Gryndall nodded. "That's correct."
"Right. And, if he's a mercenary, then he's also a foreigner as I don't know of any Carthalian swords for hire."
Gryndall sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Alright. So we're looking for a man with an axe. Possibly a foreigner. What else?"
Constantine Blackwell cleared his throat. "Right, well, one or more of these men has a background in carpentry. Thatching. Boat building. Something of that nature. Because they would have taken the carriage apart in a matter of minutes, wanting to dispose of the evidence as quickly as possible. Getting the carriage disassembled and removed from the roadside would have been of primary importance - and the fact that they did such a good job of it - and so swiftly - means they understand how such things are assembled."
"Yes, those pieces were taken apart rather well," agreed Gryndall, glancing towards the spot twenty yards away where they'd discovered the carriage parts, covered by thick brush and stacked neatly together.
"Aye, my father couldn't have done a better job of it," Theo remarked.
"Your father was a carpenter of some sort?" asked the coroner, turning towards the young knight.
"A wheelwright. For thirty two years."
Constantine Blackwell looked impressed. "That's about as experienced as a man can get at his trade. So if you say that your father, an expert wheelwright, could not have taken that wagon apart any more cleanly nor swiftly, then these men are near experts."
"Well then, men?" interrupted Gryndall, eyeing his knights. "Carpenters. Boat builders. Foreigners. Practised and deadly with the axe. Short and stocky fellows. Who do we know?"
Donal scratched his chin as he deliberated. "Vikings?"
Gryndall frowned and locked eyes with his knight, unhappy that he seemed to share his own suspicions. "Vikings."
In a small house on a rocky, windswept stretch of Vinland's northern coast, an old man and his wife kept their fire blazing. Under normal circumstances at this dark hour, Karl and Helga Nördgren would be fast asleep, warm in their bed and snoring softly. However, on this night, they have been ordered by Erik the Bald to keep watch. A man is coming from across the sea for a meeting and the surly thain has tasked them with guiding his visitor to shore.
"See anything yet?"
Karl Nördgren looked at his wife and shook his head.
"No. Nothing."
"What's it exactly we're supposed to see, anyway?"
"A signal lantern."
The woman muttered something indiscernible and returned to her knitting. Karl watched her for a minute and then sighed as he returned to his previous thoughts.
Why was Erik the Bald such a cold and blood-thirsty man? He was nothing like his father. Keen-eyed and charismatic, Bergthor the Brave was arguably the best jarl that Vinland had had in centuries - or at least he had been until he'd gone soft in the head.
A man of great intelligence, Bergthor had ruled their colony in a fair and just manner. He had ensured peace and prosperity for all seven thousand inhabitants of Vinland. A patron of the arts and the written word, the scholarly Viking had prefered the tongue to the sword - though he was equally devastating with both.
Karl took another puff from his pipe and held the sweet, smoky elixir for several seconds before releasing a cloud of smoke.
Erik the Bald was sorely lacking in his father's former qualities. Squat and round, Erik the Bald's three passions in life were eating, whoring, and fighting - in that order. And soon, when Bergthor finally passed on to Gimli, he would be their new jarl...
[Scribe's Note: In the Norse religion, Gimli is the hall in Asgard (Viking 'heaven', for lack of a better term) where righteous men go when they die. More commonly known is Valhalla - also a hall in Asgard - where those who have died specifically in battle go after they die.]
The tobacco from his pipe now thoroughly spent, Karl Nördgren reached into a small wooden box on the table beside him and extracted another generous pinch. Packing it into the hollow end of his whale bone pipe, he was about to set the match stick to it when something caught his eye.
There. In the distance. A light. A flashing light. It flashed once. Twice. Three times.
"That's it," said the old man, setting down his pipe and rising quickly from his rocking chair. "He's here."
Helga emitted a sigh of exasperation as she put down the sweater she'd been knitting. "I'll go and fetch our dear thain."
Karl nodded and grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door. "I won't be long, love."
"See that you aren't. I don't fancy being here alone with that animal for very long."
Karl gave his wife a sad smile and made his way outside onto the cliff top that was their backyard. A cool breeze was blowing off the Middle Sea and the old man wrapped his jacket more tightly around him to trap what little warmth remained in his body. Then, stepping firmly from the balcony, down onto the stone path, Karl made his way down towards the dock at the bottom of the cliff. Judging by the lantern still blinking in the distance, Erik the Bald's visitor wasn't far off.
Stepping slowly and carefully so as not to slip and fall, the old man reached the dock after a quarter of an hour. At the end of the long wooden structure was a wide iron bowl. The small fire he'd set in it earlier to guide Erik the Bald's visitor was still smoldering and he added some kindling to rouse the flame. After a minute, it began to burn more brightly, and the blinking lantern in the distance ceased.
Good. They've seen it.
Gazing out at the calm, black water, the old man waited with curious impatience for the mysterious vessel to appear. It seemed like another quarter of an hour passed before a small fishing boat came into view. At the end of its hull hung a lamp, the dim light it created casting an eerie glow about the boat. At precisely that moment, Erik the Bald arrived, making his presence known by shouting down to him from the cliff top.
"KARL NӦRDGREN!"
The old man turned away from the water and strained his eyes against the dark as he scanned the cliff above for the squat and slovenly thain. He could just barely make out Erik the Bald's boar tusk helmet.
"YES, MY LORD?"
While he felt it somewhat premature to be addressing Erik the Bald in a manner usually reserved for the jarl, his father - after all, Bergthor wasn't even dead and in the ground yet - he thought it prudent considering that Erik the Bald would eventually be jarl and nursing the man's ego could only improve their strained relationship.
"Has my guest arrived?"
"He arrives this very minute, my Lord."
"Good. I'm coming down."
"Mind your footing, my Lord."
There was no reply and Karl returned his attention once more to the incoming boat as it drew steadily nearer. Several minutes passed before he heard Erik the Bald approaching from behind.
"Good evening, my Lord."
His belly bobbing twelve inches in front of him, Erik the Bald spat. "Bah! Don't smother me with your pleasantries, old man. You and I both know that if it were up to you, I wouldn't be here tonight."
He wasn't lying. Karl and his wife didn't like him one bit. Though when the thain had asked him last week whether he would play the role of lighthouse for a visitor from across the sea, he'd said yes without hesitating. Because, despite the protestations of his wife after the fact, he knew as well as anyone else in Skagen that Erik the Bald was not a man to refuse.
The boat was much closer now and Karl could easily make out the three men aboard. Two wore vests of chain mail and the other, the man standing closest to the bow, a sort of black frock with a silver amulet hanging from his neck.
"Ahoy!" yelled Erik the Bald.
"Greetings," came the reply.
"Friend or foe?" asked the Viking in his best Gaelic - which to Karl sounded pretty poor.
Gaelic...Celts?
The only Gaelic speakers still left in this corner of the world were the Celtic men and women of Riordan, in Carthal...and the monks of Lindisfarne...
"As friendly
as a friend can be at a time when friends are foes and foes are friends."
Karl's pulse quickened as he quickly translated the words spoken by one of the men aboard the boat.
That's definitely Gaelic.
Who could they be?
"Correct," said Erik the Bald in his native Norse.
Evidently the man aboard the ship had issued some sort of verbal code. Though Karl doubted whether his thain - whose Gaelic was piss poor - had even understood properly.
"Come ashore, friends. We have much to discuss."
There were murmurs of approval from the men on the boat as the vessel drew astride of the dock. Next, mooring ropes were tossed out and Karl fastened them to the posts protruding from the water. When the boat was finally secured, the man in the black frock stepped off the vessel and onto the dock.
Karl watched him, standing there, a mere five feet away.
A thin smile played across the man's face as he stepped forwards, into the light, and into the thain's embrace.
"We meet at long last, Erik the Bald," said the man in flawless Norse.
"Aye. At long last, Anwir of Lindisfarne."
Chapter Three
It is at this point, dear reader, that I, Copernicus, royal advisor to the late Gryndall, to his father before him, and now, partial caretaker of young Tyrion, shall take a pause from our tale to share with you an annotated history of Carthal and the other two islands that lie within its vicinity: Lindisfarne and Vinland.
Lindisfarne, as you have presumably gathered by now, is home to the Cycliad, an Order of monks that was long ago founded at Riordan by the Celtic druid Taog.
King Gryndall's grandfather, Cynwrig, agreed to let the monks establish a new monastery at Lindisfarne and enjoy complete sovereignty of the island as reward for their loyalty to him during the Great War. (The Great War was the two month conflict that saw the united clans of western Carthal liberate their cousins of eastern Carthal from the tyrannical rule of Ine the Terrible. I will explain more of this shortly.)
Lindisfarne is a rather small island - about four kilometres at its widest point - and a man can cross it easily in an hour (providing of course that the fog is not too thick and he doesn't walk right off the edge and into the sea - as has been known to happen!)
As to its terrain, the island is rocky and rugged - a suitable home for the hundreds of mountain goats kept by the shepherds there. Its vegetation consists primarily of a thick emerald green moss which blankets the entire island and an assortment of thistles and herbs the monks use to brew medicinal remedies.
With regards to its inhabitants, there are roughly two hundred souls on the island of Linidisfarne. Of these, eighty are members of the Cycliad and reside within the monastery. (The monastery is built into the side of the mountain and overlooks the village below.) These monks speak Gaelic as that was the language spoken by their Order's founder, Taog of Riordan. (The Celtic druid-missionary Taog migrated to Riordan and began preaching there nearly two centuries ago. Despite Carthalian being the language of Carthal - a hybrid of Latin, English, and Gaelic, pure, original Gaelic is still spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of that city.)
The other, approximately one hundred twenty inhabitants of Lindisfarne, are shepherds and fishermen and brewmasters and blacksmiths. These comprise the villagers and they are a pious group who live their lives according to the rules prescribed by the Cycliad. There are two sets of rules - one for the monks and another for the villagers. And, as you can probably imagine, the set of rules prescribed to the former is much more strict than the set of rules prescribed to the latter. I see no need to list the rules of the Cycliad here - as I don't imagine you ever visiting - Lindisfarne not being a particularly renowned tourist destination - but suffice it to say that the rules forbid killing, stealing, committing adultery, and so on and so forth. To break the rules is a grave and serious matter. For instance, a villager caught stealing will be given ten lashes and locked in the pillory for three days - from sun up to sun down. For adultery, the punishment is twice that and there's nary a man or woman who can survive the wounds incurred by twenty lashes. (Though in recent years, so I'm told, a cream made from seaweed and seal oil works to great effect if applied within an hour after the lashes have been administered.)
The monks, not surprisingly, are burdened with much stiffer rules and severe punishments for breaking them. (This, you have no doubt ascertained from King Gryndall's discussion with Anwir over the fate of Lionel.) For instance, a monk caught stealing will lose his pen hand. A second offense will result in him losing the arm. A third offense will incur the death penalty.
The history of Lindisfarne (and Carthal) is a rather intriguing story in and of itself and many chroniclers have recorded its history in great detail. However, in the interests of time I will provide you with the brief version. Cynwrig, King Gryndall's grandfather, was a Romano-Celt, born to a Celtic mother and Roman father. He was raised among the Ilani clan in the region of what is now Clarendon almost a century ago.
Cynwrig's father, Desirius, had deserted the Roman army with several of his countrymen and gone to live among the Ilani. This is how he met Almha, Cynwrig's mother. Almha’s brother was clan chief. Childless, when he died the chieftaincy passed to Almha. When Almha died several years later, the result of a lingering sickness, Cynwrig succeeded his mother as leader of the clan.
The Ilanis were one of seven clans in western Carthal and these seven clans lived side by side in relative peace. There was of course the occasional spat - such as when a young man from the Brean clan impregnated and then refused to marry a young woman from the Lhur clan - nearly causing a war. But, by in large, the clans got along with one another and any issues that arose were quickly resolved by the clan elders. (I must confess, being from Rome, my knowledge of the early Carthalian clans is limited and you would be better to refer to the texts written by the Carthalian scribe Cerbhall of Hawthorne should you wish to read more about that subject.)
Returning to our story, when the Romans withdrew to defend our homeland from the Visigoths, Carthal was left without a ruling force. Unlike other parts of the known world, the Carthalians had been happy with their Roman occupiers. The Romans (my people) added public baths, constructed impressive edifices with imported marble - some of which rival those in Rome itself - and built a network of roads across the island. When the Romans left, abandoning their garrisons at Brinsley and Hawthorne, chaos ensued. Not so much in the more Romanized west, but in the eastern and northern regions of Carthal, where inter-clan relations were much less amicable. A certain chief, Ine the Terrible, had recently risen to power.
Unhappy with his clan's modest wealth, he began plundering neighbouring clans, ransacking, pillaging and murdering. Within three months, much of eastern Carthal had come under his rule.
Cynwrig and his fellow, western, clan chiefs feared that Ine would soon come to their corner of the island and seek to rule them as well. They decided to act pre-emptively and Cynwrig, being the most feared and respected leader among them, was elected to lead their army against Ine.
Two months later, after several petty skirmishes, the two armies met in a valley three miles south of Darnfell. A great battle ensued and Ine was defeated, the remaining warriors of the six eastern clans quickly surrendering and submitting to Cynwrig. Coerced into fighting for Ine, these men had felt no allegiance to the wretched Saxon. Cynwrig, being a most noble man, accepted their surrender and his men quickly embraced their eastern cousins.
Ine was beheaded, cast into the sea, and peace was restored in Carthal. The eastern clans agreed to unite with the western clans under a single banner and create a single nation. This nation was Carthal. A vote was held, with the head of each of the thirteen clans being given the opportunity to have his say (or her say, in the case of the Kadin clan), and Cynwrig was elected ruler.
The few dozen druid-monks present at the Darnfell meeting asked Cynwrig to grant them a parcel of land for a monastery in exchange for the
ir loyalty and because they had fought alongside his army against Ine. They suggested Lindisfarne and Cynwrig, not being a religious man, was quick to consent; having the monks on an island and not in Carthal would prevent any future religious conflict and would keep the monks from meddling in his political affairs. The majority of the monks were equally happy with the arrangement as it gave them the opportunity to establish a monastic community and live their lives according to their religious laws, away from the whorehouses and gambling dens of Brinsley and Hawthorne. The monks were given full sovereignty of Lindisfarne on the condition that they do not proselytize nor conduct religious services in Carthalian territory. Several among their number were unhappy with this condition, but they were overruled by the majority who argued that they had made out well because they would have full sovereignty of Lindisfarne and could exercise religious rule on the island.
The monks set out immediately following the meeting at Darnfell and within a decade had completed their monastery and attracted two dozen followers. Those Carthalians who wished to worship were invited to follow the monks to Lindisfarne and it is largely from these people that the present-day villagers of that island are descended (though some families on Lindisfarne descend from the earliest colonists of that island.)
Returning briefly to Carthal, Cynwrig made the capital at what is today Clarendon (though it was then called Wyflig) because that was where he hailed from.
For the remainder of Cynwrig's reign, there was peace in Carthal. That is not to say that there was never conflict; several naval battles and petty skirmishes were fought against Viking marauders from Vinland and other foreign raiding parties, but by and large Carthal enjoyed peace and prosperity. Following Cynwrig's death, his son Godric inherited the throne.
Godric was very different from his father. A man who loved books and learning. A scholar. An academic. He established universities and ordered libraries to be built in every city across Carthal. He sent Carthalian emissaries to distant lands in order to acquire new knowledge in the domains of agriculture, engineering and warfare. He amassed an impressive collection of texts with topics ranging from architecture to alchemy. More importantly, for me personally at least, Godric created a learning exchange program between Rome and Carthal in his efforts to revive the Roman traditions and Latin language in Carthal. I arrived in Carthal as a boy of twelve, my parents only too happy to send me away for school as Rome, under the Visigoths, was a rather miserable place.