Echegorgun looked at the sun. “If they did not attack last sunset, they will attack this one. The two ships Brand has will not be ready to fight. He will have taken them up to the grind-beach and loaded them up with oil and meat. The strangers will catch everyone else asleep or tired. The grind makes much work.”
“Will you not warn them?”
Echegorgun looked surprised, as far as his flat hair-covered face would show it. “I would warn my cousin Brand. For the rest—the more Thin Ones kill each other, the better. I know you spared me when you could have struck me with the spear, so now I spare you, for True Folk keep their bargains, even if they have not been said. You fed my boy, my Ekwetargun as well. But I would be wiser to twist your head off your shoulders and hang you with the others.”
Shef ignored the threat. “I can tell you one thing you do not know,” he said. “I am a man who has authority. I am a king in my own land. Some say I am a sort of a king even here. And I speak for many people. Here is one sign of my authority.” He showed the Rig-token, the kraki, round his neck, and pointed to the one he had made for Cuthred. “It may be I could do something for you. For you and your kind. Make the men stop hunting you. Let you live in a place less stony. But you would have to do something for me. Help me defeat those men from the south, and the woman with them, and their ship.”
“Well, I could do that,” said Echegorgun carefully. He rose to a strange squatting position, gripping his bare feet in his enormous hands.
“How? Would you warn Brand? Would you—fight on our side? You would be a mighty warrior if we gave you iron to use.”
Echegorgun shook his massive head. “I will do neither of those. But I could speak to the whales for you. They are worked up already. If they thought I had killed you, they might feel like listening to me. And these are stranger whales, of course. If they were my own folk I would not deceive them.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Bruno, Hauptritter of the Lanzenorden, stood in front of a double rank of his armored knights, pikes sloped, standing immobile at attention as he had made their custom. All were looking at the ceremony taking place a hundred yards in front of them. They could have got a better view by marching closer, but one could not be sure how the natives would take interference in their sacred custom. Bruno had no objection to interfering with the barbaric customs of the natives, but this was not the time.
A roar came from the thousand throats of the men clustered at the center of the doom-ring of the Gautish peoples, a roar and a clashing of weapons on shields.
“What's that mean?” muttered a voice from the rear rank. “They've made a decision?”
“Silence in the ranks,” said Bruno, though without heat. The Lanzenorden believed strongly in the theoretical equality of all its members, without the savage discipline that had to be imposed on armies of peasants. “Yes, look, they have a king. Habeunt regem,” he added, parodying the formula for the election of a Pope.
A figure rose, swaying wildly, from the throng in front of them. A man lifted on a shield by a dozen eager supporters. Once he caught his balance, he looked round, drew his sword, shouted out his name and the traditional formula of proclamation. “I am the king of the Gauts. Who denies it?”
A moment's silence, then the clashing of weapons again. A week before, and a dozen chieftains would have denied it. Fighting it out hand to hand would have deprived the Gautish peoples of most of their ruling class, the rich and the god-born together. So for days the meeting, the Gautalagathing, the Thing of those bound by the Law of the Gauts, had been abuzz with messengers, rumors, offers of support and retractions, deals and promises. Now it was all settled. Till the next shift of power.
The crowd began to disperse towards the smell of roasted oxen and the great vats of beer which the new king would provide as part of the price of his election. The German Ritters watched them with a certain envy, a certain scorn. Bruno decided to hold them in their ranks a little longer, to make certain no-one went down to the party, got into a fight.
Another figure was coming towards them, the scrawny black-clad Englishman, Erkenbert. As he came closer Bruno saw a slight flush of excitement on his pale face, and felt his own heart thud in anticipation. The Englishman was holding one of his everlasting lists.
“Do you think you've found it?” said Bruno as soon as the other was in earshot.
“Yes. Down at the tents I found an old man. Too old to attend the election, but not so old that he had lost his memory. He was at the raid on Hamburg. More than that, he was among the men who sacked the cathedral. He remembers closely who was there—especially closely, for he feels still that he was cheated of some share of the loot. He gave me a complete list of the chieftains present, seven of them who led more than a dozen ships' crews, he says. Now, and this is the important thing. Six of those chieftains we have news of already, and we know they do not fit.”
“So it must be the seventh?”
“So it would seem. His name is Bolli. He is jarl of the Tronds.”
“And who in Hell are the Tronds? I've been in this God-forsaken country half a year, I've heard of more tribelets and kinglets than my father has pigs in sties, and I never heard of the Tronds.”
“They live far in the north,” said Erkenbert. “Far up the North Way, where they seek to control the fur-trade.”
“Far in the north they may be,” muttered Bruno, “but if there were a new king there, an emperor-in-being, we would still have heard about it. I begin to wonder if our method is wrong. Or could even the holy Rimbert have made some mistake? Perhaps there is no Holy Lance.”
“Or perhaps it is lying in a treasury, unnoticed.”
Bruno's face took on an expression quite unfamiliar to Erkenbert, one of depression and defeat. “I can't help thinking,” he said, “you tell me the Lance is in Norway. We hear also that the great struggle for power in the North is going to take place where we left in the spring, at Hedeby in Denmark, everyone is full of it. And here we are, running round provincial gatherings in Sweden.”
“Gautland,” corrected Erkenbert.
“Same place. I have gone in the wrong direction.”
Erkenbert reached up and patted the disconsolate knight on his enormous shoulder. “Whom God loves, he chastises,” he said. “Think of King David in the wilderness. Think of Samson at the mill, and how in the end he brought down the great temple of the Philistines. God can bring forth a miracle at any time. Did He not deliver Joseph from Potiphar, and Daniel from the lions' den? I will tell you the holy text you must remember: Qui perseravabit usque ad finem, ille salvabitur. He who shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved. To the end, though. Not to near the end.”
Bruno's face slowly cleared. He wrung Erkenbert's hand in a careful grip. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you. Wise words. We shall find out more about these Tronds. And meanwhile, I shall hope that God has some errand for me in sending me to these parts.”
Hrorik, King in Hedeby, gnawed his beard as he listened to the reports of his scouts. “Definitely the Ragnarssons?” he queried.
“Definitely. We got close enough to see the Raven Banner.”
“Flown only when all the bastards are together. Well, at least there's one bastard fewer of them now. And him the worst bastard of them all. A hundred and twenty ships, you say, and harbored on the mainland opposite Sylt?” Hrorik calculated thoughtfully. “Well, the Ragnarssons are always bad news, but that could be worse. They have to get through the marsh first, and then they have to get over our good wooden walls. I know all about their rams and the tricks they learned from their father. I think we ought to be able to see them off.”
One of the scouts cleared his throat. “More bad news, lord, I'm afraid. Catapults. We saw them unloading them. Big jobs, weighing a ton, I would say. Three or four of them.”
Hrorik's face regained its concerned expression. “Catapults! What sort were they? Were they the stone-throwers we've heard about, or the dart-throwers, or what?”
&nbs
p; “We don't know. Never seen one work. We've just heard these stories, same as you. They all come from men who've been defeated by them.”
“Thor help us. This is where we need some men who know about these things.”
Hrorik's port-warden, sitting in on the conference, broke in. “I can help you there, lord. I got a report from a skipper yesterday. He was up at the Gula Thing. He said there had been a lot of excitement up there—I'll tell you another time. But at the end of it he said that one of our ships had recruited two Englishmen and was bringing them south. Englishmen,” he added with emphasis. “Those are the real experts. These are guys who were there when Ivar got his, and the Frankish king too. Ship should be in in a couple of days.”
“So. While Sigurth Snake-arse crawls through the marsh, we can have these men building machines to fight his machines. That's good. But let's do the obvious things too. If the Ragnarssons are there on the west coast, the east coast's clear. So let's get ships out to King Arnodd, and King Gamli, and ask them to send every ship and man they can spare. Clean out the Ragnarssons, and we'll all sleep easier.”
“Clean out the Ragnarssons,” said the port-warden, “and maybe it'll be time to have just one king in Denmark.”
“Just don't say that anywhere else,” agreed Hrorik.
Many days' sail to the north, far from the gathering war-storms that would determine the fate of many kingdoms, Shef and Cuthred crouched immobile in the shadow of a rock. Twice they had got into what they thought was good cover. Both times Echegorgun had moved them out, muttering in his own strange language. “You Thin Ones,” he said finally. “You don't know how to hide. Or how to look. I could walk through one of your towns in broad daylight and you would never see me.” Shef did not believe him, but he had to acknowledge the uncanny skill of the Hidden People in vanishing, in the day, at night, or in the pale twilight that had come again after another long day of sleep and waiting.
In front of them, Echegorgun stood knee deep in the water at the edge of the inlet. He had led them down to it by barely manageable paths, the men slipping and scrambling on the rock, propped up by Echegorgun or Miltastaray, sometimes lowered from one place to the next. Finally, once they were concealed to his satisfaction, Echegorgun had told them to sit motionless, and watch. Watch what a True Person could do. They would see something no Hairless One had seen for many a lifetime. How the True Folk called their kinfolk, the whales.
Now Echegorgun stood facing out to the open sea. High above, Miltastaray kept watch for any boats that might appear, ferrying men or meat between the place of the grind and Brand's threatened home on Hrafnsey.
In one hand Echegorgun held a long paddle, its blade curiously rounded, cut laboriously with stone tools from the trunk of a mountain-aspen. Strange curlicues ran around its inside face. Echegorgun held it up, high above his head, the grotesque length of his arm suddenly clear. Then he brought it down with all his strength on the calm water. The sound of the slap seemed to run from horizon to horizon, as the ripples ran out into the Atlantic swell. Again Echegorgun brought it down. And again. The two men crouched, wondering how far the sound would run above water. And how far below it.
After a dozen blows, Echegorgun turned and put the paddle carefully on a rock on the steep shore. He took another implement, a long tapering tube, made out of layers of coiled and glued birch-bark, and took another cautious step further out, waist-deep now, standing on some unseen projection. He put the thinner end of the tube in his mouth, the trumpet end deep in the water.
From where they crouched, and even in the dim light, Shef could see the prodigious back widening as Echegorgun took a deep breath, a deep breath like the indraft of a bellows. Then he blew.
No sound reached the men on the shore, but after a few moments the air seemed to buzz, to vibrate noiselessly. Was the surface of the sea shivering in sympathy? Shef could not tell, though he strained his one eye to see. He had no doubt that beneath the water some immense disturbance was taking place.
The blowing went on and on, Echegorgun breathing in continually and somehow blasting out at the same time. Shef was not sure, but he felt dimly that the “notes” Echegorgun was playing altered now and then, according to some unknown code. He remained motionless, feeling the chill of the high latitudes creeping up on him, feeling his muscles stiffen, the cold stone strike through his breeches. He did not dare to move. Echegorgun had said that at any disturbance he would break off. “Just one pebble rolling,” he had warned. “If the whale-folk were to think I was playing with them, even foreign whale-folk… I could never swim safely again.”
Beside him Cuthred too sat like a rock image. But then, barely perceptibly even from two feet, his eyes moved, his chin rose a trifle, pointing. Between the shore and the skerries, a fin rose. The straight-up, right-angle fin of the killer-whale, the orca. It was coming towards them, not quickly, deliberately. From time to time the head too rose, and a spout went up, white against the gray islands. The orca was taking a good look. Behind it, well behind it, the rest of the school followed.
Slowly the fin came closer. As it closed, Echegorgun's breathing seemed to slacken, as if he were cutting down the underwater noise. He seemed to be blowing with a shorter, more varied rhythm. Finally the fin closed right up, the orca swimming along parallel with the shore, turning, cruising slowly back. Every time it turned it kept its eye on the strange gray creature standing waist-deep in the water. Shef felt his skin contracting at the thought of what might happen. A lunge of the jaws, a sweep of the tail, and Echegorgun would be off his feet and off the rock. Even his mighty frame would be no more than a bull-seal to the killer. Nothing was safe with them in the water, not the tusked walrus, nor the polar bear, not even the great whales which they tore to pieces while they were still alive.
Echegorgun put his tube carefully down on the rock behind him. Then, slowly, he sank down, submerging shoulders and head in the water, and began to swim out. The killer watched, giving him room. The men on shore could see little, only what showed above water. Yet it began to seem, after a while, as if Echegorgun was acting out some kind of pantomime. Sometimes he seemed to mimic a whale's motion, sometimes a man swimming. Once it seemed to Shef as if he kicked his heels above the water, and rolled over violently: a boat turned upside down? The killer's movements began to synchronize with his own, they swam up and down together, both moving at a fantastic speed for a human, a bare stroll for a whale.
And then the fin swung away, a great tail slapped the water twice, as if in farewell. The other fins cruising up and down offshore swung too, in unison. All together the school began to race down the sound at top speed, the whales arcing in and out of the water in a complex ballet, as if in exultation. They raced away to the south, towards Hrafnsey.
Echegorgun remained in the water till they were out of sight, cruising up and down with an easy overarm stroke, only skull and arms showing, with a faint flurry where his heels touched the surface. At a distance, just another seal. Finally he turned, swam into shore, heaved himself out, shook himself easily like a dog.
“Well,” he said in Norse. “Come out now, Thin Ones. I told them the one who wounded their leader was dead. They asked, and the one they followed? Dead too, I said. They were disappointed. It was easy to tell them there were more whale-foes in the ship. The great ship going into Hrafnsey now. They said they would find sport with it.”
“Going into Hrafnsey now?” said Shef. “How are we to get there?”
“There is a way,” said Echegorgun. “No Thin One would find it, but I can show you. One thing I had better tell you, though. The whale-folk are not good at telling Thin Ones apart. Nor do they care much. Anyone on the water is at risk tonight.”
“Show us how to get across,” said Shef. “I swear to repay you for all this. Even if I have to become king of this land to do it.”
The men of the two-masted ship moving under light sail towards Hrafnsey harbor had had a long voyage up the Norwegian coast in which to get used to the
ir unfamiliar weapons and sail-rig. For the most part they were men of Agdir, Queen Ragnhild's homeland. In the turmoil following the sudden death of Halvdan and the seizure of power by Olaf, one of the skippers of King Halvdan's fleet had decided his best interests lay with Ragnhild, and had placed his ship at her service. Most of his crew had not stayed with him, but had deserted, their places taken by Ragnhild's own men. With them had come Valgrim the Wise, defeated in his plan to control the College of the Way, and eager to take revenge on the one who had thwarted him. Not only him—but also to set the Way and his misguided colleagues back on the true path of Othin, the path that would lead to victory, not defeat, at Ragnarök. He and his backers had built the catapults and trained their users. They were eager, too, to redeem their failure in the Gula Fjord.
Yet the driving force behind them all, skipper, crew and Valgrim as well, was the hatred of Queen Ragnhild for the man who had killed her son, or caused him to be killed. The man who had stolen the luck to which she had pledged her life. Ragnhild had seen her mother-in-law Queen Asa go to the gallows without blinking, had poisoned her husband King Halvdan without a tremor. One day, maybe, she would breed a new race of kings from her own loins. But before that the beggar-Englishman she had seduced, hidden, and thought to use to clear the path for her son: he must go to Hel to serve her son and her for all eternity.
As the great warship closed on Hrafnsey, its goal, its crew had ceased to follow the coastline and had moved offshore, into the Atlantic rollers but out of sight of land, coming in again only a few miles from where they reckoned their quarry to be. There they had lain upon a deserted inlet, one of the thousands on that jagged coast, seen by no-one. Or at least, no human.
Yet they had not lacked for close information. After the butchery was over at the grind, the real work had started for the men of Halogaland. Vital to cut the carcasses up and salt as much meat as possible. Even more vital to rig the cauldrons on the beach itself, strip off the blubber, start the long job of rendering down the whale-oil, immensely valuable for lamps, for fuel and even for food through the long winter nights. Firing the cauldrons was not a problem. Once the oil had been cooked out of the blubber, the strips that were left became fuel for the next rendering. But every barrel the Halogaland coast possessed would hardly be enough for the sudden windfall of wealth that the grind brought. Boats were passing up and down in all directions, loading up barrels, towing strings of them, sending messages for urgent assistance. One whale-boat with two men in it passed by the fjord where Ragnhild's warship lay, to be snapped up immediately by its pinnace.
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