One King's Way

Chapter Five

Erkenbert the deacon sat in the sunlight behind a stout table, ink and parchment in front of him. It had been a long day's work, almost over now. But a deeply satisfying one. Erkenbert felt confidence, respect, almost awe creeping over him as he shuffled the thick pile of parchment sheets, filled with row after row of names: each one an application to join the ranks of the new Order which the archbishops of the West had proclaimed: the Order of the Lance, or in their tongue the Lanzenorden.

During their slow journey north from Cologne to Hamburg, Erkenbert had realized that there were special factors favoring the establishment of an order of warrior-monks here, in the German lands. In his native Northumbria, as indeed over the whole of family-conscious England, the thanes who formed the backbone of any army were good at one thing alone: establishing themselves comfortably on the estates granted them by the king. And then moving heaven and earth to see that not only did they hold on to them, however old, fat or unfitted for military service they became, but also that the estates were passed on in due form to their children. Sometimes they sent sons to perform service for them, sometimes they worked their way into royal or monastic favor by enforcing the king's dooms, or the abbot's, and witnessing any charter that needed a voice to swear one way or the other. However they did it, even if they had to send their daughters to tempt some magnate's lust, it was rare in England to find a parcel of land without some noble's son who thought he had a claim on it, or a noble's son who would prove in the end to be disappointed.

Not so in Germany. The warrior-class there had not been allowed to settle in and make itself comfortable. Service had to be performed. If it was not, a better replacement was found immediately. A middle-aged warrior had better have seen to his own security by the time his sword-arm stiffened, for his lord would feel no obligation to do it for him. As for the sons of warriors, there were many with little prospects, no assured future. In a sense, thought Erkenbert very quietly to himself, for all their concern with noble blood, they were more like peasants or churls than nobles, for they might be dispossessed at any moment. To such men, warlike though they were, to be allowed to enroll in an Order which would provide them a home and comradeship till the day they died, as if they were black monks, might well have unexpected appeal.

Yet he and his colleagues would not have had so much success in recruiting their serf-soldiers if it had not been for the oratory of Archbishop Rimbert. A dozen times as they made their way north from Cologne to Hamburg, Erkenbert had heard him call together the masses in whichever town they had chosen for their halt, and had heard him preach.

Always he took as his text the words of Saint Mark, “I will send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” He reminded his hearers how Jesus had forbidden Saint Peter to resist the soldiers when they came for him in the garden of Gethsemane, how he had urged his disciples to turn the other cheek, and if a man compelled them to go with him one mile, to go with him voluntarily for two. He would pursue the theme till he saw the looks of doubt, or disgust, on the faces of his warlike listeners.

And then he would say to them that what Jesus said was no doubt true. But what if a man compelled you to carry his pack for a mile, and you carried it from good will for two—and then instead of thanking you, he cursed you and told you to carry it another two, another ten, another twenty? What if you turned the other cheek and your enemy struck it again, and again, using his heaviest dogwhip? As his listeners stirred and muttered angrily, he would ask them why they felt anger. For were these things that he put to them not far less, not a hundred times less, than the insults and injuries they had had to endure from the pagans of the North? And then he talked to them of what he, Rimbert, had seen in his many years as the apostle to the North: daughters and wives ravished, men taken away and left to die in slavery, Christians on their knees in the snow, wailing as they waited to be sacrificed to the heathen gods at Odense or Kaupang or, worst of all, Swedish Uppsala. Wherever he could, he would tell each particular audience of what had happened to men or women from that town or that district—he seemed to have an inexhaustible stock of heart-rending stories, as who would not, Erkenbert reflected, if he had spent thirty years on the pointless and hopeless task of preaching to the heathen.

And when his audience's anger was at its height, when the serf-knights among them scowled and wrung their hands and swept off their leather caps in passion, then Rimbert would tell them his text: “I will send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Yes,” he would say, “the good priests of my missions, not one in ten of whom ever returns to his home, they have been sheep—and sheep they will remain. But from now on”—and as he said this, his voice would rise to an iron clangor—“when I send out my sheep, I will see that with each sheep there goes, not another sheep, not a wolf, no. But a great dog, a great mastiff of the German breed, with a good spiked collar round his neck, and twenty other wolfhounds running with him. Then we will see how the wolves of the North listen to the sheep's preaching! Maybe they will listen closely to his bleat in the future.”

And Rimbert would condescend to joke and play with words, sometimes even imitating the noise of a sheep to set his audience laughing uproariously in the relief of its tension and anger. And then Rimbert would tell them, slowly and quietly, of his plan. To send mission after mission into the North, through the friendlier of the chiefs and kings of the heathen, each mission centered on a learned and pious priest, as had always been the custom, but each mission containing also a new and strong bodyguard for that priest: men of noble birth and knightly station, men without wives or children or ties, men expert with sword and lance and mace, men who could ride a war-stallion with shield on one arm and lance in the other, controlling it with knees and fingertips alone—men whom even the pirates of the North would walk carefully around, fearing to antagonize them.

And then, when he had their full attention, Rimbert would tell them of the Holy Lance, and of how, when it came back to the Empire, the spirit of Charlemagne would come again and lead Christendom once more to triumph over all its enemies. And he would invite suitable applicants to present themselves to his servants, to see if they were worthy of a place in the Lanzenorden. Which was why Erkenbert now had the thick piles of parchment in his hand, covered with row after row of names: the applicants' names, their claims to noble birth—for no peasants or peasants' sons would be admitted under any circumstances—the lists of the worldly wealth they could bring to the order, and the details of their personal arms and equipment. In due course some names would be crossed out, some would be accepted. Most would be crossed out. And most of those not for failure in wealth or nobility, but because they could not pass the tests devised for them by the archbishop's Waffenmeister, his master-at-arms. Which, as Erkenbert ceased his writing, were going on in this place or that all over the wide exercise field outside the wooden stockade of much-sacked Hamburg. Men cutting at each other with blunted sword and shield. Men riding horses along a complex course of jumps and figures to strike down with a lance. Men grappling with each other, hand to hand, in the ring. And everywhere the grizzled Waffenmeister or the sergeants of his staff, noting, comparing, repeating names.

Erkenbert looked across at Arno, the counselor of Gunther, sent along with Erkenbert into Rimbert's archdiocese to watch, assist and report. They grinned at each other with the curious fellow-feeling that had grown between them, the small dark one and the tall fair one, each recognizing the other's delight in efficiency, in the exercise of pure intelligence.

“The Archbishop will get his first hundred easily,” offered Erkenbert.

Before Arno could reply, another voice cut in. “He will only need ninety-nine now,” it said.

Deacon and priest stared up from their stools at the newcomer.

He was not a tall man, Erkenbert noted, ever sensitive on this point. But his shoulders were extraordinarily broad, made to seem even more so by a pinched, narrow waist like a girl's. He was wearing a padded leather jacket such as horsemen wore under their mail. Erkenbert saw that extra strips had been sewn in to widen the upper body, neatly, but without any attempt to match colors. Beneath the jacket there seemed to be only a fustian tunic of the cheapest kind, and well-worn woolen breeches.

The eyes staring down were a bright, penetrating blue, the hair as fair as Arno's, but sticking up like the bristles of a brush. He had seen dangerous faces, and crazy faces, Erkenbert reflected, remembering Ivar the Boneless. He could not remember ever seeing a harder one. It seemed to have been chiseled out of rock, the skin stretched taut over prominent bones. Set on a neck as thick as a bulldog's, the head seemed almost small.

Erkenbert found his voice. “What do you mean?”

“Well, fellow, the archbishop wants one hundred, I make one, one less than one hundred—have you heard of the art of arithmetic?—that makes ninety-nine.”

Erkenbert flushed at the jibe. “I have heard of arithmetic. But you have not yet been selected. First we need to know your name, and your parents' names, and many other things. And you would have to go before the Waffenmeister. In any case you are too late for today.”

He felt a hand laid on his arm, Arno speaking softly and carefully. “Colleague, you are correct, but I feel in this case we may make an exception. The young herra here is known to me, to us all. He is Bruno, son of Reginbald, the Count of the Marches. There can of course be no doubt as to his suitability on the score of ancestry.”

Erkenbert reached irritably for the parchment. “Very well. If we are to do this in proper form we must then proceed to the questions of wealth and the contributions the applicant can bring to the order.” He began to write. “The name is Bruno, the son of a count must naturally be Bruno of…?”

“Bruno von nowhere,” said the soft voice. Erkenbert felt his writing hand enclosed in a vast, irresistible grip, gentle but with metal cables stirring beneath it. “I am the Count's third son, with no estate. I own nothing but my arms and armor and my good horse. But let me ask a few questions of you, little man with the paper. You speak teutsch well, but I can tell you are not one of us. I have heard nothing also of your noble family. I ask myself, who is this who has the right to say who shall and who shall not be a Ritter of a noble order? No offense, I hope.”

Arno cut in hastily. “The learned deacon is an Englishman, Bruno. He fought in the Pope's army that was beaten and came to tell us the story. He saw also the deaths of the famous Vikings, Ivar Boneless and Ragnar of the Hairy Breeches. He has told us a great deal of value, and is heart and soul for our cause.”

The grip round Erkenbert's hand released, the blond man stepped back, interest showing on his craggy face.

“Good,” he said, “good. I am prepared to accept an Englishman as a comrade. And there is one thing the little Englishman has said—take no offense, friend, each of us has his strengths—one thing that is true. I must certainly pass the Waffenmeister.” His voice rose to a shout. “Dankwart! Where are you, you old villain. Set me a test. No, do not trouble. I will set them myself.”

During the talk with Erkenbert, activity had ceased on the field. The Waffenmeister, his sergeants, the so-far successful applicants had quit their various tasks and come to cluster round the newcomer. They cleared a lane for Bruno as he stepped away from the table.

In four bounds he had reached the great black horse standing untethered close by. He sprang into the saddle without touching stirrup or pommel, snatched a lance stuck in the ground, and was already in motion towards the circuit of jumps and quintains. As his horse rose to the first hurdle Erkenbert realized the blond man had tucked his left arm theatrically behind his back, to make up for the fact that he carried no shield. His reins were dropped, he was controlling the stallion by knees and thighs alone. An overarm stab at the first quintain, an instant twist and leap. As dust rose from the field Erkenbert could make out only the crash of tumbling targets and a black centaur rising every few seconds over fence after fence. The more expert watchers had started to cheer every stroke. In what seemed moments the horse was back, the rider swinging again to the ground, breathing hard and grinning broadly.

“Did I pass that part, Dankwart? Tell the man with the paper, then, it doesn't count if he doesn't mark me down. But now, Dankwart, we have an expert watching, one who has seen real battles and seen great champions fight. I want to show him something and have his opinion. Who is the best man here today with sword and shield?”

The grizzled Waffenmeister pointed impassively to one of the applicants who had been sparring with his sergeants. A tall young man in a white surcoat over mail. “That one there, Bruno. He's good.”

Bruno walked towards his proposed adversary, took one hand between his two, looked up at him with a curious tenderness, like a lady to her lover. “You agree?” he asked.

The tall man nodded. Sergeants handed each of them a shield, a heavy kite-shaped one of the horseman's pattern. Then a heavy sword, edges blunted, point carefully rounded. The two men stepped back, began to circle each other warily, each moving to the right, away from his opponent's sword.

Erkenbert, no expert, saw only a blur of motion, three repeated clashes as the tall man struck, low, high, backhand, whirling the sword as if it were weightless. Three solid determined parries from Bruno, twisting his wrist each time to take the blow at right angles on his own blade, ignoring the shield. Then as the fourth blow came he had stepped inside it, jerking the edge of his shield up to catch the descending sword just above its guard. As the tall man stepped back to recover his balance, Bruno's sword was in the air. It seemed for an instant as if three swords were striking at once, the tall man parrying desperately in all directions. Then his shield was down, his sword was up, he was in a half-crouch to parry a blow not struck. Bruno seemed even to pause for an instant, to weigh what was needed.

Then his sword swept through the gap too fast for sight. A thud, a gasp, and the tall man was sprawling on his back. Erkenbert realized a second after the blow that he had seen the count's son deliberately rolling his wrists at the moment of impact, to soften the blow. He had had no need to exercise his full force.

Bruno had already dropped sword and shield, was helping his opponent up with the same curious tenderness. He patted his cheek, looked closely into the other man's eyes, waving a hand in front of them to see if the other could focus. Relief crossed his face, he stepped back, grinning. “A good bout, young knight. I am glad we shall be comrades of the Order. Another time I will show you the trick of that feint, it is easy to learn.” He looked round, acknowledging the applause of the circle of watchers, waving so that his opponent should be included in it.

Another thing about these Germans, thought Erkenbert, remembering the prickly, awkward insistence on rank and precedence of his homeland. They work together very easily. They like to form clubs and groups and companionships and all share their food and their beer. Yet they will still accept a leader who insists on being one of the men. Is that a strength or a weakness?

Bruno was approaching the table again, eyes shining with a kind of manic glee. “Now,” he said, “will you write me down?”

As Arno reached for the pen and the parchment he laughed, bent over, collected Erkenbert's gaze and said with sudden gravity: “Now, comrade. They say you have seen the great champions, Ivar Boneless and maybe the warrior they call Killer-Brand. Tell me, how do you think one such as myself would compare with them? Tell me the truth, now, I take no offense.”

Erkenbert hesitated. He had seen Ivar fight in battle against the champions of Mercia, though only from a fair distance behind. At closer quarters he had seen the duel on the gangplank between Ivar and Brand. He remembered Ivar's snake-like speed, the unexpected power in his relatively slender frame. Thought of what he had just seen, measuring the strength and leverage of the broad shoulders in front of him.

“Ivar was very quick,” he said at last. “He could dodge a blow rather than block it, and still remain poised to strike back. I think if you had an open space to fight him in you might have worn him down, for you would be the stronger. But Ivar is dead.”

Bruno nodded, face intent. “So what of Killer-Brand, the one who killed him?”

“It was not Brand who killed him. Ivar was too quick for Brand, mighty man though he is. No.” The hatred in Erkenbert's heart welled up. “It was another who killed Ivar. The son of a churl, devil-possessed. He had only a dog's name to call himself, Shef, and he did not know his father. In fair fight you would defeat a hundred like him. And now they call him a king!”

The blue eyes were thoughtful. “Yet he killed a great champion, you say, fair fight or no. These things do not happen by accident. Such a man should never be despised. The greatest gift a king can have, some say, is luck.”

By the time Shef reached solid ground he was chilled through, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. The rising tide had forced him to swim twice, no great distance but soaking him through each time. There was no sun to dry him. A fringe of seaweed marked the edge of tidal sand, with just beyond it a shallow dyke, obviously man-made. Shef scrambled to the top of it and turned to look out to sea, hoping against hope that he would see the Norfolk standing in to rescue him, and that in an hour or so he could count on dry clothes and a blanket, a hunk of bread and cheese, maybe a fire on the sand while someone else stood guard. At that moment he could imagine no greater reward for being a king.

There was nothing to be seen. The gray twilight made everything out on the flats seem the same, gray sea, gray sky, gray sandbanks slowly yielding to the water. He had not heard the clash of battle behind him as he made his way to the shore, but that did not mean anything. The Norfolk might have been carried by boarders. Or she might have been refloated and be continuing her single-ship duel with the Frani Ormr. Or both ships might long have sailed out once more to the open sea. There was no hope in that direction.

Shef turned the other way and contemplated the drab landscape in front of him. Plowed fields with shoots of green barley showing. Somewhere a few hundred yards off in the dimness black bulks that might well be grazing cows. All that showed a certain confidence here on the edge of the pirate sea. Were the men of this land great warriors? Or slaves of the Vikings? Or did they rely on the dangerous shoals to keep them safe? Whichever was true, their land was no great prize: flat as a man's hand, kept from the tide only by a six-foot dyke, muddy, sodden and featureless.

More to the point, there was no prospect of warmth in it anywhere. In a wooded country Shef might have thought to find a fallen tree to break the wind, boughs to pile under and over him to keep him out of the wet, maybe a drift of decaying leaves to rake over himself. Here there was nothing but mud and wet grass. Yet the cows and the plowed fields showed there was a village not too far away. Men never plowed more than a couple of miles from their homes and byres: the time it took an ox to travel that distance, morning and evening, was the most that any sensible man would add on to his day. So there must be a house, and with a house a fire, somewhere all but in sight.

Shef looked round for a gleam of light. Nothing. That was only to be expected. Anyone who had light and fire would have the sense to shut it in. Shef turned to his left, for no reason than that it was away from the land of the Christians and Hamburg further down the Elbe, and began to walk briskly along the dyke. If he had to, he decided, he would walk all night. His clothes were bound to dry on him in the end. He would be ravenously hungry by dawn, his body's resources used up by keeping out the cold, but that could be borne. He had fed well all the months he had been a king, and a jarl before that. Now was the time to use some of that up. But if he lay down in the fields, he would be dead by morning.

After only a few minutes of stumbling, Shef realized that he was crossing a track. He paused. Should he follow it? If the natives were hostile he could be dead well before morning. The patter of rain on his shoulders made his mind up for him. He moved cautiously down the track, his one eye probing the darkness.

The village was no more than a cluster of longhouses, their low walls showing just slightly darker than the sky. Shef reflected. No hall for a lord, no church for a priest. That was good. The longhouses were different sizes, some long, some short. One of the shortest ones was the closest to him. In the winter these folk, like the poor people of Norfolk, would bring their beasts in the house with them, for warmth. A small house meant few cows. Was it not true that charity was likeliest among the poor? He moved cautiously towards the door of the nearest house, the smallest. A chink of light through the wooden shutters. He planted the Snake-eye's spear butt-down in the ground, pulled the sword from his belt and held it by the blade. With his right hand he pounded on the ill-fitting door. A scurrying inside, muttered words. It creaked open.

Shef stepped forwards into the ill-lit doorway, his sword balanced across both hands in token of submission. Without a pause he found himself lying on his back, staring up at the sky. He had felt no blow, had no idea what had happened. His arms and legs seemed to pay no attention to his insistent commands to them to move.

He felt a fist gripping the neck of his tunic, hauling him half upright, a voice in his ear muttering in a thick dialect, but comprehensibly, “All right, come along, get your feet under you, let's get you inside and have a look at you.”

His legs sprawling, Shef staggered inside, his arm round someone's shoulder, and sank on to a stool by a meager fire.

For long moments he could pay no attention to anything but the warmth, holding his hands out to it, crouching over it. As the steam started to rise from his clothes he shook his head, rose unsteadily to his feet, and looked round. Facing him was a stocky man, hands on hips, with a mop of curly hair and an expression on his face of irrepressible good humor. From the thinness of his beard Shef realized that he was even younger than himself. In the background stood two older folk, a man and a woman, looking at him with alarm and distrust.

Shef tried to speak, realized his jaw was stiff and sore. An exploring hand found a growing lump on the right-hand side.

“What did you do?” he asked.

The stocky man grinned even more broadly than before, made swift darting movements with his hands and body. “Gave you a bit of a dunt,” he replied. “You walked right into it.”

Shef cast his mind back, amazed. In England, and among the Vikings, men hit each other with their fists often enough, but wrestling was the warrior's sport. By the time someone had raised his fist and swung it, even a grandfather should be able to duck out of the way. Even walking into a dark room, he would have expected to see a swing coming and at least react to it. Nor would you expect a swing to knock a man down. Fighting with fists was an affair of prolonged and clumsy bludgeoning, which was why the warriors despised it. Yet Shef had seen nothing and felt nothing till he was on the ground.

“Do not be surprised,” said the old man in the background. “Our Karli does that to everyone. He is a champion. But you had better tell us who you are, or he will strike you again.”

“I got separated from my ship,” said Shef. “Had to walk and swim across the sandbanks.”

“Are you one of the Vikings? You speak more like one of us.”

“I am an Englishman. But I have been much among Norsemen, and can understand their speech. I have spoken with Frisians as well. You speak most like them. Are you Frisians? The free Frisians,” Shef added, remembering how they liked to describe themselves.

Even the old woman laughed. “The free Frisians,” said the stocky youth. “Living on sandbanks and running for their lives every time they see a sail. No, we are Germans.”

“The archbishop's men?” inquired Shef cautiously. He could see his sword now, standing in a corner where they must have put it. If the answer were wrong, he would lunge for it and try to kill the stocky youth at once.

Again they laughed. “No. Some of us are Christians, some follow the old gods, some none. But none of us has any wish to pay tithes or kneel to a lord. We are the folk of the Ditmarsh,” the youth ended proudly.

Shef had never heard the name from anyone before. He nodded. “I am cold and wet. And hungry,” he added. “May I sleep inside your house tonight?”

“Sleep by the fire and welcome,” said the older man, who Shef realized must be the father of the stocky one, the master of the house. “As for hunger, we have plenty of that ourselves. But you can dry yourself here rather than die out on the marsh. Tomorrow you must go before the village for a doom.”

I have gone into a doom-ring before, thought Shef. But maybe the Ditmarshers' doom will be kinder than the Great Army's. Feeling his swollen jaw again, he moved to the side of the fire while the family of the house prepared itself for sleep.