The Shield Ring
Rosemary Sutcliff
Language: English
Pages: 234
ISBN: 1590785223
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The story takes place in England shortly after the Norman Conquest. High up among the mountains of the Lake District is a secret valley where the Northmen (Vikings) have their last stronghold - or shield ring. The Normans want to crush this last group of Northmen and bring the whole country under their control. To this end they build a castle in Carlisle and send an army north.
Life goes on in the valley: lambing, shearing, spinning, harvesting, and singing and storytelling in the great hall in the evenings - as narrated by two young people. Frytha is a Saxon girl, who fled to the valley after the Normans burnt her home, and Bjorn, the Bear-Cub, is the foster son of the old harper.
As the people of the shield ring go about their lives, they stay ready for a Norman attack. Bjorn's foster father teaches him to play the Sweet-singer, a special harp that the old harper owns, and despite Bjorn's enthusiasm, a secret fear burns inside the boy: if the Normans capture Bjorn, he may succumb to torture and reveal the path to the hidden valley.
When the Northmen need to scout the extent of the Norman army, Bjorn volunteers: he speaks enough Norman to get by and a harper can go anywhere. The young man sets out for the Norman camp, not knowing that Frytha, an ally, follows him. He does know that if the Normans discover his espionage, though, he will be tortured, and his secret fear from childhood may become a reality.
Defend and Betray (William Monk, Book 3)
from a cushioned bench as they entered, and came quickly through the rest, saying, “Why, what is this that you bring us, Haethcyn?” “A girl-bairn,” said the gray giant, “a small, very spent girl-bairn, with a long road and a burned home behind her, my Lady Tordis. A shepherd has just brought her in from beyond Lancaster.” “Her father?” “Nay, you must ask of the Normans concerning her father, and all her kin,” the gray giant said meaningly. The other women were exclaiming softly and bitterly
stream, she felt very much as if she had been rescued from drowning. She laughed breathlessly. “If this be a town, I like better the wild places.” Bjorn nodded. “Bide here a while, and we shall grow a little used to it.” And so for a while they stood together in the low doorway, watching the people jostle by. A very brightly colored crowd they seemed to Frytha, used to the dark grays and browns of the undyed wadmal the Jarl’s folk mostly wore. She had thought Bjorn bright as a jay in his
got to get this brute rubbed down, unless any of you cock-brained lot mean to do it for me.” A burst of voices closed in over his words, and out of them, one voice was thrown up clear. “Then there’s one thing plain enough, lads: we’ll be out of here the morn’s morn, or I’m a king!” Frytha stole a swift glance at Bjorn. The great bole of the ash-tree was taking on a moony, white-owl pallor in the dusk and the firelight, and the sky through the dipping branches was water green; and against sky
for a few moments, watching man and hound dwindle smaller on his sight, then turned back to his own men beyond the ancient steading. There was a lark singing above the barley-fields, he noticed. Meanwhile, among the sparse birchwoods of mid-dale, Bjorn and Frytha also had come to the place and time for going their separate ways; and stood looking at each other, and away again, finding nothing to say; while the rain-scented wind swooped over the neck of the ridge, and set the birchwoods hushing
from the blow, a wave of Northmen were out over the defenses at the dale-head and charging down upon their vanguard, with Gille Butharson, pole axe upswung, yelling like a fiend at their head, and swooping and hovering in their midst, the black Raven banner of the Viking kind. The Normans, penned in the narrow dale, faced outward all ways against the onslaught that was upon them from every side; and for a while it looked as though their so much greater numbers might yet carry the day. Again and