“If any man cannot swim,” Niall called forward, “he will have to learn before he reaches shore!”
“In God’s Name madman, what will you do?” demanded Edric, staring appalled at the nearer craft. It was now so close that they could distinguish the helmed heads along her gunwale, peering above the row of painted shields, and see the three men on her foredeck wave in greeting. Her figurehead was a crested serpent, her consort’s a beaked bird. A tall man in a scarlet cloak blowing like a banner lifted an arm and hailed them, taking them for fellow-raiders; it was beyond the bounds of possibility as Danes reckoned it that a longship could be manned by any other. Niall hailed back to maintain the error as long as he might, and issued curt orders.
Cynric went up the mast like a squirrel as though to release the yard. Niall, his eyes narrowed and lips pressed tight, watched the shrinking space between them. This demanded exact and expert judgement, and he had not his old tried crew to work his will. Eymund watched him keenly, still grinning. This, the nearer ship, was also the further out upon the channel; her consort was coming up more slowly upon their starboard bow.
“What luck, friend?” shouted the tall man in scarlet, waving his axe in greeting. Niall could see his open mouth, a wide gash in a brown beard, but the wind snatched the words from his lips so that they came but thinly to their ears. He nodded to Eymund and put the tiller over a little. Eymund loosed the sheet, spilling the wind from the sail, and as it hung slack Cynric freed the yard for lowering. The Danes eased their labours until they merely held their position against the tide, hailing them cheerfully. Their spare men crowded to the bulwarks. The Firedrake glided forward, losing way, as though they would round to for talk.
“What pickings, friend?” bellowed the brown captain. “Any meat left on the bones?”
“Naught but a bellyache!” Niall shouted, tense and ready, assessing speed and drift and the strength of the gusty wind.
“Will you ram?” Eymund asked in a low voice.
He did not answer. “Now!” he yelled. The yard rose again, Cynric made fast, Eymund hauled in the sheet and the sail filled taut. The Firedrake bounded like a spurred horse, straight for the other ship’s bows. The brown man waved arms and axe wildly as if he would push them off with his hands, roaring a protest that broke off short as he realized that this was no clumsy mishandling but deliberate intent. The rowers tugged frantically at the great oars as the Firedrake hurtled down upon them. The captain was howling at them to backwater that she might cross their bows, but the mingled screech of protest and rage filled too many ears; a partial attempt to obey tangled oars in confusion, and she spun across their course.
At the last moment Niall put the helm over, jerked his head to Eymund at the sheet, and shouted aloud as the great ship answered like a well-schooled horse. A spear thwacked into the foredeck planking so close that its quivering shaft brushed him. The Firedrake, almost within arm’s reach of ramming the serpent bows-on, turned slightly and ran down her full length, splintering the whole oar-bank in one rending, rattling turmoil. Men were hurled headlong from the benches, skulls crunched and ribs staved by the kicking oar-looms. The unopposed starboard oars spun her about broadside to the waves, and as the Firedrake cleared her quarter in a momentary shocking silence before the screams and groans began, the tide gripped her and whirled her away up-channel towards the headland’s fangs. A scatter of ill-aimed spears was all they could offer in reprisal, and none found lodgement in any man’s body. Niall coolly put the Firedrake about for the second longship.
“By Thor’s Hammer,” exclaimed Eymund, forgetting under action’s pressure that he was a postulant for baptism, “I never guessed that could be done!”
“Merciful God!” Edric gasped, loosing his hold on the gunwale and gulping like a fish, “I thought you would ram her!” “Content you, this time we do,” Niall growled. He spared a glance for the crippled galley falling away down-wind; she need not be reckoned with while they attended to her consort. He lifted his voice to shout at his incredulous, awe-struck crew, too dazed yet even to raise a cheer. “Lie down between the benches before we strike!”
Aboard the second longship was tumult and alarm, the bark of commands, curses and questions flying, a hurried assembly of defence along bulwarks and upon her tiny decks at sight of the Firedrake charging with wind and tide, the spray bursting about her stem and her dragon’s jaws agape. The starboard rowers hoisted in their oars and held them skyward as she tore at them, exactly as Niall had anticipated they would. His lips curled from his teeth in a contemptuous snarl; the Danes had small experience of ship-duels, to expect him to try that trick again, but these were mere raiders of peaceful lands who had never defended their own in the Middle Sea. He held her straight for the mark offered him. Thrown spears sang past or thudded into timber, but his men were already down among the benches and waiting breathlessly, gaping at their insane captain.
Eymund, holding to the bulwark with one hand and the sheet with the other, laughed in delight. “Show them how trading goes in the Middle Sea, Niall!”
“God have mercy on us!” choked Baldred, clutching at the bench that sheltered him and lifting his nose over it to goggle at Niall. “What will you do now, madman?”
“Ram her!” answered Niall savagely, his eyes filled with her wallowing bulk, the uplifted hedge of oars, the painted shields and screeching faces. He tightened his grip on the tiller for the impact. She heaved up on a crest, and the Firedrake leaped across the last few feet and rammed her at a slight angle just abaft the forecabin.
The tearing, splitting shock filled the bay and the sky. Every man aboard the longship was hurled off his feet or bench. The Firedrake’s mast snapped off short with a rending crash above all other sounds and fell as a tree falls, smashing a gap in her starboard bow to drop across the other’s foredeck, yard, sail and cordage in a smothering tangle. The Firedrake thrust on with the way still left her, grinding deeper into sundered timber that cried and groaned in torment, treading her enemy under her forefoot. Locked together, the two longships drifted helplessly before wind and tide.
Niall let go his fierce grip on the tiller and ran forward, snatching out his sword. Eymund was before him, hacking with his axe at the stays still holding the mast and sail to the Firedrake’s hull. Others were up and running too, but Niall made for the narrow foredeck, seeing the tangle of sail heave and surge and split as maddened men caught beneath its folds fought their way free. The first were already clambering over the Firedrake’s bows, wedged fast into her victim’s side, quick to realize where lay their only chance of escaping alive, and the foremost swung an axe at his head and leaped down at him as he reached the deck.
He ducked and slashed at the bellowing face, conscious of feet at his back and Vikings scrambling headlong over the bulwarks, of the other vessel dragging at the Firedrake's head, of the rush and swirl of water into her breached hull and the shuddering of the timbers beneath his feet. More Danes were thumping down from the foredeck, which was crammed with men. The axe swept again, but his arm was the longer and in mid-stroke it fell from a dead hand. He wrenched his blade free and swung back-handed at an upraised arm. A spear leaped past his head, and a man above spun round and fell against the bulwarks, that caught him behind the thighs and tipped him overside. Grunting men packed all about him, barking like dog-foxes, “Out! Out!” From his eye-corner he saw a yellow head and a red one side by side, Eymund and Edric fighting as comrades. Baldred, blaring like an enraged bull, hewed fiercely on his other side; whatever his failings as a leader, when it came to handstrokes he dealt his share mightily.
The Firedrake writhed and groaned like a living creature in the death-grapple on her bows. Timber shrieked and cracked. Then with a heave and a lurch she wrenched free, jerking her dragon-head high so that half the fighters fell. Niall staggered, recovered, slammed a blow against a staggering Dane that took him upon the nape and flung him among his comrades’ feet. He sprang forward, winning a yard of fighting-room that hi
s long arms could put to use. The doomed ship drifted away, the gap already too wide to be jumped. Now the Firedrake’s bows no longer plugged the breach she was settling fast, heeling as she filled, and the last of her crew were leaping overside and striking out for their enemy. Heads bobbed about her bows, hands clawed at the planking.
The Englishmen roared and surged forward. Over a dozen Vikings jostled on the foredeck, trying to jump down into the tight-packed scuffle below, or reaching to haul swimmers aboard. If they were augmented sufficiently to break aft the ship was lost; farmers and fishermen were no match for berserks. But the Englishmen knew that as well as Niall did, and penned them in the narrow space of the bows so that they had no room to fight. Javelins, spears and ballast-stones cleared the foredeck of those exposed upon it; those who leaped down were trapped against the cabin, pressed by enclosing shields and worried down to die in ankle-deep water. The Firedrake too was mortally hurt, her bow-planks staved and her seams agape, but her end filled Niall with savage exultation as he hewed and slashed with icy water deepening round his calves.
Heads bobbed all about her; few Danes could not swim, and they converged on her from all sides. While some finished the scrimmage in the bows others jabbed them off as they reached her sides, hacked at clutching hands, battered at heads with oars and thrust them savagely under as they grabbed at the blades. The ship wallowed more and more soddenly. Her kill had already vanished; soon she would join her on the bottom of the Severn Sea, with dead Danes and Englishmen commingled for the indifferent fishes. A strong current had her by the keel and was bearing her inshore, but she would never live to reach it. Niall saw the last Dane aboard go down kicking and clutching at his belly, shoved his red sword into its sheath and set his hands to the stained planking. He heaved himself onto the foredeck, shook his hair back and glanced quickly about him, feeling the rush of water through the riven timbers beneath him.
Men were running along the shore, less than half a mile away; Alfred and Odda and the rest. Many Danes had already given up trying to board a doomed vessel and were swimming for the first longship, which had clawed clear of the point, transferred half her starboard oars to larboard and got under way again. A few still stubbornly swam about her, out of reach of the oarblades. Water ran knee-deep, thigh-deep amidships; it was now pouring in through the breach smashed in her side by the falling mast and racing aft. She was settling by the head, and listing so that he had to steady himself by the stempost. Eymund, just below him, looked up into his face with blue eyes afire and slapped the shuddering planks.
“What better death could she die?” he exclaimed.
Niall nodded, his heart content. She was not his; she had never been his. She was a weapon in the hand of God, her blow struck and her force spent. His dream of the old life had been no more than a dream. Alfred, Odda, Edric and Eymund all had known it as that and warned him. Judith, who had said nothing, had known it best of all and let him learn it from the Firedrake, without grief or bitterness. And here her brothers who would be his brothers came splashing to him through the yeasty water, staggering as she listed more and more to starboard. A swimmer cursed him by all the gods as her gunwale leaned to the reaching waves, and his feet fought for purchase on the tilted planks.
“If you cannot swim, hold fast to your oar and kick!” Niall yelled, and then she rolled from under him. The icy water closed over his head.
He struck for the sunlight, heaved up on a crest, dashed water from his eyes and glanced about. Heads were surfacing and blowing all about him, turning shoreward between threshing arms. His fishermen could swim. He trod water and waited for another comber and yet another to hoist him high, in case any weak swimmer or wounded man should need help. More distant heads receded towards the Viking ship, where men reached down to drag comrades from the sea. He struck for the shore, well content.
The men of Wessex were laughing and shouting thigh-deep in the surf, jostling to grip his hands with needless solicitude and help him up as he let his feet sink. He shook water from his face, flushing hotly as he saw that it was the King’s hand grasping his, Odda’s arm about his shoulders. Then Judith, her sodden skirts clinging to her legs, threw herself upon him, and before them all he snatched her off her feet and kissed her, to a great roar of approval from the whole assembly.
The men who had ventured with him were all about him, grinning and dripping and wringing water out of hair and garments. Unbelievingly he numbered them; Eymund, Edric and Cynric, Baldred with rancour laid aside, Eglaf and the lad Alfgar. A handful of wounded were being tended, and one dead man lay on the shingle with his arms folded on his breast. “Is he the only one?” he asked incredulously.
“Wounded and died as we got him to shore,” Baldred answered through chattering teeth. “And Osfrith, Coelnoth and Wulfric died in the fight. God was with us.”
“To Him be the praise,” Niall muttered, crossing himself.
“And to you who were His sword-hand!” exclaimed the King. “If they had landed at our backs we should all be dead men! And you sacrificed your ship, that was all the world to you!”
Niall shook his head. “She was never mine. For this she was lent to me.” He smiled down into Alfred’s friendly eyes. “But I think I am beached for ever in Wessex, lord King. Is she worth a measure of English ground, that my wife may teach me to be a farmer?”
The King looked at Odda, and Odda tugged at his beard and looked at the King. They both began to grin. “It seems little enough to ask,” declared Odda, “if Guthrum lets us live to grant more than room for our burying. Grant it in Devon, lord. I want Niall at my side in warfare.”
“I want him at mine in peace or war,” the King retorted. Eymund moved closer and gripped Niall’s elbow, lifting his other hand to point up the hill. “Rorik and Skuli,” he announced quietly.
15
The Vikings clustered on a rocky shoulder beyond the farmstead, a mass of dull colour and bright metal picked out here and there with a gay cloak, but as though Eymund’s pointing had been a signal they started down through the woods, moving soberly and without haste. Steel glanced and was gone among the new leaves. The need for haste was over. There was nothing left them but to die fittingly on heaps of dead foes, and leave a name that should stand for generations to their honour.
Niall gave a sigh of weary disgust. They would have to be killed, and he had had a bellyful of killing. Thirst for vengeance was dead in him. It did but sour one’s grief. Also Danes took a deal of killing, and seldom died alone. He looked to the King, who lifted his spear and strode along the beach as fast as the shingle would permit, his gaunt face harshly set.
“Has bloodshed no end?” he muttered bitterly, and Niall realized that they were of one mind. So was Odda, and so were the others. They were workmen tackling an ugly task, grimly determined to have it done and cleanse Wessex of this evil plague. Only Edric and Cynric might be eagerly vengeful, with burning memories of Leofric to drive them at Danish throats.
“We thinned them somewhat on the cliff,” grunted Odda, lumbering into a trot as the shingle gave place to sand and that in its turn to turf. The exercise was warmly welcome to all who had been swimming in the icy sea. Niall was thankful to feel the chill thawing out of his muscles as he loped along with Odda and the King.
“We can hold them by the creek,” Alfred decided. “They will fire your homestead, Baldred.”
“All the better,” Baldred stoutly panted. “It has needed—rebuilding—these ten years and more.” Battle seemed to have emboldened him.
“Take your folk and cross higher up, beyond your stockade. Close in behind them and wait for my signal.”
Baldred yelped to his men of Meliscombe like a sheepdog rounding up a flock, and led them slantwise over the turf towards the pasture and woods up-stream, while the main force trotted round the curve of the bay and up the ridge towards the inlet and the plank bridge that spanned it.
“Let me hold the bridge, lord King?” suggested Niall. “Without mail or shie
ld or helmet?” snorted Odda. He cast an expert eye over the half-full creek and its steep banks. “We have the numbers and the ground to favour us, if they come at us here. And the bridge is more of a snare than a way. Let them come and stone them off it into the tide.”
The Englishmen were already spreading along the crest, standing just behind it for safe footing; the damp grass would crush to a surface slippery as ice once many feet had trampled it in battle. The gulls swooped and wheeled overhead, protesting indignantly at this invasion. Niall glanced down the steep descent at the racing tide, lapping higher over the brown rocks, at the seaweed and mussel-beds and grinding stones.
The Danes emerged from the woods. They did not turn aside to fire the deserted homestead, a petty and futile gesture. Rorik’s was not an empty malevolence; he knew where he owed his misfortunes. They came steadily across the open space towards the bridge.
“We have them!” muttered Odda. “They know this is their end.”
“It will be the end for many of us,” the King said soberly. “But it must be finished.”
“Blood will have blood,” said Eymund flatly. He was pale and grim as Niall had never seen him, his laughing mouth a tight line of resolution. These were his kinsmen and comrades. Niall felt the hairs stir on the nape of his neck; blood would have blood, and Rorik was his father’s nearest kinsman. The stimulus of violent wrath no longer drove him to outrage that kinship; it had been quenched in blood. Judith was beside him as she had been all along, caught up in that throng and the only woman there. She was controlling herself rigidly, but her eyes betrayed her. For all the shortened skirts and warlike javelin, she was but a frightened girl troubled for her dear menfolk. He smiled at her, and let his impulse master him.
“Lord King, let me have speech with my kinsman?”
Before Alfred could answer he was out upon the flimsy bridge, and other soft shoes padded after him. Without turning his head he knew that Eymund was at his back. He leaned to the slope, that rose steeply for a few yards above the creek, and stood where it tilted more gently to the open space about the stockade. The Danes came on steadily, perhaps half a bowshot away. He sent his trained bellow ringing across the clearing.
The Price of Blood Page 22
