One King's Way thatc-2 Page 7

  No time to grab it, and too risky to grapple. All the Viking had to do was hold him till the Ragnarssons got there. Shef stepped back, arms spread in the wrestler's stance. The young man faced him, still panting, still grinning.

  “My name is Hrani,” he said. “I am the best wrestler in Ebeltoft.”

  He closed, reaching out for a collar-and-elbow grip. Shef ducked and snatched for the knife at Hrani's belt. As Hrani dropped a hand to cover it, he straightened up, swinging his left arm backhand under Hrani's neck and thrusting a hip behind him. Off balance, the tall man fell backwards. On to a knee braced to catch his spine. In the same instant Shef heaved down with both arms and all the smithy-trained strength in his body.

  A snap of spine, and Hrani looking upwards with terror in his eyes. Still holding him over one knee, Shef patted his cheek gently.

  “You are still the best wrestler in Ebeltoft,” he said. “It was a foul throw.”

  He pulled the knife from Hrani's belt and stabbed upwards, deep under the ribcage. Rolled the body aside and straightened, retrieving the sword with its plain bone handle.

  A deeper channel just a few yards away. Shef trotted to it, hurled the sword thirty feet to the other side, plunged in and stroked swiftly across. Turned and stood on the shore to face the Ragnarssons, trotting up together, breathing hard. He ducked his head for a moment to let his empty eye drain, then looked across and met the Snake-eye's gaze.

  “Come over,” he called. “There are three of you, all great warriors. So was your brother Ivar. I killed him in the water too.”

  Halvdan strode into the water, sword raised. His brother Ubbi caught him by the shoulder.

  “He would cut you down before you had your feet under you.”

  Shef grinned, deliberately exaggerating it, hoping to provoke a charge. If one man came across, he would try to kill him while the water still hampered his movements. If two or three crossed together, he would run again, confident that if nothing else he could outdistance them. He had the initiative now. This was a puzzle they had to solve. For they did not know he had made up his mind to run. If they all crossed together, the odds were that they would kill him, but he would get at least one blow in first. They might think, seeing the body of their henchman, that he was full of the fighting madness and would take their dare.

  Without warning or backlift Sigurth's javelin came darting at his belly, launched without as much as a flicker of expression. Shef saw the flash, leapt with the reactions of youth into the air, kicking his legs wide. The shaft tapped him agonizingly in the groin as it flew through. Shef landed in a crouch on the sand, bit his lip to conceal the pain.

  “At least your brother Ivar fought fair, standing on the same plank as I did,” he called. “Did anyone tell you how he died?” His testicles crushed in my grasp, he thought, and his face cut to ribbons where I butted him with the edge of my helmet. I hope that was not the story they heard. For if he fought fair I certainly did not.

  The Snake-eye turned away, not even bothering to draw his sword. He muttered something to his brothers and they turned too, stepping back towards the body of Hrani. Shef saw Sigurth stoop and retrieve the gold bracelet from Hrani's arm. Then the three began to make their way together back to their ship. They had not taken the dare.

  Sigurth is a clever man, thought Shef. He turned and fled from the sea-battle rather than fight according to my plan. Now he has done the same again. I must remember, that does not mean that he has given up. He looked round, assessing his own situation. He was cut off from the Norfolk. It might or might not be attacked by Sigurth and his crew, might or might not win the duel. But in any case he did not dare to try to rejoin it. Impossible to say what ambushes Sigurth might lay in the sandbanks. He would have to go the other way, towards the unknown shore, across maybe a quarter-mile yet of sandbanks.

  He had the clothes he stood up in, a flint and steel tied to his belt, and a poorly made iron sword with a bone handle. His stomach reminded him that he had not eaten since the noon-meal. He was already starting to shiver uncontrollably in his soaked woolen breeches and tunic. The salt water was irritating his empty eye, so that by some freak the other one wept continually. The sun was a bare hand's breadth above the flat horizon. And he could not stay where he was. The tide was rising. Soon he would be faced with a long swim rather than a walk.

  He felt less of a king than ever. But then, he told himself, he had never felt truly a king at all. At least now that he was a man he had no master or stepfather to beat him.

  Turning towards the German shore on the north bank of the Elbe, he thought to pick up the javelin Sigurth had hurled at him. A fine weapon, as was to be expected, iron-shafted for a foot below its long triangular head. The head itself of excellent steel, without marks of use. No silver inlay or decoration. The Snake-eye, sensible man, wasted no money on what he meant to throw at his enemies. Yet there were marks on the steel, runes. Tutored carefully by Thorvin, Shef managed to read them: “Gungnir,” they said.

  So, the Snake-eye thought it no desecration to imitate Othin himself. It was no heirloom or ancient weapon. Shef's smithcraft told him that this was new-forged.

  Thoughtfully, Shef sloped the spear over one shoulder, tucked Hrani's sword into his belt, and set out wearily and cautiously for the north bank of the Elbe across its guardian sands, just visible in the twilight.

  Far to the north of the sandbanks of the Elbe, north even of the Ragnarssons' stronghold in Danish Sjaelland, the great college of the Way in far-off Kaupang lay still under deep snow on the Norwegian shore. Thick ice bridged the fjords from one bank to the other. Men out in the open moved hurriedly to the next place of shelter.

  Yet between the rapid shapes of skiers one figure came to a halt, stood motionless in the snow: Vigleik of the many visions, most respected of the priests of the Way. Where he stood, birds began to flutter out of the sky, land around him, forming a circle. As the flock grew thicker, men pointed, called others to watch. Slowly a circle of men, priests and their apprentices and servants, formed outside the ring of birds, keeping a decorous fifty yards away.

  One of the birds, a small redbreast, flew up from the throng, perched on Vigleik's shoulder, twittered loud and long. Vigleik stood unmoving in the snow, his head cocked as if paying attention. Finally he nodded courteously, and the bird flew off.

  A second bird came, sat on his gloved hand where it clutched the pole of his skis. This time it was a tiny wren, its tail cocked up like a rider's spur. It too sang a long song, and waited. “Thank you, sister,” the watching priests heard Vigleik say.

  Then all the birds flew hastily up and off to safety in the branches. The newcomer was a great black crow, which did not sit by Vigleik but paced up and down in front of him, calling from time to time in harsh and challenging caws. It sounded as if it were jeering. Still Vigleik stood silent. In the end the bird lifted its tail, squirted a stream of droppings on to the grass, and in its turn flew off.

  After a while Vigleik raised his eyes and stared into the far distance. When he dropped them, his face had changed back to its normal expression. Knowing the vision had passed from him, his colleagues ventured to approach. In the lead was Valgrim, admitted head of the College, and priest of Othin All-Father—there were few who cared to take such responsibility.

  “What news, brother?” he said at last.

  “News of the death of tyrants. And worse news. My brother the redbreast told me that Pope Nikulaus is dead in Rome-burg, smothered under a pillow by his own servants. He paid the price not for sending his men against us, but for losing.”

  Valgrim nodded his head, a smile of pleasure creasing his beard.

  “My sister the wren told me that in Frankland King Karl the Bald is also dead. One of his counts told the story of how Karl's ancestors had the long-haired kings shaven to show that they were kings no more, and said that God had sent baldness to Karl to show he should never have been king. When Karl told men to lay hands on the count, the other counts rose a
nd slew him instead.”

  Valgrim smiled again. “And the crow?” he prompted finally.

  “That was the worse news. He told me there is a tyrant still living, though close to death today, Sigurth Ragnarsson.”

  “Tyrant he may be,” said Valgrim. “Yet he is the favorite of Othin for all that. If the Way could win him to its side, it would gain a mighty champion.”

  “That may be too,” said Vigleik. “Yet his creature the crow treats us as his enemies, the murderers of his brother. It threatened me, threatened all of us, with his vengeance. And yet the crow was not telling all the truth, I know. He was keeping something back.”

  “What?”

  Vigleik shook his head slowly. “That is still hidden from me. Yet for all you say, Valgrim, I do not think the road to victory at Ragnarök lies through the likes of Sigurth Ragnarsson, with his sacrifices and his cruelty. It is not great champions alone that will overcome Loki and the Fenris-brood. Nor is it blood that will bring Balder back from the dead. Not blood, but tears.”

  Valgrim's face flushed even in the cold at the challenge to his authority, and the mention of unlucky names and deeds. Controlling himself, he asked finally, “And at the end, when you seemed to look far away?”

  “Then I saw eagles in the distance. First one mounted above the other, and then the lower one flew higher again. I could not see which would win in the end.”

  Chapter Five

  Erkenbert the deacon sat in the sunlight behind a stout table, ink and parchment in front of him. It had been a long day's work, almost over now. But a deeply satisfying one. Erkenbert felt confidence, respect, almost awe creeping over him as he shuffled the thick pile of parchment sheets, filled with row after row of names: each one an application to join the ranks of the new Order which the archbishops of the West had proclaimed: the Order of the Lance, or in their tongue the Lanzenorden.

  During their slow journey north from Cologne to Hamburg, Erkenbert had realized that there were special factors favoring the establishment of an order of warrior-monks here, in the German lands. In his native Northumbria, as indeed over the whole of family-conscious England, the thanes who formed the backbone of any army were good at one thing alone: establishing themselves comfortably on the estates granted them by the king. And then moving heaven and earth to see that not only did they hold on to them, however old, fat or unfitted for military service they became, but also that the estates were passed on in due form to their children. Sometimes they sent sons to perform service for them, sometimes they worked their way into royal or monastic favor by enforcing the king's dooms, or the abbot's, and witnessing any charter that needed a voice to swear one way or the other. However they did it, even if they had to send their daughters to tempt some magnate's lust, it was rare in England to find a parcel of land without some noble's son who thought he had a claim on it, or a noble's son who would prove in the end to be disappointed.

  Not so in Germany. The warrior-class there had not been allowed to settle in and make itself comfortable. Service had to be performed. If it was not, a better replacement was found immediately. A middle-aged warrior had better have seen to his own security by the time his sword-arm stiffened, for his lord would feel no obligation to do it for him. As for the sons of warriors, there were many with little prospects, no assured future. In a sense, thought Erkenbert very quietly to himself, for all their concern with noble blood, they were more like peasants or churls than nobles, for they might be dispossessed at any moment. To such men, warlike though they were, to be allowed to enroll in an Order which would provide them a home and comradeship till the day they died, as if they were black monks, might well have unexpected appeal.

  Yet he and his colleagues would not have had so much success in recruiting their serf-soldiers if it had not been for the oratory of Archbishop Rimbert. A dozen times as they made their way north from Cologne to Hamburg, Erkenbert had heard him call together the masses in whichever town they had chosen for their halt, and had heard him preach.

  Always he took as his text the words of Saint Mark, “I will send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” He reminded his hearers how Jesus had forbidden Saint Peter to resist the soldiers when they came for him in the garden of Gethsemane, how he had urged his disciples to turn the other cheek, and if a man compelled them to go with him one mile, to go with him voluntarily for two. He would pursue the theme till he saw the looks of doubt, or disgust, on the faces of his warlike listeners.

  And then he would say to them that what Jesus said was no doubt true. But what if a man compelled you to carry his pack for a mile, and you carried it from good will for two—and then instead of thanking you, he cursed you and told you to carry it another two, another ten, another twenty? What if you turned the other cheek and your enemy struck it again, and again, using his heaviest dogwhip? As his listeners stirred and muttered angrily, he would ask them why they felt anger. For were these things that he put to them not far less, not a hundred times less, than the insults and injuries they had had to endure from the pagans of the North? And then he talked to them of what he, Rimbert, had seen in his many years as the apostle to the North: daughters and wives ravished, men taken away and left to die in slavery, Christians on their knees in the snow, wailing as they waited to be sacrificed to the heathen gods at Odense or Kaupang or, worst of all, Swedish Uppsala. Wherever he could, he would tell each particular audience of what had happened to men or women from that town or that district—he seemed to have an inexhaustible stock of heart-rending stories, as who would not, Erkenbert reflected, if he had spent thirty years on the pointless and hopeless task of preaching to the heathen.

  And when his audience's anger was at its height, when the serf-knights among them scowled and wrung their hands and swept off their leather caps in passion, then Rimbert would tell them his text: “I will send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Yes,” he would say, “the good priests of my missions, not one in ten of whom ever returns to his home, they have been sheep—and sheep they will remain. But from now on”—and as he said this, his voice would rise to an iron clangor—“when I send out my sheep, I will see that with each sheep there goes, not another sheep, not a wolf, no. But a great dog, a great mastiff of the German breed, with a good spiked collar round his neck, and twenty other wolfhounds running with him. Then we will see how the wolves of the North listen to the sheep's preaching! Maybe they will listen closely to his bleat in the future.”

  And Rimbert would condescend to joke and play with words, sometimes even imitating the noise of a sheep to set his audience laughing uproariously in the relief of its tension and anger. And then Rimbert would tell them, slowly and quietly, of his plan. To send mission after mission into the North, through the friendlier of the chiefs and kings of the heathen, each mission centered on a learned and pious priest, as had always been the custom, but each mission containing also a new and strong bodyguard for that priest: men of noble birth and knightly station, men without wives or children or ties, men expert with sword and lance and mace, men who could ride a war-stallion with shield on one arm and lance in the other, controlling it with knees and fingertips alone—men whom even the pirates of the North would walk carefully around, fearing to antagonize them.

  And then, when he had their full attention, Rimbert would tell them of the Holy Lance, and of how, when it came back to the Empire, the spirit of Charlemagne would come again and lead Christendom once more to triumph over all its enemies. And he would invite suitable applicants to present themselves to his servants, to see if they were worthy of a place in the Lanzenorden. Which was why Erkenbert now had the thick piles of parchment in his hand, covered with row after row of names: the applicants' names, their claims to noble birth—for no peasants or peasants' sons would be admitted under any circumstances—the lists of the worldly wealth they could bring to the order, and the details of their personal arms and equipment. In due course some names would be crossed out, some would be accepted. Most would be crossed o
ut. And most of those not for failure in wealth or nobility, but because they could not pass the tests devised for them by the archbishop's Waffenmeister, his master-at-arms. Which, as Erkenbert ceased his writing, were going on in this place or that all over the wide exercise field outside the wooden stockade of much-sacked Hamburg. Men cutting at each other with blunted sword and shield. Men riding horses along a complex course of jumps and figures to strike down with a lance. Men grappling with each other, hand to hand, in the ring. And everywhere the grizzled Waffenmeister or the sergeants of his staff, noting, comparing, repeating names.

  Erkenbert looked across at Arno, the counselor of Gunther, sent along with Erkenbert into Rimbert's archdiocese to watch, assist and report. They grinned at each other with the curious fellow-feeling that had grown between them, the small dark one and the tall fair one, each recognizing the other's delight in efficiency, in the exercise of pure intelligence.

  “The Archbishop will get his first hundred easily,” offered Erkenbert.

  Before Arno could reply, another voice cut in. “He will only need ninety-nine now,” it said.

  Deacon and priest stared up from their stools at the newcomer.

  He was not a tall man, Erkenbert noted, ever sensitive on this point. But his shoulders were extraordinarily broad, made to seem even more so by a pinched, narrow waist like a girl's. He was wearing a padded leather jacket such as horsemen wore under their mail. Erkenbert saw that extra strips had been sewn in to widen the upper body, neatly, but without any attempt to match colors. Beneath the jacket there seemed to be only a fustian tunic of the cheapest kind, and well-worn woolen breeches.

  The eyes staring down were a bright, penetrating blue, the hair as fair as Arno's, but sticking up like the bristles of a brush. He had seen dangerous faces, and crazy faces, Erkenbert reflected, remembering Ivar the Boneless. He could not remember ever seeing a harder one. It seemed to have been chiseled out of rock, the skin stretched taut over prominent bones. Set on a neck as thick as a bulldog's, the head seemed almost small.