Thorgrim held his spear up and slid his hand down the shaft until it was right behind the spear head, until he was holding the spear as if it was a dagger with a six foot handle behind.
The Englishman saw the danger now. His eyes went up to the spear point and opened wider still. He tried to step back but Thorgrim held the edge of his shield with his left hand as he drove the spear point down with his right. It came over the top of the shield and struck the Englishman just above the collar of his mail shirt and drove on in with little resistance, down through the man’s throat and further still.
Thorgrim let the spear go as the man’s head rolled back and his body went limp from the shock of the fatal blow. He reached out and grabbed the man’s sword before it fell and jerked the edge of the shield he still held on his left arm. The man’s arm slipped out of the shield’s strap as he went down and Thorgrim flipped the shield around and stuck his own arm through.
Thank you, Thorgrim thought as he watched the man’s body hit the ground, the spear standing out from his chest, blood running from his open mouth. His eyes were still wide and Thorgrim guessed he was already dead, though it hardly mattered just then.
He stepped back, sword raised. He could see nothing but panicked people running, shoving. One of the men-at-arms stood in mid-stream, trying to kick his way through. Then suddenly the crowd parted and there was only space between him and Thorgrim. Thorgrim saw the determined look on the man’s face as he stepped up, leveled his spear and charged.
Thorgrim let him come, let his momentum build, and just as his spear point was a couple feet from driving into Thorgrim’s gut Thorgrim chopped down with his sword, splitting the spear shaft like kindling. He lifted his shield and the surprised man slammed into it as Thorgrim braced himself against the impact. The man bounced back and Thorgrim brought his sword down like an ax. But the soldier was quicker than Thorgrim would have guessed and he leaped back, colliding with the people behind him, his determined look gone as Thorgrim’s sword whipped past, hitting only air.
No time for this… Thorgrim thought. This chaos, the cover that the crazed mob provided, would not last much longer. They had to get out now. Godi and the others had formed themselves up into a square, fighting off attacks from three directions. Thorgrim backed off a few feet, reached over and smacked Godi with the flat of his sword.
“We have to go!” he shouted, loud enough for Godi and the others to hear. “Out the gate, with the crowd!”
Godi nodded, thrusting with his spear as he did.
“Swine array!” Thorgrim shouted. A swine array would form them into a human wedge, an effective formation for smashing through a shieldwall, if they had men enough. Thorgrim hoped it would do the same with seven men against a frightened mob.
“Right!” Godi shouted.
Thorgrim pushed his way forward. He meant to make himself the point of the wedge, but before he could get there Godi let out a roar and charged ahead, swinging and thrusting with his spear, kicked with legs like small trees at anyone in his way. They moved forward, the others falling in behind Godi like geese flying in a V formation, and the terrified people fought to get clear.
Much as he loathed letting another man take the greater risk, Thorgrim had to admit Godi made a frightening and effective point.
“Harald, Brand, get Starri!” Thorgrim shouted and the two young men nodded and raced off to pull Starri from his personal brawl and drag him along.
The crowd was thinning some, which made movement easier, but offered less cover. Godi plunged ahead into the running mass and anyone who saw him coming stumbled out of the way and anyone who didn’t was knocked aside as they made for the main gate. There were handfuls of soldiers all over the grounds, some hurrying one way or another, some not, but there was no coordinated effort to stop the Northmen. No one seemed to be in charge.
That was hardly a surprise. The entire situation had been turned on its head. Order had been turned to madness in less time than it took for a man to don a mail shirt and strap on his weapons.
And now, Thorgrim realized, the king’s men were having a hard time even finding the Northmen in the crowd. He could see here and there armed men pointing, running, trying and failing to get at them through the panicked townsfolk.
Godi was no longer swinging his spear or kicking his way through. There was no need, no one was blocking their way. The seven of them found themselves carried along by the crowd, swept toward the gate like twigs in a fast moving stream.
The gate was close now, the guards trying to shut it, men shouting orders, men trying to get the running mob to stop long enough to get the big doors closed and trap the prisoners inside. But no one was willing to stop in their headlong fight. No one was interested in being trapped inside the walls with the mad heathens on the loose.
They were fifty feet away when the guards gave up trying to close the gate and formed up into a human wall instead, shields and spears ready, making one final effort to keep the heathens from getting out. Godi did not slow at all, and neither did the men behind him, Thorgrim on his left side, Harald on his right, the rest trailing astern. Twenty feet away and Thorgrim dug in, pushed harder, came up to Godi’s side, and then he ran harder still until he was a step ahead and then another, leading the swine array now. Thorgrim was the only one with a shield, and tough as Godi was his flesh would not turn aside the point of a spear.
Thorgrim was ten feet from the shieldwall, running as fast as he was physically able. He saw a half dozen spear points aimed directly at him, men bracing for him to impale himself on their weapons. Five feet away and Thorgrim ducked behind the shield so the wood and canvas disk was covering him from the waist up and he had time enough before he hit to hope none of the soldiers would think to go for his legs.
Five spear heads hit the shield, five points came tearing halfway through the wood as Thorgrim slammed into the shieldwall. He felt the men in front of him buckle under the impact, felt the line of men seem to break apart.
He pulled his arm from the strap of the shield and let it go. The five spears that were stuck in the wood were useless now, leaving the men who had carried them unarmed, and Thorgrim slashed at them with his sword. He was still in the middle of his first stroke when Godi came crashing into the men to his right and Starri came screaming in to his left.
Starri had a spear in hand, the shaft broken in two, leaving a weapon three feet long, and he was using it with great dexterity. He drove the point in between two shields and Thorgrim heard a man scream as the shieldwall continued to break apart. Godi had bashed a gap in the wall and Harald and Brand and Gudrid were charging into it, spears driving out in every direction. Thorgrim brought his sword back over his left shoulder and took a powerful backhand swing at the man in front of him who was stumbling to get clear.
And then the shieldwall disappeared. It was like a magical thing. One second there were twenty soldiers standing in their way, and the next second there were not, the component parts of the wall either lying on the ground bleeding or running off.
“Go! Go!” Thorgrim shouted, and he waved his men forward and they started to run once more. They did not bother with their swine array. The way was clear now, the gates open, the streets and thatched houses and workshops of Winchester in sight past the open ground. They raced out through the gate, now nearly alone as the town folk scattered like chickens with a stray dog in the yard, and they kept on running. Where they were running to, Thorgrim did not know. His only thought was to put distance between them and the king’s men.
They bolted over the open ground and toward the place where the nearest street began, Thorgrim now taking the lead. He could feel his chest burning, his legs aching, but he pressed on. And then they were in the street, where the small buildings crowded up near the dirt road offered them at least some illusion of shelter.
Thorgrim slowed his running then came to a stop, doubled over, gasping for breath. The wound in his side was radiating pain and he was sure Failend’s fine stitches had
been torn clean away. His knees hurt.
He could hear Godi and a couple of the others sucking in air as well. He looked up. Godi’s mouth and eyes were open wide as he struggled to pull sufficient breath into his chest. Gudrid was sweating profusely, the perspiration making tracks through the soot that covered his face. Hall was still doubled over. Harald and Brand, to Thorgrim’s annoyance, were pretty much breathing normally, as was Starri Deathless.
“Very well,” Thorgrim said at last. He straightened and winced at the dagger-thrust pain from his half-healed laceration. He barely had breath enough to speak, but he knew there was no time to wait. The king’s men would be coming soon. “We need to go.”
“Where?” Starri asked.
Thorgrim gestured with his head toward the far end of the street. They had come that way only once, at night, following the Englishman, but Thorgrim thought he had an idea of how the city was laid out.
“Any of these streets will lead to the city wall,” he said and he hoped he was right. “We’ll go there and find a way out.”
No one said anything because no one had a better idea. Thorgrim turned and headed up the street, jogging as fast as he was able. He could see faces peering out from doors and windows and from behind buildings. Word of the chaos at the king’s residence, of the savages on the loose, must have spread.
They had not gone far when two things happened at once. Up ahead, through the press of houses and the jam of carts and animals on the street, they caught sight of the city wall, the great, gray stonework that encircled Winchester, the wall that was there to keep the hostile world out, but was now keeping them in. And behind them, they heard the first sounds of pursuit.
Horses, Thorgrim thought as the sound made its way through his heaving breath and his distracted thoughts. There were horses behind them, but not in sight, still a ways back. They were not running, but not walking either. Moving quickly. Horses had to mean the king’s men, and if they were not at a full gallop it likely meant they were not entirely sure where the Northmen had gone.
“I hear horses,” Starri said at the same moment Thorgrim heard them.
“Yes, but there’s the wall,” Thorgrim said, pointing. “Let’s go.”
He picked up the pace of his run, painful as that was to his legs and knees and lungs. They raced down the center of the road and came out in the street perpendicular to it, a street that bordered the city wall. Thorgrim stopped there, breathing hard. He looked to his right, but he could see nothing other than the ends of more streets, more carts, more animals wandering about. Across from those streets stood an unbroken stretch of wall fifteen feet high with no way to get over or through.
He looked left. A hundred yards away he saw it: the main gate. The doors were still open but no one was going in or out. The guards has shed their bored and lazy attitude. They stood poised with shields on their arms, spears held ready, looking in a dozen different directions. A general sense of alarm seemed to have spread through the city.
“There!” Thorgrim pointed with his sword and he felt a glow of hope, the first in a long time. The guards outnumbered them, to be sure, but Thorgrim did not doubt they could fight their way through. And the gates were still open.
He started to run again, the rest behind him, and covered about a dozen feet before he stopped. Riders came bursting out from the street closest to the gates, pounding into the open, and reined hard to a stop. The foremost of them had his sword drawn and was pointing to the gate and shouting something Thorgrim could not understand. But he did not need to. The meaning was clear enough as six of the guards raced off to push the main gate’s two big oak doors closed.
“Oh, by all the gods!” Gudrid said in frustration.
“They’re showing us no favors today,” Brand said.
“Toy with us, toy with us, it’s what they’ll do,” Starri said. “They like to play with Night Wolf this way, you know.”
Even before that exchange was done, the riders had seen them. The man with the sword was now pointing their way, and the others were turning their mounts to look. For a moment no one moved, not the Englishmen or the Northmen. Both clusters of men seemed frozen in that moment, like reliefs carved in the posts of a great hall, depicting some moment before epic battle.
Then the horsemen began to move. Thorgrim saw the leader kick his heels into his horse’s flanks, saw the horse leap forward into a run, the rest of the horsemen just two steps behind. The guards were running as well, but they were quickly left in the horses’ wake.
Thorgrim looked around. They weren’t getting out of the city, so the best they could do was find a place to make a stand. Any one of those houses might work. It would at least be a fine place to die with their weapons in their hands.
He was about to speak when he heard Harald’s voice, shouting. The boy was not among them and Thorgrim had not even noticed he was gone. But now he came running out from the side of a nearby workshop and over his head he was carrying a ladder, a long ladder, twelve feet at least. Long enough to get up and over.
“Here! Here!” Harald shouted as he pounded across the street, stopping quick and letting the momentum bring the ladder down and stand it upright against the stone wall. Thorgrim looked back at the horsemen. They were fifty yards away, riding at a full gallop now. Harald was too late. There was no time left for Thorgrim and his men to turn their backs and get up the ladder.
“Sons of whores!” Starri shouted and charged toward the riders. He had covered only three steps when Godi lunged forward and grabbed him by the neck and the crotch and lifted him kicking and flailing over his head.
“Go! Go!” Godi shouted and he turned and flung Starri at the ladder, flung him so hard Starri was halfway up when he hit it and managed to grab hold of one rung and get his foot on another before he fell.
Godi grabbed Hall and shoved him toward the ladder. “Go, all of you go, I’ll hold them off!”
Harald turned toward Godi, shouting and pointing at the ladder with his spear. “You’re with us, Godi, you’re with us!” he shouted. “Come with us!”
Thorgrim grabbed Harald’s arm and pulled him back. He had seen, in that instant, what Harald and the others could not see. He saw what Godi wanted, and what the gods wanted for Godi. They called to him. They called him to their feast in the great hall.
“Let him have this,” Thorgrim said to Harald. “He might make it yet.”
Harald’s eyes were wide, his face red with exertion. He looked as if he did not understand. The horsemen were on them now, riding up with swords drawn. Harald’s eyes went from Thorgrim to Godi and back. He nodded and turned and leaped for the ladder, the last one up, save for Thorgrim and Godi.
The first of the horsemen came charging at Godi and Godi lifted his spear and jabbed. The horseman swerved away, slashing with his sword and missing, and the next came in at his heels.
“I’ll see you again, soon enough, Godi Unundarson!” Thorgrim called as he reached out and found one of the ladder’s rungs.
“In Odin’s great hall, Thorgrim Night Wolf!” Godi called, still facing the riders coming at him. “I’ll have your seat waiting!”
Thorgrim turned and ran up the ladder, moving fast up the wooden rungs. He heard the shouting and the pounding of hooves on the ground below. He pulled himself up onto the top of the wall and stood and looked down.
Godi was standing at the base of the wall like a giant rock barrier rolled in place. He was driving with his spear as the horsemen came at him, charging and retreating. He had managed to get up two rungs of the ladder, but now the riders had him fully engaged.
He took another step just as the guards on foot reached him, charging in, spears thrusting upward. Godi knocked a spear aside, lunged down at the man, drove his point into the man’s guts and trapped his own weapon at the same time. Thorgrim saw Godi grab for the dead man’s spear as three others drove their weapons into his huge body. Godi roared like a bear and swung his fist, leaping from the ladder as more spears came driving into
him.
The first rider was back, sword lifted. Godi, incredibly, was still on his feet, lashing out, when the sword came down on his head.
Hall and Gudrid grabbed the top of the ladder and pulled it up. Thorgrim felt a hand grip his arm.
“We have to go.”
He looked over. Harald was there, tears running down his face. He nodded toward the ladder now leaning against the other side of the wall. Beyond that lay open country. The rest of the men were already climbing down.
“Go. I’m behind you,” Thorgrim said. Harald swung himself onto the ladder and raced down, and Thorgrim followed behind. He hit the ground and Harald grabbed the ladder and spun it off the wall and tossed it aside.
Thorgrim looked around. They had the wall to their backs and the open country before them and no obvious place to go, no sort of defense or shelter. What to do? Get as much distance as possible between themselves and the English, he guessed.
“Follow me,” he said as if he had some plan in mind. He headed off directly away from the wall, not toward the Roman road but over the fields. Maybe there would be a farm near — he could see buildings in the distance — and maybe they would find some horses there.
Maybe. But he did not think they would get there. It might take the men-at-arms on their horses a moment to straighten themselves out, another moment to get the gate open, but it would not be long before they came riding out with their helmets and mail, swords and shields at the ready.
They were moving at a fast walk, six men in open country.
“Maybe we should run?” Harald suggested.
“No,” Thorgrim said. There was no point. They could not possibly run far enough to do any good, and further exhausting themselves would not help.
They were still close enough to the city wall to hear the creak of the main gate as it was swung open. As one they stopped and turned. A moment later the first of the riders came charging through, then another and another. More than a dozen at least, and Thorgrim was sure these were just the men at the gate. More would be coming, as if there was any need for more.
The Midgard Serpent Page 48
