One King's Way

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