Sidroc the Dane

by Octavia Randolph

  He re-sheathed his knife, and stood a moment longer. He did not know if he had been trembling as he drove his knife into the thegn’s body, but he felt rock solid now. He drew another breath, deeper, fuller. His empty hand rose to his own chest, and he laid it there, palm open, almost where he had hit the dead man with his blade. He was not feeling for his heart through the thickness of his leathern tunic, but for his luck-spirit, his hamingja. It seemed to have rushed back in, returned to him.

  The shrillness of Yrling’s whistle called him back. Sidroc retrieved both sword and spear and walked into the yard of the fort. He saw a figure dressed in the way of a serving man edging his way along the inside of the palisade, saw the man reach it and dash out, following several others who had fled. No arrow nor flung spear hindered them. Those inside and still alive were turning to other things.

  Yrling stood near the largest of the buildings, a timber hall of stout and sturdy make. He still held his unsheathed sword, but had set his shield against the upright planks of the hall. The carnage before him was considerable. Perhaps a score of men lay dead or dying within the walls, and half that number without the breached gates. The Saxon thegns amongst them were easy to spot. Their weaponry marked them at once; the swords worn high on their chests from now-empty baldrics, their knives hanging across their bellies. And all bore ring-shirts. The Danes, both Yrling’s and the strange crew, were an altogether more ragtag lot.

  Sidroc stopped at the edge of the yard, scanning those who stood and those who lay on the muddy ground. Yrling looked hale. Like all of them his hair was disheveled, his face wet with both sweat and rain. Sidroc saw Asberg next, spear in hand, straightening up from where he had been poking at the downed body of a Saxon, felled with that same weapon. Asberg lifted his spear in a kind of salute to him, and grinned at Sidroc. After what Sidroc had just undergone, Asberg, with his light blue eyes and broad and open face, seemed a friend of long standing, and Sidroc grinned back.

  Jari was there, turning from where he and his brother Une stood by a trampled wattle fence from which geese had fled. Jari had a bloodied head but otherwise looked unhurt. And Sidroc saw the remains of the troop of raiders who had begun the attack, standing, weapons still raised, and looking at he who had whistled them to attention.

  Yrling was speaking now. Having won the place, he too must address those Danes they had aided.

  “Brothers new to us,” he began, and looked at four or five who stood nearest, weapons in hand. “Who leads you?”

  The response was slow in coming. At last one spoke. “We have no leader. We sailed with Gorm from Aros in Jutland, but have left him to go our own way.”

  “So you have no ship,” Yrling said. They had seen none, and now knew why.

  The strangers had demand of their own.

  “Whose men are you?” one tossed out.

  “The men of Yrling,” he answered. “And I am that Yrling – Yrling of Lindisse.”

  “You sound from Jutland to me,” came a voice from one of the strange Danes, and indeed, all his men had looked to him as he named himself thus.

  “Já. I was Yrling of Jutland, but now will carve out holdings here in Lindisse. One day I will be Jarl here.”

  He kept his eyes on the newcomers as they took this in. His voice was steady, his white teeth flashing as he spoke. “It was bold work you set for yourselves, taking this keep. And the Gods were with you that we came along when we did.”

  This was more than simple boasting. With only a score of men the attackers would have been hard pressed to have won out against the Saxons. It told Yrling how desperate they were, to attempt such a strike. If Gorm’s men had been outnumbered by the Saxons, they were even more so by his own men. He paused a moment to consider. He could threaten that they join him, or die, but Yrling had some little pride in his skill at man-craft.

  “There is a debt now, which you owe us,” he chose to tell them. “One you can fulfill behind me.”

  The Danes thus addressed spent some time glancing at each other. They had not perhaps left one war-lord to take up so soon with another. Yet they had suffered heavy losses in this attempt against the coast-guard; continuing on with so few men made success at any other raids unlikely. And they were hungry.

  “I will join you,” said one, who had yet to speak. He made good on his words by walking to stand next Yrling. One by one his fellows joined, until all who still could stand made declaration in this way. There were three-and-ten of them. One had a bad slash on his fore-arm, but other than that their hurts were slight. Yrling looked on them with satisfaction, and sheathed his sword.

  They must now count their own losses. Gap was going around the yard, spear in hand, making certain all the Saxons were dead. A quick thrust to the breast of any that groaned or seemed to breathe assured that. He stopped at one body, from which a low and strangled moan issued. It was one of their own number. Gap waved Yrling over. The man before them, Asved by name, had been one of the original twenty who had left with Yrling from Ribe. Most remembered how Bjarne’s knife, thrown after the rat aboard Death-day, had barely missed Asved, and recalled how he had sworn at Bjarne before beginning to laugh.

  That rat had not been seen since landing on the shores of Angle-land, but now Asved was dying. He had taken a deep wound to the lower belly, the wool of his leggings dark with running blood. Yrling looked down on him. Asved’s eyes were tightly shut, his face knotted by suffering. He could not live much longer, the rasping gasp of his breath told that. Yrling shook his head, and re-drew his sword as he bent over him.

  “Asved,” he called, in a loud voice. “Now I send you to Odin!” The man’s eyes were still shut, but Yrling knew he heard him. It was a promise he kept with a swift thrust of his blade at the man’s heart.

  “To Odin,” echoed several. Like all the other Danes who had fallen, his had been a warrior’s death, one to celebrate.

  They had lost but six men from Death-day and Yellow-sail, a slight price to win such a prize as what lay before them. And for the six that had died, more than twice that number now joined their ranks.

  Those who lived were tired, sore, and thirsty, yet there was no time to lose. Thegns had ridden off; more would be back, and soon. As they numbered the bodies, they found four-and twenty dead Saxon warriors, more than Yrling had expected. Each of them bore worthy war-kit, and all of it was now theirs.

  “Everything. We take everything,” Yrling told his men. He had lifted his right hand, gesturing to all within the palisade. They turned first to the battle-gain from the dead thegns, each man seeking out those he had downed.

  For Sidroc it meant returning to the narrow path between the two small outbuildings, and to the body lying there. He set his shield on its rim against one of the timber walls and squatted down on his heels at the side of the dead Saxon. He knew what to do, start with that of greatest value. For Sidroc this was the man’s steel helmet, still upon the head. He pushed the man over on his back, pulled at the legs to straighten them. He lifted the helmet off, his eyes tripping briefly over the opened grey eyes of the man he had killed. He put the helmet directly on his own head, felt the warmth still held in the padded leathern interior of it. Looking through those large and slanted eye-holes for the first time framed what seemed a new world for him.

  The ring-tunic. A pool of blood, showing almost black against the iron rings, marked the entry point of Sidroc’s killing thrust. It stained the brown leather of the sword baldric on the man’s chest. He fumbled for the buckle, found and unfastened it, pulled the weapon and its scabbard away and to one side. The thegn’s seax must also be freed, with its separate belt. He did not take time to draw the blade out and admire it; he knew it would be good by looking at the care taken in adorning the grip. Swirls of red copper wire had been hammered into carved grooves, making the grip gleam even in the grey light.

  To claim the ring-tunic itself he must pull the man’s arms over his head, and wrestle it off. His hands were bloodied by
the time he finished, but he had the heavy thing rolled up. The rent his knife blade had caused he would have mended; until that day he would wear it himself, once the blood was rinsed from it.

  Nothing at the wrists, but a handsome silver chain at the neck, one braided of many strands of silver. Remembering Yrling’s act after capturing Yellow-sail, Sidroc slipped the chain over his head as soon as he had yanked it over the man’s face.

  The leggings were held by another belt, but no purse would be there; this thegn’s silver would be within the hall in which he slept, and thus be forfeit to Yrling. But the brown belt itself, stamped over with dark circles and squares from a small die, sported a large buckle of bronze, and Sidroc pulled it loose. The thegn’s black boots too he wrenched off; his own were split in two places, and the farmers they had killed wore shoes little better than he owned. Those on the feet of this Saxon were almost new, made of thick leather – goat hide, Sidroc thought – and were long enough to fit him.

  He had worked quickly, aware of the beating of his heart, the warmth still felt, however faintly, from the thegn’s body, aware too of the noise of hoots and crows of triumph coming from the yard, the calls of others doing what he himself had just done. He gave a final look at the body he had despoiled, then turned from it.

  What he did not already wear he dumped in the thegn’s shield. He swung his own on his back and carried his battle-gain out to the yard.

  The ground there, of blood-stained and churned mud, was littered with the half-naked bodies of Saxons. All the Danes who had died had been carried to the wall of the largest building. All were still fully dressed, their weapons laid on their chests or at their sides. They must be left behind, and would be sent to Asgard, weapons and silver intact. Odin, All-Father, or that Goddess of love and lust, Freyja, would be ready to welcome them to their waiting and respective halls.

  But the living must look to their next meal. Yrling and Une had been ranging in and out of the timber buildings, stuffing leathern packs with any valuables their reaching fingers closed upon. Sidroc joined the rest pillaging for food. Two large hand wains were wheeled from one of the outbuildings, into which was heaped anything they could lay hands on. Storehouses had bins of early grain, the remains of last year’s dried beans and peas, and half-empty barrels of shredded smoked meat. A springhouse sunken into the soil yielded pots of fresh cheeses and butter. A small wooden box lined with crinkled sheet lead held salt in great flakes of snowy white. Loaves of precious bread, that which the men craved, were swept from the rack on which they had been cooling near the cooking ring, and other loaves plucked from the hot pans in which they still baked. One locked storehouse had its door broken down by the blows from a battle-axe. Within were pottery crocks of mead, to add to the crocks of new-brewed ale already taken from the back of an open shed. The two who carried them out cried out in gladness at their find.

  Such geese and fowl which had not escaped were grabbed, a prize worth the pecking and scratches they gave. The wains, piled high, made two hasty trips to the beach, their contents held upright by the guiding hands of the men who won the goods. On the final trip they all gathered their battle-gain.

  Yrling himself would fire the place, and was at work at the cooking ring with rush torches. It was his final act of triumph against the Saxon guard, and he took more than a little pride in the deed. But beyond sealing his victory, it was the funeral rite of their lost brethren. Whenever possible raiding Danes burnt their dead, freeing the life-essence at once. He flung the rush lights one, two, and three onto the wooden and thatched roofs of the fort. Damp as it was, the oil-soaked torches still caught, flaring into brilliant if smoky flame. All were watching, now crowded into the broken gateway as the fire spread. The bodies of the Danes left behind, composed, armed, awaiting the after-life, lay in stark contrast with those of the defeated thegns.

  Yrling must show that all who fell in his service would be so honoured.

  “Our dead will fly to Asgard in a moment,” he claimed aloud, assurance to the living.

  Sidroc had been looking too. Some of these men he had come to know fairly well in the past weeks. He knew it was not only their injuries that made them unrecognisable now. He felt as if he looked on the corpses of strangers, so different were the dead from the quick. He could not let himself think that his body could also be lying there.

  They loaded the ships, pushed off, oared away, a brilliant and smouldering beacon marking the path they had taken.

  That night Sidroc awoke in the dark. The camp they made was on the firm banks up a narrow river, a camp they would abandon after first light. He always slept soundly, but he awoke with a suddenness that made him wonder if all was well. They had feasted and drunk much ale, and all had also two cups of the strong honeyed mead they had won. He felt none of it now. He lifted himself on his elbows. By the light of a slender and waning Moon he could make out the forms of two of his fellows as they stood, keeping watch. He lay back down in the near-blackness. Closing his eyes his brain was full of an image, that of his last look at the plundered body of the thegn he had killed. He was a warrior who had been the picked man of the lord that set the coastal watch. The man had ten or fifteen years on him. He had a wife somewhere, and children too.

  Now the thegn’s fine silver chain was hung around Sidroc’s neck; his boots lay near to Sidroc’s feet. He had asked the thegn for life, and had repaid the man’s granting it with death. It was akin to what his uncle had done, sailing up to the captain of the yellow-sailed drekar and asking for help, before sending an arrow into his heart. Both men had made mistakes, mistakes that led to their deaths.

  This was to go a-viking, Sidroc reflected. To abide by no law on land or sea, to live wholly by one’s wits, to seek every advantage, no matter the means. What he had first thought treachery was in truth cunning, without which no man could survive. Yet it was long until sleep again found him that night.

  Chapter the Twenty-first: Nothing

  YRLING kept the men of Death-day and Yellow-sail on the move. They might spend several days oaring up a river, exploring its narrowing stream, striking at what farms lay within easy reach of their waiting ships. But they always returned to the North Sea, and their steady northern way up the coast of Lindisse. It was a kingdom both sparsely peopled and poorly defended. And it was far enough from Wessex or Mercia, the stronger kingdoms to the West, that a band of some sixty Danish raiders striking there would elicit little interest from Kings Æthelred of Wessex or Burgred of Mercia.

  The demands of keeping them in food meant a strike at almost every farmstead they spotted. The knowledge that fleeing survivors would find their way to some lord’s hall to summon help kept them sailing on. Crossing from the borders of Anglia to Lindisse had aided them, as no king’s men could pursue them across kingdoms, but the haste in which Yrling and his men moved meant unavoidable waste in the foodstuffs they captured. They gorged on meat before it could go bad. The flesh of fowl, sheep, pig, and cattle was roasted, or boiled up with whatever grain they could carry off. Smokehouses might yield hams or a haunch of deer; and eggs, if they could be carried off safely, were prized. As they had found at the fort of the coast-guard and at earlier strikes, a cask of ale or even crocks of mead might be discovered. More than once Yrling issued threats to those who tried to claim such for themselves. Better they all get a swallow than a few men end up drunk, or dead from fights over it. It was the same with women; he wanted no fighting. He could not stop the men from having their full of any women they caught, but never allowed women to be brought aboard his ships.

  As his men began to know each other friendships and aversions formed. Men paired up as fighting partners, and trading partners too, for what booty they had taken. Certain men would not eat or even stand next to others, though Yrling sometimes made a point of sending such to perform a single task together, to keep any rift to manageable width. The man Kjeld from Yellow-sail had angered Gap by ridiculing his whistling manner of speaking. Thus Kjeld and
Gap were told to join Yrling as they ripped up the floorboards of a particularly thriving farm, hoping to spot a sack of buried silver. Bue, who had, for no seeming reason, taken a dislike to Jari, was sent with him to tackle and spear a huge blue-black pig.

  Jari was younger brother to Une, who was second in command, so Bue’s dislike put him at odds with both brothers. But Toki and Bue had taken up; they shared the same reckless spirit and loud and jesting taunts. Both Toki and Bue had love of dice, and after studying their play Sidroc found he could often best each of them. Their daring would not still their hands even when their luck-spirits had wandered; they would play and lose with an almost defiant pride. Sidroc gained much from them, both in the way of hack-silver and the better things they had stripped from the bodies of the dead, good shoes, belts, woollen mantles.

  Still, when it came time to run against the gathering men of a place Toki would form up near Yrling, sometimes flanking him with Sidroc and Une. Jari would be close, and the quiet Asberg, who they all saw was nimble with both feet and spear, was a welcome member of their line.

  One of the men they had picked up at the coast-guard fight had special skill, one not in the way of fighting. Aki bore on his left wrist the pricked-in design of a coiling snake, one he had made himself. The snake even sported overlapping scales, so skillfully was it wrought, and as the design lay under the skin no ash-and-lye soap could scrub it off. All the men admired it, perhaps none more than Sidroc. One late afternoon, after they had eaten, Sidroc saw Aki at work on his own wrist and came to him.

  Aki was seated on a log, his kit on the tree stump. He had two small pouches opened before him, a scrap of linen dotted with tiny blood marks, and an awl like a thick needle in his right hand.

  Sidroc watched as Aki poked the punch into his skin, wiped away the welling bead of blood, and sprinkled the hole with a mixture of powered, dried woad, and fine copper dust. Both would lend a blue colour to the design, and the woad, being both a dye plant and one used to staunch bleeding, kept the many small holes from weeping too much. Right now Aki was adding to the detail on the snake’s scales, rubbing small pinches of the dye-stuff into the tiny wounds he gave himself.