by Angus Donald
‘He’s a murderer. A blood-lusting maniac. He destroyed my brother and a thrall with his bare hands. Tore them apart.’ Freki had found his voice.
‘Greetings, Freki,’ said Bjarki. ‘I am sorry, truly sorry for killing your brother. He did not deserve it. And I will fight you, formally, if you wish it.’
‘No, no, no… the king has outlawed feuding between his vassals,’ said Otto. ‘Don’t be a fool, Freki. I saw these two Rekkar kill forty Avars!’
‘That’s not actually quite what hap—’ began Bjarki.
‘I know what kind of mayhem he is capable of…’ Freki did not seem to know how to continue. ‘I know what a brute he is…’
‘I forbid you to fight,’ said Otto. ‘As your hersir, I absolutely forbid it! No one here doubts your courage. But I order you now to forgo vengeance.’
Freki looked at him, then at Bjarki, his expression unreadable.
‘Say it to him,’ said Otto. ‘Now. Say you forgive the killing. I do not want to lose you, Freki. But this matter must be put to rest without delay.’
Freki looked at Bjaki, towering above him. There was a long, horrible silence, and finally the boy muttered: ‘Well, since you order it… I forgo my vengeance. Let it be forgotten. My father has forgiven it, I must as well.’
‘Well spoken, Freki Olafsson,’ said Otto. ‘Well spoken, indeed. Now let us have some ale, a proper drink, to welcome our friends to the Auxilla.’
Tor watched Freki’s face as jugs were brought, and horns were filled with foaming ale, and drunk, and toasts to the mighty Bloodhand were made, and to the king, as well, may he rule over Francia for a thousand years.
Forgiveness is for weaklings, Tor thought privately. What kind of a warrior could overlook the murder of his own brother? And while Freki made a good show of comradeship, talking easily with Bjarki, introducing him to the other members of the Auxilla, she knew deep in her heart that an old blood-debt was not so easily forgiven – still less would it be forgotten.
* * *
Bjarki and Tor settled into life in the Auxilla with little difficulty. The small company of warriors was given only light duties guarding the council hall and the outside of the palace complex and apart from an hour or two’s exercise and drills each morning on the parade ground of the compound, they had little to do in their waking hours. The days grew shorter as the year turned, and they spent much of their time in the longhouse, drinking and sleeping, telling tales around the fire-trough that ran down the hall’s centre.
Bjarki kept away from Freki as much as he could, but Captain Otto seemed to enjoy his company, seeking Bjarki out with the ale jug in the evenings, and urging him to tell tales of blood and glory; something Bjarki found a little trying. He told the story of the fight at Thursby, several times over. Because he could not remember what had happened on the only occasion his gandr had come to him, he was forced to invent details of the fight; which made him uncomfortable. Indeed, he felt a little like a fraud.
Captain Otto hung on his every word. And he responded to Bjarki’s irksome lies by recounting several feeble stories about the times he had lost his temper and initiated violence in some ale-house fracas. It soon became clear that Otto had almost no experience of real combat whatsoever.
‘What brought you to Aachen, sir?’ he asked the captain one evening.
Otto blustered and lied about being specially chosen for this elite auxiliary unit in the king’s standing army but Bjarki realised that he had been sent here by his aged father, who was a lord of a minor Frankish fiefdom on the west bank of the River Rhenus up near the border with Frisia.
Despite Otto’s admiration for the Rekkr, he was an enthusiastic follower of the Christian god. And while all the various Frankish peoples had been converted to this Roman religion many generations back, in the remoter parts of Francia there were still villages who paid homage to their old gods: to the All-Father, his son Thor, Tiw, the god of war, Hel of the realm of the dead, and Loki, the trickster, some of them even still told the old stories about the Irminsul, the tree that linked the Nine Worlds. Bjarki got the impression that Otto’s father was half-hearted in his duty to Christ, and that Otto was, in fact, a hostage to ensure his father’s good behaviour.
‘The king has been admirably firm, and Lord Paulinus, as well, when it comes to stamping out heresy whenever they find it,’ said Otto. ‘But some of my father’s people stubbornly cling to the old ways. And my father finds it hard to execute folk who’ve been loyal to him for several generations.’
‘Execute them for what?’ said Bjarki.
‘For apostasy, of course; for denying the Christian god. But I have faith that the light of Our Saviour will come to all the unbelievers in due course. After all, even you, Bjarki, a Rekkr, have forsaken your false gods.’
‘Hmm,’ said Bjarki.
‘Perhaps you would like to pray with me in the morning,’ said Otto. ‘To affirm your faith and cleanse your immortal soul of all its past sins.’
‘That is a very kind offer, Captain. Very kind. Let me think about it for a while, yes?’ said Bjarki. ‘Now tell me a little about the rest of our company. How did our brave comrades come to be serving Karolus here?’
In truth, Bjarki wanted to know why Freki Olafsson had travelled down from Bago but could not bring himself to ask Captain Otto directly.
‘Some are here because they love the king, as do I, and recognise that one day the whole world will be ruled by Karolus and his line. He will be an emperor one day, like the Roman emperors of old. They are his models, you know, Karolus venerates them like his ancestors. But what was I saying?’
‘You were telling me how these northern folk came to serve Karolus.’
‘Yes, as I was saying, some love the king and desire to serve him. Others, have found the truth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and seek to bring His light to all Mankind. And others have… well, there are a whole variety of different reasons… You see Brandt, that big, dark-haired fellow over there? He killed a man in Jutland and fled from the fury of the dead man’s family. Yoni, the little blonde one by the fire, she’s an adventurer from Hibernia. She was a sea-rover in the northern islands. She nearly drowned one time and made a vow to the pagan god Lir that if he spared her a watery grave she’d never set foot in a ship again. Nonsense, of course, but here she is.’
* * *
It was Tor who discovered the truth about Freki. ‘His father sent him down here from Bago,’ she told Bjarki one cold morning when they were sparring gently with axe and shield on the almost empty parade ground.
‘He’s set to be the Bago hersir one day and Olaf thought to make a proper fighting man of him by sending him to Karolus to learn skill at arms.’
They paused for a while to watch Freki thrashing away with his sword against an equally unskilled opponent. His blows were wild, uncontrolled.
‘That plan doesn’t seem to be working out very well,’ said Bjarki.
‘Maybe I’ll take him under my wing, train him up, just like I did you,’ said Tor, grinning at him.
Bjarki lowered his shield and axe and gaped at her.
‘I’m joking, Bjarki. Although it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had. I could “accidentally” maim him in a training bout. Cut off his hand or a foot!’
‘You say you’re joking – but you’re not being very funny.’
‘How’s this for a jest,’ said Tor, and she launched a flurry of axe blows at Bjarki, who only with difficulty fended them off with his shield.
When they broke apart, both panting, Tor said: ‘It seems that someone, at least, seems to appreciate my sense of humour.’
She jerked her chin at the side of the parade ground where a heavy four-wheeled travelling carriage was parked, the vehicle drawn by four black carthorses. The lumbering box on wheels was painted black and the symbol of the eagle – the insignia that adorned Karolus’s war banner – was inscribed in gold on the door. Bjarki could see that the square wooden shutter above the door that acted as a window
was very slightly open. Someone inside was watching them. He caught a flash of jewels, and a glimpse of a white face.
‘Is that Queen Hildegard, do you think?’ said Bjarki.
‘Why would she hide from us?’ Tor replied.
‘I’ve no idea. But it’s a royal carriage and that’s not a man in there.’
Tor shrugged. ‘Perhaps, oaf, you have a secret admirer.’
* * *
Bjarki soon realised that the Auxilla was a rather poorly regarded military outfit. They were, despite their pretensions to being an elite unit, distinctly third rate. Very few of their members would have been good enough to make the ranks of the Barda, he reckoned. In terms of skill, Bjarki and Tor were head and shoulders above any of the others – save perhaps the dark murderer Brandt, who had obviously received some instruction in his youth – and although Bjarki still felt a fraud whenever Captain Otto called him Rekkr, and treated him with exaggerated respect, he and Tor were swiftly accepted as natural leaders in this company of thirty mismatched folk.
One thing, however, that the Auxilla did excel at was dressing for war.
Every third day, two Auxilla members were selected for duties as an honour guard for the royal family. The preparations for this service began well before dawn, earlier than the rest of the company usually rose. The two chosen fighters washed thoroughly; long hair was braided and the twisted locks threaded with ribbons, pierced shells and silver bells; cropped hair was shaved back to the scalp, which was rubbed with oil to make it gleam.
The armour worn by the two sentinels was ostentatious, to say the least: breastplates inlaid with relief images of animals and monsters, greaves polished and leather kilts oiled. Mail was scrubbed and cleaned, rolled in barrels of sand till the dull iron shone. Steel helmets, set with bulls’ horns or pure white swans’ wings or vicious spikes and sharp ridges, were buffed to a brilliant shine. Weapons were all very showy – double-edged axes, the twin blades buffed to a mirror-like brightness, or long swords with ornate, richly bejewelled polished bronze scabbards and gold-and-silver encrusted hilts.
When the two honour guards were ready, they were inspected by Captain Otto and the rest of the Auxilla. Folk in the longhouse gathered around them to murmur admiringly, and darted in to give a little final polish to a gleaming breastplate, or to remove a smudge from a snow-white shield or arrange the fall of a fat plait more decorously on the warrior’s shoulder.
When Bjarki first saw the two men in their finery, he assumed they were destined for a grand party or some sort of high Frankish ceremony. He was taken aback when he heard that these two gleaming, glittering, glowing visions of martial splendour – two figures from a childish fantasy of soldiers – were dressed as such only to stand rigidly on either side of the throne for eight hours; stand without moving a hair, ready to spring into action should a passing assassin try his luck with King Karolus or a member of his family.
All the weapons and armour came from a common pool and were used only for the infrequent ceremonial occasion of the honour guard. It was, in fact, the only kit that was well maintained in the whole company. For training purposes, they used old, notched, tarnished swords and battered shields that barely held together after a single decent blow. The ordinary ring-mail was ripped and rusty; scale-mail hauberks had half the shield-shape scales missing and left large patches of bare dry leather exposed; the helmets were all dented, some with loose and mouldering leather linings.
Tor and Bjarki had their own swords and seaxes, which they took care of themselves, cleaning, oiling and sharpening them nightly. But Tor always found herself wincing when she had to don something rusty or musty from the communal stock for the daily training sessions on the parade ground.
‘Do you think we ought to teach them to look after their weapons and kit properly?’ asked Bjarki one day when he was wedging tight an ancient and blunt bearded axe that had been rattling alarmingly on its shrunken handle.
‘They know how to do it, most of them; they just can’t be arsed.’
‘Still, shouldn’t we show them, and make them understand—’
‘These are not our people, Bjarki,’ snapped Tor. ‘These are lackeys of the king; traitors and turncoats all. Don’t waste your breath on them.’
Tor was in a foul mood. Her courses had started during the night, and she felt dirty and weakened by this inconvenience. Her belly ached and her back, too. Yet it was not something she ever wished to discuss with Bjarki.
* * *
Towards the end of their second week in the Auxilla, Lord Grimoald arrived at the longhouse in the late afternoon, with an escort of a dozen Black Cloaks, and asked for the whereabouts of the two newest recruits to the scara.
For a mad joyous moment, Tor believed that they were to be invited to form the honour guard at some point in the near future. Her mind began to whirl with murderous possibilities. How close would they be to the king’s person? Would there be any Scholares there? If so, how many?
In the event, it was nothing to do with the honour guard, and after Lord Grimoald had spoken with Captain Otto privately in the officers’ quarters at the end of the longhouse, Bjarki was summoned by the King’s Shield.
The young warrior had been invited, it seemed, to an audience with Queen Hildegard in her private chambers. Tor was not required to attend.
‘Watch yourself, oaf,’ Tor whispered to Bjarki as he followed Lord Grimoald out of the door. ‘She probably wants to ride you down to a nub.’
Bjarki paused in the doorway, frowned down at her and shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t think that’s it,’ he said. ‘She barely considers me human. For someone like her that would be like bedding one of her pack-horses.’
After he was gone, Tor found herself all alone by the dying hearth fire with an empty ale horn at her feet that she could not remember drinking, and for no good reason at all, great fat tears were running down her cheeks.
Chapter Eighteen
In the queen’s chamber
As they marched down the arrow-straight stone-paved road, Bjarki was struck once again by the size and sheer oddness of the city of Aachen.
Everything was arranged in lines and squares. The ‘islands’, as he had heard them called, were the strangest of structures of them all. These were great brick blocks rising three- or four-storeys high in terrifying square towers, each level containing a small dwelling big enough for one family. Rickety wooden staircases curled around the blocks allowing the residents to enter their unnaturally high homes. As Bjarki looked up he could see women and men, children, too, leaning out of their windows, gossiping with each other, or with families in other islands across the street. He could not even imagine living like this: he would be continually afraid of plunging to his death. Yet these people seemed unconcerned about being suspended all day at the height of a tall pine tree above the constantly thronging thoroughfares.
One small boy of about ten or eleven summers, hanging out of a low window, caught sight of Bjarki marching down the main road with Lord Grimoald by his side and a dozen Black Cloaks all around him and called out, ‘Hey-o, Beast-man!’ to him in an excited but not at all unfriendly way.
Bjarki raised one hand in acknowledgement and the cry was taken up by dozens of people looking from their windows in almost as many islands.
‘Beast-man! Beast-man! When will you fight again, Beast-man?’
Bjarki found he was smiling at all the attention and, indeed, enjoying it. He had never been popular; never been recognised by total strangers before.
‘You think these people love you?’ snarled Grimoald. ‘They do not.’
Bjarki looked across at him and said nothing. He was slightly taken aback by the poisonous rancour in the big man’s deep, hard-edged voice.
‘I don’t think they exactly hate me,’ Bjarki said.
‘You are this week’s novelty; the foreign oddity on every tongue today. Forgotten tomorrow. They would as happily see you bleed in the gutter.’
‘Show us your beast
-self, barbarian,’ shouted an old man on the street corner. ‘Come on, show us! Change into a wolf and I’ll give you a coin!’
One of the Black Cloaks barked something and menaced the old man with his spear and the fellow retreated to his doorway, muttering to himself.
‘You have some personal experience of this, I think,’ said Bjarki.
Lord Grimoald stared hard at him. For ten strides he said nothing at all. Bjarki assumed he would not bother to reply. Then…
‘I too fought a trial by combat, Dane, long ago. Like you, I bled before the public and I triumphed. Like you, the king took me into his service.’
‘I see,’ said Bjarki. They were approaching the palace complex. A gleaming white marble portico, supported by six elegant fluted columns, filled his vision. A dozen more Scholares were guarding the entrance to the jumble of palaces and gardens. They snapped to attention when they saw Grimoald approaching. The big man stopped; seized Bjarki by the shoulder.
‘I know you faked it, barbarian. In the amphitheatre. I could see what you and the Svear woman were playing at, even if others could not.’
Lord Grimoald’s hairy face was a hand’s width from Bjarki’s – Bjarki could smell sour wine on his breath and the faecal stench of his rotting teeth.
‘You are no true beast-man,’ he said. ‘It was paint and tricks and misdirection. And that woman is very competent. But you are no Rekkr.’
Bjarki was shocked to hear that last word from Grimoald’s mouth.
He stared at the big man, now quite speechless.
The huge man’s heavy paw was squeezing his shoulder painfully.
‘Yes, my tricksy Dane,’ said the King’s Shield, his words coming out in a hot, stinking gust, ‘I know all about the Rekkar – and the gandir, too. Growing up in my village, far to the east, beyond the River Elbe, we heard all the old stories of the bear-warriors who feel no pain, or the wolf-people, and the boars. I am a Wend, what you Danes would call a Vindr, and before I found Christ and came to Aachen, before I made my oath to the king, we used to tell the tales of these fabled warriors around the hearth-fire. And I know you are not one of them. You used bluster and mummery; roared and danced like a madman; you had a bucket of luck and, for some reason, the king decided to tip the odds in your favour in the amphitheatre. He had your enemies slaughter each other, then face you wounded and weakened. You fought well, yes; you triumphed and won glory. But you are no Rekkr.’