by Hume, M. K.
‘We are under attack!’ the old man yelled. ‘The Crow King comes with armed men in two longboats. Return to The Holding at a run! Move your arses, boys, for they’ll be right behind me.’
Poul caught the arm of one young boy as the lad ran past him. With his mouth gaping foolishly, the boy stared back uncomprehendingly.
‘Run to Atric Poulssen’s farm as fast as your legs can carry you, boy. Raise the alarm there and beg them to give us whatever aid they can. Also, ask Master Atric to light the beacons so we can warn the other farms that the wolves have come while our master is away. Now, boy, or we’ll all be dead before you get started.’
Finally panicked, the boy ran for his life, his twelve-year-old legs pumping.
‘At least the lad is out of harm’s way,’ the old man muttered to himself with a twinge of guilt, because the boy was one of his grandsons. Then he scuttled off to the small house where he lived with his daughter. With only the briefest of explanations, he pushed her to one side and found the clothes chest in his room. From under his most prized possessions, he lifted out an old sword, a knife and a small circular shield. Cursing vilely, he hunted at the bottom of the chest until he retrieved a battered old helmet that he planted on his head with a growl of pleasure.
All over The Holding, the male workers and slaves were arming themselves while women sought out staves, spears and, in the case of Maeve, a sturdy bow and a good supply of arrows. Alfridda and Blaise had already decided that the invaders must be confronted before they reached the main farm complex, where Blaise intended to protect all the children with her brother’s sword and a knife produced by Alfridda. Maeve loped away with her bow and quiver strung over her shoulder, while she braided her mane of scarlet hair so she could thrust it under a knitted cap.
‘I’ll need a supply of flammable oil, Alfridda, the sort you use when you are burning off the refuse at the end of the sowing season,’ Blaise demanded. The young girl’s face looked odd and stretched, as if a stranger was trying to break through her skin. ‘I’ll take as much as you can give me! I don’t care about the quality, just the quantity. I want to make sure that Hrolf Kraki’s pigs regret coming here – especially if they intend to harm the children.’
Alfridda stared at the British girl with a puzzled expression on her face. Although her initial reaction to Blaise had been to admire the girl’s delicate beauty, living with Blaise had failed to bring Alfridda any deeper understanding of the girl’s character. She never encouraged anyone at The Holding to know and understand the real her.
Conversely, Maeve was easy to like and threw herself into the farm’s life. Both girls worked hard, especially with the children, but there was a coldness in Blaise’s nature that repulsed Alfridda, who was a warm, open woman with a strong and practical bent.
Yes, Blaise was an enigma. Especially now.
‘We have some seal oil. But why do you want it? I can’t understand what you propose to do with it, if we are under attack.’
Blaise grinned at Alfridda, her merciless eyes flat. ‘I intend to spring a little surprise on our unwelcome visitors before they gain entry to the buildings. If it works, Maeve can pick the bastards off with her bow and arrows while our attackers are cooking slowly in blazing seal oil. I detest creatures that prey on women and children.’
Alfridda knew that she was incapable of inflicting such agonising damage on another human being. Blaise, however, was dewy-eyed with expectation as if she was anticipating a visit from a demon lover. In its pseudo-innocence her beatific smile made Alfridda’s blood run cold.
Stormbringer’s sister stared at the young girl with wide, astonished eyes.
‘I thought you were the gentle one of my pair of Britons, Blaise, so you’ve surprised me. We Dene have a horror of fire because we depend on it to keep us alive in the depths of winter. Many deaths in our communities have been caused by fire in our houses, and most children suffer small burn scars from accidents. Still, we will always need it for the bounty it gives us.’
‘One of my ancestors was the Boar of Cornwall, a king well versed in the deadly arts of war,’ Blaise responded. ‘Another ancestor was Pridenow, a brilliant ruler whose disposition was as cold as your ice packs. Mercy has no place in the British world where I grew to womanhood. Had I not been stolen from my country by your brother, I would have been wed by now to a young king in the embattled north of Britain. In those tribal lands, my true destiny was to see my husband and my sons die before their time, just as the women of my family have done since the Saxons first arrived on our shores. I’ve seen fires burn nuns in their nunneries and priests in their churches, and my kin wait every day for raiding parties that come into our lands every spring and kill and maim and burn. You may think me cold and ruthless, but how could I be anything else?’
Blaise squared her shoulders proudly. Alfridda realised that she would break before she would surrender, and there was nothing that she wouldn’t do to survive.
‘Aye, Alfridda, the blood of heroes runs in Blaise’s veins,’ Maeve explained. ‘Her brother carried this gladius because he knew that the Romans were far shorter than the barbarians who served them as mercenaries and that a short sword kills at short range just as nastily as a longer blade. Blaise will blind them with her softness and beauty, so they will come within the reach of her blade. And then she’ll not hesitate.’
‘Your children will be safe with us,’ Blaise promised with narrowed, savage eyes. ‘It’s time for you to see to the defence of this place. We’ll do our part!’
As Alfridda ran to organise the workers who would defend the farm and its inhabitants, she shuddered with amazement. Little Blaise? With hell in her eyes and murder in her heart, the tiny girl was proving to be a princess in truth – and not just by birth.
According to the ancient who had first seen the strange longboats, they were faced by a force of at least thirty men, excluding the few who had been left to guard the vessels. The Holding boasted over fifty slaves who worked the earth and cared for the livestock and, because Stormbringer was essentially a kindly master, his slaves were treated far better than those at other estates. Over time they were permitted to marry and raise their own Dene families. As a result the slaves were eager to fight for their homes and families on the farm. Underneath their fervour lay the knowledge of what their fate would be if they were taken as prisoners to the halls of Heorot and judged under the despotic rule of Hrolf Kraki and his vicious bitch of a paramour. They would truly become slaves – if they were allowed to live.
As well, fifteen fierce women, all mothers, were armed with spears, axes used for wood-chopping, wicked adzes and hoes. Alfridda knew that a woman defending her hearth and children can often be more dangerous than any man.
She could also count on another twenty young boys under sixteen and a motley group of old men who were still hale enough to lift a sword. These reserves had assembled around the farm buildings with makeshift armour, old shields and swords; both the young and the very old would succumb to the weaponry of the experienced warriors very quickly, but their numbers would help to slow the attackers down and make it possible for the farm labourers to swamp them with their numerical advantage. Nevertheless Alfridda sincerely regretted the need to use them against the might of Hrolf Kraki’s thugs.
All told, her force outnumbered Hrolf Kraki’s assassins by eighty-five to forty. However, her untrained and inexperienced defenders were no match for combat-ready Dene warriors; only chance and their limited advantage in numbers could save some of her people from total annihilation. Alfridda knew the inhabitants of The Holding were in serious trouble.
Some of Stormbringer’s strategic skills and the fire in the blood that drew men to his service were shared by his sister. She immediately understood that they must divide their force to protect each side of the main path leading into the heart of the property. Her motley force of untrained combatants would have s
lightly more chance of success if they could force their enemies to fight in enclosed and awkward spaces, so she decided to place some of her defenders in the laneways beside the workers’ quarters, narrow paths which created ideal ambush positions. She divided her makeshift army pragmatically to use the women, old men and the striplings as bait while the able-bodied slaves were placed where they could strike at the heart of the invading warriors.
When the Dene mercenaries arrived, full of swagger and arrogance, the women bared their buttocks disdainfully and shouted unflattering descriptions of their manhood and Hrolf Kraki’s ability to pleasure a normal woman. When these insults didn’t work, one tall and buxom woman threw her spear at one of the Dene warriors with an almost masculine arm. With more luck than skill, her weapon spitted the man through the gizzard after a throw that was strong and true, and, mortally wounded, the man fell to the ground.
Then, enraged, the other mercenaries rushed at the woman to kill her out of hand.
Maeve’s arrows brought two men down in the initial charge, and she watched as they tore at their chests with ineffective fingers. She had aimed at the base of their throats, determined to strike at unprotected flesh rather than the mailed shirts that covered their chests. They died, gurgling in their own blood.
The warriors came on, splitting into three groups. One group went to the left while another slightly larger group went to the right. The central group was soon carving its way through the few slaves guarding the main entrance to the central farm hall as if the resistance was made of butter. Alfridda could only hope that Blaise was as good as her word. They were all as good as dead if Blaise was unsuccessful.
Gradually and painfully, the inhabitants were being driven back, leaving behind them a litter of broken bodies, sorely wounded defenders and discarded weapons. Stormbringer would return to find their bodies had become scattered bones, gnawed at by scavengers that would find their corpses a tasty titbit before the beginning of the long winter.
Then, with the prospect of bitter failure in Alfridda’s mouth, she heard a man scream violently. Many of the wounded had howled their agony that day, but the voice-box creating this terrible sound was almost destroyed in the process. The high-pitched shriek rose and rose, then suddenly stopped, leaving Alfridda’s skin crawling with a sick horror.
She continued to stab with her long spear at the line of warriors in front of her, but the concentration of one of the men was so broken by the sickening sound of pain that her spear blade managed to slip past his shield to pierce the side of his body. As his axe lowered, one of the house-slaves hit him squarely on the head with a wooden hammer, smashing the side of his skull with a satisfying, wet thump.
Alfridda turned and saw a figure lying inside a core of white and yellow flame with a burning arrow shrivelling in the centre of the man’s charcoaled back. As the smell of burning flesh reached her, Alfridda had to force down a wave of vomit and bile. Then, from out of a darkened corner near the entry to the hall, she saw another man stagger into the open space and she watched in horror as he set the afternoon alight with his death. One of the defenders, probably Blaise, had doused him in seal oil and had set him alight. As the flames rose up in a great explosion of heat, the victim danced for a moment like an animated scarecrow.
And then, mercifully, an arrow struck his chest and dropped the agonised and capering man to the ground.
Other Dene warriors ran from behind the corpse of the burning man, while tearing at their mailed shirts, tunics and cloaks as they tried to remove the oil that coated them and ran in long runnels through their hair and down their faces. Sickened by what they had seen during the death of their comrades, half a dozen warriors were fleeing from the form of a small woman, barely five feet tall, with long black hair bound into braids around her head. She was holding a bloodstained gladius in one of her hands while the other held a flaming torch that she was using with indiscriminate fury to set her victims alight. Men dodged around her, too fearful of her flames to cut her down.
Such a sight should have galvanised the defenders of The Holding, but with the same dramatic impact as the appearance of Blaise breathing fire and brimstone, two strangers had suddenly appeared from out of nowhere and galloped into the rear of the fray with swords drawn and swinging. The older of the two men swept the head off one of the assassins as neatly as a woman would sweep dirt from a doorstep, while the younger man, with white-blond braids flying around his face, impaled another attacker on his sword before withdrawing the blade with a neat twist of his wrist.
As the two strangers leaped off their warhorses to carve into the enemy from the rear, another stranger on a slow-moving mule could be seen plodding into view. If the defenders had had time to observe his approach, they would have seen that the rider was a priest.
He, too, climbed off his mount with less grace than eagerness, while pulling out a very clean and sharp sword. Alfridda barely had time to ward off a red-faced warrior wielding an axe before the priest attacked the warrior from one side to remove the hand holding the weapon that threatened her.
‘Didn’t your mother tell you to be nice to ladies?’ he asked with a beatific smile.
The mercenary howled, clutching at the stump of his wrist to stem the arc of arterial blood spurting out. The priest shook his head ruefully, muttered something about bad manners and removed the wounded man’s head with a clean blow to the neck. He bowed gallantly to Alfridda and moved on to his next victim.
The tide of battle seemed to have turned back in favour of the defenders with the arrival of the three strangers, obviously highly skilled warriors with the advantage of being able to attack their enemies from the rear. At the front of the attacking force, the struggling men were suddenly distracted from their individual battles when Blaise screamed with rage like one of Lorcan’s banshees. One of the mercenaries had grabbed her hair from behind. As he tried to drag her close enough to cut her throat with his knife, Blaise never hesitated. She twisted sideways and moved slightly closer to his body before burying her gladius deep into his belly. Then, when the man’s grip on her hair relaxed as he clutched at his vitals, his scream of unbearable pain mingled with her howl of fury. Without compunction, the fierce-eyed young girl picked up her torch and set the mortally wounded man alight.
‘Jesus!’ Lorcan muttered in surprise and awe at the cold-bloodedness of the girl’s actions. To be burned alive was a terrifying way to die – and a woman had sent this man into the shades.
‘Jesus!’ he repeated to himself. ‘She’s one hell of a woman!’
And then he recognised her.
Lorcan’s eyes were starry with admiration as he stalked towards a new adversary. Around them, arrows whizzed as Maeve used her bow to pepper any unprotected enemy flesh. The priest could see that the tide of battle had turned once again for Hrolf Kraki’s dogs were slowly and surely being forced backwards toward the picket fence that surrounded the inner enclave.
Lorcan and Gareth could tell that the high number of casualties suffered by the defenders had, in the main, been inflicted on the untrained farm workers and slaves. However those who survived seemed to be the fittest and most capable from among Alfridda’s small force.
Alfridda estimated that the three strangers were older on average than Hrolf Kraki’s mercenaries, and although they were more skilled than the attackers and held the element of surprise, the number of trained men facing the enemy was still fewer than the remnants of the Crow King’s minions.
Meanwhile, as Gareth hacked at each warrior who appeared before him, he sensed that the big difference between the two forces was the dramatic violence of Blaise and the toll of victims slain by Maeve’s archery. Moreover the invaders lost all confidence when two women forced them to take defensive action, a shame too profound for Dene warriors to bear.
At the fence, the last fifteen men of the Dene force formed themselves into a defensive circle. They wer
e ready to fight and die to the last man, but Alfridda pushed her way through the circle of surviving farm workers.
‘You have one, and only one, chance to surrender your arms! Do you wish to die at our hands? Should I give you to Blaise and Maeve? They may be women but they have no fear of you and they have killed many of your friends during this unwarranted and cowardly attack. We are prepared to encircle you and pick you off until we have you and the last of your men. You have one chance to decide your fate, so what do you choose?’
A tall warrior, with a nasty, long-healed scar across his nose, stepped forward with his shield raised defensively, in expectation of trickery.
‘I believe that you will kill us, Lady Alfridda, no matter what decision we make. Yes, I do know your name! My master was thorough when he issued his orders. On the faint chance that you don’t kill us out of hand, my master will carry out that task himself. For myself, I would prefer to die with my sword in my hand than be remembered as a coward.’
Blaise materialised out of the crowd. Her face was deathly white at what she had seen and done on this violent and vicious day. Her arms were stained with woodsmoke and soot, as were her clothes. A smear of blood covered the back of her simple shift from shoulders to buttocks and her gladius had been wiped on the hem of her dress, leaving an ugly blot. The Dene warrior shuddered. Her pale, frozen face spoke of amazement at what she had been able to do to other human beings. But now that her blood and her rage had cooled she was sickened by her actions. No matter what she did now, the memory of those blazing and blackening men with their hair and flesh turned to charcoal and their lungs seared into silence by flame would remain with her all her life. She wanted no more lives on her conscience this day, so she intended to force these warriors into surrender by any means at her disposal.