Sword Song (7 page)

“Erik would not kill a man for telling a lie, would you, brother?”

“No,” Erik said.

“So he is a fool, but a fool I love.” Sigefrid laughed. “But don’t think the fool is a weakling, Lord Uhtred. He fights like a demon from Niflheim.” He slapped his brother on the shoulder, then took my elbow and led me on toward the incongruous cross. “I have prisoners,” he explained as we neared the cross, and I saw that five men were kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs. They had been stripped of cloaks, weapons, and tunics so that they wore only their trews. They shivered in the cold air.

The cross had been newly made from two beams of wood that had been crudely nailed together and then sunk into a hastily dug hole.
The cross leaned slightly. At its foot were some heavy nails and a big hammer. “You see death by the cross on their statues and carvings,” Sigefrid explained to me, “and you see it on the amulets they wear, but I’ve never seen the real thing. Have you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“And I can’t understand why it would kill a man,” he said with genuine puzzlement in his voice. “It’s only three nails! I’ve suffered much worse than that in battle.”

“Me too,” I said.

“So I thought I’d find out!” he finished cheerfully, then jerked his big beard toward the prisoner nearest to the foot of the cross. “The two bastards at the end there are Christian priests. We’ll nail one of them up and see if he dies. I have ten pieces of silver that say it won’t kill him.”

I could see almost nothing of the two priests except that one had a big belly. His head was bowed, not in prayer, but because he had been beaten hard. His naked back and chest were bruised and bloody, and there was more blood in the tangle of his brown curly hair. “Who are they?” I asked Sigefrid.

“Who are you?” he snarled at the prisoners and, when none answered, he gave the nearest man a brutal kick in the ribs. “Who are you?” he asked again.

The man lifted his head. He was elderly, at least forty years old, and had a deep lined face on which was etched the resignation of those who knew they were about to die. “I am Earl Sihtric,” he said, “counselor to King Æthelstan.”

“Guthrum!” Sigefrid screamed, and it was a scream. A scream of pure rage that erupted from nowhere. One moment he had been affable, but suddenly he was a demon. Spittle flew from his mouth as he shrieked the name a second time. “Guthrum! His name is Guthrum, you bastard!” He kicked Sihtric in the chest, and I reckoned that kick was hard enough to break a rib. “What is his name?” Sigefrid demanded.

“Guthrum,” Sihtric said.

“Guthrum!” Sigefrid shouted, and kicked the old man again. Guthrum, when he made peace with Alfred, had become a Christian and taken the Christian name Æthelstan as his own. I still thought of him as Guthrum, as did Sigefrid, who now appeared to be trying to stamp Sihtric to death. The old man attempted to evade the blows, but Sigefrid had driven him to the ground from where he could not escape. Erik seemed unmoved by his brother’s savage anger, yet after a while he stepped forward and took Sigefrid’s arm and the bigger man allowed himself to be pulled away. “Bastard!” Sigefrid spat back at the moaning man. “Calling Guthrum by a Christian name!” he explained to me. Sigefrid was still shaking from his sudden anger. His eyes had narrowed and his face was contorted, but he seemed to control himself as he draped a heavy arm around my shoulder. “Guthrum sent them,” he said, “to tell me to leave Lundene. But it’s none of Guthrum’s business! Lundene doesn’t belong to East Anglia! It belongs to Mercia! To King Uhtred of Mercia!” That was the first time anyone had used that title so formally, and I liked the sound of it. King Uhtred. Sigefrid turned back to Sihtric who now had blood at his lips. “What was Guthrum’s message?”

“That the city belongs to Mercia, and you must leave,” Sihtric managed to say.

“Then Mercia can throw me out,” Sigefrid sneered.

“Unless King Uhtred allows us to stay?” Erik suggested with a smile.

I said nothing. The title sounded good, but strange, as if it defied the strands coming from the three spinners.

“Alfred will not permit you to stay.” One of the other prisoners dared to speak.

“Who gives a turd about Alfred?” Sigefrid snarled. “Let the bastard send his army to die here.”

“That is your reply, lord?” the prisoner asked humbly.

“My reply will be your severed heads,” Sigefrid said.

I glanced at Erik then. He was the younger brother, but clearly the one who did the thinking. He shrugged. “If we negotiate,” he explained, “then we give time for our enemies to gather their forces. Better to be defiant.”

“You’ll pick war with both Guthrum and Alfred?” I asked.

“Guthrum won’t fight,” Erik said, sounding very certain. “He threatens, but he won’t fight. He’s getting old, Lord Uhtred, and he would prefer to enjoy what life is left to him. And if we send him severed heads? I think he will understand the message that his own head is in danger if he disturbs us.”

“What of Alfred?” I asked.

“He’s cautious,” Erik said, “isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“He’ll offer us money to leave the city?”

“Probably.”

“And maybe we’ll take it,” Sigefrid said, “and stay anyway.”

“Alfred won’t attack us till the summer,” Erik said, ignoring his brother, “and by then, Lord Uhtred, we hope you will have led Earl Ragnar south into East Anglia. Alfred can’t ignore that threat. He will march against our combined armies, not against the garrison in Lundene, and our job is to kill Alfred and put his nephew on the throne.”

“Æthelwold?” I asked dubiously. “He’s a drunk.”

“Drunk or not,” Erik said, “a Saxon king will make our conquest of Wessex more palatable.”

“Until you need him no longer,” I said.

“Until we need him no longer,” Erik agreed.

The big-bellied priest at the end of the line of kneeling prisoners had been listening. He stared at me, then at Sigefrid, who saw his gaze. “What are you looking at, turd?” Sigefrid demanded. The priest did not answer, but just looked at me again, then dropped his head. “We’ll start with him,” Sigefrid said, “we’ll nail the fat bastard to a cross and see if he dies.”

“Why not let him fight?” I suggested.

Sigefrid stared at me, unsure he had heard me correctly. “Let him fight?” he asked.

“The other priest is skinny,” I said, “so much easier to nail to the cross. That fat one should be given a sword and made to fight.”

Sigefrid sneered. “You think a priest can fight?”

I shrugged as though I did not care one way or the other. “It’s just that I like seeing those fat-bellied ones lose a fight,” I explained. “I like seeing their bellies slit open. I like watching their guts spill out.” I was staring at the priest as I spoke and he looked up again to gaze into my eyes. “I want to see yards of gut spilled out,” I said wolfishly, “and then watch as your dogs eat his intestines while he’s still alive.”

“Or make him eat them himself,” Sigefrid said thoughtfully. He suddenly grinned at me. “I like you, Lord Uhtred!”

“He’ll die too easily,” Erik said.

“Then give him something to fight for,” I said.

“What can that fat pig of a priest fight for?” Sigefrid demanded scornfully.

I said nothing, and it was Erik who supplied the answer. “His freedom?” he suggested. “If he wins then all prisoners go free, but if he loses then we crucify them all. That should make him fight.”

“He’ll still lose,” I said.

“Yes, but he’ll make an effort,” Erik said.

Sigefrid laughed, amused by the incongruity of the suggestion. The priest, half naked, big-bellied and terrified, looked at each of us in turn but saw nothing but amusement and ferocity. “Ever held a sword, priest?” Sigefrid demanded of the fat man. The priest said nothing.

I mocked his silence with laughter. “He’ll only flail around like a pig,” I said.

“You want to fight him?” Sigefrid asked.

“He wasn’t sent as an envoy to me, lord,” I said respectfully. “Besides, I’ve heard there is no one to match your skill with a blade. I challenge you to make a cut straight across his belly button.”

Sigefrid liked that challenge. He turned to the priest. “Holy man! You want to fight for your freedom?”

The priest was shaking with fear. He glanced at his companions, but found no help there. He managed to nod his head. “Yes, lord,” he said, “Then you can fight me,” Sigefrid said happily, “and if I win? You all die. And if you win? You can ride away from here. Can you fight?”

“No, lord,” the priest said.

“Ever held a sword, priest?”

“No, lord.”

“So are you ready to die?” Sigefrid asked.

The priest looked at the Norseman and, despite his bruises and cuts, there was a hint of anger in his eyes that was belied by the humility in his voice. “Yes, lord,” he said, “I’m ready to die and meet my Savior.”

“Cut him free,” Sigefrid ordered one of his followers. “Cut the turd free and give him a sword.” He drew his own sword that was a long two-edged blade. “Fear-Giver,” he named the blade with fondness in his voice, “and she needs exercise.”

“Here,” I said, and I drew Serpent-Breath, my own beautiful blade, and I turned her so that I held her by the blade and I tossed the sword to the priest whose hands had just been cut free. He fumbled the catch, letting Serpent-Breath fall among the pale winter weeds. He stared at the sword for a moment as though he had never seen such a thing before, then stooped to pick her up. He was unsure whether to hold her in his right hand or left. He settled for the left and gave her a clumsy experimental stroke that caused the watching men to laugh.

“Why give him your sword?” Sigefrid asked.

“He’ll do no good with it,” I said scornfully.

“And if I break it?” Sigefrid asked forcefully.

“Then I’ll know the smith who made it didn’t know his business,” I said.

“It’s your blade, your choice,” Sigefrid said dismissively, then turned to the priest who was holding Serpent-Breath so that her tip rested on the ground. “Are you ready, priest?” he demanded.

“Yes, lord,” the priest said, and that was the first truthful answer he had given to the Norseman. For the priest had held a sword many times before and he did know how to fight and I doubted he was ready to die. He was Father Pyrlig.

If your fields are heavy and damp with clay then you can harness two oxen to an ard blade, and you can goad the beasts bloody so that the blade plows your ground. The beasts must pull together, which is why
they are yoked together, and in life one ox is called Fate and the other is named Oaths.

Fate decrees what we do. We cannot escape fate. Wyrd bi? ful ãræd. We have no choices in life, how can we? Because from the moment we are born the three sisters know where our thread will go and what patterns it will weave and how it will end. Wyrd bi? ful ãræd.

Yet we choose our oaths. Alfred, when he gave me his sword and hands to enfold in my hands did not order me to make the oath. He offered it and I chose. But was it my choice? Or did the Fates choose for me? And if they did, why bother with oaths? I have often wondered about this and even now, as an old man, I still wonder. Did I choose Alfred? Or were the Fates laughing when I knelt and took his sword and hands in mine?

The three Norns were certainly laughing on that cold bright day in Lundene, because the moment I saw that the big-bellied priest was Father Pyrlig I knew that nothing was simple. I had realized in that instant that the Fates had not spun me a golden thread leading to a throne. They were laughing from the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of life. They had made a jest and I was its victim, and I had to make a choice.

Or did I? Maybe the Fates had made the choice, but at that moment, overshadowed by the gaunt stark makeshift cross, I believed I had to choose between the Thurgilson brothers and Pyrlig.

Sigefrid was no friend, but he was a formidable man, and with his alliance I could become king in Mercia. Gisela would be a queen. I could help Sigefrid, Erik, Haesten, and Ragnar plunder Wessex. I could become rich. I would lead armies. I would fly my banner of the wolf’s head, and at Smoca’s heels would ride a mailed host of spearmen. My enemies would hear the thunder of our hooves in their nightmares. All that would be mine if I chose to ally myself with Sigefrid.

While by choosing Pyrlig I would lose all that the dead man had promised me. Which meant that Bjorn had lied, yet how could a man sent from his grave with a message from the Norns tell a lie? I remember thinking all that in the heartbeat before I made my choice, though
in truth there was no hesitation. There was not even a heartbeat of hesitation.

Pyrlig was a Welshman, a Briton, and we Saxons hate the Britons. The Britons are treacherous thieves. They hide in their hill fastnesses and ride down to raid our lands, and they take our cattle and sometimes our women and children, and when we pursue them they go ever deeper into a wild place of mists, crags, marsh, and misery. And Pyrlig was also a Christian, and I have no love for Christians. The choice would seem so easy! On one side a kingdom, Viking friends and wealth, and on the other a Briton who was the priest of a religion that sucks joy from this world like dusk swallowing daylight. Yet I did not think. I chose, or fate chose, and I chose friendship. Pyrlig was my friend. I had met him in Wessex’s darkest winter, when the Danes seemed to have conquered the kingdom, and Alfred with a few followers had been driven to take refuge in the western marshes. Pyrlig had been sent as an emissary by his Welsh king to discover and perhaps exploit Alfred’s weakness, but instead he had sided with Alfred and fought for Alfred. Pyrlig and I had stood in the shield wall together. We had fought side by side. We were Welshman and Saxon, Christian and pagan, and we should have been enemies, but I loved him like a brother.

So I gave him my sword and, instead of watching him nailed to a cross, I gave him the chance to fight for his life.

And, of course, it was not a fair fight. It was over in a moment! Indeed, it had hardly begun before it ended, and I alone was not astonished by its ending.

Sigefrid was expecting to face a fat, untrained priest, yet I knew that Pyrlig had been a warrior before he discovered his god. He had been a great warrior, a killer of Saxons and a man about whom his people had made songs. He did not look like a great warrior now. He was half naked, fat, disheveled, bruised, and beaten. He waited for Sigefrid’s attack with a look of horrified terror on his face and with the tip of Serpent-Breath’s blade still resting on the ground. He backed away as Sigefrid came closer, and began making mewing noises. Sigefrid
laughed and swung his sword almost idly, expecting to knock Pyrlig’s blade out of his path and so expose that big belly to Fear-Giver’s gut-opening slash.