The Hammer and The Cross. Chapter 6, 7, 8
Chapter Six
For many days Shef had no time to think of his quest for Godive—or anything else for that matter. The work was too hard. Thorvin rose at dawn and worked on sometimes into the night, hammering, reforging, filing, tempering. In an army of this size there seemed to be innumerable men whose axe-heads had come loose, whose shields needed a rivet, who had decided that their spears needed reshafting. Sometimes there would be a line of men twenty-long, stretched from the forge to the edge of the precinct and on down the lane that led to it. There were also harder and more complex jobs. Several times men brought in mail shirts, torn and bloody, asking for them to be repaired, let out, altered for a new owner. One at a time each link of the mail had to be laboriously fitted into four others, and each of the four others into four others. “Mail is easy to wear, and it gives freedom to the arms,” Thorvin had remarked when Shef finally ventured to grumble. “But it does not give protection against a fierce stroke—and it is hell on earth for smiths.”
As time went by Thorvin handed over the routine jobs more and more to Shef, and concentrated on the difficult or special items. Yet he was rarely far away. He talked continually in Norse, repeating himself as often as was necessary. Sometimes, in the beginning, using mime until he was sure Shef understood. He spoke English well enough, Shef knew, but he would never use it. He insisted too that his apprentice spoke back to him in Norse, even if all he did was repeat what had been said to him. In fact the languages were close to each other in vocabulary and in basic style. After a while Shef caught the trick of repronunciation, and began to think of Norse as a bizarre and aberrant dialect of English, which had only to be imitated, not really learned from the beginning. After that matters went well.
Thorvin’s conversation was also a good cure for boredom or frustration. From him, and from the men who stood waiting their turn, Shef learned a great many things that he had never heard before. The Vikings all seemed enormously well-informed about everything that had been decided or intended by their leaders, and had no scruples about discussing it or criticizing it. One thing that soon became clear was that the Great Army of the pagans, feared throughout Christendom, was by no means a unit. At its heart were the Ragnarssons and their followers, maybe half the total. But to these were attached any number of separate contingents, joined to share the loot, of any size from the twenty ships brought down by the Orkney jarl to single crews from villages in Jutland or Skaane. Many of these were already dissatisfied. The campaign had started well enough, they said, with the descent on East Anglia and the establishment of the fortress as a base. Yet the idea had always been not to stay too long, but to gather horses, acquire guides, and then move suddenly from a firm base in the East Anglian kingdom against the true enemy and target, the kingdom of Northumbria.
“Why not land with the ships in Northumbria in the first place?” Shef had asked once, wiping the sweat from his forehead and signaling to the next customer.
The stocky, balding Viking with the dented helmet had laughed, loudly but without malice. The really tricky part of a campaign, he had said, was always getting started. Getting the ships up the river. Finding a place to beach them. Getting horses for thousands of men. Contingents turning up late and going down the wrong river. “If the Christians had the sense they were born with,” he had said emphatically, spitting on the ground, “they would pick us off before we got started almost every time.”
“Not with the Snakeeye in charge,” another man had remarked.
“Maybe not,” the first Viking had agreed. “Maybe not with the Snakeeye. But lesser commanders. Do you remember Ulfketil down in Frankland?”
So, better to get your feet planted before you tried to hit, they had agreed. Good idea. But this time it had gone wrong. Their feet were planted too long. It was that there King Edmund, most of the customers agreed—or “Jatmund” as they pronounced it—and the only question was, what was making him act so stupid? Easy to ravage his country till he gave in. But they didn’t want to ravage East Anglia, the customers complained. Takes too long. Too thin pickings. Why in Hell didn’t the king just pay up and come to a sensible deal? He’d had a warning.