Harry Harrison - Hammer Cross 2 - One King's Way

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One King's Way
The Hammer and The Cross, book 2
Harry Harrison
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
CONTENTS
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter One
Frozen in the hard grip of the worst winter in memory, all of England lay
under a frigid
mantle of snow. The great river Thames was covered with ice from bank to bank.
The road
leading west to Winchester was a flint- hard, filthy track of frozen
hoofprints and caked
manure. The horses slipped on the ice, snorting out steaming vapors. Their
riders, huddled
and chilled, looked up at the dark walls of the great Minster and spurred
their tired mounts
with little result.
This was the 21st of March of the year of our Lord's Incarnation 867, and a
day of
greatest portent. A royal union was taking place today. Filling the pews were
the military
aristocracy of Wessex, every alderman, thane, and high-reeve who could
possibly be
squeezed within the stone walls, gaping and sweating, a low mutter of
explanation and
translation continually rising from them, watching intently as the whole
elaborate ritual of
coronation of a Christian king unrolled its stately dance.
In the right-hand pew at the very front of the nave of the great Minster at
Winchester
was Shef Sigvarthsson, co-king of the English—and king in his own right of all
those parts
of it north of the Thames which he could persuade into obedience. He sat
uneasily, aware
of the many eyes on him.
They saw a man whose age was hard to guess. His thick dark hair and smooth-
shaven
face made him seem young, too young for the gold circlet of royalty on his
brow and the
heavy bracelets on both arms. He had the height and the broad shoulders of a
warrior in his
prime—or of an ironsmith, which was what he had been. Yet for all his youth
the dark hair
was already streaked with white, and his face showed the betraying grooves of
care and
pain. His right eye-socket was an empty hollow, and the patch that covered it
could not
disguise the way the flesh had drawn and fallen in. The whole of England and
half of
Europe beyond knew how he had been half-blinded on the order of Sigurth Snake-
eye,
eldest of the sons of Ragnar. And how the smith's apprentice had taken his
revenge by
killing Sigurth's brother, Ivar the Boneless, Champion of the North, rising
from near-thrall
to carl of the Viking Great Army, to jarl under the orders of Alfred Atheling.
Now to being
king and co-ruler with Alfred himself, joint victors over the Frankish Crusade
only the year
before. Rumors ran everywhere about the meaning of the strange sign he wore
round his
neck as emblem of the Asgarth Way, an emblem none had worn before him: the
kraki, the
pole-ladder of the mysterious deity Rig.
Shef had no wish to see the coronation, still less the ceremony that would
follow. The
grooves of pain deepened in his face as he watched. Yet he understood why he
had to be
there, he and his men: to make a point, to support his co-king. It was
Alfred's request, as
close to a command as possible, that had brought him here.
"You don't have to take the Mass," Alfred had said firmly to Shef and his
supporters.
"You don't even have to sing the hymns. But I want you there at the
coronation, wearing
your pendants, wearing your crown, Shef. Making a show. Pick out your most
impressive
men, and look rich and powerful. I want everyone to see that I am supported
fully by the
men of the North, the conquerors of Ivar the Boneless and Charles the Bald.
The pagans.
Not the wild pagans, the slavers and sacrificers, like the sons of Ragnar: but
the men of the
Way, the Way of Asgarth, the pendant- folk."
They had at least managed to do that, Shef thought, looking about. Put on
their mettle,
the two dozen Way- folk selected to sit in the front ranks had responded
nobly. Guthmund
the Greedy was carrying more gold and silver on his person, in arm-rings,
torque, and beltbuckle,
than any five thanes of Wessex put together. Of course he had shared in three
successive distributions of plunder under Shef, whose fame, though fabulous,
was not all
exaggeration. Thorvin priest of Thor and his colleague Skaldfinn priest of
Njörth, though
opposed to worldly display, had nevertheless dressed in shining white and
brought with
them their signs of office, the short hammer for Thorvin and the seaman's boat
for
Skaldfinn. Cwicca, Osmod and the other English freedmen now veterans of Shef's
campaigns, though hopelessly unimpressive in person from youthful hunger, had
managed
to dress themselves in the unheard-of luxury of silken tunics. They also
carried carefully
sloped the tools of their trade: halberds, crossbows, and catapult-winders.
Shef suspected
that the mere sight of men so obviously English, so obviously low-born, and so
obviously
rich beyond the dreams of the average Wessex thane, let alone churl, was the
most
powerful silent argument for Alfred's success that could be found.
The ceremony had begun hours before with the forming of a great procession
from the
king's residence to the Minster itself—a walk of barely a hundred yards, but
every yard of
them seeming to demand some special observance. Then the high mass in the
Minster, the
nobles of the realm crowding up to take communion, not so much out of
reverence as out of
an earnest desire not to miss any luck or blessing that might be granted to
others. Among
them, Shef had noted, had been many seemingly incongruous figures, the
undersized
frames and rough clothes of slaves that Alfred had freed and churls he had
promoted. They
were now here to take the word back to their towns and villages: the word that
there was no
doubt, no doubt at all that Alfred Atheling was now Alfred King of the West
Saxons and of
the Mark, by all the laws of man and of the Christian God.
Also in the first row, towering over those around him, sat the Marshal of
Wessex, the
man chosen by custom as the most notable warrior of the kingdom hand-to-hand.
The
Marshal, Wigheard, was indeed an imposing sight, nearer seven foot than six
and twenty
English stone if an ounce in weight; he carried the king's state sword at
arm's length as
effortlessly as a twig, and had already shown uncanny ability to fence with a
halberd as if it
were a willow-wand.
There was one man in Shef's group, sitting immediately to his left, who had
difficulty
following the ceremony, who glanced again and again at the Champion. This was
the giant
Brand, himself champion of the men of Halogaland, still wasted and shrunken
from the
belly-wound he had taken in his duel on the gangplank with Ivar the Boneless,
but slowly
regaining strength. Brand, shrunken as he was, still seemed the bigger man of
the two. His
bones were almost top big for his skin, with knuckles like rocks, and ridges
jutting out over
his eyebrows like armor. Brand's fists, Shef had once noted by careful
comparison, were
bigger than a pint pot: not just huge, but disproportionate even to the rest
of him. "Men
grow big where I come from," was all that Brand would ever say.
The noise of the congregation died as Alfred, now thoroughly blessed and
prayed
over, turned to face them to take his oaths. For the first time Latin was
abandoned and the
service broke into English as Alfred's senior alderman asked the solemn
question: "Do you
grant us our rightful laws and customs to be held, and do you swear after your
power to
grant rightful dooms and defend the rights of your people against every
enemy?"
"I do." Alfred looked round the packed Minster. "I have done so, and I will do
so
again." A rumble of assent.
Now a trickier moment, Shef thought as the alderman stepped back and the
senior
bishop stepped forward. For one thing the bishop was startlingly young—and for
good
reason. After Alfred's dispossession of the Church, his excommunication by the
Pope, the
Crusade against him and his final declaration of non-communion with Rome,
every senior
cleric in his kingdom had left. From the Archbishops of York and Canterbury
down to the
least bishop and abbot. Alfred's response was to promote ten of the best
remaining junior priests and tell them the Church in England was in their
hands. Now one of them, Eanfrith
Bishop of Winchester, six months before priest of a village no-one had heard
of, came
forward to ask his question.
"Lord King, we ask you to grant to us protection for Holy Church and due law
and
rightfulness for all those who are members of it."
Eanfrith and Alfred had been days working out the new formula, Shef recalled.
The
traditional one had asked for confirmation of all rights and privileges,
tithes and taxes,
ownerships and possessions—all of which Alfred had in fact taken away.
"I grant protection and due law," Alfred replied. Again he looked round, again
added
words beyond tradition. "Protection to those within the Church and without it.
Due law to
members of it and to others."
The highly trained choristers of Winchester, choir-monks and choirboys
together,
burst into the anthem of Zadok the Priest, Unxerunt Salomonem Zadok sacerdos,
as the
bishops prepared for the solemn moment of blessing with the holy oil, after
which Alfred
would be literally the Lord's Anointed, against whom rebellion was also
sacrilege.
Shortly, thought Shef, would come the difficult moment for him. It had been
explained
to him very carefully that Wessex, ever since Queen Eadburh of wicked memory,
never had
a Queen, and that the King's wife could have no separate coronation.
Nevertheless, Alfred
had said, he was insistent that his new wife should be accepted by him in
front of the
people, in honor of her courage in the defeat of the Franks. So, he had said,
after the
donning of the regalia, sword, ring and scepter, he meant his wife to come
forward and be
named before the congregation, not as Queen, but as the Lady of Wessex. And
who better
to lead her to the altar than her brother, Shef, also his co-king?
Who might have to yield his kingdom to the child of Alfred and the Lady, if he
had no
child himself.
This would be the second time he had given her away, Shef thought bitterly.
Once
again he must forget the love, the passion that had once bound them. The first
had been to a
man they both hated, and in punishment for that, it seemed, he must now hand
her over to a
man they both loved. As Thorvin nudged him with a mighty elbow, to tell him
the time had
come to step forward and lead the Lady Godive with her train of maidens to the
altar, Shef
met her eyes—her triumphant eyes—and felt his heart turn to ice.
Alfred might now be a king, he though numbly. He himself was not. He did not
have
the right, or the strength.
As the choir broke into the Benedicat he decided that he would do it. Do the
thing he
wanted to, not just what he felt was his duty. He would take out the fleet,
the new navy of
the co-kings, to work out his inner anger on the enemies of the realm: the
pirates of the
North, the fleets of the Franks, the slavers of Ireland or Spain, anyone. Let
Alfred and
Godive find their own happiness at home. He would find peace in drowned men
and
shattered ships.
Earlier this same day, far to the north in the land of the Danes, a simpler
and more
terrifying ceremony had taken place.
It had begun before dawn. The bound man lifted from where he lay on the floor
of the
guard- hut had long since ceased to struggle, though he was neither a coward
nor a
weakling. Two days before, when the emissaries of the Snake-eye had marched
into the
slave-pen, he had known what would be in store for the man they chose. When
they picked him from the others, he had known also that the least chance of
escape was to be seized,
and he had seized it: secretly gathered the slack in his wrist-chains as they
marched him off,
waited till the guards were hustling him over the wooden bridge that led to
the inner heart
of the Braethraborg, the stronghold of the three last sons of Ragnar. Then
struck suddenly
to his right with the chain, and hurled himself for the rail and the swift
river beneath it—at
the best to swim for freedom, at the worst to die his own man.
His guards had seen many such desperate attempts. One snatched at his ankle as
he
lunged for the rail, two others had him pinned before he could recover. They
had beaten
him systematically with their spear-shafts, not in malice, but to ensure he
would be too stiff
and battered to move swiftly again. Then taken off the chains and replaced
them with
rawhide thongs, twisting and wetting them with sea-water to dry even tighter.
If the bound
man could have seen his fingers in the dark, they would have been blue-black,
swollen like
a corpse's. Even if some god intervened to save his life, it wo uld be too
late now to save his
hands.
But neither god nor man would intervene. The guards had ceased to acknowledge
his
existence when they talked among themselves. He was not dead, because for what
he had to
do a man was needed with the breath, and especially the blood, still in him.
But that was
all. There was no need for anything else.
Now, at the end of the long night, his guards carried him out of the longhouse
where
the great fresh-tarred flagship lay, and down the long row of rollers that led
down the
slipway to the sea.
"Here will do. This one here," grunted the burly middle-aged warrior in
charge.
"How do we do it?" asked one of the others, a young man without the
campaignmarks,
the scars and silver arm-rings of the others. "I've never seen this done
before."
"So watch and you'll learn. First, cut that rawhide round his wrists. No,
don't worry,"
as the younger man hesitated, looked round automatically for any slightest
glimpse of an
escape, "he's a goner, look at him, couldn't even crawl if we let him go.
Don't let him go,
mind. Just cut his wrists free, right."
A few minutes of sawing, and the bound man staggered as the lashings freed,
stared a
moment in the pale but growing light at the hands in front of him.
"Now lay him out flat on that roller. Belly down. Feet together. Now see here,
young
Hrani, because this is the important bit. The thrall has to have his back
upwards, for why
you'll see very shortly. He can't have his hands behind him, same reason, and
he mustn't be
able to move. But he mustn't be able to stop himself moving either.
"So what I do is this." The middle-aged leader pressed his captive's face down
on to
the solid pine trunk he lay on, seized both arms and dragged them forward
above his head,
till the victim looked like a man diving. He pulled a hammer and two short
iron spikes from
his belt.
"We used to tie them, but I think you get a better roll like this. I saw
something like it
once in one of the Christers' churches. Course, they put the nail in the wrong
place. Halfwits."
Grunting with effort, the veteran began to hammer a spike carefully through
the
junction of wrist and hand. Behind him, there came a rustle of many men
moving. Against
the dawn- light of the east, dark shapes began to show. Spears and helmets
silhouetted
against the sky where the sun would soon show its first glimmer on this, the
first day of the
warriors' new year, when day and night were the same length. "He's taking it
well," said the young man as his instructor started to hammer in the
second spike. "More like a warrior than a thrall. Who was he, anyway?"
"Him? Just some fisherman we picked up on the way back last year. And he's not
taking it well, he can't feel a thing, his hands have been dead for hours.
"Soon over now," he added to the man now firmly nailed to the log, patting his
cheek.
"Speak well of me in the next world. This could go a lot worse if I bungled
it. But I haven't.
Just lash his legs down, you two, no need for another spike. Feet together.
He's got to turn
when the moment comes."
The little group got to their feet, leaving their victim stretched out along
the pinetrunk.
"Ready, Vestmar?" said a voice behind them.
"Ready, lord."
The space behind them had filled up while they worked. At the rear, away from
the
shore and the long sea inlet, lay hump after hump of dark shapes, slave-pens,
workshops,
boathouses, and in dimly- sensed ranks the rows of regular barracks that
housed the trusted
troops of the sea-kings, the sons of Ragnar—once four, now three. From the
barracks the
men had come streaming, all men, no women, no youths, to see the solemn
spectacle: the
launch of the first ship, the start of the annual campaigning season that once
again was to
bring terror and ruin to the Christians and their allies of the South.
Yet the warriors hung back, ranking themselves round the inlet's shore in a
deep semicircle.
Pacing down to the very shore itself came only three men, all tall and
powerful, men
in their prime, the three remaining sons of Ragnar Hairy-Breeks: Ubbi the
grizzled,
despoiler of women, Halvdan the redbeard, the fanatical dueller and champion,
dedicated to
the warrior's life and code. Before even them, Sigurth the Snake-eye, so
called for the
whites that surrounded every part of his eye-pupils like the gaze of a snake:
the man who
meant to make himself King of all the lands of the North.
All faces were turning now to the east, to see if the first glimpse of the
sun's disk could
be seen on the horizon. Most years, here in Denmark in the month the
Christians called
March, only cloud. Today, good omen, clear sky, with just the light haze
already turned
pink by the still- invisible sun. A slight murmur came from the watchers as
the readers of
omens came forward, a stooped and aged band, clutching their holy bags, their
knives and
knucklebones and sheep's shoulder-blades, the instruments of divination.
Sigurth watched
them coldly. They were necessary, for the men. But he had no fear of a bad
divination, a
poor set of omens. Augurs who augured badly could find themselves on the
sacrifice-stone
as well as any other.
In the dead, intent silence, the man stretched out on the pine-log found his
voice.
Pinned and lashed as he was, he could not move his body. He strained his head
back, and
called out in a choked voice, aiming it at the midmost of the three men by the
shore.
"Why can you do this, Sigurth? I was no enemy of yours. I am no Christian, nor
man
of the Way. I am a Dane and a freeman like yourself. What right have you to
take my life?"
A roar from the crowd drowned his last words. A line of light showed in the
east, the
sun poking up over the near- flat horizon of Sjaelland, eastmost of the Danish
islands. The
Snake-eye turned, threw back his cape, waved to the men in the boathouse above
him.
Instantly a creaking of ropes, a simultaneous grunt of effort, fifty men, the
picked
champions of the Ragnarsson army, throwing their mighty weight on the ropes
attached to
the spiked rowlocks. Out from the boathouse loomed the dragon-prow of the
Snake-eye's own ship, the Frani Ormr itself, the Shining Worm. Grinding
forward along the flat on the
greased rollers prepared for it, ten tons of weight on a fifty- foot keel made
of the stoutest
oak-tree in Denmark.
It reached the top of the slipway. The pinned man craned his neck sideways to
see his
fate looming against the sky, and clamped his mouth shut to avoid the scream
welling from
inside him. One thing only he could avoid giving his tormentors, and that was
the joy of a
good omen, a year launched in fear and despair and shrieks of pain.
The men heaved at the ropes together, the prow tipped and began to slide down,
thumping over each roller in turn. As it ground down towards him, as the
projecting prow
reached over him, the sacrifice called out again, meaning it in defiance:
"Where is your
right, Sigurth? What made you a king?"
The keel struck him accurately in the small of the back, rode over him and
crushed
down with its immense weight. Involuntarily, the breath pressed from his lungs
in a weird
cry, turning into a shriek as pain overcame any possible self-control. As the
ship roared
over him, its haulers running now to keep up, the roller to which he was
nailed whirled
round. The blood of his crushed heart and lungs spurted up, driven out by the
massive
rounded keel.
It splashed upwards on to the flaring bow planks above him. The augurs
watching
intently, crouched low so as not to miss any detail, whooped and whirled their
fringed
sleeves in delight.
"Blood! Blood on the planks for the sea-king's launch!"
"And a cry! A death-cry for the lord of warriors!"
The ship surged on into the calm water of the Braethraborg fjord. As it did so
the sun's
disc rose fully above the line of the horizon, sending a long flat ray beneath
the haze.
Throwing aside his cape, the Snake-eye seized his spear by the butt and lifted
it up above
the shadow of the boathouse and the slipway. The sun caught it and turned its
eighteen- inch
triangular blade to fire.
"Red light and a red spear for the new year," roared the watching army,
drowning out
the augurs' shrilling.
"What made me a king?" shouted the Snake-eye to the passing spirit. "The blood
I
have shed, and the blood in my veins! For I am the god-born, the son of
Ragnar, the son of
Volsi, the seed of the immortals. And the sons of men are logs beneath my
keel."
Behind him his army ran, crew by crew, towards their waiting ships, to take
their turn
by the stronghold's crowded slipways.
The same chill winter that held fast to England had fallen also on the other
side of the
channel. In the cold city of Cologne, on this same day, as Alfred was being
crowned,
eleven men met in a bare unheated room of a great church hundreds of miles to
the south of
the Braethraborg and its human sacrifice. Five of them wore the purple and
white of
archbishops' rank—none, as yet, the scarlet of a Cardinal. Slightly behind and
to the right
of each of the five sat a second man, each of these dressed in the plain black
robe of a
canon of the Order of Saint Hrodegang. Each was his archbishop's confessor,
chaplain and
counselor—of no rank, but of immense influence, with the best hope also of
succeeding to
the dignity of a Prince of the Church.
The eleventh man also wore the black robe, this time of a mere deacon. He
looked
covertly from side to side at the assembled gathering, recognizing and
respecting power, but unsure of his own place at the table. He was Erkenbert,
once deacon of the great
Minster at York and servant of Archbishop Wulfhere. But the Minster was no
more, sacked
by the enraged heathen of the North the previous year. And Wulfhere,
Archbishop though
he remained, was a mere pensioner of his fellow-archbishops, an object of
contemptuous
charity like his co-Primate of Canterbury. The Church in England was no more:
no lands,
no rents, no power.
Erkenbert did not know why he had been called to this meeting. He did know
that he
was in deadly danger. The room was not bare because the great Prince-
Archbishop of
Cologne could not afford furniture. It was bare because he wished to have no
cover for any
possible eavesdropper or spy. Words had been said here that would mean death
for all
present if repeated.
The group had eventually, slowly, cautiously, come to a decision, feeling each
other
out. Now, the decision made, tension slackened.
"He has to go, then," repeated Archbishop Gunther, the host of the meeting in
Cologne.
A circuit of silent nods around the table.
"His failure is too great to overlook," confirmed Theutgard of Trier. "Not
only did the
Crusade he sent against the province of the English meet defeat in battle..."
"Though that itself is a sign of the divine disfavor," agreed the notoriously
pious
Hincmar of Rheims.
"...but he allowed a seed to be planted. A seed worse than defeat for one king
or
another king. A seed of apostasy."
The word created a momentary silence. All knew what had happened the year
before.
How under pressure from both the Vikings of the North and his own bishops at
home the
youthful King Alfred of the West Saxons had made common cause with some pagan
摘要：

OneKing'sWayTheHammerandTheCross,book2HarryHarrisonChapter1Chapter2Chapter3Chapter4Chapter5Chapter6Chapter7Chapter8Chapter9Chapter10Chapter11Chapter23Chapter24Chapter25Chapter26Chapter27Chapter28Chapter29Chapter30Chapter31Chapter32Chapter33CONTENTSChapter12Chapter13Chapter14Chapter15Chapter16Chapter...

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