Silver Hammer, Golden Cross

by Octavia Randolph

  “Judith was no more courageous,” she muttered, as gently as mother would to babe. Her lips pressed themselves once more to Ashild’s forehead. The voice now, as firm as that kiss, went on. “Wilgot will hear your confession. And hear too, of your valour.”

  Sidroc was now off his horse, and hung his helmet on his saddle-bow. Sigewif had watched the two horsemen dart from behind the dense cover of the yews. Now one turned to her.

  “Jarl Sidroc,” she said. Her steel-coloured eyes had widened.

  He inclined his head to her, as he always had. The years fell away in that simple gesture. She pressed her hands together, made her slight bow. “I thank you for your timely help.”

  He shook his head. “It was Asberg; Asberg and Ashild.”

  The folk of Oundle were drawing near, crowding around them. Sidroc saw cassocked monks gripping spears, and watched them slide those weapons back inside the barrel they had drawn them from. White-faced woman held each other and looked on.

  “That bell,” Sidroc began, his eyes travelling up the squat church tower to the top. “Who thought to ring it deserves a warrior’s share.”

  Ashild scanned those fronting the church. The crowd parted, and one of Oundle’s priests came through it, holding Bova in his arms, whether dead or in a faint could not be known. But the old brewster was there too, at Bova’s head, chafing her brow and speaking to her.

  “Was Bova, dear Abbess,” the woman now said, “Bova who took the bell, as if it were life itself, and made it ring.”

  Sigewif took her novice’s limp hand in her own. Bova’s eyelids began to flutter.

  “We have all played our part, and offer great thanks to God for our deliverance,” said the abbess. She placed Bova’s hand into that of the old nun. “Take her to her cell and keep her warm; I will be with you soon.”

  Asberg spoke now. “We must leave for Four Stones,” he told Sigewif. He made reckoning of who he could spare. “We leave our injured with you, and ten men to help guard you.”

  He looked to Sidroc. They could not know what might await them at Four Stones, or on the way there. Leaving twelve of their number behind was a risk, but Asberg hardly saw how he could leave Oundle with less.

  Sidroc gave a slight gesture, one which conveyed that Asberg still commanded.

  “The dead,” Sigewif said now. The bodies of the two enemy leaders lay at the margin of road and field. Her eyes went from them to those others dotting the broken furrows. “After you have taken what you want, we will give them decent burial.”

  But Sidroc countered this. “We claim the bodies, Abbess,” he told her. “You must leave them to us. They will be justly dealt with.”

  Sigewif’s lips parted, then closed. “As you wish,” she conceded.

  Asberg lifted his hand, gesturing his men to follow. Ashild remained at the side of the abbess. They watched the men from Four Stones and Sidroc and his captain go from body to body. Asberg and Byrgher stopped first at the richest prize, that of the two leaders, and with quick and knowing hands stripped swords, ring-shirts, helmets, knives, purses, and silver arm-rings. Ashild saw Sidroc and his man walk a distance to where a spear stood upright from a dark form. She watched Sidroc pull the spear, and plunge the tip into the soil. Then he knelt down at the side of the body. She brought her eyes back to the ground in front of her, and kept them there.

  Her uncle was before her now, pulling an overturned shield full of glinting metal. “You have share in this,” he told her. His eyes were flashing in joy of his own gain, and in pride of her actions.

  Sidroc was come as well, with weapons-belts and more. “This is yours outright,” he said. “The sword is middling, but the knife is well-wrought.” He had her spear in his hand, and now passed it to her. “And your spear, that made a clean kill. It has tasted blood and will be hungry for more.” There was also a small pouch of worn leather. “His purse.”

  She accepted this mutely, with a nod of her head. The booty was stuffed into the saddle bags of their horses, and the dead Danes slung two each over the backs of those beasts they had captured.

  “We will send word back to you from Four Stones,” Asberg told the abbess. They stood with her looking back at the walls. Her serving folk were already at work, gathering up the fire-stuff the Danes had deposited there as their threat.

  One of the two small casks of oil had fallen and been smashed, darkening the soil with its costly contents, but the second sat upright and untouched. Sigewif eyed the quantity of brushwood and faggots heaped up by the enemy. Her voice was dry, and not without a hint of triumph. “Good of them to have left us so much kindling.”

  Riding back to Four Stones their first stop was just outside the small wood of trees. They passed through it, but then Sidroc, in front with Asberg, reined to a halt. Ashild stayed on her stallion as Sidroc and Asberg hurled the bodies of the dead Danes off the captured horses. Working in threes and fours she watched the warriors of Four Stones clamber up into the ash trees there, pulling up the bodies of the dead, hanging them from the stoutest boughs on either side of the road. Any approaching Oundle would be met by this gruesome party of earlier callers.

  Runulv did not take part in the hanging, but stayed upon his horse and near Ashild, an act for which she was silently grateful. She recalled Runulv from when he had brought Hrald home, and knew Hrald liked him. As Sidroc jumped down from the tree he was in, Runulv asked her a question.

  “He is your father, já?”

  She watched Sidroc straighten up from where he had landed, and his face lift to the man he had left hanging in the ash. The ugliness of the sight made her look away.

  “No,” she told him in Norse. “And yes.”

  When they were done and the men remounted, they spent a moment looking back at their handiwork. Both she and Runulv joined in a final glance. Ash trees were sacred to Odin, and the source of the best spears. These had received the offered burden without complaint.

  “Fair warning to avoid the haunts of Christians,” Sidroc said, for all of them.

  Chapter the Twenty-seventh: Hrald of Four Stones

  FOR the first part of the ride Sidroc remained side-by-side with Asberg. Ashild, riding just behind with Byrgher, heard snatches of their talk. They rode back as they had come, pushing their horses, and after they had stopped to water them Ashild found Sidroc dropping back to ride next her.

  She had her battle-cap once more on her head, and the spear he had pulled from the man she killed in her hand. Of the two Hrald had made for her it was the one she liked better. Now it felt oddly heavier in her hand, and as she rode her eyes often times dropped to the steel point of it, held low and by her stallion’s right shoulder. It cannot be made heavier by that man’s blood, she told herself; I am only weak from having not eaten.

  “That is the shield Hrald used at Tyrsborg,” Sidroc offered, of the disc of wood upon her back. They had ridden some time in silence, and were now passing through open meadowlands.

  She gave a quick nod of her head, but said nothing.

  “You wear a seax,” he said next.

  “It is one of yours. Or rather Hrald’s. He gave it me, from the knife chest in the treasure room.”

  Feeling as dull in body as she did, it took effort to keep her anger at the high pitch she had known when she first recognised him. A seax, she thought, such as you wear. Or Ceric. And you live at your hall Tyrsborg, with his mother. You, who have been away from us so long.

  She turned her head now to look at him.

  “Why did you forsake us?” The sudden tears pricking her eyes could not soften the rage filling her breast, white-hot and painful within her.

  “Forsake you?” His voice held the note of true surprise. “I was captured, at the point of a sword. Six of them.”

  “You could have returned! Mother and Hrald – all of us…”

  But he was shaking his head. “No. I could not.” This was a simple fact, spoken without anger of his own.

&nbs
p; “Why are you back now?”

  He took a breath. “I had to come. Danes landed on Gotland. I spoke to them, learned Guthrum was dead, and that Haesten had marshalled a huge force. I feared Hrald would be – ”

  “Hrald! You feared for Hrald. Hrald, who is now Jarl. Hrald, who as a boy was allowed to come to you, as I longed to.”

  He was quick to protest this last. “You could not make that voyage; the danger was too great.”

  “Not too great for Hrald and Ceric. Only for me.”

  “Ashild. You were a girl. And the man they travelled with – Kilton – he was mad.”

  Yet he saw now, and for the first time, what spending those months with him might have meant to her.

  She was looking straight ahead now, over the creamy mane of her horse’s head, looking at the red ribband of road they followed back to the home she loved, a home she was, as a woman, destined to leave.

  She thought of he who rode next her, living in peace and plenty with Ceric’s mother, and thought too of the new children he had fathered with her, the twinned boy and girl Hrald recalled with such fondness. And she thought of her sister Ealhswith, who had been a toddling child when her father had vanished.

  “Ealhswith has never known you,” she pronounced.

  “I cannot hope for her to recall me,” he allowed, in a mild voice. “But you do.

  “Ashild. I could not live two lives. The Gods drove me far away, and I chose to stay, believing that it was my Doom to cross their will for me. But I did grieve for you. Know that if I had come back, I would have had to face Kilton here.” He paused a moment. “It might have meant war.”

  She searched for more to challenge him with. “Why is your Doom any different now?”

  “It is not,” he answered, his voice low. “I cross the will of the Gods to be here.”

  He thought of what he could add to this, and looking at her, spotted the hammer of Thor around her neck. She would not be wearing it now unless it held meaning, beyond it having been that of Yrling. His next words carried his conviction with them.

  “The Gods move in you, too, Ashild,” he told her.

  Hrald and all else at Four Stones were expecting news, from Oundle, points South, or West. What he did not expect was one of his own riders, posted to the North, coming to him to say that Thorfast and his brother Haward were on the march with their combined halls, heading for Four Stones with near two hundred men.

  They were not far behind, and Hrald and Jari must make quick decision as to the meaning of the visit. To summon the villagers into the hall yards seemed untoward and could lead to panic; to begin to assemble his men to ride out and meet him might trigger aggression where none was intended.

  In the end they let the village be, but alerted all within the walls. They had fifty men in the vale of horses, guarding that treasure, and with Asberg’s fifty gone to Oundle they had a hundred men remaining.

  “’Tis a hot-head; I always knew it,” Burginde grumbled. “Them that act so cool are hot beneath.”

  Ælfwyn turned to her as they crossed the floor of the hall. “We do not know that of Thorfast, nurse,” she returned, trying to assure herself as much as Burginde.

  They had just left Hrald and Jari, who remained in the treasure room. Her son had summoned her down from her weaving with the news, but had been able to give her scant comfort as to the meaning of it. She did not know if she should be preparing welcome in the kitchen yard, or gather her daughter and sisters and warn them of danger. At any rate, she must go up and speak to them, trying to mask her own concern.

  The palisade wall was well-stocked with watch-men its entire length, and it was not long before alerting whistles were sounded from over the section behind the kitchen yard. The Lady of Four Stones came down, Burginde at her side, to meet her guests.

  Hrald was wearing his sword and knife, and Jari the same. Gunnulf was about the yard, and he stood with his brother. Ten or more of the warriors who sat at table with Hrald stood behind them. The rest stood in clusters of ten or twelve, eyeing the small party ready to step outside the gates. All within the yard, whether warriors, workmen, or serving folk, stopped in what they were doing, and waited.

  They could hear the horses come, riding the perimeter of the walls, and the jangling of bridle metal and weaponry when the lead men stopped. Hrald signaled the gates be opened. He stepped out. Jari was at one side, and his mother and Burginde at the other. A score of his best men filled the space behind him.

  Thorfast was there, sitting on a black stallion, his younger brother Haward next him on a bay of equal worth. They were fully armed as if for imminent battle.

  “Thorfast,” said Hrald. He was making no move to dismount.

  Thorfast’s eyes moved behind the openings of his helmet, looking at the men and women who stood off to one side.

  What he said bore the note of near unbearable boldness.

  “Ride with me now to join Haesten, or be crushed.”

  It was challenge so sudden and unyielding that every ear it fell upon rang with it. Ælfwyn could not stop the gasp that issued from her throat. Her hand went to the pale skin there, and Burginde’s to her own mouth. Yet both women felt a surge of anger at the wildness of this threat.

  “Haesten!” answered Hrald. “What does he offer that is not already yours?”

  “The chance to keep what is mine.”

  Hrald took a step nearer to where Thorfast’s horse stood shaking its mane.

  “I will not ride with you,” he said, his voice as steady as the hand that now rested on his sword hilt. “I will not join Haesten. I will not break the Peace.”

  “I want you as friend, not foe,” Thorfast answered.

  “You are the one to decide that,” Hrald said. “I am unchanged. I will not break what my father and your uncle made.”

  “You are a fool, and you are young,” Thorfast said, glaring down at him. “Turcesig and Four Stones would have been joined long ago, if not for your delay. You cannot even control your sister. How do you think you will hold onto your hall.” He was turning his head now, as if he looked again for she who was missing.

  “Join with me now,” he ordered. “When we return, I will wed Ashild.”

  “I will not take arms against Ælfred, or any who uphold the Peace. And you will not wed Ashild unless she wants you.”

  The fury Thorfast felt thrilled through his voice. “Then fight me now. Here. The men of Turcesig against that of Four Stones. Let it be decided now.”

  Hrald’s chief men had closed up behind him during this, and now an answering hoot was sounded from amongst them.

  Thorfast went on. “It will serve as practice for when we face Wessex. Our men will fight line to line, Saxon-style.”

  Hrald was looking at him in disbelief at the slaughter he threatened. He shook his head in wonder.

  It only angered Thorfast more. “You will fight me, or never leave these walls alive,” he claimed.

  “I would never throw my men away as you would,” Hrald returned.

  He found himself looking up, as if for answer. “No. Hand to hand, three of us, three of you. You and your two best men. Me, and mine.”

  Thorfast looked struck by this idea, then seized on it. “Three on three, to decide all.”

  Now Hrald would sum the challenge. “The men, the hall, whatever lies within is forfeit, to whoever wins.”

  “Name your men,” Thorfast said next.

  Asberg and Jari, Hrald thought at once; two of the strongest and ablest warriors at Four Stones; and one of them kin. But Asberg was not here, and there was no knowing when he would return from Oundle. Hrald could not have his uncle at his side.

  He was aware that Jari had taken a stride forward.

  “Me, of course,” he assured Hrald. The one who had served as his body-guard since Hrald’s boyhood was again ready to die for him.

  Hrald gave the slightest of nods. Jari had been his most constant sparring par
tner, and now would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Other of his men were crowding forward, some in haste, others with deliberate step. Asberg’s oldest boy Ulf was one.

  It was Gunnulf who broke through. His face and voice were more earnest than Hrald had ever known. “I must be your third, Hrald. No fighter is as strong as Jari, but you need speed as well. Let me take your other side.”

  Jari stared at his younger brother, as if sizing him up. “Já, Hrald. Gunnulf as your third. The two brothers to flank you.”

  Not all behind him agreed, Hrald saw that. Gunnulf was only a little older than he, and though quick with his sword, more known for his bold jests and pranks. Others of his men extended their hands to Hrald, asking to be named. Behind them he saw Onund, looking with despair at Gunnulf. But Gunnulf was looking back at Hrald and Jari.

  “The two brothers,” Hrald repeated. He nodded at them both, these two who committed to fighting to the death with him.

  He did not say more, for coming down the pounded clay road was a small troop of horsemen, riding at speed.

  It was well past noon when they approached Four Stones. They had met no one on the road, save for the three patrols posted by Hrald, who had nothing to report from the South. Some of the men so posted were too young to have good remembrance of Sidroc, but those who did greeted him with the same awed surprise that Asberg had shown. They left each patrol more wary than they had found them, telling of the body of Danes who had made attempt on Oundle, and warning of more to follow.

  The road to Four Stones curved up a slight incline, one that all the riders knew well, but that hid the full extent of the landscape just around the keep. Thus it was with a shock that the troop approaching saw an army of men before the walls.

  They stopped, their horses jigging and prancing in the suddenness of their reins being pulled.

  “What –” breathed Sidroc. Ashild was now between him and Asberg, in the first rank. Asberg had grunted, and was trying to control the head of his stallion, who lifted his front legs in protest at the hard stop. Ashild’s mouth had opened, and she stared first at the army of men, then at her uncle.