The second rune was UR, the Wild Ox, the beast to be slain by a boy who in the slaying becomes a man. It meant a sacrifice, of childhood, of much that was good and safe, and thus a leave-taking too. Something must be slain, and the fourteen-year-old boy, on seeing UR, had reached for his father’s only other legacy, his axe.
The third rune was HAGALL, a hailstorm, striking the land from nowhere, sudden destruction, the same rune that had sent him without a word of farewell, with only rune-stones at his waist and an axe in his hand, back over the fells of Hareid by night, to stand in his father’s house, before his father’s bed, where the murderer slept who had stolen both. A boy had raised an axe, struck, the sacrifice made. A man had left the house and headed for the harbour, the first step on a path that had led, by various ways, to the mercenary road.
The red mist fading, Haakon stared down at the three symbols, unsurprised that they were the same as those that had sent him vengefully into the night fourteen years before. Since then many crossroads, many choices between left and right, forward and back, like the choice made by Angelique, his lover, to ply her trade in her home town of Tours at war’s end. Choices ending up here, on a road leading nowhere.
And yet, the runes whispered again of choice, of opportunity, there if he could but see it. He knew what was behind him, the feeling that all of any importance in his life had been accomplished with one clean axe-stroke half a lifetime before. To set out again, all he needed was the will, the putting of one foot before the other. That and perhaps some coins to help him on his way.
Then a voice drifted up from the street and crept into his ear. It belonged to one of the Bishop’s men, standing before Haakon’s lodgings where the lane widened a little, and it spoke of gold to be had by a man who knew how to wield an axe.
SEVEN
WINGED SLAUGHTER
As the first of the two bells rang, the Fugger nudged Jean in the chest with something hard; and when, grumbling, he opened his eyes, the Frenchman found an executioner’s sword lying across his chest.
‘How in the name of …’ coughed Jean, but the Fugger was off, moving around the room.
‘So Daemon and I are flying down the street,’ he began, ‘the one where I had been told the late headsman lived, and we come across a throng in a doorway. “You shall not enter!” yells a stout woman in the entrance. “What little he had is mine, for the six months he was under my roof.” “But he owed me for three casks of beer!” shouts one man. “And he owed me for an army’s share of my bread!” says another. “And he owed me for days on my back!” screams a thin woman, thrusting two ragged children forward. “These mites are his too. He was to buy them new clothes after he took the Count’s head tonight.” This brings an angry roar from the small crowd, who were siding now with one claimant, now with another. But the stout woman will not be budged from her doorway. Meantime, Daemon – yes, yes, come forward, my dear, take a bow – Daemon is above me and lets out a caw, and I look up to see him sitting on a hoist under the window up above. There’s a hoist opposite too, and the houses so close there’s almost a bridge between them. The shop owner is out watching the fun so without a second’s pause I slip past him, through his shop, up the stairs and into the room on the street, open the window – and walk right over the arguing heads and into Old Stouty’s residence.’
The Fugger, who had enacted every part of the story along with the words, now leapt from his imaginary bridge near the window and fell into a room.
‘There did not seem much in the room worth fighting over, but I didn’t linger. The sword sat on the window ledge so I grab it, teeter back across the hoists, and am down the stairs and through the crowd just as the two women are coming to blows.’
Jean slipped the weapon from its sheath. It was slightly heavier than his own, longer too, and not so exquisitely forged. But he had used worse, far worse.
‘Fugger,’ he declared, ‘you’ve done well.’
‘And Daemon too,’ laughed the Fugger.
‘And Daemon too,’ said Jean.
The bird, occupied among its feathers, looked up at the mention of its name. ‘Hand hand!’ it cawed.
Jean stiffened, then after a second smiled grimly.
‘We’re coming to that,’ he said. ‘But first, we need to find this abattoir.’
When ordered to find a replacement executioner at such short notice Marcel, the Bishop’s steward, had had one of his panics – or what his lover, Jacques, called a ‘blue whirlwind’. Arranging orgies was one thing. He relished the detail involved in creating the tableaux, finding the perfect complimentary bodies; his years of travelling with the players of Poitiers had given him a taste for spectacle and a relish for surprising effects – the confectioner’s sugar for Lot’s wife had been his idea. But having to deal with real life in the form of the killers and thugs who would answer a call for the role of executioner – well, it would agitate the nerves of less sensitive men than he. Especially when so much was at stake. If the finale of the Archbishop’s entertainment was a success and led to his master’s rising to the See of Orleans, he knew his own rise was guaranteed too.
It was Jacques, the brutish boy with more than a touch of the gutter about him, who suggested the competition. Test the headsmen’s skills and make some extra money from the spectacle of it all. A cousin – there was always a cousin with Jacques – owned an abattoir at the edge of town, an enclosed stockyard where you could crowd people in at a few sous apiece and take a cut from the profits of the beer and roast offal traders who were bound to set up.
Marcel felt he could leave the cruder details in the rough hands of his young friend. But the spectacle would be his. He had played in enough small towns to know what people craved. Violence, as brutal as possible, and comedy. He had some ideas for both.
When Jean, the Fugger and Daemon arrived at the abattoir, they found a small carnival taking place. The notices and criers had called forth not just the participants and their entourages but a host of spectators and the people to service, entertain and prey on them – fire-eaters, stilt walkers, magicians, pickpockets, whores, all moving through the throng. It was a good warm-up for the main event of the evening.
They could see the abattoir comprised a series of animal pens, with an outer track along which the beasts could be driven, itself surrounded by a circular stockade. Every plank of this was already occupied by children from the street, hopping down to dart among the smoking braziers of the meat sellers, the casks of the beer men, and the legs of the apprentices and artisans who had paid a few sous to enter by the main gate.
It was from there that Jean regarded the scene. Through the hurly-burly he could see a raised dais on which a man in gaudy hose was gesticulating extravagantly to a large, bearded man beside him. Before them stood a group of men in eye masks or makeshift hoods.
Mask and sword gained Jean admittance, and he pushed through to the dais.
‘Name?’ said the little man with the lacy shirt, frills of which sprouted around his tunic at collar and crotch, spilling there around one of the largest codpieces Jean had ever seen. The larger the codpiece Jean thought, but said, ‘Blanc. Gaston.’
‘Really?’ tittered the man. ‘It seems to be a family trade. These two are also Blancs.’ He gestured towards two men with hoods. ‘Do you require an axe as well?’
‘No, Monsieur. I have my weapon here.’
Marcel leant forward and his eyes widened.
‘A swordsman, eh? Do you have the requisite skill?’
‘We shall see.’
‘Are you experienced?’
‘I have used it before, yes.’
‘Any famous heads we would have heard of?’
‘Probably not, Monsieur. With the army. Here and there.’
‘I see,’ sighed Marcel, already bored. Executioners always bored him, they had no small talk. ‘Well, Blanc G., you can show us your talents in a moment. Wait with the others.’
Jean went and stood in the small group of shrouded me
n and looked over his rivals. The two Blancs were in animated discussion, raising their hoods to babble at each other. Another three men in eye masks stared silently ahead, but the last man in the line returned his gaze evenly. He was huge, in height and girth, and obviously experienced for a golden beard spilt out from under a leather mask, well stitched and fitted over the nose, weighted down with metal bands at the neck, with slashes for breathing and hearing. The kind he wore himself.
Two other things caught Jean’s eye. In giant hands the man was holding an axe, but not such a one as he had ever seen before. It had not the usual huge, heavy, curving blade but a smaller half moon set into a slim shaft that was bound tightly in red leather straps. This was not an axe for wood or animals, but by the way he held it Jean knew it had been well used on something. The second thing was the huge hound, at least part wolf, that sat quiet and alert at the man’s feet, eyes flicking constantly over the crowd.
The axe, the dog, the beard, the size of him. It brought one word to Jean’s mind: Norseman.
Haakon had followed his rival’s movements, from the moment he saw the mask pulled on at the gate. He too noted the quality of the mask, the man’s easy stride, most of all the sword held lightly in the scabbard to his side. He knew in that instant who his main opponent would be.
He had seen an executioner’s sword used many times on campaign. In the right hands it was a fine tool and weapon, but he had rarely seen it in the right hands. More often he had seen men blunder and fail with it, for it took a rare eye and a skill in timing. Haakon was confident he would not encounter such skill in a backwater like Tours.
Nevertheless, Fenrir had growled when the swordsman stepped down from the dais and Fenrir was a good judge of enemies. So he returned the man’s stare evenly. Lifting the axe, he let it dangle over the ground. The victory, the client, the client’s purse would soon be his. And then the tales would begin again.
A fanfare announced the start of the competition. Marcel, becoming more fatigued each minute by the noise and smells of the crowd, gestured Jacques forward.
‘Be advised!’ he bellowed. ‘His Eminence, the Most Holy Bishop of Tours, seeks this day a man worthy to take the place of our late, lamented executioner.’ A chorus of hoots and boos erupted at that. Rising above it, he continued, ‘And so the Bishop has ordained this holy competition to find the right man. These honoured competitors’ – he waved at the dozen men below him – ‘will each display their skill through a series of tests and one of their number will win the ultimate prizes – the head and purse of the Count de Chinon – before supper.’
This last provoked more noise, cheers in approval and curses from the many there who liked the young and handsome Count and felt that, his unfortunate heresy notwithstanding, they were not looking forward to watching him die.
The first round consisted of nothing more than the chopping of fruit. A dozen melons were placed on the small-fowl cutting blocks. Each headsman took his position and each, in turn, his swing.
Before they began, betting was intense. The Fugger, who’d scrambled through a small gap in the fence at the back, took a bet from the brother of the competitor before Jean that his axe would triumph over Jean’s sword. Having nothing to stake, the Fugger risked all his nothing and called it two sous, and at the drop of Marcel’s handkerchief found himself that much the richer. Hardly difficult, this first round had still eliminated half the competitors who through nervousness or lack of technique had missed, flattened or bobbled their melons. Four others had achieved their goal, along with Haakon and Jean.
The second set of targets were at least alive. Six bullocks were brought out of their pens and held in position by chains through their nose rings and a rope around their haunches. Terrified by the noise of the crowd, their squirming provided a suitable test, the aficionados of executions agreed, for a moving target was often what you got on the scaffold. This time the Fugger got odds, five to his two, so confident was the man in the prowess of the butcher, whose bloodstained leather apron beneath the eye mask gave his trade away. This was what he did every day, the Fugger reasoned to secure the odds. Surely he would defeat a mere swordsman?
He didn’t. By the time Marcel’s scented handkerchief had floated to the ground all killing had to be complete. Never mind the number of strokes used, heads had to be on the ground. Only two were. Two bullocks wandered around bleating from the blows they’d received, another had an axe head lodged in its skull, while the butcher was still hacking away in a furious and blood-spattering frenzy long after money changed hands.
So far, Jean had used two strokes of his sword. He thought that the Norseman had used three of his axe, understandable without the block to oppose the blow. As he’d expected, it had come down to the two of them.
Jacques bellowed again, ‘And now, Mesdames and Messieurs, by the great kindness of our loving father the Bishop, we have a special treat to decide this contest. He has provided us with two of the heretics who were to die tonight in God’s holy flame!’
And with that two men, as bound and terrified as the beasts before them, were herded like them into the arena. The crowd surged forward, delighted to have such a good view of what they usually only saw high above them on a scaffold. They watched as the younger fellow’s head was thrust down on a block, the older, greying man forced to kneel before the swordsman, both of them spitting prayers out between their chattering teeth.
For a moment, looking down at the kneeling figure, Jean returned in his mind to that other, recent place of execution. To what he’d done there and why he’d done it. In the silence of the crowd’s anticipation, he looked into the shrouded eyes opposite him and said, ‘The triumph is yours, Monsieur. I do not kill men for the sport of others.’
‘Neither do I,’ growled the big man, and stepped away from the block.
There was uproar, some applause, threats. Marcel stamped angrily on the dais and complained loudly at this thwarting of his spectacle, after all the trouble he’d taken. The butcher, mask off, his apron covered in bullock’s brains, lurched forward to say he would take care of them both. The victorious executioners just rested on their weapons.
Within the tumult, Jean became aware of a small voice beside him. It was the prisoner’s, and he had to lean close to hear him.
‘Monsieur,’ said this greying man whose face betrayed the treatment he’d received in prison, his voice and manner a class above the rabble’s now screaming for his blood, ‘my son and I were destined for the flames tonight, for the pleasure of the Bishop, the education of the people, and in full view of our wives and families. All because we chose to read the words of the Lord in our own tongue. Now He who sees all has chosen you to spare us that pain and our loved ones that vision. I implore you, even if you do not share our faith, share our humanity.’
Jean moved across to the figure opposite him. ‘They will burn instead. He asks us to prevent that.’
‘That is different then,’ Haakon grunted, immediately kneeling to ask the weeping lad’s forgiveness. On the other side, Jean did the same.
‘I bless you for your kindness, Monsieur. And God will bless you for it as well.’
There was no ceremony to it. The crowd were distracted by their arguments, and while Marcel whined about betrayal an axe and a sword rose and fell and two heads rolled on the ground.
At being thus cheated, the mob’s disapproval threatened to turn violent, discarded melon husks already flying towards the dais where Marcel had failed to provide the show some of them had paid for, and all desired.
The Fugger knew a distraction was necessary before spectacle was abandoned in favour of riot. For Jean had to win the prize, had to be on the scaffold tonight beside the man who’d condemned him to his slow death, had to take back what was stolen. So he pushed his way to the front, climbed up and grabbed the melon-dodging Marcel.
‘Monsieur, the final test!’
‘There is no other,’ Marcel said, wiping pulp from his lace. ‘I had thought to get the
mob to choose between their headstrokes, but now—’
‘I have a test for them. They are matched in efficiency. Try them for speed.’
‘Speed?’ said Marcel disdainfully. ‘How can we test their speed?’
‘Look!’ The Fugger pointed into the chicken pens behind them. ‘Fifty each. First man to finish, wins.’
It was a straw, and Marcel grasped it. Jacques, who had just punched the drunkest of the protesters, had a moment to shout the proposition. Loud laughter greeted it and the mob swayed behind the idea. The action would be fast, furious and faintly ridiculous and it was something in which they all could share. They were chicken killers to a man.
Details were quickly arranged. The two executioners would stand in separate pens whose fences would prevent the chickens fleeing their fate. Each could have two assistants to chase, catch and place on the block; as Jean did not use one he was free to move as he chose, and he put his assistant, the Fugger, atop the fence to keep him informed as to his rival’s count. Each bird had to be severed at the neck, with only five mistakes allowed.
In the frenzy of betting that followed the Fugger, who had doubled his money on an evens bet on the prisoners, now placed his twenty sous at two to one with a man who believed utterly in the axe and block – as most people did.
Crowding round the extremity of the pens, climbing on every elevated part of the abattoir, the crowd cheered each group of chickens thrown in, like gladiators entering some ancient arena. Haakon stood at his block, massive, calm, certain. If the two boys he’d selected did their job in supplying him with chickens – helped by a now agitated Fenrir, snapping at the frightened birds – he felt certain the prize would be his. Only when he looked across at his opponent standing calmly, legs apart and sword resting on his shoulder, did he have a moment’s doubt.