The Amber Road

by Harry Sidebottom

  Three of the Geat ships scraped over the obstacle. Ballista’s five longships were alongside in moments, men pouring over the gunnels. One of the Geats held out for a time, but when surrounded by four vessels its end was inevitable.

  With fire arrows from Castricius’s men on the far bank arcing down at them, the remaining Geat longboats attempted to pick up men from the wrecked vessels and pull back some way down Norvasund.

  There was no time to celebrate. The boats of the Wylfings had reached the palisade on the nearer shore. They ran into a storm of missiles. Using the rising ground, Wada’s three hundred men shot and threw everything to hand without cease. The plunging shafts and stones swept the decks. Flames blossomed briefly, before they were stamped out. The frontage allowed only ten longships to come prow on to the wooden defences. The bravest Wylfings hurled themselves at the rampart. Some got over; most were hurled back into their boats or down into the shallows. Those who made it inside were surrounded and hacked apart. Soon, those in charge had had enough. The boats backed water. Missiles flew back and forth, smoke trails coiled through the air, men still suffered and died, but it could bring no decisive result.

  Ballista gazed over to the far side of Norvasund. Those under Castricius were not yet engaged. But things did not bode well. Whatever his orders from Unferth, the leader of the Dauciones was exercising more discretion than the other tribal chiefs. He had formed up the majority of his warriors in a shieldwall just out of bowshot. The backs of a smaller group could be seen disappearing into the trees. Ballista had no doubt they were setting off on a flank march which would bring them around behind Castricius’s position, where there were no defences apart from a shallow stream. Attacked from all sides except the water, there would be no salvation for Castricius’s men. The professional in Ballista could not help admire the unknown leader of the Dauciones.

  ‘They are coming,’ Maximus said.

  The Brondings were about three hundred paces away. They were jostling into a shield-burg at the base of the headland. Behind their overlapping shields, numbers were difficult to judge. Exactitude mattered little. Ballista’s hearth-troop had to be outnumbered by something like ten to one. A slope and a makeshift barricade would make no difference. This could only end one way.

  Ballista searched around for Hieroson and Vermund the Heathobard. They were down near the rowing boat with the prisoner. Ballista considered sending them away. He could join them, row to safety with Maximus and Tarchon. He dismissed the nithing thought. He would not run, and if he sent anyone away now, it would undermine the fragile morale of the hearth-troop. Things would have to play out as the Norns had spun.

  Rikiar the Vandal raised his voice:

  ‘Let us make our drawn swords glitter

  You who stain wolf’s teeth with blood;

  Now that the fish of the valleys thrive,

  Let us perform brave deeds.

  Here before sunset we will

  Make noisy clamour of spears.’

  The warriors hoomed their approval, slowly beat their weapons on the linden boards of their shields. Ballista felt tears prick his eyes with pride at being one of this brave, doomed band.

  Mord’s hunting dog was baying. Ballista spoke gently to the youth. ‘Are you content with this? I forgot your grandmother was a Bronding.’

  The boy grinned. ‘My mother is from the Eutes, and my father is an Angle. I am a Himling atheling, like you.’

  Ballista grinned back.

  The Brondings were advancing. When they came in range, Ballista shouted for those with bows to shoot. It did little good – the shields of the Brondings soon quivered with shafts – but the hearth-troop had more arrows than they could use today, and they would not need them tomorrow. It made them feel they were doing something.

  The shield-burg came on slowly, but to those waiting it took all too little time.

  Twenty paces out, the shield-burg broke open. With a roar, the Brondings rushed forward. Now arrows found their mark. Men were snatched backwards, as if they had run into an invisible rope. But far too few to break the charge.

  Ballista carefully weighted then threw a stone the size of his fist. He saw it smash into a shield. Its owner staggered, but came on. Ballista dragged out Battle-Sun.

  A warrior grasped the barricade with his shield hand, swung himself up. Ballista back-handed his blade into the man’s leading leg. He collapsed at Ballista’s feet. Another hurdled the obstacle. Ballista got Battle-Sun into his guts. The dying Bronding fell into him, driving him back. Ballista took a blow from an unseen assailant to the right shoulder.

  All along the line the Brondings were swarming over. Ballista saw Dunnere the Heathobard cut down. Somewhere, a dog howled in pain.

  ‘Back! Form on me!’ Ballista retrieved his weapon, took quick steps back to the young Angle holding the white draco. Maximus was on one shoulder, Tarchon the other.

  Often in battle there came a pause. Having cleared the barricade, the Brondings held off as they lapped around the defenders.

  A tight knot of men, completely surrounded. Perhaps twenty left; half the hearth-troop gone. Young Mord howling defiance over Ballista’s shoulder. An Olbian muttering ‘Let us be men’ in Greek. No point in trying to run, begging would do nothing. Die like a man among men. The heartbreaking sorrow of never seeing his sons again.

  A tremor, like wind through a cornfield, among the Brondings. Heads turning, anxious words.

  Battle-Sun shook in Ballista’s hands. The Rugian pilot was dead at his feet, near cut in half. Ballista’s right shoulder stung. The mail was broken, blood hot on his arm. He was panting with pain, or shock, or effort.

  The ring of Brondings backed away. Then, at a command, turned and ran, clambering over the ruined barricade.

  Ballista and the survivors stared at each other, not yet daring to hope.

  ‘Look, out to sea.’ It was Maximus, keen-eyed as ever.

  Ballista looked, struggling to comprehend the turn of events. The seaworthy Geat longships were retreating, the Wylfings following. On the far shore, Dauciones were running back to their boats.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Maximus said. ‘You never would have thought it.’

  A great forest of masts out at the entrance to Norvasund. Any number of longships, under oars, coming down the Little Belt from the north. Banners flew above them: the White Horse of Hedinsey, the Deer and Fawn of Varinsey and the Three-headed Man of the Wrosns. Four of the Bronding reserve were swinging out line abreast to delay them. But the largest enemy ship, the one with the huge black flag showing Fenris the wolf in silver, was pulling out of Norvasund and away south into the Little Belt. Unferth was fleeing from the fleet of the Himlings.

  Morcar stood at the edge, where solid ground gave way to mud. The other leaders of the fleet stood a little apart; his brother Oslac, eorl Eadwine, Hathkin son of Heoroweard, and Hrothgar of the Wrosns. The marsh was no distance inland from Norvasund. As they and the crowd waited for the cowards, he listened to the wind hissing through the alder scrub, and turned things over in his mind.

  Mercy, in the two days since the battle, had been on everyone’s lips, along with forgiveness and reconciliation. Morcar had used the words as assiduously as any. It had been necessary. Half the Geats had got away, and three ships of the Wylfings, but not a single vessel of the Dauciones had escaped south down the Little Belt, and the only Bronding longship to win clear had been that carrying Unferth himself. Conspicuous mercy and many assurances had been required to bring some three thousand defeated and trapped warriors and their eorls back into allegiance to the Himlings. But mercy was a virtue which all too easily could be interpreted as weakness. It had to be balanced by severity. Politics had precluded severity to the losers, but it had to be exhibited. The cowards among the victors would provide that display.

  Morcar felt strangely alone. It was not so much that the other leaders were standing at a slight distance, the crowd further away still, more that neither his two particular confidants nor his son wer
e at his side. It had been essential that Glaum, son of Wulfmaer, stay on Hedinsey. Someone reliable had to be with Isangrim, otherwise the old cyning was all too susceptible to malign influences. Swerting Snake-Tongue had been a long time in the west. He should have returned by now. Perhaps it had proved necessary for Swerting to travel into Gaul to the court of Postumus. If so, that might not be good. And Mord had vanished with Dernhelm.

  In the distance a guard of warriors could be seen through the oaks bringing the convicted to the marsh.

  Where had Dernhelm gone? Why had Mord gone with him? The very day of the battle, Dernhelm had retaken command of his longship Warig, quietly gathered his hearth-troop, Mord among them, and slipped away. The last time Dernhelm had vanished he had returned in triumph with the head of Widsith. Now most likely he had slunk back to Hedinsey, to their father. Glaum could deal with that.

  Morcar smiled. Norvasund had been a triumph to rank with any of those won by the Himlings of the past, with those of Hjar over the Franks or Starkad over the Heruli and Goths. The scops would sing of it for generations. And it was not Dernhelm’s but Morcar’s own. Morcar had ordered the beacon fires not be lit when Unferth’s fleet was spotted in the Sound. Instead he had trailed the enemy. Fast ships had summoned Oslac and Hrothgar. They had met with him off the north coast of Varinsey. Under his command, they had pursued Unferth down the Little Belt, caught him at the entrance to Norvasund, and there crushed his pretensions to the title of Amber Lord.

  Doubtless the scops would make much of Morcar being first to board a Bronding longship, of how he had cleared its prow, struck down five warriors with his own hand. It had been a creditable feat of arms, but it was nothing compared with the leadership he had shown.

  It had always been about leadership, everything, all the hard things he had done. All of it had been for the good of the Angles. A people could have only one leader, and the theoden must be the best man. It was a fact of nature. Froda had been vainglorious and thoughtless. Froda had been their father’s favourite. A man of no substance, as cyning he would have brought disaster to the Himlings and the Angles. Eadwulf had been fickle, drunken, intemperate in all things. It would have been better if he had been executed, as Morcar had intended, but his exile for the murder of Froda had dealt with Eadwulf Evil-Child. Morcar claimed no credit for Dernhelm being sent away into the imperium. It had been luck, or the will of the Norns. But the betrayal of Arkil in Gaul had been a second masterstroke. It had been a difficult decision, not reached without consideration. That so many valuable Angle warriors had had to be sacrificed with Arkil had been unfortunate. Yet leadership was indivisible. It demanded hard choices. When Isangrim stepped down, as the old man soon must, Oslac would stand aside. The Angles would be united under one Himling ruler. Morcar knew he would give them the leadership they needed.

  All had been in place, and then Dernhelm had returned. Isangrim doted on his youngest son, doted on Dernhelm in a way their father had never doted on Morcar himself. Dernhelm had to be removed again. Unsurprisingly, Oslac had shown himself weak. Morcar had arranged for his brother to find his whore of a wife alone with her old lover outside the feast, and Oslac had done nothing but whine and quote gloomy lines about betrayal from the verse of the Romans. Still, the Norns had given Morcar a new thread. Back on Hedinsey, the imperial envoy Zeno had made a clandestine approach. The repulsive little Greek claimed Dernhelm was carrying secret orders from Gallienus, orders to overthrow their father and take the throne himself. When confronted with documentary evidence of such treachery, of attempted parricide, the senile affections of Isangrim must give way. There could be no punishment for the hateful crime except death.

  The condemned were herded down through the poles which marked the sacred site. Morcar felt no more sympathy for them than did the bleached skulls, the visible symbols of ancient piety, which were set on top of every one of the ash stakes. Each of the six men had hung back from the fight, had thrown down their swords like nithings. The cowardice of each had endangered their companions.

  At the edge of the marsh, Morcar spoke the ritual words. ‘Deeds of shame should be buried out of the sight of men, stamped down, trodden deep. Take them.’

  One by one, the bound men were thrown into the marsh. Some struggled and sobbed, others lay still; all alike again unmanned by the weakness that had brought them to this. The wattled hurdles were brought down, and they were drowned.

  The crowd – the loyal Angles and Wrosns, and the Brondings, Wylfings and the rest returned to allegiance – watched in solemn silence.

  Morcar turned away, satisfied. No one would mistake the Himlings’ mercy of the last two days as weakness.

  XXX

  The Island of Abalos

  The new moon had risen. It was a clear night. From the copse, Ballista watched the isolated farm about half a mile away. Behind the dark line of the fence and the outbuildings, the high ridge of the hall was silhouetted against the azure sky. Grey smoke puffed up, smudged the stars and was pulled away to the east. Chinks of light came from the shutters. Now and then one of the doors was opened, and the sudden spill of golden torchlight threw everything else into blackness. When his night vision returned, Ballista could see the dark standard flying from the gable. He could not make out its insignia, but he knew it bore Fenris the wolf in silver.

  They had sailed direct from Norvasund. The wind on the starboard beam, the current had helped them south down the Little Belt. The westerly had remained constant as they steered south-east around Varinsey and the islands of Latris, then north-east past Cape Arcona and across the open sea to Abalos. It had been a fast passage, just three days.

  Behind Ballista, someone smothered a sneeze. It should not matter. They had come up from the south. The wind was across their faces. Ballista raised himself on his elbow, and looked back. The men were blackened and muffled, their outlines broken and indistinct in the banded moonlight under the trees. A Black-Harii such as Wada the Short could have found little at which to complain. After Olbia and Ouiadoua Bank, even the Romans and Olbians must be becoming accustomed to night fighting. At least those who survived.

  The hearth-troop had been hit hard at Norvasund. Twenty-three had fallen there: Dunnere Tethered-Hound and another three Heathobards, the Rugian pilot, four Romans, seven Olbians and seven of the young Angle nobles. All had been cut down around Ballista on the hill, except two Angles who had met their end fighting under Wada at the palisade, and another lost from one of the boats commanded by Ivar Horse-Prick. When all those left had been gathered, just thirty-six men had filed on to the Warig, several of them carrying wounds.

  The previous afternoon, they had put in at a deserted stretch of coast near the main port of Abalos, hidden the Warig in a creek. Mord had volunteered to go on foot into the settlement. His grandmother was a Bronding. He had relatives there who would not betray him. Eadric, son of Eadwine, had gone with him. To look peaceful, they had taken off their helmets and coats of mail, left behind their shields and bows. It had taken much courage from both of them.

  The young men had returned in the gloaming. The news they brought could not have been better. Unferth had withdrawn from the port. He was with his sworn companions in his hall on Gnitaheath.

  Mord had led them to this concealed vantage point. Ballista looked up through the branches at the moon. They must have lain here for four hours or more. At first, messengers had come and gone up the road to the hall, riding hard. Unferth must be trying to gather what support remained to him, plan his next move. After Norvasund, Ballista could not imagine what that might be. But a cornered animal was always dangerous.

  Now the doors of the hall had not opened and there had been no movement for some time. The light seeping around the shutters had dimmed to almost nothing.

  Ballista whispered for Castricius, Ivar Horse-Prick and Wada to come close. He outlined his plan. Like those at Gudme, the hall had two main doors. They were situated opposite each other in the long walls. Ballista would take the one facing
west with ten men. Castricius with the same number would take the other. There might be smaller doors. Ivar and five warriors were to ring the north of the building, Wada and the remaining five the south. They should stay at a distance and be vigilant. Some halls had underground passages designed for those inside to escape. When they were all in position, Ballista would call on Unferth to surrender, or those around him to give him up. Most probably, these would be refused. If the defenders were so minded, Ballista’s men would let any women and children leave. Then they would break open the doors. They had brought axes, but it would be better if they could find timbers among the farm buildings with which to batter down the doors. If all else failed, they had tinderboxes.

  With not much noise, they separated into the four groups. Huddled around Ballista were Maximus, Tarchon, Rikiar the Vandal, the Romans Diocles and Heliodorus, and Mord, with four other young Angles. There was no telling how many fighting men were in the hall with Unferth. The thirty-four of Ballista’s party might be outnumbered, possibly by some margin. Surprise would be lost by the summons, but it could not be helped.

  Ballista smiled at Mord in the gloom. The youth grinned back. Ballista thought of what lay ahead of the atheling. Vermund the Heathobard and Hieroson the Olbian were back at the boat with the prisoner. When they returned to Gudme and the court of the cyning, when finally the captive was unmasked, the words he would be forced to repeat would strike at the heart of Mord’s young life. If, of course, Mord or any of them lived to return to Varinsey. Ballista put it all out of his mind.