Harry Harrison - Hammer Cross 1 - The Hammer and the Cross

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2024-12-04 1 0 716.05KB 353 页 5.9玖币
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Qui credit in Filium, habet vitam aeternam; qui autem incredulus est Filio,
non
videbit vitam, sed ira Dei manet super eum.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not
the Son
shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
—John 3:36
Angusta est domus: utrosque tenere non poterit. Non vult rex celestis cum
paganis et
perditis nominetenus regibus communionem habere; quid rex ille aeternus regnat
in caelis,
ille paganus perditus plangit in inferno.
The house is narrow: it cannot hold both. The king of heaven has no wish to
have
fellowship with damned and heathen so-called kings; for the one eternal king
reigns in
Heaven, the other damned heathen groans in Hell.
—Alcuin, deacon of York, A.D. 797
The greatest disaster ever to befall the West was Christianity.
Gravissima calamitas umquam supra Occidentem accidens erat religio Christiana.
—Gore Vidal, A.D. 1987
CONTENTS
Carl
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
The Hammer and The Cross
Thrall
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Harry Harrison
Jarl
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Thrall Chapter One
NORTHEAST COAST OF ENGLAND, A.D. 865
Spring. A spring dawn on Flamborough Head, where the rock of the Yorkshire
Wolds juts
out into the North Sea like a gigantic fishhook, millions of tons in weight.
Pointing out to
sea, pointing to the ever-present threat of the Vikings. Now the kings of the
little kingdoms
were uneasily beginning to draw together against this threat from the North.
Uneasy and
jealous, remembering the long hostilities and the trail of murder that had
marked the history
of the Angles and the Saxons ever since they came here centuries ago. Proud
warsmiths
who overcame the Welsh, noble warriors who—as the poets say—obtained the land.
Godwin the Thane cursed to himself as he paced the wooden palisade of the
little fort
erected on the very tip of Flamborough Head itself. Spring! Maybe in more
fortunate parts
the lengthening days and the light evenings meant greenery and buttercups and
heavyuddered
cows trooping to the byres to be milked. Here on the Head it meant wind. It
meant
the equinoctial gale s and the nor'easter blowing. Behind him the low, gnarled
trees stood in
line, one behind the other like men with their backs turned, each successive
one a few
inches higher than the one to windward, so that they formed natural wind-
arrows or
weathercocks, pointing out to the tormented sea. On three sides all round him
the gray
water heaved slowly like an immense animal, the waves starting to curl and
then flattening
out again as the wind tore at them, beating them down and levelling out even
the massive
surges of the ocean. Gray sea, gray sky, squalls blotting the horizon, no
color in the world
at all except when the rollers finally crashed into the striated walls of the
cliffs, shattering
and sending up great plumes of spray. Godwin had been there so long that he no
longer
heard the roar of the collision, noticed it only when the spray reached so
high up the cliff
that the water which soaked his cloak and hood and dripped onto his face
turned salt
instead of fresh.
Not that it made any difference, he thought numbly. It was all just as cold.
He could
go back into the shelter, kick the slaves aside, warm his frozen hands and
feet by the fire.
There was no chance of raiders on a day like this. The Vikings were seamen,
the greatest
seamen in the world, or so the y said. You didn't have to be a great seaman to
know that
there was no point in putting out on a day like this. The wind was due east—
no, he
reflected, due east a point north. Fine for blowing you across from Denmark,
but how could
you keep a longship from broaching to in this sea? And how could you steer for
a safe
landing once you arrived? No, no chance at all. He might as well be by the
fire.
Godwin looked longingly at the shelter with its little trail of smoke
instantly whipped
away by the wind, but turned his pace and began to shuffle along the palisade
again. His
lord had trained him well. "Don't think, Godwin," he had said. "Don't think
maybe they'll
come today and maybe they won't. Don't believe that it's worth keeping a
lookout some of
the time and it's not worth it the rest. While it's day, you stay on the Head.
Look out all the
time. Or one day you'll be thinking one thing and some Stein or Olaf'll think
another and
they'll be ashore and twenty miles inland before we can catch up with them—if
we ever do.
And that's a hundred lives lost and a hundred pounds in silver and cattle and
burnt thatch.
And the rents not paid for years after. So watch, Thane, or it's your estates
that will suffer."
So his lord Ella had said. And behind him the black crow, Erkenbert, had
crouched
over his parchment, his quill squeaking as he traced out the mysterious black
lines that
Godwin feared more than he feared the Vikings. "Two months' service on
Flamborough
Head to Godwin the thane," he had pronounced. "He is to watch till the third
Sunday after
Ramis Palmarum." The alien syllables had nailed the orders down. Watch they
had said and watch he would. But he didn't have to do it as dry as a
reluctant virgin. Godwin bellowed downwind to the slaves, for the hot spiced
ale he had
commanded half an hour before. Instantly one of them came running out, the
leather mug
in his hand. Godwin eyed him with deep disfavor as he trotted over to the
palisade and up
the ladder to the watchkeeper's walkway. A damned fool, this one. Godwin kept
him
because he had sharp eyes, but that was all. Merla, his name. He had been a
fisherman
once. Then there had been a hard winter, little to catch, he had fallen behind
with the dues
he owed to his landlords, the black monks of St. John's Minister at Beverley,
twenty miles
off. First he had sold his boat to pay his dues and feed his wife and bairns.
Then, when he
had no money and could not feed them any longer, he had had to sell his family
to a richer
man, and in the end had sold himself to his former landlords. And they had
lent Merla to
Godwin. Damned fool. If the slave had been a man of honor he would have sold
himself
first and given the money to his wife's kin, so at least they would have taken
her in. If he
had been a man of sense he would have sold his wife and the bairns first and
kept the boat.
Then maybe he would have had a chance to buy them back. But he was a man of
neither
sense nor honor. Godwin turned his back on the wind and the sea and took a
firm swallow
from the brimming mug. At least the slave hadn't been sipping from it. He
could learn from
a thrashing if from nothing else.
Now what was the wittol staring at? Staring past his master's shoulder, mouth
agape,
pointing out to sea.
"Ships," he yelled. "Viking ships, two mile out to sea. I see 'em again. Look,
master,
look!"
Godwin spun automatically, cursed as the hot liquid slopped over his sleeve,
peered
out into the cloud and rain along the pointing arm. Was there a dot there, out
where the
cloud met the waves? No, nothing. Or... maybe. He could see nothing steadily,
but out there
the waves would be running twenty feet high, high enough to shelter any ship
trying to ride
out a storm under bare poles.
"I see 'em," yelled Merla again. "Two ships, a cable apart."
"Longships?"
"No, master, knorrs."
Godwin hurled the mug over his shoulder, seized the slave's thin arm in an
iron grasp,
and slashed him viciously across the face, forehand, backhand, with a sodden
leather
gauntlet. Merla gasped and ducked but did not dare to try to shield himself.
"Talk English, you whore's get. And talk sense."
"A knorr, master. It's a merchant ship. Deep-bellied, for cargo." He
hesitated, afraid to
show further knowledge, afraid to conceal it. "I can recognize 'un by... by
the shape of the
prow. They must be Vikings, master. We don't use 'em."
Godwin stared out to sea again, anger fading, replaced by a cold, hard feeling
at the
base of his stomach. Doubt. Dread.
"Listen, Merla, to me," he whispered. "Be very sure. If those are Vikings I
must call
out the entire coast-watch, every man from here to Bridlington. They are only
churls and
slaves, when all is said and done. No harm if they are dragged from their
greasy wives.
"But I must do something else. As soon as the watch is called I must also send
riders
in to the minister at Beverley, to the monks of good St. John—your masters,
remember?"
He paused to note the terror and the old memories in Merla's eyes. "And they
will call out the mounted levy, the thanes of Ella. No good keeping them
here, where the pirates could feint at Flamborough and then be twenty miles
off round
Spurn Head before they could get their horses out of the marsh. So they stay
back, so they
can ride in any direction once the threat is seen. But if I call them out, and
they ride over
here in the wind and the rain on a fool's errand... And especially if some
Viking sneaks in
through the Humber while their backs are turned...
"Well, it would be bad for me, Merla." His voice sharpened and he lifted the
underfed
slave off the ground. "But by almighty God in heaven I'll see you regret it
till the last day
you live. And after the thrashing you get that may not be long.
"But, Merla, if those are Viking ships out there and you let me not report
them—I'll
hand you back to the black monks and say I could do nothing with you.
"Now, what do you say? Viking ships, or no?"
The slave stared out again to sea, his face working. He would have been wiser,
he
thought, to say nothing. What was it to him if the Vikings sacked Flamborough,
or
Bridlington, or Beverley Minster itself? They could not enslave him any more
than he was
already. Maybe foreign heathens would be better masters than the people of
Christ at home.
Too late to think that now. The sky was clearing, momentarily. He could see,
even if his
weak-eyed landlubber of a master could not. He nodded.
"Two Viking ships, master. Two mile out to sea. Southeast."
Godwin was away, bellowing instructions, calling to his other slaves, shouting
for his
horse, his horn, his small, reluctant force of conscripted freemen. Merla
straightened,
walked slowly to the southwest angle of the palisade, looked out thoughtfully
and carefully.
The weather cleared momentarily, and for a few heartbeats he could see plain.
He looked at
the run of the waves—the turbid yellow line a hundred yards offshore which
marked the
long, long expanse of tidal sandbanks which ran the full length of this barest
and most
harborless, wind- and current-swept stretch of English shore—tossed a handful
of moss
from the palisade into the air and studied the way it flew. Slowly a grim and
humorless
smile creased his careworn face.
Great sailors those Vikings might be. But they were in the wrong place, on a
lee shore
with a widow- maker blowing. Unless the wind dropped, or their heathen gods
from
Valhalla could help them, they stood no chance. They would never see Jutland
or the Vik
again.
Two hours later fivescore men stood clustered on the beach south of the Head,
at the
north end of the long, long, inlet- less stretch of coast that ran down to
Spurn Head and the
mouth of the Humber. They were armed: leather jackets and caps, spears, wooden
shields, a
scattering of the broadaxes they used to shape their boats and houses. Here
and there a sax,
the short chopping sword from which the Saxons to the south took their name.
Only
Godwin had a metal helmet and mail-shirt to pull on, a brass-hilted broadsword
to buckle
round his waist. In the normal way of things men like these, the coast-watch
of Bridlington,
would not hope or expect to stand on the shore and trade blows with the
professional
warriors of Denmark and Norway. Rather, they would fade away, taking as much
as they
could of their goods and wives with them. Waiting for the mounted levy, the
thane-service
of Northumbria, to come down and do the fighting for which they earned their
estates and
manor houses. Waiting hopefully for a chance to swarm forward and join in the
harassing
of a beaten enemy, the chance of taking loot. It was not a chance which had
come to any Englishman since Oakley fourteen years before. And that had been
in the south, in the
foreign kingdom of Wessex, where all manner of strange things happened.
Nevertheless the mood of the men watching the knorrs out in the bay was
unalarmed,
even cheerful. Almost every man in the coast-watch was a fisherman, skilled in
the ways of
the North Sea. The worst water in the world, with its fogs and gales, its
monstrous tides and
unexpected currents. As the day strengthened and the Viking ships were blown
remorselessly closer in, Merla's realization had come to everyone: The Vikings
were
doomed. It was just a matter of what they could try next. And whether they
would try it,
lose, and get the wreck over with before the mounted levy Godwin had summoned
hours
before could arrive, resplendent in its armor, colored cloaks and gold-mounted
swords.
After which, opinion among the fishermen felt, the chances of any worthwhile
plunder for
them were low. Unless they marked the spot and tried later, in secret, with
grappling
irons... Quiet conversations ran among the men at the rear, with an occasional
low laugh.
"See," the town reeve was explaining to Godwin at the front, "the wind's east
a point
north. If they put up a scrap of sail they can run west, north or south." He
drew briefly in
the wet sand at their feet. "If he goes west he hits us. If he goes north he
hits the Head.
Mind you, if he could get past the Head he'd have a clear run northwest away
up to
Cleveland. That's why he was trying his sweeps an hour ago. A few hundred
yards out to
sea and he'd have been free. But what we knows, and what they doesn't, is
there's a current.
Hell of a current, rips down past the Head. They might as well stir the water
with their..."
He paused, not sure how far informality could go.
"Why doesn't he go south?" cut in Godwin.
"He will. He's tried the sweeps, tried the sea-anchor to check his drift. It's
my guess
the one in charge, the jarl what they call them, he knows his men are
exhausted. A rare old
night they must have had of it. And a shock in the morning when they saw where
they
were." The reeve shook his head with a kind of professional sympathy.
"They are not such great sailors," pronounced Godwin with satisfaction. "And
God is
against them, foul, heathen Church-defilers."
A stir of excitement behind them cut off the reply the reeve might have been
incautious enough to make. The two men turned.
On the path that ran along behind high-water mark, a dozen men were
dismounting.
The levy? thought Godwin. The thanes from Beverley? No, they could not
possibly have
arrived in this time. They must only now be saddling up. Yet the man in front
was a
nobleman. Big, burly, fair hair, bright blue eyes, with the upright stance of
a man who had
never had to plough or hoe for a living. Gold shone beneath his expensive
scarlet cape, on
buckles and sword-pommel. Behind him strode a smaller, younger version of
himself,
surely his son. And on the other side of him another youth, tall, straight-
backed like a
warrior. But dark in complexion, poorly dressed in tunic and wool breeches.
Grooms held
the horses for half a dozen more armed, competent-looking men—a retinue,
surely, a rich
thane's hearth-troop.
The leading stranger held his empty hand up. "You do not know me," he said. "I
am
Wulfgar. I am a thane from King Edmund's country, from the East Angles."
A stir of interest from the crowd, the dawnings his message might be of
hostility.
"You wonder what I am doing here. I will tell you." He gestured out at the
shore. "I
hate Vikings. I know more of them than most men. And, like most men, to my
sorrow. In
my own country, among the North- folk beyond the Wash, I am the coast-guard,
set by King
Edmund. But long ago I saw that we would never get rid of these vermin while
we English fought only our own battles. I persuaded my king of this, and he
sent messages to yours.
They agreed that I should come north, to talk with the wise men in Beverley
and in
Eoforwich about what we might do. I took a wrong road last night, met your
messengers
riding to Beverley this morning. I have come to help." He paused. "Have I your
leave?"
Godwin nodded slowly. Never mind what the lowborn fish-churl of a reeve said.
Some of the bastards might come ashore. And if they did, this lot might well
scatter. A
dozen armed men just might be useful.
"Come and welcome," he said.
Wulfgar nodded with deliberate satisfaction. "I am only just in time," he
remarked.
Out to sea the penultimate act of the wreck was about to take place. One of
the two
knorrs was fifty yards farther in than the other; her men more tired or maybe
less driven by
their skipper. Now she was about to pay the price. Her wallowing rolls in the
waves
changed angle, the bare mast rocking crazily. Suddenly the watching men could
see that the
yellow line of underwater sandbanks was the other side of the hull. Crewmen
exploded
from the deck and the planks where they had been lying, ran furiously up and
down,
grabbing sweeps, thrusting them over the side, trying to pole their ship off
and gain a few
extra moments of life.
Too late. A cry of despair rang thinly across the water as the Vikings saw it,
echoed by
a hum of excitement from the Englishmen on the shore: the wave, the big wave,
the seventh
wave that always rolls farthest up the beach. Suddenly the knorr was up on it,
lifted and
tilted sideways in a cascade of boxes and barrels and men sliding from the
windward into
the leeward scuppers. Then the wave was gone and the knorr smashed down,
landing with a
thump on the hard sand and grave l of the bank. Planks flew, the mast was over
the side in a
tangle of cordage; for an instant a man could be seen grasping desperately to
the
ornamented dragon-prow. Then another wave covered everything, and when it
passed there
were only bobbing fragments.
The fishermen nodded. A few crossed themselves. If the good God spared them
from
the Vikings, that was the way they expected to go one day—like men, with the
cold salt in
their mouths, and rings in their ears to pay kindly strangers to bury them.
Now, there was
one more thing for a skillful captain to try.
The remaining Viking was going to try it, to scud south with the wind abeam
and all
the easting he could get, rather than wait passively for death like his
consort had. A man
appeared suddenly at the steering oar. Even from two furlongs' distance the
watchers could
see his red beard wagging as he bellowed orders, could hear the echo of his
urgency rolling
across the water. There were men at the ropes, waiting, heaving together. A
scrap of sail
leapt free from the yard, caught instantly by the wind and tugged out. As the
ship shot
urgently towards shore another volley of orders swung the yard round and the
boat heeled
downwind. Within seconds she was steady on a new course, picking up speed,
throwing
water wide from her bow-wave as she raced away from the Head down toward the
Spurn.
"They're getting away!" yelled Godwin. "Get the horses!" He cuffed his groom
out of
the way, scrambled astride, and set off at a gallop in pursuit, Wulfgar, the
stranger thane,
only a pace or two behind, and the rest of their retinues following in strung-
out, disorderly
lines. Only the dark boy who had come with Wulfgar hesitated.
"You're not hurrying," he said to the motionless reeve. "Why not? Don't you
want to
catch up with them?" The reeve grinned, stooped, picked a pinch of sand from
the beach and threw it in the
air. "They've got to try it," he remarked. "Nothing else to do. But they're
not going to get
far."
Turning on his heel he indicated a score of men to stay where they were and
watch the
beach for wreckage or survivors. Another score of mounted men set off along
the path
behind the thanes. The rest, bunched together, began to trot purposefully but
deliberately
along the beach after the racing ship.
As the minutes passed even the landsmen realized what the reeve had seen
straight
away. The Viking skipper was not going to win his gamble. Twice already he had
tried to
force his ship's head out to sea, two men joining the red-bearded one as he
strained at the
steering oar, the rest of the crew bracing the yard round till the ropes sang
iron- hand in the
wind. Both times the waves had heaved, heaved remorselessly at the prow till
it wavered,
swung back, the ship's hull shuddering with the forces contending on it. And
again the
skipper had tried, turning back parallel with the coastline and building up
speed for another
dash to the safety of the open sea.
But was he parallel with the coastline this time? Even to the inexperienced
eyes of
Godwin and Wulfgar it looked this time as if something was different: stronger
wind,
heavier sea, the grip of the inshore current dragging at the bottom. The red-
bearded man
was still by the oar, still shouting orders for some other maneuver, the ship
was still racing
along, as the poets said, like a foamy-necked floater, but her prow was
turning in inch by
inch or foot by foot; the yellow line was perilously close to her bow-wave, it
was clear she
was going to—
Strike. One instant the ship was running full tilt, the next her prow had
slammed into
unyielding gravel. The mast snapped off instantly and hurled itself forward,
taking half the
crew with it. The planks of the clinker-built boat sprang outward from their
settings, letting
in the onrushing sea. In a heartbeat the whole ship had opened up like a
flower. And then
vanished, leaving only cordage streaming in the wind for a moment to show
where she had
been. And, once again, bobbing fragments in the water.
Bobbing fragments, the fishermen noticed interestedly as they panted up, this
time
rather closer to shore. One of them a head. A red head.
"Is he going to make it, do you think?" asked Wulfgar. They could see the man
clearly
now, fifty yards out in the water, hanging still and making no effort to swim
farther as he
eyed the great waves pounding in to destroy themselves on the shore.
"He's going to try," replied Godwin, motioning men forward to the watermark.
"If he
does, we'll grab him."
Redbeard had made his mind up and started to swim forward, hurling the water
aside
with great strokes of his arms. He had seen the great wave coming behind him.
It lifted
him, he was swept forward, straining to keep himself on top of the wave as if
he could
propel himself up the beach and land as weightlessly as the white foam that
crawled almost
to the soles of the thanes' leather shoes. For ten strokes he was there, the
watchers turning
their heads up to look at him as he swung to the crest of the wave. Then the
wave in front,
retreating, checked his progress in a great swirl of sand and stone, the crest
broke,
dissolved. Smashed him down with a grunt and a snap. Rolled him helplessly
forward.
Dragged him back with the undertow.
"Go in and get him," yelled Godwin. "Move, you hare-hearts! He can't hurt
you." Two of the fishermen darted forward between the waves, grabbed an arm
each and
hauled him back, for a moment waist-deep amid the smother but then out, the
redbeard
braced between them.
"He's still alive," muttered Wulfgar in astonishment. "I thought that wave was
enough
to break his spine."
The redbeard's feet touched the shore, he looked round at the eighty men
confronting
him, his teeth showed suddenly in a flashing grin.
"What welcome," he remarked.
He turned in the grip of his two rescuers, placed the outside of his foot on
one man's
shin, raked it down with full weight onto the instep. The man howled and let
go the brawny
arm he was clutching. Instantly the arm swept across, two fingers extended,
driving deep
into the eyes of the man still holding on. He, too, shrieked and fell to his
摘要：

QuicreditinFilium,habetvitamaeternam;quiautemincredulusestFilio,nonvidebitvitam,sediraDeimanetsupereum.HethatbelievethontheSonhatheverlastinglife:andhethatbelievethnottheSonshallnotseelife;butthewrathofGodabidethonhim.—John3:36Angustaestdomus:utrosquetenerenonpoterit.Nonvultrexcelestiscumpaganisetpe...

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