One King's Way

Chapter Seventeen

Shef realized a man was coming towards his little group bivouacked in a fenced yard on the edge of the village's common grazing land. He seemed uncertain rather than hostile or aggressive. Indeed, as he reached the group he paused, sketched what might have been a clumsy bow—performed by someone who had heard of the custom but never seen it done. His eyes were on the white priest-clothes of Hund, now badly soiled, and the Ithun-apple that hung round his neck. “You are a leech,” he said. Hund nodded, remained seated. “There are many in this village who are sick, or with wounds that have not healed. My son broke his leg, we bound it up but it is crooked, he can put no weight on it. My mother has the eye-sickness. There are others—women whose childbirth tore them, men who have had the jaw-ache for years, no matter what teeth we pull… Leeches never come up here. Will you look at them?”

“Why should I?” said Hund. The priests of the Way did not believe in humility, had never heard of Hippocrates. “If our champion loses tomorrow you are going to hang us, or maim us and enslave us. If you brand me tomorrow, why should I heal your sick today?”

The man looked uneasily at the others in the group. “Vigdjarf did not see that you were a leech. I'm sure… Whatever happens… He did not mean you.”

Hund shrugged. “He meant my companions.”

Shef got to his feet, looked down at Hund, winked his one eye barely perceptibly. Hund, who had known Shef since they were boys, caught the hint, looked away, his face unreadable.

“He will come,” said Shef. “When he has unpacked his leech-tools. Wait for him over there.”

As the man walked away Shef said to Hund, in an urgent undertone, “Treat the ones he shows you. Then demand to see the others. Even the thralls. Ask anyone you think you can trust about the mill. The mill we can hear creaking. Whatever happens, be back here at dusk.”

The disk of the sun was already poised on the jagged mountain-tops as Hund walked back to the others, looking weary. The brown stains of dried blood showed on the sleeves of his tunic. From time to time during the afternoon, the listeners had heard faint cries of pain: a leech at work in a place where even poppy and henbane were unknown.

“Much to do up here,” said Hund, sitting down and accepting the bowl of food Shef passed him. “I had to break that child's leg again to set it properly. So much pain in the world. And so much of it easy to cure. Warm water and lye for the midwives' hands would save half the women who die in childbirth.”

“What about the mill?” demanded Shef.

“Late on they brought a thrall-woman to me. They did not want to, told me it was useless, and so was she. They were right. It was useless. She has a growth inside her and even in Kaupang with assistants and my best potions I doubt I could save her. But I tried to ease her pain. Her pain in the body, that is. There is no cure for what is in her mind. She was an Irish woman, stolen from her home when she was fifteen, forty years ago. They sold her to some man up here. She has never heard a word of her own tongue since, had five children by different masters, all taken away from her. Now her sons are Vikings, stealing women on their own. Never ask yourself why there are so many Vikings, so many Viking armies. Every man breeds as many sons from slave-women as he can. They do to fill the ranks.”

“The mill,” said Shef firmly.

“She told me there is a mill, as you said. It was set up only last year by a Way-priest who came up here, one of Valgrim's friends. Last year, too, they brought up a man to turn it. How can a man turn a mill?”

“I know,” said Shef, remembering the god-vision he had seen. “Go on.”

“She says the man is an Englishman. He is kept locked up there all the time. Twice he has broken free and run into the hills. Both times they ran him down. The first time they beat him with rawhide outside the temple. She said she saw that. She said he is a man of great strength. They lashed him for as long as it would take to plow an acre, and he never cried out except to curse them. The second time he ran, they… did another thing.”

“What was that?” asked Brand, listening keenly.

“When they say slaves are gelded, it usually means they cut off their stones, like a bullock or a cut stallion. To make them tame and docile. They did not do that with him. Instead they cut off the other thing that makes you a man. They left him his stones. He is still as strong as a bull, and as fierce. He has the desires of a man. But he can never act like one again.”

The men listening stared at each other, each one wondering what his fate might be in the morning.

“I'll tell you one thing,” said Cwicca definitely. “I don't care what promises anyone makes. If Brand loses tomorrow—and Thor send he won't—the man who beats him gets my first bolt right through him. And then we're all going to start shooting. We may not be able to get out, but I'm not going to be a thrall here. These mountain-trolls are as bad as the black monks.”

A rumble of assent came from the others, men and women together.

“She said one more thing,” Hund went on. “She said he's mad.”

Shef nodded, reflectively. “A mad Englishman,” he said. “As strong as a bull and as fierce. We will loose him tonight. I know there are sentries watching us. But they will expect us to try to sneak off with the horses. All of us will go to the latrine separately once the sun is down, but three of us will hide the other side of it till full dark. Me. You, Karli. You, Udd. Put your smith-tools inside your tunic, Udd. And a flask of grease from the meat-pot. Now, Hund, show us as much as you can about how the village is laid out…”

Hours later, in deep darkness lit only by the stars, the three men clustered in shadow outside a rough hut on the outskirts of the village: the place of the mill.

Shef glanced round at the lightless houses not far away, waved Udd forward. A heavy door, barred, the bar clamped down and secured with a heavy iron bolt. No lock on the bolt. There only to prevent someone getting out. No need for Udd's skill yet. The little man slipped the bolt, raised the bar, stood ready to open the door.

Shef fumbled with lamp and strike-light, catching the sparks, blowing on the tinder, finally lighting the wick that floated in the whale-oil container, and sliding down the thin-shaved, transparent horn screen that let light out but shielded the wick from wind. A risk to show a light out here, however carefully shielded by tunic and body. But if what Hund said was right, a greater risk to plunge into the beast-den blind.

The light working at last, Shef signaled to Udd, who jerked the door open. Shef slid inside like a snake, Udd and Karli just behind him. He heard the door pulled softly shut as he looked inside at the great mill. At the huddled shape lying under sacking a few feet away, by the wall. He stepped forward one pace, two, his eye drawn to the massive bar jutting out from the center of the upper wheel, the thick chain leading from it to…

A flash of movement and something was lashing at his ankle. Shef leapt in the air, still holding the lamp incongruously upright, came down three feet back.

The hand missed his ankle by an inch. A bone-wrenching thud. Shef found himself staring down in the uncertain light of the lamp at a pair of glaring wide-set eyes. The thud had been a chain jerked to the very last fraction of its run by a collar round a thick neck. The eyes glaring up showed not a flicker of pain, only bitter rage at having failed.

Shef's eye went to the chain. Yes, from the bar to the collar. Another chain from the collar to a shackle set deep into the wall. The hands gyved together and chained also to the collar, so that they could not move further than from waist to mouth. Why had all this been done? Slowly Shef realized it was so that the chained man could be dragged from the wall to the bar, and from the bar back to the wall again, without anyone having to go within his reach. The room stank. A latrine bucket. It was doubtful if the man used it. A pot for water. He must use that. No food, no light, only sacking to cover himself with in the cold air of the mountain spring. How had he lived through the winter? The man wore only a single ragged tunic, torn till one could see the matted hair of his chest and body.

The chained man was still waiting, still watching, without so much as a blink. Waiting for the blow. Hoping the striker of it would come within range. Slowly he shuffled back, attempting with an imbecile cunning to look afraid. Trying to tempt Shef forward, within the reach of the chain.

Something stirred within Shef's memory. Disfigured as he was, hair and beard trimmed only where they fell to the length of the circling mill-bar, the man looked familiar. And, amazingly, something like recognition was dawning in his eyes as well.

Shef sat down, carefully out of reach. “We are Englishmen here,” he said. “And I have seen you before.”

“And I you,” said the man. His voice creaked as if he had not used it for many days. “I saw you in York. I tried to kill you, one-eye. You were near the front of the men who broke in. Standing next to one of the Viking whoresons, a giant. I struck at him and you parried the blow. I would have killed him with the back-stroke and you a moment later. But the others got between us. And now you are in the Viking lands to make sport of me, traitor.”

His face twisted. “But God will be good to me, as he was to my king Ella. At the end I can die. God send me a free hand before that!”

“I am no traitor,” said Shef. “Not to your king Ella. I did him a favor before he died. I can do you one too. A favor for a favor. But tell me who you are, and where I have seen you.”

The crazy twist of the face again, like a weeping man determined never to shed a tear. “Once I was Cuthred, captain of Ella's hearth-band, his picked champions. I was the best warrior from Humber to the Tyne. The Ragnarssons' men pinned me between shields after I had killed half a score of them. Gyved me and sold me for my strength.”

The man laughed silently, throwing his head back like a wolf. “Yet there was something they never knew, that they would have paid gold to know.”

“I know,” said Shef. “You put their father in the worm-pit, to die of adder-bite. I was there. I saw it and that is where I saw you. I know something else too. It was not your doing, but that of Erkenbert the deacon. Ella would have set him free.”

He leaned forward, not quite close enough. “I saw you throw Ragnar's thumb-nail on the table. I stood behind the chair of Wulfgar my stepfather, whom the Vikings made a heimnar. The man who brought Ragnar to York.”

The mad eyes were wide with surprise and disbelief now. “I believe you are the devil,” Cuthred muttered. “Sent as a last temptation.”

“No. I am your good angel, if you still believe in the White Christ. We are going to set you free. If you promise to do one thing for us.”

“What is that?”

“Fight Vigdjarf the champion tomorrow.”

The head turned back like a wolf's again, on it a look of savage glee. “Ah, Vigdjarf,” Cuthred husked. “He cut me while they held me. He has never come within my reach again. Yet he thinks he is a bold man. Maybe he will stand up to me. Once. Once is all I need.”

“You must let us come close to get your shackle out. Get your collar off.”

Shef waved Udd forward. The little man, a bundle of tools in his hand, stepped forward like a mouse towards a cat, one pace, two. Within range. And Cuthred had him, one great paw round his face, one gripping his neck, ready for the snap.

“A poor exchange for Vigdjarf,” reminded Shef. Slowly Cuthred released Udd, looking at his own hands as if he did not believe them. Karli lowered the point of his sword. Udd, shaking, stepped forward again, peered near-sightedly at the iron, began to try to work it loose. After a few moments he turned back to Cuthred, stared at the collar.

“Best to file the collar off, lord. It might make a noise. Can't help hurting him, too.”

“Keep greasing the file. Do you hear, Cuthred? He may hurt you. Don't lash out. Save it for Vigdjarf.”

The Yorkshireman's face twisted, he sat immobile while Udd slowly filed and greased and filed again. The lamp burned its oil, began to gutter. Finally Udd stood back. “It's through, lord. Needs pulling back.”

Shef stepped forward, with caution, Karli standing just out of reach, sword poised again. Cuthred waved him away, grinned, put his hands up, seized the two ends of the thick collar still twisted round his neck. Pulled. Fascinated, Shef saw the muscles standing out like cables on his arms and chest. The stout, cold iron bent into a bow as if it were peeled greenwood. Cuthred stepped free, dropping collar and chains with a crash. He knelt, seized Shef's hands in both his own, pressed them to his head, pressed his head to Shef's knees. “I am your man,” he said.

The lamp went out finally. In the darkness the four men cautiously eased the door open, went out into the starlit night. Like shadows they crept back through the village, snaked back to their camp-site, keeping the hobbled horses between them and the Norwegians' sentry. The fire was still burning, tended by the watchful Edith.

As he saw the woman, Cuthred made a choking noise in his throat, seemed ready once again to pounce.

“She is English too,” whispered Shef. “Edith, feed him with all we have. Talk to him quietly. Talk to him in English.” As the others started to stir in their blankets, he crept over to Cwicca. “And you talk to him too, Cwicca. Give him a pint of ale, if there's any left. But first, quietly, cock your crossbow. If he lunges for anyone, shoot him. Now I'm going to sleep till dawn.”

Shef stirred, not at first light, but as the sun first started to show over the mountain tops that hemmed in the valley on both sides. It was cold, and dew lay thick on the single blanket. For a few moments Shef was reluctant to stir, to break the little cocoon of warmth his body had created. Then he remembered the mad eyes of Cuthred, and sprang up.

Cuthred was still asleep, his mouth open. He lay with a blanket pulled over him and his head pillowed on the breast of Edtheow, oldest and most motherly of the slave-women. She lay awake but unmoving, one arm crooked round Cuthred's head.

And then he was awake. His eyes flicked open without a transition, took in Shef staring at him, took in the men beginning to light fires, roll blankets, head for the latrine. Fell on Brand, also on his feet, also studying Cuthred.

Shef never saw Cuthred move. He saw the blanket fly one way, behind it Cuthred must have sprung to his feet in one movement from a lying position, before his eyes could focus he heard the crash and grunt of knocked-out breath as Cuthred drove into Brand with his shoulder. Then they were both on the ground, rolling over and over. Shef saw Cuthred's thumbs drive at Brand's eyes, saw Brand's great quart-sized hands grip the Englishman's wrists, try to bend them back. Then the two were locked for an instant, Cuthred on top, neither able to force the other back. Cuthred twisted his hands free, jerked the knife from Brand's belt and leapt to his feet with the same uncanny speed. Brand too was struggling up, but Cuthred had the knife swinging forward for the killer stroke under the chin.

Osmod grabbed his forearm as he struck, pulled the knife aside. Then Osmod was rolling on the ground, knocked sideways by a backhand blow from the pommel. Cwicca had both hands on the knife-wrist. Shef ran in, seized Cuthred's left arm, twisted for a bone-breaker hold. It was like seizing the fetlock of a horse, too thick to manage. As Cwicca on one side and Shef on the other grappled with an arm each, Karli stepped forward, face alive with excitement.

“I'll quieten him,” he yelled. His feet shuffled, his shoulder dropped, he swung with both hands, left-right-left, hooking into Cuthred's unguarded belly, driving upwards to go under the ribs and reach the liver.

Cuthred lifted Shef bodily off the ground one-handed, smashed an elbow into the side of his head, jerked an arm free. A fist like a bludgeon came down on Karli's head, he stamped violently on Cwicca's feet, failed to dislodge the desperate grip on his knife-wrist, reached across to seize the knife left-handed.

Staggering to his feet again, Shef saw Udd sighting deliberately with a crossbow, started to shout “Stop!”, realized that in one instant either Cwicca would be disemboweled or Cuthred shot dead.

Brand stepped forward, between Cuthred and the crossbow. He said nothing, made no attempt to grip the other man. Instead he held out his axe, balanced across both palms.

Cuthred stared at it, ceased to reach for the knife, reached instead for the axe-helve. Paused. Cwicca, gasping, slowly let go, retreated out of range. Half-a-dozen crossbows were leveled now. Cuthred ignored them, staring only at the axe. Slowly he reached out and took it, felt the balance, swung it backwards and forwards.

“I remember now,” he muttered hoarsely in his Northumbrian English. “You want me to kill Vigdjarf. Ha!” He hurled the axe upwards, twirling it so that it span in the air, the light flashing off its brilliant edge, caught it at its balance point as it came down. “Kill Vigdjarf!” He looked round as if expecting to find his enemy in sight already, began to move towards the village like a landslide.

Brand jumped in his way, arms spread, calling out in his primitive English. “Yes, yes, kill Vigdjarf. Not now. Today. Everyone watch. Now eat. Get ready. Choose weapon.”

Cuthred grinned, showing a set of gums with a few sparse front teeth remaining. “Eat,” he agreed. “Tried to kill you before, big man, in York. Try again later. Now, kill Vigdjarf. Eat first.” He buried the axe-head with a chunk deep in a tree-stump stool, looked round, saw Edtheow coming towards him with a hunk of bread, took it from her and began to gnaw at it. She gentled him like an anxious horse, rubbing his arm through the filthy tunic.

“Oh yes,” said Brand, looking at Shef still rubbing a buzzing ear. “Oh yes. I like this one. We've got a berserk here. Very useful people. But you do have to get them pointed the right way.”

Under Brand's direction the entire camp got to work on Cuthred, scurrying round him like men with a champion race-horse. First, food. As he gnawed his way through the crust Edtheow brought him, the ex-slaves heated their staple oat porridge, passed him a bowl of it, began to warm over the stew they had made the night before from unwary chickens pecking too near the campsite, diced onions and garlic into it. Cuthred ate continuously, supervised by Brand and Hund together. They gave him only small amounts at a time, seeing him scrape each bowl down to the wood before passing him the next one. “He needs the food for strength,” muttered Brand. “But his belly's shrunk. Can't handle much at a time. Give him a pint of ale to slow him down. Now, get that tunic off him. I'm going to wash and oil him.”

The catapult-crew prized hot stones out of the bed of the camp-fire, dropped them into a leather water-bucket, watched the steam rise. But when Shef stepped forward, making gestures to take off the tunic, Cuthred scowled, shook his head violently. Looked at the women.

Realizing he did not wish to show the shame of his mutilation, Shef waved the women away, stripped off his own tunic. Turned deliberately so that Cuthred could see the flogging-scars on his own back, scars his stepfather had put there, pulled the tunic back on. Fritha and Cwicca stretched out a blanket on the ground, made signs that Cuthred should lie on it face-down, then cut the tunic from his body with their seax-knives.

When they saw his back the ex-slaves looked at each other again. In places the flesh had been flogged off clear through to the spine, only thin scar-skin covering the vertebrae. With lye and warm water Fritha began to sponge off a winter's accumulation of filth and dead skin. When he had finished, Brand came forward with his own spare pair of breeches, signed to Cuthred to put them on. The men stared elaborately into the far distance while Cuthred donned them. Then they sat him on a tree-stump while Fritha worked on his arms, face and chest. Shef observed him carefully as they did so. Cuthred was, indeed, a big man, far bigger than any of the ex-slaves, bigger by a long way than Shef himself. Not the size of Brand—the breeches were rolled up twice at the ankles, and hung so loose at the waist that Brand's belt would have gone round him twice. But he was different from almost any man Shef had ever seen, any of the warriors he had known from Brand's crew or from the Great Army. Someone like Brand had no paunch or beer-belly, but he was thick-set, he ate well every day, his muscles were covered with a thick coat of padding to keep out the cold. If you seized him over the ribs you could pull out a handful of flesh.

By comparison with Cuthred, Brand was shapeless. On the mill-slave, turning a great weight with arms and legs and back and belly hour after hour, day after day, week after week, fed on little more than bread and water, the muscles stood out as if they had been drawn on paper. Like those of the blind man Shef had seen in his fleeting vision. It was the combination of strength and thinness that made Cuthred so blindingly fast, Shef realized. That and his madness.

“Start work on his hands and feet,” ordered Brand. “See, he's got toenails like a bear's claws. Trim them, or we'll never get shoes on him, and he needs them for grip. Let me see his hands.”

Brand turned them over and over, testing to see if they flexed. “Hands like horn,” he muttered. “Good for a sailor, bad for a swordsman. Give me some oil, I'll rub it in.”

Cuthred sat as they worked on him, oblivious to the cold, seemingly taking the attention as his due. Perhaps he was used to it from his former life, Shef thought. He had been captain of the companions of the King of Northumbria, a rank you could reach only by fighting your way up. Cuthred must have fought more duels than he could remember. Besides the marks of torture, old scars of point and blade were showing up beneath the shaggy mat of hair. Like a horse, he must have grown his own pelt in the heatless hut through a mountain winter. They began to trim his hair and beard with the group's one pair of precious scissors. “Don't want anything blowing in his face,” Brand explained.

He passed over his spare tunic to go with the breeches, a splendid one of dyed green wool. Cuthred shrugged into it, unfastened the breeches, tucked it in and tied the rope belt round himself once more. Washed, trimmed and dressed, did he look different from the wretched creature they had rescued, Shef asked himself.

No, he looked just the same. Any sane person, meeting Cuthred on a path or road, would have jumped off it and climbed a tree, as if he had met a bear or a wolf-pack. He was as crazy and as dangerous as—as Ivar the Boneless, or his father Ragnar Hairy-Breeks. He even looked like Ragnar, Shef remembered. Something in the stance, in the careless eyes.

Brand began to show Cuthred the weapons they had available. A poor selection. Cuthred looked at Karli's treasured sword, sniffed, bent it without words over his knee. Looked up at Karli's grunt of shock and protest, waited to see if it would come again, grinned as the stocky Ditmarsher fell silent. He tossed the seax-knives aside contemptuously. Osmod's halberd interested him, and he fenced for a few seconds with it, whipping its great weight round one-handed as if it had been a willow-wand. But the balance was wrong for a one-handed weapon. He put it aside, scrutinized Brand's precious silver-inlaid axe. “What is its name?” he asked.

“Rimmugygr,” said Brand. “That is, ‘Battle-troll.’ ”

“Ah,” said Cuthred, turning the weapon over and over. “Trolls. They come down from the mountains in the winter, peer through the shutters at chained men alone. This is not the weapon for me. You, chieftain,” he said to Shef. “You wear gold on your arms. You must own a famous sword to lend me.”

Shef shook his head. After the battle at Hastings his thanes had insisted that a king must have a great weapon, had picked out for him a sword of the finest Swedish steel, with a gold hilt and its name engraved on the blade: Atlaneat, it had been. He had left it behind in the treasury, carried only a plain sailor's cutlass. He had left the cutlass behind on the trip to Drottningsholm, taking only the ‘Gungnir’-spear. But Cwicca had brought the cutlass with him when they rescued him, he had pushed it back in his belt. He unsheathed it, handed it over. Cuthred looked at it with much the same expression he had shown for Karli's. It was a single-edged sword with a heavy back, slightly curved, made of plain iron though with a good steel blade welded on by Shef himself. Not a weapon to fence with, just a slashing sword.

“No back-swing with this,” muttered Cuthred. “But force in the first blow. I'll take it.”

On impulse, Shef passed him also the shield that Udd had made, case-hardened steel pegged over plain wood. Cuthred looked at the thin metal with interest, scrutinized its odd color, tried to strap it on. Strap would not meet buckle over his forearm till they had punched an extra hole in it. He stood up, bare sword in hand, shield strapped on. His face grinned like the mask of a hungry wolf. “Now,” he said. “Vigdjarf.”