The Great Pagan Army Read online

  More screams floated from the dormitory. They were long, agonizing sounds, inhuman. The youthful archer glanced uneasily over his shoulder.

  The giant Northman rose with a grunt. He pointed at the abbot and then at Peter. The bleeder grumbled, but they began to ransack the house.

  Peter tested his bonds. It was no good, so he waited, sick with dread. What did these terrible pagans plan to do to him?

  2.

  Flames devoured the abbey. A great red beast of licking fire roared upon the buildings. Piercing screams told of a trapped monk. It seemed impossible the monk could sing such high notes. Soon enough however he gurgled down into a lower range. Then the thunderous roar of fire drowned out his cries.

  The Viking archer, the lean youth in the leather tunic—Heming Ivarsson—watched intoxicated from the apple grove as heat flushed his face. He fingered his lucky Hammer of Thor amulet, the one with little painted eyes. He wondered upon the ways of fate. So much had happened since spring, since leaving Jutland in the North and sailing the high seas, the whale’s track, in his father’s dragon ship. The shed blood, the brutality of battle, the thrill of victory awed Heming. Skalds sang songs, but they never captured the oily fear in your belly as you waited in the dark or as you sent shafts hissing at a man staring you in the eye.

  Giant flames licked the underbelly of the night, wild, powerful, consuming. With a terrific crack, a giant beam exploded. Other timbers groaned and fell into the fire as sparks blew upward. More lumber screamed in protest. Then all at once, an entire building frame collapsed into the inferno as the fire roared approval.

  A Frankish horse neighed from the small herd tied to the apple trees. They were Heming’s responsibility. The stallion jerked his head as his eyeballs rolled wildly.

  “Easy,” Heming soothed in Danish. “You won’t burn.”

  The stallion thumped his hooves. Maybe he didn’t like Heming’s native tongue. Heming didn’t know any Frankish. Maybe he should cut a monk free and have him calm the beast. The captured monks, the two from the stone house, lay trussed nearby like hogs. Both watched the fire. The heat flushed the younger monk’s forehead and highlighted his red hair and arrow-scratched cheek.

  Heming scowled, drew his dagger and jabbed the dirt. He kept jabbing as burning wood exploded. Each resounding crack tightened his lean face. The monk had just stood there, the bastard, daring him to strike. Heming had slain the hound. His father had clapped him on the back for it, even though he had felt regret at the deed. Slaying a three-legged dog was bad luck. Heming was certain of it. He thrust the dagger into the earth. The trouble was he had never killed a man. His father said it changed you. His father said some men turned mean after their first kill, while some became queasy. Some shrugged it off. Some vomited. Some learned to love it. Some men forever after shied from gore and some become berserk. His father said it was different killing afar with a bow than close in with a sword or if you rammed a knife into a man’s belly.

  His father Ivar Hammerhand had killed by sword, axe, dagger, rock, rope, fist… not by poison, though. Ivar said poison was beneath a warrior. It was a coward’s way to drip hemlock into a drink or to smear a pin with nightshade. His father had sailed with legends, with Ragnar Hairy-Breeches and Mad Hastein (over twenty-five years ago). Silver and gold had laden their dragons, not like the paltry trash and trinkets from this stinking abbey, but then, for his father, nothing was as it used to be. In those days men ran faster, swung their axes harder, raped more women in a night and guzzled not just horns of beer but entire barrels! Nor had Vikings been so frightened in those days that they needed to marshal themselves into a giant host. In those days any group of dragons sailed where they dared. A fleet of three or thirty, it was all the same. This massing of hundreds of longships under Sigfred the Sea King— it didn’t impress his father the Hammerhand.

  A crash of timbers pulled Heming’s attention back to the fire. Until he slew a man with arrows—Ivar said first kill from a distance. Watch a man crumple from your shot. See the life leak out of him. Then if he wanted to pick up a spear and shield and march in the swine array, the shield wall… then by Odin that’s what would happen.

  Heming grew thoughtful, until his musings turned toward… it. His stomach coiled and his mouth grew dry. None of the crew had spoken about it since setting forth from Jutland. Most of the crew believed it was cursed, a thing of evil. His father’s boasts and mocking to the contrary hadn’t persuaded anyone. Why had his father buried it when they had camped before the Frankish fortified bridge? Ivar Hammerhand mocked magic, mocked the gods. He even mocked Heming’s charmed amulet, saying a warrior made his own luck.

  Heming pulled his dagger out of the earth and wiped the blade on his breeches, leaving a smear of dirt like a cut. He watched the fire. The roar, heat, blaze, there was something sinister and majestic about the conflagration, something awful and lovely. If there was ever a moment to test it, to weigh the possibilities himself—Heming spun around as he found himself short of breath. He strode among the unsaddled horses. None of the crew had ridden here. The horses carried sealskin bags, axes, cheeses, silver plate and pans. He had earlier watched his father whistling, acting nonchalant as he’d secreted it—

  Heming unlaced binding and wriggled his arm into a sealskin bag. He twisted his neck, searching for a sign of Ivar Hammerhand, his giant father. Heming’s lips drew back as he pulled it out, holding it against his chest as he moved deeper into the grove. In the glow of the terrible fire, he unwound cloth to reveal a heavy golden chalice shaped like a human skull. Rubies were cunningly set in the eye-sockets. They winked with evil so goosebumps prickled his arms.

  It was the fabled cup of Attila the Hun. Long ago, the terrible Hun had ordered his goldsmith to fashion a cup out the skull of Gundicarius, the defeated King of the Burgundians. Grisly legend said that Attila drank the blood of his foes. Such fiery swill had turned the Scourge of God mad for glory, like a wolf licking the blood of a sheepdog. Attila had grown swollen with vanity, puffed-up with arrogance and greedy for the souls of men. From a tribe of prostrate Germans he had demanded the girl-child Ildico. In his drunkenness, the great Attila had staggered to his wedding chambers. There he had fallen back onto his bed, snoring, and in a violent fit blood had poured from his nose. It had filled his mouth, and the terrible Hun who had thought to rule the world had drowned on his own black blood!

  Heming peered where ale or mead would slosh, where men kept their brains. Had the Scourge of God truly put his lips onto the rim and quaffed such a brew? He shuddered in awe. The cup was like the fire: terrible and wonderful, sinister and majestic. Heming held the chalice up to the stars.

  He knew the story of its gaining. In his youth, Ivar Hammerhand had sailed with Mad Hastein. The maddest voyage of all was a three-year raid that began with sixty-two dragon ships. A Christian priest-thrall had once calculated the beginning date as 859 A.D. First, the reaver fleet had struck southern Aquitaine. Then they pillaged Muslim Spain and afterward ports in Mediterranean North Africa. They sailed up the Rhone River and then went east to Lombardy. Hastein had figured to spy out the great city of Rome, and by trickery, they sacked it. Only it had turned out to be just a city called Luna. Rome was farther inland. There in Luna a trembling priest, begging to buy his freedom, took Ivar and others deep into a church crypt. Only Ivar Hammerhand had returned out of the earth, white-faced, speechless and clutching the cup of Attila. By 861 A.D., twenty dragon ships had limped back onto Noirmoutier Isle at the mouth of the Lorie River, and the maddest Viking raid of them all had entered into legend. Since then, Ivar had kept the cup hidden in Jutland at his settlement where he ruled as jarl or chieftain. Many people said Ivar’s good fortune began when he laid hold of Attila’s cup, but that a curse was upon it, a secret doom that brought bloody death as Attila had died.

  Heming heard brutal laughter. With a fearful start, he ran to the packhorses and repacked the cup.

  From out of the fire Ivar Hammerhand lumbered into sight, a
barrel perched on a massive shoulder and with his sword prodding three naked monks. Their hands were tied behind their backs and they staggered and stumbled. Heming could tell they were monks by the tonsure, the shaved ring of hair with the bald spot on top. The naked monks bore horrible, blistering burns on their bodies like wounds. Other Vikings rolled their barrels.

  They brought the loot to the stone house. Ivar smashed a barrel open with an axe. Wine spurted and laughing Vikings held their helmets under the flow. They guzzled and roared. One gray-haired veteran, a one-eyed archer, slammed captured chickens against the ground. Then he took a head between his fingers, stretched the neck and neatly sliced it with his knife. The dead chicken kicked its legs and madly flapped, leaped up and ran with its blood spurting onto the grass. With his gory knife, the gray-haired archer knelt behind a trembling, naked monk and cut his bonds. He kicked the monk in the arse, shouted and pointed at the chickens and shoved wooden stakes into the monk’s hands and pointed at the fire.

  The shamelessly naked monk nodded and set out for the farthest chicken. The gray-haired archer winked at Ivar and notched an arrow. Suddenly the monk darted for freedom, his flabby arse shaking. An arrow whirled into the naked man’s back, knocked him down. The monk screamed and tried yanking out the arrow he couldn’t reach. The other two pale-skinned monks, also cut free, dashed across the yard, gathering dead fowl. They plucked feathers with a will, and glanced now and again at the poor wounded fool who slithered toward the woods. The archer finally strode out and with the blunt end of his axe bashed the keening monk on the head.

  The other two monks skewered the plucked chickens and approached the flames. The fire was agony upon their horribly reddened skin, but they remained at their post and began to cook.

  The warriors shed their armor and padding and feasted, boasted and jested about what they had done. When the Frankish fortified bridge fell four nights ago, when the Great Army burst through, it had been a race. A hundred various bands made up the Great Army, most small like Ivar’s company, a few big like Sigfred the Sea King’s host. Ivar’s men had rowed harder up the Seine than most. They had captured horses at a stormed villa. A quarter of the men remained with the dragon. The rest had hurried through the night to be first.

  “You mark my words,” Ivar had told them. “This land will look as if locusts have descended. That’s why we’re going to plod along these trails in the dark and take the first choice of loot rather than the last. We’ll rest when we’ve won and not before!”

  The old reavers now roared, shouted and clashed wine-sloshing cups together. When the chickens were ready, they tore into the hot fowls with their teeth. Heming sat in the apple grove watching as he fingered his Hammer of Thor amulet. Ivar Hammerhand was lucky, always had been after gaining Attila’s cup. Heming shook his head. He feared that his luck was bad. The Norns, the three old spinsters, wove a man’s fate at his birth.

  Heming knew that not even the gods defeated fate. In the world’s last battle, terrible Ragnarok, when the Giants stormed across the Rainbow Bridge and hammered at the gates of Asgard, then the Gods would march to their doom. According to the prophecies, the Fenris wolf devoured Odin. The Midgard Serpent bit Thor and nine steps back the Thunder God staggered before he died of poison. It was fated. It would happen. A hero didn’t weep over it and no doubt neither did a god. He laughed at the end. Gripped his sword, swung with gusto and bellowed high humor as a spear bit into his lungs. He showed that he had courage and died well.

  Heming bit his lip. He didn’t want to die with or without courage. He wanted luck. He had his amulet, but so did many men have. Who else had the cup of Attila?

  The two naked monks hurried with the last cooked chickens. They looked ridiculous. One had a humped shoulder, skinny legs and a potbelly. The other bore a twisted foot. Their manhood was shriveled and small, ridiculous.

  Heming shook his head.

  Ivar Hammerhand, with his great beard stained with chicken grease, with his wine-reddened eyes, grabbed a fistful of slimy bones and hurled them at the monks. The two Christians flinched. It sent the Vikings howling with drunken mirth. Others hurled chicken bones. Then a warrior picked up a charred piece of wood and threw it, hitting the hump-shouldered monk in the head. The monk fell, and the roar of laughter made Heming turn away, disgusted with the brute treatment of these defenseless Franks and at himself because he was different. Take a man’s treasure, but why torment him for no good reason? Heming wondered if his squeamish nature was the origin of his bad luck. He wondered if his father knew. If that’s why he had to kill with a bow before he could heft a spear in the shield wall.

  A monk screamed as swords hacked into his flesh. Heming waited for the next scream, and glanced over when it didn’t come. His eyebrows rose. The second monk, the hump-shouldered Christian, was on his knees, with his arms stretched up into the darkness. He chanted, and there was something grand about him.

  Vikings gazed star-ward. So did Heming. He didn’t know what to expect.

  Ivar grunted as he rose unsteadily. “You have courage, monk. That’s the best way to die.” The monk kept chanting, with his sweaty face aimed at the heavens. Ivar thrust. The hump-shouldered monk toppled dead onto the bloody grass.

  3.

  Peter bit back a scream as Einhard toppled dead onto the grass. The giant Northman yanked out his sword and spoke solemnly to the others.

  Peter squeezed his eyes shut as he began to tremble. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want a sword thrust into his back so it sprouted like some obscene flower out of his chest. Why, why had this happened to them? They were monks, beloved of God. The holy relic of Saint Martin lay in their abbey. This was a hidden valley. The Northmen had never found it before.

  Peter swallowed bile and squeezed his eyes shut more tightly. Was this his fault? Had he brought down God’s wrath on all of them for his sin?

  Sins, for my sins. They keep multiplying.

  Peter panted, sucked down air, and he opened his eyes. He lay on his belly at the edge of the apple grove. His wrists were cruelly tied behind his back so his hands had gone numb. They had tied his ankles, too. The blaze of the abbey sickened him. Watching his fellow monks slaughtered like the chickens…

  Oh, he had known before he had committed the grave offense that it was wrong. Yet for months, he had secretly lusted and plotted on his cot in the dormitory. He couldn’t forget the sway of Willelda’s hips or forget how she had smiled at him the last time he had been in the village. She had asked him once about his writing. He had noted her curiosity and it had sent him wondering. Yes, how he had plotted to sin as he had lain on his cot in the dark. His long-sought chance had finally come yesterday. The abbot had sent him to the village…

  Peter stared at the flames. He listened to the horrible cackle of fire. The horror of those singing Northmen, their drunken roars, it terrified him. Would they haul him up next? Would they taunt him with chicken bones? Would they shove a sword through his back?

  He stared at the orange flames that leaped toward the heavens. They writhed like insatiable harlots. His terror, his guilt and shame, the pain in his wrenched-back shoulders… he fell into a daze watching that fire, his thoughts in turmoil.

  I brought Satan’s minions among us. My sins took away God’s protection.

  What shocked him, what ate at him deep into his core, was that he still wanted Willelda. He couldn’t stop thinking about her and about… about what had happened yesterday. Half of yesterday had been the greatest moment of his life. The other half… oh why couldn’t he forget? He needed to forget her and forget what had happened yesterday…

  ***

  …Peter trembled as he took hold of Willelda’s hand. That she was an imp of Satan he had no doubt. The problem was that he didn’t care, not now as she led him into an abandoned hut. Oh, for countless months he had dreamed of this. As he had lain on his cot in the monastery, he had envisioned such a sinful encounter in excruciating detail.

  His stomach knotted. T
he penance for such secret lusts was twenty lashes on the bare back: hissing strokes administered with coiled whips of bull-hide. He shuddered, and his hand convulsively tightened around Willelda’s soft palm.

  She glanced back—oh so artfully—and gave him a teasing smile. She had all her teeth, had long dark hair, while something in her eyes caught his breath.

  “Amo puellam,” he whispered in Latin.

  “Don’t be frightened,” she said, her dark eyes slashing into his soul.

  “What?” he said. “I’m not!”

  “You’re a poor liar, Peter. You just muttered a prayer.”

  He had skinny shanks, long bony fingers and bitten-down, ink-stained fingernails. In his black monk’s habit with its single corded rope, he was like a stork and she a beautiful robin.

  He bit his lip. He was all too aware of those full breasts straining against her woolens. Despite the gauntness of her cheeks and the hollowness of her eyes, her ripe bosom was like autumn apples, like honey to a bear, like—

  “Are you sure we’re safe?” he whispered. If they caught him alone with the village beauty… his scrotum shriveled at the thought.

  She gave him an odd look. “The pestilence slew Wulfrud and his wife, their entire family. This was their home.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry, Peter. The pigs have been rooting here. I had to chase them out with a switch. None of them have died. If they had, perhaps the abbot would have let us flesh the bacon.” Her belly growled. She frowned at it before shaking his sleeve. “Hurry, show me like you promised.”

  He sniffed, searching for an evil taint. He dreaded the plague, had seen this year far too many bloated bodies.

  “Peter!” she said, stamping her bare foot.

  “Shhh,” he said. “Someone might hear you.”

  “And I might change my mind.”

  He stared at her bosom. He hadn’t meant to. He had been warring with his soul not to.