Oathbreaker (The King's Hounds series)

by Martin Jensen

  “These men were counting on our protection,” Simon said indignantly.

  “If you wanted me to protect them instead of you,” Wulfgar stated calmly, “you should have ordered my men to march alongside them and not in a closed formation around you.”

  “Quite right,” Prior Edmund chimed in. “What about the outlaws?”

  “We got them all,” Wulfgar said, running his hand through his hair. “Would you like us to bury the dead merchant here?”

  Edmund nodded. “Bury him, but hang the outlaws up.”

  Wulfgar raised his hand to summon one of his men, whom he instructed to oversee the digging of a grave. Then Wulfgar asked me to come with him.

  “I’ll be right there,” I said. Winston had dismounted and had subtly caught my attention as he pulled his two animals to the side of the road.

  I stepped over to him, taking care to make sure the mare stood between Atheling and me, and Winston gave me a questioning look.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, “but I’m on my way to find out if this was anything other than a band of outlaws on the lookout for loot.”

  “Who could have known why we’re here?” Winston mumbled.

  “No one, I assume,” I responded with a shrug. “I doubt Godskalk would have let anyone else in on the king’s secret request.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “There is one thing that suggests I am,” I said.

  Winston bit his lip.

  “True,” he said nodding. “The attackers did go right for the peddlers.”

  I nodded in agreement and rushed to catch up with Wulfgar. He had assigned a group of spearmen to gather the dead outlaws. By the time I reached him, a pile of six shabbily dressed bodies lay in front of him, and two more were quickly tossed onto the heap of their dead companions.

  I walked around the pile, studying the bodies. They were dirty, with uncut hair and tattered, threadbare clothes. Only one of them wore shoes. Two of them didn’t even have shirts and had made do with sacks with holes cut out for their head and arms.

  Wulfgar watched me as I reluctantly leaned over and passed my hands over each of the bodies.

  “I’m looking for clues about who they were,” I explained.

  He stood there waiting until I finished and wiped my hands in the grass.

  “Nothing,” I announced.

  “Humph. What did you expect?”

  I couldn’t very well say I was afraid I would find evidence that they’d been sent by Jarl Leofwine.

  “Maybe a coin—”

  Wulfgar laughed aloud.

  “If any of these asses had had a coin, the others would have killed him to get their fingers on it.”

  He was right. These were not the housecarls of some powerful jarl, hunting down their master’s enemies; this was a flock of desperate outlaws, the type the whole land was crawling with. They were Viking soldiers whose masters had no further need for them now that Cnut was on the throne, or they were Saxon soldiers whose thanes had fallen in battle—or been assassinated on the king’s orders. Now they all roamed the countryside without a bread-giver, living off what they could rob from the weak and powerless.

  Even their weapons indicated this. A lone rusty sword lay next to the pile of bodies along with three axes, whose edges hadn’t been sharpened in a long time, and four spears, only one of which still had its shaft intact.

  They had been desperate, daring to attack a group protected—even if only indirectly—by a dozen spearmen.

  The prior and subprior were already at the freshly dug grave when Wulfgar and I reached it. Winston and a couple of peddlers were standing with them. Two spearmen lowered the dead merchant’s body in, and Prior Edmund said a prayer. Then some farmers in threadbare clothes filled in the grave, and we all turned away.

  “What about the dead man’s possessions?” Simon asked.

  “We have divided them among ourselves,” grunted one of the peddlers, a fat man with a red nose and a thin wreath of hair plastered to his pate.

  “One-third must be given to the poor,” Simon said, his voice not welcoming any opposition. The other peddlers nodded, although I had my doubts that even a quarter penny would find its way to the riffraff sitting on the grass behind us.

  They didn’t get to sit for very long, because the spearmen rounded up the men and boys and forced them to grab hold of the robbers’ bodies, tie nooses around their torsos under their arms, and hang the bodies from the tallest trees lining the road, to scare and serve as a warning to anyone else similarly inclined.

  By the time they were done, the sun was getting low in the west, and Prior Edmund ordered everyone—even the weakest of the rabble—to keep a swift pace since he wanted to reach the fortification guarding the crossing over the River Tove by sundown. Faced with the choice of a quick march or spending the night in the dark forest alone, everyone was happy to comply.

  The order of the procession hadn’t changed. The spearmen fell in again behind Winston and me; maybe the monks felt safe from any further attacks. They probably thought it unlikely that two bands of outlaws would be roving within the same small area.

  Winston nodded his acknowledgment of my report that common roadway robbers had committed the attack. He rode along in silence by my side, preoccupied with the obstinate Atheling. The mule apparently thought that if you stopped twice in one day, the second time was it. As a result, Atheling was extremely unwilling to move on. He staggered along the track in a half-sideways trudge and impeded the progress of the spearmen and everyone else behind us.

  Eventually it got to be too much for the spearman at Atheling’s tail, a bony young man with big ears. He lowered his spear, positioned the tip against the beast’s rump, and poked.

  Atheling brayed bitterly and flashed the whites of his eyes but started moving forward close to his normal speed, in a bumpy walking gait.

  I thought about the mute man.

  That morning I had wondered if he had a sword on his back, assuming he was one of so many soldiers who had lost their employers or their able-bodiedness and had been forced to live off handouts.

  But now I knew not only that he had been carrying a sword, but that he knew how to wield it. He was a true swordsman, thus of a certain rank and presumably also noble-born. And if he’d been living on handouts, they had been generous; the strength in his arm proved that. His final feint—fooling the scum-pot thief he was fighting into striking downward with his ax and thus leaving his neck exposed—was not the move of an inexperienced swordfighter.

  Now I had also beheaded the first outlaw I attacked. But I was on horseback, and the animal’s forward thrust combined with my downward swing from above had added strength to my blow, so my sword sliced hard enough to sever the head from the body.

  By contrast, the tongueless man had been fighting on foot. And yet he still had the strength to cut so deeply into the thief’s neck that his sword plowed through the vertebrae, beheading the thief as he toppled over.

  What had cost the man his tongue? What crime had he committed? I knew of only two for which a man would forfeit his tongue: spreading malicious gossip about the king or those closest to him, and blaspheming either the Lord or His Holiness the Pope.

  But I had never heard of Cnut actually having a man’s tongue cut out—not that the king refrained from abusing those who, in his opinion, deserved it, but Cnut mostly stuck to having noses cut off and eyes gouged out.

  And these days, what with the country inundated with newly arrived heathen Vikings, you’d be hard-pressed to find a clergyman who would dare insist on having someone’s tongue ripped out for blasphemy, for fear of retribution.

  The fortification came into view just as I concluded that every man was entitled to his secrets. Nonetheless, I decided to keep a vigilant eye on the mute man. And in the meantime, I would rejoice that our procession included an experienced swordsman who had not hesitated to throw himself into the fray in our defense.

  Chapter 8

 
Towcester was a stone-walled, fortified burgh, which sat on a small hillock just far enough from the river that it wouldn’t flood during the spring thaw. From that elevation, there was an extensive view up and down Watling Street, the dividing line between Wessex to the south and the Danelaw to the north. Inside the town walls was a crooked stone hall, the west side of which had settled somewhat. It was surrounded by three post-and-plank buildings that housed the garrison.

  A few farmers had built homes outside the town walls, although none of the homes were actually big enough to merit being called farms. I could tell from the inhabitants’ clothing, and their posture as we rode by, that not long ago they had been in the same lot as the wayfarers in our procession.

  The jarl had put a one-eyed man in charge of defending the river ford. He had a gray beard, but sturdy shoulders and a booming voice. The guards on duty at the gate must have woken him up, judging from the way he yawned and busily scratched the gray chest hair jutting out of the neck band of his leather tunic as we approached. But he still managed to bid us a resounding welcome as we rode past him through the gate and came to a stop. He jogged—or rather, given his stature and heft—jiggled over to Prior Edmund’s mule and steadied the stirrup so the prior could dismount.

  Three guards rushed over and took Edmund’s and Simon’s mules, Winston’s horse, and Atheling. They then led the animals, with Wulfgar and me leading ours in tow, back outside the gate and to a pen down by the river.

  By the time we returned, the gray-bearded man had already led his guests into the hall. Wulfgar, who hadn’t taken his sword belt off since the attack, made sure his men understood that they were allowed to accept the tankards offered to them so long as they also understood they would be on watch duty that night along with the local guards. Then he and I ducked through the low door and joined the others in the murky hall.

  It was dark and stuffy, the smell of moldering straw mixing with the sour smoke wafting up from the hearth in the middle of the room.

  A couple of stooped slaves scurried over and handed each of us a tankard of ale. I drank thirstily and found the ale quite good—to my amazement. Wulfgar evidently shared my opinion, since I heard him smack his lips in satisfaction.

  A long bench ran along the far wall opposite the door. Edmund, Simon, and Winston were seated on it, while the man with the gray beard sat in a chair reminiscent of a throne, although its lack of armrests suggested it was the chair of a lowborn man.

  “Yes, we’ve had our hands full dealing with those outlaws,” the old man was saying. He didn’t seem to notice Wulfgar’s and my arrival, preoccupied as he was with his finer guests. “It’s all heath and forest from here to Brackley, so there are plenty of hiding holes for those kinds of wrongdoers. As recently as last week, we rode out to give them their just deserts, but they managed to ambush us yet again.”

  Edmund’s expression made clear that he didn’t think tricking this aging soldier would be that hard, but he didn’t say anything.

  “You should be glad that the road south is safe now,” Simon said instead.

  “Definitely, definitely,” the old man assured him, only now noticing Wulfgar and me standing in the middle of the room. “Welcome to you, soldiers,” he said. “I am Humbert, the jarl’s man here.”

  Wulfgar and I introduced ourselves.

  “If you’d like to share the long bench tonight with the holy men, you are most welcome,” the old man said, nodding graciously to us and gesturing for the slaves to fetch us more ale.

  Wulfgar accepted the drink, but declined the offer of shelter for the night, saying that he slept best with his men. I thought this would be a good opportunity to spend some time alone with Wulfgar and try to find out if he knew what the king had sent us north to learn, so I wasted no time explaining I preferred to sleep with my peers as well. Winston gave me an odd look and then made a face, revealing something I had never seen in him the whole time I’d known him: jealousy. No doubt he, too, would have preferred not to spend the night in the stuffy hall.

  I grinned at him, handed my empty tankard to a slave, and made my way out by myself to the fortification’s close, where I gratefully inhaled the evening air for a bit. Then I set off after Wulfgar, who was heading straight for his men.

  It didn’t take him long to assign them shifts for the night, but it took him slightly longer to impress upon them that their job was to assist the local guards, and that if any of them were found drunk, he would face Wulfgar’s wrath. I could tell that this information was not new to them, nor apparently was it an empty threat.

  Wulfgar then turned to me.

  “I could easily eat half a hog. Would you like the other half?” he asked me.

  “As far as I can see, there aren’t any cooking fires burning,” I said, although my hunger pangs had been troubling me for a long time.

  “Damn,” Wulfgar said, looking around. “You’re right. Hey,” he said to one of the local guardsmen, “don’t you guys here by the river ever eat?”

  “Of course,” the guard replied, laughing. But he said Humbert, who lacked a woman of his own, had forbidden his men from having any women around to cook. So instead the fortification had an arrangement with the farmers outside the wall, who kept them in food and drink. It was an arrangement that the farmers, Humbert, and his men were all happy with.

  I pondered how you could get away with requiring men who lived the boring lives of guardsmen in an outpost like this to forgo female companionship. Wulfgar and I walked back outside the gate and down toward the nearest farmhouse, where, sure enough, we found a farmer who assured us his wife would have our meal ready shortly. Unfortunately he couldn’t provide a whole pig, he explained, chuckling at Wulfgar’s request, but our bellies would be filled if we came back an hour later.

  While we waited, we strolled through the fields lining the river and made sure the rest of the wayfarers from our procession had gotten their camps set up. We knew they would sound the alarm at the slightest provocation, since none of us believed we’d gotten rid of all the outlaws in the woods earlier.

  Wulfgar sternly ordered two peddlers who had built their fire too close to one of the haystacks dotting the fields along the river to douse it. We listened to a family heatedly argue with two poor beggars afflicted with favus or some similar skin disease. The father claimed the men had stolen a loaf of bread intended for his children. The beggars ran off when Wulfgar decided to intervene, and we laughed when one of them tripped over a pair of legs sticking out from beneath a wagon and fell face first.

  The owner of the legs grunted unintelligibly, and when I bent over I saw why. It was the tongueless man. He’d found himself a place to sleep where he’d be sheltered from the dew that would cover the fields by morning.

  I bid him good night and followed Wulfgar, who walked with more purpose now, back toward our promised meal.

  The farmer had not lied. A linen cloth was spread on the grass, set with bread, boiled pork shank, smoked ham, a roasted chicken, and a round cask of ale. We sat down and dug in. The food was delicious. These farmers may not have been living out here around the fortification for very long, but their women were not novice cooks—and I enjoyed the best meal I’d had since Alfilda’s tavern.

  Wulfgar and I didn’t say much as we chewed our meat and bread. Only after we had both comfortably stretched out our legs and freshly filled our tankards did I belch and give Wulfgar a satisfied smile.

  “Now that was a meal fit for a nobleman,” I said.

  “Close to it,” he said, putting his hand on his stomach.

  “And tomorrow,” I said, pointing north, “we’ll be in the Danelaw.”

  Wulfgar glanced up and down Watling Street. It was deserted, since the travelers who could afford to were enjoying an evening ale somewhere, and those who couldn’t knew better than to be out on a well-traveled roadway as darkness settled in.

  “Yes,” Wulfgar said, belching into the back of his hand. “Although now that the Danes rule the entire lan
d, I suppose it matters less, in the northerners’ eyes, whether we’re Saxons, Danes, or Angles.”

  I looked at him. His light-brown hair was braided down his back, and he wore a mustache that hung down on either side of his mouth in the Saxon fashion.

  “You’re Saxon,” I said.

  “My grandmother was Danish,” he responded with a nod.

  Ah, that explained his unusual dialect.

  “And your father?”

  “Saxon, farmer, soldier,” he said with a shrug.

  “You’re from the north?” I asked.

  He nodded, gesturing vaguely with his chin over the river.

  “And you would rather serve as a prior’s housecarl than be a farmer like your father?”

  He frowned at me, and I raised my shoulders in an apologetic gesture.

  “Not that it’s any of my business,” I added.

  “Humph. Curiosity is the mother of knowledge,” he said. Then he smiled and held out his hand to me. “Was this made to hold the handle of a plow?”

  His hand was fairly narrow, strong, and sinewy. He was right. It was more suited to a spear shaft or a sword hilt than a plow.

  “I suppose I would have become a farmer if I had been the elder brother,” Wulfgar said. “But as it was, my brother got the farm, and I became a spearman—most recently for the monks.”

  “I thought everyone inherited equal parts up north,” I said. That’s what I’d always heard, at least. Where I came from in the south, the eldest son inherited everything but had to buy himself free of the younger brothers. I had thought that in the Danelaw all the land was divided equally between the sons.

  “We do,” he said. “Unless one of the sons would rather swing a sword than shear sheep.”

  Ah. I understood. He let his brother buy him out of his inheritance because he wanted to be a soldier.

  “And you?” Wulfgar asked me.

  I told him briefly about my estate back home, about my father and my brother, Harding, who had both fallen at the Battle of Assandun, and about how I had subsequently lost my estate to a pack of Viking assholes.