Kings and Pawns

by James L. Nelson

  Heathens are asleep…drunk and asleep… he assured himself. He stepped away from the wall as more and more of his men came over, and he could see the other columns also climbing over the wall, unopposed. They were also slinging shields over their arms, spreading out in defensive lines. They had all been instructed back in the clearing to defend against a surprise attack. If they came over the wall and the Northmen did not attack, it did not mean that the Northmen were gone. It could well mean they were asleep. Or setting a trap. And either one of those would be fine with Nothwulf.

  The three lines of men advanced inward toward the big church that formed the center of the priory, and presumably the column to the south was doing so as well. It was rapidly getting lighter, and the buildings and the spaces between were no longer hidden by shadow and still there was no one to see. Nothwulf felt the tension mount, waiting for a sudden attack, waiting for a terrific disappointment, he didn’t know which to expect, or which would be worse.

  Some time passed and still there was nothing. The thegns leading the north and south columns came jogging over, and they and Nothwulf and Leofric stood in a little cluster, away from the men.

  “Don’t see anything, lord,” one of the thegns said. “No sign of the Northmen, or anyone at all.” The others nodded.

  “We saw their ships just yesterday morning,” Nothwulf said. “They didn’t look ready to sail, and the heathens sure as damnation did not leave without their ships. Each of you, pick four or five men and have them start searching the buildings. Tell them to be quiet. If they find the Northmen sleeping, don’t wake them. If we can kill them in their sleep we will.”

  The thegns nodded and hurried off, and moments later handfuls of men from each column trotted off toward the cluster of buildings that made up the Christchurch Priory.

  “If there are as many of the bastards as we think,” Leofric said, “then we should find them soon enough. Then the church is about the only building big enough to hold all of them at once.”

  Nothwulf nodded. He saw a handful of his men push open the church door and step warily inside. He waited for shouting, a clash of weapons, anything. Soon the men came out again having apparently found no Northmen.

  “Could they have sailed last night?” Nothwulf asked Leofric. He spoke softly, did not want to be overheard.

  Leofric shook his head. “I wouldn’t think so. The bay here, it’s very tricky. Mudflats, sandbars, and they’re always shifting. And the channel to the sea is narrow. I don’t think they could have felt their way out at night.”

  That was a small relief, a very small one. The two men continued to watch as the buildings were searched, the searchers going in one after another, and then emerging again with nothing to report. Nothwulf felt his spirits sink with each moment that passed, each building that was explored.

  The sun came up over the edge of the wall and the light like the grace of God fell over the priory. The men searching the buildings were lost from sight, but soon they appeared again, heading back toward Nothwulf and Leofric. They moved slow, the weary steps of men who had marched through half the night, then had been keyed up to a fighting pitch, and then let down again.

  Nothwulf closed his eyes. He would hear what they had to say, but it was hardly necessary. He knew already what they had found. Once again, the Northmen were gone.

  Chapter Seven

  [F]rom thy shoulders cast

  what to thee seems irksome:

  let thyself thyself direct…

  The Poetic Edda

  Thorgrim Night Wolf stood on top of the makeshift wall and watched the light slowly spread over the fishing village and the priory beyond. He knew the priory’s name, had heard it spoken a few times, but he knew he would hopelessly bungle it if he tried to say it. It had the name “Christ” in it, he knew.

  English…he thought. The language was similar to his own in many ways. He could hear it when one of those English fellows was speaking to Gudrid, and occasionally he could pick out a word or two, but that was it.

  Harald seemed to be picking up the language quickly, in part, Thorgrim guessed, because it was not so different from his own. The boy went out of his way to speak with the women who had been taken with the priory, the wives of the laborers and craftsmen, though none were at all young or pretty. Harald must have been motivated to learn the language just for the sake of learning it.

  He forced his attention back to the church. It was a half a mile away and just starting to emerge from the gloom of the pre-dawn. They had heard no obvious sign of an attack, just a few noises in the dark that might have been anything. Still, Thorgrim felt certain the men-at-arms had come. He felt it in his bones, in his gut, and he had learned to trust those signs. He had seen them, in the wolf dream.

  “Nothing yet, Night Wolf!” Starri Deathless cried out. He was at Sea Hammer’s masthead, the highest lookout spot around. It was even a few feet higher than normal, since the ship’s bow was still pulled up on the beach, along with six of the other seven vessels.

  It had been a long night, and Thorgrim could feel it in his aching back and sore muscles, and the throbbing in the still unhealed wound in his side. In the wolf dream he had seen the soldiers.

  He had no doubt they were coming to liberate the church and kill the hated heathens, or drive them off. Thorgrim and his men were outnumbered, but that was no great concern. Most of the army sent against them would be farmers, not true warriors with the strength to fight the Northmen.

  The church and its grounds, however, were a concern. Too big, too exposed for his men to defend.

  Two days before, Thorgrim had held his council on the top of the church tower, and they had all agreed with him. The priory was vulnerable and the ships, half a mile away, were undefended.

  Thorgrim looked out over the shabby village clustered against the stone walls of Christchurch as he considered those problems. The fishermen were pulling slowly back to the shore with their catch. Men and women shambled through the streets at their various tasks. Life went on.

  The people had fled when the fleet first pulled up on the shore, which was no surprise. What else would reasonable folk do in the face of the heathens coming from the sea? But it was not long before they started coming back.

  Perhaps they understood, correctly, that the Northmen would not plunder their pathetic hovels because they were hardly worth the bother. That they themselves, worn down from lifetimes of labor, were of little value on the slave market. Maybe they resented those truths. But whatever their thoughts, or lack thereof, a few had returned, and then more, and then when it seemed clear the Northmen were minding their own business, the rest had come as well.

  “We must abandon this place, the church,” Thorgrim announced to his chief men, there on the roof of the church tower.

  “Without the silver Oswin was supposed to bring?” Harald asked.

  “We’re not leaving this village,” Thorgrim corrected. “Just the church. We must build a small ship fort, a longphort, down by the water, where the ships are pulled up. It will be easier to defend, and it will protect the ships. And if we can’t defend it, we can take to the sea.”

  Heads nodded, but faces looked uncertain. “Build a longphort?” Godi asked.

  “Yes,” Thorgrim said. The dam was breached now, the ideas pouring through. “No great thing. We’ll use timbers from these buildings,” he said, gesturing toward the houses spread out past the walls of the church grounds. “Easy enough to pull down. We’ll build a half-moon wall to enclose the ships, enough to cover, say, two hundred feet of the shore. That should do us. The water will protect our backs, and with so short a wall to defend we can hold off any who come.”

  Heads were still nodding, and with a bit more enthusiasm now.

  “There’s another thing,” Thorgrim went on. “Whoever’s leading this army, he must have men watching us. We can’t let them catch us in the middle of building this new defense. We’ll be in a bad place to defend ourselves if they do. We’ll be spread out,
disorganized. It must be done quick, built before they have a chance to react.”

  No heads were nodding anymore. “What are you thinking, Father?” Harald asked, the only one among them who would dare. “How fast do you want it done?”

  “One night,” Thorgrim said. “We make ready today, and then tomorrow, when the sun is down, we build it. And it’s done when the sun comes up.”

  Still no heads were nodding. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking,” Thorgrim said. “I can practically hear it. Our numbers are not so great, and we have two hundred men-at-arms to guard. But they’re not men-at-arms now. They’re laborers. And they’ll labor for us. The priests, too.”

  Now heads began to nod. “We can make them work, sure,” Starri said. “But they’ll malinger as much as they can. You know how these English are. Malingerers.”

  Thorgrim did not in fact know these English—he had been in Engla-land for just a few weeks, and the time before that had been many years ago. He wondered if Starri actually did know the English any better. He doubted it.

  “It’s a problem, getting forced men to work hard, that’s true,” Thorgrim said. “But they’re not the only ones we have.” He swept his arm in a half circle to indicate the village at their feet. “We have all these men here, and I reckon they’re hard workers. And I reckon we can motivate them quite well.”

  He was right about that, and he was right about what the folk of the village would find most irresistible. Not silver or gold; they had little experience with such things, and if they tried to spend it, anyone in authority would know it had come from the Northmen, the only possible source, other than stealing it themselves. And trading with the Northmen or stealing could cost them their lives.

  But there were other things to be found in the priory. The storehouses were filled with sacks of barley, wheat and rye, barrels of salted fish and pork, cured hams, barrels of ale, onions and carrots, butter, cheese, a bounty of food. Louis explained to Thorgrim that the people around had to pay a sort of tax to the church, and they often paid it in the produce of their farms, and the food in turn fed the people at the priory and the many wealthy travelers who passed through. This, Thorgrim knew, would be far more tempting than gold or silver.

  He took Gudrid and Harald and a small guard and they left the walls of the priory and began spreading the word, telling anyone who stayed around long enough to listen that the priory’s storehouses would be open for all who would come and give a few day’s work. In the course of doing that they met with a few men, old sailors, who could speak the Norse tongue well enough, and they sent them off to further spread the word.

  The villagers, several hundred of them, arrived at the priory gate the next morning. Thorgrim ordered the gates open and the people streamed in, and if any of them were reluctant to enter, the sight of the barrels and sacks of food stacked up on the grounds convinced them. Food was distributed, enough to make their breakfast and to demonstrate that there was indeed food to be had and that the Northmen were willing to give it out.

  The people were still eating when Gellir came hurrying over. Gellir, a man with good eyes and quick wit, had been posted on the wall with instructions to watch for anyone in the town, but to not be seen himself.

  “Lord Thorgrim? Two men, lord, sneaking through the town, trying to not be seen.”

  “Townsfolk? Thieves?” Thorgrim asked.

  “Hard to say, lord, they’re keeping their distance. But they don’t seem like they’re dressed like townsfolk. They might be wearing mail, I can’t see for certain.”

  Thorgrim nodded. Not townsfolk, and not the sort of man who would be sent scouting. The commanders of this approaching army then, who wanted to see for themselves what they faced. Which meant he would have to wait until they were gone before moving ahead with his plans.

  “Keep an eye on them. Let me know if they leave, or if they’re still around when the people here are done with their breakfast.”

  Gellir nodded and left. It was not long before he was back again. “They’re gone, lord. Saw them walk off, and later I could see them riding away.”

  “Good, Gellir, well done,” Thorgrim said. So the commanders had left, no doubt satisfied that nothing of import was going on. Time to get to work.

  The first order of business was collecting up the materials to make the walls. “Logs, beams, planks, whatever can be had,” he told them, using one of the sailors as a translator. “Anything heavy enough that it would take two or three men to carry. Bring it all to the beach where the longships are pulled on shore.”

  Even Thorgrim, who was certain this would work, was surprised at the eagerness with which the local men, and women and children, set to the task assigned. The locals knew, of course, where such material would be found, and they began rounding it up. Others began to tear down houses nearby, houses that might have been abandoned, but more likely, Thorgrim guessed, owned by their fellow townspeople who had not returned with the others. Thorgrim wondered how many minor offenses and long-standing grudges were being avenged as certain houses were pulled down and broken into their component parts.

  By end of day a substantial pile of beams and such had been deposited in a heap on the beach. There the men-at-arms and the priests who had been captured when the priory was taken were encouraged, at spear-point, to begin sorting the lumber out and stacking it neatly in various piles. That was as far as Thorgrim wanted to go in the light of day.

  The two men whom Gellir had seen scouting that morning had left, but Thorgrim assumed that others from the nearby army had been sent to watch, men who were better at hiding themselves. If that was the case, then Thorgrim did not want to make it obvious what they were up to. They might be collecting wood to repair their ships or build new ones, or getting rollers to haul the vessels further out, or to build a shelter of some sort. Uncertainty would buy them time, but if their enemy knew what they were about, and if they had any competence at all, then they would attack before he and his men were ready.

  The Northmen returned to the priory with the villagers who were herded warily in through the main gate. Once inside, the captive men-at-arms were made to distribute more food to them. Thorgrim climbed up on the back of a wagon and spoke to them, and the sailor translated.

  “You did good work today, and you’ll be paid. Some of it now, and the rest when the work is done. You’ve already seen the fine food and ale that’s to be had here. More to come.”

  The villagers watched in silence as he spoke, but he could see they were not afraid, and that he had given them enough food already that they believed what he said, so he went on.

  “But hear this,” Thorgrim continued. “We have little time to do what we need to do. In fact, it must all be done by sunrise tomorrow. So eat your fill, and then rest yourselves, and then when it’s fully dark we’ll set to work again. Oh, and you must remain within the walls of the priory until we’re done.”

  The villagers looked less pleased about this, but Thorgrim figured that they would understand that getting more food meant cooperating, and there was not much they could do to resist anyway. So, in the way of folk who had always lived lives that were not entirely their own, they accepted their fate and found places to bed down.

  Thorgrim’s reasons for keeping the folk there were threefold. Keeping the townsfolk penned in the monastery would reduce the chance of word getting back to whoever commanded the army coming for them, and it would make it much easier to assemble them for the night’s work. And if the enemy did attack in the night, several hundred terrified villagers filling the grounds would create enough confusion that Thorgrim and his men could get clean away.

  Once all was settled, Thorgrim went wearily off to the small house by the church that he had taken for his own, hoping for a few hours rest before a long and tiring night. A candle was burning on the table and giving off enough light in the dark interior that he could just see the pile of furs that covered his bed.

  He had given word that all should rest and he had exp
ected to see Failend there, in their bed or near it, but she was not. He took off his sword and lay down on top of the furs. He wondered if Failend would come and take her rest with him. She had not been in his bed the night before, either. He had seen her that day, working with the rest, standing guard over the prisoners, but he had been too busy to speak with her. He wondered where she was, if her absence had any significance, but before he could think much more on it he was asleep.

  It was dark when he woke sometime later. Groggy with sleep, it took him a moment to realize someone was knocking on the door. He reached over and laid his hand on Iron-tooth’s hilt and thought, Murderers don’t knock, you fool.

  “Come,” he called and the door opened and there was light enough from the still-burning candle for him to recognize Harald’s shape.

  “Father?”

  “Yes, Harald, what is it?” Thorgrim groaned and propped himself on his elbow.

  “Sun’s just set. We were expecting the scouts back before dark, but they never arrived.”

  “Who are the scouts?”

  “Vandrad from Blood Hawk’s crew was one. The other was one of Jorund’s men I don’t know well.”

  “Humph,” Thorgrim said. “Vandrad’s a good man. If he didn’t return, that’s an ill sign.” If Vandrad didn’t return then it was likely because he and the other man had been taken. That, and the appearance of the two men who had been scouting the village earlier, probably meant the enemy was closing in fast.

  He stood and said, “Let’s get food and ale out to the folk sleeping on the grounds out there, and the prisoners as well. Just bread and cold meat. No time for anything more. Then we get to work.”

  The grounds of the priory were quiet and dark when Thorgrim left his quarters and walked over toward the mountain of barrels of meat and ale and sacks of grain, where a half dozen of his men stood guard. The quiet did not last long. With a few words Thorgrim had his men moving among the sleeping townsfolk and the prisoners, rousing them, getting them on their feet. They were not harsh about it, but they were not particularly considerate, either. There was much work to do, and Thorgrim’s men at least understood that their lives might depend on getting it done.