One King's Way

Chapter Twenty-seven

Two nights and a day later, the party stood ready to move on, on a bright windless day, in light snow. Shef would willingly have assembled them all and set off the day before, but Hund had vetoed it.

“Some of us are too weak,” he said sharply. “Hurry them on and you will find more of them not waking up in the morning, like Godsibb.”

Shef, haunted by the memory of her peering through the lattice of Hel-gate, gave way unwillingly. Yet even as he hauled stones out of the freezing stream-bed for her cairn, watched by interested but disbelieving Finns, he thought to himself, she said “Go on.”

“I have to get out of this wasteland,” he had told Hund, trying to get some urgency into him. “I told you, I saw the warriors round Hedeby. It may have fallen by now, and the Ragnarssons will be richer and stronger. At the rate we're going, Sigurth will be King of all Denmark by the time we are there.”

“And is it your duty to stop him?” Hund looked at his friend and reconsidered. “Well, maybe it is. But you cannot stop him from here. We will just have to move on as fast as we can.”

“Do you think these visions of mine are true?” Shef asked him. “Or is it just the drink that does it, as beer and mead make men think they are mightier than they are? Maybe all my visions—maybe Vigleik's visions and all the things the Way sees, maybe they are just some kind of delusion, some kind of drunkenness.”

Hund hesitated for a while before replying. “That could be,” he admitted. “I will tell you one thing, Shef. That fly killer mushroom, the red one with the white spots on it, that men crush and put on the walls to keep insects off, you would not eat that by accident. But there are other things like it that sometimes grow in the corn, get reaped with it. Maybe find their way into the bread. Or the porridge. Especially if the corn has been left damp in store.”

“It's always damp in store in England,” said Shef. “So why doesn't everybody have these visions all the time?”

“Maybe they do, but dare not speak. But more likely you are especially sensitive to such things. You drank no more than Karli or the Finns last night, but it seemed to affect you for much longer. And then, maybe because you are affected by such things, the gods send themselves to you. Or maybe the gods have given you this weakness for their own purpose.”

Shef, always impatient with speculation which could not be settled one way or the other, shook the thought off. Concentrated on hustling everyone into action, even on the rest day Hund had decreed.

So, their dead buried, a supply of cooked meat in every pack, they mustered to travel onwards. Remembering what he had seen on his soul-flight, Shef led them confidently to the lake through the birches. It was where he thought, stretching away as far as the eye could see, long and narrow, a natural water-road. Still unfrozen—but not for long as the chill of autumn gave way to winter.

Yet they had no boats. Shef had had the idea of making light boats from bark, as Brand had said the Finns did. A little experiment proved that none of Shef's party had the faintest idea how it was done. The Finns who sometimes skied by, keeping an eye on the visitors, shrugged uncomprehendingly if appealed to. Many in Shef's party were skilled craftsmen, who could—given time—have built anything up to a complete ship from trunks and planks. By the time that was done, they would all have starved.

They plodded on on foot, keeping to the birches as long as they could, for shelter from the wind and the drifting snow. Another day's travel and the wood came to an end with the lake, leaving only the immense level moor stretching out before them, now covered in snow. Nineteen pairs of eyes turned to Shef as he contemplated the prospect. All but Cuthred's showed doubt and hesitation.

Silently Shef gave orders to camp again in the kindly woods, light fires and cook their already-dwindled supplies. He waved at the Finn who seemed never to be too far away, like the wolves, and said to him firmly, “Piruusi. Bring Piruusi.”

The headman skied eventually out of the dark, as untroubled by the snow and wind as if it had been a spring day in Hampshire, and settled down enjoyably to a long night of bargaining.

The real solution was to turn everyone in Shef's party into expert skiers, make skis, and set off to the Way-College mining station which, if Piruusi could be trusted—and on this he probably could—was maybe sixty, maybe a hundred miles downstream. Again, they would all have starved long before that could be achieved. In the end, and after arguing himself hoarse, Shef settled for as many pairs of spare skis as the Finn camp could provide, together with four reindeer sleighs and their drivers to take the rest. It cost Shef his second gold arm-ring, another twenty silver pennies, and four good iron wood-axes. It might have cost more if not for an intervention from Cuthred.

“Make iron yourself?” Shef asked, as they haggled over axes.

Piruusi signed a vehement no.

“What you cut with before the Norse-folk come, then?” Shef went on.

“They cut with these,” said Cuthred from his place by the fire. From inside his jacket he produced a stone axe, a worked flint too big even for Cuthred's powerful hands. An axe to be used by a giant, a gift, seemingly, from Echegorgun.

Fear showed in Piruusi's eyes as he looked at it, and remembered the strange powers these pathetic foreigners were in league with. He ceased to haggle, came quickly to an agreement. The next morning, sleighs and skis arrived, and Shef began the still-laborious process of deciding who should do what, who was the strongest, the likeliest to learn. He was careful not to let only his weakest ride in the sleighs, for those carried his reserves of cash, gold and silver. He had been careful also never to let the Finns see how much he had. Drink-brother he might be to Piruusi, even piss-brother if there were such a term: none of that, he was sure, would shield Piruusi from giving in to temptation.

The early coming of winter had surprised but not particularly alarmed the Way-College's mining station deep inside Swedish Finnmark. There were a dozen men there and half that number of women, four priests of the Way, apprentices and hired workers. They had good supplies and plenty to keep them occupied. During the summer they dug the ore, during the winter smelted it and made it into trade products, pigs of iron or such things as half-finished axe-heads, which could be threaded on bars and moved in bulk. They had built their work-station at a point where they had good communications at all times, by water down the river when it was unfrozen. After that they shipped metal down, by ski and sleigh over a plain road once the ice came. They were well-stocked for the winter in food and fuel. Indeed, they spent much of their time in winter burning charcoal in the birch and pine-woods that began to grow out of the moor as it sloped down towards the sea.

When apprentice Egil first called out to him that strangers were coming from the west, Herjolf the senior of the priests was, again, surprised but not alarmed. They must be Finns, he assumed. There was no-one else there. He would soon find out what they wanted. Meanwhile he ordered work to cease and the men to arm themselves quietly, many with the new crossbows that had come out of England the year before. The Swedish steel made these, he was sure, the best weapons known in the world. Far better than the English example his friend Hagbarth priest of Njörth had given him as a model.

His men covered him, most of them keeping out of sight, as he watched the black dots sweeping across the snow. Not Finns, after all. Some of the skiers were passable, some astonishingly inept, but even the best of them did not have the easy grace of the Finns. Yet the sleighs must belong to Finns, and they were being driven well, if as sedately as if they were taking a crowd of old grandmothers to a funeral.

Herjolf's expression of doubt turned to incredulity as the leading skier put on speed, away from the others, and hissed up to him. Eyes red-rimmed from the snow glare looked at him out of a wilderness of untrimmed beard.

“Good day, Herjolf,” said the apparition. “We have met. I am Thorvin priest of Thor, like yourself. I would show you my pendant if I could get it out, and my white tunic if it were not deep under my skins. But I call on you as a Way-fellow to help us. We have done the Way good service, and come a hard journey to find you.”

As the sleighs and the slower skiers swept in, or crept in, Herjolf called to his men to put their weapons down and come to help. The wayfarers climbed stiffly out of the sledges where they had been loaded, took out packs, looked round in relief. One of the skiers seemed to chaffer with the Finnish sleigh-drivers, in the end paid them off and walked hobbling over as they swung away, cracking their whips and racing off in the wild style Shef had forbidden for the last three vexing days of travel.

“This is Shef Sigvarthsson,” said Thorvin, introducing the one-eyed man. “You have heard many stories of him.”

“Indeed I have. Now tell me, Thorvin. What are you all doing here? And where have you come from? And what do you expect me to do now?”

“We have come from the coast of Norway,” said Shef. “We are going down to the coast of Sweden, where we mean to take ship for England. Or, it may be, for Denmark. It depends on what news you can give us.”

Hagbarth the Njörth priest appeared at Herjolf's elbow. Shef looked at him with weary surprise. They had not met since Shef had fled from Kaupang. Yet if Hagbarth could appear at Hedeby on the business of the Way, it was natural to find him somewhere else, even here a hundred miles inland. Njörth-priests were favoured errand-runners. Shef wondered what had happened to Hagbarth's ship, the Aurvendill which had carried him from Hedeby to Kaupang.

“There is no shortage of news,” he said. “Whether you will want to go on to Denmark, or to England, once you have heard it is another matter. It seems to me that your arriving in Hedeby, and then in Kaupang, started a turmoil that has never ceased since. I hope you have not brought more with you.”

“We will go on as soon as we can,” said Shef. “And you will remember, Hagbarth, that it was not my wish to go to Kaupang, turmoil or no. It was you who took me there. If you had followed my wishes you would have let me take passage home.”

Hagbarth nodded in acknowledgement of the truth of what Shef said, and Thorvin spoke up again. “You will give us shelter for a while, then, Herjolf? We are all followers of the Way, as you will see when we are indoors.”

Herjolf nodded also. “One or two of you I could have recognized under any circumstances.” He pointed a finger at Udd, who had crawled out of a sledge, looked around him, recognized the chimneys of the iron-working shop and was now standing entranced, staring in at the red glow of the banked fires in the biggest forge he had ever seen.

“That is the one who invented those crossbows you are carrying,” said Shef. “A Skraeling, he seems, yet some would say he is the man who defeated the king of the Franks and all his lancers.”

Herjolf looked at Udd's unimpressive form with a new surprise and respect. “Be welcome, then,” he said. “But from the look of you I doubt whether many of you will be fit to travel on soon. Here, look at that one!”

Cuthred, who had skied awkwardly but uncomplainingly for the last three days, was tugging at his woollen breeches and leggings, trying to roll them down. As he did so he swayed, holding himself up only by the effort of his will. Moving to help him Shef suddenly saw a splotch of dark blood soaking through the thick layers of wool. “It is the disease I told you of,” said Hund, stripping away the wool as Shef and Thorvin held the big man up. “See, the cut he got from Vigdjarf. It healed as if it were magic, but now it has broken out again. Come, get him indoors. He will not be fit to move for many days. Not ever, if this place has no store of greenstuffs.”

The poor condition Shef's people were in became obvious once they had been taken indoors and the clothes they had worn for weeks on end stripped from them. It was the disease a later age would call scurvy: a disease of long voyages and dried food. The symptoms were obvious. Long-healed wounds opening of their own accord, teeth loosening in the jaws, fetid breath, and over it all a general weakness, lassitude and gloom. It was not unfamiliar to anyone in the North, but they expected to find it in the late spring, when folk had been cooped up in their cabins for months, eating salt herring and stored grain. The cure was light and sun, some said. Fresh food, said others. The two went together, usually. This time, Hund pointed out, there was a chance to know for sure, since there was no chance of light and sun—but leeks, onions, garlic, peas and beans to hand. If the sufferers improved, then food was the cure. Which showed, reasonably enough, that there was something in some kinds of food that there was not in others. One day a true priest of the Way might be able to extract it, dry it and store it, for the benefit of all.

But not this year, as Herjolf pointed out. There was no chance of moving on. When Herjolf, Hagbarth, Thorvin and Hund came to Shef in a body to confront him with the fact, he sat silent for a while. Ever since the first meeting with Echegorgun he had felt a fierce urge to turn, to attack his pursuers, to act instead of reacting. For weeks he had been driven on by desire to get back to the main cogwheels of the action, instead of lurking out on the edges. The desire had been sharpened by the vision he had seen in the shaman's tent, of the Ragnarssons round Hedeby and King Hrorik in the breach of the stockade.

Yet at the same time there was something very tempting in the idea of staying where they were, in the wilds yet under cover, unknown yet not lost. Patiently the priests explained things to him. They had supplies, they could get more. The road was easy to drive in any but the worst weather, or one could take sleigh down the river, once it was firmly frozen. Cultivated farmlands lay not impossibly far away, with surplus of grain and meat and all kinds of stores. No great suspicion would be aroused by the priests of the Way buying more. It might be thought they had miscalculated, or needed the food to trade with the Finns.

“And you can make yourselves useful,” added Herjolf. “Your little man Udd is never out of the forge even now, and he knows a great deal. Has learnt it for himself too. Have you seen how he has found to harden steel? He should be a priest of the Way—” Herjolf barked with amusement at the thought of the scrawny Englishman reaching that dignity, then said more soberly, “No, if he were to think of that I would be willing to stand his sponsor. He is talking already of millwheels and devices, of great hammers to pound out the iron by machinery rather than by muscle. If a tenth of what he says is true, his stay will be worth all the supplies it costs us. So stay. Thorvin tells me you are a smith too, and a seeker of new knowledge. You and Udd can think, the rest can burn charcoal or blow the bellows. In the spring, then you can seek your destiny. Hagbarth's ship is laid up here in the boathouse till spring. It will take you on your way faster than any other.”

Shef nodded. Beneath the relief, a kind of excitement was growing. Time to think. Time to try things out without the frantic, driving, battle-in-the-morning haste that had always been his fate so far. Time to plan. A chance to move when he was ready and the other side was not, instead of the other way round. Of course they would have a winter to prepare and grow strong too. But then they might not know he was coming.

He remembered the words of Svipdag the prisoner. What were they? “The only man who could get through what waits for you would need an iron skin.” They had been spoken in malice and to frighten him, he knew, but there was a proverb in Norse that Thorvin often quoted. “The words of fate will be spoken by someone.” Maybe Svipdag had been the emissary of fate. An iron skin. He would see.

Chewing carefully with loose teeth on the whole green pea-pods that Hund had forced upon him, Shef swallowed, nodded again. “We will stay, Herjolf, and I thank you for your offer. And I promise you, no-one here will be idle. Many things will be different in the spring.”

Soon chimneys smoked, clangor rang out over the snow, men skied out to cut wood and raise new huts, sledged out iron to pay for food and beer. The passing Finns, wondering, saw unceasing activity when the Norse-folk usually slept.

Far in the south the Ragnarssons, with the head of King Hrorik on a pole as a reminder, marched their army from kingdom to kingdom, demanding the surrender of all the little kings of Denmark, Gamli of Fyn and Arnodd of Aalborg, Kolfinn of Sjaelland and Kari of Skaane.

In Sweden King Kjallak the Strong, brought to the throne by discontent with his peaceful predecessor Orm, consulted with his priests and heard continual reports of the insolence of the German missionaries and their protectors. We cannot defeat them, said village after village. What do we pay our herring-tax for? Come and defend us! And Kjallak agreed, but found it hard to pick a champion who was prepared to meet the Germans' awe-inspiring leader. The time would come to crush them in battle, and also in the spirit, so he told the impatient priests of the great temple at Uppsala.

And in Hamburg the fierce and saintly Archbishop Rimbert heard the same reports with pleasure, and circulated them to his brother prelates, the archbishops of the German lands, sure that destiny lay in the West, not as the fool Pope Adrian thought through some accommodation with the Greekling Emperor and his Popelet. In all the German lands the stories of the bold Ritters of the Lanzenorden spread among the landless younger sons of aristocratic families, and the recruiting tables were never free of applicants.

In Norway King Olaf Elf-of-Geirstath, whom men were now beginning to call “the Victorious,” as they had never done all the days his brother was alive, looked at his retinue of under-kings, of Ringeriki and Ranriki, Hedemark and Uppland and Agdir, and at the newly-cautious embassies from the West, the fierce Rogalanders and the men of the fjords, and wondered where the man was whose luck had so changed his own.

And Godive, now swollen with child, wondered occasionally what had become of the boy she had once known, her first man and her foster-brother.

But far in the North the land lay hidden and peaceful under snow.