The Faces of Doom
By
S. A. Gorden
© 1997 S. A. Gorden
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Chapter 3
Suicide
A dream memory of the past...
I left for the sea when my uncle Einar came back to our island to visit. Our village lived by fishing. My family made the boats. We would trade the fish to those that were on the mainland or the Vikings traveling past. My uncle had gone with a Viking ship as their shipwright. He had come back with silver and gold. My father had three other sons and four daughters. There were too many mouths to feed so I went south with my uncle when he left.
It was the second day my uncle was home that it was decided that I would leave with him. My uncle, father and I were in the sauna. Einar talked about the trips and silver he had made. Father then told him that the village was having bad times. He then asked Einar to take me with him when he left. They talked about where he would go. Father asked about Novgorod. It was near and there were many Finns there.
Einar said no. He said the Rus had tight control of the trade there. If you wanted to make money the direction to go was west. He said Gotland would be the place to go. Ships went west from there all the time. He then told tales of the western sea, the isles in the north and the rich lands to the south.
The day I left with Einar my father gave me the old bronze axe. It had been in the family for generations. I remembered as a child playing with it while father carved the planking for a boat. He also took my knife away and gave me a new heavy bladed one. We all had a beer and Einar sang the song about Vainamoinen and the Pike-jaw harp. We left then before anyone could show sadness.
On the trip south my uncle started to teach me what I needed to know to work a Northman ship. He told me always to keep my knife sharp and axe near. Stay with the ship; never go ashore on raids. And finally the chants and spells to sing every night and morning.
Einar explained. Except for the captain and one or two other men on board the crew was chosen for their strong backs and skill with weapons not for brains. They would just as soon kill you for your share of the trip as let you live. The captain of course would protect you, but he was not around all the time. The easiest way to survive the trip was to make sure the crew was scared. Twice a day within their hearing I was to sing the chants and spells. Einar carried a bladder filled with oil. When he sang his chants he would squirt it into a fire or torch that he would have near by. The resulting flare would impress the crew so even with a beer soaked brain they would hesitate in confronting you.
Einar warned never to claim too much power or they might just kill you if a raid goes badly. Claim to be able to shrivel a penis or cause an itch. Claim to have bottled up in your body a plague that would be released if you die. But always do your work so the captain would always want you along.
I shipped with Einar on three voyages as an apprentice. I learned to check the spruce root lashings. How to replace the tar and wool caulk. The mechanics of the sail, side-rudder, and planking came easy to me, after all I grew up making boats. The first thing I learned was how quickly things wore out on the ocean voyages. On the second voyage I learned about battle and how to keep the ship repaired while under attack when pirates attacked our knorr. It was then time for me to head out on my own. Einar said that the raiders made more on the voyage, but the traders were safer.
I hired on with Brand, the Three Fingered, a trader. Brand had started with all of his fingers but lost two on his right hand when his ship became caught in a gale. The rigging on the cargo had become loose. He was tying it up again when the prow caught on a wave and swung around. The rope had snapped the fingers off.
Brand had two homes, one in Vestfold, Norway and the other in the East Firths of Iceland. We would sail between his two homes hauling cargo from intermediate ports.
Brand's main port abroad was Ireland. Nearly every other voyage we would stop by an Irish port. It was there that I met a stonemason. He took a liking to me. His own son had died in fighting between two petty lords over land. His son would have been close to my age. He carved stones for churches and lords. He had trained with the Irish monks as well as some local wise women. He taught me the runes and old knowledge kept by the monks and druids. He gave me my stone chisel. I had always before used a pick when I worked with stone. The chisel and hammer made it easy to put the runes to stone and wood.
When the crew learned that I now knew the lore of the druids and Romans as well as my own Finnish verse, they began to respect me as much as their own jarls. On the section of deck I kept my belongings I carved the futhark. The crew would pass no closer than an arm's breadth from my berth. Brand at first wanted to put me ashore when he saw the carving, but when he found out it was just the alphabet he roared with laughter at his crew.
I sailed with Brand for two years. I saved the ship once in a gale by splicing the mast when it cracked in the winds. A second time we ran aground on a sand bar in England holing our bottom. I dangled by ropes over the side and plugged the hull. We escaped off the bar minutes before the local militia arrived.
Brand became mean on our last voyage. He started to limp and groan when the weather changed. I decided to leave for my home when we got back to Norway.
We pulled into Iceland early in the spring with a load of cargo from Ireland. I told Brand we would have to beach the ship and clean and fix its bottom before we put out again. We had been hit by a spring storm and were taking in a steady stream of water through the hull. Brand had pulled back to hit me, but I think the daily chants and spells had even worked on him. He just glowered at me, finally telling me to fix the hull.
It was on that stop that I met Brand's daughter Heldi. She showed up the second day we were in port. Her pale hair and skin reminded me of the birches at home. She hung around the work just close enough to see and be seen but far enough away to be ignored. It was that night after I had quit working on the hull that she came up to me with a cup of beer. I was sweaty and dirty. She was clean and bright with soft blond hair blowing in the wind.
We talked a little. I explained what we were doing. How I was replacing the cracked boards and re-pitching the bottom. Brand looked at us with anger and she left. After that she would come at least once a day to the ship to talk, whenever Brand was gone.
It was three days later that we met a mile down the beach an hour after sunset. I pulled open her clothes and for the first time saw how young she was. Her breasts were just forming and there was no hair between her legs. Even with her youth she knew what to do and how to be with a man. She told me afterward that she had watched her mother with Brand when he was in port and her mother's other friends when he wasn't so she would know what to do when she became old enough.
Brand had turned mean at home before he did on ship. Every time he came home he would beat her mother and her. She would pray to the gods that one of the other men her mother slept with was her father, not Brand. Brand never left them enough to live on when he sailed on his voyages. Her mother worked a small garden. She kept house for a farmer outside the harbor area and cleaned for the innkeeper for food to live on. Heldi's mother had been sold as a bride from Finland, her family being too poor to keep her. Her mother had told wonderful stories to Heldi about her homeland. She wanted me to take her home with me. We met every night after that. I had seen and heard much those years on ship. I used those nights to try it all with Heldi. She was always ready and willing. I told her to get ready to leave when we returned from the next trip.
We went west when we left Iceland. The Greenland settlements would need supplies. Summer villages would spring up every year on the shores of the great fishing banks and hunting grounds across the sea. The summer villages were set up to ease the task of drying and processing the fish, walrus, and seals as well as giving the crews time to relax on shore. We were carrying spare rigging and other equipment for the fishing/hunting boats as well as the usual supplies for the villages. The boats were traders like our ship who wanted to head back across the sea with full loads. Also included in the fleet were a number of Icelandic ships whose adventurous captains had discovered that profits were easier to make out on the fishing banks and hunting grounds than trading in Normandy or further down the coast.
Trade was brisk in Greenland. We were soon empty of stores. Brand told of a story he heard of a large town up a large river in the far mainland, a rich town with much to trade. He set sail west to find it.
We found the river and sailed for days upstream. The river had rapids, but our ship and crew had traded on many coasts. We made short work of the river. We found dozens of villages but none with anything worth trading. They used stone tools and had only a few jewels and silver trinkets. The locals would point farther west and south when asked where they got the trinkets from so we continued on.
We finally got to a huge lake. Along the southern shore we found a village. Again we were told what we sought was further west. On the western shore we found the river again just as large as the outlet on the eastern end. Only a few leagues on we started to hear the rumble. We turned a final bend in the river and saw a roaring gigantic falls in the distance. Immediately, we knew we had to turn back. Our adventuring was done.
Brand wanted to cut some spare masts and oars to sell on the way back through the Greenland settlements and in Iceland so we put ashore along a deserted stretch to cut them. The forests here were virgin and it was easy to find the straight hardwoods we needed right on the riverbank. After weeks of work, we had filled the hold with rigging and were ready to leave. It was then that he told me he knew about Heldi and he left me on the shore. He didn't want to kill me outright. He was afraid of the plague and curses. I sang new curses the most powerful I knew, but he laughed. He said his penis was already shriveled and cursed me back for touching his daughter. But I did see the crew hiding their faces from me. So I sang again the curses with a voice that would carry across the water to the retreating ship.
It took a week of hard travel before I was able to walk the miles through the woods and marshes to the nearest village. There I was made a slave. When they saw my skill with working wood they sold me to traders. I was put in a large canoe made of bark and we traveled in a small fleet of canoes from village to village across a great expanse of huge inland lakes. My masters would sell my work as a carver and millwright to a village while they traded and then would move on. I slowly learned their language and decided to leave the first chance I got.
A small storm had come up on the huge lake we were on. Our canoe put in to shore without the others to wait the weather out. The fleet had become separated in the gale. My tools were kept by my master and only given to me when I needed them. I had hidden my stone chisel in my clothing when we packed after the last village we had stopped in. That night while my master slept I drove the chisel into his heart. I took my knife and axe from him and killed the rest of the crew on the canoe. The last two men woke and tried to fight, but I had worked on a Viking ship. They had never witnessed the wrath of the Northmen or seen their Berserkers attack. They lasted only minutes.
The canoe was too large for one man to handle so I packed what I needed and took off up the shoreline. I had two days of freedom before I knew I was being followed by the rest of the trading party. Two men sprang at me from ambush. In order to catch me they had run ahead of the others, carrying only spears.
I had mounted my axe on a staff I used for walking. With it I blocked a spear thrust and chopped the head off one of the attacking men. I then swung the butt of the staff into the stomach of the second man. I finished the fight by breaking his neck before he could get up.
I knew that I had to make it so hard to catch me that they would give up the chase and let me go. I started to trot along the trail. I didn't stop that night. I looked to the sky. The Great Bear was there. I sang to Ukku for strength and trotted on. The next day it started to rain. I was far up a tall cliff by now. The year before there must have been a large fire along the shore. The woods had burned for miles. When I looked back I couldn't see them following. I relaxed and that's what killed me.
I slipped on the ash-covered mud and fell off the cliff. I didn't fall all at once but skidded down the cliff face. I landed alive, but with both my legs broken and something wrong with my hip. I was in a rocky cove surrounded by large cliffs. There was nothing near but the rocks and the pounding of the waves. I lost most of my supplies in my pack when it broke open during the fall. I tried to survive. I pulled both my legs straight and bound them into place. I tried to crawl to a more sheltered place. The cliff was too tall and the shore too rock strewn. The second day I knew I would die there at the base of the rocky cliff. Tuonela was were I was going. I looked to the sky and sang to Ukku. I made a cross out of driftwood and sang to the God of the monks. I sang to the trees of the druids and the gods of the Northmen. Finally, I sang the chants of all the old knowledge.
I picked a stone, feeling the resonance it had with the songs and using my chisel I started to carve. I used the ancient knowledge I learned from the Irish stonemason to carve the oval stone. I put a curse in runes upon it. A curse of destruction to Brand and a curse on the Huron traders and a blessing on their enemies the Iroquois.
I was weak when I had finished. I had been barely able to finish the singing. I had waked twice from feverish sleep to birds pecking at my flesh. I looked to the sky, pulled my good Finnish knife, and slit open my throat, the same way I had learned to help butcher the reindeer at home. I was going to die with a knife in my hand and not by being eaten. I felt the warm darkness come as the blood oozed from my throat. The warmth reminded me of Heldi's warm arms during the darkness of the last time we slept together by the quiet waters.
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To read how the story begins click here.
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