28.
[This is part 1/2]
28.
866 AD. The third month of summer. Mid-month. Freyr's day.
I felt as though I would lose my mind.
I wanted to mount myself upon the fallen Ælla and smash that wretched face over and over with my two fists, to pulp and shatter it.
Beneath the roughly torn-off faceplate, Ælla's face was a mess of brown beard and hair soaked in sweat and blood. Nowhere on it was there a Cyning beloved of the gods. Just a single unconscious, fat man lying there, soon to die.
Soon I could choke the life from this bastard and complete my revenge.
I should have felt exhilaration, yet my fury only grew larger.
To this wretch, my father.
How dare you.
So many people, for a sight like this.
The more the flames of fury blazed inside my chest, the more my mind sharpened. I held back the brothers who wanted to tear open his back at once and offer him to Odin as a sacrifice, and I reminded them that Ælla had insulted our gods and our lives with our father's death, insisting that we had to kill Ælla's soul in the same manner.
Only then could my father's soul rest peacefully in Valhalla.
Sigurd, whose eyes looked ready to roll back with rage.
Ivar, his face stained with blood you could not tell had come from a mouth bitten too tightly or from a torn scalp.
Björn, his weary face overlaid with eyes that gleamed like steel.
Even Ubba and Halfdan, glaring at Ælla with expressions that looked as if they might weep at any moment.
The brothers respected my words, and following me as I lifted the fallen Ælla lightly, they moved to the edge of the forest that stretched across the western side of the battlefield beneath a sky that was beginning to darken heavily.
There I ordered that something to bind him—chains or ropes—be brought, and then I bound Ælla tightly to a large tree.
Among my brothers who silently stared down at Ælla's face, Ælla regained his senses with a faint groan, and I gave him a choice.
"Where is my father buried."
"...Urgh. I don't know, heathen...!"
For that courageous answer, Ælla had to lose one of his fingers.
I tightly bound Ælla's severed finger—his shrill scream rising—and reduced the bleeding a little, then repeated the entire process.
"Where is my father buried."
"I don't know... urghk... I do not know! Aah—aaaaagh!"
Three from the left. Four from Örn. At last his initial courage was nowhere to be seen; every orifice on his face streamed with spit, tears, and snot, and he had pissed himself. He pleaded with me, but I did not listen.
"I truly cannot remember...! The trees all look the same—how in the world am I supposed to remember that...! Urghk...! I am certain it is somewhere in this forest...! Khurghk... please, kill me! Aaaagh! Kill me!"
"I cannot do that, Ælla."
This time, one ear from Örn.
"Aaaaaargh—!"
"Next it will be an eye. Ælla, before that I will give you a choice."
"Anything...!! Urghaaa—! I will give you anything! I will do anything! What is it you want!"
No matter how he struggled, the thick rope would not loosen. Above the wailing Ælla and my silent observation, raindrops began to fall one by one.
"Take your own life."
"Aaagh—! Urghgghk... wh... what!? You dare...! You dare!"
I did not like the look that shot at me, filled with venomous spite.
"Aaaaaaargh—! Aaaaagh!"
Having lost both eyes, Ælla could endure no longer and had no choice but to accept my demand.
"I understand... please, please stop..."
Ælla's voice, grown hoarse from screaming through the continuous agony, was a thin, metallic whisper that had now lost all fierce will to live.
"I will kill myself, so untie these ropes..."
"No."
"Then how am I to do it..."
"I did not bind your mouth, Ælla. And I did not cut out your tongue."
"Uhehe— uhehehehe. Uhehehehehe!"
Laughing like a madman with his hoarse voice, Ælla finally stretched his tongue out long and bit into it with all his might. After shuddering for a long while and pouring out blood, his body at last fell still.
"You have killed yourself, so you shall not enter Heaven."
The enemy's blood was spilled, and vengeance was achieved.
But my heart knew no satisfaction; it burned all the more with rage, and even as my body grew soaked in the sudden rain, it steamed.
"Throw Ælla's corpse onto the field and leave it for the beasts to tear at. He who had no honor shall be dishonored even in death."
"Yes! Jarl Helgi!"
A thoroughly frightened voice answered my words.
When I turned my back from the great tree and walked, the warriors gathered before me parted in two, opening a path.
I walked that path. Simply, endlessly, I walked.
*****
Clearing the battlefield, assessing the results of the battle, evacuating the wounded, recording the dead, whether to form pursuit detachments.
I postponed all of it.
In the downpour dripping steadily, I simply walked on and on, aimlessly.
When I reached my tent in our army's encampment north of Eoforwīc, a little way from the battlefield, I collapsed at once.
I think I simply found everything hard and exhausting, and I wanted to throw it all away.
The moment my head touched the ground I fell into a deep sleep, and I opened my eyes again in a space that was not this world.
'Where is this?'
Far beyond the horizon, red rays of light streamed out and dyed the whole world, and dark clouds flowed beneath my feet.
Above my head a vast ocean hung in place of the sky, and in an instant my surroundings filled with countless human skulls.
[Save me, Helgi Ragnarsson.]
[Bring me back to life, Helgi Ragnarsson.]
[I don't want to be dead. I wanted to live.]
[What about my mother and my little brother? Bring me back to life, Helgi.]
I heard the voices of countless souls, bound within mountains of skulls piled high like vast heaps, crying out to me.
'I'm sorry. I had no choice. I'm sorry.'
Before I knew it, words I had buried deep inside my heart slipped out, though my mouth did not open.
Instead, tears I had never once shed in my life as Helgi Ragnarsson streamed down my cheeks. They were tears as red as blood.
[Bring me back to life, Helgi!]
[Why do you live while I must die!]
[Did you not kill me! Then can you not bring me back! It is unjust! It is infuriating! You die too, Helgi!]
[Join us, Helgi. Come with us, Helgi.]
The crimson light beyond the horizon grew steadily stronger, dyeing the clouds beneath my feet and the waves above my head a deep blood-red. The skulls drew closer and closer, and the wailing of the souls echoing inside my head grew ever more bestial.
Just as the bloody stream from one eye grew fiercer, a woman's gentle hand reached out and touched my cheek.
"—!!!"
A woman wearing a golden mask. The eyes beyond that mask, pierced only by empty sockets, were so unbearably weighty to meet that I felt a crushing pressure unlike anything I had ever known in my life.
A force I dared not defy.
My entire body felt as though it were submerged in the deepest ocean, enduring the immense pressure of the water with every fiber of my being.
My body, which should have shattered long ago, managed to hold on through the cool energy that flowed in from the woman's hand resting against my cheek. And as if conveying some message, a woman's voice—hazy and distant like thunder rolling from far away—once again threw my mind into confusion.
"—!!!"
Unlike the beautiful hand that touched my face, when she swung her other hand—made entirely of skulls—the countless skulls that had surrounded us and spun madly all around turned to dust in a single instant, softly drifting away into the void. Gone too were the grudges that had been bound there, and the voices thick with resentment that had ceaselessly rung in my ears.
All of them became one and vanished beyond the crimson light.
At last, the light beyond the horizon that had stained the whole world in blood-red subsided, and the world slowly sank into silence within the dingy darkness. Finally, I felt every last trace of tension, grief, and strength drain from my body as I collapsed into the arms of the woman who cradled my cheek.
A hand that now wiped away the blood tears, which had ceased to flow. The gaze beyond the golden mask curved gently, and as the sea beyond it rippled and a waterspout descended to swallow my body, the woman's voice at last reached my ears.
[I shall walk with you.]
Soon after, my consciousness once again sank into darkness.
*****
I opened my eyes, still in the exact same posture as when my head had touched the ground inside the tent.
My entire body was drenched in cold sweat, and seeing that my hair and gear were still soaked with rain and blood, it did not seem that much time had passed.
'Was it a dream.'
What was that world, and who was the woman of the skulls and the golden mask? Could it have been Hel? Had she come to protect me? Or had I strayed into her domain?
My tangled mind could produce no clear answer to any of it, but somehow I felt that, unlike moments before, my heart no longer churned with a directionless, unmoored fury.
'Thank you. Lady Hel.'
It may have been an illusion. It could have been a case of my PTSD manifesting in a different way. Nevertheless, I placed my palms against the ground and offered a bow of gratitude.
Then, within my mind, an image I had never seen before in my life rose up. Another part of the forest, separate from the place where I had executed Ælla. A place reached by following paths the beasts had made. A place where water did not pool, a place the wolves avoided.
Even when I shook my head again, the image of that place would not fade.
'It can't be. It can't be...'
My reason denied it—insisted it could not be so—but my body was already moving.
When I hurried out of the tent, I found my brothers and countless warriors gathered together, staring blankly up at the sky above my tent.
[Goooooo-]
A massive storm churning directly above my tent.
A shape that looked exactly like a great serpent coiled within the clouds.
"Björn, Ivar, Halfdan, Sigurðr, Ubba. There is somewhere we must go."
I shook each of my dazed, spellbound brothers awake by the shoulder one by one, then immediately seized a shovel in one hand and sprinted madly toward the place my mind pointed me to.
"Helgi—! Wait! Helgi—! Refil! Follow him!"
"Gods above! Follow him, Guthrum!"
"Escort the Jarl!"
I ignored the commotion erupting behind me. I pushed past the Norsemen and the warriors of Eoforwīc who wore every shade of expression, past the now-surrendered Uhtred and his Bernician warriors, and plunged into the forest path. I ran and ran through the trees, a place where no one could have guessed a path existed without the keenest eye, until at last I reached that place.
The place that had persistently appeared inside my head.
'It can't be. It can't be.'
[Thunk—! Thunk!]
I swung the shovel frantically, tearing open the earth. Firm yet moderately packed soil. Soil made softer by the moisture it held.
"Helgi...!"
"What...?"
My brothers, who had sprinted after me until their breath caught in their throats, took one look at me and began to join in one by one.
[Rumble— kaboom!]
The rain grew thinner, and the churning clouds crashed against one another with a mighty roar.
Under my monstrous strength, the earth sank away in an instant, until at last something long and stretched thin came into my sight.
"Brothers, enough."
The brothers who had been frantically digging alongside me all stopped their work, and I threw the shovel aside and carefully brushed the soil away.
"Those are..."
"Serpents. They are serpents. Serpent carcasses."
"Then that means..."
Soil was cleared away by my large hands, and the already dead and desiccated serpent skins scattered this way and that.
[Thud—]
And then, at last, something solid struck against my hand.
I pressed down firmly on my desperate heart and brushed away the soil with even greater care, and familiar things appeared. Thor's hammer necklace, and beneath it, the symbol of Hel.
"Here... Father is here, brothers. Father is here."
Sweat and raindrops mingled together and streamed from the corners of my eyes, and tears streamed from the eyes of my brothers as they knelt one after another.
"We have come, Father. We have come."
"We are far too late, aren't we? We are sorry, Father."
Beginning with Björn and Ivar, the sound of my brothers' wailing—a sound I had thought I would never hear—filled the pit to the brim.