The Yngling

3.

The castle was much larger than that of Martin Gutknekt and had a moat with brown billows of dead algae. The gate stood open in the sunlit morning as the neovikings walked their horses across the drawbridge. The gate guards scowled at the strangely garbed and equipped riders but did not move to stop them. As the warriors approached the great squat keep, the two guards at its entrance lowered their pikes, and one called down to halt. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

Nils stared up the stone steps at them, one enormous hand spread on a thick thigh, making the most of his size and imposing physique as they stared back at him. "Who is your master?" he responded.

This question for a question stopped the slow-witted guard. After a moment he answered, "The graf, Karl Haupmann."

"Tell him four northmen are here to see him, with information about a strong force of horse barbarians in the country."

The sun-browned face stared suspiciously at the big northman, jaws working with indecision. These strangers obviously were not nobles, or even knights. Nils helped him. "Or would you rather be staked out in the sun and flayed?"

The guard stepped back, then turned reluctantly through the open door. His partner's mind squirmed with discomfort at being left alone to face the four big warriors, a discomfort that the three could read in his face as certainly as Nils read it in his mind.

"At home men like that would be thralls," Leif Trollsverd said.

"That's about what they are here," Sten answered.

The remaining guard stared at them, perplexed by the unfamiliar tonal syllables. He knew German and Anglic, but had never heard any other language and was uncertain whether this was truly speech or not. After several minutes a burly knight came out of the interior and squinted down at them in the bright sunshine. He snapped fast words in German, and they sat looking impassively up at him until he repeated in Anglic. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

"We are northmen and want to see the graf," Nils said dryly. "We've seen a large force of horse barbarians near the district of Martin Gutknekt."

The knight sneered. "Show a skin-clad savage a peasant riding on an ox and there's no telling what he'll think he saw."

The usually imperturbable Sten rose in his stirrups and had his sword half out before Nils put a hand on his wrist and spoke softly in Swedish. Turning back to the knight, Nils said with mild calm, "Then let us tell him what we think we saw."

Without saying anything more, the man led them inside and to a throne room some fifteen meters long. Entering, they passed two guards with pikes and swords who stood by the open door. Five mail-clad knights stood on the dais near the throne; three were breathing deeply as if they had hurried to be there. Karl Haupmann sat upright and hard-faced, as his marshal, followed by the barbaric-looking warriors, strode to the foot of the dais and stated the particulars in German.

Nils recognized an unforeseen problem here. The graf was a cruel and ruthless man with a pathological suspicion of foreigners.

He looked at them. "Northmen, eh? What is this about horse barbarians?"

"There's a large force of them, between one and two hundred, camped in the mountains near the district of Martin Gutknekt. We think they plan to take his principal village."

The graf's emotional pattern was ugly, but his speech, if curt, was civil. "Why do you think they'll try to take Doppeltanne?"

Nils sensed here a xenophobe who might have them attacked on the spot if he thought it safe. And lacking any tactical advantage, the odds of nine to four did not appeal to Nils, especially with the two door guards behind them. He stated his answer matter-of-factly, in a voice of utter assurance. "First, I didn't say 'try.' There is no question of their ability. Second, they'll need food and shelter for the winter, and the village has both. Third, they're camped near Gutknekt's district. And forth, they're in tents, making no effort to build huts against the winter."

"And why should I listen to you?" The graf's control cracked for a moment. "You are foreign barbarians yourselves. What are northmen doing in Bavaria, unless…?"

"We're going to Baalzebub's land. Our army beat his and killed Baalzebub himself. Now we will take his country."

"But we'd heard you were passing far to the east, far east of the Czechlands." The graf stared intently at Nils through narrowed eyes.

"The rest of our people are. The four of us have come this way to see to some business."

"What business?"

To say "a woman" might amuse and relax the graf, but it might also make them seem ludicrous and weak. On the other hand, while to say "our own business" might offend him dangerously, it might also impress him with their fearlessness and make him cautious.

"Our own business."

The graf darkened and, turning, spoke to his marshal in German for a full minute. The marshal nodded curtly and left. The other knights tightened.

"Then why do you come to tell me about horse barbarians? They're no business of yours, are they?" There was a note of triumph in the graf's voice.

"Maybe they shouldn't be. Not here at any rate." Nils looked at the others. "Let's go," he said in Swedish, "but be ready to fight." They turned to leave.

"Wait!" The graf stood up. "You saw their camp. How can we find it?"

They stopped. "It is in the mountains west of Doppeltanne," Nils answered. There are three main ridges between the valley and their camp, or maybe four. They are camped along the east foot of the next ridge west. Or they were. They may be in Doppeltanne by now."

The man was stalling for time, Nils realized.

Sitting back down, the graf asked more questions about the condition of the enemy and their horses and what Nils thought their tactics might be. After several minutes he arose abruptly. "I am keeping you from your journey," he said. "Thank you, Northmen, for your information." His eyes were like chips of flint, and a smile played at one corner of his mouth. "And travel in peace."

Nils nodded, and the four warriors started toward the tall broad door of the chamber. Halfway there Nils sensed that the knights were moving; glancing back, he saw them sauntering from the dais. Though seemingly casual, they were taut inside, and nervous. Nils paused briefly in the doorway, then started down the wide corridor.

"When he sent his marshal out," he said rapidly, "it was to set a trap. After that he was stalling for time. The ones behind us are the smaller jaw."

The short flight of stairs leading down to the entrance of the keep was only half as wide as the corridor. They would be bunched there, with no room to maneuver. Just short of the stairs, Nils quietly said "Stop," steppped to a window and leaned out on his stomach through the thick-walled opening to scan the courtyard. Outside stood a phalanx of bowmen and a group of mounted knights, facing the door.

The knights following the northmen had continued a few paces and stopped uncertainly. "Take them," Nils said, and they fell upon them.

At the sounds of fighting and the shouts of the knights, the entrance guards below began to shout. The unexpectedness and ferocity of the northmen's attack overran the knights, three of whom fell while the others gave way and let them pass. One of the guards at the throne room door dropped his pike and ran into a side corridor while the other, cursing, stepped quickly through the door and tried to close it. It burst open in his face, throwing him to the floor as the four warriors rushed in.

The graf stood in front of his throne, drawing a short sword, but Nils met him at the foot of the dais and bisected him casually in passing, then led them through a curtained doorway behind the throne and up a flight of stairs. This took them to a suite of rooms above, where they found a woman, obviously the grafin, and a boy in his early teens. Startled, the boy drew a knife, but Leif grabbed his wrist and the knife clattered on the flags as the boy yelled with pain.

Erik covered the stairwell then, and Leif and Sten held their two prisoners while Nils gagged them. They could hear someone shouting in the throne room, and while Nils snatched a bow and quiver of arrows from the wall, angry voices and shod feet sounded from below. Strong-arming their prisoners, they hurried out of the apartment into another corridor and from it into a climbing stairwell that wound within the outer wall.

Voices surged into the corridor they had just left, and Nils shouted down in Anglic to stop, that they had the grafin and the boy. Pursuit stopped, although the voices only paused, and the northmen went on up the stairs until they emerged onto the top of the keep. Erik and Sten strayed by the trapdoor, tying the woman with strips of her petticoat. Leif pushed the boy ahead of him to the parapet and lifted him bodily into an embrasure where he could be clearly seen, powerful fists holding him firmly by belt and jerkin. Nils laid the bow and quiver against the parapet and leaned through an embrasure next to the one the boy was in.

A growing crowd stood below in the courtyard, including some of the archers and a knight, but their attention was on the entrance, and they had not yet seen the figures in the embrasures above. For a long minute things hung like that, as if the world had slowed down, until a knight jogged shouting out of the entrance of the keep, followed by others, and all eyes turned to the top. Briefly there were angry shouts from the courtyard, but Nils kept still, monitoring emotions, until a waiting near-silence had settled. Then he spoke, loudly, so that he was clearly heard twenty meters below.

"We came in peace to warn the graf of an army of horse barbarians camped within the country." A babble of voices rose that Nils waited out. "As our reward he tried to have us murdered." He paused. "Now he is dead, and we have his wife and boy hostage."

Although the crowd remained quiet, Nils stopped until he could sense unease below, and the beginning of impatience, then called down again. "Who was the marshal of the old graf? The graf killed at Elbestat? Step forward if you're here."

The faces below turned to a tall, square-shouldered knight who stood looking grimly upward before striding out in front of the archers.

"And the man who is marshal now. Let him step forward."

The burly, sneering knight came into the open beside the other.

Without speaking, Nils stepped back from the embrasure out of sight, nocked an arrow and bent the bow. Then, stepping to the embrasure again, he let the bowstring go and the new marshal fell with an arrow in his chest.

The crowd made a sound like a many-voiced sigh, but no one else moved. In that instant of shock Nils shouted down, "The marshal from before is now the ruler of this castle until the king names a new graf. Come up and parley with us, and then we'll leave."