To Four Stones’ immediate North was an ancient hall known as Turcesig, which Guthrum had captured. It was now heavily garrisoned by him, though he was rarely there. It was buttress and protection to Yrling but further hemmed him in. With so much now taken by the Danes, all were forced to raid farther afield. This held particularly true for Four Stones, a fortress with a growing number of men, a village that produced far less than it had in its prime, and with a hall unmanaged by any mistress.
There were rich holdings in the West, but Mercia and Wessex were the most well-protected Kingdoms of the Saxons. Strikes for silver and supplies against these targets must be carried out with lightning speed. Booty was carried to a series of temporary, ever-changing camps, before the final dash, hauling it within Four Stones’ massive gates. The months Yrling and his core group of men had lived, ship-less and without shelter, served them well here. Even the youngest of them hardened into seasoned campaigners, veterans of many skirmishes, used to rough living, cold food, and hard and fast riding.
After the loss of Dauðadagr and Yellow-sail, horses had been the means of Yrling’s success. Horses remained the great treasure of Four Stones. Yrling took care in the bloodstock he had stolen and won, breeding up the best of the stallions to their equal amongst the mares, gelding the less promising colts so they put on flesh and became good mounts and pack animals, trading off fillies he had no use for. He had a string of horses he favoured as his own mounts, stallions and mares both, though every animal he had not bestowed personally on his men was in fact his.
Yrling’s frustration with the village did not abate. Some of the women of the hall had taken up with his men, and he had his pick of any as bed-mate, though he respected the claims of those men who had singled out women to be theirs. But the village, almost all of women, refused to yield. He knew some of the women there would lie with his men in exchange for small amounts of food, even a single loaf of bread. But none would hand-fast with them. It seemed a perverse kind of pride that kept them from this union, one beyond any of the warriors’ ken.
Out raiding they were sometimes followed by desperate Saxon women, begging, willing to trade themselves for whatever food they could spare. Such would appear at dusk, as they were setting camp, stepping from behind trees in groups to show themselves, their children left at a distance behind. These were women from nearby hamlets and trevs whose farms and substance had been earlier destroyed, either by Yrling’s band or some other raiders. Now they hid themselves near road sides by water, likely places for men to stop for the night. Only desperation could have driven them to such peril, and in fact some hollow-eyed women looked half-mad, or cackled like witches as they snatched at whatever they were offered to eat. Then they would vanish into the trees with those who had fed them. Others clutched the food, took it in haste to their waiting young, then walked back with slower step to pay their due to the man who had passed them a wooden bowl of cold boiled grain.
Most of the men would avail themselves of the women who offered in this way. To couple with a village woman meant seeing her there tilling her row of turnips day after day, of facing some other man’s wanting of her and the fight that would follow. And too, once she was gotten with child there was that to be reckoned with. The women would lie with the men but not wed them, and the babes since born were jealously guarded by their mothers.
These camp followers asked the same as the village women, food for their empty bellies, but none of the men need ever see them again. Appetites for women were heightened while riding out. These women had need of food and offered themselves, and the warriors found themselves walking towards them, waiting for them to near. Sidroc was one.
The women did not speak to him; some almost would not look at him. He knew he was ugly, and knew they submitted out of hunger and not desire. It was an exchange, almost silent in approach, acceptance, completion. He felt no shame in the potent urgings of his own body, yet knew these women acted in shame. He could not lessen that shame but might, he felt, not deepen it, in his manner to them during their moments together.
Later, bedded down on his hide ground cloth, his saddle at his head, a few fleeting thoughts streaked through his mind before sleep came. Often it was an image of a woman, her face beyond viewing, but the sense of her loveliness real, and calling. She did not issue from within, as the sense of his fylgja did. This was from without, coming towards him.
He would wed one day; he wanted a woman to share life and treasure with. It would not always be like this. Tonight a half-Moon, luminous and yellow, was rising over his head, and he stared at it. Its glow carried the old woman Åfrid to his mind, eyes twinkling in her wrinkled face, telling him of the bright woman coming to him, telling him he would want Freyja’s favour.
He could no more picture the bright woman than he could the Goddess, though he tried. The woman he had just lain with was too near in memory. Nothing about her or the other camp followers – famished and unwashed, their gowns soiled, hair tangled – spoke of Asgard. He tried to envision the hall he hoped to possess. He could capture one sensation, that of sitting at a table, sitting next his wife, sitting so closely that their thighs touched.
He squeezed his eyes shut, to hold it.
The men around him were tossing and grunting, pulling at wool blankets, grumbling at the hardness of the ground. The fire had burnt to cinders. Before first light they would be up and on their way, to danger, food, and treasure. But before he fell into sleep he determined, I will Offer to you, Freyja.
It was early Summer when it began. They had ridden back from a raid to the West, at which they had struck at the village fronting a small but fortified keep. When the gates to the keep did not open to release enraged thegns, they counted themselves lucky and pilfered all they could carry from the supporting crofts. They had thundered in, scattering terrified folk who snatched at bawling children, pulling them from the path of the raiders.
On the way back they spied a baggage train ahead, progressing slowly along the same stone-paved road they had just travelled on; it must have turned on from some smaller track. It was a simple task to divide, have half of them wait as the others lightened their load, handing down newly-won foodstuffs, then gallop ahead to confront the few guards who served as escort. These were swiftly overcome, leaving cowering drovers and serving men quaking as they waited. Yrling made decision: take all of it back to Four Stones. Danes fairly owned the roads from here to his part of Lindisse, and so many draught oxen, waggons, and the dead guards’ horses all had value.
But by the time they got back to Four Stones one drover was unable to walk, and was carted in amongst the goods his oxen hauled. None at Four Stones knew they had pulled in contagion.
The drover was the first to die. It was not the same quick but hot fever that carried off Eadburh, or the one that snatched children to their graves after swelling their tongues and making red their cheeks. This fever started slowly, with hot brows and chilled hands, then in days became aches throughout the body. A rash then sprouted on the torso, spreading across arms and legs, stopping short at the face. This rash broadened into open and running sores. The smell of rotting flesh oozed from the fluid that seeped from the lesions. By then the suffering men could stand no light, clawed at their eyes, acted out of their heads. For some a profound sleep came, giving rest; the rest of death.
Not all the men grew sick. Of those who did, some had aching bones, and a mild rash that burnt, but did not suppurate and weep. They could take drink, must lie abed as they had no force of strength in their bodies, but grew well. The other third were swept off to their deaths by this spotted fever.
As the fever spread, men who were well found themselves looking at each other. The question in their minds did not cross their lips: who would sicken next? One night, early on, Sidroc sat in the kitchen yard, lifting his ale cup to his mouth, and paused to look out at those near him. Tables, trestles and all had been brought out for them to eat, the hall being given over to the sick. Above
their heads an orange and angry Moon was rising. He saw the same question in the eyes of his uncle, his cousin, and every other man who sat there with them at Yrling’s table.
Yrling and Sidroc were amongst those who did not sicken. Asberg and Jari were also spared, though Asberg felt fevered for a few days. Toki was taken ill, and long enough after the first men had died so that he could see what might be his Fate. Sidroc watched his cousin pale, saw how he resisted showing any signs of illness, how his bluster became the greater in the face of so many lying stricken by this unseen hand.
Toki had a raw kind of courage, one that forced him to race, yelling taunts, into the thick of any contest of arms. There was no deeper well-spring he could tap, his courage flowed on the surface like a river. Sidroc knew this of his cousin, had known some part of it for many years. Toki had given himself to no God; he gave himself to no one. When, racked with chills he called out for his forsaken wife Ginnlaug, Sidroc knew it was the fever which made him call her.
He could not name what he felt for his cousin, but Sidroc did not want Toki to die. The blood-bond, tried as it had been through their boyhoods, was still that, a bond. Their parents were siblings. They had been born the same Spring, and after the loss of Sidroc’s father, had been raised together. Toki’s father Ful had birched both of them, and for shared deeds. And Toki had helped him bury Hlaupari, had helped drag the big hound to the stream bank, dig the hole into which he must consign his body…
Kneeling at the side of his pallet, Sidroc forced Toki to drink both ale and warm meat broth. He could take no food; none of the men so afflicted could stomach it, or some constriction of the throat prevented such swallowing. But all could see that those who could drink had a chance at life.
It was not only the warriors of Four Stones, and the men of the captured baggage train who fell ill. The fever spread throughout the hall and yards, but again keeping to proportion of those who never sickened, those who fell ill but mildly, and those who would die. The sharing out was capricious and cruel, as it ever was with contagion. To see able warriors who had survived many battles cut down by an unseen and unfightable foe was a bitter loss. And to lose any more of the hall’s folk, all of which were needed for its functioning, gave greater concern to Yrling as to its continuance.
He had ever imagined himself master of a hall, and in these imaginings it was one flourishing with folk. Since the day of the taking of Four Stones little had flourished save the number of men he commanded, and horses he owned. His horses were untroubled, but his warriors had diminished in number, the keep itself and its village now depleted beyond quick reclamation.
The fever which had smote them burnt itself out. The Norns, those magical Jotuns who spin, draw out, and snip the thread of men’s lives, had made their choices, and now moved on. Toki grew well again, and being as young and strong as he was, with more speed than many others. He rose from his pallet one morning as if abashed he had ever been ill. His cheek was still pale, and he had lost flesh. He moved at times those first few days as if giddy, but would not admit to any weakness. Nor, if he had memory of Sidroc kneeling at his side, holding his burning head to help him drink, did he mention it to his cousin.
The dead Danes had been burnt, singly or in groups, out by the Place of Offering; the folk of the hall buried where the mounds of Wendreda, Eadburh, and the other Christians who had died here lay. When Eadburh had died her priest Osberht had gone away, where the men of Four Stones did not know or care; but it meant the folk had no other holy man to lead them in their rituals, wave his hand over them, or exhort them as the priest had done.
At least the Summer harvests were good. The rye and barley and oats in the village were full-budded and milky, sweet early peas gave way to filling red beans, and huge cabbages swelled green and white as they unfurled leathery veined leaves to the sky. The baggage train had been loaded with sacks of grain, barrels holding brined haunches of pig, and two large barrels as well of smoked and dried eels. And the rueful fact remained that Four Stones had fewer mouths to feed. Eleven folk of the hall had died, and of Yrling’s men, nearly thirty.
With fewer men but many horses Yrling began turning his attention to more than the snatching of foodstuffs from farmsteads, or skirmishes with thegns for their weapons and silver. Slaves had value, and good slaves – strong young men and comely young women – had great value. The light-eyed fair-haired youth of the Angles and Saxons garnered high prices at markets abroad. Yrling had no intention of taking any himself across the seas, but now knew of Danes who would be happy to pay him well for healthy young, male or female.
His surfeit of horses meant he could set out leading many rider-less mounts. A strike at a large farm or small village could garner ten or twelve slaves. Few if any of them could ride; these were all free crofters, and some were Saxon slaves, all without means to keep a horse. But a single woman could be carried on the saddle in front of one of his men, and the youths bound, by threats or leathern thongs, to the saddles of other horses. To Yrling’s mind it was less wasteful than killing, though they had need at times to kill the kin of those they stole. Once secure they made for the Dane who would take them to the coast to sell them on. Sometimes this was a keep, at other times no more than a camp at a prominent crossing, by a tall cairn of stacked stones, or near a fording place of a rushing river.
Yrling was in his slaving as single minded as he had been in most of what he undertook. No woman could be kept by any of his men, for any amount of silver they might offer him; and no woman was to be abused. There were maids amongst the females they captured, and any who could be so presented brought more silver. And it was light work for his men. Given a choice of mounting a horse or death, nearly all captives chose the horse, though more than one woman wept bitterly, or thrashed and tried to bite or kick the man who held her on his saddle. The over-awed youths were altogether quieter, if they had not already fought back and been killed.
Their best slaving had been done in the West, in Mercia and Wessex. Both had strong kings, but both men were tasked with fending off assaults by Danes on multiple fronts. And the farmsteads and hamlets they targeted were at the borders of either kingdom, and sometimes far from the hall of the lord who collected rents in grain, wool, and beasts from those the men of Four Stones captured. They were rarely followed, and when they were had force of number enough to dump their living cargo under guard and ride back to engage the thegns who chased them. They had killed a number of pursuers this way, or laughed them to scorn as they watched the men sent after them turn the heads of their horses for safety.
That Winter a messenger appeared at Four Stones’ gates, a Saxon. He and his fellow thegns, a party of five, mounted on tired and muddied horses, had been met by the guards posted as watch-men along the road leading to the fortress. They had been led to the palisade, and the chief of them admitted to deliver his message. Standing before Yrling, his nephews, and a few picked men he told them of his mission.
He was sent from a lord of Wessex, Ælfsige, reeve of Cirenceaster. This place was far removed, but Ælfsige’s holdings were extensive, and that of his own father, still alive, also of large extent. Both men had lands in the easternmost parts of Wessex. It was Ælfsige, acting on behalf of these doubled holdings, who made offer. Yrling of Four Stones, called Jarl, had in numerous actions laid waste to their lands and people, destroying their substance and depriving them of their rightful folk. In exchange for a cessation of these acts and for future protection from same Ælfsige of Cirenceaster was prepared to present a sum of choice treasure. As further inducement to peace, and to bind the halls together, Ælfsige pledged the hand of his eldest daughter. This was a maid of seventeen years, and one, the messenger made somber haste to mention, renowned for her beauty.
The thegn delivering this proposal was of no less than thirty years, a solid, sober, and practised warrior by the look of his stance, quality of his weaponry, and the long scar he bore along the back of his sword hand. The voice was firm, th
e words unhalting but well considered. Not a few of the men he addressed had reason to respect the manner in which he conducted himself. He was a warrior standing alone in a hall stolen by Danes, offering an immense treasure and his lord’s cherished daughter to the man who was ravaging the lands and folk he was sworn to protect.
“I will come,” the Jarl of Four Stones said in answer, “and speak to your lord.”
The following month Yrling rode West with a troop of thirty men. Since the offer from Ælfsige of Cirenceaster he had made no forays into Wessex, had harried no lands which might be those of the man he rode to meet. This cessation of hostilities would alone provide contrast to his past actions and serve as foretaste of the protection he would proffer in return for Ælfsige’s promised goods.
An offer of protection to these remote lands was not in fact one he could make lightly. He could keep his own men from predation but assuring that his Danish brethren respected the accord he had struck with a Saxon lord might prove difficult.
He left Sidroc in command of Four Stones, taking Toki with him. He would be gone for many days and the charge to Sidroc was great. Roving bands of rival Danes could strike the same devastating blow to the keep Yrling had. The door from the kitchen yard had been the first thing Yrling had replaced, and newly crafted of oak and bound with iron strappings, was stronger than the palisade in which it stood. Yet weakness could be found in any defence, and Sidroc must safeguard both keep and all the hard-won booty it housed.
Toki as consolation had the pleasure of riding at his uncle’s side as they set out, his grey stallion prancing eagerly beneath him, and the gilt helmet Toki proudly sported gleaming in the Winter light. There was no real reason for Toki to don it so early, save his desire for show. The other riders, Yrling included, stowed their helmets in their saddle bags while on Four Stones’ land. Yet none, even Sidroc, could deny that Toki, with his ready grin, yellow hair spilling forth in two plaits from under the golden rim of the helmet plate, and great pale horse dancing under him as he worried the bit, drew eyes to him. Show was part of battle; not that part that mattered once weapons clashed, but a part that gave high and even reckless confidence to those about to take their chances with the spinners of Fate.
Sidroc the Dane Page 42