The subject occupied the young man and his mates all through the dinner of broth, salt pork and cabbage. There was a barrel of ale, someone had taken a hatchet or an axe to its top, and they all dipped into it liberally. Shef drank more than he realized, the day’s events circling in his head. His mind was revolving what he had learned, trying to put together the rudiments of a plan. He lay down that night exhausted. The Irishman leaping in death in his arms was a detail, a matter of the past.
Then exhaustion seized him, drove him into sleep, into something more than sleep.
He was looking out from a building, through a half-shuttered window. It was night. A bright moonlit night, so bright that the racing clouds above threw dim shadows even in the dark. And out there something had flashed. Something had flashed.
There was a man standing next to him, gabbling out explanations of what the something might be. But he did not need them. He knew. A dull feeling of doom grew within him. Against it, a rising tide of fury. He cut the explanations short.
“That is not dawn from the east,” said the Shef-who-was-not-Shef. “Nor is it a dragon flying, nor the gables of this hall burning. That is the flashing of drawn weapons, of secret foes coming to take us in our sleep. For now war awakens, war that will bring about disaster for all the people. So rise now, my warriors, think of courage, guard the doors, fight heroically.”
In the dream, a stirring behind him as the warriors rose, gripped their shields, buckled their sword-belts.
But in the dream and over the dream, not in the hall, not part of the hero-tale that was unfolding before his eyes, he heard a mighty voice, too mighty to come from a human throat. It was a god’s voice, Shef knew. But not the voice anyone would have imagined of a god. Not dignified, not honorable. An amused, chuckling, sardonic voice.
“Oh half-Dane who is not of the Half-Danes,” it said. “Do not listen to the warrior, the brave one. When trouble comes, do not rise to fight. Seek the ground. Seek the ground.”
Shef woke with a start, the smell of burning in his nostrils. For several seconds, half-drugged with fatigue, his mind circled around that: strange smell, something acrid, like tar—what could be burning tar? Then there was a confusion of movement all around him, a foot stamping on his guts jerked him into full wakefulness. The tent was abroil with men scrambling for breeches, boots, weapons, all in full darkness; there was a glare of fire on one side of the tent. Shef realized suddenly that there was a continuous roar in the background. Voices shouting, timber crackling, and over it all a deafening metallic clanging, the impact of blade on blade and blade on shield. The noise of full-scale battle.
The men in the tent were shouting, crowding past each other. Voices outside shouting, yelling in English, voices suddenly only yards away. Shef understood suddenly, the mighty voice still ringing in his ears. He hurled himself back to the ground again, fighting his way to the middle of the floor, away from the walls. As he did so the whole side of the tent caved in and through it there flashed a spear-blade. The young man who had guided him turned half toward it, his feet still trapped in folds of blanket, met the spear full in the chest. Shef grabbed the falling body and pulled it on top of him, feeling for the second time in a dozen hours the convulsive leap and start of a heart bursting.
As he did so, the whole tent collapsed and a wave of trampling feet ran over it, spears stabbing down into the trapped pile of struggling men. The body in his arms jerked again and again; in the darkness inches away there came screams of pain and fear; a blade plunged into the dirt, scraping against Shef’s sprawling knee. Then suddenly the feet were gone, a rush of bodies and voices swarmed past in the lane outside, a new hubbub of clanging and shrieking broke out ten yards toward the center of the camp.
Shef knew what had happened. The English king had taken the Vikings’ dare, had attacked their camp in the night, and by some miracle of organization and his enemies’ overconfidence, had broken through or over the stockade, driving for the ships and the tents of the leaders, killing as many trapped in their blankets as they could. The English were pouring on, driving toward the center of the river-line. Shef seized his breeches, his boots and his sword-belt and wriggled past the corpses of his temporary fellows into the open. Pulled the gear on, ran, keeping low to the ground.
There was no one standing within twenty yards. Between himself and the stockade was a swathe of leveled tents with bodies sprawled among them, some calling feebly for help or trying to struggle to their feet. The English raiders had charged through the camp hacking frenziedly at anything that moved. They had left few survivors.
Before the Vikings could recover, join together, the raiders would be deep in the heart of their enemies’ fortress, the battle irrecoverably won or lost.
All along the river-line there was glare and smoke, leaping up as sails caught or the fire took hold of some new-tarred timber hull; against the blaze a frieze of capering demons, hurling spears, swinging swords and axes. The English must have met little resistance down by the ships in their first charge. But the Vikings closest to the ships had rallied swiftly and fiercely to defend their wave-stallions. What was going on by the tents of the Ragnarssons? Was this the moment? Shef thought with a calm and intent calculation which left no room for self-doubt. Was this the moment to try to get Godive out?
No. Clearly there was battle and fierce resistance on all sides. If the Vikings beat off the assault, then she would remain as she was: a slave, the bedslave of Ivar. But if the attack succeeded—and if he were there to save her …
He ran, heading not toward the fighting, where one more half-armed man would find nothing but quick death; but in the opposite direction, toward the stockade walls, still dark, still quiet. Not completely. Shef realized now that there was battle not only close to him but also far away, in all directions round the further walls of the stockade. Spears were flying in the blackness, firebrands coming looping over the logs of the stockade. King Edmund had sent in simultaneous assaults from all sides at once. Each Viking had rushed to the nearest point of danger. By the time they realized where help was needed most, again Edmund would have won or lost.
Like a shadow Shef ran towards the slave-pens. As he neared them a figure lurched towards him in the fire-lit dark, its thigh black with blood, a longsword drooping in its hand. “Fraendi,” it said, “help me a moment, stop the bleeding—” Shef stabbed once from below, twisted the sword, withdrew.
One, he thought, grabbing up the sword.
The pen-guards were still there, clustered in tight formation in front of the pen’s gates, clearly determined to resist any attempt to break through. All along the logs of the slave-stockade heads were bobbing as the tethered slaves tried to peer over, to see what was happening. Shef lobbed the longsword over the nearest wall, followed it in one surge of motion. There was a yell as the guards spotted him, but no movement. Undecided whether to guard the gate or to follow him.
Figures all round him, stinking, clutching. Shef snarled abuse in English, pushed them away. With the longsword he slashed the leather bonds between one pair of hand manacles, did the same for the man’s foot fetters, pushed the sword into the freed hands.
“Start cutting them free,” he hissed, turning instantly to the next man and drawing his own sword from its scabbard. The slaves saw what was happening, thrust their hands out, then snatched their leg-bonds, held them up for an easy cut. In twenty heartbeats half a score of slaves were free.
The palisade gate creaked open, the guards deciding to come in and catch the intruder. As the first Viking came through, hands caught his arms and legs, a fist slammed into his face. In seconds he was on the ground, his axe and spear snatched away, blows swinging at his fellows who crowded after him from the light into the darkness of the pen. Shef slashed furiously at leather, then saw suddenly the hands of his half brother Alfgar, a face staring at him in amazement and twisted rage.
“We have to get Godive.”
The face nodded.
“Come with me. Yo
u others, there’s weapons at the gate, cut yourselves free. Those with weapons, who want to strike a blow for Edmund, over the wall and follow me.”
Shef’s voice rose to a bellow. He sheathed sword, stepped to the wall, caught the top of the logs and heaved himself over in a second powerful roll. Alfgar was with him a moment later, staggering from the shock of release, a score of half-naked figures swarming after him and more pouring over the wall. Some ran instantly into the friendly dark, others turned in rage toward their guards, still embroiled in their struggle round the gate. Shef ran back through the leveled tents with a dozen men behind him.
Weapons lay everywhere for the snatching, dropped where their owners had died or still lying where they had been piled for the night. Shef hauled aside a tent flap, rolled over a corpse, seized a spear and a shield. For a long, hard-breathing pause he studied the men who had followed him as they armed themselves too. Peasants mostly, he judged. But angry and desperate ones, maddened by what had happened to them in the pens. The one in the front, though, staring at him intently, rolls of muscle on arm and shoulder, he carried himself like a warrior.
Shef pointed ahead, to the struggle still going on round the untouched command tents of the Viking Army. “There is King Edmund,” he said, “trying to kill the Ragnarssons. If he succeeds the Vikings will break and flee and never recover. If he fails they will hunt us all down again and no village of any shire will be safe. We are fresh, and armed. Let us join them, break through together.”
The released slaves surged as one toward the fighting.
Alfgar held back. “You did not come with Edmund, half-armed and half-naked. How do you know where to find Godive?”
“Shut up and follow.” Shef sprinted ahead again, hurdling through the confusion towards the tents of the women of Ivar.
Chapter Eight
Edmund—son of Edwold, descendant of Raedwald the Great, last of the Wuffingas, and now by God’s grace king of the East Angles—glared through the eyeholes of his war-mask in frustration and rage.
They had to break through! One more thrust and the desperate resistance of the Viking chiefs would crumble, the Ragnarssons would all die together in blood and fire, the rest of the Great Army would fall back in doubt and confusion … . But if they held … If they held, he knew, in a few more minutes the war-wise Vikings would realize that the assaults on their perimeter were no more than angry peasants with torches, that the real attack was here, here … . And then they would be down on the struggle by the riverbank with their overwhelming numbers, and it would be the English who were caught like rats in the last unmown square of the hayfield. He, Edmund, had no sons. The whole future of his dynasty and his kingdom had now narrowed down to this yelling, clanging tumult, maybe one hundred men on each side, as the picked champions of the East English and the last hard core of the Ragnarssons’ personal forces fought it out: the one side straining every nerve in their bodies to break into the three-sided square of the Ragnarssons’ tents down by the river; the other, standing poised and confident among the tangle of their guy-ropes, bracing themselves to hold out for five minutes more after the unimaginable shock of the English assault.
And they were doing it too. Edmund’s hand tensed on the bloody sword-hilt and he swayed as if to move forward. Instantly the brawny shadows on either side of him, the captains of his bodyguard, edged slightly forward, blocking him in with shield and body. They would not let him throw himself into the melee. As soon as the initial slaughter of sleeping men had stopped and the fight had begun, they had been in front of him.
“Easy, lord,” muttered Wigga. “See Totta and the boys there. They’ll get through these bastards yet.”
As he spoke the battle surged in front of them, first a few feet forward as a Viking went down and the English rushed at the momentary gap. Then back, back. Above the helmets and the raised shields a battle-axe whirled, the thuds as it struck lindenwood turning to a crash of steel on mail. The swaying mob ejected a body, cleft through its mail from neck to breastbone. For an instant Edmund saw a giant figure twirling its axe in one hand like a boy’s ox-goad, daring the English to come on. They did, fiercely, and all he could see was straining backs.
“We must have killed a thousand of the bastards already,” said Eddi on his other hand. In a moment, Edmund knew, one or the other of them would say “Time to get out of here, lord,” and he would be hustled away. If they could get away. Most of his army, the country thanes and their levies, were already making for the rear. They had done their job: burst over the stockade behind the king and his picked strikers, massacred the sleepers, overwhelmed the ship-guards and set fire to as many beached longships as they could. But they had never expected to stand in line and exchange blows with the professional champions of the North, nor did they mean to. Catch them asleep and unarmored, yes. Fight them awake and enraged, man to man, toe to toe—that was the duty of their betters.
One break, Edmund prayed. Almighty God eternal, one break in this square and we will be through and attacking them from all sides. The war will be over and the pagans destroyed. No more dead boys in meadows and children’s corpses tossed down wells. But if they stand another minute, long enough for a mower to whet his scythe … Then it is we who will break and, for me, it will be the fate of Wulfgar.
The thought of his tormented thane swelled his heart till it seemed the links of his mail must snap. The king shoved Wigga aside and strode forward, sword raised, looking for a gap in the fighters where he could thrust forward. He shouted full-throatedly, so that his voice echoed inside the metal of his ancient visor:
“Break through! Break through! The hoard of Raedwald, I swear it, to the man who breaks their ranks. And five hundreds to the man who brings me the head of Ivar!”
Twenty paces away, Shef gathered his little band of rescued prisoners in the night. Many of the tarred longships along the river were now blazing furiously, throwing lurid light on the battle. All around them, the Vikings’ bivouac tents were down, flattened by the English charge, their occupants dead or wounded. Only in one place, in front of them, eight or ten pavilions still stood: the homes of the Ragnarssons, their chieftains, their guards—and their women. Round these the battle raged.
Shef turned to Alfgar and to the heavily-muscled thane beside him, standing a pace in front of the little knot of half-armed, heavy-breathing peasants.
“We have to break into those tents there. That’s where the Ragnarssons are.” And Godive, he thought silently. But only Alfgar would care about that.
In the firelight the thane’s teeth showed, a mirthless smile.
“Look,” he pointed.
For an instant again, as the battle cleared, two warriors showed in black silhouette, each leap of flame seeming to catch them in another contorted pose. The swords whirled, each blow parried forte à forte, the strokes coming forehand, backhand, at all angles, each one meeting a precisely timed counter. The warriors twisted and stamped, raising their shields, leaping over low strokes, moving with each blow into position for the next, trying to gain leverage even from the strokes of their enemy for a tiny advantage on the next counter, a weakened wrist, a strain, a hesitation.
The thane’s voice was almost affectionate. “Look at them, both sides. Those are the king’s warmen and the best of the pirates. They are the drengir, the hard here-chempan. How long would we last against them? Me—maybe I could give one a little trouble for half a minute. You—I don’t know. These—” He gestured with his thumb at the peasants behind him. “Make sausage meat of them.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Alfgar abruptly. The peasants stirred and muttered.
Suddenly the thane had Alfgar by the arm, fingers sinking deep.
“No. Listen. That is the king’s voice. He is calling on his true men. Hear what he wants.”
“He wants the head of Ivar,” snarled a peasant.
Suddenly they were all moving forward, raising spears, bracing shields, the thane among them.
H
e knows it won’t work, Shef realized—but I know what will!
He leapt in front of them, pointing, gesturing. Slowly the men caught his meaning, turned away, dropped their weapons, headed for the nearest of the blazing longships.
Over the clash of steel the Vikings too heard the king’s voice calling, and understood him—many of them had had English bedslaves for years, and their fathers before them.
“King Jatmund wants your head,” cried one of the jarls.
“I don’t want Jatmund’s head,” Ivar called back. “He must be taken alive.”
“What do you want him for?”
“I will give that much thought. Something new. Something instructive.”
Something to put heart back into the men. This had all been much too close for comfort, Ivar reflected, edging from side to side to keep a clear view of the action. He would never have thought that the king of a little kingdom like this would have had the guts to challenge the Great Army in its own base.
“All right,” he said quietly to the Gaddgedlar, waiting behind the battle-line as his personal reserve. “No need to wait much longer. They aren’t going to break through. Over here, between the tents. Now, when I give the word we are going to charge. Go right through them, don’t bother to fight. I want you to catch the kinglet, King Jatmund. See him. There. The little man, the one with the war-mask over his face.”
Ivar filled his lungs to shout, over the din of battle, in mockery of the cry of Edmund. “Twenty ounces, twenty ounces of gold to the man who brings me the English king. But don’t kill him. He must be taken alive.”
But before he could speak he felt Muirtach and the Irish gasp and stiffen around him.
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