pushed beyond limits, always patient, and then slam-bam, he sets the world right again.” Ivar leans back against the support post right up against the bench. “God, you heroes make me puke. Always playing like you don’t know what’s really going on.”

 “Don’t worry about it so much.” Danica takes my left hand in both of hers and strokes it. “All you have to do is lie back, close your eyes, and don’t say anything. Think of warm summer evenings or something and it’ll be over soon enough. That’s what I do.”

“Uh, right.”

“Before the night is over, you’ll wind up with another gold arm ring,” Danica continues. “If Jorgen won’t give it to you, the thanes will demand he does. But it’s not the ring that’s important. Having the thanes demand Jorgen give you one is. A little taste of power over their lord, making him dance to the tune the thanes whistle. The thanes will remember that long after they’ve forgotten the ring.” Danica’s voice has an edge to it that could freeze a river, and her green eyes blaze with the icy fire of unquenchable ambition.  “And who knows what might happen to Didrik in the months and years to come?”

“What’s in it for you?” I ask Ivar.

“Professional reputation, nothing more. That is reward enough for me. I sing to conjure up the greatness of our hall.” His eyes shift when he says this.

“No, what’s in it for you?”

“Let’s just say that when the time comes, remember me, if you know what I mean?” Ivar smirks and slaps my forearm. His touch is cold and dry like snake skin. “Maybe when I’m old and washed up, I might like to have some warlord or king watching out for me. Who knows? You might just wind up the old warlord here yourself someday. We artists always cover our bets, heh, heh, heh!”

As Ivar rises and crab walks back to his corner, I wonder how many such deals he has cut with  Per, Johan, and Jorgen himself.

                                                              ***   

“Execrable!”

The voice in the darkness takes me by surprise. I look to my left on the palisade’s fire step. The pale light of the moon highlights Jorgen’s cheekbones but leaves his eyes in skull cavern shadow.

“Sorry?”

“Ivar’s poem about you and Aethling.” Jorgen lifts his old man hands with their thin parchment skin with wine juice stains and grips the points of two of the sharpened logs of the wall. “The one he sang tonight. Truly execrable! Beowulf, of noble line and proud mien. Total twaddle. Noble line, my eye. You were just another orphan dropped on my doorstep. Another useless mouth to feed for fifteen years before I got any return on you. Imagine how I would have felt if you had keeled over from the smallpox at age sixteen just when you are able to wield a sword.”

“Imagine how I would have felt,” I offer. “By the way, I wasn’t an orphan. I was a bastard.”

“No, not that I’m going to argue that the poem wasn’t effective. What with his praises, Ivar had the thanes eating out of his hand. Glorious Wendts and Geats, brothers through and through, standing tall against the Saxon thugs,” Jorgen mimics Ivar’s voice giving it a sing-song, feminine lilt. “Saxon thugs, indeed! By Odin’s hairy arse, being a thug would be a step up the social ladder for some around here. Ever taken a good, sharp look at your own men? A grab bag of mental defectives, fops, oafs, lunatics, and dipsomaniacs!”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

“What gets up my nose is the fact they were all on the river bank and they saw what happened. But do they let out a peep when Ivar starts singing about how you toppled Aethling’s horse and held Aethling under water under he cried yield? No! Instead, that oaf Breca is nodding like a strutting rooster. When Ivar gets to the part where Aethling begs your thanes for mercy, Olaf is making eyes at the thrall girls and pointing to his own chest. Then you have the Per and Johan’s thanes so consumed by jealousy they want to gnaw their own livers out.”

Jorgen’s shoulders slump, and he lets out a long breath which billows like smoke in the chill night air. He roots around in the pocket of his white linen tunic and pulls out something that flashes yellow in the moonlight. “While you were out here, playing the reluctant hero, the thanes went wild. Baying like the dogs they are that you deserve another arm ring. Probably set it up with Ivar, didn’t you?”

“Actually, I told him the poem was total crap.”

“Don’t give me that. I know how it’s done. Just the other day, I gave Ivar half a barrel of mead to come up with that ridiculous praise song about Didrik. Off shoot of the mighty oak, indeed,” Jorgen snorts. “The boy still wets his bed and it cost me another half a barrel to get Ivar to leave that part out. Ah, well, what can you do?” He tosses the gold arm ring to me. “Here! Satisfied?”

I catch the arm ring, feel its solid weight of lies, then slip it on.

“That woman of yours, Danica, will be amused. Sharp taste for gold, she has, but all ex-thralls do, I suppose.”

That’s a cheap shot coming from this old miser, and I can feel my cheeks burn. But now I don’t even know what my own motivations are or were. Maybe he’s right. Maybe deep down, I was protesting to Ivar just enough to show the proper level of reluctance. Right now, I’m just not sure so I say nothing and look away. It’s one of Jorgen’s canniest skills – getting people to doubt themselves,

He leans over the needle points of the palisade and points down into the protective ditch.  “Remind me tomorrow to get the thralls to clear that brush out of the ditch. If the Saxons come, it could provide cover.” 

“Good idea.”

His mood turns gloomy. “You know, Beowulf, it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.”

“What’s not?”

“Being the Lord of a March. Most of it is just petty details. Like clearing the brush out the ditch here.” He looks back over his shoulder at the huts and houses behind us and sweeps an arm over them. “Nearly a hundred people living inside the palisade and three times as many freemen and thralls beyond these walls and do you think that it occurs to one of them that maybe the Saxons would use that brush as cover? I bet every single one of them thought that. But do they do anything about it? Of course not! They wait like sheep for someone else to do it for them. Latrines need to be dug, night soil taken out. Who organizes all this? Me! The warlord of latrine buckets.”

I sigh, just to sound gloomy also.

“Just thought I’d share that with you,” Jorgen says with grim satisfaction. “By the way, over the next month or two, you’re going to win a few more undeserved arm rings.” I start to protest, but Jorgen raises one of his spectral white hands to stop me. “It’s not because I like you Beowulf. It’s because I hate you. With another four or five gold arm rings to your name, you’ll be worth murdering.”

                                                ***      

When I return to my hut, Danica is waiting for me in the darkness. The ring of gold has inflamed her passion. She is ravenous and unsatisfiable, her bare legs locked around my hips, her heels drumming my thighs. When she kisses me, my soul is sucked out of my mouth. After I’m done, I pry her arms from around my neck. She is gently suffocating me. But at least she leaves me exhausted enough to fall into a dreamless sleep between my wolf skin quilts.

I don’t tell her about Jorgen’s plan to laden me with so many arm rings that someone will stick a knife in my ribs. Why give her the lead time to make up her own plans?

                                               ***