by C. R. May
Erik turned back as the king’s guard, doughty warriors to a man, drew close to their lord and prepared to sell their lives dearly. The hilltop belonged to the men of the West, twin arms sweeping around to engulf the stout hearts beneath their proud banner. Away to the East the scene was being repeated as the army of Halogaland flowed like a tide around young Gudrod and his Tronds, and the men of both sides paused from the slaughter as they watched Ragnar Jarl overwhelm the last opposition there. Steel shimmered in a rapidly decreasing ring until the battle flag of Trondelag juddered and fell, rose again to flash in the morning light, and was beaten down for a final time.
Erik sniffed his satisfaction at a job well done and turned back. Locking eyes with King Olav for the first and last time, he spat on his palms, hefted Jomal, and walked forward.
27
HAKON
Erik Haraldsson, by Oðin’s will Konungr of the Norwegians, bent low and pressed the dagger home. As the wounded man’s head went back and the last breath rattled and died in his throat, the king held his gaze as the light there began to fade. The ropes of gut the Vestfolder had been holding in slid to the turf as the strength left his arms, and Erik stepped away as the stench of innards washed over him. The hilltop was a mass of tattered and bloodied bodies, and Erik ran his eyes across the scene as his guards clustered protectively at his side. Some lay contorted in death, the terror of their final moments etched upon their features; others looked deceptively peaceful, almost as if they had chosen a bad place for a nap. Some sat bewildered as they watched the lifeblood drain from their wounds to darken the soil beneath them; others crawled to find a quiet place to spend their final moments on Midgard, as the animal which exists in all men forced itself to the fore.
Erik’s men laughed and joked with their friends and kinsmen, scarcely able to believe that they had faced an army of fellow Norsemen and lived to tell the tale. Some of course had not, while others compared wounds and still more held out arms and bared chests for their kinsmen, the wonder on their faces telling the tale: not a scratch.
As men began to make piles of the plunder, Erik strode across the hillside towards the place where they had watched the war banner of Trondelag fall. Ragnar Jarl watched him come, the smile on his face betraying the pride he felt at his part in the victory. The Halogalanders parted before the king, smiles and chants, Erik! Erik! following him as he walked the final few paces and the jarl dipped the captured flag in deference. ‘Welcome lord,’ he said as Erik ran his eyes across the carnage there: ‘congratulations on your victory.’
Erik snorted, throwing his arms forward to draw his greatest jarl into an embrace. ‘The victory was as much yours as mine old friend,’ he said as they came apart. ‘I shall never forget.’
The Halogalanders cheered again as the king raised their jarl’s arm high, and the cheering redoubled as men carried forward the flags of Rogaland, Fjordane, Vestfold and Ringerike to add to that of Trondelag and Halogaland itself. Erik’s eyes sparkled with pride as Anlaf Crow raised his own personal axe banner alongside the flags of the kingdoms as he savoured the moment that he had worked so hard to achieve; to unite the lands of the Norwegians under the rule of one king as Harald Fairhair had willed it.
‘You will want to see the body of the king,’ Ragnar said as Erik lowered his arm and the men went back to plundering the dead.
Unlike Olav, Vestfold’s usurper king who now lay gore spattered nearby with Jomal embedded in his skull, Erik had met his brother Gudrod on numerous occasions when he had accompanied Halfdan the Black and Sigurd Jarl to King Harald’s hall at Avaldsnes. But looking on the faces of dead kinsmen was a thing which he had grown accustomed to, and Erik gave a curt nod to indicate that the jarl lead on. Ahead, a bloodied ring of death lay where the king’s guards had fallen fulfilling their oath, and not for the first time that day Erik felt a pang of regret that such men had been forced to give their lives for such an unworthy cause.
‘We have not touched Gudrod’s body,’ Sigurd explained as they walked. ‘We wanted to wait until you decide what you want done with it.’
It was the first time that he had considered the disposal of his brothers’ bodies, and he surprised himself as he answered with barely a thought. ‘They were both sons of Fairhair and kings by right, acclaimed as such by ancient law at their respective Thing. That their ambition got the better of them rightfully cost them their lives, but the shame should not sully them in death. We will throw up earth,’ he said as he looked about, ‘here, on the ridge line where they fought and died. Men not yet born will see them as they travel the roadway or look across the vale from the berg and say; ‘look yonder to the place where Gudrod and Olav Haraldsson rest in their mounds; hacked down by their brother Erik Bloodaxe their rightful lord, as Oðin willed it.’
They had continued picking their way through the dead as Erik spoke, and as he finished he realised that they were already standing over the body of his brother. Erik looked down at the cut and hacked about remains but, in truth he felt little emotion. He had been the only child borne to Ragnhild Eriksdottir, the only son born to the daughter of a king. As well as his numerous wives, Erik’s father had sired countless sons on women the length and breadth of Norway, high born or otherwise. ‘I am glad,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Norway has enough enemies without fighting among ourselves. I will sacrifice to the gods at the Thing and give thanks that the only Haraldsson’s left alive live content in their kingdoms.’
‘Will you want to harry the Vestfold?’
Erik clapped his jarl on the shoulder. ‘I may,’ he replied with a knowing smile. ‘These people need to realise that I am their king and no other, but you shall not be counted among my host. Take your Halogalanders home as soon as you are able. With any luck the threat from the Trondelag died on this field today, but you and your men have shown me nothing but loyalty going back beyond the fight in Bjarmaland and I would be no worthy lord if I kept men from their homes a moment longer than necessary.’
Ragnar brightened. ‘Will you invest the berg?’
Erik shrugged. ‘I will pitch tents for a couple of days and see if they are wise enough to throw open the doors. It will be a shame to burn such a fine and wealthy town, but their future is in their own hands. Then I will ride through Olav’s lands and take the submission of the leading men before sailing back to Rogaland before the winter storms set in.’ He smiled. ‘The jarls and hersar will be lying on the ground hereabouts, surrounded by those of their hird who were not born fleet of foot. There will be many places in need of a new lord, men of proven worth and loyalty. I will think on it over the winter and reward those who have been steadfast in their loyalty to me in the springtime.’ Erik smiled again as the reality of a kingdom shorn of opposition to his rule came upon him. ‘We have forged the future of the kingdom here Ragnar, here on this thrall’s tit of a hill. With my warlike brothers dead or cowed into obedience nothing can stand in our way.’
Erik wiped the ale from his chin and held the cup out for more. ‘Hakon is back?’
Gunnhild nodded. ‘He is in the Trondelag, at Sigurd Jarl’s hall in Lade.’
‘Of course he is,’ Erik replied, ‘he is a kinsman of the jarl.’ Gunnhild narrowed her eyes in question and Erik explained. ‘Hakon is one of my father’s by blows, a son born out of wedlock to a distant kinswoman of Sigurd. Harald sent her away when she fell with child and Sigurd took her in. He sprinkled the child with water, accepting him into the family and gave him the name of his own father, Hakon.’
‘So why is he here now, with three ships full of English warriors?’
‘A few years back my father received an embassy from King Athelstan in England, offering to make common cause against the Dublin Norse who were making trouble for him in Northumbria.’
Gunnhild snorted. ‘I know all about Northumbria, my brother Harald has a hall just south of there, at a place called Torksey in the Five Boroughs. They will never accept rule by the southern English kings, the land is populated by Norse, D
anes and English in equal measure.’
Erik shrugged. ‘Whether the inhabitants like it or not, their wealth and location means that the English and Scots will always covet their land. That wealth could also build an army to threaten the king here in Norway, so it was also in my father’s interest that the Dubliners be kept out. The two kings exchanged gifts, Athelstan sent a magnificent sword, and Harald gave the English king a purple sailed dragon ship in return to seal their alliance. Hakon’s fostering with Athelstan was part of that deal, and I can see now that Sigurd used it to remove his kinsman from harm’s way here in Norway.’ Erik shook his head as Athelstan’s forethought began to reveal itself to him. ‘Sigurd thought that he was being guileful, but he had more than met his match in the English king.’ The king chuckled as his mind went back to a far off strand, and he smiled at Athelstan’s cunning. ‘When I was in Northumbria one of their leaders, a churchman called Wulfstan, was interested in gaining my support. He sent a man called Oswald Thane to share his fear that Athelstan was planning to instal Hakon as under king in York and annex the kingdom, but it would seem that he had a far greater king helm in mind for the boy. Only last summer he sent a fleet to harry the Scottish coast, all the way up to the Norwegian land of Caithness, only a strait away from Orkney itself.’
Gunnhild’s eyes widened as she began to tease apart the wider implications of the plot. ‘Henry the Fowler, king of the East Franks; his eldest son Otto is married to Athelstan’s half-sister, Eadgith. This is all part of the Christian fightback. Henry’s army is pushing north into Jutland, keeping my father and brother busy and away from causing trouble in Frisia and England.’
Erik’s jaw dropped as the machinations of the Christian princes was revealed to him. ‘So Athelstan gets a free run at Northumbria, browbeats the king of Scots, and the two southern kings also get the chance to serve their God by supporting the first Christian to sit upon the high seat of Norway.’
‘Then you need to kill Hakon this year,’ Gunnhild snapped. ‘And make sure that Sigurd Jarl pays the price for his disloyalty.’
Erik pondered her words for a moment but shook his head. ‘It will have to wait until the spring, I have just released the levy to salvage what they can from the harvest. I asked a lot of them to fight for me in the Vestfold so late in the summer, I cannot recall them now.’ He shot her a wink and pulled her close. ‘What can a fifteen year old and three shiploads of Englishmen do against the mighty Bloodaxe? There will be time enough to shoo this whelp and his Christian nursemaids from the kingdom when the campaigning season comes around again.’
King Erik stomped back into the hall, and faces were turned to the floor as he swept the room with a withering glare. Even Gunnhild paled in the heat of the king’s anger, but she knew that she had a duty to perform and she did it well. Walking forward, the queen took up a horn of mead and cleared the room with a look. ‘Drink this,’ she cooed, as the men and servants hurried through the doorway and cast nervous glances their way. ‘We have faced tougher times together and come through unscathed; we shall do so again.’
Arinbjorn, alone among the men who had accompanied Erik from the Thingstead had remained, and he cleared his throat softly as he sought permission to speak.
Gunnhild’s eyes went from Arinbjorn to Erik and back again as she awaited her husband’s reaction, and the king inhaled deeply as the mead began to cast its spell. ‘Barely a half of them,’ he muttered sadly. ‘My power is seeping away by the day.’ Erik walked across to the pitcher and topped up his drinking horn. Gunnhild and Arinbjorn exchanged a look as he did so, and both realised with a start that they were witnessing Erik lose faith in his ability to inspire men for the first time in his life.
Gunnhild attempted to rally her man as the realisation that her children were in grave danger came upon her. If Hakon could wrest the kingdom from Erik they could all pay with their lives. ‘You have seen off far harder men than this stripling,’ she said. ‘What is so different this time?’
Erik had finally noticed that Arinbjorn alone remained in the hall out of all his followers, and he made a gesture that the man explain on his behalf as he slumped down in the high seat and took another gulp.
‘Sigurd Jarl has persuaded Hakon to hand the bonder back their allodial rights. It was the wellspring of Harald Fairhair’s power.’
Gunnhild looked askance, and Arinbjorn explained. ‘Allodial rights allowed the farmers to hold their land and the goods on it in absolute ownership, free to dispose of as they choose and completely without payment of rent or service to an overlord. When Harald Fairhair was winning the land in his youth he made it law that all ancestral lands and other inheritances belonged to him alone. In return for remaining on their land or carrying out their trade all bonder, great or middling had to pay skat to the king.’
Gunnhild nodded. ‘I can see why Hakon’s popularity is sweeping the land like a heath fire. Why did King Harald make such a law? The Norwegians are notorious for their love of independence and self reliance, it could only end like this.’
Arinbjorn took a sip from his own cup before continuing. ‘As the old kings were killed or driven from the land and Harald’s kingdom grew it became impossible for him to attend every Thing, so he appointed jarls over each district to act as his representative. A third of the skat raised came to the king’s treasury, here in Avaldsnes, and the rest went to keep the jarls and the hersar below them. In times of war these men, men like myself, had to supply the king with huskarls or hirdmen depending on his wealth and status; sixty for every jarl and twenty each for every hersir.’
Erik had been listening and he broke in with a comment of his own. ‘It was a good system, fair and just; the farmers and other freemen paid a little but they gained the security of a well ordered kingdom. Gone were the days when Vikings could scathe a coastline and be away with their booty and enslaved before the local ruler could organise a response. Even the Danes and the Swedes thought twice before they harried the Vikken or set foot across the Gota River because they knew that they would be faced by the king’s host before they could get very far.’
‘And the incessant warfare which had weakened Norway in the days of many kings was over,’ Arinbjorn added.
‘Warfare is one thing,’ Gunnhild said, ‘but a man’s gods are altogether different. I may be a Dane by birth, but I know the men of Norway now as well as my own. Even the basest woodsman would never turn his back upon the true gods for a handful of silver. If Hakon thinks that he can get the Norwegians to bow down to this Christ, I think that he is in for an unpleasant surprise.’
Arinbjorn’s great frame shook with laughter. ‘Forgive me for saying so queen, but you have never wanted for silver, nor food or much else I am thinking. It can mean the difference between life and death for most. They will keep the silver, mumble a few words to the Christ if they ever have the need, and then go back home to their own shrines and sacrifices.’
Erik saw the queen’s expression darken at his foster-brother’s words and a realisation came upon him. Maybe this was the way that kings toppled from their high seat; not the death he had given his brothers, a king’s death on the field of battle ringed by the bloodied corpses of his oath sworn. But bit by bit, cut by cut, as support seeped away and men, even unwittingly, began to lose their dread. He shook away the thought with difficulty. This was Arinbjorn after all, if anyone had earned the right to speak freely in their presence it was he. But he had recognised Gunnhild’s look of shock at the impertinence, and he asked the question which was begging to be asked before she could snap a reply. ‘So, what’s to be done?’
Arinbjorn’s laughter trailed away to be replaced by a frown. In truth Erik suspected that the situation was quickly becoming hopeless, but he valued his oldest friend’s advice more than any other and he needed to hear that he felt the same. ‘Hakon and Sigurd Jarl spent the winter and early spring travelling from hall to hall, Thing to Thing. Everywhere, in the Trondelag, Upland and down in the Vikken he was taken as king as s
oon as his proposal to free the bonder from taxation was aired. He elevated Bjorn Farman’s son Gudrod to his father’s old high seat in the Vestfold, and made Tryggvi Olavsson king in his father’s kingdom of Ringerike. The gods!’ he exclaimed with a shake of his head, ‘men are even saying that Hakon looks so much like his father that he is Harald Fairhair reborn! Everything they do, they do to win support, here and now, regardless of the cost in the future.’
‘And they are still pushing the Danish connection I hear. Erik Daneaxe and his Jutland witch,’ Erik said as he rose from his seat. ‘Well, I trust to my axe be it Danish or Norwegian, and I will not flee from a child without a fight. Let us send around the war arrow regardless of the numbers at the Thing, and take the fight to them.’
28
A WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
The wooden latch went up with a clack, and the fallow bloom of a candle flickered to light all but the deepest recesses of the little room as the door creaked open. The old archbishop let out a gentle grunt of amusement, and he recognised the look of gratitude that washed across the face of the young scribe as the letters revealed themselves again on the page before him. As the monk moved from candle to candle, touching each wick with the taper to push back the winter shadows, Wulfstan relaxed as he allowed the smell of beeswax and smoke to carry his mind back to the far off days of his own youth. Every churchman, high or low, had started his new life bent forward transcribing passages from one sheet to another, be they mundane legal writs, king’s judgements or the beautifully illustrated ecclesiastical passages which graced the great churches and monasteries. That so many had been destroyed since the pagans had begun their attacks on Christendom he reflected with a snort of irony, was part of the reason that he was in this place. That and the trouble he had caused, offering one Norseman after another the Northumbrian crown in a bid to keep the kingdom independent of the grasping southern kings. King Eadred had finally seen no other recourse than to carry him away to the South coast, as far away from his own land as he was able, and Wulfstan allowed himself a smile as he recalled the struggles of the unfortunate monks tasked with his instruction so long ago: he had always been a bit of a scoundrel.
