He threw his hands up theatrically. “It would be a disaster! All over Northumbria the houses of God would fall into ruin, the servants of God would starve.”
“They won't starve for loss of a year's rents,” said Cuthred. “How much of last year's have you got set aside in the minster?”
“There is another solution,” said Ella. “I have proposed it before. We could make peace with them. Offer them tribute—we could call it wergild for their father. It would need to be a mighty tribute to attract them. But there must be ten households in Northumbria for every man out there in the Army. Ten households of churls can buy off a carl. Ten households of thanes can buy off one of their nobles. Some of them will not want to accept, but if we make the offer publicly, the rest may argue them round. What we would ask for from them is a year's peace. And in that year—for they will come again—we will train every man of military age in the kingdom till he can stand against Ivar the Boneless or the devil himself. Then we can fight them three to two, eh, Cuthred? Or one to one if we have to.”
The burly captain snorted in amusement. “Brave words, lord, and a good plan. I'd like to do it. Problem is…” He pulled the laces on the pouch at his belt and tipped the contents into his palm. “Look at this stuff. A few good silver pennies that I got from selling a horse when I was down South. The rest is imitations from the archbishop's mint here—mostly lead, if it's not copper. I don't know where all the silver's gone—we used to have plenty of it. But there's been less and less of it all over the North for twenty years now. We use the archbishop's money, but the Southerners won't take it; you have to have something to trade to deal with them. You can be damned sure the Army out there won't take it. And it's no good offering them grain or honeycombs.”
“But they're here.” said Ella. “We must have something they want. The Church must have reserves of gold and silver….”
“You mean to give Church treasures to the Vikings, to buy them off?” gasped Erkenbert. “Instead of marching out to fight them, as is your Christian duty? What you say is sacrilege, Church-breach! If a churl steals a silver plate from the least of God's houses, he is flayed and his hide nailed to the church door. What you suggest is a thousand times worse.”
“You imperil your immortal soul even to think of it,” cried the archbishop.
Erkenbert's voice hissed like an adder. “It was not for this that we made you king.”
The
Six months ago, Ella thought, I would have led the host of the Northumbrians out to fight. It's what they expect. If I order anything else there is the risk of being called a coward. No one will follow a coward. Erkenbert has as good as told me: If I do not fight they will bring that simpleton Osbert back. He is still hiding up there in the North somewhere. He would march out to fight like a gallant fool.
But Edmund has shown what happens if you fight on even ground, even when you catch them by surprise. If we march out in the old style, I know we will lose. I
Ella spoke with sudden decision, the weight of kingship in his voice.
“We will stand a siege and hope to weaken them. Cuthred, check defenses and provisioning, send away all useless mouths. Lord archbishop, men have told me that in your library there are learned books by the old Rome- folk who wrote on matters of war, especially of siegecraft. See what aid they can give us in destroying the Vikings.”
He turned away, left the wall, Cuthred and a trail of lesser nobles following; Wulfgar was tipped back on his stretcher and carried off by two stout thralls down the stone steps.
“The East Anglian thane is right,” whispered Erkenbert to his archbishop. “We must get these people away before they destroy our rents and seduce our thralls. Even our nobles. I can think of some who might be tempted into thinking they can do without us.”
“Look it out—Vegetius,” Wulfhere replied. “The book called
“He has been in the forge four days now,” observed Brand. He and Thorvin, with Hund and Hund's master Ingulf, stood in a little knot a few yards away from the glowing fire of a smithy. The Vikings had found it, still stocked with charcoal, in the village of Osbaldwich a few miles outside York. Shef had taken it over immediately, called urgently for men, iron and fuel. The four stared at him through the wide-flung doors of the smithy.
“Four days,” repeated Brand. “He has hardly eaten. He would not have slept except the men told him if he did not sleep, they still had to, and made him cease the din of hammering a few hours a night.”
“It doesn't seem to have done him much harm,” said Hund.
Indeed his friend, who he still thought of as a boy, a youth, seemed to have changed totally in the course of the past summer. His frame was not massive by the demanding standards of the Army, full of giants. But there seemed to be no excess flesh on it. Shef had stripped to the waist in spite of the gusts of an English October. As he moved round the forge, pecking now at something small and delicate, shifting the red-hot metal with tongs, barking quickly at his iron-collared English assistant to pump harder at the bellows, his muscles moved under the skin as if they lay directly beneath it, without blurring fat or tissue. A quick jerk, metal sizzling into a tub, another piece snatched from the fire. Each time he moved, separate muscles slid smoothly over each other. In the red light of the forge he might have seemed a bronze statue of the ancient days.
Except that he had not their beauty. Even in the light of the forge the sunken right eye seemed a crater of decay. On his back the thrall-marks of flogging showed vividly. Few men in the Army would have been so careless as to display such shame.
“No harm in the body, maybe,” replied Thorvin. “I cannot speak for the mind. You know what it says in the
“I do not know what cunning thing our friend is beating out in his mind. Or who he is doing it for. I hope he will be more successful than Volund—more successful at gaining the desire of his heart.”
Ingulf turned the questioning. “What has he been making these four days?”
“This, to begin with.” Thorvin held a helmet up for the others to scrutinize.
What Thorvin held up was like no helmet they had ever seen. It was too big, bulbous as the head of a giant insect. A rim had been welded round it, filed to bright razor-sharpness in the front. A nose-guard ran down in front, ending in bars running back to cheek-protectors. A flared skirt of solid metal covered the nape of the neck.
More surprising to the watchers was the inside. A leather lining had been fitted to the helmet, suspended by straps. Once the helmet was on, the lining would fit the head snugly but the metal would not touch it. A broad strap and a buckle fitted under the jaw, to hold all firm.
“Never seen the likes,” said Brand. “A blow on the metal will not crash into the skull. Still, it's better not to get hit, I say.”
As they talked, the racket at the forge had ceased, and Shef had been seen diligently fitting small pieces together. Now he walked over to them, smiling and sweating.
Brand raised his voice. “I say, young waker-of-warriors-untimely, if you avoid the blow you don't need the helmet. And what in the name of Thor is that you are holding?”
Shef grinned again, and held up the strange weapon from the forge. He held it out horizontally, balancing it after an instant on the edge of one hand, just where wood joined metal.
“And what do you call that?” asked Thorvin. “A hewing-spear? A haft-axe?”
“A beard-axe that's had bastards by a ploughshare?” suggested Brand. “I don't see the use of it.”
Shef picked up Brand's still-bandaged hand and gently rolled back the sleeve. He put his own forearm next to
