The Half-Slave

by Trevor Bloom

  There was a low growl from the Cheruskkii.

  ‘We are a free people. A holy people. Guardians of the sacred pool,’ he reminded them. ‘Generations ago we migrated from the Almost-Island and settled between the two rivers when the Cheruskkii were still sitting on logs in the marshes and croaking.’

  The Theodi laughed at that. This was their story and they were proud of it.

  Besso kicked the turf with the heel of his boot and looked up at him. ‘What does tha want, Ascha?’

  ‘Join us, Besso! Fight alongside the Romans and the Franks as thirty years ago we fought together against the Huns.’

  ‘You want us to take on the Cheruskkii?’

  ‘It’s the Cheruskkii who have betrayed us, not the Romans or the Franks. Hanno is dead and you are no longer oath-bound. I am the son of Aelfric, Besso. Join me now against those who stole our honour.’

  Besso gave Ascha a fixed and sleepy stare. He ran his fingers through his beard, shrugged and shook his head. And then, with a faint smile as if he was not quite sure what he was doing, he took a step towards Ascha and began to walk slowly towards him.

  Ascha waited, heart in mouth.

  There was a pause and then Ulfila, one of his father’s friends, stepped out from the line. Others followed: Lulla, Hwita, One-eyed Ucca, Odda, red-haired Meoc, old Wada. The boy Morcar grinned and lifted a hand as he passed by. He watched them come, a steady trickle of men. They left the Saxon line and sauntered over as if out for a summer stroll. He counted quickly. Not many. Not enough to make a difference, but better than nothing.

  Seeing the Theodi leave, the Cheruskkii raised an angry roar and beat angrily on their shields. The Saxon army shifted like some vast and nameless beast, ready to fall on the Theodi traitors. Now was the hard time. If the Cheruskkii attacked they would destroy the Theodi in moments. Stay calm, he thought. Stay calm.

  A sudden boiling in the lines and Radhalla appeared with his big head and powerful stone-crunching jaws. He wore a gleaming chain mail coat held by a war belt as wide as a man’s hand and over it a black wolfskin cape. On his arm, a warshield decorated with bronze animals and birds.

  Radhalla watched with dark and hooded eyes as the Theodi streamed away.

  ‘Let ‘em go!’ he bellowed. ‘They’re all going to die anyway.’

  An angry growl from the Cheruskkii, but they lowered their spears. Ascha blew out his lungs with relief. He turned and waved to Syagrius to let the Theodi through and then yanked his horse’s head around and followed them.

  When he looked back, Radhalla was still watching him.

  As he neared the allied line he saw a rumpled figure waiting for him half-way up the slope, accompanied by a young boy. Ascha slipped a leg over the horse’s neck and slid to the ground. Besso dipped into his tunic, pulled out an apple and bit into it. The juice ran down his beard, and dripped onto his chest. There was a crooked smile on his face.

  ‘What’s tha laughing at?’ Ascha said sourly.

  Besso scratched his bristly chin. ‘The way tha spoke back there. Tiw! But it put me in mind of thi father.’

  Ascha threw the boy a suspicious glance. ‘What’s this?’ he said.

  The boy looked about fourteen, the age Ascha had been when he went on his first raid. Besso snapped his fingers. The boy ran a pink tongue across his lips and stepped forward. He held a bundle with both hands and offered it to Ascha.

  Bemused, Ascha took the gift. It was heavier than it looked. He noticed the boy gazing up at him with a look akin to awe and felt slightly embarrassed. He pulled away a sackcloth covering to reveal a sword, the sword his grandfather wore when he fought the Huns, the sword his mother had hidden beneath the hut floor when the Cheruskkii came. Holding his breath, he ran his hand over the shining blade, gently tracing the wave-like pattern with his finger and looked at Besso, his eyes swimming.

  ‘Thi mother wanted tha to have it,’ Besso said. ‘She knew I would see tha again. I was unable to give it tha before.’

  ‘Tha could have kept this to thiself, and I would niver have known,’ Ascha said.

  Besso smiled. ‘That occurred to me also.’

  ‘I don’t want it!’ Ascha said suddenly, pushing the sword away.

  Besso looked at him angrily. ‘It’s thi father’s sword!’

  ‘My father sent me away to exile,’ Ascha yelled. ‘He made me an outcast.’

  ‘Thi father had no choice,’ Besso said dourly. ‘He was a good man and did what he could.’

  ‘But Radhalla…’

  ‘Radhalla is half the man thi father was,’ Besso said with a vehemence that took Ascha by surprise. ‘He was always jealous of Aelfric.’

  Ascha looked at him. ‘Radhalla was jealous?’

  ‘Everything Aelfric had, Radhalla wanted. It was always the same with him. But thi father would a been proud of tha. Proud of what tha’s done.’

  He laid a hand on Ascha’s shoulder and held up the sword. ‘Take it,’ Besso said softly.

  Ascha turned and looked at Besso, wanting to believe. He lowered his head and took the sword. He put one arm around Besso’s meaty neck and the other round the boy’s shoulders and together they walked back up the slope.

  ‘For a moment, I believed you were going over to them,’ Syagrius said peevishly.

  ‘I thought about it.’

  Syagrius looked at him and gave an uncertain laugh.

  ‘They’ll attack very soon,’ Ascha said, looking back across the plateau.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No word from the Franks?’

  ‘None,’ said Syagrius. ‘Now, come with me. I want you to translate for the Franks.’

  Syagrius rode out in front of the allied line and turned to face the troops.

  Ascha looked him over. The King of the Romans, the Franks sometimes called him, although with his grey hair and ill-fitting cuirass, he looked more like a country landowner.

  Syagrius spoke in his thin patrician voice. He reminded them why they were there and what they were required to do. He told them they were heavily outnumbered, but that help was on its way. If they died today, they would do so knowing their deaths would be avenged.

  ‘I trust that you will fight with honour and I pray that God will grant us victory.’

  Ascha had barely finished translating the Governor’s words when there was a wild yell.

  ‘Here they come!’

  32

  As cha held his breath. The Saxons held their shields in front of their mouths and boomed their war cry. They hammered their seaxes on their shields and then they came on, wardrums pounding. There were thousands of them, covering the plateau from one side to another. The Franks clashed their weapons against their shields and howled like wolves. Ascha felt as if the earth were shaking.

  Syagrius flicked his fingers, and archers ran forward into the dead ground between the two armies. Half way down the slope, they knelt and fitted arrows to their bows and drew. They held the shafts to their chins with a look of rapt concentration and then released in one fluid movement.

  A dull thrum of bowstrings.

  The Saxons raised their shields and went to ground. Ascha saw a dark stain of arrows rise and fall, rattling on shields and thumping into wood and flesh. There were cries of pain and men fell, writhing. The archers fired again and again before withdrawing. Each time the northerners shook themselves like wet dogs and then came on, tramping steadily over a ground littered with arrow shafts and stricken men, bunching up and leaning forward, shields up, as if caught in a storm.

  With a wild yell the Saxons broke into a run, dipping down into the lower ground and rushing up the slope like a tidal wave, big bearded faces screaming defiance.

  Ascha unlaced the beaded peace-bands that held the hilt of his father’s sword and drew it, rasping from the scabbard’s throat. He rested the heavy blade against his shoulder, flexed his fingers around the grip and waited, every muscle rigid with tension. A rain of slingshots hummed through the air above his head and crashed onto the
Saxons’ shields and helmets, shattering skulls and breaking limbs.

  He heard Syagrius shout, ‘Hold your places. Stand fast!’

  ‘Stand fast!’ Ascha repeated in Frankish. ‘At my signal!’

  He waited until the moment was ripe and jerked his arm down.

  ‘Now!’ he yelled. ‘Spike them!’

  With a grunt the Franks swung their arms up and over. Javelins and angons, the cruelly barbed Frankish harpoons, arced and fell, doing cruel damage to soft bodies.

  Still the Saxons came on.

  ‘Franciskas!’ Ascha called. The Franks took two running steps and hurled their tomahawks.

  The shields of the Saxon front rank shattered under the whirling blades. Time stood still. And then Ascha felt himself shaken by a bone-jarring crash, like a great oak falling in the forest, as the two armies met.

  Twice, against all odds, the allies hurled the Saxons back. The Franks dragged out their dead and injured and closed up the line. They checked their shields for cracks and their blade-edges for chips and wiped their faces clean of blood and sweat. A pause while both sides caught their breath and warily watched each other. Ascha ached all over, and his sword arm felt heavy as lead. Sweat ran down his back and his throat was dry as sand. The first few moments of battle were already a blur. Men swung their weapons, iron thrusts opening the bodies of strangers who died to grunts and curses and the clang of iron on iron. But now the allies’ numbers were dwindling. Already more than half were dead or injured. They couldn’t take much more.

  Syagrius came trotting by, his face drawn.

  ‘We must hold this rise,’ he shouted urgently to Ascha. ‘Once they push us back we are lost.’

  Simple to say, Ascha thought, the difficulty lay in doing it.

  There were shouts further down the line. Ascha could see men turning and pointing. He raised a hand to shield his eyes. He saw banners fluttering and the flash of sunlight on iron weapons. There were armed men coming up on their flank.

  ‘Who are they?’ Tchenguiz said.

  ‘Franks,’ one of the auxiliaries shouted. ‘It’s Bauto! The Franks are here!’

  A ragged cheer went up. Men turned, laughed and threw their caps in the air. Some danced, swinging each other by the arm.

  Ascha squinted into the sun.

  ‘It’s not Bauto,’ he said, his eyesight better than any man’s. ‘It’s Ragnachar and his River Franks.’

  He felt a tremor of apprehension but was reassured when he saw that Ragnachar was making no attempt to join the Saxons. Ragnachar rode with his wife and two daughters in a cart pulled by two long-maned ponies, followed by a wagonload of slaves. Behind came a troop of mounted Alani and then the mass of Ragnachar’s Franks. Ascha saw Fara among the Alani, riding the same black stallion he had ridden the night before. He wrenched his eyes away.

  Some day, he resolved, but not today.

  Ragnachar led his Franks with drums beating past the Saxons and toward the allied lines. Ascha could hear bone flutes, a thin and mournful sound, like the keening of kites. He felt a huge surge of relief. Blood was thicker than water after all. Ragnachar had come to rescue his nephew. With Ragnachar’s forces they could hold the Saxons off until Bauto’s scara arrived.

  Ragnachar drove to the edge of the plateau. His cart rattled to a halt. The Alani reined in and Ragnachar’s Franks came to a standstill. Ragnachar sat in the wagon with his legs wide and his belly drooping over his britches. Banners whipped in the breeze. The cheering faded. The allies turned and looked at each other with anxious faces.

  ‘Why they stop?’ Tchenguiz said.

  A chill spread down Ascha’s back. ‘He’s not going to fight.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s waiting to see which way the wind blows. He’ll join forces with whoever comes out on top.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ someone said.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said.

  The drums thundered once more, the trumpets blared and the horns groaned like a dying bull. Ascha’s head throbbed and his eyes stung with sweat.

  ‘They’re coming,’ someone shouted.

  The sun was at its highest. The men buckled down and waited for the onslaught. The rhythm changed. Rum-pum-ti-ti-pum, rum-pum-ti-ti-pum. The Saxons were forming up in a deep wedge, axe wielding Cheruskers to the fore, other clans to the sides. They came on baying triumphantly, a dark mass as deep as it was wide, aiming for the middle of the allied line.

  ‘Cuneus!’ Syagrius yelled. ‘Open the front rank! Middle ranks step back!’

  Ascha called it in Frankish. ‘Boar snout!’

  The sound of trumpets shivered the air.

  He knew what Syagrius wanted. The only defence to the boar’s snout was to pull back the centre of the line to let the Saxons in and envelop them. But they had too few troops to encircle the Saxons. If they were to avoid being penetrated, the allies would have to withdraw.

  He screamed at Syagrius. ‘Lord, we will not be able to hold them much longer. I must go now!’

  Ascha saw a shadow of doubt flit across the Governor’s brow, and then his face cleared and he nodded. ‘Go!’ he shouted. ‘And may God go with you.’

  Ascha slapped Tchenguiz on the shoulder and they turned and pushed their way through the packed Franks, shouting and banging on the mens’ shields to let them through. They ran to the rear and round to the quarry. They moved fast, knowing the way, pushing through chest-high weeds and climbing up over the rocks until they came to where the band of hostages and Pritanni lay hidden in the brush.

  They rose when they saw him and looked at him expectantly. He scanned their sweat-stained faces, his weariness forgotten. Far off, he could hear the sounds of battle, rising and falling like the sea.

  ‘Thought you’d forgotten us,’ Gundovald growled, and the men snickered nervously.

  ‘Syagrius will hold them as long as he can,’ Ascha said. ‘But as soon as he pulls back, we go in.’

  They drew their weapons and moved up to the edge of the quarry. They squatted and waited, hearing the clash of iron on wood and the screams of dying men. Ascha sheathed his sword and drew his franciska. This would be close work and a hatchet would be more use. He heard the brazen call of the Roman trumpets and a hoarse Roman shout, ‘Withdraw! Withdraw!’

  He peered through the foliage, trying to judge the moment. He waited until the bulk of Saxons had passed before he turned.

  ‘You ready?’ Ascha shouted.

  Gundovald cleared his throat and spat. ‘Ready as we’ll ever be.’

  Ascha grinned. ‘Then let’s go tear their arses out!’

  The hostages and Pritanni exploded over the lip of the quarry and fell on the Saxons. Ascha swung his shield and whirled his franciska. He killed quickly, smashing skulls and hamstringing the Saxons before they knew what was happening. Easy work to kill or maim when a man’s back was turned. The Northerners were wedged tight together. Struggling to turn they died in droves, the struggling and the dying, crowded side by side.

  A fair-haired Cherusker slashed at him with a murderous deep-bladed stroke. He countered and struck back. The blow cut deep into the base of the Cherusker’s neck and he fell with a hollow cry. A Chaussi half-turned and lunged with a spear. Ascha sidestepped, struck and heard the crack as the man’s head gave way, spraying him with a fine mist of blood and fragments of bone.

  He pressed on, teeth clenched, cleaving bones and shattering shields. He stepped inside a Saxon’s guard and pushed his blade deep into soft flesh. He felt a massive blow and staggered, his shield shattered. He slipped in a puddle of human guts and nearly fell. He just had time to see a Saxon smash Hariulf’s skull with a single axe blow before the Saxon turned and was coming for him.

  He threw the broken shield aside and scrambled to his feet. Hooking his tomahawk over the man’s shield, he pulled it away and hacked hard. The man screamed, his severed wrist fountaining blood. Ascha fought on. He saw Rufus, his sword flickering, like a snake’s tongue. He was aware of Tchenguiz at his
side, his face caked with congealed blood, Gundovald swinging his big axe, Gydda watching his back and howling like a fiend, a seaxe in each hand. He heard a cry of pain and saw Hortar the Aleman fall with an axe buried in his chest.

  ‘Where’s Radhalla?’ he yelled and spat the blood that rose to his throat. Tchenguiz turned and pointed with his long knife. Over the screams and the clash of iron on iron, he could hear Radhalla bellow, ‘Come on my grey wolves! The more we die, the stronger we become.’ For a moment he saw the warlord of the Cheruskkii surrounded by his Gesith, and then he was gone.

  The ferocity of the attack took the Saxons by surprise. The Saxon charge began to falter, and they started to pull back, feet slipping on the blood-soaked ground. The allies were too tired to cheer or give pursuit. They rested, bent double, and drew in great lungfuls of air. Ascha saw they were on the point of breaking. They had destroyed the boar’s snout, but had nothing in reserve. The dead and the dying lay across the rise like felled logs, the plateau was strewn with weapons and broken shields.

  He heard a sudden flurry of drums. He looked up and felt his insides go jagged. Ragnachar’s troops were moving against them. Ragnachar stood in his cart, his wife and daughters beside him, waving them on. He let his sword arm fall to his side. His body ached and he felt an acute sense of disappointment. If the Overlord’s uncle joined forces with Radhalla, the Saxons would break through and take the town. It would all be over before Bauto arrived.

  In front of the Saxon army, he could see Radhalla striding up and down, urging the Saxons on. This time, just one more push, and they would break through. The allies were exhausted and would be unable to hold them.

  Ascha tried to get his mind to work but it wouldn’t snap to. They had lost, and he wanted to weep with frustration.

  But there was another sound borne on the breeze. Horns sounded deep in the forest and there were armed men coming out of the trees.

  A shout went up.

  Tchenguiz turned to him with a huge grin. ‘Them’s Franks, boss.’

  He looked and looked again, and heard the cry go up, ‘It’s Bauto! Bauto’s here!’