15.
15.
It was a day's walk from Árós at a leisurely pace, perhaps two at a very leisurely pace?
If you followed the road I had dug up and overturned—something I did to give the idle something to do, what with our overflowing population—all the way down and crossed the strait, you would set foot upon a great island.
Roskilde on the island of Zealand.
Far, far older than any of Grandmother's old tales, there was once a Konungr who bore a name containing the word 'Ro.' Because the lakes and ponds he favored were plentiful, the place came to be called Ro's Spring—Roskilde.
As the story above suggests, it was probably one of the oldest cities of the Norsemen, alongside Uppsala. What that meant was this: many families had dwelt there for generations, and thanks to its geopolitical position as a hub of east-west trade, there were many rich men.
In this era, for a Northern European city to have many rich men and old, established families meant that the power of its Thing was formidable. How formidable? The collective will of an enraged citizenry could unseat a Jarl, even a Konungr.
So, honestly, I had thought that Sigurd, appointed Jarl of Roskilde by our father's renown and the will of the people, would be the last of us brothers to arrive.
My brothers and I—our eyes would roll back in fury the moment we heard Father had been killed by Ælla of Northumbria, and we would cry for vengeance and cross the sea at once. But if I were to be truly candid, there was no reason for men with little personal interest in my father Ragnar Sigurdsson's death to move with any great urgency.
To think he arrived this early, though?
'That was unexpected.'
Summer had already sped well past the halfway point of its six months. Yet, compared to the heat I had known in a past life on the Korean peninsula, this land was cool, bearable. And here, with a genuinely glad heart I hadn't felt in a long while, I embraced this scoundrel of a bard.
"Sigurd! You must have hurried greatly, my brother."
"Helgi! You look even bigger than before. When I saw you from a distance, I nearly mistook you for a bear and turned my horse's head away."
'Honestly, this guy...'
It seemed the serpent coiled within Sigurd's eyes gleamed with an uncanny green light. He had struggled the most to bear our father's death, so it was a relief to see he seemed to have overcome it somewhat. Our two mothers must have looked after him a great deal.
"Sigurd. It seems your journey was uneventful."
"Ivar."
It was the meeting of an uncle-aged elder brother looking upon his cute little sibling, and a younger brother now fully grown, desperate to appear as much the adult as possible.
That was about the extent of what could describe the relationship between Ivar and Sigurd. With Björn being even older than Ivar, it was even more complex, and Halfdan was stuck in the middle, playing the role of mediator.
'Björn, Ivar, Halfdan, Sigurd, Ubba, me.'
How did all six of us come from one man?
All of us were sons brimming with individuality, and it gave me a dim sense of why Father had always been roaming abroad. They say even raising one is hard. Raising six? Good heavens... I was struck anew by how truly remarkable Áslaug, the biological mother of the five brothers besides me, was.
"It couldn't have been easy persuading the old men of Roskilde; you've had a hard journey. Any trouble at Dover? I left a token there with its Earl."
"He was very cooperative. Eadberht, was it? He seemed to have no will to fight at all, so I only left a small guard for the ships and immediately marched to join you. Guthrum was very curious about the situation here."
"Ah—."
Ivar, smiling roundly as he stretched his supple body, grasped Sigurd's shoulder and guided him into the village.
"First, let the warriors rest outside the village, and then come inside, Sigurd. The situation is unfolding in an amusing way, you see. I have a great deal to tell you."
I was left with the impression, lingering in my mind, of a single serpent coiling itself around a plump, fleshy eagle chick.
'The serpent is in Sigurd's eyes, but it's Ivar who is the great serpent itself.'
Beyond the affectionate(?) brothers, the warriors of Roskilde stood waiting for orders, dazed. To arrange their billeting and provisions, I gathered them together.
"Come this way, all of you. Aren't you hungry?"
*****
"...So what you're telling me is, you defeated the local Konungr with only 800 men? I can scarcely believe it."
"Here they don't call him a Konungr, but a Cyning, their word for king. Truthfully, I never dreamed I'd shatter Edmund so thoroughly either. You know how it is: once two warrior-hosts meet, you have to see how they fare against one another at least once."
By the goodwill of Earl Sigebryht of Rendlesham, we were using the hall of the old kings as if it were our own. We sat gathered once more around the long table, sharing our news. The night grew ever deeper, and the flames blazing in the central hearth of the hall lit up six green eyes.
"It started as a greeting, a test of how tough these Angles were, but then Helgi shook the enemy line in a single breath. You should have seen it! After that, there was hardly any real fighting. Edmund, in the midst of it all, proved exceptionally skilled at removing his own hide from danger."
Faced with Sigurd's gaze, which seemed to ask for a bit more explanation, I could only shrug my shoulders.
"There's a city to the west called Beodericsworth. We heard he's holed up there, a place ringed entirely by stone walls. You can't assault a stone city with 800 men—no, it's fewer now, about 700—so that's the predicament you found us in, Sigurd. Twiddling our thumbs, unable to do one thing or another."
"Hmm—So, to put it simply, Edmund marched out with an ill-prepared force, got soundly beaten by Helgi, and scurried back behind his walls. Understood. So what is our next move?"
As if unable to contain his restless energy, Sigurd kept shifting his posture in his seat. Looking at him, Ivar gave a hollow laugh, and as if soothing a wild beast, he filled Sigurd's cup with a drink in a leisurely motion.
"According to our good friend, Earl Sigebryht, many of the Eorls here in East Anglia—and the people beneath them—have begun to doubt Edmund's ability. Beneath that doubt runs a deep-seated grudge against all the vile misdeeds Wessex and Mercia committed in this land."
"Wessex, Mercia?"
"The great kingdoms to the west of here. Mercia has grown weak, and Wessex's king is said to be on his very deathbed, so they are in disarray."
"Oh-ho—."
A hunter's instinct for its prey kindled between Sigurd's eyes, and Ivar, smiling with a similar look, continued to speak.
"What this means is, if we can just strike down Edmund and topple him, East Anglia could fall right into our grasp."
Just then, the fire flared up violently, writhing anew upon the sinister faces of us three brothers seated across from one another at the table.
[Hwareureuk!]
"...Good. Far better than I expected. So when do you plan to move?"
Sigurd asked, his voice feigning calm as he forced down his visibly excited demeanor, and Ivar answered without hesitation.
"We must give the troops you brought a moment to catch their breath, so let us depart in two days. I'll send word to Guthrum as well. The wounded can recover well enough here."
"Two days."
"Good."
Sigurd and I nodded gravely.
*****
Credit must be given where it is due.
I only knew Edmund from the memory of battle, but that Angle king's fighting spirit, at least, was the genuine article.
"You filthy, stinking barbarians! Wicked spawn of the Devil! Do you not fear the power of the Lord! Unbelievers! Heathens!"
Who was he calling filthy and stinking? The ones who never even washed.
"You shall all fall into Hell! There you shall burn in flames that never end! The great and holy Lord says in the Bible—!"
"How does that fellow know of the domain of Hel?"
Perhaps the wound from my javelin was not so deep; Edmund, clutching the injured spot with a deeply creased face, stood upon the wall and screamed his lungs out, his voice laced with a certain madness.
As he listened to Edmund's furious disrespect—partly to gauge the enemy's morale and the solidity of the wall—Ivar cocked his head abruptly at the familiar word.
At that, Sigurd, possessed of a supreme bard's and storyteller's instinct, snapped up the lure in an instant.
"Who knows? It seems they share a similar worldview. Perhaps they're even cousins of the Asgard gods."
"Well indeed, even gods must have neighbors. The ways of that world are beyond the knowing of us mortals..."
"Ah, come to think of it, the son of the priest most favored by Hel happens to be right here! What do you think, Helgi?"
My two brothers, who had been spinning a most blasphemous conversation, soon turned their arrows on me. The way they grinned roundly—anyone could see they were brothers!—was identically infuriating.
"As if I would know anything. Only this: the hell Edmund speaks of and the domain of Goddess Hel are wholly different spaces. From what I know, Goddess Hel embraces those who die a commonplace death like her own children. Her watchdog, Garmr, catches their scent and judges the dead souls. Those who broke their honor in life and committed foul sins suffer eternally in a land of ice."
"Oh—"
Ivar and Sigurd showed an expression of profound fascination at my words, which were seasoned with a touch of fiction. Naturally, the image of Hel varied from region to region, but as I was, after all, the son of a priest favored by Goddess Hel, how could I speak ill of her?
So, I had taken what my mother told me and simply fleshed it out a bit(?). And it seemed my brothers and the nearby guards all simultaneously pricked up their ears.
"Well, I should almost thank Edmund for this. Come to think of it, isn't this the first time my brother, who is so singularly blessed by all the gods, has actually spoken of them?"
"Wait, I must remember this to turn into a song."
Sigurd suddenly declared he had to record my words and bustled about, badgering the guards nearby to fetch something to carve letters into—a stone or a piece of parchment.
'Where in these open fields are you going to get paper? And when would you even carve letters into a rock?'
Fortunately, it seemed to have been a jest. At my dissuading gesture, Sigurd grinned and made me swear that I must, without fail, tell him the tales of the gods someday.
Of course, all throughout this little commotion, Edmund, drunk on the sound of his own voice, continued to screech relentlessly.
"—you hear me! You dung of Satan! At a single blast of His horn, the walls came down and all the profane within them fell! Repent your sins even now and come into His bosom! Then you shall be forgiven!"
"...Let's leave the matters of the gods aside for now. For the moment, we must attend to the affairs of men. What do you all think? Of that wall, I mean."
"Fairly tall and solid. But it's not insurmountable."
Ivar, seeming utterly weary of Edmund's relentless curses(?), shook his head roughly as he asked, and Sigurd answered.
Then, following the gaze of my two brothers who stared at the wall as if trying to dismantle it with their eyes alone, I also took a careful look once more at the wall encircling Beodericsworth.
Not terribly high, but a height that was fairly troublesome. There was a well-maintained waterway in front of it, and it looked as though we would first have to fill that to cross.
And flanking the gate made of solid timber, at each corner of the wall stretching left and right, there were wooden towers that looked much taller and sturdier. They shielded the archers inside quite effectively, which was a real headache from an attacker's standpoint.
"Good. It doesn't seem like a matter that will be settled in a day or two. We must first make camp. We'll build a palisade some distance from the wall, and then begin the siege. As it happens, many of my warriors used to work as carpenters; I'll have to make good use of that."
Ivar's vanguard and Sigurd's 2nd Expeditionary Force had also departed in relative haste, bringing only the veterans who could be mobilized immediately. But given the social nature of Norsemen, even warriors all held a second trade. Professional warriors—Huskarls—were few.
No, to be precise, it was easier to think that farmers, miners, fishermen, carpenters, merchants, and craftsmen all received the education of a warrior. It was an age when you had to defend your own village. The exceptional among them took up the warrior's path as their sole profession.
Therefore, this host of Norse warriors was overflowing with men who knew how to do all manner of things.
After that, leaving behind Edmund, who stood on the wall all day long expounding upon his god and just how terrifying and powerful that god was, we built a rather decent camp for the night and then began to craft 'toys' one could never expect from ordinary barbarians.