by Hume, M. K.
‘What’s wrong, my friend?’ Stormbringer asked, all solicitous now that he could see that Arthur’s battle plan was both simple and effective.
‘My old tutor, Father Lorcan, often used that phrase when I was a young boy. For a moment there, I felt the ghosts of my childhood gather together as if to warn me. My task, the last part of the gamble, is to loosen my troops in all four directions as part of a co-ordinated whole. Caught between our cavalry, your force and my two prongs of warriors, Heardred’s army should collapse like walls of sand.’
‘Shite, Arthur!’ Stormbringer exclaimed. ‘It sounds workable!’
‘I’m not really so gifted, Valdar. I’ve just been fortunate enough to serve under some brilliant commanders in major battles and I’ve observed their tactical expertise while in the front line. The Dene have few opportunities to fight as a unified, cohesive force under a centralised command. Every saga I’ve heard has praised individual prowess and strength of arms by heroes, but modern battles are won by men who fight together as a single whole. My father defeated the Saxons for many years in this way.’
Stormbringer was still not completely convinced.
‘Valdar, much of your future combat, both on sea and on land, will continue to be governed by individual thinking and personal talent. But not against this king – and not at this time! Because this type of warfare is foreign to you, it’s essential that I must command the fighting square.’
Stormbringer had suspected that Arthur could have been trying to steal the lion’s share of the glory and was happier when Arthur demonstrated that his strategies had nothing to do with a personal search for power.
‘If we do as you propose, how do you plan to convince six hundred men to fight in ways that are contrary to all their martial instincts? For that matter, how do you plan to train your cavalry in such a brief period of time? Your ideas are good, my friend, but I’m concerned about their implementation. And where are you going to find your archers?’
‘Thorketil, the Hammer of Thor, will find archers among the peasantry. He served with distinction at Lake Wener and, since then, he has discovered that the bow can make a difference to the outcome of a battle. I have no doubts that he’ll have a small troop of archers ready within two weeks.’
‘Very well, but what of my other concerns?’ Stormbringer would be risking a great deal on a plan that held only a limited chance of success.
‘What do your warriors say before they go into battle, Stormbringer? Today is a good day to die! If we do nothing, Skania will burn in the spring and you may not be able to return when the weather is warm. In truth, my friend, you have little choice if you wish to preserve any form of Dene presence in the west of Gotland.’
Arthur briefly regretted the need to speak the unvarnished truth. But Valdar Bjornsen was nobody’s fool. He understood war and loss of life, so knew he had little choice.
‘I will have no difficulty in convincing twenty young bloods to volunteer for cavalry duty. In fact, I’ll have to beat them off with sticks. If they are competent horsemen, I can teach them tactical requirements within two weeks. Not much fighting skill is needed, after all, since the horses will do most of the work.’
Arthur was rifling through every Roman battle strategy that Germanus had ever taught him. ‘Before you ask, I plan to teach all six hundred of our men a series of strategies that can be used to lure an enemy into an enclosed area where they can be contained and forced to fight on our terms. In so doing, I intend to minimise the casualties suffered by our own forces. If these tactics can be mastered by ignorant Roman peasants, so can they by your Dene warriors.’
The Sae Dene king could hardly argue that his warriors were inferior to Roman foot soldiers. He knew he was being manipulated, but Stormbringer respected Arthur’s intellect, so he reasoned that the younger man must take a calculated gamble if he was to defeat the Geat king. At all events, the Geat king must be stopped, crushed now, while the Dene force was strong enough to drive the invaders back to their own lands.
As so often, Arthur, the Last Dragon, held the key. All he needed now was a brace of blacksmiths.
The weeks moved quickly as from among the hundreds of volunteers Arthur selected thirty men who owned good horses, were superior horsemen and young enough to learn new methods.
As well, he searched out a dozen blacksmiths who were set to work making large rectangular shields in the Roman style. The Sae Dene supplied sufficient iron for solid metal shields for the front two rows of Arthur’s fighting square and the rest must make do with hardwood shields covered with bull-hide and reinforced with iron. The usual rounded Dene shields would be of no use in the coming conflict, so Arthur planned to present the new ones as a fait accompli.
He began basic training for his cavalry and then sent them off to endless practice sessions under the jaundiced eyes of Rufus Olaffsen, the warrior whom Eamonn had beaten in single combat over a year earlier and who now served Stormbringer with a dour and determined obsession. Since Hrolf Kraki had humiliated Rufus for failing in combat against his British enemy, Rufus had hungered to bring down the Crow King. Arthur knew that his budding cavalrymen would be drilled to within an inch of their lives.
Thorketil had been touchingly grateful to Arthur for his trust. The young Briton approached the Hammer of Thor with a proposal that he form a special group of archers whose role would be to supplement the land forces by softening up the enemy with heavy arrow-fire before the other warriors went onto the attack. Arthur explained that many warriors would deem his force to be cowardly, because they attacked from a distance, but Thorketil immediately assured Arthur that he would find youths, older men, the partially incapacitated and those young aristocrats who lacked the required physical prowess to become warriors in their own right. Normally, such young men would die in combat before they had reached their majority, but as archers they would now become valuable members of Stormbringer’s force.
As a fighting man wounded in combat, Thorketil well knew the feelings of uselessness when an injured warrior could no longer practise his calling – one for which he had trained throughout his entire life. In the brutal world of the north, most wounded men died, so it followed that starvation, humiliation or shame were the rewards for those hardy souls who survived. Most warriors prayed for a clean, quick death.
Any disabled warrior who could draw a bow and become an integral part of a battle group would be given a sense of purpose. He would feel like a man again in a society where the disabled were expected to sacrifice their lives during the freezing winters, when food was in short supply.
‘I’m certain I’ll be able to provide you with enough archers, Master Arthur. More than you expect, in fact. And you’ll have to search far to find men more committed to a Dene victory, for we all understand what it is to be considered a useless burden.’
Arthur could see the gratitude and respect that glowed in Thorketil’s close-set eyes and dismissed any prejudice that the Troll King might be as foolish as his features suggested. Thorketil had suffered from ridicule throughout his life because by chance his features resembled those of a retarded child.
‘I have complete faith in you, Thorketil, but you must bring your men to readiness as soon as possible. People are dying while we train our men to take part in the final battle and we have little time to complete our preparations. The weather is against us!’
The Briton looked skywards. Flocks of large northern geese were heading south in their arrowhead formations and he could hear the distant honking of their cries of farewell to the summer homelands. The leaden skies seemed pregnant with the prospect of rain, sleet and snow. Winter had almost arrived.
Thorketil bowed to Arthur. ‘I will have our men ready for combat within a month, my lord. I’ll stake my life on it!’
‘Please, Thorketil, no grand gestures.’ Arthur turned away, then remembered another salient point.
As for the six hundred warriors provided by Stormbringer to become the nucleus of his fighting force, Arthur almost surrendered to their stubborn refusal to accept the Roman Tortoise Movement as a manly defence. He explained the manoeuvre and the use of interlocking shields over and over again until his head began to spin, but the warriors remained obdurate.
Finally, Arthur and Stormbringer called their entire force onto a parade square where the tactics to be used could be explained in detail. Totally frustrated, Stormbringer insisted that the warriors should carry out their instructions without demur or further discussion.
Arthur looked at the six hundred mulish men sitting on the sod in various comfortable positions and saw no promise in the sea of pale eyes that they were prepared to obey their master. The whole enterprise could fail if these men weren’t prepared to change their approach.
Stormbringer raised himself to his full height and addressed the Dene warriors.
‘Listen closely, men, for I only intend to issue these orders on one occasion. The Last Dragon and I don’t want your glorious deaths, and we don’t want to grieve for any of our number if that warrior should become a casualty through his own stupidity. We are here to win this war against the Geat army and, as your Sae Dene king, I want you to win for the glory of the Dene people. The whole point of planning this battle long before we’re even on the enemy’s home ground allows us to implement our battle plans with surety. I want to win, and I intend to live so that we can enjoy the spoils. Is that understood? If there is any man here who puts his own dreams of glory above the needs of the jarls and his comrades, then you must speak out now and leave immediately with your honour intact. This is one time when our warriors must fight as part of a whole, if we are to defeat a unified enemy.’
Stormbringer stood to one side to permit Arthur to take his place. The demeanours of the men had softened a little, but the Briton was sure that the warriors had yet to be persuaded. His heart sank. How could he, an Outlander, succeed when their beloved master had failed?
Arthur began to relate tales of terrible, infamous battles where Romans had defeated superior forces because they had hunkered down and used strategic devices such as the Tortoise Movement to repel attack. They had driven back numerically stronger forces by sheer, bloody-minded attrition. Many heads were shaking at first but then, as he described the ways in which undisciplined warriors threw themselves against the shields of the Romans, hot breath to hot breath, more and more heads began to nod in agreement with his depiction of the Romans’ grim and steadfast methods of defence. Arthur was pleased he had remembered the Dene love of sagas and tales of valour. How much easier it was to use the stories of past Roman victories to convince this force of reluctant heroes to adopt new tactics.
‘The Romans ruled the world for many centuries, so we must all ask each other why they were so successful.’ Arthur’s voice was mellifluous now. The warriors who listened so intently began to imagine the small, dark Romans as they sweated in their leather and iron armour within the Fighting Square.
More importantly, they began to understand and accept the points that Arthur was making. He compared Roman battlefield discipline to the combined efforts of Dene sailors as they fought with their oars against nature’s fearsome storms.
‘What would happen if you all rowed to your own beat and ignored the men around you? The oars would break and the longboat would begin to founder. And then the sea would feast on the marrow in Dene bones. Do I speak the truth?’ Arthur’s voice roared out.
‘Aye!’ Snorri called out from the press of warriors. ‘All men must row as one, or the boat goes nowhere.’
‘Thank you, brother.’ Arthur’s voice was gentle now as he realised he had six hundred men fixated on his every word.
Firelight lit the men’s eager faces now, as the sparks blew upwards towards an ebony sky.
‘Can you do what the small, dark men from Italia did? Can you hold the square as your enemy batters at you from all sides until such time as you can be released from your post, and then go on to fight and to kill? Can you obey your orders like a Roman? And can you do better than a Roman, as a warrior who knows when he should fight and when he should think?’
The Dene warriors screamed and beat at their shields with the pommels of their swords to show that no Romans could be more disciplined than they. They swore to stand firm against their enemy and vowed by all the gods that they would not break for any reason.
Nor would the Geats feel their swords until they were ordered to do so by their commanders, but they would eventually drink Geat blood to their satiation.
The night trembled with the force of their excitement and determination.
Tomorrow, Arthur could begin.
In the tent city perched above the bay where the fleet waited, Arthur had acquired a large leather structure and had scrounged various useful items of furniture. These had appeared at regular intervals, and were always a surprise for him. He suspected that Ingrid was responsible for these home comforts. As a practical and sensible woman, Ingrid had decided to make the most of her changed circumstances, and was determined that her master would become wealthy and would always be comfortable.
Many Geat women would have killed themselves rather than surrender to the avowed enemy of her people. Ingrid understood her duty to her tribe and her husband’s status, but she also gazed at her infant son and her difficult daughter and decided that she would never sacrifice her children for an abstract concept of honour. A pragmatist and a widow, she knew that once a person passed into the shades, they had no power to protect those kindred left behind.
This new young master was more easy-going and offered her more freedom than she had experienced in the houses of her father or her husband.
Here, she was owned by a man of distinction and her son would rise in his service. Ingrid set about acquiring anything not nailed down that would add to Arthur’s consequence and prestige.
As he entered his leather tent, Arthur discovered that he was now the proud owner of a folding campaign chair. Inlaid with an exotic black wood, the design suggested that it was of Roman construction. Arthur lifted the simple chair and discovered that it was surprisingly light.
He was immediately impressed by the simple motif of inlaid woods that ran in a border pattern along the arms, back-rest and seat. This humble household item was a masterpiece, perfectly designed to provide civilised living in the field.
‘Do you like your new chair, Master Arthur?’
Arthur observed Ingrid watching him from the shadows as she wielded a greasy spoon inside a blackened cooking pot. She rose to her feet gracefully and lugged the heavy iron pot to the tripod that straddled the fire pit, where she set it on a hook above the hot coals. Her infant son was sleeping inside a cloth sling that freed her arms to carry out her daily chores.
‘It’s a beautiful piece of furniture, Ingrid, but I’m not sure I really need it. It looks Roman to me!’ Yet his eyes were warm with admiration and his hands stroked the inlaid back-rest with unconscious respect for the chair’s beauty.
Ingrid smiled. ‘A man of your importance should sit to eat, not hunker on his heels or squat cross-legged on the cold earth like a peasant.’
‘But where will all these new possessions fit in Sea Wife? Apart from the longboat, I have no other home and she’s a fighting ship, unsuitable for transporting furnitu
re.’
Ingrid had gradually grown comfortable as she began to realise the essential decency that lay under her master’s mask of cold reserve. She treated him respectfully, but with a sense of familiarity, as if she was a well-born older sister. Arthur was unsure if he approved of their burgeoning friendship, but it never occurred to him to force himself on the two women in his household. Nor did he chain them or make them sleep outside under the stars. Ingrid thanked God every day that He had placed her in the hands of this peculiar young Briton.
‘I promise to find a place to put everything, master. A leader of distinction should live with a certain style.’
‘Hmmmph!’ Arthur grunted noncommittally and seated himself in his new chair. Surprisingly, it felt solid, satisfying and, somehow, powerful, so he took an immediate liking to it. Now he could enjoy the warmth of the fire pit without suffering the cold that bled up through the sod floor. Much as he hated to admit she was right, Ingrid was correct about her new acquisition.
As Arthur warmed within and without under Ingrid’s personal touch, a small whirlwind entered the tent through the back flap, burdened by several huge packages wrapped in cabbage leaves. Sigrid’s whole presence radiated waves of chill disapproval and dislike towards her master and her mother.
Ingrid’s fractious daughter was bearing several slabs of beef for Arthur’s table which she had collected from a central tent where meat was distributed to the warriors. The girl’s arms and her crude shift were stained with watery blood, while her hair was uncombed and her expression was sullen. Despite his irritation at her arrival, Arthur noticed how well she looked as the first chills of autumn flushed her pale cheeks.
‘You’d best see to your girl, Ingrid. She’s allowed the beef to bleed all over my pallet,’ Arthur snapped. By accident or design, a parcel had begun to leak blood over the coverlet of fur and wool that he used to keep the growing cold at bay.