“Roll up the North first,” said Halvdan. “Set you in place as the One King of all the Northlands. Then come back to the South.”
“With a thousand keels, and rock-throwers in the front of them,” amplified Ubbi.
“To finish the Christians once and for all…”
“To fulfill our Bragi-boast long ago…”
“To get revenge for Ivar.”
Halvdan got up, drained his horn, pulled his spiked beard-axe out of the ground. “I’ll go round the tents,” he said. “Drop a few hints. Say we’ve got a plan, and everyone will get a shock when they know it. Keep them quiet just a few weeks longer.”
Erkenbert the deacon stood inside a great ring of ancient stones. It was the doom-ring of the Smaaland peoples, the Little Countries between Danish Skaane and the giant confederacy of the Swedes extending hundreds of miles to the north, a country with many kings striving always to establish one Sveariki, one empire of the Swedes. It was the Smaalanders’ spring assembly, when men came out of their snowed-in cabins and began to prepare for the short but welcome summer.
Erkenbert had carefully dyed his worn black robe so that it shone even blacker, a violent contrast with the furs and homespuns that surrounded him. His attendant had also once more shaved every inch of his tonsure, so that the bald ring on his head stood out even more strongly. “We don’t want to hide away,” Bruno had said. “That’s the old style. Trying to get by on sufferance. We want them to see us. Get Christianity in their faces.” Erkenbert had meditated a sharp reply on the virtue of humility, but had withdrawn. For one thing few men any longer cared to answer back to the Master of the Lanzenorden, as men were already calling him. For another Erkenbert could see the sense in the policy.
The Smaalanders were selling off slaves, as usual. Mere bags of bones, most of them, ill-fed during the winter and now a doubtful speculation for the summer and the work-period. The emissaries of the Uppsala king Orm were buying the cheapest, as usual. Don’t bother with most of them, Bruno had said. Funds are low. But this one he had to have.
A burly farmer pushed forward into the ring as his turn came, towing with him in one fist an emaciated figure. The slave was dressed in no more than tatters, and shook uncontrollably with cold. Through the rags his ribs showed. A cough racked his body every few seconds, and he stank of the midden where he had slept for warmth.
A chorus of jeers greeted the arrival, from the seller’s neighbors. “What do you want for him, Ami? If he was a chicken you’d have to use him for soup. Even the Swedes won’t take him. He won’t live till the next sacrifice.”
Ami glared round indignantly. His eye fell on Erkenbert advancing deliberately across the sale-ground. Erkenbert walked composedly up to the thin man, put his arms round him, held him closely.
“Don’t worry, sirra, we have heard of you, we are here to rescue you.”
The stink attacked Erkenbert’s nostrils, but he bore it, remembering the Book of Job. The thin man began to weep, causing a fresh barrage of jeers and hooting from the crowd.
“How can you rescue me, they will take you too, they are animals, they care nothing for the rights of God…”
Gently Erkenbert disengaged himself, pointed behind him to the group from which he had come. Ten Ritter of the Lanzenorden stood in a double line, every man mailed, helmeted, with metal gauntlets shining. In each man’s right hand was a short pike, butt on the ground, point forward at exactly the same angle. “These people are good warriors,” Bruno had said. “But they have no discipline. We will show them some. It keeps them uncertain.”
“What do you want for this man?” said Erkenbert, speaking loudly so the watchers could hear.
Ami, a devout disciple of Frey, spat on the ground. “To you, Christling, twenty ounces of silver.”
Derision from the crowd. Eight ounces was a good price for a man in full vigor, twelve for a pretty girl.