If he would yield he would ask for it now. But Odinkar would not ask, and Jari would not have granted this boon to Gunnulf’s killer. They went on for two blows more. On the third Jari got in at the hilt, carrying off the sword and several of the man’s fingers with it. As Odinkar stumbled Jari drove a final time, into the torso beneath the heart. With his power behind it, the ring-tunic crushed and broke, rivets sundered apart, useless against a driven sword-point. Odinkar dropped, and Jari placed his booted foot on his back and drove his sword a second time, in between the shoulder blades.
Hrald, trading blows with Thorfast, had seen all this; it had taken place with the lightning speed of a few rushed heartbeats. Gunnulf was dead, but Jari had killed both Gnupa and Odinkar. Thorfast saw it too. All that truly mattered was if Hrald fell.
For an instant Hrald’s eyes lifted to the edges of the duelling ground. On one side stood Haward, almost at the edge of the hazel boundary, leaning anxiously forward and towards his brother. Thorfast’s men were several paces behind him, rigidly upright, hands on weapons-belts as they watched.
Hrald’s gaze returned. He blinked at the three bodies tumbled on the ground. Gunnulf was dead, his helmet rolled off, his long yellow hair fallen around him.
My friend is dead, Hrald inwardly repeated. Salute, and move on. This is what I have been taught. I have my own task: this man before me wants to kill me; I must kill him first. It was what Asberg and Jari and his own father had always told him, to stay alive you must kill him first.
For the first time Hrald felt fear. He had been fighting Thorfast, fending off his blows, bringing his training to bear, the fruits of all the sparring he had done. When he had been forced near the hazel wands he had known a thrill of recognition: he would be forfeit if he stepped outside. But now faced with the baldness of the fact that he must kill Thorfast to himself live, he felt fear.
He raised his chin a moment across the field, to where his father stood. He knew all eyes were upon him in this final contest, but those he sought were Sidroc’s. He was there, taller than any other man, his eyes hooded in their keenness as they stared back at his son.
He recalled Sidroc telling him of when he was young, in one of his first battles, of how he took fright and dropped his sword in surrender. His hamingja, his luck-spirit, had felt his fear and begun to flee. He went on to kill the Saxon who had picked up his sword. Ceric thought it was all dishonour, but now Hrald knew what his father had known.
He felt fear unto terror at what he must do, and do before all. And he felt a caged beast, forced to fight before those who watched, though it had been he himself who had decreed this contest.
He did not want to kill. Naming it like this, as if it were a choice he could make, made it the worse; he had no choice. His fear flared up inside him, yet he felt cold. His hamingja must be even now leaving him.
“Christ help me,” he muttered. “Christ, help me.”
The few moments they had passed in watching Jari fight Odinkar had ended. Thorfast, hearing Hrald mutter something, squared up against him.
They started again, thrusting, blocking, feinting, lunging. The iron bosses of their shields rang from their blows, as did the fists holding them. All the time Hrald was speaking, first to himself, then to One outside him, or to one within. “Christ, help me,” he kept repeating.
His teeth were clenched, and tears ran from his eyes. He swung his blade and blocked with his shield, gave and received blows, all knowing nothing but the prayer he recited. It breathed in him as he drew breath.
Jari came into view, moving slowly and with effort, but coming to Hrald’s side. “Nej,” came from Hrald’s lips. He prayed for help, but not to lead another faithful to him to his death. He must end this contest with Thorfast as he had begun it.
Ashild, watching with her mother and Burginde, could not close her eyes before it. She saw how her brother struggled, returning the blows that came from Thorfast’s sword. At times the two men almost fell in each other’s arms, or their heads were brought close, side to side. She had thrown her spear from afar and killed her man; Hrald was hard upon his, hand to hand, face to face, an intimate and horrible closeness which she had not suffered.
As they moved together in their lethal parrying both men began to slow. Hrald was tiring, his shield forearm and shoulder tingling with fatigue, his sword arm heavy as it rose or swung. But so too, he saw, was Thorfast. The lightning advances he had used against him at the beginning of their contest were replaced by a steady holding of his ground. His war-cries were now grunts of effort as he blocked Hrald’s sword thrusts and tried his own. Hrald knew one of them would die soon, and could rest. Perhaps Christ would help him to that rest.
His eyes flicked to the cluster of men from Four Stones, none distinct. But there at the edge stood his father, unmoving from when he had last spotted him.
His father’s words came to him, those which he had said to him before he stepped onto this sacred ground.
Hrald’s lips moved again. “I do not fear you,” he found himself saying. He was speaking to Thorfast, but seeing Death.
Something rushed back at him, at speed unimaginable, Christ’s hand over his head, or his sense of his hamingja, that fleeing luck-spirit, being called back. He felt something enter him, flowing back like a river of living water. This river swept out his fear and doubt, and even his exhaustion, so that something else could come in. Whether it was his luck-spirit, or the Christ-spirit; that of his ancestors or that of the Source, he could not know.
He no longer felt the blows his shield took, nor the ache in his arm from those he gave.
“I do not fear you,” he cried in words slow and deliberate. His voice was loud enough that all watching heard, though they could not make out what he said. Only Thorfast did.
His opponent had once more lashed out with his sword, and was in the act of returning his shield to cover his torso. Hrald’s cry arrested his motion, and Hrald stepped forward in the heart-beat Thorfast’s guard was down. A plunge of Hrald’s sword drove the point deep into Thorfast’s body.
The sword fell from Thorfast’s hand. He stood there with widened eyes, staring at Hrald an arm’s length before him, and his sword hand began to move toward the blade connecting him to his killer. Then Thorfast’s legs crumpled, and Hrald found himself stepping back to avoid being hit by his falling body.
A great and roaring cry arose from those behind and around Hrald. He stumbled, went down on one knee, then pushed himself up and away from the vanquished.
He was still within the sacred ground. He must speak. He dropped his shield, pulled off his helmet with his left hand, let that too fall. His sword alone he held.
His panting breath slowed, and his words sounded steadily across the field of death.
“Thorfast is defeated,” he called out to all those watching him. “His brother Haward and all other witnesses will attest to our fight.
“Those of you who would join with Haesten, go now. You are free to leave. If you do, know that we may meet again.” He glanced now down to the body of Thorfast, at his feet.
“Those of you who pledge to stand with Four Stones, I bid you now to return to Turcesig and await me there. Haward, if you will stand with me and uphold the Peace as your father did, tell me now.”
The younger brother’s face was ashen. “I will uphold the Peace, Hrald,” he answered.
“Then take your dead, and tell all the men of Turcesig what I have told you.”
That was all. He lifted his sword, ran it back into its scabbard.
Men came to him across the field, his father foremost. Hrald found himself once more in his father’s embrace, a meeting as wordless as had been that before the hall, but imbued with power. Then he felt the arms of his uncle too about him. He knew he swayed as they held him.
They turned to where Jari knelt at the side of Gunnulf. Jari had turned his brother over, and was blowing great breaths as he held him by his lifeless shoulders. Gun
nulf’s long hair streamed down from his head. The wound in his back had bled but little, and his handsome face was totally unmarked. No fear nor horror shown there; the blue eyes fixed but still moist, the mouth held in a look of almost amused surprise.
All the witnesses from Four Stones were crowded about, but now one who had not been of their number pushed his way through. Onund must have crept through the trees and been watching from a distance. He threw himself down at Gunnulf’s boots, and clasped onto his ankles, bent double in grief.
Jari’s arms slid under his brother, and with a heave he lifted him in his arms and rose to his feet. He stood there alone, Gunnulf’s trailing hair and arms falling down from the body Jari cradled. Onund, having been deprived of his friend, turned to Hrald.
“He died for you,” Onund choked out. His brow was deeply creased, and his dark hair limp upon it.
“Já,” said Hrald. “And for Four Stones.”
After claiming his brother’s body in this way, it took Asberg to get Jari to relinquish it.
Haward was at the side of Thorfast’s body, and the field now crowded with folk bringing broad planks of wood on which the dead might be carried. The bodies were loaded, and the path retraced along the palisade wall, a solemn procession of the quick and the dead. Hrald walked first, with Jari at his side. Then came the board bearing Gunnulf. It took only the sight of Hrald to tell Thorfast’s waiting men of the outcome.
It was dusk when the group from Four Stones passed through the gates and into the hall yard. Hrald’s mother and sister had held him in loving embrace when they had returned through the gates, waiting until they were within the hall to do so. Burginde had grabbed him with devoted might, and looked almost ready to scold through her tears. Then, sniffing, she took Ashild away to the bower house, threatening her with a good scrubbing.
There was much still to do, the most vital of which was attending to the dead. Jari’s wife Inga was joined by the Lady of Four Stones in washing and wrapping Gunnulf’s body. Ælfwyn herself would serve in this hallowed task, for Gunnulf had died in service of her son. Beyond this was the affection she held for both Jari and Inga, and her desire to do honour to them all by the work of her hands. Moving in tender silence, the women completed their sorrowful charge. Gunnulf’s body was washed, the yellow hair of which he was so proud combed and plaited. He was bound in new linen, and covered with a shroud of the same. Then he was carried by Jari and Asberg and Sidroc and Hrald to the house of Wilgot, and laid out there for the night, awaiting burial. Another came with them; Onund, who asked the priest that he might keep vigil through the night.
“His closest friend,” Jari said, as they left the priest’s door. His voice was hoarse with lament.
“Já,” Hrald answered.
Hrald was now alone with his father in the treasure room. They had ale-cups in their hand. Hrald was still unwashed and in the clothes he had fought in. His father had helped him take off his ring-shirt, which had withstood the contest well. Hrald’s lip twisted in a smile, thinking on he who had given it. “Now I can tell Ceric I did not dent it,” he told his father.
Sidroc smiled back, and regarded his son.
“Hrald,” he began. “What you did there, I will ever be proud of. And what we all saw, none will forget.”
He watched his son’s chin drop, the dark lashes fall over the eyes as he looked down, warding off his praise.
“I thought I would die,” Hrald confessed. “I felt terror of death. I begged Christ to help. Then I almost wanted it, so I could stop. So I would not have to kill him.
He swallowed, his eyes still downcast. “Then I remembered what you had said. That was what I called out to him: I do not fear you.
“I wanted to live, but it almost did not matter. The fear left me. Something else came.”
Sidroc had been looking at his son’s downcast face all this time, and now Hrald raised his eyes to his father. A shield-maiden had not touched ground before Hrald, pointing her spear at him, summoning him to the halls of Odin or Freyja. If she had, Sidroc did not know if he would have seen her; mayhap it would seem a winged angel, calling him to Heaven. Neither place had called to him, and Sidroc could not think of what it would have been to have travelled so many leagues to witness his son’s death upon his arrival, nor what that death would have meant to all of their lives after that moment of profound loss.
He thought his boy had felt the flight of his hamingja, that luck-spirit running out on him, as men who were losing at dice complained. If he had, she had returned, he had called her back, and that was all that mattered. He leant towards his son, and answered him.
“What came was courage, which flanks fear, runs alongside fear, always. Without fear there is no courage.”
The words filled Hrald’s head; he let them settle. And he let himself smile.
He must ask his father the next. “You will leave us soon?”
He nodded. “I came to see what manner of man you had grown to. Now I know.”
The colour had risen to Hrald’s cheek under this praise. His father had fought hard to win his way to the life he lived, and worked hard to keep it. Hrald had seen that life, and understood his father’s desire to return to it. And he had left Four Stones to him, demanding nothing.
Even the thickness of the oak wall and door could not hide the sounds of the hall being set up for their delayed meal. It would be a feast, one as great as could be mustered given the shortness of notice. They must both ready themselves for it.
“Tonight you will sleep here in the treasure room, Father,” Hrald thought to say.
But Sidroc shook his head. “This room and all in it is yours. I will sleep in the hall with the rest of the men.”
He turned his head at the treasure-bearing chests and barrels, baskets, and shelves. Doing so made him remember the precious things he had brought for his son.
“I have a pair of Tyrsborg goshawks for you, at Saltfleet,” he said. “The offspring of those you flew with Ceric.”
They grinned at each other, recollecting those days on the island. “They will be the pride of the falcon-house,” Hrald said.
Sidroc now looked as well at the broad bed, covered with the wolf pelts.
“One day you will bring your wife here,” he said, a hint of teasing in his voice. “Is there some maid who has caught your eye?”
Hrald’s cheek again flushed. “None,” he admitted, and Sidroc recalled there were a dearth of nearby halls which counted likely maids amongst their offspring. If Guthrum still lived, a match with one of his daughters, or even with a noble maid of Wessex, might be explored by Hrald’s mother and uncle. All this would have to wait until peace was once again established.
“Whoever you choose, I hope she is as good a woman as your mother,” Sidroc ended.
Just before Hrald would take his place at table, he called his mother into the treasure room. He had donned a fine tunic, one on which she had devoted hours in embellishing neck opening and cuffs. His hair was still damp from the dousing he had given it, and lay long and dark upon the shoulders of the deep brown tunic.
His mother was arrayed as for a great feast, in a gown of pale blue wool upon which tiny pearls had been sewn at the neckline, like a sprinkling of snow. So eager was she to embrace her son again that she rushed to his side when she entered. She had washed the body of one young man; here was her own, alive and whole before her. She remained holding onto his forearms as he spoke to her.
“Mother, I would have something for Ashild, something choice to give her.”
He had been considering the gifts he would soon present to his men for their service of arms this day. But he had nothing fitting for his sister.
Ælfwyn closed her eyes a moment in thought. It was true she had given to Oundle every jewel that Yrling had ever bestowed upon her. But Sidroc too had carried back to Four Stones plunder in way of gems and silver and gold-work; and had been given bracelets and neck-rings and other prized pi
eces of metal from his men as tribute to their war-chief, just as he shared out booty in swords and knives and horses to them. There were amongst these things ornaments she had given to Ashild and kept by for Ealhswith, and more remained with which Hrald might adorn a future wife. But nothing, she knew, of especial nature, or unknown to Ashild’s eyes.
But now she remembered something else.
She turned to a locked chest which held within it another, resting at the bottom under a bolt of cloth of purple. This was one of the chests she had first found in the treasure room, when she had come as a bride. What she drew forth was a piece of gold treasure, one she had kept back from giving to the abbey, for she felt it was of the original treasure of Four Stones, that of the dead Merewala. She had admired its beauty, but it had not been anything she wished to herself wear. Now she brought it forth and pressed it into her son’s hands, to present to Ashild.
It was a thick fillet of pure gold, a band meant to be worn about the brow of a great lady; a queen, even. If it had truly belonged to an earlier Lady of Four Stones, it was fitting that it be bestowed now on one who had fought to preserve the keep, and its religious house.
He almost laughed at the sight of it. “She will never take it off,” he predicted.
Once back in the hall, Ealhswith ran to her to mother. The day had been long and filled with fears, and the hall was crowded and growing noisy. Ælfwyn hugged her youngest, who clung to her. Sidroc was standing with Asberg and Jari by the long raven banner. The battle flag Ashild had made was hanging there too, stuck into a rush-light holder. The three men were speaking together, a number of others leaning in and listening to the returned Sidroc.
“You must greet your father, Ealhswith,” Ælfwyn told her. She took her by her hand and led her to the group. Sidroc wore one of the dark blue tunics he favoured, upon which his jewel-hilted seax gleamed. His face was shaven; Ealhswith, if she had memory of her father, had never seen him without the dark beard he used to wear.
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