One King's Way thatc-2

by Harry Harrison

  Yet there were some matters, often involving seduction, rape, adultery or woman-theft, where the law might be clear but where passions ran high. Several times during the two days Shef heard voices suddenly raised and the clang of weapons. Twice Hund was called away to patch and bandage, and once men rode away with set faces and a corpse of their own slung over a horse.

  “Someone will get burnt out over that one,” Brand remarked. “Hard men round here, they can get away with things for a fair while. Then the neighbors get together, come down and torch the place. Kill everyone who tries to get out. Works even on berserks, eventually. As the poem says:

  “Every wise man shall count himself warlike

  With moderation.

  Or find, when he comes among the fierce ones,

  No man has no match.“

  On the second afternoon, as Shef lounged in the sunshine watching Guthmund bargain furiously for two barrels of salt pork—his bargaining tactics were much admired, even by the victims, who swore that they could never believe a famous abbey-robber could express such passion over a mere clipped penny. Then Shef noticed men's attention start to waver, heads turn, and then a general drift begin up to the stones of the doom-ring. Guthmund broke off, releasing the pork-merchant's collar, slapped his money down, and began to follow the drift, Shef hastening after him. “What's up?” he asked.

  Guthmund had picked the story out of the crowd. “Two men agreed to settle their business Rogaland-style.”

  “Rogaland-style? What's that?”

  “The Rogalanders are poor, couldn't afford proper swords till recently, just carried cutlasses like the one you had, or timber-axes. But they really mean business just the same. So if they decide to fight a duel, they don't square off inside an enclosure marked with hazel twigs, or fight a formal holmgang like you did once. No, they stretch out a bull's hide, and both men stand on it. Not allowed off. Then they fight with knives.”

  “That doesn't sound too dangerous,” Shef ventured.

  “First they tie their left wrists together.”

  The place for duels of this kind was in a hollow, so men could line the sides and watch. Shef and Guthmund found places high up. They saw the bull's hide carefully laid out, the contestants brought forward. A priest of the Way spoke words which they could not hear, and the two men slowly stripped off their shirts and stepped out in their breeches alone. Each held in his right hand a long, broad knife, like the seax-knife Shef's catapult-men carried, but with a straight blade and sharp point—a stabbing weapon as well as a chopping one. A leather rope was tied first to one wrist, then the other. Shef noted that there was maybe three feet of slack left. Each man took half the slack and held it in his bound left hand, so that the fight began with the backs of the left fists touching. One man was young, tall, with long fair hair braided down his back. The other twenty years older, burly and bald, an expression of grim anger on his face.

  “What's it about?” Shef muttered.

  “Young one got the other one's daughter pregnant. He says she consented, the father says he raped her in the field.”

  “What does she say?” Shef asked, remembering similar cases from his own time as a judge.

  “I don't think anyone asked her.”

  Shef opened his mouth to ask further, realized it was too late. More words spoken, a ritual request to accept mediation, now impossible to take without shame. Two headshakes. The law-speaker stepped carefully off the bull's hide, made a signal.

  Instantly the two men were in motion, springing round each other. The father had stabbed at the first flicker of the judge's hand, stabbed low under the linked hands. But at the same moment the young man had dropped his slack and sprung back to the full extent of the rope.

  The father dropped his slack too, snatched forward at the rope trailing from his enemy's wrist. If he got it he could hold the younger man to him, keep him no more than one arm's length, perhaps pull him close and stab him in the body. But to commit yourself to a mortal stroke left you open to a mortal counter. In this kind of duel it was easy to kill your enemy. If you cared to give him the chance to kill you.

  The older man's snatch missed, the younger one was leaping away, keeping near the edge of the hide. Suddenly he stretched forward, slashed his enemy across the back of the arm. A shout as the blood showed, a sneer in answer from the wounded man.

  “Easy in this game to give a scratch,” Guthmund remarked. “But a scratch won't settle it. Loss of blood, if it goes on a long time—but it never does.”

  The fight had reached a kind of pattern, one man trying to close, stabbing always underneath the two arms, jerking and grabbing at the rope that joined them. The other ignoring the rope, keeping away, flicking quick slashes at arm or leg, but taking care not to let his knife catch, to trap him for an instant.

  He did it once too often. The bald father, bleeding from a dozen minor wounds, took yet another slash high up on the left biceps. Caught the retreating hand, the knife-hand, with his own tied left. Started to twist it savagely, shouting something Shef could not catch over the crowd noise. The seducer lashed out with his own left hand, desperately trying to catch the other's knife-hand in his turn. But the older man had twisted, holding the knife away behind his body out of reach, feinting to thrust low, then high, twisting the caught wrist all the time.

  With no other hope left the trapped man kicked both feet off the ground, tried to catch the other's thighs in a scissors grip, sent him staggering. As the two fell locked to the ground Shef saw blood spurt, heard the groan of released breath from the spectators close up. The judge stepped forward, pulled the two men apart. Shef saw one knife jutting from deep in the chest of the young man. As they rolled the other over he saw a second hilt standing up from the older man's eye.

  Women were shrieking, rushing forward. Shef turned to Guthmund, ready to rebuke a system that lost a woman husband and father in the same heartbeat, and a child father and grandfather. But the words died in his throat.

  Cuthred was striding down the hollow, spiked shield in one hand, sword in the other. Behind him trailed Fritha and Osmod, Udd a pace or two after them, all carrying crossbows but looking helpless. As Shef started to shove his way forward, he heard Cuthred's crazy voice lifted in pidgin Norse.

  “Bunglers! Nithings! Have to be tied together not to run away. Hold a man to be cut. Fight an Englishman, why don't you, one with hands free. One hand tied, give you choice. Hornungs, sons of drabs! You, you there.”

  White spittle was flying from his mouth, and a circle was steadily widening round him, leaving him isolated with the two dead men at his feet. Staring down, Cuthred slashed suddenly at one of them, opening a great gash across the young man's dead face. He began to stamp his feet and breathe in great gasps, ready to charge the entire crowd.

  Shef stepped in front of him, waited for recognition to show in the mad eyes. Reluctant recognition.

  “They won't fight,” said Shef slowly. “We'll have to find a better time. And striking a corpse is foul play, Cuthred. Foul play for an ordwiga, a herecempa, a frumgar like yourself, a king's champion. Wait for the Ragnarssons, for the killers of your King Ella.”

  Cuthred's face worked at the string of honorifics, all of which he had earned in former life as captain of the King of Northumbria's guard. He looked at his bloody sword, at the corpse he had struck, threw his weapon down and burst into racking sobs. Udd and Osmod closed on either side, took his arm, started to lead him away.

  Mopping sweat, Shef turned to meet the disapproving look of the duel-judge, the law-speaker.

  “Mutilating a dead body,” the Norseman said, “is punishable by a fine of…”

  “We'll pay,” said Shef. “We'll pay. But someone ought to pay for what has been done to that live one.”

  The next morning, Shef stood by the narrow gangplank leading to Brand's prized and cherished ship, the Walrus. Guthmund's Seamew, already loaded, rocked easily in the water twenty yards out, a row of faces looking over the low gunwale. Loa
ding the ships had not been an easy business. Each rowed eighteen oars a side and carried a normal crew of forty. To this had had to be added Shef, Hund, Karli and Thorvin, the eight men of the catapult crew, the four women they had rescued from Drottningsholm, Cuthred, and the train of runaways they had attracted in their ride across Upland and Sogn—nearly thirty all told, a large number to add to the cramped quarters of two narrow ships.

  But now they were not all there: Lulla, Fritha and Edwi of the catapult crew, all missing. Had they been cut off somehow? Were they being hidden somewhere in the Thing area, destined for slavery or revenge, or even sacrifice? At the thought of his men being strung up on the temple trees of some backwoods town, Shef's patience snapped.

  “Get all the men off,” he shouted to Brand. “You too Guthmund. We can muster a hundred men between us. We'll go through this place and turn every tent over till they hand our men over. Anyone doesn't like it, he'll get a bolt in his belly.”

  Shef became aware that Cwicca and the others were not reacting with the enthusiasm he would have expected. They had donned their glassy expressions, always a sign they knew something they did not dare to reveal.

  “All right,” Shef said. “What's up with those three?”

  Osmod, usually the spokesman on difficult occasions, spoke up. “It's like this,” he volunteered. “We've been walking round, some of us, looking at things. And all they're talking about here is catapults and crossbows and that. They've heard a lot about them, don't know how they work. So we said, naturally, that we knew all about catapults, and as for crossbows, well Udd here practically invented them. So they say—by this time they'd stood us all a drink or two—they say, ‘very interesting, do you men know what's happening down south?’ ‘No,’ says we, naturally enough, since we don't. So then they say…”

  “Get on with it!” Shef bellowed.

  “They're paying big money for experienced catapult men, men who know how to build and shoot them. Big money. We think Lulla and Edwi and Fritha have decided to go in for that.”

  Shef stared for a moment, uncertain how to react. He had freed those men. They were landholders back in England already. How could they go off and take service with anyone, leaving their lord? But then they were free men, because he had freed them…

  “All right,” he said. “Forget it, Brand. Osmod, the rest of you, thank you anyway for staying. I hope you won't lose by it. Let's get on board and get going. Back in England in two weeks, if Thor sends us a wind.”

  He did not, or not immediately. All the way down the long fjord from where the Gula met the Sogn to the open sea, the two boats pulled steadily into the teeth of a fresh breeze, low in the water from their weight of passengers and stores. Brand spelled the rowers, rotating the male passengers with his own men.

  “Get round the ness,” he remarked. “Wind'll be on our beam then, we can stop rowing and sail south. What's that ahead?”

  Round the point of the promontory that guarded the Gula-fjord, little more than half a mile away, came a ship. A strange ship, not like the traders and fishing-boats they had passed half a dozen times already. Her blue and white striped sail bellied in the breeze behind her, a pennant flew from her mast, blowing towards them so they could see it only fitfully as a gust took it wide. Something wrong with her sail. Something wrong with her size.

  “Thor aid us,” said Brand at the steering-oar. “It's one of Halfdan's coastguard ships. But she's got two sails. She's even got two masts. I never saw such a thing in all my born days. What have they done all that for?”

  Shef's one sharp eye caught sight of the banner, the Gripping Beast design on it.

  “Turn,” he said. “Get us out of here. It's Queen Ragnhild. And she means us no good.”

  “It's a big ship, but we're two to one, we can fight her…”

  “Turn,” shouted Shef, recognizing something about the motions of the men on deck.

  Brand caught on in the same moment and sent the Walrus heeling round in a turn so violent that the rowers were sent skidding along their benches. “Back starboard,” he shouted. “Pull backboard. Now pull together. Pull hard, get the stroke up. And drop the sail and sheet home, you in the waist there, help him, Narr, Ansgeir. Guthmund…” His voice carried over the water to their companion lagging a furlong behind. The Walrus, wind now behind her, began to scud back the way she had come.

  Watching the pursuing ship, Shef, as he had expected, saw her yaw to bring her beam round. “On the word, swing her hard to starboard,” he said quietly. “Now.”

  The Walrus swung briskly round. At the same moment Brand shouted to his crew to lift their oars, let the boat run freely under sail. The oars heaved smartly together out of the water. A hum in the air, three oarsmen together span out of their seats, landed in the belly of the ship, cursing or moaning. Shattered pieces of oar flew up in the air, splashed slowly into the sea. The mule-stone that had smashed through them just above head-height flew on, hit the water, bounced from wave to wave to wave before sinking.

  “They were talking about fitting one of those,” said Brand. “But they said she'd never take the recoil. Must have rerigged her internally along with the two masts.”

  “But who's crewing the mule?” asked Shef, still watching the ship behind them trying to make up lost distance, alert for any second swerve that would bring the mule round to bear. It was fortunate this was a stern chase and Ragnhild's men could not shoot over the bow. “Renegades of mine? But where would they have got them from?”

  “The Way has been very interested in all that you did,” put in Thorvin, standing close to Brand. “They built copies of all the machines you made. Valgrim could have built the mule and found a crew. Some of his friends are priests of Njörth, would know how to rebuild a ship. What are we going to do? Run back into the Gula-fjord and hope to fight them on land?”

  Shef was once more staring intently at the activity in the bow of the pursuing ship. She had lost way by turning beam-on to shoot, and now both were under sail the Walrus and her consort were making ground with every wave. The ships had begun half a mile apart. Now they were certainly more than that. Even at that distance, though, Shef was certain that he could make out a tall figure, a tall female figure, standing in the very prow of the ship, long hair streaming disheveled. Ragnhild coming after him. Chasing him, however fast they sailed, into a long fjord with no other exit. And they were certainly doing something strange in the prow there. Could they have built a mule that did not need to be bedded low down and centrally in a ship?

  Light showed behind Ragnhild, fire, a strong fire blazing brightly. At the same moment Shef's brain recognized the motions of the men round it. He had never seen a catapult being wound from in front of it before, but that was what they were doing—had been doing, for they had just jumped back to clear the view for the shooter, just like Cwicca's crew. Not a mule, one of the great dart-shooters he had used himself to release Ella and to break Ivar Ragnarsson's army.

  As Shef turned to shout at Brand to swerve again, he saw the light suddenly coming straight at him with inconceivable speed, rising and falling slightly a bare six feet over the waves. Involuntarily, Shef cringed. Bent forward, arms over belly, sure the machine would send the great javelin-size bolt straight through body and spine.

  A thump just below his feet, sending him staggering. Instant reek of burning tar, burning wood. Brand yelling hoarsely and a lurch as he abandoned the steering oar to look over the side. Then Shef was shoved aside by men running up from the waist of the ship with bailing buckets, trying furiously to lean over far enough to reach the water, scoop it up, throw it on to the great fire-arrow that had slammed into the Walrus, come clean through her rear planking three feet from Shef's leg, was now setting fire to planks and thwarts at once.

  “Use the drinking water!” shouted Brand. The driblets of sea-water his crew were bailing up from the waves barely within reach were making no impact on the mass of pitch and tar on the bolt's head, jammed through the planks. And the f
ire was spreading. If it caught the sail… A man ran from the water-barrel by the base of the mast, lost his footing and fell, bucket going wide into the bilge. Others hesitated, torn between the sea just out of reach and the water-barrel too far away.

  Cuthred slouched from his place near the bow. No-one had ventured to ask him to row. He had an axe in his hand. Standing over the fire-arrow, he smashed three strokes down through the Walrus's frail planking, bent over the side, thrust the bolt further through till the blazing head stood well out from the ship's inner side. Swung the axe again, shearing through the thick wood with one blow. Picked up the severed head, ignoring the flames that ran up his arm, tossed it over the side. As Cuthred turned sneering to Brand, Shef realized that the ship behind them had yawed again.

  Machine-war, he thought sickly. It comes too fast. Even a brave man wants to stop, to shout “Wait till I'm ready!” Helplessly, he saw the mule-stone come blurring towards him, again seeming to come directly at him, not the ship, him personally, aiming for his rib-cage, to shatter the thin bones and crush out the heart.

  The stone hit the water thirty yards short, bounced like a child's skimming-stone, bounced again, and hit the Walrus like a hammer just forward of the steering-oar. Planks stove, a rowing-bench hurled from its socket, green water poured through. But only a hole, not the complete shattering and disintegration of a ship struck on keel or stem-post.

  You were a king before, Shef told himself. Now they say you are an over-king. And what are you doing? Cringing. Waiting for help from a madman. This is not the way for a leader. You have destroyed men from a distance before. You never thought how you would behave when the other side had all the machines.