Sidroc the Dane

by Octavia Randolph

  Sidroc walked with Yrling to the opened stable doors, where Merewala had fallen. The body lay still upon its back, but both men, nearing it, stopped in their tracks. Both gave up soft oaths.

  The old lord’s body had been desecrated. The helmet was there, but the noble head which it had protected had been hacked away. Yrling’s killing thrust had been at the throat; now another had completed the job with a skeggox. A bloodied stump of neck was all that sprouted from the ring-tunic, its gleam hazed by the darkness of blood.

  Something else was gone as well. Strapped across the old lord’s belly, over the shining links of his ring-tunic, had been a black sheath, from which hung his seax, its pommel ornamented in silver and gold. Sheath, blade and belt: all were gone.

  A louder oath from Yrling was for all of it. He could scarcely believe one of his men would pilfer from his own battle-gain; he could without contest kill a man for doing so. But the way the daughter of the hall had been dealt with reminded him that many following him were renegades. He could place no trust in such men.

  The hacking away of the man’s head incensed him. The body was his trophy, and no other’s. He was not sure he would not have served it thus himself, but the fact that one of his men had done so without his leave angered him the more.

  They stood there, looking upon the fallen lord, as the rowdy singing of a drunken man filled their ears. From the direction of the kitchen yard came two Danes, staggering as they approached. Having discovered ale and drunk their fill, they paraded by, one holding a long pole on which sat a heavy burden: Merewala’s head on the end of a pike.

  Chapter the Twenty-fourth: Jarl

  THE first few days at Four Stones passed in a fog of action, and excess. Ridding the confines of the keep of the dead was the first task. The thegns were tied by the heels to lines strung from the saddles of the good horses found there, and dragged out through the great opening of the palisade gates. Yrling would have ordered the men of the village to bury them, but there were, oddly, few found.

  Work gangs of Danes dug shallow graves out beyond the common pasture lands, and heaved the bodies in. Even Merewala’s body suffered thus. Stripped of everything of value by the men who had killed them, some of the dead were dragged naked down the dull ribband of road. Merewala’s head alone remained within the enclosing palisade. When the ashes had cooled enough a Dane stuck the pike bearing it into a chink between paving stones in the ruins of the hall. There it looked balefully down upon all which had been lost to the invaders.

  Merewala had led three-and-forty warriors. All were dead, their bodies numbered by Yrling himself as the horses pulling them were driven by.

  Their own dead amounted to two-and-twenty; nineteen of whom were killed outright and three who died within that first week of wounds taken. All were burnt, a great pyre fired outside and around the back of the keep. On a plain of rising land they had discovered an old and forsaken Place of Offering, a trench wherein bits of rusted metal still lay, choked by Winter-dried weeds. A beech tree, tall, majestic, boughs now empty yet spreading, led the eye there. Off to one side of the beech was the trench, overseen by a rotting but tall carving of a God. Parts of it had fallen away, but there was no mistaking from what remained that this was none other than Odin. The single eye of all-seeing All-Father betrayed this. Merewala had professed the faith of the Christians, but someone before him had followed the same Gods the Danes revered. Old Gye, who Yrling had sailed with on raids, had told him this; that before the men of Angle-land followed the cross, they had honoured the northern Gods. The Danes sent their newly dead to Asgard within Odin’s gaze.

  It was there too that All-Father received the ox due him. Yrling was not alone in making Offering. Every man of his company came forward with something to consign to the trench. The captured weapons of the vanquished thegns brought fresh and shining steel to lie next that eaten away by rust. Each man selected some item from his battle-gain to present to that God he most honoured. Blades of seaxes were snapped, sword blades bent, shields with their figured iron bosses smashed. The weapons of one’s opponent were ever the most cherished winnings, signifying utter victory over a foe, but the warring Gods would have their due in such token.

  Sidroc chose the long spear of the thegn he had tricked into killing his fellow with, calling out the name of Tyr as with a wood-axe he severed the shaft. The decaying carving of Odin was before him, there to witness his death-due, yet as he straightened up his eyes fell on the beech tree beyond, a thing thriving, vital, and alive as he. He found himself nodding to it, in recognition. That beech had witnessed much here, its girth telling it had mayhap watched from leafy boughs when the image of the God was first carved and painted.

  When they were done the trench was heaped with shattered weaponry. This mass Offering was performed with the smoke from the bodies of many Danes still wafting from the smouldering funeral pyre.

  Of the body of Wendreda, the old lord’s daughter, and those of the dead folk of the hall, they never knew what happened, only that new mounds appeared in the small fenced-in area to one side of the village.

  Yrling could not keep his men from ravaging through the crofts the first day or two, grabbing women. He put an end to it after that. They needed the village women to farm and care for livestock. Likewise, any women within the walls, those of the actual keep, he would not allow to be further abused; these were needed to serve them. Of the village men, there were but few left save the old or very young; some had been killed in the sham raid at the start, but some of his men carried the rumour they had fled.

  Looking upon their efforts, it seemed a faultless attack, one executed with both speed and audacity. As a Winter encounter it gave added surprise. Danes sailed in fair weather, raided, then set sail again over the North Sea to home as soon as they were satisfied, and with the weather still fair. Yrling’s war-band, stranded as it was, was forced to try a different tack, one which had richly rewarded them. The fact that Bjarne had been killed by one of Merewala’s body-guard was the greatest loss Yrling felt; he had been an able hand at managing food stores.

  He could not grieve Wendreda’s death; her rape angered him, but the fact that it had forced her to take her own life gave him pause as to her fitness as his wife. Such a woman lacked hardiness, he thought, or that native cunning many women possessed. A Jutland woman of any spirit would have pointed out to him her transgressors and insisted that he kill them. He would have, and all would be well.

  At any rate there were women about the hall who would come to him willingly enough, and as the weeks went on some of the village women too became more pliant. These had need to be, as the village food stores were carried inside the palisade, the village animals slaughtered to feed Yrling and his troop. Four Stones had supported a war-chief and his forty men; even with his losses Yrling had more than sixty. The herds of sheep, cattle, and goats shrank with an abruptness which would have alarmed Bjarne, had he lived. The men feasted, each and every night. The hunger which had haunted their days was driven out, and more easily than the memory of Merewala’s proud lordship here. His head above the ruins of his great hall kept him in mind, for the first few weeks at least. The grey floss of beard moved gently in the wind, bringing eerie life to the severed orb. The men moving below found they did not often look up at it.

  Of the second, and far smaller building lost to flame, lumps of melted bronze and pocked fragments of silver metal told that here indeed treasure had been housed. Its loss occasioned more wailing from the women of the hall, and when human bones were found in the cooling rubble the Danes kicked at, speechless tears fell from the eyes of those women who dared watch. For the second time in his life Sidroc saw women lift hand to brow, drop fingertips down to breast, cross to touch each shoulder, and then join together; the gesture he recalled the thrall woman Berthe use. This sacred sign of the Christians would be one he witnessed whenever the folk of Four Stones felt special distress. The Danes cleared the ruins of the temple away to enlarge t
he entry to the paddock, and some of the women would so sign whenever they were forced to walk over the dusky ground that had held the lost building.

  But at last the men had a roof under which to lie. The second, smaller portion of the hall of Four Stones became their home. It was of magnitude greater than Yrling or his nephews had ever stood in back in Dane-mark. A fire-pit the length of three men lay in the centre, edged round with large stones, blackened from years of heat and ash. The rest of the floor was of fitted pieces of red and charcoal-hued stone, set in a waving pattern that seemed to flow underfoot; a floor the likes of which none of them had ever seen.

  The clay beneath it had been dug out to hold this portion of the hall, so that from the forecourt a few stone steps led down to it. Once within, a flight of wooden stairs hugged the wall to one side, leading up to a partial second floor. The rooms there under the roof were narrow, but the largest had shuttered windows giving out to the forecourt, and looked beyond the top of the palisade to the village. Little was stored in these rooms, but they might have value in the future. It was the body of the hall itself that would serve the men’s daily needs.

  Tables of old oak sitting on trestles of even greater age served for meals. The hall was well supplied with these tables, dark with age, their tops scarred with the action of knives, and yet in strength as sound as new wood. The supporting trestles looked even older, yet were as sturdy as young trees. These trestle bases sported carvings of twining animals and scrolling vines wherever these had not been worn away by the action of innumerable boots rubbing against them. Stout benches, long and short, provided seating. Food was carried to the Danes sitting at the tables by the serving folk, progressing along a dim and narrow passage near one end of the hall. It led out to the kitchen yard, from which their meals were from the start brought; the quantities needed were too great to admit of cooking at the fire-pit.

  After the evening meal the tables were each night upended and stored against the stone block walls. Pallets of straw then covered the floor until dawn. All the men slept thus; only Yrling himself did not bed down in the body of the hall. His bed lay behind a door strapped over with iron, set into a wall of oak the thickness of a man’s wrist. Behind this door was a small chamber, with a single window set high in the wall, which became the treasure room of Four Stones. The floor was of broad oak planks and not stone, warmer and more pleasant under foot, but still a solid base for all it housed. This room had already goods in it; chests of fine men’s clothing, and other things secret to Yrling, for he alone looked inside some of the smaller boxes laid within.

  It could not be known what goods had been lost when the main part of the hall burned, but in this newly-made treasure room Yrling had brought every pack from all the horses bearing his gains from the Abbey of Beardan, the fort of the coast-guard, and every war-band or farmstead they had triumphed over. The candle-holders of silver, lengths of cloth, gem-encrusted boards ripped from the stacks of thin animal skin, the odd and rare hand of silver, and all else was deposited here. Chests were carried in from store-houses in the work yards to hold the wealth of weaponry he had won, the swords and seaxes taken from the fallen. Another held spear-points, only awaiting new shafts.

  Whole spears of varying lengths were set upright in the body of the hall itself, at the corners of the treasure room wall, where they were readily at hand. And the wall of the treasure room, at one end of the hall, was signally marked with a symbol of the victorious Danes. Upon its thick oaken boards Aki, so good at drawing, took a stick of charcoal and limned a vast raven, wings outstretched. The carrion-eating raven was a favoured symbol of warring men. Yrling had given himself to Odin, and Odin had two ravens. The dark eye of the bird Aki drew there was such that it seemed to look out over the men as they sat at table, or slept.

  His men kept their own battle-gain as they would, in leathern packs into which each man had burnt his mark with iron poker. All had won treasure, and had more awarded to them by Yrling, so that some had two or three packs, filled with clothes, boots, seaxes and swords, scabbards and weapons belts, mantle pins of bronze, and handfuls of silver in coinage, jewellery, and hack-silver.

  Cold weather deepened into Winter, and came on fully. Spared from damp and wet, and with ample food in their bellies, the men of Four Stones took full possession of their new home. The shattered rhythm of the keep was slowly, and imperfectly restored. Craftsmen and serving folk who had been killed in the taking of Four Stones left voids not easily filled. The men and women who remained were, in many cases, forced into other roles by necessity, and all, whether free or not, were now regarded by the conquerors as thralls – mere slaves.

  Four Stones had been a rich and well-ordered hall; now, with no Lady to run it, its folk and produce suffered. The long-standing bonds between hall and village were severed; the village become a place of outright plunder for its grain, vegetables, and beasts, and before Yrling ordered it stopped, for its women too. Men seeking the touch of female flesh might bargain with the hungry village women for food, but mindful of Wendreda’s Fate, he wanted no more rape.

  Within the palisade enough of the cookery staff had been killed that others, as yet unskilled in the feeding of large numbers, were forced into the role. The brewers and bakers still lived, at work at their malting ovens and kneeling at their stone querns. They brought forth barley ale, and breads of oat and rye meal, all of good savour. Wheat was in the grain chests, so that bread of that fine tooth and flavour was also baked. But those doing such work muttered about the rapid depletion of the village stores, and the emptying of the keep’s own grain houses.

  The stronghold being won, certain Danes came forward to take the place of lost artisans. Men of Jutland and Laaland who were able took up the tools of hands which had been stilled in the attack. The fire at the smith’s was re-lit, and the bright clang of hammer striking steel on an iron anvil rang forth through the work yard. Others turned tanners, scraping and soaking the hides of the cattle and goats they ate. From these, leather workers fashioned shoes, belts, and tunics. Of linen and wool the men had clothing enough from what they stripped from the bodies of all they had killed; but with no women of the hall spinning or weaving, the store of bed linens and towelling suffered.

  It was a hall of men flush with conquest, unconcerned with the diverse and largely hidden needs of continued sustenance. Their shelter and bounty had been hard won, and they took time to relish it. At night gathered together at table they recounted their deeds, those skilled in such matters making Saga-tales of the small band who had sailed from Ribe and was now in possession of this rich keep. All deeds lived on in the skaldic art. The fire-pit blazed as the barley ale went round, men winking in the heat of fire, food, and brew. And oftentimes Toki, his yellow head bending near the painted yellow arms of his harp, would pluck out a song, his fine voice by turns plaintive and low, or loud and raucous. Men sung of were never forgotten after they themselves had become ash.

  Yrling had gained more than thirty head of horses from Merewala’s stable and paddocks, an unexpected and welcome boon. Many of the men he housed and fed had never sat astride a horse. Only the more prosperous of them, such as Une and Jari, had been raised with horses, and Yrling, with his deep attraction to their beauty, had bought his mare as a youth. Both Toki and Sidroc were good riders as a result. Now each man, however awkward at first, became a capable horseman under the training of those at ease astride the long-limbed steeds of this new land.

  Their mounts were not only their means of swift travel and successful raiding, but also a source of treasure in themselves. A good horse, while not part of the war-kit proper, was prized by all warriors, a possession to aspire to. One need only to back a handsome animal to know this. The height and stature a horse gave its rider as it moved past those treading the ground was nearly as great a distinction as stood between a trained warrior with spear or sword and a peasant wielding a hay rake.

  To house and feed this growing herd they scouted out a pla
in, lying to the northeast of the keep, hemmed round with thick forest growth, making of it a natural enclosure. With close to one hundred horses the need for fodder was great, and the animals could be brought into the keep yard in rotation. Merewala’s red stallion became Yrling’s favoured mount, and he gave Sidroc and Toki and his chief men all their pick in turn. A young bay stallion with streaming black mane and tail became Sidroc’s, along with a few choice mares, so that he might increase his stock. Toki selected a showy cream-coloured horse, but kept on riding the grey stallion of the war-chief at Beardan, just as the dead man’s gold-chased helmet now adorned Toki’s head.

  Snow fell that Winter. Hard frosts and sleet gave way to blowing flakes that whitened the ridges of the empty furrows of the village fields. The war-band did not ride out to raid; it had no need to. But before the advent of freezing weather, groups of men went out to hunt, augmenting the kitchen yard work tables with stags, and even twice, boar. The hunting in icy marshes and in hushed and dripping forests brought more food to their tables. And the hunt, with its rigours and dangers, served as sport as well. The first boar that was chased out of thick hazel undergrowth had up-curving tusks the length of a man’s finger. Seven Danes surrounded it, spears foremost, and three of them struck the flanks of the beast with their spear points. Its grunting squeals did not long sound. One man, having made the first spear-thrust, was eager to approach the fallen boar. The hoary dark head had dropped to the frosted mosses, the small eye rolled up and dull. The Dane was crying out in triumph over the dead beast when the shoulders of the boar rolled. The snout came up, and the deadly tusks pitched forward, puncturing the man’s belly. His own squeal was deeper and more final than the beast he had dropped.