Harald gathered the children before him and asked, “Which of you is the fastest runner?”
A boy who looked to be about ten glanced from side to side at his fellows, then spoke up. “I am, sir.”
Harald knelt beside him. “Good lad. What is your name?”
“Cummian,” the boy answered.
“He is my son,” Aidan volunteered.
“Have you ever been to the village, Cummian?” Harald asked. “Down the cart path that runs beside the fields, and leads through the forest?” The boy nodded. “I need you to be very brave, Cummian, and very, very fast. The attackers outside are going to let the women and children and thralls leave the longhouse unharmed. As soon as you can, slip away in the dark and run to the village. Tell them raiders have landed and are attacking. Your father will be here with me and the rest of the men waiting for you to bring help back to us.”
The women, their children, and the six thralls left the doorway of the longhouse in a frightened huddle. As they did so, four torches flared, one after the other, off to the right where the worksheds were located.
“This way,” a voice called. “Come this way, to the light and safety.”
Peering from behind a corner of the first workshed, a hulking giant of a warrior stood, holding a torch. In the torch’s glare, I could see that he was wearing a dark cloth wrapped around his head and helm to form a hood, masking all of his face except his eyes. As I watched, he called out. “Come this way,” he shouted, in a hoarse voice. I recognized from its sound, muffled though it was by the cloth, that he was the leader who’d spoken his oath out from the darkness.
The last of our women, children, and thralls passed from sight beyond the edge of the workshed, into the welcoming circle of light from the torches. The leader of the attackers stepped back behind the shed, totally hidden now from my view.
Suddenly his voice roared out, “Kill them all! There can be none alive to tell the tale.”
It lasted only moments. We could hear the screams, but could see almost nothing. I saw a woman—it looked like Tove—stagger into view, clutching at a spreading bloodstain on the front of her dress. A warrior stepped into view behind her swinging a sword, and cut her down.
Aidan rushed past me out the door clutching a broadaxe in his hand. “Oathbreakers!” he screamed. “Oathbreakers!” Ulf grabbed at his sleeve to stop him, but he pulled free. As he neared the worksheds, an arrow flew out of the dark and pierced his chest. Even from the longhouse I could hear it strike home. Aidan gave a choking cough and fell face down. In the flickering light from the torches, the arrow’s bloody head, protruding from his back, glistened wetly.
Suddenly Cummian burst into view. He must have bolted away when the slaughter started, for he was running up from the beach, darting this way and that to avoid a burly warrior who chased him, waving a bloody sword. The warrior tripped and stumbled, and Cummian turned and headed straight for the longhouse.
“Run, boy, run,” Ulf yelled, cheering him on.
The leader of the attackers stepped into view at the corner of the workshed, a spear poised over his shoulder. As we watched in horror, he drew back his arm and threw. The spear struck the boy square in the back, and its bloody spearhead and a foot-long length of the shaft jutted suddenly into view from the center of his chest. The impact lifted Cummian off his feet and carried him through the air, his arms and legs flailing, till finally he fell face down onto the ground and the shaft embedded its point in the earth.
Impossibly, the boy still lived. We could hear him crying and moaning where he lay pinned to the ground.
I pulled an arrow from my quiver. It was a hunting arrow, its head broad and sharp. With it, I could end Cummian’s suffering. I started to nock it on my string, then stopped, and stabbed it into the ground in front of me.
The attackers’ leader was moving forward toward Cummian in a low crouch, carefully covering himself with his shield. Fret put an arrow to his bow and started to draw.
“No,” I said. “Let him come closer.”
I pulled out another arrow, one of Hrorik’s that I’d brought to fill out my quiver. It was one I’d made for him long ago, to his specifications. It was an arrow designed specifically for war, not hunting, and its head was narrow, long, and sharply pointed, to pierce armor or shields.
The attacker’s leader reached Cummian. With one hand, he held his torch high, surveying his handiwork. With the other he grasped the spear shaft. Placing a foot on the boy’s back, he wrenched it free. When he did, Cummian gave one last scream, then lay still.
I’d hoped my chance would come when he retrieved his spear, and it did. With a torch in one hand and the spear in the other, Cummian’s killer had to release his grip on his shield’s handle and let it hang from his shoulders by its strap. The shield still covered him from just below his chin to midway down his thighs, but it lay flat against his chest now, no longer held away from his body.
The distance was too great in the poor light to shoot for his face. I pulled the arrow back to full draw, aimed at his chest, and released.
The man must have realized what a target he’d made of himself, despite the darkness and distance from the longhouse. He couldn’t have reacted to the twang of my bowstring, for he moved at the same moment I released my arrow. He hurled his torch to one side and stepped sideways in the opposite direction. He saved his life by his actions, but was too late to avoid my shot altogether. I heard the thunk of my arrow hitting the wooden planks of his shield, and knew by his roar of pain that it had pierced it and his mail.
“Now, Fret,” I said. He launched his arrow and I my second shot at the hulking shape scuttling for cover in the dark. I knew we both missed, for I heard no further cry.
For a brief time nothing happened. Then the voice of the attackers’ leader, even hoarser now from anger and pain, rang out through the night. “You in there! I’ll roast you like rats on a spit.” To his own men he called, “Fire the longhouse!”
Four men stepped briefly into view at the corners of the worksheds. Each was holding a bow with a small bundle of flame blazing in front. They drew and released, and fire arrows streaked through the night, streaming sparks behind them like falling stars. I heard them smack into the thatched roof overhead.
“I know that voice,” Harald said. “But who….”
“Harald, there’s no time!” Ulf shouted. He swung the front door shut and barred it. “The woods are closer to the byre door than to here. We must try to break out that way.”
Already tendrils of smoke were beginning to seep through the thatch.
“What about him?” I asked, pointing to the wounded carl—now barely conscious—leaning against the longhouse wall past the door.
“We cannot carry him,” Ulf said. “It would slow us too much. All we can do is keep him from being burned alive.”
He drew his knife, kneeled beside the wounded man, and cut his throat with a quick swipe of his blade.
The animals in the byre were squealing and moaning with fear. Rolf appeared at the entrance between the byre and the main house and shouted, “The roof overhead is burning. Sparks are beginning to fall. If the straw in the stalls catches fire, the beasts will go mad.”
“To the byre,” Harald said. “We’ll use the animals to shield us for as long as we can control them.”
In the byre, the horses were rearing and kicking in their stalls. Hens flew about wildly, crashing into men, beasts, and walls. Above us, a hole opened in the roof, fire eating at its edges, and flaming thatch dropped into the straw of the sheep pen. Rolf threw his cloak over it and stamped the flames out.
The byre was rapidly filling with smoke. My eyes were burning and I coughed every time I drew breath. I feared that if we stayed much longer in the smoke and flames, I would be as overcome with terror as the beasts.
“Halfdan,” Harald called. “The horses are too fear-crazed to be of use to us. Open the door and we’ll send them out. Our attackers may think they bear riders, and r
un out from the cover of the trees to stop them. If they do, you and Fret kill as many as you can.”
Ulf and I lifted the heavy timber used to bar the broad byre door, and Ulf carried it back to where Harald and the others were standing by the oxen. As soon as I swung the door open, arrows whirred in from the night. One of the horses was hit and it screamed in pain and fear.
Rolf opened the gates to the horses’ stalls. They needed no urging. Bucking and kicking, they charged out through the byre’s door.
As Harald had predicted, four or five men ran out from the cover of the trees toward the fleeing horses. Fret slew one, who was moving from the tree line with a bow half drawn. Another, running hard toward the horses, threw a spear, striking the lead horse behind its shoulder. My arrow hit this man in his side as the horse staggered and fell. The rest of the warriors turned and ran back into cover, but I brought one more down with an arrow that caught him down low in his back just as he reached the edge of the trees.
The byre was now filled with smoke, and more and more blazing thatch was dropping around us from the edges of the ever-widening hole in the roof above. I stayed close to the doorway, trying to find air to breathe. A rooster, its feathers on fire, flew past me and slammed into the wall.
“Halfdan, to me,” Harald called.
He and Ulf had lashed the crossbar from the byre door across the necks of the two oxen like a widely spaced yoke. Between the two great beasts was enough space for us to stand.
“We’ll use the oxen as our shield-wall, for as long as they last,” Harald said. “If we can get within a spear’s throw of the trees, every man should run for himself. Perhaps in the darkness of the forest some can escape.”
We crowded into the space between the two beasts. I twisted my cloak in a long, loose roll, and draped it over one shoulder, so it hung across my chest and back. Then I loosed my belt and cinched it again around the ends of the rolled cloak, holding it tight to my body. Perhaps its folds would provide a little protection. My sword, which I’d not yet drawn from its scabbard, hung from my belt on my left side. My quiver hung at my right hip by its long strap over my shoulder, the dagger Harald had given me beside it, suspended from my belt. I slung my shield across my back and pulled its strap tight, then took my position between the oxen, bow in hand, with an arrow ready on the string.
“Let us go now!” Harald shouted.
Rolf, at the rear of our hooved fortress, slapped the oxen across their flanks with the flat of his sword, and the stolid beasts moved forward into the open as our little force crouched between them. Rolf and one of the carls from the farm positioned themselves beside each ox’s hind leg and walked backward, their shields overlapping to protect our rear from missile fire.
Once outside, we gulped hungrily at the fresh air. The entire roof of the longhouse was now ablaze. The towering flames lit the area we were moving through as brightly as day, and roared like an enraged beast. Behind us the sheep, still trapped in their pen, bleated piteously.
We’d scarcely left the byre when arrows began arcing out of the trees and thudding into the side of the ox closest to the forest. The poor beast grunted at each impact, but trudged on.
I couldn’t see the archers shooting at us, but I could tell the general area of the tree line their arrows were coming from. Calling to Fret to follow my lead, I bobbed up, launched an arrow over the ox’s back toward the trees, and ducked back down into cover before the answering arrows could find me. On my third such shot, I was rewarded by a yell of pain from the trees.
Fret, who’d stayed low and hidden between the two oxen, watching me, seemed encouraged by my success, and he straightened and drew his bow. When he did, an arrow skimmed over the ox’s back and ripped through his throat. Fret staggered a step then fell, choking on his blood and clawing at the arrow. I stepped over his writhing body as our slowly moving huddle moved on.
Rolf called a warning from behind me. “They are coming from the rear!”
I looked back over my shoulder and saw warriors rounding the corner of the longhouse at a run. They must have been the attackers from the front of the building.
“Down, Rolf,” I shouted. When he crouched, I shot over him and dropped the one in the lead with an arrow in his chest. The two warriors closest behind him hurled their spears, then dropped down low behind their shields. As they threw, I sped an arrow toward them, quickly drawn and released without aiming. It skimmed harmlessly between them.
Both of the spears had been aimed at the ox on the side away from the woods, which till now had not been wounded. One spear fell at its haunches, and would have pierced it up the center had Rolf not reached out and caught the speeding missile on his shield. It had been thrown hard, and its spearhead splintered the thin wooden planks and jutted almost a foot out the back. The other spear arced high and dropped from above into the ox’s back, just behind its shoulders. The ox bellowed at the pain, and from behind us I heard cheers.
I nocked another arrow, but something fell heavily against me from behind and knocked it off my bowstring. I looked angrily over my shoulder, and was staring into the face of a dead man. One of the carls from the estate, an arrow protruding from the back of his head, had slumped against my back. His eyes were wide open and his mouth gaped as if in surprise. I shrugged his body aside, and it slid past me to the ground.
The speared ox sank moaning to its knees, blood pumping from its nostrils and mouth. Its fellow stopped, anchored to the dying ox by the timber lashed across their necks. It too was gravely wounded: By now more than a dozen arrows pierced its side. As it stood there, four more arrows flew from the trees into its body. The hapless beast gave a great sigh, and its legs collapsed from under it.
In the light from the burning longhouse I could see that the woods closest to us were filled with enemy warriors. Their faces showed white against the dark trees and foliage, and their helms glinted in the flickering light. For now they did not attack, but arrows continued to arc toward us from the tree line. We squatted down, pressed close together between the oxen’s bodies, and huddled under our shields, so the arrows had no effect.
We were protected for the moment, but we were trapped and hopelessly outnumbered. None of our party who’d traveled up from the south had fallen yet, though Odd was wounded in one leg. Of the carls from the estate—less experienced warriors than Harald’s men—only three still lived. As soon as our attackers reorganized sufficiently to launch a coordinated charge, we were doomed.
Behind us, the warriors who’d come from the front of the longhouse house began massing together. It would not be long now.
“They will charge soon, Harald,” Ulf said. “From both directions. And there are but nine of us left.”
Harald had been turning his head this way and that, surveying the area. “There, to the right,” he said, pointing. “See that low stone wall, between the pasture and the fields? We’ll try to reach it. They will expect us head for the woods because they are closer. The wall is in the opposite direction, but if we can reach it, we’ll have cover to fight behind as we retreat, and at its end the wall runs to the forest.”
Harald leaned close to me, and whispered in my ear, “I do not think we will reach the wall. If the time comes that I tell you to run, you must do what I say. Run as fast as you can and do not look back.”
“No!” I protested. “You are my brother. I will stay and fight with you. If we die, we die together.”
“Someone must survive to avenge us,” Harald said. “If you can reach the forest, they will never take you. None can match you there. You must do this thing for me. For all of us. Survive and avenge us.”
Ulf, who had overheard this exchange, nodded. “There is no shame, Halfdan, in what Harald asks of you. I will die easier knowing someone survives to pay blood for blood. Now lay your bow aside and ready your sword and shield. It will be close work from here on out.”
Despite Ulf’s urging, I did not abandon my bow. If I could reach the forest I would need it. Instea
d I unslung my shield from my back, grasped its handle and my bow in my left hand, and drew my sword with my right.
We stood up as one and began running for the wall, staying as close together as we could. The leg wound Odd had taken earlier slowed him, though, and after a short distance he fell behind. Archers from both groups of the enemy’s warriors concentrated their shots on him. He was hit twice, in the leg and in the back, knocking him to the ground. I glanced back as I ran. He was trying to rise when the first of our pursuers reached him and swung a great two-handed axe full into his back.
Had we only the attackers from the woods to deal with, we might have succeeded. We were running directly away from them, and they probably could not have caught us in time. The attackers who’d come from the front of the house were closer, though. The five fleetest of their warriors cut across the front of our path at an angle and turned to block our way, only a short spear’s throw from the protection of the wall.
We smashed into them on the run. Rolf, who’d wrenched free the spear that had pierced his shield, hurled it at the warrior closest to him as we closed. The man swung his shield up, catching the missile, but when he did Harald swung Biter low, cutting the warrior’s legs clean through above the knees. Without pausing, Harald whipped Biter up again in a backhand swing and chopped through the sword arm of the warrior standing beside his toppling comrade.
A tall warrior, with helm but no mail brynie, swung his sword in an overhand chop at me. Letting my bow fall, I dropped down on one knee and raised my shield overhead, catching the blow, then stabbed my sword upward, under the edge of his shield and into his groin. He doubled over, screaming, and fell backwards to the ground clutching at the wound as I scrambled back to my feet.
Ulf, too, killed a man, but by their deaths the men we’d fought had bought time for the rest of our pursuers to catch up. Like a pack of wolves they threw themselves at us, hacking and stabbing from all sides. Within moments, Lodver and the three remaining carls from the estate were down.
Viking Warrior Page 17
