TLV - 03 - The Sign of the Raven (24 page)

"Greeting, my lord," said the Englishman, "and God speed your cause. I am Tosti Godwinsson, Earl of Northumbria and your faithful servant." He bent a knee.

Harald stroked his beard and raised his left brow. A smoldering was in this man, wrath had eaten lines in his face and the mouth drooped downward. Yet that was all to the good; he was not likely to forget what he had suffered and make peace with his brother. Tosti, Day of Storm, yes, he had been well named.

"Be welcome among us," said Harald. "It is known that I am hard to my foes but have ever rewarded troth. Together we may do much."

Tosti got up. "I have only twelve ships, my lord," he said, "but they are large and well stocked, and every man aboard, English or Flemish, is of proven worth." His hot glance went over the Norse fleet where it sprawled vastly out into the sea. "Truly you're not one to take half measures!"

"I think you'll find us a better ally than King Svein or Duke William," said Harold.

Tosti flushed. "So you know that? Yes, my lord, I make no secret of it.
...
I sought help where it was to be had. None but you offered it to me on any terms worthy of a king. Now I will stand by you as long as God gives us both life."

Harald wondered. A proud and avaricious earl with half of England as fief would likely prove troublesome in years ahead; not for nothing had the English chiefs outlawed him. But if he remained true until the realm was well in hand, that would be enough.

"Let us go ashore if we can, and rest tonight and talk of our plans," he said aloud.

The townsfolk opened their gates on promise of safety; Harald took only his leaders and some guards inside, leaving the rest of his men to ring the burgh in. He and Tosti held feast at the best house, together with the Norse chiefs and Tosti's young sons Skuli and Ketill. Harald questioned the outlaw carefully.

"Yes," said Tosti, "my brother Harold is not a weakling. And his Housecarles are a troop to reckon with, the very core of the English fighting strength. But he's far to the south, in London I think, and in no case—" he drained his beaker at a gulp and mumbled out his anger—"in no case will God help a perjurer."

"They say no grass will grow on the grave of any who's sworn falsely," said Harald. "But my namesake is not yet in the earth."

"We can hold the North long before Harold can reach us, and raise its levies against him," said Tosti. "They may not fight very willingly for us, but sheer numbers . . . Edwin and Morkar are the earls we must beat. Brave men, but hotheaded and without deep knowledge of war."

Harald rested his chin in a hand and looked thoughtfully at his ally. The leaping firelight splashed Tosti's face with red. "How does it feel to battle your own brother?" he murmured.

Tosti started. His voice cracked. "Ha' done, my lord! They say that a slayer of his own kin was never lacking in the Yngling race."

Eystein jumped to his feet, grabbing after a sword; but Harald laughed. "I was only testing you," he said. "I like a man without guile."

Tosti slumped back. "The world is splitting asunder," he mumbled. "Naught is left of Alfred's house save one sickly child. Your claim is better than William's, my lord, and at least as good as Harold Godwinsson's. I'll stand by you to save what can be saved from the wreck, and . . . and to come home again."

"That wish I can understand," said Harald gently.

They talked at length of what was to be done. Harald found it odd, the liking which sprang up between them. Sometimes it happened thus, men looking at each other as tenderly as at a woman; friendship could be as mysterious as love. Tosti was sullen, touchy, guilt ridden, driven as much by greed as anything else . . . but he had charm, and his will and skill were not to be surpassed.

At dawn they went to the church, and there the earl swore faith on the altar and laid his hands between Harald's. For his part, the king promised him dominion over half of England, the northern and eastern shires which he loved.

Thereafter the fleet set out again.

2

It was needful to strike fast, so that the north could be taken ere Harold Godwinsson arrived to dispute it. At the same time, Harald Hardrede thought it wise to test both friend and foe. He decided to harry the coasts as he went on down toward the Humber.

At Cleveland, therefore, the Norse landed. So swiftly had they come that no war word had gone before them and no army was raised. They swarmed ashore and across the countryside. Farms and hamlets stood ablaze, cattle were slaughtered on the strand, men cut down when they fought and women passed from hand to hand. Then the horns summoned the warriors back and they stood out to sea anew, shouting and singing and wild with the feeling that they already gripped England in her helplessness.

Their next landfall was at Scarborough, a sizable town: walled, like all the English burghs, and defended by men who cried defiance and sent an arrow sleet from their towers. Harald and Tosti led the host, swords belled on shields and the townsfolk were driven back within their gates. But here they in their turn sent the Norse reeling away.

"Now what's to be done?" asked Eystein. "Have we time for a siege?"

"No," said Harald. He looked about him. The land rose steeply. A nearby hill overlooked the walls. "Do you take some men, Eystein, and go around to the farms hereabouts and take every pitchfork you can find."

"Pitchforks?" cried the sheriff. "That's a weird booty."

"I've seen stranger." Harald looked at the high wood and earth palisade before him and remembered the day he and Ulf and Halldor thundered at the gates of Messina. And now Ulf was dead, and Halldor sat on his farm out on Iceland with scarcely a word, and Harald Sigurdharson fought alone. But . . . work to do.

While Eystein was getting the wooden forks, the king told off men to gather hay and branches atop the hill. When this was heaped high, he lit the fire, and his warriors took forkfuls of blaze and tossed them downwind to Scarborough's roofs. Much of it fell short, but enough landed in the thatch to set houses aflame, and erelong the English were driven out. They fought for a while, the Norsemen reaped them, and then the rest gave in.

Harald regarded the ruins and said to Tosti: "Your folk are as brave as any I've met; but they seem never to make ready for danger till too late."

"It's our great fault," nodded the earl. "And yet, hurt and unprepared, we've thrown back more than one foe."

Harald gave him a sharp look but said naught.

Still looting as he went, the king sailed on to Holderness. Here he met ships of Earl Morkar, but they were greatly outnumbered and fled. Landing, he found a levy raised to oppose him, and that was not an easy battle; but he broke them and laid the Wolds waste.

In these fights Olaf was beside him and proved a valiant if unskilled warrior. The prince went into a fight as to a task he hated, and did not join the roaring celebrations of victory but slipped off alone to pray forgiveness. Tosti and his followers were good allies, and as the host rolled on, the earl's dark moods lifted until he was merry toward every companion.

After Holderness came the Humber. It was Harald's plan to steer inland, up the River Ouse, and make camp. Belike Morkar would give battle ere they came to York; once he was beaten, that great city must yield, and then Northumbria and Yorkshire would be grasped.

Harald and Eystein stood together by the shore, where the Humber met the sea, and looked east. The weather had turned almost warm of late, mild winds and sunny skies, as if heaven smiled on the conquerors. The sea danced and glittered, rushed to the beach and back again in a huge rattling roar; gulls swooped aloft and their mewing ran out, lonesome, across a restless waste to the world's rim.

Harald drew in a deep lungful. "I wonder when we shall see this again," he said.

"Soon, I hope," replied Eystein. His red hair fluttered in the breeze and his eyes wandered northward.

"Down in the South," Harald told him, "I heard a story of the old Greeks, about a giant who drew his strength from the earth. He could not be overcome until a hero lifted him into the air. Sometimes I think we are like that, save that our life is the sea. No other folk have ever sailed so far; nor have I ever felt myself more alive than when I had a keel beneath me."

He turned. "Enough. Back to the ships and on our way."

He rowed a goodly distance inland before the crying of the waters was lost to him.

Around the Humber and the Ouse, England was low, rolling easily shoreward; the windy heights of Yorkshire were out of sight in the west. Here the hills were old, worn down to forested slopes and broad green valleys. Reeds whispered on the banks of the quietly flowing Ouse, waterfowl rose clamorous from them as the dragons swam by, the sky stooped big overhead. There were many farms in sight, empty now of folk who had fled; the fields were yellow with stubble, and the grass of the meadows dry and sallow, turned to hay by the waning summer, and the trees—oak, ash, elm, thorn—talking to each other of the autumn which had already faded them. An eeriness lay over this landscape; the chunk and splash of oars came unnaturally loud, men dropped their voices without thinking.

That night the fleet lay to in the river. The next day, near sundown, they reached Riccal, nine miles from York. It was a small town whose gates creaked drearily in the breeze, its people run away. "This is a good place," said Harold. "We can camp here and sally forth against York when we will."

The ships were drawn up on the bank, to line it for almost a mile with sharp prows and carved heads: and then the men went ashore. Their camp-fires twinkled as far as one could see in the dusk; woodsmoke and voices drifted under stars that blinked forth; the tramp and iron rattle of watchmen made the night loud. Their chiefs took the houses of Riccall and found goodly stocks of food and drink inside.

"We will lie here for a day or two, and send out scouts, ere faring to York," said Harald. "Tosti, can you get spies into the city itself?"

"I think so," answered the earl. "It will be so full of fugitives that one more new face means naught." He glanced up. "Yet I thought you not such a cautious leader."

Harald smiled and raised a silver goblet. "I've seen battles lost because someone was heedless," he said. "It's best to work carefully when you build an empire."

Olaf spoke suddenly: "No man can think of everything. In the last, it's only God who gives victory."

"And our own sword arms," laughed Eystein. "Fear not, we have St. Olaf with us."

Harold shivered, remembering. "It grows cold," he said. "Stoke the fire."

He took his ease the next day, sharpening his weapons himself and oiling the knee-length byrnie he called Emma; so heavy was that coat that no other man could bear it for long, and it had never been pierced. Meanwhile his scouts ranged afar. Gunnar Geiroddsson came back with a shapely little English girl perched on his shoulder and clinging to his hair; she giggled and seemed not to mind the raw whoops which lifted around her.

Word was that Earl Edwin had brought the Mercian levies to join Morkar in York, and that they would go forth the following day. King Harald laid his sword down, its blade shimmering in the torch-gleam, and nodded. "Good," he said. "We shall meet them."

3

Wednesday, the eve of St. Matthew's Mass, dawned fair. The Norse host was early afoot, men by the thousands spilling off the road and into the fields; a dust cloud hung over them and their steel flashed through it. They had the Ouse at their left and York ahead of them. Harald rode the black Spanish stallion, his chiefs mounted near him and Landwaster streaming in the van. He bore a gilt helmet, sword at his waist and ax at the saddlebow. He felt utterly glad and whistled as he rode.

"A good day for fighting," said Eystein. "Cool enough to make men brisk, and not so cold as to sap them."

"It is a good day to be alive," muttered Olaf, "but many will not be at sunset."

"What did you say?" asked his father.

"Naught you would think important," said Olaf.

After several miles, the host reached low ground. On their right flank, a ditch cut past a deep marsh. Water shone between reeds and thick green of lily pads, and a flight of wild swans rose impossibly white. The sun, a ways toward the west, turned the river into one blinding sheet.

Up ahead came another pillar of dust, and Harald saw an army moving to meet him. Those were the northern levies, half-Danish men as big as his own tramping stolidly forward with axes at shoulder; they were well equipped and seemed in good training. The king waved Tosti over to him and asked: "Where are we now?"

"This must be near Gate Fulford, about two miles from York," said the earl. "We could see the city beyond that ridge there." His face gleamed with sweat under the helmet and his lips were drawn back tightly. "Yes . . . those are the banners of Edwin and Morkar. I have much to avenge on them."