the berserker's tale - part I

The water cascaded noisily over the stones in the riverbed and though the spring floods came early it was still not deep enough to keep men and horses from fording. On any other morning the sound of it rushing would have carried over the lowing of the cattle in the surrounding meadows. But the waters ran red with blood, the groans and cries of the wounded drowning out both the gurgling river and the neighboring livestock.

King Vortimer lay prostrate in the bloody surrounding meadow, his berserkers lying arms and legs akimbo around him in a wide circle. The victors stooped to loot and stab the fallen.

A wounded berserker pushed a dead warrior who clung to him in death's embrace off of his chest and rose slowly to his knees. His body feathered with arrows, a few Saxons warily approached him, remembering how fiercely he had fought and seeing their own fallen lying thick round about him. Even with his long sword's tip resting on the earth and his head hung in exhaustion, they had to goad one another till one dared confront him to deliver the killing blow.

While they dallied, he raised himself gingerly off one knee and braced his left foot against the hard ground. His head remained bowed and his sword, gripped firmly in his right hand, was as still as the dead surrounding him. The Saxon who approached him was more intent on killing his exhausted enemy than guarding against an unanticipated blow and was surprised when the berserker suddenly thrust himself upward and swung his sword in a wide and deadly arc, his overconfident opponent crashing to the earth with blood streaming from his cleaved throat.

And there he stood on the odd tableau of a battlefield whose defeated living had abandoned the field, his feat of arms an insult to the Saxon warriors that save for one man who refused to perish, had won the day.

An almost forgotten voice breaking the brief silence, the exhausted hero's eyes flickered with hope, its raw and harsh fury a cross between a war cry and a mule’s bray. But before he could turn his head to see what manner of friend or foe had newly entered the field of arms, two Saxons dashed at him with battle axes raised and he made a terrifying sweep to the left and then right with his sword felling each.

The voice cried out a second time, the Saxons closest to him back stepping in surprise as a man of unusual height and breadth of shoulders leapt into their mass swinging a huge war hammer, the pole held in his large hands so long that it bent under the weight of its great, iron head, helms flying through the air as Saxon skulls were smashed and necks broken by the terrifying force of his blows.

As he swung the weapon in a wide circle, he ducked his head each time the pole passed over him, the hammer picking up speed as Saxons sidestepped to flee his killing rage, their archers rapidly loosing poorly aimed arrows that plucked at his tunic and kilt but never wounded.

But two men could not alone this battle win and the berserker finally turning filled his lung with air, his voice booming into the hills facing away from the ford, FORTOOONAH! its echo ringing across the meadow.

King Vortimer stirring, he raised his hoary white head and the berserker cried out, Rally, good fellows, rally to the king! while the nameless one waded into the Saxon horde like a mighty man of old. Vortimer rose shakily to his feet and lifting his sword high above his head cried out, FORTOOONAH! In the distance, battle cries echoed from the hills and across the meadow as the king's army rushed toward the battle.

A well aimed arrow piercing the wounded berserker's throat, he stumbled to his knees and dropped his shield to grasp his neck. Taking a few deep breaths he rose again and with one last backward glance sprinted like a doomed man into the fray.

...

Author's note: In the coming weeks I plan to post installments for a new serial fiction, the berserker's tale, loosely based on the battles fought in Britain in the late fifth and early sixth century during their attempt to hold the invading Saxons at bay.

If you believe Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum and the Annales Cambriae, into this dense intermingling of history and legend swaggered Arthur Pendragon or Ambrosius Aurelianus from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

These names live on in the annals and in the imagination of their heirs, and though history has long since turned away its jaundiced eye, it still wishes it might find a thread of truth to these tales even as it doubts. It is in the tension between myth and fact that the most interesting stories hide.

The unsung heros, those who died or disappeared from the records in favor of their more fanciful betters are the ones that interest me. Some say the mighty hammer wielding warrior hailed from Annwn, the Welsh otherworld, and yet others think he was a half-forgotten Celtic deity. His is the story that I have longed to tell for more than thirty years.

If we could separate history from his implausible myth, perhaps we might find not one but a composite of many, the booming cry on the battlefield, FORTOOONAH! a prayer to possibility, or if you believe in such beings, to the Roman goddess who blindly governs chance in the affairs of men and women, assigning gifts and misfortune based on the random spinning of her great wheel.

And fortune both for good and ill, dear readers, is the underpinning for this story. May it smile more than it frowns on each of you.

Stay tuned! More will shortly follow.

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