A Song Of Steel (The Light of the North saga Book 1) Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by James Simonds (pen name J. C. Duncan)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: [email protected].

  First edition March 2021

  Cover design by Damonza.com

  Photography by Studio Zahora

  Illustration by James Nathaniel

  Maps by Red geographics

  ISBN 978-1-8383522-0-2 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-8383522-1-9 (ebook)

  www.jcduncan.co.uk

  Contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1: The Fish and the Fumble

  Chapter 2: Raids and Reavers

  Chapter 3: The Smith and the Son

  Chapter 4: A Clatter of Swords

  Chapter 5: The Country Count

  Chapter 6: Forging a Future

  Chapter 7: The Drums of War

  Chapter 8: The Hunters and the Hunted

  Chapter 9: The Danevirke

  Chapter 10: The Valley of Blood

  Chapter 11: A Gathering of Crowns

  Chapter 12: The Fall at the Ford

  Chapter 13: Slavery and Solitude

  Chapter 14: The Slave and the Swordsmith

  Chapter 15: A Song for a Sword

  Chapter 16: Killing for a King

  Chapter 17: The Fear in the Forest

  Chapter 18: A Serpent in the Steel

  Epilogue

  Afterword and Historical Note

  Glossary

  Preface

  One of the most interesting and overlooked periods of European history in fictional literature is the period between the great Viking adventures of the ninth and tenth centuries and the wars following the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066. The empire that would eventually become Germany was just expanding into the lands on the southern Baltic coast. France was coalescing out of the chaotic mess of successor states that followed the reign of the mighty Charlemagne. The Papacy was flexing its relatively new-found strength, warring with the Holy Roman emperors for power and influence across the Christian world. The Norse tribes were shaking out into nation states. This was the period in which modern western and northern Europe was first starting to become recognisable to someone with a current map. A thousand years on, roughly the same nations still exist in roughly the same places. It was the age when modern Europe was seeded, if not founded. The time of the Roman Empire creating nations around Europe and wiping others out, the time of the Huns and Goths and Vandals and Franks burning and conquering their way across Europe as they migrated, was over forever.

  Then, at the end of this fascinating period, which is named after them, the Vikings seemed to simply drop out of popular history. Their power appeared to dissipate, and their legendary raids ceased. Their last significant contribution to mainstream history seemed to be their role in the conquest of England in 1066 when the king of Norway, Harald Hardrada, was killed at Stamford Bridge at the head of an army of Vikings. The Franks took over the nation of England on the back of his costly defeat, arguably settling the demographic status of western Europe forever and bringing an end to the Viking age.

  The Norse, or ‘Vikings’, as they are euphemistically and mostly incorrectly known, were degenerating from the peak of their power abroad even as they grew as nations at home. But their disappearance from historical interest was primarily a factor of their successes, not their failures. It seems that most people think the end of the Vikings was equivalent to a defeat, but it was not. It was due to their maturing as nations. The Viking raids were mostly a reaction to fairly tough conditions at home and constant warring between factions that left a very experienced and active group of warriors looking for new and better lands to plunder or conquer. This was driven by a culture of violence and low-level warfare – or was the cause of it. Both viewpoints are valid, I think. You could argue that the widespread nature of their raids and settlement was a symptom of calamity, a similar phenomenon to that of the Vandals, who conquered Rome because they were fleeing other enemies across Europe, or the Saxons, who conquered England because they were fleeing enemies in what is now northern Germany.

  The Viking raids actually stopped not because the Vikings were defeated but because their situation at home drastically changed. The warring factions coalesced into three nations: the Norse kingdoms of Sweden, Denmark and Norway that survive to this day, relatively unchanged in border or name. As these nations solidified and slowly stopped infighting, they prospered, and their people stopped looking outwards so desperately for conquest and plunder. Trade supplemented and then replaced raiding. Wars became formalised and were about the power of nations, not the wealth of local leaders and warlords. Surplus warriors became famous mercenaries and settlers, not raiders. It is much more profitable and less draining to trade than to plunder when you have a web of trade routes extending further than any other on earth at the time. The Norse trade network at the end of the Viking age encompassed the entirety of Europe from Iceland to near the Ural Mountains and extended deep into Central Asia.

  Another significant factor that influenced the end of the Viking raids was the coming of Christianity. Christianity was known to the Norse for hundreds of years before they converted, of course. They encountered it, and Islam and other Asian religions, on their travels and raids, but they only started converting in large numbers in the tenth century. Harald Bluetooth, the king of Denmark, declared Denmark a Christian country in AD 975. From this point, it took two hundred years for the three Norse Scandinavian nations to be mostly converted to Christianity and to become accepted into the Christian European family of nations like any other. Their families intermarried, and they traded and conducted diplomacy as unified Christian nations. Sigurd I Magnusson, the king of Norway, went on crusade to the holy land, the first king of any Christian nation to go on a crusade. Eric 1, king of Denmark was the first Christian king to go on pilgrimage to the holy land after the First Crusade, (although he died on the journey). The Viking Norse nations had become as Christianised as any nation in Europe and actively participated in European efforts while remaining entirely independent. This was not the behaviour of beaten and downtrodden people.

  It was a fascinating time with a slightly anti-climactic ending from a storytelling point of view. The age of the Vikings ended not with the clashing of swords and the shattering of shields but with unification, advances in farming techniques and the chant of prayer (a gross simplification, perhaps, but not totally unjustified).

  The Norse culture was largely eroded in Scandinavia by the spread of Christianity and the laws, culture and ways of living that came with it, which were immiscible with the old ways. Their fascinating former way of life – their religion, storytelling, art, laws, honour code and society structure – was mostly subsumed. Most people outside of Scandinavia know very little of those aspects of Norse life, preferring to remember the Norse as raiders and conquerors, which is a grievous injustice to their history. Given that the Scandinavian Norse left little in the way of written works compared to many of their contemporary cultures, it is an injustice that has been hard to fight. Their brethren in Iceland left a rich history of written works, poetry, laws, sagas and other records that help keep their history much more alive and well known.

  However, what if it hadn’t played out that way? What if the Norse had refused to peacefully accept Christianity? What if that single decision by Harald Bluetooth to convert had been instead to ban Christianity? What if they had not gone quietly into the Christian brotherhood of nations? What d
ifference would it have made to Europe then and now, from that one decision on that one day in history? That series of questions is one that fascinates me and is the central premise of this series. In this alternate reality, The Norse remain unconverted at the dawn of the twelfth century, and the Viking raids and conquests have continued to haunt Europe’s shores from northern France to southern Italy.

  I have sought to tell this story in the most appropriate way I can think of, in the context of a fictional Norse saga (or legendary story), seen both through the lens of its creation and through modern eyes. The Norse tradition of storytelling and oral history is both fascinating and misunderstood. I am excited to shine a little light on it with my own take on a Norse saga and its creation story. Welcome to the saga of Ljós a Norðan, (The Light of the North) set during an alternate history of what becomes the nation of Nordland and the Northern Crusades that create it.

  The world of Ljós a Norðan in AD 1100 with major locations and towns

  The named locations from the Kingdom of Denmark

  Bright blade flowed smoke

  Through arrow-stricken air

  The Aesir kin awoke

  To find their worthy heir

  Sword and spear were turned aside

  Shields were rent and broke

  No mortal could defy

  The fate that Odin spoke

  The heart of a fallen star

  Entwines the lives it takes

  Flames eating at their souls

  Bright steel slicing fates

  Into the ranks of hel-formed foe

  The hopes of victory strode

  With him did our bravest go

  Stout hearts with no fear showed

  As victory spread her wings

  And all the world seemed saved

  A final foe descended

  His pact with chaos made

  Loki slipped into the fray

  And clouds blew in his wake

  He struck the mighty Gjaldir down

  And turned our hopes to ash

  Battle Poem of the sword Ljós a Norðan

  Norse – 12th century

  Chapter 1

  The Fish and the Fumble

  Bjørsjøen lake, Nordland

  August 2015

  The late summer sunlight, dancing off ripples on the water, was giving Ingrid sore eyes. Her father, Aurick, had told her to bring sunglasses, but she had ignored him and was too proud to admit that mistake. So she stared at her line and stubbornly pretended that all was well. The pain in her eyes did somewhat distract her from the pain in her backside from sitting for too long on the narrow wooden bench, and the pain in her forearms from leaning on the side of the small boat that her father loved so much. Her neck was aching from staring down at the line too. Why was fishing so uncomfortable? It was utterly beyond Ingrid how her father could love fishing so much, but her mother had insisted she go on the trip with him this year, so here she was, trying to pretend to be enjoying herself and failing miserably.

  Aurick smiled to himself as he watched his daughter impatiently fuming. He had told her to feel the line, not stare at it, to relax and sit back to enjoy the time. She had always been such a wilful child; it was part of the reason why he loved her so much. His own father used to own the small cabin beside Bjørsjøen lake and he, Aurick, had spent many a happy summer weekend there as a child, fishing, swimming and enjoying adventures in the woods. He had hoped his daughter would take to the outdoor life as he once had, but he had known it was unlikely.

  As with her generation in general, she was far too focused on achieving rather than doing. She didn’t yet understand that fishing was about more than just acquiring fish. She also didn’t understand that continually fussing with the line the way she was would extend that process, not shorten it.

  ‘Ingrid,’ he said, leaning in to put a hand on her hunched shoulder. ‘You can’t see the fish, and you can’t catch them by force of will. Relax, enjoy the lake and let the fish come as they will.’

  ‘How can it be this hard?’ she replied, gesticulating with her free hand. ‘Why haven’t we caught more fish?’ She sat up and looked at her father with squinting eyes and furrowed brow.

  ‘If fish were easy to catch, there wouldn’t be very many of them left, would there? And, anyway, we’re here to do some fishing, not just to catch fish.’

  Ingrid opened her mouth and stared dumbfounded at her father, as if she had just noticed that he was mad. ‘That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. What’s the point of fishing if it’s not to catch fish?’

  Aurick leaned back and laughed heartily. Ingrid shrugged off her father’s hand and returned to sulking over her line. Aurick regained his composure after a time and looked around the small lake, the centre of which they gently drifted in, near a small island of rocks, turning on their anchor in the gentle wind. The rocks looked like a crouched wolf from this side, lying on the surface in wait for prey in the sunlight, waiting through the ages, weathered and moss stained. He loved this lake. His was one of only three cabins here on the lake’s shore in this remote corner of the mountains. The bigger and more popular lakes down towards the lowlands were often crowded in summer, but this was almost his own private haven. The mountains behind him soared into the sky, snow-capped the year round. The rolling forest surrounded the lake and swept unseen into the broad valley below.

  He was just working out how he would phrase this in a way to gain his daughter’s attention when he felt a chill breeze and heard a sound like the rustling of leaves or feathers, perhaps the flapping of wings, faint and out of place on the lake on that warm summer’s day. Aurick looked around puzzled but saw no birds. He forgot about it as his daughter suddenly perked up.

  ‘I’ve got something!’ she shouted, so loudly and suddenly that he nearly dropped his rod. He would really have to teach her more about fishing etiquette – if he could ever get her in the boat again, that is.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘The line is pulling against me!’

  ‘Great, start pulling it in. Not too hard!’

  Aurick looked at the line. It was definitely taut, but there was no vibration or jerking. This was probably not a fish. Shame. His daughter would not take that news well.

  ‘Ingrid, it’s probably not a fish. It might be caught on some weed.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course it’s a fish. It suddenly moved away from me.’

  ‘The boat is moving, not the line.’

  Ingrid scowled and looked at the line. ‘Well, I felt something. Something tugged. It pulled away from me – maybe it’s just a slow fish.’

  Aurick chuckled. ‘How slow do you think you would be with a hook in your mouth? Pull the line in, and let’s see what it’s stuck on. Perhaps it needs re-baiting.’

  Ingrid muttered to herself. She couldn’t decide which was dumber: her father or fishing. She started winding the line in. At first, it would not come in despite her straining at the reel, then there was a dull twang and the line was light again as it rushed in.

  As the hook came to the surface, there was a weed-covered lump of mud and detritus covering it.

  ‘Swing it over here,’ Aurick told her. ‘Careful. Okay. Let’s get this rubbish off and reset it.’

  The muck and weed was stripped off by careful fingers, avoiding the barbed double hook and the remains of the worm attached to it. The worm had indeed been nibbled and worried at by something. The fish were outsmarting him as usual, but that was okay. One would make a mistake soon and become dinner. Fishing is more about patience than it is about technique – that’s what his father had always said.

  The last of the mud and weed came free and revealed a congealed and rusty mesh of metal tangled on the other barb of the hook. Aurick snapped a rusty ring off the hook, and the whole mess fell into the bottom of the boat.

  He reached out and held the shaft of the hook in one hand and carefully slipped another worm onto the twin barbs. He then swung the hook back around the end of
the boat and whipped the rod forward again, casting the hooks back into the lake twenty metres to the side of the boat. Keeping his eye on where the hook splashed, he shifted the rod to his left hand and proffered it to his daughter. When she didn’t take it after a few seconds, he glanced to his left and saw Ingrid holding the rusty mess in her hand and peering at it. She held it up to the light and turned it around in her fingers, a thoughtful expression on her face.

  ‘What is this, Father?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, I don’t know, some old rubbish. Old fishing gear, something off a fishing trap. Don’t know. Leave it before you cut yourself and get an infection. You don’t know what’s in there, could be hooks or sharp edges. Here, I’ll drop it over the side, and you take the rod.’

  Left arm still outstretched to offer Ingrid the rod, he leaned forward with his right hand open, palm up.

  ‘No, I want to know what it is. It looks interesting.’ Ingrid leaned away out of the reach of Aurick’s awkwardly crossed arms. She lowered the congealed mess carefully into the water and waved it around, little pieces of mud and rust and weed breaking free and drifting away, turning the clear water brown around her hand.

  She brought the mass back into the boat, water running gently through her fingers and dripping onto her legs, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Her eyes were wide.

  ‘Father, look!’

  Aurick returned his eyes from the bobbing float out in the lake with an eye roll and a sigh. ‘What? What is it?’ What she was holding in her hand quite clearly was not fishing gear.

  ‘I think it’s chain mail!’ she exclaimed, thrusting the rusty mass towards his face with excited eyes. ‘Remember the chain mail we saw at the museum in Røros? This looks like that, don’t you think?’

  Aurick leaned in and squinted. Sure enough, the pattern of links, although rusted, congealed and still infused with lake mud, was fairly pronounced. Shifting internally from frustration to curiosity, he put the rod down in the boat, setting its shaft on the side.