In The Midgard Serpent, the 10th book in James L. Nelson's Norsemen Saga, we learn how to kill a whale by stabbing it with a spear and riding it until it is dead.

Well, there's more to it than that, but that's basically what Harald, the young and not always wise son of Thorgrim Ulfsson, aka Night Wolf, does on his first voyage as captain of the longship Dragon. The ship, battered by the toothed cetacean, does not fare too well in the battle, but then gain, neither does the whale.

Otherwise, Thorgrim continues his efforts to get free of Engla-land so he can return to his farm and family in Vik (Norway) where, unbeknownst to him, his son Odd Thorgrimson is engaged in an unintentional rebellion against King Halfdan the Black, who tried to declare Thorgrim dead so he could seize his lands. Thorgrim, after all, has been absent for a few years, having sailed off to go a-viking in Ireland where various travails have prevented him from going home. Only recently he was able to leave Ireland, but a storm drove him ashore in Saxon lands, where his situation was not much improved.

It actually seemed like he might be on his way, but Harald's stunt with the whale brings Thorgrim's small fleet of longships into contact with another small fleet under Bergthor, a fellow Norseman whose destination is nearby Winchester, which they intend to raid. But King Aethulwulf of Wessex, who is preparing for an embassy to King Charles the Bald of West Frankia and a pilgrimage to Rome, just happened to have a vast army and fleet at his disposal, and they meet the raiders and beat them at their own game. Suddenly, Thorgrim's peaceful journey home is neither peaceful nor headed home.

Meanwhile, in Norway, Odd is trying to prove to Halfdan that neither he nor the other landowners of Vik will let the king run roughshod over them ... but it doesn't go well, especially after Halfdan's men take Halfdan's young sister hostage. Soon, Halfdan is a prisoner being paraded through the land, tortured as an example to other wealthy men that standing up to Halfdan is not a good idea.

The lesson does not have the intended effect.

And Failend, the Irish woman who has thrown in with the heathen Northmen and has become Thorgrim's lover, is having second thoughts about her future. Her decision to march into Winchester late one night will have dire consequences for the entire party.

As always, Nelson shifts between several points of view, although -- perhaps far more than usual in this book -- it was very stressful as a reader every time we left one perspective for another. Sorry, Jim, but I want to know what happens next with that person now, not wait another two chapters!!

By book's end, after one very hard-to-believe escape sequence, one character who has been with Thorgrim for a long time will have fallen, and another will have made a dramatic decision that seems to have made a permanent change on future appearances. That makes me sad. It won't, however, make me hesitate before picking up the next in the series!

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