One King's Way

Chapter Twenty-nine

The new king of the Swedes, Kjallak, knew well that he had been chosen to succeed his murdered predecessor Orm for one thing only: to cope with the menace of the German Christians, and to a lesser degree the Way-folk now spreading through the country. To return the land of the Swedes, Sveariki, to the old ways and the old customs of the priests. Failure, and the priests of Uppsala-temple would choose again.

He laid his plans carefully. A sacrifice had been demanded. A sacrifice he would give them. And it would consist of men and women from all the groups that the Swedes hated and feared: Christians, Wayfolk, Finns and even the skogarmenn, the small scattered communities of borderers who lived in the forests or on the moors and paid no taxes.

Chasing Finns in the winter was useless. In the summer it was hard also, because they retired with their reindeer to the deep tundra. There was a time to strike, a time when the Swedes had a natural advantage. In the deep mud of the melting season, when no-one moved if they could avoid it, but when the matchless horses of the Swedish horse-breeders could make their way. Kjallak sent sleigh-loads of forage during the winter to selected places. Picked his men and instructed them carefully. Sent them out, a week before the equinox, in wind and driving sleet.

Shef too had laid his plans. At the equinox, he thought, the ice might have gone from the fast-running river, and conditions would be good to take the Fearnought downstream, on the first stage of the voyage home. His men were arming the ship carefully, stowing her dragon-plates of steel in the hold where they could be unshipped quickly, fitting beckets to the gunwales to hold crossbows and quarrels, chipping rocks for the mules.

As he watched, Shef realized that a group of Finns was heading towards them. They moved clumsily without their skis. There was still some snow on the ground, but much of it had churned to slush or mud. The Finns looked graceless, like birds with clipped wings. Yet they were often enough about the station, coming in to trade or to examine what went on. One of Herjolf's priest-companions was a devotee of the goddess Skathi, the ski-goddess of the mountains. He spoke the Finnish tongue and often traveled with them, learning their lore. Shef saw him go to meet them and turned back to the loading.

A while later, he found Ottar, Skathi's-priest, at his shoulder, and with him the Finn, Piruusi, a look of sullen anger on his face. Shef looked from face to face, wondering.

“He says the Swedes attacked his encampment two days ago,” said Ottar. “Many men on horses. They had not seen them come because the snow was melting. Many Finns were killed. Some taken.”

“Taken,” repeated Piruusi. “One Swede got drunk, fell from horse. We catch him. He tell us, Finns to go to the temple. Temple at Uppsala. Hang there on a tree in honor of Swedish gods.”

Shef nodded, still wondering why he was being told. “He wants you to rescue them,” said Ottar.

“Me! I know nothing of Uppsala.” But then Shef fell silent. He remembered the three visions he had had in Piruusi's tent. Of them all, he had thought most about the first, his old enemies the Ragnarssons seizing power and blocking his path. Yet he had seen the king too, the new king, threatened by his priests into promising a proper sacrifice, not the cheap disposal of surplus slaves that the Swedes had carried out for many years. And the Christians, they had been in it too.

“Did he say anything about Christians, your Swede?”

Piruusi's face lightened, he said something in Finnish. “He says he knew you were led by the spirits,” said Ottar, translating. “Christians too are to go to the great oak. And the men of the Way, or so Piruusi says.”

“We've had no trouble,” said Shef.

“We live far up-stream. And in any case, we aren't all here.”

Shef felt his heart lurch at the correction. Thorvin had gone to the farm-town thirty miles off, while the snow was still good for sleighs, taking with him Cwicca, Hama and Udd, to trade iron for food. They had not returned. If they had been taken too… Shef realized with surprise that of them all, Cwicca who had saved his life by pulling him from Ivar's drowning embrace, Thorvin who had taken him in as a wandering nobody, of them all, the one whose fate most concerned him was Udd. If he went, no-one could replace him. Many plans would die at birth without his inspiration.

“Do you think the Swedes might have got them?” he asked.

Ottar waved at the road from the east, from downstream. Riders were visible on it, spurring as fast as they could through the heavy mud. “I think someone is coming to tell us,” he said grimly.

The news was as they had expected. The town lay in ashes, surprised at dawn and burnt to the ground. The raiders had killed every man, woman or child they met, but seized some to herd away with them on spare horses. For capture they had selected those with the pendants of the Way, or youths, or maidens. In the confusion little had been made out as to why the Swedes had attacked the town. But some said they had called out “skogarmenn! skogarmenn!” as they had killed. Wood-men, men of the forest, outlaws. All the same thing. Thorvin the priest had certainly been taken, been seen led away. A gap-toothed man had also been recognized, who must be Cwicca. No-one could remember seeing anyone who might have been Udd. But that was entirely probable, Shef reflected. Even people in the same room as Udd often did not see him. Till it came to iron and steel, to metal and contrivances, the little man was made to be ignored.

“What is the day of the sacrifice?” Shef asked.

Gnawing his beard, Herjolf replied, “The day the Holy Oak, the Kingdom Oak as they call it, the day its buds first show green. In ten days. Maybe twelve.”

“Well,” said Shef, “we shall have to get our men back. Or try at least.”

“I agree with you,” said Herjolf. “And so would every priest of the way, even Valgrim, if he were still alive! What the Swedes have sent us is a challenge. If they hang up our priests in their sacred clothes, with the rowan-berries at their belts and the pendants round their necks, then we will lose every convert we have ever made among the Swedes. And further afield, when the news spreads.”

“Ask Piruusi what he will do,” Shef said to Ottar. All that a man can, came the reply. The Swedes had taken his youngest and favorite wife. Piruusi's account of her charms was vivid, made it plain that he found her, like Udd, irreplaceable.

“Good. I need Hagbarth too. Tell him, Herjolf. This is Way business now. And another thing. I am going to fly a banner.”

“With what device?”

Shef hesitated. He had seen many banners now, and knew the power they had on the imagination. There was the dreaded Raven Banner of the Ragnarssons, had been the Coiling Worm of Ivar. Alfred flew the Gold Dragon of Wessex, left over from the Rome-folk. Ragnhild's device had been the Gripping Beast. He himself had marched to Hastings under the Hammer and Cross, to unite Wayfolk and English Christians against the army of the Pope. What should he choose this time? The device of Rig, the ladder he wore round his neck? No-one would recognize it. A hammer and a broken shackle, for freedom? This time he was not coming to free slaves, but to rally border-people and outlaws.

“You will fly the Hammer, surely,” pressed Herjolf. “Not the Hammer and Cross, as you once did. There are no Christians here. Only the Germans and their converts, no friends of ours.”

Shef decided. He still held the lance he had taken from Echegorgun, the lance that the troll-man had taken from Jarl Bolli of the Tronds. “I will have an upright lance as my own device,” he said. “With a hammer across it, for the Way.”

Herjolf pursed his lips. “That will look too much like a cross, for my liking.”

Shef stared at him. “If I am to fight a king,” he said, “I will be a king. You heard the king's order. Send me all our needlewomen, and do it at once.”

As Herjolf walked away, Shef spoke quietly to Cuthred. “We will not leave till tomorrow morning. Go out tonight. No chance of help from the Huldu-folk at Uppsala, I suppose? Too far from the moors and mountains. Just the same, word can be passed. Maybe there are other half-troll families in the north besides Brand's. See to it. Make your farewells.”

Shef thought to add, “and see you return,” but curbed the words. If Cuthred wanted to desert, he would. All that held him now was pride, and that was not to be insulted.

Cuthred stood unspeaking in the prow of the Fearnought next morning, in full mail, with sword, shield, spear and helmet. He looked like a king's champion again, except for his eyes, weary, red-rimmed.

The ship was crowded with men, and women too. Only half a dozen had been left at the mining station. Priests, apprentices, Englishmen, Englishwomen and Finns were all crowded in together, fifty and more. They could never have managed to do so if the ship had needed to be rowed or sailed. But the snow-melt whirled her away without human effort, fast as a racing horse. Hagbarth at the tiller had only a lookout on the yard for ice, and men at the prow with oars to boom off floating debris.

All the way down the stream they saw the signs of devastation, burnt farms, burnt villages. Men called from the banks as they saw the standard flying, were hailed, told to rig their boats and follow. By the time the Fearnought reached the sea, a small armada of four- and six-oared boats trailed in her wake. At the sea itself, the fishing villages of Finnmark yielded larger craft. Shef reorganized, commandeering the largest boats, filling them with men from the smallest.

“You can't take them very far like this,” protested Hagbarth. “They can't carry enough water for one thing. No, don't tell me, I know. Obey orders. You have a plan.”

As the Fearnought and her tail of small craft nosed down the Finnish Bight, as the Swedes called the deep gulf between Swedish Finnmark and the land opposite, they sighted a cluster of small islands. Piruusi, hitherto silent, came to Shef and pointed.

“Finns on those islands,” he said. “I cross sometimes, on ice. Sea-Finns.”

Shef motioned to Ottar, put him, Piruusi and a clutch of his Finnish followers into a boat, told them to bring on every boat and man they could. They pressed on under light sail, waiting for the challenge that must come from King Kjallak's coastguards.

Ali the Red, skipper of the Sea-bear, patrolling the seas towards the Finnish Aland Isles, saw the strange sail bearing down on him, and approached cautiously. He had heard tales of strange and strangely-armed vessels, and had no mind to take needless risks. The rag-tag of sails behind, he scanned and dismissed. Fishing boats of the broken men, scavengers only. In any case, as they saw his striped sail and that of his consort, he saw them veer in unison and scud away. But what were they doing on the strange ship? The knorr miscegenated with a Frankish cog? Trying to flee as well?

“She's in range for a long shot,” snarled Osmod. The former captain of halberdiers was in a state of barely-controlled rage, had been ever since he realized his longtime friend and comrade Cwicca was facing a Swedish noose, as sacrifice to Frey and Othin.

“Stand away from the mule,” Shef ordered. “Get down in the hold, all of you. Hagbarth, you too. Now, Osmod, you're in charge. Turn this ship around and sail away, in flight.”

Osmod gaped. “But I can't sail a ship.”

“Yes you can, you've seen them do it often enough. Now you do it. Karli, Wilfi, and me, we're your sail-crew. Cuthred, take the steering oar.”

“Well,” said Osmod uncertainly. “Which way's the wind. Cuthred, turn the front bit away from the wind, um, to the left. Karli, you take that end of the yard, and Wilfi, that end, and turn it round so the wind is behind it. Christ, Thor, I mean, what happens next?”

While Hagbarth held his hands over his eyes, the Fearnought lumbered into flight, the very image of an undermanned trader on a maiden voyage. Watching, Ali grinned into his red beard and brought his two ships slanting expertly across to intercept.

“Get your heads down,” ordered Shef. “Forget the mules. One crossbow each and another to hand.”

He waited till the Sea-bear was almost alongside, her gunwales lined with fierce bearded faces, spears poised to board, before he gave the word to rise. Anyone can wind a crossbow, as Udd had said two years before. Even easier when they had only to be cocked. At ten yards' range even the most inexpert could not miss, and at ten yards' range the stout iron quarrels went through wood and mail, flesh and bone as if they were so much canvas. As Shef's archers dropped their first crossbows and reached for the second, it was already clear there would be no need for another volley.

Hagbarth stepped from ship to ship trailing a rope, looked at the few instantly demoralized survivors and ordered them to make fast alongside.

“Now the mule,” said Shef, looking at the desperately turning consort vessel. “One rock over their heads, Osmod, and tell them to throw their weapons overboard.”

A short time later, his fleet now consisting of three strongly manned large craft with dinghies and pinnaces in tow, Shef's armada moved on for the Swedish shore. Behind them, in small boats so loaded their gunwales were within inches of the water, the disconsolate coastguards surviving argued whether to try for the Aland Islands and the Finns, or the Swedish shore, to face their king's vengeance.

The men of the Lanzenorden, for all their prowess, had made few converts among the Swedes, at least among the men and the native-born. The congregations they protected had mostly been drawn from the slaves, Christians when they were brought to the land. Some were Germans, some Frisians or Franks, the majority English and Irish. The Ritters felt little kinship with them. They enjoyed the experience of imposing their will on the Norse who had persecuted them for so long, enjoyed realizing that power was largely a matter of concentration. When a Viking army thousands strong came down on some town or village in the West, of course they seemed superior. When fifty armed and trained Germans appeared in the middle of a Swedish village with a population of two hundred, it was the same story. If the natives ever concentrated against them, it would be a different matter. But there was no loot to be won, it was no-one's responsibility. The Lanzenorden wintered in peace, but not in content. The rank and file were bored, forbidden to get drunk or lord it over the handsome Swedish women. Erkenbert the deacon feared his chances of promotion were vanishing, stuck here far from the center of affairs. Bruno the leader fretted alone in his quarters. He had not found the lance of Charlemagne. If it was anywhere it was far away in the north in another country. The God in whom he trusted seemed to have deserted him.

When the frantic knocking sounded on the door of the knights' quarters, they sprang out of their torpor, chessboards flung to the ground. Weapons were seized from walls, men struggled into their armor. Someone opened the door cautiously. A thin shabby figure scrambled in.

“They've taken them,” he babbled.

“Taken who?” snapped Bruno, alerted by the uproar. “Who's taken who?”

The fugitive's wits seemed to desert him, faced by hostile looks and bared weapons. Erkenbert stepped forward, spoke in English to the frightened man.

“He is from Hadding,” he reported. “The town ten miles off, where we have held Mass. He says that this morning soldiers of King Kjallak came, rounded up all the Christians who have attended our services—they had a list—and took them away under guard. It is said by the Swedes, with great satisfaction, that they are to be sacrificed to pagan idols at the great temple, maybe in five days' time.”

“A challenge for us,” said Bruno, looking round and grinning. “Isn't that right, boys?”

“A challenge to the holy God,” said Erkenbert. “We shall meet it as did the holy Boniface, who smote the great pillar Irminsul of the Saxons unharmed, and converted the pagan Saxons from their unbelief.”

“I heard a different story,” muttered one of the knights. “I'm a Saxon myself. But anyway, how are fifty of us going to get a bunch of sacrifices away from the whole assembly of the Swedes? There'll be thousands of them there. And the king, with his housecarls.”

Bruno slapped him violently across the back. “That's why it's a challenge,” he shouted. More soberly, he added, “And don't forget, they believe that things must be done in certain ways. A challenge must be answered. If I challenge the king, he'll have to fight, or put in a champion. This isn't going to be a battle. It will be a show of our strength—of God's will. We'll face them down. Like we've done before.”

His men looked uncertain, but discipline was strong, and faith in their leader even stronger. They began to collect their weapons, packs and bedrolls and horses, working out the march in their heads. Five days. Fifty miles to pagan Uppsala. No trouble, even over muddy roads. But it would be difficult to come at the assembly of the Swedes with any element of surprise. Suspicious, too, that they had been, left unharmed, when one might have expected firebrands in the thatch and men outside at dawn. Maybe King Kjallak of the Swedes had thought ahead of them. Was expecting their coming. Had prepared a welcome. The two priests of the mission found a queue at their doors of men waiting to make a confession, and ask for shrift.