King and Emperor thatc-3 Read online

  Ma'mun knew that the Christians would have some trick or other. Otherwise they would not have ventured to set up their camp on land. He had seen many tricks, seen them all fail. The sudden appearance of a row of helmeted heads, the leveled crossbows beneath them did not surprise him. He had not heard the metallic twang of the crossbows before, and watched with interest as his first wave of stormers fell or were hurled off their feet by the thump of crossbow quarrels at short range. Weapons to use against armor, he guessed, the besetting vice of Frankish tactics: eager to kill, reluctant to die. They would be slow to reload, whatever they were. The followers of Islam ran on undeterred, reached the low palisade, began to hack and stab at the defenders. Ma'mun could hear his priests calling ritual curses on those who added gods to God. He walked slowly forward, waiting for the resistance to break.

  His guard-captain touched his arm, pointed silently behind him. Ma'mun frowned. Another trick, indeed! Coming out of a rocky gully to his left flank, already swinging round in a wide arc as if to cut off his retreat—his retreat!—was a line of men.

  Iron men. Gray steel glittered from their weapons, their armor, their shields, their very hands and feet. Not many of them. They seemed barely two deep in file, their line a mere two hundred yards. They came on slowly. Why did they look so strange? Pulling his beard, Ma'mun realized that each carried the same weapreconisedons, carried them in the same way, even at the same angle: a short pike in the right hand, a kite-shaped shield on the left side. Had they no left-handed men in their ranks? What could make men walk together like that, as if they were a machine, as unvarying as the scoops on a noria, a water-wheel. With incredulity Ma'mun saw that each man was putting his foot forward at the same time, so that the line came on like a single animal, like the limbs of a crawling hundred-legged beast. He could hear a great voice shouting something in the barbarous tongue of the ferengi, the same word repeated again and again: “Links… links… links.” At every word the feet came down again.

  Ma'mun shook himself, sent runners to turn the rearmost of those attacking the palisade, called his guards round him and ran forward himself, saber drawn, to engage the iron men. A moment of delay and his men would turn, swarm round the Franks now out in the open, drag them down from all sides. Breathing hard, for he was a man of fifty winters, he reached the slowly advancing line, hacked at an iron figure with his saber of best Toledo steel.

  The German facing him, no knight or Ritter but only a poor brother of the Lanzenorden, ignored the blow, merely ducking his helmet into it. He concentrated on keeping the step, keeping the line, following the battle-drill his sergeants had shouted into him. Left foot forward, thrust with the shield, lift the man in front of you back. Right foot forward, stab with the pike. Not at the man in front, ignore him. At the man to your right. Bruder Manfred to your left will kill the man in front of you, you kill the man in front of Bruder Wolfi to your right. Stab at the armpit as he raises his weapon.

  Ma'mun struck one stroke against the unbelievers and died, killed by a blow he never saw. His guardsmen were cut down and trampled under foot by a line that did not even check its pace. The wave that turned back from the palisades and rushed at the iron men did not break and retire but was accepted and trodden under like stalks beneath a scythe. Their cries of encouragement and praise to God were answered only by the hoarse bellows of the sergeants: “Links… links. Straighten up there! Close up, close up! Second rank, keep your points down, stab him again, Hartman, he's only wounded. Right wheel, right shoulders there!”

  As the dust rose over the churning battle, Mu'atiyah, who had not followed Ma'mun and his guards to glorious death, heard the strange machine-soldiers of the Franks grunting like laborers who have heavy loads to carry in the cornfields. From the palisades the Frankish bowmen were preparing a second volley, while the lightly-armed Greek oarsmen swarmed out, ready to drive a demoralized enemy onto the points of the iron line now fully behind them.

  It was the duty of a learned man to learn, and to report his learning, Mu'atiyah reflected, dodging through the rocks and scattered scrub of the hillside. Some of the lower-born among the army were following his example, mere Berbers and Goths. He called a dozen of them round him, to act as a guard against the Christian peasants who would surely be out to avenge their stolen fields and children. They obeyed, recognizing his dress and the pure Arabic of a descendant of the Quraysh.

  Somewhere on the island there would be a boat. He would take the news to his master bin-Firnas. And to the Caliph of Cordova himself. But best to speak to his master first. It would be wise to appear not as one who had fled from battle, but as one who had braved dangers to know the truth. At a safe distance Mu'atiyah turned, produced his spyglass, and looked again across the hillside to where Agilulf was directing the passionless slaughter of a mass of men trapped too close together by their enemies to lift a hand against the pikes and pole-axes.

  Iron Franks, he thought. And Greek fire. It will take more than the courage of the ghazis to defeat those together.

  Far away, in his sleep, the King of the North felt a pang of warning, a chill that seemed to strike up from the ground beneath his stout-timbered bed and down mattress. He tossed in his sleep, trying to wake up as a swimmer before sharks tries to throw himself out of the water. As unavailing. Over the years Shef had come to recognize the difference between one kind of vision and another.

  This would be one of the worst kind: the kind that took him not across the surface of the earth, like a bird, or back into the old histories of men. One that took him down into the deep strongholds of the gods, the Helworld, past the Grind, the grating that separates the living from the dead.

  He seemed now to be sinking deeper and deeper, unable to see anything but earth and rock, a stink of mold in his nostrils. Yet some sense warned him that he was going to a place he had seen before. Glimpsed before. Not a place for mere men to visit.

  The darkness did not lift, but a feeling of space grew around him, as if he were in some enormous cavern. Light over there, or at least a glow. He did not think his father and patron would let him go without showing him something.

  Suddenly the shadows turned into a shape. A shape that without warning struck at his face, slashing out of the dark with a hiss of hatred so fierce it was like a shriek. Shef jerked convulsively in his bed, his muscles trying to hurl him back. Too late, his eye recognized the head of a monstrous serpent glaring at him, striking again, the poison fangs jerking down bare yards from his face.

  The serpent was fettered, he realized. It could not reach him. It struck again, but this time not at him. Again at a target it could not reach. Not quite reach.

  Below him Shef could now make it an enormous human shape, stretched out in the darkness. It was chained down by great iron fetters to a table of stone. Shef's flesh crawled as he realized what he was seeing. For this could only be Loki, the bane of Balder, father of the monster-brood, enemy of gods and men. Chained here on the orders of his father Othin to live in everlasting torment till Doomsday. Till Ragnarök.

  The harsh face twisted in agony as Shef watched. He could see that the snake, while it could not reach its chained enemy, could sweep its fangs within inches of his head. The venom from them ran out, splashed on the face that could not turn away, ate away skin and flesh, not like venom, like—something Shef could not name.

  But while the face twisted, something about it did not change. A set purpose, an air of craft. Looking carefully round, Shef saw that the great body was concentrating its force, was heaving all the time, heaving on the seemingly unmovable, deep-anchored fetter on the right hand. He had seen this before, Shef remembered. And he had seen that the fetter was working loose.

  Yes, there was his father now. Seemingly dwarfed by the shape of Loki, by the great serpent, but standing there with perfect self-possession, ignoring the fangs now striking hatefully at him.

  “You have come to gloat over my pain, Rig?” A hoarse whisper from Loki.

  “No, I have come
to look at your fetters.”

  The face of the tormented god closed, as if determined to show neither fear nor disappointment.

  “No fetter can hold me for ever. Nor will my son Fenris-wolf be bound for ever by Gleipnir.”

  “I know. But I have come to speed things up.”

  Incredulously, Shef saw his father, the trickster-god, stoop, produce some metal instrument from his sleeve, begin to lever at the places where Loki's right wrist-manacle was set into the rock. The bound god seemed unable to believe what he saw either, watching motionless till the eating venom from above ran into his very eyes.

  As he felt himself drawn away, returned to the world of men, Shef heard another hoarse whisper: “Why are you doing this, deceiver?”

  “Think, if you wish, that I find Ragnarök too long in coming. Or that I desire freedom for Loki as well as for Thor. In any case, there is someone I mean you to meet…”

  Shef crashed into wakefulness again, heart pounding. Me? he thought. Not me. Not me.

  Chapter Three

  Shef eyed his royal guests broodingly as they emerged from the guest hall he had had built for them. The dread of the night was still on him. It had turned the whole world a darker shade. He found himself even walking more lightly, more warily, as if at any moment the earth might split and hurl him down to what he knew lay beneath.

  And yet all seemed well enough. There was his friend and partner Alfred, turning on the steps and stretching his arms out encouragingly to the sturdy toddler behind him. Little Edward half-running, half-falling into his father's catch. Behind them both, stepping forward with pleased maternal smile and a second baby slung familiarly on her hip, the face Shef could not forget. His own love, long-lost to him now, Godive, once his childhood sweetheart from the marshes, now known and loved far and wide as the Lady of Wessex. They could not see him for a moment as he stood in the shadow of the strange contrivance he meant to show off that day. He could observe unobserved.

  Unobserved by those he watched. Not by his own men, who shifted uneasily and glanced at each other as they saw his silent concentration.

  He ought, he knew, to at least fear and resent them. To be making plans for—if not their death, their removal. For making them safe. Many would say, though they did not dare to say it to his face, that it was a king's first duty to think of his own successor. Years ago, in the dark days of the double invasion by Charles the Bald's Franks and Ivar the Boneless's pagans, Shef and Alfred had agreed to share their luck, and their kingdoms, if they should ever hold them again. They had agreed too that each would be the other's successor if either died without an heir, and that any heir of either would inherit from both in the same situation. The deal had not seemed important at the time. Neither had much chance of living to see another winter, let alone another spring. And Godive had slept in Shef's tent, if not in his bed. He had thought, if they lived, it would only be a matter of time till her love returned, and his desire.

  He had been wrong. If he died now, his kingdom fell to Alfred. And after him to the laughing toddler now being carried towards him, baby Edward. The sub-kings would ignore the agreement, of course. There was no chance that the Scandinavian kings, Olaf or Guthmund or any of the dozen others, would agree to obey an English Christian. It was doubtful if even the Mercians or Northumbrian English would accept rule by a Wessex Saxon. The One King of the North was truly One King. No-one else would be accepted by the rest.

  An unstable situation. Could this be the trigger for the Ragnarök his father wanted him to know of? He ought to take a wife and breed a son as fast as possible. Everyone thought so. The court was alive with jarls' daughters and princesses of the North, paraded in the hope of catching the king's feeble attention. Ragnarök or no, he would not do it. Could not do it.

  As he stepped forward out of the shadow to greet his guests, Shef creased his face into a welcoming smile. Even to those he greeted, it looked like a rictus of pain. Alfred controlled himself, managed not to shoot a glance at his wife. He had known for years that his co-king was not the boy-lover many whispered, was instead in love with his own wife. Sometimes he wished it was in him to hand her over, or to share her. But while it might be in him, it was not in her. For some reason, she seemed to hate her friend of childhood more deeply each passing year. Her resentment grew with his success: as she thought, perhaps, of what might have been.

  “What have you to show us today?” asked Alfred with false-ringing good cheer.

  Shef's face brightened, as it always did when he had some new thing to explain. “It is a horse-wain. But one to carry people.”

  “Wains have always carried people.”

  “Three miles to market and back. Bump into a pothole, crawl out of it. Going no faster than a walk, or the passengers would be hurled out. Even on the good stone roads we have had built, you and I”—the last three words were mere flattery, as everyone knew—“it would be torment to travel in it if the horses began to run.

  “But not with this. See.” Shef patted a stout post that led up from a frame above the axles. “This post holds a metal spring.” He pointed to it.

  “Like the steel you use for your crossbows.”

  “Yes. Over the spring we fit straps of the stoutest leather. And from the straps we hang—this.” Shef patted the wickerwork body of the coach, setting it swaying gently. “Climb in.”

  Gingerly Alfred stepped up, sat on one of the two benches in the coach body, noting the way it bounced and swung like a hammock.

  “Lady.” Shef stood back a careful two paces to avoid any brush of hand or clothing, gestured Godive in after her husband. She climbed in, moved little Edward from the place he had seized by his father, and settled herself firmly next to Alfred. Shef climbed in too, picked up the wailing child, and sat him next to himself. He waved to the driver in front of them, who cracked his whip and set off with a dramatic jerk.

  As the coach dashed at unheard-of speed down the road behind its four horses, Alfred leapt in his seat with surprise. From behind the coach there came a dismal screech, which turned into a violent noise like pigs being killed. A gap-toothed face rose grinning into view, face purple with the exertion of blowing on a bagpipe.

  “My thane Cwicca. If they hear the bagpipe people know to clear the road.”

  And indeed the coach, swaying from side to side on its springs, was already racing for the outskirts of Stamford. Alfred realized that the road was lined with cheering churls and their wives, all caught up in the intoxication of speed. Behind them the royal escorts were stretching out their horses into a gallop, whooping like jaybirds with excitement. Godive clutched her baby daughter to her and looked anxiously at Edward, prevented from climbing out by King Shef's iron grip on his breeches.

  Above the roar of the road Alfred yelled, “Is this the most useful new thing the Wisdom-House has brought you?”

  “No,” Shef shouted back. “There are many. Here is one coming up, I'll show you. Stop, Osmod,” he bellowed to the driver, “stop for Christ's sake, I mean Thor's sake, stop, can't you, what's the matter?”

  Another grinning face peered back. “Sorry, lord, the horses get excited, like, with the speed.”

  Alfred looked down doubtfully. The court of Stamford was a strange place. Men called Alfred esteadig, “the Gracious,” for his kindness and his good humor. Just the same, his thanes and aldermen addressed him with something like respect. Even churls often spoke to his co-king as if they were both schoolboys engaged in stealing apples: and both Cwicca and Osmod, thanes though they might be called, still had the marks of slave-birth on their faces and bodies. Not long ago their only possible contact with a king would have been facing his doom on an execution-ground. It was true that Cwicca and Osmod were both survivors of the One King's strange journey to the North, and so allowed many liberties. Even so…

  The One King had already sprung from the coach, leaving its door swinging open, and was setting off from the road to a group of churls knee-deep in mud not far away. They broke
off from what they were doing, knuckled foreheads in respect. And yet they were grinning too.

  “See what they're up to? What's the hardest work in clearing a new field? Not cutting the trees down. Any fool can do that with a broad-axe. No, getting the stumps out. They used to cut them off low down and then try and burn them out. Long job, and oak, or ash, or elm, they'll all grow back from almost anything.”

  “But what we have here”—Shef seized a long staff standing up from a complex contrivance of iron wheels and pulley-blocks—“is ropes rigged to the stoutest stump in the field. Fit the other ends round a weaker stump. Throw your weight on it”—Shef suited his actions to the words, ratcheted the staff back, threw his weight forward again, and again. Twenty yards away, with cracking noises, a stump began to heave out of the earth. A churl sprang forward, added his weight to the king's. With heave after heave, the stump tore free, to loud cheering from churls and the watching escort.

  The king wiped his muddy hands on the legs of his gray breeches, waved to the churls to drag the stump free and attach the ropes to the next victim.

  “England is tree country. I am turning it into grain country. This pulley machine was made in the Wisdom-House by priests of Njörth—they are seamen, they know all about pulleys—and some of my catapulteers. They are used to cogwheels. My steelmaster, Udd, is in charge of making the wheels. They have to be small, but strong.”

  “And do you let anyone have the machine?”

  Shef's turn to grin. “If they left it to me, maybe. But they don't. My fee-master in the House of Wisdom, Father Boniface, he rents them out to those with land to clear. They pay a fee for the machine. But cleared land is free for the clearers to keep. Not for ever. For three lives. Then the land reverts to the crown. I get rich from the rents of the machines. My successors”—Shef nodded at baby Edward. “They get rich when the land comes back to them.”