Becca The Viking & The Heavenly Runes Book 3, Voyage To The Holy Land: Becca The Viking & The Heavenly Runes

By R.D. Ginther

Becca Book 3, "The Voyage To The Holy Land," was another wonderful continuation of the adventurous voyages of Becca the Red, and his Viking ship and crew of Fifty. However, in this saga, Becca encountered trials that should have by all rights destroyed him and his men but instead, divine intervention snatched them out of certain disasters.

 

Becca still had a lot more to learn and especially about himself and his shortcomings. Thankfully, Cheese-slicer, the reformed thief turned prophet, was always by his side and was used divinely to redirect him in the right direction. Despite the trials these Northmen encountered, they were not enough to break their spirits. They all remained honorable to their captain Becca, holding fast to the agreements in their contracts, to do or die for the sake of the ship and each other. He in turn always kept a careful eye on every man and even the extra men he acquired.

 

No matter how each situation may have seemed to these men, whether fighting the winds and sea, or Arabs, it always worked out to their benefit in the end, earning them their title as true Vikings. Soon they will be heading home, soon it will all be over, but will it really be over for everyone? Is death and the grave the end if human life that people think, or another door and a birth into a new dimension?

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.A.Edwards
• Release date: May 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223616177

Book preview

BECCA THE VIKING

EARTH I

BOOK III

Voyage to the Holy Land

1.

Becca was left free to lie down and to think over past and future things without being involved in the minutiae of ship operations. 

The events of the last two voyages would not let him sink into sleep but kept running through his mind. 

In the early hours before dawn,  a man’s thoughts run more clear in the cool ebb tide than in the heat of the day.  For Becca that was so, and he was like many a man in that respect. 

On a Northman ship manned by free men, a captain need not to be on duty at all hours to command the ship—far from it!  Each man aboard knew his duties and took responsibility for performing them, and so he in turn was freed from constant supervision.

How totally different a Northman ship and its crew performed, as the East Romans observed with admiration but could not fathom the reason for it—being they operated galleys manned by slaves, not free men. 

His helmsmen, too, rotating the duty, could see to most everything as well.  Becca need not, therefore, be disturbed when he took to his bed. 

Again and again, he turned over in the spot on the ship reserved to himself, his blanket and hide covering him against  the chill and damp, and the occasional spray off a wave that overtopped the gunwales. 

Winds swept over the ship.  It rocked from time to time, but that was the rocking of a fleece-lined cradle  to a Northman.  It felt perfectly right to the marrow of his bones, to be rocked like that in the bosom of the sea.

Rock-a-bye, Viking, in the long-ship,

When the wind blows, through waves will slip.

When the dawn breaks, her men spring up,

And pass around the horned mead cup!

He was thinking of the past when instead he saw the future, a cloud coming toward him, full of a brightness that could not be the sun.  He knew the sun did not move in that way, even when it casted its rays across the water in the earliest breaking of day’s light.

Instead, out of the cloud and the brightness, a single form became sharper and more clearly distinguished from the cloud that carried him, for the figure that appeared was a man’s, or rather a unique Man’s.

At this point, Becca’s heart began to beat faster.

Truly, a man?  This could be no mere mortal!

The Man stood upon the water, with one foot, and his other foot stood on the wave-tossed coast.

No man ever stood so high and as large as this Man.  In later centuries Jonathan Swift in his Gulliver’s Travels would make fun on giantism in Gulliver, an ordinary man, something of a yokel,  set amidst a tiny race of mankind, the Lilliputians.  On arrival in their land, he lay down to sleep, then awoke later to find he was tied down with hundreds of tiny strings because to  them he presented a threat to the entire nation, as big as he was.  To the Lilliputians the threads were thick ropes, but to him they were mere threads.  Enough of them, however, did hold him down, and he had quite a time to extricate himself.  The continual troubles he had being a colossus in a land of  finger-high human beings, made for a hilarious account.  But the real thing for Becca, this was not funny at all!

Becca wondered,  how this could be that a Man could be as large as this cyclops? 

Surely, he was either the Christos, the Lord Yeshua, or he was one of the great ones of God, the angels His servants.

He recalled now he had seen him before.  It hit him like a bolt from the clouds.  At Lindisfarne!

How that memory shot through him, it was so painful at times, a memory of hot war returning years afterward to a man in bed, only it wasn’t a war—it was a cold-blooded raid of robbery and rapine.

The Lindisfarne angel stood over the isle viewing the bloody, fiery carnage of a church, the monastery being ransacked and destroyed at his feet!

He still couldn’t understand it for the life of him.  How could this mighty an angel have stayed his sword as he, Becca, and his fellow Danes rampaged through the church and the hallowed halls?  They burned the buildings, killing old monks and priests. They sacked up church valuables to be carted back to the ships, and thence to Dane-Land, to fuel the drinking, the orgies and boasting parties in the kings’ mead halls!  They committed every outrage known to men acting like brute beasts on helpless, innocent people.

True, he himself hadn’t taken part in the women’s rapes and killing for the sake of killing.  But he had shared ships with those who had, both coming to Lindisfarne and going.

True, he himself had fought only against armed defenders, but still he was the invader,  the robber,  they were only defending what was theirs, not his and his fellow Danes’.

Becca sprang to his own feet.  He stared out through the darkness at the Angel.  Why was he  coming back to haunt him? Or had he come to avenge Lindisfarne and kill him?

Justice so delayed seem terribly unfair!

Why hadn’t this powerful an angel of God planted just one gigantic foot on him and the whole Viking fleet,  and next bend down blowing all the scurrying, surviving Vikings on shore right out to sea to drown them?  They were just like ants to him in size.  He could have done it!  They all certainly deserved it!

Becca rubbed his face, he could not believe this was happening.  By  looks and size, the same Angel had `returned and was facing him.  Compared to the angel,  his ship shrunk to a tiny toy boat bobbing before his mighty feet just as the Viking ships had done back at Lindisfarne.

Lightning struck in sheets across the horizon.  It remained dark, with clouds that blocked the light.  Becca’s ship rocked, then sank into darkness, next was lit with the brightness of the day.

What  some Vikings called witches’ breast milk and later called St. Elmo’s fire glowed along the gunwales.  It changed color from bluish violet to other colors. 

He stared at it, enchanted despite his repugnance concerning witchcraft.

Green flames ran like snakes along the ropes hanging from the mast, climbing up and down, then leaping to the dragon head at the prow.  It also had a rope attached so the green snaking fire travelling on the rope down into the water where it spread on the water, reminding him of Greek fire. 

Becca looked over the ship.  His occasional helmsman, Thorgil, stood at the tiller but seemed to have turned to stone.  Was he enchanted by a spell?  Not a head raised among the crew, they were sunk so deep in slumber.  How so?  Was he  the only one awake to view this cloud-wreathed Angel, the world-shaking Guardian of Lindisfarne?  Wouldn’t they be given a fit!

Before he could go and give Thorgil’s shoulder a shake, he heard a rumble.  Words came words out of the thunder.

"Nay, I am not that servant. He was the guardian of the boy you called

Aelfric.  I belong to the Four Guardians Of Holy Israel,  and my name is

Usocherah.  I will be your Guardian too, For the Holy One of Israel has

assigned me to you. I will be with you in trouble.  In fire and in flood, I

will come and help you.  Go forth on your Voyage.  It is the one you

have chosen in your heart."

How quickly the colossal figure of the Angel Usocherah vanished.  The Angel drew back into the clouds that brought him.  No mountain stricken by a great earth-shaking quake or eruption had ever disappeared from view so fast. 

The first sun’s rays of dawn glimmered on the horizon,  about to run across the water in a straight path to the ship.  Thorgil moved at the tiller, looking about until he looked his way,  so he knew he wasn’t asleep. 

Becca knew he could not sleep after such a sight as Usocherah.

He stood looking out.

What he had just heard excited his heart more than the sight of the Guardian of Israel who had declared himself his own guardian too.

He was to go forth on his voyage chosen in his heart?

Surely, that meant that he had heaven’s favor on this voyage!  What else could it signify?

His heart was heaving like a bird fluttering in his breast.  He felt like leaping into the water, just to do something that could express what he felt expanding within him, threatening to burst him apart with the thrill of it all in his limbs. 

He wanted to shout, he wanted to take off running, he wanted to throw a log all the way the length of his ship as Norse champions did.  It didn’t matter what he did, he just wanted to do something, anything wild, to express what he could not say in mere words.

Not willing to upset the crew, he sank down instead on his knees.

His men, starting to stir, peeked out of their bedrolls and a few caught sight of their captain, and might have thought he was praying.

He was not praying.  He was kneeling!  His knees had turned to water.

He had to kneel at the magnitude of what had just happened.  Heaven had smiled on him!  Yeshua, he knew, had sent his mightiest messenger, Usocherah.

The message now burned furiously in his heart.

What did it all mean?  What was this thing in his heart that the angel spoke about?  Why was this voyage so important compared to the others that it merited Usocherah’s appearance?

He wanted so much to find out immediately.  But he had no idea how.  Nothing came to mind.  He was dealing with a being sent from another realm, not born of human flesh but divinely created by a single word. 

If he had thought about that, he might have realized right then, it had little to do with his Lilliputian thoughts and feelings.  The answer lay deeper than his own thoughts could go, to God’s grand design and purposes perhaps. 

Now that he couldn’t resolve his question so easily, he felt frustrated.  He was the kind of man, always had been, that didn’t like muddles of any sort.  Riddles, yes, challenged the mind of man,  but they could be resolved most often with an agile wit, something he had always possessed. 

Hardly a man alive could best him at riddles, he had learned back at Hedeby.  But in matters of God’s purposes for his handling of the affairs of mankind?  What good could wit serve? 

Becca touched his bit of Mimir’s wise heart in the amulet hanging from his neck.  It was no magic talisman.  It only served to remind him of Mimir’s wisdom, that was all.

Yet this time he felt something pass from it to his own heart. 

Was he mistaken?  How could that be?  Mimir’s heart had long since decayed in the earth.  This tiny portion of it had dried hard like a stone.  He thought it couldn’t possibly hold any life.  Yet he felt something warming his own heart like the heat from a glowing fire!

Clutching the amulet, Becca went to the gunwale and looked out again across the waves.  He realized he was facing East, as the sun had arisen there. 

The amulet seemed to throb on his breast. 

What is going on with it? he murmured.  Is it pointing to the East?

He had been East, or at least the northeast, so why head there again?  He had no business, or chance of finding himself and his ship hired there as mercenaries.  The Arab Caliphates, knowing about his services to Charles would have set a bounty on his head no doubt.  Assassins would greet him at the first eastern shore he touched with his prow.  It was surely capture, torture, and death to go there.

Despite his attempt to prevent mistreatment of the Arab people they had conquered, some had been slain.  He could not prevent all the deaths during a campaign.  Then after the war had ceased, the victors his allies the Franks, rounded up  captives and usually sold them as slaves.  Didn’t the Arabs think they in turn would have done the same to them?

Yet his name had been attached to Frankish campaign.  News of it would reach the ears of the Caliphs in the South and East that he massacred Arabs and enslaved any survivors.  How they cursed his name and wanted to take vengeance on him!  It would be a lust for revenge flaming in their hearts. 

So he had no desire to ever set foot in any Muslim lands!  He couldn’t get hired, the Caliphs would never trust him.  So why was his amulet so agitated as he faced east? 

He didn’t like amulets for this very reason!  It had ceased to be dead and became alive.  He hated magic, as magic had been the obsession of his forebears.  Magic and wizardry had led them off into caves and  deep into woods to practice all sorts of sorcery, spells and nasty, malicious witches’ arts, involving the Dead and all sorts of evil spirits. 

Grabbing it in his hand, he was tempted to take it and throw it into the sea and be done with it. 

Yet he couldn’t!  he recalled his grandfather.

It was the only thing of his he still had.  And he sorely missed old Mimir,  and would always hold hard to his memory and his wise words. 

So he took his fingers off the amulet.  It stayed on the chain around his neck.  And yet it kept pestering him!

Becca, thinking it over, was beside himself.  What was he to do? 

Pacing back in forth on a small platform for even footing,  he tried again to think his options through.  Instead of turning north in the western Mediterranean, should he head due east after rounding the Straits of Hercules and its big Rock?

Nothing came to mind.  He made no progress at all. 

He finally did what he might better have done at the first. 

2.

He waited until it grew dark that same day.  His men were in their places of choice, sleeping or about to fall asleep under each his woolen blanket, and an oiled leather hide to keep  damp off. 

Sitting up, he called silently on Yeshua, only his lips moving.

Lord, I ask for your leading, your guidance,  as your servant.  If you are calling me forth, I ask for a sign, and some word that is clear as to where I am to go.  I also ask for your reason for such a long voyage, for I cannot go to the East, filled as it is with my enemies, unless that is your choice, unless I know how I am to live, me and my ship and my men.

That seemed to him a good enough prayer for a fighting man to pray.

He added a few things more, but they didn’t matter, as he felt and heard nothing in response.  Absolutely nothing!  The heavens above seemed turned to brass.

He tried some combinations of his petitions, but nothing he said, however which way he phrased them, produced the slightest result.  His amulet also seemed to mock his prayers by acting up all the more. 

Forget it then! he thought.  He was wasting his sleep time! 

He looked out landward as the last bit of Christian Frankish coast passed to the Muslim coast of Iberia.

Why not just turn around and try some far off northern kings for a change?  That seemed the smart thing to do.  They weren’t half as rich as the kings further south.  They had more fighting men than they needed ordinarily.  They were always squabbling with each other over tracts of rocky land that would be considered worthless further south in Frankia.  But one or more might hire him and pay him enough to make it worth his while in land and goods if they tightened their belts until the king, thanks to their services, got the upper hand over his enemies. 

Determined to do that very thing, the next day on leaving anchorage in a cove where they went for water and a little game hunting,  he ordered, rather gruffly, the helmsman to turn them northward.  He was heading back! 

As for the amulet, he had had enough of it.  He pulled it off to throw into the sea, then instead  threw it in his locker slammed the lid and locked it.

The  strangest thing happened.  Sea birds ordinarily follow any outgoing ship to catch any scraps thrown out from finished meals.  They did this time too. 

But they acted differently than all previous times—diving and making such a racket, the men even raised their oars on a couple occasions to bat them off in the air if they could. 

His men kept glancing at him and the crazy, diving birds, he couldn’t help but notice. 

He ignored the glances, and kept his eyes on landmarks, to make sure they weren’t driving south. 

Eventually the protesting, screaming birds rose up and fell away returning to the land.

The Sigrida didn’t get very far, as it turned out.  They ran smack into bad weather.

Storms, one after the other, raced at them from the north.  They took water, and sprang a leak.  Bailing had to be done through all the shifts.  They tried to gain shelter, but couldn’t find the entrances to any of the coves and bays they knew indented the coasts, as flying spray blown off white caps and the monstrous waves blinded their eyes. 

The seas grew more violent with each passing hour.  The howling winds made it impossible for any man’s shouted speech to be heard.

The  Sigrida shot up steep slopes to their crests and then was hurled down the other sides.  Demonic, black, boiling skies conspired to make it impossible to see anything that could possibly afford them shelter. 

Taking on more water,  as the Sigrida labored heavily, not lightly as before as a leaf on the water through the waves. Becca and his men fought for her, foundering seemed more and more imminent.  Every hour the storm continued might be their last as living men. 

Even  the veterans with years at sea got sick from the tossing of the ship, up and down, and up and down. 

Each time it seemed impossible they would ever crest the wave in whose power they were helpless to do anything.  Each time the ship survived after plunging to the bottom of an enormous wave, it was no credit to their seamen’s skills.  They all knew  oars and the sail were next to useless. 

The sail?  Becca had fear he would lose it and the mast.  He lashed the helmsman at his post with ropes to keep him from being washed over the side.  He himself stood watch for