The Yngling y-1

by John Dalmas

  Topping a rise, they saw the hoof tracks stretch out, where the riders ahead had begun to run their horses, and in a short distance the wagon tracks began to swerve, where the animal that pulled it had been whipped to a gallop. The northmen quickened their own horses' pace and, rounding a curve, saw the overturned wagon ahead.

  Its driver lay beside it, blood crusted on his split skull. His horse was gone. The northmen circled without dismounting, looking down and around. Two cloaks lay beside the wagon, one large and one smaller. The tracks of the raiders' horses left the road.

  The four conversed briefly in their strongly tonal language. "Less than an hour," Nils said. "Maybe as little as half an hour. With any luck they'll stop to enjoy the woman, and we'll catch them off their horses with their weapons laid aside." He rode into the woods then, eyes on the layer of fresh leaf-fall ahead, and the others followed, grinning.

  The tracks led them into a deep ravine, dense with fir and hornbeam, a trickling rivulet almost lost among the stones and dead leaves in the bottom. After drinking, they slanted up the other side and followed a ridge top where pines and birch clumps formed an open stand. They continued along the crest for about five kilometers, and the tracks showed that the raiders had not stopped except, like themselves, to drink.

  "Look!" Leif Trollsverd spoke quietly but clearly, without stopping his horse, pointing down the slope on the east side of the ridge. Angling toward the top was another line of tracks, of leaves scuffed and indented by hooves. The northmen quickened their mounts again until the second set of tracks joined those they'd been following. Sten Vannaren, who was in the lead now, slid from his saddle and walked back down the second set, half-bent.

  "At least five," he said. "Maybe eight or nine. Hard to tell in the leaves." He came back and swung his big frame into the saddle again. "Looks as if they came along after the others had passed." He urged his horse ahead, leaning forward and looking past its neck. "And look. Here they trotted their horses as if to catch up." He stopped and looked back. "What now, Nils?" The blond giant stared ahead thoughtfully for a moment. "They are more of the same, and enough to let be."

  Sten, somewhat the oldest of the four, nodded and swung his horse off the trail. Without further words they urged their horses at an angle, southeastward down the ridge side.

  They had ridden several kilometers through cleared farmland, the road now rutted by wagons, when they saw the village ahead, the bulk of a small castle standing a short distance past it. The huts were typical-of logs, with thatched roofs. As the road entered it, they saw that here the peasants were bolder. They didn't scurry away as had those at the smaller clusters of huts between there and the forest, although they still drew back from the road. Beside the inn the stable boy gawked at them until a brusque word jerked him to duty, and looking back over his shoulder, he led their horses into the stable.

  The rim of the sun was an intense liquid bead on the forested ridge top to the west when they pushed open a door and entered the subdued light and complex smells of the small inn. The babble of conversation thinned to one beery voice, and then that face too turned toward the large barbaric-looking foreigners. The place fell still except for the slight, soft sound of their bare feet and the sounds from the kitchen. They steered toward one of the unoccupied tables, Nils's eyes scanning the room looking for the psi. He spotted him, a solitary young man sitting near the wall, the hood of his homespun Brethren cloak, faded dark-green, thrown back from a lean, strong-boned face. His eyes, like everyone else's, were on them. His mind was on Nils, recognizing his psi, and suddenly started in recognition. He knew of this barbarian, had been given a mental image of him by someone with whom he shared special affinity.

  "You are Ilse's next oldest brother," Nils thought.

  "Yes, I am Hannes. And you're Nils, the northman who came to her hut after the Great Storm, the one she had foreseen in a premonition."

  Nils's mild, calm mind validated his knowing.

  "Stories have passed among the kinfolk about the things you've done since then, you and your people. Incredible stories. Is it true that you yourself killed Baalzebub?"

  The innkeeper was standing beside the table. Nils ordered for himself, scarcely pausing in his silent conversation. Sten ordered for the other two, who spoke no Anglic.

  "Yes, I killed Kazi, or Baalzebub, if you prefer. Now I've come to find Ilse."

  "She's had your child."

  The northman's mind did not react. It was a datum.

  "And she's still at her hut."

  "That's not good," Nils responded calmly. "There are horse barbarians in the hills."

  Now that the alarming-looking strangers were sitting quietly, the peasants had returned to their conversations and beer. Suddenly Nils began to speak aloud, in Anglic, so that they could hear, while Sten interpreted in an undertone for the other two warriors. "Brother Hannes! The horse barbarians have come to the district-a strong force of them, we believe. They are scouting the countryside from the hills. What defenses are there here?"

  Across the room the sun-browned psi stood up slowly, surprised by this unexpected speech. Conversations had died abruptly as worried faces turned toward the neovikings. Hannes spoke carefully so that the peasant with the most uncertain knowledge of Anglic could follow his words. "The baron here is Martin Gutknekt. He is a mild and honest lord, but well known for his skill at arms. He keeps a dozen knights, and since the battle on the Elbe he's kept a few dozen other armed men at the castle as well."

  "And who will protect the peasants if the horse barbarians come suddenly, like rabid wolves with curved swords for teeth, to attack the villages? Maybe a hundred or more of them?" Nils's mind caught the shock of fear from the peasants.

  Irritation flashed through Hannes. "Why did you say that? It was vicious," his mind accused. But as he thought it, he realized there had been no tinge of viciousness or sadism in the northman's mind. And the character pattern he read would not support that interpretation. But he neither corrected himself nor apologized. Either would be redundant to another psi. Instead, he stood there, gazing with his mind at Nils's. "Ilse described what you are like," he said at last. "Now I see more clearly what she meant."

  Nils smiled slightly, and as the innkeeper approached with roast meat and a stew of vegetables, he returned to the point. "We've seen signs of two bunches, one of nine and the other possibly as large. They behaved more like scouting parties than like vagrant bands. They didn't even stop to rape the woman they caught." His mind pictured the wagon for Hannes, with the two cloaks and the dead man, a picture more precise than any intentional memory Hannes had ever seen. It was as if the northman had complete access to his memory bank and his subconscious. His sister's mind was the finest he'd ever seen before, but it wasn't like this one.

  Nils's calm thoughts continued relentlessly. "That suggests a strong force of them nearby. And they are fighters by nature. As individuals they're as good as your knights. A village is a better place to winter than in the forest, and they're reckless men. If there are as many as fifty of them, they can easily take and hold the village against the force your baron has. The knights are far too few to drive them out, and outside the castle walls the men-at-arms are no match at all for horse barbarians. Will the castle hold all the peasants?"

  Hannes' mind thickened in the face of the problem. It had been generations since there had been such a need, and castles had not grown with the population.

  Night had fallen and the air already felt frosty. The moon was two nights past full and would not rise for a while. In the darkness the northmen rode slowly on the short stretch of unfamiliar road between village and castle. Their horses' hooves, thudding softly on the earth, emphasized the stillness now that summer's night sounds had passed. In front of them the castle stood black against a star-strewn sky. Only a few windows in the gate tower showed lights above the wall.

  Nils reached out and sensed the minds of the gate guards. As he came beneath the wall, he was near enough to see the
spots on the cards through their eyes and the rough plank table. He sensed thoughts and voices in German without knowing their meaning, felt their emotions which were quiet and poorly defined. At the gate he drew his sword and hammered the hilt sharply against the timbers three times, calling in Anglic, "Open the gate."

  The immediate responses were starts and flashes of irritation, followed by suspicion, probably with the realization that the hail had not been in German. Nils could not read the German thoughts, but his mind presumed them. Except for the Brethren and foreigners, who would hail in Anglic? And would one of the Brethren ever use such a preemptory tone? A torch was held over the battlement and a dim face looked down from an embrasure more than twenty feet above them. "Who are you and what do you want?"

  "We're northmen come to see Martin Gutknekt. Let us in!"

  "Come back tomorrow when the gate is open."

  Nils pounded again, almost violently, bellowing, "Open! Open!"

  "Peace, peace," the voice hissed from above. "If your racket disturbs the baron, you'll wish you hadn't got in. I can't let armed men in at night, unknown men, without his leave. Why can't you wait until morning?"

  "Two reasons," said Nils, his voice suddenly mild.

  "First, northmen don't wait unless they want to, although they'll wait forever if it suits them." With each mention of "northmen" the man's mind had reacted, Nils noted. Apparently stories of them had reached here from the war in the Ukraine and were known by more than the Brethren. He continued. "The second reason: we have information for your baron of horse barbarians near here. We will either tell him what we know right now, or we'll leave and your blood can mark your ignorance. Your scurfy district here means nothing to us that we should cool our heels."

  Sten grinned at Nils, chuckling in his throat as the torch was withdrawn, and spoke softly in the northern tongue until their companions too wore wolfish grins. Then they waited silently for a span of minutes. At length Nils sensed the gateman approaching with others, one of them hard and especially self-assured. The baron, or perhaps his marshal if he had a marshal.

  A narrow gate opened beside the main gate, and the gateman beckoned to them. It was almost too narrow for a horse to pass through, and low enough that the northmen dismounted to enter. The other three loosened their swords in their scabbards cautiously, but Nils, finding no treachery in the waiting minds, had taken his horse's reins and preceded them. Inside the wall the tunnel-like gateway was no wider, and where it opened into the courtyard there was another gate, a raised door of heavy bars. In the courtyard a cluster of knights waited, dimly seen. Nils's glance counted eight, and he looked at the one whom he sensed was the leader.

  "Come," the man said curtly and, turning, led them, the other knights falling in behind.

  The keep loomed in the darkness, perhaps twenty meters in diameter and several levels of rooms in height. Probably with a dungeon below ground level, Nils decided.

  Martin Gutknekt's audience chamber was small, in keeping with his position as one of the lesser nobility. He was a freckled, small-boned man of medium height, but chunky and strong-looking. Although he met them seated, the elevation of his chair allowed him to meet Nils's eyes on the level.

  "So you are northmen. The Saxons told us of your feats against the enemy far away in the east. They also told us you were going south from there into unknown lands. What are northmen doing in Bavaria?"

  "I've been in Bavaria before, as a wanderer. Now we've come to find a seeress who saved my life after the Great Storm. We plan to winter in the land of the Magyars and then pass down the Donau to the sea, where our people are going.'

  "To the land of Baalzebub? Then it is true what we heard. You must be great fighters indeed to have defeated his army and killed him."

  "No others can match our weapon skills. But there were a lot of the enemy; we won mainly by cunning. Now Baalzebub's orcs are dead or fled, and the last I saw his head, it was lying beside a Ukrainian Marsh a full meter from his neck. But his horse barbarians are still plundering, in spite of the beating you people gave them at Elbestat, and you don't need to go farther than the hills west of this valley to find some."

  "My man told me you had news of horse barbarians near the district. Where, and how many?"

  Nils described what they had seen and what they had made of it, and the baron indicated his acceptance of their interpretation by not disputing it. "But they can't take the castle," he answered. "A few score men can hold it against hundreds, unless the hundreds have siege engines."

  "They don't need the castle."

  "But they can be driven out of the village."

  "Not by you. There aren't enough of you."

  For just an instant Gutknekt realized that the comment should have irritated him and hadn't. "My lord the graf can drive them out. His vassals include three barons besides myself, plus his own knights."

  "How many men?"

  The baron grew thoughtful. "Five dozen knights, perhaps, and bowmen to support them. We all took losses at Elbestat. In fact, the old graf himself died there, and his cousin is the graf now."

  "Five dozen? Not enough," Nils said, sensing the same thought in the baron's mind. "Not if the horse barbarians number as many as a hundred."

  "But the graf could get help from others."

  "How long would it take that help to get here?"

  "Two weeks, maybe less. We could easily hold out that long."

  "You could. But what about the peasants? Could you bring them all inside the walls and shelter and feed them? The weather can turn bad any time now. The horse barbarians will take the village, kill the men and take the women captive. And if an army comes to relieve you, and it's strong enough, they may not even stay to fight. They may ride into the mountains and come back when the graf has left, or go somewhere else and take another village. That's what I'd do."

  "And what do you want me to do?" The baron's voice reflected the anger of frustration that Nils read in his mind. "You say I don't have the strength to stop them, but I don't have the space to keep most of the peasants inside."

  "Bring in as many as you have room for. Put sentries out with horns. Have the peasant men climb on their roofs when they hear the horns and use their bows. And give them whatever swords you can. They won't be much use to them as weapons, but they may help to stiffen their spines."

  "It's against the king's law to give swords to peasants. And I can't call them men-at-arms; I already have as many as the law allows."

  Nils didn't answer.

  The baron sat down again, thoughtful. "Surely you don't think the peasants can hold the village." It was a statement, not a question.

  "No. But there'd be fewer horse barbarians when it was over, and the peasant men, those not within the castle, will be killed anyway. It's not just a matter of this village, though. There are thousands of horse barbarians plundering through Europe, and your troubles with them won't end until they're dead or driven out. When they were in a few large armies, you marched against them, and they stood and fought and you beat them. But now that they're a lot of scattered packs, you don't know what to do about them. After Elbestat you might have kept after them and hunted them down, but you demobilized and came back to your castles to lick your wounds. Now you don't know where or when they'll strike next, or how to defend your villages. The peasants… "

  "But would the peasants fight? They're only peasants, after all."

  Nils shrugged. "Talk to the Brethren. They know the peasants better than anyone else does. There's one staying in the village now, a Brother Hannes."

  Martin Gutknekt stared thoughtfully past the northmen, the discourse within his mind a slow, complex pattern of German. After a bit the brown eyes focused on Nils. "Well, Northman, I'm not used to someone else doing my thinking for me, and I'm not overly fond of it, but I thank you just the same. Will you and your friends stay here tonight? I can feed you better than they would at the inn, and the straw in the beds will be cleaner."

  "Our thanks, Ba
ron, but we'll sleep in the open. Cream draws flies. Who knows? The attack could come at sunup, and we don't want to be trapped in the inn and be butchered or in the castle and be delayed." He held out a huge hand. "We wish you luck, and the blood of your enemies."

  2.

  When the sun reached the meridian, the four warriors came to a crossroads. To the south they could see a larger castle in the distance. Instead of continuing in that direction, they followed the lesser road westward toward the wild forest that began with the hills. The October sun was warm, almost hot, and although they were used to wearing mail and to sweating, it felt pleasant to ride into the shade at last. At a suggestion from Leif Trollsverd they swung out of their saddles and strode along, leading their horses up the slowly climbing road, stretching their own legs, giving the animals a rest. Here the road was little more than a trail, wide enough for a wagon but humpy with stones and outcrops of bedrock.

  In their own lands they were more used to going on foot or skis than on horseback, and they hiked for four hours in unbroken forest, the road curving more north than west. Soon after they'd mounted again, Nils led them off the road at a blazed tree and along a little path that led to a cabin. He held up a hand and stopped them as soon as he could see the cabin through the trees. His careful eyes saw nothing wrong. His subconscious, remembering perfectly, comparing in detail, saw nothing different that could not be accounted for by the passage of time, by the change of seasons from one winter to the following autumn. But he knew unquestionably that something was seriously the matter.

  They sat without moving, all but Nils aware of the occasional movements of their horses, their eyes carefully examining the cabin and the woods around it. Their ears were alert for meaningful sound.