Swords & Heroes Story #5

Call of the Wyrd by Teel James Glenn

Jul 23, 2024

Excited to present today’s story from Teel James Glenn. I first became acquainted with Teel’s writing when he submitted an S&S tale to my Sword & Heroes anthology. That piece, ‘The Price of Rescue’, featured characters from his fantasy world of Altiva. Very immersive, enjoyable, and I wanted to read more about his bard and barbarian. So when he sent me this story, it took me a moment to realize “Call of the Wyrd” is not an Altiva fantasy. So I started over and really got into this short, Viking-inspired heroic mini saga. I think you’ll agree that Teel taps into a powerful mythos here, for the call of the ‘Wyrd’ cannot be denied. - Ed.

This week, we present Story #5…

“Call of the Wyrd” by Teel James Glenn

I sing the song of Viking death; Of warriors and of blood.

I sing the song of Viking life; Of fight against the flood—

Of honor, love and kinship; Of family and of friends.

I sing a song of history that never has an end!

— Ballad of the Wyrd

Ragnar Longaxe was tired, more tired than he had ever been in his twenty-five years on Midgard. It had been days since he’d slept; almost that long since he’d had anything but roots and berries to eat or rain water to drink.

The Skrælings had not let him rest, harrying him and his brothers day and night, driving the Northmen further into the rugged hill country of this new land. Further away from the comforting ocean-sea and their beached ship.

There remained only Ragnar and Bjorn, though there had been a full dozen armed warriors when they’d started out, leaving their longship hidden in a river berth in order to bury the plunder of a full season. Their Captain, Sven Bluetooth, had worried that the Swedes whom they’d raided would overtake them with their ship loaded with prizes. He’d wanted to bury the loot and resupply before returning home for a second ship and more men.

The crew, being burdened with gold and jewels, had moved slowly inland. Ragnar, a giant among men, was the tallest and strongest of his brother warriors. Red bearded with long, flowing, copper-colored hair, he was able to carry twice what any other could—and laughed at the weight.

The Northmen soon came upon a village of the brown little Skrælings and, as was their wont, took food and cavorted with the women. They had been forced to kill any of the men who resisted.

They had dallied in the village for two days, and that had been their mistake.

On the morning of the third day, the painted men came charging at them with a rain of arrows that wounded most of the crew; their chainmail shirts and spangenhelms proved their worth, but the screaming little savages were lucky bastards. They had no iron weapons, but their sheer numbers and insane courage took its toll, forcing the Northmen to retreat into the woods.

For days the painted men had pursued the burdened crew without surcease. One by one, Ragnar’s treasure-laden brothers fell to the multiple weapon stings of the little men, until only the redheaded Viking and Bjorn, called the Wise, were left.

Now the giant, still carrying four men’s worth of gold and jewels, pushed himself forward while Bjorn followed, watching the underbrush with haunted eyes.

“The feathered trolls are still out there, Ragnar,” Bjorn said. His voice was hoarse and strained. “I know it.”

“So do I, brother,” Ragnar said. “So why say it? It is their Wyrd to follow and ours to escape, I know it in my heart. We just have to get higher in the rocks; there we can find a place to make a stand.” The redhead’s breath blew ragged under the weight of the plunder. The pace of their route was wearing on even his massive physique.

“We should just leave the cursed treasure and fight our way through to the ship,” Bjorn said.

“Why anyone would call you ‘Wise’, only Odin knows,” Ragnar joked. “This treasure is King Olaf’s by right. Sven Bluetooth swore to see it safe to him, and we swore as well. Would you break your word on the oath ring and twist our Wryd?”

“But—”

“But no!” Ragnar suddenly raged, new strength flowing into his powerful limbs at the resurrection of the argument the two men had been having for much of the day. “We are charged to keep this treasure and we shall! There is no argument.”

Ragnar spat. “We will find a safe cave for this, bury it well, and then we will cut our way through the damnable little men to the few left at the ship. Or we will join our brothers in Valhalla!” He brandished the broad-headed axe he had been leaning on as a walking stick to reinforce his point.

“As you say, Ragnar,” the smaller man said with a grin, no anger in losing the argument once more. “But I fear I cannot go much further without some rest or food, I am not half Frost Giant like you.”

This made Ragnar laugh, and he clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Then I shall have to carry you as well, eh, little one?”

As it turned out, before the hour was gone the two men found just the site they were looking for at the top of a hill. It was a rock outcropping that resembled the head of a raven, a fact that Bjorn noted with a grin of satisfaction. “It is a good omen!”

Ragnar grunted in the affirmative.

The spot was in the shadow of a mountain, a narrow defile between two boulders that had been thrown up ages before by some glacier, forming a natural cave. It was not deep, but the opening almost allowed Ragnar to stand upright.

There was even a pool of rainwater in a rock depression nearby where the two warriors could slake their thirst. “This tastes sweeter than a maid’s kisses,” Bjorn laughed as he splashed water on his face between deep gulps.

“I’d still trade it for a horn of mead,” Ragnar said. He drank deeply but kept his eyes on the trail behind them.

“Aye,” Bjorn agreed. “There is that.”

The two men pushed themselves to bury the cases of gold and jewels at the back of the cave before taking any real rest. Ragnar used his axe to loosen the dirt, then the two of them scooped out the earth using their spangenhelms before placing the treasure in the holes and covering them up. They tamped down the earth to obscure any sign of their digging. Finished, they stood back, satisfied that the ground looked much as it had before they buried the treasure.

Once the loot was safely hidden, the two men collapsed at the mouth of the cave, the last reserves of their prodigious strength of will spent. There they slept the clock around and well into the next evening, only awakening when a sudden rain shower soaked them.

When the cloud cover lifted, Mani, god of the moon, was riding his chariot across the sky, casting a ghostly light across the rocky terrain that was almost as bright as the winter sun.

Ragnar looked out at the bleak scene and felt a sudden pang of homesickness for the rocky fjords of home. It had been a full two years since he had seen his farmstead and family. He had two fine sons, Sven and Snori, both growing like weeds and already almost men who would soon go Viking with him.

It was his wife, Signe, however, he missed most. Her courage and wisdom, her smile, and her warmth. It was the thought of providing for her that had driven him on this long journey; and it was that image of her waiting by the stead that sustained him.

Her golden hair and her blue, beckoning eyes were suddenly as bright in his mind as the stars against the night sky. An almost painful yearning for her ran through him, a shiver that was not born of the cold night air.

He was not one given to long inward journeys, but now he thought of his Wyrd, the thread that Urd had woven for him. It was the fate that had been set for him; it was the path he must tread that the three Norns had marked out for him. He willingly embraced his destiny, but still, he yearned for Signe’s touch.

Soon, he told himself while whispering his assurances across the leagues, soon I will hold you again, my shield maiden wife. He had to force her image away, compelling himself to rise and shake off his reverie.

“What is it?” Bjorn asked, startled awake by his sword brother’s movement. He’d been dozing and would have just as easily slept the night through.

“I need to stand and stretch,” Ragnar said, then grunted. “Enough rest. Let us start back for the longship. I would we were off this accursed land and out to sea.” He took up his great axe, named Limbcutter, and swung it above his head to work the stiffness out of his bulked muscles.

The naturalness of the weapon in his hand, and the ease of its arcing through the air, was a comfort to the warrior. It was an extension of him, a part that called for use even as his cramped legs wanted to walk or his lungs to breath.

“Now you are talking sense,” Bjorn agreed. The smaller man shook himself awake and also stretched. “Let us drink our fill from the fresh water then head out. Perhaps we can slip past these brown trolls before sunrise, now that we can move swiftly without the treasure.”

The two friends drank till their stomachs could hold no more, then Ragnar studied the sky with a mariner’s eye.

“The ocean-sea is beyond that peak,” he said, pointing to the distant black shape of a mountain. “We will make for it; we should cross the river were the ship is hidden in a day or so. Without that Varangian loot we will fly like Valkyries!”

The two men laughed, then started off with light hearts and good humor. And why not? As sad as they were for their brothers who had fallen to the painted Skrælings they felt joy that those same brothers were already drinking in the hall of the gods, Valhalla.

Life to the Northmen was precious; they would fight to preserve it till the last breath, reveled in bringing new life into the world with children or the crops of their farmsteads, but death held no terror. Like the seasons, death itself was part of the cycle of life. Hulda, goddess of death, had a beauty to her that, while as cold as the ice fields of their homeland, was also familiar.

All men died. The only shame was to die abed, from enfeeblement. A man’s greatest wish was to die well with steel in his hands that would serve as his key to the door of the great feasting hall of the dead. Such a death on the field of battle would draw the favorable eye of Odin’s Shield Maidens, the Valkyries.

Ragnar and Bjorn had not gone ten minutes down the rocky path before they became aware of movements in the shadows around them.

“Ragnar—”

“I see,” the tall redhead said. “Looks like we get to work off our stiffness sooner than we thought, my brother!”

Just as he spoke, the night exploded with little painted men. Dozens of the almost naked warriors charged the two Northmen while uttering savage, animalistic war cries.

Ragnar and Bjorn exchanged wolfish grins then yelled their war cry and prayer—“Odin!”—as they ran at the approaching Skrælings.

Under Mani’s bright light, the two groups of warriors met in a dance of death that was a macabre ballet of blood and slaughter. Waves of brown warriors threw themselves at the two invaders with no regard to their own lives, with neither fear nor hesitation at the cost.

The steel blades, the chainmail, and the iron thews of the Northmen were proof against the superior numbers of the brown men for a long time. With each and every swing of Ragnar’s Limbcutter or Bjorn’s longsword another scrawny brown form fell, only to be replaced by two more.

The stone weapons of the Skrælings were all but useless against the Northmen’s hauberks and mail, glancing off or outright breaking on the armor or spangenhelms. But by attrition and sheer numbers the two were cut and battered on arms, legs and cheeks.

Still, the two friends laughed as they slayed. Relishing and embracing the slaughter as others might the caresses of a beautiful woman. Limbs were hacked, skulls split, and guts spilled in a cascade of death, blossoms of red to present to Hulda as bouquets to a maid.

“The Shield Maidens will have their pick of this charnel field,” Ragnar observed with a lusty shout. “These trolls know no fear.”

“Nor caution,” Bjorn observed as he slashed another warrior down. “You think they would learn their lesson.”

The Skrælings, indeed, did not learn their lesson and continued to swarm at the two invaders. They even climbed over the bodies of their fellows with wild abandonment to fall on the Northmen with suicidal fury.

The clearing where the two friends made their stand was a circle of bloody corpses, the ground slippery with gore, and it was that which caused Bjorn to go down as three of the enemy slammed into him. “I’ll see you in Valhalla!” he managed to scream just as a little warrior brought a rock down to smash his skull to pulp. Bjorn the Wise lay dead.

Ragnar gave a cry of anguish and yelled, “We will drink tonight with Thor!” expecting the same fate as his friend.

But the dozen warriors who overwhelmed and held him fast made no move to kill him. Instead, the Skrælings bound him with stout leather cords and levered him up to a tree to lash him to it.

“Kill me outright, you Nibelungen!” he shouted at them, “You will get no pleasure in torturing Ragnar Longaxe; I will not scream like a woman!” He cursed himself for being taken rather than outright killed, for now he would not die with a weapon in his hand; and he hoped that the Valkyries would not quibble at the exact cause.

The brown men chanted in their guttural tongue but stood back from the giant Northman, seemingly to wait for something or someone. The moon disappeared and the clouds rolled in once more. Rain began to fall and lightning flared.

“What are you waiting for? Kill me or give me my axe,” Ragnar raged. “I will not be sport for—” The words froze in his throat as a hideous figure came shambling up the ravine toward the group.

It was one of the Skræling race, but so ancient and withered he seemed a shadow of humanity. The figure was bedecked with feathers and had a necklace of seashells and finger bones.

Despite his wizened appearance, there was an energy in his eyes such as Ragnar had never seen. The little man began to chant in a strong voice that cut through the cacophony of the growing storm. He pointed an antler-tipped wand at the Northman and began an invocation.

Ragnar strained against his bounds with full fury till his throat bled and his hands turned blue. Then the sky split with such violence that the ground around them shook. He knew then that if he were to triumph he would have to look beyond himself for victory.

The giant looked up into the sky and screamed, “Odin, give me strength!”

Suddenly, the leather restraints holding him stripped apart. The Northman exploded forward to scoop up one of the brown men as if he were a rag doll, swinging him like a club to lay into the Skrælings with all the rage and hope he could summon.

The brown men came again with unbridled fury and piled onto Ragnar, so many that they immobilized him, wrapping themselves around his chain shirt and legs. The old shaman walked up and touched the antler-tipped wand to the center of Ragnar’s chest.

A strange blue light came from the bit of antler, and the Northman felt a chill deeper than the grave begin to crawl over him from the touch, a cold he knew was of deep magick. While he feared no man, for he trusted his Wryd, the darkness of sorcerers was known to change one’s path or end it too soon.

“Your sorcery means nothing to me,” Ragnar cried as if to convince himself of his courage. He then spat at the old man and cried, “Thunderer, hear my call, deliver me!”

In less than a dozen heartbeats, a bolt of lightning arced from the sky and blasted into the chainmail that the Northman wore. The shock was transmitted to all who had grabbed onto the giant, and they were propelled away from him. The bolt of energy jumped as well to the old Skræling, who flew back across the clearing to slam into a massive stone, only to lay still.

All those in the ravine who had flown off the armored man dropped to the ground dead. With the abruptness of a stopped heart, the storm was over. The sky cleared revealing stars like diamonds in the black firmament and the moon as a polished gem.

There, standing alone in the circle of smoking corpses stood a stunned Ragnar Longaxe, his tunic smoldering, his hair singed. And yet alive.

Some might say it was his chainmail shirt that had transferred the power of the sky to his attackers, but in his heart Ragnar knew it was Odin’s lightning spear Gungnir that had saved him. It was his Wyrd to live and fight and return to his Signe then, at least for a time.

On that night the warrior of the north would not feast with the gods nor drink with Shield Maidens. But he would know, for many years to come, that because of that night his place in the feast hall awaited among his fallen brothers!

Call of the Wyrd © 2024 by Teel James Glenn. (2935 words.) All rights reserved. You may restack this story via Substack but please do not republish elsewhere. Banner and sword illustrations by Gilead the Artist, used by permission.

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