Elizabeth Mayne - Lady Of The Lake

The Vikings were newcomers to Warwick. They were refugees from Lombardy, Danes that had been trapped in the terrible famine that had racked province after province on the Continent. Edon looked from one wary face to the other and elected the eldest of the four as their leader. “Did you not hear my orders this morn, Viking?”

“Aye, lord, we heard you.” The man stood his ground on crooked legs, bowed from starvation. “I am known here as Archam the Bent. I am responsible for the fire, not my sons.”

“Why did you disobey my order?”

The four men exchanged glances. “Our holding begins at Wootton Wood,” the youngest answered. “Father, tell the jarl the truth, else he will have all of our heads up on stakes.”

“Be quiet, Ranulf,” said a brother.

“Are these your sons, Viking?” Edon directed his words to the elder. His grizzled head rocked up and down in affirmation. Edon could not place his age; his face and throat were too wrinkled and worn by the sun and wind and the loss of a great deal of weight.

“They are each my son. Once I had ten sons all as straight and tall as you. These three are all I have left.”

“Then why would you endanger them by going against my orders?” Edon demanded. When no answer came, he turned to Rig and commanded, “Take the eldest beyond the palisade and cut off his head.”

All four Vikings started as Rig and his soldiers stepped forward instantly to carry out Edon’s command.

“My lord!” the youngest protested, struggling to protect his brother. “We had no choice in burning the village. Asgart told us to clear the village land and plant it today. It was the only hide he would spare us.”

“Aye.” The father broke his proud silence, speaking from desperation. “We must plant our field now, else there will be no grain in our larder this winter. Midsummer is past.”

“When did you arrive in Warwick?”

“Last full moon, Jarl Edon,” said the youngest son. “We were just given our land assignment this rising.”

And from the look of them, a month ago they could not have swung an axe, any one of them. “How many are you? Wives, children and thralls?” Edon asked.

“We four survived the journey overland and the voyage, lord,” said the father.

“Who showed you where your holding was and gave you leave to burn your fields today?”

“Asgart of Wolverton rode out to the woodland with us and said we could plow from the top of the hill to the first stream behind the village. It was all the land there was to spare. He said to burn the cottages in our way, for the people inside were only squatters.”

“We didn’t want to burn them out, Lord Edon.” The eldest son finally spoke in his own defense. “Lord Asgart told my father to burn the huts or else to move north to York and ask for a hide of land from someone else.”

Edon was not surprised by that answer. He turned to Rig and said, “Send Thorulf to fetch Asgart. I will deal with him.”

These men were being used, victimized, as were the Mercian thralls in the quarry. Edon’s quarrel was not with them. Still, they had started a fire that cost a village, and someone must pay. Edon glared at all four of them and came to a summary judgment on the spot. “My man Maynard has surveyed the shire and parceled it as to my orders. There is good land, cleared and ready for planting, east of the quarry. Three of you may farm there beginning on the morrow. You, Ranulf, will pay for the damage done the village of Wootton by two months service to my general, Rig. Give your axe to your father. You will have no need of a weapon until you are released to your father’s house at the end of your duty.”

Edon turned to the father, asking, “Have you a longhouse, Archam the Bent?”

“Nay, we sleep under the stars. We will build a longhouse when we have land.”

“Rig, take the father to Maynard. You will go to my man, Maynard the Black. He will show you the fields you may work and issue you seed to plant in your field. Do not fell any trees that you cannot use for your longhouse. I will tolerate no more fires in this shire, is that clear?”

Gratitude was not a common virtue displayed among Vikings, but these men were clearly grateful for Edon’s leniency. Archam and his sons were not the type of Vikings that had gone out seeking fortunes and land forty years ago with Edon’s grandfather, Ragnar Lodbok. These Vikings had been farmers all their lives. If it came to battling with axe and sword they would be hard-pressed to defend their own, much less be of good service to Edon in a war.

That was the reason he took the healthiest son into his household to be trained in weapons and fighting by Rig. Instinctively, Edon knew where the real challenge to his authority came from: Asgart, Embla’s man.

It was time for the jarl of Warwick to assert his authority. Sighing, Edon dismissed the offenders. He went up to his keep and visited with his ladies and conferred with Theo, allowing him to use his mazer bowl on this occasion.

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