Becca The Viking & The Heavenly Runes Book 1, Voyage to Lindisfarne: Becca The Viking & The Heavenly Runes, #1

By R.D. Ginther

If you are looking for Viking adventures look no further than Becca! Becca The Viking & The Heavenly Runes, The Voyage To Lindasfarne Book 1, is a delightful new series that will intrigue you. This book is filled with rich descriptions of exotic countries, village life and seafaring adventures.  It will satisfy anyone's desire to escape into medieval sea voyages and the thrilling yet engaging battles on the sea.

Becca is a  young lad unlike any other lad of his age, strong, brave and honorable. But he had a dream, to venture out on a ship to explore lands far away. He got his wish to go out on his first raid, which didn't quite go as he had planned, and it placed him at crossroads that will change his life forever. Should he surrender his Viking culture?

Starting out on this new unexplored culture that he acquired, and not by accident but by divine appointment, Becca decided to be his own captain with his own ship. But being a captain is more than minding a ship, there is the crew to consider. Nevertheless, Becca is ready to learn, even from his young servant called Aelfric and later from Alexios. The lessons as a young captain that he learnt are ones that we can glean and learn from. All along the way there is the very significant golden thread of heavenly inspiration woven into every voyage and battle that he faced. But there are major hurdles that will come in his way, and he must choose wisely, which can mean the difference between life and death, not only for him but his crew as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.A.Edwards
• Release date: Mar 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215937679

Book preview

BECCA THE VIKING

&

THE HEAVENLY RUNES

ANNO STELLAE 780

EARTH I

BOOK I

I  Voyage to Lindisfarne;  Voyage to Miklagard

"They that go down to the sea in ships,

That do business in great waters,

These see the works of the Lord,

And his wonders in the deep..."

—Psalm 107 of David the Singer,

Circa 1000 B.C.

1.

Becca wrestled differently from other boys in the village.  He must have been a born berserker because he needed no drug or mushroom to ignite a trance and rouse his inner beast.

Loki, the Trickster god, the old Norse tales related was so jealous of the adored Balder who eclipsed him that he cunningly enlisted the weak, over-looked  mistletoe as a weapon to kill him.  In a like manner, he must have smiled at Becca’s birth and early development,  spotting violence and nonconformity and anticipating what future use he was going to make of those traits in him.

Could he master the beast within?  Or would it master him?  That was a question in his life, and the saga of his life, short or long, would reveal the answer. 

In the old Greek tales, Hercules, as a precociously strong baby strangled two snakes that his enemy, the goddess Hera, put in his crib. 

In a similar sense, snakes (of the human kind) challenged the young Becca early on.

Incidents of his responses to such challenges were not rare in the rough-and-tumble Viking society of Dane-Land. Lessons he administered his peers almost never seemed to be taken to heart. 

Why?  Other boys may have mistook his gentle and obedient ways shown to his parents and surviving grandfather, not to mention servants—which was, indeed, rare in his time, and liable to be taken as softness and mistletoe weakness.

Physically as well, his build tended to lie more on the slender side, not thick and burly.

But woe to those who thought he was not strong and well able to handle antagonists, even if larger than himself.  They should have taken note of the willow, its agility and supple strength.

"How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without

our past? Can you live without the willow tree?  Well, no, you can’t.

The willow tree is you."

—John Steinbeck, 20th Century

They waylaid the willow on occasion.  No count was kept of such incidents.

In boyhood scuffles, where a rival wished to demonstrate his prowess at Becca’s expense, the usual happened when he was provoked. 

With a Danish war cry, Becca charged, slamming the other boy’s shoulder with his and tripping him to start off, letting his opponent’s weight work against his opponent.  Then he whipped around to his back and gripped him from behind round his neck with his locking arm, cutting off his air.  A final tumble allowed him to pin him to the ground.

Some boys were so desperate to recoup damaged pride they fought dirty, or at least they tried.  A last resort for the losing party, it usually went badly for them at the receiving end in any tussle with Rasmus the Green-Eyed’s son.

Becca made sure they limped for weeks afterwards, unable to even touch their most tender parts. 

And if they called out for a little help against Becca, and a buddy leaped in, Becca, as soon as he had taken care of the one on the ground, pursued whoever had grabbed him.  Even if the chase lasted several hours, he always caught up and bruised him from head to foot, but particularly in the groin.  So much for buddy helping buddy.

Becca was not adverse to teaching adults a lesson too if need be. 

Becca and his village companions were out skylarking in the fjord (where they swam on the warmer days, though bathing to get rid of dirt was not the purpose, since they relished mud fights in Holbaek’s main drain, the tidal stream that rolled through their village twice a day). 

An older man came down to watch and was particularly attentive to Becca, who was taking turns with the others diving off a big rock in the water.  When the boys started to return to shore, Becca noticed the looky-looky had sidled closer.  He moved right up to their group as they reached the spot on the beach where their clothes lay in piles. 

Becca hurried to his clothes.  Several other boys stood round, letting the man run his hands over them.

The boys were laughing and joking as he did it.

The man glanced over to Becca and left the others to maybe try the same thing with the red head.

Who was he?  Becca had never seen him before.  But he didn’t care, he was leaving, and the man better not try to stop him or lay a single finger on him. 

He saw he hadn’t time to leave before the man reached him, so he bundled his clothes, and charged.  He knocked the man flat on his back.  But just to teach him a lesson not to mess with him again, he jumped on his midriff hard, then leaped off.  He ran behind a house belonging to a bachelor neighbor and pulled on his clothes, then sped straight home. 

From his father’s dooryard, he glanced back.  The man was holding his belly, all bent over, hobbling away down the beach.

Good riddance to rotten cod! Becca thought.  You show up here again, you won’t walk again.  I’ll wrap those bowed legs of yours around your neck, and tie them!

2.

BECCA’S MATCHES WITH his peers, ordinarily, did not last very long.  After he defeated every challenger that was present, it was too humiliating for any others to come and try Becca and receive the same drubbing.  So he remained the village champion, though he cared nothing for any title for that achievement.  Why should he?  His peers didn’t excite any admiration because, to his experience, they hadn’t earned it.  Their plaudits, consequently, were to him not worth a dried acorn. 

Young Danes such as him in such superb condition were eagerly sought for crews aboard a warship outbound for battle and prey and booty.  If they survived the rigors of boyhood and grew to manhood, they would be prizes to be recruited for any Danish raiding ship.  In the hurly burly society of the time, the trick was for any youth to survive that long.

If he did, there was a big pay-off.  Dane-Land was just the place to cause adventurous young men to cast eyes abroad to bigger pastures than their scantily-provisioned homeland could provide.  And they found they were uniquely equipped to go and seize those pastures with the cattle and dairymaids in them! 

Without great forests and plains or much fertile farmland you could boast about, far too crowded of late amidst slim resources, many young Northmen like Becca cast eyes westerly and southerly.  He too dreamed of fortunes and better livings to be had elsewhere. 

It helped that they knew they could forcibly take better livings elsewhere, too.  Wherever defenses were weak and not too wary but the people rich and comfortable, all they had was to sail there in one of the pirate ships.  After usually a brief fight, it was theirs!

Holding it was another question.  Unless they went as a large army, aimed at settlement after the initial conquest, no single Dane could survive in a foreign land more than a few days at the most.  He would be hunted down with dogs and killed.

One for all, all for one, and in Danish, en for alle, alle for en,—that had to be their mode of operation in foreign, hostile lands if one and all were to survive. 

To the west lay the broad, verdant isles of Britannica and a rich country of many cattle, sheep, and grain fields,  just what they didn’t have but were hankering for!  Tantalizingly, it lay just a few days sail from Dane-Land too!  The only problem, it had many vigilant kings with trained militias of fighting farmers to protect it.

3.

NOT ALL DANES CARED about getting quick riches at the expense of neighboring countries, however.  Becca’s grandfather was one of those exceptions.  And this grandfather was one to be listened to for a number of good reasons Becca could not ignore.

Most people acknowledged Becca's grandfather as a sage among men.  Even wise elders came to talk to him, seeking counsel in matters small and great.

Chieftains and princes also came from time to time, since they were invested with weighty affairs of state regarding whole districts that often stumped their best counsellors.  Naturally, they couldn’t demean themselves by going to a village named after a murky, tidal stream in a hollow, so they sent messengers.

The Danes' chief king was headquartered at Hedeby on the channel leading to the Baltic coasts.  From there, both merchants’ knerrir and raiding ships could sail east and west and, round the cape of Jute-Land, south and east again.  A crossroads, in all respects!

In regard to the expeditions of war fleets for raiding and plunder that sallied forth from there, an official, a titled Hertug with retainers, came one day to Mimir’s house with his king’s inquiry since Mimir declined to go to Hedeby, sending away the messenger with that message.

A few days later the nobleman returned to Hedeby and reported to the king with a sour expression.

The old warrior at Holbaek’s has grown stiff as a goat’s pizzle against the plan, Your Majesty.  I couldn’t get him to budge, he wouldn’t listen to a word I had to say!  He ought to go swallow the fjord, I say!  He’s outlived his usefulness.  There aren’t enough beds in Dane-Land for his kind!  The young need to be given a chance to win glory for the Danes, now that he’s had his!

What’s his objection to my plan? the king reminded his chief noble.

Oh, he speaks nonsense!  He says all your Majesty’s plunder will turn to nothing but ashes in your hands someday.  Is the old man mad?

The king mulled over his options.  Mimir’s counsel, he knew, had wide influence.  His words reached many ears, young and old. 

Order the execution of this insulting, insolent village sage?  That would be easy enough, and quick. 

No, the king decided, this one was too old and too well-known.  Best let him fade away in a village’s obscurity like an old soldier!  And good thing he spent his days in Holbaek!  There couldn’t be any village more obscure and distasteful, with swine and chickens wandering between the wretched huts searching for scraps, as his hertug scorned it.  Why, after he left, he discovered his shoes were stinking of chicken manure!

4.

BEING RAISED IN SUCH a place as Holbaek should have caused Becca to leave and go and put down roots in another land where he could better pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

But not so yet with Becca.  My ancestral land right or wrong, remained his motto, though it would be sorely tested in the years to come.

It came to be tested in this way, which is the story of how he became Becca of the Heavenly Rune-Book.

He realized by degrees that he had to walk a different road than all his elders had walked since their youth—except two, his grandfather, and his father. 

5.

THE GREATEST OF THE king's more or less secret plans at the time (chiefly monetary) centered on Lindisfarne, or the Holy Island—the very plan Mimir had doused with cold water when the king’s envoy had visited him.

This holy isle of the Christians held the gold-hoard the king coveted, that would enable him to play a much larger role on the northern domains of the snow giants. 

This plan to gain quick riches as a means for power was not going to die, however, despite Mimir’s thumbs-down

Lying hard by the northern British coast of the Saxon King of  Northumbria's domains, the island was the seat of St. Cuthbert's Church and monastery.  Pound for pound of gold, silver, and jewels, it was the wealthiest edifice in all the Saxon kingdoms of the British Isles.  Utterly of no interest to the unlettered Danes,  it also contained the biggest library of illuminated manuscripts of the Christians. 

Most Danes had not heard of it, even so.  But soon they would, thanks to the king.

What a splendid prize to seize!  Having heard tales of that glittering treasure-hoard of the Christians heaped up at Lindisfarne, the Danish nobles, chieftains, elders and counselors, and their king conferred thick as thieves, all the time glancing over their shoulders in case servants were listening.

They were hardly able to control their drinking, though they needed to be stone sober, keenly aware of the hazards of the undertaking.  The big question whose answer they must find:  how best to muster their men-strength, weapons, and ships to seize Lindisfarne, and when was the best time for the raid?

As the Danes’ ships grew in number in boat yards across the land, it seemed the problems with the plan increased instead of being resolved.  The king and his selected magnates just could not seem to agree on the best time.  It was the hardest thing to nail down.

The king’s counsellors did not help resolve matters either when they entertained second thoughts. 

They began advising caution.  Apparently, initial excitement over the venture had cooled.  They carefully compared Dane-Land’s resources against the Northumbrians—and the Northumbrians always seemed to come out on top.

After all,  this king, according to reports, watched over Lindisfarne like an eagle its eaglets, or a dragon its golden hoard.  It would take a savage fight with many men to match his forces.  Risking so many men and ships as Dane-Land with great effort might muster—that was going to be their ruin if they could not outwit King Sicga and overwhelm his defenses with a sudden, shattering hammer blow. 

Could little Dane-Land, despite all its fighting ships, manage to do that? 

The more the Danes discussed the  Anglo Saxon king’s defenses and soldiers, the more they lost confidence that they could beat Sicga and seize the fabulous, golden prize he guarded.  The Danish king’s plan was now beginning to look impossible, if not more than a shade suicidal. 

But gold!  Gold!  Its fantastic, magical allure will never, as long as the old world spins around, let men’s souls rest.  Madness inspired by gold makes sober counsel seem folly, and folly seem sensible, even right. 

Inflamed by reports of the gold of Lindisfarne, there was to be no rest in the mead-house of the Danish king at Hedeby, not until a solution was found to the might and power of gold-horde’s guardian! 

First, they had to match his frightful fire power.  Secondly, they had to fix on the perfect date to make their strike on Lindisfarne.  To even hope to succeed, their attack had to be carried out exactly on the hour and the day for which Sicga would be least prepared.

Dane craftiness pitted against Saxon craftiness.  Loki on both sides, so how were the Danes going to get the advantage?

The first need of adequate firepower was possible for Dane-land to produce, if they all worked hard and spent every last two or three coins they could hear clinking when they shook their purses out on the mead-drinking table.

The greater problem they knew they faced was that they were at an impasse.  Human intelligence could not determine the question, when was the perfect time to strike Lindisfarne?

Here is where the Spinners of Destiny, the Fatal Sisters could be of real help.

"Double, double toil and trouble,

fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the trouble,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,

Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double,  toil and trouble;

Fire burn and caldron bubble.

Cool it with a baboon’s blood,

Then the charm bites firm and good."

The Spinning Sisters of the North, the Norns— Skuld, Urd, and Verdandi by some Norse accounts—stepped in to decide the matter once and for all.

Where did they hole up?  Some shepherds claimed they spied it in a den dug out beneath a giant, dead oak that grew on an island in a vast bog north of Hedeby.  The dripping walls were alive with slimy, lizard-tailed creatures, their eyes glowing green, lighting the den’s inhabitants in the gloom. 

One shepherd, a nasty churl with a harelip and the name of Uggligr,  reported what he saw in the Norns’ den to the king—and got half a truffle-stuffed goose to consume as his reward for entertaining the court at a banquet with his tale.

Uggligr was the kind of a fellow who had a tongue that never stopped, as his tale grew all the more  detail in the telling!

One human’s glimpse of  Skuld the eldest sister would cause bowels to loose in terror, Uggligr told the court.

She crooned over her mortar preparing enough bat wool, dog tongue, eye of newt, lizard’s leg, and adder fork.

Both thick, muscular arms hairy,  sticking out of her flapping sack of a gown from a crooked stick of a body, her hairy legs stood on  coal-black, misshapen wooden club feet (the originals lost to a bear)  and worked the pestle in the big mortar, stirring a gruel of abominable things round and round and round until it was just right consistency.

She glanced up from her masterpiece of the magical arts with crossed yellow eyes glinting from  fiery irises. 

Git me more blind worms, dearies, a dozen will do from that big Thor-decorated vessel set over by the children’s basket.  Quick, it needs to go in the pot right away with a half-quart of murthered  children’s hearts from the basket directly in the pot!

The mass of wriggling blind worms in Urd’s lichened, long-nailed hand dropped with a hiss into the pot. 

Working the stinking mixture furiously, Skuld sweated streams that ran down her boney, stiff-haired cheeks—hairs sprouting like wires out of moles and warts and brown age spots.

Verdandi  was only a bit less appalling a terror.  She had a habit of gashing herself with her overgrown, claw-like nails, then sucking the ends of her nails greedily,  leaving her skin a patchwork of gashes and scabs and scars. 

She stood with a rudder taken from a shipwreck she and her sisters had conspired to create,  stirring the bubbling pot that already held the owlet’s wing and clippings of berried nightshade along with the lately dumped half-quart of children’s hearts  (from children scooped from wombs). 

Into the pot Skuld scraped the mortar’s contents with her hand, licking her fingers for the delicious bits of the fire-bellied bombina bombina attached after she set the mortar down. 

Chanting curses and incantations in wails that joined with the cyclonic winds at the door of the cave to produce shrieks straight from the lowest pits of the underworld, the sisters ran through their repertoire of curses and spells and poxes. 

At this point, Uggligr fell back on common knowledge of the dark rulers of Dane-land’s under-story.  The curses the Sisters employed, in his rendition,  were much the same as were standard with the Heks, the witch often found plying her black arts in Danish villages and towns on islands and fjords. 

After being given a large draught of beer, Uggligr was all the more inspired.  He shared the remaining menu of the Norns as he claimed he had witnessed it.

With the liquor that rose up, skimmed off with a big ladle, the Sisters added the crowning catalytic vial of baboon’s blood,  a costly import from  Arab domains,  and  anointed the spun wool from a black sheep they throttled so as not to spoil the wool. 

After the wool, held down sheep skulls, dried in the cyclonic winds that swept across the black mouth  of their bog island cave,  they spun on their loom a fate for Dane-Land that would extend to many generations over a 1300 year stretch of time. 

The trio fixed on the perfect date by examining the eloquent, fortune-speaking cloth that resulted.

In deadly runes the launching date for the king’s fleet appeared after they applied their specially created decoding acid—tincture of a prostitute’s aborted child boiled down and a five year old daughter’s eyes that had witnessed her royal parents sliced into pieces by assassins before she too was given the same treatment.

The sisters of  dire fate danced together when they saw it come to the surface, like invisible writing does when that old stratagem of spies,  vinegar or lemon juice is applied to paper, then heated or bathed with an acid.

Lemons being not that accessible in northern regions ordinarily,  the Sisters devised their own tincture.

But what was the date?  Uggligr, having drunk too much to keep his few, meager wits about him,  passed out at the point of giving it to the king and collapsed and blue bubbles in his vomit. 

Pulled outside, the shepherd was thrown a horse blanket to cover him, and left to dry out.

The next day, he rose up, the drool from his harelip none the better from old vomit, staggering to the mead-hall entrance, determined to deliver the date to the anxious king.  If he failed, he would be in big trouble, of course, for having raised such high expectations in the king and then all for nothing.

Ja, ja, I’ll git it, I’ll git it!  Comes to me all of a sudden most, it does!  It’ll come, it’ll come...

But...it cometh not!

Scratching the bald spot on his head, Uggligr couldn’t, for the life of him, recall any such thing as the fatal numbers he glimpsed in the den of the Norns, nor all he had said the previous night in the mead-hall.  Too much mead, perhaps, had wiped his brainpan clean.

He got himself roughed up by the king’s bailiff for wasting the king’s time, his face stuck in one of the many cow pies from the herd wandering the streets. 

He should have given up, cut his losses, and slunk home at that point if  he couldn’t provide the   information.

But he persevered and tried again, assuming if he did the same thing he would get a different result,  so his final failure got him thrown in a manure wagon and taken out and cast on the ground in a field. 

Cursing Odin and the gods, Uggligr finally cut his losses and extricated himself from the manure clumps heaped on him.

Dey can’t neber keep a good man down!  Not by my buskins!  I’ll shew does uppity snoots of theirs Uggligr  ain’t down yet! 

True, he had his main chance stolen from him, but he still had his flock of sheep waiting for him back at his old camp. 

He wiped his face on his filthy sleeves and looked about for the way back home.

Seeing his grand tour of the capital had ended abruptly in this fashion among the manure and clods,  and understanding that if he valued his life he best not impose on the king and his court any longer, the shepherd left Hedeby for good. 

He went anxiously in search for his flock he abandoned on old grazing grounds—his bid for glory at the royal court blasted and gone forever.

He could only hope his sheep weren’t all stolen by other shepherds or gone down the gullets of wolves.  He proceeded, stumbling in his haste, realizing for the first time he had lost his head in going to Hedeby in the first place.

Unfortunately, both hopes were dashed.  All he could turn up after franticly searching were scattered little piles of gnawed bones, split for the marrow, and bits of wool and hide. 

6.

PRESENTLY, DESPITE Uggligr’s dismal performance, the fateful date found its way to the befuddled king and his foot-dragging counsellors.  In such cases of high stakes, it always will be found, because the Sisters could always find someone other than braggart shepherds who would  serve admirably with two tongues, a serpent’s and a fool’s. 

And who was he?  Hearing all the various stratagems thrown out in the thick air of the king's grand feast-hall (with a selected group for the sake of national security, of course),  a craftier soul among them happened to be the king’s professional jester, Torvald Trollerson.

Fool he was officially, but fool in the head he was not.  Useful, certainly!  He had a most cunning thing to say to the gathering.

Who was he?  Hedeby’s royal court was a large village of a special kind.  In the mead-hall and the adjoining palace this individual was to be found equipped with normal arms and chest, nevertheless he lacked sufficient size of his lower torso to go with them.  Thusly foreshortened to a child’s stature from earliest childhood due to being dropped as a baby by a servant, he was still blessed enough in the upper story to survive on fully developed wits.

Full of fury and resentment ever since he first realized his plight of being too short-changed below the waist to ever attract a woman, he proved more than eager to facilitate the Sisters’ piece of skullduggery. 

Dwarfish but colorfully attired in black and yellow striped pantaloons and vest, with tinkling bells on his yellow, red, and green, three-horned cap, Torwald was accorded license as the court fool to say most anything naughty, insolent,  and mischievous up to a point.  It paid well too, right out of the king’s coffers, so he needn’t be pitied in that sense, though in truth he was a most wretched creature, no prettier in his person than a natterjack toad.

Standing forth with the flourish of a royal standard in his hand that towered over him, he declaimed with full assurance and gleaming, beady eyes, waxing extraordinarily eloquent in this chance of a lifetime to turn the ship of state:

Bung up the hole with thy windy counsels, all ye high chiefs and young, daring blades!  Why fight this prancing, puissant Saxon king, prithee?  Why risk our men and ships in battle with that low Anglo  Saxon mongrel and all his buxom-teated bitch’s whelps?  Why not sail our fleet on a suitable day of our own choosing and take his soft, simpering priests’ isle by surprise?  Carpe diem!  Pinch the prepuce!  Foreclose the foreskin!  We merely require the right dawn for sailing.  Is that so hard to fix, my lords?  Then we can sack up their golden treasure before their king even hears the first cock crow and springs from off his bitch’s hemispheres!

All present in the hall blinked their eyes at the absurd spectacle he presented doing a little jig, laughed at his ribald witticisms, then roared in agreement. 

Ha, ha, ha!  Yes, the little natterjack is right, a surprise raid will do it!  That sawed-off little fool still has a bright head under the tinkling cap!  Of course! But what is the date? 

If he hadn’t the wits to come up with it immediately, after raising all their expectations like that, Thorvald would be in trouble, naturally.  His head might roll across the floor.

The court fool knew he had the answer the nobles and the king had wracked their brains for months about.  Skuld, Urd, and Verdani had seen to it.

Thorvald whispered something with his big, fleshy lips in the king’s ear after climbing a ladder designed for him.  It must have been the long-sought date for attacking Lindisfarne!

The king smiled broadly.  As a reward, he rapped this fount of dark wisdom on the head smartly with his long-handled gold spoon.

Though highly irritated, the jester was politic in response.  He slid down the ladder, then pretended to swoon and walk dazedly about.  Eyes crossed liked Skuld’s and elbows flopping like a duck with wounded pinions, he unknowingly foreshadowed future leaders of Dane-Land.

Thusly a fool’s counsel prevailed over Mimir’s true wisdom. 

From that point on, the Danes’ fowler’s net on Lindisfarne jerked tight.

7.

THE PLAN WAS WORKED on in men-thick, secret  meetings in Hedeby and elsewhere in smaller chieftains' mead-halls all over Dane-Land.  As long as the date was kept secret as far as it could be, the raid should prove successful. 

Keeping it secret was something they had to manage well, or all was lost!  To implement the plan, however,  they were obliged to take others into their confidence, keeping back only the date of the strike on the Holy Island. 

As a stone thrown in a pond causes ripples to spread out, every part of Dane-Land would hear of the king’s plan sooner or later and then seek to play a part in it.  All that the promoters had to mention was the immense, glittering gold-hoard available for the taking, and  Danish eyes lit up and all red-blooded men were stirred in their blood.

In little Holbaek, it was then just a matter of time before Becca the Red took part in several local chieftains’ meetings though he had no particular interest as yet in such.

His father, Rasmus, being public minded,  took him along with him to learn how grown men deal with important, public matters, so, initially, he went without inward complaint.  Later on, he went, but with growing reservations and inner conflicts. 

Sitting in the back of the mead-hall hall of an extinct titled family shared by several villages, he realized the time had come to decide what the plan had to do with his own life.

Where would he fit in?  What was going to be his role in it?

Helmsman?  No, that could only go to experienced navigators.  He saw he had really no better choice, it had to be oarsman and a warrior. 

Yet it troubled him deep within, being he happened to be related to the plan’s two most obdurate opponents.  The treasures promised young men by the old men who had been mighty warriors in their youth—what were those promises and treasures to him?

He knew one thing for sure, he wanted more from life than just a private hoard of gold and silver.  But what specifically was it?  Would gold and silver satisfy him for what it could buy him?  If not wealth, would a reputation of brave exploits and many men killed by his sword to his credit satisfy him as a heroic Dane?

Going counter to his own tribal Danish instincts, he knew taking treasure by force was wrong.  He knew killing for it was wrong, too.  He knew living for riches above everything else was wrong.  How could a Viking youth of his time know all this?

What real gain is that, son of my son? Mimir would ask if the subject came up in conversation.  We would be a wealthy land if raiding had not impoverished us!

If it were truly a good thing to do, he observed once to Becca, there would be merriment for all in it, not sorrow mixed in as blood is mixed in the booty that comes to us from this greedy raiding.  Why, I have seen gold and jeweled rings with the bloody fingers of noblewomen and high-born men still in them!  Cut or bitten off!  Ears the same, pierced earrings still attached! Bishops’ robes, queens’ gowns, brocades and silk stripped off corpses in graves and tombs!  Is that the way we Danes choose to make a living?  Slaying the living?  Robbing the graves of the dead?  How dastardly can we get?

He spoke from his heart, as already he had lost a grandson in a raid—Becca’s older brother, Ansgar.

Ansgar the Noble Ash-tree!  What manhood, what courage, what strength, what handsomeness of face, eyes, demeanor and form!  Larger than Becca would grow, broader in his chest, long of leg, he looked in every inch of him to be a king in the making  Everyone who saw Ansgar stood aside and kept their eyes on him, for when he entered any house or market-place or mead-hall, the focus shifted immediately to him, the head-turner.

Becca had worshiped his elder brother.  Who didn’t?  So had many young men and adults too.  His eyes moistened whenever he recalled how the news came to his mother and father by a survivor of the battle at Jarrow and the voyage home, a shipmate to Ansgar who came bearing his fallen friend’s ship locker, dragging a sword-cleaved leg,  his scarred, swollen face flooded with tears.

His father, Rasmus the Green-Eyed took it like any man in Dane-Land inured to death and hardship.  He stiffened like a carved sealion’s tusk of scrimshaw, but kept his eyes tearless, and froze into cold stone without any show of feeling, while saying a word.

8.

MOTHERS DO NOT NORMALLY make such good stoics as the menfolk.  Sigrida Sigridsdatter ripped her fine, embroidered white apron, stumbled to the hearth and heaped ashes on her braided head.  In that state she wailed through the rooms of the house, pacing back and forth in bare feet, the sound piercing through walls and into the village to the other houses.

She rebuffed any comforting from the village womenfolk who came over to mourn with her. 

Utterly broken in spirit, her wails continued until a party of drinking men came staggering and banged on their door.  They alternately begged and threatened father Rasmus to shut his wife up, she was spoiling their celebration of a successful raid—the same that had robbed her of her heart’s treasure—noble Ansgar.

Hear, hear, Rasmus, if you let your woman carry on like that, all our young men will lose heart and cease to show courage as men!  She will turn them into headless chickens fluttering about helter-skelter!  Our wives won’t let us go out again, you’ll see, and then we will all sink into muck and poverty!  Is that what you want to happen?  She’ll stop our raids for sure!  Then how will we fare, eh?

Whether he agreed with these drunks or not, Rasmus spoke to his wife to get her things together.  He was taking her to a neighboring village where her old, maiden aunt dwelt.

He didn’t argue it, he just declared she would stay with her until she felt like she wanted to come back and be his wife and a mother to his children again. 

That was brutal handling for Sigrida Sigridsdatter, whose father had been a chieftain.  Turn her over to a frustrated, bitter, older woman and have to suffer her indignities?  That was a fate worse than death to her! 

She knew that aunt of hers well, Hertha Herthsdatter by name.  Sigrida had spent unhappy parts of some early years as that hag’s abused, unpaid servant.  She could hear even now her cackle and screeching voice.  That old, carrot-nosed harridan would have a lot to say to her how a Dane’s wife ought to behave more seemly and bravely than she had behaved. 

Hertha, given the chance,  would shake her stinger, the willow whip at her head she used on her hogs.  What was one son’s death anyway?  She still had four, and two daughters!  So what was she complaining about?  Sigrida still wasn’t so old she couldn’t grunt and push out another Ansgar if she wanted, Hertha would insinuate, prodding her niece’s belly with the whip end.

Ha!  Now that was easy for Hertha Herthsdatter to say!  She had no husband, no offspring, she had lost no sons on a raid or in a trade voyage, nor would she ever know what such a loss of a son like Ansgar could mean.  A barren, wasted, maggoty womb, hungry for children she would never have, since no man in his right senses would ever think to take her in his arms!

Rasmus’ sorrowing wife knew for sure she’d be lashed by her aunt’s evil tongue day after day until it drove her mad.  If she had to endure that, she knew for sure she would go and drown herself in the fjord.

True, she still had Becca!  Two daughters as well.  But could she forget Ansgar?  Rasmus had laid down his word, and it was law in Dane-Land—"Wife, be quiet or go to Herthsdatter!

As she sat tearing her apron to shreds, she knew she had to try or her aunt would be the death of her!  Why give her aunt that satisfaction, to have driven to madness a married niece she hated for bearing sons and daughters?  Why submit to such an odious creature riding her back, lashing her with her whipping tongue till she dropped into her grave.

Sigrida was nobody’s fool.  She knew what was behind it all, what the old, cursing, spell-casting hex was really up to!

It wasn’t beyond this schemer that she might persuade Rasmus to assign a room in his house for her in her old age.  Yes, that had to be it!  After all, the old woman had no doubts noticed certain signs off feebleness setting in to her bones.  She found she couldn’t whip the hogs around and drive the neighbor boys off with her whip as ably as she used to do.  Her arm would hurt too much afterwards, and the boys always returned more frequently now, since they knew she couldn’t run fast enough to catch them and bite their ears.

Why, they had come and stripped all her fenced-in goose-berries, and she hadn’t got one bit of the harvest!  She had been feeling so poorly in her feet and legs that day, all she could do was stand and watch, while cursing  and spelling and poxing them down to Nilfheim.

Clearly, her sunset years had set in.  She was getting on, so she was probably thinking she could use a few stout-bodied servants to attend to her needs and wait on her hand and foot. 

The old, nasty witch will never get the chance!  Sigrida Sigridsdatter vowed, cutting her arm with a flint.  She took the blood and mixed it in a mortar with a toad’s eye to anoint an image of Thor she carried as an amulet.  The god was reputed to be especially fond of that tincture, confided to her by a hex that passed through Holbaek occasionally with magic potions for sale.

Rather than slice her wrists,  she’d live,  stifle and stuff under her grief just to spite her aunt, if that was all she got out of it. 

9.

AFTER THE MOTHER QUITTED grieving aloud, she washed her golden hair, braided it, and put on a new apron, land life went on in Becca’s family, but it was never the same.  How could it?  The loss of one so promising as Ansgar—a grandson-son, a son and heir, a brother, a future head of the family and the whole extended clan, and beyond question a leader who would be chosen king over all Dane-Land’s chieftains—was hard on his immediate family.

Themselves enduring the dire effects of a raid that Mimir had said would be the result, it wasn’t pleasant, it was intolerable.  Somehow, raggedly, speechlessly, they struggled through it, day by day.

Sigrida Sigridsdatter seldom found anything to laugh at after that.  Her wide-spaced, light blue eyes were most often downcast as she glided ghostlike and silent about her few household chores.  Her daughters were no better.  They acted like copies of her, having lost the brother they idolized and adored, the very likeness of what they dreamed of for a husband.

The house was full of gloom, consequently.  Becca avoided it as much as possible, only coming home late at night to crawl into his bed, pull his quilt over his head and shut the world out. 

His sisters had it worse and could not escape as he could, except by marriage to men chosen by her parents.  They were sad specimens, all they knew were domestic duties dawn to dark.  And as yet they were too young for courting.  And no suitors dared showed up either at Rasmus’ Tree of Heaven shaded door.  When he thought them ready, not until then!  But there was another problem for the daughters.  The village’s young men were still too busy with other things than to take brides they could not yet support.  With such prospects, no wonder they went about so long of face in the house.

The desire to escape the house of doom was growing stronger by the hour and day in Becca.  He felt time was drawing to a decision he had to make if he was to break out like a young, long-legged yearling into the wide, wonderful, lush green pasture beckoning beyond the pen. 

Few restrictions held him back in that society.  If there were some, he agreed with them still at this stage.  When the time came that he judged they were intolerable, he had the means to smash through them, he could not be held back, no more than a tiger in a cage of bamboo grass stems.

Did he wish to go on a raiding party, and prove his manly courage and skill with weapons?  Yes, he did wish it.  How could he not?  It was what life had made him to do, despite all his reservations borne of Mimir’s wisdom and his father’s example.  But not for the reasons most men had that impelled them to join such escapades.  He could not even say what his true reasons were, no more than salmon fingerlings could say what they were aiming to do when they all headed instinctively down a stream or brook or river toward the bounding main.

10.

THE BIG QUESTIONS OF life aside for the moment, in the meantime,  Becca had to attend to the needs of his present circumstances.  To please his grandfather, Becca thought how he might appreciate more warmth in his bones. 

He hunted a bear whose tracks he had followed to his lair a number of times.  Waiting until the bear was as fat as he could be before winter, he brought him down with an arrow in the throat and a spear thrust in his heart.

He flayed the skin and pelt and had it made with Ingmar’s help into a wonderful bear-shirt.  Deftly, she sewed up the one rent made by the spear.

He did the same for himself too, only his was different from his grandfather’s.  Ingmar the servant woman embroidered a collar so it wouldn’t rub his neck raw.

Ingmar was not going anywhere, despite her special sewing ability.  She was a slave.  Mimir had out-lived two good women.  Each had been as good a wife as a man could wish.  Ingmar, his slave woman was his only helper now, caring for his household needs. 

He might have married her too, even though she was much younger, but he judged himself too old for a wife now.  He also concluded it would not be fair to deprive her of the younger man she deserved, who could father her children.  Few aging Danes in the same position would think women had such consideration coming, but Mimir was not like other men his age. 

11.

IT CAME ABOUT IN THIS way that Becca learned how the land lay with Mimir in matters of romance and matrimony and the End of the World.

Becca with a youth’s unguarded looseness of lips, reproached his grandfather one day.

Why not take her to bed, Grandfather, at least to warm your bones at nights? You don't need to marry her and give her your goods when you die.  They can be buried with you or burned in a funeral pyre.  And she is still young enough to marry and give pleasure to a man, I should think.

As if Becca knew!  He remained a virgin youth—not uncommon in that society.  That was not so surprising.  Village maidens were not readily available to young men such as himself, unless the fathers approved of a coming match with any of them.  Where would they find lovers at their age anyway?

Becca was not interested in taking a bride at this stage of his life either.  So he was hardly going to gain access to the marriageable girls in the village!  What father would let his young filly sport in the field with a yearling when the father needed to marry her off to get rid of the expense of her upkeep?

Mimir shook his head and his gray hairs fell down across his face.

"I will not force an old man's love on her.  She is content to serve me as she is, my son of my son.  And I am content with her as