Darkness blacker than the very worst of men’s hearts spread its ugly wings overhead, in this manner naught could be seen or discerned, just as the waves below menaced every man aboard the ship. The Bear’s Horn was a vessel like any other, in the frozen northlands that had spawned Hroðgar, a long-ship more than eighteen meters long and four wide. It cut across the sea as might a man’s blade through another’s flesh. Sails high and open it accepted the good grace of the winds with a dignity and pride within every man’s heart and soul with equal fervour for it was their hope, that they would soon see land, ere the first frost.
Some took to the sea as might fish, others such as Amleth Oddersson took poorly to the waves and spent much of his time his back bent over the side of the ship. Yet for Hroðgar, the rocking of the ship, the odd sighting of a whale and the almost perpetually rotten food did little to diminish his resolve. Were it not for why he was aboard, he might have enjoyed himself. Thus, unable to find the slightest enjoyment, most of his time on the Horn had been spent behind an oar or below deck, assisting in the kitchen. Anything to escape the melancholy and grief that perpetually dogged him. Though, if melancholy sought to drag him overboard and to drown him in the deeps far below when it was not preoccupied with haunting his every dream.
At present, knife in hand, bent over a barrel of carrots below deck, so caught up was he in his own musings, mostly of what he would not give to cull the earth of all the gulls that had replaced the common crows at that moment. It was they whom haunted him worse than the melancholia, they that annoyed every man aboard the Horn, barring them from the sleep so many of them so ardently desired, with their endlessly, whining cries.
Suddenly, from the shadows behind him, echoed the jeering laughter of several members of the crew, as they sniggered at a particularly raunchy song they had taken to singing. Music was something that was never in short supply, no matter the hour of the day or night.
“Hroðgar! Are you still cutting up carrots? Come join us, we were just singing of your mother!” Glædwine teased him, always one to adore a good jest even if it was in poor taste or was ejaculated out at the wrong time.
It was Hroðgar’s view that, given the hour, his friend ought to have kept silent. Or as silent, as the obnoxious sailor could be.
Tall, though not nearly so as the former huscarl, Glædwine was as different from him as one could imagine. Bright, cheerful and friendly, he was the illegitimate son of a Jarl fostered with another and had spent most of his life at sea as either a merchant or raider. Blonde, with a short beard and vivid blue eyes, he was however no less a warrior than is friend. The captain was dressed in a hauberk and chainmail with a wolf-cloak thrown over his shoulders and pinned into place with a brooch, in the shape of a golden-crow. This emblem was his personal emblem and one he took pride in, for reasons that escaped his friend.
Always with a tune on his lips, a romantic and kindly man, he, it was who had invited Hroðgar and Sigewulf aboard the Bear’s Horn. This in spite of how they were outcasts, rejected by all.
More than three months before, Hroðgar had discovered his eldest children to have been murdered, and by the hands of the sons of his liege-lord, Ealdwald. The act had driven him to the brink of madness, so that he had threatened him in his halls. The result; Ealdwald had sent fifty men to slay him in the dead of night. Those men had been burnt to a man, with Hroðgar’s only regret being that he had had to sacrifice the corpses of his eldest son and daughter, to trick them.
Having the element of surprise, the former local hero-turned criminal had waited in ambush for the scouting-party that was sent out by Ealdwald. His impatience with the initial assassins, something that Hroðgar had taken well into account, when he laid his first ambush against the fifty men.
This new group of warriors approached the still burning house with considerable caution at first, wherefore at the first sight of the flames they froze with shock. Such was their bewilderment at what they saw that the six of them did not foresee the ambush, prepared for them.
Hurtling a short hafted battleaxe towards one of them, the burly warrior in this way dispatched first one, then by throwing all of his body-weight against a second he knocked this man off his feet. Swift as lightning, his sword gifted to him more than twenty years hence by Ealdwald himself was buried in the gut of another man, ere he withdrew it to slash the next apart.
In mere minutes, all the men had been cut down save he who had been thrown to the ground.
Hroðgar’s blade at his throat, it was that he decided to spare one heartbeat to the next, though it was not out of compassion that he did so, as he soon revealed. “On your feet knave, on your feet!”
“Wh-what do you plan, Hroðgar?” The man asked in a pleading voice, suspicious that the older farmer had some devious scheme in mind.
He was not far from the truth, with the bear-like warrior recognising the quavering coward as Sorin the Cattle-Farmer. Lip curling in disgust, as he had never liked the fellow since they were children (there was nigh on a seven-year age difference that separated them), he retorted. “You will return to that coward Ealdwald, and deliver him a message; that I, Hroðgar, shall hew down his entire family, tearing it asunder, from the root to the highest branches. This you may tell him, I have sworn to the gods with his men as my sacrifice to seal the oath!”
The man was aghast, but could do little more than make haste for the home of Ealdwald less he have, his throat slit open.
Once he had disappeared from sight, Hroðgar turned next to his son, saying to him, “And now we must prepare for the inevitable attack, by the whole of that clan of knaves.”
What he could not have predicted, was how those who lived within and just near to the lands of the Jarl would respond to their newly formed feud. Most of the local farmers and cattle-herders, took not the view that their fellow farmer was justified, in his deeds.
At the first, one of the neighbouring cattle-farmers sought to lure father and son to them; by offering them some apples from a garden he kept near where he raised his sheep. Offering them apples the day after the raid on the home of Hroðgar, he had come without his own sons or wife. This was the first sign that something was amiss.
Ignoring these misgivings as his own stomach had begun rumbling, after a night and morn’ with nary any food eaten. This along with how their children had always played together, and the fathers had remained firm friends throughout the whole of their lives; Hroðgar had little reason to suspect Horsa.
Horsa offered several of his choices apples from the basket, to Sigewulf who devoured them enthusiastically, under the approving eye of the farmer. “Hungry eh lad? Well, eat up; there are plenty of apples therein the basket for you.”
Blonde of hair and beard, he was stout with a large belly and rosy cheeks; he was typically an individual who inspired naught but ease. At present, he did just that, wherefore the suspicions of Hroðgar were allayed.
Reaching down to pluck an apple of his own, he devoured it with nigh on as much enthusiasm as his son had. It was not until he reached for his second that he glanced up, at his old friend.
Catching the stare of the other man, wherein he discovered the hint of something he had not seen there, ere that moment.
“You ought to have fed him better, hitherto now,” Horsa remarked to him, eyes upon the boy.
It was at that moment that Hroðgar heard the snapping of a bramble.
It might well have simply been the wife of the cattle-herder gathering berries as she tended to do, but his own misgiving got the better of him. The brief flash of panic in the eyes of Horsa, alerted him to the great betrayal that lay in mind for them. A strange calm overcame Hroðgar at that moment, as he stabbed into the other man with his gaze. “Horsa… what have you done? What, in the name of Woden, has come over thee?”
Another man might well have differed, and though there was the barest of minutes spent attempting to deny his crime, Horsa seeing the futility of this act soon admitted the truth. His was a reaction of anger, as he drew steel, with a hardened look on his face, “Amongst the men who were burnt alive, by you Hroðgar was my son. You cost me, my son!”
“It was he who chose to invade my home, Horsa, he who followed Ealdwald,” Hroðgar snapped without the slightest prickle of remorse. “This after Ealdwald’s sons cost me mine, and my daughter.”
There was no sympathy in Horsa, who shrugged his shoulders, “From what I had heard, if your daughter had kept her legs closed, none of this would have happened.”
In the distance, a crow cawed. Black feathers came to decorate a nearby tree and the ash-trees nearest to that one, as it took flight. Many were the birds of that sort that flocked wherever or whithersoever father and son wandered.
The cub who had paused in his meal, to stare in mute shock at the cruel condemnation, of the sister he had loved so much could hardly summon any words. Words that might well have defended his kin, or damned the man before him, he knew not.
Utterances of any sort were meaningless, as Hroðgar put an end to a man he had dubbed friend, since his most tender of years. The bellow of outrage, on the part of Horsa’s brother and the subsequent charge, was soon cut short also, wherefore he turned to his son.
“Take the apples back, to the farm,” He commanded his son, with a dark look to the corpses of the two men before them.
Never one to defy his father, Sigewulf did as bidden rather more eagerly, than any other orders previously given. Apprehensive at the sight of the bodies, he left his father to the bloody task of severing the heads and putting them atop two spikes.
This act was not one that Hroðgar had planned at the outset. But the insult to his children could not go unpunished.
It happened in the days that followed, more of the farmers banded together to hunt him and Sigewulf, once they heard of the murder of Horsa. Great was the red-hot rage of the man’s wife and daughters, when they discovered his and his brother’s heads and raven-pecked corpses. Such was the wroth that overtook them that they swore thence, to aid Ealdwald in the murdering of father and son. A number of other families soon joined the two, for Horsa’s wife had come from a large, family one well-connected to all in the area.
Hardly blind to the danger, and with his own cattle hidden some distance north of where the farm had been whilst he and his son took to the woods. It was there that they throve for a time, resting uneasily and lighting a fire only to cook food, and that one was lit solely after most had gone to sleep. It was a dangerous time.
A time that stretched into weeks, as they moved from forest to forest, from cave to cave, many days. That is, until they woke up one morn’, to discover their herds gone. The animals had been grazing when he had fallen asleep, some hours away, from them.
Unable to find them, Hroðgar cursed himself for his stupidity as he failed to find them. How could he be so stupid? How could have allowed himself to nod off, in the dead of night, when there was the ever-present danger of one of the locals happening upon them?
“Where are they?!” He cried out, looking about and searching all throughout the landscape that he had left them, some hours away from where they slept.
This query he repeated to himself, several times in an ever mounting frenzy, this in spite of his knowledge that they were gone because someone had taken them. His sense of panic, and horror, was one that his son sought to calm by calling out to him.
“Father! Father! There is naught to worry, we will simply find the herd,” He pleaded, seeking to calm his stricken father.
Irritated with the boy’s prattling, Hroðgar was to push him away, forcing himself to breath in and out over the course of several long minutes. Sigewulf looked hurt, and stared at him with tears in his eyes feeling this rejection by his sire, indifferent to his pained feelings he ignored the boy.
“Come, we will track down the one who stole what is ours,” the warrior growled, his hand on his sword’s hilt.
This they did. They did indeed track down the animals, which was not terribly difficult for a man trained since his most tender years in the hunt. The truth though was to prove herself far murkier than originally expected. At the first they thought that it was one of Horsa’s friends, Ivarr who had taken them all. But when questioned, after he was lured out into the woods and cornered with a blade to his throat, he confessed to have sold most of them.
“I found them in the field, I did not know they were yours Hroðgar,” Squealed the other man, utterly terrified for his life.
“But all I saw out there, were chickens, where are my cows, sheep and donkeys?” Hroðgar demanded of his soon-to-be victim, as the other man blubbered so pitifully that Sigewulf looked on him with pity. This was only noted absently by the father, so intent was he on his own work it was all he could do.
“I s-s-sold them! Hroðgar you must believe me, had I known-”
“You did, and you hardly cared,” He gritted out from betwixt clenched teeth.
In the distance, a crow cawed.
It happened in that instant, just as he prepared another feast for the ravens and the crows that Sigewulf took it upon himself, to show mercy for the first. It was he who pressed his small hands, to his father’s arm shaking his head even as he wordlessly pleaded with him.
Hroðgar should very much have liked, to have refused him. His violent instincts pushed him to do so.
This was to prove a mistake. A raven crowed in dissatisfaction. This ought to have served as a reminder of what he had lost, of what he might yet still lose. Yet, in this moment as he stared into his son’s blue gaze, he felt his arm go slack.
It was foolish; it was putting the boy’s life at risk which went against all that he stood for. And yet, more than that he could not bring himself, to disappoint those eyes in that moment. Swallowing his temper he pushed the man away, unable to explain to himself why he should let the worm go. He had stolen from them, taken advantage of the difficulties of those around him for his own profit and had little in the way of ethics.
As said, this was a mistake. A foolish one, and yet, “Go! Go and return to the farm, yet if I hear that you have sold us to that rat Ealdwald, I will hunt you! I will hew you where you stand, just as I did Horsa, and his filthy brother.”
The man did as ordered, this after several more tears were shed. It was once he was well and truly clear of the woodlands that he took to shouting. “I have seen them! They are here! Hroðgar! Hroðgar is here, he is in the woods!”
Hroðgar wished thence that he had slain the knave.
Things only became worse for them, in the days that followed, after he chose to spare Ivarr. It was he who reported which forest they had taken to, where they had likely hidden, and just how Sigewulf had calmed his killer instincts.
As they fled in the night west, for the lands of Yngvar the good-brother of Ealdwald it was difficult not to blame Sigewulf. Their journey was bloody, mostly noiseless and saw the warrior carry his child on his back as he raced through the night, his heart beating against his ribs. Never before had he known such fright, and never before had he been hunted in quite that manner.
They fled through the night, just ahead of a hundred torches and screams, as the locals who had once been his friends, his nearest of kin, hunted him as one might a gazelle in the wild. They did unto him, as he wished to do unto the sons of Ealdwald.
Dreadful as the night was, it was not until he had hidden the boy in a cave near to the estate of Yngvar with a sizeable amount of cow-meat stolen from one of his former neighbours. It was a risk, and one that had to be taken, as he turned back down the route he had taken to the cave.
Offering up a prayer to Woden, he pleaded with the god of war and heroes for aid in the hours that were to follow.
What followed was to prove itself, far more violent, than those that had preceded it. Tracking down first one small group of scouts, Hroðgar was to evince little in the way, of mercy or reason. It was dark, and the locals carried torches so that the finding of them proved itself easy in the woods. The first group he ambushed happened upon him, quite by accident so that they hardly had time to scream before he had slit their throats.
The second group gave him considerably more difficulty, as one of the men was a warrior he had once fought alongside and who was far more ready than the others. In the midst of hiding behind a nearby oak, the outlaw had resorted to sword and knife. Stabbing down with the former, just as the torch-bearer moved to pass him by.
The strike drew a great shriek of agony unlike any other, he had ever heard, even with his thirty years of experience in violence and struggle against neighbouring warlords. This cry was primordial and silenced as swiftly as it was torn from, a throat that was slit even more quickly than the man lost several toes.
Kicking him out against those behind the now dying man, his torch flying wild as it fell against one of the three in this scouting-party.
His next sword stroke served to slice the man’s throat even as he sought to put out the fire that had started, on his fur cloak. This sword-blow might well have been followed up by another, were it not for the speed with which the third man, recovered from his brief surprise. Pushing away from he who had fallen against him, he rolled back head over heels, wherefore he drew himself to his full height.
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Sword in hand, he made a wild slash at the knife-hand. Drawing back now himself, hardly keen to lose a hand, Hroðgar was to discard the weapon in favour of a buckler. Nervous about the clash with Alvis the Wonder, as some had once dubbed him. A formidable warrior, with no less than ten years of age over the father of Sigewulf, the other man was a warrior who had won for himself an unchallenged reputation. Such was the renown he had developed over the course of forty years of hard fighting that sagas are still sung of him.
There was a time that the other man, had saved Hroðgar, and whom he had saved half so many times with the younger man, having once considered the other something of an inspiration. Such was the friendship that had bound them together that they had considered themselves almost brothers. Or so Hroðgar had considered them, after the many times they had fought together side-by-side, against the many neighbours of Ealdwald.
Surly and unpleasant at the best of times, the other man was dark, with grey hair and pale skin that was almost snow-white in its colouration.
Now they stood against one another.
“I would not have it so, Alvis,” Hroðgar warned desperately.
“Because you know, you will die.” The other man sneered, charging once more, striking with all his considerable might and weight with his sword.
Aware that weight lent strength, as did the straightening of one’s sword arm from a previously bent position, the man struck at Hroðgar hard. The blow hit his buckler hard, with such force that he felt it resound all the way up his arm.
Hroðgar attempted to strike back, and once again the sword of Alvis moved to intercept, and parried away his weapon. Twisting away to avoid losing his sword hand, the outlaw was to fall back almost losing his footing in the snow as a second strike, then a third followed.
‘I despise defence,’ Hroðgar grumbled internally with more than a little panic, as he came close to tripping as he retreated.
“What is the matter, Hroðgar? You did better in the battle of the Glacial-River!” Alvis taunted him, “No wonder your son died squealing like a pig! If he fought as poorly as you do now, I can see how Ealdwald’s limp sons might have bested him!”
The fury that suffused Hroðgar’s being at those words, were unlike anything he had ever felt before. It was as though the whole of his being was full of molten lava, as his ears roared and his eyes saw crimson.
The next time there was a sword blow, he did not avoid it as he had previously done, nor did he seek to back away. To the contrary, he stepped forward taking the blow to the shield, but this time it was not only him who felt his arm ache and his wrist purple but the mighty bear sworn to Ealdwald. Striking with all he had in him, against the sword with the buckler as he pressed forward with all his weight.
Grunting in pained surprise, Alvis was to back away, flat-footed and distracted. This was exactly what his foe had been waiting for; next came the underhanded stab beneath shield and sword.
Thrown forward by the momentum of his own rage and weight, Hroðgar fell onto his foe from the slight upraised position he had assumed as they fought.
The second, third and fourth stabs that followed had resulted in more grunts of surprise, but soon as the blood of the berserker soaked the snow and flooded the ground they lay next to one another. Both wounded, both aching but one of them, dying while the other would live.
It was impossible to say how long they lay there; panting side by side as exhaustion nearly overcame victor and loser aside.
“Fly, fly from this place Hroðgar,” Alvis breathed, eyes staring up at the stars heaving and struggling to continue breathing. “You shall find naught save death, especially for that boy of yours in this place.”
His words sounded almost kindly. There was a kind of softness to them that Hroðgar wished to put his trust in. However, in recent days his trust in others had eroded so very much, so that he found himself instinctively mistrusting and bucking against them.
In place of blindly doing so, he sought to ambush one more group of scouts ere, he returned to the cavern to retrieve his son and flee back into the lands of Ealdwald. It was a stratagem that served him well, with this last group fighting well it shan’t be denied, but nowhere near as well as Alvis. Their screams served to attract the other scouting-parties and caused them to intensify the search.
The trouble for these self-appointed justiciars was that the screams of the dying also served to attract the attention of Yngvar’s own men. Men who came out in force themselves, to clash with the farmers and warriors who served Ealdwald, so that they were themselves chased out of the region.
By that time, Hroðgar had already returned whither to the east, making for near to the palisade-guarded home of Ealdwald.
Unwise others might have dubbed his refusal to flee, to fly to the safety of Yngvar and his holdings, to hide there amongst his men or to entreat him to war with Ealdwald. Much as he might have liked to do so, he could not because much as he despised the Jarl he had once served, he clung to his previous hatred for Yngvar also. This was also to be a personal war, between him and Ealdwald, not two lords.
This was the reason, he preferred to fly back to the lands from whence he came, leaving as ever a trail of blood and death. His still sleeping son, snoring softly on his back with the father by the time he stopped to put him down, did so several hours from the fort of his former liege. Hungry, he was to devour the remainder of their rations with his ever ravenous son.
“Father, how shall we take revenge now?” Sigewulf asked of him, speaking cautiously for fear of upsetting his father once again. He had noticed just how easily angered the man could become, at the slightest wrong-gesture or word, so that the boy had come to fear his sire.
If it at all came to his attention, and if it bothered him at all, the chief-most warrior of the locality showed no hint of regret or any other emotion on his face at that moment. Not when there was some thinking to be done, as he considered this query. It was a good one after all, and made him stop if only for a moment to examine how best, to proceed with securing justice.
“I am not certain, but we shall soon see my son,” He replied to the boy, who nodded slowly, visibly unhappy with this decision.
Two weeks later saw them still puzzling over this issue, as warriors and farmers wandered all about in the hopes that they might hunt down father and son. The gates often opened were guarded by at least three guards at all times, so that Hroðgar would not risk, an attack lest he leave his son unguarded once more. Though, nothing had happened the prior time he had left his son alone, but the fear of his loss would not allow him to do so a second time.
During that time, he noted the movements of the enemy, how often they ventured forth from the safety of their walls. What worried him most was the security of the enemy and the caution with which they now moved so that there was nary a single opportunity left to him, to wreak his vengeance upon them.
Morn’ became evening and dusk turned to dawn as the days passed swiftly, with Hroðgar’s despair mounting and his frustration grew. It happened one day that he would venture nearer to the walls, to attempt to slip into the fort when one day near to the end of the second week, it happened that Ealdwald with a large number of his huscarls departed at last from the safety of his walls. Stunned at this good fortune which took place at noon, when the suns were at their zenith with the warrior by this time weary, as he had slept but fitfully and rarely.
Hardly believing his good fortune, he would have followed, however; his rival took to the north-west in the direction of the sea, though this hardly occurred to him at this time. So caught up with his thirst for revenge that, he could only curse and scream in a fit of rage when after several hours of trailing the warrior, he was left firmly behind. Thirty men a-horse could move with such swiftness that a man, with a child on his back, could not hope to follow.
“Father, we must turn back!” Sigewulf cried out, after hours of following the hoofmarks in the ground left by the steeds and ponies that the Jarl had relied upon, to transport him and his men. “We shan’t hope to follow, if we do not know where he is bound!”
It happened that the father froze, debating this point internally. He knew his son to be right, though a part of him would have preferred to continue to charge forward. He had a need to move, needed to attack, Ealdwald directly. The trouble for him was that he was to stop to ask himself if he had seen the children of the Jarl or not. Uncertain of himself, he had to concede that for one thing he was destined to trail behind his objective with nary any success. Not without knowing where the children were, whithersoever they were bound, and how long they intended to remain gone for?
Thus, they turned about much to the chagrin of Hroðgar, so that they might seek out more knowledge from those near to the estate of the Jarl he had served for so many years. It was hours before they were to once more see the long-house of the Jarl.
It was another several days ere they found out, what it was that Ealdwald had departed for. Impatient to throw himself against an enemy, as a warrior he was ordinarily fairly patient yet at present he had no wish to do so. He simply wanted retribution.
All efforts to hunt him down, had begun to fade away he had noticed much to his distress, since he had a need for them to do so, if he was to truly extricate information from someone. Frustrated, Hroðgar decided upon a rather more impulsive gesture that he might otherwise have refused to do.
He opted to seek to set fire to the west-wall of Ealdwald’s estate. The palisade’s watch had been relaxed since the Jarl had departed, and though there was still a look-out here and there most of the time, it was not always watched as sternly as before. It was at this time, he struck with the vengeance so characteristic of his person, in recent days. Hroðgar did so under the weary eye of his son, who might have otherwise preferred to find a place to sleep.
“Observe, and learn for the future, my son,” He was to instruct the youth, who did reluctantly as he was told while the fire was started near the dry wood of the walls.
Once the fire had been started, the two fled the west of the wall so that they might circle about the estate to strike from the north-wall. This only after Sigewulf had been given instructions to go hide in the northern corner of the forest so that his father, may devote himself to the conflict with the estate.
The siege, so to speak, was to begin once the fire was discovered, and before the enemy had come to the realization of who it might be who had started it. Throwing a spear, he had stolen from one of those hunting for him, days prior Hroðgar was to toss it through the chest of one of the guards. The man fell ere he could scream, with the other guard next to him near to the gates began to cry out, just as Hroðgar hurried over to hew him down.
Throwing the cloak of one of the men, over his shoulders along with his helm, the father threw himself behind the walls. While all those who were awake, sought to move to put out the growing fire, and moved to open the south-gate that they might make way for the river that was to the east of the estate.
“You there!” Called out one of the many guards, who raced past the middle-aged warrior, wherefore he told him, “Go awaken the Jarl!”
Nodding his head dutifully, as he had done countless times in the past, when he had served Ealdwald, the only part of these orders that startled him was the knowledge that the Jarl was missing. Crossing into the long-house, he was to move through the interior, instinctively with nary any hint of hesitation so that he soon stood before, the bed of the Jarl. The bed in question was one made of hay, with the figure resting thereupon it was a plump one, with a short beard and balding hair.
Bewildered by this discovery, along with that of the softer breath of the woman who was nestled against the man’s side, for all knew that Ealdwald’s wife had passed years hence.
“Wake up,” He hissed drawing his sword from its scabbard, and still the man snored, ignorant of the danger that loomed over him. “Wake up, I say!”
Now a swift kick to the side resulted, so that the Jarl awoke with a groan and a curse. He might have said more, as he froze mid-curse once he noticed the sword at his throat. “Who-who are you? Wait, Hroðgar how- why are you here?”
The man before him, he realized at once as soon as he heard his voice, was not Ealdwald. Hardly able to see in the darkness and being far too unsure of the situation outside to take up a torch, he only now came to know that it was not in fact his enemy, but rather the man’s younger brother Ælfred.
A much more temperate man, if plumper and younger by some twelve years than his elder sibling the man before him, was one whom Hroðgar had difficulty marking as an enemy. He had never fully gotten along with the Jarl, and had little to do with the upbringing of his nephews and nieces.
“Why are you not on Eadmund’s estate to the north-west?” Hroðgar queried, bewildered and angry.
“I left my good-brother’s estate at the call of Ealdwald,” The younger man explained, eyes on the sword at his throat, “I had thought you followed Ealdwald!”
“No, now where is he?”
“He has gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?” The warrior growled, almost shaking with fury, as he stared almost blood-eyed at the man before him.
Ælfred opened his mouth to answer, seemed almost to rethink it, then pleaded, “If I tell you, will you at least let my Gilda live?”
The fact that he did not plead, for his own life shook something in the warrior, even as he eyed the still slumbering woman, if briefly so.
Slowly he nodded, with Ælfred sighing, a little in relief, wherefore he answered, “He has gone west.”
“West where?”
“West, farther than you or I could imagine,” Ælfred continued bitterly, “He has left me with all the enemies he has accrued over the years, and answered the call. The call of Ælle and Vengrist, and gone to Nordbeorn to buy passage with all his best warriors, for the isle of Bretwealda.”
“Bretwealda?” Hroðgar queried, only to shake his head, “Never heard of it.”
“It is called the ‘Lordly-Isle’,” Explained the new Jarl bitterly, his brow knitting together in consternation, “You were such a terror, and with the neighbouring Jarls keen to pounce on the weakness demonstrated by us, he has fled. He will never return, and you shall never see him again, Hroðgar.” Hesitantly, he added, as though keen to allay the warrior’s fury. “You have won, is it not enough?”
The question caused him to tremble with fury.
In spite of this sentiment, he would not strike down the younger warrior and preferred to sheath his sword. This did not mean that he was keen to allow the lesser man to escape him unscathed, so that he struck him with all the ferocity of a bear.
The blow split the man’s nose and bruised his cheek, and left his head spinning visibly, not that Hroðgar paid his injuries much mind.
Resolved to leave him with no other wounds, it was the view of the father of Sigewulf that this was the end of the matter of his conflict with Ælfred. This proved to be a mistake, as the other man was not without some measure of spite himself.
Angry at the unjustified blow, or what seemed to be the case to his mind, he opened his mouth and called out to his men. “To me! To me! Hroðgar is here! Hroðgar is within the home of Ælfred!”
His home’s infiltrator could well have stabbed him in that instant. The accompanying shriek of the lady of the house attracted all the more the attention, of those guards newly awakened to the danger to their liege. Arriving in time, only to find the Jarl attempting to calm his much beloved wife and coax her to cease her sobbing, he turned to his men.
“What is the matter with you lot? After him! After him!”
“Who milord?”
“Hroðgar! He was just here, disguised as one of you!”
But it was too late, the man in question had by this time had slipped out from within the estate.
Retrieving his son once more, Hroðgar was to carry him on his back once more, this time for nigh on three sleepless days. Angered by the attack on his person, and determined to end the blood-feud, Ælfred led his men himself throughout the hunt.
An experienced tracker, no less the equal to his elder brother, he worked closely with his finest warriors to track his enemy. So that it was now the turn of the outlawed-man, to be stricken and full of fear as he moved north-west.
At the first, Ælfred failed to realize exactly where it was that his prey was headed towards. Late one night, as he discussed the newest tracks and how Hroðgar had taken to covering the said tracks.
“He is clever, yet careless,” Reported one of his men, remarking to the new Jarl, “He is doubtless attempting to trick us into crossing into the lands of Jarl Hólmgeirr’s lands. This way he could escape, in the confusion caused by the conflict between us.”
“That is not what he intends to do,” Ælfred grumbled, disbelieving his man, though not without due consideration.
“What does he intend to do?”
The Jarl did not answer at once. Rather, he stared on at the horizon past the coloured leaves of the nearby trees, the first hint that winter would soon be upon them. It was times such as these that, Ealdwald’s brother, wondered whether the gift of his newfound position was a curse, or a blessing.
A sigh escaped him, wherefore he replied to his guards’ queries, “He intends to reach Steinnhlér, in the hopes find, passage on a ship to Bretwealda.”
At the first, the dogged pursuit by Ealdwald’s younger brother had been more annoyance than truly a source of fright. It was only after the first arrow had buzzed near Sigewulf’s knee that Hroðgar had swallowed his pride, enough to acknowledge him as the threat he truly was. This had led to the outcast struggling even more, in the days that followed, to stay ahead, to cover his tracks and to evade the hunting dogs and scouts of the Jarl.
The fact that he had stayed a little ahead of the new lord was reassuring. Ealdwald, would have seen to cornering him by this time and would not have failed when given half the opportunities Ælfred had been offered.
This only made Hroðgar feel all the more irritated, with himself. He knew that as time went on, and he was prevented from sleeping properly, he was making more and more mistakes. He needed rest, and he needed to stop to eat a proper meal.
At last, the enemy relented. It was not noticeable at the first, and yet it was a balm that allowed for Hroðgar to temporarily slip off the path he had been treading whither north-west. Finding himself a small clearing in the forest, he was to allow Sigewulf to trap two hares which they cooked and ate, wherefore he fell asleep for the first time in days. His son on watch-duty, a task that he was grateful to give over to the child, though he promised himself it would only be for a brief time.
When he awoke, it was well past noon, the intended time when his son ought to have woken him. Noticing that the moon was at its zenith, he glanced about in a panic, convinced that something had happened to the boy.
“Sigewulf! Sigewulf!” He called stricken and worried, only to stop when he heard the child’s soft snores. The realization that he had fallen asleep on duty came as a shock, one that took Hroðgar some time to recover from. “Sigewulf, wake up, you little fool!”
“F-father? What is it?” Sigewulf asked, his voice thick with sleep and eyes blinking in confusion and irritation.
“You fell asleep,” it was all that he could squeeze out. The boy blinked once more in confusion, which was more than what Hroðgar could take at that moment. The slap that followed threw the boy onto the ground and left him near the root of a large oak in a state of shock. “You little fool! You were supposed to wake me at noon, and we were to continue on towards Steinnhlér! But in place of that you fell asleep, you stupid little fool!”
“I did not fall asleep, you just did not wake up,” Complained his son.
“Then throw water on me from the brook,” was the retort, as a finger jabbed towards the source of water in question. “Be glad, you little worm, all I did was slap you.”
His harshness towards his whimpering son, made the boy moan all the more. Not that his father was at all affected by his weakness, to the contrary, it only hardened him all the more against him.
One day, he mused to himself, such a stupid mistake on the part of his son would likely cost them both their lives. A part of him also blamed himself, for entrusting the task to so unworthy a travelling companion.
The only thing to be grateful for, he told himself, was that he had had time enough, to become fully rested. This meant he could once more push forward, with the same grit and determination that he had done days previously (and without the mounting number of mistakes on his part).
Gathering together the few belongings they had, it was not long before they set out, with the darkness of night remaining for hours afterwards. It was with a great deal of relief to both of them that they did not encounter the Jarl, or his men, for the remainder of the evening and early morn.
The road that stretched ever on, was one unfamiliar with the by now sullen Sigewulf, who had fallen into a cold silence towards his father. Ordinarily his son’s quietness would worry the father, who did have a fondness for the child’s chatter, but as they did not know where the enemy had gone or where or when they might next appear he paid it no mind. This only served to exacerbate the distance that divided them now, in spite, of how the elder of the two continued to physically at times carry the younger.
In time, nearer to the end of the day when Sigewulf began to doze, not wishing to fall asleep as he stubbornly sought to prove himself to his father he asked of him, “Where are we headed?”
“To Steinnhlér,” Answered Hroðgar.
“Have you gone there before?”
“Aye,” Was the immediate answer, with the warrior hesitant to add yet feeling as though he must, “Once, with Ealdwald more than ten years ago.”
“And if they do not like us any more than those from nearer to home, father?” Sigewulf asked doubtfully of him.
“We go there to seek out Glædwine, if he is there or his brother Ulf,” Hroðgar explained to his son, his eyes set upon the horizon that stretched out before them.
Sigewulf did not ask him much more, regarding his friends. Unfamiliar with their names, as Hroðgar had never mentioned either of them ere this moment, the boy opened his mouth though to ask after them, only to close his mouth. The boy was to opt not to ask, out of preference to renew his sullen silence in the hopes to guilt his father into an apology, not that his father cared to do so.
Rather more concerned with pressing forward, his thoughts and prayers with the road that stretched ahead of them.
The city when it arose in the distance did so in grandeur, with the city one of a multitude of long-houses and small huts all cluttered together behind a large five-meter-high palisade. Inhabited by nigh on two thousand souls, it was the largest collection of people, in the whole of the locality. So that it came about that Sigewulf gaped at the sight of it, having never seen so bizarre and strange a place before, and thus utterly unprepared for it.
“Welcome to the city of Steinnhlér,” Hroðgar grunted, amused by his shock, wherefore he added, “It is from here that we will pursue Ealdwald.”
“How so?”
“Because, this is the only port from which Hroðulf and Ælfgar operate from in this locality.” He told him, with the boy mouthing the names, only to hurry along after him asking who they were. But his father did not answer him, not being particularly interested in clarifying this information for him.
The locality stunk so greatly that Sigewulf was to wrinkle his nose and complain irritably, “Why does it stink so?”
“That is the stench of people,” Explained Hroðgar with a shrug of his massive shoulders, searching about the faces of all those they passed as they entered for someone he might know.
His gaze moving from one point to another, so that he searched about for a single point or person of familiarity, his search was brought to a halt when he saw a banner fluttering in the wind. It was a shock to him, when he noticed the banner of Ealdwald and Ælfred. The banner was that of a large black crow on a red bolt of cloth.
It was at this moment that his stomach sunk to below his feet, with his son no less dismayed as he pointed at the banner planted in the earth just outside the tavern, and pointed at it frantically.
The two turned to head for the opposite part of the town, when Ælfred and his men suddenly appeared just outside of the tavern. The men caught sight, at once, of the warrior and calling out his name to the horror of Hroðgar who knew himself to be now well and truly cornered.