Gone Viking 04

Upriver

That night, Agnar slept next to me, a sword between us, a guarantee of honorable conduct. I appreciated the additional warmth of his body under the robe because, despite the advance of the season into a blossoming spring, the nights were still quite chilly. The People said that this was the perfect weather for the tapping of the maple tree.

Agnar was up before me well before dawn, finding the edge of the encampment to empty his bladder. His departure left me chilly, and I missed him. I had slept with a partner for twenty years, so sleeping alone was difficult and Agnar's considerate conduct was a great relief. I had no interest in copulating with a man from a mystical past. Was I the time traveler, or were they? We were in the same place geographically, but by many hundreds of years earlier; if, indeed, this was actual history, and not a parallel universe, or a hallucination.

Soon, the same urge forced me to reluctantly leave the diminishing warmth of our bed for a private place on the brush-lined shore of the island. I had inadvertently picked the bushes favored by many of the females on the island, as I was aware of several other squatting figures in the nearby bushes. This was a time of female companionship, as there were several muted conversions and some laughter.

Wiping myself with what I hoped was an innocuous piece of moss; although dew soaked, it might have cleansed me, but did nothing to dry my privates. I resigned myself to being in wet panties for the duration of the morning. One does not think of bringing spare undies on this sort of spur-of-the-moment adventuring.

Agnar returned to where we had slept together. "We slept as shipmates, comrades." He handed me a baldric with a long, sheathed knife. "Poke me with this, if I ever forget we are shipmates."

I tried to refuse, but he insisted. "The male wants to do the thing very badly at times. And at times, he does it very badly. We are a dumb stubborn part of humanity, so we need reminding of our better natures. Also, as a Viking, you look naked without a blade."

We loaded the long ship with the traded goods remaining. We had goods we would trade further north. We had food we had traded for to keep us alive. We would hunt, we could fish, we would cook, eat, sleep, piss, shit— we would carry on.

Or try. Ellaf agreed to take a passenger north. Not that he could safely refuse to transport the shaman, Mestigoit. Mestigoit was shaman to several of the bands in the area and well known, respected and feared over a great area of this large river watershed.

As modern peoples, we too easily dismiss the power of faith, superstition, and the belief in the supernatural. The People believed in power they could not see that controlled their destinies. They gave great credence to their dreams. Indeed, it was said of the People that they believed that this waking life was a dream, and only in dreams was their reality.

A shaman, like Mesitgoit, helped them make sense of all this. Mesitgoit was an intermediary with the unseen world and an interpreter of dreams. Ellaf was visibly worried about his august passenger. Any accident befalling the shaman would be a bad omen. His death might doom the future of our trading with the peoples. They were becoming addicted to the material culture we were bringing them. They would not abandon that, but they might find other ways, other agents, to obtain what had become a need.

I was given an early shift on the rowing bench. Ellaf kept rotating rowers so that there was always someone fresh to fill in. Sometimes, we would only row with half the benches full. We were in no hurry, as long as we could meet the next band in a day or so.

My respite from rowing was not a respite from work. Because of the nature of the river and a spring flood, at least one crew member kept watch to keep debris floating downstream from damaging the ship... Sometimes, the better part of an hour would pass with no threat approaching the hull; then suddenly, floating deadwood, submerged tree trunks, and a torrent of debris would assault the ship as if directed by a capricious hand.

( I neglected to mention that the name of our ship was Barufakr or "Wave Horse.")

My companion at the bow of the ship was Mestigoit. He pretended to be annoyed with me, even playfully taunting me. I splashed him with a slap on the river with the spare oar I used to push dangerous objects away from the hull.

But it was all a ruse. He wanted to converse. But not in a conventional way. We talked within each other's heads. It was a consensual thing, not intrusive mind reading.

I saw this as natural. A skill I had always had. He made it clear he respected me as a fellow magician. I had revealed much to him the night I was under the influence of the mushrooms.

And since he felt he had the measure of me as 'a traveler from beyond what is known.' It was professional courtesy for 'him' to reveal himself. He had power with the people, not in spite of, but because of his infirmities, and his infirmities we more than met the eye. His legs were malformed at birth, his nose broken as a youth. But much of his magic came from the tragedy that no Northman knew, and it was only whispered by the people.

He was not he; also, he was not her. Part of the flaw in his formation in the womb that had ruined his legs, made him not male and not female, although showing some of the genitalia of both. In physique and strength, he was male from the waist up. But he produced no seed. His member did not stiffen.

He had a vagina but no fertility, he had never bled, he had no womb, only a blind, dead-end tunnel.

This gave him magic over both men and women. He possessed more understanding of men than any woman, and more understanding of women than any man.

"How can a woman who has slept with a man, borne children, possess such magic as you have? The People believe that if someone is deprived of these things, the universe compensates by giving one wisdom, power over the unseen. And the ability to talk to monsters."

"Monsters?" I questioned.

"Ah, the Northmen dismiss our stories, but, indeed, the forests are replete with beings that terrify the People.

"The deeper the forest, the further away from the River and the habitations of the People one journeys, there the Monsters are not fearful to live. For they fear us as much as they terrify us."

(To be continued.) Many thanks to my editor Kenji Sato.

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