The Amber Road

by Harry Sidebottom

  There was nothing to be gained by delay. Do not think, just act. Ballista got to his feet. The others got up, too. He led them out of the wood.

  In the blue moonlight, they jogged along a hedge which divided two meadows. They could hear nothing over the thump of their boots, the creak of leather, their grunted breathing. Ballista’s bow and quiver banged against his back, his shield dragged at his arm.

  Silent on great white wings, an owl glided overhead.

  From nowhere, Ballista half remembered a line from Plato: ‘The greatest hunting is the hunting of men.’

  The ridge of the hall loomed closer.

  No alarm rang out.

  Ballista reached the fence. With his dagger, he cut the rope securing the wicket gate. He slipped into the farmyard, the others at his back.

  The homely smells of woodsmoke and animal dung, the reek of a midden. Hard-trodden earth underfoot. The sounds of a horse shifting in its stable. Still no outcry. No dogs or geese loose to give a warning. Ballista angled to the left, close under the overhanging eaves. He stopped before the western door. Dark shapes around him. Ivar and his men passed behind.

  Ballista whispered for Rikiar and Heliodorus to look for a timber which could serve as a ram. They disappeared into the outbuildings. Ballista waited. So far, so good. They had outrun the news of their coming, outrun all expectation. Unferth had no sentries posted. He had arrived on Abalos but hours before them. No one would have considered such close pursuit.

  Heliodorus spoke in Ballista’s ear. Beams could be pulled from a cowshed, but it would make a noise. Ballista said they would do it later.

  Ballista drew Battle-Sun. The serpentine pattern in the blade shimmered in the moonlight. Alone, he walked to the door. It was tall and wide. There was a pile of dry chickweed to one side. He put his ear against the boards; why, he was not sure. The sound of a man snoring, of more than one, reverberating in the big space.

  Ballista straightened up and struck the pommel of Battle-Sun against the door. The boards jumped and rattled. The sound boomed into the hall, out over the yard. He struck again.

  ‘Unferth! You are surrounded. It is over. Surrender.’

  Shouts from inside. The crash of a table or bench overturning. Feet drumming on the floorboards. The scrape of steel; weapons being tugged free.

  Ballista stepped back, locked his shield with the others. They crouched in the night, linden boards well out and angled upwards. If the door opened, the first response might well be a flight of steel-tipped shafts.

  Above, a shutter squealed and swung open from a previously unseen window in the thatch. So, the hall had a loft. The head and shoulders of a man in the opening. The face glittered with cold, immobile metal.

  ‘Who is there?’ The mask gave an inhuman quality to the voice.

  ‘Dernhelm, son of Isangrim, the one the Romans call Ballista.’

  The carved face looked down. ‘The killer of my son.’

  ‘You know me then. Unferth, do not make your followers share your death. Show yourself a man. Release them from their oaths. Give yourself up.’

  There was something uncanny about the silent, unmoving regard of the silvered mask.

  Ballista raised his voice. ‘You Brondings and any others in there, your leader has no more luck. Hand him over, and you will go free.’

  ‘No!’ A shout came from the floor of the hall, behind the door. ‘We gave our sword-oath. We would be dishonoured.’

  Keeping his eye on the upper window, Ballista addressed the unseen warrior. ‘There is no dishonour in renouncing an oath extracted under compulsion, an oath to an evil man.’

  The voice answered from behind the door. ‘Save your cunning arguments for yourself, Oath-breaker. We stay. Every man must give up the days that are lent to him.’

  Ballista called up to where Unferth still stood in the window. ‘If there are women and children in there, we will let them depart unharmed.’

  The mask nodded. ‘It is not possible to bend fate, nor stand against nature. It will be as you say.’

  ‘Have them come out of this door, no other.’

  The mask withdrew, pulling the shutters to behind it.

  They heard the bar lifted, then the door opened. Only the low remains of the hearth fire illuminated the cavernous interior. A dozen figures emerged: three children, nine women, one with a swaddled babe in arms. Before the door closed, Ballista saw the dull gleam of serried ranks of helms and mailcoats. Many men would die before the hall could be cleared; perhaps too many.

  ‘Wada, have two of your men lead them away,’ Ballista called.

  Grim and another Heathobard went up to the women.

  ‘Wait!’ It was Maximus. ‘That one in the middle – the big one with the broad shoulders – grab her!’

  The woman threw her cloak in Grim’s face. Steel flashed from a concealed blade. It cut deep into Grim’s leg. He howled as he fell. The other Heathobard hacked down the warrior disguised as a woman.

  Screaming, the women and children scattered into the night. Their cries and the ways they ran vouched for the genuine nature of their gender and age.

  Grim was dragged away. As his compatriot tied a tourniquet around the Heathobard’s thigh, Ballista gave new orders to Diocles.

  When the Roman had vanished around the hall towards Castricius, Ballista and his men moved back into the obscurity between two farm buildings. They unslung their bows, notched arrows and trained them on the door.

  From the far side of the hall came the noise of heavy things being manhandled, of loud hammering.

  Ballista knew it was a terrible thing that he had decided to do, but he could see no other way.

  The noise from the east side stopped. All was quiet in the farmyard, as if it were a normal night, as if awful things were not unfolding. When a cow lowed in its byre, it sounded unnaturally loud.

  ‘What are they doing in there?’ Mord whispered.

  ‘Waiting,’ Ballista said. The women would have loved ones in the hall. They would spread the news. It was only four or five miles to the port. Time was not an ally to the attackers. At any moment Fate could turn them into quarry, hunted down across a dark, alien landscape. You could never rely on Wyrd.

  Diocles rounded the hall, Castricius and eight of his men in his wake. ‘All done,’ he said.

  ‘Nailed up tight as a vestal’s cunt,’ Castricius said. ‘I left two to keep watch.’

  ‘The chickweed,’ Ballista said.

  Diocles darted forward. As he crossed the twenty or so paces of open ground before the doors, an arrow whipped out from the tiny window high above. It missed the soldier by a hand’s breadth. He dived under the overhanging thatch.

  Sparks dropping in the darkness. A glow from under Diocles’ hunched body.

  When the chickweed was well alight, Diocles leaned out and swung it high on to the thatch. It hung there. The fire in it seemed to diminish. Then little tendrils of flame snaked out across the roof.

  Diocles moved away north under the protection of the drooping eaves, took a roundabout route back.

  Maximus touched Ballista’s arm, pointed. Three men with torches were moving towards the southern end of the building. They threw them cartwheeling over the gable wall, then faded back into the shadows.

  The weather had been dry. The west wind breathed life into the flames.

  Ballista sent runners to call Wada and Ivar and their followers to him. As in the east, just two warriors were to remain at the northern and southern ends. The wounded Heathobard Grim was to remain with the latter.

  ‘Watch the door,’ Ballista said. There should be twenty-six men spread out around him in the darkness. Each should have his bow trained on the door. He wondered if it would be enough.

  ‘The daemons of death are close.’ Castricius spoke softly in Latin. In the baleful firelight, smeared with soot, he looked like one himself.

  The middle of the roof was blazing fiercely, the southern end flaring up. If the women had not already done so, t
his ghastly beacon would raise the countryside. Would relief arrive before the fire drove the defenders out or buried them under falling timbers?

  ‘Watch the door,’ Ballista said.

  The outlines of black figures emerged up on the roof. Balanced precariously on the beams, they hacked at the burning and smouldering thatch. The great lumps they threw down fell like molten waterfalls.

  There was no need for orders. Out of the darkness, arrows flew. The defenders on the roof were illuminated by the fires. They could not see the missiles coming. One after another, shafts found their mark and figures pitched into oblivion.

  Above the door, a man’s tunic caught fire. In an awful dumb-show, he beat at it with his hands, until he missed his narrow footing and crashed to earth like a northern Icarus.

  After that, the defenders withdrew, and no more ventured on to the roof.

  The fire roared. The heat of it was hot on Ballista’s face even at a distance. Deep in the thatch, it seemed to breathe like a great beast. There was a horrible smell, all too like roast pork. Ballista thought of the Goths before Novae, the Persians at Arete, his own at Aquileia; all the men he had seen burnt.

  A deep groan from within the hall, a sharp crack, and the southern end of the roof sagged. The first of the beams had burnt through. They must come soon. No one could abide in that inferno.

  ‘Watch the doors.’

  The words were still on Ballista’s lips when the door flew open. On an instant arrows thrummed into the opening. The two warriors pushing the doors fell transfixed by many shafts.

  Looking into the hall was like looking into a scene of divine punishment yet to be tenanted. The orange glow played on the empty high seat, the first pairs of great columns. No man could be seen in the swirling smoke.

  They came with a yell, out from both sides where they had been huddled against the walls. They rushed together to form a shield-burg in the doorway. They were too slow, too clumsy in their desperation. Arrows plucked men off their feet, hurled them backwards. They collided with those behind. Those on the floor tripped those still on their feet. Ballista released, notched, released again. All around him others did the same. The doorway was filled with shafts flitting like bats.

  Standing on their companions, treading them down, a dozen or more defenders linked shields in the opening. Arrows sprouted in the bright-painted boards. The men launched forwards. Arrows sliced all around them. They ran off to Ballista’s right, towards the southern gate in the fence. Wada the Short rose in front of them, other shapes at his side.

  A terrible clatter as the fight was joined. Warriors cutting, hacking in the infernal light.

  Ballista sensed men near him moving to join the melee. He searched but could not see the flash of the silver mask.

  ‘Maximus, Tarchon, Rikiar, Mord, stay with me.’

  Heliodorus was reeling. The Egyptian’s helmet had been knocked off. His bald pate shone. A swordsman cleaved Heliodorus’s shoulder open. Wada cut Heliodorus’s killer near in half.

  Still no silver mask. Ballista’s eyes flicked between the fight and the empty door.

  Wada was in the middle of the foe. His blade flickered too fast to follow. The Harii was shouting, the words unintelligible in the uproar. His enemy fell around him. His brother was being avenged.

  A flash of something moving in the hall. Gone before Ballista could focus.

  Wada staggered. The man behind him swung another blow at his legs. Wada went down, swallowed in the chaos.

  Distracted, Ballista did not see the men come from the hall. Six men, their leader’s face a mask of metal. They were on Ballista before he could shoot. He dropped the bow, snatched up his shield. Unferth’s blow split through the lindens, buckled the boss. Agonizing pain; Ballista dropped his shield. He got Battle-Sun in the way of the next downward cut. Unferth swung left and right. Ballista blocked. Sparks bright as lightning as steel met steel. Ballista was driven back. Everywhere the din of fighting, stunning the senses.

  Ballista’s back bumped into the wall of an outbuilding. Cattle stamping and shifting, bellowing with fear on the other side. Unferth thrust. Ballista twisted. The tip of the blade scraped off his mail, jabbed into the wood. For a moment Ballista’s face was against the cold surface of the mask. The face of a young man, inhuman in its calm beauty.

  Unferth grunted, stepped back, turning. Behind him, Rikiar hacked at his other leg. Unferth’s shield splintered under the blade. Pivoting, all his weight in the blow, Ballista swung. Battle-Sun took Unferth’s right arm, near the elbow. A scream, obscured by the metal. Unferth’s sword fell from his hand. Rikiar chopped into the back of Unferth’s thighs. Ballista thrust. Rings of mail cracking, steel rasping through flesh and bone.

  Ballista withdrew Battle-Sun, pushed with his damaged left hand. Unferth took two faltering steps and fell on his back. Ballista, his boot on the bloodied chest of his enemy, the tip of his blade at his throat, reached down and ripped off the mask.

  ‘You have my luck in the palm of your hand.’ Unferth’s voice was steady.

  ‘Yes,’ Ballista said, and thrust down.

  Ballista held the silver mask high. ‘Unferth is dead.’

  The clamour of battle died as men took up the shout. ‘Unferth is dead! Unferth is dead!’

  There were six or seven defenders left. They pulled away into a huddle. Backs to the burning hall, they tossed their weapons to the ground. Castricius and the others faced them in a semicircle.

  In death, Unferth’s face was unremarkable. Perhaps fifty years old, swarthy skin, long black hair shot with grey.

  ‘A southerner,’ Maximus said.

  ‘Where his name tell he from?’ Tarchon asked.

  ‘It tells nothing,’ Ballista said. ‘It means unrest. His son called himself Widsith.’

  ‘Stranger,’ Rikiar said.

  Maximus looked sharply at Ballista. ‘Do you know it is him?’

  ‘No.’

  They all studied the dead man. The firelight moved over his face.

  ‘Then you know what you must do,’ Maximus said.

  ‘Yes,’ Ballista said. He raised his voice. ‘Kill all the others.’

  XXXI

  The Island of Varinsey

  The procession fanned out when it reached Gudme Lake. With the other dignitaries, Oslac followed the cyning through the sacrificial grove of oaks to the field of the trophies. There were many memorials to past victories of the Himling dynasty. They were simple constructions: a stake about the height of a man driven into the ground, a helmet placed on top, a crossbeam to which was nailed a shield and sword. Other weapons taken from the conquered were piled at the foot of each. Time and the elements had reduced the oldest, those set up back in the days of Starkad or even Hjar, to nothing but a weathered wooden pole and some corroded iron. The impermanence, like the modest scale, was intended to prevent any affront to the gods.

  In front of the new trophy, much more war gear from the victory of Norvasund was heaped up down by the waterline. Isangrim picked up a rock the size of his fist from those laid out ready. The cyning himself cast the first stone. It bounced off a shield. Oslac and the others made their throw. The hail of stones rattling and pinging off the weaponry disturbed a raven perched on a nearby trophy. The large black bird took to the air and flapped out across the lake away from Gudme.

  The ritual stoning complete, the cyning and his court watched as warriors went down to the lakeside to break up the offerings. Shields with fine metal fittings were hacked apart with axes. Yew longbows were snapped in half, arrows of ash and pine broken. Chapes and mouths of ivory and gold were wrenched from scabbards. Long days of skilled craftsmanship were negated as pattern-welded blades were snapped on an anvil.

  Oslac watched Kadlin out of the corner of his eye. Had she looked over at Dernhelm? He had caught her gazing at him at Heoroweard’s funeral. Oslac felt the familiar lurch of his jealousy as he remembered finding them together in the darkness outside the feast before Dernhelm left for Norvasund. S
he had given him no reason for doubt since then. As far as he knew, she had not been alone with his half-brother. Indeed, over the last days she had been particularly affectionate, and in their marital bed she had been unusually demonstrative. Was it just designed to reassure him, or was it all to allay his justified suspicions?

  Dernhelm was not looking at her. He seemed distracted. As Oslac watched, he twice glanced back down the road they had taken from Gudme. Since his return from Abalos, apart from this morning, Dernhelm had only come to their father’s hall the once to announce the death of Unferth. The rest of the time he had remained with the closest of his hearth-troop, almost all of them foreigners, in the household of eorl Eadwine at Gudmestrand.

  The weaponry ruined beyond repair, the warriors began to toss the remains out into the lake. The whole was a strange ceremony. The procession and the trophy might well have been borrowed from a Roman triumph, but the rest – the stoning, breaking and deposit in the lake – had their roots deep in the north. Perhaps that was how it went, Oslac thought. The imperium could not be ignored. Peoples took things from the great power in the south, but adapted them to their own usages.

  As the last broken weapons splashed into the water, there was an awkwardness. Everyone knew it was time for the sacrifices, when warriors from the defeated would be hung in the oak trees like the Allfather was hung from Yggdrasill. Unlike the Lord of the Gallows, the warriors would not survive. Given the circumstances, that could not happen. Hygelac of the Geats, Yrmenlaf of the Wylfings, Eudosius of the Dauciones, and Brecca, newly appointed ruler of the Brondings and brother of the king murdered by Unferth, had all returned to their allegiance and stood with the Himlings.

  The bloodied silver mask of Unferth and his great battle-standard, Fenris in silver on black, were hauled high into the branches. Those assembled, the sometime rebels as much as any, hoomed their approval. Oslac searched his memory of the Aeneid for suitable sentiments on reconciliation. None came to mind.

  No man expressed his pleasure more evidently than Morcar. Oslac regarded his brother with mistrust. Morcar had spoken many smooth words to those who had served Unferth. Their actions were enforced, and thus there should be no recriminations or reprisals. All was forgiven and forgotten. Oslac doubted the sincerity of those statements. The former rebels would be wise to do the same. Morcar had always been vengeful, ever since they were children; vengeful and cruel. His cruelty had been apparent yet again when insisting on the drowning of those Angles deemed cowards. The suspicion remained that Morcar had delayed the intervention of the fleet at Norvasund to ensure his own greater glory, so that like a deity he had turned imminent disaster into victory. Certainly, try though he had, Morcar had been unable to hide his fury when Dernhelm had returned with the evidence of the killing of Unferth.