The Midgard Serpent Read online

  The Midgard Serpent

  A Novel of Viking Age England

  Book Ten of The Norsemen Saga

  James L. Nelson

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Fore Topsail Press

  64 Ash Point Road

  Harpswell, Maine, 04079

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by U.S. Copyright Law.

  Copyright © 2020 James L. Nelson

  Maps by Chris Boyle

  All rights reserved

  ISBN-13: 978-0-578-69642-3

  To Lisa, my shipmate, my partner, my wife of all these years,

  with all my love: then, now and forever.

  Table of Contents

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  For terminology, see Glossary

  Prologue

  The Saga of Thorgrim Night Wolf

  There was a man named Thorgrim and he was called Night Wolf because it was believed by some that his spirit from time to time would take on the form of a wolf. Thorgrim was known as a man who was generally fair and honest, and, as he grew older, one who was not quick to anger or violence. But sometimes as the day drew to a close he would become very irritable, so much so that none dared approach him, and he would go off on his own and it was at those times that some thought he roamed the night in the form of a wolf.

  Thorgrim himself did not know the truth of his wolf dreams, as he called them, but he would often see things that proved to be true. At those times he would suffer no one to be near him, save for one man who was named Starri Deathless. Starri was of those men called berserkers, a warrior to whom the gods gave great power in battle and other mystical powers as well. When the wolf dreams came on Thorgrim, Starri would remain near him through the night, but if Starri ever witnessed Thorgrim’s spirit shifting into the form of a wolf he would not say.

  After earning great wealth and reputation going a’viking as a young man, where he raided along the coast of Engla-land and Frankia, Thorgrim bought a farm in a country called Vik and there he and his wife Hallbera, known as Hallbera the Fair, started their family. They had two sons, the oldest named Odd and the younger named Harald, and a daughter named Hild. From his days of raiding Thorgrim Night Wolf had gained a reputation as a warrior of great skill and a gifted leader of men, and that reputation only grew stronger over the years as Thorgrim led his neighbors in defending their lands against bandits and sundry raiders, and joined in fighting for the king when called upon. It was for that reason that few men dared to challenge Thorgrim in any way, and even the kings who ruled over that country were content to leave Thorgrim be, as long as he paid the taxes and tribute owed them, which he did.

  When Thorgrim’s wife Hallbera died giving birth to their fourth child, Thorgrim decided to go a’viking again with his father-in-law, Ornolf the Restless, with whom he had sailed as a young man. Harald was then fifteen years of age and Thorgrim brought him along. But Odd had just married and he and his wife Signy were already raising a family as well as tending the farm Thorgrim had given them as a wedding present, and for that reason Thorgrim convinced Odd to remain at home. Thorgrim had lost his own wife, and with her the happiness and comforts that come with a home and family, and he did not want Odd to abandon those things, though Odd wished to go and was angry at having been left behind.

  Now at the time there was a king who ruled over that part of the country of Norway whose name was Halfdan Gudrødson and he was known as Halfdan the Black. Halfdan had been king for almost twenty-three years when Thorgrim went a’viking again. In that time he had expanded his kingdom twofold and wished to bring even more land under his control. Though he was king over Vik he never tried to rule with a heavy hand, in part because he knew the people there looked to the jarl Ornolf and Thorgrim as leaders who would not be pushed around, and Halfdan did not wish to antagonize them.

  When Thorgrim and Ornolf went a’viking, they intended to be gone only one season, but when they did not return after several years Halfdan reckoned that they were dead and once again he turned his eye on their lands, which he wanted for his own, and the country of Vik from which he hoped to receive more taxes and tribute. Though Thorgrim’s son Odd was the rightful heir to the land, Halfdan did not think Odd would protest too loudly if his king claimed it for his own. Odd was much admired by the people of Vik, despite his young age, but he had no reputation as a fighting man or a leader. It was only when Halfdan tried to take the land that was rightfully Thorgrim’s that he learned that Odd most certainly had the blood of Thorgrim Night Wolf and Ornolf the Restless in his veins.

  And, as it happened, Thorgrim Night Wolf was not dead, and at the very time that Halfdan was waging war on Odd and the men of Vik, Thorgrim and his men were on the coast of Engla-land, though where on the coast they were not quite certain. After spending several years raiding in Ireland, where they endured many hardships but also gained considerable wealth, a great storm had blown Thorgrim’s fleet of eight ships across the sea to Engla-land, though one of the ships was lost in the fury of the wind and seas.

  Thorgrim wanted nothing more than to return to his home in Vik, but Engla-land was a rich country, and Thorgrim’s men wanted him to lead them in more raiding, and because they were good and loyal men, Thorgrim agreed. They plundered a church which yielded great riches, and when they sailed from that place, which the English tried to prevent them from doing, Thorgrim set a course to the east, which he knew was likely to bring them to Frankia, after which he meant to sail back to Vik, to live out his days on his farm and never go a’viking again.

  Here is what happened.

  Chapter One

  Of what art thou in quest,

  what dost thou seek here,

  or what, wretch, desirest thou to know?

  The Poetic Edda

  Thorgrim Night Wolf stood on a cliff edge. The breeze lifted the bitter ends of his hair, twirled them around, whipped them g
ently against his face. It pushed him with a gentle insistence toward the edge, a straight drop of two hundred feet or more, he guessed, to where the surf broke on the unforgiving rocks below.

  But the wind was not terribly strong, and Thorgrim did not think a sudden gust would come and send him hurtling over the brink. Nor was he terribly concerned that it might. The thought had occurred to him, as he approached the edge, that the wind could catch his cloak like a sail and send him plummeting down. He was surprised by his reaction to that possibility, which was really no reaction at all.

  He glanced over at Harald standing a few feet away. Strands of the young man’s blond hair were lifting to the breeze just as Thorgrim’s dark hair, shot through with gray, was doing.

  The boy doesn’t need to see me fall to my death, Thorgrim thought.

  There. There was a reason to not allow himself to be blown over the cliff. He would not want his son to see him die in that manner.

  “It’s kind of like home,” Harald said at last. “But white.”

  Thorgrim nodded. They had found a narrow trail up from the beach on which their ships were hauled out, a winding goat path leading up through scrubby brush to the top of the impressive, looming cliffs. They were, as Harald noted, not unlike the steep and jagged cliffs along the coast of Norway, the granite walls ringing in the fiords that made the wind tumble and twist as it ran through the confines.

  But these cliffs were not a dark and menacing stone, but instead had an odd, whitish hue. And this was not a fiord, this coastline of Engla-land. Just beyond the cliffs, here and there, massive rocks jutted up from the surf like stone giants ready for some sorcerer to bring them to life. To the south was the open ocean. At the foot of the cliffs, to the west, was the bay with its half-moon beach where they had spent the past few nights. It wasn’t much of a harbor, but it was the only one Thorgrim could see from that high place.

  Beyond the beach, farther west, was the coastline down which they had sailed just a few days before, after fighting their way out of a shallow, muddy bay where the English had tried to trap them. To the east, more cliffs, more inhospitable coast, as far as Thorgrim could see.

  “Wind’s westerly,” Godi said. He, too, had made the long climb up to the top of the cliff. Now he stood off to the side and his massive frame looked as if no amount of wind, or anything else, could move him. He looked like nothing so much as one of the stone giants standing in the surf below.

  “It is,” Thorgrim agreed. “And it has been more or less westerly for the past few days.”

  The others, experienced seamen all, nodded and grunted in agreement, the implications obvious to them. An easy westerly wind would be ideal for driving their longships to the east, the direction they wished to go, and the wind’s apparent steadiness meant there was a good chance they would not find themselves in a bad place on that jagged, rock-strewn shore.

  If the wind were to come out of the south, for instance, it could drive them up against the cliffs, and if it was blowing hard enough they might not be able to keep clear. But so far the wind had shown no tendency to behave that way.

  Thorgrim let his eyes move all around the horizon, studying the place where the sky met the earth. It seemed as if the world was divided in two, with everything to the north of them land and everything to the south ocean, and they were standing right where both worlds met.

  There was nothing in the sky that looked threatening, nothing that suggested any change in the weather anytime soon. Thorgrim had been gifted by the gods with an innate sense for weather which was honed by a lifetime at sea, sailing the coast of Norway and raiding in foreign lands. If his gut told him the weather would not change soon, he believed it, and he knew the others would as well.

  It was a crucial point, because the next decision depended on the weather. The direction they wished to go was already set: east, always east. But Thorgrim had no way of knowing how far these cliffs extended, or how long they would have to sail before they found another place to come ashore. He did not care to sail that coast after dark, and he certainly did not want to be caught by a wind that was trying to drive them onto land. Or, worst of all, a wind trying to drive them ashore at night. He might not care about himself so much, but he had six ships and nearly four hundred men under his command. And one woman.

  Failend. His lover. His former lover? Thorgrim was still not sure of his standing with her, and had found neither the time nor the inclination to inquire after her feelings on the matter.

  He looked inland again. His instinct told him they were on an island, not the mainland. When they had come that way days before he had seen a stretch of water off to the north. It might have been the mouth of a very wide river or bay, or it might have been the open water that separated a great island from the shore. If he suspected the weather was going to turn on them he would lead his fleet back that way, to see if they could sail east between the island and the shore. But now it seemed that would not be necessary.

  “What do you say, Louis?” Thorgrim asked. Louis the Frank had also come with the small band to the top of the cliff, more out of curiosity, Thorgrim guessed, than anything else. He certainly had nothing to offer in the matter of seamanship or navigation.

  In reply to Thorgrim’s question Louis shrugged, as Thorgrim knew he would. “As long as we can sail to the east, that’s all that matters,” he said.

  Why do I ask him? Thorgrim wondered. I didn’t even ask Harald, or Godi.

  It was a curious thing, his relationship with Louis. Thorgrim was not much given to introspection, but he did wonder at this. Louis had been his prisoner at first. He had escaped, and nearly gotten Thorgrim and his men killed in the process. He had fallen into Thorgrim’s hands again. Thorgrim had nearly killed him half a dozen times.

  And through all that, Louis had remained unflappable, unmoved, as if it made no difference to him. He certainly had never shown fear. Thorgrim would expect that of a Northman, but somehow he was impressed when he saw it in a Frank. Louis claimed to be a nobleman, he claimed to be a trained warrior, and his manner and his skill in battle suggested he was not lying about that. Thorgrim believed him, though he would never give Louis the satisfaction of admitting it.

  “You wish to sail east because your home is to the east?” Thorgrim asked. Louis had only one immediate concern in life, and that was to return to Frankia and run a sword through the brother who had betrayed him.

  “And your home as well,” Louis said. Because Louis knew that Thorgrim’s only concern was to get back to his native land and never leave again.

  “The east?” Thorgrim asked. “Frankia’s to the east?” They had been blown across the sea from Ireland to the shores of Engla-land, but where in that country they had made landfall Thorgrim had no idea. And so far they had not met anyone who was much able to enlighten them.

  Louis turned and looked north. He turned and looked south. He turned and looked at Thorgrim. “That’s Engla-land to the north,” he said, “and the ocean to the south, and so we must be on the south coast of Engla-land.”

  Thorgrim nodded. He did not really seek Louis’s opinion, he was just needling the man for amusement. If Louis knew more about the twisting, irregular nature of shorelines he would know that his reasoning did not necessarily follow. But it was as good a guess as they could hope for, and it was in fact Thorgrim’s guess as well.

  “This is a rich land,” Starri Deathless said. He and Hardbein, captain of Fox, and Halldor who commanded Black Wing were the rest of the party who had climbed to the cliff top.

  “A very rich land,” Starri said again. “Lots of silver, gold. Churches plump with it. Ireland looks like a poor man’s hovel compared.”

  This was met with grunts of agreement from the others, though Thorgrim remained quiet. He knew Starri was right, but the talk made him uncomfortable. He was done with raiding. He thought the gods might be ready to let him sail for home. They had at long last set him free from Ireland. He did not want to tarry on the shores of Engla-land. />
  He looked over at Louis. The Frank was staring out over the sea, his face expressionless save for a slight frown.

  “Night Wolf, you made your fortune raiding here, when you were young, many, many years ago, didn’t you?” Starri asked.

  “Yes. The start of a fortune anyway,” Thorgrim said, then added, “The rest came from hard work,” a minor slight to Starri, who was not much given to any type of labor that did not involve weapons. But he knew Starri would not even notice the barb. Which he did not.

  “Yes, I made a fortune here, too,” Starri said. “Long ago. Before I wound up in Ireland, I was here. Gathered enough silver to choke a king.”

  Thorgrim looked at Starri. “Did you? Where is this fortune now?”

  “I buried it somewhere,” Starri said in a tone that suggested he had no idea where.

  Thorgrim nodded. No surprise there. He looked around at his men. His son. “Very well. On the morrow we’re off to sea. East, with a fair wind. May the gods grant that it take us home, and nothing ill befall us.”

  Behind him, Starri Deathless stifled a laugh.

  Chapter Two

  Tell me, Fjolsvinn!

  That which I will ask thee,

  and I desire to know:

  who here holds sway,

  and has power over these lands

  and costly halls?

  The Poetic Edda

  Skorri Thorbrandsson scratched at the thick blond beard that covered the lower part of his face and squinted and looked around the country ahead of them: hills nearby, and off in the distance formidable mountains, swaths of timber, granite ledge jutting up here and there from the tall grass like rocks breaking through the surface of the sea. Off to the right, far off, the glittering expanse of the ocean. They had passed clusters of houses and farms with their scattered outbuildings. No people. Not a single person to be seen.