The evening turned into yet another banquet, another in the long series of feasts they had been enjoying at Winchester since gathering to see the king off. But this time the celebrations were sharpened by the esprit de corps that comes from being fellow soldiers in the field, free of the censure and moderating influence of their wives.
And as the men-at-arms and the nobles and the court enjoyed their bacchanal, more and more of the fyrd, those citizens called up for duty as soldiers, arrived in camp, swelling the ranks of the Wessex men.
The next day nearly all the daylight hours were taken up with the march. The army, crawling at the pace of the heavy-laden carts, managed to covered a full fifteen miles toward Hamtun. Once again camp was made and food and drink served out, but this time the men, tired and saddle-sore from the march, feasted with considerably less enthusiasm. It was not long after the sun had set that every man was asleep, save for the sentries, the servants, and those of the fyrd who continued to find their way into camp.
Felix woke before dawn on the third day. His eyes opened and he stared out into the blackness of his tent, fully awake and cognizant of where he was, what he had to do. He tossed his blankets aside, swung his feet off his traveling bed, stood and stepped outside. A small table was set up there with a bowl for washing, and Felix’s servant was busying himself getting his sword and mail ready.
The morning was cool and still, with the undercurrent of noise that comes from so many men sleeping or moving softly about in so small a space. Felix washed his face and ran water through his hair. He allowed his servant to ease his padded tunic over his head, and his mail shirt on top of that, and finally to belt his sword around his waist.
Felix was no warrior and he knew it. Certainly he had fought in enough battles, had killed, wounded and been wounded often enough that no one could ever accuse him of shunning the more brutal aspects of power. He did not lack in physical courage, but swords and spears and mail were not the sort of weapons that most appealed to him.
Politics, intrigue, statecraft, those were the fields of battle where he felt most comfortable, most in command. But sometimes the field of combat could not be avoided. No amount of diplomacy was likely to make the heathens go away. And, that being the case, there was nothing much that Felix could do but shuffle into his mail and ride off with the rest.
Once he was properly dressed and fitted out he walked the fifty feet to where Æthelwulf’s pavilion stood, ringed by the smaller tents of the nobles, which themselves were ringed with guards standing semi-erect, spears in their hands. The sun was still below the horizon but the light had spread enough that the guards could see Felix clearly. They stepped aside without a word as he made his way toward the royal tent.
He paused just outside. He could hear movement within, men shuffling around and occasionally a gruff but indecipherable word from Æthelwulf himself. Felix knew the king’s habits well, and he knew it was still a few minutes too early for him to disturb Æthelwulf’s morning.
He waited patiently, silently, and listened to Æthelwulf’s servants get their lord prepared for the day, and when one of them stepped through the flap that served as a door to the pavilion Felix said, “Is the king ready to receive?”
The servant nodded, though he looked unsure. “Reckon so, lord,” he offered. Felix nodded and ducked through the door and into the king’s tent.
It was well lit, with candles standing in tall iron candleholders placed liberally around the space. Æthelwulf was in the center of a cluster of servants fussing over him. They looked to Felix like a pack of hounds that had run a bear to ground and now were doing their best to bring it down. Finally Æthelwulf had enough, and with a wave of his hand sent the men scurrying away.
“Ah, Felix, there you are!” Æthelwulf said. “We must get the men fed, quick as can be, then we march.”
“Yes, sire,” Felix said. “And you’ll be pleased to know that another sixty-three men of the fyrd arrived in the night. Our army is more than seven hundred strong now, by my figuring.”
“Excellent, excellent,” Æthelwulf said.
“And sire?” Felix continued, getting to the real purpose of this visit. “We have but a dozen miles or so to Hamtun, but that could take us the bulk of the day with the wagons. Might I suggest we leave the wagons behind to catch up to us as they will, and make for Hamtun as quick as we can? Before the heathens arrive and do whatever wicked thing they might do?”
Felix was not one to be taken by surprise, so he had been making arrangements with the captain of Æthelwulf’s house guard. They had sent regular patrols south to the coast to keep an eye on what the heathens were up to. He knew for certain that as of yesterday they had not arrived in Hamtun, in fact had not yet left the beach on which they had first landed. The whale, however, was starting to get a bit ripe, and the patrols suggested that the beach would not be habitable for much longer.
There were any number of directions in which the heathens might go when they did finally leave the beach, but Hamtun, the closest place where they might find churches and monasteries filled with plunder, was a good bet. Heathens seemed to have a nose for those things.
It was possible, too, that they would not be satisfied with Hamtun alone. The largest concentration of wealth in the kingdom of Wessex, one of the largest such concentrations in all of England, would be at the royal court at Winchester. If the heathens knew that, they might find an attack on Winchester irresistible.
Felix did not think Æthelwulf would argue with his suggestion of a quick march, and he was right. The king sent his servants to summon the nobles, the ealdormen and the thegns. Once they were assembled outside his pavilion he gave orders for the men to make ready to move, the men-at-arms and the fyrd alone. They would leave it to the servants to break camp and follow. They would get to Hamtun as soon as they could and turn their attention to killing their enemies.
This announcement had a wonderful rejuvenating effect on men who were heartily sick of traveling at the speed of oxen. They scattered and summoned their men and called for their horses and soon the column was riding south out of the camp, leaving tents, servants and wagons behind. Some of the men-at-arms, and some of the fyrd, were still eating their breakfast as they marched.
They made their way south over the old Roman road and they made good time of it. Felix rode near the head of the column, just a little behind King Æthelwulf and his retinue. They rode in silence. There was nothing for them to discuss, not yet.
The tall spire of the church at Hamtun came into view first, and Felix knew they had only a few more miles to ride, which was good since his legs and posterior were no longer accustomed to long hours in the saddle.
Felix knew Hamtun well. He traveled there often, it being the closest port to Winchester. The church he was looking at now was a wooden affair, impressive in its massive timber frame and commanding spire. But it was not as impressive as the cathedral at Winchester, which, along with Æthelwulf’s hall, was a rare, stone-built structure.
No smoke, Felix thought as he rode. There were no great columns of black smoke roiling up from the unseen town, and that was good, because it probably meant that the Northmen had not yet arrived. And there were no thin columns of smoke, either, at least not many, which meant that most of the folk there had probably run off for what they hoped would be safety. And that was good, too. It was one less thing to worry about, and meant there would be more food to feed Æthelwulf’s army.
The first of the houses soon came into sight, the thatched, board-sided cottages that were scattered around the edges of the town and grew more numerous as they rode toward the water. Felix looked off to his left, across the river that formed Hamtun’s eastern boundary. On the other side stood the decaying walls of a Roman fort, and behind the walls he could see the upper edge of another building he knew to be a Roman bath.
The men who had built the road they traveled on had built that as well, and Felix imagined that it, like the road, had been a marvel to behold in its day. I
t still was. He had spent nearly a full day there once, exploring what was left of that vestige of Rome. To the Romans, he suspected, it was no great thing. To him it was extraordinary. Even the Franks, whose towering stone cathedrals and palaces far outstripped those of the English, could not hope to do what the Romans had done.
And then they had abandoned it all.
Felix shook his head in wonder.
They approached the town itself and the Roman road under them seemed to fade away into dry and trampled dirt, making a wide swath between the clusters of houses. Here and there anxious faces peered out at the strange and marvelous parade passing by, but not so many as Felix would have expected, which reinforced his idea that the folk here had heard of the Northmen coming and had mostly fled.
He looked off to his right, toward the church that dominated the town. A low wall encircled the building and the cemetery that sprawled out from its east side. He could see no movement on the church grounds. He could picture the priests and the laymen loading the gold and silver chalices and reliquaries and candle sticks and crucifixes and communion service into carts and hauling them away at the first word of heathens in the neighborhood.
If the Northmen find nothing here, they’ll certainly come to Winchester looking for it, Felix thought.
They arrived at last at the water’s edge. Hamtun was situated at the north-west end of a stretch of water that looked more like a wide river than a bay, though it was not. Æthelwulf raised his hand and he and the rest stopped, since there was nowhere left to go. The king swung himself off his horse, and that was taken as a signal that the rest should do so as well, which they did.
Felix handed the reins of his horse to his servant, who had been following behind, and then walked stiffly up to where the king was standing. A press of men circled around Æthelwulf, hoping to be consulted, or at least noticed, and Felix had no chance of getting through them.
Nor did he want to. He had no interest in the opinions of that vainglorious mob, each man hoping to say something clever enough to get the king’s attention. He knew that when Æthelwulf wanted his advice he would seek it out, so he turned his eyes toward the water.
Hamtun was a busy port. Trade to and from Frankia and Frisia and the Danes and the other North countries flowed though there. Several storehouses, much larger than the cottages of the town folk, nearly as big as the nave of the church, stood near the bank. Half a dozen long, sturdy wooden docks thrust out into the water. Eight or nine merchant ships lay tied to the dock, taking on or discharging cargo, and more were anchored just off the shore.
Now, along with those few merchant vessels, there were a dozen more ships of various sizes, each well-found, impressive and powerful looking. Felix knew them all. They were the fleet that he had helped assemble to carry Æthelwulf and the others across the water to the palace of Charles the Bald. Their size and number were calculated to impress Charles and to discourage anyone, Northmen in particular, from attacking them while they were underway. Felix felt sure they would do both.
He stared out over the bay, off to the south as far as he could see. No Northmen yet, but they would come, he was sure of it. There was nothing he and the rest of Æthelwulf’s army could do but wait. Make ready and wait.
That notion did not sit so well with him. He felt a sort of disquiet in his gut. Then another idea flickered, half-formed, in his mind. He was just considering whether it was a decent enough notion to bring up when he heard someone near Æthelwulf speaking, loud and clear enough to hear. It was Leofric.
“Sire, I had a thought. If the Northmen come in their ships they can land here, and down there,” he said, pointing to a place a hundred yards south of where they stood, “and there, and there,” he added, pointing to various spots on the shore. “They can land wherever they wish and it will be hard for us to guess where that will be and be ready for them.”
“Yes?” Æthelwulf said. “What of it?”
“Perhaps we should not let them land at all,” Leofric said. “We have ships here, the ones meant to take you on your holy pilgrimage. Perhaps this is God’s providence. Let us take to the ships and fight them on the water, where they will never expect us.”
Yes, Felix thought. It was exactly the idea that had just occurred to him.
Chapter Sixteen
The sword shall
in sheath rest,
if one his brothers bane
he find tied up.
The Poetic Edda
It had always been Amundi Thorsteinsson’s habit to be up well before rismál, the time of rising, when the sun was just showing itself. It was a habit instilled in him by a demanding father, and he had adhered to it all his life, and had instilled it in his own children. But he did not seem capable of rising at that hour anymore, not since his return from Grømstad. Not since his surrender.
The household was awake and already at work on the morning chores. He could hear them through the thin wall of his bed closet. He could hear the servants putting away the blankets and such, could hear them stoking up the fires. He could hear the soft clink of iron on iron as they set up a tripod and hung a heavy pot over the flames, filled, no doubt, with porridge of some sort. He could hear the muted sound of a barrel rolling over the packed dirt floor, the grunts of the men rolling it.
He was alone in the bed closet. His wife, Alfdis, had been awake for some time already. At least he guessed that she had been. She usually was. He had not heard or seen her rise. There was just an empty place beside him in the bed, an indent where her small body had been.
He sighed. He wondered what Alfdis made of his seeming inability to rouse himself of a morning. He had never asked her. He really did not want to hear the answer. So they didn’t speak of it, just as they did not speak of what had happened at Halfdan’s hall, except when there was no choice but to make reference to that recent history.
With a groan he sat upright, swung his feet off the side of the bed and set them on the floor. He sat there for a moment, conjuring the will to stand, which he did a few moments later. He pulled on his tunic and stepped over to the wash basin near the bed. He washed his face and ran wet fingers through his graying hair.
To have such a bed closet, big enough for a bed, a basin, and even chests for clothes and blankets and space on the walls to mount swords and armor, was a rare luxury indeed. Few men had halls large enough for such a thing, but Amundi did. There was a time when he was secretly proud of that, but he could hardly remember feeling that way now.
He opened the door and stepped out into the long hall. The servants who were bustling around bowed to him, shallow, obsequious gestures, at least those who could not avoid it, and he nodded to them in return.
One of the slaves, a young girl, pretty, stopped at his side and said, “Will you have breakfast, lord?”
Amundi thought about the question. “No,” he said. “No breakfast.” His appetite seemed to have gone the way of his habit of early rising. His leggings were already hanging loose at his waist.
He circled around the fire pit to the far wall. He lifted the latch on the heavy door and opened it and nearly collided with Thord, the overseer of his farm, who was rushing in as Amundi was reluctantly stepping out. Thord was a careful man, a man who did not speak much and did not get excited without serious provocation, but he seemed excited now, and not in any joyous way.
“Lord Amundi, there’s a rider coming, and he carries a banner,” Thord said. “Those with younger eyes, they say it’s white and red. Long banner.”
Long banner…red and white…Halfdan’s banner. The mere suggestion gave Amundi a foreign and ugly sensation, a sensation of dread and humiliation, a desire to just lie down and wallow in self-pity and ignore all the world, let it care for itself.
He had been feeling this all along, but with Thord’s words the feelings doubled, tripled. He had thought perhaps this turmoil in his mind would get better as the days passed, but it had not. He found himself returning again and again to that moment when he had st
ood, sword and shield in hand, at the head of his warriors, with the big oak gates of Halfdan’s compound standing between him and an all but certain, bloody death. This desperate band — his men, and Odd’s, and Vifil and Thorgeir and the rest — standing ready, refreshing the grip on their weapons, finding their footing with their shoes, ready for the gates to swing open, and for them to charge through.
Feeling alive with death so close at hand.
But the gates had not opened. Odd had called down to be ready, and they were ready, and then nothing. Time inched along. And then the sentry, confused, yelled, “Master Odd?” And then nothing. And then the sentry repeated his words.
“Master Odd?”
By the time it became clear what had happened it was too late for the men behind the gate. The sentry reported from above that Odd had gone down the wall and was walking away. Incredulous, Amundi sheathed his sword and climbed the ladder and saw for himself. Odd had climbed down the outside of the wall and was now walking, quick and determined, toward Halfdan and his men, who were riding in his direction.
“He’s giving himself up,” Amundi said out loud, even though there was no one close enough to him to hear.
Of course he is. Amundi cursed himself for a fool. If he had thought about it for one moment he would have realized that Odd would never have agreed to their plan, would never have allowed anyone to die because of his blunder. It had surprised him when Odd had acquiesced so easily, and now it was clear why he had. He had not really acquiesced at all.
Standing there, all but alone on the wall, Amundi had looked down at the men on the ground below. They were still ready for a fight, but the edge was gone. He no longer saw that complete willingness, even eagerness, to die then and there, fighting their way to freedom. He looked back at Odd and Halfdan. The riders had spurred their horses forward and now they were closing in on Odd on either side. It was too late. It was over.
When Halfdan approached the gate Odd was not with him. He had apparently been taken back to the camp, bound hand and foot, no doubt.
The Midgard Serpent Page 17