The friendship between King Erik and Arn had grown even stronger. In Arn’s eyes, Erik had quickly changed from a youth greedy for simple pleasures into a man of great solemnity and dignity. For Erik, who had now seen his marshal in a war against overwhelming enemy forces, there was no doubt who was the true architect of this victory. And he didn’t hesitate to give full credit to Arn before the worldly members of his council, although in the presence of the bishops he found it wise to declare that the victory had been given to them by the hand of God.
Arn was not opposed to encouraging the bishops to talk of David versus Goliath, since every such more or less astute comparison from the prelates served to reinforce the idea that Erik had triumphed through God’s will and was thereby entitled to wear the crown.
But in his own heart Arn had more doubts. Earlier in his life he had seen far too many apparently inexplicable victories or defeats to be genuinely convinced of God’s intervention in every little human struggle on earth. In Arn’s experience, it was foolish commands on one side of the conflict that usually spelled victory for the other side.
And the Danes had been foolish in more ways than one, as well as arrogant. They had seriously underestimated their enemy, and they had depended almost exclusively on heavy cavalry, even though they should have realized that they would encounter snow. Their greatest mistake was not anticipating the longbow archers, and thus they had forced their entire army to ride to its death all at once. So many serious misjudgments could end only in defeat.
Yet as the marshal of the realm, Arn’s chief responsibility was to warn against pride. Such a great victory as occurred at Lena could never be repeated if the Danes decided to return. No doubt they wouldn’t come back soon, since it would take time to replace such a large army; so many riders, horses, weapons, and armour had been lost.
After the Swedes had finished their plundering of the battlefield at Lena, which went on for two days, all the equipment, saddles, and arrows collected were transported on fifteen fully loaded ox-carts to Forsvik. The plundered goods were more than enough to outfit two hundred new heavy riders.
They also obtained important information from the conquered armour. The Danes had a new way of protecting themselves against arrows and swords. Their helmets were stronger and offered better protection for the eyes. And some of their chain mail was not made of linked rings but rather from whole steel plates, like the scales on a fish; not even the long needle-sharp arrow points could penetrate such armour.
This information created many new tasks for the Wachtian brothers, prompting them to replicate the best of the Danish armour and also to think up new weapons that might work better than those they already had. One new weapon was the long war hammer, with a hammerhead on one side and a short, sharp pike on the other, which could puncture a hole in any type of helmet. Another weapon that they spent much time discussing with Arn was a light crossbow for riders that required only one hand for shooting arrows. It took time to develop this weapon, since it had to combine seemingly incompatible traits. It had to be strong enough to pierce steel plates and yet light enough to shoot with one hand from horseback, since the rider’s other hand had to hold the reins and his shield.
After much effort the Wachtian brothers finally produced a weapon that would allow a light rider to move in close to a heavy enemy and slay him with a single, infallible shot.
The marshal of a realm needed to prepare for the worst. That was Arn’s firm conviction, and he was quick to say so whenever given the opportunity. Other councillors and kinsmen seemed convinced that they were now living in favourable times and with eternal peace, since the victory at Lena had been so monumental.
The worst that might happen would be for the Danes to return with just as many heavy riders in the summer; this time they would not underestimate the enemy or be enticed into the sun-dimming cloud of arrows shot by the longbow archers.
The Danes’ greatest weapon was the number of heavily armoured horsemen. An attack launched by a large group of such riders would strike like an iron fist through any army, provided they were sent into battle at the proper moment.
The lack of heavy riders was the greatest weakness of the Goths, but it was worse for the Swedes. This simple but grim conclusion brought about a thorough change in the exercises carried out at Forsvik during the next few years. All adult Folkung men were sent there to obtain new armour, both for themselves and their horses. Then they had to practice in the fields around Forsvik that had been turned into an arena, where no grass grew any longer. Arn’s own son, Magnus Månesköld, was among the many men who arrived to learn the methods required for this new way of waging war.
It was of course easier to train heavy riders. They needed to do little more than ride close together with lowered lance, but without hesitation when the battle started. The trick was not to send them into the wrong situation. For this reason Arn thought the young riders at Forsvik should take responsibility for them. But the foremost of the Folkungs thought this was an unreasonable demand. Men like Magnus Månesköld and Folke jarl couldn’t possibly take orders from youths young enough to be their own sons. Such an arrangement would never have worked in the lands of the Goths or the Swedes.
In the new knights’ hall at Forsvik, Arn had requested that a big box of sand be brought in. There he gathered the young knights and squadron commanders a couple of times each week, shaping in the sand hills and valleys, using pine cones and spruce cones to represent cavalry or phalanxes of foot-soldiers. By this simple device he tried to teach them what he knew of what had happened on the battlefield. But only the young men wanted to learn such things; all of the older Folkungs believed far more in their own courage and that of their kinsmen rather than in anything they could learn from pine cones.
Another way to prepare for the war that no one thought would come, not even Arn, was to establish new Forsvik schools. Sir Sigfrid Erlingsson had inherited his own estate on Kinnekulle, and there he began to train young men, as well as at least a hundred longbow archers from among the peasants and thralls. Sir Bengt Elinsson now had two estates, since he had inherited Ymseborg from his parents and Älgarås from his maternal grandfather. At Ymseborg he created his own school, and he sold Älgarås to Arn and Eskil. They in turn gave the estate to Sir Sune Folkesson, provided he took it upon himself to train at least three squadrons of light riders and two hundred longbow archers. Forsvik itself was becoming more and more a school and weapons smithy for heavy cavalry.
It was particularly hard for Sune Folkesson to part with Arn and Cecilia. In confidence he told them the whole story of the great love between himself and King Sverker’s daughter Helena, how their love could have cost them both their heads, and how he had sworn that one day he would take a squadron of Folkungs to fetch Helena from Vreta cloister. There she still sat, withering away, even though her father had fled with his tail between his legs to Denmark.
Cecilia and Arn were probably the two people in all of Western Götaland who would be most moved by such a tale. They had never betrayed their love for each other, nor had they ever lost hope, and their virtue had been rewarded.
Yet Arn responded with great harshness toward Sune’s hopes of gaining permission to ride at once to Vreta.
Abducting a maiden from a convent, and that was what it would be called no matter now willingly Helena came running, would provoke all of the bishops. And such internal strife was not something that the fragile new realm could tolerate. As long as Sverker, the former king, was still alive, he was the only one who could give her hand in marriage; that was a right that no one could take from him. And as long as that was so, taking Helena in such a fashion would be considered stealing her from the cloister. It didn’t matter how much the two young lovers wished to think otherwise.