The Amber Road

by Harry Sidebottom

  Eadric asked if there was anything they could do. Ballista said it would be good if they could all draw back, create a ring around him and by intercepting any messengers give him some time to consider the defences.

  Neither Maximus nor Tarchon withdrew, but Ballista was so accustomed to their presence, they did not impinge on his thoughts. He sat in the sun on a pile of wood. Three days before, there had been a village here; now it was a lumberyard. The women, the young and the old had been sent inland to find shelter among the other settlements of the Angles, Chali and Aviones. The able-bodied men had participated in the destruction of their own homes. Now they were labouring at the defences; when Unferth came, they would fight as part of Ballista’s war band. Unlike the young nobles, they had not been trained almost exclusively for war. Many of them would die.

  The low, round hill commanded a fine view over the inlet of Norvasund: the still, inner waters to the left and the choppier outer ones to the right which led to the Little Belt between the Cimbric peninsula and the island of Varinsey, and on to the wider ocean. From up here Ballista could see the ships working on the sea barrage, and the vestigial defences appearing on either shore. The plans for the latter were simple. Where the floating barrage came to the shore on the far, eastern side, it would be protected by a semi-circular low ditch and bank, the latter topped by wooden stakes. From the sea barrage a palisade would run forward to meet the earthworks, thus enfilading the former from the land. If anything, the defences on the eastern side were even more basic. A simple palisade running out from the barrage along the waterline – again letting archers shoot along the face of the line of oaks – before snaking back to the hill, where here at the top another palisade would block access to the headland. The demolished houses of the village had provided excellent ready-worked wood.

  Ballista worried at a shred of meat caught in his teeth. Water was not an issue. A stream ran into the Norvasund just inland of where the eastern palisade would stand. They were collecting food, but it should not be a problem. Unless completely surrounded, they would be able to draw supplies from the hinterland. They were stockpiling weapons which could kill at a distance – arrows, javelins and stones to throw – and incendiary materials. If there were time, refinements could be added. Sharpened stakes could be concealed in the ditch of the eastern fortlet, and maybe below the water on the west. When the blacksmiths had finished making arrowheads, they could turn to producing caltrops. Both Castricius and Diocles were familiar with torsion artillery. There were skilled carpenters among the Angles. If there were time, perhaps they could build two or three very simple artillery pieces, something similar to the ones he had designed and used a couple of years before when defending Miletus from the Goths.

  If there were time … It all returned to that. A chain of beacons stretched across Hedinsey and Varinsey. Ballista had men out in small boats in the northern and southern approaches of the Little Belt. They would have warning: several hours, perhaps as much as two days. Yet that would mean little if the defences were incomplete. If Unferth came now, the plan was for the longships to defend the as yet unblocked section of the Norvasund, the men with Ballista here in the west to make a stand on the hill, and those in the east to force-march around the inlet to join them. If Unferth came now, the plan would allow them to die with honour.

  Even if there were time, these defences would not hold for ever. Still – Ballista made an effort to cheer himself – they should not have to hold for long. Oslac’s ships from Varinsey could be here in a day, two at the outside – unless Unferth came with numbers that Oslac could not hope to defeat with just the aid of those already here. In which case, the defences at Norvasund would have to manage until Morcar could sail from Hedinsey to join Oslac. That meant at least two days; at the outside, no more than four. Ballista worked free the bit of gristle, spat it out. Four days; more if the weather was unseasonal.

  Mord was walking up around the post holes of a destroyed cottage. The young atheling had his big hunting dog with him.

  Tarchon barred Mord’s approach. The dog bounded ahead to Ballista. It had got used to him quickly. It wagged its tail as Ballista rubbed behind its ears.

  ‘Young prick-arse wants talking,’ Tarchon called.

  Ballista waved Mord up. Perhaps he would have to talk to Tarchon about his linguistic inventiveness.

  The hunting dog was a fine hound. It looked like a Maremma from the imperium. Morcar must have imported it for his son from the Roman provinces on the Rhine.

  ‘I am sorry, Uncle,’ Mord said. ‘I know you did not want to be disturbed.’

  He was far from a bad youth. Ballista wondered what his half-brother thought of his son asking to join this force.

  ‘Do not worry. What is it?’

  ‘A man has come in with a prisoner.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘He gave his name as Vandrad.’

  Ballista’s chest felt hollow. ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘Tall … hard to tell. He would not remove his hood.’

  Could it be, after all these years?

  ‘He would not let me search him either.’

  That sounded right. An exile caught in Angeln could be killed as an outlaw. He would not let them disarm him or see his face. Surely it could not be him? Even he would not take such a risk. ‘Let him come up, with his prisoner.’

  Ballista’s eye was caught by the prisoner. Unlike the others approaching, he was bound, and he stumbled. He was barefoot, and his tunic was in shreds. He had been beaten, probably tortured. If he could stand straight, he would be tall and thin. Despite the dried blood matted in his blond hair and caked on his face, he looked familiar, like someone not seen since childhood.

  Then Ballista saw the hooded man. He was tall and broad enough. None of his face showed beneath the deep hood. He had a fine blade on his hip. The way he walked was right, well-balanced, a slight swagger.

  ‘Dernhelm,’ the hooded man said.

  Twenty-eight winters, but Ballista knew the voice, knew it like his own. ‘What are you doing here?’

  The voice came from under the hood. ‘Some things just happen. And I have to be somewhere.’

  XXIX

  Norvasund

  They came in the night. No beacons flared. Ballista was awake, but the first he knew of their arrival was the northern picket boat flying in from the Little Belt, her crew hailing wildly.

  There was a certain chaos as torches flared, horns rang and leaders shouted. Men bundled out of tents and shelters to rush to their posts. The five longships were run out. Maximus helped Ballista arm. Around them, in the guttering lights on the top of the hill, members of the hearth-troop did the same for each other. Riders were despatched north and south to light the warning signals further up and down the coast. Others spurred away inland to bring word to the tribes of the Cimbric peninsula.

  Over the black waters Bronding warships stole down into Norvasund. Ballista counted six or seven. Maximus saw eight or nine. More moved out in the darkness of the sea.

  The lights and commotion on the waterfront would have told the enemy that surprise was not with them. Nevertheless one ship slid to within long bowshot of the sea barrage. Volleys whickered out from the two nearest of Ballista’s boats. The arrows could be heard, but their fall was unseen in the dark. The enemy vessel backed, turned and followed the others out again.

  In the greyness of pre-dawn Ballista ate porridge and waited for their return. The enemy had come up the inlet and moored against the eastern shore no more than half a mile away. Some around him – Rikiar the Vandal, Mord, son of Morcar, and the Heathobard known as Dunnere Tethered-Hound – had urged an attack from the land. Ballista had overruled them. The numbers of the fiend were unknown. Night attacks were notorious for confusion. The defenders would hold to their plan.

  The light was gaining. Ballista put the bowl aside. It was always difficult to eat before a fight. He stood to study the disposition of his forces.

  Across the water
Castricius had about four hundred men under arms. Should the little Roman fall, Diocles was to take over. The defences there were incomplete. To their rear was nothing except the shallow stream.

  Ballista ran his gaze over the inlet. The sea barrage was finished, more than forty great oaks lashed into place. The five warships, the Warig among them, each crewed by fifty Angles, were under the orders of Ivar Horse-Prick. Ballista had appointed Eadric, son of eorl Eadwine, as the second-in-command there. He was young, but he showed good sense, and both he and his father were held in high regard by the Angles. For this section of the defences the only thing lacking was that the line of sharp stakes concealed below the waterline ran only halfway across the sound from the eastern bank.

  On this side, below where Ballista stood, the palisade was complete. Behind it were just over three hundred warriors commanded by Wada the Short and a Heathobard called Grim. Up on the hill, things were less good. The defences had not even been started. In the course of the night, since the alarm, a rough barricade had been thrown together from baggage, stacked timber and what remained of the village. Running along the crest, it would somewhat hinder any enemy advancing out along the headland. Ballista had kept most of his hearth-troop around him: Maximus and Tarchon, Rikiar and the Rugian pilot, the atheling Mord and six more young Angles of the nobility, Dunnere Tethered-Hound and five other Heathobards, fifteen Olbians, and eight Romans, including the bald mutineer Heliodorus. It amounted to only forty-one shields, but, the young Angles aside, they were all proven warriors. The men from the south had acquired much equipment from the Brondings of Widsith. Clad in this northern armour, intermingled with the others, there was little sign that they were from the imperium.

  It had been eight days since the coming of the hooded man and his prisoner. Another two or three, and the defences would have been accomplished. Four or five more and there would have been caltrops, hidden traps, perhaps even artillery. Still, as the Greeks said, it was no use crying over the stubble on a pretty boy’s cheeks. When some things are gone, like youth, they are gone.

  After the man calling himself Vandrad had spoken, Ballista had sent everyone except Maximus and Tarchon away. He had listened to what the captive had been forced to say. Then, his deep hood still hiding his identity, Vandrad had departed.

  The prisoner, now masked as well as bound, was being guarded by the maimed Olbian guide Hieroson and a Heathobard called Vermund. They were to remain out of the fighting. Should the day go badly, they were to get their charge away. A rowing boat was ready. They were to go inland to a village of the Chali. From there they were to skirt back to the coast, get a boat from the Aviones, and take the captive to eorl Eadwine on Varinsey. It would be a heavy task, but the eorl would know what had to be done. Hieroson and Vermund had taken great oaths. They would do this or die in the trying.

  Ballista waited. It was hard enough to face what might be the end, even without the waiting. But, always before battle there was the waiting, the awful time when fear crept into a man’s heart, tried to steal his courage. He thought of his sons, the awfulness of never seeing them again. He thought of his wife, and of Kadlin.

  The sun had not yet crossed the horizon. To the east the sky was a smooth band of purple-gold. Arching back from there its vault was ribbed with darker purple clouds. In the distance the tiny black dots of a flock of crows fluttered north-east towards where the enemy lay.

  ‘What if they put some ashore elsewhere?’ Mord asked. ‘If they attacked from inland as well as from down Norvasund it would go badly for us.’

  Ballista leaned down and fussed Mord’s dog. ‘They may not have the numbers.’ He spoke reassuringly, for all those standing about to hear. ‘And they do not have the time. They know Oslac and your father will be here soon.’

  Was that true? Ballista did not know. Neither Oslac nor Morcar had any love for him. Oslac had looked like he wanted to kill him outside the feast, when he saw him with Kadlin. But surely Oslac would not sacrifice this many of their people out of personal animosity. And Morcar was with their father. He would have to be seen to do the right thing.

  The sun was still not up. The colour had leached out of the morning. The westerly breeze had shifted the clouds, bringing a trail of white smudges against the blue sky overhead. It was going to be a fine day.

  The call of a horn. The deep echo of a drum. The whole of Norvasund was filling with ships – sixty, seventy, still more. Soon it was as if a man could walk dry-shod from shore to shore.

  ‘Allfather!’ someone muttered in the hush.

  As the sun rose, it picked out innumerable standards above the fleet. The bull with silver horns of the Brondings of Abalos, the double-headed beast of the Geats of Solfell, the gold-on-black lion of the Wylfings of Hindafell, the killer and the slain of the Dauciones; each banner repeated again and again. The islands and eastern Scadinavia must have been stripped of fighting men.

  In the centre, shielded on all sides by his vassals, flew the enormous black standard with the wolf Fenris picked out in silver, the sign of Unferth, the man who would be Amber Lord of the North.

  Ballista’s eyes flicked here and there, trying to count the ships, estimate their size, calculate the numbers. At least three thousand men, most likely yet more; perhaps as many as four thousand. There had not been an armada like this on the Suebian Sea in his lifetime, not since Starkad and Isangrim defeated the Goths. If only there had been time to build artillery. The slaughter it would have brought down in these confined waters on those close-packed ships.

  Achilles, hold your hands over us … Allfather, turn your baleful grey eye on them … Different prayers rose in divergent tongues. Even the toughened men of the hearth-troop were shaken.

  ‘A lot of the fuckers,’ Maximus said. ‘Makes them hard to miss.’

  Men laughed, some immoderately because of the tension.

  ‘The Hibernian is right.’ Ballista pitched his voice to carry, tried to make it exude confidence. ‘Every missile will find a home. They cannot all fight at once. They will get in the way of each other. Their ships will foul each other. And they will burn. Light the fires!’

  Fuck, this is not good, Ballista thought. One thousand men against four times that number, with only a few stakes and a flimsy barricade to even the odds. Even if they survived the first onslaught, Oslac and Morcar would have to get here soon. But Ballista still wondered whether they would come at all. The former had reason to hate him, and the latter had sacrificed as many before. Ballista looked at his own white draco writhing above his head. How many men would Unferth send up here to avenge his son? Would this be the end? A stand with forty men on this windy little hill?

  Across the water, the sound of the horn rang out again. The drum beat a different rhythm. Slowly the enemy fleet opened up, like the carapace of some massive water insect. The ships flying the standards with the killer and the slain man nosed into the eastern bank. The small figures of Dauciones warriors could be seen jumping ashore. Ballista reckoned there to be about a thousand of them. Castricius and Diocles would have much to do to hold out. Further away down the inlet, ten longships carrying the bull with silver horns of Abalos – half the Bronding contingent – moved to the nearer bank. These warriors would have a longer march to come to the base of the headland where Ballista stood.

  As the warriors disembarked on either shore, the rest of the fleet advanced in two divisions. First came twenty longships of the Geats, the double-headed beast of Solfell fluttering above each of them. They were in line abreast filling the water, rowing straight for the sea barrage. Behind them were another twenty vessels. These flew the rampant lion of Hindafell. In two ranks, these Wylfings were angling towards the palisade at the foot of the hill held by Wada the Short and Grim the Heathobard.

  Ballista looked for the largest battle standard with the silver wolf on black. Unferth himself with ten longships remained further out as a reserve. Briefly, and with no real hope, Ballista scanned beyond, towards the two tiny islands and the mo
uth of Norvasund. As he expected, the sun shone on empty water. There was no realistic chance of any relief for at least another day, maybe more, as the beacons had not tracked the approach of the enemy.

  The enemy had come down the Little Belt from the north. They must have slipped through the Sound between Hedinsey and Scadinavia the night before last and spent the previous day lying up somewhere on the west coast of Scadinavia. It had been a dark night when they made their passage through the Sound, but it was strange they had not been seen by any of Morcar’s watchers on Hedinsey. A dreadful foreboding gripped Ballista. Even Morcar could not have added such a greater betrayal to his earlier treacheries.

  Ballista pushed his fears to one side. Long ago, at the siege of Novae, his old commander Gallus had taught him that an essential aspect of command was to ignore what cannot be altered. There was more than enough to worry about here in Norvasund today.

  The Geat longships were picking up speed, their oars rising and falling, white water curling from their prows. As they came into range, volleys of bright fletched arrows shot out from the five guardships and fell on and around them like swarms of wasps. Some oars swung dead in their wake, but their speed did not slacken.

  Ballista stared at the deceptive surface about twenty paces from the barrage where the stakes were hidden. Surely they were there? Now; it must be now. With a wonderful suddenness, a Geat ship juddered to a stop. Another veered sideways. Even from such a distance Ballista could see the planks torn from its side, men thrown into the water. Over near the far bank, a third crashed to a halt, then a fourth. Three others banked down hard, the water creaming as their oars fought the water to bring them to a standstill.

  As the rest closed with the barrier, Ballista saw what they intended. At full speed, just before impact, their crews scrambled towards the stern. For four or five, it did no good. They ran bow on into the oaks or tangled in the untrimmed branches. The raised prows of the others slid up over the floating trunks. The warriors piled forward. For a couple the momentum was not enough. They slid backwards. Three more stuck fast. Men jumped out on to the treacherous, shifting barrage. As they hauled at the ships, from both banks arrows sliced among them.