Libera Nos

‘A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine.’

Deliver us, oh Lord, from the fury of the Northmen.

Feel the snow drift between the pine-needles, silken on the spear-thicket green. It brushes against weathered cheeks, moths with frosted wings that crumble into sweet-tasting tears of winter. They say the Fenris wolf was bound with twine, woven from impossible things. The breath of a fish; the spit of a bird; the tread of a cat.

The roots of a mountain – can you hear them?

They have faded. Swallowed up by the clatter of iron, the roar of the smith’s sparks scattering from the forge, the tolling bells from cattle moving in rivers of hoof and horn. Men squat by their doors and play dice. Their speech has grown gruel thin. It is full of the counting of silver and stinks of dreams left as an offering to mold.

Stop. Can you hear them?

They run under your feet. Mark the creeping lines as you trace the pale green that whispers beneath the skin. Feel the rhythm: boots stamping in the cold, steel hammering at flint. The fire quickens and draws in, out, hungry for the wind. The roots have seeped into the bones of the earth, echoes of bards’ tongues, mead-rich, which spoke of subtle things. 

Close your eyes and imagine nothing. The frost is a girdle of blue iron, needling the flesh. Understand: there never was nothing. The world was birthed from the void, whilst the stars were hailstones, the hard black eyes of a withered man. Life was quickened with Surt’s ragged panting as he crafted a sword from the white ore of creation.

Know it to be true. Have you not breathed down the neck of your beloved, and felt their heart race? Have you not snatched that breath, left them a shell of hollow clay? One can only destroy what was made. At the last twilight, that blade birthed from the sun’s rage will scour this middle-earth. I once heard a story that sounded the same from the men who carry God on their tongues in a wafer of bread. They are eager for the flames.

The breath of this world has grown ragged. Wheezing, rasping, a grandmother on her deathbed, soul hanging in the air as pale mist. The old songs lose their strength. Quivering on sinews, strings of gut and cord, calling still. A mother stumbles through the forest, yelling for her boy. The night swallows up her grief and grows fat. They found the child’s body carved into a block of ice in the morning. His lungs were black where midnight claimed him. He died a swordless death and will endure an eternity without warmth, the prize of half-rotted Hela. I told this to the shaven man. He drinks the blood of a carpenter and a king from a wooden cup that smells of grapes.

He laughed. No. Hel is for the wicked. The boy is in a better place now.

The mother’s screams are echoed by the fathom-deep wail of the water. Can you see it? The waves spitting seafoam as Jörmungandr writhes. The hordes of ocean fury, swift as gulls, break on the shore. Once, I rode on the back of a dragon, cloaked in rings of iron. We flew across mountains of black glass that raged in concert with the wind. I stopped by the docks in my old age. All the dragons were gone– in their place, wooden barrels with painted heads. The work of a sorcerer. The shaven man speaks of a soothsayer who turned a rod into a snake. Such changes are possible. Now, a sea-serpent becomes a case of timber, bobbing in the harbor. It has been long since I gazed upon that water, since I walked along its beaches.

Three winters past, a mighty ruler came to the shore. His robes of crimson faded as the salt sucked at the dye. He wore the sun, hammered out into a band around his head. Sitting upon a wooden chair, he said:

Stop, Ocean, for your king commands you.

Nothing stopped. And he was happy.

Did you see him?

The snow is thicker here. It cushions the hooves of horses. Their breath is steam, feeble in the air like a promise of first love. The brothers with the dirt-brown robes have cut down the rows of ash and elm, the weathered faces of spirits long forgotten. A horn rings out. Warriors returning? No. The groan of a great oak crashing to the forest floor. They build strange new homes out of their husks and place a man inside.

Have you seen the statues on the walls? Smooth, rose things. Sanded down to the grain. There is love there, when you touch them. I looked into the face of my newborn and felt a comfort like this. I did not find it in the eyes of my father.

There is pain here. The barbed touch of a strange crown spiked with thorns. It is different from the jutting stone, sword-tips that form the Aesir. The one-eyed Allfather. The Thunderer. Fertile Frigg, swift-footed Ullr. Wolf gods; raven gods; goat gods. They will die someday, at the last battle. Why? The slain that drink beneath the golden shields of the Hall of Heroes, they fight, they fall, they live again. In my youth, a spear took me through the leg. A healer poured boiling wine and maggots on me, to be renewed. The wound wept; my blood was wine.

Ah. I think I understand.

I do not think I want to come back. My fighting days are done. The winter is in me, even when the thaw comes. The wet aches in my bones. My leg drags; I stumble. I fear the bed-death. Only the wicked go to Hel, he said. Have I been wicked?

My son killed his first man four moons ago, for stealing sheep. I buried the body. I am no stranger to slaughter-dealing. My son is different now; I no longer know him. I studied the corpse he made. It shall lie in the dark loam and become a feast. The grubs will gorge and mate. Their eggs hatch, mayfly lives, die, born again, die, return. Is this Valhalla? The roof and walls of its mead-hall thatched with yellow ribs and rotting guts, an empty flesh-chest. Inside, the worms are ravenous. They will devour each other with no end, until the Doom of the World. It is all they will ever do or ever will be.

It is damp. It is cold. No woman heats my bed anymore. She died; the sickness took her. I wake up sobbing clear pus.

Where is the fire that can warm me again? Where is the face of my father?

The man on the walls is hurt. They have wrought some grievous wound on him.

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The End