“Let’s not find out,” Jalil said.
April took matters into her own hands. “Hello!” she yelled, waving at the Viking bowman. “Hi, how are you?”
No response.
I kept rowing. A good bowman could hit us from this distance. A really good bowman could probably put a shaft through each of us inside of about thirty seconds.
I felt that shaft. Felt it in my guts, felt it sticking out past my spine. Imagined being able to reach behind me and grab the bloody arrowhead.
“Maybe we should just row away, you know, and keep smiling,” Christopher suggested.
My sword was lying in the bottom of the boat. If I could get close enough, maybe…
Suddenly, around the back of the nearest ship, a boat only slightly larger than ours came into view. Two men with arms like my legs were rowing it. The boat turned neatly around the sea serpent prow of the ship and came for us.
“We just cannot catch a break,” Christopher muttered.
One of the oarsmen stopped and stood up. “Who are you?
Why do you come here?”
Three of them now. Four of us. But that was comparing Marines to toddlers. They were armed. They were dangerous.
We were four lost fools in a rowboat.
“My name is April,” she said, putting out a dazzling smile.
The Viking glared. “Does your woman speak for you?”
“Sexist jerk,” April said. But in a whisper.
I backed my oars, killing our momentum. “My name is David.
This is Christopher. This is Jalil.”
“Strange names.”
“We are strangers.”
“What manner of men are you? What land do you come from? Are you from the sun-worshipers, the filthy man-eaters?”
“I’m thinking we answer a big N.O. to that,” Christopher whispered.
“No,” April said, “we’re from… from north of Chicago.”
The Viking stared, not liking the answer. He was deciding. I could see it in his eyes. My life was in his eyes.
Suddenly it was like a light went on in the Viking’s head. “Are you the minstrels? King Olaf Ironfoot is expecting a troop of minstrels. He has grown impatient and feared that they have been killed by wild beasts or else murdered.”
“Well, worry no more, we are your minstrels,” Christopher said quickly, voice shaky. “We haven’t been killed by wild animals or murdered, although it’s not for lack of people trying.”
But the suspicious look was back on the Viking’s face. He shot a warning look at the bowman. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the bow come up into its owner’s hand. With shocking speed, he drew and fitted an arrow.
“If you’re minstrels, give us a song.”
I looked at Jalil. Jalil looked at Christopher. We all looked at April. At the same time
I bent over just enough to grip the hilt of the sword. Maybe a quick swipe and I could take down the big guy. Of course that still left the bowman.
“I don’t know any Viking songs!” she hissed.
“Give him something with lots of killing in it,” I said.
“What, Marilyn Manson? I don’t listen to that crap!”
“Don’t you know anything with killing in it?” Christopher demanded. “Where were you when everyone was into gangsta rap?”
April bit her lip, eyes darting back and forth as she dredged through her memory. “Killing!” she yelled suddenly.
“ ‘Killing… killing me softly with his song… playing my life with his words…’ ”
I froze. The world froze. She was singing and the Viking was deciding whether we heard the end of the song or never heard anything again.
The arrow would fly. I would reach to stop it, but by the time my hands came up, by the time my fingers began to close, it would be in me, through me, draining my blood in fountain spurts.
But now April was getting into it. The shaky fear voice was giving way to a singing voice that grew stronger and more confident. Her eyes were closed. Her hands were white as she twined them nails digging into bone.
The girl could sing. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what I thought of as a Viking song.
“ ‘I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a style. And so I went to hear him to listen for a while…’ ”
I watched the big Viking closely as April’s beautiful voice seemed to fill the harbor. His expression remained hard. But then I saw something amazing: The Norseman was crying. I don’t mean a little moisture. I mean tears streaming down his scarred cheeks into his greasy beard.
The oarsman behind him was similarly affected. I shot a look at the guy with the bow. No tears, but he was gazing off into blankness now, lost in memory.
I let go of the sword hilt. We weren’t going to fight our way out.
We were going to sing for our lives.
Chapter
XVIII
There was more to the village than I’d thought. The architecture wasn’t grand or imposing, except for a sort of town hall kind of place that had been built out of whole logs and rose above all the surrounding buildings.
Three piers extended out into the water, with a wharf built of tarred, split logs. Longshoremen off-loaded bundles from wide-hulled merchant ships. The longshoremen must have been slaves. They were a motley bunch, ranging from the blond, blue-eyed Viking look to smaller, olive-complected men and women to black people, but all with shaved heads. I saw no whipping going on, but a couple of big, old Vikings were roaring away, giving mostly superfluous orders and pushing people around.
Beyond the primitive dock sat warehouses that also looked like they were built of Lincoln Logs. They’d have been right at home in the old West.
Just beyond the far pier and curving away inland was the defensive wall I’d glimpsed earlier, logs set vertically and cut into sharp points. I guessed that it ringed the entire village, but I couldn’t see it. I did see a tower, again like something out of an old cavalry movie. Except instead of bluecoats carrying Winchesters, there were bowmen pacing around a parapet and looking pretty alert.
We headed uphill to the tow proper. Here the population became more noticeable. We saw a lot of people. More people than could possibly have fit into the twenty or thirty buildings that comprised the village.
And surely this village could not have supported the fleet of ships in its harbor. It was a forest of masts. I counted to thirty and still had only counted a fraction of the ships.
For the most part the men seemed to be engaged in swaggering around, talking in loud voices, and clapping one another on the back. Most were armed. But not all were armed alike. Or dressed alike. After a while you could start to make out differences between what had to be officers and ordinary soldiers.
The officers often wore chain-mail shirts. They carried swords with jeweled hilts or gold-scrolled scabbards. Some carried battle-axes with carved handles and elaborate heads. They had tall leather boots, more luxuriant furs, better-sewn pants.
They had attendants, helpers, whatever you call them, who carried their helmets and axes. Squires.
The common soldiers wore simpler clothing and carried simpler weapons. No chain mail. No gold. No engraving. Axes that looked like they came from K-mart instead of a jewelry store. Helmets that could have been banged together out of recycled soup cans.
But even the common soldiers were a loud, swaggering, boisterous bunch. No cringing. No saluting. No groveling. None of what my dad would have delicately called “military chicken product.”
I began to notice something else, too. Not all of these Vikings were quite what you’d think of as Norsemen. Yes, the big, blond type predominated heavily, but there were Vikings who looked like they’d just come in from South America, Africa, or China. And a lot who looked less easily identifiable: mixes of Nordic and Asian, Nordic and African. These were as likely to be officers as common soldiers, and all had the same swagger, the same haw, haw, haw laugh, the same eager, dangerous eyes.
Blond or brown, t
hese were big, strong, muscular, dirty-faced, smelling-of-sweat-and-charred-meat warriors. They weren’t playing dress-up. They weren’t putting on an act. These guys killed, face-to-face, ax-to-ax. Everywhere I looked I saw nasty scars, missing eyes, ears, hands, and arms. One young Viking, probably no older than me, had a livid scar, a puckered puncture wound on both cheeks. Someone had stuck a sword through this guy’s mouth.
I felt small. Weak. Not something I’m used to feeling. Not something I like feeling. The memory of my own terror was still all over me. It popped up out of nowhere. It was attached to other thoughts the way remoras are attached to sharks.
Of course, not every man was a warrior. I saw unarmed men as well. Some were richly dressed. Maybe businessmen. Others were working. We passed a blazingly hot smithy, open forge aglow, two sweaty slaves working a huge bellows while a hairy shirtless Viking with shoulders like the front end of my old Buick hammered away, whang! whang! whang!
Swords hung from the front of the building, and a nice selection of battle-axes. But hoops for barrels were on display, too, along with nails and woodworking tools.
Our guide — or captor, it was hard to be sure which — led us on past an area where more than a dozen open fires had been reduced to coals. Entire cows, pigs, sheep, and goats were blistering and burning on slowly rotating spits. Vast iron pots bubbled. Fish, some several feet long, others smaller, were sandwiched into iron grids and suspended above the fire.
Maybe fifty women were working this outdoor kitchen, hustling around like any harried bunch of cooks. It was overseen by an immense woman with black hair gathered into pigtails.
“My wife,” our guide said genially.
“She’s very impressive,” April said. “May I ask her name?”
“She is called Gudrun. Gudrun, Man-Beater.”
I looked closer and saw the staff she carried. A five-foot-long piece of skinned tree branch. On the end was a doubled fist-sized knot.
“I am Thorolf,” he added politely. And then he did something that surprised me, without my knowing exactly why. He pulled out a leather pouch and a rough-cut rectangle of thin paper.
And he proceeded to roll himself a cigar.
“Our names, again, in case their oddness may have caused you to forget, are April, Christopher, Jalil, and David.”
“Who is your lord?” Thorolf asked, as casually as if he’d asked what school we attended. But it was a loaded question.
A dangerous question, I sensed.
“We’re independent,” I said, trying to match his casual tone.
Bright blue eyes narrowed at me. He lit the stogie, inhaled, and breathed out a cloud of smoke. “You are free men? Not slaves?”
“Free men,” I said.
“You are not from around here,” he said. A statement.
“No,” I said, keeping it simple.
Thorolf accepted that. Accepted, at least, that we wanted to mind our own business and have him mind his.
“I will arrange for food and drink. King Olaf will send for you when he wishes entertainment. He is in counsel with the other kings and earls.”
He led us on to a corral containing forty or fifty stocky, shaggy horses. There were lean-tos around the perimeter of the corral fence. Most seemed to contain hay and alfalfa for the horses. Some contained what you got from horses after you fed them hay and alfalfa.
“You stay there,” he said, pointing to a decent, clean little shed, open on one side.
“Food will be brought. And drink, eh? Eh? What point in food if there is no drink?” he stomped off, blowing clouds of cigar smoke into the frosty air.
“Tobacco!” Jalil said excitedly. “Hah.”
“It bothered me, too,” April said. “But I didn’t think it was the right time to bitch about second-hand smoke.”
Jalil waved his hand impatiently. “Who cares about smoke?
The man was smoking tobacco. A Viking!”
We all stared pretty blankly. I was busy trying to see a line of retreat if things got bad.
“Tobacco is a New World plant. So is corn. And tomatoes.
They were stewing up corn and tomatoes back there. None of which any real Viking would have.”
“That’s what you focus on?” Christopher asked. “You focus on tobacco and corn? The man’s a living, breathing Viking, speaking English and living practically next door to Loki’s happy little family, for God’s sake. Why wouldn’t he have a stogie?”
“It just proves it’s not a dream,” Jalil said defensively. “I might dream about Vikings, and since I don’t speak Nordic they’d have to be English-speaking Vikings. But I’m not dumb enough to have a Viking firing up a panatela. And I don’t know why I’d come up with Asian Vikings. Black, maybe.”
“Just proves it’s not your dream,” April said. “Maybe it’s my dream and I just think it’s kind of… exciting… all these big, burly men and all.”
A woman appeared quite suddenly, carrying a tray. Without a word she set it down on the ground and walked away.
We took a look at the tray. A loaf of dark bread. A single, big bowl of soup. A hunk of rank cheese. Two deep-cut bowls.
One water, and the other…
“Beer!” Christopher said, delighted. “Hey, maybe this is a dream. My dream!”
“I’m thinking maybe getting faced isn’t a great idea,” I said. I don’t drink. My personal choice.
“Say what? After the day we’ve had? This is the best excuse for getting hammered I’ve ever imagined.” He took a deep, defiant swig of the beer and glared at me over the rim.
April laughed and took the bowl from him. “I’m guessing the drinking age here is about three,” she said. She took a sip and spat it out on the ground. “Okay, let’s try the water.”
We broke up the bread and wolfed it down. It was excellent.
The soup was even better, despite having to dig the chunks out with our fingers.
“Food is freaking magic,” Christopher said. “I mean, after a day of hanging around the castle walls, being terrorized by insane mythical gods, you need some food. Food and beer,” he added, looking defiantly at me again.
I calmly took a drink from the water.
We heard an explosive guffaw. I spun left and saw Thorolf.
He was hysterical. I mean, laughing like he could laugh himself to death. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
We’d made the man cry twice in an hour.
“Come, come,” he managed to gasp. “The king has called for you. Oh, you really are minstrels! Drinking the washing water and leaving the beer! Ah-hah-hah-HAH!”
Chapter
XIX
“We don’t exactly have an act,” April muttered.
We marched through the pushing, shoving, happily drunk throng. The crowd grew more and more dense as we approached the large building that dominated the center of town.
“Make way, make way!” Thorolf yelled, pushing common soldiers aside, roughly but without malice, and shouldering past officers.
The proportion of officers grew as we progressed. So did the general level of drunkenness. I was a good head shorter than the average guy we passed, a head and a neck shorter than a lot of them. And most of them were armed.
Suddenly we were shoved out into an open space. I hadn’t even noticed when we’d passed within the great hall, but now I could see.
It was like a model version of Loki’s throne room. Timber walls that had been roughly plastered instead of Loki’s stone. A high, wood roof supported by massive beams.
Shields, all scarred, many with holes, hung from the top of the left wall. Along the right were various flags and banners.
War trophies, I assumed. The shields and banners of enemies who hadn’t done too well upon meeting the Norsemen. Like something you’d see in a museum. Only these didn’t represent some long-ago, forgotten battle. Some of the bodies represented by these banners and shields still lay rotting on misty fields. Widows and orphans still living remembered the men who’d fallen
behind these banners.
In the center of the room was an open hearth the size of a small swimming pool. Smoke rose to a hole in the roof. The smell stayed behind: the smell of burning meat, joining the smell of sweat and beer and smoke.
“It’s like one of my brother’s frat parties,” Christopher said, in a shout that could barely be heard above the level of voices all around.
Back from the fire, behind a clothed table sat a dozen or so Vikings. These were rich men, powerful men: silver brooches, lush furs, polished leather, chains of silver baubles around their necks, elaborately filigreed silver goblets, silver-handled knives sticking out of the piles of meat before them.
Some of the men at the table looked like punks. Drunk, glaring, mad-at-the-world, don’t-make-me-kick-your-ass punks.
Sadists. Psychos.
But for the most part they were a sober, bright-looking crowd.
They were swilling beer and something that came in smaller glasses, but they still looked clear-eyed enough.
Then I recognized a face I knew. At the far end of the table, ignored by everyone, was the old man who had sacrificed the sheep.
He looked at me. I looked at him. We both knew we’d seen each other before. I had to work to start breathing again.
At the center of the table was a black man chewing at the edges of a slab of pink meat on a silver knife.
Thorolf pushed us forward. “My king! The minstrels are here,”
he said in a bellow that was normal conversational speech in this crowd.
“They had better be good,” King Olaf Ironfoot warned. He jerked the meat-laden knife toward one of the other Vikings to his left. “My good friend King Eric the Grim says his sword is hungry for blood.”
This evoked quite a bit of guffawing by all but Eric, who glared and said, “Would I dirty my sword with these… these gamesters? Better to throw them into the fire and hear their fat crackle in the flames, as the sun-worshipers do!”