The Price of Blood

by Doris Sutcliffe Adams

  THE PRICE OF BLOOD

  The last Kingdom of England was broken, the sea-wolves ravaged along the coast; beacons flared on the hills and Odda of Devon gathered desperate men to die fighting for Wessex and the Christian faith.

  Niall, however, was a peaceful trader and this was no war of his; shipwreck had cast him into the midst of it. Judith would have hanged him; but, though Leofric could not believe a Christian Dane existed, he brought him before Odda for judgment. Over the murdered bodies of women and children in a burned farmstead, Niall discovered that he could not be loyal both to his faith and to his kindred among the heathen raiders. He made his choice and held by it, escaping Odda’s noose and the perils of battle, sea and fire. Yet in the end he was taken by his own vengeful kinsman Rorik Cropear and doomed to a harder death.

  This is a splendidly written story, authentic in historic detail and with superbly drawn characters.

  By the same author:

  DESERT LEOPARD

  NO MAN'S SON

  The Price of Blood

  by

  Doris Sutcliffe Adams

  ROBERT HALE LIMITED

  63 Old Brompton Road, London S.W.7

  © Doris Sutcliffe Adams 1962

  First published in Great Britain 1962

  Printed in Great Britain by

  Clarke, Doble & Brendon Ltd., Cattedown, Plymouth

  Dedicated

  with my love

  to

  Bill and Margaret

  Peter and Mary

  My Brothers and their Wives

  Table of Contents

  Preface

  The Price of Blood GLOSSARY

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  I0

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  GLOSSARY

  Berm

  The level space between a ditch and a rampart.

  Berserk

  A warrior who worked himself into a frenzy before battle and fought with irresistible fury.

  Braies

  Loose drawers worn by men.

  Byrnie

  Short-sleeved, hip-length body-armour, usually of leather sewn with horn plates or iron rings.

  Ealdorman

  The governor of a shire, appointed by the King.

  Folkmoot

  The assembly of free men to decide the affairs of the settlement.

  Fyrd

  All males capable of bearing arms, summoned to defend their country.

  Holmgang

  A formal duel between Norsemen, held on an island if one was available, or in a marked fighting-ring.

  Quern

  A stone handmill for grinding grain.

  Rana

  The Norse goddess of the sea.

  Seax

  A long, heavy Saxon dagger.

  Skald

  A Norse poet.

  Wergild

  Man-price; compensation paid to the kindred of a killer’s victim, as an alternative to their avenging his death by a blood-feud.

  1

  The wind screamed out of the black sky, hurling spears of rain before it. It tore solid water from the ridged and roaring wavecrests that glimmered barely seen alongside, hurtling out of blackness into blackness. There was nothing for eyes to see however they strained, nothing in the world but wind and water mingled in lightless chaos. The helmsman could not see the ship’s bows; sea and sky were all one about him, and the waves that heaved the ship up to the shrieking wind and down to the clutching water were invisible forces. On the crests the ship reeled, in the troughs she lurched and laboured, and he fought the steering oar with all his strength and weight.

  The ship was a wreck already. Water surged and tumbled the lull length of her; the oarsmen worked knee-deep in it. The mast was gone, and falling had broken half the larboard oars and smashed a great gap in her gunwale. It had been patched with canvas and shields and benches, but every wave that snarled along her flank thrust spouts of water under the patches, and her strained seams were spewing their caulking. Every man who was not at the oars was bailing desperately to keep her afloat. The spare oars and sail had been lost when the sea-anchor’s cable parted, that first night of disaster; there were only five pairs of oars left, and the weary rowers had all they could do to maintain steerage-way and keep the wreck before the wind. Now and again, as the wind slackened a little, the helmsman could hear their grunts of effort, but he could not see them.

  In a brief lull, as the ship lay heavily in a trough, the helmsman shouted an order in a cracked, hoarse voice, and some of the balers relieved the oarsmen. It was raggedly done, and the ship lurched sickeningly as the sea wrenched at her keel and the wind pounced on her again. The tall helmsman flung all his weight on the tiller, ducked his head as a wave hurled its heavy top inboard upon him, drew a gulping breath of air that was half water and stiffened himself doggedly. They were all done, clumsy and slow and weak from exhaustion and hunger and battering. Four days and five nights they had fought the storm, and endurance was near its end. The helmsman, grimly screwing up his spray-blinded eyes in an effort to pierce the darkness forward, knew that the ship could not last more than a handful of hours.

  A man floundered aft, and stood under the break of the poop in its exiguous shelter. He coughed and spat, drew a whooping breath, waited for the wind’s screaming to slacken slightly, and then reported, “Water gaining, Niall.”

  The steersman grunted acknowledgment and struggled with the kicking tiller. It was not news to him. The wind was coming now in erratic gusts of violence, and mastering the heavy steering-oar took all the strength in his weary body.

  “The storm will blow itself out by dawn,” offered the other man, “and land not far away.”

  “Very near, by the feel of the waves,” agreed the helmsman. “And a strong tide running with the wind. Any guess where we are, Gorm?”

  “Anywhere in the Western Sea, but my guess is Wales or Wessex.”

  “Neither a coast I should choose to be wrecked on,” commented the helmsman grimly. “Know what kind of shore it is?”

  “Depends where you hit it.”

  A squall shrieked down upon them, hurling rain and sea together at the tall steersman’s hunched shoulders. The ship lurched soddenly, and he heaved on the tiller, grunting with effort. Slowly she righted herself, and the man shook the water from his face, gasping a little. His soaked hair grappled round neck and chin and blew in heavy wet ropes past his face. The other man was hauling himself up from the starboard gunwale where he had clung, cursing in a smothered voice of pain.

  “Gorm, you should be in the cabin with the others!” said the helmsman sharply.

  “Not while I have two feet to stand on, Niall.”

  Niall clenched his teeth, thrust and stiffened automatically to the kick of the tiller, and tried to peer at his comrade, a denser blackness in that wild dark turmoil. Gorm had an arm broken and probably a rib or two cracked as well, but he had steadfastly refused to lie with the four other injured men, awash in their sleeping-bags in the tiny cabin under the poop. He was cursing and coughing together as he clung to the gunwhale, and Niall protested quickly, "Gorm, you can do no good here!”

  "Rather drown in one piece than by inches.”

  "See how they fare, then.”

  The wind was plainly easing, the gusts lessening in duration and ferocity, though the waves still leaped on them from astern and tore worried the length of the hull, so that she tossed like a chip in a mill-race for all the weight of water in her. The rain hissed steadily, stinging the tall man’s cold flesh. He c
ould not hear Gorm moving in the cabin for the blows the sea dealt, thrumming through every rib and board of the groaning fabric, but he saw the faint dark loom of him as he emerged and realized that dawn was on the way.

  “Thorkill is dead,” Gorm announced flatly.

  "God rest him,” Niall said. That made eleven dead; two killed by the falling mast, five lost overboard when the ship was swamped, one with his skull cracked against an oar-bench and three succumbed to injuries and exposure. Probably they would all be with Thorkill before daybreak; they must beach their struggling craft before she sank under them if they were to live, and by the leaden feel of her, scarcely responding to the tiller, he knew they had little time left. He peered forward, blinking his sore, swollen eyelids. The black sky seemed dark as ever, but he could discern the bulwarks on either hand diminishing into the night, the dull glimmer of the water rushing back and forth as she plunged, the dim movements of oarsmen and balers, and the yeasty waves ripping alongside. Faintly, almost imperceptibly, the sky ahead was greying with the first approach of dawn.

  The erratic gusts were shifting, striking now on the larboard and now on the starboard quarter so that the ship was in imminent danger of broaching-to. Once she offered her broad-side to the waves she was done, and Niall fought the tiller desperately. Gorm joined his sound arm to the bitter struggle, smothering his coughing. The furious tide clutched the keel, and each wave threatened to thrust the waterlogged Raven bodily under and stamp her to the bottom. It was bitter cold, and inside his sodden clothing his body was numb and stiff with chill. Every battle with the steering-gear cost a greater effort, drained from him more and more of his failing strength.

  “Set someone else to steer, Niall! You have been at it longer than any of us!” Gorm expostulated, as the wind’s fury died again to moaning and the rain’s lash-strokes eased.

  “I will put the old Raven ashore myself!” Niall retorted. He had been at the tiller without respite since the previous noon, but with Gorm crippled there was no fitter man on board to set at the steering-oar. He could distinguish the black shapes of the balers, incessantly casting out the water that poured in, and the swaying rowers heaving stubbornly on the long oars. They were all shambling and clumsy now, reeling with fatigue and cold and hunger. Stores and cargo had gone during that first wild night, and they had laboured without rest in the bitter cold and wet on empty bellies. They were all bruised and cut and battered, their salt-soaked clothing had chafed their flesh to raw sores, and there was little effort left in them. Niall was in the same state himself, but responsibility for all their lives stiffened him. Land was near, dawn almost upon them, and somehow, though the ship was doomed, he must get his crew ashore alive.

  “An hour or two left, if these gutless herrings can keep baling,” Gorm observed disparagingly.

  That was a needless aspersion on the crew, for no captain ever commanded a better, but Gorm was never known to commend any man while he could find excuse to blame him. He was an admirable mate, but he reckoned Niall too easy a captain for the good of discipline, and considered it his first duty to chasten any who might take advantage of his weakness. Those near enough to hear him snorted and forced themselves to fiercer effort, and the larboard stroke oarsman lifted his head and croaked, “Never thought to envy a herring, but fins would not come amiss today.”

  “And an end in someone’s belly, Helgi,” retorted Niall.

  A ripple of weary laughter ran forward. The oarsman had long hair fair as bleached flax, gathering the dim dawnlight into a blotch of pallor against the black timbers. There was no difficulty in putting his name to him, when every other man was a featureless shape moving obscurely in darkness.

  “Do not remind us we have bellies,” a baler protested plaintively, and won a mock groan from his comrades.

  The rain was thinning. The gusts came less viciously; he could steady the tiller without needing all his strength to fight. As the tension eased from his muscles Niall became conscious of the utter weariness he had held back so long. He was trembling with fatigue and weakness, aching through all his body. The cold wind probed to his bones. Water splashed at him, black and bitter, from every wave that heaved at the stern; it surged about his ankles, licking at the Raven’s ribs and planking, and at every rise he saw on all sides a wild waste of dark water ridged and ribbed with white. He screwed up his eyes, trying to discover a shore beyond that roaring chaos, but though the sky ahead was paling now to grey, it was still too dark to see further than a stone's cast.

  If Gorm’s guess proved right, after four days of shuttling to and fro in the Western Sea at the mercy of the Easter gales, a landing in Wessex might be as surely fatal as foundering in deep water. God only knew how matters stood in that last surviving Christian Kingdom, since Guthrum of East Anglia and Ubba Ragnar’s son treacherously surprised and slew its King in their mid-winter attack, and put the miserable land to fire and sword, but unless all resistance to their onslaught had already been crushed, shipwrecked Northmen might expect a sharp-edged welcome. Niall grimaced a little. It was no dispute of his, but it seemed he was thrust between the mill-stones.

  “Whatever the shore, we must take our chance with it,” he said aloud.

  “If we do not drown, we shall most likely be hanged,” declared Gorm equably. “Which would you choose, Helgi?”

  The white-haired lad considered the alternatives seriously. 'Whether we feed the fishes or the crows is no great matter, but surely Christian hangmen grant a man a full belly before stretching, his neck?” He looked hopefully at Niall, who grinned back.

  “With so many of us to dispose of, they will probably reckon it too great a waste of meat.”

  "I hope they have the timber to do us justice,” said Helgi. 'And a headland where we shall make a fair showing,” Gorm supplemented.

  “Hey, not so ready with your ropes, Gorm!” Niall exclaimed. “By my reckoning the fishes are the more likely to benefit!”

  The grim jesting won another laugh. Niall leaned to speak in Gorm’s ear. “Open the arms-chest and give out the weapons, Gorm.”

  Gorm cocked his head on one side like a wise old gull. “Arms?”

  “When we strike there may not be time.”

  He nodded and splashed away forward. When he at last returned the rain had ceased, the grey of dawn had spread upward over the whole sky before them, and the look-out in the bows, clinging drenched and battered to the high stem-post carved in the likeness of a raven’s head, was darkly outlined against it. Gorm proffered Niall’s own sword, and took the tiller while he clasped the belt about him. The seas showed no sign of moderating yet, and the strong current was sweeping them irresistibly into the breaking day, a fiercer tide than most seas knew. A western tide meant either the Channel or the Severn Sea, neither of which was familiar water to Niall. And now that the scream of the wind and battering of the rain no longer filled his hearing, he thought that over the surging sea he could hear the rhythmic boom of breakers.

  He lifted his head like a tall hart, straining to hear. Beside him Gorm opened his mouth to speak and then checked, his ugly troll’s face, with its salt-rimed spiky whiskers, suddenly intent. “You heard it too?” he muttered.

  “And misliked it.”

  The look-out flung up an arm and yelled sharply. “Breakers! I hear breakers ahead! ”

  Niall peered through the murky twilight, wondering whether the land were to larboard or starboard. “Avast rowing! Backwater!” he shouted above the rapidly rising thunder of great combers bursting on rocks, and the oars threshed at the water until the stout wood bent as the rowers fought to check the Raven’s way and force her back. Wind and current had the ship fast, and she groaned and shuddered like a living thing. Then, greyer than the grey light, dim and ghostly and insubstantial-seeming as mist, he saw the curve of cliffs reaching round from his right hand to a headland whose foot was a smother of tall spray beyond the Raven’s bows.

  Niall flung all his strength against the tiller. “Give way, larboa
rd! Backwater, starboard!” he yelled. The Raven lurched and struggled like a wounded crab, almost inert with the weight of water in her, and the steering-gear creaked and strained. Gorm’s body pressed against his, and slowly, reluctantly the ship answered and came round. A wave surged up on the quarter, surged over and crashed a great black deluge onto the poop. It rushed and frothed the length of the ship, and she settled soddenly. The patch in her larboard side, fully exposed to the sea’s force as she obeyed helm and oars, spouted white at every make-shift joint. Slowly, slowly the desperate men fought her towards the point.

  Dark rocks thrust gleaming out of boiling white foam. Low, steep grey cliffs loomed clearer and clearer, and at their feet, all along their curve, their jagged fangs grinned blackly as the waves leaped on them in an angry white smother, lashed high up their flanks and fell back to strike against incoming combers and hurl pillars of water at the sky. The sea swirled and dimpled, dragging and breaking over hidden reefs. Niall measured the distance to the headland and the arm of raging surf it reached across their bows, and gasped a prayer through clenched teeth.

  "God, let us make it! Sweet Saviour, let us weather the point!”

  The Raven listed further and further to larboard as the sea thrust under the patch, for all the frenzied work of the balers. Cross-currents gripped and twisted her as the waves wrangled among the rocks. A violent lurch kicked Gorm from the helm and threw him back into the knee-deep water, where he floundered weakly. Niall, winded and gasping, savagely fighting the tiller, could do nothing to aid him. Another comber broke over the poop, beating him down as he struggled to rise. The ship no longer had buoyancy to ride the crests; they broke on her as on a rock.