The Hammer and The Cross by Harry Harrison. Jar1. Chapter 8, 9

“All right saying ‘Go on,’ ” said one anonymous voice that night. “What happens when we get there? No Alfred. No Norse-folk. No Wessexers to help out like we were promised. Just us. Eh? What then?”

“We’ll shoot ’em down,” said Oswi confidently. “Like we did with Ivar and them Ragnarssons. ‘Cos we got the machines and they haven’t. And the crossbows and all.”

A mutter of agreement greeted his statement. Yet every morning the camp marshals came to Shef with a new and growing figure: the number of men who had slipped away in the night, taking with them freedom and the silver pennies already paid to each man from the spoils of Ivar, but forfeiting the promise of land and stock in the future. Already, Shef knew, he had not enough men in the ranks both to man his fifty machines—pull-throwers and twist-shooters—and to use the two hundred pulley-wound crossbows that Udd’s forges had produced.

“What will you do?” asked Farman, Frey’s priest, the fourth morning of the march. He, Ingulf and Geirulf the priest of Tyr were the only Norsemen who had insisted on staying with Shef and the freedmen.

Shef shrugged.

“That is no answer.”

“I will tell you the answer when you tell me where Thorvin and Godive have gone. And why. And when they will come back.”

This time it was Farman’s turn to give no answer.

Daniel and Alfgar had spent many angry days of frustration, first finding the base of the Frankish Cross-wearers, and then getting through its guards and outposts to see its leader. Their appearance had been against them: two men in soiled and sodden cloaks after nights in the open, riding bareback on the sorry nags that Alfgar had stolen. The first sentry they had approached had been amazed to see any Englishmen come near the camp of their own will: the local churls had fled long since, taking their wives and daughters with them if they were lucky. Yet he had not troubled to call an interpreter for Alfgar’s English or Daniel’s Latin. After several minutes of shouting up at him above the gate of the camp stockade, he had meditatively fitted arrow to bow and shot it into the ground at Daniel’s feet. Alfgar had pulled Daniel away at once.

After that they had tried several times to approach the daily cavalcade of warriors streaming out from the Hastings base, to rob and forage while King Charles waited unhurriedly for the further challenge he was sure must come. The first time had cost them their horses, the second, Daniel’s episcopal ring, which he had waved too eagerly. Eventually, and in despair, Alfgar had taken a hand. As Daniel shouted angrily at a Frankish priest they had discovered picking over the ruins of a ransacked church, he pushed him aside.

“Machina,” he said clearly, in the fragment of Latin he possessed. “Ballista. Catapulta. Nos videre”—he pointed to his eyes. “Nos dicere. Rex.” He waved at the camp with its flying banners, two miles off, made speaking gestures.

The priest looked at him, nodded, turned back to the barely coherent bishop and began to talk to him in strangely accented Latin, cutting Daniel’s furious complaints short, demanding information. After a while he had called to his guard of mounted archers and set off back toward the camp, taking the two Englishmen with him. After that they had been passed from hand to hand, with cleric after cleric coming in to extract more and more of Daniel’s story.

But now at last the clerics had gone. It was Alfgar, his cloak brushed and a substantial meal inside him, who stood in front of Daniel, facing a trestle-table, behind it a group of men with the look of warriors: one of them wearing the gold circle of royalty over a bald head. At his side stood an Englishman, listening carefully to what the king said. Eventually he turned to Alfgar, speaking the first English they had heard since they arrived in the camp.

“The priests have told the king,” he said, “that you have more sense than the bishop behind you. But the bishop says that you two alone know the truth of what has happened up there in the North. And that for some reason”—the Englishman smiled—”you are anxious to help the king and the Christian religion with information. Now the king takes no interest in your bishop’s complaints and proposals. He wants to know, first about the army of Mercia, second about the army of the heathen Ragnarssons, and thirdly about this army of heretics which his own bishops are especially anxious for him to meet and fight. Tell him all that, behave yourself sensibly, and it will do you good. The king will have to have some Englishmen he can trust once his kingdom is established.”

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