Freelance Traveller

Here Be Dragons

by John Clifford

This part originally appeared in the March/April 2018 issue.

Chapter Three

5712 CE / 1194 Imperial
Spinward Marches 1126 Orcrist B8A6733-C Fl
3-645th battalion E company Orcist Militia Armory, Fjerntby

After waiting almost two months for another ship to relieve them, the Jorvik had limped back to the Sword Worlds Confederation for major repairs. Sometime during the voyage an anonymous crewman had put together a holovid using sensor readings, security video, helmet cam footage and even some gun camera images. The audio was mostly intercom recordings. Then a rather well done musical track was added. When the ship made port in Narsil the holovid was loaded to the data net. It was entitled, ‘The battle of Singer’. Within a week it had been sent throughout the confederation. When the press got a hold of it, they dubbed Myra ‘the Laughing Valkyrie’. She seemed to enjoy her fifteen minutes of fame. (Although she repeatedly said that if she ever found out who made the video, she’d murder them.)

As soon as Grev (Count) Stev Brun heard of the video, he downloaded a copy and watched it with his wife Caroline. He thought she was going to pass out when their daughter had jumped on the back of the warbot. But by the end of it they both cheered. Then Stev decided that this would best be viewed with an audience. He rented the local militia armory hall; it was larger than the great hall in the Brun estate. During peace time the hall could be rented, and often was, for social occasions. Then he had invited, basically, the entire town of Fjerntby. Almost everyone had seen the holovid already, but everyone that could be there was. After all, Myra was one of their own, a local girl made good. The count and his family provided food and generous amounts of beer. Some of the townsfolk had put up a banner and decorations around the hall. Everyone seemed determined to make an event of the showing.

And an event it was. Food and drink flowed freely and a general party atmosphere prevailed. That is, until the holovid started. Then, silence fell over the crowd, broken only by the occasional gasps and the odd whisper. Stev watched the crowd and was amazed by the rapt attention the audience was paying, even though he knew that most of them had seen it already. When it ended, with an image of Myra thrusting the broken laser rifle and the head of the warbot into the air, her face lit by the vampire ship’s nuclear destruction as she shouted, the music continued, but it was drowned out by the roar of the crowd. Stev jumped to his feet with the rest of the crowd and roared in celebration. Even his wife, normally reserved and prim, shouted with the rest. Then a thought occurred to her and she sat back down. A wistful smile crossed her face.

For most of Myra’s childhood Caroline had tried to turn her into a proper lady, a refined noblewoman, beautiful, graceful and nurturing. She had failed miserably, obviously. But until this moment she hadn’t understood why. Some centuries past the Sword worlders had gone through a ‘Viking’ revival. They had tried to remake their society based on a highly romanticized vision of their ancient Scandinavian forebears. When Caroline was younger she had been a huge history buff and she had read some copies of the surviving history texts about the original Vikings. She had realized that they had gotten some of the major details of the real Vikings badly wrong. By modern standards most of the Scandinavians that had actually gone ‘a Viking’ would be classified as having serious mental illnesses. But, during the dark ages, what later generations would consider insane, were merely survival traits. Even admirable, heroic.

One of the other things that had stood out to Caroline in her studies was that those ancient peoples tended to see the humor in life. They lived, for the most part, short brutal lives. Yet they tried to, as much as possible, enjoy life. Somehow the Sword Worlders had missed that part. Her people tended to be grim, stoic, even humorless. But as she had watched her daughter laughing at the vampire ship it showed her the simple truth of Myra. She wasn’t a Sword Worlder trying to be a Viking. Myra Stevdatta Brun was a real Viking. She was a throwback to their ancestors. Replace her vacc suit with chain mail, the laser with a broadsword and the robot head with a troll’s head. Send her back in time five thousand years and she would fit in perfectly. Caroline’s precious little girl belonged on a longship raiding the coast of Europe.

* The first Viking raid was at the island monastery of Lindisfarne, off the Northumbrian coast, in 793 C.E.

Another thought occurred to the countess and she looked around at the celebrating crowd. The Sword Worlds were going through another dark age, surrounded by enemies, with little hope of surviving much longer as an independent people. Perhaps what they needed was people like her daughter. Maybe, in order to survive, they needed to become Vikings again, wading into battle for the sheer joy of it. Then another thought came to her and her face changed. She remembered reading about the very first Viking raid ever recorded*. She reached out and tugged on her husband’s sleeve.

Stev looked down at his wife and was taken aback. He had never seen her smile like that. Her face was a mirror of the evil grin Myra had flashed her men in the battle. He asked her tentatively “Are you alright?” She nodded her head, “Tell me, do you think the vampire ships have any monasteries we can raid?” All he could do was look at her with a confused expression as she threw her head back and laughed. She was sure Myra would get the joke.

Caroline’s laughter joined the general sounds of the celebration as they echoed through the hall. And as they did, they also echoed though time and space, melding with the distant echoes from a small town in Norway. Some would suggest that the age of the Viking was returning, but truthfully, had it ever really left?