King and Emperor

Chapter Thirteen

From all directions the levies converged on the rock of Puigpunyent, where a tense and raging Emperor directed them as they came in, either to strengthening the ring upon ring of sentry-posts set in the ravines and thorny scrub all around, or to the ever-growing gangs of pickax-men who, stone by stone, were dismantling the towers and walls of the heretics' fortress.

A hundred miles to the south, admiral Georgios and general Agilulf stared puzzledly at each other as they digested the order to halt, return, cease the pressure on the Arab forces, abandon the search for the vanished Northern fleet: return at once with every man and every ship.

Little further to the south, the Caliph himself, taking the field in the service of the Prophet for the first time for many years, pressed forward at the head of the greatest army Cordova had sent out since the days when the forces of Islam had tried to conquer France and the lands beyond it, to be turned back by Charles whom the Franks called “the Hammer,” Martel.

And crossing the Bay of Biscay came a force small in comparison with the others in numbers of ships and men, but their superior in the new qualities of range and weight of missile: the fleet of the One King, of England and the North, drawn from all its blockade stations against the Empire and sent south on the word of Farman the seer. Twenty mule-armed two-masters, thirty longships pacing them, packed with the unemployed and impatient warriors of the North, all laden as deep as they could be pressed with beef and beer and biscuit for the appetites of more than two thousand men. Alfred had accepted Farman's vision-warning, but refused the expedition command, saying England must not be left kingless: the fleet sailed under the orders of Gold-Guthmund, sub-king of the Swedes, once known (and still well-remembered) as Guthmund the Greedy.

Even in Rome, even in Byzantium, attention was falling on the remote borderlands where the Emperor of the Romans searched for the Grail-relic that would complete his empire, and where the Shatt al-Islam had suffered its first turning-back in more than a hundred years.

But the One King himself sat in the sunlight and linked fingers with his mistress, smiling foolishly.

“Completely slit-struck,” snarled Brand to the rest of the king's council, watching the pair at their table by the harbor from a decent distance. “Always happens to him. Treats women as if they all had snakes up their skirts for years on end, then one of them does something or other to him, can't think how, and bang! You can't even get his attention. Behaves like a fourteen-year-old who's just been taken behind the barn by a milkmaid.”

“There may be no harm in it,” offered Thorvin. “After all, better that he has a woman than that he doesn't. Who knows, he may get her with child…”

“The way they're going on they should have triplets already, whole ship shakes half the night…”

“…and if that were to happen, it might make the King—take his responsibilities more seriously. And she is who she is. Daughter of Ivar, granddaughter of Ragnar. She can trace her line back to Völsi himself, and through him to Othin.” Thorvin pointed to the ship moored a furlong off on the still water. “Fafnisbane, Sigurth the dragon-slayer, his blood runs in her veins. No-one was more pleased than I when her father and uncles were killed. But there was no-one alive who did not in some way respect them. She is one of the god-born, and of a family favored by Othin. Maybe that will avert some of the anger of the god, which some of us have feared for him.”

The council pondered his words. On the whole the Vikings among them, Hagbarth and Skaldfinn, even Brand despite himself, were impressed. Cwicca and Osmod looked at each other silently: their memories of Ivar the Boneless had not faded. Only Hund allowed trouble to show on his face. Brand, with the champion's sensitivity to matters of honor and precedence, noticed it.

“She was never your woman,” he remarked with as near kindness as his voice could manage. “Do you feel he owes you a debt because she was your apprentice?”

“No,” he said. “I wish them well, if they have chosen each other. But what is all this about the god-born and the blood of heroes?” Bitterness tinged his voice. “Look at them over there! Who are they? A pirate's bastard who spent most of his youth in a wattle hut. And a woman who has been a drab to half of Denmark. And that is the One King and the One Queen-to-be!”

He rose abruptly and stalked away across the bright and crowded quayside. The others watched him go.

“What he says is true,” muttered Hagbarth.

“Yes, but he worked his way up, didn't he?” contradicted Cwicca, aflame with anger at any criticism of his master. “And I expect she only done what she had to, too. I think that's as important as kings' blood anyway. Me and Osmod should know: how many kings have we been at the death of, Osmod?”

“Six,” said Osmod briefly. “If you count the Frankish king, that is, we didn't kill him but his men did it for us once we beat him.”

“The trouble is,” said Thorvin, “the more you kill, the more power goes into the hands of the ones you don't.”

Only a few yards away from the Northerners on the crowded quayside, a different group watched the pair of lovers. They squatted in the shade of an awning where a tailor advertised his wares, the tailor himself crouched on a tiny stool, passing cloth through his hands while he stitched with the speed of a serpent. As his feigned customers felt material and from time to time called out the cries of surprise and outrage which were part of normal negotiation, tradesman and clients exchanged muttered comments.

“That is him for sure,” said one in the thick and sweaty homespun of a mountain shepherd. “The one eye. The gold circlet. The charm round his neck.”

“The graduale,” corrected a better-dressed man, grey-haired and grey-bearded. The others looked sideways at him, corrected themselves and returned their eyes to the cloth.

“Two days ago he went all through the city with ha-Nasi,” said the tailor, voice and eyes never rising. “At the librarium he tore a book and asked what was the price of wisdom. The geonim think him an idiot and have asked ha-Nasi to send him away. Yesterday and today he has been with the woman. His eyes never leave her. He cannot keep his hands from her body, or only with difficulty.”

The grey-haired man looked first disbelieving, then sad. “It may be that he is still bound in service to the Evil One. But who is not, when he is born? It is from that that we have to climb. Thierry, do you think he would come freely, if we asked him?”

“No. He knows nothing of us.”

“Can we bribe him?”

“He is a rich man. His clothes would disgrace an onion-grower, but see the gold he wears. They say…”

“What do they say?”

“They say he asks always for new knowledge. His men talk of the Greek fire in the taverns, say openly they seek a way to match it. Every day, when the wind rises, they fly strange kites with boys in them from the decks of their ships. If you could tell him how to make Greek fire he might go with you. Or send another.”

“I know no way to make Greek fire,” said the greybeard slowly.

The shepherd spoke again. “Then it will have to be the woman.”

To cover the silence that fell, the tailor raised his voice in a cry of approval of his own wares and amazement at his prices.

“It will have to be the woman,” said the greybeard heavily. “So it is with men. Their own desires lead them to danger and to death. Their loins urge them to give life. But every life they give is another hostage to the Evil One. God the Father of the Christians.”

“Jehovah of the Jews,” added the shepherd.

“The Prince of this World,” said all the men in the booth together. Ritualistically, each man spat briefly and secretly into his palm.

Shef, the object of so much hidden scrutiny, rose finally from the table where he had been sitting, throwing down a silver penny with his own head on it as payment for the strong resined wine: the Jews had no such prohibition as the Mohammedans against strong drink, though they did not consume it in the everyday fashion of the Latins or the determined drunkenness of the Way-folk.

“Let's go back to the ship,” he said.

Svandis shook her head. “I want to walk round. Talk to people.”

Shef's face showed surprise, dismay, alarm. “You did that before. In Cordova. You were away all night. You won't…”

She smiled. “I won't treat you the way I did poor Hund.”

“There are no slaves here, you know. What language will you speak?”

“If I can't find anyone to talk to I'll come back.” Shef continued to stare down at her. Since they had mated on the deck of the Fafnisbane a bare day and a half before, he had thought of nothing but her. It seemed to be part of his nature that once he was attached to a woman, no other would do, no other thought could enter him. Except what had to be done. Now there was nothing to be done. Yet something told him that this was a woman who could not be held, who would rebel at the suggestion of it. And soon the wind would rise. “Come soon,” he said, and walked away, waving already for the boat and the rowers that would take him back to the Fafnisbane.

As the afternoon breeze began to rise, the kite-handlers prepared for yet another trial flight. A small elite of them had grown up. Cwicca and Osmod had places as of right: they had been companions of the One King in all his exploits. Even more important, both of them now had ground into them the deep belief that there was a technical solution to every problem. Technical solutions had raised both of them from slavery to wealth—first the catapult, then the crossbow, then case-hardened steel, then water-wheels, windmills, the cam, the trip-hammer and the mill-driven bellows. They were used to the immense difficulties of putting ideas into practice, turning imagination into technology. They knew it could be done. Perhaps most significantly, they knew it had to be done by trial and error, by combining the knowledge of many. Failure one day did not deter them the next. Their conviction was contagious.

Another member of the gang was Steffi, the squinter. He too had belief—belief enough, as the others recognized, to throw himself off a cliff and expect to live. Hama and Trimma were the line-handlers, Godrich and Balla cut and stitched the precious kite-cloth given by bin-Firnas. All the half-dozen ships' boys of the Fafnisbane, recruited originally by Ordlaf the skipper to man his yards, were eager contenders to be flown aloft, watched with bitter envy by their counterparts on the other six two-masters. All the kite-handlers were English, all except the boys were men rescued by the Way from slavery. The Vikings from Brand's ships showed a certain curiosity, and were ready enough to man their oars and act as retrieval or rescue ships. Their own sense of dignity, though, seemed to hold them back from the manic jostling try-it-and-see activity of the experimenters.

Most important member of the elite was the king himself, too often forced to worry about other matters, always returning like a hungry bee to the nectar of flight. Hagbarth, priest of Njörth, while half-disapproving of the whole project as a threat to seamanship, nevertheless saw it as his duty to the Way to record the experiments. He often found it difficult to get close enough to the apparatus to see what changes the stitchers or the line-handlers were making.

“See,” said Cwicca finally as the preparations reached completion. “We think we got it rigged absolutely right now. And we had to make two changes that the Arab fellow in Cordova didn't know about.”

“You took out all the hen-feathers,” suggested Shef, remembering the total failure of the dive from Stamford tower.

“No feathers at all. Like the old Arab said, you got to fly like a man, not like a bird. And the old Arab was right about another thing. You got to stop thinking ‘sail.’ You don't want the wind to push you. You want it to hold you up. So you got to rig this kite here—” Cwicca struggled with the concept of “asymmetry,” settled in the end for, “different at both ends. Wider upwind, narrower downwind.

“Right, now the two things we've figured out are these. First, he launched with the boy in the sling facing upwind. Good idea, for staying up. Not so good if you ever decide to try to fly free.”

The twelve-year-old Tolman, most favored and practiced of the apprentice flyers, bounced on his feet with eagerness as Cwicca said the words, was immediately kidney-punched by a jealous rival. The king unwound the two boys with the ease of practice and held them apart at arm's length.

“Go on,” he said.

“It's kind of—” Cwicca again struggled with an idea, this time what a later age would call “counter-intuitive,” settled for “not the way you'd expect, but we've tried launching with the boy facing downwind. It means he doesn't keep his eye on the ship…”

“I watch the sea and the sky,” shrieked Tolman. “I watch where they meet. As long as that's straight, and beneath my chin, I stay up.”

“And the other thing we've found out,” continued Cwicca determinedly, “pretty much like the Arab said, is you need two sets of controls. One for up and down. Those are the wing-things, that the boy works with his arms. But it stands to reason, you have to have left and right as well. So we fitted, like, a tail-vane, like they have on weather-cocks. He works that between his feet.”

Hagbarth, watching, looked carefully at the double square of sail-cloth fitted now on the wider upwind mouth of the great kite. Hagbarth, skilled seaman as he was, had never seen a rudder. All Northern ships used the traditional steering-oar instead. Nevertheless, it was clear the idea could be adapted to water.

“And today's the day we're going to try free flight,” remarked Shef. “Are any of the boys prepared to risk it?”

As the kidney-punching broke out again, the men of the kite-crew secured a boy each and held them firmly.

“We better stick with Tolman,” said Cwicca. “He's skinniest and he's had most goes aloft.”

“And he's worthless,” added Osmod, Tolman's second cousin.

“Right. Now look, you men. Is there any risk in this? I don't want to lose even Tolman, even if he is worthless.”

“Bound to be a bit of a risk,” said Cwicca. “After all, he's going up five hundred feet. No-one can fall that far and just walk away. But it's over water. Warm sea. Recovery boats well downwind and watching. We've never had a kite just crash into the water. Worst they do is settle slowly.”

“All right,” said Shef. “Now show me the line release.”

Cwicca showed him the single thick mooring-line, led forward to a place by the flyer's right hand. Showed him the dog-lead clip that held it, the neat contrivance that ensured a few inches slack even when the kite was tugged by the wind.

“When he hits the water he'll have to get out of the sling. Make sure he has a sharp knife. In a sheath, round his neck on a lanyard. All right, Tolman, you're going to be the first man from Norfolk to fly.”

Struck by a sudden thought, Shef looked round. “That Arab, Mu'atiyah, where's he gone? I'd like him to see this, so he can tell his master.”

“Him.” Cwicca shrugged. “He used to hang around saying things. We never understood him, but we could guess. One of those ‘it'll never work’ people, you get them everywhere. Anyway, we got fed up with him, and Suleiman, Solomon, whatever we're supposed to call him, he took him on shore and locked him up. Said he didn't want him running off to Cordova too soon with some story about treacherous Jews.”

Shef shrugged in his turn, went to stand by the rail while Hagbarth took command of the now-practiced routine of launch. The Fafnisbane tacking out against the on-shore breeze a good mile from the wall that guarded the outer harbor. Two of the fast and manageable Viking longships positioned close in, a mile downwind, ready to row for the point of splashdown. Two mule-armed consorts, the Hagena and the Grendelsbane a further half-mile out, spread wide north and south. Not to observe the launch. To watch and ward against red galleys sweeping out of the haze, sharp-eyed boys with far-seers at every masthead.

“They are playing their games again,” said ha-Nasi the prince disapprovingly to the silent Solomon.

“It will never work,” snarled Mu'atiyah to himself as he watched from a barred window overlooking the sea. “How can barbarians compete with my master, the glory of Cordova? They speak Arabic no better than monkeys even yet.”

“The woman is by the well,” reported Thierry the shepherd to Anselm, the grey-bearded perfectus. “She tries to talk to the women who come down to draw water, but in no language they know.”

The ships cruised out across calm water, only ruffled by the rising breeze.

As the moment of launch approached, everyone aboard the Fafnisbane went into a now-practiced routine. Tolman wriggled into his sling. Four of the strongest men aboard lifted the whole frame of the kite to the rear larboard rail. Hagbarth, at the steering-oar, judged the breeze. At the right moment, the Fafnisbane moving at her best pace with the wind abeam, he yelled one order. Instantly the hands at the ropes hauled up both sails. The two-masted ship, still under way, swung bow into the breeze. The kite filled with air, started to lift from its handlers.

Cwicca nudged Shef. “Say the word, lord. This is the big moment, like.”

“You say it. You know the right moment.”

Cwicca, judging breeze and ship's movement, hesitated. Then called sharply, “Let her go!”

The kite lifted sharply away from the slowing ship. The handlers had begun by paying out line from a coil round palm and elbow. They knew now that that was too slow. Instead their lines ran almost freely from neat coils on the deck, slowed every now and then by horny palms closing. Just keeping enough tension to pull the kite back against the wind, gain another trifle of lift.

The box of cloth and cane soared gently into the sky, watched by a thousand eyes. “Line almost all out,” called the handlers.

“What's the signal for him to release?”

“Two tugs.”

“Give them.”

High in the sky Tolman, son of a quern-slave by an eel-trapper, felt the two sudden checks on his rise. Felt for the dog-lead clip, jerked it free, dropped it carefully behind him. Another check while the metal clip struck the loop through which the line ran—they had carefully made that bigger so there would be no jam.

And now he was free, hanging in the sky on nothing but the wind. Slowly, with a caution belied by his normal behavior on the ground, Tolman began to test his controls. He was still rising. Could he level out? Alert to every shift of the frail frame, he tried the arm controls, to catch the wind and bring him down. Tolman had no theory about how anything worked. His decisions were based on trial and response. The lack of preconceptions of a twelve-year-old combined with quick responses to teach him basic aerodynamics.

Now he had the horizon level again. There was a moment to look down. Far ahead he could see the mountains, rising high out of the narrow coastal plain. Here and there his eye was even caught by movement, by flashes of light that must be metal. And far off to the north, in the distance, a smudge that must be burning. Where was the harbor?

With a slight catch at the heart Tolman realized that free flight had one major difference from dangling on a line. He was being blown steadily away from the Fafnisbane and from the recovery ships. Already the Viking boats were almost directly below him, a bare furlong from the land. He would be over the land himself in minutes, could see himself being carried miles away into the mountains.

He must turn back. But how? Could a kite turn into the wind? If a ship could… If he could make it point down, surely the speed of descent would counterbalance the tug of the wind. As long as he did not dive directly into the wind…

Gently, alert all the time for the first twinge of an unbalanced response, Tolman worked his foot controls, felt his craft heel away to the right, found himself automatically working the arm controls to lift the left side and lower the right.

A mile astern, Shef and Steffi and the rest of the watchers saw the seemingly runaway kite turn into a slow and gentle bank. Oars threshed as the recovery ships prepared to race after it, now that it was turning back towards the sea. Hagbarth prepared to shout orders, make sail, head in the same direction.

“Wait,” said Shef, head fixed upwards. “I think he knows what he's doing. I think he's going to try to turn and come back to us.”

“Well, one thing's sure,” said Steffi with a defiant glare round for contradiction, made more defiant by his squint. “There ain't no doubt we can fly. And not with no feathers neither.”

In the last moments of his flight, Tolman, like Steffi before him, seemed to lose control of his craft and come down hard and fast. He hit the water with a splash and a cracking of canes barely a hundred feet from the Fafnisbane itself, the recovery ships well astern of him. Shef, who had shed his gold circlet and bracelets minutes before, dived and swam over, knife trailing from his wrist, ready to cut the lad free if need be. In the warm water he and half-a-dozen other swimmers surged round the still-floating kite. But Tolman had wriggled loose already, was treading water like a frog, holding his craft protectively. “Did you see?” he shouted. “Did you see?”

“I saw,” Shef replied, kicking gleefully in the bright sunlight. The anxiety and depression that had grown on him with the years had vanished. Nothing so pleasurable as splashing in the warm Inner Sea, far from the freezing waters of England. And the problem of flight was solved, or at least well begun. And he was the lover of Svandis.

“I owe you a reward,” he said. “The promised reward for new knowledge. But you will have to share it with Cwicca and Steffi and the gang. Maybe the other boys too.”

“I should get most,” shrilled Tolman. “I took it up and flew it!”

On the shore, by one of the gates out of the fortress-city of the Jews, Anselm the perfectus eyed the little convoy of mules and donkeys.

“You have her?” he asked.

“Wrapped up in a carpet, slung over the black mule. You can't see her because we've packed other bales round her. The gate-guards won't notice.” Thierry the shepherd hesitated. “One bad thing, mi dons.”

“What's that?”

“We lost Guillem. She killed him.”

“One woman against six of you?”

“We thought we had her. One each side of her, coming up from behind, grab the bottom of her dress, lift it right over her head like a bag. You'd expect a woman to start shrieking ‘rape’ and be too frightened to fight, arms trapped and her legs bare.”

“So?”

“She had some kind of gutting knife in her belt. Slashed her own dress right open, stabbed Guillem right through the heart while he was trying to grab her arm. Then I hit her one and she went down. Kept on fighting, though, while we gagged her. We did it in an alley behind the well, only women around and I don't think anyone saw. I hope she has no brothers. I wouldn't want to have to fight one of them, if that's what the women are like.”

“Guillem has earned his release,” said the perfectus. “May we all leave the world as well, and earn the right to pass out of it. Go on, Thierry. I will leave the message and then follow.”

The mule-train passed through the guarded gate, headed across the plain and up into the nearby mountains, Svandis slung bound, gagged, near-naked but conscious over the lead-beast.