“St. George and the World Serpent” by Stephen Kotowych
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Eligible for the Aurora Award for Best Short Fiction
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Originally published in Odin: New & Ancient Norse Tales (Flame Tree Publishing, November 2024).
* * *
James crashed through the heavy leather flap across the officer’s dugout door, laughing as he fell to the rough pine board floor. His Brodie helmet clattered away, and a spray of trinkets flew from his pockets: some French coins; his good craps dice; spare rounds for his Lee-Enfield.
His small holy medal of St. George skittered to a stop against the polished boot of another officer playing a battered upright piano.
“Are you drunk, lieutenant?” said the officer, without turning or stopping his playing. The piano was dusty and worn, its keys yellowed and chipped from years of use.
“Yes, I am,” said James, rolling to his back. He knew that tune–what was it?
James lifted a hand to shade his eyes against the kerosene lamps that bathed the dugout in amber. The oily light was dazzling after the nighttime darkness of the trenches.
The walls and roof were made of logs; the central support column was a thick tree trunk, still covered in bark. The cramped space was cluttered with make-shift furniture, a field radio, rolled maps. A fire crackled in a black potbelly stove.
James thought he knew all the dugouts along this stretch of trench but had no memory of this one. The place smelled of mud, the kind that clung to boots and seeped into clothes, a reminder of the trenches just outside. A faint hint of old beef lingered in the air, the smell of rations that had been sitting too long.
A shell whistled and exploded somewhere overhead, rattling a cascade of dust from the timber ceiling. James laughed. That one wasn’t so close. After two years at the front, he could tell which incoming rounds needed worrying about.
It was Wagner, he realized. Fantasia in F-sharp Minor, maybe? He decided to lie there on the floor forever and smiled.
He didn’t realize the music had stopped until the piano player loomed over him.
“Sir!” James said, recognizing the officer’s insignia. He scrambled upright and came to swaying attention. The floor was sliding out from under him, he was sure. Stumbling drunk into a general’s dugout? Men were shot for less.
The general wore a patch over his left eye and appraised James coolly with his right. “Well, if you’re staying close the flap. Remember your light discipline! You’ll just give the Jerrys something to aim for.”
James, uncertain for a moment, pulled the flap back across the door, drowning out some of the war outside.
The general offered James a seat at a low stool beside a small pine table. The table was roughhewn, like the floor, but the linens were exquisite, reminding James of Balliol College high tables he’d attended.
From somewhere the general produced a cut glass bottle and two blue-and-white Delftware teacups. He poured honey-brown liquor into each.
“I can’t imagine what home-brew swill you’ve managed to get your hands on,” said the general, “but officers should have more self-respect.” The delft made a sharp tink as they toasted. “So will you tell me what’s got you in your cups, or shall I guess?” James finished his drink, and the general poured him another.
“It’s the push tomorrow, sir,” said James. There was no sense in hiding it. Any fool could guess. “Just working myself up for going over the top.”
“Isn’t that why you wear this?” The general dangled the St. George medal by its chain. “‘Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George, inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons!’”
“Yes, well… Shakespeare aside, sir, I haven’t found it a source of much comfort,” James said.
The general released the chain and for just a half-second too long the medal seemed to hang in the air, lingering as if stuck, before jangling to the table.
James blinked profusely, wondering how strong the general’s liquor was. He couldn’t place the flavour. It was thick and sweet, but wasn’t brandy, as he’d expected.
“No answer to your prayers?” asked the general.
“I’m worried I had an answer, sir, and that it was ‘No.’” James sighed. “Do you believe in God, sir?”
“In my own way.”
“I was taking Divinity at Oxford before all this,” said James. “Don’t think I could go back, now.”
“Lost your faith?”
“Just not sure I can look it in the eye any longer.” He put down his teacup. “If I’m to love my enemies and pray for those who hate me, how the bloody hell am I supposed to go kill the Hun?”
“There have always been Christian soldiers,” said the general. “St. George. Joan of Arc. A Roman centurion converted at the foot the Cross.”
“Yes,” said James, reconsidering his teacup. The design was hard to make out. Something Dutch, probably. “But I can’t help wondering whether they’ve got it all wrong. Can you claim to follow the Prince of Peace if it’s your job to kill people every day? ‘Those who live by the sword,’ I keep thinking.”
The general smiled. “You’ve finally figured it out, have you?”
“Sir?”
“The secret at the heart of war: it is a pagan province and delight. We must repay our enemies’ hate with hate, blood with blood. We must glory and revel in warfare!”
James shifted in his chair. “Well, sir, I’m not sure about that, but–”
“Come now!” said the general. “You’re not drinking to drown your fears, but your guilt. Your guilt in liking war, in loving it. You’ve been taught such feelings are wrong, but you know how your heart sings in battle. Don’t deny it! I only have one eye, but it pierces the hearts of men.”
James opened his mouth to protest, but no words came.
“You’ve not been Christian for some time,” said the general. “Out there, in no-man’s land it’s not St. George you’ve called on, or your desert god. You and your ancestors belonged to me for a thousand generations before the Carpenter arrived in these lands. And it is on my help that you have called in the secret of your heart.”
The room swirled and spun. James squeezed his eyes shut, nauseated, until it stopped.
He now sat on a chain mail-covered mead bench at the end of a Viking hall that stretched away into darkness. The potbelly stove was a great blazing fire pit; the dugout’s support pillar was just one of dozens deep-carved with runes and supporting a high, gabled roof of shining shields. James’s teacup was a drinking horn.
The general was transfigured into a tall, bearded man in a wide-brimmed hat and dark blue cloak, a traveller’s staff in his hand. His good eye, blazing like the sun, fixed on James.
“You’ve not called on me by name,” said Odin, “but you’ve felt the tug of something else on your soul, the ancient allegiance of your forefathers, James Osborne–James Ásbjørn. The Bear of the Aesir! It is in me that you have trusted.”
James fought to convince himself it was a dream or some bad liquor, but the feeling of the chain mail, the scent of roast boar on the air… The hall felt too real for a hallucination, and too familiar. He’d read all the Norse myths as a child, of course, but this was something more.
Something that ran in the bones.
Even Odin didn’t overawe him the way he expected an angel or demon might should he chance to encounter one. Odin seemed more an old friend James had simply never met or spoken to before.
The hall twisted away from James again, and he grabbed hold of the mead bench. His mind told him that he wasn’t moving, but his body cried out at the pull of centrifugal force.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” James said, now back in the cramped dugout in France.
“Recruiting,” said Odin, again the general. He poured them each another drink. “Mead,” said Odin, holding up the bottle. “From the teats of Heidrún herself.”
James grabbed the teacup with both hands and threw back the liquor. Setting it down again, James finally made out the design: not some pastoral Dutch scene after all, but blue-and-white men with swords, in battle. And they were moving. James pushed the cup away.
“What do you mean ‘recruiting’? For the British side?”
Odin laughed. “For my side. Sometimes I am here,” he said, pointing out his British uniform, “and sometimes I am there.” Odin’s appearance slid away in an instant and he was dressed as a German commander.
James cried out and grabbed his head. It hurt to watch Odin’s transformation, but it happened so fast that like a cut from a sharp blade the pain took a moment to register.
“The All-Father can be many places,” said Odin, “and be many people.” James opened his eyes as the pain passed, and the British general sat there again.
“There are many men on both sides whose hearts long for glory and who pray to me for aid, even if they can’t admit it to themselves.” Odin unrolled a large map across the table. The British lines were in blue, the German in black. Red arrows stretched between the trench lines; the next day’s date was written beside them.
The big push.
“I see to it their longing for battle is fulfilled, so the stouthearted can join my glorious dead in Valhalla.”
James counted four arrows pointing to the German lines, and four coming from them, colliding in no-man’s land.
“You’ve–you’ve given both sides orders to attack,” James said. “This is monstrous! It will be a slaughter. Hundreds–thousands–will die for, for nothing. For a few hundred yards of mud!”
“It’s no concern of mine what they fight for,” said Odin. “The petty aims of your kings and ministers don’t interest me. I play at a more serious game: Ragnarok.”
“Ragnarok? No, stop!” James said, kicking over his stool as he leapt up and stalked about the dugout. “I can’t listen to this. I’m a Christian. My God! It must be–be blasphemy to even talk to you.”
“Your god, your god…” Odin sighed. “You’re the one who stumbled into my dugout. And didn’t you say there wasn’t much conversation between you and–” Odin nodded skyward. “Are you sure you’re really on the best of terms?”
James stopped pacing.
“You have the heart of a warrior, James: one that rejoices in battle; in the thrill and power of taking an enemy’s life. What do you think He will make of a heart so full of pride and murder? So much uncertainty with this god of yours. Can you really be sure where He will send you, at the end?”
James reached out a hand to steady himself against the piano. Every doubt he’d had about the fate of his soul all these years ago came crashing back.
It hadn’t been what he expected, going over the top that first time. The other men in his squad, just as green as he, huddled terrified in the trench in advance of the whistle to start the charge. Some vomited, others wept. But the moment took James back to a summer hayloft and an eager servant’s daughter, and the same giddy anticipation as before his first love-making.
Back in the trench hours later half those green men were dead and James’s guilt at how much he’d relished the experience was crushing. It wasn’t how a good Christian ought to feel after killing men, was it?
The first time he’d shot and killed a man from a hundred yards; when he fought hand-to-hand with that German and bayoneted him through the ribs; when he charged that pillbox with only his pistol; when that platoon of Jerrys begged to surrender to him, having watched him kill so many of their comrades at close quarters. It had all been…intoxicating.
It was the only word that came close for James, if he was honest with himself. After battle, colours seemed brighter, food tasted better. Death made life more alive! But always the guilt followed, and the dread.
God help me, thought James. I do truly love it. Does that mean I am damned?
“And you?” said James. “What would you have me do?” He sat back down at the table.
“Embrace the calling of your heart,” said Odin. “I need men like you with me in Valhalla, ready when Ragnarok comes. The grey wolf ever watches our halls, James. Loki has escaped his prison in the roots of Yggdrasil, and that has set events in motion. Ragnarok could come tomorrow. It could come in a hundred years. But the days grow short, and I need an army.”
James thought a moment. “And if I, what? Embrace the old ways? Can you–Will I live? Through the war. Do I make it?”
In Odin’s utter stillness James had his answer.
He was surprised that relief outweighed his sadness. There was some part of him, he realized, that never expected to make it home. He’d spent two years burdened every moment with if and when and didn’t understand how exhausting it had been.
It would be tomorrow. During the big push.
“The skein of your life was tied off by the Norns long ago,” said Odin. “Not even I can change that. But could you really look forward to dying as an old man in bed, with all your long years paling next to the thrill of battle? Knowing you were doomed to Hell at the end of it all for your deeds of glory? I can return you to life, in the flower of youth, feasting and fighting until the end of time in Valhalla.”
James put his head in his hands. Everything was upside down.
He wondered whether God would forgive him. He had no priest to grant him absolution in his final hours. Would God judge his soul already too black, too stained by murder and bloodlust?
James wondered, too, about the promise of Valhalla. What would it be like to feast and battle with all the great warriors of history until the end of time? Would he be happy there? There would be no hope of ever meeting his departed loved ones again in heaven. But what if he didn’t merit heaven at all?
“No,” said James in just more than a whisper. He raised his head and looked Odin in the eye. “I can’t abandon my faith. I can’t. I can only hope and pray that God will forgive me my sins when I go to meet him.”
“Will your desert god still forgive though you have no sorrow in you for your deeds?” Odin demanded. “You revel in death, like your berserker ancestors of old. Bear of the Aesir! It strengthens you–sustains you!”
James had no answer. Odin wasn’t wrong, and salvation seemed a gamble. But to cast his lot in with this strange god? God, it was said, was a jealous god. First Commandment, and all that. Perhaps rejecting the All-Father’s offer counted for something. Perhaps God would be merciful after all. He had to trust to hope.
“I can’t. I won’t,” said James. “I’m sorry. I want no part of you or your Valhalla.”
Odin pushed himself up from his chair, growing impossibly tall for the cramped space, until he loomed over James like the World Tree itself. His good eye blazed to life, its unbearable brilliance drowning out all other light in the dugout. James shut his eyes tight and craned his head away, fearing blindness.
“The friendship of Odin is not so easily cast aside!”
James toppled backward, rolling to his belly once he hit the ground. Even though clenched shut, his eyes ached from Odin’s piercing light. The dugout pitched and tossed like a ship at sea, and James dared not stand. He clawed his way across the pine floor in the direction of where he thought the door might be. “I don’t want your friendship! Leave me in peace!”
The dugout and the whole of the earth rumbled as Odin spoke. “Go then! But pray you do not come to regret your words when next you call on Odin’s name.”
#
James didn’t sleep at all that night. After finding the door and hurling himself back into the mud of the trenches, he put as much distance between himself and Odin’s dugout as he could.
Near dawn, when his weary mind began to doubt all he had seen and heard in the night, he’d considered going back to find the dugout and confirm his experiences. But he held back. There would be no dugout, he knew. As if it had never existed.
Instead, James spent the night in prayer. He prayed for the intercession of every soldier-saint he could think of. He said rosary after rosary, and more Our Fathers than he could remember. They were prayers for forgiveness, and for salvation. He didn’t know what the answer would be.
Sound like the distant rumble of thunder, and shells howled overhead toward the German lines. The rolling artillery barrage to soften up the enemy. The push was on. James lined up at the nearest trench ladder and was the first man over the top when the whistle blew to signal the charge.
Better to get it over with quickly, he thought.
He and the men with him advanced at a walk over broken, muddy terrain long since chewed up by artillery. The rotting bodies of dead soldiers, dead horses, and the shattered hulks of abandoned equipment lay all about them.
They’d only covered forty yards when the German counterattack started. Machine gun fire zipped past James with unearthly sounds. All around him soldiers fell dead.
James mucked his way to the crest of a small ridge and saw Germans advancing toward him. He stood transfixed, recognizing one: a mustachioed man wearing an eye patch.
Odin dropped to one knee, aimed, and the next instant James was spun around and knocked off his feet by what felt like a horse kick to the chest. He tumbled backward into the bottom of a shell crater, sliding up to his waist in fetid, icy water.
James cried out in agony as the horse kick resolved into the sharp pain of a rifle shot. Dark, steaming blood oozed from under his tunic, mingling with the reeking muck covering him.
Half-forgotten stories from James’s childhood came flooding back. In them, Odin always betrayed his favourites so that they would take their place in Valhalla: Sigurd slain in his bed by a greedy brother-in-law. Hengest and Horsa betrayed by their own men. Harald driven into the thick of his enemies by Odin himself, disguised as the king’s charioteer.
The German shelling was getting closer now. Plumes of dirt erupted into the air over the lip of the crater with the thoom of each shell burst, marching ever closer to the British trenches.
“Gas! Gas!” came the cry.
Sure enough, yellow-green tendrils of poison gas crept over the rim of the crater, reaching out for him like eager fingers. He coughed hard, and with a grim smile spit frothy blood from his mouth.
He might not last long enough for the gas to get him.
The poisonous haze mingled with the smoke of burst shells and obscured the battlefield like a drawn curtain. Vague shapes coalesced in the deadly fog.
They were the merest suggestion of form. They might have been female; they might have had wings. They lingered and seemed to embrace the bodies of the dead, before lifting away and disappearing back into the fog.
James laughed again, though it was agony to do so. It was gallows laughter of a man who knew he’d been outmaneuvered. The All-Father had been right about him and would not be denied.
For in that moment only anger and hatred–not love–for Odin filled James’s heart, and made him wonder whether it was with Odin that he truly belonged. Perhaps Valhalla was a just fate, with its eternal battle and toil, instead of some restful heaven with the righteous.
James’s ears perked up as the screech of a single shell suddenly stood out above the din of the assault. Something about that sound… James arched his head back, scanning the sky. Where would it land? It would be close.
Under the shriek of the shell, he could hear the faint strains of piano. It was the same piece Odin played before, but James had been wrong about the title. It was Wagner, yes, but not the Fantasia. It was Siegfried’s funeral march from Götterdämmerung–the Twilight of the Gods.
With the shell screaming towards him, James drew a deep lung of acrid air for what he knew would be his final cry for help. But would he call upon Our Father or Odin All-Father?
“O—!”
– FIN –
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Solid. I often read my work aloud but didn’t know it was that common a piece of advice. “Write with the ear, not with the eye” is a great way to sum it up. Looks like this Lewis fellow knew how to turn a phrase 😉
Had to share this glowing review of Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume One just published in Amazing Stories.
Hello all!