They heaved forward, and his heart leaped; the Danes were giving ground! He shoved too, thrusting all his weight against a stocky sweating body covered with a rank sheepskin, caught his foot on something softly solid and went to his knees. Someone trod on his leg, someone else on his spear-hand. The body under him was trampled almost into the mud. He heaved himself up, shaking his hair from his eyes. This was not his way of fighting, and a spear was nothing but a handicap in so tight a press.
The Danes had not broken. The sharp yelp of orders carried faintly over the tumult, and he knew what was happening. The crews of the other ships were landing, being marshalled, pushing up the beach to join their fellows. He knew what else would happen, but there was only one thought in the insensate mass of peasants about him, to push the Danes into the Parrett at spear-point. He began to wriggle sideways through the press, struggling to reach the nearer curve of the river on his right, but the pressure was so great that he could gain no more than a foot or so at a time. The urgency of it built up in him until he wanted to stab himself a path with his spear, to clear his way through or over their stupid bodies. He stormed and shouted, trying to turn them, but they were deaf and blind to everything but the Danes before them.
The pressure increased suddenly, but the thrust was from the other side. He groaned aloud, knowing that Odda’s bold blow had spent itself, and now skill, discipline and superior arms would prove themselves against wild valour. Then the flank attack came, forcing along the river bank in the deadly wedge that had broken kingdoms, and the men of Devon swayed, wavered and gave ground. Niall was carried back among then in the pack, struggling to free himself and stand fast, shouting to those about him to face right and charge again, but once they started back nothing could rally the untrained levies, not even their own thanes. They broke and ran in wild panic, out of the river’s loop for the friendly hills.
Niall, freed at last from the press that had borne him back as those about him scattered and ran, looked quickly at the field of battle. The English leaders were trying to check the panic and drive their men back to the fight; in the forefront Odda’s own command was still fighting coolly, still together, steadily drawing back from the Danes. Niall ran to join them, slithering over the miry ground. The Danes had broken their formations and were everywhere, gleefully chasing fugitives. Niall heard heavy feet squelching after him, and swung round so fast that his own feet went from under him. He rolled wildly to his knees, saw the axe-blade whirl as a red cloak and painted shield lurched over him, and desperately swung his spear-shaft at hairy naked legs. The Dane stumbled forward bellowing, and Niall caught him about the thighs and threw him over his shoulder. He had lost his spear. He scrambled awkwardly after him, wrenched his axe from his hold and cracked his helmet apart. The fellow had fallen upon his shield and he had no time to heave him over; as he came to his feet he tore the cloak from his back and bundled it about his left arm. Then he ran to join the dogged troop covering the flight and fighting off a swarm of Danes as they withdrew.
He drove through them from behind, bowling over a couple who impeded him, swung round roaring challenges in mingled Irish and Norse, and backed to the English shield-wall. His captured axe swept widely as the Vikings encompassed him on three sides. His weapon-craft was workmanlike rather than stylish, but his height and reach and coolness made of him a foe few would tackle lightly, and for the first time in his life he had gone into battle with his heart set on killing rather than on emerging alive. The axe crunched viciously at every blow, for the women and children and the baby given to the crows. Then a hand gripped his shoulder from behind, a sword swung past his face, and he was pulled into the English rank and part of it.
Back and back they went, holding off the host that would otherwise have slaughtered the demoralized levies. When they ran they kept their ranks intact; when they turned to fight they locked shields, shoulder to shoulder, and stubbornly beat off every furious charge Ubba hurled upon them. The ground tilted more and more sharply under their heels, giving them the advantage of defence, taking the weight out of the Danish onslaughts. Here and there a man fell, and his comrades closed the gap and kept the line whole. Odda’s voice rang in brief, confident orders, directing their withdrawal.
The fyrd had fled, not for the wooded hills from which they had charged but for an outlying spur further north, crowned with ancient ramparts of stone and turf. With ditch and bank between them and Ubba’s host the peasants had rallied enough to fight back from behind them; they were massing desperately along the walls. The Vikings’ assault slackened, and the rear-guard stumbled into a weary run for the trampled grassy causeway over the ditch. Then Odda shouted; Ubba’s warriors were hurling themselves up in a final endeavour to thrust them back through the gateway and carry the hill-top.
Niall swung round, stumbling on the rough ground, and hewed in savage, stubborn fury at helmets and arms and slanted shields, grunting deeply at every blow. Odda himself was on his left hand, a quick little tow-head on his right, and the three of them stood shoulder to shoulder for a moment like a rock in the rising tide, the Danes raging round them. Then more and more Englishmen were pounding down to support them, stones and clods flew over their heads, the enemy were sullenly retiring, and they could back to the narrow entrance, lumber across it, ground their weapons and catch their breath, staring at each other in wonder that they were still alive.
5
Niall, panting and dizzy, leaned on his axe and drew his sleeve across his streaming brow, shook his hair back with the habitual toss of his head and grinned triumphantly at Odda, gasping beside him. The Ealdorman’s jaw dropped comically.
"You!”
Niall nodded. “We did not—finish—-the argument.”
"Argument?”
“To test—whether I was—a Christian—or not.”
Odda eyed him, steadily and grimly, and then nodded abruptly. “We can—reckon that proved,” he decided, and then his hard face twiched. Suddenly they were grinning at each other, beaten, exhausted, spattered with mud and blood and soaked with sweat, but still undefeated, in mutual respect and liking. Odda wiped his sword on his thigh, sheathed it, and held out his hand.
Niall’s came into it in a grip sticky with blood. “Well met, friend,” said Odda, as though this was their first encounter.
“Well met indeed, Ealdorman.”
Odda drew him to his side and then turned to the rearguard still crowded close about him with anxious, sober faces, and the thronging peasants staring at him in shame and dismay and hope. The entrance had been hurriedly barricaded with stones and thornbushes, the ramparts were manned, some sort of order already established out of the chaos of panic flight. Odda, limping a little, climbed heavily up to the bank top, and Niall made one of the group that accompanied him, none denying or questioning his right.
Ubba’s host had withdrawn from the hill-top, leaving a strong force spread along its foot to keep the men of Devon penned there. Dead men and wounded lay scattered all along the slope and strewn thickly below, and some of the Danes were moving from one to another, gathering up their own men, finishing and stripping their enemies. More were streaming back to the river to haul up the last ships above the tide-mark and set up their camp. Odda ground his teeth.
“We are not yet done!”
“No,” Niall agreed. “We are still alive.”
Several men looked sharply at him, but he was perfectly serious, and one uttered an unwilling bark of laughter. “Aye, and still have teeth!” he asserted, and an endorsing murmur ran through the little group.
Niall was studying their own ramparts. They were no new work, nor wrought within the memory of any man living; the turf of a thousand years had smoothed the sharp edges of ditch and berm and covered the stones fallen from its walls. The men who dug and laboured had fought their own battles here before the Saxons came out of the sea, before great Rome stretched out her arm into the mist to hold and rule; their bones had crumbled into this earth in the years before tim
e. Their memory was lost, but their work endured and served men today in the same need. It was a knowledge at once awesome and weirdly comforting. Niall quietly crossed himself as a queer little shiver crept down his spine, as if a ghost had touched him with his dead finger.
“We can break out after dark and reach the woods,” a man suggested.
“No,” said Odda flatly.
“But we all know this camp cannot be held!”
“It will be,” Odda said grimly. “Here we hold Ubba. He cannot march into the swamps and leave us at his back. We hold as long as we can endure—aye, and longer.” He glanced up at Niall’s puzzled face, and added in explanation, “There is no water.”
Niall cocked an eye at the grey clouds. “There will be ere nightfall.”
Odda grinned sourly and nodded. Then he looked round at the men waiting on his word, meeting each man’s doubtful, anxious eyes in turn. He spoke with harsh decision, and the same resolution replaced doubt on every face as their duty stood plain.
“The Danes are waiting for us to break out. The fyrd would be cut to pieces, and if we run they will never stop running. So we wait." He set his hands on his belt and stood wide-legged on the crest of the bank, a bitterly indomitable man who could out-wait any Dane and then bite. He glanced back at Niall. “From all I have ever heard of him, Ubba is an arrogant man.”
Niall nodded. “I have never seen him, but by all accounts he is.”
Odda turned and scrambled down. They looked at each other in complete understanding. Arrogance might not be an asset when it came to waiting.
Niall waited on one side while Odda posted his men and surveyed his defences. Reaction after violence gripped him. He ached as if he had been beaten, his muscles were stiffening, he trembled like a reed and the sharp wind chilled him to the bone. After a time, which seemed long to him, he remembered the cloak still wound about his forearm and clumsily pulled it round his shoulders, faintly surprised to see the rents in it. His hands fumbled the pin as he fastened the silver brooch still clinging to it. He desired only to curl up in a quiet corner and sleep out the day, but none of them could do that. Now Odda had for the moment done; he stretched himself with a rueful groan and rubbed his right arm.
“Shall be as stiff as a corpse by nightfall,” he grumbled, and then shivered as the first drops spattered from the lowering clouds.
“Brr, her e comes your water!”
"What orders have you for me?” Niall asked formally.
“You do well enough without them. Best stay by me, though I reckon no man here will harm you now.”
“I would seek out Leofric Ethelric’s son, if he lives.”
“Should be a meeting worth witnessing. And you and I have a deal to say, Dane, but we have time before us.”
“Aye. My name is Niall, and I am not a Dane.”
“We will discuss your genealogy at a fitter moment,” Odda promised gravely, and limped away, hunching his shoulders against the rain, now streaking steadily over the hill-top. Niall watched him go until he was lost in the throng. It took a determined effort to bestir himself to search, but the need to find the brothers and set matters right between them grew more and more urgent as he started about it.
There were many others seeking kinsmen and friends, wandering and calling in hope and fear. Leaders were gathering their men, rousing them from apathy, settling for the long wait. Some were clearing the thorns and furze that grew thickly in the enclosure, and a fire or two smoked in the rain. Wounds were being tended; slight wounds for the most part. The more sorely hurt had not reached the fortress. Yet the slaughter had not been as great as Niall had feared. The levies were still a strong force. He reflected sardonically that a man running to outdistance death is usually vouchsafed speed of foot beyond his normal achievement. He moved wearily through the sullen throngs, unchallenged and unremarked, looking over lesser men’s heads for a glimpse of flaming hair.
He found their encampment at last, huddled under the exiguous shelter of the ancient ramparts at the fort’s western end. A little sigh of thankfulness escaped him as he counted three bright polls, though one was bundled about in a bloody clout that pushed up the hair into a crest, and two were half hidden by helmets. He pushed closer. Someone was trying to start a fire under cover of an outspread cloak. He heard the steady click of iron on flint before he saw the humped shapes in the rain and grinned to recognize Eglaf. The group huddled together, sullen and shamed and bewildered faces turned to the three young leaders. They did not appear to have lost heavily, but there were other bandages among them and two men lying on the wet turf.
“God save you,” he said quietly, and the three red heads turned as if jerked by a string, and three freckled faces gaped at him.
The clicking ceased, and Eglaf straightened like a loosed bow, reaching for his seax. Niall nodded to him amicably. “I lost your spear, Eglaf, but it brought down a Dane.” Then he clasped both hands over the axe-helve and waited in a palpitating silence.
“How did you come here?” Leofric asked gently, his voice flat with the effort of controlling it and his eyes deadly.
“Beside Odda in the rearguard.”
"Beside—Odda?”
Niall nodded. “For Wessex and Christian faith.”
They stared at him. Edric, quickest of wit, was first to speak, and to the point. “What says Odda?”
"We joined hands in friendship.” He looked from one to another, and suddenly smiled. “And if you would do as much—?”
"You will reckon honour satisfied?” Edric finished, beginning to smile.
“I owe you my life,” Niall pointed out.
"You came very near owing us your death,” said Leofric grimly.
"Only in the way of duty,” Niall extenuated him. “I bear no grudge.” He held out his bloody hand. Leofric came forward, looked from it to his face, hesitated, and then gripped it, an uncertain smile parting his red beard.
“I am glad!” young Cynric blurted, and then blushed to the edge of his bandage. “I liked you.”
They all laughed, and Niall, to ease the moment’s embarrassment, asked, “How did you fare?”
“We were not with Odda in the rearguard,” Leofric replied bitterly, and his unhappy followers averted their eyes. “They ran, and we could not halt them.” He moved restlessly, gnawing at his under lip. “Ubba holds the ford, and the way up-river is his. We are beaten men, and there is no food or water here."
"You are not beaten. You follow Odda, and he is not beaten while he lives.”
“You know what Odda intends?” Edric asked incredulously.
"To hold here until the time to strike again,” Niall answered, so that the silent churls heard every word too. “And we shall not run next time.” He heard the growl of agreement, and saw hope and courage re-kindled in their gloomy faces. He repeated Odda’s words, as a dozen and more leaders must also be repeating them through all the camp, passing Odda’s faith and stubbornness to the defeated fyrd. For himself he had no regrets whatsoever. His conscience was at ease, though he had disowned his kindred and joined their enemies. He could not have chosen the other way.
The rain blew over, and the sun shone. Fires were coaxed to blaze. From the ramparts Niall watched the Danes, the three brothers beside him. Ubba had set a strong guard all along the foot of the hill, and across the valley between it and the wooded slopes beyond, but he would not throw his men against strong defences desperately held. Perhaps he counted on hunger and thirst to do his work for him, perhaps he despised them as no longer dangerous, and in any case Danes were notoriously reluctant to undertake profitless siege-work. They were not even troubling to fortify their camp in the usual fashion, with ditch and stockade. The ships were beached in an orderly line above the ebbing tide. Tents and shelters were being erected, and foraging parties starting out. They had already brought down the horses and baggage left in the woods by the men of Devon, and the brothers cursed savagely to see whooping Danes riding up the valley astride English ponies to d
estroy and plunder unopposed.
The afternoon dragged on. Niall, grudgingly accepted by Leofric’s folk, did what common-sense and experience indicated as most useful. He was deft and knowledgeable with wounds, as a ship’s captain in the Middle Sea had need to be, and he had also had much practice in keeping a crew in good heart through conditions of physical misery. He chopped furze and thorn, helped to construct rough shelters from stone and turf, cheerfully cursed the rain-squalls with them and never by any chance reminded them that the condemned Dane had defended their backs when they had run. By the day’s end he had their tolerance if no more.
When dusk came down Ubba’s guards lit a chain of great fires about the hill, so that they should not be surprised by a sudden attack under cover of night. The red and yellow flames cast their flickering glare over the steep slopes, and behind them the Vikings ate and drank, and shouted jeers and challenges up at the hungry Englishmen watching silently from the banks. Ubba, it seemed, intended to let starvation drive them out of their stronghold onto his spears. Sullen and grim, the men of Devon endured their baiting and obeyed Odda; they waited. The fires served their purpose too; Ubba could not surprise them either.
Fires burned behind the ramparts too. They gave some comfort in the cold damp wind to hungry, exhausted men. Niall curled up between theirs and a windbreak of piled stones, and as the rain began to patter down again, endeavoured to arrange the rents in his clammy cloak so as to admit as little as possible. The grey sky was darkening fast. The best a man might do was to try to forget his discomfort in sleep. Most of the folk about him appeared to have the same thought.
Niall was dozing uneasily when feet squelched over the wet turf, he heard a murmur of voices, and someone softly spoke his name. He rolled onto an elbow, and as the firelight touched the two men advancing to it, he started to scramble up, hampered by the clinging cloak. There was no mistaking Odda, the heart and will of Devon. He stepped round the fire and went to him. Odda's companion was Leofric, but he drew back and disappeared in the falling rain. Odda jerked his head, and Niall followed him out of earshot of the camp.
The Price of Blood Page 7
