Men were scrambling to their feet behind him, groping for their breeches, buckling belts. One man undid a pack, began to haul from it strange, metallic shapes. The others queued in front of him, clutching the long pilgrim-staves all had carried openly.
“Force them down hard,” grunted the packman, struggling to push the first halberd-head on its socket over the carefully designed shaft.
“Move fast,” said Sibba. “Then, Berti, you take two men to face the door, one either side of it. Wilfi, you at the other door. The rest, stay with me, see where we’re needed.”
The movement and the clanking of metal had brought the thane, Elfstan, from his bed. He stared, wonderingly.
“Men outside,” said Sibba. “Not friendly.”
“Nothing to do with me.”
“We know. Look, lord, they’ll let you out. If you go now.”
The thane hesitated. He called to his wife and children, dressing hastily, spoke to them in a low voice.
“Can I open the door?”
Sibba looked round. His men were ready, weapons prepared. “Yes.”
The thane lifted the heavy bar that held closed the main double doors, and pushed them both open together. As he did so a groan came from outside, almost a sigh. There were many men out there, poised for a rush. But now they knew they had been seen.
“My wife and children—coming out!” shouted Elfstan. Quickly the children slipped through the door, his wife scurrying after them. A few feet beyond she turned, beckoned frantically to him. Her husband shook his head.
“They are my guests,” he said. His voice rose to a shout, addressing the ambushers outside. “My guests and the guests of King Alfred. I do not know who are these thieves in the night, within the bounds of Wessex, but they will hang when the king’s reeve catches them.”
“There is no king in Wessex,” shouted a voice from outside. “And we are men of King Burgred. Burgred and the Church. Your guests are vagabonds and heretics. Slaves from outside! We have come to collar and brand them.”
Suddenly the moonlight shone on dark shapes, moving together out of the cover of houses and fences.
They did not hesitate. It would have been easier to catch their enemies sleeping, but they had been told what their enemies were: released slaves, lowest of the low. Men who had never been taught swordplay, who had not been conditioned from birth to war. Who had not felt the bite of edges over the linden-shield. A dozen Mercian warriors swarmed together at the dark doors of the hall. Behind them, now that concealment was gone, horns blew for the assault.
The double doors of the hall were six feet across, a man’s full arm-span. Room only for two armed men to enter at once. Two champions rushed in together, shields up, faces glaring.
Neither saw the blows that killed them. As they peered into the gloom for men to face them, faces to hack at, the halberds swept from both sides, at thigh level, below shield and mail-shirt. The halberd-heads, axe one side, spike the other, were twice the weight of a broadsword. One shore through a warrior’s leg and deep into the facing thigh. The other sliced upward from the bone, deep into the pelvis. As one man lay in the flow of blood that would kill him in seconds, the other flapped and twisted, shrieking, trying to tear free the great blade lodged in bone.
More men pushed over them. This time spearpoints met them from in front, driving through wooden shields and metal rings, hurling men back into the confusion of the doorway, groaning from belly wounds. Now the long blades, sweeping in six-foot arcs, chopped down the mailed warriors like cattle before the poleaxe. For a few seconds it seemed as if the sheer weight and numbers of the first rush would break through the defenders.
But against the dim-seen menace, nerves failed. The Mercians scrambled back, those in front weaving desperately behind their shields, trying to drag their dead and wounded with them.
“So far so good,” muttered one of the Waymen.
“They’ll come again,” said Sibba.
Four more times the Mercians came on, each time more warily, trying now, as they realized the tactics and the weapons against them, to draw the blow and evade it, to leap forward before the halberdiers could recover their cumbrous weapons. The Norfolk freedmen used their advantage of numbers, two men to face each door, a man striking from each side. Slowly the casualties on both sides grew.
“They’re trying to cut through the walls,” muttered Elfstan to Sibba, still on his feet as the sky began to pale.
“Makes no difference,” replied Sibba. “They still have to climb in. As long as there’s enough of us to block each gap.”
Outside, a fair angry face stared at a bleeding exhausted one. Alfgar had come with the attackers to watch the destruction of the Waymen. He was not pleased.
“You can’t break in?” he shouted. “Against a handful of slaves?”
“We’ve lost too many good men to this handful of slaves. Eight dead, a dozen hurt and all of them badly. I’m going to do what we should have done first.”
Turning to his men, he waved a group forward to the undamaged gable end of the hall. With them they carried thorn fencing. They piled it against the wall, stamped it into a pile of thick brush. Steel struck flint, sparks dropping onto dried straw. The fire flared up.
“I want prisoners,” Alfgar said.
“If we can get them,” said the Mercian. “Anyway, now they have to come to us.”
As the smoke began to pour into the drafty hall, Sibba and Elfstan exchanged glances. They could see each other now in the growing dawn.
“They might still take you prisoner, if you went out,” said Sibba. “Hand you over to your own king. You being a thane, who knows?”
“I doubt that strongly.”
“What are we going to do?”
“What is always done. We will wait in here for every breath we can draw, until the smoke is thickest. Then we will run out and hope one or two of us may get away in the confusion.”
The smoke poured in more thickly, followed by the red gleams of fire eating at planking. Elfstan moved to draw a wounded man lying on the floor out of the smoke, but Sibba waved him back.
“Breathing smoke is the easy death,” he said. “Better than feeling the fire in your flesh.”
One by one, as their endurance waned, the halberdiers ran out in the smoke, trying to run downwind for a few yards of screen. Gleefully their enemies pounced, blocking their path, making them strike or lunge, leaping in behind with sword and dagger, and a long night of loss and frustration to avenge. Last and unluckiest ran Sibba. As he came out two Mercians, realizing by now which way their prey would go, stretched a rawhide rope across the path. Before he could rise or draw his short knife, there was a knee on his back, brawny arms on his wrists.
The last man left in the shell of his home, Elfstan stepped slowly forward, not running downwind like the others, but taking three long strides out of the smoke, shield raised, broadsword drawn. The Mercians running in hesitated. Here at last was a man like themselves. At a safe distance Elfstan’s serfs and tenants watched, to see how their lord faced death.
Huskily Elfstan snarled a challenge, gesturing to the Mercians to come on. One detached himself, stepped forward, swinging backhand, forehand, clubbing upward with his iron shield-boss. Elfstan parried, edge to edge with the skill of a lifetime’s practice, chopping with his own shield, circling one way then the other as he tried to detect a weakness in his enemy’s wrist or balance or technique. For minutes the grave ballet of the sword-duel, the thing thanes were bred for, went on. Then the Mercian sensed the Wessex. thane’s exhaustion. As the shield-arm facing him drooped, he feinted a low cut, turned it into sudden short thrust. The blade drove in below the ear. As he fell, Elfstan stuck one last failing blow. His enemy staggered, looked unbelievingly at the arterial blood spouting from his thigh, and fell also, struggling to cover the flow with his hands.
A groan rose from the men of Stanford-in-the-Vale. Elfstan had been a hard master, and many had felt the weight of his fist if slaves, or
the power of his wealth if free. Yet he had been their neighbor. He had fought the invaders of the village.
“Good death,” the Mercian captain said professionally. “He lost, but maybe he took his man with him.”
Alfgar moaned with disgust. Behind him, men rolled the traveling cart of his father forward. Through the shattered palisade of the village, a further cortege advanced, black-robed priests in the van. In the midst of it the rising sun glittered on the bishop’s gilded crozier.
“At least we have some prisoners,” he said.
“Two?” asked Bishop Daniel disbelievingly. “You killed nine and caught two?”
No one bothered to answer him.
“We must make the best of it,” said Wulfgar. “Now, how are you going to deal with them? ‘Make an example,’ you said.”
The two freedmen stood in front of them, each held by two warriors. Daniel paced forward, stretched his hand out, pulled a thong from round one captive’s neck, broke it with a jerk. He stared at what lay in his hand, did the same to the other prisoner. A silver hammer, for Thor, a silver sword, for Tyr. He tucked them into his pouch. For the archbishop, he thought. No, Ceolnoth is too much a weakling, feeble as the weathercock Wulfhere of York.
These are for Pope Nicholas. With this silver in his hand he may reflect that the Church in England cannot afford weakling archbishops any longer.
“I swore to burn the canker out,” he said. “And so I will.”
An hour later Wilfi of Ely stood tethered to the stake, legs tightly bound to prevent him kicking out. The brushwood burned brightly, caught at his woolen breeches. As the fire blistered his skin he began to twist in his bonds, gasps of agony forced from him despite his efforts. The Mercian warriors stared at him judgementally, interested to see how a slave-born bore pain. The villagers watched more fearfully. Many had seen executions. But even the wickedest, secret murderers and housebreakers, faced no more than the noose. To kill a man slowly was outside English law. Though not outside Church law.
“Breathe the smoke,” yelled Sibba suddenly. “Breathe the smoke!”
Through the pain Wilfi heard him, ducked his head, breathed in great gasps. As his tormentors hesitated to approach, he began to fall forward in his bonds. As unconsciousness came on him, he rallied for an instant, looked upward.
“Tyr,” he called, “Tyr aid me!” The smoke billowed up round him as if in reply. When it cleared he hung limp. A rumble of talk rose from the watchers.
“Not much of an example there,” observed Wulfgar to the bishop. “Why don’t you let me show you how to do it?”
As they dragged Sibba forward to the second stake, men went running at Wulfgar’s word to the nearest house, came out moments later trundling the beer-barrel which even the meanest home could boast. At a gesture they stove in one end, tipped the barrel over, stove in the other to create a short stout cylinder. The barrel’s owner watched unspeaking as his summer ale ran into the dirt.
“I’ve thought about this,” said Wulfgar. “What else have I to do? What you need for this is draft. Like a clay chimney in a fireplace.
They tied Sibba, pale and glaring, next to the stake where his comrade had died. As they piled the brushwood deeply round him, Daniel stepped forward.
“Abjure your pagan gods,” he said. “Return to Christ. I will shrive and absolve you myself, and you will be stabbed mercifully before you burn.”
Sibba shook his head.
“Apostate,” yelled the bishop. “What you feel now will only be the start of everlasting burning. Mark this!” He turned and shook a fist at the villagers. “His pain is what you will all suffer forever. What all men must suffer forever, if not for Christ. Christ and the Church that keeps the keys of heaven and hell!”
At Wulfgar’s direction, they lowered the barrel over stake and condemned man together, struck sparks to the brush and fanned the blaze. The tongues of flame reached in, were sucked upward as the air burned out above them, leapt savagely at the body and face of the man inside. After a few moments the shrieking began. Continued, growing louder. A slow smile began to spread across the face of the limbless trunk that watched from its padded upright box.
“He’s saying something,” snapped Daniel suddenly. “He’s saying something. He wants to recant. Put the fire out! Pull the brush away.”
Slowly the burners raked back the blaze. Approaching cautiously, they wrapped cloths round their hands and lifted the smoldering barrel high over the stake.
Beneath it lay charred flesh, teeth showing white against blackened face and scorched lips. Flame had shriveled Sibba’s eyeballs and was forced deep into his lungs as his body gasped for breath. He was still conscious.
His face lifted as the bishop approached, aware through its blindness that it was again in open air.
“Recant now,” shouted Daniel for all to hear. “Make a sign, any sign, and I will cross you and send your soul without pain to Doomsday.”
He bent forward under his miter to catch any word that burned lungs could pronounce.
Sibba coughed twice and spat the charred lining of his throat into the bishop’s face.
Daniel stepped back, wiping the black mucus with disgust onto his embroidered robe, shaking involuntarily.
“Back,” he gasped. “Put it back. Put it over him again. Restart the fire. And this time,” he shouted, “he can call on his pagan gods till the devil has him.”
But Sibba did not call out again. As Daniel raved and Wulfgar grinned at his confusion, as the warriors slowly moved in to pull the fire in on the bodies and spare the need for burial pit, two men slipped away from the back of the crowd, unseen by any except their silent neighbors. One was Elfstan’s sister’s son. The other had seen his home destroyed in a battle not of his concern. The rumor of the shire had told them where to take their news.
Chapter Four
Shef’s face did not change as the messenger, staggering with fatigue after his long ride, poured out his news: a Mercian army in Wessex. King Alfred vanished, no one knew where. The emissaries of the Way mercilessly hunted down wherever they could be found. The Church proclaiming King Alfred and all allies of the Way anathema, stripped of all rights, to be neither helped nor harbored.
And everywhere, the burnings; or, by order of the bishop of Winchester, where the dreaded living corpse Wulfgar was not present, the crucifixions. Long lists of names of those caught: catapulteers, comrades, veterans of the battle against Ivar. Thorvin moaned, shocked, as the list ran on and on, moved even though those caught and killed were not of his race or blood and were only for a few short weeks of his faith. Shef remained seated on his camp-stool, thumb running again and again across the cruel faces of his whetstone.
He knew, thought Brand, watching, and remembering the sudden veto Shef had imposed on Thorvin’s eager readiness to spread the word himself. He knew this would happen, or something like it. That means that he had sent his own folk, Englishmen, men he raised from the dirt himself, to what he must have known would be death by torture. He did the same for his own father. I must be very sure, very, very sure that he never looks at me in quite that same considering fashion. If I had not known before that he was a son of Othin I would know it now.
And yet if he had not done it I would be grieving for the death of Thorvin by now, not for a bunch of gangrel churls.
The messenger ran down, news and horror finally exhausted. With a word Shef dismissed him to food and rest, turned to his inner council sitting round him in the sunlit upper hall: Thorvin and Brand, Farman the visionary, Boniface the former priest with his ever-ready ink and paper.
“You heard the news,” he said. “What must we do?”
“Is there any doubt?” asked Thorvin. “Our ally called us in. Now he is being robbed of his rights by the Church. We must march at once to his assistance.”
“More than that,” added Farman. “If there is a moment for lasting change, surely it is this. We have a kingdom divided within itself. A true king—Christian though he m
ay be—to speak for us, for the Way. How often have the Christians spread their word through converting the king, and having him convert his people? Not only will the slaves be with us, but the freemen and half the thanes. Now is our chance to turn the Christian tide. Not only in Norfolk, but in a great kingdom.”
Shef’s lips set stubbornly. “What do you say, Brand?”
Brand shrugged massive shoulders. “We have comrades to avenge. None of us are Christians—your pardon, Father. But the rest of us are not Christians to forgive our enemies. I say march.”
“But I am the jarl. It is my decision.”
Slowly, heads nodded.
“What I think is this. When we sent the missionaries we stirred up the wasps’ nest. And now we are stung. We should have foreseen it.”
You did foresee it, thought Brand to himself.
“And I stirred up another when I took the Church’s land. I have not been stung for that yet, but I expect it. I foresee it. I say let us see where our enemies are before we strike. Let them come to us.”
“And let our comrades lie unavenged?” growled Brand.
“We will miss our chance of a kingdom, a kingdom for the Way,” cried Farman.
“What of your ally Alfred?” demanded Thorvin.
Slowly Shef wore them down. Repeated his conviction. Countered their arguments. Persuaded them, in the end, to wait a week, for further news.
“I only hope,” said Brand in the end, “that good living has not made you soft. Made us all soft. You should spend more time with the army, and less with the muttonheads in your doom-court.”
That at least is good advice, thought Shef. In order to cool feelings, he turned to Father Boniface, who had taken no part, waiting only to record decisions or write down orders.
“Father, send out for wine, will you? Our throats are dry. At least we can drink the memorial for our dead comrades in something better than ale.”
The Hammer & the Cross Page 36