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

by James Duncan

  Ordulf walked over to the bench at the side of the hall, mind racing, trying to make sense of the situation. Otto crossed his path as he went and grabbed his arm forcefully.

  ‘Otto, what is going on? What have I done?’

  Otto stood tight-lipped and looked around out of the corner of his eye. ‘Come outside in a moment. I will not explain it here; I have my own position to consider.’

  Ordulf released the smaller man’s arm, mouth open with unformed protest. Otto strode briskly for the door and left. Ordulf went to his bench and looked up at the old woman as she came around handing out bowls of food. She shuffled past him without giving him one.

  Furious, he snapped to his feet and barged out of the door. Otto was sitting on a stool in the low, open-sided building at the back of the yard that was used for storage in summer and would have animals living in it during the late autumn and winter.

  Ordulf strode over, fists clenched and temples throbbing. Otto stood and held out his hand placatingly.

  ‘So tell me, what poison has spread in the group?’ said Ordulf. ‘Does that shit lie and say I stole his woman? I did nothing. I didn’t touch her, despite her attempts to woo me.’

  Otto sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘Ah, that explains it,’ he said, his whole posture relaxing and a look of sympathy crossing his face.

  ‘That explains it? So it was him! By God, I will split his head for this!’ Ordulf was raging now, barely able to keep his voice down, all notion of keeping a low profile lost in his swirling mind.

  ‘No, you will not, and you misunderstand me. Look, just stay calm and listen. There is much you do not understand.’

  This drew an angry glare from Ordulf, but the smith remained silent and waited.

  ‘Brunhild told them you refused her and that you looked scared. She said you ran from her and went to hide in the latrines. The warrior’s wife, Turid, told everyone that the sight of her nakedness seemed to shock you, to unman you, and said she believed you were indeed terrified.’

  ‘What? I wasn’t scared of them. I was just trying to avoid trouble with her man!’ Ordulf said, raising his hands in exasperation. ‘I wasn’t scared of Turid – I thought that I might be punished for looking at her because you told me that to touch a freewoman was death!’

  ‘Brunhild doesn’t belong to Geir, her man. They are slaves. They couple together because she chooses to at the time. She is free to bed any other, and so is he. It means nothing if you had accepted her advances. What matters is that they think you are afraid of a woman! Now, listen. I should have explained this before, and I will remedy that now. To the Norse, the most important principle in a man’s life is his honour – his lack of fear, his respect for others and his ability to do what is right despite danger or threat. It’s a whole code of behaviour, and those who exemplify it are admired while those who don’t are reviled.’

  Otto lowered his voice and leaned in. ‘The most important of those attributes by far is the lack of fear. A Norseman is supposed to be unmoved by danger, fear of failure, fear of death. He is especially supposed to be unafraid of standing up for himself, his family and friends and, above all, his lord. If a Norse warrior was said by any man to have run in fear from a woman, he would have to duel that man to the death to save his honour, and even then he might still be shunned.’

  Otto put his hand flat on Ordulf’s chest for emphasis. ‘The only reason you are still allowed in that hall is that you are a slave and not bound by those rules in principle. However, those ideas are still deeply ingrained, and everyone is judged by them, no matter their status.’

  Ordulf’s anger turned to surprise and then incredulity.

  ‘So I am damned for refusing to rut with her?’

  ‘No, listen to me. Refusing her is fine. You are damned for fearing to rut with her. The reason doesn’t matter. Whether it was out of fear of another man’s anger or fear of her naked body, it doesn’t matter. You. Showed. Fear. Of. A. Naked. Woman.’ Otto poked Ordulf’s chest with his finger to emphasise the words. ‘And that is inexcusable to them.’

  ‘Look!’ he exclaimed, exasperated. ‘You arrived here with a reputation. You were the big, wild Christian who beat Leif flat with nothing but a hammer and fought off two others while you did it. You are the bull it took four men to capture. They expected to see that strength in you. Instead, they saw you beg for your life in the yard, they saw you felled with a single blow by Leif and now they hear you run to hide from some tits.’ Otto shook his head and tutted. ‘Ordulf, your reputation hangs by a thread, even for a slave. I understand you not wanting to make trouble, but that fear will be your undoing. You cannot behave that way. You do not have to seek trouble, but you cannot hide from it. You cannot recklessly challenge others, but you cannot allow any challenge to go without reply. You must learn to think like the Norse, or you will be worse than nothing to them. You must stand up for yourself and show no fear of the world, or you will be branded a coward forever. The jarl will hear of it, and he will sell you to the farms rather than be associated with a coward or have one under his roof.’

  Ordulf was silent, his eyes fixed on the ground. He chuckled, which surprised Otto.

  ‘So I must not be the hot-tempered youth who causes conflict or the acquiescent slave who avoids trouble. I must walk a middle path?’

  ‘That is not an inaccurate way of thinking of it,’ Otto said, with a smile at last on his face. ‘There is more subtlety than that, but I think you will find your way.’

  ‘So how do I fix this now?’

  ‘Well, the men think you a coward, so they will likely seek to humiliate you. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, but they will seek to enforce their dominance over you while they are not afraid of you. You must not let that happen.’

  ‘I never saw they were afraid of me before!’

  Otto nodded smugly. ‘Exactly! You never saw it because they acted as if you did not scare them.’

  Ordulf rolled his eyes at the now-apparent obviousness of that and cursed his lack of perception.

  ‘Ordulf, you arrived as the giant who could crush warriors,’ Otto continued. ‘Do you know that on the first night you set yourself to sleep on a pile of everyone’s bedclothes and only the old woman had the courage to come and retrieve hers?’ He laughed. ‘Ordulf, half the slaves in the house would have gone cold that night because of you. They didn’t dare do anything about it, but also they did not whinge or complain. They were outwardly unperturbed. They pretended it was nothing until the old woman shooed you off the pile.

  Let me give you an example of how that works for the Norse. A couple of years ago, the jarl and his warriors had to settle a feud with a rival. The rival had insulted the jarl by not showing up when called for a feast and sending no apology. When confronted, the rival suggested that he should have sent his men’s wives instead, as they were more suitable company – a grave insult, implicitly questioning the jarl’s manhood. The jarl sent six of his men round to kill everyone on one of the rival’s farms, including three warriors who were part of the rival’s family.’

  Ordulf’s eyes widened. ‘He committed a massacre of innocent people to avenge an insult? That’s insane!’

  ‘Yes he did, and no it’s not,’ said Otto, without a trace of agreement at the proposition. ‘It’s entirely normal, and the rival was merely testing the jarl’s resolve. Here, if you insult another man or question his honour unfairly, he has many means of redress. He can appeal to the court or his lord for judgement, he can call the man to a duel or he can simply take revenge and hope the court later rules it fair. The revenge does not have to be on the perpetrator personally; it can be on his family or anyone under his care. The law is very clear on this. I think the idea is to dissuade the starting of conflicts as you cannot protect everyone you love from a powerful enemy.’ Otto’s face was stern.

  Ordulf sat back. ‘I cannot believe you would think it is normal to kill families over an insult. Such a thing would be unspeakable evil at home.’

  ‘T
his is now your home, and this is the way here. So it simply is normal, and you need to understand it,’ Otto said forcefully. ‘Anyway, his warriors burned the longhouse with the enemy inside it. The three warriors who were inside burst out of one door together to try and fight free. They were all killed, but one of them had fouled one of the jarl’s men with his own shield and twisted it violently, breaking his arm very badly between elbow and wrist, with the bone coming through the skin.’ Otto indicated with his own arm the mechanism and manner of the gruesome injury.

  ‘The jarl’s command had been for the warriors to return immediately the farmers were dead to present their actions publicly as the law demands. The injured warrior decided it was more important to do this, and include his testimony, than to go and have his arm set. For three hours, they waited for the lawgiver to hear them, and they presented their testimony in full. The warrior simply ignored his broken arm, which was bent and twisted most horribly, until this duty was completed.’

  Ordulf scoffed. ‘I don’t believe this nonsense. Why would he do that?’

  ‘Believe it, I was there when he returned and saw it myself. He made sure he completed his duty just in case his testimony made the difference; he would not risk his lord being ruled against and have the act ruled as murder. By the time he went to have his arm set, it was too late to heal properly, and it had to be removed.’

  ‘That’s stupidity!’ said Ordulf, pacing a small circle in front of Otto.

  ‘No it isn’t, it’s drengskapr. It showed his honour and his lack of fear, and he is still very highly regarded for it. He is regarded as one of the jarl’s most loyal and respected men, although he cannot now fight. He manages a village in the jarl’s lands as the lawgiver.’

  Ordulf shook his head in amazement. ‘I would get my arm fixed.’

  ‘And that is expected. You are a slave, not a Norseman,’ Otto said with a tinge of contempt creeping into his voice.

  ‘So how can I avoid humiliation? I am not allowed to harm another slave,’ Ordulf said, arms spread and palms upturned.

  ‘You are not allowed to harm them or damage them in a way that would interfere with their work, just as you are not allowed to damage any of the jarl’s property, but no one said you are not allowed to stop them if they try and humiliate you,’ Otto half whispered, cautiously. ‘Now I must go to the hall and pretend to be busy. I don’t want them to know I helped you. You are dangerously close to being untouchable.’ And with that final needle, he walked away, leaving Ordulf exasperated and wondering what form the humiliation would take and how to defend against it.

  He didn’t have to wait long. He strode into the longhouse and did his best to ignore the stares and contempt. Be imperturbable. In truth, it wasn’t that hard; he was so fed up and so physically unafraid that he barely had to act. He went to the pot over the low fire with a bowl and spooned himself some food. Brunhild’s man walked over to him from the side of the room, shoulders set aggressively and eyes full of contempt.

  The man stopped and slapped the edge of the bowl Ordulf was holding, knocking it from his grasp and spilling it all over the ground by his feet, splattering his leg with steaming broth. Ordulf ignored the pain; he didn’t move. He felt… pleasure, he suddenly realised. He now had an outlet for his frustration and rage. And that outlet was standing glaring at him from half an arm’s length away.

  Ordulf slowly straightened from the pot, every move deliberate and economical, like a predator stalking its prey. He raised his eyes to lock with the man’s. What was his name – Geir? He didn’t much care. He drew himself up to his full height and looked down at the man.

  And he slowly smiled. The smile held no joy. It was the smile of a wolf looking at a lamb. The lamb suddenly realised his error; the smugness and contempt dropped from his face like a falling veil. Ordulf watched, fascinated, as the man tried to maintain his composure. He could not back down from the provocation he had just made – everyone in the house was watching. Just as he saw the man’s eyes flick to Ordulf’s neck and his arm start to swing forward in a punch, Ordulf brought his hand up to block.

  By luck more than skill, and with Ordulf’s exceptional hand speed from all those years swinging a hammer – he could move his hands faster even than most small men – he caught Geir’s punch in his own hand. Geir’s eyes went wide; the mask slipped completely. Ordulf’s smile grew. He whipped his other hand around and grabbed the back of the smaller man’s head. Twisting the captured arm with his right hand, he pushed down on the back of Geir’s head with his left, a move he had used on the patch a number of times. Then Geir was forced to bend over double, and he tangled the man’s legs with his own and slammed him onto the dusty floor. He pulled the captured hand behind Geir’s back and sat on him, completely trapping him.

  Then, smiling, he picked up his bowl from the dust and raised it to another slave near him, gesturing to the pot. There was a moment of hesitation as the man faced the choice of either refusing or accepting the task. Accepting would mean publicly recognising Ordulf’s superiority, refusing… well. He took another long look into Ordulf’s predatory eyes, smiling up at him from on top of the still-wriggling Geir, and decided against refusing. He walked calmly over, filled Ordulf’s bowl and handed it back to him.

  Ordulf enjoyed that meal. He was sitting comfortably by the fire. He took his time over the hot broth, ignoring everyone in the room and whistling to himself between mouthfuls. His seat stopped wriggling after a while and apparently just concentrated on breathing. It must have been hard to breathe in that position. Poor seat.

  When he was done, Ordulf casually stretched his legs and rose to his feet, ignoring the dusty and wheezing man who got up after him. He strode over towards his area, then paused and looked at the more comfortable and central position that Geir usually occupied. Casually throwing Geir’s bedding to one side, he moved his own things over and arranged them on the wooden boards nearer the fire. He sat on a stool, back against one of the supporting posts, and sighed contentedly.

  The rest of the longhouse occupants went back to their business. Geir shuffled over to his new bed’s location sullenly, trying to maintain his own dignity, which was hard under the circumstances. Otto pulled up a small box next to Ordulf and sat on it.

  ‘That was well done,’ he said, trying to keep his face neutral but eyes brightly smiling. ‘I was worried you would rip his head off, but you did it just right.’

  They chatted for a while, and Otto continued his Norse lessons. Ordulf had progressed beyond individual words and was picking up simple sentences and constructs. He couldn’t yet have a conversation, and following when someone spoke rapidly was still like trying to understand the wind howl, but he could now name most of the objects in the house and make and understand some simple requests related to them.

  When the fire had died down and everyone had settled into bed, he lay on his back, perhaps as satisfied as he had been so far in captivity. Suddenly, someone arrived at his bed. In the very dim light, he realised it was Brunhild and then realised she was naked. She stood there, looking down on him, hands on hips, awaiting his response. Most of the house’s occupants had only just settled into bed; he knew almost none of them would be asleep and everyone would be watching to see what happened. He knew he had only one choice, but as he felt a rapid stir under his sheets he realised it wasn’t a difficult one to make. If swiving this slave was required of him, then, by God, he would carry out that duty earnestly and fully. It was too dark to see facial expressions, but Ordulf smiled anyway and pulled aside the furs, making space for her to lie next to him. She dropped down to her knees instead, one each side of his thighs, straddling him, and pressed her face into his. One of her hands took one of his and pressed it to her breast, while she kissed him fiercely, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. Then the hand let go of his and disappeared down between them to pull his trousers roughly out of the way of what she sought.

  Ordulf revelled in the freedom from modesty and worry about shaming
himself. He cared not that everyone was awake and probably listening or even watching. Damn their sleep. They had thought him afraid to lie with a woman, and he decided he would make certain that no one thought that again. He was tired of the fear; he was tired of the helplessness; he was tired of feeling lost and alone and out of control. He put a hand in Brunhild’s soft, flowing hair and let go of all his worries. Let them know I am not afraid.

  Chapter 16

  Killing for a King

  Uppsala

  Late autumn 1116

  Imperial dispatch

  For Sir Hans Metel of Oldenburg, captain of the Lower Saxon forces

  Sir Hans

  I have reported our success in the subjugation of this land and received instructions that our efforts in God’s name are complete for the year. We are to return the bulk of the forces home and retain only garrison forces.

  You know my opinion on this matter, but our orders are clear. My request to continue the offensive has been refused with great finality. We cannot be seen to continue a campaign that the emperor has decreed complete and the pope has blessed as a great victory. We will, from now on, only receive supplies for moderate garrison forces and so have no choice but to return the army home for autumn. We will suffer a hard winter up here with so few men. I have decided to remain myself, to ensure the good governance of the province. I regret that I will not be able to join you, but your orders are to gather the Lower Saxon forces and return home with them. They will not be part of the garrison.