King Olaf's Kinsman<br />A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in the Days of Ironsid by Charles W. Whistler (top 10 non fiction books of all time txt) 📕

Yet when I went down to the ships presently, for none of us slept within Wulfnoth's walls, I was glad that there was no light of burning houses over Penhurst woods, as yet.

It was very dark when we marched from Pevensea. We followed the earl's men, and save for remembering the muddy torchlit causeway to firm ground from the castle, and after that dim hill and dale passed in turn, and a long causeway and bridge that spanned the mouth of a narrow valley that opened into the great Pevensea level, I knew not much of what country we went through. After passing that causeway we came into forest land, going along a track for awhile, and then turning inland across rolling hills till we began to go down again. And as the first streaks of dawn began to show above the woods, the word was passed for silence, and then that we should lie down and rest in the fern on the edge of a steep slope below which shone the faint gleam of water.

Then came Wulfnoth and spoke to Olaf, and said that he and his men would go beyond the village so as to take the outlaws from the rear. He would send a man to us who would show us all that was needed.

After that we lay and waited, and as the sun rose and the light grew stronger, I thought that I had never seen a more beautiful place.

We were above a little cliff of red rock that went down to the valley of the Ashbourne brook. And all the valley from side to side was full of the morning mists so that it seemed one lake, while the woods were bright with the change of the leaf, from green to red and gold--oak and beech and chestnut and hazel each with its own colour, and all beautiful. The blue downs rose far away to our left across the ridges of the forest land, and inland the Andred's-weald stretched, rising hill above hill as far as one might see, timber covered. There were trees between us and the village that we sought; but above its place rose a dun cloud of smoke from some houses fired that night by those who held it, and that was the one thing that spoiled the beauty of all that I saw.

Now Olaf and I spoke of all this, whispering together, for we were close to the village, and already we had heard voices from thence as men woke. For Olaf was ever touched by the sight of a fair land lying before him. And while he spoke, a man seemed to rise out of a cleft of the rocks below us, and climbed up to us, and bowed before us, saying that he was to guide us.

He was a great man, clad in leather from head to foot, and carrying a sledgehammer over his shoulder. That and a billhook stuck in his belt were his only weapons.

"I am Spray the smith," he said, in a low voice. "The earl is ready, and the thane also. The knaves are all drunken with our ale, and we may fall on them at once."

"Have they no watch kept?" asked Olaf wondering.

"None, master."

"Are there Danes with them?"

"Aye; half are Danes. But I met one of them last night and spoke to him peacefully, being stronger than he, and I said that vikings had come to Pevensea, and that the earl was minding them. So they fear no one."

Then came a herdsman's call from the woods beyond the village, and the smith said:

"That is the thane. Fall on, master, and fear nought."

Whereat I laughed, and the men sprang up. The smith led us for a hundred paces through the beech trees and then across the brook, and the steep slope up to the village was before us. There was a little, ancient earthwork of no account round the place, but if there had been a stockade on it, it was gone.

Then came a roar of yells and shouts from the far side, and we knew that the work had begun, and ran up the hillside. Then fled a man in chain mail out of the place, leaping over the earthworks straight at us, unknowing.

Spray the smith swung his hammer, not heeding at all the sword in the man's hands. Sword and helm alike shivered under the blow, and the man rolled over and over down the hillside.

"That is the first Dane I ever slew," said Spray to me as we topped the ridge.

Then we were in the village and among a crowd of wild-looking, half-armed forest men, who fled and yelled, and smote and cried for quarter in a strange and ghastly medley. There was no order, and seemingly no leader among them, and an end was soon made. Before I had struck down two men they scattered and fled for hiding, and we followed them. Wulfnoth would have no mercy shown to these wretches who would harry the peaceful villagers--their own kin. They would but band together again.

Now I did a foolish thing which might have cost me my life. For two outlaws ran into one of the old stone buildings of which I had heard, and I followed them. As I crossed the threshold I stayed for a moment, for the place seemed very dark inside, and I could not see them. But I was plain enough to them, of course, and before I could see that a blow was coming one smote me heavily on the helm and I fell forward, while they leapt out over my body into the open again. Then I seemed to slip, and fell into nothingness as my senses left me.

Presently I came round, nor could I tell how long I had been alone, I heard far off shouts that were dull and muffled as if coming through walls, and then as my brain cleared, I saw that I was in what seemed to be a dungeon like those that Earl Wulfnoth had under Pevensea. All round me were walls, and the light came in from a round hole above me.

When I saw that I knew that I had indeed fallen into this place, and my sword, too, lay on the floor where it had flown from my hand as I did so. It was lucky that I had not fallen on it.

Now the shouts died away, and I thought that our men were chasing the last of the outlaws into the woods. When the silence fell, I waxed lonely, and began to wonder if I had been forgotten. But Olaf would miss me presently, and would surely return to the village before long. So I would be patient, and at least try to find a way out of this trap into which I had come so strangely.

But there was no way out unless a ladder or rope were lowered to me. The roof of the place was rounded and arched above me, and the hole was in its centre so that I could not reach it. Maybe the place was ten feet across and ten feet high under the hole, and it minded me of the snake pit into which Gunnar the hero was thrown, as Ottar the scald sang. Only here were no snakes, and the air was thick and musty, but dry enough. I could see the beams of the house roof above the hole.

Then I thought that if I could prise some stones from the old walls I might pile them up until I reached the edge of the hole with my hands, when it would be easy to draw myself up, though maybe not without taking off my armour. But when I tried the joints of the masonry with the point of my seax, I did but blunt the weapon, for the mortar was harder than the stone, which was the red sandstone of the cliff where we had rested.

So I forbore and sat down, leaning my aching head against the cool wall, to wait for Olaf's return. There would be time to shout when I heard voices again, and it was not good to make much noise in that place after the blow of a club that had set my ears ringing already.

Then I fell to thinking of Sexberga, and those thoughts were pleasant enough. And idly I began to sharpen my seax again on a great square stone that was handy in the wall as I sat, but it was very soft, and crumbled away under the steel without doing it much good.

Now, when one is waiting and thinking, one will play with an idle pastime for the sake of keeping one's hands amused as it were, and so I went on working the long slit in the stone, which the blade was making, deeper and deeper. The sand trickled from it in a stream, and then all of a sudden I became aware that I had pierced through the stone into a hole behind, and I bent over to see how this could be.

The stone was not more than an inch or two thick, and there was certainly a hollow which it closed, and when I saw that I broke and worked away more of it until I could get my hand in. Then I found that I could feel nothing, for the place was deep. So I made the hole bigger yet, and put my arm in. Then I found the back and one side of a stone-cased chest in the wall, as it were, of which the stone I had bored was the door, though this was to all appearance like several other of the larger blocks that the place was built of.

When I reached downwards my hand could just touch what felt like rotten canvas, and at that I began to work again at the hole. The stone was too strong to break, though it seemed thin, and I was so intent on this, that the voices I had longed to hear made me start.

"He was hereabouts, master, when I last saw him," said one whom I thought was Spray the smith.

"I will hang you up if he is lost," said Wulfnoth's voice.

Then I sprang up and shouted, and the vault rang painfully in my ears. It was Olaf who called back to me.

"Ho, Redwald where are you?"

"Under the house, in a pit," I answered, standing under the opening.

Then someone came tramping above me, and the next moment Spray's leather-hosed leg came through the hole, and he nearly joined me. Thereat others laughed, and he climbed up quickly enough, for it was an ill feeling to be hanging over an unknown depth.

"Lower me down a rope," I said, as I saw his face peering into the place with some others.

There seemed to be a ladder handy, for the next minute its end came down, and at once I picked up my sword and climbed out. Olaf stood in the doorway now with Relf.

"It is easy to see how my cousin got into that place," he said to Relf, pointing to my helm, which was sorely dinted.

The big thane looked and laughed.

"That is what felled him. But I knew not of this pit," he said, looking past me into the house where Spray and the men stood round the hole.

Then the smith said:

"Nor did I, master. But this has been found by the forest men--here are their tools."

And when we looked, all the floor of the house was broken up, and the stone paving was piled in corners, and a pick or two lay on them with a spade and crowbar.

"They have been digging for treasure," said Relf, "and that has kept them from my house. There are always tales of gold hidden in these old places. I have seen that they have done the like elsewhere in the village."

"Aye," said Spray, "they have heard some of our tales, and they have dug where we would not, for it spoils a house, and the wife's temper also, to meddle with the good stone floor."

Now it seemed to me that here was a likelihood that there was truth in the old tales, and that I had lit on the lost hiding place of which some memory yet remained even from the days when OElla's men took the town from the iron workers five hundred years and more ago, when the might of Rome had passed.

"There is somewhat that I have found in this place," I said. "Come and see what it is."

Wondering, Olaf and Wulfnoth climbed down the ladder after me, and Relf did but stay to find a torch before he followed us. Then I showed them the