One King's Way thatc-2

by Harry Harrison

  In the end Hagbarth was sent out on skis while work started on Aurvendill. He had been reconciled to the idea, and confessed that he would have been fascinated to see it tried on anyone else's ship. He could not bear, though, to watch them slice into his own. After the main sawing was done, he promised, he would watch and assist. Till then, he would stay away.

  Cuthred volunteered to escort him. Of all the men and women there he had played least part: refusing even to look at the mills being erected, taking little interest in the forge. He lay abed a long time with his leg-wound open, as if his body were taking revenge for the way he had overridden its demands during the berserk fit. When it healed, he took to skiing alone, quickly becoming expert, often staying out all day. When Shef asked him once whether he felt hungry or thirsty out in the waste, he replied, “There is food out there, if you know how to get it.”

  Shef wondered. Echegorgun had trailed them across the mountains to Piruusi's camp. Could he have followed further? The Hidden Folk seemed to be able to go where they pleased in the wastelands. Cuthred had said once that there were more of them than true people realized. Maybe he was meeting Echegorgun, or even Miltastaray, in the wasteland. The Hidden Folk liked him. Hardly anyone else did, though some among the women were sorry for him. At least he was a good protector for Hagbarth, and Hagbarth was not one of the men who were likeliest to offend him, unlike Karli, now paired with Edith, or Ceolwulf, who seemed to remind Cuthred of what he had once been.

  Yule came, with roast pork and blood sausage to add to their usual fare, with tale-telling and songs from the Way-priests of their mythical stories. The deep winter came after it, with such howling winds that the mill-sails had to be taken down and stored for a while, and thick snow drifting. The small community, with ample food and fuel, blankets and down-lined bags, ignored it. Shef wondered again at the good cheer on every face, but not for long.

  “It's cold up here, right enough,” said Cwicca. “But if you think what it was like back in Crowland in the fens, slaving for the black monks! Lucky to have a blanket at all, no food but porridge and not much of that, living in a hut with an earth floor and that soaked through from Michaelmas to Easter. And nothing to look forward to but Lent! No, I've never passed a happier winter.”

  One thing that added to the gaiety was yet another of Udd's experiments. He had never forgotten the total failure of his attempt to make winter ale by steaming water off rather than freezing it off. Winter ale could be had now for the trouble of putting a bucket outside, but Udd persevered. If the strength in the drink was not left in the heated ale, he reasoned, it must have flown off with the steam. Slowly he experimented. Catching the steam. Enclosing the heated pot. Running a pipe, a copper pipe for its ductility, out from the heat into the cold, to liquefy the steam more quickly. Catching the end product. Repeating the process with ever tighter seals and more careful catchment. In the end, Udd had something which he was prepared to offer to the others. They tasted gingerly, curiously, appreciatively.

  “A good drink for a cold day,” said Osmod. “Not as good as mulled winter ale, I reckon, but that's more natural, isn't it. This has still some of the reek of the forge about it. ‘Burnt ale,’ we'll call it.”

  “It might be better to use wine,” said Udd, though he had tasted wine no more than twice in his life.

  Cuthred said nothing, but took a flask with him next time he skied alone into the snow.

  The day came at last when they were ready to roll the remade Aurvendill out of the boathouse into a backwater of the river, now beginning to flow stronger under the ice, and to show signs of break-up.

  “Should we not put something on the rollers, for luck?” asked Shef.

  Hagbarth looked at him sharply. “There are some who do that,” he said. “Blood usually, a sacrifice to Ran, the troll-goddess in the deeps.”

  “I don't mean that. Udd, have you a small keg of burnt ale? Put that under the keel. As she rolls forward, she'll crush it.”

  Hagbarth nodded. “And then you must give her a new name.” He patted the stem-post. “She is my Aurvendill no longer. That is a star, you know. Made from the frostbitten toe of a giant which Thor flung into the sky. A good name for a fast ship. She is that no more. What will you call her?”

  Shef said nothing till the men were at the drag-ropes, ready to pull her out of the shed in which they had worked for so long. Then, as they heaved together and the strong brown liquid splashed on the keel, he called out, “I name you Fearnought!”

  Fearnought slid slowly down the runway and crunched through the thinning ice, to lie at rest on her ropes.

  She seemed a strange craft. They had cut, spliced and riveted her keel with the stoutest wood and steel they could contrive. On the extended keel they had fitted frames every few yards, and to these frames, against the usual practice, which was to use sinew, they had nailed the planking. The Aurvendill's original planks now formed only the upper part of her sides. Stouter ones, split from pine-trunks, held her lower down. At prow and stern fighting platforms disfigured her previously clean lines, copies of the ones Shef had seen on Hedeby walls. Two new-built mules squatted on each. To balance their cumbrous weight the Fearnought was built deep and round, with heavy ballast in what was now a capacious hold. The fighting platforms had been extended to half-decking, giving some shelter for the crew underneath them, more than the skin awnings which were all Viking crews normally had, even for the Atlantic.

  On two matters Hagbarth had had his way. The Fearnought remained a one-master, though with her greater bulk the sail had been extended outwards, though not upwards, giving her almost half as much sail area again. And the iron plates that were to armor her sides and the rotating mules were stored in the hold, to be fitted only as needed.

  “I wouldn't like to try the long open-sea passage to England in her,” said Hagbarth, careful to speak well away from the ship in case his words brought bad luck. “She makes the tubbiest knorr look graceful, and once you put the plates on she's worse.”

  “She's not designed to reach England,” said Shef. “If she gets us through the narrows and round to the Frisian shore, she'll have done her job.”

  Just past the Braethraborg will do, thought Hagbarth, but did not say the words. He himself had no intention of risking that dangerous passage. He had a draft on Shef and Alfred's treasury for the price of the Aurvendill, and hoped only to collect it.

  Shef wondered, indeed, who he had the right to ask to share his dangers. The English men and women who had come so far with him would continue, hoping to reach home, as would Karli, eager to tell his tales of travel in the Ditmarsh. So would Hund. Thorvin too insisted on going. Hagbarth and his small crew would travel as far as Smaaland in the south of Sweden, showing the landlubbers how to sail the boat as they did so.

  As the snow melted and people thought of departure, Cuthred came to see his master.

  “Do you want me to travel south with you?” he asked.

  Shef stared at him. “I thought we would take you home. To Northumbria.”

  “There's no-one in Northumbria for me. My king is dead. I do not know if my wife is alive, but even if she is—I am no good to her now. I would rather live here in the waste. There are people here who would take me as I am. People who do not measure a man in only one way.”

  The terrible bitterness was in his voice again, Shef heard. And yet—he did not dare to let Cuthred go. He was worth a catapult on his own, or a case-hardened breastplate. He would be needed before they won south, of that Shef was sure.

  “Do you remember the mill?” he asked. “When I released you from that, you said you were my man.”

  Cuthred had been a king's champion for much of his life. He understood loyalty and service, and accepted both as lasting to the death.

  “See me through the Skagerrak and I will free you to return, to live in the waste, however you wish,” said Shef.

  Cuthred stared down at the slush. “I will see you through the Skagerrak,” he agreed. “And
past the Braethraborg. There will be someone waiting for me here.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The new king of the Swedes, Kjallak, knew well that he had been chosen to succeed his murdered predecessor Orm for one thing only: to cope with the menace of the German Christians, and to a lesser degree the Way-folk now spreading through the country. To return the land of the Swedes, Sveariki, to the old ways and the old customs of the priests. Failure, and the priests of Uppsala-temple would choose again.

  He laid his plans carefully. A sacrifice had been demanded. A sacrifice he would give them. And it would consist of men and women from all the groups that the Swedes hated and feared: Christians, Wayfolk, Finns and even the skogarmenn, the small scattered communities of borderers who lived in the forests or on the moors and paid no taxes.

  Chasing Finns in the winter was useless. In the summer it was hard also, because they retired with their reindeer to the deep tundra. There was a time to strike, a time when the Swedes had a natural advantage. In the deep mud of the melting season, when no-one moved if they could avoid it, but when the matchless horses of the Swedish horse-breeders could make their way. Kjallak sent sleigh-loads of forage during the winter to selected places. Picked his men and instructed them carefully. Sent them out, a week before the equinox, in wind and driving sleet.

  Shef too had laid his plans. At the equinox, he thought, the ice might have gone from the fast-running river, and conditions would be good to take the Fearnought downstream, on the first stage of the voyage home. His men were arming the ship carefully, stowing her dragon-plates of steel in the hold where they could be unshipped quickly, fitting beckets to the gunwales to hold crossbows and quarrels, chipping rocks for the mules.

  As he watched, Shef realized that a group of Finns was heading towards them. They moved clumsily without their skis. There was still some snow on the ground, but much of it had churned to slush or mud. The Finns looked graceless, like birds with clipped wings. Yet they were often enough about the station, coming in to trade or to examine what went on. One of Herjolf's priest-companions was a devotee of the goddess Skathi, the ski-goddess of the mountains. He spoke the Finnish tongue and often traveled with them, learning their lore. Shef saw him go to meet them and turned back to the loading.

  A while later, he found Ottar, Skathi's-priest, at his shoulder, and with him the Finn, Piruusi, a look of sullen anger on his face. Shef looked from face to face, wondering.

  “He says the Swedes attacked his encampment two days ago,” said Ottar. “Many men on horses. They had not seen them come because the snow was melting. Many Finns were killed. Some taken.”

  “Taken,” repeated Piruusi. “One Swede got drunk, fell from horse. We catch him. He tell us, Finns to go to the temple. Temple at Uppsala. Hang there on a tree in honor of Swedish gods.”

  Shef nodded, still wondering why he was being told. “He wants you to rescue them,” said Ottar.

  “Me! I know nothing of Uppsala.” But then Shef fell silent. He remembered the three visions he had had in Piruusi's tent. Of them all, he had thought most about the first, his old enemies the Ragnarssons seizing power and blocking his path. Yet he had seen the king too, the new king, threatened by his priests into promising a proper sacrifice, not the cheap disposal of surplus slaves that the Swedes had carried out for many years. And the Christians, they had been in it too.

  “Did he say anything about Christians, your Swede?”

  Piruusi's face lightened, he said something in Finnish. “He says he knew you were led by the spirits,” said Ottar, translating. “Christians too are to go to the great oak. And the men of the Way, or so Piruusi says.”

  “We've had no trouble,” said Shef.

  “We live far up-stream. And in any case, we aren't all here.”

  Shef felt his heart lurch at the correction. Thorvin had gone to the farm-town thirty miles off, while the snow was still good for sleighs, taking with him Cwicca, Hama and Udd, to trade iron for food. They had not returned. If they had been taken too… Shef realized with surprise that of them all, Cwicca who had saved his life by pulling him from Ivar's drowning embrace, Thorvin who had taken him in as a wandering nobody, of them all, the one whose fate most concerned him was Udd. If he went, no-one could replace him. Many plans would die at birth without his inspiration.

  “Do you think the Swedes might have got them?” he asked.

  Ottar waved at the road from the east, from downstream. Riders were visible on it, spurring as fast as they could through the heavy mud. “I think someone is coming to tell us,” he said grimly.

  The news was as they had expected. The town lay in ashes, surprised at dawn and burnt to the ground. The raiders had killed every man, woman or child they met, but seized some to herd away with them on spare horses. For capture they had selected those with the pendants of the Way, or youths, or maidens. In the confusion little had been made out as to why the Swedes had attacked the town. But some said they had called out “skogarmenn! skogarmenn!” as they had killed. Wood-men, men of the forest, outlaws. All the same thing. Thorvin the priest had certainly been taken, been seen led away. A gap-toothed man had also been recognized, who must be Cwicca. No-one could remember seeing anyone who might have been Udd. But that was entirely probable, Shef reflected. Even people in the same room as Udd often did not see him. Till it came to iron and steel, to metal and contrivances, the little man was made to be ignored.

  “What is the day of the sacrifice?” Shef asked.

  Gnawing his beard, Herjolf replied, “The day the Holy Oak, the Kingdom Oak as they call it, the day its buds first show green. In ten days. Maybe twelve.”

  “Well,” said Shef, “we shall have to get our men back. Or try at least.”

  “I agree with you,” said Herjolf. “And so would every priest of the way, even Valgrim, if he were still alive! What the Swedes have sent us is a challenge. If they hang up our priests in their sacred clothes, with the rowan-berries at their belts and the pendants round their necks, then we will lose every convert we have ever made among the Swedes. And further afield, when the news spreads.”

  “Ask Piruusi what he will do,” Shef said to Ottar. All that a man can, came the reply. The Swedes had taken his youngest and favorite wife. Piruusi's account of her charms was vivid, made it plain that he found her, like Udd, irreplaceable.

  “Good. I need Hagbarth too. Tell him, Herjolf. This is Way business now. And another thing. I am going to fly a banner.”

  “With what device?”

  Shef hesitated. He had seen many banners now, and knew the power they had on the imagination. There was the dreaded Raven Banner of the Ragnarssons, had been the Coiling Worm of Ivar. Alfred flew the Gold Dragon of Wessex, left over from the Rome-folk. Ragnhild's device had been the Gripping Beast. He himself had marched to Hastings under the Hammer and Cross, to unite Wayfolk and English Christians against the army of the Pope. What should he choose this time? The device of Rig, the ladder he wore round his neck? No-one would recognize it. A hammer and a broken shackle, for freedom? This time he was not coming to free slaves, but to rally border-people and outlaws.

  “You will fly the Hammer, surely,” pressed Herjolf. “Not the Hammer and Cross, as you once did. There are no Christians here. Only the Germans and their converts, no friends of ours.”

  Shef decided. He still held the lance he had taken from Echegorgun, the lance that the troll-man had taken from Jarl Bolli of the Tronds. “I will have an upright lance as my own device,” he said. “With a hammer across it, for the Way.”

  Herjolf pursed his lips. “That will look too much like a cross, for my liking.”

  Shef stared at him. “If I am to fight a king,” he said, “I will be a king. You heard the king's order. Send me all our needlewomen, and do it at once.”

  As Herjolf walked away, Shef spoke quietly to Cuthred. “We will not leave till tomorrow morning. Go out tonight. No chance of help from the Huldu-folk at Uppsala, I suppose? Too far from the moors and mountain
s. Just the same, word can be passed. Maybe there are other half-troll families in the north besides Brand's. See to it. Make your farewells.”

  Shef thought to add, “and see you return,” but curbed the words. If Cuthred wanted to desert, he would. All that held him now was pride, and that was not to be insulted.

  Cuthred stood unspeaking in the prow of the Fearnought next morning, in full mail, with sword, shield, spear and helmet. He looked like a king's champion again, except for his eyes, weary, red-rimmed.

  The ship was crowded with men, and women too. Only half a dozen had been left at the mining station. Priests, apprentices, Englishmen, Englishwomen and Finns were all crowded in together, fifty and more. They could never have managed to do so if the ship had needed to be rowed or sailed. But the snow-melt whirled her away without human effort, fast as a racing horse. Hagbarth at the tiller had only a lookout on the yard for ice, and men at the prow with oars to boom off floating debris.

  All the way down the stream they saw the signs of devastation, burnt farms, burnt villages. Men called from the banks as they saw the standard flying, were hailed, told to rig their boats and follow. By the time the Fearnought reached the sea, a small armada of four- and six-oared boats trailed in her wake. At the sea itself, the fishing villages of Finnmark yielded larger craft. Shef reorganized, commandeering the largest boats, filling them with men from the smallest.

  “You can't take them very far like this,” protested Hagbarth. “They can't carry enough water for one thing. No, don't tell me, I know. Obey orders. You have a plan.”

  As the Fearnought and her tail of small craft nosed down the Finnish Bight, as the Swedes called the deep gulf between Swedish Finnmark and the land opposite, they sighted a cluster of small islands. Piruusi, hitherto silent, came to Shef and pointed.

  “Finns on those islands,” he said. “I cross sometimes, on ice. Sea-Finns.”