by Joanna Bell
I did not hear the rest of what was said. It was happening. It wasn't about to happen, it already was happening. My brother already approached the estate from the west, and the two men I overheard waited simply for the signal to bring the rest from the northeast.
Heather was in a hut on that estate, approached in darkness by Northern warriors who would surely show her no mercy. The Angles who I had worked the fields with, and their wives and their children, were on that estate. The lord who had shown me kindness, and decided not to hang me, was on that estate. The boy whose life I had saved, the incident that spurred all of it, was on that estate.
Silently, I stood up, with the rock I had found clutched in one hand. And heavily I brought it down on the head of the man standing closest to me, silhouetted as he was against the last of the day's light. He went down hard – dead or unconscious I did not know – and then I heard the familiar metallic scrape of a sword being unsheathed. I knelt beside the fallen man, drawing his sword, and the remaining warrior who faced me must have assumed I was an Angle, because his first blow was sloppy. Sloppy enough that I had time to bring the blade in my hand up to deflect it, and then to deliver a hard punch to his stomach.
"Voss!" I swore under my breath, and only when the word was out of my mouth did I understand my mistake. The Northern warrior paused very briefly, and in spite of himself, upon hearing a familiar word coming from the Angle he thought he fought with. But it did not take him long to realize who stood before him.
He began to shout at once, turning to the north and calling for reinforcements.
"It's him! It's Magnus! Bring the –"
I put his companion's sword through his neck, and his shouts died away into gurgles as he fell to the ground, soaked with his own blood.
And then I ran. I grabbed a second sword from the dead man's hand and I ran into the woods. As I approached the gate the guards, alerted by the sound of my panting, took their place in front of it.
"The North –"
"Who is it?" One guard asked, because it was too dark to see my face and they were not expecting me to be in such haste when I returned from my oyster picking.
"It's Magnus," I breathed. "The Northmen are here – right now! They come at this very moment from the west and the northeast! Let me in, we must wake the lord and the men – lock the gate behind –"
"What is this?" Came the response. "The Northmen approach at this hour? Is this a trick? Why should we trust you when you are –"
I grabbed the man by the throat and shoved him up against the gate. "This is no trick, my friend. Do as I say or you will die tonight – your village will burn, you children will have swords run through their hearts! Let me in!"
Something in my voice convinced them, and I found the gates opening.
"Bar them!" I shouted. "Bar them shut! Wake the men! Now! Move!"
And then I ran to Lord Eldred's hall as the bellows of the guards began to wake the estate. At the heavy wooden door, another guard stood to stop me and I simply shoved him aside and broke the door open with my shoulder.
"Lord!" I shouted, as I ran, followed by his guard, into the dwelling. "Lord Eldred! The Northmen approach the estate! Wake! Wake the men! Wake the archers and have them take position on the –"
I stopped when Eldred appeared in front of me in his sleeping dressings, demanding to know why I was in his house. I repeated myself and did not have to go far before he understood what was happening. There was a flicker of suspicion in his eyes – just a flicker – but it soon turned to decisiveness. He turned to the guard behind me and bid him to gather the archers. He turned to another man, who had come running at the sound of shouting, to assemble the armed men.
"I will fight," I told him. "Let me warn my girl, and then I will fight with your people. I killed two of them at the beach – here, I have their swords. Just let me –"
"Go!" Eldred nodded. "Go and bring her back here, we have a room underground for the women and children!"
I turned on my heels and left the lord and his men to their preparations, flying across the bare earth of the Haesting estate to the hut that lay next to the wall. The wall that would at any moment see burning clumps of dry grass and resin pitched over it.
"Heather!" I yelled as I approached. "HEATH–"
But she was already standing in the open doorway with a look of confusion on her face.
"What is it?" She asked when I came to her. "Magnus – what's –"
"Come with me," I replied quickly, not waiting for a response before I began to pull her back towards the lord's hall.
"Wait!" She screeched, her eyes suddenly wide with fear as she noticed the commotion going on around us. "Magnus! What are you –"
And then I saw a bright flash in the corner of my eye and turned towards it, already knowing in my heart what it was. The sound of the straw that had been piled next to the wall going up in flames reached my ears almost immediately. And then there was another flash, and another. The third was close enough to Heather and I that she screamed and clutched at my arm.
"Who is it? Magnus! Who –"
"Come with me!" I shouted, over the growing screams and shouts of the Angles as they poured from their little straw dwellings and the flames began to spread. "The lord's house is stone, it will not burn. COME WITH ME!"
And then we ran for our lives – for her life – back to Lord Eldred's hall as the sound of ladders clattering against the walls filled my ears. The Northmen – my people – were upon Haesting. In no time at all, the first of them would be over the estate's walls.
"We'll take her," a woman I did not know told me when Heather and I arrived at the door. "Let go of her arm, we'll take her down below with us – she'll be safe, don't worry, I promise –"
But I was not about to trust one of the Angles – not one whose name I did not yet know and had never seemed to set eyes up on before. I did not let go of Heather. I insisted on following the woman as she led us down some stone steps that curled into the earth underneath a trapdoor that was normally obscured with a sheepskin rug. And when I saw that the other women and children huddled there, and more arrived every moment, I kissed Heather quickly and told her to stay there and not to come out until I returned.
I should have anticipated by then, with her seeming ability to misunderstand – or flat-out ignore – even the most basic rules, that she would give me trouble.
"No!" She burst out, clutching at my arm as I went to leave. "Magnus, no! Where are you going?! Don't go back out there! Stay here, with –"
I took her hand off my arm and held her away from me because she was trying to draw me to her. The Angles – even the children – stared at us.
"Look around!" I replied, before she could ask me again. "Girl, look around! Who do you see down here? Do you see any who are not women or children or old men?! This is not the place for the fighting men! Now let me go, at once! I will come for you when it's done."
And then she did look around, as if she hadn't noticed before that there were no men of fighting age down below, as if she was truly surprised to see such a state of affairs.
"Wait!" She begged, when I kissed her once more and turned to leave. "Magnus, wait!"
"I cannot. Stay here. I'll come for you."
I turned to run up the steps, the smell of smoke acrid and sharp in my nose by then, and before I could exit she screamed after me once more:
"Promise! Magnus! Promise me you'll come back!"
In one ear, I could already hear the first clashes of swords. But still I turned at the last moment and caught her frightened eyes in the low torchlight.
"I promise I'll come back."
It was the first time I ever promised a woman I would come back. My mother never asked it of me, although I had sensed the question there on the tip of her tongue a few times, before the raiding parties left when I was younger and more inexperienced. I learned what it was on that night, to feel that last desperate clutch at my dressings, the last hasty kiss planted on my chee
k by a woman who loved me – and who was being left behind.
And oddly enough, as I emerged into the smoky, flame-lit estate, it was love that I thought of. It was that note of pure fear in Heather's tone, the cloud of despair that darkened her eyes. She loved me. I did not even know if she knew it – but I knew it then, as I rushed to find Lord Eldred and tell him of the tactics I felt sure my father and brother would use.
I found him, sword in hand, watching one of the Northern warriors mount the wall and jump to the earth below, followed by another, and then another. I caught him just before he was about to rush to where the breach had occurred.
"No!" I shouted, for the sound of the flames and the screaming was very loud by then. "Lord Eldred, it is a distraction! This is not where they will come over the wall – in a moment there will be more – many more – in a different place, and a small party battering the gate. You must –"
The lord and I watched as the Northmen that had surmounted the wall cut down one of the Angles who had bravely gone to meet them, and then another in quick succession. And then he turned and looked at me sharply.
"What is this you say, Magnus? How am I to trust you? Is it not your people coming over those walls? Is it not –"
"Do you see any more coming?!" I asked desperately. "See how it's already working, Lord – your men rush towards that place. Already, the largest number of the Northern warriors will be effecting a larger breach elsewhere. The men won't listen to me – I beg you, call them back! Give me half, I will take them one way around the inside perimeter – you take the other half and go the other way. And keep the gatekeepers in their place. Lord Eldred! Please! We must do this now, before –"
I don't know what it finally was that made the lord of the Haesting estate listen to me, but before I could finish begging him to listen he was calling the men to him, giving them the instructions I had just outlined – and then giving half of them to me.
That night, my heart pumped harder in my chest than it had ever done. I led a group of Angles towards a part of the estate wall that was not well lit, knowing that if I did not succeed, they might think themselves deliberately misled and hang me – not that my greatest concern was for my own life. If I did not succeed there was another life in danger – Heather's. As terror ripped through me at the thought of her coming to harm, another emotion followed in its wake. It was courage. I could not fail. She loved me. Her love gave me strength, it tightened my grip on my sword and made the blows I dealt with it more decisive.
My father always warned Asger and myself of being too certain of victory, and it was not a feeling that I had experienced in battle before. Even that night I would not quite have said it was the certainty of victory. It was more the certainty of giving everything. There was still the possibility of giving everything and coming up short, I knew that. Still, I did not fancy the chances of my weak-hearted brother against my steely determination to get back to the girl who waited for me under the lord's house – the one I had promised to return to.
I led the Angles behind Lord Eldred's hall, where the huts were fewer and pig sties sat side by side, and told them to keep their eyes on the walls for Northmen coming over. There did not seem to be any. There seemed only to be the squealing of the pigs, who could smell the smoke and sense the fright in the air.
We doubled back, and still there was no sign of anyone – there weren't even any of the little resin-soaked fireballs. I almost wanted to laugh – how had my father allowed the attack to happen without even making sure they had their tactics in full order? I knew how. Asger. Asger, and his tendency to let his pride and emotions get ahead of his actual abilities.
"Do you lead us deliberately from the fight?" One of the Angles approached me angrily and tried to take me by the neck of my leather dressings. "Is that what –"
I brought my arm up and batted him away, hard enough to send him flying backwards onto his backside. "No!" I replied, as a few of his fellow warriors turned sharp looks towards me. "I know the tactics of the Northmen – they like to start the assault on an estate with a distraction. That's what those men were, coming over the wall near the huts. Did you not see how few there were of –"
At that moment I was interrupted by a great cracking, splintering sound from the north. It was the front gate, I knew it at once. How stupid was my brother, to concentrate the entire force of his men on such an obvious place? A place the Angles would already be surrounding?
"There!" I shouted to the men. "They breach the gate. I want two of you to stay here and keep an eye on this back wall – the rest of you come with me!"
But there were not going to be any more breaches of the walls that night. I saw at once that Asger had done as I suspected – and as my father must have allowed – and sent the entire force of Northmen through the most obvious place imaginable. The fighting was already heavy when I arrived with the rest of the Angles minutes later. Swords clashed, the bellows and screams of men echoed through the chilly night and the metallic smell of fresh blood filled my nose.
Our numbers seemed to be about equal, but the Angles had the obvious advantage of already surrounding the Northmen, as they poured through the narrow front gate. With one last glance back at Lord Eldred's hall, I gripped my sword tight and leapt into the fray.
There is no thought in a fight, no pondering. And I was glad of that fact as I cut down men I had spent many a raiding party fighting alongside. I was a better swordsman than any of them, and when some of them recognized me and stood for a fleeting moment in a shock of recognition, I took advantage.
"Magnus!" A voice cried at one point. "Magnus fights with the Angles! Traitor! Traitor!"
The fighting seemed to intensify into a frenzy after that, and I was glad of the Angles at my sides as the full force of the North seemed to surround and focus itself on me. At one point a heavy kick to my leg, from behind, almost sent me down to one knee. But one of Lord Eldred's men hauled me up, and I spun around to drive my sword into the chest of the man who had sought to hobble me.
The fight was intense, but not long. When my father's men seemed to sense that they were being bested – which it soon became clear they were – they began, as all men do in those situations, to lose heart. And instead of a warrior Jarl exhorting them to continue, and bellowing tactics, there was no one. It seemed there was no one, anyway.
From the remnants of the Northern warriors who were still standing when the fighting died down, a figure emerged. Asger. When he saw me, he raised his sword and at once two or three Angles jumped to take him on, not knowing who he was. Seeing that my brother was bloodied, and that the arm holding his sword trembled with fatigue, I bid them back down.
"You take up a sword against your own brother?" He addressed me, spitting dramatically at my feet. "You take up a sword against your own father! Surely you are mad, Magnus. There will be no place for you in the Great Hall now. There will be no –"
From all around us came the groans of the dying and wounded. Asger's foot, when he moved to take a step towards me, slipped in a pool of blood. But the living men were silent now, watching the confrontation between the sons of the Jarl.
"You always were better at theatrics than fighting," I chuckled. "Do you forget who truly took up a sword against his own brother? Do you forget –"
"LIAR!" Asger screamed, taking a swing at me that I easily deflected. "Liar! Do you wish to keep your foul secret from your new friends, is that it? Do you wish them to think it was not in fact you who first lifted his sword to his own –"
"I lifted my sword in defense of a boy," I replied, drawing myself up to my full height as anger tightened my heart. "You know it as well as I do that my sword was not lifted against anyone, you fool. If you hadn't seen fit to try to murder a child – and not even in the heat of battle! – I would not have seen to block you. And even afterwards, when you came for me, I did no more than defend myself. I did no more than –"
He swung at me again, the whites of his eyes flashing against his bloodi
ed face. The Angles, knowing that the fight was won and that what occurred in front of them then was personal, and not a threat to them, stood back.
"Do that again," I whispered coldly, seeing the hatred twisting my brother's face. "Do that again! SWING AT ME AGAIN, ASGER! Voss, what did our parents do to be cursed with such a –"
My anger was too great, too distracting. When my brother pulled out the jewel-studded dagger that our grandfather had given to me – and that Asger had immediately stolen, to no sanction from our father – and moved to jab me with it, I did not jump out of the way in time. The blade caught my left arm, close to the wrist, and we both looked down to see the blood flowing suddenly from the wound it left there.
Asger was going to die. I adjusted my grip on my sword and brought it up and out, knowing he would at any moment make a stupid move, and that when he did I would finish him.
And then a scream rang out. A woman's scream. Heather.
"Get back!" I shouted at her, not taking my eyes off Asger. "Get back inside, girl! NOW! Get –"
Before she was upon me, one of the Angles snatched her up as she cried and begged me to walk away.
"You're injured!" She shouted. "Magnus! The fighting is done! Come let me take you to the healer to –"
Asger, who had always had a strange ability to see what was in people's hearts – a much better ability than he had with combat – must have seen something in the stance of my body, or heard something in the tone of Heather's voice, for he immediately recognized that he was not seeing a random woman.
"Ah," he commented. "Brother, you have a girl. She's pretty. Have you put your baby in her belly yet? Shall I come back with a larger force and cut it out of her?"
The red veil fell over my eyes, then. I brought my sword down with force, no longer parrying, no longer interested in anything Asger had to say. Even in death he was going as he had lived – with ill-judged words spilling from his lips, and a confidence that did not match his circumstances.
