Demon of Scattery Read online

  The Demon of Scattery

  Poul Anderson

  and

  Mildred Downey Broxon

  Once in the war between elves and trolls, it happened that Skafloc fled England to seek help among the Sídhe. He was a mortal who had been fostered by elvenkind; he bore with him the halves of the sword called Tyrfing. Could that weapon be forged anew, it would bring victory to his folk. They were in sore plight. But no smith could mend it save Bolverk, the blind giant afar in Jötunheim.

  Mananaan MacLir befriended Skafloc in Ireland, and they set sail together on the quest. Though their boat was small, her hull and rigging were charged with the force of Mananaan, who had been a god before the White Christ came, and who was still a might to reckon with on deep water. Also, at the prow danced the figurehead of Fand his lady.

  Farther northward the twain fared than a man-built ship would have gone before making landfall. Darkness lit by aurora fell over the sea.

  Icebergs went like moving mountains; from them welled frost. Strange beings prowled half-seen around the strakes. Again and again must Mananaan strain to the utmost his powers over wind and wave.

  Yet even on the hardest passage, times will come when seamen find naught to do but sit and spin yarns. It staves off the loneliness.

  Thus Mananaan, at ease on a bench, regarded Skafloc, who held the rudder. Tall was Mananaan and fair to see, with clear features, greenish-gold locks, and eyes that held the changeable hues of ocean. His green cloak, white tunic, golden torque and armlets bore the only bright colors within the rim of sight. He strummed a harp as he said, low and slow:

  “My friend, you are steering toward more than you know. You steer toward your fate, and what that might be I cannot tell. Yours is the blood of strangers; what burdens you is not the geas my people know. Now the world and the halfworld are changing, and I think all Faerie lies under an unforeseeable doom.

  “Even so, from what was, we can draw some understanding of what is, and perhaps of what shall be. I am thinking on a thing that happened in Ireland near a hundred years ago. Kindred of yours were caught in it, and at the end even I played a part. What it all meant lies outside my ken. I wonder if any god knows what really happened, unless he be too great for me to speak with.

  “But told from the human side, the tale can be followed. It may enlighten you in some way. If not, it may at least pass a few hours of our voyage.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  Historical Notes The Irish

  The Norse

  To

  Karen and Bill

  I

  THE VIKINGS REACHED SCATTERY Island on the first of April. This was a day of cold winds off the sea, noise and spray in the air, clouds at whose hasty shadows the sun cast spears. Whitecaps chopped across the Shannon mouth and the river itself ran darkling. New leaves tossed in the woods along either bank; spring green rippled over plowlands. Smoke blew in rags from the farmsteads yonder, but Halldor made out no folk and few kine. Everybody must have fled when the ships hove in sight.

  No. On the holm before him, the monks straggled from their chapel, milled briefly about like ants whose nest has been trampled, and ran for the tower. They had only one or two small curraghs, which could ferry but few of them away in time, and he had caught them unready, at their devotions. Norse dragons swam fast. Besides, the monks had their church treasures to ward, and a stout place wherein to stand siege.

  From the tiller of his craft, Halldor gazed down its crowded length to his goal. He had ordered the sail struck and oars out. Forty men, two to a shaft, cast their strength into the work, and Sea Bear drove forward with her hull ashiver. Some chanted together to help keep the beat, “Tyr hold us, ye Tyr, ye Odin—” hoarse amidst thole-creak, wave-splash, rig-thrum of a mast not yet unstepped. Helmets gleamed on their heads, ringmail on the shoulders of those who owned it. Proud on the foredeck as lookout, shining in iron, Halldor’s son Ranulf laid hand on the snarling beast-head mounted at the prow.

  His father’s glance dropped, and brows drew into a scowl. A woman knelt in the hull below Ranulf’s feet. Though cowl and flapping cloak covered most of her, Halldor saw clasped hands and knew she was calling on her White Christ—in a whisper, but it might reach far. He touched the small silver hammer at his throat and drew Thor’s sign.

  The steering oar bucked, to let him know it wanted his full grasp. He shrugged off his faint misgivings. Her saints and angels had helped her naught when the Norsemen sacked her convent some days agone and Ranulf ran her down across a field. Indeed, she was the only one who was taken away, he and some of his friends finding her sightly enough to be worth her keep out of their shares of food and drink… for a while, at least.

  Halldor turned his mind toward the other two ships, Arrow-Egil’s gaudy Reginleif and Sigurd Tryggvason’s Shark. Good, they were still where he wanted them, aft of his to starboard and larboard. He hadn’t been sure of that, for although their skippers and he had sworn brotherhood, they had merely agreed to follow his redes as long as they deemed those to be sound.

  Several more had called him over-careful. He was a fine seaman, they admitted, but no viking. He had not let himself get angry. It was true; he was a trader, raiding not because he wanted to but because he must. He had answered mildly that he had not kept himself alive through five and forty winters by using his head only for a hat rest.

  This had been in Armagh, in the north of Ireland, where a number of crews were lying over between fall and spring rather than go back to Norway…

  Halldor had been asking everyone about the western coast; he had learned Irish several years earlier. At last he had fared thither on horseback with a few trusty companions. To those he met along the way, he said he was a messenger; but he always looked about him, and beheld the richness of the land. On his return, Egil and Sigurd were ready to listen. They were from Thrandheim too and knew him of old.

  The three sat in a wattle-and-daub hut. Eye-smarting smoke drifted thick below the thatch. From the rafters hung meat the farmwife had set to cure before she and her family were driven off. Rain pattered on the roof and lay pooled outside the wicker door.

  “Pickings ought to be good along the lower Shannon,” Halldor said.

  “Our folk have not been that way in a long time. Farmsteads, monasteries, churches with their golden vessels—all lie waiting for us. Of course, others besides me know this. We should start early, to arrive first. From the way the season has gone thus far, we might safely embark a little before the equinox.”

  They were somewhat surprised, but took him at his word. He was not called Halldor the Weatherwise for nothing; throughout his life he had paid close heed to sea and sky, and thought much about what he saw.

  Sigurd did frown and say, “Um-m-m, we’ll be just three shipsful. Man for man, the Irish fight as well as our own lads. If a chieftain thereabouts can quickly gather a host, we might have a nasty surprise.”

  “Halldor, of all men, has surely planned against that,” Egil answered.

  However well meant, his words smote painfully. During the past summer, the second he spent in viking, Halldor had been ambushed ashore and lost Ivar, the older of his two living sons. Soon afterward, Ranulf had arrived from home in his father’s trading vessel, ablaze with the wish to leave sixteen years of boyhood behind him.

  “I have,” Halldor said as steadily as might be. “We want a
base that we can hold against attack. Not that I reckon it likely we’ll be set on in force.

  However, it’s well to be ready. It’s also well to have a place where we can rest in safety, tend our ships and gear, maybe share out the plunder if it’s ample—for you know I want to end this cruise as soon as I’ve piled up what wealth I need.” He drained his beer horn and beckoned through the murk of the hut for a thrall to bring him more. “Spying,” he said, “I’ve found the right spot, too: an eyot settled by none but Papas.”

  “Christian kirkfolk? Good!” More than greed roughened Egil’s voice.

  Like many Norsemen, he saw witchcraft and bad luck in a faith that scorned all other gods.

  —And so, while the last winter winds howled—but less mightily than usual, as Halldor had foretold—they had set forth west and then south along Ireland, raiding as they went. At first, not much was left for them.

  Later they struck an untouched convent, but it yielded scant loot. Now, soon after, they had turned into the great river and were approaching Scattery Island…

  The clangor of a bell, blown downwind to his ears, roused Halldor from those flitting memories. That near had he come, rounding a spit at the north end to seek the sheltered bay on the east side. A half mile to larboard was lesser Hog Island; the nearer shore of the mainland lay as far again beyond. The sound loudened with every leap of his craft: clearly from a big bell, whose bronze would fetch a hefty price in Norway. The peals cried out of the tower which loomed over Scattery. Heaven whistled and scudded around it.

  Entering the bay, he squinted in search of the best ground, for there was no dock. Crow’s-feet wrinkles deepened around light blue eyes in a broad, high-cheeked, broken-nosed face. Grizzled yellow hair and close-cropped beard glistened with spindrift. The hauberk clashed on his burly frame when he leaned hard against the tiller.

  Scattery was itself small, about a mile long north-and-south, half a mile wide, lowlying in the water. Trees along the western rim were a shield-wall against storms for wattle-and-daub huts and a tiny stone church huddled not far from the strand. Otherwise he made out garden plots, grass and wildflowers beyond—and, near the church, the round tower. Of grey stone, skillfully dry-laid, that thing reared a hundred feet or more to its conical slate roof. Windows stared from each floor like sockets in the skull of a saint. The wooden door was ten feet aloft, reached by a ladder which the monks had pulled after them.

  The vikings rowed slower now, until shingle grated beneath Sea Bear’ s keel. Ranulf was the first overside. “Yuk-hei-saa-saa!” he screamed, the old battle yell. None of the warriors who had stood to their weapons and straightway followed him said aught, for nobody was here to fight.

  Oarsmen drew the sweeps inboard, dropped them clashing amidst the benches, took up their stowed arms, and likewise jumped. Had foes been on hand, Halldor would have been in the lead. As was, he could make fast the rudder, out of harm’s way, before he too sought the bow and sprang.

  The Irishwoman, Brigit, was kneeling there abaft the foredeck. Beyond her he glimpsed the real hammer he kept in its rack, hallowed to Thor. A horror too great for weeping was upon her. He made out words she stammered in her own tongue. “—Easter Sunday, and the heathen come to the holy isle—Easter— Eli, Eli, lamach sabachthani?” He didn’t understand that last.

  No matter. He leaped. The water belted his waist, chill and swift. No shield encumbered his wading ashore, for he wielded an ax. While he helped draw the ship well up, he saw the Irishwoman rise. She straightened her back and waved at the tower. He liked that.

  Shark and Reginleif neared. Halldor signalled them to come in, the ground being shown safe for good-sized hulls. “Let’s go, let’s go!” Ranulf cried.

  “Stay,” his father said. “They’ll not run away yonder.” The lad dithered all the while that the rest of the Norsemen came to land, made fast their vessels, posted guards, and formed a band to move on toward the tower.

  At a shout from Halldor they came to a halt beyond bowshot of that stronghold. A few arrows nonetheless flew from its windows. The waste and the short way they sped told him that nobody schooled in war was there.

  He stepped ahead of his troop, with small fear of being hit by such archers, till he was almost at the wall. Staring along its height to the swiftness of clouds overhead, he felt as if it were toppling on him; his feet, wet and cold in their boots, curled toes toward firm earth. Gulls wheeled above, mewing through the wind.

  He filled his lungs and shouted in Irish, “Ahoy, you! Will you be talking?”

  After a short while, a man leaned out of a lower opening. Though the hair around his tonsure was white and he had not many teeth left, his call resounded: “Michael speaks, abbot of Saint Senan’s. Are you Christian?”

  “No, but I’m prime-signed.” Halldor had undergone that rite years ago; by it he did not forswear his friend Thor, but he became one with whom the baptized might lawfully deal. “I’ve traded in England and France as well as Scotland and Ireland. They do not think ill there of Halldor Ketilsson.”

  “Those are no chapman’s craft which bear you, those lean hulls with demon figureheads.”

  “Oh, we are in viking this time. However, I’m not the kind who’d slaughter needlessly. Yield, and all of you shall go free, yes, even the sturdy ones we could sell. I will swear this by any oath you wish, and by my own honor in the hearing of shipmates.”

  The abbot’s gaunt frame stiffened yet further. “Think you in your pride that we, to save our poor lives, would let you profane the house of God, scatter the sacred vessels and relics, make the sanctuary a den of robbers?” He spat. Had the wind blown less strong, he might have struck his target. “And this on the very day when Christ is risen? We’ve meat and drink in here, and we’re well-used to fasting. God will send us help.”

  “If you try to hold out, I can promise nothing,” Halldor warned.

  “What worth can be given a heathen’s word? Rage, then, if you will.

  Slay us, and we fall as martyrs, who’ll afterward watch from Heaven as you writhe in Hell.” Michael caught his breath, mastered his fury, tempered his shout. “Beware, Lochlannach. This is most sacred ground that you tread. In ages past, Saint Senan banished a monster from here, a creature more frightful by far than your flimsy dragon ships. We keep his holy rule.

  He will not forsake us. Beware, Lochlannach!”

  Halldor had heard that legend when he was spying in these parts, and thought little of it; he had often met its kind. The abbot was merely, forlornly seeking to daunt him by it. “Well, you can still yield before we attack,” the Norseman offered, and walked off. Despite the poor marksmanship of the defenders and the byrnie which ought to turn their weakly driven arrows, a tightness clutched between his shoulderblades till he got back to his folk.

  He had no wish to die. Whatever lay beyond—in Norway alone, one heard of feasting in god-halls, gloom in the nether depths, strange half-life in the grave, rebirth, and who knew how much else?—this world was his, friends and kindred, home and holdings, Unn his wife, their daughters who were lately wedded and beginning to bring forth grandchildren, the hope of the house that lay in Ranulf, the growth of a grainfield or a woodcarving beneath his hands, merriment, wide farings, endless play of sky, water, weather…

  —“Burn them out,” Egil said. “Cut wood from the trees and those hovels, stack it around, put the torch to it.”

  “Hear them yell while they fry,” Ranulf cackled.

  Halldor frowned at his son and answered:

  “Stillness beseems the youthful.

  Speak not with nothing to speak from.

  That wolf will win the most meat

  Which warily gangs after prey.” He was somewhat of a skald, and thought a stave was the mildest way to chide the boy—who flushed and withdrew, stiff-legged.

  To Egil, Sigurd, and the rest in earshot, Halldor said, “Have you forgotten? We want that tower for ourselves, a safeguard. A fire would bring down the floors and make it useless.
Also, steering in, did you not see the Papas shift their wealth there, whatever it is?”

  “If their books burn, well and good,” Egil snapped.

  “I’ve handled books and come to no harm,” Halldor told him. “Rather, I’ve learned things. It’s a shame so many among us fear they hold baneful wizardry. But if naught else, what of embroidered cloth threaded with pearls and gold, or silver chalices, or crystal-studded boxes, that would be lost?”

  “What, then, would you do?” Sigurd asked him.

  “What I awaited from the start,” Halldor said. “We knock together a framework to stand on, and bring it to the tower, and beat in the door.

  We’ll need a ladder or two as well, inside, but not much else. Those hymn-singers can’t do anything against us hand-to-hand.”

  He felt the least bit sorry for the monks. They were bearing themselves like men.

  The afternoon was old when everything was ready. Halldor helped drag the scaffold to its place—the trunk of a young rowan, the shaft of a spare oar were cool and smooth against his palms—and was first up. On the way, arrows and flung stones dealt the vikings no more than a few flesh wounds, and made them hoot laughter.

  When he swarmed aloft, the rungs were steady beneath his feet. Mostly the frame was held by lashings, but he had himself driven nails into key spots. Those he carried on Sea Bear for making repairs, and the hammer he used was Thor’s.

  It was his ax, though, which he now swung. Two fellows beside him on the platform did likewise. The blows thundered, splinters flew, gashes opened white, the door gave way. Beyond was a room bare and dim, a hole in its ceiling for farther passage. The monks seemed to have gathered on top, just below the tower roof. Warriors pushed in around Halldor. They brought a ladder. He mounted. Their baying echoed back and forth.

  Beyond, he heard the bulk of his folk raven at the foot of the buildings like dogs at a tree wherein a squirrel is trapped.

  The racket turned into a howl. Words cut through: “They’re dropping boulders-” Wrath roared.