The Wolf and the Raven

by H A CULLEY

  ‘Welcome home, father,’ Ivar said formally whilst Bjorn told his brothers to let go with anger in his voice.

  Sigurd and Halfdan muttered sorry and returned to their places behind the other two. Ragnar was about to ask what in the name of Hel was going on when his daughter, Ragnhild, said quietly that he had better come up to the hall and they would explain what had happened since he’d been away.

  Around them the usual greeting between the returning warriors and their families carried on as normal but Ragnar sensed that the welcome was more subdued than usual.

  As he walked away Olaf heard others talking about what had happened and for a moment he thought of going after his friend, but his own wife and children demanded his attention and he let him go. He would visit him later and they could get drunk together. Then would be the appropriate time to discuss how to take revenge on Eystein and Aslaug.

  Lagertha hadn’t followed Ragnar back to Arendal. She and the other jarls from the north of the kingdom had gone directly to their respective bases so they were unaware of the death of Agnar and the betrayal of Aslaug until they got home.

  When she did eventually hear the news Lagertha’s hostility towards Ragnar softened somewhat. She even thought of sailing down to Arendal to see him, using the excuse of seeing her daughter, Ragnhild, but she hardened her heart against it.

  ‘What will you do?’ Olaf asked Ragnar that evening after they had drunk several horns of ale together.

  ‘Do? Go and see Eystein, of course. Agnar and Eirik were fools and I can understand that the old king had to protect Gotland, but I can’t forgive him, especially if he has given sanctuary to Aslaug.’

  He said her name as if it was something nasty he’d eaten.

  ‘However, it would be folly to turn this into a blood feud unless he’s murdered Eirik. I’ll demand my son back unharmed together with my wife and her bastard child. In return I’ll continue our alliance.’

  ‘And if he refuses?’

  ‘Then I’ll kill the old goat, regardless of the consequences.’

  He looked across the table at Bjorn and Ivar, who’d been allowed to stay and drink a little ale with their father.

  ‘They did well in my absence. There’s not many seven and six year olds who could take command of things. There was a real danger than some ambitious jarl or wealthy bondi could have seized the throne.’

  ‘With the help of Edda,’ Olaf pointed out. ‘Besides all but the greybeards and boys were either away with us or had accompanied Agnar.’

  ‘Yes, I was sorry to hear that Edda’s father had died with my fool of a son. He’s too young to be accepted as a jarl, yet but he shows real promise.’

  ‘I’m not so sure – about him being too young, I mean. He’s a strapping lad for thirteen and those of his father’s men who came with us seem to respect him,’ Olaf said pointing across the hall to where Edda and a group of warriors were getting uproariously drunk.

  ‘Maybe; it’s up to the bondi to elect their new jarl in any case. I don’t want to interfere. In any case, we have Eystein to worry about and I haven’t finished with Northumbria yet. Ealdorman Edmund must pay for the death of Fridlief.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of going back there next year?’

  ‘No, I need to give my warriors a place to raid which will give them a chest full of gold and silver first or they won’t want to come raiding with me again.’

  ‘So where are you thinking of going next year? Frankia?’

  ‘Yes; I have Paris in mind. If all I’ve heard about it is correct, we’ll make every bondi richer than his wildest dreams.’

  Chapter Fourteen – Invasion of Frankia

  845

  Edmund had sunk into depression when he found out that Joscelin was lost to him. It was Cynefrith who took charge and got them to Paris. Once there he arranged to rent a suitable house for Edmund and himself and accommodation for the rest of the crew.

  ‘You’re going to have to rouse yourself, lord,’ he told Edmund after they’d been there for a few days. ‘You can’t stay locked away in your room.’

  ‘I’ll do what I bloody well want, Cynefrith, and stop calling me lord. Here I’m no more than a simple merchant.’

  ‘Not even that if you don’t get a grip on things. Besides, Charles wants to see you.’

  ‘Charles? Charles who?’

  ‘Charles the Bald, King of West Frankia, the son of Louis the Pious. That Charles.’

  ‘What on earth does he want with me?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. A messenger arrived from Aix la Chappelle this morning with the royal summons, though it’s worded like a request.’

  Edmund sighed. A request from the king was a politely worded order, especially as he was now a resident of that part of the Frankish Empire ruled by Charles. He had succeeded his father when Louis had died, but his brothers had rebelled against him.

  The civil war had lasted for three years and ended up with the partition of the empire created by Charlemagne. Charles had kept the valleys of the Rhine and the Rhône, including the regions of Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, and Provence as well as the coastal regions of Frankia. But the civil war had reduced his political influence significantly and had weakened him militarily. He’d also lost the title of emperor, which had gone to his brother Lothair. He was now known as the King of West Frankia.

  ‘How far is it to Aix?’ Edmund asked, now resigned to having to travel there.

  ‘Overland? Nearly three hundred miles; but it’s probably more convenient to travel by ship. I’d made some enquiries and we can go back into the German Ocean and down the River Meuse. Aix La Chappelle lies on an offshoot, the River Wurm.’

  Edmund felt rejuvenated once he was back on board again. He had shrugged off his lethargy and the wind in his hair and the sea spray in his face made him glad to be alive again. They had to row much of the way down the Seine and he joined his men pulling on an oar for a time. His hands soon blistered and the muscles in his back made him feel as if it was on fire, but he ignored the pain. Even a sudden heavy shower of rain did little to dampen his spirits. It was if he’d been reborn again.

  The only thing which clouded his new found enthusiasm for life was the niggling worry about why Charles the Bald wanted to see him. It made no sense. In Paris he was just another merchant, albeit a relatively wealthy one. Perhaps Eanred had changed his mind? Exile wasn’t enough and he now wanted him dead. But in that case he would have been arrested in Paris and sent back to Northumbria if Charles had acceded to Eanred’s request.

  The more he pondered the reason for the summons the more in the dark he was. In the end he gave up worrying and concentrated on enjoying the journey.

  It took ten days to reach Aix. As soon as they docked the port reeve came down personally to greet them.

  ‘The king is expecting you, Lord Edmund. You are to be his guest. An escort is on its way with horses for you and two companions.’

  Edmund thought that this was mildly encouraging. If he was to be incarcerated he would have been taken away on his own, and on foot. Aix wasn’t as big as Paris, but it wasn’t small by any means. However, the palace complex lay to the north of the city and proved to be much larger than Edmund was expecting. He was so overawed by the scale of the buildings that he scarcely noticed when a groom and two boys came running to take the horses away.

  Cynefrith and Laughlin accompanied him and together they entered the palace via a gate adjoining the palace chapel. Edmund thought that it looked enormous, more like a cathedral than a chapel. However, it wasn’t built in the style he was used to; it was round with a domed roof like a basilica. Other buildings adjoined it, including accommodation for the monks and priests and, on the other side of the entrance hall to the chapel complex, the king’s private rooms.

  They walked along a long covered walkway and entered another building which the captain said was the barracks for the guards on duty. Edmund noticed that the palace was full of people scurrying about: courtiers, scholars, nobles, m
erchants and even beggars and poor people who had presumably come to ask for charity or to submit pleas to the king.

  Beyond the barracks lay an even longer walkway which ended at a large building which housed the council chamber and the treasury. Both were built of brick, rather than stone and the council chamber was larger than any building Edmund had ever seen, measuring some one hundred and twenty feet long by seventy feet wide.

  ‘There are other buildings outside the palace complex,’ the captain told him. ‘These include the main barracks, quarters for the courtiers, officials and servants and a hospice. There is also a hunting park and a menagerie where various exotic animals are kept for the amusement of important visitors.’

  Edmund thought of the king’s hall at Eoforwīc, which was like a poor shepherd’s hut by comparison to Charles’s palace. The brick buildings particularly fascinated Edmund. Some of the Roman ruins in England were built of brick, but no Anglo-Saxon builder had mastered the art of turning wet clay into hard-baked bricks. He thought it looked a simpler, and cheaper, way of building than stone and determined to find out more about the technique.

  The council chamber was full of people milling about waiting their turn to be called forward to speak to the king. The chamberlain’s assistants moved amongst them, finding people who were lucky enough to be granted a brief audience and taking them forward to where King Charles sat on his throne. There they waited their turn to move to the base of the dais and go down on one knee. Once they had submitted their plea or concluded their business, they got to their feet, bowed low and backed away from the royal presence.

  Edmund had to restrain a laugh. He couldn’t imagine any Northumbrian being so obsequious to Eanred. However, he was faced with a dilemma. He still had no idea what he was doing here but he wasn’t about to scrape and bow to the Frankish king, whatever the reason for his summons.

  Thankfully he didn’t have to. The captain left the three of them and went to have a quiet word in the chamberlain’s ear. The man, who was standing at the foot of the dais with those patiently waiting in line for a word in the royal ear, banged the end of his staff of office on the stone floor and the buzz of conversation died away.

  ‘That concludes today’s business. You may return tomorrow at midday if you so desire.’

  The chamberlain said this with such an air of disdain that it was obvious he wished they wouldn’t bother. Charles got up from his throne and everyone, except the three Englishmen, bowed low as he left though a door behind the dais. One of the men who had been standing in a small group chatting together at the other side of the dais from the supplicants followed him out.

  ‘Come with me, the king will see you privately,’ the captain said when he re-joined them. ‘Your two men can wait here for now.’

  ‘Ah, Lord Edmund, thank you for coming,’ Charles greeted Edmund in Latin with a smile as soon as he was shown through the door.

  The room was quite small and only contained the king and the man who had followed him. It was richly furnished with tapestries on the walls, a table covered with papers and a chair. There were two other chairs in front of the desk but both the other occupants of the room were standing and so Edmund walked across to join them.

  ‘Princeps, I am honoured to meet you, but I have to confess that I am ignorant of the reason,’ he replied in Latin.

  ‘We don’t use the term princeps, Edmund,’ the other man said in heavily accented English. ‘Highness is the correct form of address.’

  ‘Forgive me, Highness,’ he replied in Franconian, ignoring the other man and addressing the king.

  Charles frowned at the man who’d corrected Edmund and turned back to his guest with a smile.

  ‘I do apologise, I haven’t introduced my companion. This is Count Louis of Arras.’

  Edmund was stunned. This then was Bastiaan’s father; the man who had ruined his chances of marrying Joscelin. For a moment he just stared at the man, then he realised that both men were looking at him, puzzled by his reaction.

  ‘I’m sorry, Highness. Am I correct in thinking that you are the father of Bastiaan and Joscelin?’ he said, turning to the count.

  ‘Er, yes,’ the latter said, taken off guard. ‘Do you know them?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied tersely before turning back to the king. ‘Highness, how can I help?’

  Charles looked at him curiously and then at the count, who was clearly mystified by the peculiar exchange. Edmund came to the conclusion that the count had arranged Joscelin’s marriage whilst ignorant of Edmund’s betrothal to her; but surely his children would have mentioned it? More likely he had been told but ignored it as unsuitable and had failed to even remember Edmund’s name.

  ‘My agents have reported that the Viking leader, Ragnar Lodbrok, is amassing a large fleet. The rumour is that he intends to attack Paris,’ Charles was saying. ‘I have placed the count in charge of our defences against these pirates, but I understand that you have fought them before. Not only that, but you are more experienced in naval warfare than any of us are. I’m hoping you can help us to come up with a strategy for defeating them.

  ‘We don’t believe that we can tackle them at sea,’ Louis went on. ‘We are going to have to stop them once they are in the River Seine. I thought that perhaps a chain across the river might stop them and we can then bombard them from the shore.’

  ‘Do your agents have any idea how large Ragnar Lodbrok’s fleet is? When he attacked Northumbria last year he brought twenty ships and a thousand men with him.’

  ‘If the threat was the same size this time, then I feel we could deal with him easily; however, I have spies in all the main Scandinavian ports and they tell me that Grimulf the Dane and a fleet from Uppsala in Sweden have agreed to join the ships from Adger and Alfheim. The best estimate I have is that he can bring some three thousand warriors in some fifty longships against us.’

  ‘How many men do you have for the defence of Paris, Highness?’

  ‘I can probably muster five thousand, given enough warning.’

  Edmund didn’t like to say that a Viking warrior, trained from boyhood to fight and kill, was probably a match for two or even three Franks. Instead he returned to the idea of barring access upriver.

  ‘A boom won’t work. They’ll merely land downstream and kill the men defending the windlasses and then lower the chain.’

  ‘What would you suggest, then?’ Count Louis asked, not trying to hide his resentment at the offhand way that Edmund had dismissed his idea.

  ‘You have enough ships, they are just not as fast, seaworthy or as agile as the Viking longships. However, if you raft them together across the river and build turrets at the bows, you can prevent them rowing upriver and inflict significant casualties using archers and rock throwing catapults, if you have them. They can’t break the line or capture your ships easily because the towers will be too high to assault from the deck of a longship.’

  ‘Alas, we have no catapults, but we do have archers, of course. What do you think they will do then?’ Charles asked warming to the Englishman’s idea, whilst Louis tried to think why the idea wouldn’t work.

  Edmund shrugged. ‘Probably leave their precious longships and advance on Paris overland. If so, you can then meet them in the field and crush them with superior numbers.’

  Charles smiled broadly and clapped Edmund on the shoulder in congratulation whilst Count Louis gave the young man a sour look. He felt his influence with the king slipping away and tried to think of a way to discredit Edmund’s plan.

  -℣-

  Ragnar watched from the crowded jetty at Arendal as yet another fleet of longships anchored out in the fjord. The largest drekar detached itself from the rest and made its way to the jetty where Ragnar’s havnesjef was hastily trying to make room for it to tie up. Thirty two longships and eight knarrs were already there and the new arrivals made the total up to forty two plus ten knarrs. It was the largest Scandinavian fleet ever assembled.

  The leading ship had been dis
playing the golden lion before the faded blue sail had been lowered but, even without that confirmation, Ragnar was well aware that the last contingent was from Uppsala. Eystein hadn’t come himself, or course; it was led by his younger brother, Osten.

  ‘Greetings, old man. We’ve come to show you how to fight,’ did nothing to endear him to Ragnar. At forty two he thought of himself in his prime. True, he was starting to grow the odd grey hair, especially in his beard, but he had his favourite thrall pull them out as soon as they appeared.

  ‘You are welcome, Osten, but you will treat me with the respect to which I am entitled, not only as your senior in years and experience, but as a king twice over.’

  ‘I meant no offence, Ragnar,’ the young man said with a grin. ‘Now where are the drink and the women?’

  ‘A feast has been prepared in your honour, of course, but you will leave my thralls alone if you know what’s good for you.’

  Since Aslaug had left him he’d decided that wives were too much trouble. He had several nubile young female thralls to look after his needs, in bed and out of it, and he had no intention of sharing them with this brash young Swede.

  ‘Did you find my wayward niece?’ Osten asked as they walked up to the king’s hall together, followed by a scowling Olaf and an equally irritated Eirik.

  Ragnar looked at him sharply.

  ‘No, do you know what happened to her?’

  The other man nodded. ‘I heard that she’s living with a Norseman called Ingólfr Arnarson on Westray.’

  ‘Then Ingólfr is a dead man as soon as the raid on Paris is over.’

  ‘If you want to kill him you’ll have to be quicker than that. My informant told me that he is planning to join a hersir called Ráðormr who is putting together an expedition to capture the Land of Ice and Fire.’

  ‘The Land of Ice ….? I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘It’s an island on the edge of the world currently inhabited by monks who worship the nailed god.’