The Road to Vengeance

by Judson Roberts

  Hastein approached us. “Are your men ready for tonight, Tore?” he asked.

  Before Tore could answer, I spoke. “Tore was just suggesting to me that perhaps I should begin watching the woods now—the woods on the north bank where we shall cross,” I lied. “To make certain there are no Frankish sentries hiding there. It is still several hours until dark. Few men can remain motionless that long. If sentries are there, I will see them.”

  Hastein looked at Tore approvingly. “It is a good plan,” he said. “You are making good use of Halfdan’s skills. I, for one, am not as confident as Ragnar that the Franks will post sentries only opposite our encampment on the island upstream.”

  Seeing Hastein’s enthusiasm for the new plan, Tore wanted to go watch the woods with me. With difficulty, I dissuaded him. “Can you stalk as slowly and silently as a cat? Can you lie motionless in the dirt and undergrowth for hours?” I asked. “Even if insects crawl upon you and bite you? It is what must be done. If there are Frankish sentries, they will be hidden and watching. If you move, they will see you. Only if they see nothing moving, nothing at all, will they grow bored and confident and certain no one watches from our side of the river. Only then will they move about and give away their own positions.”

  There were three of them. Three Frankish warriors, concealed just back from the water’s edge in the woods across from the downstream island. They were widely spaced—one opposite each end of the island, and one in the center—but between the three of them, they would be able to see anything that crossed the river from the island to the north bank, even in the dark.

  I told Tore, and Tore told Hastein. Hastein immediately sent runners to fetch Ragnar, Ivar and Bjorn to the Gull.

  “Your plan will not work, Father,” Ivar said once he heard the news. “The Franks’ sentries will sound the alarm long before we can position our ships to span the river. Your battle plan depends upon our army forming on the high ground of the ridge in a strong position before the Franks realize we have crossed the river. But if they send their soldiers into the woods, in response to their sentries’ alarms, what we will have instead will be a confused, disorganized fight in the dark among the trees. We cannot win the decisive victory you desire that way.”

  “We have come too far to be undone like this,” Ragnar answered. “We have led the Frankish cavalry away from their infantry. Their army is fragmented now. We cannot let this opportunity pass.” He wheeled on Hastein. “How certain are you that Frankish sentries are in those woods?”

  “I am certain,” Hastein answered. “Halfdan saw them.”

  Given Ragnar’s displeasure at having his plan foiled, I would rather Hastein had given Tore the credit. Ragnar glared in my direction. No doubt my appearance did not improve his impression of me. My face and hands were still smeared with the mud I had used to darken them, and my clothes were filthy from having slowly crawled on my belly almost the entire length of the island as I watched the far bank from hiding.

  “You must face the facts, Father,” Ivar said. “Your plan cannot succeed.”

  “Perhaps,” I suggested, “there is a way.”

  The water was cold and the temperature of the air had dropped sharply after the sun had gone down. I was shivering and I could hear Einar’s teeth chattering.

  “How far downstream do you think we need to go?” he whispered. The cold was making him impatient. We had not even passed the end of the island yet.

  We were floating with the current, hanging on to the raft we’d built in the channel between the two islands while dusk was falling. There was not much to it—just three logs lashed together, with cut brush tied on top and along the sides. Our clothes and weapons—just bows, one quiver of arrows each, and knives—were also tied on top of the logs and covered with cut branches. In the dark, from the far shore, the raft would look—I hoped—like a tree that had fallen into the river and was drifting downstream.

  “Far enough so we can no longer see the end of this island,” I answered, also in a whisper. “The third sentry I saw was in the woods almost opposite the island’s end. We need to be far enough downstream from him that he cannot see us when we climb out of the river.”

  Only our heads showed above the surface of the water, and they were concealed by the brush we’d lashed to the logs. As the current slowly carried us past the end of the island, we began kicking our legs, gradually pushing the raft closer to the north bank.

  “To your left,” I whispered, once we’d rounded a bend and the island was no longer visible. “I see what looks to be a gap in the trees along the bank. Do you see it? Let us make for there.”

  The gap proved to be the mouth of a narrow stream. We pushed our raft into it, cut our clothes and weapons free, and climbed stiffly up into the stream’s shallow channel, hidden by its banks and the trees that grew above them.

  “Gods, that water was cold,” Einar said as we shook ourselves as dry as we could and pulled on our clothes. “I was beginning to regret that you asked me to come with you.”

  I was glad he’d accepted. If two of us struck simultaneously at each of the sentries, we were far more likely to achieve silent kills. It was essential that each sentry die without making any sound to alert his comrades. I needed someone skilled with a bow to help me. But even more, I needed a woodsman like me—someone who could move through the forest silently, more like a beast than a man. There might be others possessing such skills within our army, but I knew only of Einar.

  The first sentry was easy. He had fallen asleep, seated against the base of a tree, and we located him by the sound of his snoring. We did not even need our bows. We crept close, then I reached around the trunk of the tree and clamped my hands over his mouth and nose to prevent any outcry, while Einar killed him with his knife.

  The second Frank had taken a position behind a large oak at the water’s edge—a good hiding place from which to watch the river. It had taken me the longest to locate him during the afternoon, when I was watching the shoreline from the island. But now that the woods were cloaked in darkness, he moved about often, standing to stretch his legs or pacing up and down along the bank. Einar and I took up positions behind a bush no more than two spear-lengths behind him, and readied arrows on our bows. The next time he stood and stretched, reaching his arms up and rolling his head from side to side, we put two arrows into the center of his back. He flopped forward against the trunk of the oak, a single, strangled gasp escaping from his throat, and slid slowly down the tree to the ground.

  The third sentry was the hardest. He had moved since the afternoon, and was now hidden in the midst of a large thicket with small trees and shrubs behind him as well as in front. Although we could dimly make out his shadowy form through the leaves and branches of the underbrush that surrounded him, we had no clear shot. Einar and I watched him for a time, but when he did not move from the thicket, Einar signaled to me and we backed away, deeper into the forest, so we could talk.

  “The other two are already dead,” Einar whispered. “This killing does not have to be as quiet.”

  What he said was true. But it still needed to be quick and certain. If we only wounded the Frank, he might still be able to sound an alarm before we could close with him and finish the job.

  “We cannot delay too long,” Einar continued. “The night passes. It will take time to move the ships into position and get our army across them.”

  “What do you suggest?” I asked.

  “One of us must get in position to shoot. The other must move upstream of him, or down, and make noise—enough noise that he will move from that thicket he hides in and investigate.”

  His plan had the merit of being simple, and I could think of nothing better.

  “Who will be the shooter?” I asked.

  “You,” Einar answered, and pointed downstream. “I will circle around that way. Be ready.”

  Einar moved off, quickly vanishing into the dark. I headed back in the direction of the river’s edge, and took up a posit
ion that gave me a good view of the downstream side of the thicket—and hopefully the sentry, if Einar was successful in luring him from it.

  Rap-tap. The sound startled me, even though I had been waiting for Einar to begin. Rap-tap-rap-tap. What was he doing?

  Over and over, Einar repeated the pattern: rap-tap, rap-tap-rap-tap. It did not sound like any noise a beast would make. Yet it was not obviously a sound made by a man, either.

  Rap-tap, rap-tap-rap-tap.

  “Is someone there?” the Frank whispered.

  Rap-tap, rap-tap-rap-tap.

  “Carloman, is that you?”

  Rap-tap, rap-tap-rap-tap. It sounded like it was getting closer.

  The Frank stood up. I was watching him from behind the thick trunk of a tall ash tree, peering around its side, just above ground level, with one eye. I could see the Frank’s head clearly now above the undergrowth, but my view of his body was still obstructed. With so much depending on a quick, quiet kill, I did not want to risk a shot at his head in the dark.

  Rap-tap, rap-tap-rap-tap.

  I heard the quiet rasp of the Frank’s sword being drawn from its scabbard, and he began edging forward, one cautious step at a time. I estimated that in three more steps he would be in the open.

  Rap-tap, rap-tap-rap-tap.

  “Who goes there?” I could hear the nervousness in the Frank’s voice. I eased back behind the trunk of the tree until I was fully hidden by it, then stood up slowly. Listening to the rustle and crunch of the Frank’s footsteps in the dry leaves and scattered acorn shells on the ground, I visualized where he was as I laid an arrow across my bow and pulled it to full draw.

  Rap-tap, rap-tap-rap-tap.

  I edged forward around the ash tree. The Frank was directly ahead of me, just clear of the thicket, peering into the darkness in the direction the sound was coming from. His right side was toward me. It was not a good angle for a killing shot.

  “Psst,” I whispered. The Frank spun toward me and I aimed my arrow at the center of his chest. I was close enough to see the whites of his eyes when they widened with shock and surprise, and to hear him suck in his breath in a frightened gasp.

  I released my arrow and immediately lost sight of it in the dark. Just as it leaped off my bow, the Frank began scuttling back away from me, then staggered and fell out of sight into the cover of the thicket. I heard a thunk—I feared it was my arrow, sailing past him and smacking into the trunk of a tree. Almost immediately after, I heard a muffled thud followed by a brief rustle as the Frank hit the ground. Then there was only silence.

  “Did you hit him? Is he dead?” Einar called in a loud whisper. I did not know. I didn’t know if he was even wounded. I feared he was merely frightened and hiding. And now Einar had given his own position away.

  “Shhh!” I answered, nocking another arrow on my bowstring. I moved to the other side of the ash tree and crouched low behind a bush, waiting. I was hoping that when he fell, the Frank had been too startled and distracted to be able to tell where I had gone. I was hoping he would be uncertain where I was now. Most of all, I was hoping he would be too fearful of losing his own life to risk calling out or blowing a horn to sound the alarm.

  Eventually, I thought, he will try to move deeper into cover in order to put more protection between himself and my bow. When he did, it would give his position away. I would have to risk a shot then, even through the brush. At this point, any shot was better than none.

  But the Frank did not move. And as Einar had said, the night was passing. I could not wait forever. I would have to go to him. I would have to expose myself to view. Hopefully, he did not have a bow, too.

  Pulling my bow to full draw, I stood and crept forward. When I reached the edge of the thicket, the Frank’s body came into view and I understood what had happened.

  One of the Frank’s feet lay across a thick tree root. When he’d seen me and tried to retreat, his heel must have caught on it, tripping him. The arrow I’d aimed for his chest instead had struck him in the center of his forehead as he was falling. It was his skull the arrow had thudded into, not a tree. It was a miracle I had hit him at all, much less killed him. Had I released my arrow a split second later, had I aimed only a little to one side or the other, or jerked the bow the slightest bit when I released, my arrow would have missed him completely.

  I heard Einar coming up behind me. “Is he dead?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I answered and turned to face him. “What was that sound you were making?”

  Grinning, Einar held up his knife and tapped its handle against his bow: rap-tap, rap-tap-rap-tap. He stepped forward to look at the dead Frank and gave a low, admiring whistle.

  “A shot through the head,” he said. “Perfectly centered. In the dark, and when your target was moving. I knew you were skilled with a bow, and confident of your ability with it. But this shot…” He looked at me and shook his head. “This is the stuff of legends.”

  8 : The Field of the Dead

  From somewhere nearby, a bird chirped its first tentative greetings to the approaching morn. I opened my eyes. I had not been sleeping, only wishing I was.

  I was sitting on the ground with my back propped against the trunk of a tree. My shield, helm, and weapons were beside me. The woods around me were filled with other warriors, mostly also seated or lying on the ground, a few standing. There was enough light—the strange, gray light of dawn, before the sun actually rises above the horizon—to see them clearly now. When we’d first arrived here, after stumbling through the forest, bumping into each other and trees for what felt like hours, it had still been the deep, pitch-black dark of the last stretches of the night.

  Torvald appeared from the slope behind me. His helm was strapped on his head, and his shield slung across his back. “Up, my lads. Up now,” he said as he walked among us, occasionally prodding a sleeping man with the shaft of his spear. “The morn is upon us, and it is time.”

  He stopped beside Tore, who was sprawled against the trunk of a nearby tree with his head tilted back, mouth open, snoring loudly. Tore’s unstrung bow and two quivers stuffed with arrows were propped beside him.

  Torvald reached out, eased the bow away from Tore, and leaned it against the back side of the tree he was sleeping against. Then he jabbed the butt of his spear’s shaft sharply into Tore’s chest.

  “Wake up, Tore,” he said. “Would you sleep through the battle? And Gods, man, where is your bow? Did you leave it on the ship?”

  Tore opened his eyes, looking dazed, and slapped at the shaft of Torvald’s spear, but it was already gone. Torvald strode off, wearing a pleased grin, while Tore looked around him for his bow with a confused and increasingly anxious expression on his face.

  I stood and stretched, made water against the side of a tree, then strapped my helm and sword on. Slinging my shield across my back, and the straps of my two quivers over one shoulder, I hoisted my bow and spear and joined the disorganized throng of warriors headed toward the top of the ridge just above us, where a steadily growing light was beginning to shine through the trees.

  As I stepped from the last fringe of the forest into the open, just beyond the crest of the ridge, I paused and looked around at what was to be our field of battle. The face of the ridge had been cleared on this side so long ago that not even stumps remained. A long, grassy meadow—no doubt used as grazing land for the flocks of the nearby village—covered the sloping side of the ridge, flowing down and merging with the broad plain that extended from the river to the village.

  The open, grassy hillside stretched perhaps two bowshots long. On its right, the sloping meadow ended at a large outcropping of rock. Just beyond, the end of the ridge fell off sharply down to the river. In the opposite direction, just past the left end of the open ground, the ridge turned and curved out onto the plain where it tapered down to nothing. That end of the ridge, beyond the far end of the hillside meadow, had never been cleared. The dense growth of trees on the long, sloping extension that reached out into
the plain marked the boundary of what would be our left flank. Ragnar had chosen a strong position from which to offer battle to the Franks. They could attack us only directly from the front.

  The Frankish village we’d seen from the river lay almost straight ahead, though it was still a considerable distance away. Numerous tents, smoldering cook fires, and tethered mounts of the army of Frankish cavalry that had followed us upriver along the north bank were scattered across the fields surrounding the village.

  Hastein, Ragnar, Ivar, and Bjorn were all standing a short distance down from the tree line on the sloping side of the ridge, spaced evenly across its front. As warriors emerged from the woods above them, they called out, “What ship? Who is your captain?” Depending on the answer they received, they directed the men toward the right flank, the left, or the center.

  Two standards had been set up in the center of the hillside, their tall poles wedged into the ground and supported by piles of stones. The silk banners fluttered in the morning breeze, revealing the designs that adorned them: Ragnar’s black Raven and Hastein’s soaring Gull.

  Someone slapped me on the shoulder as he walked past. “Fine work last night, Halfdan,” he said. “I heard the tale of the shot you made in the dark.” I recognized the warrior who spoke. His name was Hauk. He was one of the ten archers on the Gull’s crew, and rowed an oar toward the front of the ship. He had never spoken to me before this day.

  Odd was walking behind him. He grinned at me and said, “Aye, your deeds are quite the story this morning. Your comrade Einar has been telling us of them.” He jerked his head in the direction Hauk was walking. “Come with us,” he said. “Our position will be on the slope above Jarl Hastein’s standard.”

  Gradually our battle formation began to take shape. A shield-wall of warriors, standing shoulder to shoulder and three deep, stretched from one end of the grassy hillside to the other. Above the shield-wall, a short distance below the tree line running along the crest of the ridge, a second battle line composed entirely of archers was being formed. The archers had been divided into three blocks of warriors: the largest in the center, and two smaller behind and supporting the shield-wall on each flank.