One King's Way

Chapter Thirty

As they drew nearer and nearer to Uppsala, Shef fell a mood of foreboding come over him. It should not have. Everything was going as well as anyone could possibly have expected. No resistance on the shore, the fighting men of the Swedes already marched for the assembly and the sacrifice, or so they were told. Guided by boats with lanterns sent out off shore, Piruusi had appeared with a heavy reinforcement of Finns, eager to strike a blow for once at the stronghold of their hereditary enemies. Scores of spare crossbows had been distributed and every man who received one given a short course of instruction and five practice shots—all that were needed to enable a man to load and fire a crossbow of the newest pattern, and hit his target at fifty yards' range. With the Finnish bowmen as a screen and two hundred crossbows behind them, Shef knew he had a force which was at least to be reckoned with, one that would defeat any casual or careless attack. He had had to detach only a dozen men and women to guard the boats and moor the Fearnought especially beyond casual reach.

Morale was high, too, borne up by resentment. Also by the cautious welcome they received as they pressed forward—too much of a straggle to be called a march—through the villages of heathen Sweden. Those who were left behind in the villages were women and slaves and the low-born. Many of those, seeing the banner with lance and hammer, took it for some kind of a cross, as Herjolf had feared, and if they were of Christian origin saw it as a liberation. Others saw the Wayman pendants and cautiously joined the party, or volunteered information. Yet others had had friends or relatives snatched for the great sacrifice, and willingly asked for weapons, to help free them. There was a sense of support, of the army growing, not shrinking as so many did on approach to battle.

So why did he feel the foreboding, Shef asked himself. It was because of Cuthred. Shef had some inner presentiment that this matter was not to be decided by pitched battle: that in the end it would come down to a test of champions. Till this time he had relied implicitly on Cuthred, on his strength and skill, but most especially on his uncompromising spirit. Cuthred never had to be encouraged, always restrained. Never till now. But now he was silent, gloomy, without the aura of lurking menace that had always surrounded him.

Jogging along on a commandeered pony, Shef found Hund riding alongside him. As usual, he did not bother to speak, merely waited for Shef's opening.

Speaking quietly, Shef glanced at Cuthred's back ten yards away and muttered, “I fear I have lost my berserk.”

Hund nodded. “I had thought so too. Do you think you will have need of one?”

“Yes.”

“I remember Brand talking of what makes a berserk. He said they were not men possessed by other spirits, but men who hated themselves. Maybe our berserk—” Hund avoided using his name in case Cuthred heard it “—maybe he has been given some reason not to hate himself.”

Shef thought of Miltastaray and the strange remarks Echegorgun had made about the Hidden Folk, their disabilities, and their rare matings. He could see that Cuthred, if he did not think himself a man again, might have been able to think himself a troll.

“I don't want to give him that reason back,” he said, “but I would prefer him a bit more like his older self.”

Hund produced something from under the long cloak most of the men were now wearing, against the wind and squalls of rain. “It came to me that there might be another thing that makes the berserk. Just as your visions might be caused by something in you, or something in the grain, or something in the Finn's drink, so the berserkergang could be caused by something in the soul—or something in the body. I have talked to the Finns, with Ottar's help. The fly-killer mushroom is not the only one they use. There is this potion too.” He showed Shef a flask.

“What is in it?”

“A decoction. Boiling water poured onto another mushroom. Not the red one with the white spots this time, the one that makes the seeing-drink. Nor the other one I know of, the death-cap mushroom, the one—” Hund lowered his voice again “—that looks like a prick.

“There is a third. The Finns call it the tuft-ear mushroom, after the big cat that lives in the forests. It sends men into frenzy, makes berserkers of the mildest.” He handed over the flask. “If you need it, take it. Give it to Cuth—to our friend.”

Shef took it thoughtfully.

Outside the great temple at Uppsala was a yard, roofed over with thatch but earth-floored, wattle-walled, the rain driving in through every chink. Nine score men and women crowded into it, hands tied into iron rings set into long bars. Given time and effort, a man could break free, untie others. But guards patrolled up and down, clubbing savagely at anyone who shifted, made anything that looked like an attempt at escape. The guards were having more trouble than usual, as they remarked to each other. Not only were there far more for the sacrifice than in living memory. They were not the usual bone-bags, dying by noose or blade only days ahead of death from cold or starvation. That was as it should be, the guards said, aiming blows to break fingers or collar-bones. The gods would have fresh meat for a change. Perhaps the Swedes' ill-luck was caused by the gods having to boil their victims down for soup.

Cwicca, nursing a fractured arm gained when a guard saw him trying to pull the iron ring out of its bar, whispered out of the corner of his mouth to Thorvin next to him. “I don't like the look of Udd.”

The little man indeed seemed almost on the point of tears: natural enough, but neither Englishman nor Wayman wanted to give their enemies a chance to mock. He was staring at one of the Swedes, a priest, who had come into the slave pen. It was the custom of the Swedish priests of the temple, of the Kingdom Oak, to taunt and jeer at their captives, believing that their fear and despair were acceptable to the gods. Some said it was a custom set by their ancient king Angantyr. Others said the bastards enjoyed it. Udd's lower lip was trembling as he listened to the Swede's shouts.

“Don't think it will be quick! Don't think you'll get off easy. I have made the sacrifice at this assembly for twenty years. When I was young, then I made mistakes. I let men slide to the gods not knowing they'd gone. Not now! Those I hang, they'll still be awake with their eyes open when the ravens of Othin come to peck them out. How will you feel then, when the raven sits on your head and reaches out its beak. I've seen them! You'll try to lift your hands, won't you? But I'll have tied them down.

“And that's not all. Even after you've gone to death, gone to the gods, what do you think will happen then. You'll sit on clouds with harps in your hands, you Christians, eh? No! You are slaves here and you'll be slaves there.”

The priest began to sing a sacred song, his voice and rhythm strangely like Thorvin's. This was where the Way had come from, Cwicca realized with a flash of insight. From beliefs like this one. But changed, not made gentle exactly—the Way-followers were as fierce as any—but without the undercurrent of desperate anxiety that made the true pagans, the hard-core, so addicted to pain.

Udd's head dropped, his face twisted, the pagan priest saw and broke off his chant with a crow of victorious laughter. As he did so Thorvin too began to sing, his deep voice carrying on the very tune of the pagan's, but to a different rhythm:

The pagan shrieked with fury, ran down the rows of chained prisoners towards his rival, shouting curses, a weighted club in his hand. As he raced past Hama, chained with the others, stuck out a foot. The priest tripped over it, landed sprawling almost at Thorvin's feet. Thorvin eyed the club regretfully, his hands chained above his shoulders. He stepped forward at full stretch, brought a booted heel down. A crunch, a snoring sound from the pagan, deep in his throat, then a choking.

“Snapped windpipe,” remarked the guards, removing the body and clubbing Thorvin dispassionately senseless.

“In Thruthvangar, when we reach it,” Thorvin gasped between the blows, “he will be my servant. Our servant. And we are not dead yet, though he is.”

Unnoticed now, Udd began to weep again. He had traveled far, endured much, done his best to counterfeit the warrior. Now his nerve had gone, his reserve of courage drained empty.

As Shef's army closed on Uppsala, the last night before their informers insisted the sacrifice was due, the rain came down harder. The muddy tracks began to be thronged with worshipers, sightseers, adherents of King Kjallak and devotees of Othin and Frey, all mixed in hopeless confusion. Rather than trying to fight a way through all at once, Shef simply told his men to put their unfamiliar weapons under their cloaks and press on as if they were just another group, an unusually large one, heading for the ritual. In better weather the Finns, at least, would have been recognized. With all heads bent in the streaming rain, and the Finns kept in the center, no remark was made, no opposition organized. Shef heard many voices say that the gods had not relented. They would demand blood in torrents before the Swedes would see good harvests again.

In the dark hour before dawn, Shef saw the dragon-gables of the temple rear against the clouds. Even more unmistakable, the great bulk of the oak-tree itself, the Kingdom Oak, around which the Swedes had worshiped their gods and elected their kings since before they were a nation. Forty men with hands outstretched would not span the trunk, it was said. Even in the growing crowds, no-one ventured under its branches. Some of the offerings of last year still swung there, human and animal. A charnel of uncleared bones lay beneath it.

As they halted Shef sent word along to Herjolf, Osmod and the others, to try to get the men into a deep line unblocked by Swedes, and prepare them for whatever might come. He himself moved up to Cuthred's shoulder. The big man stood unspeaking, weapons hidden.

“I may need you at my shoulder soon,” said Shef.

Cuthred nodded. “I will be there when you need me, lord.”

“Maybe you should drink this. It—it makes a man readier, or so Hund tells me.”

Cuthred took the flask, unstoppered it, and sniffed it gingerly. He snorted with sudden contempt, threw it onto the sodden ground. “I know what that is. They give it to the striplings they do not trust before battle. Offer it to me, Ella's champion! I am your man. I would have killed any man else who gave me that.”

Cuthred turned his back, stood angrily aside Shef looked at him, bent and picked the flask up, sniffed it himself. Perhaps a third of the draught remained. They gave it to the striplings before battle? He was a stripling or so people kept telling him. On impulse he lifted the flask, drained it, threw it back to the ground. Karli, a few feet away—he took care not to get too close to Cuthred—watched anxiously.

Horns had started to blow somewhere, low and heavy in the damp. Was it dawn? Hard to tell. Hard to tell, too, whether the Kingdom Oak was budding. But the priests of the temple seemed to have decided to begin. Doors opened as the sky slowly paled, priests filed out chanting, circled the oak. Another blare of horns, and a gate swung slowly open. Guards began to herd a double line of shuffling figures out into the chill. Shef undid his cloak, let it fall into the mud, stood breathing heavily and deeply. He was ready now to act. He waited only for his target.

Not very far away, behind a low ridge that fringed the temple-plain, Bruno had mustered his riders. He had decided to keep his men mounted, for the shock effect. It was true that the mounts were only Swedish horses, not the highly-trained chargers of Frankland or Germany, but his men were all horsemen, true Ritters. They would squeeze a charge out of any animal.

“I think they're getting ready to start,” said Bruno to Erkenbert. The little deacon could hardly ride at all, but refused like the mission's priests to be left behind. Bruno had swung him up onto his own saddle-bow. Erkenbert was shivering with cold. Bruno refused to consider that it might be fear. Perhaps it was excitement at the thought of striking a blow for the faith. Erkenbert had read to them all, the day before, the legends of the holy saints, the holy English saints Willebald and Wynfrith, who had taken the name Boniface. They had attacked the pagan Saxons in their own sanctuaries, cut down their holy pillars, gained eternal salvation in Heaven and also everlasting glory among men. Martyrdom, Erkenbert had said, was nothing in comparison. It was certainly true that the little Englishman was eager himself to be the hero of story. Bruno had other intentions, not involving martyrdom.

“There!” said the deacon. “They are leading out the martyrs to their doom. When will you strike? Ride forward now in the strength of the Lord.”

Bruno tensed, rose in his stirrups to give the order, settled slowly back. “I think someone is there before us,” he said in surprise.

As the captives were led slowly forward, Shef realized that someone had come to take charge. The growing light revealed a block of gray stone in the center of the plain between the temple and the oak, a flat square platform maybe four feet high and ten across. A man stepped out from the group near the temple doors, swinging a spear. He vaulted suddenly and powerfully onto the platform, heaving himself up on the spear, and raised his hands high. A concerted shout came from his supporters, drowning out the buzz of comment from the rest of the crowd. “Kjallak!” they shouted. “Kjallak king, favored of the gods!”

Shef began to walk forward, lance in hand. He knew, but did not care, that Cuthred was behind him. His body seemed buoyed up on a cushion of air, as if something inside him were lifting him, as if his breath were too great for his lungs.

“Kjallak!” he called out harshly. “You have my men there. I want them back.”

The king stared down at him, a warrior in his prime, thirty-five years old, veteran of many wars and many single combats.

“Who are you, manling, that disturbs the assembly of the Swedes?” he asked.

Shef, within range, swung the lance-butt at his legs. Kjallak leapt nimbly over it, came down on wet stone, slipped and fell. Shef vaulted onto the stone to stand over him. His voice lifted and rang across the plain, shouting out words he had never thought to say.

“You are no king! A king is to guard his people. Not hang them on trees for a crowd of old tricksters. Get off the stone! I am the king of the Swedes.”

Weapons clashed in the background, but Shef ignored them. Half a dozen of Kjallak's men had run forward as soon as their king was threatened. Three met crossbow quarrels humming from the crowd. Cuthred, stepping forward, coldly cut the legs from under one, slashed furiously at the others, driving them back.

“Is this a challenge?” called Kjallak. “This is not the place or the time for it.”

Shef responded with a kick that caught Kjallak rising to his feet, tumbled him off the stone. A groan rose from the watchers. Kjallak got to his feet again, face paling.

“Whatever place or time, I will kill you for that,” he said. “I will make a heimnar of you and give what is left to the priests. You are the first sacrifice to the gods this day. But you have neither sword nor shield. How can you fight me with that old pigsticker?”

Shef looked round. He had not planned this. It was the recklessness born from Hund's potion that had done this: left him facing a fully-armed hero himself, instead of sending forward his champion Cuthred. Impossible to ask for a substitution. The day was up now, he saw, and by some chance the rain had stopped. All eyes were on him, up there on the stone, at the center of a natural amphitheater. The priests of the temple had ceased their chanting, stood there in a grisly group, next to their herded captives. Round him in a great ring of spears stood the assembly of the Swedish nation. But they made no move to interfere. They stood, waiting for the judgment of the gods. He could never expect a better chance than this. And the potion was still strong within him.

Shef threw his head back and laughed, lifted the lance and threw it point-first into the wet turf. He raised his voice so that it would carry not to Kjallak but to the rearmost row of the spectators.

“I have no sword and shield,” he shouted. “But I have this!” He pulled from his belt the long single-edged knife he carried. “I will fight you Rogaland style! We need no bull's hide. We have the holy stone. I will fight you here, wrist tied to wrist, and he who steps down from the stone, he is king of the Swedes.”

A slow rumble came from the crowd as they caught the words, and Kjallak, hearing it, tightened his lips. He had seen duels like that before. They took away the advantage of skill. But the crowd would not let anyone back out now. He still had strength and reach. He reached down, unbuckled his sword-belt, threw it from the stone, hearing the Swedes begin to cheer and clash spear on shield as they realized he had taken the dare.

“Dunghill cock!” he said, keeping his voice low. “You should have stuck to your own midden.”

Cwicca, holding his broken arm up by the sleeve, muttered to the battered and bleeding Thorvin, “There's something funny going on. He would never have planned this. Nor he hasn't been levered into it either. This isn't like him.”

“Maybe the gods have taken control of him,” said Thorvin.

“Let's hope they keep it up,” said Hama.

Bruno, still watching the arrangements being made from his unnoticed vantage-point, looked round thoughtfully. All eyes were on the center, where men were helping Kjallak out of his mail as Shef stripped to his tunic as well. A rope had appeared, cut from the hangman's coil, and they were preparing to lash the two men together, each man with two seconds now to see fair play. One of the temple priests had insisted on singing an invocation to Othin, and Herjolf, pushing out of the crowd, had begun a counter to it.

“We can't even get at them now,” said Bruno. “The crowd's too close-packed. See here, what we'll do is this.” He pointed out to his men a circuit they could make. To the right, round behind the temple and the slave-yard, to appear between the temple and the oak, where a gap had been left for the prisoners. “Come out there behind them,” he concluded. “Ride forward and make a wedge. That way we'll get our people away at least.”

“What's that banner they've broken out down there?” asked one of his men.

“It is a cross,” cried the weak-eyed Erkenbert. “God has sent a sign!”

“Not a cross,” said Bruno slowly. “It is a lance. Like the one the young man just threw down. A lance with something I can't see across it. I don't deny it may be a sign for all that.”

Breathing deeply and slowly, Shef waited for the signal to begin. He wore only his breeches, shoes kicked off as well for a surer grip on the wet stone. He had no idea what to do. It did not seem to matter. Hund's potion filled him with rage and ecstasy. The calculating part of him that lived on somewhere below the potion had given up its protests, was telling him instead to keep his eye on his enemy, not just luxuriate in feelings of power.

A sudden silence as the rival chantings stopped, a blare of horns, and Kjallak stepped forward over the stone platform like a panther and slashed. Shef leapt away almost too late, felt a line of fire across his ribs, heard from some far distance the roar of acclaim. He began to move, pulling with one hand on the rope both men held, feinting to thrust with the other. Kjallak ignored the feints, waited for the real stab. When it came, the one-eye would have to step close. When he missed, Kjallak would strike again for the body. He circled always to the right, crowding the knife-hand, making his opponent back away to keep him off his blind side. Every few seconds he slashed quickly, professionally, at Shef's exposed left arm, enough to make the blood run, the strength go.

“How's it going?” asked Thorvin, his left eye swollen shut.

“He's cutting our man to bits,” answered Cwicca.

He's cutting me to bits, thought Shef. He felt no pain, no physical fear, but there was an undercurrent of panic rising, as if he were out on a stage in front of thousands of people, and had forgotten what he was supposed to say. He tried a sudden sweep with one leg, a wrestling trick. Kjallak evaded it economically, and sliced him across the knee. Shef slashed back at Kjallak's rope-arm, drawing blood for the first time. Kjallak grinned and thrust suddenly over their joined arms, forcing Shef to jerk his head aside and leap back, dropping the rope, to avoid the instant second thrust for the heart.

“Learning, eh?” panted Kjallak. “But not fast enough. You should have stayed with your mother.”

The thought of his mother, her life destroyed by the Vikings, stabbed Shef into a flurry of thrusts, coming forward recklessly. Kjallak dodged them, caught a couple with his own knife in a clang of metal, waited for the surge to die down. Like a berserker, he thought. Don't take them head on. Keep out of their way and wait for them to tire. He could feel it already, the spasmodic strength draining.

“Stayed with your mother,” he repeated. “Maybe had a nice game of knucklebones.”

Knucklebones, thought Shef. He remembered the lessons from Karli in the marsh, remembered Hedeby market. Seizing the trailing rope again, he jerked it taut, slashed it suddenly through. A groan from the crowd, a look of surprise, disgust in Kjallak's eyes.

Shef threw his knife high in the air, spinning end over end. Kjallak, whose eyes had never left it, looked up, followed it automatically for an instant, his head rising. Shef stepped forward, pivoting from the waist as Karli had taught him, and threw a clenched left fist in a sweeping hook. He felt the blow run up his arm, felt the crunch of fist on beard and bone. Kjallak staggered. But he was a man with a neck like a bull's, knocked off balance but not down.

The spinning knife came down. As if he had practiced the catch for a dozen years, Shef caught it left-handed by the hilt, thrust upwards at the raised chin. The blade skewered through beard and chin, mouth and palate, drove on till the point wedged hard in the roof of the skull.

Shef felt the dead weight fall forward, twisted the blade, jerked it free. He turned in a slow semi-circle towards the crowd, raising the bloody knife. A roar of applause from his own men, confused cries from the rest.

“Foul!” cried one of Kjallak's seconds, stepping towards the stone. “He cut the rope! That's against the rules.”

“What rules?” said Cuthred. Without further words he slashed at the second, half-severing his head. From the stone Shef saw spears poised, crossbows leveled.

A ray of sunshine broke through the clouds, fell on the bloody stone. This time a groan from the crowd, of awe. And in the same moment, a clash of metal. Shef looked up, saw between the oak and the temple a solid line of armored horsemen, driving between the prisoners and their guards, hustling the temple priests towards him. He did not know who they were, but they gave him a chance. The potion filled him with one more inspiration, a surge of fury.

“Swedes!” he called out. “You are here for good harvests and prosperity. They grow from blood. I have given you blood already, king's blood. Follow me and I will give you more.”

Voices from the crowd, shouting about the oak and the sacrifices.

“You have sacrificed for years and what good has it done? You sacrificed the wrong things. You must sacrifice what is dearest to you. Start again. I will give you a better sacrifice.”

Shef pointed across the clearing. “Sacrifice your oak. Cut it down now, and set free the souls that hang from it. And if the gods want blood, send it to them. Send the gods their servants, the priests of the temple.”

Across the clearing, a small black-clad figure had scrambled from a horse, was running under the ghastly swaying boughs. He had an axe in his hand, snatched from a gaping priest. He reached the oak, raised the axe and swung. A groan again from the crowd at the sacrilege. Chips flew, men stared upwards for the avenging thunder. Nothing. Just the hard noise of metal on wood as Erkenbert swung like a man possessed. Slowly eyes turned towards the priests. Bruno's men rode forward, herding them towards the stone. Herjolf turned towards Shef's followers, seizing the moment.

“Right,” he shouted. “Crossbows, down here and make a ring. Ottar, get your Finns organized. The rest of you, seize those men. And you,” he called to Bruno, “stop your little fellow before he does himself an injury. Make a ring round the oak and get four men at it who know their business.”

The Swedes watched in amazement and acquiescence as Herjolf made his grisly preparations. Before the morning was over the Kingdom Oak would be in flames, and tossed onto it as a pyre, the bodies of its servants.

“Does that make the one-eye king of the Swedes?” they asked each other.

“Who knows?” went the answers. “But he has brought back the sun.”