Book 3: 'Arrow Odd'

17.0 THE GREAT PAGAN ARMY ATTACK ON ANGLELAND

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE GREAT PAGAN ARMY ATTACK ON ANGLELAND (Circa 866 AD)

"If the porkers knew the punishment of the boar-pig,

surely they would break into the sty and hasten to

loose him from his affliction."

The Saga of the Sons of Ragnar Lothbrok; Anonymous

(866 AD)  Over the summer, news filtered into Gardar, the Land of Forts, the Land of the Hraes', that the grandsons of King Frodi 'the Peaceful', Ruler of Kiev, the twelve berserker sons of Jarl Arngrim and Princess Eyfura were dead and buried on Samso Island in Denmark. And it was Arrow Odd who had killed them. The raider who had killed five berserker champions of King Frodi's in Zealand had now killed twelve berserker grandsons on Samsey. King Frodi sent out envoys to Erik 'Bragi' in Gardariki, to King Olmar in Tmutorokan and to Jarl Arngrim in Novgorod. An army was to be assembled to venture north and avenge the deaths of the berserker brothers.

"King Frodi has raised a host to attack us," King Roller told Oddi. "He wants your head."

"The berserker sons of Arngrim were after my head when I fought them on Samsey. And it cost Hjalmar 'the Brave' his life," Oddi complained. "I should flee."

"He will pursue you to the ends of the Earth," the king warned him. "You must go to King Hlodver and get whatever force he can muster. I shall raise a force to support you, but no king can help you openly. We are all under the rule of King Frodi. You must take your fleet and your forces to Britain and to your King Skolli there. We shall face Frodi in Angleland. His host is vast and we have no way of beating him, so we must wear him down, we must retreat up through the Jute Lands, the Saxon Exes, the Anglelands, the Danelaw, Northumbria and on up through Scotland, where our fleet will be waiting, then we'll go to Ireland and, if need be, New Ireland. There was a reason I sent you on that mission to find the western lands."

'Thus, the ends of the Earth just got a lot larger.'  Oddi thought at that moment that King Roller must be the most fortuitous king he had ever met. So, he left immediately for Sweden to garner King Hlodver's support.

"Do you know that at that moment he thought you were the wisest king in the world," Gunwar said as she joined Roller in bed. He hadn't seen her spirit for months. Then after Samsey, when Frodi sent envoys out proclaiming Arrow Odd an outlaw, she came to him again, pleading for the life of her son. But she needn't have, for Roller knew, after he'd learned of Heid's prophesy, that Oddi was his nephew, the son of his brother, Erik 'Bragi', Kagan-Bek of Tmutorokan. He would have a lot of explaining to do when he met his brother in Valhall he thought, as he pulled Erik's naked wife closer.

For the second time in his life, Erik received the war arrow, this time in Tmutorokan. He was going to the hall of the Alchemists' Guild when King Frodi's envoy passed him the blackened arrow. After he had received his first war arrow as a youth, it became he who sent out the war arrows during his tenure as leader of the Hraes' and now, decades later, he was receiving his second. "Tell your king," Prince Erik told the envoy, "that I shall meet him with my fleet at the Thames Estuary, for it is said that Oddi and his raiders have conquered that land, so that is where we must start our search. I shall take the Nor'Way in case they try to escape to the north."

When Erik entered the hall of the Alchemists Guild he took a small red Coptic style book out of his shirt and he joined eleven other Prophets and Alchemists that knelt in a circle and he opened his book and began to chant with them. There were Mages from Baghdad and Jerusalem, Cathay and India, Sheba and West Africa and one from the Nor'Way. They squatted on their knees in their wide circle of twelve and they chanted for hours, reading from their ancient texts, all different, yet so much the same, and soon Erik felt a presence in the room, an ancient being in the room behind him and a future being ahead of him, just beyond the ring of Mages. There was a problem. Something that had worked before no longer worked as it once had – the science was flawed or changing. Erik realized he was only a messenger. Zarathustra, Zoroaster, the original prophet of the book, the first prophet of the one true god religions had a problem and the answer could only be found in the future, so far in the future that an intermediary had to be found to communicate through and Erik had shown promise of being just such a Mage. The problem was in the primary Arc itself, and its ability to generate power. The secondary or receptor Arc worked fine, but the primary would not provide enough power for the receptor Arc to do its job quickly and a new application had arisen for which it was not suitable at all. Erik had no idea what was being discussed, or even the language it was being discussed in. It was images and ideas, nothing verbal. A great oaken chest filled with plumbium plates and fruity acids and copper and silver rods both rigid and flexible. The science had worked for centuries, but now it would not. Physics was changing as the three dimensional world was changing and Erik could understand this part...he had seen it before; when he was in Kraka's coma for nine days, he had seen the universe form from a singularity to a linear existence then to a planar form and into a three dimensional world that was evolving still and what had worked before no longer did. And concepts and terms such as batteries and capacitors were being bandied about, through and sometimes around Erik, and some things he could follow and others he could not fathom, but the future being that stood in front of him fully understood it all, like Erik understood steel, and the ancient being behind him was an apprentice who knew much of it and could guess at the rest. Silver plates and posts replaced lead, and acids were replaced with oils, and static generators of fur and cloth charged up the Arc and it became a power storage device rather than a generator and its output increased exponentially. Zarathustra was satisfied. History would be kept on track. Erik wasn't sure what was meant by that, but he knew the messaging was over.