Read Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz Online
Authors: Tim Marquitz
But not Rurik.
Everyone in Hundested, who knew Rurik, expected the young man to
remain as always, seated upon a bench aside the hearth fire in
Werner’s Mead Hall and Eatery. As a manner of pride, all men in
the Norse lands wore beards, but Rurik’s is wild and harried,
unkempt and poorly groomed. Stiffly, he sits with one eye inside his
flagon and one eye on the fire, while to himself he mumbles.
Werner, the proprietor of the hall, would say Rurik had never thawed
from the day he was found, and when asked what that meant, he’d
always tell the curious to ask Rurik. Upon looking at the frazzled
man, no one ever asked. Not until that early spring day when Oslo
‘Boarstout’ entered the mead hall.
The robe Oslo wore was made of bear hide with the bear’s skull
still intact. During combat, he’d pull the skull over like a
helmet. Pinched under one arm, a spear hung loosely, and in his
scabbard dangled a mighty sword. Bare chested and strong, the straps
holding his bearskin coat crisscrossed Oslo’s body. Here stood
a warrior not to be trifled with.
Werner carried to Rurik what would be his third flagon of mead before
noon when Oslo Boarstout spoke loudly, “I seek nourishment and
drink, yet you hang upon this man like a mother holds her babe to her
breast. My coin is good here, or is it not?”
Werner looked over his shoulder at the man. “You’re
berserkr
?” It was an obvious statement that needed no
answer. Still, the man in the bearskin robe nodded. Werner
continued, “Then you are a man of honor and know the code.”
Berserkr
was a title reserved for the bravest, most ferocious,
and proven loyal to the Norse kings. The bear-warriors could be
likened to knights by the command in their voice – an order
from one was to be respected as if it were an echo from the king. In
the heat of battle was where their similarities differed. A far
contrast from the chivalry of knighthood, the
berserkr
showed
no mercy in the killing field. A frothing, enraged beast is what the
blood-lusting
berserkr
became upon the field of war, and his
proudly worn bear-cloak served as a forewarning of what would come if
challenged.
“Aye, I live by the code.” He pulled upon his long beard
and asked, “Are you a fighter then?”
Werner nodded, “Sure, when I was younger. I’d helped
fight off the hill people in the south. After that I came here to the
island looking for mercenary work. My woman found me and I slowed
down.”
The
berserkr
nodded, a smile creased his face. “They
have a way with that, do they not?” Delivered as a question not
requiring an answer, the second inquiry did expect one. “So
what of
honor and code
should I offer to this morning’s
mead swiller?”
Rurik did not flinch. He raised his replacement flagon to his lips
and poured. Werner turned back to the warrior and patted Rurik on the
shoulder. “From one warrior to another, we both know that to
save a man’s life bonds them forever. Rurik has survived what
many men could not. When my woman and I found him, he was near dead.”
Oslo the Boarstout set a scattering of silver coins upon the table.
“If your woman cooks, I’ll take the daily meal, and a
flagon of ale.” He pointed at Rurik with a soft nod, “and
his story.”
Werner nodded and called to his woman, “Helle! Bring a large
bowl of stew and a quart of ale for our new guest.” A woman’s
voice acknowledged the order from behind the bar in the kitchen.
Werner leaned in and whispered into Rurik’s ear.
Rurik lifted his flagon in a shaking hand to his mouth. He poured
nearly half and swallowed his brew in two gulps. Turning around upon
his bench, Rurik gave a frozen stare, piercing the warrior. His eyes
were hollow, empty and blue. His haunted voice reflected a deep ache.
“So you wish to hear my tale?”
The warrior nodded again, “Aye, I do.”
Rurik started, “Well, five years ago—less if I were to
be true ... ”
Four years and seven months earlier, Rurik pulled against the ropes,
swiveling the yardarm connected to the mast of the ship named the
Windward Mare
. The
Mare
was a deep tub with a wide and
open storage, separated by a fore and aft deck. From bow to stern she
totaled thirteen meters, and by her deeper hold she could deliver
around twenty-four tons per trip. Speared through the center of the
ship, at the front edge of the aft-deck, a single mast held a
triangular-sail that whipped aggressively in the wind.
The yardarm, a long wooden-beam, whirled around on a greased groove
before the wind caught and blew the sail full open. Rurik hung to the
riggings as the ship listed starboard. Upon the side opposite of
Rurik, another sailor named Gurvald wrapped the slack of his rope
around a pin set into the side-rail to hold the sail in position.
Rurik wrapped his end of the riggings around another wooden stop,
securing the top-sail from falling.
The total crew of the
Windward Mare
was five. Rurik, Gurvald,
and Njorf comprised of the seamen. Sten, the helmsman, steered the
yoke from the back-deck. Balancing aside his helmsman stood Captain
Brodir ‘Fairkin.’ He’d earned his name by how he
treated his men, but also by how generously he paid them. In return,
he had a loyal crew.
With the sun dipping into the southwest sea behind them, they sailed
into an advancing night. They’d gone on, and by midnight they
touched familiar dirt in the port town of Helsingborg. There was
barely one-hundred miles of water between the two cities of Aarhus
and Helsingborg. Due west, at their backs, was the Danish city named
Aarhus.
The
Windward Mare
was a type of ship known as a
Knarr
,
and was built for transportation of supplies and for long distance
exploration. The ship served a different job than the dreaded Norse
longships, but the men who sailed them were no less courageous. The
island civilizations beyond the channel believed the Norsemen were
terrors from the sea. Within North Umbria, the Vikings had rightfully
earned their reputation. They were renowned as sea-fighters and
raiders to the Christians, but to the other empires in the east, the
Norse were respected as shrewd merchants. Brodir Fairkin was an
astute merchant, and in a few hours his haul of livestock would be
delivered on time for the morning’s market.
The sea rose with a respectable chop in the waves, but was nothing
Captain Brodir’s crew couldn’t keep command over. As the
sea began swallowing the sun behind them, the gusts gradually
lessened over the surf. The ship rode up and over a wave’s
crest, and then slammed the bow down into the valley. The next wave
would be driven into, splashing up and over the front, sloshing down
into the hold where a small flock of sheep received a cold,
unexpected shower.
Captain Brodir stood beside Sten at the yoke. As the helmsman held
the wheel, keeping the
Mare
on course, Brodir stated above the
noisy wind and surf, “I hope the cold water doesn’t
freeze our delivery. It’ll be hard to sell forty frozen sheep.”
An experienced sailor, Sten did not fight the sea. He merely used the
ships wheel to guide them steady. Through a blond beard, he gruffly
replied, “I’m worried the smell of wet sheep will kill us
before we reach dock.”
Brodir chuckled. “Would you like to go see how Njorf is
faring?”
Sten laughed at knowing his fellow sailor was with the sheep in the
open hold. “No, sir, he is probably covered in cold soggy
sheep shit by now. I’d rather
he
not see me laughing.”
The bow of the ship lifted over the next wave, but as it came down,
the hull hit flat and felt as if it scraped against something
underneath. The next wave lifted the ship and twisted the
Mare’s
direction. Upon the tide’s release, the ship again seemed to
slide across an object submerged in the water.
Sten felt it in the wheel. For a quick moment, the rudder stiffened.
Through vibrations in the wood at his feet, as much as by the sudden
free-spin on the yoke, he knew the cable controlling the rudder had
snapped underneath the ship. Sten’s eyes grew wide before
announcing what the Captain already knew, “The rudder is free!”
With barely a sliver of twilight-orange remaining on the horizon
behind them, Captain Brodir grabbed to the side-rail and peered over
the side into dark waters. With an oscillating shimmer atop the
rolling sea, he could see nothing below the dark green surface. They
must have hit some floating debris and drove it deeper.
Attentively, Brodir searched the murky water for whatever they had
hit. Behind him, on the other side of the boat, a long appendage
slithered up and out of the ocean. The tentacle began at a blunted
point, a nub that grew thicker, to the expanse similar to the
shoulders of the biggest Viking warrior. The slick and leathery
tentacle wrapped itself over the ship’s forward bow. As the
serpentine arm coiled and gripped the arch of the bow-spirit, two
more dark tentacles slipped from the blackish-green waves.
The second arm glided atop the swelling waves toward the main mast as
the third appendage shot high out of the water and hovered over the
helmsman.
With paralyzed feet, Sten called out, “Kraken!”
Sten’s call sent a shiver through the souls of all on board.
Norse sailors knew the stories of the kraken, a terrible squid-like
monstrosity with a history of snaring longships sailing though the
deeper waters. Warships, forty Vikings strong, met their ends to such
feared beasts, pulled down with their ship to the ocean’s
depths. Until that evening, Brodir believed the stories to be nothing
more than tall-tales told to scare children.
Brodir turned and stared in stunned amazement before the hovering
tentacle slammed down upon Sten. The captain stepped to the side,
barely dodging the slithering arm as it veered to knock him over the
side of his ship. Sidestepping by only a margin, he watched Sten
become pinned beneath the lumbering arm and rolled against the deck.
Sten was crushed between ship and beast as the sea-monster tightened
its hold across the back railing. Brodir heard the snapping of bones
and saw a splash of blood squirt across the wet deck before looking
away from the friend with whom he’d just shared a laugh.
The tip of the central tentacle wrapped around the mast. Gurvald
attempted to wrestle it away but became ensnared as it coiled its
powerful arm. Brodir noticed Rurik had been knocked off his feet and
bumped clear from immediate harm, but the captain knew Gurvald’s
powerlessness would soon end as did Sten’s.
The kraken’s leathery skin appeared slick and slimy in the
fading light, but in contradiction to appearances, its coarse and
knobby skin adhered against Gurvald’s soft flesh. Each feeler
was simply a giant muscle wrapped in sandpaper-like skin. The
tentacle continued to curl around the bottom of the wooden shaft, but
Gurvald was caught and pulled within the spiraling arm. There, he
popped under the pressure and was crushed within its grip.
Brodir twisted around. “Rurik, Njorf, cut us free!”
Along the ship’s railing were small hatchets, set in sheaths,
to be used in case of an emergency. The purpose for the axes was in
the rare event of a man becoming ensnared within the ropes. With one
swift hack the sailor could be freed. There were two at the bow, two
in the aft section, and one on each side of the deck, opposite the
mast.
Brodir’s arm stretched for the hatchet’s handle but the
ship began to list onto her starboard side. The kraken pulled itself
up from the ocean, a dark shape emerging from the even darker waters.
By the pull of strong tendrils, the ship slid further onto its side
in the water. Brodir’s fingers touched the ax handle for a
split-second before he slid across the sanded deck toward the water
and the awaiting hunter. Brodir rubbed the palms of his hands against
the deck to slow his fall. Looking over his shoulder to the braying
sheep falling out of the hold and into the water, Brodir saw Njorf
riding their wooly backs closer to the blackening waters. Njorf
kicked some of the sheep overboard to avoid being shaken out of the
open hold.
Brodir’s feet hit the portside railing, now submerged by
inches. Icy cold water soaked into his boots. To the right, he
watched Rurik, also balanced upon the rail, his hands splashing
frantically, searching for the submerged handle of the emergency
hatchet.
Water poured into the storage hold as the ship turned on its side.
Njorf pushed the jam of floating sheep away from him. The wading
sailor made eye contact with Brodir and yelled, “Captain! I’m
standing on an ax! I can get it once the sheep give me room to dive.”
Brodir felt around with his boots knowing his own ax must be nearby.
Behind him, the beast fully emerged from the depths. Displaced water
rushed off its bobbing, blobby form. The captain turned as the kraken
made a slurping, sucking sound. Brodir felt the hatchet with the heel
of his boot and bent for it as the
Windward Mare
listed toward
port.
Two strong tentacles reached from beneath the captured ship to wrap
around and grip the side-rail overhead. Powerful arms pulled,
twisting the ship with creaks and pops, rippling from
bow to stern. Both Brodir and Rurik lost their footing and fell
against the shifting deck. Njorf, soaking wet, emerged from the water
amongst the panicked sheep. Raising his hands high, in one of his
fists was the small ax.
Bravely, Njorf struggled through knee-deep water along the
sideways tilted foredeck. He moved toward the bowsprit above his
head and ever closer to the tentacle entwined there. Brodir and Rurik
had their own axes in hand before the ship flexed again.
Creaks, accompanied by a deeper groan, rippled through the straining
wood. They all knew the reverberations heralded the ship’s
surrender to being sundered. Desperate to save their ship, Njorf
hacked deep into thick leathery skin. A dark spray of blood preluded
the tentacle releasing the bow. The ship reversed its strained moan
of self-destruction.