Swords From the West (78 page)

And when the fear of invasion had passed, the court of the king waxed merry. The minstrels and troubadours had a new song, made from the talk of the caravans that came over the border, and they sang of a crusader who adventured into paynimry itself and waged war upon the great cities. This they called the "Romaunt of the Longsword," and many a time in hall and woman's garden they related it for the pleasuring of the people of the castle who had ever an ear for something new.

This romaunt came to be known even in the courts of Europe, and some of the minstrels sang of a maid who rode in armor beside the knight.

It is the song of a man of high honor, though no more than a youth in years, who kept faith in all things. And now this tale, from which the song came to be, has been told.

Rorik the Yngling tried to catch up with the bell. It was the only thing he could hear moving around him, but he couldn't find it.

He had taken the wrong path; he was lost, and unless he worked his legs fast he was going to be late for the battle.

It would never do if Rorik the Yngling missed the battle, for then he would have no gold-neither pay nor plunder, or the chance of finding a girl somewhere about afterward.

Shouldering his long two-handed sword, he hurried his lanky legs after the clank-clong of the elusive bell. Being a Dane, Rorik was not accustomed to mountains. Up through the pines a black shoulder of rock showed, and far above that a white summit of snow, but no sign of a road or the camp he was looking for.

The Good Lord, thought Rorik the Yngling, had made the farming land down in the valleys, and up here the devil must have piled everything evil. Up here in these Swiss mountains. No, Rorik wouldn't be surprised if he found a forest troll ringing that bell to fool him.

Running up the path he found a cow standing there alone, with a heavy brass clapper bell hanging on its neck. The bell grated when the cow looked at him, but it didn't clatter as before. Someone had been driving the cow-someone who couldn't be seen. Rorik listened and dropped suddenly to a knee.

A rock swished over his head, and he jumped into the laurel bushes by the path, sliding the sheath from the five-foot blade of his sword.

"Pfut!" he said. He reached out and caught the arm of a girl who was trying to slip out of the bushes. She tried to bite his wrist. He felt beads around her bare throat.

"Kitten," said Rorik, "you can keep the cow. I am too much in haste to drive it off, now. Where is the camp?"

She shook her head, listening.

"The soldiers, the army, the verlorene Haufen-where are they, girl?"

Getting no answer he pulled her up to him, rubbing his head against her hair, feeling the gasping of her throat, kissing her. She tried to twist away from him.

"Listen, flaxhead," he whispered in her ear, "I am a Yngling of Jonsson's dale-of pastureland and homestead. No man has gentler blood than I have, child. And no weapon man can stand against me, foot to foot. In truth," said Rorik modestly, "I am a champion."

In spite of this assurance, the girl pulled away, silently.

"I like you well enough," he told her, "and you can tell me your name."

"Maera," she gasped.

That was a strange name and her tongue had a strange, slow twang to it, unlike Danish.

"Why do you stay here where a battle will be with only a cow?"

Maera looked up from the tangle of her hair, and stopped pulling suddenly. Taking his hand, she drew him along the path. "Look," she said quickly, "I have all the cows to milk."

Before he could think about that, she had reached a turn in the path where a hut perched on the mountain slope with cattle and pigs pressing against the pens.

"This is the homestead," she said, catching him from the corners of her eyes, while she tried to keep her arms from trembling. Often, while she peered down through the pines at the lower valley, Maera had wondered what the enemy would look like-those men-at-arms of the emperor, riding over the crops-if she met one face to face.

Now here she was with this giant of a man looking not at all like a soldier, his head thin and brown, his hands hard and curved as if from the grip of a mattock. She had been frightened when she felt his strength.

Rorik wanted to pick her up and carry her into the hut. Such a foolish thing as she was, to stay here alone. The place was certainly empty except for her-with faggots for the fire stacked along its bare planks, and shirts and hose washed clean hanging among the apple trees where a terrace had been scraped from the mountain and walled up with stone.

"Your hide isn't safe here," he said. "Where have your menfolk gone?"

"I won't tell you!"

To Maera it seemed certain now that this prowler was a spy, spying and peering to find out where the Swiss fighting men were gathering, in these Bernese uplands. "You are no champion," she cried at him. "No-a dunderhead, trying to talk like a soldier. You are as full of lies as a hive is of honey, Sir Nobody!"

Now Rorik of Yngling had broad shoulders and a small head. Perhaps he did not think things out easily in that head; but when he did have an idea he was sure of it. Up on the mountain he had expected to meet devils and Swiss pikemen. Instead, he had found the little Maera. And he began to think she was mocking him.

"Sir No-" he stared at her.

"Nobody of Nowhere."

There she stood, with fire in her blue eyes-so thin and young he could have broken her back with his fist. No longer afraid of him.

She had touched the pride of Rorik the Yngling. "I will show you," he said. "Pfut! I will let you see that I am first among all those soldiers." Then he remembered that he had lost his way. "But first tell me where the German camp has moved to."

Maera laughed. Such a clumsy lie!

"The dog would know where his kennel is. Go down past the waterfall, my fine soldier. Take the forest path to your left. And stay away there, or it will be the worse for you."

"No. I will come back. And you, girl-you will wait here?"

Maera looked up at him curiously. "I will be here. But you will never come up again."

As he jumped the stone wall, sliding down by the mountain stream, it seemed to Rorik the Yngling that this girl with her blue eyes and her cowbells had managed to put a spell upon him. There might, after all, be a power of magic in these mountains ...

Maera, running back from her lookout, flitting through the timber where no path ran, hurried to take her message to the pikemen of the Bern canton assembling at the stone church where the tolling bell summoned them from their land. Her father, waiting among the captains, the blue steel of his pike by his head, breathed deep at sight of her safe.

"Still they stay down in the valley," Maera cried. "Only one dunderhead of a spy came peering up into the wald."

"Yes," said her father, "yes, they are careful. If their scouts have not gone up into the forest, they will come along the valley, this way, to the head of the pass. Now that the sun is down, they will not venture where their scouts have not explored."

As Maera made her way back to watch the cattle, she passed the bands of Swiss moving along the mountain trails where they could not be seen in the darkness, to where the church bell tolled.

The echo of the bell comforted Maera. In that gray church atop the pass she had been christened, to drive out the devil in her. There, sometime, she would walk in her bride's veil. She felt that the voice of the bell was speaking to her, telling her she was not alone on the mountain. She prayed that it would drive Rorik and all his fellows away.

"Mark ye well," said the Genoese, "he is a noble Yngling." And he nudged Weiphart, who was turning the spit at the fire.

"Ach so," muttered Weiphart, blinking into the smoke. "From the land of Jonsson's dale. Like a baron he is, indeed. Will his nobility have white wine with the fowl?"

"It is not like beer," said Rorik the Yngling, "but I will have it."

He chewed the flesh from a chicken's back, tossed away the shell of bones, and wiped his hands politely on the straw where he sat before taking the wine jug.

Rorik had followed his nose among the fires of the gewaltige Haufen, the main guard, to the smell of fat fowls sizzling by this fire. A good camp, Rorik thought, where the sentries challenged sharp, and the horse lines were quiet. Never had he seen so many great horses together, fit for drawing the heaviest plows. And here the men had good steel shirts, well oiled and cared for. How kindly they greeted him!

"Almost you were too late, Rorik, my sir," said Weiphart, pouring wine into his own steel cap. "Before daylight we advance up. Yes, already have the high sirs given orders."

"Good," nodded Rorik the Yngling. "Good! Then you will have me with you in the battle."

Weiphart and the Genoese breathed hard over their meat. "You will win this battle for us?" asked the Italian crossbowman anxiously.

"I do not say that," replied Rorik modestly, "but no man could stand foot to foot with me in Jonsson's dale."

Conrad the Schwarzreiter looked up at him. "Have you ever," he snarled, "stood in the line of a battle?"

Rorik shook his head. "The messenger of the emperor said in Jonsson's dale that his majesty called, for men broad of shoulder and long of leg. To me he gave a silver thaler. I walked to Cologne, where they said the army was up the river. Pfut, at the river they said it was here, in the mountains of the Swiss. Eight gold florins they will pay me for a battle."

"Eight-gold!" grunted Weiphart.

Rorik the Yngling nodded. He remembered the amount very well. And he had calculated what he could buy with the gold. "Eight they said, and eight it is."

"Dane gold," said Conrad.

Conrad thought that he had never seen a recruit with such broad shoulders and so little wit. "This one," he nodded at Weiphart, "is doppelsold- ner-frontline-pay man. For an open attack he gets one gold piece and for an assault on fortification, one and a half pieces."

They were all veterans of long campaigns from Spain to Bohemia-the Genoese being in a high-paid class, with the best of the new steel crossbows. They had horses and body armor, while Rorik seemed to have lugged along only the heavy two-handed sword.

"Eight it will be," he said, "for me."

"For using that woodchopper?" Weiphart reached over and gripped the handle of the Dane's long sword.

"Yes," said Rorik.

With a grin Weiphart tried to raise the point off the ground. Using one arm, by straining he could raise it; taking both hands he swung it once in the air, and it sagged down.

"Great Lord of heaven," grunted the doppelsoldner, "no one can cut with it."

It seemed to Rorik that this German was disparaging his sword. He took the handle himself, gripping with both hands. He planted his feet and the muscles of his long body tensed. His arms shot up, and the fivefoot blade slashed the air over the soldiers' heads, whistling.

At the edge of the firelight two men stopped to look. One wore a cloak with an eagle embroidered on the shoulder, and a silver chain shone under the other's beard. Conrad, who noticed everything, sprang up when he saw them.

"If you have not found one, my sirs," his clipped words came, "I offer, with gladness, Conrad, captain in the Thuringen riders."

"We have not decided," the cloaked man said, watching Rorik. "Who is your Hercules?"

The two were staring at Rorik the Yngling as if at a new breed of war horse, marking his stand and his points, as he sheathed the two-handed sword.

"My sirs," said Conrad, stiff, "it is a Dane from the farmlands who fancies himself the best of us."

"He's the tallest, certainly," observed the officer with the armiger's chain. "Too tall, eh, Strube?"

"A lighthouse has its uses. It can easily be seen at all times."

"But he has as much wit, my sir," Conrad grated, "as your Livonian mare. Less."

"That also has its use." The official of the eagle walked around Rorik, studying him. Suddenly he looked up into his eyes. "So you are a mighty man-at-arms, Dane?"

"True enough," agreed Rorik.

"Would you like to be given armor fit for a noble. Or even-an emperor? From helm to spurs, eh?"

"Well enough," Rorik smiled, pleased, "if it is for the battle."

"It is for the battle."

He of the eagle glanced once at the armiger, who nodded. Then between them they conducted Rorik the Yngling away from the fire, through the lines of the Black Riders to a pavilion that glowed with candles. Young squires who were oiling saddles and cleaning leather sprang up at sight of them. And here, where swords and armor were stacked, the armiger took charge of Rorik.

Not once did he look him in the face. First he tried a hauberk of fine linked steel on the giant Dane. It gleamed as with silver. The boys fitted mail to his legs and tried low boots on his feet until a pair was found to fit. They fastened shoulder pieces etched with gold up against his neck-they clasped a cloak over his shoulders. They even combed out his long hair while he admired his gleaming limbs. The steel mesh, being too small for him, gripped his muscles tight.

"With the padding out, it will do," decided the armiger, and the one named Strube nodded.