by M. K. Hume
“I live to serve,” Arthur answered, and immediately leapt to his feet to obey. Because his nerves were stretched taut, the young man was grateful to be occupied during the interminable hours that stretched out before him until the battle commenced. Every warrior feared these hours, because each man was tortured by his own imagination.
And so the afternoon dragged on, in impatience and taut anxiety, while the sun continued its descent towards the horizon and the coming battle.
Chapter XXI
THE CROWS OF HUNGER
We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement.
—THE BIBLE, ISAIAH 28:15
The sun had crept slowly towards the western horizon and the red-flecked sea as Stormbringer stirred, rose to his feet, and moved to the summit of the vine-strewn sandy dune. Below him, the enemy camp was a careless jumble of tents and cooking fires.
“Is the beacon ready, Arthur?”
“Yes, Stormbringer, ready to light as soon as you give the signal.”
“There’s no reason for delay then. Halgar will be in position, and the Geats will be engrossed in eating their supper, so let’s light the beacon and introduce these fools to Hell.”
Arthur had prepared a small mound of kindling, wood shavings, and dried leaves in a small hollow in the ground, and this tinder was quickly ignited with his flint. He had also prepared a torch, wound round with cloth soaked in the pitch which Stormbringer carried on his boats to repair sprung planks and timbers. Once the flame roared into life, Arthur thrust the torch into the beacon and waited until the dry wood caught alight.
“Lord!” Arthur acknowledged the command softly as the blaze leapt up with a sudden flare of scarlet and gold flames that were almost too beautiful to announce the start of a battle.
“Attack!” Stormbringer ordered, his call to arms clearly heard over the squabbling of feeding seabirds and the soughing of the freshening wind. As Stormbringer charged down the dunes with Arthur and the Dene warriors in pursuit, the young Briton could hear distant roars of challenge across the river from the besieged Dene encampment near the banks of the tributary. Desperate not to trip over the trailing creepers that rendered this area between the sea and the tree line an obstacle course of considerable danger, Arthur shouted to Stormbringer that Frodhi’s warriors had commenced their attack.
At full pelt, a line of Dene warriors forty feet long struck the Geat force like a tidal wave. It was inevitable that the Geats would hear Stormbringer’s call to arms, but they had been engrossed by one of the few high points of any soldier’s day, the evening meal. So it took the besiegers a moment or two to realize that they were under attack from an unexpected quarter.
Shouts, curses, and bellowed commands filled the air and added to the confusion among the Geat warriors. When Arthur reached the first cooking fire, he kicked over a triangle of iron supporting a heavy cooking pot filled with bubbling mutton stew. The hot slop of food hit the glowing coals with a deadly hiss, but Arthur now knew that he wouldn’t trip over the cauldron during the fighting.
A huge, disheveled Geat with a plaited blond beard and long, uncombed locks vaulted over the mess around the fire pit with the determination of a man who was crazed or confused. In one hand, he wielded a wicked axe on the end of a long handle which he swung with such force that Arthur felt the breeze of the blade as it sliced past his chest. Too experienced to look downwards, the Briton responded with an underhand slice of his sword. He knew the Geat would evade the blow, but the warrior must be prevented from swinging that unusually long axe again.
Arthur stepped inside the arc of the axe, even as he swung his sword. Now less than four feet from his enemy, most Dene warriors would be too far away for knife work and too close to wield their swords effectively, but Arthur already had the hilt of the Dragon Knife in his left hand. He drew the blade out of its scabbard and the pommel embraced his hand like a lover. He scarcely took the time to think as the wondrously crafted knife sliced open the Geat’s throat with the practiced neatness of a fisherman filleting a fish. Quickly, as the arterial blood sprayed over the space where Arthur had just been standing, the Briton sped towards the next warrior.
And the next!
And the next!
The Geats had been caught completely off guard. Two men had even been in the malodorous latrines when the attack began and had lost valuable time dragging up their unlaced trews. As the shadows deepened, it was only the presence of firelight that gave any sense to the chaotic struggles of men as they fought and died.
Now, Arthur could appreciate why the success of the Dene attack depended on men who had fought the sea together and knew each other’s faces and the timbre of their voices. One huge man appeared before him, eyes wild with battle lust and his braids swinging like snakes around his head. Arthur almost castrated the warrior before he recognized Rolf Sea-Shaper, the helmsman from Loki’s Eye. At the last moment, the young Briton managed to control the deadly momentum of the knife thrust.
“Rolf! You fucking idiot! I’m the Briton—you know me!”
Rolf shook his head and the redness left his eyes.
“Arthur, the Last Dragon! Shite! I could have gutted you!”
“Look down, Rolf Sea-Shaper.” Rolf saw the Dragon Knife almost touching his genitals. He winced appreciatively.
“Congratulations, young Arthur! You’d have trimmed me in ways my wife wouldn’t have liked. Stay careful, friend!” Then the warrior turned and pursued a running Geat who seemed crazed and disoriented, for he was heading pell-mell towards the Vagus and the besieged enemy. Without identification to mark the chains of office, the Geat and Dene warriors were interchangeable, so only familiarity saved Stormbringer’s men from killing one another rather than their enemies. Sensibly, the Sae Dene commander had ordered that warriors from his ten ships should provide the nucleus of troops for the first wave of attack, so the second wave would be used only if, for some inexplicable reason, Stormbringer’s crews failed to achieve their objectives.
Later, Arthur would realize that the battle had been quick and vicious, although time seemed to stretch out as the Dene hunted down those Geats who were trying to retreat. They had realized their position was hopeless within ten minutes of the commencement of hostilities, but were far too proud to beg for mercy. Once trapped, most of them died bravely and attempted to take their attackers into the shades with them.
Arthur was faced with one ugly choice as the camp was being mopped up and the corpses piled onto a section of the riverbank once they had been stripped of all their valuables. Stormbringer had determined that the families of the dead would receive the first cut of the spoils, while the remainder would be kept and equally distributed among the entire force at the end of the campaign. Once the Sae Dene had explained his intentions, the warriors in the various crews worked together with cheerful enthusiasm.
In the corner of one large tent, Arthur stripped away a bundle of clothing that had been thrown into the corner near a sleeping pallet. Then he felt a sting in his hand and a hellcat came after his eyes, her long claws bared and her teeth searching for the soft skin of his throat. Without a further thought, Arthur struck out with his clenched fist on the side of the head. The figure yelped, then slid unconscious to the floor.
“Mercy, my lord! Mercy! My daughter was trying to protect me,” a shrill female voice called from the back of the tent. “The girl’s only thirteen, and she’s still a virgin. Please, lord, don’t kill her! She’s already seen her father slaughtered in front of her! Please . . .”
“Hell’s fucking bells!” Arthur swore in the Celtic tongue, and then began to ask questions of the woman, a striking strawberry blonde of some thirty years. In her arms, she nursed an infant who couldn’t be any older than one or two days.
What do I do now? The girl’s a child and she falls into the category of a slave. I should kill the mother immediately, but her baby will die if we can’t f
eed and care for the infant.
Arthur thought quickly. “Get on your feet and all three of you might survive.” Arthur shoved the reluctant woman forward as she tried to rouse her daughter. A narrow snake of blood slid from the girl’s nose. Then, half dragging the semiconscious girl-child and with the nursing mother bringing up the rear, Arthur picked his way through the dead to where Stormbringer was overseeing the clearing of the Geat camp.
“Hoi, Stormbringer!” Arthur shouted in warning in case any of the Sae Dene’s companions killed his captives before he had time to explain his plan to the captain. “I’ve a favor to ask and a problem to solve.”
Stormbringer looked up and felt that odd shiver of premonition that raises the hair on the arms and sends shudders through the soul.
Arthur was walking out of a thick drift of charcoal-grey smoke and, behind him, a wall of fire and showers of wind-borne sparks created a halo of light around the tall Briton’s figure. The nimbus of fire caught Arthur’s curls and seemed to crown him with a diadem of yellow, orange, and scarlet flame shot through with gold. The woman, who was nursing the infant at her breast to silence it, was a black blur against the brilliant backdrop, as was the figure that sagged over Arthur’s shoulder.
Then the Briton dumped the small figure unceremoniously on the ground.
The child, for she was little more, sprang to her feet and spun to face her captor with the speed of a striking serpent. She had been dissembling, feigning unconsciousness to attack Arthur as soon as he put her down. As Stormbringer watched this largely silent tableau, the girl’s headscarf tore away and her white-blond hair came loose, seemingly yards of it, for the child’s locks had never been cut. Stormbringer couldn’t recall the last time he had seen such thick, lustrous hair on an adult, least of all on the head of a child.
She launched herself at Arthur with the intention of scooping out his eyes with her nails, but Arthur gripped a handful of that wonderful hair, turned her so that she faced Stormbringer, and then used his boot on her boyish backside to shove her down onto the muddy, blood-soaked earth. The child’s right hand landed in a puddle of clotting gore, and she wailed thinly before bursting into tears.
“What have you brought me, Arthur? We agreed that there were to be no prisoners except for children!”
“Aye, Stormbringer! That was our agreement!” The light played across Arthur’s face and, momentarily, the features appeared to be molded out of gilded bronze, except for his eyes, which caught the light like two prismed crystals—colorless, yet striking.
He’s a god! the superstitious pagan in the Sae Dene whispered from inside his brain. No! He isn’t a god, he’s just Arthur! But God seems to be giving me a glance into some future glory. So what under heaven does He intend for this troubled young man?
“I’ve decided to claim these three souls as part of my spoils from our campaign. I know! I’m a landless and untried man, and I should be more sensible, but this girl is younger than my sister—for all that she’s a hellcat. Her mother says she’s been rendered half crazy because her father was killed in front of her, so it appears that she is maddened with grief.”
Stormbringer welcomed the opportunity to break the moment and gaze down at the child.
He saw immediately that the girl’s eyes were an unusual shade of grey, with navy rims around irises which were almost colorless within. Those flat eyes, fringed with long, pale eyelashes, were threatening and angry. The child’s milk-white skin and pale flesh was so delicate and transparent that Stormbringer could have sworn he could see the veins just under the skin.
She’s a frightening child! An intense child! But is she dangerous?
“I can’t, and won’t, kill a child who’s younger than my sister, Master Stormbringer. But my scruples don’t extend to her mother.”
At this threat, the young girl wailed like a wild beast and she struggled to rise. Arthur’s boot pushed her back onto her knees, although he felt a momentary stab of pity.
“Unfortunately, the mother has recently given birth, and her infant son will die if I kill her. Such an action is at odds with the upbringing that governs my manhood so, for good or ill, I ask that these captives be given to me as slaves. I’m prepared to vouch for their silence until our campaign against their kinfolk comes to an end.”
Stormbringer bit on his thumbnail and his magnificent brows furrowed in concentration. “Step forward, woman, so I can see your face!”
The woman complied so that the Sae Dene commander could see her expression and come to a conclusion concerning her fate. She could have been no older than thirty, and the girl had inherited her mother’s fine white skin and delicate features.
“Bare your head, woman, and tell me your name,” Stormbringer demanded.
The woman complied, and the assembled warriors could see that she possessed a beauty that was unearthly, almost fabulous, lit as it was by the fires from the burning tents and the detritus of a savage conflict. So would Helen of Troy have seemed when she watched her husband take his revenge on her adopted city for his humiliation at the hands of Prince Paris, her lover. Her thick, sword-straight hair had been plaited into long braids, which she had wound into a coronet around her head. No diadem could have been more beautiful. The tendrils of curling hair that had escaped from the plaits softened the harshness of the constraining locks and made the mother appear more vulnerable, especially to impressionable male eyes. Whether she had intelligence, Arthur couldn’t tell.
“My name is Ingrid, and my husband was the commander of this encampment. My daughter is Sigrid. Any harm that comes to my children is my fault, so I should bear the punishment. I was pregnant and refused to stay behind in safety in the lands that lie beyond Lake Wener. In my loneliness, I wept and refused to eat. Eventually, my husband weakened and permitted me to join him here, since his duty to his master, Olaus Healfdene, was considered to be a relatively simple and safe task of guarding harmless prisoners.”
“Why didn’t your husband send you to safety once your son was born? There was no reason for you to remain any longer. You should have been packed off home immediately.”
The woman bit her lip, as if only a flow of blood could ease her feelings of shame. “I should have gone, but my son was only born a few days ago and I never recover quickly from childbed. I was supposed to leave in the next few days . . . oh, Inge! Would you still be alive if I had acted reasonably? Would you have traveled with me to Västergötland and survived this massacre? Is your death my fault?”
She opened her mouth and would have wailed aloud. Instead, she began to tear her robe in distress and scour her perfect cheeks with her nails until Stormbringer ordered her to be restrained. Arthur released Sigrid, who ran to her mother and held her protectively. The girl stroked her mother’s forehead to comfort her, while she glared at Arthur with a fierce rage. The child was more adult than the parent.
“Yes, Arthur. Like you, I lack the callousness to damn an infant to die of starvation. Take all three of these Geats as slaves if you wish, but you are responsible for their behavior.”
“Aye, Stormbringer! I accept that all blame and shame will be mine!”
Stormbringer, Arthur, and his captains made their way across the river to the Dene encampment. They were forced to take the longest route, which involved wading through waist-deep water and then swimming across one of the deep channels at the widest point of the river where it entered the sea. Arthur knew from the captain’s expression that Stormbringer was worried, because Leif and his warriors had made no attempt to take part in the twin battles along the banks of the rivers. Such behavior, or lack of it, was a warning that the prolonged siege of over two months might have been successful in killing off most of the Dene survivors through starvation and illness.
As they swam they held torches high above the water so they could see their way in the black waters and on the insect-ridden swamps.
In the predom
inantly stygian darkness, Arthur could see several lights flickering in the swamps ahead of them. “Look, Stormbringer, the signs aren’t entirely gloomy. Some fires have been lit, so some of your kinsmen are still alive.”
When he reached shallower water, Stormbringer quickly found his feet, for his torch was one of the few still sending out a bright light. His spare hand immediately started to slap at invisible insects, which were biting any inch of his skin that wasn’t below the waterline.
“They need as much fire as they can get to kill off these fucking insects,” Stormbringer shouted, with his voice rising angrily on the last word. Arthur realized he’d never heard the Sae Dene curse before.
The river was fast running in the main channel, but the stones on the uneven bottom had grown beards of weed, moss, and slime near the river’s edge. The smell of rotting weed was stronger here, even though the Vagus had a powerful flow. Arthur almost dropped his own torch when a stone slid out from under his leather soles and brought him down to his knees with a sharp and painful jolt. Waterweed and reeds were choking the margins of the river.
“Fuck! It should be too damned cold for this shite to grow on the rocks.”
Several of the warriors had already slipped and fallen while trying to keep their footing. They snickered in understanding.
“Shut up, Arthur! Did you hear that?”
Stormbringer’s body was stretched and taut like a hunting hound that has taken the scent of prey and was now readying itself for a deadly attack. His every sense was straining now towards the shore only a hundred feet or so away.
“There! I thought I heard someone weeping, and I’ll swear I heard a cry for help.” Stormbringer picked up the pace, trying to maintain his balance in the river’s current.
“I heard it too,” Halgar added, so every man struggled to remove himself from the treacherous waters.
The current slowed significantly once they reached the reeds, but the hard, dry vegetation resisted them at every step. Cursing, the warriors heaved themselves onto solid ground.
