Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar

by Frances Mason

  “I’m not going to get the necessary elevation. One of you better do it.”

  One of the men stepped forward and took his place and his bow with nocked arrow, handing Agmar his own short bow. He kneeled also, drew the string back to his chest, then further. “It’s only a short bow, so I hope it’ll take this, but if it doesn’t the arrow won’t get enough force to shoot high.” He drew back further, lifting the bow so that the string almost came back to his face. Like most of the archers in Wulfstan’s army he preferred the long bow, which he would draw all the way back to the cheek. The ash of the short bow made a cracking sound but did not break. They all held their breath with him. He aimed up, near the top of the arrow loop, then released. There was a sharp twang and the arrow shot out through the arrow loop at the very upper limit. He watched it rise and fall in its parabolic path, dropping to the causeway below. He grinned at Agmar. “We’ll have company soon.”

  Agmar said, “So will they. Look.”

  Men from the castle were already clambering onto the drawbridge before it was fully down, leaping down on the other side to charge down towards the now anticipated attack. Several fell screaming into the moat which, because of scarcity of water at this height, was crammed full of wooden spikes with lethally sharp tips.

  “Agmar said, “Let’s see if we can thin their ranks out.” The man who had shot the fire arrow was already knocking another arrow, and two others dropped their arrows by the two remaining arrow loops and started picking off men as they clambered up the lowering drawbridge. One Fik was about to jump to the far side of the moat when an arrow passed through his neck and he toppled, his head smashing into the pathway before he slid down into the moat, onto the spikes. Agmar and the remaining men searched back along the corridor and found murder holes, from which they could fire down into the passage through the gatehouse. Agmar shot a helmet free man though the skull and he collapsed. The men who had made it through to the drawbridge were now running back, and collided with more Fiks coming out, causing general confusion. In the distance could be heard a dull thudding sound as the men from the lake below ran up the path toward the castle. Agmar and his men took advantage of the concentration of men in the passage beneath them, firing arrow after arrow, increasing the panic, as the Fiks did not know which way to run.

  “Why’re they sticking to the walls?” one of his men asked.

  Another turned to look at Agmar, both simultaneously realising what was about to happen. Agmar dropped his bow, shouting, “keep up the attack. I have to warn the others.” Reaching the front of the gatehouse he looked down and saw the first men reaching the drawbridge from the path. He shoved aside the archer and yelled, but the sound of the screaming Fiks and the tramping of boots behind the advancing vanguard was too loud and the charge was relentlessly forward. The sound of steel clanging against steel could be heard clearly. Agmar yelled again, then told the other men to do the same. But before they could make sense of what he was saying there was an almighty crash, followed by screams. He ran back through to the murder holes and looked down. The centre of the passage below had collapsed. A trap for unwary besiegers. Agmar wondered whether Wulfstan was among the fallen. It was impossible in the poor light to tell.

  Agmar yelled, “Keep up your fire. Don’t let the bastards take advantage of the situation to gain the upper hand.” They all continued shooting their arrows down, and two of the other three, now that mainly Wulfstan’s men were outside, came through and added their arrows. The passage was poorly lit, and Agmar said, “Careful now lads, no friendly fire. If you’re not sure let the men below sort out the good from the sheep lovers. Do any of you still have a fire arrow?” The others nodded. “I think I can see some woodwork there,” He pointed. “See if you can light it up and give us and our men a better idea of who we’re killing.” Both men lit their fire arrows and shot them through to strike the wooden beam, lighting up the passage. They could see the men in the pit clearly now, mostly dead on spikes, some dying slowly. Wulfstan was alive, edging along the safe part of the corridor, thrusting his two handed sword like a spear. One man, who had somehow fallen between the spikes, was crawling up out of the pit. Being trodden underfoot by his comrades he fell back. Another was climbing out at the castle ward end of the pit, a Fik raising his axe to cut him down. Then Wulfstan’s two handed sword skewered the Fik. Both Fiks and marcher soldiers shoved each other toward the pit, and all was a mass of heaving human flesh, as though a wave of men could not decide which way to flow or where to break. Agmar and the others had run out of arrows. Agmar ran along the passage to look out of the arrow loops facing the castle ward.

  Below him Wulfstan slashed about in a mighty circle, his six foot sword, as long as he was tall, cutting a swathe through the shoving mass of Fiks. Arrows from the top of the keep fell all about him. One struck him in the shoulder and another in the leg, soon he seemed to have turned into a porcupine, arrows protruding from every angle. But his layers of armour, cloth and chain and plate, kept most from deeply penetrating his flesh, and what his armour did not defend his almost berserk rage ignored. Then his men broke through the last resistance in the passage, the wave turning definitively toward the keep, and with a surge flowed past Wulfstan’s bloody circle, hacking and hewing. The Fik line within the bailey trembled and broke and the survivors ran back to the keep, followed by a rain of arrows from the first of Wulfstan’s archers to reach the castle ward. As Wuflstan’s men ran for the keep its door was being closed, and when they reached it the remaining Fiks, trapped outside, turned to fight and die.

  Wulfstan’s archers now turned their fire towards the battlements of the outer wall with their internally exposed ramparts and quickly slew the few archers there, one crossbowman tumbling to the ground, his face crushed between the hard ground and the weight of his own body, turning his mangled features towards his own back, the others slumping like marionettes when the strings have been dropped, their souls fleeing to the realm of Nethra, or whoever rules the dead of the Fik people. The archers atop the keep periodically poked out their heads and shot an arrow or crossbow bolt. Occasionally an archer on the ground would time a shot perfectly and transfix one of the archers above.

  The man who had remained at the arrow loops overlooking the external approach to the gatehouse ran back. “Agmar, an attack in the rear.”

  “What?”

  “Looks like some kind of Fik party found out about the plan. The camp is overrun. Looks like a bonfire.”

  “Shit!” he said, then yelled through the arrow loop at Wulfstan. At first the baron did not hear him, then one of his men pointed to the gatehouse. Wulfstan turned and took off his helmet, looking up. An arrow shot past his ear. Agmar roared as loudly as he could, “We’re betrayed! An attack on the camp.” At first Wulfstan did not hear or did not understand, then his face registered his comprehension. He quickly directed the vanguard to hold the castle, slammed his helmet back on, then ran back through the passage, turning men around to follow him back down the slope.

  Agmar directed the men with him to stay and hold the gatehouse, then ran back through the passages and stairwells toward the rampart where they had entered, yelling at the men as he passed them at each point on the way to hold the gatehouse come what might. He made the rampart, and ran down the narrow stairway. An ally mistook him for an attacking Fik and tried to cut his head off. He ducked the blow and slammed his shoulder into the man’s gut, lifting him and throwing him back down to the ground of the ward. Agmar sped around the gatehouse to its passage and ran through, careful to stay close to the side. When he came out he could see many of the men pouring back down the slope.

  The opposite end of the causeway was held by a small band of Fiks, but the camp was overrun. Many of Wulfstan’s men poured into the boats that had brought them to the bottom of the path on their way up. Some were now reaching the shore of the moat. Wulfstan was on the causeway, hacking like a madman, lopping off a head here, an arm there, a leg another where. With his helmet back on h
is head, all the stabs and slashes against him seemed to baulk at the impossible demand of penetrating that formidable armour, already bristling with arrow shafts. Most could not even reach him, so long was his reach extended with his massive two handed sword and so frenzied was his attack. One man was cut in half by that sword and looked about in puzzlement from the mud, reaching out for his legs, which kicked back, as if reluctant to re-join him. By the time Agmar reached the narrow causeway all the boats had been launched. The causeway was clotted with men following their leader back.

  The camp was in chaos and many men had fled; some out the southern gate in the palisade, others toward the castle, yet others tearing down parts of the south western wall to escape; but Aedgar had rallied a few hundred men at the northern end and now they pushed forward in a disciplined wall of lances, usually used from horseback, but here giving the unmounted men a formidable front, bristling with impassable points. They heaved and Aedgar urged them forward, stretching them out in a long curving front, as the Fik numbers were large enough to encircle them if they fought in too deeply packed a battalion. Though the Fiks were in the camp in large numbers, recently disgorged from the town, their ranks were mostly disorganized by their looting of the camp and the dead. Turning to face Aedgar’s disciplined stand a few madmen stood firm and swung in berserker rage, but the steady forward pressure impaled them or knocked them over. Then the advancing front trampled them. One huge Fik ducked under the lance points and thrust at the groin of a lightly armoured soldier. The soldier went down screaming, but before the Fik could pull his sword out the line marched over him. His unhelmeted head was struck by a steel capped knee and then his head was crushed in the mud by a series of boots, one of his eyes popping out and his jaw torn away as he screamed.

  Agmar tested the water and found that with his height and the silting near the causeway he could walk where the other men could not, making his way forward before the press of men who were trying to join Wulfstan. Others tried to follow him and thrashed about, drowning. Others stripped metal armour off and swam. By the time that Agmar reached the edge of the lake several score men had rallied around their leader, and were forming up into disciplined ranks, slaughtering the last remaining Fiks at the end of the causeway.

  The Fiks in the camp, seeing that beserker bravery was only going to get them slaughtered in the face of a disciplined assault by Aedgar’s battalion, formed up their own shield wall at the south end of the camp. All around the camp was ablaze, tents and carts crumbling in the flames, sparks rising and fading in the smoke thick sky.

  Wulfstan’s and Aedgar’s forces advanced. The Fiks had the advantage of numbers, but Wulfstan moved to flank them through the east gate of the palisade as Aedgar engaged their front from the north. The Fiks ignored Wulfstan’s forces, which were less numerous than Aedgar’s, and appeared less again through the aperture of the gate, though their ranks were continually being swelled by soldiers crossing back over the causeway. The Fik archers behind the Fik shield wall now sent a rain of arrows into Aedgar’s ranks. Here a man died with an arrow in his eye. There a man screamed with an arrow in his gut. Another fell as his leg, lightly armoured because of the surprise of the Fik attack, buckled when an arrow pierced above his knee, and was crushed as the line advanced over him. Another, struck by a dozen arrows in his legs, still marched, held up by hardiness or battle madness. Many arrows fell harmlessly among the thick forest of lances, raised high near the knights for cover, layered several times over as the ranks closed against the missile storm, the occasional kite shields, with their pointed bases for mounted combat, which some of the knights had grabbed in the confusion of the first assault, adding only a little to the overall cover.

  Aedgar’s archers sent their own volley of arrows into the Fik lines, but the Fiks in the shield wall, each with a short spear and round shield, weathered the storm better, arrows mostly thudding harmlessly into the shields. One Fik fared less well, finding his shield permanently joined to his arm as an arrow pierced the shield and continued through, pinning his forearm to the wooden back. He marched forward regardless, teeth gritted against the pain. Then the lines crashed together, with a sound louder than thunder in a deep echoing gully. Incautious Fik heads were transfixed on long lances, but most of the Fiks locked shields tightly with their neighbours and trusted to the blind force of the men layered behind them, heaving with shield against back. The lances probed high so the Fiks crouched low, advancing under the lances and slashing at frequent gaps in armour. On each side as men went down they were trampled by comrades rushing forward to fill in the spaces. Aedgar shouted a command and the front rank dropped to their knees, thrusting from beneath while the second rank thrust from above, and wherever the Fiks tried to hide from the lance points, whether high or low, wherever they pushed their shields, low or high, the lances found them, in their faces and their feet, their chests and their shanks.

  But the weight of numbers was showing, as the Fik line extended and wrapped around Aedgar’s western flank, near where the Fiks had originally breached the camp palisade. Aedgar’s flank was now tighter to his centre because of drawing together against the arrow storm. For a moment Aedgar’s men held, then the end of the line collapsed, and the Fiks’ flanking reached further and further into the line as it disintegrated from one end to the other. Aedgar’s forces were now chaotic, with men in the front pushing forward with Aedgar, as others tried to retreat, some running into the lances of their comrades, and others impaled on the spears of the steady Fik advance. Aedgar, seeing what was happening, tried to command an orderly retreat northward, defended by the most southerly lances, some of which he turned west to reconstitute the line, hoping to rally his men again beside the palisade where their rear would be protected, but the retreat turned into a rout, and behind him, trapped between palisade and mass panic, some were crushed, while others desperately tried to escape the press by scrambling over other men, up to the spiked posts, some being impaled on the sharp wooden points, the weight of their friends alternately dragging and pressing them down with lethal force. With dread, Aedgar’s men heard the Fik screams of triumph.

  But it was not triumph. It was a call to watch their flank, and it came too late, as Wulfstan and more than a hundred men, pouring through the eastern palisade gate, slammed into the Fiks’ eastern flank. And men were returning from the earlier rout of the camp in ever increasing numbers, and joined up with Wulfstan, as others, among Aedgar’s ranks, used muscle against their own, turning men around and dragging them back into the fight. Slowly, Aedgar’s battalion regained its cohesion and surged forward.

  Then a horn sounded from the south. Mounted men charged out of the darkness, filling the plain beyond the southern gate with the thundering of hooves. Their lances were locked in place, their visors up because of the darkness, their heavy warhorses snorting loudly, eager for battle. As they burst through the southern gate Wulfstan’s men could see their tabards and fluttering banners in the light of burning tents and carts. They were knights from one of the recently taken motte and baileys surrounding The Cliff. They had seen the Fiks approaching from the south, and guessed their destination. They now risked a charge in the dark, and luck or the gods favoured them. Before the Fiks could form a defensive wall of shields and spears in that direction the lowered lances crashed into their unprotected western flank. The few Fiks who realised soon enough to turn were not enough to resist the force of the charge, lone shields against a grinding machine of barded horseflesh and bloody armed death, lances piercing shields and armour and heads and chests and groins; horses crushing with their barded fronts and stamping bloody faces beneath their iron shod hooves, shattering skulls and spilling brains; men and horses together in sweating, grunting unison, ploughing through the Fiks, sowing their ranks with terror and the soil with corpses, and drenching both in a rain of blood.

  The Fiks were fighting on three fronts now, and their numbers, so telling behind a solid shield wall, came to nothing as the knights and their horses
slaughtered, and Aedgar’s men rallied then surged forward again, and Wulfstan and his now two hundred snarled and swung with their swords, fuelled with blood lust and vengeful hatred. Few individual Fiks could find any open space through which to flee, and the host as a whole could not retreat, having nowhere to go en masse.

  A huge chieftain slashed and stabbed and spun and struck in berserker rage with a giant claymore, fighting through a score of the two hundred toward Wulfstan. Everywhere his blade swung men died or lost limbs or fell crippled to the blood soaked ground. When he reached Wulfstan the two men hewed ferociously at each other, the fury of each a match for the other’s, their swords striking loudly enough to be heard above the clangour of the general fray, sparks flying from iron as fire blazed in four glaring eyes, reflecting the burning camp without and radiating the hatred in each man’s soul. Then Wulfstan’s sword shattered. The Fik’s sword, continuing its path, swinging down, struck Wulfstan’s heavily armoured thigh with such force that his thigh bone shattered and he collapsed. The chieftain raised his sword high for the kill, his own men rallying to him, driving back any possibility of aid.

  A streak of firelight on quicksilver struck from beyond the circle of men that tried to fight forward to protect Wulfstan. Agmar’s long arm and long sword had reached a seemingly impossible distance through the ranks and its tip pierced the Fik chieftain through the throat. The stroke severed his spine and he collapsed, blood gouting from his open mouth as he gaped in disbelief at his own death. Then Wulfstan’s men had surrounded their lord, driving back those Fiks who had fought around the chieftain. These Fiks, seeing their leader fall, panicked and fled into their own ranks, adding to the confusion of death from three sides.

  When the sun dawned the camp ground was a mass of dead and writhing dying men. Wulfstan lay on a pallet by his pavilion, which like a few scattered tents had miraculously avoided the fire, as the soldiers helped their own or stabbed surviving Fiks and looted them, or took back what had been looted from the camp earlier by the Fiks. Before the assault on the castle Wulfstan’s forces had been three thousand strong. The castle had been taken with little loss, but the ensuing rout of the camp and following battle had killed a thousand. More than two thousand Fik warriors lay dead or dying.