This was only the third time Odd had been through that underground passage. The first two times were for inspecting, making certain the work was done to his satisfaction, which it was. It was very well done. Gnup would get a silver arm ring for that, if he and Odd lived through the night.
Behind him, Odd could hear muttered comments, speculation, soft exclamations of surprise.
The tunnel seemed to go on forever, though Odd knew exactly how long it was, which was not very, and soon he saw the ladder at the far end appear in the light of his torch. He paused and thrust the base of the torch into a small hole dug in the side of the tunnel and left it there, then scrambled up the ladder and into the storehouse above.
The night air was cool and fresh and it made Odd realize how foul the air in the tunnel was. Of course he had never envisioned so many men moving through it. He had built it for his family and the servants to escape the hall, not an army of near two hundred warriors. He hoped the men at the far end of the line would not faint, but there was nothing he could do about it now. It would be up to their fellows to rescue them.
Vermund had left his burning torch inside the storehouse, set in a bracket, and in the light Odd could see that the storehouse was empty of people. Vermund and Signy had led them out the door, which was hanging open, and if they were still following his orders, had sent them running for safety, as far from the burning hall and Halfdan’s men as they could get.
Odd stood aside. As the others began to emerge from the shaft, he gestured for them to head out the open door. The storehouse would stand between them and the hall and Halfdan’s men would not see them there. Odd doubted they would even think to look in that direction for an army of warriors coming up out of the ground.
Finally Amundi came up from the hole in the floor. “I’m the last,” he said. He had a hint of a smile on his face. He looked as if he was about to say something, but instead he just shook his head in a gesture of disbelief and headed out the door.
Odd came last out of the storehouse. The air carried the powerful, sharp smell of burning thatch and the crackling sound of the fire was loud. There was light enough from the fire consuming the roof of the hall, and the stars and moon overhead, for him to see the men waiting for him: his neighbors in a small cluster, and behind them the warriors they had brought along with them. Warriors summoned by Halfdan to help kill Odd and his people.
“Well, it seems Halfdan won’t burn us alive in the hall, or cut us down like dogs,” Odd said, speaking just a little softer than normal. “You and your men can make your escape now, you should be safe. You’ll lose your horses, and I’m sorry for that, but there’s nothing for it. But if you head out into the night Halfdan will never hunt you down.”
“Doesn’t have to,” Ulfkel said. “He knows well enough where our farms are.”
“But he doesn’t know you were here,” Odd said.
“You’re saying we should leave? Leave you behind?” Vifil asked. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll go speak with Halfdan,” Odd said. “Give myself up to him in exchange for my family’s safety. Like I meant to do before.”
Amundi made a snorting sound. “Too late for that. You’ll be cut down before you speak one word, and it will be the worse for your family.”
“What else can I do?” Odd said. “Do you expect me to flee?”
Odd could sense something uncomfortable passing through the men, a shuffling sort of indecision. Then Ulfkel said, “You can fight, by Thor’s arse. We can fight. We can all fight this bastard.”
Odd shook his head. “I wouldn’t ask that of any of you. I couldn’t ask.” But even as he spoke the words he chastised himself for a hypocrite. It was true that he would not ask, but it was also true that he wanted very much for those men to offer. He was willing to give up his own life, ready to give it up, but he did not want to sell it cheap.
“You don’t have to ask,” Amundi said. “I don’t think Halfdan sees much difference between you and us anymore. He might not know we were in the hall, but it won’t matter. This started with you, and with your father’s farm, but we’re part of it now. By our choice. He’ll certainly come after us, so we might as well make our stand here.”
Heads nodded among the assembled free men. Behind them, Odd could see the warriors who were close enough to hear the discussion nodding as well. Nearly two hundred men, and he doubted that Halfdan had many more than that with him. And Halfdan’s men were staring into the flames of the burning hall, waiting, unaware that their enemy was behind them, out in the dark.
There were worse ways to go into a fight.
“Very well,” Odd said. He tried to keep the relief out of his voice, and that effort made him feel like even more of a hypocrite and a fraud. “Fighting it is.”
Chapter Thirty
Long is the journey,
long are the ways,
long are men's desires.
The Poetic Edda
Halfdan did not know they were there. That advantage, the chance to launch a surprise attack, was worth another two dozen warriors. For that reason Odd and the others wanted to be certain that Halfdan continued to not know, right up until the moment the first of the king’s men fell to their swords.
Amundi and the others hustled to arrange their men in columns, two long lines of one hundred men each. The plan was simple, as most good plans were. Nearly all of Halfdan’s men were on the far side of the hall because that was where the doors were. But Odd did not think Halfdan would be foolish enough to leave the near side of the building completely unwatched. And if that was the case, then those men had to go before they could raise an alarm.
He and the other free men stood at the head of the columns and led the way carefully toward the edge of the storehouse, the only thing that stood between them and the burning hall. Odd raised his hand and the men behind came to a stop, some, not getting the message, cursing as they ran into the men in front of them. Odd and the other leaders edged to the corner of the building and stepped out into the open where they could see.
The hall was blazing now, the whole north end a great pyre reaching up high into the night sky. It was hard to look at, and Odd felt a sadness flood over him. In all the worry of getting his family and the servants and the others to safety, of wondering what Halfdan might do next, he had not thought of what this meant.
His hall, his home, the place where his children had been born and raised, and now it was being consumed by flames and soon it would be nothing but a charred heap, a mound of smoldering wreckage. He felt his sorrow slowly shift into something else: a rage deeper and more profound than he had thought possible.
Odd pulled his eyes from the blaze and looked along the length of the hall. Halfdan had indeed set guards on that side. He could see them, half a dozen or so, moving back and forth, silhouettes against the burning building. He turned to Amundi and the others.
“I’ll kill those men,” he said, nodding toward the hall. “And then we’ll bring our men forward and attack around each end.” He turned and slipped off before anyone could object.
And well they might object. Odd was the youngest of them, the least experienced in the use of arms. The others had all gone a’viking in their younger days, and even if it was many years before, still they had done this sort of thing and lived to tell of it. They had stood in shield walls and fought desperate battles hand to hand. They had killed men with swords and spears and knives and seaxes. They had likely killed men with their bare hands. And Odd had done none of that. Odd Pig-Binder.
Odd had killed before, certainly. Not just pigs but men, killed them in the usual course of things: feuds and robberies and repulsing minor raids by outlaws. He had probably killed more men since the start of his fight with Halfdan than he had in his whole life leading up to it. But in the eyes of the others he was a farmer, not a warrior. And even if he was a very fine, very well-respected farmer, he was a farmer nonetheless.
It was this understanding, and a sense that this
was his fight, work that he alone must do, and the rage in his soul that was pushing him like a gale of wind toward the burning hall.
He moved quickly through the dark, his shield slung over his back, Blood-letter still in its scabbard. He could see the guards looking in every direction, but mostly they were staring at the burning hall, a rare sight, which meant they would be nearly blind when looking the other way, out into the dark. A wagon stood almost halfway between the storehouse and the hall. Odd reached it undetected and ducked down in its shadow. He swung the shield off his back and laid it aside.
The nearest guard was no more than thirty feet away. He had a shield on his arm and a spear in his hand. The fire glinted off a polished helmet on his head.
Odd made a moaning sound, like a man, or maybe an animal, in great pain. He did it again, louder this time. His eyes were on the guard and he could see him react as the strange noise reached his ears and registered as something that should concern him. He paused, looked up, cocked his head, then looked side to side. Odd moaned again and this time the man could tell the direction from which the sound came.
He was not fool enough to come rushing over. Rather, he took careful steps in the direction of the wagon, shield on his arm, spear horizontal and poised. Odd remained motionless, watching him come, waiting to see which end of the wagon he would investigate first. The world seemed to close down on him until it was just Odd and the wagon and the advancing guard and the rage like a sharp knife in his temple.
The guard stepped to his left and headed toward the front of the wagon where the shafts rested on the ground and Odd moved in the other direction. This was something entirely new to him. He had hunted, certainly, had become quite adept at stalking prey, but he had never played this sort of game with another human. But strangely, it did not feel foreign. Not at all. Odd felt as if the spirits of his grandfathers were leading him on.
He came around the far side and drew the long knife from the sheath on his belt, stepping with care, making no noise. The guard had reached the wagon now and was peering cautiously down into the shadows, shield still at chest level, spear point reaching out into what Odd knew was only darkness.
Odd straightened and took three steps. The guard sensed he was there just as Odd’s left arm came up and around the man’s head and his hand clamped over his mouth. It was all so very strange: the warm bulk of the man pressed against him, the smell of his flesh, the strength of his body as he suddenly realized he was in mortal danger and began to fight back. Odd could feel the man’s teeth pressed into his palm and he could feel his warm breath through calloused skin as Halfdan’s warrior screamed into Odd’s hand.
The muscles in Odd’s left arm tightened and the man’s head was pulled back, his neck elongated and he began fighting harder still as he understood what was coming. He swung the edge of his shield up over his left shoulder, trying to hit Odd in the face, but Odd flinched right and the edge of the shield just grazed his cheek. Then Odd whipped the knife around and brought it up to the man’s throat.
Odd had cut the throats of hundreds of animals of all sizes and he knew the sensation well: the press of the steel against resilient flesh, then the feel of the flesh parting under the sharp blade, the slight tug as the blade was drawn through muscle and sinew, the fine vibration as it ran over the bones of the neck. The blast of hot blood over the knife hand.
And here it was again, in every way, but this time it was a man, and Odd was very much aware that it was a man, a man who could think and speak and love and hate. Who might have a wife, who might have children. Odd felt the great profundity of that, and he felt a numb detachment as well.
All this Odd thought and felt in the three heartbeats’ time it took him to grab the warrior and cut his throat. He felt the man thrash a bit more and he held him tight, like a grieving lover he was trying to console, and then the man went limp and Odd eased him down onto the ground.
Odd dropped to one knee beside the motionless body. He stabbed his knife into the ground and wiped his blood-soaked hand on the tail of the man’s tunic, and once most of the blood was gone he grabbed the knife and wiped that as well. He did those things without thought, his eyes on the remainder of the men on that side of the hall. They, too, would have to be removed.
He looked down at the body sprawled out in front of him. The man’s arm was flung out and his shield had come halfway off his arm, and without really thinking about it or making a decision Odd knew what he would do next. He slid the knife back into his sheath, then plucked the helmet from the man’s head and set it on his own. He picked up the shield and slid it over his arm, then grabbed the man’s discarded spear and stood.
The next closest of Halfdan’s men was a couple hundred feet away. His shield was on his back, his spear resting easy on his shoulder. He wore a tunic and no mail. He seemed to not be very concerned about much. Odd began jogging toward him, a pace calculated to allow him to remain unconcerned.
By the time the man paused in his casual pacing and turned to face him, Odd had halved the distance between them. The man took the spear off his shoulder and rested the butt on the ground but took no other precautions beyond that. In the light of the burning hall he would see the familiar face of the shield Odd held, the glint of his helmet, the spear in Odd’s hand. Just what he would expect to see.
“What is it?” the man shouted as Odd drew closer. There was curiosity in his tone, perhaps a touch of concern. The next word out of his mouth, and the last word, was, “What?” as Odd, still jogging, lowered the spear he was holding and with his right hand alone drove it straight into the man’s gut.
The man’s eyes and mouth opened wide. He doubled over the spear and Odd was certain a scream was coming so he swung his shield in a wide arc and slammed it against the man’s head. The man’s helmet made a dull ringing sound as the wooden shield struck. The man twisted sideways and sprawled out on the ground, the spear jerking free from his body as he fell. Odd paused to see if he needed to hit the man again, but he seemed to be out cold, a mercy as he bled out through the vicious stomach wound.
Odd straightened. That little performance had not gone unnoticed. Two more of the men patrolling that side of the hall were running toward him now, the first about fifty feet ahead of the second.
“This bastard tried to kill me!” Odd shouted, pointing with his spear toward the man at his feet. He didn’t think the warrior running at him would believe that, or care, but if it created even a hint of doubt in the man’s mind that could be an advantage.
“He tried to kill me!” Odd shouted again. The man coming at him was thirty feet away and as he ran he slung his shield around off his back and onto his arm. Odd was sorry to see that. It would make this all the more difficult. He held his spear at his side, waited until Halfdan’s man was twenty feet away, too close to miss, and then he whipped the spear up and flung it straight and true.
The shield was a problem, as Odd guessed it would be. The man never broke stride as he lifted the shield and let the iron spear point embed itself in the wood. But that instant when the shield was over the man’s face was all that Odd needed. He leapt forward and drew Blood-letter as he ran. The man lowered the shield, the spear still hanging from the face, only to run straight into the point of Odd’s sword.
He was still running as the blade slid into his chest. He started to scream, then the scream turned to a choking sound as the blood erupted from his mouth. Odd held up his shield and the man hit it hard, coming to a jarring halt, and Odd pushed him away, pulling Blood-letter clean out as he did.
The next man was almost on him, a great brute with a shield and an ax and crazed look on his face, wild eyes peering out from a mass of wild facial hair. He raised the ax and screamed as he hacked down with a strength of arm that would easily cleave a helmet in two and still have force enough to cleave the skull beneath it.
Odd did not raise his shield. Instead he raised Blood-letter, held sideways, and the man’s bare wrists came down on the blade’s wicke
d edge. The force of the blow pushed the sword down and all but separated the man’s hands from his arms. The ax flew clear and Odd had to dodge to one side and the man shrieked and held his arms up to his face, his hands flopping sideways at unnatural angles. He started to scream again but Blood-letter cut it short.
Odd was breathing hard, but the rage was up and the urge to keep on killing was overwhelming. There were no more guards that he could see on that side of the hall; any others were lost in the darkness further down. It was his duty to go back and get Amundi and the others so they might launch their planned attack, but even the notion of moving away from the fight was more than Odd could endure.
He looked back at the storehouse, trying to organize his thoughts well enough to make a decision, when he saw that no decision was needed.
The others must have seen what was happening, maybe guessed that Odd would just keep going on his own, so they broke from their hiding place and advanced, two lines of warriors surging toward him. Odd could see Amundi leading the line of men closest to him, Ulfkel, leading the other. They split up as they approached the hall, Ulfkel heading for the north side, the side fully engulfed, Amundi going for the south end, leading his men seemingly straight at Odd.
“Come along! Now we kill the lot of them!” Amundi shouted as he ran closer. He had his shield on his arm and his sword raised and he seemed more alive than Odd had ever seen him.
Odd took a step toward him, ready to join the charge, ready to run at Amundi’s side around the far end of the hall and plunge into the fight, hitting Halfdan’s men on one side while Ulfkel hit them on the other. But he didn’t.
Instead he stood and watched. Amundi, with Ragi and Vigdis in company, raced by, and after them the hundred warriors they commanded.
Go with them, go with them! Odd commanded himself, but he remained fixed where he was, watching the warriors race past. He did not know why. It wasn’t cowardice, that he understood. He was more than willing to plunge into the thick of it. It wasn’t any misgiving, as if he might think this was a bad idea. He knew it wasn’t. He knew they had every hope of success.
Kings and Pawns Page 32
