One King's Way

fight. I want to show him something and have his opinion. Who is the best man here today with sword and shield?”

The grizzled Waffenmeister pointed impassively to one of the applicants who had been sparring with his sergeants. A tall young man in a white surcoat over mail. “That one there, Bruno. He's good.”

Bruno walked towards his proposed adversary, took one hand between his two, looked up at him with a curious tenderness, like a lady to her lover. “You agree?” he asked.

The tall man nodded. Sergeants handed each of them a shield, a heavy kite-shaped one of the horseman's pattern. Then a heavy sword, edges blunted, point carefully rounded. The two men stepped back, began to circle each other warily, each moving to the right, away from his opponent's sword.

Erkenbert, no expert, saw only a blur of motion, three repeated clashes as the tall man struck, low, high, backhand, whirling the sword as if it were weightless. Three solid determined parries from Bruno, twisting his wrist each time to take the blow at right angles on his own blade, ignoring the shield. Then as the fourth blow came he had stepped inside it, jerking the edge of his shield up to catch the descending sword just above its guard. As the tall man stepped back to recover his balance, Bruno's sword was in the air. It seemed for an instant as if three swords were striking at once, the tall man parrying desperately in all directions. Then his shield was down, his sword was up, he was in a half-crouch to parry a blow not struck. Bruno seemed even to pause for an instant, to weigh what was needed.

Then his sword swept through the gap too fast for sight. A thud, a gasp, and the tall man was sprawling on his back. Erkenbert realized a second after the blow that he had seen the count's son deliberately rolling his wrists at the moment of impact, to soften the blow. He had had no need to exercise his full force.

Bruno had already dropped sword and shield, was helping his opponent up with the same curious tenderness. He patted his cheek, looked closely into the other man's eyes, waving a hand in front of them to see if the other could focus. Relief crossed his face, he stepped back, grinning. “A good bout, young knight. I am glad we shall be comrades of the Order. Another time I will show you the trick of that feint, it is easy to learn.” He looked round, acknowledging the applause of the circle of watchers, waving so that his opponent should be included in it.

Another thing about these Germans, thought Erkenbert, remembering the prickly, awkward insistence on rank and precedence of his homeland. They work together very easily. They like to form clubs and groups and companionships and all share their food and their beer. Yet they will still accept a leader who insists on being one of the men. Is that a strength or a weakness?

Bruno was approaching the table again, eyes shining with a kind of manic glee. “Now,” he said, “will you write me down?”

As Arno reached for the pen and the parchment he laughed, bent over, collected Erkenbert's gaze and said with sudden gravity: “Now, comrade. They say you have seen the great champions, Ivar Boneless and maybe the warrior they call Killer-Brand. Tell me, how do you think one such as myself would compare with them? Tell me the truth, now, I take no offense.”

Erkenbert hesitated. He had seen Ivar fight in battle against the champions of Mercia, though only from a fair distance behind. At closer quarters he had seen the duel on the gangplank between Ivar and Brand. He remembered Ivar's snake-like speed, the unexpected power in his relatively slender frame. Thought of what he had just seen, measuring the strength and leverage of the broad shoulders in front of him.

“Ivar was very quick,” he said at last. “He could dodge a blow rather than block it, and still remain poised to strike back. I think if you had an open space to fight him in you might have worn him down, for you would be the stronger. But Ivar is dead.”

Bruno nodded, face intent. “So what of Killer-Brand, the one who killed him?”

“It was not Brand who killed him. Ivar was too quick for Brand, mighty man though he is. No.” The hatred in Erkenbert's heart welled up. “It was another who killed Ivar. The son of a churl, devil-possessed. He had only a dog's name to call himself, Shef, and he did not know his father. In fair fight you would defeat a hundred like him. And now they call him a king!”

The blue eyes were thoughtful. “Yet he killed a great champion, you say, fair fight or no. These things do not happen by accident. Such a man should never be despised. The greatest gift a king can have, some say, is luck.”

By the time Shef reached solid ground he was chilled through, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. The rising tide had forced him to swim twice, no great distance but soaking him through each time. There was no sun to dry him. A fringe of seaweed marked the edge of tidal sand, with just beyond it a shallow dyke, obviously man-made. Shef scrambled to the top of it and turned to look out to sea, hoping against hope that he would see the Norfolk standing in to rescue him, and that in an hour or so he could count on dry clothes and a blanket, a hunk of bread and cheese, maybe a fire on the sand while someone else stood guard. At that moment he could imagine no greater reward for being a king.

There was nothing to be seen. The gray twilight made everything out on the flats seem the same, gray sea, gray sky, gray sandbanks slowly yielding to the water. He had not heard the clash of battle behind him as he made his way to the shore, but that did not mean anything. The Norfolk might have been carried by boarders. Or she might have been refloated and be continuing her single-ship duel with the Frani Ormr. Or both ships might long have sailed out once more to the open sea. There was no hope in that direction.

Shef turned the other way and contemplated the drab landscape in front of him. Plowed fields with shoots of green barley showing. Somewhere a few hundred yards off in the dimness black bulks that might well be grazing cows. All that showed a certain confidence here on the edge of the pirate sea. Were the men of this land great warriors? Or slaves of the Vikings? Or did they rely on the dangerous shoals to keep them safe? Whichever was true, their land was no great prize: flat as a man's hand, kept from the tide only by a six-foot dyke, muddy, sodden and featureless.

More to the point, there was no prospect of warmth in it anywhere. In a wooded country Shef might have thought to find a fallen tree to break the wind, boughs to pile under and over him to keep him out of the wet, maybe a drift of decaying leaves to rake over himself. Here there was nothing but mud and wet grass. Yet the cows and the plowed fields showed there was a village not too far away. Men never plowed more than a couple of miles from their homes and byres: the time it took an ox to travel that distance, morning and evening, was the most that any sensible man would add on to his day. So there must be a house, and with a house a fire, somewhere all but in sight.

Shef looked round for a gleam of light. Nothing. That was only to be expected. Anyone who had light and fire would have the sense to shut it in. Shef turned to his left, for no reason than that it was away from the land of the Christians and Hamburg further down the Elbe, and began to walk briskly along the dyke. If he had to, he decided, he would walk all night. His clothes were bound to dry on him in the end. He would be ravenously hungry by dawn, his body's resources used up by keeping out the cold, but that could be borne. He had fed well all the months he had been a king, and a jarl before that. Now was the time to use some of that up. But if he lay down in the fields, he would be dead by morning.

After only a few minutes of stumbling, Shef realized that he was crossing a track. He paused. Should he follow it? If the natives were hostile he could be dead well before morning. The patter of rain on his shoulders made his mind up for him. He moved cautiously down the track, his one eye probing the darkness.

The village was no more than a cluster of longhouses, their low walls showing just slightly darker than the sky. Shef reflected. No hall for a lord, no church for a priest. That was good. The longhouses were different sizes, some long, some short. One of the shortest ones was the closest to him. In the winter these folk, like the poor people of Norfolk, would bring their beasts in the house with them, for warmth. A small house meant few cows. Was it not true that charity was likeliest among the poor? He moved cautiously towards the door of the nearest house, the smallest. A chink of light through the wooden shutters. He planted the Snake-eye's spear butt-down in the ground, pulled the sword from his belt and held it by the blade. With his right hand he pounded on the ill-fitting door. A scurrying inside, muttered words. It creaked open.

Shef stepped forwards into the ill-lit doorway, his sword balanced across both hands in token of submission. Without a pause he found himself lying on his back, staring up at the sky. He had felt no blow, had no idea what had happened. His arms and legs seemed to pay no attention to his insistent commands to them to move.