Hund dashed the bucket from his hands, looked at him with bitter enmity. “Poisoned, I said! And if it is bad for you, what about my wounded?”
Shef passed a tongue over dry lips. It was night already. The whole long afternoon and short evening had been a struggle over baking dust and stone, they had rallied round a hilltop villa which must have its own well. As had happened every time that day, the enemy had thought quicker. He did not know if it was a dead man down the well or something more certain, poison berries maybe. He had to take Hund's word. He had to have water. There was a train of wounded lying ominously quiet. Styrr, who had saved his life, was looking at him in silence. Styrr could resist heat and thirst less well than most men. Outside the night was filled with a deafening chorus of crickets from the olive trees: sound enough to cover any ambush. That was what the enemy wanted.
Brand was propelling someone forward, an old man, a greybeard. There was always someone, Shef remembered Brand telling him, who decided to stay put no matter what threat was coming.
“Ask him where the nearest water is,” he ordered. “Skaldfinn, translate.”
The chatter that followed sounded like Church Latin to Shef. These were, he supposed, the degenerate descendants of the ancient Romans, still speaking their language, but badly, if not as badly as the French.
“He says, in the aqueduct at the bottom of the hill. It comes from Rome, which is fed by its own aqueducts.”
“What's an aqueduct?”
“Like a canal, only made of brick or stone.”
Did the greybeard stay behind out of folly or weakness, Shef wondered, or was he left to tell me just that? He will lie. I need to know the truth. Ragnar, Ivar's father, Svandis's grandfather, he knew how to deal with people like this, Cuthred once told me. I wonder if I can do it myself?
He stepped over to the old man, jerked him to his knees, shoved a thumb firmly into the corner of one eye. Ragnar used to grow his right thumb-nail long for just this purpose, he remembered dully. Must have made the job easier. He used to gouge one out before he asked a question, just to show he meant it. I can't quite do that.
“Tell him I will have his eyes unless he can tell me why I should trust him,” he said, voice flat.
“How can he make you believe that?” answered Skaldfinn.
“I don't know. That's for him to work out.”
The old man was weeping now, he could feel the tears under his thumb, tightened his grip a fraction to compensate as the gabble went on. Hund was staring at him, face twisted with hatred, hand ready for a grab to save the old man, but unable to do it without risking a slip. Svandis was there too, looking uncertain—she boasted often enough about her grandfather, let her see what it was really like. Brand's eyebrows were raised. Styrr was grinning.
“He says there is no better place, but the Emperor's soldiers will be waiting, he heard them talking, not all are Germans. I think he's telling the truth,” Skaldfinn added. “He's not trying to lay a trap. He's telling us the trap's there.”
Shef let the old man drop to the floor. Today he had done everything wrong. Time to make up for it.
“We'll get the water,” he said. “Find Steffi, and Cwicca, and Osmod.”
“Nothing for us Norsemen to do?” asked Styrr huskily.
“Business for Loki,” Shef replied.
“What have you got that we can use?” Shef demanded. No-one spoke more words than they had to now. Their throats were too dry.
“Plenty of flares,” replied Steffi. “We improved them. The last lot, I had to light them and then hold them, you remember. Now we know that rope soaked in a solution of that saltpeter stuff burns well and doesn't go out in flight.”
“What else?”
“I've been trying to make kind of—Greek fire balls, that we can throw, not squirt.”
“Do they work?”
“I can't get them to spray out when they land. But they'll set anything on fire, and water doesn't put them out, just spreads the flame. They're made of bark, with sulphur and saltpeter, and soaked in the Greek oil. All sewn into waxed cotton. Fuses to set them off.”
“That'll do.” Shef coughed again as the dust settled on his throat. Outside the slope leading down to the aqueduct was pitch dark, no moon as yet. Trees and walls and the shacks of the poor gave cover. He had no doubt the enemy were waiting there for their break out. Shef started to husk out his instructions.
As the wounded were assembled, walking or on stretchers, the sentries watching the other sides of the camp called back, Cwicca's catapult teams set to work. No need for silence, but little wish to talk. The twist-shooters were set up in a rough arc facing downslope and angled right, towards the sea. Behind them Steffi had set up his pull-throwers. On the word his men began to lob the prepared fireballs down the hill, down the hill and to the right. On Shef's instructions, only every third missile was a fireball, the other two rocks from the supply train or from the villa's rock garden.
“We won't hit anyone except by accident,” Steffi protested.
“They don't know that.”
“We'll have none left to throw later.”
“We're leaving them behind in any case.”
Steffi protested no longer. His teams hurled the stones out into the blackness, to crash and clatter away down the hill. Amongst them the fireballs made no noise, emitting just the faint red streak of the glowing fuse as they flew away. As the barrage continued and nothing happened, no response from the dark, no cries or orders or counter-missiles, the watching crossbowmen began to mutter nervously.
Behind a wall Agilulf listened to the stones whistling down around him. None had so far come within twenty yards of where he stood. He did not understand what was happening. That, he knew now, was the dangerous time. What were those glints of light through the air? Fireflies? He could face steel, but not flame again. The Emperor should have remembered that.
Steffi nudged Shef and indicated a sudden crackle of fire a hundred yards off. The first fuse had reached the fireball-core. In the light of the flames a tree sprang out, looking as if it were leaning over to the blaze. A branch caught, fire beginning to run back from its twigs to the main trunk. There were more sparkles of fire here and there in the dark now, and they were springing up faster than they could be counted. Such wind as there was was blowing up the valley. Anyone between the fire and the Waymen would have to retreat in their direction.
Suddenly a black shape moved, the first time they had seen a sign of life out there. His Ritter helmet showed up clearly in silhouette. Then it was gone, and Shef shouted angrily at the twist-shooter teams for missing a target. But just as the flames had appeared out of nothing, so all at once the hillside was beginning to crawl with movement. Men forced out of their ambush places, men trying to duck through the gaps in the fire to reach the other side, even men, Shef saw, stepping forward to try to beat out the blazes before they got established. Beating them and scattering them, not putting them out.
To the crackle of flame and the noise of the crickets were added the sharp snap of crossbow releases, the heavier twang of the torsion dart-throwers shooting off their heavy missiles at what was for them point-blank range. Shef could see men falling now, or writhing, but some trick of the air kept him from hearing any human noise above the increasing roar of flame. The men dying and twisting were like a shadow play on the walls of a hut.
Shef tapped Brand sharply on the shoulder, jerked a thumb. Move now. Brand led his sixty men, two ships' crews, sharply and directly down the hill. A squad of crossbows followed immediately, then another body of Vikings, all the contingents told off to follow in set order. It was tempting to angle left, away from the flames. Shef had ordered them not to do it. Head into the flames as near as you can. The ones who should stop you will have moved and been shot or fled. Get downhill as fast as you can before you too are silhouetted against the fire.
The men were pouring down slope now, even the stretcher bearers moving at a jolting run over the uneven ground. It was
the thought of water, Shef realized, more than any new obedience. Steffi's men had shot off their missiles, stood uncertainly by their catapults.
“Take them apart and carry them?” Steffi pleaded. “Just two of them?”
Shef shoved him on his way. “Leave the catapults. Carry your fire-gear if you can. Move.”
The twist-shooters were still keeping up good practice, as the flames lit up a wider and wider area. The easy targets had gone, fallen to the crossbows, but there were still men moving. Did they think they were out of range? They were trying to help their own wounded, Shef realized, running to them to drag them out of the path of the spreading fires. Shef stepped to a machine, pointed to a man trying to crawl out of a tangle of scrub already alight. Sure enough, two men ran in to help him, he could see white faces turning towards him. They were not losing many men down there, Shef thought, but they were being hit out of the dark by men they could not see. A slight movement of the trail, another thick twang, one of the rescuers was hurled aside as if by a giant's finger, the other stumbled grotesquely and turned sideways for an instant. The watchers could see the giant dart driven clean through both thighs. The would-be rescuer fell back into the blaze just as it reached the man he had been trying to rescue.
Shef felt a fierce joy. He slapped Cwicca on the back, jerked a thumb to say “Move.” No time to harness up the mules, but the wheeled twist-shooters were easier to handle than Steffi's machines. Without orders Cwicca's gangs seized them by the trails, ran them jolting and bouncing down the hill. With them ran the last squad of crossbows and halberdiers assigned as rearguard. All of them running at full pelt down the slope, Shef in their midst, weapons ready for someone to try to spring the ambush. The ambush that had already been sprung.
A clash of blows in the dark as a few Lanzenbrüder closed with their enemies instead of falling back behind the flame. They were coming out of the light into the dark, never saw the bolts or blades that cut them down. And then there was the aqueduct, a long line of stone four feet high, with behind it the blessed smell of water. Shef's men poured over the wall, their chief among them, and ignored pursuit as they buried their faces in the cold and gently-running stream.
As he pulled his face up at long last, Shef saw Brand looming over him. “Which way?” he said curtly.
Shef looked for the first time at the aqueduct. The stream itself, built to supply the rich merchants' villas along the Ostia road with purer water than the polluted Tiber, was no more than six feet broad, much of it roofed over with slabs of stone to cut evaporation in the heat. Not all of it, though. He could not take the wheeled machines along it. There was a walkway either side, but barely wide enough for two men, no room again for carts or machines. What Shef wanted above all was to get back to his ships, abandon this failed attack.
Something told him that would not work, the same fighting instinct that had made him keep them shooting down wounded men. This fight would be to a finish now. If he fell back they would pursue him and destroy him. One end of the aqueduct led to Rome, about the other he had no idea. The god had told him—what was it? He would find his peace in Rome. Peace in death, maybe. So be it.
“That way,” he said, pointing left. “Get them moving fast. Cwicca, ditch those machines.”
Cwicca had nursed his machines over a thousand miles of travel. The machines were what had raised him from slavery. He began automatically to argue with his master, as he had done, to the astonishment of King Alfred, so many times before. This time Shef was past the point of tolerance. As the gap-toothed man began to expostulate, Shef, afraid and overstrained, stepped forward and hit him squarely in the mouth.
“Move,” he shouted. “Or I'll have you back in a collar like you were before.” His old comrade spat blood, pulled loose another tooth, gaped at it incredulously. Turned to obey the order.
“All masters are the same in the end,” remarked one of his mates, hacking at the ropes to make the dart-thrower at least temporarily useless. Cwicca did not reply. In the darkness Tolman and the three boys with him hesitated over their bundles of cloth and canes and rope. Light enough for boys to carry, but a burden just the same. Cwicca seized two bundles from them, slung one over each shoulder.
“I'll carry thothe,” he said, lisping badly. Tolman eyed the tears rolling down his face, said nothing.
Hours later the weary column struggled up the aqueduct to the walls of the Eternal City itself. They had run through the night like travelers chased by wolves. Their long thin column had been attacked again and again by men coming in from either side, men who had ridden ahead of them and then swerved in to a line which could not be missed. The crossbows had taken heavy toll of the attackers, but several times the column had been cut in two and there had been fierce work with blades in the dark before it could be reunited. Every time men had been left behind, lost or crippled or unconscious. Their comrades threw the dead into the running water, and as time went on threw in those they were not sure of as well. Few of the wounded were being carried now. In the hot night death by drowning seemed a delight to the sweating and exhausted men who were left. Shef was aware several times of Hund raging and struggling in the darkness as his charges were abandoned or given the warrior's death. He had no time or strength to intervene.
The light was beginning to show in the east as Shef led the rearguard up the final gentle slope to the lodgement that the advance guard had made on the walls of Rome itself, on the very slopes of the Aventine Hill. Light, he thought. And shelter. A chance to see what was happening. To seize the initiative, control the battle instead of reacting to it. He yearned for time more than for food or rest or water. He needed it as an outmatched wrestler needs a foothold.
As he reached the wall, saw the remains of his command spread out along the inner, undefended battlements, he turned and looked out, stepped on to the parapet to feel the dawn wind on his sweat-soaked tunic.
Two hundred yards away Erkenbert said with vindictive relish to his catapult captain, “Launch.” The short arm dropped, the long arm shot up, the sling dragged along the ground and then whipped round in its vicious swing. Its load shot into the sky, not neatly but in a confusion of twisted limbs.
Shef, on the parapet, saw nothing except a momentary glimpse of movement coming towards him. He threw up an arm, felt a body-shaking thud, found himself sprawled on the ground, a weight on top of him. He tried to thrust it off, found his hands caught in something tough and sticky, clawed at it in desperation. It was off him and men were lifting him to his feet. He realized his hands were caught in human entrails, from a burst-open body at his feet. It was Trimma the cross-bowman, his dead face set in a rictus of torment.
“They're shooting our own dead at us,” explained Brand. “They must have known where we were headed and brought the big catapults round to meet us. These are men who were killed in the night.”
Ahead of us again, thought Shef. Ahead of us again. I do not know what to do next.
“They're all round us,” Brand added. “I doubt there's more than half of us left.”
“The worship of Loki has brought us little good, then,” said Thorvin. His tone was bitter, his white clothing torn and blood-stained. He had fought with his hammer in the night. He had not been able to save Skaldfinn, cut down by the aqueduct. Solomon the Jew had vanished, no-one knew how. Of Shef's immediate council only six remained: he and Thorvin, Brand and Hagbarth. Hund was there, his face cast down. Svandis too. He should have given her a thought at least during the night, Shef reflected, but he had not. The blood of Ragnar could usually look after itself. But she had within her now the blood of himself and of Rig. Why had he not stayed by her? He had had other duties.
And he had them now. Every now and then the battlements beneath them shook as another boulder landed from the counterweight machines Erkenbert was using: he had improved them, Shef had seen through the one remaining unbroken far-seer. He had hardly needed to, for there was nothing to oppose them with. Shef's council appeared sunk in apathy
or despair. Even Brand had his heart set, it seemed, on making a noble end, no more.
Wrong, something said inside Shef's heart. They knew what they were suffering. They did not know what the other side was suffering. They must have lost heavily in the night as well, from fire and shot, in the innumerable scrimmages in the dark. It was an axiom that heavy horsemen should not be used at close quarters and at night, where valuable and highly-trained men could be brought down by mere kitchen-boys. Yet that was what the Emperor had been doing. The Wayman army had lost its machines, that was all. It had once known how to fight without them. Nor had they lost everything.
Shef's eye fell on the long bundles someone had stacked against the parapet. He had not known anyone had carried them, would have forbidden it if he had seen them. But now they were here… Yes, there was Tolman, lurking in the lee of a buttress, ducking his head incongruously every time the stonework shook to a new blow.
Shef got to his feet, setting his face into a mask of good cheer and encouragement. He walked over towards the frightened boy.
“Fancy a flight?” he remarked. “Safer up there than down here. Get aloft and let's see what the other side is planning. Cwicca! Unpack the gear and assemble a kite. What happened to your tooth, did you bite someone tough?”
The freedmen eyed each other as they began to assemble canes and cloth. Their experience of slavery was longer than their years of freedom, the habits came back to them readily. “He's forgotten he hit you already,” muttered one out of the corner of his mouth to Cwicca. “And the bairn's terrified.”
“Shut up and fix that line,” Cwicca replied. Were all masters the same in the end, he wondered. He looked down at his wing-pendant, now the mark of the flier-caste. Master or no master, he had done things that no other man ever had.
Within minutes Tolman was in his familiar harness, held by six men just inside the wall. The wind was strengthening and they were a good forty feet up on the battered ramparts of Rome. It would take him out over the semi-circle of machines and men hemming them in from the outside, but Shef wanted him to use his eyes on what he could not see, the forces surely gathering for an assault within the walls.
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