Chapter the Twenty-fifth: Game Great and Small
CERIC and Hrald had been practicing shooting with their new bows. Tindr had drawn a deer upon the target boards hammered to the stable wall, and Sidroc had taken up charcoal and sketched a rough outline of a man’s figure. The archers of Angle-land were renowned, and both boys had had small bows and blunted arrows for a few years. Tindr had shown them how a blunt arrowhead could kill a bird or rabbit, just from impact, and with no tearing of the skin. The bows he had made them were almost man-size, and he had forged arrowheads for them as sharp as his own.
Today Sidroc had been watching them as they practised. He had handled the bow himself, but felt no call to it as weapon; the sort of fighting he had always done was face to face and hand to hand, though he had seen firsthand the damage the archers of the fyrd of Ælfred had inflicted on his brothers in some of the larger pitched battles.
“There is much to be said for killing from afar,” he noted, when the boys had come and laid their bows and quivers upon the table. He gestured with his head to the quantity of arrows bristling from the boards on which he had drawn the target-man. Ceric had wearied of their practice before Hrald, though he had kept on with it until the younger boy was ready to quit. Shooting well took a kind of inner calmness which Sidroc thought his son might possess, and in abundance. Ceric, at least at this age, found it more difficult to slow his breathing and steady his aim.
“At Kilton our archers killed lots of Danes within the palisade walls, when we were attacked at Twelfth Night,” Ceric said, with a boy’s simplicity in saying this to a Dane. “Our archers are the best in Wessex,” he ended.
“Já,” Sidroc nodded. “I have seen their work myself, upon the field at Ethandun.” His mind flicked back to that greatest of battles, which led to the Peace between Guthrum and his Danish host, and Ælfred and his. He followed his thoughts in his next words to them.
“Whether you fight with bow, with spear, or sword, if you win the field the dead and dying will lie around you. Kill the dying with your spear, or any thrust through the breast.”
He had tapped his own chest here. Ceric and Hrald listened, their eyes going from his chest to his face.
“If…if the man is not dying, but wounded…?” his son asked.
Sidroc paused. “You will have to judge. Needless killing is never good. If he is disarmed and disabled, not able to fight, but not in agony from his wound, there are Gods who will reward you for sparing him.” He grinned now at them. “Yours is one of them.”
He returned his thoughts to the lesson at hand.
“Be wary stripping battle-gain. It is easy to be killed if you are distracted by what you think you have won. Judge quickly, and strip quickly. Swords first; you know they are most valuable. A good helmet is my next choice, and any man with such will also have a good sword, likely pattern-welded. Ring shirt – já, costly indeed, but you will be wearing one already, and they are heavy. They take time to remove. Jewellery next, unless it is gold; strip gold first. Any warrior with gold about his wrists or neck will have a war-kit to match.”
Ceric’s hand went to his tunic, and the golden cross hanging beneath it. His uncle never went into battle with any show, his ring-tunic blackened, an unworked helmet, a plain scabbard hiding his fine sword. Ceric would do the same. He would wear the golden cross, but keep it well hidden.
Sidroc saw this slight movement, and went on.
“Silver arm-bands and cuffs, of course; and all jewellery has the advantage of being small and light in weight.”
He thought a moment longer, recalling his own actions after a battle. These two would have no need to strip a man for clothing and boots, as he had often done when he began. The first few times he fought he scavenged even food from the field; he and Yrling and Toki had had to take whatever they could.
“Do not bother to cut away a man’s purse unless you have the gift of time. Men will go into battle with gold around their necks but almost nothing in their belts. I do not know why, but I have seen it myself.”
The boys took this all in, wide-eyed, but silent. He was telling them things he had learnt through practice, and through hardship, things that he saw older warriors do. He felt he could do no less, for what Hrald meant to him, and Ceric to his shield-maiden. Both boys would receive hard and long training in arms when their bodies were ready. The more they knew now, the better equipped to bear that training, and the realities of the battle field.
A song bird had been chattering away over their heads, high in one of the spruce trees, and now dipped down near them, almost landing on the end of the table before swooping back to its perch. They all looked at its path before it vanished.
“How many men have you killed,” Ceric asked. His green eyes had fallen from the dark boughs of the tree top to Sidroc.
He jolted a little, inside, without showing it. His shield-maiden had once asked him this. Those who had never killed a man always wanted to know how many you had.
“Killed outright – five and fifty,” he said. The two sea battles he had fought to win their way to freedom had greatly added to this grim sum.
That was almost the number of thegns at Kilton. Ceric repeated the number in his head. He knew that the last would have been his own uncle, Godwin of Kilton.
“I do not think I can do it, father,” Hrald said to him.
Sidroc was alone with his son in the treasure room next day. He looked at the boy, his question on his face.
“I do not think I can fight. And kill.”
He beheld the boy’s face, the pointed chin and lifted eyebrows that recalled his mother, the dark hair that recalled he himself. Hrald stood motionless before him, his blue eyes widening as he looked to his father for help.
“I want to be like Tindr, walking the woods and bringing back food for all. I think Tindr could live in the woods. I want that too.”
“You cannot be like Tindr, Hrald.”
His father gave a single shake of his head, meant for himself. He had shown too much, told too much. He had frighted the boy, when he meant only to make him stronger. “You have but ten years, Hrald,” he went on.
“You will not fight for a long time, years.” Hrald’s eyes were steady, taking this in. “And if the Peace holds, you may not need to fight at all.”
He thought what more he could say. He could not tell Hrald that when he went into battle he would be surrounded by his pledged men, Asberg on his right, Jari on his left, as Ceric would be. That was not the way Danes fought. It was every man for himself; even war-chiefs knew this, and took the same chances upon the field as his least follower. The times Danes fought together were rare, and often due to the bond between uncle and nephew and father and son.
“I do not want to kill anyone,” is how his boy answered. Hrald saw the look on his father’s face, a grave look of wonder. Hrald knew he must speak again lest he begin to cry.
“What you did to Ceric’s uncle…I could not do that. I could not.”
His father took a slow breath. “He would have killed me, if I had not killed him first,” he answered. His boy must have seen the justice in that. He kept his tone measured, one of explanation and not defense.
Hrald said nothing.
“If you are threatened, if you are attacked, you must strike out.” Here he raised his hand to his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “It is ugly, I know. It was not my wish that you and Ceric saw it. But I want you to know how to fight, to protect yourself, and your mother and sisters.”
He could not tell a boy of ten what would have happened to his wife if Kilton had been the victor. Hrald had lowered his eyes, the dark fringe of lashes casting a spiked shadow on his round cheek. He did not answer.
“Is this the doing of Wilgot, and your time at Oundle, with Sigewif?” As little as he thought of him, he did not wish to speak ill of the priest, not when the boy’s mother put such store in him. Even less would he speak against the Abbess of Oundle,
a woman of capability who ruled her doubled convent with wisdom worthy of her royal blood.
“Have they told you…it was wrong to fight?” he hazarded.
Hrald shook his head. “Wilgot blessed us all before we left, and both Ceric’s uncle and Worr told us we could be attacked at sea…or when we landed.”
The boy’s eyes glided around the chests and baskets lining the walls of the room. “The treasure at home, the land, all of it,” he went on. “It is all from killing men, is it not?” It was a child’s question, not the accusation of a man.
“Five and fifty, that is what you told us yesterday.”
The boy let his eyes drop once more. “I do not want to kill even one man.”
His father too looked about the room; Hrald saw the dark eyes shift as if he looked for something.
“When I was your age I had nothing. My mother was a serving woman who left me with my father. His wife did not like me. Then he went out in his boat and did not come back.”
He heard himself say these things, knowing it could mean but little to Hrald. Yet it struck him how alike their boy-hoods had been in this wise. Hrald the elder had sailed off one day, never to return, just as he had vanished by sea, through kid-nap, leaving his own son father-less.
“I went to Angle-land with my uncle, Ashild’s father,” he went on. “There was no place for me in my homeland, and I worked and fought hard for all I won.”
Hrald’s blue eyes were unblinkingly set on him. At his age he had no choice. He had a young and reckless uncle who gave him a home, and who would, a few years later, be urging Sidroc to join him in making their way in a new land.
He bethought him that it was killing for plunder that most troubled the boy. And indeed, it was often the killing he had done simply for gain that awakened him in the nights. “What I fought for – silver, treasure, land, horses – you do not need to fight for,” he tried. “These things are given you.”
He found himself looking up, as if for answers.
“You have only ten years, Hrald. You are a young boy, still. In a few years you will feel differently.
“If someone tries to take what you have from you, you will fight to keep it,” he ended.
Just as those you killed tried to keep you from taking what they had, his son thought.
Sidroc did not call the boys to practice that day. Next afternoon when the three of them met Hrald fought with seeming commitment. He knew he had disappointed his father. He also knew his father would not be there at his side when he would be forced to fight his first battle.
Tindr brought home a deer. He had left in the dark and not broken his fast with the family. Ceric and Hrald set a look-out for him, perching in the hay loft in the stable, where they could see out a crack between the upright timbers of the wall facing the forest.
The Sun was fully risen when they spotted him. In his dull hunting garb of green and brown he was not easy to see amongst the like-coloured trees. He had brought his take, for he dragged it along behind him in the leathern sling strapped to his waist. The boys scrambled down to meet him as he pulled it along into the kitchen yard.
His bow was on his back and his quiver slung over his shoulder. His hair was braided, the way he always wore it when he hunted. The boys swarmed him and he grinned at them with a small grunt as he released the sling from his waist. Gunnvor was bending over the cook-fire, banking up coals, and she straightened and smiled at him. Yrling broke from the hall door and ran out, Eirian at his heels.
They could see the long and slender legs of the deer, but much of its body was hidden by the flap of leather that covered it. Tindr knelt down and pulled it back. It was a stag with four prongs on each antler. Tindr looked down at the red coat and laid his hands upon the stag’s muscled neck. The boys saw this, and also the single puncture between the ribs.
It was larger than the deer the boys had seen at home, and they knew from the racks of antlers about the hall and stable that Tindr had taken greater still. Both of them had dropped on their knees on the other side of the stag’s body. Hrald put his hand out, and touched the deer’s flank. It was still warm.
Tindr, watching him, nodded gravely at the boy. He lifted his open hands before them, the backs first, and then palms. There were runes drawn in charcoal on both; those on his palms were too smudged to read.
“Will you take us out?” Ceric asked. “To hunt with you?”
He pointed to Hrald and to himself, and made the motion of pulling back a bow string.
“Please,” said both boys together, cupping their hands in the bowl shape they knew meant this word.
Tindr looked into the beseeching faces. Their aim was not true enough for them to go after deer. New as they were, they were likely to wound and not to shoot true to heart and lungs. And his taking of these woodland creatures was between him and the Lady. He must be alone to down a deer, and first he must awaken being called to do so. Even then he did not always return dragging his sling. Sometimes he saw the deer, but something stopped him from nocking his arrow, some thought that this stag was better left for another time. Once a great hart stood a long time in his view, and he could not pull back the string. As he lowered his bow he saw a flash of white out of the tail of his eye, and the hart bounded after it. The Lady in the guise of hind had called the hart, just as she as Lady of the Forest had called him.
He shook his head, still looking into the boys’ faces. He crossed the clenched fists of his hands at the wrists, while nodding to the stag which lay beneath them. Their faces fell. He pointed now to the small pouch of squirrel fur which Hrald wore at his belt, and turned his head to his workbench, where some of the rabbit pelts they had snared lay drying. Then he made the gesture of fitting an arrow to a bow, and grinned to the boys.
“He will take us shooting, but for rabbits and squirrels,” Ceric read.
Hrald looked down at the single wound in the deer’s red fur, and remembered the look of the many deer he had seen brought back to Four Stones, pierced with multiple spear points.
“Not until we can shoot as well as he does,” he said.
The boys nodded back, and again cupped their hands. Tindr grinned and nodded, pointed to the Sun, then made his sign for tomorrow, his finger turning in a circle.
The Sun had just begun to crack the sky when Tindr met the boys in the kitchen yard. They had laid out their kit the night before, their bows and charged quivers, and had filled their water skins. Gunnvor had packed them bread and strips of dried pig. They were eager to begin their day, but Tindr led them first to a basin of water he poured from a pail. He threw the water upon his face, rubbed his hands over it, and then lifted the water several times, letting it fall through his fingers. He dried his face and pointed to Ceric to go next.
“Why must we wash to go into the woods, where we will just get dirty?” he asked. But Tindr pointed again to the basin, so he did it. The water was so cold it made him gasp. Hrald went next, and both boys were glad for their wool tunics and warm mantles to counter this dousing.
Tindr moved next to the cook-fire, where he drew out a fragment of charcoal. He gestured the boys to him, and took first their left and then their right hand into his, scribing the straight lines of runes upon the backs.
“It is one of the runes he wears, Feoh, for wealth, or cattle,” Hrald said, looking down at his left hand, and Ceric’s too. He knew from his father that Tindr revered the Goddess Freyja, and he knew it was her rune too, but did not mention that aloud. “And this is Gyfu, gift – he is asking we be given the gift of game.”
Neither boy came home with a rabbit nor squirrel that morning, and Hrald lost an arrow in the trees shooting after a big hare. But Ceric spotted deer tracks by a creek whose water had a thin skim of ice on it. Stepping into a clearing they saw a goshawk soar ahead, the wild kin of those at the apple farm. Hrald found some of the black and red tinder bark on a birch tree, and the three of them warmed their hands at a little fire they kindled. The b
oys came back to Tyrsborg hungry and happy and chilled through and ready to go out again next day. In the weeks that came both boys shot rabbits with blunted arrows, and had unblemished pelts to show for it. Squirrels, scolding them from over their heads, were harder, and both boys let fly arrows that it took a long time to retrieve. When a layer of snow covered the ground they saw a fox hunting mice in it, leaping into it headfirst and coming up with the small morsel in its snow-frosted jaws. The beauty of its red fur caught Ceric’s eye, and he raised his bow at it. But Tindr stopped him. You cannot eat fox, he gestured with a grimace. Do not kill what you cannot eat.
Chapter the Twenty-sixth: Winter
THE days were much shorter now, and Blót, that blood-month of sacrifice had come. In Angle-land it was the time of slaughter, when animals which could not be kept over the Winter were butchered. Pigs that had fattened on the nuts and acorns of the woods, sheep too young or too old to survive on Winter fodder with any hardiness, and geese who had grown huge on the rich seed-heads of Summer grasses were rendered up. Their meat was salt-dried, brined, and smoked, and also eaten fresh; it was a month of abundance before Winter’s sparseness, not to be relieved until the few feasts at Winter’s Nights.
On Gotland all this was true, and more, for alongside the culling and feasting each family, rich or poor, made what Offering they could to their Gods. The taking of life was made sacred by that portion given directly as a thank-offering for the bounty of the year past, and was given too in supplication as folk headed into uncertain Winter and its dangers and hardship.
There was no one day on which Offering was made. Most chose any day of the waxing Moon, as most certain to ensure increase. That was the time when the family of Tyrsborg made their Offering. Some along the trading road had already done so, coming to the great carved figure of Freyr to kill a beast in the view of his wide painted green eyes. Others had hoisted the bodies of fowl or goat or pig onto an Offering rack at the gable peak of their houses, lifting it close to the Gods as they swept over Midgard’s chill and blasted landscape. Up at Tyrsborg the household trooped into the woods to a place that had been chosen their first year to receive the bodies of the seven sows Sidroc had promised as a vow.
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