The market at Risa was, in fact, not a new thing. The farmers north of Hafrsfjord had gathered on the level ground by the harbor for generations to sell and trade for their surplus grain. But Erling's dreams for it went far beyond such. He wanted a place where merchants would come and spend weeks or the whole winter. Eventually, I knew, he wanted a town, like Visby on Gotland, something that did not exist in Norway at the time, though Olaf was trying the same plan up at Nidaros. And why not? The world was changing fast.
To help him in this undertaking came Thorbjorg Lambisdatter. She in fact rarely sailed with her three knarrs, she said, but she could direct the business as well from Risa as from her home up north. Erling gave her trade favors, but I suspected those were not her chief reason for coming. I misliked her motives. I did not mislike hershe was a good, honest capable woman, no more nor less prone to temptation than the rest of usbut I feared her hopes.
I saw them in close conversation one night after supper, at the doorway to the entrance room (we'd taken over the hall at Risa farm). She put her hand on his arm and he smiled and lifted it off. She went out to her bed alone.
I've seen Erling swing his sword over scores of dead foemen, but I was never prouder of him than I was that night. You don't generally expect fidelity in marriage from Norsemen (or Irishmen, if it comes to that), but Erling had graspedGod knows howthat a vow to a wife was as weighty as a vow to another landed man.
I took one of my seaside walks that evening (which of course was as dark as midnight that time of year, except for the light of an almost full moon). I was going along the shore of the harbor when the moonlight caught what looked like a man standing in the water. This was no time of year for sea bathing. I went nearer and saw that it was Erling, trouserless in the shallows. The very thought made me shiver and pull my cloak tighter about me.
I said, " 'Tis a sin of presumption to choose your own penance before you've even confessed."
"I thought you'd be overkind with me," said Erling.
"I knew monks in Ireland who used to do penance this way. As I recall, when they got older they tended to stiffness of the joints. I'd think a man of war wouldn't care for that."
"It's less a penance than a shield."
"Come out of the water and tell me about it."
He came ashore, rubbed his legs down with his cloak, pulled on his trousers and told me. I can't tell you what he confessed. It was about what you'd expect if you're charitable; less than you'd expect if you're filthy-minded.
I pronounced absolution and told him his cold bath would do for penance.
"Sometimes it's frightening to be strong," he told me. "Sometimes I'm afraid of what I could do."
"I think your faith is strong too," said I.
"Is it? I'm not sure I even know what faith is. Give me words, Father. That's your gift."
"What is faith?" I mused. "I suppose I understand it no more than other men. But on the rare occasions when I've possessed it it's been as if I was riding atop a ship's mast, keeping watch, sitting on the sail-yard. You've done that, haven't you?"
"Aye, many times."
"Then you know how it feels. The mast top sways all aboutyou feel every motion of the sea ten times more than you would on deck, and you sway out over open water, first to one side, then the other. Your head tells you the yard will hold you up, but your belly keeps saying you're going to fall.
"But unless you're a coward, you believe your head and ignore your belly. That's what faith feels like."
"Thinking over feeling? I thought faith was all about feeling."
"Feeling comes with it, just as you feel every pitch of the ship more strongly on the mast top than down below. But feelings are quicksilver. You can't grasp them, and they poison you if you try to live on them. Faith is trusting God and telling your feelings to sit down and shut up."
We went to our lonely beds then.
And so the people came, the free and the unfree, in sleighs or on skis (we had a good snow blanket that yeara thing that doesn't always happen) or on foot, carrying their wares, and the craftsmen paid Erling for the right to set up booths (the thralls took it out of their freedom-silverI tallied it). There wasn't much order to the boothspeople set them up higgledy-piggledybut as time went on winding paths appeared among them, and we became a kind of community, like a strange, secular cloister. We could tell visitors, "You'll find Egil the comb-maker down that pathturn right at the woolen merchant's and left at the midden."
Thorbjorg had done well by Erling. She knew every merchant and craftsman from Lofoten to Lindesness, and she knew who wanted a change, and she'd steered such to Erling. "We're hard by the sea lane here," said Erling, "and one of the few good harbors on this coast. And if only for the grain we have to sell, they'll come. Grain is gold in Norway." Erling held most of the grain himself, having bought it from his thralls for freedom-silver or received it in rents from his tenants. I suppose you could argue that he should have let the thralls sell their own grain and get their own best price, but they were more likely to get skinned in that case, and they couldn't afford it.
Thorbjorg stayed in the women's house. Astrid had chosen not to come along. Whether that bespoke trust or contempt, who could say?
One icy morning I was arguing with a thrall over the value of his oats (they often tried to sharp me, and who can blame them?) when I heard a horn blow. I knew the call. It was the summons to arms.
I ran to Thorbjorg's booth, where Erling was most often to be found. Erling was opening a chest brought by his shoe-boy, pulling out iron arrows which he distributed to several men.
I edged close to Steinulf and asked, "What goes on?"
"Our balefire northward on Fjol Island has been lit," he said. "you can see the smoke yourself. Some force must be coming by sea. This market would make a sweet prize for Vikings."
Over the next hour or so men streamed in from the nearby farms, summoned by the war-arrows and the horns. Erling had men working aboard the two warships he'd brought, getting them ready to launch when he knew more of his enemy.
A runner on skis came at last. "Two ships," he said to Erling. "Big ones, and heavily armed. They're sailing fast."
"You're certain it's only two?"
"They're hull up and no more sails to be seen."
"Good!" said Erling, smacking his palm with a fist. "We'll handle them and make a profit in armor today."
He began getting his armed men on board, along with the merchants (who are a warlike lot when their goods are threatened) and bonders who'd come in response to the horns.
They were ready to embark when a second ski-runner came in, winded with exertion, and was brought to Erling.
"There are five ships," he coughed.
"Five!" Erling cried. "I thought there were but two!" He turned a glare at the first messenger.
"It seemed so," said the new messenger. "I saw it myselftwo ships and no more to the horizon. But three more appeared. I can't say how. It must be witchcraft."
As I listened to this exchange I thought there was a change in the light, as if in an eclipse, and I noticed that the messenger who spoke wore a purse on his belt, with rings and bits of hack-silver, along with a slice of cheese, inside it. The purse hung on the other side of his body from me.
For just a moment I seemed to see through all things. I could see the bones in men's bodies. I could see the fish swimming under the ship's belly. Then my sight cleared (dulled?) and all was as before.
"Eyvind Kellda is in this," I muttered, but nobody heard me.
"This isn't a raid, it's an invasion," said Erling. He turned to his lieutenants. "Can we handle five ships with two?"
Steinulf and Eystein looked at one another. "We could try," said Eystein after a moment. "But I wouldn't wager much on our chances."
"We must make a land-defense then. Not here by the harbor. Somewhere up on the heights." He pointed toward the eastward hills.
"What of our goods?" a merchant cried.
"Take what you can carry. The rest isn't worth your lives."
"I've been trading for twenty years and never saw such an attack from countrymen. You promised us the king's peace, Erling Skjalgsson!"
"If you've claims against me, bring suit at the Thing," Erling snapped. "Right now our concern is to live the day out." We disembarked and went to work.
There was a thrall womana widowwho'd nearly purchased her freedom. Her hope for the balance was the knitting she'd done and brought to market. I went first to her and helped her carry her stock of mittens and mufflers (bulky but not heavy) up to the hilltop Erling had chosen for a stronghold. Then I found another thrall to help. I let the merchants worry about themselves. The rich have many friends; the poor have only one in this world, and I was His agent.
At last we stood on the hilltop, armed men in a battle line. The women, children and old people hurried on to a higher hill beyond us. I was one of the armed men (and don't tell me churchmen shouldn't bear armsI won't stand by and watch people killed when I can help defend them, and I'll gladly answer to God for it).
We watched as they tied their ships at the pier or simply beached them, and as they tore screaming into the market and began looting. Their leaders had a job of it to get them to drop the plunder and reform as an army. This gave us time to estimate their numbers and compare them to our own.
It did not look good.
We had the merchants and bonders in addition to Erling's two ship's crews. But even so they outnumbered us about two to one.
"Take heart," said Erling, standing surrounded by his bodyguard under his twin-eagle banner, which Steinulf carried. "We have the high ground."
It's always good to have the high ground. But it's not everything, as we soon learned.
Three men climbed up near our position under a white shield of truce. A powerful-looking man of middle height with graying golden hair shouted, "Erling Skjalgsson of Sola! I would have you know the name of your destroyer!"
"Pray tell me your name," Erling shouted back. "I'll need to know where to send the body!"
"I am the hersir Brusi Arnfinsson of More! You hanged my son!"
"I've no shame in that," said Erling, "though I took no pleasure in the thing. He broke the king's peace. He plundered, killed and kidnapped in my country. But this I'll say to youyour son died well."
"See that you die well yourself, Erling Skjalgsson! For if I find you alive when we've overrun you, I vow I'll hang you as you hanged him!"
He cast a spear over our heads, shouting, "I give you to God!" and went back to his army.
As their battle line drew up, we saw that theirs was longer than ours, and deeper. They were using the "swine formation"a wedge of men in which each line is two men wider than the one before it. We thinned our line to spread it, and Erling called, "Archers and spearmen! Remember to aim lowit's tricky to hit a mark downhill. We'll need to make the most of our position."
When the More-men came into bowshot our archers let loose at them. Despite Erling's warning a lot of arrows went over their heads. Others wasted themselves in shields, but a fair number dropped men.
Meanwhile they were loosing arrows as well, and theirs tended to come low. A lot of them buried themselves in the turf before us, and several of our men got them in their legs. All in all our shooting was probably better, but not enough to even the odds.
The high ground told more when they came in the range of our casting spears. Our spearmen were more careful than our archers, and the enemy, wearied with their climb, had trouble keeping their shields high enough to cover themselves properly. Their spear casts in reply seemed somewhat feeble to me, and I don't recall that they did much damage.
We stood on a sort of rim, the ground falling away sharply before us. That gave us good vantage as they came on from below, especially when they got in range of the thrusting spears. We did real slaughter then. It was nearly a matter of simply poking your weapon in, over the shields, until you found something solid, and pushing. It was there we stopped them, and their wedge went to pieces, and they drew back in disarray.
We stood and watched them, panting and feeling our nerves sing. Before us lay the enemy wounded and dead, quiet or writhing in pain and screaming, and I felt strong and intensely alive, unconquerable and without pity.
But Brusi Arnfinsson felt unconquerable and without pity as well, and he soon had his men reformed and ready for another attack.
We beat them back once again, but it was harder and took longer, and we were more weary when it was done. We lost a few men too.
There's a sort of reckoning you do in your head during a battle, when it's small enough for you to see most of it, and it began to dawn on me (I think I wasn't alone) that we could not keep this up. They would bear us down by weight of numbers, if not now then soon.
The confidence I'd felt became weakness and a foggy foreboding. I would die hereI'd be struck down and my throat would be cut by those who stripped the dead, and the ravens would pick at my flesh.
I knew as I watched them close with us that this would be the end. This time they would run over our line and cut us to pieces. The great saga of Erling, and the little saga of each of us who followed him, would end here, in a narrow place fighting deadly odds.
They came on like winter, they came on like old age, they came on like the end of the world.
Their faces as they approached were not the faces of men. They were the faces of the dead, the faces of the overwhelming force of the fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers of all of us, who had gone before and fallen, hard or easy, beneath the great Reaper's sickle edge.
It was with something like relief that I watched them come. Soon the fever will break. Soon the fit will end. Soon the yearning and the fear and the regret will be done.
Then there was a screaming, as if from a herd of wild pigs, and a force of men, hairy and unarmored, swinging axes and clubs and swords and stinking like corpses, came up from our left flank and smote Brusi's force as with a smith's hammer. "Baug Kollasson!" someone cried. The berserker had come from the south with a few of his friends.
That charge saved our lives, but I watched it with horror and have never since been able to think otherwise about it. Filthy, ragged men, wide-eyed, howling and gnashing teeth, they fell on Brusi's force like wolves on sheep. Brusi's men far outnumbered them, but the sheer shock of their onset, along with the confusion of a flank attack, knocked them sideover.
They never had a chance. My heart was wholly with Brusi's warriors at that moment, as whose wouldn't be, seeing his fellow men slaughtered by wild beasts? Better to die, I thought, than be saved thus. Something deeply wrong, wrong at the very roots, was here. For thousands of years we've struggled to keep ourselves above the level of beasts. These berserkers cared nothing for that; less than despising it they paid it no more notice than a cast-off pair of shoes. Their mind seemed to be, Why bother yourself with humanity? It's overprized. Drink the wine we drink, and set aside your burden of custom and decency. Admit you are but a beast as we are, and all your sorrows will be gone, and you'll wonder how you ever troubled at them.
When our foes were utterly confused and disorganized we charged them from the front and shooed them away like flies from dinner.
At last the only More-men not fled or slain were Brusi Arnfinsson and some of his bodyguard. There was no cry for quarter; Brusi had chosen to die with honor.
He would have too, had not the berserkers spent their wind. I suppose there'd never be survivors of any battle involving berserkers if they could carry on for hours as they start, but that kind of work wears you down, and Baug's men had run a long way. While sane men carried on the fighting, the berserkers faded and fell and lay themselves down in the snow for a nice snoggy nap, or slouched off to find a more sheltered bed.
That gave Erling the chance to call his men off and speak to Brusi.
"You've done all as a father should," he called. " 'Tis but proper you should seek mansbot for your child. You've failed to take it with an army, but I owe you the chance to take it in person. I'll fight you in single combat, if you wish it."
Voices were raised among Brusi's men, but he cut them off and stepped out from among them bearing sword and shield.
"You do me honor, Erling Skjalgsson," he said. "Almost I think we could be friends if you'd not spilled blood of mine. You're a more proper ally than that milk-faced warlock."
"Milk-faced warlock? Eyvind Kellda?"
"Aye. He cloaked three of my ships with his magic. We'd hoped you'd sail to meet us with a smaller force, or failing that at least underreckon us. It almost worked."
"You made a deal with the devil."
"I see that now. But the lad was my son after all. Blood cries out."
"A son is a son, but he's also his own man in the world. He must account for his deeds."
"He'd not have been on his own, perhaps, had I done handsomer by him."
"I've no doubt you did all you could for a younger son. Whatever bitterness he bore, whatever choices he made, were no fault of yours."
"Thanks for that word, Rogalander. Shall we get to business?"
They faced off against each other and began swinging.
Brusi gave the first blow, as was his right. Erling caught it on his shield and struck back with a swing that Brusi fended.
It went on like that for some time. It went on, in fact, longer than it should have, considering Erling's youth and greater reach. I'd not have reckoned that Brusi's experience would have counted for as much as it seemed to. I'd seen Erling kill bigger and cannier men in less time.
I suppose he could have let Brusi fight until he dropped from weariness, but that would have been to shame him, a thing far worse than killing.
At last Brusi tried a feint, a swing of his shield followed by a back-handed sword blow, which Erling stopped by catching the blade on his sword guard, bringing his iron shield rim down in Brusi's face, and swinging his sword down and behind to slice Brusi's hamstring, just back of the knee. The old man fell hard and lay face up, his chest heaving. He must have known, as we all did, that Erling had spared his life, but his honor was left to him.
"You've finished me as a warrior, Rogalander," he said.
"You've earned a rest," said Erling.
"This means the straw-death for me."
" 'Tis no shame for Christian men to die in their beds. But live long, Brusi Arnfinsson. Live long and be a good lord. And come to me if you need a friend. I owe you that."
His bodyguard carried him back to their ship on a shield.
Only three ships sailed back northward; the other two were profit for us. They helped to make good the merchants' losses. Erling was generous, as he wanted them back the next year.
"But not here at Risa," he said to Thorbjorg as they surveyed the littered battleground. "This place is too much exposed. I need a marketplace easier to defend."
"I owe you thanks, Baug Kollasson," said Erling that evening in the hall at Risa. "You came just at the time you were needed."
Baug stood before him by the long fire in an idle pose, a grin on his greasy face, his long-hafted axe over his shoulder. "It was no more than an honest bonder owes his hersir," he answered.
"I wonder to see you bring so many of your own kind. How many do you have? Twenty or so? That's a great household for an honest bonder. I told you I dislike berserkers in my lands."
"And now you see how squint-sighted that was. There are kings who'd pay much to have a force like my household at their beck."
"Only very desperate ones, Baug. But it would be ungracious to complain of it now. Here's a gold ring for your services, and there'll be silver for your men. But know thisI'll hold you to account for their conduct."
"Once again you do me honor, lord." Baug's teeth shone in the firelight.
"I've found the place," said Thorbjorg Lambisdatter the next day, while everyone was salvaging what they could of their goods and dividing up the captured weapons and armor. "While you were hanging rings on berserkers' arms I was with the women, talking of where a market should be."
"Exactly what I was wondering," said Erling. "I've had some ideas"
"Forget them. Listen to me. I talked to the women. The women know. 'Tis they who run the farms and do the trading in summer, while you men are away spoiling foreigners. They sell off the unneeded stock in autumn too as often as not. And they care about safety without thinking it shameful. Almost all agree that there's but one place, better in a hundred ways than Risa."
"And what place is that?"
"To the east of here, across the peninsula. A sheltered harbor that's not a far ride for you, and easy of access for all the people of the inner fjords as well. Easy to defend.
"A place called Stavanger."
Title: | The Year of the Warrior |
Author: | Lars Walker |
ISBN: | 0-671-57861-8 |
Copyright: | © 2000 by Lars Walker |
Publisher: | Baen Books |