Though his warriors seemed doubtful, they did as he asked and made three large crosses, which they fitted to three of the Saxon boats likes masts. Geirmund then ordered three of the dead Saxon warriors to be doused in oil and hung from those crosses, and rather than waiting until dawn to depart, they left with the setting sun.
They took a total of six boats, three with crosses and three that rowed with the rest of the company from Readingum to the Moulsford, where the scent of rot and death at Ashdown still hung in the air. Most of Geirmund’s warriors halted there and disembarked for a land march while he rowed on, alone in his boat with a dead Saxon looming over him, pallid and raven-pecked. Rafn and Thorgrim came in the other two cross-ships, having volunteered for the task, for the heavy Saxon boats needed strength to row, and Wælingford still lay five rests to the north.
It was in the deep-night when they and Geirmund finally approached the hold. He knew there would be watchers set upon the walls, so when the three boats came in sight of the town, he lit his dead Saxon afire upon his cross. Rafn and Thorgrim did the same, and the light of those flames spread across the river and blazed through the darkness. Almost instantly Geirmund heard cries of alarm coming from the walls, and he could imagine the terror caused by such a sight at that time of night.
He rowed his boat to the shore near the fortifications before the flames could consume the wood of his ship, and Rafn and Thorgrim did the same. The three of them tied their boats in a row and left them burning where they could be seen from the walls and as a signal to the rest of Geirmund’s company in the woods to the south. Then the howls of many Dane-horns shattered the night’s quiet, blaring from east to west, as though a vast army had appeared from nowhere and now waited in the darkness.
Geirmund stalked towards Wælingford’s gates, and after the Dane-horns quieted, he bellowed at the watchers on the wall. “I am Geirmund Hjörrsson, called Hel-hide! I defeated you on the river, and I have now come to take this place! You are outnumbered, and it will be mine! Your king has abandoned you! Your god has abandoned you!”
He paused, allowing fear to build within the walls of the hold.
“But I am prepared to be merciful!” Geirmund shouted. “I give you until sunrise to leave Wælingford! I see no reason for you to die here! Go back to your families! Return to your farms in peace! If you leave your silver and weapons behind, I swear to you that we will not harm you or pursue you!”
He paused again.
“But if you are not gone by sunrise, I will show no mercy! We will burn alive every Saxon inside these walls and sacrifice you to our gods!”
He stared up at the walls a moment longer, at the many shadows he could see there, and then he turned away. Rafn and Thorgrim followed him south, away from the hold and the burning boats, into the darkness towards his waiting company.
“Well done,” Rafn said. The Dane’s clothing and black hair became one with the night, leaving his face a faint and bodiless wraith.
“If that doesn’t scare the Saxons away,” Thorgrim said, “perhaps they deserve to keep the cursed place.”
“They will leave,” Geirmund said.
“Are we truly letting them go in peace?” Rafn asked.
“Yes, if they meet my terms. That is what I swore.”
Rafn nodded, but in the darkness Geirmund couldn’t tell if the Dane had simply heard his answer, or if he approved of it.
They lit no fires for the rest of that night, but let the darkness keep them and their true numbers hidden. A daymark later, when the sun finally rose, they marched from the wood through a thin morning fog, across fields and pastures, until they reached Wælingford.
Skjalgi pointed as it came in sight. “The gates are opened!”
“It seems you were right, Hel-hide,” Thorgrim said. “The Saxons left.”
It seemed that way, but the Danes nevertheless entered the hold with caution, weapons drawn, prepared for a trap.
They found none. The town, it seemed, had been empty for some time. The ground in the livestock pens had dried out, and the blacksmith forge had gone cold, but when they reached the secondary fortifications near the bridge, they found the campfires still smouldering, as if abandoned in great haste. The Saxon warriors had left some silver behind there, as well as their axes and swords, fourteen blades in all not counting the many spears, pitchforks, and other makeshift weapons lying about, hardly enough to defend such a hold if Halfdan had descended in force.
“Æthelred truly did abandon them,” Rafn said.
Geirmund’s Danes simply stood there, as if disbelieving of their easy success, surprised into silence.
Geirmund raised his voice to address them. “Wælingford is ours!” he said, holding up his seax, and at that his warriors finally roared with a sudden cheer. “Bring me any gold or silver you find to divide equally among you, but you are free to claim anything else in the town.”
The Danes cheered again and separated to explore. Geirmund sat down upon a wooden stump before one of the cookfires as the sun rose above the roofs and walls of the town. Skjalgi went off to see what he could find, but Steinólfur and Birna sat down next to Geirmund.
“Warriors will be flocking to you after this,” the older warrior said.
“I take no honour from it.” Geirmund sheathed his seax without having to clean or hone its blade. “This victory was too easy.”
Birna rolled her eyes at him. “You’re thinking with your pride again, Hel-hide. Must honour be a struggle?”
“No, but honour must be earned,” he said.
“Look around you!” Steinólfur spread his hands wide. “You have earned it. Twice now you have led these Danes to victory by use of your cunning, and without the loss of a single warrior. But if you’d rather have a fight, I’m sure you could go find the Saxons and invite them back.”
“You have made your point,” Geirmund said. “Now I must send word to Guthrum and Halfdan that we have taken Wælingford.”
“I’ll go.” Birna stood. “I want to see Halfdan’s face when he first hears of it.”
Geirmund nodded. “Go, then. But tell Guthrum before you tell Halfdan. I am his oath-man, so if there is honour to be had here, he shares in it.”
She nodded and strode away, and then Steinólfur leaned in closer to him. “Do you know that you have already achieved more than your father? He has never taken a town or a fortress.”
“He never had to.”
“Perhaps this place could be yours. It’s a good place. Strong walls. A river for trade. Not unlike Avaldsnes.” The older warrior looked around. “But Halfdan or Guthrum will likely claim it. And I suppose the Saxons will want it back, so even if the Danes gave it to you, you would have to fight to keep it.”
“Do you think there are lands where that isn’t the way of things?”
“What, where you don’t have to fight to keep what is yours?” He rubbed his beard, almost tugging on it. “Perhaps there is. But I think no matter where you are, you would be wise to always be prepared to fight, even if it never comes to that.”
“Do you think my father and mother are prepared?”
He dropped his hand from his beard to prop it on his knee. “I don’t know.”
Geirmund didn’t know the answer, either, and it wasn’t a question he wanted to dwell on. He rose to explore Wælingford with the Danes, and like Steinólfur he found it to be a good place, with workshops and warehouses arranged on two main roads that crossed each other at the centre of the small town. Aside from some food stores of grain, it seemed the Saxons had left little of value behind, only a few tools and some furniture in the buildings. But then one of the Danes found a small hoard of hacksilver buried in the corner of a stable near the smithy, and that increased the joy and reward for all.
Geirmund gave Steinólfur the task of dividing the wealth, allotting every warrior an equal share, and many of the Danes
found new weapons among those the Saxons had left behind. Geirmund claimed an axe and an old Langbardaland sword with a narrow hilt the same width as its pommel, which allowed Skjalgi to keep the blade Geirmund had already given him.
At the mid-afternoon mark Halfdan and Guthrum came to Wælingford with a force of at least one hundred Danes. Geirmund met them at the southern city gate, and while Guthrum and Birna wore broad grins, Halfdan glowered and looked around as if he suspected some trick.
“The hold is taken,” Geirmund said. “As you ordered.”
“How did you do it?” the king asked.
“With cunning,” Guthrum said, walking past Halfdan towards the gates.
The king made no reply, but he followed the jarl, and then Birna fell in beside Geirmund behind them.
“He called me a liar,” she whispered. “He almost refused to come, but Guthrum would not be denied.”
Then Geirmund shared in her grin as he showed Halfdan and Guthrum the town, the bridge, and the defences, which the king and jarl had only seen from a distance until that moment. The more Geirmund considered Wælingford, the more he realized its importance. The Danes could occupy it without weakening Readingum, while the river and the Icknield Way offered access to trade and fresh warriors, allowing the Danes to control that region almost indefinitely.
“Was there silver?” the king finally asked.
“There was,” Geirmund said, wondering if Halfdan meant to go back on his word. “I have already divided it among my warriors.”
“If you remember,” Guthrum said, “you told Geirmund any silver would be his to–”
“I remember,” the king said. “That silver is his reward for what he has done here today.”
Geirmund bowed his head, knowing there would be no more wealth from the king.
Guthrum gestured towards the Saxon’s secondary defences. “I will leave my warriors here, and I will send more. We must keep the Saxons from taking back this place. From here I might push north, to the riches of Abingdon–”
“No,” Halfdan said. “You will hold Wælingford, but you will send no warriors north until we have put Æthelred to the sword. We cannot afford to lose even a single warrior unless it be in pursuit of that Saxon’s crown. Wessex must fall, before all else.”
“You sent Geirmund and his company here easily enough,” Guthrum said.
It seemed that Halfdan’s blue eyes turned to ice. “I sent them knowing they would succeed. The gods had given me a sign.”
Guthrum paused for several long moments before he finally accepted that with a nod. Then Halfdan announced he would return to Readingum and departed immediately with some twenty of the Danes, while Guthrum and the remaining warriors stayed in the town. The jarl walked with Geirmund to the bridge where they could speak in private, and they stood in the middle of it, listening to the rushing of the Thames beneath their feet. A cold wind and sky in turmoil overhead threatened rain.
“Æbbe’s Dun is a Saxon minster of great wealth.” The jarl looked upriver, to the north. “A market town. Halfdan doesn’t order me to stay here out of true concern over losing warriors. He doesn’t want me to grow any richer.” He turned towards Geirmund, and then towards Wælingford. “The king did not expect this. Neither did I.”
“The king wanted me to fail,” Geirmund said. “He wanted me dead.”
“You may flatter yourself, but his sending your here was not about you. Do not forget that you are my oath-man.”
Geirmund looked downriver, to the south. “He wanted to weaken you?”
“You fight for me, so, as your reputation grows, it adds to mine.” He glanced down at Hnituðr on his arm. “He knows what is said of you, and he has seen the evidence. He knows that it was my warrior who came back from the land of Hel to save the encampment and the ships from his blunder.” He chuckled to himself. “To think I almost refused you back at Avaldsnes. You offered me no advantage, no silver, no ships, no warriors. But I liked you, and so I took you on, and now I see it was fate. Do you think so?”
“I do.”
Guthrum waved an arm down the length of the town. “In doing this you have made me a rival to Halfdan in a way he cannot ignore or dismiss. Word of it has spread too quickly. Because I helped spread it.”
“My victories are your victories,” Geirmund said.
“I know that, but I am pleased you still know it. You keep your oaths. I admire that, and I will reward it. You are a man of honour, Geirmund Hel-hide.” His grin returned. “Did you know that’s what the other jarls and their warriors are calling your company now?”
“What is?” Geirmund asked.
“The Hel-hides. They say you and your company defy death.”
“No one can defy death.”
Guthrum held out his hands towards Geirmund. “And yet here you are. But do not grow lazy or careless in your reputation. Halfdan will hate you even more for what you have done here, and for now my protection has its limits. Any warrior may fall in battle, of which there are more to come.”
“When?”
“Soon. Æthelred and Ælfred have withdrawn to a place called Bedwyn, to the south and west of Readingum. Halfdan and the jarls want to strike there. They have sent down the Thames and into East Anglia, calling for more warriors.”
“My company will be prepared.”
“I know they will,” Guthrum said. “I would expect nothing less from the Hel-hides.”
Geirmund heard pride in the jarl’s voice, and in that moment he decided he liked the name.
16
For the next few weeks Geirmund and his warriors dwelt at Wælingford, and from there they made raids into the surrounding country seeking food and silver. In very few villages and farms did they find Saxons willing to fight them, and Geirmund wondered if some of them had been the same farmers who had fled Wælingford when offered the chance. If so, it seemed they still fled, for most raids found houses, churches, and stables empty, their people hiding in the hills and forests, leaving the Danes free to take what they wanted. When the Saxons did not run and hide, Geirmund’s warriors stayed true to their oaths and only slayed those who raised weapons against them.
“Why did you set that rule?” Skjalgi asked one day as they rode back from raiding a small settlement west of Wælingford. “The Danes say it is not a common thing.”
“There are two reasons,” Geirmund said. “The first is that my grandfather and his warriors lived by that rule. There is no honour and no reputation in killing those who cannot fight.”
“And the second reason?” the boy asked.
“After we defeat Wessex, we will have to manage the kingdom, and we will still need farmers to work the land. That will be difficult if we have killed or made an enemy of every Saxon we meet. It is better to teach them how they might live in peace with us.”
Skjalgi nodded, and Geirmund studied him for a moment before risking a question about something the boy had avoided discussing in the past.
“Did your father go raiding?”
Skjalgi’s gaze fell to the narrow, rutted, and grass-choked road they travelled. “No. He always said he wasn’t good with a sword, and his axe was only meant to cut trees.”
Geirmund had known others like that, and there were many in Rogaland who did not go a-viking. His own father would have found much in common with Skjalgi’s. “I have heard that he was an honest and honourable man,” Geirmund said. “Hard-working and strong as an ox.”
Skjalgi went quiet for a long time, but he seemed restless, looking here and there as if fighting against a thought in his mind. Geirmund let him be, until the boy finally spoke. “He died under that tree without a weapon in his hand,” he said. “Not even his axe.”
Geirmund paused to think carefully about his words. “It is true that Óðinn is not easily pleased. He can be harsh and unforgiving, and not all will go to Valhalla. Many good m
en and women will not, but that does not mean they are undeserving of our honour and respect.”
Skjalgi looked away, trying to hide the tears in his eyes.
“You have become a true warrior,” Geirmund said. “A brave and honourable man. I believe your father would be proud of you, but wherever he finds himself, he cannot be any prouder of you than I am, or Steinólfur.”
Skjalgi sniffed and nodded, squaring his jaw with the road ahead. “Thank you,” he said.
Back at the hold, Guthrum summoned Geirmund to inform him that the march to Bedwyn would begin in three days, which were then spent preparing. On the third day they left eighty Danes to hold Wælingford and journeyed south to Garinges, where they met the Danes from Readingum under Halfdan and the other jarls.
From there the combined army marched hard and fast south of west along an old ridgeway, which carried the warriors over heath and bog as a rainstorm poured down on them. The forests there grew thick with birch and alder, and the rain filled those woods with mist.
At mid-afternoon the storm finally passed, and the Danes came to a high dun of chalky ground that towered over the countryside, stretching from east to west. Atop that hill ran a ridgeway, which the Danes followed west until it brought them within sight of the Saxon army encamped at the highest point on the dun. But Æthelred had built no walls there, which meant there could be no retreat behind them, and the battle would be waged over open ground as it had been at Ashdown.
The hill on which they stood offered commanding views of the land in all directions. The heavy clouds had moved south, draping the fields, pastures, duns, and dales that way in veils of rain, while vast, dense woodland grew behind them to the east, and ahead of them to the west. Geirmund and his company waited as Halfdan spoke with the jarls to form a plan of attack with the little daylight they had left to achieve it.
When Guthrum came back from his council, he did not seem pleased. “Halfdan orders me to flank the enemy.”
“He’s dividing our forces?” Geirmund asked, standing with Eskil and some of the other commanders. “What will Halfdan and the other jarls do?”
Geirmund's Saga Page 18