“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 can 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 may 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 priest, still stubbornly black-gowned, paused on his way to the door.
“There is no wine, lord jarl. The men said they were looking for a cargo from the Rhine, but it has not come. There have been no ships from the South for four weeks, not even into London. I will broach a barrel of the finest hydromel instead. Maybe the wind is wrong.”
Quietly Brand rose from the table, stalked to the open window, stared at the clouds and the horizon. Why, he thought, I could sail from Rhinemouth to the Yare in my mother's old washtub in weather like this. And he says the wind is wrong! Something is wrong, but it is not the wind.
That dawn, the crews and captains of a hundred impounded trading vessels—half-decked single-masters, round-bellied cogs, English, Frankish and Frisian longships—all rolled unhappily from their blankets to stare at the sky above the port of Dunkerque, as they had done every day for a month and more. To see if the conditions were right. To wonder whether their masters would deign to make a move.
They saw the light that had come from the east, that had raced already across the tangled forests and huddled settlements of Europe, across river and toll-gate, Schloss and chastel and earthwork. Everywhere on the continent it had lit soldiers gathering, provision-carts mustering, horse-boys leading remounts.
As it swept towards the English Channel—though at this time men called it still the Frankish Sea—it touched the topmost banderole on the stone donjon within the wooden keep that guarded the port of Dunkerque. The guard-commander looked at it, nodded. The trumpeter wetted his lips, pursed them, sent a defiant bray down his metal tube. Immediately the quarter-guards answered from each wall, men began to roll from their blankets inside the keep. And outside, in the camp and the port, and along all the horse-lines that trailed off into the open fields, the soldiers stirred and checked their gear and began the day with the same thought as the sailors who were trapped in the port: this time, would their master stir? Would King Charles, with his levies, with the levies sent h
im by his pious and Pope-fearing brothers and nephews, give the sign for the short trip to England?
In the harbor, the skippers looked at their weathervanes, stared towards the eastern and western horizons. The master of the cog Dieu Aide, the cog which would carry not only the king but the archbishop of York and the Pope's legate himself, nudged his chief mate, jerked a thumb at the flag standing out stiffly from the mast. High tide in four hours, both knew. Current would be with them then and for a while. Wind in the right quarter and not dropping.
Could the landsmen get themselves down and embarked in time? Neither bothered to speculate. Things would be as they would be. But if the king of the Franks, Charles, nicknamed the Bald—if the king seriously wanted to obey the instructions of his spiritual lord the Pope, unite the old dominions of his grandfather Charlemagne, and plunder the wealth of England in the name of holiness, then he would never get a better chance.
As they watched the flag and the wind they heard, half a mile off in the donjon trumpets blaring again. Not for dawn, but for something else. And then, faintly, carried on the southwest wind, the noise of cheering. Soldiers acclaiming a decision. Without wasting words, the captain of the Dieu Aide jerked a thumb at the derricks and the canvas slings, tapped the hatches of the cog's one hold. Get the hatches off. Get the derricks over the side. We'll need them for the horses. The war-horses, the destriers of France.
The same wind, that dawn, blew across the bows of the forty dragon-boats cruising down the English coast from the Humber, almost in their teeth, making it impossible to rig sail. Ivar Ragnarsson, in the prow of the first boat, did not care. His oarsmen were rowing at their paddling-stroke, which they could keep up for eight hours a day if need be, grunting in unison as they heaved their oars through the water, feathering with the ease of long practice, continuing their conversations with a word or two as they swept them back, dipping and heaving again.
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