A Time for Swords

by Matthew Harffy

  The third of my pursuers teetered on the edge of the pit, off balance. As I turned to watch what was happening, the fourth man collided with him, sending him plunging into the trench on top of his comrades in a tangle of limbs. The screams were instantly silenced, to be replaced by cursing and fresh cries of pain.

  The fourth warrior took in what had happened. His bearded face was red from the exertion of the chase and his eyes shone with a furious light as he looked up from the pit and his struggling friends. His gaze met mine and he drew the sword that hung at his side. Raising it, he pointed its tip at me.

  “Now you die!” he shouted in Norse.

  He glanced about him and quickly saw the thick planks that traversed the gap that had been uncovered when the others fell, pulling the thin cover of straw and mud down with them. He bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. One of the others started to climb from the pit, which was deep, but not so much that a man could not jump and scramble his way out.

  I felt suddenly very exposed. The only weapons I had were the short axe I had scooped up from the path and the seax hanging sheathed from my belt. Panic rose within me like bile. Where were the defenders? They should have been here. The plan relied on them. Without them, I would be slain and Werceworthe lost. Had they fled? Was such a thing possible?

  The Norseman swung his sword to loosen his muscles and stepped onto the planks. I hefted the axe, judging its weight. Would it be better to throw it or to keep it in my grasp and fight him, hoping that the Norse in the pit would not clamber out until I had bested this one?

  He took another step onto the plank, which flexed beneath his bulk. I made a couple of practice cuts with the axe. It was well weighted and the stinging pain in my shoulder and the streaming blood staining my kirtle told me it was sharp. I would hold onto it, I decided. As I made the decision, so my adversary’s eyes widened and he stopped walking. He was almost over the pit that ran the breadth of the land between two of the man-high wattle walls we had erected. He faltered, looking confused. It was then that I noticed a flash of white just above his collarbone. For a heartbeat I could not make sense of what I was seeing. He looked down, seemingly bemused, and a second splash of white appeared in his left eye. Feathers. The white goose feather fletchings of Wulfwaru’s arrows. He toppled into the pit, dislodging the man who was trying to climb out. The first arrow had wounded him, the second had penetrated his eye, killing him instantly.

  I let out a breath, only then comprehending the tension that had gripped me, standing against these four men alone.

  The faces of Wulfwaru and her archers appeared over a couple of the high fences. There were timber platforms behind for them to stand on. From their raised vantage point, they could partially see into the ditch and as I watched several arrows flew down, thumping into flesh and mud.

  “Halt your shooting,” shouted Wulfwaru, her voice cracking and breathless from her headlong run from the river. “Do not waste your arrows.”

  I bent over, placing my hands on my knees and dragging in ragged breaths. I could hear a rushing in my ears, like a blizzard howling through a forest. My vision blurred and darkened. I was dimly aware of figures hurrying past me as I fought not to lose consciousness.

  A half dozen villagers, armed with the fire-hardened spears, crowded the pit. They were led by Drosten, who held one of the few precious, iron-tipped spears, designed for hunting boar. A flurry of shouting and grunting, down-thrust spears wrenching screams from the throats of the remaining Norsemen. The sounds of death became hollow; echoed as if they were coming from the depths of a great cavern.

  A hand on my right shoulder. I looked up, dazed and confused.

  Gwawrddur.

  “Breathe,” he said. “You have done well.” My sight began to clear and I shook my head. Spitting into the mud, I stood up straight. Gwawrddur scanned the activity by the pit. There was no longer any sound coming from the Norsemen, but the villagers continued to thrust their makeshift spears downward in a paroxysm of ecstatic bloodletting.

  “Drosten,” snapped Gwawrddur. “There is no time for that. Quickly, have the men strip them of weapons and armour. The rest of the raiders will be upon us in moments.”

  The Pict, boar spear slick with blood, nodded and began barking orders. The villagers were not trained warriors, but they knew well enough to obey, and they had put aside their spears and were scrambling down into the stake-filled trench and passing swords, seaxes, helms and byrnies up to their comrades.

  I was breathing more easily now, and no longer feared that I would pass out. Gwawrddur glanced at my left shoulder.

  “How bad is that?” he asked.

  “It hurts,” I said and shrugged, instantly regretting the movement.

  “Wounds do that, Killer,” he said with a wink. He peered at the rip in my kirtle, pulling the cloth apart to better see the cut beneath. “It is not too deep,” he said. “We’ll have one of the womenfolk stitch you up and bandage the wound as soon as we are able.”

  I wondered when that would be.

  “That won’t be for a while though,” Gwawrddur growled, as if in answer to my thoughts. “Drosten,” he called, an edge of tension in his voice, “there is no more time. Get out of there and move the men back.” He was staring beyond the ditch, across the expanse of open ground to where the barn marked the beginning of Werceworthe. I followed his gaze and shivered. Lining up in the distance were the remainder of the Norse raiders.

  The flash of Skorri’s crimson cloak was bright in the gloomy afternoon drizzled haze. There were easily more than two score of them and they were arrayed as a warband, ready for battle. Their iron-bossed round shields were held high and ready. War axes and sword blades gleamed dully in the wet air. At a shouted command from their jarl they stamped forward and hammered their weapons into the willow boards of their shields. At the same time they let out a guttural roar of anger and defiance. The sound was huge and terrifying.

  “I hope you are ready for some more action,” Gwawrddur said to me with a humourless grin.

  Skorri’s band of warriors bellowed and stepped closer with another thunderous crash of steel on shields.

  I swallowed the terror that threatened to engulf me. Nothing had prepared me for the sight of such an array of enemies. What had I been thinking when I had cast aside my calling and picked up the sword? My shoulder throbbed and I felt naked standing there in the mud before the tightly packed ranks of Norsemen who advanced towards us, as inexorable as wyrd.

  Drosten and the villagers moved back from the pit. They had stripped as much as they were able from the corpses and had drawn back the planks that had covered the trap. The men’s blackened spear-tips were blood-stained now; their faces pale. Drosten handed me a mud-splattered shield that I recognised as the one carried by the man who had almost crossed the pit on the planks. It was hide-covered and bore a red swirling symbol on a black field. I hefted it. My shoulder ached all the more, but I was glad of its protection.

  I longed for the comfort of my sword. I had thought Gwawrddur would have brought it out for me, but it was nowhere to be seen. Too late to worry about that now. I clutched the hand axe and hoped it would be enough.

  The Norse came on, step after step. Their shouted challenge as loud as thunder. Around me, the men quailed to see the might of those who attacked us. We had slain four of their number in the pit, and I had killed one in the wood, but still they outnumbered us and seemed undaunted by their losses.

  “Hold, men,” said Gwawrddur. “Stand strong. Anyone can shout loudly, but we have prepared well for this day. And you have bloodied your weapons.”

  The Norse war cry grew louder with each step.

  “They shout to frighten you,” he said.

  “It is working,” replied Wigmund, a thickset man who made up for his lack of spear-skill with his strength and wit. His eyes glistened with fear. Nobody laughed at his jest.

  “Our plan is good,” said Gwawrddur, “and we will send these bastards on their way soon enough.�
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  The Norse shieldwall was still some way off, but the closer they got, the more fear gnawed at my guts. I glanced left and right. The men who stood with us looked as though they would flee or vomit at any moment. Perhaps both. My own stomach churned and I wondered if this was where I would find death, unready and unshriven.

  “Stand fast,” growled Gwawrddur, sensing the resolve of the men around us wavering. “They will not pass that ditch. Hold firm.”

  I looked at the gap from one side of the spike-filled ditch to the other, calculating the distance. It was easily large enough for an unsuspecting man to fall into, but now, with the covering removed, it seemed almost insignificant, no real obstacle for these Norse raiders.

  Skorri bellowed out a command. It seemed he had surmised the same, for the first line of the Norse invaders broke into a sprint, screaming as they came.

  They raved and yelled like demons unleashed from the bowels of hell. I grew cold and my skin crawled. My breath caught in my throat. They were going to leap over the pit.

  Forty-Eight

  The Norsemen snarled and rushed forward through the mud. They howled and screamed like wild beasts as they came. Involuntarily, the men around me shuffled back a pace. Drosten growled deep in the back of his throat and used the haft of his bloody boar spear to prod those closest to him back into line.

  The first row of the Norse were well ahead of the rest of the raiders now. They were all tall men and strong. Their long strides quickly ate up the ground between them and the corpse-clogged pit. They had thrown aside their shields, but gripped axes or swords in their thick-fingered fists. They would jump over the ditch and be upon us in a heartbeat.

  My mouth was dry. It was all I could do to stand where I was and not run screaming. I bit my lip and held my ground with difficulty. If only Hereward, Runolf and Cormac were with us, we might have stood a chance, but I knew they were positioned elsewhere. So be it. This was the life I had chosen for myself and I had known it would likely end in a bloody and painful death.

  The instant before the Norse reached the gore-churned pit, Gwawrddur let out a piercing cry.

  “Now!” he shouted.

  Instantly, from either side of our position, the women archers rose above the wattle barriers and loosed arrows that must have already been nocked to their strings. The thrum of the bowstrings was followed a heartbeat later by the thud of arrows hitting flesh and iron byrnies.

  Two men were brought up short with white-fletched arrows jutting from their bodies. The third man took an arrow through his opened mouth and I knew instinctively that it was Wulfwaru who had loosed that deadly dart. A fourth man was slowed by an arrow clattering from his iron-link shirt. Staggering, he lost his footing, to tumble into the pit atop his fallen comrades.

  Of the six Norsemen who had charged at the ditch, only two made the jump and cleared the distance.

  Their hatred washed off them like a stink. Their bellowing rage was like a physical thing, such was its power as they careened into our defensive line. I was dimly aware of more arrows flying through the rain-washed air, but all my focus was on the Norseman nearest to me. His eyes were crazed, wide and dark and bloodshot. Despite his bulk, the bearded warrior seemed to drift past the lowered spears like so much smoke. With prodigious strength, his great axe cracked into the skull of Wigmund, splitting it as easily as one might crack an egg. Warm blood and brains showered my face the instant before I raised my shield against the terrible onslaught of this madman. His axe hammered into the board and my shoulder screamed. I almost dropped the shield, but I knew that if I did, I would be dead an eye-blink later. Again the axe-head thudded into my board, this time splintering the willow wood, despite the blow seeming to be less powerful than the first. I staggered back, trying to make space for me to swing the small axe I gripped in my right hand. Though God alone knew how I could hope to best that brute with his massive reach and huge war axe.

  I braced myself for another blow on my shield, but none came. Risking a look, I saw the Norseman on his knees. His throat had been slit from ear to ear and blood fountained and gushed down his byrnie and puddled in the mud before him. Gwawrddur’s sword point was smeared red and the Welshman offered me a savage grin such as I had never seen on the dour swordsman’s face before.

  “A good thing only a couple of the whoresons crossed that ditch, eh?” he said.

  I could not speak. Wigmund’s opened head steamed at my feet, his corpse a tangle of lifeless limbs and meat enshrouded in a stained kirtle and breeches that until a moment before had clothed a man who lived and breathed and loved. The faces of his wife and his three children flickered in my mind’s eye. My gorge rose and bile stung my throat.

  Further along the line Drosten had fended off the second Norseman with his boar spear and the help of the spear-wielding villagers. As I watched, the tattooed Pict jabbed the iron point of his spear beneath the attacker’s uplifted arm and into the soft flesh there. With a roar like a bull, Drosten shoved forward with all his great strength and the Norseman fell back, flailing into the mud. The villagers quickly finished him in a frenzy of thrusts with their crude weapons. The wooden shafts pierced his face and his neck. One pinned his outstretched hand to the muddy ground.

  Gwawrddur raised his hand and shouted for the archers to cease their onslaught.

  The other men who had tried to leap over the defence were all dead or dying. White feathers jutted obscenely bright and clean from mud-splattered, bloody flesh. A few arrows had fallen into the dark earth before the Norse shieldwall. Skorri had held the bulk of his force back, and it appeared that Wulfwaru and her archers had attempted to take some more prizes from their number. But the rain still came down and the bowstrings were damp, sapping the arrows of power, and the armoured men were distant. Nothing but the luckiest of shot would hurt them and so any arrow loosed was an arrow lost. There were still some two score warriors before us and we might well need those arrows yet.

  I realised with a start that it was getting dark. The Norsemen had landed as the sun was lowering in the sky and now it must have fallen below the rain-drenched western horizon.

  The Norse were not shouting now. They had halted their approach and stood glowering at us with undisguised loathing.

  Gwawrddur stepped past the corpses of Wigmund and the Norse axeman. He beckoned for me to follow him. I hesitated. I felt faint. My shoulder throbbed and my head swam from the exertion and the horror I had witnessed. I had stood firm and done my duty, but now, with the lull in the fight, it seemed I had time to think of fear once more and it transfixed me as surely as if my feet had been nailed to the earth.

  “Hunlaf,” whispered Gwawrddur. “I need your voice.”

  I shook my head, still uncertain and unable to move.

  “Hunlaf!” he snapped. “I must speak to their leader and you are the only one who can make their words clearly, without confusion. Now come here!”

  I drew in a juddering breath. The air was dank and bitter with the metallic bite of blood. Gwawrddur was staring at me, willing me to obey him. I shook my head. All I wanted was to turn and flee. But with a great effort of will, I lifted first my left foot from the mire and then the right. Soon, I had closed the gap and stood trembling beside the lean Welsh swordsman.

  He offered me a silent nod.

  “Repeat my words,” he hissed. “And loudly now. They must all hear them and you must not sound fearful.”

  I said nothing, but assented with a small nod. I was terrified.

  “You cannot take from us that which you came for,” Gwawrddur shouted. “We knew of your coming and have hidden all of our treasure.”

  I took a deep breath and repeated his words in the Norse tongue. My voice cracked at first and I had to pause to hawk and spit before continuing. On the second attempt my voice came out strongly enough and I pushed the thoughts of Wigmund and the fallen from my mind.

  “We are ready for you,” Gwawrddur continued, with me echoing his words in Norse. “We are no sheep f
or you to prey on like wolves. Begone back to the sea and find others to plunder. All that awaits you here is death. Like those we have already slain.”

  For a long while Skorri was silent. The men around him murmured and grumbled, but they were too far for me to hear any of their words. The rain began to fall more heavily, filling the darkening world with its hissing voice.

  At last, Skorri, his crimson cloak sodden and dark, took a pace forward.

  “You do not fight like the followers of the nailed god,” he shouted. I translated his words. “But you are few. And we are many. I am Skorri, son of Ragnar, jarl of these raven-feeding warriors, and I do not flee from a battle with peasants and holy men.”

  “We are not holy men,” replied Gwawrddur through me. “We too are warriors and we will soak the earth in your lifeblood and feed the raven and the wolf with your flesh if you do not return to your own land and leave us. There is no shame in leading your men to safety. Gold can profit you nothing, if you are dead.”

  “True,” shouted back Skorri, “but battle-fame and renown live on forever, even after death.”

  Gwawrddur grinned at that and I wondered how different these two men really were.

  “There will be no songs sung of what happens here,” he said. “We will kill all of you and I will see to it that your name is never repeated.”

  Skorri spat into the mud. He looked up at the dark sky, perhaps judging how long until full darkness fell.

  “You have big words for such a thin man,” Skorri shouted against the increasing roar of the rain. “It is getting dark. The night is no time for fighting. We shall continue this conversation on the morrow.”