“Run for it, Niall!” Eymund’s voice said urgently in his ear. “Niall!”
His dazed eyes cleared. He tightened his hold on his weapons, gaped stupidly for a heart’s beat into his kinsman’s white strained face, and yielded to the arms that hauled him fiercely across the garth. Life crept back to his cramped muscles with use, and a yell of discovery spurred his wits.
“Over the stockade, Niall, and your God guard you!” gasped Eymund as he pulled him along, his arm tight about him. They reached the cover of the nearest buildings, and he tugged him to the right. He released him and thrust him on.
“Come with me, Eymund!”
“I cannot—you know I cannot!” He turned away on that despairing cry, and Niall ran clumsily, clasping the bundle of useless steel and silver to his breast with half-dead arms, while the yells of the chase speeded his leaden feet. He dodged round a cottage, slipped in a puddle and almost sprawled headlong, and on a sudden impulse fled across the slimy trodden clay of a threshing-floor, dived through the open doorway of the barn beyond and plunged into a crackling pile of straw that half-filled it. He burrowed down into its prickly heart and lay still, while the Danes went roaring past the doorway. A crooked grin crossed his face.
He rubbed his hands together, and worked his numbed fingers until life came back in an agony of red-hot needle-thrusts that brought out sweat over his frozen body. He fumbled for his dagger and freed his wrists of the dangling ends of rope. Fortunately the backs of his wrists had taken the worst of the pressure, not the tendons inside them, and he had some grasping-power left in his hands. He huddled into the warm straw, shivering, and clenched his jaws to still his chattering teeth. It would be a while yet before he could hold a sword, but as long as no Dane thought to prod this straw for him, he would come forth before the night passed to expend his life in something more profitable than a barren martyrdom.
Outside dusk was deepening to twilight, but from the black gloom inside the barn the open appeared light. He could follow the pursuit by the angry voices. The pirates had spread along the stockade seeking him. A naked fugitive should shine white as the moon in heaven, but though there was no concealment he could have reached with his few yards’ start, they could see nothing. After a fair time had been wasted on cursing, speculation and investigating the brush-cluttered ditch, it occurred to one acute mind that Niall had doubled back among the buildings. He voiced his inspiration at the full pitch of a seaman’s lungs, and they trampled in full cry for the gate.
Something like a chuckle escaped Niall's lips, and he squirmed and fumbled in the straw to clasp his belt about his middle where he needed it. His hands were stiff and tingling, but use was returning to them and to his aching arms. He lifted his head and pushed his clinging mane of damp hair from his brow. Then he lay rigid as a man came opposite his hiding-place.
He was the bald prisoner, moving furtively past the cottage eaves. Not running for his life and freedom, but skulking slowly forward with his eyes fixed on the muddy ground. As Niall stared, he halted. He glanced at the open door, a queer sly smile on his anxious face. He turned away, and Niall realized that the prints of his bare feet crossed the threshing-floor’s sticky clay in plain betrayal. Fury sped vigour through his abused muscles. He erupted from the straw through the doorway, and had the Englishman by the neck like a weasel taking a mouse, before he had time to squeal.
Niall whisked him round and ran him into the barn, his long fingers sinking remorselessly into the soft flesh. The man clawed feebly at his wrist, his eyes starting from his head. “Not a sound out of you, rat!” he growled softly, and slackened his grip sufficiently to let his victim breathe.
“No, no!” he whimpered, sagging to his knees and clasping his hands to his breast. “I would never have told them—no, do not kill me!” He pawed at Niall’s bare legs in an agony of terror.
“You would have run to betray me, as you led the Danes on this village!” he accused him.
“But they forced me—I had to save my life!”
“Your worthless life!” Niall kicked him away in utter disgust at the contact. He half-drew his sword, and the abject creature squeaked thinly and cowered from him, trying to cover his head with his arms. He ought to kill him, he knew, but he could not bring himself to do it; he had killed his share of foes, but never one who was not on his feet and fighting back. “Come!” he snarled, and kicked him up.
He drove the quivering wretch before him out of the barn, and dodged from cover to cover until he gained the back of the church. Cautiously he padded along the dark wall until he could put an eye round the corner to see the half-dozen Vikings clustered round the doorway. Faint candle-light streamed from the window-slits, and a confused murmur of voices. At least two babies were crying. He drew back. Six to one were heavy odds for a naked man not in the best of fighting-trim, but he would have surprise on his side. Could he, before he was slain, kill enough of them to ensure the prisoners’ escape?
11
The initiative was almost immediately taken out of Niall’s hands. He had barely drawn back and kicked the Englishman, who crouched whimpering against the wall, to ensure silence, when he heard a scuffle, the thump of a blow, and an outburst of rough laughter. A child yelled. A young woman stepped sideways round the corner, an empty wooden bucket swinging from one hand and a yearling babe under her other arm. She checked half-crouching, fury and fear in every line of her taut shape, intent on the Vikings round the corner.
“Set down that brat and come here!” a man shouted angrily. “By Thor’s Hammer, if I must fetch you I will burst his head on this doorpost!”
She gasped and clutched the child, stepped back and glared wildly about her. Her eyes encountered the naked white apparition, and almost left their sockets. Her mouth opened for a scream, and then she lifted the hand that held the bucket and stifled it. Niall touched his lips for silence and crept noiselessly along the wall, sliding his sword from its sheath. He signed to her to shelter behind him, but she shook her head, her mouth setting fiercely. The child stared, his lower lip turned down, and he loosed a lusty howl of alarm.
The impatient raptor snarled and came round the corner, thrusting forward a shaggy mass of hair in which a large nose and a number of large teeth were the only immediately visible features. If he saw Niall at all, that was his last sight on earth. The sword swung under his bristles, his head fell back between his shoulders, and one great dark gush of blood spouted across the mud as he dropped. The girl threw down her bucket and pounced on his spear, and the child screamed with renewed fervour.
“Can you not shut that whelp’s mouth, Asgrim?” one of his comrades demanded. When Asgrim did not answer, he grunted something Niall did not catch and came after him. The girl lunged viciously at his midriff. Her point glanced down on his byrnie of hardened leather leaves and went horridly home beneath it. He staggered back, screaming like a wounded horse, and as the blade tore free he dropped sideways, clutching at his belly with both hands to hold in his entrails. Niall leaped round the corner.
The Danes were already on the move, their weapons swinging, but for a heart’s beat astonishment froze them. The nearest man half-lifted his axe as Niall leaped at him and then fell backwards, his shoulder cloven. The others came at him yelling, but the kicking body under their feet hampered them for long enough to let him spring back. Grinning direly, he set his back to the wall. His strength had not returned to him, and his sword-play had never been so skilled as to encourage him in vanity, but he could occupy them for a little time. He feinted at the nearest and then slashed at another, and shouted to the girl. “Run, lass! All of you in there, out and run!”
Instead she dropped her child into the mud, where he howled with a right good will, and circled to jab at the Danes from the flank. One half-turned to strike back her spear, and Niall dodged under an axe that should have taken his head off and drove at its wielder with terrifying recklessness. He could not hope to keep up this unequal battle for long, but his life would be
well spent if he gained time enough for the captives to escape before his own pursuers returned. There was tumult in the church, a rush of feet and the girl’s voice screeching as she stabbed. A spear thrust through his flying hair, and he whirled aside, thanking God for the valiant lass who would not let them converge on him.
A harsh cry pealed, and something spun past Niall’s head with a dark velocity that made him duck involuntarily. An earthenware pitcher crashed solidly against a Viking’s skull, the first of a hail of erratic, unlikely missiles. Pots, firelogs, loom-weights, stones and bones battered the startled Danes, and Niall was thrust aside by the craziest charge man ever dreamed of.
Women, girls and half-grown younglings flung themselves upon the dazed raiders with spits and pestles, distaffs and sticks. They beat at their heads and shoulders, grappled them from all sides, twined round their legs, tearing them down by sheer weight of numbers. Niall, who had never guessed at the vengeful capabilities of ravished and enslaved women, stared appalled. They worried the struggling men down in a silent frenzy of hatred, and they disappeared under a press of writhing bodies.
The girl with the spear ran forward, but her services were not needed. In each tangle someone had been told off to seize the victim’s dagger and use it. Niall started forward instinctively to stop them, and then checked himself. Vengeance was their right and their due, and no man could dispute its justice. He averted his eyes from it, looked down into the convulsed face of the squirming Dane clutching his spilled guts, and in pity and horror struck one blow.
Alarmed voices were shouting questions from the gateway, the men who had chased him brought back by that first wild screech. The women were scrambling up, torn, wild-eyed and blood-spattered, shaken by what they had done. The brat in the mud was still screaming. Niall gestured urgently with his sword.
“Over the stockade and up to the woods, quickly!”
They caught up their children and their weapons and fled. Hild grabbed his hair, hauled his head down, and kissed him full on the mouth. “Hey, black lad, will death have none of you?” she exclaimed, slapped his bare shoulder, and then caught up her skirts about her skinny shanks and trotted as though her bones had never known rheumatism.
Someone was shouting beyond the church, calling on Thrand and Kol and Asgrim. He could hear the squelch of soft shoes over miry ground, and other raised voices. Niall’s lips drew back in a mirthless grin. The church concealed the women’s flight for the moment, but Thrand and Kol and Asgrim would not answer in this world, and he must win time for the captives to reach the woods and safety. He swung up his sword and ran towards the voices.
By the church wall the forgotten Englishman, who had cowered there through the brief struggle, staggered to his feet and stared desperately about him. He squealed at the sight of Niall, and then he too started to run, not after the women but towards the Vikings. It flashed through Niall’s mind that he dared not let himself be taken by Englishmen after his betrayal; he had no choice but to accept whatever treatment Rorik gave him and buy his life with fresh treachery. Niall’s long legs closed on him before he had gone a dozen paces, and he seized him by the scruff and almost swung him from his feet.
“Stay and die with me, rat!” he growled, and as the smaller man yelped and almost fell, palsied with fright, dragged him ruthlessly along at arm’s length. The cramp had worked out of his legs, and his hand-grip was almost normal now, though he doubted that there were many blows left in his aching arms and shoulders. What he had he would deal out, once they bayed him; in his present temper he asked nothing better than to die ridding Wessex of his kinsmen.
He burst from behind the church, and the advancing Danes, a dozen or so trotting purposefully to investigate, turned after him with a yell of discovery and execration. Two or three javelins hurtled harmlessly past him, but it would have been a marvel if startled men could have hit so swiftly-moving a mark in that dim light. He dodged behind a haystack, showed himself briefly as he doubled back round a cottage, grinned savagely to hear their hunting-cries and ran in plain view for the gate. The Englishman he towed after him like a longship towing a skiff, without heeding his squeals and struggles.
He reached the gate and glanced quickly seaward. Then he uttered a grunt of satisfaction; Rorik and his force must still be occupied in bringing Skuli’s undermanned Firedrake to safe anchorage. The noise of conflict, muffled in the winding valley, could not have reached them. He shoved the yammering Englishman onto the bridge ahead of him, and heaved the gate’s wreckage across the gap to hinder his foes and lessen the number who could come at him at once. He dodged round the ruin as another javelin sang past his ear, and caught the whimpering craven as he scrabbled at the planking.
“Up and fight, rat!”
Then a distant crash and a roar of many voices halted the oncoming foes. “Wessex and Christian faith! Out, out!” And riding high and clear over all other noises, a girl’s voice urgently called his name. “Niall! Niall!”
He laughed aloud at the shadowy group of Vikings checked among the buildings near the gate, drew a great breath and loosed it in one wild Irish yell that pealed along the valley and up through the crowding woods. Another howl answered, and suddenly Eymund yelled at the hesitating Vikings.
“Let him go! Will you lose all we have won?”
The throng was gone in one rush, and Niall was left standing defiantly on the bridge, feeling more than a little foolish. Nothing appears more ridiculous than futile heroics, and he grinned rather sheepishly as he took up again the life he had prepared to expend. Then another, fainter yell from behind spun him round, and he stalked down the shore-path to meet Rorik’s company. The Englishman grovelled on all fours, clutching at his feet. When Niall kicked free he gaped up, witless with terror, and scrambled from him on all fours like the apes of Barbary. Niall put out his left hand and plucked the javelin from the earth as he passed it. As he came to the bend he saw Rorik’s men straggling up from the shore, and halted in their path.
The newcomers stopped as though they had run upon a barricade, signing themselves with Thor’s Hammer to avert ghostly evil. In the dim dusk his great body gathered all the light from the water-green sky, weirdly white and of more than mortal stature. The brisk wind blew his long hair sideways like a banner. The sword-blade and the linked silver plates about his loins shone faintly luminous. Awe froze them; he was the ghost of some dead hero out of the days before time was.
At his back Niall heard the clash and shouting of joined battle, and the crisp bark of orders as the Englishmen covered the escape of their women and children. He grinned direly at the palsied Danes and exchanged sword for javelin. He was not a warrior for the skalds to sing, trained to cast equally well with either hand, but he did not often miss a fair mark.
The English traitor screeched incoherently and wobbled into a run past him, flapping his hands at the Vikings as he scuttled to meet them. The sight roused them from their trance. A javelin leaped. Niall heard it thud home, saw the shining point emerge at the back of the craven’s neck, and as his feet drummed briefly he advanced without haste, selecting the fairest mark that offered.
A howl of recognition signalled a headlong rush by Rorik and Aslak, shamed by their own fears into berserk fury. Niall waited until he could hear his kinsman bellowing commands to take him alive, until he could distinguish his furious face, and then made his cast at the giant. To his chagrin he missed even the broad target of that belly, betrayed by his strained shoulder, and it was small consolation to see the ruffian behind him roll under his comrades’ feet with the point in his thigh. He wheeled and ran, not for the village but for the hillside above it, with the pack straining not fifty yards behind and wasting wind on threats.
Long-legged and unencumbered by mail or clothing, he slightly increased his lead. The new-springing grass and rain-sodden earth were kind to his bare feet, and he reached the first trees unscathed and dived aside into the thickets. He scrambled up and along the hillside, working left towards the sea
, and the Danes followed the fleeting white glimpses they had of him with hunting-cries and orders and a violent threshing of branches.
It was very dark under the trees, where the remaining light of the sky was caught up in the topmost branches so that little reached the ground. Though roots and rocks punished his bare toes and hawthorn and briers clawed at him, Niall led them deliberately up and away from Brockhurst and their outnumbered comrades. He was as angry as a man well could be, with the bitter fury of the easy-going man goaded beyond his endurance, and his desire was to destroy Rorik and every pirate that followed him for the evil they had done. His own life counted for nothing. He listened to the pursuit crashing blindly after him, and dodged deviously from cover to cover up the hill, reckoning rightly that their natural tendency would be to spread along the slope and straggle down it.
Grouching behind a boulder, he watched and listened as the Vikings scattered, and cursed the nakedness that revealed him in the dark. Then a new thought struck him, and he grubbed with both hands at the wet earth under him, smearing it over his limbs and body to dull their whiteness, rubbing it over his face to his hair. Its effectiveness startled him. Grinning savagely, he started down the hillside to try how many Danes hunting him should find him after a fashion they did not anticipate.
Stalking a straggler like a wolf after a lamb, he paused when a gap among the trees offered him clear view of the stockade. He knew what had happened as well as if he had been present. Edric and Cynric, watching dourly with their little force from the woods, had seen Rorik lead most of his company down to the sea and had snatched the chance to save their kindred. Forestalled in that by him, they had yet attacked to save him. Now, knowing from his shout that the need was gone, they were withdrawing. He felt a twinge of conscience for Eymund, and then fiercely reminded himself that he too was liable to Wessex justice. A scrimmage was still going on at the gate; Eymund might now have joined it and died. The clashing and cries came thinly to him. Further away little black insects scuttled for the woods. He peered, blinked and choked back a grim laugh. Even the swine were being driven into the woods, and some of the drovers were mounted. Edric had swept clean.
The Price of Blood Page 16
