by Wayne Grant
“Very well, Godric. But we have business hereabouts. May we leave our horses with you? We’ll pay with good coin if you will feed and water them until our return.” He held out a silver coin in the palm of his hand.
Now Godric’s gaze turned from resolute to a mixture of greed and worry.
“Aye, my lord. I can keep the beasts for ye, but be warned. They may be taken by the Earl’s patrols. I can’t be held to account fer that, can I now? They take anything of value they find. They took the seed fer grindin’ and when that wasn’t enough fer ‘em, they took our seed for planting. So you can see the fields are empty.”
The Midlands bleed.
Roland handed the man his coin.
“No, old man, we’ll not blame you if the horses are taken, but hide them as best you can. If soldiers come, leave the horses and hide yourself. And Godric, put out that fire—it’s how we found you.”
For the first time the old man grinned.
“Aye, lord, that I can do. But tell me, where are ye bound? I would stay clear of Castleton. Strangers are not welcome there these days.”
Roland turned and pointed towards the looming mass of Kinder Scout to the west.
“We go to Kinder Scout.”
The old man looked puzzled.
“Nothin’ but heathen Danes up there, my lord, and they’re no kinder to strangers than the folk in Castleton.”
Roland nodded.
“I appreciate the warning, Godric, but I am no stranger to the Danes.”
***
They left the horses with the old man and headed up the valley on foot. There were more deserted farmsteads along the way and an unnatural emptiness hung over the land like a pall. The silence was only broken by a lone pig that had somehow been left behind when its owner fled. It happily grunted and rooted down by the stream, unconcerned by their passing.
Soon after they left Godric’s hut, Roland sensed they were being watched. Once, as they rounded a bend he caught a flash of movement high on the wooded slopes overlooking the valley. Whoever the watchers were, they were careful. For another half hour they hiked with no sign of anyone on the trail or the heights, but he knew they were there.
Around the next bend, the valley broadened out into a wide meadow. Roland stopped. He knew this place. This was where he had missed his best chance to take revenge on the man who had killed Rolf Inness so many years ago. He had pursued William de Ferrers to this very spot after killing three of the Earl’s men-at-arms. The Earl’s son had bolted in a panic, but Roland had caught up to him here. As he looked at the meadow, now covered with summer grass and wild flowers, that day came back to him vividly.
He had burst from the woods just in time to see de Ferrers disappear over the small rise in the middle of the meadow. He began to sprint toward the top of the rise and would have had a clean shot at the man, but a patrol of the Earl’s men had appeared, coming up the valley road. He had been forced to retreat into the woods. That was where Tuck had found him.
Roland suddenly realized that his heart was pounding and he was breathing hard, almost as though he was still pursing the man he had sworn to kill. He forced himself to turn away. Sir Edgar was looking at him oddly. He took a deep breath and pointed to the eastern slope.
“We go up here,” he said.
They crossed the meadow and started to climb. It had been over three years since he had killed that roebuck on the side of this mountain—three years since he had set foot on Kinder Scout, the mountain of his boyhood. When they had climbed for a while, they struck a game trail. He knew this trail—knew where it ran to in both directions. He turned west and followed it.
A little ways on, the trail broadened and showed signs of regular use by the people who lived up here in the high country. Around a bend, they came to an opening in the trees where a small patch of level ground had been cleared. The field was barren now, and there were only a few blackened stumps where a farmer’s hut had once stood. This place was nearer the valley than most, but the Earl’s men had rarely ventured this high up the mountain in the past.
It was an ill omen.
They passed the abandoned place and followed the trail higher. To his surprise, Sir Edgar kept pace with him. For a huge man with a crippled leg, he was surprisingly nimble, though Roland could hear him sucking in air like a bellows behind him. He wondered how far they would get before the watchers in the woods made themselves known. It wasn’t long.
They had just crossed one of the many rivulets that ran off the flanks of the mountain, when an arrow buzzed by Roland’s head and imbedded itself in a nearby tree. Sir Edgar reached for the axe at his belt, but Roland put a hand on his arm. If the hidden watchers had meant to kill, they would already be dead. He took a step forward and opened his arms wide. He called up the slope, speaking in Danish.
“I appreciate the warning shot. Now if you would have the courtesy to show yourself—my bow is unstrung and my friend here can’t throw his axe that far. We are no threat.”
For a long moment, there was no response, no movement in the trees ahead. Then a man stepped out from a tangle of deadfall. He was tall and lean and moved with the easy grace of a man at home in these woods. He held a longbow in his hands with an arrow nocked. He moved down the trail toward the two men,
“We’ll judge if you be a threat or no, stranger,” the man said. He spoke in English but with a recognizable Danish accent. “I see you have a longbow and you speak our tongue, but you dress as a Norman.” He gave a disdainful sniff. “Smell like one too. Who are you then?”
Roland bristled at the man’s insult, but checked himself.
“I am Roland Inness—the son of Rolf Inness. I grew up in these mountains. I’ve come to visit his grave and that of my mother. I also come to find my brother.”
There was a long silence.
“We heard the son of Rolf Inness was dead.” This came from a second man who had quietly emerged from a cluster of bushes upslope and to his right. He too had an arrow nocked in his longbow. “Killed by Ivo Brun they said.”
“As you can see, they were mistaken.” Roland called back. “I’m alive—and it’s Brun that’s dead.”
Roland saw the man cast a surprised glance at his companion who did not return it. The first man spoke again.
“Perhaps he is or perhaps not. Brun hasn’t troubled these parts for a long time, but no one knows what became of the bastard.”
“I do.”
“And I suppose you killed him?” the man asked with a sneer.
“No, but I saw him die.”
The tall man seemed to contemplate that for a moment, then gave a small signal with his hand. Two more men with half drawn bows emerged from the trees on the left.
Roland tried to place the bowmen, but couldn’t. The scattered farmsteads of the Danes stretched over many miles in the high country of the Pennines and large gatherings were rare. If he’d seen any of these men before, he did not recognize them.
“It’s been three years or more since we heard Rolf Inness was dead—killed by the Earl’s men I’m told. We heard his son ran. Is that true? Did you run away, boy?”
Roland gritted his teeth, but held his temper, barely.
“Aye, I ran, but not before killing three of the Earl’s men. It would have been four if I could have caught up to the Earl’s son.”
The leader of the group started to reply, but one of the other men spoke first.
“Odo Kjeldsen once told me he found three of the Earl’s men-at-arms dead on the high trail—one arrow in each.”
“Odo was our nearest neighbour,” Roland said. “He would have been the one likely to have found those bodies.” The leader shot him a dark look. “If you are who you say you are, where have you been these past three years?”
“I’ve been to war and now I’m back.”
“War? What war are you speaking of?”
“King Richard’s crusade to take Jerusalem back from the Mohammedans. My friend and I,” he jerked his head toward Sir Edgar, “fou
ght there for two years, but have come home.”
“Crusade!” the man spat on the ground as he spoke the word. “Your father is killed by the Normans, so you join up with the bastards to fight their wars?”
“I did not. My master was ordered to go and it was my duty to follow him. I’ll not apologize for that—or for serving a Norman knight. He’s a better man than anyone I see here.”
There was an angry murmur from the men who surrounded them and Roland could hear the familiar creak of yew being bent. Once more, Sir Edgar slid his hand toward the handle of his axe. Roland could feel that bloodshed—probably theirs—was near, but civility did not seem to be working.
“Think of me what you will, but you should hear me out. I’ve come here to honour my parent’s graves, but also to make an offer to the Danes. It’s an offer that you should consider.”
The leader of the group looked at him sceptically.
“Offer? From you, or from the Normans? Or perhaps there is no difference. We don’t make bargains with the Normans. They come into our mountains—we kill them.”
“I’m a Saxon,” Sir Edgar observed, to no one in particular.
“We kill Saxons as well,” the man said.
Sir Edgar slowly drew forth his wicked battleaxe.
“You’d better shoot straight then, or I’ll be takin’ a few of you with me.”
“Hold!”
It was a voice that had the bark of long-practiced command to it and was close enough to startle. A wiry older man stepped out from a tangle of deadfall not twenty feet away. His hair was long and grey and there were talismans woven into its strands. He had blue ink tracings on one cheek and down an arm. He looked as though he had stepped out of the Viking past all of the Danes shared.
“Put the axe down, Saxon,” he ordered.
Sir Edgar scowled.
The man looked at his fellow Danes and made a palm-down gesture with his hand. They lowered their bows. The tall man started to protest, but was stopped by a hard look from the older man.
“These men have not threatened us, Svein. Would you kill them for sport? Are we no better than Normans?”
Svein locked eyes with the older man, and for a moment Roland thought he was going to disobey. Then he shrugged and slowly lowered his bow. Satisfied, the grey-haired man came down to the trail where Roland stood. He moved with a spring to his step that belied his age.
“I am Thorkell. I fought with Rolf Inness twenty years ago when last we rose against de Ferrers,” he said. “He was a clever war leader and a brave man. Now, the Danes must defend themselves once more—we’ve been forced to it, I am sad to say—and they have chosen me to be their war leader.” He stepped closer and looked intently at Roland.
“You do favour Rolf Inness a bit. On the chance that you might be his son, we’ll not kill you, but we’ll have your weapons, here and now.”
Sir Edgar growled behind him, but Roland did not hesitate. He swung his bow forward and handed it to Thorkell. He unbuckled his sword belt and drew Ivo Brun’s dagger from his boot and handed them over. Thorkell passed the weapons to Svein. Sir Edgar was slower to comply, and was swearing oaths under his breath as he passed his axe forward.
They were now prisoners of the Danes.
The Danes
Thorkell gave a hand signal and headed up the trail as easily as he had bounded down it. Roland and Sir Edgar hurried to follow. Svein jerked his head toward two of the bowman who fell in behind the captives.
They were still miles to the north of the Inness steading high on the eastern slope of Kinder Scout, but it was country Roland knew well. As they hiked, they passed the familiar profile of an old rock slide and snaked through a narrow clough that sheltered an ancient, misshapen oak. It was land he had hunted as a boy and hunters paid attention to such things.
As they moved further up the slope, they came to one of the many trails that wound along ridgelines linking the isolated farms of the Danes. This trail headed due north, away from the Inness place. As they marched, they skirted a farm perched on a small piece of flat ground. Unlike the abandoned steading further down the mountain, this one was still being farmed.
A man was standing in a small patch of oats with two young boys nearby. They all stopped to watch the procession pass by on the trail. Thorkell gave them a wave and they waved back. Whoever had burned out the farm lower down had not penetrated this high into the hills—not yet.
They hiked in silence until they reached the crest of a ridge overlooking a high valley. From this height, Roland could see smoke rising from camp fires below. As they descended through the trees he saw a sentry who nodded to Thorkell as they passed, but kept his gaze fixed up the trail toward the ridge.
Roland recognized this place. It was a narrow valley on the western side of the long ridge that ran north from the summit of Kinder Scout. Sometimes deer remained in this sheltered spot well into winter and he had hunted them here with his father. The valley was isolated and well-hidden, but the sentry’s vigilance told its own story—trouble, it appeared, had been no stranger to the Danes. They did not feel secure, even this deep in the mountains.
As they emerged from the woods into a clearing, he could see at least a score of men spread around the open area. All had longbows near at hand and were looking at the new arrivals with interest. In the years he had spent on Kinder Scout, he had never seen such a gathering of men, and certainly not at harvest time. That they were here and not tending to the crops on their farmsteads was more evidence of trouble.
The Midlands bleed.
Thorkell led them past a long low hut that seemed to be a sort of rude dormitory for those not on patrol. As they moved into the clearing, the men in the encampment drifted toward the group. By the time they reached the far side, a dozen men had converged on the place. Some stood and others took seats on fallen timbers. None looked friendly.
Thorkell halted them at last. There was a low buzz of hushed talk from the gathered men. Roland looked around in vain for his neighbour Odo, but did not see him. Then he noticed a boy standing in back who was watching him intently. He was tall, thin and dark haired and was leaning on a longbow. It had been three years, but there could be no mistake. It was Oren Inness, his brother.
The boy made no move to greet him as Thorkell raised a hand and the buzz of conversation fell silent. The war leader of the Danes pointed to Roland and Sir Edgar.
“We found these two over the ridge and three miles east. They were coming our way, so we thought it best to escort them. The tall one says he is Roland Inness, son of Rolf Inness. The big one is a Saxon.”
There was a renewed buzz as more men drifted into the clearing. Thorkell raised his hand again to silence the crowd.
“Inness says he has come to visit the grave of his mother and father and to find his brother, but he comes here as an oath man to a Norman and says he has an offer for us. So what are we to do with them?”
Whatever good will may have been conjured up among the Danes by his kinship to Rolf Inness vanished with the news of his allegiance to a Norman. The buzz now had an angry, threatening tone to it.
Thorkell frowned.
“First, let’s confirm if he tells the truth about his name.” Thorkell turned and spoke to the boy in the back of the crowd.
“Is this your brother, Master Inness?”
Oren Inness gave a small nod.
“Aye, it’s him,” he said. There was an edge to the boy’s voice, but Roland could not conjure its meaning and his brother seemed to have nothing else to say.
Thorkell again quieted the crowd.
“Well then, we will hear what Roland Inness has to say, and then decide what to do with him and his Saxon friend.” He turned to Roland and motioned him forward as he stood back.
Roland stepped to the centre of the clearing and nodded toward Oren. The boy did not return the gesture. He glanced over at Sir Edgar, who was scowling back at the hostile faces in the crowd. He looked ready to sell his life dearly if the Dane
s wanted it. He took a deep breath.
“Here is what I have to say. Three years ago William de Ferrers came to our farm and had my father killed. I saw it happen and killed three of his men in return. I would have killed de Ferrers, but he escaped me that day. He will not escape me forever, this I’ve sworn.”
For the first time, there was a rumble of agreement in the crowd.
“But I’ve not come here for any private vengeance. That must wait. I’ve come because there is a war in the land—a war between the Normans to determine who shall rule. You’ve seen this war in the abandoned farms and deserted valleys at the foot of your mountains. And even the high country hasn’t been spared. Some of your own steadings have been lost, and your men, men who should be taking in the harvest, are patrolling the approaches. It’s well they do, because these mountains will not save you from what is coming.”
He paused, looking at the silent watchers, sensing their unease at his blunt words.
“In this war, Prince John seeks to wrest the crown from his brother, King Richard. I care little for either, but know this—if John prevails, William de Ferrers will become the most powerful baron in England. And what will become of the Danes then?”
He saw that some of the men were starting to lean in, to truly listen to what he was saying. It was time to make his offer.
“I come to you from Ranulf, the Earl of Chester. Ranulf is a Norman, through and through—but a man of his word—a man who, like you and I, counts William de Ferrers as a mortal enemy. He is the only baron in the Midlands that stands against the Prince and de Ferrers. He offers you an alliance against this man who would starve your children and make of Derbyshire a desert. He offers each man who joins him a hide of good farmland in Cheshire to bind the alliance.”
Svein leapt to his feet.
“And why should we trust an offer from a Norman? The truth is not in them.” He spat on the ground and pointed at Roland. “If this man was ever a Dane, he is no longer. He is a creature of the Normans and this is a trick. He would coax us from these hills that protect us so his Norman masters can slaughter us. I say we treat him as we would any Norman who trespasses on our mountain. I say we kill him—and the Saxon oaf he brought with him!”