by Angus Donald
Bjarki ignored it all, he hauled on the massive door, scraping it through its curved earthen groove, jerking at it madly when it stuck, and – finally – with a heave, he flung it wide.
He stared out at the space in front of the castrum, which should have been filled with a hundred charging Saxons, led by Ivar Knuttson and the rest of the Fyr Skola contingent, his people coming to the rescue, and saw…
Nothing.
There was no one there. The area in front of the gate was quite empty.
Chapter Twelve
‘We shall oblige your king’
Bjarki stared out of the open gate in astonishment: not a friend in sight. Inside the castrum, a Frankish soldier was running at him from the side, perhaps the officer who had been shouting at him a moment earlier. Red plumes on his steel helmet. The man had a short, wide sword and round red leather-faced shield, decorated with a pattern of metal studs.
He stabbed at Bjarki, a short, low, professional killing stroke. Bjarki got his own shield in the path of the blade just in time. He swung his own sword, which was blocked by the officer’s shield; then Bjarki barged into him, thrusting up from the knees, shield to shield, using his weight to knock the red-plumed officer down. Ugo darted in from the right side, yelling, and skewered the sprawling man through the groin with the point of his sword.
He turned to look at the courtyard of the castrum, both the Rekkar were down now, with two heaving knots of Red Cloaks around each of them, stabbing down with wet-bladed swords, spearmen thrusting in their long shafts, again and again, slicing into the huddled masses of twitching meat that had once been two Fire Born – the pride of the Bear and Wolf Lodges.
Ugo gave a strangled cry and Bjarki whirled to see the young Barda had an arrow right through his neck, the dark-dripping shaft protruding six inches from the back of his jaw. He immediately lifted his own round shield, hunching instinctively behind it…
He was alone. It struck him like a blow. His comrades were all dead and he stood in the gate of the castrum with scores of enemies before him.
The space before the gate sucked at his back. He could run. He should run. The Red Cloaks were advancing; two or three glaring right at him. His sword and shield felt like lead weights in his hands. Run. He must flee now.
Then he heard the roar of many throats. He turned very quickly and looked and there, out there in the bright morning, was an army, a Saxon horde, charging towards the still wide-open gates. More than a hundred men and a few bold women, too, warriors all, were sprinting straight towards him. He felt a wash of relief, his heart lifted by the sound of their war cries.
In the front rank was Jarl Harald, brandishing a long sword and urging his people on. He was surrounded by a pack of hersirs, in war helm and grey mail, their own sworn men following behind. The Barda were there, too, on the left, and even the servant Per had come with them, armed with just a long seax and a wicker basket as a makeshift shield. And, by all the gods, was that Tor he could see, running beside them, her lithe body wrapped in nothing but her tatty Wolfskin with a borrowed spear in her grubby hands?
The Red Cloaks had finished dismembering the two Fire Born at their feet; they could see the charging Saxon horde coming for them and all the plumed officers were screaming for them to form a defensive line.
Bjarki stood well back by the open door, hoping not to be noticed. He was not to be so lucky. An arrow thumped into his shield, and he looked up at the battlement on the far side of the castrum where a pair of Red Cloak archers was targeting him – and only him. One man was in the very act of drawing his short bow, the other pointing a deadly finger directly at Bjarki.
He tucked his body behind the open door, just as the steel-tipped arrow clattered against the little log cabin wall, missing him by inches. But the Jarl’s charging men were now roaring through the gates, shouting, shoving, a Saxon avalanche, well armed, high hearted and lusting for the slaughter.
Bjarki caught a glimpse of Tor’s white face, contorted in fury as the jarl’s army swept past him. He saw Ivar, too, in the middle of the pack, safely towards the rear of the phalanx, in all his Boar Lodge finery – pig-skin armour, a boar’s head helmet – waggling an axe, yelling for blood. So much for Ivar Knuttson leading the main Fyr Skola assault, Bjarki thought.
The Saxons crashed into the loosely formed Frankish troops, driving a wedge right into the heart of their lines, and killing as they came. The clash of arms was deafening, like a thousand blacksmiths battering at their anvils in unison. Even above that terrible din, Bjarki could hear the bull-bawling of Jarl Harald, encouraging his Saxon fighters, to kill, kill and kill some more.
The Saxons had the numbers now; the Red Cloaks were weakened and demoralised by the two Rekkars’ terrifying assault. Brokk and Ingvar must have claimed the lives of at least two score enemies between them before they finally fell. Now the enemy were cringing before the Jarl’s fresh onslaught, Frankish soldiers running for the buildings, trying to escape the blood-drunk heroes of the lands they had so recently invaded, who chased them, hounded them, mocked them and mercilessly hacked them down.
Tor, wielding her long-bladed spear was slicing down men twice her age and height with precise, sweeping blows, cutting through hamstrings and tendons as they fled. She stabbed them, too, with short punching lunges, piercing enemy flesh, but never allowing her spear blade to become wedged tight in ribs or spine. Bjarki watched in deep awe as she cut the legs from under a red-plumed officer, slicing through the back of his knees just above the man’s greaves, with a single sweep of the spear’s keen blade, then finished him as he was going down with the spear-point jabbed up under his sword belt.
Bjarki roused himself for battle. He must fight. He knew that. He came out from behind the log door, sword brandished, shield high.
And stopped dead. The doors of the huge church in the centre of the castrum were opening slowly, and he could see a great mass of dark moving shadows inside. A trumpet sounded, a ripple of notes that shivered down his spine – and out of the Frankish church came a clattering, snorting cavalcade.
Some thirty black-clad cabellarii charged out of the dark interior of the House of God in a pack. They wore heavy, ridged steel helms and thick black cloaks over their scale-mail hauberks. They bore nine-foot lances with wicked, needle-pointed blades, carried round black shields, and each cabellarius wore two straight swords, one long, one short at his belted waist.
One of these horsemen, however, was differently attired – a flowing golden, blue, white and scarlet vestment worn over his brilliantly polished armour; a pointed white cloth hat with a golden cross at the forehead, and no sword or long lance for this shining cabellarius, instead his hands held a heavy war mace, a lethal spiked metal club. His long teardrop-shaped shield was painted pure white, a large forbidding black cross at its centre.
Under the cloth mitre, a round steel cap, and under this, Bjarki saw, the face of the tall Christian apostle he’d seen praying in the dawn’s first light.
The Frankish cabellarii did not hesitate for a moment, coming up to the canter the instant they were clear of the church’s wide-open doors.
They dropped the points of their lances and smashed into the scattered melee in the courtyard, skewering running Saxons with an ease born of great skill and many, many hours of practice. Then, lances embedded in enemy flesh, the cabellarii drew their long swords and, riding through the throng, began cutting down enemies left and right.
The charge of the Frankish horsemen turned the tide of the battle.
Here and there, the bravest Saxon hersirs planted their feet and stood their ground and defied the mass of mounted men. They swiftly died. Jarl Harald, wrong-footed by the sudden appearance of the cavalry, was bawling for a shield wall, urging his men to band together. The lance took him in the pit of his roaring mouth and burst blood-slick from the back of his neck.
Harald sank to his knees. Toppled, died.
The Red Cloaks who had fled from the initial Saxon charge, those who
had tried to find refuge in the barracks and stables and buildings around the edges of the courtyard, came swarming back out like rats, their rage vastly reinvigorated by the experience of their terror. They rushed to the slaughter.
The Saxons were dying now, all around. Some were fleeing, too.
Bjarki saw Per hacked down by a pair of Frankish horsemen, his body jerking with every thudding sword blow; Tor was fending off a lance thrust with her own spear, fencing with it, the lance-point jabbed, just missing her shoulder. Another cabellarius was circling behind, sword raised to strike.
Bjarki saw Ivar Knuttson viciously chop his axe into the back of an unsuspecting Red Cloak, then look wildly about him. And what happened next… Bjarki could hardly believe the evidence of his eyes. He saw the new Rekkr abandon the axe blade in the dying Frank’s spine, turn empty-handed, and run – sprint, in fact, full pelt – for the open gates. Bjarki watched in astonishment as Ivar hurtled past him, running through the double gates, his ornate Boar headdress pushed back and bobbing against the back of his neck, the champion heading for the trees as fast as his legs would carry him.
Bjarki felt the rage and sorrow mushroom inside him. His people were all dying, or were dead; everywhere he looked, his friends were being cut down. A fine trap had been laid in this castrum by their foes – and sprung.
All was lost. The enemy was everywhere triumphant in the courtyard.
They were all going to die, and die today. He saw that two Frankish cabellarii were efficiently chopping down the last of the Saxons, calling exultantly to each other as they worked; Red Cloaks were cornering the last desperate Barda against the fortress walls and gleefully hacking them apart.
Bjarki felt suddenly icy cold, freezing all over his body; he heard the sound of rushing water in his ears like the noise of a giant cataract. He found he was instinctively humming, deep in his throat, that simple, four-tone tune. His mind was spinning, whirling; time seemed to crawl, his vision blurred, became tinged with red – then suddenly sharpened. He felt something huge and ancient growling deep inside his chest, he felt his heart begin to swell and engorge, he could feel the blood pounding slow, ominous drumbeats in his hot, wide veins. He felt light, buoyant, stronger than ever, as if he could leap whole mountains in a single bound, reach out and touch the sky itself…
* * *
The lance missed Tor by a hair, it slid past her shoulder as she was turning. She reacted instantly, grasping the shaft with her left hand and pulling. The spear jerked free of the surprised horseman’s grasp. Tor flipped it one-handed and thrust it into the ground between the horse’s legs, the animal stumbled, limbs tangled, snapping the lance shaft, and while the Frank tried to control the frightened horse, Tor jabbed her own spear up into his groin.
She sensed the breath of wind from behind her, ducked instinctively, and a cabellarius’s sword skimmed over the top of the ginger fuzz on her head. She left her spear deep in the first knight’s loins, drew her seax and leapt at the man above her. She got the knife in the man’s shoulder, the point bursting through the scales on his hauberk. But he shoved her away, hard, and she fell back, landing with a breath-stealing thump on her back in the dirt of the courtyard.
The Frankish horseman was gone, swept away by the churning melee that was all round her. She got to her feet, bent and picked up her seax.
All was lost. There were only a handful of her Saxon comrades still fighting; none of the Barda yet lived. It was time to make an end now, such an end that would earn her a place in the Hall of the Slain beside her father.
She had killed half a dozen men, at least, this day, and if she could just take one of the Frankish chieftains down with her, that should earn her enough glory for a seat in the hall. Any of the red-plumed officers would do.
Then she saw Bjarki.
He was standing near the open gate, his legs straddled wide, his head thrown back and he seemed to be screaming madly at the heavens. But she could see no wound on his body. He dropped his head and she saw that his blue eyes were huge and wild, almost seeming to glow; his lips were drawn far back to reveal his uneven white teeth, a thread of spittle hanging from the corner of his mouth. He held sword and shield, one in each hand but flung the shield away from him with extraordinary force. The shield smashed into the leg of a Red Cloak, the pop of bone audible from twenty paces away.
Bjarki drew his new seax from his sheath, and holding sword in his right hand, shorter blade in his left, he screamed again – then he charged.
Tor was stunned into immobility by the extraordinary transformation. She stood and gaped, battle forgotten. She had never yet seen a gandr come into its Rekkr. Part of her was genuinely terrified, part awed, part fascinated.
This was what they had hoped and dreamed of for so long. This was the true spirit, the full, glowing ambition of the Fyr Skola. Bjarki had attained it. The Bear was inside him, now; wholly possessing him. He was Fire Born.
Bjarki ripped into a knot of Red Cloaks, half a dozen men, wielding his sword and seax with blurring speed. He moved inside a wet, scarlet cloud of savagery. He tore the Franks apart, leaving them staggering and bleeding, screaming, some already dropping to the ground, two without heads. One man curled up crying over his own slashed belly. One moment there were six fighting Franks, the next a pile of men, broken and bleeding in the dirt.
Next Bjarki hurled himself towards a passing cabellarius, lopping off the horse’s head with one massive sword blow and swarming over the dying creature and its rider, his seax stabbing, stabbing like a piston. He killed the rider in moments, plunging the blade right through the man’s scale armour, ripping it sideways, tearing the man’s ribcage apart. He bounded from the dying man, leaping like an ape, throwing himself at another rider.
Every eye in the courtyard was on him, and the Red Cloaks were rallying. In moments, Bjarki was surrounded by furious enemy swordsmen, and even as he slashed and hacked and killed them, more came rushing forward; the press around him grew ever more thick. He was at the centre of a jostling, shouting mob of foes. A cabellarius spurred forward to the edge of the crush and over his comrades’ heads he jabbed a lance into Bjarki’s shoulder. The Rekkr shrugged the blade aside, surged toward the man on the horse, killing two Red Cloaks to get them out of his path. He dropped his sword, swarmed up the horse, savaging the rider with his seax alone.
But his foes were too many; they pulled him back down, arms reaching out, swords battering down and coming back crimson.
A Red Cloak blade clanged off Bjarki’s steel helmet like a bell, and he went down for a moment, disappearing in the midst of the mob, then he was up and killing, snarling with rage, teeth snapping, gripping and tearing with his free hand, spraying blood with every vicious sweep of his lethal seax.
‘Bjarki – I’m coming,’ yelled Tor. ‘It’s me. We’ll kill them together.’
She charged into the circle of Red Cloaks around the Rekkr; she sliced the hamstrings of one tall fellow, then jammed her seax blade into the side of his throat as he sank down gasping in breathless agony. He hacked another Red Cloak across the face; sent him reeling away, noseless and screaming. Tor and Bjarki were now at the centre of a ring of enemies. They seemed to be the only ones of Jarl Harald’s force left alive in the castrum.
Bjarki had been wounded half a dozen times, he crouched low, panting, blood streaming down his legs, shining wet on his leather cuirass, puddling around his booted feet. He was weaponless but his hands were red to the wrists, the fingers slick with gore and flesh. Still they feared him. Tor glared at them all, her seax clutched in her right hand, her left clenched in a fist.
Not long now, but they would sing of this battle for ever, their fame would last till the heavens fell. Tor and Bjarki: heroes of the Fyr Skola.
Not long now.
Yet the ring of enemies around them seemed to be growing wider; the enemy were moving back, edging away, giving the skinny girl and the big gore-slathered growling man a little more space. One of the Red Cloaks was ordering
them back, back. Telling them to keep their distance. What? Why?
An arrow slammed into Bjarki’s cuirass, stuck fast in the thick leather; another tinked off the iron-reinforced greave on his right shin. He screamed at his retreating foes, took a few stumbling steps. Tor went forward with him. Bjarki’s face was ghostly with blood loss. He tried to lift his fist, but it drooped; the Rekkr seemed to be shrinking, deflating, his rage draining away.
‘Stand tall, oaf,’ Tor ordered. ‘We can take a couple more with us.’
But Bjarki was done. An arrow whistled past Tor’s ear. Another sliced through the skin of her upper arm. Bjarki mumbled something, it sounded like an apology, he seemed to be saying sorry, over and over again. He was diminished now, ordinary again. The savage aura gone. He slumped to the ground. Tor moved closer, straddling his body with her legs. She bent quickly and scooped up a short sword abandoned by a Red Cloak.
‘Come on, you pig-fuckers, let’s be having you,’ she growled, a blade in each hand. ‘One at a time – all at once, I don’t care. Let’s get this done!’
‘Wait!’ called a voice, a voice of command. ‘Archers, stand down.’
A man in a pointed white hat, in an extraordinary dazzling robe of gold and scarlet and blue, spotted here and there with fresh blood, was pushing through the ranks of the Red Cloaks. He held a nasty-looking mace loosely in his right hand, the vicious spikes stained with hair and clotted matter.
‘This is one of their famous sorcerers – do not slay him. Nor the girl.’
The language was close enough to Saxon to be intelligible, although it seemed more flowery and musical than the ordinary Fyr Skola speech.
‘Bring ropes and bind them,’ said the dazzling man, gesturing to a Red Cloak officer. ‘The king will enjoy viewing them – a wizard-demon of the North and his witch-servant. It will greatly amuse His Majesty, I am sure.’
