Hardrada

“I'll ask of the berserks, you tasters of blood,
Those intrepid heroes, how are they treated,
Those who wade out into battle?
Wolf-skinned they are called. In battle
They bear bloody shields.
Red with blood are their spears when they come to fight.
They form a closed group.
The prince in his wisdom puts trust in such men
Who hack through enemy shields.”

Haraldskvæði’s Saga:

A Week Ago:
She had done nothing. Messou was an innocent. This sealed the fate of everyone, and they were coming.

This woman, he loved. Messou had seen these weaker, smaller versions of her lover’s race, the Ostmen, just before they landed. As Hardrada slept in the cave, and as she was foraging for small shellfish in the tidal pools just after dawn, she raised her eyes to meet their glare as they arrived. She had only time to give a small yelp before they crushed her skull beneath their war hammers. At that, Hardrada had awakened, come out, saw the only thing that held his heart to the world, and lay waste to these murderers all in short order. Then he knelt, ran his fingers through Messou’s plasma-gored hair, lifted her small axe from her palm and placed it in his belt. In a fugue, he waited for the next wave of men to come.

Now, his heart wanted to burst from its throbbing cage within him, hover there over this stony Wineland shoreline, and do its own killing. The dynamic had to change. He had to make himself whole for this next act. As the Úlfheðinn Berserker he was, he placed his right index finger, sticky with the blood of the murderers, into the deer-leather pouch at his waist, felt the grainy mixture of dried and ground herbs and mushrooms there, and brought the gore-soaked digit to his nose and snorted-up a hearty dose, far more than he had ever taken of the sacred battlefield concoction. This was what gave him connection to his forefathers, and to the mysterious powers. These skills and legendary powers were why they had taken Hardrada along for this voyage the previous Spring. He had shown that he and his Berserker brethren, of the Wolf, of the Bear, could to lay waste to the front lines, to the first hordes of defenders they had conquered before sailing and rowing across the entirety of this icy ocean to the new-found land.

This wave of men, the native men, came. These came for their tribe, for the theft of their sister/cousin/daughter. They splashed ashore, yelping their war chants. The array of small, round rocks that made up the strand between Hardrada and the angry force, stumbled them to shore, and the remnants of their sea-legs slowed them slightly. They gathered around their Warlord for a moment, near the water, and pleased to see that at last they had come around the entire island to actually find Hardrada and his woman. They seemed startled for a moment to see him, huge and red with his natural tones, and the blood of the slain, covered only in fur. But this was a momentary distraction. Within seconds their war-cries began again in earnest, as they were bent toward his death, and to taking her back again, away from this forbidden love.

The vibrant mixture in Hardrada’s sinuses began to take effect. The anger left him, and the timelessness of true warriorhood overcame him. He felt himself release the emotion. Far above the cloudy glow on the morning sea, that imagine of Odin floated before him as usual, his sacred audience, welcoming him, approving of every stroke his massive arms delivered, and inviting him to the table of his peers in Valhalla if he fell. For Hardrada, there was simply no downside to battle. It was what he was made for.

The men arrived, as if in slow motion. He could smell their work upon them, seal, fish, the sea. Their eyes were filled with the unique hatred fueled by battle, misplaced righteousness, and the myths they told themselves of his iniquities, and his foreignness. The Warlord stopped in the crackling rocks and raised his left hand. He saw, near the tidal pools behind Hardrada, the pile that was once Messou. His face lined with age, now crinkled into a visage of pure horror and grief, he met Hardrada’s eyes. The first one to do so, even from those he called friends. The Warlord screamed at him, “Skraeling Uitiko!” which meant nothing to Hardrada at all, but it was delivered in the manner of a divine right for violence. He was enraptured by that idea and was certainly ready to move to that plane.

Hardrada’s right hand fell to the reindeer-femur-handle of his battle-axe wrapped in leather straps, connected to his wrist with the same. He shouted and swung the blade into the Warlord and his lieutenant first. These two were split at an angle from the first’s neck, through the lower torso, and onward into the running attacker beside him, bisecting that one’s entire pelvis. The sound was music, and in Hardrada’s slow-motion universe, he could take the moment to allow that sound to echo off the rocky walls of the cove. Inspired, he lifted his head for a moment in the reverence of the delicious viscosity his blades had discovered. Above, Odin laughed and laughed. The God raised a horn to Hardrada.

His training and instinct twisted the femoral handle of the axe, and he spun the gore from the blades. Spinning, it became an illusion of a solid mass, and then stopped, less filthy with the remains. He lifted it to meet the next two, moving inland, but incrementally more carefully. As their pace slowed at the sight of their comrades, and as Messou came into focus, Hardrada felt the ecstasy take him. On the ground, a mass of roses, blooming with the final arterial spray, nested in velvet tubes of still-pulsing knots of the second attacker’s bowels. All was right in the world. And soon, he would be joined with his love.

Beauty—every minute a treasure, an eternity. All was bliss. He ran, smiling in deep love toward the next wave, as they moved slowly toward Hardrada. He could make art of the slashes, taking them into the bliss of the eternal. Jealous for a moment that he could not yet follow, he felt a twinge of loneliness, but a glance at the sky soothed his pain at once. It was not his task, enraptured as he was, vulnerable to any blade that wanted him, so he blasted into them as one who dances into the fray.

Again, and again, he saw that Odin was pleased, laughing, horn in hand, and bitter draughts chugged as the art continued on this small stretch of hard, rock beach. Fourteen came before Hardrada, offered their lives, and he obliged out of deep love and understanding. And so, in his Berserkitude, fourteen fell. Small cuts from their chert blades reached at his limbs and gave him tiny pleasures at their entrance and openings. A filigree of capillary bleeds tattooed his forearms and decorated his hands. The thongs at the end of his axe would never allow slippage. He looked to the sky, and asked of his God, “Soon I will be with her? Soon I will be forever at the hand of my Lord and my also my Goddess?” Odin just laughed on and watched the play of opposites envelope the beach.

In his head, a voice boomed, “When these next men come, this last time, as they crowd you, spin again your axe.”

“Lord?”

Within moments, another boat rounded the edge of the dark-grey rocks at the mount of the tiny cove. It was one of his own Ostmen fleet, the shields wrapped the edges of the boat on each side of the rows of oarlocks. He saw his own family runes on one of them. He smiled widely. The sails wrapped and furled; the oars pumped. The boat’s tackle was rigged to move quickly, at a quick clip around the stony obstacles at the entrance to the cove. It came close to ground at a thousand-hands down the beach and one man jumped into the shallows, ran to the pebbled shore and up the hill to the right, access to the cliffs above them him in an obvious flank.

“Come Brothers!” Hardrada shouted. “I have bliss for you!” He dug again into the pouch. He shoved the mixture, again, deep into his nostrils. Another bright image flashed in the skies. Odin faded, still heartily, deeply laughing, and was replaced by Messou, by the ever-glowing façade of his very own lover. Her hair windy, and her dark skin smooth and unmarred. Motioning to him, begging, smiling, she was something else now. He looked down the beach toward the cave entrance and saw the glow of her remains. It gave off a purple, orange aura that seemed comforting to him. He looked back toward the clouds at Her visage as the Ostman boat landed beside the Native canoe. Her voice, sublime, hummed across the echoing island and sea. Although he never knew her words in his head and ears during their brief life together, now in death, her words were clear to his heart:

“No matter what, Hardrada, you will be with me. And I, with you, always.”

This time the attackers were all men he knew, some of them, men he had taught to fight from their first-fur. They were also men who brought the scents of his homeland, their aspect and visages, like his own. These combined with the thoughts and feelings of deep love he had, at once for them.

They did not race towards him, but slowly flanked him. The man on the cliffs above was now behind him. Hardrada filled his chest with air, and his sinuses with the homey scent of them. He saw that the man on the cliffs had a bogi, a sea bow, and quiver with him. Surely, they were not using these as the cowards do, on land. These Winelanders had certainly corrupted his brethren. He was certain that it was his own brother, Colborn, who was up there. Why didn’t he come with these others, to face him, and to go into the other world with him?

As Hardrada gazed at the figure on the cliff, Colborn lit an arrow, and shot it downward, directly at Hardrada. It whispered into the space toward Hardrada’s head, and as everything else in this war-world of his, it came, in half-time, and he gently side stepped. It landed, and skittered on the rocks, still lit. He stooped to pick-up the burning shaft. Colborn knew what he was doing. He knew that few pains could stop a Berserker, and nothing but immolation could halt the advance of one.

The smile on his face must have unnerved many of them as their expressions were not ones of welcome and battle, but of fear, and some, of sadness. They had seen what he could do, but they were also resigned to follow the traditions for one who would fraternize or aid the enemy of the Northmen. And that was what his woman was, or had been when She was alive, not a heap of cooling slime on the rocks only fifty feet from them… to them She was the enemy. The first landing had been peaceful, but skirmishes all along the coast had cost the Northmen many brothers.

Amazed at the fire on the tip of this arrow, he moved it around and around in small circles and figure-eights, not even watching the men around him. Another arrow skittered to a stop beside him. It was only a distraction. If he was to go today, as he wished, it would certainly be by their hands, which was gorgeous, and perfect and beyond his dreams of happiness. He felt anticipation for this last fight. Would he take them with him? Would they all laugh together and sing of this battle in the Great Hall even today? Smiling in reverie, he dropped the arrow, and pulled Her weapon from his waist belt. A modified Harp Seal and Greenland Seal-fat-scraper, She had fashioned it into a formidable axe of Her own.

He felt it warm in his left palm. What a privilege for them to be slain by this, Her own axe, he thought. As he raised both axes, he felt the bliss take his heart again. Still, all the world was slowed to a blur. His brethren, whom he recognized, but had no more names for them in his flower-filled bliss-throbbing head, appeared like figures in a long-hall, sculptures of family and friends he adored. They begged in their movements to be worthy of this death. He was to oblige. The whirling began, and the first three were hewn to pieces. In his vision, they came because they knew that he had these powers. They came for deliverance from this painful existence. For their entrance to the Halls of Odin and not simply Hel’s domain. What other motivation could they have? He could not comprehend the battle. He could not know their anger at what they saw as this betrayal of his own people for a woman of these Winelanders.

There was warmth at his back and he had all the time in this illusory world to turn, to see the glow from her corpse grow in power, and the hazy pulsing light leave the body. It rose toward the figure on the cliff face, who was just notching another fire-arrow to shoot. The glow surrounded Colborn. Suddenly, his brother was engulfed in flames. He ran in circles, beating at his head until the shrieks took on one last, ripping, high-pitched keen. This new spectacle stopped all motion on the shoreline. Before a moment or two, Colborn’s body fell to its knees, and then to its face, then slid, smoldering down the slight grade and off the cliff’s edge to rag-doll down the embankment, bouncing from rock to rock, puffs of smoke at each bouncing shock and insult, to finally rest upon a boulder near the cave entrance.

Hardrada felt his memory spark to grief, but the psychedelia in his battle-mind would not allow it. The glow spun, almost feminine in its shape and movements. It swept down to the shore in front of the cave, and glided, approaching Hardrada across the rocks.

As She came into focus next to him, he could see Her face. The eyes, beatific and eternal, he could have stared for a thousand years. He felt Her glow enter him, surround him, and beyond this usual ecstatic war-trance, came a comfort he had never known. Somewhere in his unconsciousness, he knew this wouldn’t last. He knew that unless he died today, the usual world would again crawl upon him like horrible ants, and engulf his mind with Her death; the dearth of sadness beyond repair and more thought toward a lonely end. But, for now, for now, he was invincible.

Hardrada turned to face the coming attack again. Grinning like demented full-moon, he moved the axes in figure-eight patterns around his body, awaiting the dance of death.

Another attacker had stayed back, not approaching the Berserker. This one too, raised a cowardly bow on land, but without fire, and aimed carefully, precisely at the center of Hardrada’s barrel of a torso. But, even with the most skilled weaponry, when one’s actions are slowed to half-speed, the blows are easily dodged. The arrow flew toward Hardrada, but he grabbed and shoved one of the close attackers into the shot and smiled as the delicate arrowhead instantly appeared through the man’s eye, first glistening with blood and then gushing. He dropped the body, and began his run at the bowman, passing and ducking easily the other sweeps from spear and knife as he did. The bowman notched another, and drew back. Hardrada whipped Messou’s strange axe at him and it found home in his neck, striking the artery there. The man dropped the bow and fell to his knees, hands to his throat, attempting to stem the gush.

Hardrada turned again. Five more of his kin stood, and they were speaking now. They entreated him to stop, to give up. He heard none of it. And She, within him, understood nothing but revenge.

He turned the axe in his hands and prepared to spin the gore from it. As he did, some more powerful force took over the action. It spun, and as it did, it lost weight in his hand. The thong held him tightly, and the axe, with him attached, rose in the air, pulling his body with it. He was not certain it wasn’t part of the visionary state he was in, but as he hung there, now five, eight, ten feet above the ground, it was clear he was moving toward the others. He gently landed no more than six feet from his own cousin, now in total shock at what he had just witnessed. Hardrada shared his look of amazement but quickly returned to the bloody matters at hand.

He managed, “Odin preserve you, Cousin!” and his battle axe, now still and warm to his touch came down to hew the skull before it, in twain.

Hardrada had finished off each of them with glee, and with each spin of his axe, rose-up, only to blast-down upon them with new-found power and impact. As the last of them fell, Hardrada howled. It was his traditional howl at the end of battle, at the end of timeless time, when he came back to his Earthly senses and away from the Valhallic dream he and his other wolf brothers found themselves in when sent into the fray. He felt her essence rip from him. He saw no glow, or figure, but he knew she was no longer within his corporeal form.

This battle lasted for no more than a few minutes, but it was an eternity to him, and at the end of it, the shore lapped up the blood of both Viking and Innu alike, the sea, tasting, drinking it in heartily. The tiny waves whispered, “More. More. More.”

The Ynglinga pouch was not nearly empty, and there were plenty of fir trees on the island below which he would find the red and white mushrooms to help augment the other herbs in it. He would need them. He fell to the rocks, pleased at his work. His eyes rose. She was also, no longer in the sky.

Again, he howled. This howl was not victory. This howl was mourning. She was gone now. Gone and would not return to the lands of the living. He was left here, alone. His hands, bloody and open to the bone on a knuckle or two began to allow sensation once more and he felt the throb of it, matching the rhythm in his head. There was almost nothing that he could do now, but rest somehow, or better yet, just walk. Just walk into the ocean. His brothers, and all his kin along with her brothers, and her kin, were all dead upon the colorful pebbles up and down the shoreline.

He decided against the walk into the sea, and rose after a time, shuffling back toward the cave, stooping to take what he could of her with him as he entered. He saw the furs in the makeshift bedding against the stone walls at the back, and barely made it. The fatigue took him in an instant, and he collapsed into a bloody heap, and knew no dreams as his flesh-wounds begged for healing, and his mind, for sleep.

Time, as it does, passed. One more boat came searching at the mouth of the cove, the occupants saw the stillness, and the horrors strewn about, and left it to it’s secrets.

The dawn glowed into Hardrada’s little sheltering cave, peeking over a still, autumn ocean, and threatened yet another day here in this weird land. As the sun found him, heaped into a curling bulk, he awoke in the cave, alone. His most preferred state of being for his nearly twenty-seven winters. But existence had changed, Hardrada now mourned, and then hated himself for the mourning. What had made him so very weak-minded to allow him to care, to desire, so deeply?

Singular with thoughts, the memory of Messou still ached in his senses, mnemonic, fresh, and agonizing. He had carved her symbol into his shoulder, probably in that empty-headed world between nearly-awake, and true sleep. He had not cleaned even the blood from his axe, the remains of her from the bed. He had not washed himself, afraid that it would take even the last vestiges of her from him permanently. He had no heart for fighting. He had no will to remain among these people and their foreign ways. Even though she was one of them, he cared little for them, and knew they felt the same.

He took the boat her kin had left behind. It was lined with thick birch, waterproof, but as oily as blubber. It would have no trouble lighting. He gathered her, all of her, and her possessions, especially her shell necklace, her pouch full of sweet-smelling dried blooms, and the wrap for her head. Hardrada placed the corpse in the boat, and as the tide changed, he kicked the canoe towards the center of the cove. He picked-up the other Bowman’s quiver and his fire-making kit. He refused to look at the man’s gull-eaten face, afraid of any recognition, and the further grief of it. He attached one of the small, oil-soaked rags to the arrow, near the tip and flinted it to life. With no wind, it was not a difficulty to shoot the arrow true, and into the canoe, now washing steadily out of the cove and into the flat, morning sea. It took a few moments, as the flames were accepted by the oily birchbark, and the boat began to burn.

He watched until the current took it around the last rocks, and into the channel beyond his vision.

He shuffled to the entrance of the cave and looked out across the other side of the channel toward the mainland. Soon winter would come. Soon it would ice-over, and all choice would be gone for him. His chance to find his way back to the Greenland outpost, and thence toward home before the ice made everything accessible by foot, was slipping away.

Now:
The end of his world, the battle, was already seven dawns ago. Mornings are the worst. At least in dreams he is with her, wrapped. Joyously, in this intoxicating early Autumn air, in this strange land, their never-birthed, impossible children play on the vast fields of grass on the cliffs above, as he and she walk about gathering tinder for the nightly fire.

But then the horror of realization comes with awakening, underground, by this relentless sea. Again. He curses his weaknesses. Where is his courage to follow her, to take up his place in the other land? Could any punishment in the afterlife be as horrific as this one?

The rotten corpses of his own brethren and the last of her own male kin still lay, in putrescent pieces. Hardrada lived now with the cacophony of feasting gulls. Each morning one appears, expectant, at the mouth of the cave. It sits and does not walk or fly away when he comes out to empty his water. It just watches him, and saunters back to the heaps of flesh, fur and metal that were those who dared to face him.

If he had fallen as he should have in the battle, what Valkyrie would find him here in this foreign land, the blood of his own brothers upon him, the gushing arterial taste of his woman’s own kin on his breath. What place in Valhöll, could there be for a man without people? Could dying in battle against both his enemies and his own brothers ever allow such an afterlife? Even Fólkvangr, or Hel would be comfort, but nowhere in his imagination could he envision a place for him.

Daily, Hardrada climbs to the top of the cliff on the spear-shaped promontory and watches across the water East, toward the land where his umbilical is buried in Svealand, and again, She is there in the sky, floating above the waves, exactly as he remembers her. Char-black hair, Her starglossy, twinkling eyes set deep in Her soft face, She beckons him to join Her. To step out. He sees Her over the water, calling him. His grief at play, he smells Her on his furs. The ritual begins. He walks toward the edge of the promontory. He hears the surf below at first—allows the destruction of him—but the rest of his body fights the urge. It fights as it was trained to do. To always survive. To never give up. To stand as tall as his monstrous frame will allow, naked as always except for the fur around him, among the fallen dead, as he had in his battles abroad.

His hesitancy thwarts him again, and he drops in shame to his knees and then to his hip, supporting himself with one massive arm. With the other, he snatches his knife from his belt. Waves in near admiration before the Eastern sun rising from the depths. Laughing to himself, perhaps maniacally, he cries, “Knívleysur maður er lívleysur maður!” (The knifeless man is a lifeless man).

He raises the Tollekniv blade to his throat, and pushes, feeling the wetness begin to drip as the toothy metal breaks the skin. He, this expert with Tvekamper, the single combat with a knife, now a coward when that combat is against the grieving demon within him. He takes another breath, and wills the blade harder to his throat, which is when his bulging eyes see the ship, moving steadily toward the island from the direction of Greenland, and the East…