Silver Hammer, Golden Cross Read online

  Silver Hammer, Golden Cross is the Sixth Book in The Circle of Ceridwen Saga by Octavia Randolph

  Copyright 2017 Octavia Randolph

  ISBN 978-1-942044-06-2

  Bookcover design: DesignForBooks.com

  Textures, graphics, photo manipulation, hammer and cross illustrations, and maps by Michael Rohani.

  Photo credits: Left gold chain: Fotolia @ Valerii Zan, right gold chain: Fotolia @ Gitanna; clouds and earth, DesignForBooks.com.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests beyond this, write to the author, addressed “Attention: Permissions” at [email protected]

  Pyewacket Press

  The Circle of Ceridwen Saga employs British spellings, alternate spellings, archaic words, and oftentimes unusual verb to subject placement. This is intentional. A Glossary of Terms will be found at the end of the novel.

  Silver Hammer, Golden Cross

  Octavia Randolph

  Contents

  List of Characters

  Silver Hammer, Golden Cross Map Year 890

  Preface

  Part One: Peace

  Chapter the First: The Sword of Godwulf

  Chapter the Second: Two Women

  Chapter the Third: Two Swords

  Chapter the Fourth: The Reflection in the Silver Disc

  Chapter the Fifth: Silver Hammer

  Chapter the Sixth: A Shared Sorrow

  Chapter the Seventh: A Tale Written by Two

  Chapter the Eighth: Not So Easily Bought

  Chapter the Ninth: Firelight

  Part Two: War

  Chapter the Tenth: Fire in the Sky

  Chapter the Eleventh: Disturbance

  Chapter the Twelfth: Few Choices

  Chapter the Thirteenth: There Will Be War

  Chapter the Fourteenth: The Bride-price, and the Bride

  Chapter the Fifteenth: The Summons

  Chapter the Sixteenth: The Raven of the Danes

  Chapter the Seventeenth: You Are The First

  Chapter the Eighteenth: Two Beds

  Chapter the Nineteenth: What I Already Know

  Chapter the Twentieth: Call to Battle

  Chapter the Twenty-first: Golden Cross

  Chapter the Twenty-second: The Toll

  Chapter the Twenty-third: A Landing

  Chapter the Twenty-fourth: Another Offering

  Chapter the Twenty-fifth: Yrling’s Daughter

  Chapter the Twenty-sixth: The Fight for Oundle

  Chapter the Twenty-seventh: Hrald of Four Stones

  Chapter the Twenty-eighth: The Duel

  The Wheel of the Year

  Anglo-Saxon Place Names, with Modern Equivalents

  Glossary of Terms

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  List of Characters

  Ceric, son of Ceridwen and Gyric, grandson of Godwulf of Kilton

  Worr, the horse-thegn of Kilton

  Raedwulf, bailiff of Defenas

  Modwynn, Lady of Kilton, widow of Godwulf

  Hrald, son of Ælfwyn and Sidroc, heir of the Danish keep of Four Stones in Lindisse

  Ashild, daughter of Ælfwyn and Yrling, Hrald’s older half-sister

  Ælfwyn, mother to Ashild and Hrald, widowed of Yrling; marriage dissolved with Sidroc

  Asberg, brother-in-law to Ælfwyn

  Jari, a warrior of Four Stones, body-guard to Hrald

  Gunnulf, Jari’s younger brother

  Sigewif, Abbess of Oundle, sister to slain King Edmund of Anglia

  Sparrow, known now as Bova, a novitiate of Oundle

  Wilgot, the priest of Four Stones

  Ceridwen, Mistress of the hall Tyrsborg on Baltic island of Gotland

  Sidroc, her husband, formerly Jarl of South Lindisse

  Rannveig, a brewster on Gotland

  Tindr, her hunter son, and Šeará, his Sámi wife

  Ælfred, King of Wessex

  Eadward, Prince of Wessex, son of Ælfred

  Begu, a village woman of Kilton

  Edwin, Ceric’s younger brother, heir to Kilton

  Edgyth, Lady of Kilton, mother by adoption to Edwin, widow of Godwin

  Cadmar, a warrior-monk

  Thorfast, nephew to Danish King Guthrum

  Haesten, a Danish war-chief

  Silver Hammer, Golden Cross Map Year 890

  He suffers that much less, who knows a number of songs. – The Exeter Book

  Preface

  Peace is wrought in the words of men, strong links to bind two folk together. War is wrought in the deeds of men, sundering with blood what words had forged in ink.

  After long and bloody war, a Peace had been made by Ælfred, King of Wessex, and the Dane Guthrum. This Peace cleaved the country in two, and left Guthrum King of East Anglia. For over ten years it held.

  One signer of that Peace was Sidroc the Dane, one of Guthrum’s war-chiefs. Sidroc had won much treasure in his warring against the Angles and Saxons, and ruled over the keep of Four Stones. But for most of the years of that Peace Sidroc was hundreds of leagues East, on the Baltic island of Gotland. Four Stones fell to his second child, Hrald, whose older sister Ashild could not inherit. As a maid with a brother she was destined to wed a powerful lord, either Saxon or Danish, to join two houses and increase the riches of both.

  Away in Wessex was another great keep, that of Kilton. The older son of that hall, now of eighteen years, rode to Four Stones to see his best friend…

  Part One: Peace

  Chapter the First: The Sword of Godwulf

  Angle-land

  The Year 890

  CERIC OF KILTON leant forward over his saddle pommel. He had just tested the tie-lines on the saddle bags of the pack horse he led; all was secure. He turned his head and grinned at Worr, the horse-thegn of Kilton, who rode on his right, then shot a quick look and a nod to the bailiff of Defenas on his left. The four thegns they rode with touched their heels to their mounts in response. They were off.

  The troop was now only a two days’ ride from Four Stones. Ceric and the six who accompanied him had been on the road for ten days, and his goal was near. They were seven men and five pack horses, a considerable train, for they carried not only provision for themselves but a number of gifts for the family of Four Stones. A long ride in Wessex would not have occasioned the carrying of so many staples for their provisioning, as in Ælfred’s realm they would be welcome anywhere; one look at the embroidered golden dragon on the pennon affixed to one of the thegn’s saddles would have made them so. But they were riding across Kingdoms, and had been for several days in that ruled by the Danish King of Anglia, Guthrum. The Peace forged between Ælfred and the Danish invaders more than ten years ago had remained largely unbroken, but the Lady of Kilton, Modwynn, Ceric’s grandmother, had insisted Ceric take no fewer than five thegns with him. That Worr would ride with him was assumed from the start. Worr was Ceric’s pledged man, and had once been the pledged man of Gyric, Ceric’s father, and then that of Ceric’s uncle, Godwin, the Lord of Kilton. Godwin had been felled in single combat by a Dane four years ago, on an island far to the East, two seas away. Both Ceric and Worr had witnessed the killing. It was one of many ties that bound them.

  The dragon pennon proclaimed the party to be men of Wessex. The safe-conduct in Ceric’s saddle bag was signed by n
one less than his godfather, King Ælfred himself. No man had challenged their crossing, and he had had no need to draw it from its hardened leathern tube. Before they had crossed the border from Wessex to Anglia they had taken care to fully restock their provender so that they might keep their need to buy along the road to a minimum. They wanted as few as possible to mark their progress. It was a welcome surprise that when they did meet folk along the road in the Danish Kingdom they had been cordially greeted. Passing a small farm not far from the border into Anglia a woman had lifted her head from her wash tub and watched them progress down the dusty trail just outside the stone-walled border of her vegetable plot. She turned and called out to someone unseen, her alarm clear in her voice. Then her eyes fixed on the pennon jutting upright on its short staff from the cantle of the thegn’s saddle. The flag barely moved in the slight breeze, but shifted enough for her to see it as the standard of Ælfred. By the time her husband emerged from the barn her fear was abating. The three men who led the troop of warriors had done nothing more than lift their hands to her in greeting as they moved along. It was her husband, who stood blinking in the strong light, who called out to them, and Worr reined to a halt.

  The man was a Dane, his wife of Angle-land. He was one of many former warriors who had helped secure the border, claimed land and a woman, and stayed on; the boy and two girls who emerged from around the back of their small wooden house told that their union was as old as Guthrum’s conquest of Anglia.

  Their farm was remote and nearly a day’s walk to the nearest village. Both man and wife were glad to see some of whom they could ask news. The woman led them to the little crock of ale keeping cool in a spring-house, bidding them bring their own wooden cups, as she had not enough serving ware of her own to dip in to slake the thirst of so many. The Dane hauled water for their horses from his well, eyeing the thirsty beasts and the weapons the thegns bore with that adept worth-judging that Danes always seemed to practice.

  Worr did the talking, telling the questioning Dane they were headed for Guthrum at the fortress at Headleage, with a message from Ælfred. Ceric knew to keep quiet, noting that the turning point for Headleage was half a day’s ride ahead, and even if the man and his now-scattered brethren thought to plot any mischief against those seemingly headed for their own king, they would not find them on that road.

  Ceric was the youngest by a decade of any of the men he rode with, and so plainly dressed that none would know that five of the six served as his bodyguard. If his garb drew any interest at all, it was the distinction of its extreme soberness. His wool leggings and leathern leg wrappings were a blue so dark to show almost black, and his tunic was also of the same dusky hue. Ceric’s copper-gold hair was a shock above it, his green eyes almost startling. When his shoulders were not covered by his mantle, a flash of the golden chain he wore about his neck might be seen, but he kept the golden cross it bore against his skin, well-hidden. Except for feast days this was the way Ceric had dressed since becoming a man, in the dark hues that recalled his dead uncle. One of the pack horses carried Ceric’s ring-tunic, which he had blackened, just as Godwin had blackened his.

  After they had regained their road Ceric spoke.

  “I would we were going to Guthrum; I would like to look upon him.”

  Worr smiled over his horse’s mane. Worr had thick brown hair, the colour of a wet river stone, and he pushed one side of it back over his ear.

  “You already have, when the Peace was signed and Ælfred and he came to Kilton.”

  Ceric had been so little then he could have no hope of any recollection. He only nodded in chagrin, having called to mind his youth in this way.

  “He does not impress,” Worr went on, reading Ceric’s briefly furrowed brow. “Short, old and grey; that is my memory of him.”

  Ceric watched his friend’s face as it bobbed with the steady walk of his mount. “Also a great warrior,” Worr finished.

  Worr’s eyes had lifted, as if taking in all about them. This is what Guthrum’s prowess had won, this immense kingdom, the greater part of the huge island riven down the centre and divided up, Danes and their winnings on one side, Ælfred and his defenders on the other.

  They met with others who welcomed them in Anglia. On the banks of a lively stream they found a hamlet of cottars, crofts tidy, cattle and sheep thriving. Ten years ago Danes had swept through, carrying all the livestock away with them, and leaving a few resistant cottars dead in their wake. But that had been all. No Danes settled there, either then or after, and after a hungry year the folk gradually replenished what had been lost. They had rebuilt the stone preaching cross the Danes had thrown down, and a priest came every month just past the waxing of the Moon to help them pray at it. The folk knew Guthrum, the war lord of the Danes, was now their King. It meant little to them; they had never seen the King of their own people, and as long as they were left in peace they cared not which man was called such.

  It was a vast and largely empty land the men of Kilton crossed. Ceric’s goal was across the Trent, in the South of Lindisse. The first time he had travelled to Four Stones he had been a boy of nine years, going by sea from Swanawic in the South all around the coast of Wessex, and parts of the coast of Mercia and Anglia too. Three years later he had ridden much this same route with Worr and Godwin, Lord of Kilton. The three had travelled hard and fast, his uncle simmering with a rancour that would erupt and seal his Fate when they found Ceric’s mother.

  Another had witnessed the killing of the Lord of Kilton that day, the son of his killer: Hrald, Ceric’s best friend. Worr had started his return journey for Angle-land two days later, but Hrald and he had sojourned on with his mother, Ceridwen, and Hrald’s father, Sidroc. They had nearly ten months together on the green island of Gotland, living at the hall Tyrsborg set above the eastern shore of the Baltic. Then they too must return, Ceric to Kilton, and Hrald to his mother and sisters at Four Stones. More than four years had passed since their parting. In two more days Ceric would see Hrald again.

  A long ride invites the unspooling of thoughts. Ceric rocked steadily in his saddle, recalling that time at Tyrsborg. The shock of his uncle’s death had receded, day by day over the first few weeks on Gotland, soothed by the routines of the small hall and the freedoms he and Hrald had known there. There was a clarity about their smallest actions, even now. He was returned to his mother, and Hrald to his father, the blood-ties reaffirmed. With his uncle dead, and the great distance between Angle-land and Gotland, he was somehow less the nephew of the Lord of Kilton, and more his mother’s son. The simplicity and directness of his life with her, and with Hrald, had changed him. He had need to care for his own horse, to help Tindr with the wood-store, and with Hrald and his mother’s small offspring, pull weeds from the bean patch and to gather up hens’ eggs. He had liked these things, more than he had imagined. At night at Tyrsborg all sat together at one table, even the serving woman and the cook. When he returned to Kilton he found himself stopping to help a serving man who seemed over-ladened with the bundle of kindling strapped to his back, or pausing to help a woman pull the heavy draw-bucket over the lip of the stone-rimmed well. He did this unthinking, seeing it as the right and reasonable thing to do. But after a time the serving folk themselves deterred him, stammering their thanks red-facedly, then waving him away. Perhaps it was unseemly for them to accept the aid of one of the sons of Kilton; and, worse, proof they were not up to the tasks set for them. As the weeks passed he returned to his expected role, one of great privilege, but ringed with limitations. He felt the same must be true for his friend.

  A special gift for Hrald burdened one of the pack horses: a ring-tunic. Ceric had thought long and hard about a worthy gift for his friend. He knew the treasure room at Four Stones housed a whole chest of fine swords; he and Hrald had opened it several times after the Lady Ælfwyn had unlocked it for them. They had drawn out weapon after weapon, swaddled in sheep fleece and still bright due to the oily wool-wax therein. They had lif
ted and tested each grip, exclaiming over the rippled dance of pattern-welded steel in the edged blade as they turned the swords in the shaft of white light piercing the room from high in the wall. They had run their fingers over pommels and grips embellished with beaten silver and even gold wire, making a sinuous dance of form under their hands’ grip. Sidroc, the Jarl of South Lindisse, Lord of Four Stones, had kept none but the best weapons of the Saxons and the Danes for himself and his son, and Hrald would have the pick of them.

  No, he would not bring a sword, nor any blade, and it was not just the surplus of weaponry his friend possessed that stopped him. And Hrald would have almost sixteen years now; a sword already at his side when warranted. But a well-wrought ring-tunic – something made anew, and just for Hrald, one of length enough to suit his friend’s height and long arms – this was a worthy gift. He had had the weapon-smith of Kilton fashion one, choosing a thegn both tall and lean to be measured for it, for if Hrald had been taller than Ceric then, at two years his junior, he was sure to approach his Danish father in height as he grew.

  “My friend is thin,” Ceric advised the armourer as he watched the man stretch the measuring thong across the thegn’s back and note the tick marks.

  “Aye,” the man assured him with a grin. “But he will mend of that with the years, fill out, grow into the shoulders as he grows in years. Let me make it for the man he will be, not the lad he is.”

  Ceric bobbed his head with his own grin, yes, of course.

  The gift tunic now lay shining, rolled in a fleece-lined pouch of tooled leather. Its heft was such he took care to place it high across his pack-horse’s shoulders to better bear the weight.

  Other gifts lay in special pouches, all things he had chosen himself. One in particular he had asked his aunt, Edgyth, to sew a wrapping for, and she, with her gentle smile, had readily complied. Inside the linen bag lay a gown of silk, destined for Hrald’s elder sister, Ashild.