Kings and Pawns

by James L. Nelson

  “I’m in agreement with my friend Amundi,” he said. “We’re free men. We have our rights. Our land is not to just be taken, not Odd’s, not any of ours.” He nodded toward his men and they stood and came over to him as Amundi’s had done.

  And then the others. Vifil, Ragi Oleifsson, Thorgeir Herjolfsson, the rest of the landowners there, each stood and summoned his men and in a long file they left the hall and found their horses. They were silent, save for Ulfkel, who muttered and cursed under his breath. It was a profound choice they had made.

  “Amundi,” said Vifil as he settled on his horse. “Are you returning to your farm?”

  “Yes,” Amundi said. “I’ve stuck my nose too far deep into this already. It’s no business of mine.”

  And then he thought, Odd will know soon enough what a world of hurt I’ve just unleashed.

  Halfdan the Black was still standing by the high seat as the men shuffled out of the hall. He watched them go and his face wore no discernable expression. Then, when the door closed behind the last man, he sat. Einar was on his right side, Onund Jonsson on his left. Scattered around the table seven other men, part of his hird, all the men he had left for his attack on Odd’s farm.

  No one spoke. No one would dare speak before he did. He knew that. These men were loyal. They would sit here until they died of thirst before they would speak their minds unbidden. And Halfdan was not ready to speak, not just then. He had to let his rage settle, let his thoughts order themselves.

  After some time, when he trusted that his voice would sound as calm as if he were exchanging pleasantries, he said, “Well, Einar, I suppose now we see how deep the rot is running.”

  “Yes, lord,” Einar said.

  “Did you think it ran so deep?” Halfdan asked. It was a terribly cruel thing to ask, because any answer that Einar could give might be expected to meet Halfdan’s wrath. Halfdan watched the man fidget a bit. He knew the question was cruel and he did not care in the least. Einar had made a hash of a number of things recently. It was his fault, really, that Halfdan was in the position he was in. But he did not intend to overtly punish Einar. That would be over too quickly. Instead he would subject him to subtle torture, drawn out over weeks and months.

  “No, lord, I didn’t,” Einar said. “Amundi, certainly. No surprise there. But not the others.”

  Halfdan nodded. In truth, he had not expected so much rot either. He knew Amundi would be disloyal, the bastard. And he had expected one or two of the others as well. But not all of them.

  “Amundi is a problem,” Halfdan said, mostly to himself. Amundi was growing too rich and too powerful. But Amundi was not as much of a problem as Odd was. The people would follow Odd because, like Amundi, he was rich and well-liked and admired. And unlike Amundi, he was the son of Thorgrim Night Wolf, grandson of Ornolf the Restless and Ulf of the Battle Song. The irony, Halfdan had come to realize, was that he understood the power that Odd could wield even more than Odd himself did.

  So Odd needed to be crushed, before he came to fully understand his place in Vik and the potential it offered.

  Halfdan knew that some men in his place might listen to the landowners’ grievances, consider that they might have a valid point, maybe come to some accommodation. But only weak and uncertain men would do that, and Halfdan was neither of those things. He had no doubt that he was right, and the others were wrong. And disloyal. And because he was certain of his righteousness and more clever than the others, he had anticipated this very thing, this near rebellion, and made ready for it.

  “This is good,” Halfdan said. “This is good. We’re getting at the rot now; we’ll cut it out. If they’re all disloyal, then they’ll all forfeit their land. We’ll see that it goes to men who know how to serve their king.” He spoke loud to make certain that everyone in the hall heard him. This was a rumor he wanted to spread, the notion that the king would be handing out the best farms to the men who served him most loyally.

  “Where are the others?” Halfdan asked Einar.

  “Just a few miles from here,” Einar said quickly. “Two hundred warriors. They made camp last evening. I sent Thorstein to speak with them. To make certain they were there and ready to move.”

  Halfdan nodded. Einar was being very careful not to make any further blunders.

  Knowing that at least some of the landowners would desert him, Halfdan had ordered two hundred of his best men, including the remainder of the hird, to follow behind and wait for his word. Two hundred men he could lead in an attack against Odd, and crush him and anyone else who proved disloyal.

  And now he knew the truth, the depth of the rot. They were all disloyal. He and his men would have more work on their hands than he had originally thought, cutting the rot away.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I guess that before he gets me,

  the ring-giver, craver of sword-crashing

  will meet with tricks — there’ll be

  a victory ode for me.

  The Saga of Ref the Sly

  There was quite a lot to do and little time in which to do it. Thorgrim Night Wolf could hear the shouts of the English men-at-arms and he guessed they were getting their warriors back in order and would renew the fight soon. He made his way through the crowd of men, the crews of four longships, shouting orders, pointing here and there, pushing men in various directions. The dead and wounded had to be found and carried off to the waiting ships. Any discarded English weapons worth keeping had to be collected up. Armor and shoes and purses had to be removed from the English casualties left on the beach.

  Oak Heart was the larger of the two vessels run up on the beach. Most of the wounded and dead were loaded aboard her, and when they were secure, the men who could still walk climbed aboard, and aboard Fox as well. Thorgrim, Asmund, Godi and Hardbein were the last to go, as was befitting their place as captains. Harald, too, waited until the others were safe aboard because that was the way Harald was. Thorgrim took one last look around.

  “Good,” he said. All of his men had been carried off. There were only English on the beach now, some moving feebly about, most lying motionless.

  How by all the gods are we going to get out of this miserable harbor? Thorgrim wondered, but that question he kept to himself. He turned and gave the others a nod and they climbed aboard the ships, Thorgrim, Harald and Asmund aboard Oak Heart, Hardbein aboard his command, Fox. Asmund, Thorgrim noted, had brains enough to not run the bow of his ship too hard up on the beach, and to drop an anchor behind him as he headed for shore. Between rowing astern with the oars, double-manned, and hauling on the anchor rope it was little problem to back her off. The same with Fox.

  Asmund said nothing other than to call a few orders forward as he saw to getting his ship underway. Thorgrim looked aft, out toward the channel. Dragon had Sea Hammer under tow and had already pulled her clear of the sunken ships and the burning Long Serpent. Likewise, Black Wing was towing Blood Hawk clear. The tide was against them now, but with the men pulling hard at the oars the shallow-bottomed vessels were able to make decent way against it.

  “We’ll get you over to Sea Hammer directly,” Asmund said.

  “No,” Thorgrim said. “I’ll stay here for now.” It was a hard choice—every man naturally wanted to be with his ship, particularly when there was danger—but Sea Hammer and Blood Hawk seemed safe now, more or less, and trying to come alongside and get aboard them would just put them in greater jeopardy. So Thorgrim swallowed his anxiety and remained where he was and watched his fleet crawl free of the killing trap into which they had blundered.

  A few desultory arrows flew their way, some striking the ships, but the enthusiasm had gone out of the English and there was little effort made to stop the Northmen’s retreat. And why should there be, Thorgrim wondered. The English had done almost all they had hoped to do: they stopped their enemy’s escape, burned one of their ships, killed any number of them in a fight on the beach. They had trapped them like wolves in a pit.

  “Let me
tend to that.”

  Thorgrim pulled his eyes from the beach and the makeshift walls they were leaving astern. Failend was standing in front of him. Small as she was, she looked smaller still with him standing on the raised after deck and her on the deck below.

  “What?”

  Failend pointed to Thorgrim’s leg. He looked down. The leggings on his left thigh were neatly sliced and through the rent in the fabric he could see dried blood and the red gleam of blood still flowing. He had not even been aware of the wound.

  He looked up at Failend. Her hair was a tangle and there were streaks of blood on her face. She wore no expression that he could see. In her hand were some strips of cloth.

  “Yes, thank you,” Thorgrim said. Failend nodded and knelt on the after deck. Thorgrim watched her hands as she peeled the cloth back and dabbed at the wound, then began to carefully wrap the cloth around it. He was aware of the laceration now, and the pain came rushing in like a storm-driven wave, as if all the pain he had not felt came on all at once. He sucked in his breath.

  “It must hurt,” Failend said, but there was still little expression in her voice. “We might have to sew it later.”

  “It’s mostly your sewing that’s holding me together these days,” Thorgrim said. Failend tied the bandage off and stood.

  “Mine and others,” she said.

  Thorgrim looked her up and down. “You’re unhurt?”

  She shrugged. “The English didn’t hurt me,” she said.

  “Good,” Thorgrim said. “Thank you, for your help on the beach.”

  “Well, I’m a heathen now,” she said. “And I guess this is what heathens do. Can you stand?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Thorgrim said. “I seem to be standing now, mostly.” He was favoring his intact leg and trying not to think about how much his wounded leg hurt.

  “I’ll sit here,” Failend said, gesturing toward a place near the break of the after deck. “Let me know if you need help.”

  Failend sat and what seemed a look of exhaustion washed over her, but Thorgrim had other things to think about.

  “Mud bank, off to starboard!” Starri’s voice called out. Thorgrim looked up. Starri was in his place at the head of the mast.

  “What’s he doing up there?” Asmund asked. He was standing at the tiller behind Thorgrim and his voice was like a growl. Asmund was not much of a talker.

  “Serving as lookout,” Thorgrim said. “He likes it up there, and he does no harm.” He paused, and then said, “Actually, he can be pretty helpful at times, doing that. Not just fighting.”

  Asmund made a grunting noise and Thorgrim directed him to turn Oak Heart a bit to larboard to avoid the wide mud bank north of them. He looked astern. The rest of the ships were falling in behind. Dragon and Black Wing still had the other, short-handed vessels in tow, but the work of pulling them became easier as the ships left the confines of the channel where the water ran fast and hard, squeezed in by the banks.

  Now what? Thorgrim wondered. The route to the sea was blocked. There were English armies scattered all over the countryside, and he had no way of knowing where they were or how large. Going ashore anywhere, even to their makeshift longphort, could be a fatal proposition.

  He looked off the starboard bow. A sandbar rose up from the harbor, a long, light brown, sandy stretch of dry land. There was nothing else there besides sand—no trees, no water, no food, nothing to form a defense. But more importantly, there was no army of Englishmen.

  “There,” he said, turning toward Asmund. “See that sandbar? That’s where we’re going.”

  The ebbing tide grew less swift as the bay opened up around them, and soon Oak Heart’s sharp bow drove into the edge of the sandbar. The ship came to a stop, so easily that it could not be felt. One moment she was moving and the next moment she was not. The oars came in and men jumped over the side and waded ashore. Anchors were lowered down, carried up the beach and driven into the soft, warm sand. On either side of the ship the rest of the fleet did likewise until they were all there, all run up ashore.

  Thorgrim hobbled forward, toward the bow. Harald was there, a worried look on his face, which irritated Thorgrim mightily.

  “Father, can I help you?” he asked. “Let me get a line, we can set you down on the beach. Or at least rig a gangplank.”

  “No, Harald. Thank you. It’s fine, my leg. Just a small thing.” He continued forward, Harald half a pace behind. He swung one leg over the ship’s side and then the other. He pushed off, knowing how much it would hurt when he landed, how foolish he was to not take Harald’s offer just for the sake of pride. He knew how much worse his dignity would fare if he screamed in pain like a little girl.

  All that he thought in the heartbeat it took him to drop from the sheer strake down into the water. He took care to take the weight on his right leg, but that nearly buckled under him, so he put his left leg down and felt the pain shoot up his side. He clenched his teeth. He did not scream. He chastised himself for an aging fool.

  Just behind him Harald dropped effortlessly into the water. Thorgrim was certain the boy wanted to take his arm and offer support as they made their way ashore, and he was equally certain that Harald knew better than to try.

  “Come on,” Thorgrim said.

  They walked ashore through the knee-high water and onto the soft sand and Thorgrim found himself breathing deep from the exertion. He stopped, hands on hips, and looked around. A handful of men were already there, seeing to anchors and mooring lines, but the rest were still aboard the ships. They sat on their sea chests, resting from the terrible exertion of that day: rowing, fighting fires, fighting their enemy, rowing harder still, all with their brethren dying around them.

  Let them rest, Thorgrim thought.

  But there was no rest for him, at least no respite from making decisions. Because now they were stuck on a sandbar, trapped in that miserable harbor, and ringed in by enemies on every shore.

  He was about to tell Harald to summon the other captains when he saw they were coming already. Asmund from Oak Heart and Hardbein from Fox were heading toward him, and further along the beach Godi Unundarson, Halldor, commander of Black Wing and Fostolf from Dragon were approaching.

  Jorund, Thorgrim thought. Jorund was the one he wanted to talk to. Much of the debacle in the channel had been the result of his ill-advised attempt to turn his ship in midstream. Now Long Serpent was burned to the waterline and more men were dead than needed to die. Thorgrim wanted very much to talk to Jorund.

  But Jorund did not arrive. Rather, one of Jorund’s men, a man named Ofeig, stepped up to the gathering. “Jorund’s dead,” Ofeig said. “Just as we were coming down the channel. He saw what was happening, that your ships had struck something and were stuck. He was getting the rowers to back oars, ordered an anchor over the stern, so we could come down slow and pass a tow line. Then one of those arrows got him, right in the chest. We had to put him out…the fire…on his clothes and his beard.” Thorgrim could hear the pain in the man’s voice. Jorund was well-liked by his men. That was why few seemed to mourn when their old chief, Ketil Hrolfsson, was killed and Jorund took his place.

  “And then…?” Halldor prompted.

  “It was just madness. Jorund on fire. Dead. Fires breaking out all over. Next thing we knew we were sideways in the channel and that was the end of it.”

  Heads nodded all around. Thorgrim felt a touch of relief. He did not like to think that Jorund had made such a hash of things.

  “His body?” Thorgrim asked.

  “Burned with Long Serpent,” Ofeig said. He gave half a smile. “I guess he had a proper send-off to the corpse hall. A funeral fit for such a man. Or nearly.”

  The others nodded. The funeral pyre of a man like Jorund should have included horses and tack, tools and food and ale and a slave girl to serve him on his journey. But at least his death was as good as any man could hope for.

  Ofeig turned and walked away. The others were silent for a moment, thinking about
Jorund and his death at the end of a flaming arrow. And where he might be now. Surely he had been lifted up to Valhalla by the Choosers of the Slain.

  “Very well,” Thorgrim said at last. “We don’t all get as lucky as Jorund.”

  He looked past the gathering at the sandbar and the shores of the harbor beyond. The land was not very far away, a quarter mile at most. But Thorgrim had never seen any vessel bigger than a fishing boat in that harbor, and even if the English rounded up everything that would float they would not be able to get enough men onto the sandbar at once to launch a credible attack. They would be butchered if they tried, and so Thorgrim doubted that they would.

  “We have wounded men,” he said to the others. “And repairs that the ships will need. It seems we’re safe enough here. For now. We can stay a few days, anyway. So let’s get the wounded ashore and get some sort of shelter rigged and a fire going. Each of you, let me know the conditions of your ships, once you’ve worked that out.”

  The others nodded. There was not much to add to that. When they had prepared the fleet to sail they took aboard food and ale and water and firewood since they could never count on finding those things when they beached the ships for the night. Thus provisioned, they could live on the sandbar for a while. But using up their stores would mean having to replace them before they sailed too far off.

  The captains returned to their ships and Thorgrim hobbled along after them. Orders were shouted, and soon each ship was swarming with activity as the men made ready to set up camp, unloading the food and ale and firewood they would need, at least for one night. A cask was set down in the sand near where the wood for the fire was being laid out, and Thorgrim took advantage of that, sitting down on the barrel, relishing the relief he felt as the weight came off his leg and the throbbing pain eased a bit.

  For some time he remained there, watching the activity on the beach. He tried to keep his mind on the one question that mattered to him and to the rest of them on the sandbar—how would they get out of the hole in which they were stuck? He tried to concentrate, but again and again his mind drifted off and he tried to pull it back. He was more exhausted than he could recall every being and he could not make his mind work the way he wished. So he stopped trying.