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The Land Leviathans

Previously published as: Hart, G. 2022. Land Leviathans. p. 145-154 in: Augustsson, J. (ed.) Phantasmical Contraptions & More Errors. Jayhenge Publishing.

Lactose was a peaceful bucolic village of displaced northerners that nestled in the flat, rich floodplain of the Whey River. It was famed far and wide for its dairy cattle and the quality of its butter, though its cheese, like those who produced it, lacked a certain panache. Life in Lactose was peaceful save for occasional visits from raiders, who rode down from the hills on their war boars, had their way with the cattle, wrecked the cow-wains to discourage pursuit, and left more peacefully than they’d come, sacks of bland cheese slung over their shoulders. Sometimes the king would send a knight or a few men at arms to investigate; more often then not, the village’s pleas for help went unanswered.

One day after Jökul had attained his manhood, he stood gazing at the wheels of his family’s cow-wain, which had been tipped on its side by the raiders. The upper wheels still spun on their axles, and as he looked up into the foothills, where dust from the receding war-boars was slowly falling, he had a rare inspiration:
“It need not be this way. We can resist them.”

That very day, he left the milking to his siblings, borrowed the carpenter’s tools, and secreted himself in the family’s cattle shed, from whence emerged mysterious hammering and sawing noises. Those who came to investigate found the doors wedged shut against them and the windows barred. At the end of that day, as the gloaming spread across the land, Jökul came forth from the shed, pushing something strange and unforeseen ahead of him.

The villagers gathered to inspect this marvel. From the outside, it looked like nothing so much as a bull, albeit one with two wheels attached (one to a side), tall enough they came within inches of the horns. It juddered and creaked as it moved, the wheels leaving a trail of crushed cowpats the children hadn’t yet had time to remove to the compost heap. Despite the shadows cast by the fading light, a wooden frame could be seen beneath the stretched leather hide. It was only barely big enough for Jökul to fit beneath, as he was an uncommonly large man.

“What is this thing?” demanded Fiflingur, the headman.

“It will be our defense against the raiders,” Jökul answered, not without a certain smugness in his voice.

“What... will its awful appearance terrify them?” The headman couldn’t quite repress a smirk.

“Wait and you shall see.”

“Let’s hope they don’t mistake it for one of the cows. I wouldn’t want to be the man wearing it when that happens.” Fiflingur held up his hands, palms facing Jökul, to rob the jest of its sting.

Time passed, and when the raiders had finished their stolen cheese and begun to think wistfully of the cattle, they descended once more from the hills. They were an unruly lot, large men and poorly armed, but they had the not-inconsiderable advantage of lacking anything that could be considered placid in their temperament, and this gave them all the edge they needed over the villagers, who were—if one might be forgiven for saying it—cowed. But this time, something was different: what appeared to be a giant wheeled bull stood squarely in their path. They reined their war-swine to a halt.

“What the hell is that thing?” wondered their leader, a scarred man with teeth that protruded much like those of the boar he rode.

The answer he received was not what he expected. Jökul, who’d been waiting for this moment, had strapped himself beneath his device as soon as the children warned of the coming raiders. Now, he took a deep breath and charged. Stunned by this unprecedented maneuver, the raiders froze in place. The device, which with Jökul included weighed about as much as the bull that had inspired its form, crashed into the front rank of the raiders. The mechanical bull mowed down the raiders like the hay that fed the local cattle, and those in the rear fled into the hills, screaming curses to keep up their courage. Those in the front, unseated and abandoned by their boars, limped away, pursued by hurled clots of cow dung and other projectiles that came easily to the hands of the emboldened villagers. When the last of the raiders had disappeared into the hills, Jökul unstrapped himself from the framework.

“Jökul, you’ve done a good deed this day.” Fiflingur reached up to pat his shoulder. “But surely they’ll learn from this and return in force. One man cannot defend a whole village against such numbers.”

“One man can.” They turned, and there stood yet another large man, though smaller than Jökul, clad head to toe in metal armor so finely made they heard nary a clank as he approached. It was one of the king’s men, unaccountably come to their village.

Both villagers kneeled. Fiflingur was the first to muster his courage. “How may we be of service, Sir Knight?”
“You can explain the purpose of this device.”

Jökul mustered his courage. “Sir, if it please you, it is to defend our village against raiders from the hills.”
“But surely that is my role?”

Jökul felt unaccustomed anger. It gave him courage. “Surely it would be, had you ever come in response to our pleas to the king.”

“One might take that as criticism, cow-man.”

“Bull man. One might.” Better to be hanged for courage than for cowering, thought the youth.

“Your elder is correct, though. Such a trick will not work twice.”

“It will!”

“Do you believe that so strongly you’d put that belief to the test?”

“Aye.”

“Then let us see how your device fares against a knight.” The knight tossed his helm to Fiflingur, who barely managed to keep it from falling in the muck. Then he mounted his horse and rode a dozen yards down the road. He turned, then removed an iron-tipped lance from its rest and couched it beneath his right arm. “When you’re ready, sirrah?”

Jökul, knees trembling, crouched beneath his mock bull’s frame, strapped himself back into the harness, and awaited the challenge. “Have at you!” cried the knight, and spurred his horse into a trot. Jökul hesitated, then deciding he’d prefer to die on his feet rather than be impaled through the back, ran toward the knight. Ever faster he moved, the distance between them dwindling, and just when it seemed certain they’d collide, the knight skipped nimbly aside and thrust past the bull’s horns with his lance. The shaft snapped, but not before it ripped through the flimsy leather and tore a strip from Jökul’s scalp.

Jökul unstrapped himself from the frame, blood streaming down his neck. The knight trotted over to retrieve the lance head. “You’re no knight, boy, but you have courage, I’ll grant you that. You’ll need it where we’re going. You shall come with me, and bring your device. The king will want to see what you’ve done.”

Jökul traveled with the knight, Sir Michael by name, for two days to reach the king of Bucolica, sleeping at the knight’s feet in the shelter of his wood and leather bull. Before entering the court, the knight ordered him to strip and scour himself clean in the horse trough. While he did, servants took away his bull and brought fresh clothing—castoffs, but of much better quality than the farmer was accustomed to. Then the knight brought him to the king. Awed, Jökul fell to his hands and knees, trembling.

“And what have you brought me?” the king wondered aloud. He was a short, fat man, but with a warrior’s powerful muscles still evident beneath the fat.

Sir Michael bowed. “Sire, I bring you a prodigy among the farmers of Lactose.”

“That’s the town that’s always pleading for armed men to fight raiders?”

“Aye, Sire.”

“And you say he’s a prodigy?”

“Indeed. He’s created this.” He gestured, and on cue, servants swung open the massive doors to the court. In trundled the mechanical bull, drawn by two servants, its wheels squeaking.

The king snorted. “Very nice, I’m sure. And what do you call this, youth?”

Jökul continued quaking, unable to raise his head. The knight kicked him, and hissed a warning. “Rise, peasant, lest you arouse his wrath. Show some of that courage you showed the raiders!”

Jökul got his feet under him, and took his courage firmly in hand. “If it please you, Sire,” he knuckled his forehead, “I call it The Naut.”

The king snorted again, recalling his scant mastery of the Norse tongue. “I can see why. And what, pray tell, does this... naut... do?”

“If it please you, Sire,” he tugged at his forelock, “I wore it as armor to rout the raiders who invade our village every few months, ravishing our cattle and making off with our best cheese.”

“Stop playing with your hair and stand like a man.” Jökul stood a little straighter, trembling even more. “Sir Michael?” The knight bowed. “Is it as he says?”

“As to the raiders, I cannot say. But it’s true that I jousted with him, and he showed remarkable courage for a peasant. Had this bull thing been made of sterner stuff, he would have been a formidable challenge.”

“Can your bull be made with sterner stuff?”

“Sire, I made it with the tools available to me, which were but wood and leather. I imagine that if you covered the hides with a knight’s armor and replaced the wood with steel, it should withstand a lance.”

“Very well. Make it so!”

“But Sire, I have none of the necessary skills. I’m no smithy.”

“Then you shall teach my smiths to recreate what you’ve invented.”

“Aye, Sire, that I can do.” And having survived this ordeal and regained some of his courage, Jökul ceased trembling.

In the days that followed, smoke and the din of hammers on metal rose from the smithy, and by the end of the week, a new mechanical bull stood gleaming in the courtyard. A thick, centrally mounted lance had replaced the former horns, and only the image of a bull painted clumsily on the side remained to hint of its humble origins. Moreover, due to its greater weight, it bore four wheels rather than the original two. The king inspected it, running fingers through his beard in awe. “Impressive. And does it work, Michael?”

“It has not yet been tried, Sire. But I’m willing to give it a go in your honor.” He turned to Jökul. “Come, peasant: don your armor and have at me.”

In the past week, being treated with respect had caused Jökul’s self-confidence to blossom. He stood tall and straight, and bowed deeply. “I’d be honored, Sire and Sir.” And he set about strapping the device to his back.

When he was done, he faced the knight across the courtyard, peering through a narrow gap in the armor beside the lance. At a signal from the king, the two men charged each other. As before, the knight’s lance struck true, and shattered on the armor. But Jökul had momentum on his side, and the impact scarcely slowed him. Indeed, had the knight’s steed not been nimble, the iron bull’s lance might have transfixed him. Puffing and panting, Jökul skidded to a halt, lance grazing the courtyard’s far wall. Then he emerged from beneath his armor and returned to stand by the knight.

“Well done, youth!” cried the king. With a dozen of these land leviathans, we’d be unstoppable. Hmmm... though your former contraption only inspired amusement, this new device will inspire terror. I shall therefore dub it the Dread Naut.” Then he grew thoughtful. Bucolica, having advanced little beyond its humble agricultural roots, had not fared well in border disputes with the neighboring kingdom. He tossed a heavy purse to the young farmer. “Here’s your reward. I command you to stay and work with the smiths until we’ve created a full force of Dread Nauts. Then we’ll give them a true test, in the field.

And so it was done, though it was necessary to scour the kingdom to obtain the needed metal. When the new weapons were complete, the king declared war on his neighbor—something he’d wanted to do for some time, to take back disputed borderlands he’d lost control of. His men used the new weapons with considerable success. They were impervious to lances, and broke the charge of massed knights, leaving the conventional forces to sweep in behind, led by the king himself, to clear the field.

The king was pleased, but his elation did not last, for those who escaped the battlefield told of the new weapons. Which, come to think of it, were not really that sophisticated for a kingdom that prided itself on its military prowess. Before the king of Bucolica had finished contemplating the possibility of extending his conquest, he found himself facing an army equipped with similar weapons. His offensive advantage largely eliminated, the king withdrew rather than risking an ignominious defeat. But once home, he commanded the creation of bigger and more powerful Dread Nauts. Which, of course, soon met similarly large and powerful devices crafted by the enemy, for they’d seen which way the wind was blowing.

As months passed, the dread nauts grew in size, to the point they could no longer be borne by a single man; soon there were crews of two, three, and even four men, one of whom sat within a rotating turret that topped the structure and bore the lance. This latter man was chosen for small size and great dexterity, as it was his job to guide the bearers through a clever steering mechanism of ropes and pulleys, operated by his feet, that tugged the bearers one way or the other. In time, the men were replaced with draft horses and oxen. Finally, they were replaced with cunning mechanisms that used the same tight-wound ropes that powered catapults to drive the wheels; what these latter devices lacked in endurance, they more than made up for in speed and power.

But that was not the end of the race to build the perfect mechanical bull. Soon, military engineers had added projectors that cast boiling oil, ballistas that launched steel-tipped logs capable of stopping a dread naut in its tracks, and repeating crossbows capable of launching a withering volley of bolts into the line of battle. And the infantry, not to be outdone, developed their own countermeasures: wagons bearing cargos of bubbling tar that could be poured onto the field, stopping the dread nauts in their tracks, and iron pikes that could be thrust between the spokes of the wheels, causing a dread naut to veer suddenly and unpredictably to the side or even topple over.

Eventually the war ended, as all such things do. In part, it had become prohibitively difficult, both practically and economically, to find enough iron to build more dread nauts. But by then, Jökul had grown prosperous. His skill having long since been surpassed by the smiths, his presence was no longer required, and he found himself thinking wistfully of a certain milkmaid, his childhood sweetheart. Guthrun Sveinsdottir was a well-padded farm girl he’d always fancied but never quite mustered the courage to approach. But now he had courage, and to spare. When he announced his feelings, the king sent him home in gratitude, providing a large pouch of coins to reward his loyalty.

In Lactose, he settled happily into matrimony, and became a farmer of no great distinction. He was, as they said back in Lactose, a one-trick mooncalf. But in truth, that description did him an injustice, for he proved the equal of one and a half mooncalves. The king sent for Jökul one more time, and he had one last good idea.

“Jökul, you have served your king well these past years, and though the problem of warfare has been solved, we face a new problem: what to do with all the restless former warriors the wars created. Left to their own devices, they threaten the peace, and there are growing complaints of their ill-mannered behavior.”

Jökul did not relish the possibility of more men joining the raiders. But before despair could claim him, he recalled an ancient children’s game he’d relished as a child because his unusual size gave him a considerable advantage, and proposed a simple plan: Each kingdom should create a team of knights, each armed with a wood and leather buckler and a leathern helm. Eleven men—the number of fingers on Jökul’s hand, plus one more digit he could count on for good luck—would engage in a competition, defending mock castles at either end of a level field. To start the competition, two champions would be chosen, and they would take turns hammering each other with their fists until one man could no longer stand. The winner would then start at one end of the field with his team-mates and try to carry a flag back to their “castle”, while the other team tried to stop them. If the flag bearer were brought to the ground, their team had two more tries to bring the flag the full length of the field. The third time the flag bearer was brought to the ground, the other team was given the flag and they, in turn, had three tries to bring it the length of the field to their own castle.

The king was well pleased, for the new diversion preserved the stunning impacts and violence of traditional warfare, but this new breed of knights would emerge from the field largely unscathed, ready to compete again the following week—a much more economical solution. Moreover, there was money to be made in providing training to other kingdoms that wanted their own team, and even more money to be made selling admission to the combats and selling ale in the stands along with—in honor of Lactose, inventors of the new diversion—mild cheese. The king sent Jökul home with another heavy purse, and granted him the boon of sending his eldest children to serve in the palace, where they would rise in social status and perhaps some day marry into the lesser nobility.

And as for Jökul? His original wood and leather naut had been returned to Lactose, where it occupied a place of honor in the family barn. He and Guthrun lived a long and happy life together, and had many children, some of whom did indeed rise to positions of honor in the palace. Even the raiders gradually learned there was more profit to leaving their oakwood home and forming their own team of warriors. They performed sufficiently well they could soon afford their own cows, about which we shall draw the veil of decency and say nothing further.

Author’s notes

The seed for this story was undoubtedly planted by Michael Moorcock’s The Land Leviathan trilogy, one of the few early Moorcock series I never actually read. M. Harold Page’s Swords Versus Tanks series of books coaxed the seed to germinate. I’d always wondered whether one of those Heinleinian YA tales of building a rocket in one’s backyard shed could be transplanted into a faux-medieval setting. In Icelandic, Jökul means glacier (despite its English false cognate), Fiflingur means foolish head, and in a happy coincidence, naut means bull.

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