Man With a Sword Read online

  A grey-bearded carle from Norway came up to the King then and said, ‘You know me, I am Ljot, and this is my axe, Bear’s Kiss. I once struck off the heads of three wolves at one blow below Thorkelshill.’

  Hardrada was strapping his tall helmet on and said, ‘I know you, Ljot. What do you want at this moment, man?’

  The Northman said, smiling, ‘Only the honour of keeping the bridge until you have got your men across to join Tostig. It is a narrow bridge and my axe would keep it clear all day. I merely ask that when the time comes for me to run over after you, the archers will send a hail of arrows to keep Godwinson’s dogs from biting me in the back. I have always dreaded ending like that.’

  Hardrada said, ‘I promise, Ljot. And may Odin ride on your axe-shaft. Kill as many of them as you can; they are of no account in heaven, or Valhalla.’

  A strange thing happened then. From the other side of the river, Tostig, hoisted on to the shoulders of two of his thegn’s, was yelling through cupped hands, ‘Harold, brother Harold, this is no way for kinsfolk to act. Call off your men and let there be no bloodshed in these meadows. Before all witnesses, I swear to share England with you, fairly, as set down by honest clerks. Is it a bargain?’

  Hardrada said, with a twisted smile, ‘Bargain with Godwinson, bargain with a snake! It is the same. If Harold accepts, you and I will not live to see this sun set, friend Hereward.’

  Before he had done speaking a hail of arrows fell among them from the men on the ridge. Carles toppled everywhere, clutching at the shafts. A great laugh floated to them from under the Wessex banner.

  ‘It is time to go,’ said Hardrada grimly. ‘See to it you swing Bear’s Kiss wide, friend Ljot. We must have time to form the shield-rings on the other side, and set up my raven banner, Landwaster. Good luck, brother.’

  So the Northmen and their friends began to run across the bridge, some of them still buckling on their belts.

  12. Shield-Ring

  In the shield-ring, under Landwaster, men jostled together, setting their feet wide, shouting to their comrades to stand away and leave room for axe-swing and sword-play. Carles bundled one another about, like dogs after a bone, for the honour of standing under the banner near to Hardrada. Hereward was closest to the King. They stood smiling together, the sweat running down their faces and on to their shirts. The air was heavy with the sharp smell of damp leather. The wild lavender under their feet flung up its pungent odour as it was crushed to the hot earth. There was another scent in the air, not of leather or lavender, but of men’s battle-fury, of that quivering sense of fearfulness that even the bravest of warriors feel just before the blows begin to fall. It was a scent like that of cold steel being ground on the sharpening-stone, no more than that. But once a man caught it in his nostril his teeth chattered and the hair rose upright at the back of his neck.

  In the thicket of the shield-ring swords and spears stood like the quills on a hedgehog, almost shutting out the light. King Harald called, ‘What of old Ljot? How is he shaking Bear’s Kiss now?’

  For a while no one answered the King. Then suddenly a man in the foremost shield-rank groaned and shouted back, ‘He is down! Ljot is down and into the river. They have got at him from under the planks of the bridge, the dogs!’

  Hardrada said in a whisper, ‘He has served his turn, poor Ljot! He has held them back long enough. He will dine in Slaughter Hall this evening, among the greatest of the north-land.’

  Then a carle yelled, ‘Stand fast! Wessex is coming now with a vengeance!’

  All at once the warm air was filled with a high whining sound, that surged forward as fast as spring rain and then swept on into the distance. Hereward suddenly felt his body streaming wet under his leather shirt and his iron byrnie. It was a cold wet that made him shiver in spite of himself. The King saw this and said, ‘You feel it, too, axe-mate? When I was a lad I thought only I felt it, but when I got to talk with old soldiers I learned that they all knew the cold kiss of the Shield Maidens.’

  Hereward nodded but did not answer. In his jaws he had clenched the strap of his helmet to keep his teeth from chattering too loudly. He could not speak with the leather in his mouth.

  Hardrada saw this also and said, ‘The sun stands above us now, friend. But when it sets, behind that dark copse of trees on the ridge, there will be no more sweating, no more biting on the thong. Instead, there will be…’

  His last words were lost then, because the air was again loud with the arrows’ scream and the whole earth seemed to shudder. The outer shield-ring clanged like a great bronze door being beaten with a giant’s hammer. A shock like an earthquake struck the men under Landwaster, and hurled them back, one carle against another. Hereward saw the man in front of him falling, his axe swinging, then he also fell back against the King. Hardrada shouted out and propped his shoulders hard against the pole of the banner.

  ‘Hold firm, my lads,’ he called, ‘or we shall all be on our backs! I did not sail so far to lie stark in an English meadow!’

  Hereward heard these words and felt that cold shudder across his back again. He wished the King had not spoken so; it was as though the Norns had used his voice to speak his fate.

  Then Hereward had no more time to think of anything but battle, for the carle in front of him fell with his axe under him and then lay still. A tall man, wearing the bronze dragon of Wessex on his helmet, and thrusting with a short boar spear, had broken through the shield-ring and stood less than six feet away. He was squinting, with the sun in his eyes, and showing his great teeth between yellow-bearded lips. ‘What I did to the man on the bridge I will do to Hardrada!’ he shouted.

  Hereward took the spear-thrust in the middle of his linden shield, then swept his sword down in a short swing. The blade glinted in the sunlight like a little rainbow, then jolted as fiercely as an unbroken stallion against Hereward’s wrist. He did not need to look at the work it had done. The English carle had gone, down below men’s knees, as they stumbled into the darkness. Hereward heard Hardrada laughing behind him, and felt the King pushing at his back and shouting, ‘Make way, there! Make way! There will be no battle left for me!’

  Hereward found it hard to keep his footing, there were so many men on the ground now and not all of them still and quiet. Once he almost fell down himself, but struggled like a drowning man to keep upright.

  Then the tide of battle swung him round and round, away from Landwaster. For a while his eyes were misted with sweat; then, as small and clear as a picture in a silver mirror, he saw Tostig and Harold Godwinson together, swapping blows with axes. They were on a little mound with the sun full on them and their heavy cloaks floating in the wind. Both seemed to be laughing like brothers at play, until suddenly Harold’s axe fell where shoulder joins neck, and then Tostig was down, his hands flung wide and defenceless.

  A great shout went up, but Hereward could scarcely hear it, his ears were so full of the sound of drumming blood. A big black horse came from nowhere and reared over him, spattering him with foam from its champing jaws. An iron stirrup caught him on the left shoulder, numbing his arm, spinning him about like a boy’s top. He caught a glimpse of a red-bearded knight slashing out with an iron mace. Hardly thinking, he parried the blow with his slender sword, and watched the fine blade snap close by the hilt. Then he flung the broken weapon with all his force, and saw the bearded man’s mouth open in a soundless cry. Arrows keened in the air again, and all at once it was as though the sky had darkened before a thunder-clap as the great black horse toppled in its high prancing and fell down over him.

  13. End of an Age

  for a long while it seemed to Hereward that he was sleeping through an endless night, broken from time to time by strange dreams - but dreams so bright, so vivid, that they seemed clearer and sharper than reality. In these dreams even sounds and scents came to him; even the waning warmth of the sun upon his upturned face; and the distant lamentations of curlews to his ears.

  In the first of these dreams he saw th
e King, Hardrada, lying on the trampled turf among the crushed wild lavender. The broken ash pole of Landwaster leaned over him, casting a dark shadow across the King’s body. The linen of the great banner lay crumpled and ripped and soiled all about, like a sea that waited to enfold him. Many men stood or knelt round the King, Northmen and Scots and Englishmen; all with pity on their faces, none of them now with swords in their hands.

  The King’s face was pale and his eyes were dulled. He was breathing harshly, and there was blood down the front of his leather war-shirt. Before this dream faded Hereward saw that the King was holding a little arrow-head in his hand, gazing down on it wearily. And before silence came again Hereward seemed to hear Hardrada say, ‘The smith who forged this knew what he was about.’ Then the King’s hand let fall the arrowhead and his own head slipped down among the billowing folds of Landwaster.

  In Hereward’s next dream Euphemia and little Cnut were standing over him silently. Euphemia was weeping and letting the tears go, unchecked, down her cheeks. The boy was screwing up his face and whimpering, as though he was hungry. Hereward tried to tell his wife that the lad should be well fed if he was to grow up and become a strong warrior. But she did not seem to hear him; it was as though there were a thick wall of glass between them and no sound reached her ears.

  There were other dreams, of Ljot holding the bridge and then flinging away his axe and falling into the river; of the old crone in the steading on the heathland, sitting and crooning to herself by the fire as the wild winds swept over the moors from the sea; there was even a dream of Kormac’s face, as he looked down at Hereward on Holmganga. That face wore such a sad expression that Hereward in his dream wished he had never hurt the man with bright Nadr the Serpent.

  But although these dreams seemed to last a hundred years, Hereward came out of them at last, into a waking that was so painful that he wished he had slept on.

  He was lying across a pony’s back, being jolted with every bump of the uneven road. A tall thin man with his right arm in a bandage was walking beside the pony, and when he saw Hereward’s eyes open he said hoarsely, ‘Courage, man, courage! We shall reach the big river before nightfall, Odin give us grace.’

  Hereward said, ‘What of the battle, friend? And why am I here?’

  The man answered slowly, ‘The battle went against us. Hardrada is dead. A chance arrow took his life from him. So Harold Godwinson was the winner after all.’

  Hereward felt that he wanted to weep for his dead King; and wanted to curse Harold Godwinson in the same breath. The thin man patted him on the shoulder and said, ‘I understand, comrade. Hardrada was my King also. As for Godwinson, the curse is already on him. He slew his own brother in the battle, and the Gods will never forgive that. Now his doom has started. A messenger came to him with ill tidings. Duke William has landed in the south. If Harold Godwinson rides ten horses to death he will not get to London in time to save his kingdom.’ Hereward cried out with pain suddenly, then said, ‘What is wrong with me, friend?’

  The thin man said, ‘A cracked rib or two, no more, I would guess. A lord’s horse fell on you. We should have left you for dead, but at his end Hardrada saw that you still breathed and commanded us to carry you to the ships.’

  Hereward bit his lips to stop himself from crying out again. At last he said, ‘We have lost the battle, and yet Godwinson has let us go back to the ships? That is strange, coming from such a man.’

  ‘Godwinson gives nothing away. We came to England in three hundred ships; he is letting us take two dozen back to Norway. The profit is on his side. Yet, Odin knows, we have hardly enough men left to take even those ships back up to Bergen. The sea will claim most of us, I fear.’

  Hereward was angry at these words, and began to say that his wife and son were waiting for him in Norway, and that he would reach them whatever the time of year, however deep the seas. But the thin man was groaning in his turn now, and almost fainting from the pain of his wounded arm.

  Then at last they both began to laugh. ‘Before Odin,’ said Hereward, ‘but we are a fine pair of warriors! To hear us, a man would say that we were two lads with toothache! Warriors, indeed!’

  By the time they had done laughing they came over a wold and looked down on the spot where the Ouse flows into the broad Humber. Now it was dusk, and the big river rolled as dull as lead on its way to the sea. Some gleams of moonlight came from behind the low autumn clouds and glinted on the slow waters. But there were no ships.

  Hereward eased himself off the pony and stood panting for a while, searching for any sign of life below. At last he said, ‘It seems that the two dozen ships have gone without us, friend. It seems that Olaf, the King’s son, and Earl Paul of Orkney could not wait for their comrades before sailing.’

  The thin man sank on to the grass, hugging his arms and moaning. ‘If I had not stayed for you,’ he said, ‘I should have been with them, wherever they are. Curse on you, carle! You have lost me my home.’

  Hereward said, ‘I have neither sword nor helmet nor byrnie left, friend, or I would repay you with them. I am stripped as clean as the crow strips the young rabbit.’

  The man spat on the ground and said, ‘Curse your sword and your byrnie! You have lost me my freedom, man. Who can be stripped cleaner than that?’

  Hereward saw that it was no use arguing with him any longer. Groaning with the effort, he struggled back on to the pony and said, ‘I took you for a good friend. Now I see that I was mistaken, for you are a poor fellow. But there is nothing to be gained by quarrelling. Lie quiet and I will go and look for someone who might help you - there must be a leech or an old woman skilled in medicines down there by the river.’

  He put the pony to a trot down the hillside, though every hoof-fall sent pain through his body. At last he could hear the thin man calling out no longer, nor could he see him, the dark had come down so heavily.

  Hereward was in the middle of another fit of groaning at the pain his ribs were giving him when three men came from behind a gorse clump and stood in his way. The moonlight touched their helmets and spear-points. The harsh sound of their voices halted Hereward in his misery.

  ‘Stay where you are, man,’ said the leader. ‘One more step and this spear is for you.’

  Hereward began to laugh again wildly at these words, for he had recognized the accent of the man who threatened him.

  ‘Danes!’ he said. ‘Danes come into England again! Does Swein the Crow think he can snatch up bigger titbits than Harald the Raven, then?’

  The leader nodded and said, ‘King Swein will do well enough, big-mouth! In this land now there will be pickings enough for any man who keeps his wits about him.’

  Then, seeing that Hereward was in pain, he said, ‘One of you lads lead the pony down to the camp and get the leech to look at this fellow. If we can mend him, he might be useful to us. He has something of the warrior-look about him.’

  But before Hereward let the Danish doctor attend to him he insisted that someone should go back up the hill and bring down the Northman with the wounded arm.

  14. Gay Bargain

  The army of Danes had come up the Humber into England, hoping to profit by the unsettled state of the country, trying to get a foothold in Yorkshire and especially in Lincolnshire, where their ancestors had lived in the old Danelaw many years before.

  Hereward, weak with his wounds, his leader dead and without sword or money, stayed with them. As he rested in their tents, he heard news from other parts of England. He learned that Harold Godwinson had died on the hill at Hastings and, as Christmas came, that Duke William the Norman had been crowned at West Minster, after some sort of rioting.

  But the Danes he was with were not greatly concerned with such matters. They were crafty men, who moved from place to place, living largely in moorland country, raiding villages here and there to get food, but generally keeping out of harm’s way.

  Up and down the land risings broke out, many of them at the instigation of the English Earl Wa
ltheof, who claimed descent from one of the most ancient families of the north.

  But then the news came to the Danes that even Waltheof, like the Prince Edgar the Atheling and the Earls Edwin and Morcar, had made friends with the new conqueror, and were travelling with him about England, to persuade the folk to lay down their arms at last. But wars were always flaring up, then dying down, like heath-fires, and one rumour often contradicted another. Some men said that William had gone home to Normandy; others said that his oldest friend, William fitz Osbern, ruled England now; still others claimed that Bishop Odo of Bayeux, the King’s half-brother, was regent.

  Hereward paid little heed to all this. His mind was set on getting over the sea to Norway as soon as he was well again, and finding his wife and son once more.

  By now he was accepted among the Danes, who called him Badger, because of the grey streaks in his hair. As he grew stronger he took a number of them on at wrestling, and always won. So, in the end, they gave him a place at the headman’s table and always consulted him before they went on a raid.

  Then, one day, a small ship came into the Ouse near Riccall, and cloaked men stepped out of it.

  One of them was King Swein himself. He saw Hereward straightaway and went to him, smiling strangely. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘and so you know which man it is best to follow at last, my friend?’

  Hereward stared at him for a while, then said, ‘My true lord was killed under Landwaster. I have promised my sword to no man since.’

  King Swein began to laugh and drew Hereward into the shelter of a wind-break. ‘Come, come, friend,’ he said. ‘A man must be practical in this world. He must do the best for himself and his family.’