Gods of War

by C. R. May

  21

  A glimpse of Hel and then another as Hemming reined in and spoke, his words a breathless blend of horror and wonder. ‘Shit. There it is.’

  Eofer guided his own mount across to the side, out past the tree line which had obscured his view and looked. For a moment he too sat stunned by the enormity of the sight which lay before them, but he put words to his thoughts as the others moved up into a line. ‘The gods know that I never thought to see such a thing.’

  He realised that his hand had moved unconsciously to the hammer which hung at his neck, and a glance to left and right told him that he was not alone. At any other time the sight of a troop of battle-hardened warriors gaping at a hillside, rubbing gods-luck pendants between thumb and forefinger would have looked preposterous, amusing even, but not today, not here.

  Hemming spoke again. ‘We could go north, lord. Skirt the town and swing back south down The Oxen Way.’

  As Eofer shook his head he was aware that most of the men strung out to either side seemed to think that he had made the wrong choice. ‘No, we have to go through,’ he replied. ‘I have a duty to perform there. Besides,’ he added, ‘the seith is not aimed at English hearts.’

  Eofer clicked his mount on, the horse walking forward as Hemming mumbled a reply. ‘I hope that you are right, lord. Seith is bad spellweorc, as powerful as it gets. I doubt it can tell the difference between folk, even if it had a mind to.’

  The hillside disappeared from view as the road took a dip, curving around the bole of the ancient oak which all Englishmen knew so well. The riders stretched out a hand as they passed the great tree, letting their fingertips run across the age-cracked runnels which marked the bark like the timeworn features of an old man as the story came into their minds. Every man, woman and child in Engeln knew the tale of the Woden Tree, it was one of the first they were ever told, a favourite of children all across the land back to the time of the first settlement by English folk. The god in his wanderings had hunted in the very woods which still stood hard against the town of Sleyswic as he matched his cunning against the great boar, spear-bristle. Brought to bay at this very spot, the pair had fought a death duel which lasted a day and a night. Finally Woden prevailed, but as he had torn the dagger-like tusks from the giant, an acorn had fallen from its mouth. To mark his great victory, the Allfather had buried the nut beneath the head of his foe at the scene of the fight, and the Woden Tree had been born. The lower branches were festooned with offerings to the god, tiny wood carved ploughs and phallus for fertility swayed gently alongside representations of the ships which would carry the last worshippers across the sea.

  Clearing the Woden Tree, the road straightened out as it hugged the bank of the Sley and approached the desolation which had been Sleyswic. Eofer gave a gentle tug at the reins, halting the mount as his gaze wandered across the devastation.

  The town, the jewel of the nation, had been systematically destroyed, piece by piece, building by building by the departing army, the fire-scorched beams crisscrossing the ground where they had fallen. Crowning the hilltop to the North nestled the broken frame of the king’s hall, eorthdraca, the earth dragon, a hall of ghosts defended by a spectral army.

  Hemming spoke in a gasp, the shock and fear in the big warrior’s voice unnaturally loud in the stillness which lay on the ruins like a thick winter cloak. ‘There are folk moving up there!’

  Eofer gave a slight nod of acknowledgment. ‘You stay here,’ he called as he slipped from the saddle. ‘I won’t be long.’ Fastening his boar helm, the eorle retrieved his shield and hefted his spear. Rolling his shoulders he turned to them with a confident grin. ‘How do I look?’

  Hemming drew himself up, the pride in his lord’s bearing reflected in his eyes. He had recognised the warrior on the hill now and understood. ‘Like a victory-thegn returned from war, lord,’ he said in admiration. ‘An eorle in his battle-glory.’

  Eofer snorted at his weorthman’s flowery praise, the words incongruous from his bluff companion. ‘Thanks, Oswin,’ he said with a smile, the action reflected on the faces of the rest of the hearth troop as they recalled their dead friend.

  Taking a grip of his shield, Eofer started up the hill as the men began to chatter, swapping memories of the desperate fight in which the young lad had fallen on the field beside the smoking remains of another hall. He inhaled deeply as he paced the ground towards the meeting, his heart beating with the enormity of the moment as his eyes took in a sight he knew deep down that he would never witness again.

  The Ghost Army stood before him, the massed ranks braced and ready for battle. At the crest, beneath the white dragon battle flag of Engeln the Ghost King sat astride his mount, the thin spring sunlight shining dully from polished mail and spear point. Raised above the level of the army as any good king should, Osea’s cadaver had begun to take on the waxy sheen of a spit roasted hog after a month facing the sun’s daily transit. Eofer gave a snort as he thought back to their last meeting, on the field outside the blackened remains of Jarl Wictgils’ hall. He had wondered aloud then how many men had killed two kings in battle and, although he had not slain the king himself, he had played an important part in it. He took a last look before his gaze moved on, taking in the details of the Iron Helm of Juteland, the wolf-grey dome mirroring the darkening clouds above.

  Arrayed before the king was his army, four ranks deep with a reserve placed at the high point, ready to bolster any part of the shield wall which came under intolerable pressure. With further mounted riders anchoring the flanks and a line of sharpened ash stakes driven into the hillside before them, the war line had clearly been arrayed by an expert in battle craft. A guda, the priest’s face and torso ash-whitened to mirror the army, walked among the ghosts, mumbling spells and incantations as he prepared his charges for the spiritual fight to come.

  The figure came forward as he approached, his weorthman faithfully at his side. As the grizzled warriors wove their way through the lines, Eofer saw that the thing which he had promised the king he would carry on to Anglia was safely tucked in the crook of the leading man’s arm. A grin split the ealdorman’s beard, the action echoing the drawn back rictus of the dead which surrounded them. ‘King Eomær is safely away?’

  Eofer nodded. ‘And the army; we barely lost a man.’

  Wonred laughed as the worry which had been gnawing at his guts for the past few weeks finally left him, Penda beaming at his side. Embracing his son, the hoary warrior gripped Eofer by the shoulders. ‘Did we get old Hrothgar?’

  Eofer gave a snort of irony, the old man’s face a mask of shock as he shared the news from Daneland. ‘The Danes got there first. The ætheling, Hrothulf, killed his uncle before we arrived and took the king helm for himself. And that is not all,’ he added as the men shared a look of incredulity. ‘The king of Swedes was killed at the same time.’

  Wonred shook his head. ‘The world is changing even faster than I thought. I was right, this new age holds no future for old men. Did you see your brother before you left?’

  Eofer nodded. ‘I left Wulf on the beach as the army was embarking to leave Daneland. The fleet should have rounded the tip of Juteland by now and be safely away.’

  Wonred cast a glance across his shoulder. ‘What do you think of my army?’

  Despite the power of the spellcræft which surrounded them, Eofer felt relaxed in his father’s company. It would be, after all, the last time that they would meet on Middle-earth. ‘They don’t say much,’ he replied as he ran his eyes along the front line, ‘although they were not so quiet when they thought that they were about to overrun us at The Crossing.’ A picture of the men before him as he had known them in life flashed into his mind then, the snarls and taunts which had cut the air when they had come like a storm to take the lives of the little English force. The arrival of Ætheling Icel with the main invading army had saved Eofer’s raiding party from that fate, but not before the Jutish jarl, Heorogar, had treacherously killed his duguth Imma Gold and the y
outh Oswin silk-tongue.

  Despite the mutilation and the ravages of time, Eofer’s eyes fixed on one of the ghost warriors and he walked across. ‘I recall this one,’ he said in wonder. ‘I gave him a barrel of ale, in the stockade the night before the sacrifice.’ Most of the ghost warriors wore leather battle shirts, but this one was shirtless and Eofer looked the cadaver up and down as he marvelled at the guda’s work. The Jute’s belly had been sliced open from groin to ribcage before the priest had reached in to scoop the entrails onto the hillside below eorthdraca in a bloody mess. Stuffed with straw and grass and roughly stitched together, the bodies had then been dressed and carried by thræls down the hill to the waiting line of ghosts. Rammed arse first onto a sharpened stake, the ghost warrior had been armed with shield and spear as the spirit army slowly formed their spectral battle line. Eofer raised his spear and flicked at a pendant which hung from the withered neck by a leather thong. ‘A Christ cross,’ he said with a chuckle, ‘I would have kept the ale myself if I had known.’

  A finch landed, plucking a strand before flying off with a beat of its wings. Wonred sighed. ‘The bloody birds have been at it ever since the shield wall was formed. It is a shame that it is nesting season,’ he added with a frown. ‘Some of the ghosts will start to sag like those old coots with me if the Danes or Jutes don’t get here soon.’

  The comment brought their minds back to the finality of the moment and the pair exchanged a look as they both realised that Eofer must move on soon. Below them, beside the waters of the Sley, a hundred English warriors were staring their way. Soon Eofer’s battle troop would say their farewells as they made their way to the western coast, stepping aboard the ships which would carry them away from Engeln for the final time. Looking back upslope, the thegn raised his spear in salute to the men who were moving about further up the hillside as Wonred sighed at his side. ‘My last hearth troop,’ he explained. ‘Old men mostly, men like myself, men who are too long in the tooth to drag their old bones across the sea. Proud men though,’ he added with a smile, ‘good men to cross the rainbow bridge with.’ The old man, a folctoga of the English, leader of the king’s armies, slipped a golden ring from his arm and passed it across with a smile. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘give this to Weohstan. Tell him about his grandfather, when he grows to manhood. Tell him…’ he said as his expression took on a distant look, ‘tell him that the ring came as máððum, a special gift from old King Engeltheow. Given to me on the field of battle from the hand of the king himself, the day we forced the ford together, shoulder to shoulder, king and thegn, and the Brondings fled before us as deer would from fire.’

  Eofer nodded as he slid it upon his own arm and turned to Penda with a frown. ‘It is still not too late to change your mind. The king asked me to tell you that the offer of a place within the ranks of his gesithas is still open to you. Likewise you could follow the rest of my father’s hearth troop into service with Cerdic strongarm in Britannia. I know that they will be well received and shown honour if they come with my recommendation.’ He looked at the duguth, willing his old friend to accept. Penda had fought at the centre of the shield wall, the place of greatest honour, in the fighting at The Crossing only a few months earlier. Both men knew that it was no exaggeration to say that without the bull-like defence offered by the man and his warriors that day it was unlikely that Eofer would be standing before them now.

  Penda shook his head, and Eofer was surprised to see a smile light the big man’s face as he pulled himself upright and spoke a verse:

  ‘Oft to the Wanderer, weary of exile,

  Though woefully toiling on wintry seas,

  With churning oar in the icy wave,

  Homeless and helpless he fled from Fate.’

  Penda continued, as pride at his weorthman’s words shone in Wonred’s eyes. ‘I have no desire to escape my wyrd, Eofer; to live an exile’s life, an eardwræcca. I would not die on a British field or wait for old age to rot me in my bed while my lord’s bones lie in a land made foreign. Your father has my oath and I mean to keep to it; I will not break it now.’

  The conversation was becoming maudlin and Eofer knew that it was almost time to take his leave. ‘Come on,’ he said, as he slipped the ale skin from his shoulder and twisted the stopper free. ‘Share my ale, and I will tell you of the war of fire and steel.’

  A horse snickered softly as Osbeorn moved up, and together they peered down into the vale. ‘We could wait awhile,’ he suggested ‘they are bound to move away soon.’ He shot his eorle a wicked smile. ‘But you don’t want to do that, do you lord.’

  Eofer and Hemming were silent for a moment longer as they took in the mayhem at the foot of the ridge. ‘No,’ Eofer said finally: ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Still,’ Hemming added. ‘We could have done with the other lads, eh?’

  Eofer raised a brow as he glanced across to his weorthman. ‘We could, but they are not here. It looks like we will have to go on alone.’ As the men of Eofer’s war band closed up and tightened chin straps, the eorle moved his horse forward with a squeeze of his knees. ‘Leave your shields covered and strapped to the saddle, but those of you without swords I want spears in your hands,’ he said. ‘Let them see that are ready for anything.’

  It was true, he mused, as the stallion cleared the tree line and broke out into the full light of the afternoon, they could very well use the men who had so recently left them. Mercians mostly, they had taken The Oxen Way earlier that day, travelling south to Porta’s Mutha where the last ships were waiting to carry them across the sea to Anglia. A hundred spears would soon put the rabble in the valley to flight, but a dozen? He untied the peace bands which secured Gleaming in its scabbard as he prepared to find out.

  The sun was past its zenith in the sky to the South, the weak rays of the northern spring raking the pasture with its light as the first faces were turned their way. The call of a cuckoo drifted across from the woodlands and Eofer wondered at the omen. Good or bad it was too late now, his course was set. As the mournful wail of a horn sounded from the pasture below, hundreds of men, women and children raced to form a line across their path.

  Eofer spoke steadily as the horses descended the slope and Hemming moved closer to his side. ‘Try to keep calm and avoid eye contact if you can, whatever the provocation. Let me do the talking. If I strike, go in hard. I doubt that they will want to lose their newfound freedom so soon.’ Further up the vale a barn, one of the last buildings left standing in Engeln, was in flames, the greasy column of smoke shrouding the view northwards as the light airs smeared the sky. The track dipped into a bracken covered hollow, and when they emerged Eofer could see that the enemy were now fully assembled only a hundred yards ahead. Slowing the horse to a walk, the thegn gave a curt nod in greeting to the man who stood at their head. ‘We are moving to the coast, where are you heading?’ he asked brightly.

  The leader of the group exchanged a look of glee with a companion and Eofer studied the man as he approached. The freed slaves were a motley band, mostly women, but with upwards of forty men of varying usefulness. The man who blocked their path had obviously taken on the mantle of leadership and looked to be of warrior class, certainly a man who had experienced battle. Taller than any of his newfound companions and broad shouldered with it, the man sported a thick beard as black as pitch. Although his hair had been cut short in the manner of ceorls and thræls, Eofer could see that an attempt had been made to twist what little there was into a knot on the righthand side of his head, a distinctive feature of the warrior class among some of the Saxon tribes. His clothing was workmanlike but of good quality for a man of his station, a thick leather jerkin above blue woollen trews and a sturdy pair of knee length boots, and Eofer noticed immediately that although he gripped a sturdy boar-spear in his right hand, no sword hung at his wide leather belt. Several silver arm rings shone from his forearm, so they had been killing and looting, but if the leader carried no sword then Eofer felt confident that they had none among them.

/>   Eofer let his horse come to a halt half a dozen paces from the group as the Saxon replied to his question, and a smile of fox-cunning curled within that great beard.

  ‘All the ships are gone, you have missed the boat.’

  The men around him laughed dutifully, and Eofer sensed Hemming’s hackles rise at the lack of respect shown to his lord. He hoped that they could keep their tempers in check, but his right hand moved across to rest on his thigh, as close to Gleaming’s hilt as he dare. ‘It’s lucky that we are all good swimmers then,’ he replied in a lighthearted tone. ‘Where are you moving to?’ He raised his chin to look deliberately at the leader’s knotted hair as he spoke, ‘back south?’

  The man’s hand went to his head and he snorted. ‘It’s still a bit short yet, but it will regrow. Yes,’ he said with a disarming smile, ‘we are going home.’ He indicated the horses with a nod of his head. ‘As you are about to take a long swim anyway, we could use your fine horses.’

  The crowd were beginning to wrap around Eofer’s small group and he sensed the tension in the air as the horses began to shift nervously. He fixed the man with a stare, levelling his voice but keeping the hard edge. ‘I can see that you are an experienced warrior and I can understand the elation you feel that the gods have seen fit to grant you your freedom Saxon, but we both know that you will never take my horse from me. You can try of course,’ he added with a menacing glare. ‘But even if I die here it will not benefit you in any way because you will have travelled on before me, on that you have my word.’

  The air crackled with tension and the nearness of violence as the two leaders regarded one another. Eofer was aware that many of the men, the weaker and more timid, were shifting slowly away as the confrontation reached the point where one or other of the leaders would have to back down and lose face. It had, as his father had always said, separated the chaff from the grain, and Eofer saw that although the numbers who stood against them were intimidating at first sight, the actual number of fighting men that his opponent could rely on were far fewer. They would be outnumbered maybe two to one, but his own men he knew were well fed and well armed, familiar to each other and experienced in war. The odds were acceptable, and he was about to draw his sword to strike the Saxon down, confident that the cordon would scatter before their onslaught, when he heard a choking sound to his right. The Saxon’s mouth had opened in surprise and Eofer risked a glance to see the cause of the interruption to his plan. One of the slaves, a troll-ugly oaf, his face pitted with the scars of a childhood disease, was rising slowly into the air, his feet leaving the ground as they swung in small circles beneath him. Eofer stifled a laugh as he watched the man’s face redden, his eyes bulging like eggs as Hemming tightened the grip on his neck. Hemming spoke slowly and deliberately, as the man’s tongue lolled from his mouth and his breath came in a rasping wheeze. ‘If you lay a hand my reins again, I will snap your neck like a dry twig. Got it?’