Food and ale were served out, but the people were given little time to eat before the gates were open and the small army of laborers, willing and otherwise, marched down to the waterfront, where they had earlier stacked the beams and logs and such. Starri Deathless and a few others were sent in the other direction, out into the deserted village to see what visitors, if any, arrived in the night.
Thorgrim Night Wolf was no stranger to building fortifications. He had taken part in the construction of many. Some had worked, some had failed, but he had learned a lesson from each of them. And he knew what he wanted now.
He gathered Godi and Harald and Gudrid, Jorund and Halldor and Asmund to him. “You’ll each of you take a section of the wall and oversee its building,” he said. “The material is mostly sorted out, but we’ll see that it’s where it should be.”
The others nodded as he spoke. He had already explained, in some detail, how he wanted this work done, and now it was only a matter of doing it.
From end to end the wall would cover two hundred feet of the shoreline, and bow inland in a near half-circle. The timbers would be set in a zigzag pattern, with one length of logs and beams meeting the next at a near right angle, the ends of the two stacked alternately one on top of the other so that each of the sections would support the next. Built with substantial baulks of wood, Thorgrim knew it would be strong enough to hold an enemy back when defended by a solid line of spears, axes, swords and arrows.
They worked for hours in the dark: Northmen and Englishmen and grumbling, angry men-at-arms. Layer by layer the walls rose up from the soft earth, irregular and ugly, but strong enough to do what they needed them to do. It was brutal work and would have taken considerable time if they did not have so great a hoard of men at work.
As it was, the night was less than half over when the wall stood six feet tall along its whole length, with timbers laid along the perimeter inside on which Thorgrim’s warriors could stand and fight. All the leftover logs, and the branches and other detritus were strewn around the approaches to hinder any attempt to rush the walls.
Thorgrim and his chief men walked the length of the fortification and Thorgrim inspected it and saw it was good. He ordered the townspeople herded back into the priory where the last of the food was distributed. Then the tired folk were allowed to return to their homes, carrying sacks and rolling barrels, their pay for a hard night’s work.
The English men-at-arms and priests, who had been demoted to unwilling laborers, were crammed aboard Blood Hawk and the ship anchored one hundred feet off the beach. The anchor cable was rigged in such a way that it could not be untied, only cut, and the prisoners had no means of doing that. If any of them thought they could swim to freedom Thorgrim was happy to let them try, but he did not think that many would.
Starri and the other scouts returned and they reported that there had been no enemy that they could see, but Thorgrim was certain they would come. He posted guards on the walls and sent the rest to sleep. He himself paced for a while, then sat on a barrel of salted fish. Later, as dawn approached, he climbed up on the wall himself. He looked behind him, scanning the grounds of the longphort, and he gave a half smile at what they had accomplished in one night.
The sky to the east grew lighter and Starri Deathless scrambled up Sea Hammer’s shrouds to the top of the mast where he might get the most advantageous view. “Nothing yet, Night Wolf!” he cried out once he was settled. Thorgrim nodded. He knew they would come.
And then they did. The sun was still below the horizon, the church still all but lost in the dark, when Thorgrim heard a sound. It was not clear what the sound was—a shield dropped as a man scaled the wall, something overturned by warriors stumbling around—but Thorgrim heard it, and in the same instant Starri cried out, “There they are! Ha! The sneaking dogs, they’ve gone over the wall!”
Thorgrim could not imagine how Starri could see them in that light, and he wondered if he really could, but Starri’s eyesight had often proved more than surprising. Men who had been sleeping behind the longphort’s walls stirred and stood and every ear was cocked toward the priory, but it was too far for anyone to hear anything over the buzz of insects and the lap of water on the beach.
So they peered over the wall and they waited. Soon enough the sun broke over the horizon and the church and the tower and the wall and the sorry little village were all lit up golden and looked almost magical in that light. And even Thorgrim could see them now.
The English were standing on the low wall surrounding the church. Thorgrim imagined they were staring off at the longphort, something that had not been there when the sun set the day before, and cursing an enemy who had slipped away from them.
Harald and Godi were flanking Thorgrim on the wall and the three of them looked out toward the church. “You recall, at that first village we landed at, right after the storm?” Thorgrim asked. “There was an army there that came to drive us off.”
“We sailed in the dark,” Harald said. “Left them scratching their asses when the sun came up.”
“Exactly,” Thorgrim said. “I wonder if this is the same army, come to fight us again.”
Godi chuckled. “If so, they’re cursing us up and down now.”
They watched for a while more, but there did not seem to be much happening at the church. “So, what now, Father?” Harald asked.
“We wait,” Thorgrim said. “We wait to see what these bastards bring us. Tribute, battle, we’ll take either one.”
Chapter Eight
Now let us reckon
up the ancient families,
and the kin's
of exalted men
The Poetic Edda
There were ten men in attendance, and they listened with polite and at times genuine attention, but Odd still had the notion that they had come mostly for the food and drink. They were seated in Odd’s hall, a fire of moderate size burning in the hearth and torches throwing their light over the big space. Food was spread out before them, mostly the remains of the more popular fare: pork and mutton, vegetables from the first harvest, white bread and butter. Servants darted back and forth, refilling cups with mead.
Odd had started talking as the eating began to taper off, figuring no one was going to listen to him until they had had their fill. Now he was getting to the end of what he wished to say, the important point.
“King Halfdan does not want my father’s farm because he needs another farm or more land or taxes or any such thing. He wants it to prove that he can take it. And he wants it to further enrich himself. And no doubt give it as a gift to the man who can do him the most good.”
The ten nodded, nearly in unison. Odd never doubted they would believe him. He was not so sure they would agree with him on what needed to be done.
They were his nearest neighbors, though spread out as they were it had taken a day and a half to get word of this feast to all of them, and then another day for them all to gather here. They were the hauldar, the most prosperous of the men who owned land scattered around Fevic and Vik, holders of the largest tracts, and their status was well above that of the general yeoman farmers.
Though all had farms that were substantial, they varied in size: some respectable if not terribly impressive, and some larger even than Odd’s own farm in the size of their fields, the number of head of cattle, the production of ale and mead and butter and cheese, ironwork and woodwork.
None had farms as grand as Thorgrim’s.
“Halfdan is ambitious, there’s no doubt on that score,” said the man on Odd’s right hand. His name was Amundi Thorsteinsson and his property, perhaps the largest of all those there, actually shared a boundary with Thorgrim’s. He was near Thorgrim’s age and the two men were friends and had been for many years. They had gone a’viking together in the younger days, before they had given that life up and turned to the less brutal work of farming. But Amundi was also a clever and practical man, and when he spoke, everyone listened.
“He’s a powerful man
, is Halfdan,” Amundi continued. “But I’ve known him to be fair as well. Thorgrim did not owe taxes?”
“He did not,” Odd said. “I have kept the farm running, as you know, and I’ve paid Halfdan everything that he was due. Just as you all have paid your share.”
Heads nodded once again. Everyone there paid Halfdan the Black, King of Agder, what they owed him, an amount which Halfdan himself set. In exchange, Halfdan pretty much left everyone alone, and did not much interfere with what the people of Agder were doing. On occasion the king made a tour of his kingdom, forcing each of the jarls and wealthy landowners to host an expensive banquet in his honor and house the royal procession for as long as they wished to stay, but only rarely.
But that could be changing, and every man there knew it.
“Don’t want to upset anyone here,” said the man halfway down on Odd’s left, looking at Odd as he spoke. He was Ulfkel Ospaksson who owned a small farm to the north of Odd’s. He was heavy-set—fat, really—and he had consumed more food and drink than any other two men had. But as a young man he had gone a’viking, and it was said he had been an impressive warrior in his day.
Ulfkel took a drink and then continued. “And forgive me for saying this, but Odd, do you have reason to believe that your father is still alive?”
“I have no reason not to believe it,” Odd said, and he felt himself flair at the question. He did not like to consider that his father might be dead. He did not like to think of Thorgrim and Harald dying in some distant land while he wrestled pigs in Fevik.
But he calmed himself, and added, “I haven’t had word from my father in two years,” which the other men there knew full well to be the case. “And even if he’s dead, Halfdan has no right to take his farm with just a wave of his hand.”
That comment was met with silence around the table. It was a tricky point. Certainly Halfdan did not have the right to take the farm. If Thorgrim was dead, then the farm belonged to Odd. But if Odd inherited the farm, it would make him the biggest and wealthiest landowner in all of Fevik, and most of Agder. Perhaps all of Agder. He knew that not everyone cared to see him thus elevated in an instant.
“Halfdan is taking a lot,” said Vifil, who owned a farm to the south. “His appetite for land grows by the day.”
“It is as bad as Ulfkel’s appetite for meat and ale,” said Amundi, and that drew a laugh and the tension in the hall dissipated.
Odd started in once more. “I’ve lived under Halfdan’s rule all my life,” he said. “He was a friend to my father, a guest in his hall many times. He’s been a guest in my hall, and all of yours. And I won’t fault a man for ambition. But if my land, or my father’s land, becomes the object of his ambition, then it becomes a problem.”
“This problem doesn’t live in Agder alone,” said Thorgeir Herjolfsson, whose farm certainly outstripped Odd’s in land and produce, buildings, servants and slaves. “All of the kings and chiefs, all over, seem to be grabbing more and more power. A man used to be free to do as he wished, now there’s always some king or other trying to put you under his heel.”
“And Halfdan’s among the worst of them,” Vifil offered to more nodding heads.
“When your grandfather, Ornolf the Restless, was jarl here, it was different,” Amundi Thorsteinsson said, turning to Odd. “Halfdan respected him. Even feared him, a bit, I think, because Ornolf was so loved by the people. Halfdan didn’t dare cross him. Now? There’s no jarl here. Who could take Ornolf’s place?” He left the question hanging.
There was muttering around the table. “Very well, what do we do about this problem?” asked another, Ragi Oleifsson, who owned the smallest farm of the lot of them. He, too, had gone a’viking as a younger man and gained much wealth and reputation, though he had lost his left hand in the winning of it. The wealth might have been turned into a more prosperous farm if Ragi had much interest in farming, which he did not.
“We go to see Halfdan. We go as one,” Odd said. “It’s the only way he’ll listen. One man can do nothing, but the most prosperous farmers in this part of the land? He must see we won’t stand for having our farms taken.”
That led to more silence. Odd had thought the point was obvious: if Halfdan was allowed to take one farm, there was nothing to stop him from taking any that he wished. They could only push back if they all pushed together.
But he could see that his ideas were not necessarily universal. Halfdan had been growing more powerful year by year, slowly enough that it had gone unnoticed, and now he was very powerful indeed. But still, he was a threat to Odd alone, not to the others. At least not yet.
“I agree,” Amundi said. “We should go and speak to Halfdan. Let him know that we’re not happy about him taking Thorgrim’s farm. We don’t know if Thorgrim is alive or dead, but it’s only right we presume him to be alive. Tell Halfdan if taxes are owed, then Odd will see them paid.”
At that last he looked over at Odd with a pointed expression. They would help him defend his father’s land, even at the risk of setting him up as the most powerful landowner in the region, but they would do no more. Certainly nothing that would cost them silver, or part of their own farms’ yield.
The others nodded their agreement, with various degrees of enthusiasm.
“Very well,” Odd said. “Well said, Amundi. And thank you all.”
It was a day’s ride to Grømstad, where Halfdan the Black kept his great hall, his chief home, though he had several, but the guests at Odd’s table were not prepared for such a trip, or an audience with the king. Odd knew that.
“You’ll want to send to your farms for men and for your fine clothes and weapons. I know you didn’t wear your best to come see me in my simple home. We’ll have more ale and mead, and then I’ll let you crawl off to your beds, then I’ll send riders out in the morning. I hope we can ride for Grømstad the day after.”
That was agreed from the others, and then the talk turned to weather and crops and the likelihood of a harsh winter, all subjects more agreeable to the farmers there than kings and politics. It took a couple more hours, and considerably more mead, before Odd’s neighbors finally crawled off to their beds, arranged on the raised platforms that ran the length of the walls.
Odd, who had been ready for bed an hour past, stood and made his way to the bed closet that he and Signy shared. He stripped off his clothes and climbed under the covers. He stretched his arm out and Signy shuffled over and lay in the crook of his arm, her head on his chest, as she had done nearly every night since their wedding.
“Well?” Odd asked in a soft voice. During the men’s discussion over dinner, Signy had been sitting inconspicuously off to the side, listening in on the talk.
“They all sound like they’ll stand with you,” Signy said, her voice slightly muffled by Odd’s chest.
“‘Sound?’” Odd asked. “You don’t think they will?” Signy was his wife and his friend. They had known little of each other when they were wed, and it had taken Odd at least a year to fully appreciate how clever and insightful Signy was. But he had at last come to understand, and now she was his most trusted advisor as well.
Signy was quiet as she considered the question. “They’ll stand with you,” she said. “At first, anyway. They said they would ride with you to Grømstad, meet with Halfdan. I don’t think they could refuse.”
“How could they not refuse? Some of them…most of them…are richer and more powerful than I am. Amundi for certain. Amundi wouldn’t feel compelled to go just because I asked it.”
“No…” Signy said. “But they’re not fools. They know Halfdan is trying to consolidate power. He’s taken control of much of the West Agder and he probably wants to push north into Vestfold. They know he’s a danger. But they know that standing by you could be even more dangerous.”
Odd thought about that for a while, but he could not divine the deeper meaning Signy implied. “How do you mean?” he asked.
Signy rolled over and propped herself up on Odd’s chest so th
at she could look in his eyes. There were still torches burning in the hall and light enough leaking into the sleeping closet that Odd could see her face, which was lovely, fine-featured and unlined. Despite the gravity of their conversation he could not resist reaching up and stroking her cheek with his fingertips.
“I don’t know,” Signy said. “I don’t know any more than you, or anyone. Probably less. But I don’t think it’s just taxes that makes Halfdan come after your father’s farm. He would like it, certainly. Who wouldn’t? But even more, I think he doesn’t want you to have it. He doesn’t want you to become the richest man in this part of the country.”
Odd thought about that. “The others, the men here today, they might be jealous if I were to have my farm and my father’s too, but why would Halfdan care?” he asked. “Even with two farms I won’t be as wealthy as he is, nor would I be in five lifetimes.”
“Maybe not as wealthy. But it’s your power he fears.”
At that Odd laughed out loud, a soft but genuine laugh. “My power?” he said. “I have yet to meet the boar who’s my match, but beyond that I have no power.”
“You have more than you think, but you won’t allow yourself to see it,” Signy said. “You’re Odd Thorgrimson. Son of Thorgrim Night Wolf, grandson of Ornolf the Restless and Ulf of the Battle Song, whose sword you carry.”
Odd felt a flush sweep over him at the naming of his bold ancestors and he hoped it was dark enough that Signy could not see it. It made him feel vaguely ill, that such a line should come down to him. Odd Pig-binder. Maybe him alone, if Harald had died in glorious battle, which seemed increasingly likely.
Kings and Pawns Page 8
