Page 10 of The Caged Viking

In any case, the ravens of death would be flying over Winchester within days. Mayhap even hours. Then it would be over.

In the midst of it all, he noticed eyes directed toward him, then darting away quickly. “What to do with the caged Viking?” they seemed to be asking with worry.

About time they worried!

In fact, just now, Lord Botswith, earl of Larchford, approached with the king. The two of them paused to stare at him and then proceeded to discuss him as if he were not even there.

“Not high enough in rank to be used as a hostage in negotiations, I suppose,” the earl remarked.

What makes him think Vikings would negotiate at this point? The halfbrain!

“Pff. Not even a high jarl,” King Aethelred replied. “Just a karl, according to my wife.”

“Karl?”

“A jarl is comparable to our English earl, whilst a karl is just a wealthy landowner, or chieftain.”

Just? I would like to give him “just”! And I am so a jarl. A lowly one, but a jarl just the same. It was ironical that he would now claim his jarlness, if only in his head, when he denied it otherwise, like whenever Egil called him “Lord.”

“Should we just kill him and hide the body?” Lord Botswith asked.

Nay, nay, nay! No killing me!

He must have made a sound because both men jolted to attention and gave him a closer scrutiny, from their safe distance on the other side of the cage bars.

“Dost think he understands English?”

“Nay! All Viking are dumb, hardly more than animals,” the king said.

Hauk would have leapt through the bars and strangled the fool monarch if he could. Dumb was Aethelred’s middle name, not his.

“Not yet,” the king answered the earl’s question about killing him, but continued to ponder the thought as he pressed a forefinger to his lips pensively. “Word may have reached Sweyn and Duke Richard of a Viking noble being kept here in a cage for torture and humiliation. You know good and well that someone in my castle would reveal the truth at the mere pulling of a fingernail or the heat of a hot iron near an eyeball.”

“With God’s support, the pagans may never reach Winchester,” Lord Bothwith opined.

Don’t count on it.

The king, in his usual pattern of procrastination, said, “We will decide the Viking’s fate at the Witan meeting on the morrow. Let the body of Saxon thanes share in that decision, as well as final battle plans. Personally, methinks ’tis best to risk the ire of the invaders by killing this one Viking, mayhap even hanging his head from the ramparts as a warning to the heathen attackers. Yes, I like the sound of that. But let the deed be enforced from a Witan order, not mine alone.”

And so they pondered Hauk’s fate.

And here I stand like a fox in a field of archers, just waiting for one overeager housecarl to take a shot. With only two lackwits to save my sorry hide! The lackwit Viking queen, who is about to pop out a royal whelp, and the lackwit woodcutter/hersir who dawdles like a youthling contemplating his first swive.

When Egil came to him later that afternoon, Hauk repeated what he’d overheard. “It has to be tonight.”

Egil nodded, for once, and said, “’Tis the same I’m hearing round and ’bout. Rumor is, one mucky lord has suggested they release you into the woods outside the castle and set up a chase with dozens of armed men on horseback and hounds to track you down.”

“Like a bloody fox.” Hauk spat into the rushes.

“That way they kin allus say ye died tryin’ to escape.”

Hauk shook his head at the idiocy of the Saxons who wasted time on such games when their very lives were in peril.

“Be ready after the castle settles down fer the night.”

“Do you have the two horses ready for us to get away?”

“Three.”