As if in response a dull thud was heard, a thud that most within the walls knew as the sound of a spear hurled forcefully into wood. One of the doubled doors of the gate shuddered slightly from the impact.
“Open!” bellowed a voice from without.
The four strongest of the serving men of Oundle stood just inside those doors, ready to pull them wide at Asberg’s order. The man closest to the struck door had given a jump, but the spear-point had not driven through.
Sigewif looked at those serving men, and at the armed troop ready to defend them. Bloodshed and death at Oundle’s own gates, thought the sister of slain King Edmund. She crossed herself, and by doing so confirmed in her courageous breast, So be it.
The abbess’ gaze settled on Ashild, and then Asberg, fixing them each with eyes the hue of steel. She closed her hand about the cross of walrus ivory ever resting over her heart. The enemy was just without, her watch-man said. She gave her answer, her voice low and firm.
“Let me speak to them, draw them near.”
Asberg could not help his grin. He knew this woman came from warrior-stock; now she proved it. She did not say more than that, nor did she need to.
She turned from them, and faced the wall. As she did Ashild reached within her tunic and once again brought forth the hammer of Thor that lay against her skin. Her fingers touched as well the small golden cross, gift of her mother, that also lay there. She let it remain where it was. One for within, one for without, she thought.
The troop of mounted men from Four Stones watched as the abbess clasped hand over hand on the ladder leading to the ramparts. She rose in her dark gown, stately as a raven, until she gained the narrow walkway above.
“Open,” the voice outside again demanded, “or we burn your walls. We have oil. Open now, or we will make of them a warming fire.”
Those within her walls saw Sigewif straighten herself to her full height, her head and shoulders exposed to view from the road without. She was looking down at two men who stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their helmets gleaming dully in the morning light. Shields were upon their left arms, covering their torsos, lest an arrow try to find them, but they brandished as yet no swords. One of them held something small in his outstretched hand; a flint and striking iron, she guessed, from his threat. A number of other intruders ranged behind them. Her eye dropped to the outside of her gate, and the long spear stuck there, its shaft still quivering.
Her answering call was as stern as any war-lord’s who faced a taunting enemy.
“I am Sigewif, Abbess of this place. I command you to leave my walls. You do not frighten me with talk of fire. Any fire you strike will be as nothing to that kindled of your souls in Hell, for if you harm us you shall burn eternally.”
“A woman!” cried one of the two warriors. He turned his face to spit upon the ground, then raised the hand with the fire-starter at her. “A woman, in a hall of women!”
He nudged the man he stood with, then spoke to him, what, she could not hear. He looked back at her. “Know your place, woman, and get off that wall. If you do not, you will be the first to die.”
“My place,” she echoed in anger. “I am sister to Edmund, King and Saint. My place is here, protecting the servants of God.”
As she spoke, Sigewif saw the other men coming closer, trying to make her out. Most were armed with swords, and many carried spears as well. Several men had left their shields and spears on the road, and were still at work, bundling piles of brush at intervals against the wooden palings of her wall. At running distance down the road she saw the men’s horses, being held in safe-keeping by five or six men. She gauged the warriors who threatened her. Only a few donned helmets, and ring-shirts were even rarer. The two in front were certainly their leaders, wearing both helmets and ring-shirts. The man who spoke did so in the tongue of Angle-land, but with the accents of a Dane.
“We serve the one and true God, live lives of study and quiet. There is nothing for you here.”
This was met by a hoot of laughter. “There is silver, somewhere. And you have women within!”
Her voice became even more firm. “If seek treasure, you must go to the halls which house it,” she argued.
“There is a hall just North, one great with treasure, but others are headed for it,” he returned. “Just now, we are here, before a hall of silver-bearing women.”
Sigewif gave a single shake of her large head. “Tell me your names,” she challenged in a ringing voice, “so I may offer a prayer for your souls when you are cast to damnation.”
The man she addressed snorted with laughter. “I tell you nothing, woman, but that you have seen your last day. Take your prayers and crosses to your Devil. I have been here since Guthrum came, and fear them not. These men are come from Dane-mark to join Haesten, and I throw in with them.”
All the time he spoke the warrior standing next him was watching, telling Sigewif the second spoke not the speech of Angle-land. Even less could she expect him to respect the property and persons of consecrated women.
Inside the stone church, Bova pressed herself against the rough wall of the bell-tower. She had fled within this tiny space with the old sister who had been the abbey’s former brewster, and closed the wooden door behind them. There was no way to bar it, and in an effort to calm Bova the old nun herself leant against it, as if her slight weight might keep an intruder from trespass. The tower was lit from above, opening to the sky as it did at its top, but it was dim enough within. The thick hempen rope to the single bronze bell was looped up on an iron hook on the wall, the bell itself a dark void high above their heads.
Outside the narrow confines of their rock-bound cell, in the body of the church itself, the nave and chancel were crowded with nuns and serving women, standing huddled together holding each other, or kneeling in prayer. Oundle’s priests knelt before the altar, upon the very slabs of stone that hid the silver and gemstone treasure of the place. Prioress Mildgyth moved amongst her charges, white-faced herself, but lending ghostly comfort where she could.
Bova was panting in her fear, her eyes locked Heaven-ward, focused on the scrap of pale sky she saw beyond the darkness of the bell. She was breathless and light-headed, giddy with a terror that made it impossible to feel her feet. She wished to be that moment up and into the air, like the small birds she envied, free and uncatchable. I will not be trapped and caught, she told herself. I will call those feathered Beings down on us, call the Angels to our sides.
She reached her hand to the hempen rope of the bell, freed it. She had watched the monks ring it, summoning all to Holy Mass, and knew the bell had its own strength. She lunged at the rope, at a point high above her head, grabbing it in both hands as she pulled at the weight of bronze above. Her feet came off the stone pavers of the floor, touched down again. She was pulled up, heard the mighty clang of the metal tongue against the inside of the bronze dome, a sound that with the door closed filled every particle of her body with its bright ringing. Another pull, carrying her, gasping, up so that her toes left the floor; then the brief and more rapid descent, seeing the astonished face of the old brewster, clapping her hands over her ears. Another, greater peal from the deep-hearted bell, and another. She kept pulling, being pulled herself Heaven-ward, and the bell was loud in answering. The Angels would hear them; they would come.
Sigewif was about to speak again when the bell in her church began ringing. After the muffled and enforced silence of the past hours it had remarkable effect. The bell pealed without ceasing, wild and insistent, a tremendous clamour rising from within, and far over, Oundle’s walls. Sigewif looked down on the Danes who threatened her, seeing their twisted and distracted faces. Asberg, below and behind her, was spurred by the uproar, and gave signal.
The gates were flung open.
Asberg had just time enough to turn to Ashild on his right. “Stay with me, my girl,” he told her. “Do not let yourself get surrounded. Stay at my side.”
Then he tur
ned his face ahead, and from his opened mouth came a piercing scream of anger.
Her left hand gripped her reins, her right her spear. She tightened her knees around the great beast. Then she was plunging ahead with Asberg and Byrgher, ahead and out through the gates.
Behind the dark cover of the yews Sidroc heard a shrill, two-part battle-cry erupt from the opening gates, a cry he knew: Asberg. No one else made battle-yell like he.
He gave answering yell of his own, and dug his heels into his horse’s flanks. Runulv was just at his side, finding his own voice, sudden and full-throated, adding to the din of the clanging bell. There was a score of Danish warriors before them, scrambling to pick up their shields or spears, drawing swords, looking about with darting eyes, some already running away, to where their horses were being held.
Ashild, between Asberg and Byrgher, hurtled towards the two lead Danes on the road outside the gates. Both men had time to draw their swords, but both found themselves caught under the churning hooves and proffered spear-points of the three horsemen who ran over them. The men ranged behind them took defensive stance with their spears, but, on foot as they were, found themselves unable to hold. And other horses were now bearing down from the trees on their right; men yelling who had come from nowhere. They were being hit from both sides; from within the gates, and without.
Ashild’s stallion had struck one of the men with a forefoot, and though the warrior slashed his sword in the air as he fell, had missed her horse; he stumbled not, but kept carrying her onward. She looked back, had a glimpse of her own raven banner streaming out over her stallion’s broad white rump, his tail a second streamer; and saw too the ranks of her men behind her, driving spear points into the downed men. Her horse slowed as she looked back, and turning her head she saw her uncle pulling ahead of her. Some of the enemy stood, taking aim with throwing spears; others fled, running towards their waiting horses, now being rushed towards them by those who held them at a distance.
Stay with him, she thought in panic, seeing that she had let her uncle outride her. Her heels dug at her stallion’s side again. Then a shock hit her, an impact great enough that she almost lost her seat, and the spear held in her lowered right hand nearly dropped from it.
A light spear had been thrown at her, hitting Hrald’s shield. It had been thrown close enough to lodge itself firmly in the painted face of the shield, and though the point barely penetrated the surface, it knocked the wind from her. The realness of it, the fact that the inch or so of linden wood had saved her life, snapped her head back to where the spear had come. There was the man, standing, looking after her. She wheeled, making the stallion dance on his hind legs an instant before plummeting down again. She lifted her own spear, and threw.
Her target was young, with brown hair in plaits that hung down his shoulders. Over that hair was a battle-cap much like her own. He wore a leathern tunic, but no ring-shirt, and had lowered his shield as he looked. He was gawking at her horse, she knew; trying to knock her off so he might claim such a prize as was the stallion.
Her spear hit him in the right breast, just under the collar-bone. His jaw dropped open. His knees buckled beneath him as his head fell back. She saw his battle-cap drop and hit the soil a moment before the head did. He lay there, her spear stuck in his breast, pointing to the sky.
She knew a noise was coming from her own mouth, some sound she did not recognise. Men were yelling oaths and battle-cries, and some, screaming out in pain. Horses, in their fear and hard usage, were whinnying their shrill cries of distress. Above it all the church bell kept clanging, masking the din of turmoil eddying about her.
Sidroc and Runulv had charged across the field fronting the burial ground, on to the road, and now across it. They both held spears lowered before them, spears which had cleaved only the air.
I have killed no one, Sidroc thought. It struck him almost with wonder. He had charged, spear foremost, but the action of doing so had thrown the Danes into such confusion that he had never reached them. His spear had met no flesh; his horse had trampled no man.
A big white horse was before him, ridden by one who had been in the first rank of attackers.
Ashild turned her horse to see a man she did not know, mounted on a strange horse, coming to her, followed by a second. She had seen the movement of horses from the direction of the burying place, but could not know who they were. Her second spear was hanging under her knee; it would take a few precious moments to free it, moments she might not have. Instead she gripped the spear embedded in her shield just behind the iron point, and wrenched it out with a twist of her wrist, ready to use it against him.
“Who are you?” she demanded. She could see her uncle turn his horse back to her, and Byrgher, who had gone after and felled another spears-man, wheel also.
The stranger jerked his horse to a halt.
“I am Sidroc.”
His shield was painted black and white, in swirls from the iron boss. She recalled Hrald telling her of this shield, on his return from Gotland. It was very like the one of black and red hanging on the wall behind the place Hrald sat each night, the shield of his father.
She pulled the cap from her head.
He saw the rider was a woman. “What daughter of Freyja are you,” he found himself asking.
He eyed her as if she were come from a Saga.
“I am Ashild.”
“Ashild!”
She had been a child when last he saw her, but it was surely her. She was daughter of his own warrior uncle, Yrling; that was bloodline enough. He had raised her as his own, the first nine years of her life, but she was woman now.
Little could have shocked Ashild as much as seeing him. A wave of near-forgotten longing swept over her, almost impelling her to fling herself at him. It was followed just as swiftly by a flare of anger at his abandonment.
Asberg reined his heaving horse up before them. Beyond him she could see the Danes who had escaped riding away at full speed.
“Sidroc!” Asberg called, bringing his horse in head-to-tail with that his old war-chief rode.
“Brother,” answered Sidroc. He was only slightly less startled to see a grown Ashild and Asberg pour forth from the abbey’s gates as they were to see him.
“It was you, who came at them from the side,” Asberg exulted. “You are back!”
But Sidroc shook his head. “Only for this,” he corrected. “Where is Hrald?” he asked, looking at the men gathering about them.
It was Ashild gave answer. “At Four Stones, defending it,” she told him.
Sidroc scanned the remnants of the invading troop. Perhaps twenty men lay dead or dying around them. A few of the invaders’ horses had gotten loose and were now being led back to where Asberg and Ashild stood with the two newcomers.
Sidroc looked again at Ashild, sitting upon a horse fit for a King. “You are as bold as your father,” he told her. “He would take pride in your courage and skill, as I do.” He looked to Asberg. “She killed a man,” he said.
“I saw,” answered her uncle. “It was Hrald and I who taught her to throw.”
Sidroc was still looking at her, in admiring disbelief. He saw the hammer of Thor around her neck, and knew it for whose it had been.
Ashild was staring back at Sidroc. “Why did you come,” she demanded, her tone no question, rather a challenge.
“To protect you,” he answered. He raised his hand, as if to the heavens. “Not that you needed it.”
I needed you every day, she thought, almost as much as Hrald has needed you.
The bell, which had rung so loudly and without ceasing, now stopped. It gave a single, slower clang, and fell silent.
Sidroc looked over at Oundle’s walls. “Is your mother within?”
“Within? She is at Four Stones.” It was only after she answered she realised he thought her mother had gone for a nun.
Asberg’s men had swept the area, and now circled them. Their gain was twelve h
orses, an unexpected windfall, and whatever booty could be taken from the bodies of the fallen enemy. Only two of their men had been hurt, one thrown from his horse and stunned; the second a slash, not deep, to the forearm. It was rich return for their efforts.
Sidroc was waving Runulv up by his side. “This is my ship captain, Runulv. He carried me in heavy weather from Gotland, to ride with me here.”
Asberg was quick to reply. “So it is. And he will have his share of the battle-gain,” he promised. He took in the seaman, a ready-looking enough man, face flushed with action. Along with Sidroc he had charged, yelling, at the enemy, and helped rout them.
They let the bodies lie and turned back to the gates. Sigewif was still upon the ramparts, and had seen all. She vanished from view, and then came to meet them, striding on foot to stand before the yawning opening. Some of the horsemen had dismounted, to help the two injured within, or to ascertain, spear in hand, that all the Danes were dead. Ashild and Asberg headed those still astride.
The abbess looked as solid as a mountain to Ashild, unshakable and fearless. She kept her eyes upon Sigewif’s face as she approached, knowing that riding just behind her was the man she had called Father; that behind her also was the body of a Dane she had killed; and knowing too that she had almost been knocked from her saddle. If she had fallen she very likely would be dead now.
She slipped from her horse, not waiting to gain a mounting block. Her knees folded a moment under her own weight and the firmness of the pounded ground. She did not know if she was red-faced or pallid, but she worked hard to control the trembling she felt overtake her body. When Sigewif opened her arms to her she feared she might sob. Instead, once enclosed in that strong embrace, she found a refuge of warmth and stillness. She was held but a moment, then the abbess pulled her back, strong hands on Ashild’s shoulders, and peered into her face. The searching grey eyes dropped an instant to the heavy silver hammer around Ashild’s neck. The expression did not change, but returned to Ashild’s own eyes.
Silver Hammer, Golden Cross Page 46
