A Song Of Steel (The Light of the North saga Book 1)

by James Duncan

  Fenrir tried a double move to put Leif off balance with his great speed. He lunged off with his left foot, struck the rim of his shield into his opponent’s and raised his sword as if to cut down over the top of Leif’s shield. Leif raised his shield to cover and lunged under it into the line of the attack beneath the shields. But Fenrir had changed the direction of the blow as soon as Leif was unsighted by his own shield. Instead of passing his blade over both their shields, he pushed back hard off his right foot and whipped it back in a reverse cut. In that moment, Leif had his shield high, covering his head, his sword extended forward in the centre, missing the body of the dodging Fenrir, and was open on his left with Fenrir’s blade cutting back towards him.

  He dropped and rolled to his right, a desperate move. Fenrir’s back-cut swung through open air, but his opponent was down and rolling to regain his feet. Fenrir pounced and rained blows down on his out-of-position foe. One knee still in the dirt, shield high warding off the rapid slashing attacks, Leif thrust forward under the shield, trying to find a leg, trying to create space to rise.

  The crowd was roaring, each man shouting and pointing, pumping their fists. Leif missed his fouling attacks on Fenrir’s legs. Fenrir tried pushing down on the upraised shield with his own, but he wasn’t heavy or strong enough to press Leif into the dirt. Instead, he put his sword hand behind his shield and swung it back in from the right with the force of both his hands, trying to topple the defence sideways and create an opening. Leif was too fast; he pulled his disintegrating shield back into his body and shoved the lighter man, propelling him into the wall of the crowd, unharmed but furious.

  Leif was bleeding from a nasty gash on his shoulder. His eyes were narrowed, his teeth set hard in his jaw. He threw down the ruined shield and called for another from a man in the circle, who passed it to him. The two men settled and faced each other again. Ordulf understood little of the tactics of the fight, but he could see that Leif had been in desperate trouble with one knee down and was hugely relieved to see him back on his feet, even if he was bleeding. It didn’t look too serious, or so he hoped.

  Fenrir was angry. Ordulf could see his mouth gaping, spit trailing from his teeth. His eyes were wild. He was slamming his shield with his sword and taunting the carefully moving and steadily bleeding Leif. Fenrir made an extravagant attack, sword flashing left and right and left again under his covering shield, which was held out in front of him. Leif covered himself, pulled out of range and fended off the attempts to get around his defence, blades clashing and scraping almost too fast to see. Men around the circle were jeering now and pointing at Leif. His eyes stayed narrow, his jaw set.

  Fenrir attacked again, an overhead swing to bring Leif’s shield up, then a low thrust to target the space beneath. Leif blocked the first and stepped around the second and didn’t even return the blow. He just raised his shield again and readied himself. The mood in the crowd was getting ugly now. They were urging Fenrir to finish it. Ordulf couldn’t understand Leif’s passive approach; was his injury that bad?

  Fenrir surged forward again, this time trying to force his opponent’s shield down, hacking and pushing at it with the edge of his own. Splinters flew, and his sword clashed with the other shield’s boss. In the increasingly wild attacks, Leif did nothing to counter, and Fenrir’s shield started to drift. On one particularly hard swing, his shield opened out from the left side of his body as his right hand came down.

  Leif struck like a bolt of lightning through the gap. Stepping hard in towards his opponent and pushing his shield up to take the oncoming swing, he thrust his sword, with his entire body weight behind it, down the open centre line.

  Ordulf saw the point burst through Fenrir’s back in a gush of blood, and the man dropped like a sack of wheat, eyes rolling, sword falling from his hand. His shaking body slammed into the dirt in a tangled heap as he gasped and gurgled through the hole in his chest for a few agonising seconds. Leif quickly grabbed the fallen sword and pushed it into the dying man’s nerveless fingers and closed them around the hilt.

  Fenrir stopped twitching; the last pulse of blood pumped out past the sword that still transfixed him. There was a mixed reaction around the circle. Some men were shocked into silence at the outcome and a few cheered. Friends of Fenrir shook their heads or cursed. One man howled in fury, like a wounded wolf. He tried to run into the circle, but he was slow, walking awkwardly, limping, and two of his fellows restrained him and pulled him back while he thrashed his arms and cursed in fury. Ordulf watched the raging man with detached curiosity as he was bodily dragged away.

  Leif carefully placed the dead man’s hands over his chest and pulled his own sword from the body. The crowd was stunned into silence, but then a cheer erupted from one man and the rest followed. They had been disappointed by the apparent lack of spirit Leif had shown, but it had just been a masterful display of defence and patience. Leif had only struck two hard blows in the entire fight.

  Leif handed his gear to someone in the crowd and walked over to exchange an arm clasp with the jarl. The two men spoke briefly, and Leif gestured to his shoulder from which blood was still flowing, running down his side and staining his tunic red from shoulder to knee. The jarl raised his hand, and silence gradually fell around the group. He waved his hand first towards Leif and then towards Ordulf and said something. Whatever was said caused a lot of the men to laugh and cheer; most of them turned to look at Ordulf.

  Even Otto was chuckling. Leif walked back out into the centre of the square and stood facing Ordulf in a relaxed pose.

  ‘Leif says he cannot wrestle you with his arm injury, so he will let you off with a joke,’ said Otto.

  ‘A joke?’ said Ordulf in confusion.

  ‘Yes. Go out there, and he will tell you a joke. Then you will be considered cleansed of your crime. That is his decision, and he has earned the right to decide your punishment.’ Otto shrugged as if such a thing wasn’t mad.

  A joke? Before, they were talking about killing me. Now a joke will suffice?

  Someone pushed Ordulf, and he didn’t resist. He walked out to face Leif, looking around him suspiciously, but saw no trap. He stopped and faced the stern and bleeding warrior. He was half a head taller and generally larger than the Norseman, so he looked down and waited, trying to appear much more relaxed than he felt.

  Leif suddenly spoke over Ordulf’s shoulder at Otto, who translated.

  ‘He asks for a demonstration of how Christians worship. He has heard they hold their hands together. He wants to see this. Then he will show you how the Norse celebrate the god Loki.’ Otto was suppressing a grin as he spoke, unseen behind Ordulf’s back.

  Ordulf was perplexed, but he placed his hands together, palm to palm, in front of his chin, fingers pointing up, and looked questioningly at Leif. Leif looked him up and down with great feigned seriousness. Men around the circle were jeering and laughing. Leif again addressed Otto.

  ‘He believes you pray like this to get into heaven and asks where you believe heaven is?’

  Ordulf sighed, split his hands and pointed up, raising his eyes to the sky and opening his mouth to reply.

  His breath left his body through his open mouth like a storm wind as Leif’s fist smashed into his stomach. The fist hit him so hard Ordulf briefly wondered if it might appear through his back, as the sword had done through Fenrir’s. Then his legs gave way, and he dropped to the dirt as the pain reached him and became his whole world. He rolled and gasped, unable to breathe, hands clawing at the dirt, trying to raise an arm to ward off the next blows, but none came. He looked up. Leif had his arms raised in victory and was baying at the crowd, who were laughing and slapping each other on the back.

  Ordulf’s first breath came back as his vision was starting to go black. In all his time fighting on the patch, he had never been hit that hard or been caught that unawares. The pain was shocking. By the time he could breathe enough to speak, the crowd had started to melt away into the buildings, some still gesturing and m
imicking his eyes-up, hands-raised posture before braying with laughter again. Ordulf lay on the ground and moaned as Otto walked over.

  ‘How… was that… a joke…?’ Ordulf gasped between searing breaths.

  Otto shrugged. ‘They seemed to find it pretty funny, so it must have been. I wouldn’t complain too loudly – that man just saved your life… and he killed a fellow Norseman to do it.’ Otto shook his head in wonder, unable to comprehend that Ordulf was still alive as he helped the whimpering smith to his feet and they started hobbling towards the longhouse.

  ‘Just so you know, if anything like this ever happens again, Loki is the trickster god, famous for deception and countering the work of the other gods out of malice or just for fun,’ Otto said, struggling under about half of the bigger man’s weight. ‘Perhaps I should teach you about their gods. I expect it might be useful again in the future.’

  Ordulf just groaned and stumbled towards his bed. His stomach felt wrong. His knees collapsed once more just before the door as his stomach gave up the fight. He vomited violently all over the ground, his knees and the unfortunate Otto’s feet.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ordulf. Could you not have warned me?’ Otto let go his grip on Ordulf, who nearly toppled completely over.

  ‘Shit… I… I’m sorry, Otto,’ Ordulf moaned, heaving and clutching his hands to his burning belly.

  Otto walked off, disgusted, heading for the water basin to wash the muck from his shins and boots. Ordulf felt utterly miserable kneeling alone in the dirt. He was a plaything for a bunch of crazy Norsemen. He didn’t understand what was happening at the smithy, a job that would apparently consume the rest of his life. He couldn’t walk around without risking death nor talk to more than one other human in the whole world. A human who, he was pretty sure, hated him for some reason he couldn’t fathom.

  Ordulf managed to prise himself from the floor after a short time and hobbled to his bed. He had had enough of Norsemen for one day.

  He didn’t sleep that night. The pain in his stomach took a while to subside to a dull ache, but that wasn’t it. His mind seethed more than his stomach. His pride and his frustration were taking over his existence. The strange ways of the smith with whom he could not communicate, the laws he was subject to that he had no way to understand, the restrictions of the house with a couple of handfuls of people he didn’t even know the names of and who essentially ignored him – all of it weighed down on him, sapping his spirit.

  His instinct was to fight it. But openly railing against the bonds that held him so tightly would do nothing, he could see that. That coward, Otto, spoke of accepting his condition or being destroyed by it. Clearly, he had given up on the idea of having any future outside of being a slave, but Ordulf furiously refused to do that himself. He would never give up that part of himself that had been a free man.

  However, equally, he knew could not thrash like a wild animal against the bonds. That would only lead to more suffering and punishment and mental anguish. He was lucid enough to understand that he would have to bottle his pride. He remembered that day at the ford: eyes locking with Sir Hans across a gulf so wide, over a distance so short, that neither of them could ever hope to bridge it. That was the first and only time he had given up and was left without hope; the shame and weakness of it burned in him like a brand. He decided never to let go of that hope again. He had survived that moment of his certain death, and he would do so again. He would keep hope alive as a counter to his despair, no matter what. He swore that to himself in the cloying darkness.

  His hope, the hope that he took to his chest that night, was that the crusaders were coming. It might take them years, it might take them half his life, but he believed they would never stop until they had captured the north, just as they had captured the Holy Land from the infidels of the desert in the year of his birth.

  He took that hope, he held it tightly in his mind and he buried it like a shining jewel in the core of his being. He would never give in – but he would be smarter. He would show patience; he would stop raging against the world around him. He would be useful to the smith; he would be obedient and servile to the master. He would ensure that he survived until his rescue. He would not live his whole life as a slave.

  Something changed deep inside Ordulf that night. The naïve boy, who wanted to understand everything, who resented every unfairness and who held his pride like a torch above him, died in that yard with Fenrir. Ordulf the man, the man who planned ahead, who would bide his time and be unassuming and patient, was brought into the world. His priorities shifted from wanting to prove himself and receive recognition for his skills to gaining the tools he would need for survival. The first thing he would need was the ability to speak, listen and – most importantly – understand. He needed to learn Norse, and so he needed Otto.

  Chapter 15

  A Song for a Sword

  13th of July, year of our Lord 1116

  My Lord Duke Lothair

  The subjugation of the province is complete. Our forces have now crushed the last remnants of the pagan forces in the far north and west of the peninsula. Viking raids continue to be a problem on the east coast. Without sufficient ships to quell these attacks, or permission to cross the straits and clear the neighbouring islands, we will continue to experience this harassment. I can report that, of our own forces, I will soon have to send half our strength home for the winter. The land here will not produce as much food as we anticipated. The remaining Norse peasantry are more unruly and fewer in number than expected. We have not the manpower to enforce firm rule here to ensure the harvest is taken in and distributed according to our needs. The constant raids make moving supplies around difficult.

  I implore again, while I have sufficient forces and good weather, that we be allowed to discreetly take control of the islands that lie a mere mile from our new province and which serve as a base for these raids. If I cannot act now, it will have to wait until spring, and our position for the next crusade will be greatly weakened in terms of time, bases for supporting the army and local supply.

  I remain, as always, your faithful servant,

  Count Adolf of Schauenburg, governor of Jutland

  For the first time since he had arrived, despite his writhing guts and lack of sleep, Ordulf got up early and, much to her delight, helped the old woman to make the morning meal. She smiled affectionately at him and showed him how to chop the ingredients, how to prepare them, what order to feed them into the cauldron and how to brown the meat against the fire before it was added. He watched, he smiled, he learned. And he began to make an ally.

  He filled a bowl and went over to Otto, who was dressing himself for the day. Otto reached mechanically to take the offered bowl, then started when he saw who offered it. Ordulf had become notorious for not getting up on time and not doing his share of the work in the house, something he had been apparently totally oblivious to. Ordulf smiled at Otto’s raised eyebrows.

  ‘Got to change my ways, eh?’ he said, smiling at Otto sheepishly. ‘Don’t think I have any more luck left in me.’

  Otto smiled broadly. He accepted the bowl and clasped the younger man’s hand. ‘So, Ordulf, you have decided to be one of the ones who accepts his fate?’

  ‘I guess you could say that’ he said, thinking carefully about what he was going to say next and how he was going to say it. ‘I have decided I cannot continue the way I was going. It wasn’t helping me. I need to settle into this, give myself an easier time.’

  Otto nodded sagely. ‘Yes, that is essential, Ordulf, and I must say, I am surprised and pleased to hear it. I thought your pride would be the end of you before the summer was done.’

  Ordulf frowned and nodded. He added, as if an afterthought, ‘Otto, if I am to settle in here, I must learn Norse as fast as I can. I will be a better student. Can you help me?’ He affected his most pious and earnest face. Otto visibly wilted before Ordulf could worry whether he had laid it on a bit thick.

  ‘Of course, I would be ha
ppy to. It’s my job anyway, so I don’t have a choice,’ he said, smiling and tucking into his bowl.

  Ordulf went to the smithy that day with his new attitude in tow. The weeks passed as he watched and learned. He stood where he was told; he held what he was asked to hold. He scrubbed, he swept, he tidied, and he polished. Yes, Ordulf, the lad who hated polishing so much, willingly and gratefully polished basic swords and axes and seaxes. He was grateful for it for two reasons: it earned him favour, and it wasn’t all that hard. It turned out the Norse didn’t care much for shiny weapons.

  Finally, after many weeks, they started making a sword. But the process was so different that Ordulf did not recognise it at first. The Norse made steel quite differently. Their furnaces yielded small lumps of iron and steel, which they worked into bars of varying properties. These were fine for making a simple axe head or a knife, but a whole sword? How could a sword be made from these, when you could not know the quality of each piece? Again, he started to doubt the Norse sword-making skill.

  Ordulf was made to stand at the back and observe as the smith went through the piles of rough forged bars, examining them, testing them with a saw blade, separating them into piles. Then, after a long time fussing over the material, he was satisfied.

  Dengir took a pair of bars from different piles, and at his direction the junior smiths heated those bars, forged them together and then folded them. They repeatedly heated and bent them double and forged them together again. This process was repeated four or five times as Ordulf watched in confusion. He had never in his life seen odd bars of steel being folded and forged together again in this way.

  Some of the smaller bars were forged together in pairs and twisted instead of folded. Two smiths would take the heated bars in great, flat-headed tongs and twist them against each other’s grip like men fighting over a shield, each trying to spin it the other way for advantage. The twisted bar was like decorative iron work that could adorn a lord’s carriage, but it was most certainly some form of steel, not iron. Ordulf could not fathom the purpose, and nor could he form the words to ask. So, he just watched in rapt fascination and doubt. This was all now alien to him.