©1996 D. A. Houdek

No reproduction or distribution without consent of the author

2992 words

"The Last Ship" is based on the unknown fate of the Norse Viking colony in Greenland. Before the year 1000 A.D. Erik the Red, father of Leif Erikson, the discoverer of America, was forced away from Iceland as an outlaw so colonized Greenland. In an early marketing effort he named it Greenland to attract settlers. For a time the colony thrived, but as the climate cooled toward the middle of the millennium, and the Viking exploration and settlement era ended, contact with the colony ceased. By the time a ship sailed again from Europe to learn the fate of the Greenland Norse, none remained alive. Their exact fate remains speculative. This story is science fiction.

THE LAST SHIP

by

D. A. Houdek

In 1410 the last ship sailed away from the Norse colony in Greenland.  With the mini-ice age deepening, the colony struggled on, alone and forgotten.  By the sixteenth century none of them remained alive.

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            This was a night for marvels, Asgrid decided as she stared up at the crystalline sky.  This was a night for magic, the glittering stars whispered to her.  Magic danced among the stars, rebounded from the cool planets, brushed against the crescent moon to reach teasingly down to earth, to surround Asgrid.  As she lay on the soft turf she felt the magic swirl through the rocks surrounding her meadow.  Then it reached skyward again, dancing again amongst the stars and planets as the vaporous streamers of an aurora.  Asgrid smiled.  Wonders would indeed abound tonight.

Around her the sheep were woolly shadows against the brilliant sky.  The work of guarding the flock here in Greenland was easy.  No wolves prowled as the old ones said they had in Norway.  Here were only a few foxes, too small to do harm to all but newborn lambs.  Of thieves she felt little fear.  The chieftain of her household, her great-uncle Skuli, was well respected, and as well feared.  Any who might harm his holdings knew well the vengeance the scarred old Viking would wreak upon them.  Or so all pretended to believe.  Asgrid knew he’d never left these ice-bound shores, never gone viking other than in dream-tales from the old sagas.  Like as not Uncle Skuli could scarce raise his arthritic arms to wield a sword.  Yet the old man did tower over his kindred.  Rusty though his sword may be, Uncle Skuli was the better in any match against the younger Norsemen of Greenland. 

Contemplation of the bleak decline of her people brought a sigh to Asgrid’s lips.  They needed to be part of the world again.  If only a ship would come to the Norsemen here at the end of the world.

Dismissing all thoughts but the marvels of this night awaiting her, Asgrid listened to the sheep.  Low and rhythmic, the sound of their breathing melded with the chewing of cuds into a sighing incantation.  Imagining she heard in their sounds the haunting melody of a conjuring song, Asgrid began to sing the ancient words of summoning.  Only here in the high meadows, away from the dour Christians, did she dare sing the old sorcerers’ songs.  She’d been taught them as a girl by the crone of Stokkaness — before they drowned her. 

Still, what she knew of the old religion, of Thor and Odin and Freya, and of the blood sacrifices they demanded, made her believe the Christian faith was a better one for the people to follow.  At least it offered hope for eternity instead of the cold certainty that one day all mankind, and even the gods, would die in the endless winter of Ragnarok.  

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            Overhead the stars twinkled in the blackness, battling the shifting colors of the aurora for their place in Asgrid’s sky.  The planets, not deigning to twinkle, rested in their ever-shifting places amidst the never-changing stars.  As her clear voice chimed the crescendo to the conjuring song a white streak crossed the sky.  Asgrid paused in her song.  The magic was strong this night, strong enough to summon a star to earth.

#

Atmosphere braking was dangerous at the best of times.  With this system’s star suddenly so active, playing havoc with instrumentation, it was foolhardy.  Commander would hear nothing of that, ignoring Second’s advice to swing past, do a hyperbolic around this unremarkable little planet with its pesky, flaring sun, and head on to the next target.  No one on Oldworld would ever know.  Another ship was undoubtedly slated to pass this star system with another ecoforming drop for that warm, wet planet.  Mark the drop for this world at the end of the galaxy as done and get on with the trip. 

No, Commander growled.  So here they were, blazing through the upper atmosphere, trying to survive even as they marveled at the way the star’s photons made a light show near the magnetic poles. 

No good, no good, Second chanted through gritted fangs.  The heat shielding neared its tolerance.  He knew what they looked like to the aborigines down there; like a meteor.  This was a debris laden system.  Meteors would be common and unremarkable.  There’d been no emissions on any band associated with any advanced technology.  Any sentient beings down there would, at best, regard them as gods, with the ship blazing through their sky as an omen.  If only they knew…  Second licked his fangs and scanned the instruments with satisfaction.  He was good.  Solar storms or not, they would make it. 

Then the unthinkable happened.  It must be one of the flares from that star, Second realized, that tricked the controller into shutting down an engine. 

Commander screamed irrational orders.  Shielding flaked off.  Crew ran about randomly striking controls, making the situation worse.  No, no, no, Second shouted silently.  Think.  Think.  Do nothing rash.  Just think.  As the ship tried to rip itself apart, plunging ever lower in the atmosphere, Second thought. 

It would work.  He could save them.  If he cut loose the trailing ecoforming pod he… 

As Second reached for the controls that would save them, Commander flung him aside. 

Fatal action, Second thought. 

Forgetting his shipmates, Second tossed Crew aside, climbing into the lifepod.  He ejected as the ship broke up.

#

Frost covered the grass when Asgrid woke that morning.  Remembering the positions of the stars, Asgrid knew it was early for frost.  Each year the frost came earlier the olds ones said.  Each winter bore down on them longer and harsher.  Each year the ice locked in their shores more solidly.  Ragnarok flitted through her mind.  Pagan tales.  Foolishness.  It had to get warmer soon, as it had been in days of old, when the colony was young.  The last two winters had been each milder than the one before.  Hope dared stir frozen hearts.  When it grew warmer, then the ships would come…

Snuggled among the sheep, with her wool cloak wrapped around her, she’d been warm enough, but the icy grass burned her feet as she chased the flock toward a higher meadow.  It was a place she knew where the grass still grew thick and tall.  Always she saved it as the last pasture of the season, to give the sheep a good fattening meal before the winter’s slaughter and deprivations.  She wanted to get to it and give the sheep a few days of good feeding before the snows covered it over.

A rocky escarpment surrounded the small meadow.  Asgrid chased the sheep one by one up and over the rock ledge that marked the pasture’s only access.  She helped the old ewe up, straining as she lifted the rheumy old beast.  Scrambling up behind the ewe, Asgrid heard panicked bleating from the flock.  Breath caught in her throat, Asgrid shoved the old ewe aside and ran into the open. 

“Mother Mary, have mercy,” she whispered in shock at the sight before her.  Only hooves and bloodied bit of wool remained of two of the flocks finest young bucks.  The hysterical bleating of a third sounded from the tumble of rocks at the meadow’s far side.  Strangled gurgling cut off the cries. 

Asgrid stood frozen.  Wolves?  It couldn’t be.  There were no wolves save in the tales and sagas old Uncle told.  It could be one of the great white bears.  At times one of the formidable beasts strayed this far south.  She fingered her small knife of carved bone.  It would be no match against a beast with teeth longer and stronger than it.  She looked again at the shredded remains of her sheep.  Three sheep lost meant hunger during the long, dark winter.  And it was her fault, her responsibility. 

Summoning the courage of her distant ancestors, the Viking warriors whom the world had feared, Asgrid pushed through the nervously milling flock and climbed the rocks at the far end.  As she struggled up she caught a glimpse of something climbing nimbly amongst the great boulders.  Panting, she backed down from the rocks, returning to her flock. 

Before the sun had set, bringing with it an unexpectedly icy wind, Asgrid had brought the remainder of the flock safely back to the farmstead. 

#

Second consumed the third fuzz creature more slowly.  Though the lifepod had the good grace to impact in a place cooler than most on this sweltering, damp planet, it was rather barren.  The little bit he’d seen on the way down showed him a land mostly covered by a sheet of ice and snow.  Whether island or peninsula, he could not tell.  Second was beginning to suspect this was not the planet’s most choice real estate.  Still, if there were sentient aborigines at a primitive enough level conquest, wealth, and godhood awaited him.  Also, he pondered, ripping through the annoyingly fuzzy creature’s exterior shell, if they were bipedal humanoids with appropriate mating portals, well, that would be a nice bonus. 

#

“Back early,” her father commented as Asgrid chased the flock into the enclosure.  “It has taken a sudden cold turn, but not so bad, I should think, you couldn’t have grazed them a bit longer.”  His eyes traced over the sheep, lips moving, and she knew he was attempting to count their numbers. 

“Three were lost this morn, Father.”  Asgrid preempted him with annoyance.  Sometimes she had no patience for her father’s dull wits. 

“Lost how?”

Asgrid hesitated.  How could she say what it was she saw.  If she spoke the truth they’d either not believe her, else they’d drown her as they had the old crone. 

“A white bear, I think,” she lied, staring at the ground.  She’d have to confess to the priest and do penance for lying to her father.  Worse, the priest was not noted for keeping confessions secret. 

All the men grew excited when Asgrid’s father told them that night of the white bear.  Boasts raced around the great hall as each man and boy thrust his chest out and proclaimed how he would kill the beast.  Empty boasts, she thought sullenly, for they had not a decent weapon among them.  Only old Uncle still owned a sword, and that was pitted by rust, its blade dull and chipped. 

She noticed then how he sat glowering at his kin from his high seat.  His cloak, a chieftain’s cloak once glorious, hung limp and thread-bare over his slumped shoulders.  Around his neck hung a cross of tarnished silver.  He did not join in the boasts nor, she believed, did he think any of the men here would go to hunt the white bear, just as she did not. 

After pulling away from the women, her aunts, cousins, sisters, and nieces, all of whom were gossiping about the latest birth of a misshapen baby, Asgrid edged nearer to the old man.  This was as close as she’d ever come to a Viking warrior of old.  If only in stories he’d sailed the seas in a dragon longship and known the friendship of Thor.  Whatever he had really been, now he was a decrepit hulk withering away among an ever-shrinking number of kin.

She refilled his horn with warm milk.  We used to drink stout beer and strong wine by the barrel, Uncle often said.  It made us men, to go viking boldly and make the world tremble before us.  Now they drank milk and only dreamed of the world beyond Greenland’s shores.  

“Uncle,” she whispered, then repeated it more loudly as she remembered his failing hearing. 

“Huh?  What?” he snorted, appearing to jerk himself out of a far distant place.  His one clear eye focused on her.  “Oh… Asgrid, is it?  You’re the one who brought this about with that tale of a white bear.”  He gestured disgustedly to the assemblage. 

Asgrid blushed.  “I only brought the tale, not the vain boasts,” she countered defiantly. 

A hint of a smile twitched the corners of Uncle’s mouth, almost lost in the stained beard.  “Boldness lives on in a slip of a girl.”  He shook his head.  “At least it lives on.”  The old man’s eye glazed over for a moment and Asgrid knew he might start a rambling story of the old times at any moment if she didn’t divert him. 

“There was no bear,” she said clearly. 

The eye blinked at her.  “I thought not.  What happened?  Did they fall from a cliff while you slept?  Did you lose them?”

Asgrid glared at her ancestor.  “I’d not be so foolhardy.”

“What then?”

Asgrid remembered the stars of the night before, the dancing aurora and the sense of magic that had filled her.  It seemed all foolish fancy now, back among the things that were so real and earthbound.  She found herself staring at the old man’s cross hanging from its thong of leather.  A humming melody rose in her throat without her being truly aware of it.  The cross was oddly shaped, not like those the others wore.  Something about it…

“I know that song,” Uncle broke in, his voice hushed.  “It’s a song of…”  He broke off, glancing quickly around. 

He stood abruptly, his huge hand clamping down on her shoulder as he leaned heavily upon her.  “I need air,” he announced though none of his kin paid him any heed.  “Attend me, young one,” he growled, his fingers tightening painfully.

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            They stepped out into the night, beneath the stars.  Asgrid glanced up at the stars.  The aurora did not dance tonight.  The stars did not sing with magic, nor did the planets speak to her.  Tonight a high, thin haze dulled the stars.  Winter’s bite filled the air.  This was a night of foreboding, of omens speaking dark predictions of the times to come.

Asgrid shivered.

With a grunt the old man pulled the tattered cloak from his back and laid it over her shoulders.  Asgrid tried to resist, to hand it back.

“Thank you, Uncle, but it was not the cold that made me shiver.  It was…”

“I know,” he huffed, reseating the cloak about her.  “I feel it too.  The darkness ahead is greater than the darkness behind.”

An icy tear rolled down Asgrid’s cheek.  “It’s my fault.  That song I hummed, last night I sang it.”

“It’s a conjuring song.  Yes, I recognized it.  But wherever did you learn it?”

Staring through the darkness at her ancient uncle, Asgrid was astonished.  He knew of conjuring songs?  He knew of magic and omens? 

“The old crone,” Asgrid finally answered.  “The one who was drowned.”

Uncle nodded.  “One of the last who still kept the old ways.”  He turned and his lone eye stared hard into hers.  “That old witch was your grandmother.” 

“My grandmother?”

“An unrepentant old pagan.  As am I,” he added.  Holding up his curiously shaped cross, let her touch it, looking closely at its shape and the patterns in its surface.  Then he turned it over and she saw the back was covered with angular markings.  “Runes,” he said.  “A magic way of writing.  I don’t know how to read them.”  He looked up at the hazy stars.  “No one’s left who does.”

“And this cross?” Asgrid asked boldly.  “What shape is this?”

“A Thor’s Hammer.  Many were reshaped into crosses when Christ came to live among us.  This one was made in my father’s father’s time.  Or even before, no one remembers for certain.”  He sighed.  Like a litany often recited he said, “It’s a good religion, better than the old ways.  It brought hope and comfort…”

“Ended the sacrifices.  Freed the slaves,” Asgrid carried on.

“Stopped the killing of unwanted or malformed babies.  But…”  Uncle stopped.

Softly Asgrid continued, “But it took the magic from the world.”

“Aye,” he whispered. 

Straightening as best as his gnarled frame could, Uncle turned toward her.  “So, what was it you summoned?”

“Oh, Uncle!  I don’t know.  A troll or ogre from the sagas is what I imagine I saw.  I saw but a glimpse of gray skin with coarse hair, a flash of fangs as long as my arm.  And I smelled the stench of death about it.”  She paused, then wailed, “But there exists no such thing!  They’re old tales only.”

“So the Christians have told you.  So they believe.  Tell no one else.  They’d not believe you anyhow.  You keep singing your songs as best as you may and I’ll invoke the old gods.”  He shivered in the cold.  “Between us we’ll yet turn back this tide of ill omens.  Be strong, young one.  Soon enough the ships will arrive again from Norway and all will be well again.  The king promised – two ships each year.”  He scanned the fjord with his eye.  Asgrid didn’t need to look.  No ship had disturbed those waters in her lifetime. 

Norway had forgotten about them.  So had Iceland.  The whole world had forgotten the colony in Greenland.  No one came for trade or to bring priests and bishops.  No one came to hunt or explore.  No one came. 

How had it been, she wondered, watching that last ship sail away?  But, then, they hadn’t known it was the last ship. 

#

Second looked up at the alien constellations of this world.  He felt the cold and savored it.  Ironic, he thought, that Commander had done just as Second had intended.  Commander had dumped the entire ecoforming load into the atmosphere, four world’s worth.  This hemisphere would be getting much colder yet, and it would stay that way for centuries to come.  Idly he wondered if the aborigines could survive the coming endless winter. 

A star moved laterally across the sky.  No star, that.  It was the ship leaving orbit.  No matter, there’d be another ship along.  He could survive until then.

The End

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