Knights of the Hawk c-3

by James Aitcheson

  ‘I swear it,’ I told her. ‘And, after I’ve done what I’ve come here for, I promise to see you safely back home. Where is home for you, anyway?’

  ‘A small village that doesn’t have a name, where the great river empties into the wide western sea.’

  That was no great help, for such a place could be anywhere. ‘Do you know where exactly?’

  She shrugged. ‘A short way downstream from the city the Danes call Hlymerkr.’

  I nodded, though I had never heard of such a place. How I’d manage to take her home or even when exactly, I hadn’t yet worked out. But I would.

  She was still pale and anxious when, later that day, we clambered from Hrithdyr on to Dyflin’s muddy quayside, hauling our packs up after us. The local reeve, or whatever the word for such an official was in the tongues of that place, came to collect from Snorri the silver penny that was the daily price for keeping a vessel moored here, and after paying it the Dane led us up the city’s narrow, dung-reeking alleys to the place where this Magnus could be found.

  Despite everything I’d heard about Dyflin and the folk who frequented it, it was nothing like I had imagined: not nearly as large, nor as impressive to look upon, compared with either Lundene or the great cities of Normandy, with their towering vaulted churches and encircling stone walls that stood the height of six men. Indeed it seemed to me a sorry place. While a few long halls that probably belonged to merchants or noblemen stood proud upon the higher ground to the south, much of the rest of the city looked as if it were being swallowed up by the mud. Crumbling, sunken-floored houses huddled close together on either side of streets ankle-deep in filth. In one place a stream had become clogged with straw and leaves and dung and the putrid remains of an animal that might once have been a hog, and had overspilled its banks, flooding the road and leaving wide pools through which we had no choice but to trudge. One part of the town was burnt to the ground, leaving only blackened timbers and piles of ash, whether as the result of some accident or a recent raid I could only guess. Traders called out in tongues I did not understand, grabbing at our sleeves to catch our attention, pointing to stalls laden with fresh-caught fish or else with bolts of brightly coloured silks from far-off lands. Bone-thin, toothless beggars leant upon sticks as they held out hands in hope of receiving a coin or two, while children played with wooden horses in the alleys between houses, eyeing us suspiciously before they resumed their games.

  Snorri led us up the hill in the direction of a wide, flat, grassy mound that looked as though it should have formed part of a castle, except that no tower stood upon it, nor was it surrounded by any palisade.

  ‘That’s where they hold the thing,’ Snorri told me when I asked what it was.

  ‘The thing?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s our word for an assembly of elders and nobles, like the hundred courts you have in England.’ He pointed towards the mound. ‘That’s where they make the laws, pass judgments on disputes, of which there’s no shortage here. Men fighting over money, or women, or both-’

  I was only half paying attention to him, for I was suddenly aware of a group of women who had stopped to fix us with stern glares. A few men even went so far as to spit on the ground as we passed, which I thought strange. Obviously they recognised myself, Serlo and Pons for foreigners, either by our manner of dress or, more probably, from the cut of our hair, for unlike the Danes and the English, who tended to let theirs grow long, ours was shaven short at the back and at the sides, in the style favoured in France. Still, I thought such attentions strange, given that they must be well used to seeing people from all parts.

  ‘It’s because they’re English,’ Snorri explained. ‘Many thegns came and settled here together with their families in the months and years after Hæstinges, preferring exile over submission to a foreign king. They all know a Norman when they see one. I thought you knew.’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I didn’t.’

  Hardly had I set foot in this city than it seemed I was already making enemies. I checked to make sure that my sword was belted upon my waist, which of course it was. Hopefully I wouldn’t have any need of it.

  Thankfully they were content to stare and spit and nothing more, and we soon left them behind us, arriving shortly at a high-gabled hall with timbers that were half-rotten in places. A boy who might have been a servant or a slave met us at the door and regarded us sullenly.

  ‘Heill nu, Björn,’ Snorri said by way of greeting, in what I presumed was the Danish tongue, since although it sounded a little like English, the words were not all familiar. ‘Er thin meistari her?’

  ‘Ma sva vera,’ said Björn with a shrug, eyeing Snorri with suspicion, as if not quite sure whether he was to be trusted. ‘Hvi? Hverr vill veita?’

  ‘Seg honum at Snorri Broklauss vili hitta hann at mali.’

  Björn glowered and hesitated for a moment, before disappearing into the gloom of the hall.

  ‘This Magnus,’ I said to Snorri, ‘is he a Dane?’

  ‘You might think it to look at him. From what I gather, though, the blood in his veins is English. Truth is, I don’t know him well enough to say for sure.’

  ‘And you think this Englishman will be willing to help us?’

  ‘I’m telling you I don’t know where he’s from. I hear he’s from noble stock, but then again I hear many things. He speaks both tongues well, and he has many Danish friends. That’s all I know.’

  Not to mention a Danish name, I thought, although perhaps that was not so unusual. Men often considered me a Breton, although it was some years since I’d last returned to the place of my birth, but my name was French, given to me by my Norman mother.

  ‘How far do you trust him?’ I asked.

  ‘About as far as I trust you,’ Snorri replied flatly, which I supposed was only deserved. ‘Let me do the talking, at least to begin with. If he’s here, that is, and I’m beginning to think he isn’t.’

  ‘If he isn’t, where will we find him?’

  ‘At this hour?’ He nodded in the vague direction of the setting sun. ‘Probably down at the stews by the docks. Whores and slaves are what Dyflin is best known for. Fine girls, there are, from all over Christendom and even beyond, as plump or as skinny as you like. You won’t find better this side of the sea. Probably there are boys as well, if you’re inclined that way; our Lord might judge, but not old Snorri. I’ll show you later where-’

  He didn’t get the chance to finish, since at that moment the door opened. Standing there was a sour-faced man of around twenty years, by my reckoning, tall and long-limbed, with fair hair that was tied back, a shaggy woollen cloak of a style that I’d seen many Dyflin folk wearing draped around his shoulders, and a flagon in one hand.

  ‘Snorri Broklauss,’ he said, without warmth, his words sounding more than a little slurred. He greeted him in English, which, I thought, was just as well. ‘I was wondering how soon it would be before you next showed your face here. You knew that wine you sold me had spoilt, didn’t you?’

  The Dane frowned. ‘Spoilt, lord?’

  ‘It made me sick, Snorri. Sick like a pig, all over my hall. I was spewing all that night and the next day too.’

  ‘That’ll happen if you try to drink the whole barrel at once, lord,’ Snorri said gravely, his expression even.

  For an instant I thought Magnus might strike him for such discourtesy, but instead his expression softened and a smile broke out across his face. ‘So, what have you come to sell me this time?’

  ‘I’m not looking to sell,’ Snorri said. ‘I’ve come looking for your help.’

  ‘My help?’ Magnus snorted, and took a swig from his flagon. ‘You want my help?’

  ‘I want information, or rather this man does.’ The sea captain stepped back and gestured in my direction. ‘He calls himself Goscelin, from Saint-Omer. He has some questions which I thought you might be able to answer for him.’

  Ale-addled as he was, it took a few moments for Magnus’s gaze to settle upon me. He lo
oked me up and down, glanced over my shoulder at Serlo and Pons, Godric and Eithne, and snorted again. ‘A Fleming?’

  ‘So he claims,’ Snorri said.

  The other man sneered. ‘And does this Goscelin have a voice of his own?’

  He wore no weapons, and yet despite his youth he had the look of a warrior, or at least someone who had witnessed much hardship in his life, and fought many battles, both with the sword and without. There was a certain hollowness in his bleary eyes that matched the ale on his breath, and a world-weariness in his manner that I found strange for one of his age, and for which I couldn’t account. He didn’t strike me as the kind of person who could help me.

  ‘I’m looking for someone,’ I said nevertheless. ‘Snorri seems to think you might know where to find him.’

  ‘That depends,’ said Magnus.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘How much I know depends on how much you’re willing to pay.’

  I had travelled that road before. I had wasted half my worldly wealth in paying spies who offered me nothing in return. Nothing, that was, except for lies. I could ill afford to make the same mistake again.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘First you tell me what you know, and then I pay you however much I think that information is worth.’

  ‘How about this?’ he asked. ‘You give me the name of the one you’re looking for, and I’ll tell you whether or not I know where he can be found, and how much it will cost you. You decide then whether you think I’m telling the truth, and either hand over your silver or leave. Agreed?’

  Ale dulled the wits of most men, but clearly not this one. A part of me wondered whether it was better to go and try my luck elsewhere, but how was I to tell who was reliable and who was not? I didn’t know this city, and so I was relying on the opinion of one who did. And he had brought me here.

  ‘Agreed,’ I said eventually, albeit with some reluctance.

  ‘So tell me.’

  ‘I’m looking for a man called Haakon. Haakon Thorolfsson, of the black-dragon banner. I hear he was last seen here in Dyflin around five months ago.’

  Magnus’s eyes narrowed. ‘Haakon Thorolfsson?’ His cheeks flushed an angry scarlet, and he spat. ‘What do you know of him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, confused. ‘That’s why I’m-’

  ‘Did he send you to taunt me? Is that it? What more does he want from me?’

  ‘Of course he didn’t send me,’ I said. ‘Why would I be asking you where to find him if he had?’

  Magnus swigged again from the flagon, and fixed me with a look of disdain, but said nothing.

  ‘So you’ve heard of him,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard of him. A friend of his, are you, or else looking to sell your sword to him?’

  Snorri had taken me for a freebooter as well. Was it so obvious, I wondered, that I had become a masterless man, one of those landless, wandering warriors that until recently I had so despised?

  ‘He’s no friend of mine,’ I replied. ‘And my services aren’t for sale.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘He stole something that belongs to me,’ I said. ‘I want it back.’

  Twenty

  We sat in near-darkness on one of the benches that ran along the long sides of the hall, while Magnus crouched by the dwindling flames of the peat fire, his tufted woollen cloak drawn close about his shoulders. The air was suffused with the smell of damp thatch and rotting timbers. Instead of rushes as we tended to use in England, I noticed the floor was covered with a loose scattering of woodchips and moss, which clearly hadn’t been replaced in some time, if the mouse-droppings everywhere were anything to judge by.

  ‘His fortress is far to the north of here, among what are known as the Suthreyjar,’ Magnus said, satisfied now that we hadn’t come to taunt him, and having accepted my offer of silver.

  ‘The Suthreyjar?’ I asked.

  ‘The islands that lie off the coast of northern Britain,’ Snorri offered by way of explanation. ‘They used to be under the control of the jarls of Orkaneya and the kings of Mann, but now they are havens for pirates, the dominions of petty warlords. Those are dangerous seas that surround them, and yet that’s the way one must travel to reach Ysland and the frozen lands beyond.’

  ‘Haakon is one of those pirates,’ Magnus said, and there was spite in his voice. ‘And one of the more powerful among them, too. He likes to call himself a jarl, but no king ever bestowed that title upon him. He makes his living in the spring and autumn by preying on the trading ships that sail the waters close to his island fastness, and in summer by raiding along the shores of Britain, sometimes selling his services to noble lords and kings in return for rich reward.’

  ‘How did you come by this knowledge?’ I asked.

  Magnus was silent for a moment. In his eye, though he tried to hide it by turning away, I spied a glimmer of a tear. ‘I know’, he said, speaking quietly now, ‘because, to our misfortune, my brothers and I tried to purchase his services for a campaign of our own.’

  ‘You did?’ Snorri said with some surprise. ‘You, a warrior?’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘He made off in the night with all the booty we had captured on our raid, leaving myself and my brothers unable to pay our men for their service.’ He took a deep breath. ‘A fight broke out. My eldest brother was killed, the other gravely wounded. He did not die straightaway, but fell into a fever and left this world three days later. I alone managed to escape with my life, together with a few of my oath-sworn followers, as well as some who had served my brothers.’

  ‘You never told me this,’ Snorri said.

  ‘And why should I have done? This was three summers ago, before I even knew you.’ Magnus turned back to me. ‘So, you see, he took something from me as well. Something more valuable than gold or silver or weapons. He took the lives of my brothers. It’s because of him that they’re now dead, and I find myself reduced to this.’

  A moving story, to be sure, although he was not alone in having such a tale to tell. In a similar way Eadgar had taken from me my lord and all my loyal brothers in arms on that night at Dunholm. What I wanted to know was the one thing Magnus had not yet told me.

  ‘Where is Haakon’s fortress?’ I asked.

  ‘I do not know the name of the island, although I know how to find the fjord in which it lies.’

  ‘You’ve been there before?’

  ‘Once,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen his stronghold on its crag by the sea. Jarnborg, he calls it.’

  ‘The iron fortress,’ Snorri murmured.

  Magnus nodded. ‘It might as well be made of iron, for all the success that men have had trying to capture it. It’s all but unassailable, protected on three sides by high cliffs rising from the water, and approachable only by a narrow neck of land, but it’s so steep and uneven that you could never lead an army up it.’

  ‘Could you take me there?’ I asked.

  ‘Take you there? Why?’

  ‘To claim back what’s rightfully mine.’

  ‘With this army?’ he asked, nodding at the various members of my retinue. ‘Four men, yourself included, and one girl?’

  ‘And as many others as I can hire.’

  He snorted derisively. ‘Hosts numbering in the hundreds have marched against Jarnborg and failed to take it. What makes you think you can do it with five?’

  ‘It needn’t come to an assault, if Haakon is willing to deal with me.’

  Magnus shot me a look as if to suggest that was unlikely, and in truth I didn’t really believe it either. For what could I possibly offer that he would accept in return for Oswynn?

  ‘Haakon doesn’t give up anything willingly,’ Magnus said. ‘I’ve met him, so believe me when I say this. Whatever he has of yours, you won’t get it back without a fight.’

  ‘Then join me,’ I said, more confidently than I had any right to, given that I knew little of this fortress Magnus had spoken of, in particular the condition of its defences, or the n
umber of spears that guarded its gates and walls. But I was desperately in need of allies, and it seemed to me that fate had led me to this man. ‘You mentioned you still have followers who remain loyal to you. I could use their swords.’

  ‘You’re asking me to risk my neck on such an expedition?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Many reasons,’ he muttered. ‘Not least of which is that I don’t know you, Fleming.’

  ‘I’ll admit to having little knowledge of war, but even I know that this is not the season to go campaigning,’ Snorri put in. ‘Assuming that you could gather the men and the ships for such a voyage, all Haakon has to do is withdraw inside this fastness of his, where, if he’s sensible, he’ll have provisions to last until spring. Do you really plan on besieging him for the next half a year, battered by the winter winds, bedding down night after night on frozen ground?’

  I glared at him. The old Dane wasn’t helping. ‘Think instead what you stand to gain,’ I told Magnus.

  ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘Vengeance,’ I said, hoping to appeal to his baser instincts. ‘Honour. Make him pay the blood-price for your brothers’ deaths. If he’s as powerful as you say he is, he must have wealth stored away in a hoard somewhere, too. All that can be yours.’

  ‘Don’t you think that if I considered this possible, and had the means for it, I would have tried already — without your help?’

  ‘Perhaps. But there are ways of achieving victory without resorting to siege or a direct assault.’

  Not many came to mind, admittedly. I was thinking, I supposed, of how we had slipped inside Eoferwic to open the gates to King Guillaume’s army two years ago, of how we had distracted the enemy by burning the ships at Beferlic last autumn, of how we had negotiated with Morcar to bring about the downfall of the rebels at Elyg. On each of those occasions it was not sheer weight of numbers that had won us the battle, but cunning and not a little daring. I had done it before. I could do it again.