by Hume, M. K.
If the jarls thought that their cripples were useless, they would soon be set to rights. Rallying his kinsmen under their new title of Loki’s Bastards, Thorketil sent six men under Rufus, with one brazier and a supply of fuel, to the opposite side of the swamp. Arthur gave permission for the seven to use some of their precious horses to get to the firmer ground.
‘I’m not waiting for daylight because I smell snow in the wind and it’ll dampen the thatch if it starts to fall before we commence our little target practice. No, I want those sons of whores to burn, so find a good position from which to pepper them with flaming arrows. You have one hour!’
‘Depend on me, Thorketil,’ Rufus replied in his usual dour fashion.
‘I am, Rufus! We all are! Tell me you’re in position by sending a single fire arrow straight up into the air – and as high as you can power it. Then you can send every arrow you have at the enemy. We’ll show them what happens when you kill the children of the Dene, even peasant children.’
The crippled and wounded bowmen respectfully touched their forelocks and turned and hobbled, limped and shuffled towards the picket line and the horses.
Behind them, none of the jarls or the guards laughed, not even when one warrior slipped in the mud.
Darkness fell like a shroud and the jarls were sure that Thorketil’s archers couldn’t expect to know exactly where the village was relative to their firing point. But the big man was clever, and had memorised where to position his men.
The jarls were impatient as they waited for the bowmen to send up their message arrow, for they were certain that the whole plan was a mare’s nest. Arthur sensed their doubts.
‘Make sure that the village is well and truly alight, Thorketil,’ Arthur told his comrade as the big man left his headquarters. ‘Your fellow lords are sure that the darkness will render you as blind as they are.’
‘We don’t have the time to wait till after the first snowfalls. The weather conditions are so quiet that I can sense the first snowflakes coming, even as we speak.’
As Arthur looked up into the black night sky, a small swirl of snowflakes began to spiral down on them.
Old King Winter would soon hold the land in a grip of freezing iron.
Thorketil ordered the coals in the brazier to be stirred back into life while more fuel was added. The Troll King and his men laid their fat-soaked arrows close to hand and began to string their longbows with efficiency and muscle-cracking force.
The only exception was the young man with the racking cough. Thorketil approached him with an offer of assistance. ‘Do me a favour, Elidar. I like to think I can still string a young man’s bow, even the longbows that the peasants use to bring down stags, so could I try to string yours?’
Elidar looked at Thorketil with unreadable blue eyes. After a moment’s reflection, the lad handed over his bow, then smiled, and Arthur was struck by the sick man’s almost supernatural beauty.
‘There! See, Arthur? I can still string the strongest of bows. Except for this knee, I’m better than I ever was. Thank you, Elidar, may your aim be straight.’
‘It will be, Thorketil. I’ll set the village alight for you!’
At this point, a fiery comet of light shot straight up into the sky.
‘The signal has come, Arthur,’ Thorketil announced with a boyish grin. ‘We can now reduce this confounded village to ashes.’
If you can hit it! Arthur thought morosely. This darkness with the slowly falling snowflakes would make any precise attack almost impossible.
‘It’s time for the fire arrows, Arthur,’ Stormbringer called and both men moved back to their positions near the extra brazier.
‘They’re in position,’ Thorketil answered. ‘Now, let’s create some light to kill by.’
Calmly, Thorketil placed the head of an arrow into the brazier and turned it until the fat-soaked cloth caught alight.
The arrow nocked, Thorketil drew back the bow string while, all around him, his six fellow archers followed suit. His first arrow shot upward into the darkness then fell back to earth and briefly lit a wooden wall when it struck the timbers.
Then other arrows snaked out of the night like a disciplined shower of sparks. At first, Arthur was quite certain that the arrows would fail to set the thatched roofs alight for the snowfall was increasing. But Thorketil’s skill prevailed and the thatch of a pole-house caught fire. Visibility was no longer a problem.
‘Ayee!’ Thorketil keened in a high-pitched scream of primal victory. ‘Now we can watch the Hundings as they dance. I suggest you guard the perimeter of the village and the swamp, because the rats will soon be scattering to find a safer shelter.’
‘It’s already done, my friend,’ Arthur replied. As Stormbringer’s second-in-command, he had been given free rein to besiege the village.
Meanwhile, the fires in the village were beginning to spread. This village had originally been built to repel an attack by floodwater; none of the builders had considered fire danger in this watery world.
Arrow after arrow snaked out into the night sky in long, burning curves that found their marks in the roofs, walls or outbuildings. Some guttered before the fire took hold, while others were extinguished by dark figures that ran and capered as they carried bladders of water along the raised walkways between the buildings. But for every arrow that died without setting its target aflame, two others set timber or thatch flickering into a quickly spreading conflagration.
Now, the slight breeze that was beginning to die with the approach of snow started to bring more danger to the Hundings’ warriors huddling in the village. It retained sufficient strength to turn frail sparks into a growing firestorm. Years of neglect had made the thatch brittle and dry, the perfect flammable material for feeding an inferno.
Given only the briefest of warnings, the Hundings were forced to dive among the reeds and huddle in freezing water to gain relief. As far as Stormbringer could ascertain from his scouts, the Hundings in this village were mostly men with strong tribal affiliations, or were senior commanders with the Hundings’ army who were being taken to places of refuge where they could rebuild their defeated forces. To huddle in the water like beasts would be an especially humbling experience to the arrogant and angry Saxon lordlings.
Hours would pass before the conflagration began to cool. As soon as they were able, the cold and miserable survivors made their way out of the maze of swamp waters and climbed to the higher ground and the few ruins that could still provide some shelter.
Arthur had half expected an attempt by the defenders to fight their way out of this ring of steel with which Stormbringer had encircled the swamp, but the Saxon hounds were too stubborn to present the Sae Dene commander with any semblance of an easy victory. As the fires began to burn out, the survivors returned to the dubious shelter of the village ruins, places where they could dig in.
One hundred and fifty senior Hundings officers were surrounded by a Dene army of more than a thousand men, while their own main force was retreating in some disorder towards the distant Saxon borders. The brains of the Hundings were penned up in this ruined village.
During a brief discussion before finally going to his tent for an hour or two of sleep, Arthur suggested to Stormbringer that it would be a prudent move to take the major part of their force and drive their enemies to a suitable place where the Sae Dene king could attack and destroy the bulk of the Saxon army in one decisive battle.
‘Wounding a snake isn’t enough! The head must be cut off, and it must be done quickly and cleanly. Otherwise they will rise again in the spring and threaten the border marches all over again. Meanwhile, I’m confident I can eliminate these defenders with a force of one hundred good warriors.’
‘That’s seems like a reasonable assessment,’ Stormbringer said. He was reluctant to leave his friend to complete the destruction of this village and its defenders
with only a handful of warriors and the detested archers at his back, if they were forced to wait out a protracted siege. The hundred-odd men inside the village were the most effective leaders of the Hundings; cold and miserable they might be, but only a fool would underestimate them.
‘Very well, Arthur, I will take your advice. But I accept it only because your plan makes good sense. Dividing our forces at this particular juncture is practical. The body of the Hundings army without its leadership will be easier to destroy and, if they are allowed to cross their borders to safety, they’ll simply wait until another leader comes to the fore who can initiate a new campaign against us.’
‘Stop being so genteel, Valdar! You’re my friend, and you’re the Sae Dene King, while I have no real status in these lands. If you’re going to be my brother when you eventually marry Maeve, then it’s my earnest desire that you build a great reputation in the Dene lands, one that will reflect well on me and mine. I’ll expect you to be off in the morning, when you can leave me to mop up these fools. I can see no good reason for us all to sit here on our arses and watch the Hunding commanders freeze to death in a disgusting swamp. They’ve allowed themselves to be trapped here for the most foolish of reasons.’
Then, on a dark morning when the snow lay to the height of a man in every hollow in the landscape, the Dene army dug itself out, the warriors cursing the circumstances that meant they were fighting a war in winter. Shortly thereafter, Stormbringer led his men away from the swamp to plough their way through the snowy landscape. The small army slid through the trees in a meandering route that avoided the deeper snowdrifts with their skins of glittering ice crystals. Arthur watched near to a thousand men slowly depart as they battled the terrible conditions with humour and a certain degree of self-pity.
‘Well, boys, we can hunker down now and wait to give these fuckers a goodly view of hell,’ Father Lorcan said jovially from behind his friend’s right shoulder. ‘What do they expect? Do they think we’ll go away, just to avoid freezing our balls off?’
In full growl, Father Lorcan’s dissatisfaction with his lot was all too apparent. With only the bulbous tip of his nose showing through a collection of wrappings, Lorcan looked like an angry vole awakened from its winter hibernation. But, on closer examination, the priest’s eyes were wickedly humorous.
‘So! What can we do? Do we attack in the morning when they’re good and cold? They’ll have seen the bulk of our army leave our bivouac and they’re still trying to keep fires alight.’
Germanus’s nose was just as red as Lorcan’s, and he was bundled up as thickly as his friend.
‘At this stage there’s no need to attack, for all we have to do is to wait.’ Arthur ignored the critical tones and expressions of his erstwhile tutors. He had been making strategic decisions for years now.
Gareth was wise enough to realise that Arthur’s demeanour had changed, along with the decisiveness of his manner. Though he appeared to be the same pleasant and quick-thinking boy they had known several years ago, his sense of fun had vanished and been replaced by a coolness of intellect that all three men found a little disconcerting.
‘Do you have any idea how many enemies are in the swamps?’ Gareth asked mildly.
‘Our scouts are warning us there are a good one hundred and fifty men hunkered down in the village. They are mostly older officers, but there are at least fifty very loyal retainers and bodyguards. When their main army was routed, these men escaped into the swamps and have refused to surrender.’
Arthur’s dry voice was laced with contempt for leaders who had abandoned their men and then allowed them to retreat, headless, towards the Saxon borders. Meanwhile, the leadership settled into what they believed was relative safety.
But a familiar fingernail was scratching inside Arthur’s skull; he had wondered at the tactics of the Hunding commanders for days, while trying to catch some glimpse of their motivation. His previous dealings with the hounds of Saxony had indicated that these leaders were anything but foolish.
Marooning themselves in a no-name swamp made no sense. What advantage could there be in defending this particular village? They could have fled anywhere with their army as protection, but they had chosen to risk their lives in this desolate place. Their whole course of action seemed nonsensical.
He and his two tutors turned and stared through the greyness of the morning towards the ruins of the village, where wisps of smoke from fires rose upwards. All three men were bemused by the enemy leadership’s decisions. Why would they persist in remaining within the village’s walls? Anything would be better than being trapped in a swamp during the first snows of winter.
To the left, the swamp became denser with reeds and water but, in the far distance, an estuary became the grey sea and the fingernail at the back of Arthur’s head began to stir once again. It was almost as if a wight was running its ghostly fingers through his hair.
‘Just . . . wait . . . a . . . moment!’ Arthur whispered slowly, as his mind raced to follow the thread of an idea.
The estuary was clear of reeds, so Arthur guessed that the water there was deeper and more saline adjacent to the swamp. His eyes scanned along the glints of distant water to the points where the reed beds began, only a few at first, and then thick swathes of the brittle, brown stems that rattled in the cold wind.
‘The village is mostly waterlogged and is surrounded by bog, so there’s no real evidence of agriculture – just a few goats, a cow or two and some chickens.’
Germanus was quickly following the direction of his words, used as he was to assessing the landscape and opponents for hidden dangers.
‘The villagers have to live on something and, if you look at the buildings carefully, there are a few small lean-to sheds that seem to serve no rational purpose. I think they might be smokehouses for curing fish. We are close to the open sea, so I expect this village would normally survive on fishing for daily sustenance.’
‘Aye,’ Arthur replied slowly. ‘We assumed that from the beginning, but we never saw the implications. Look over there at those coracles hanging on the unburned wall. They are light, one-man vessels that even a child can manage. I think the Hunding generals are waiting for the arrival of prearranged ceols that will whisk them away to safety, while leaving their junior thanes to usher the remnants of their army over their borders. The Hundings must have had this emergency plan in place from the very beginning of the campaign. The generals would have known that Stormbringer has often spoken of his intention to eliminate all threats from the Hundings by crushing them completely. Essentially, the strategic brains of the entire Hundings tribe are in the village in front of us, and they’re waiting to be taken to Saxony by water.’
‘Isn’t it too late for ceols to approach the shore without ice piercing their hulls?’ Lorcan asked doubtfully.
‘The Saxon ceols are heavy ducks when compared with the Dene longboats,’ Arthur explained. ‘They’re designed to carry all manner of cargo. They lumber along the coast efficiently enough, so the thin rime of ice that’s formed on the estuary so far won’t cause them any problem. Once they are clear of the village, the Hundings only have to sail a hundred miles into the south and hug the coastline to deliver their leaders to home and safety.’
‘If these dogs should get away, the Dene borders will come under attack again next year,’ Lorcan pointed out as he worried away at a thumbnail.
Germanus considered Arthur’s assessment of their strategic and tactical situation. ‘Even if Stormbringer manages to eliminate the combined Saxon, Jute and Angle forces, the north will still have a large number of displaced warriors who will be hungry for a strong leader to follow, especially if he promises to reward them with land,’ the Frank decided with grim practicality.
‘I can’t imagine how these ceols would know that they’re needed.’ Lorcan had placed his finger squarely on one of the flaws in Arthur’s reasoning.<
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Fortunately, Gareth provided a plausible answer.
‘Beacon fires. The generals could have arranged for a particular fire to be lit that would instruct the crews of the ceols to proceed to a specific destination where they would collect any party that needed evacuation. In this case, the collection point would be on the beaches adjacent to the village.’
Whatever the answer to the communications problem, it was of little importance in the current scheme of events.
The sun had barely warmed the cold air and Arthur could smell more snow coming their way. Although conditions in the village must be uncomfortable and freezing cold, the warriors would still be strong and they would be well fed in the immediate future. Arthur knew it took time for famine to weaken strong and vigorous men. ‘Yes,’ he reminded himself. ‘They’ll be fucking uncomfortable, but the knowledge that a ship is on the way will sustain them.’
He was finally beginning to understand why the village had been captured and occupied in the first place. Now that he knew what he was searching for, a few minutes of staring into the grey and dreary landscape revealed that charcoal-coloured shapes were clustered around the eastern side of the village. These were obviously primitive wooden boats, dugouts carved from tree trunks. They were capable of carrying two or three men at a time and, by Arthur’s count, there seemed to be about twenty of these vessels.
Dugouts could carry more men than coracles, and this made the situation more urgent than previously thought.
‘I should have known! Houses on long poles along the coast always have dugout boats or round coracles for use as water transport,’ Lorcan said. ‘I must apologise, Arthur. Back at my home, where swamps and bogs are a normal part of the landscape, any pole village will have its share.’
‘Don’t berate yourself, Lorcan. I didn’t come to the most logical conclusion myself, and I should have known better after the time I’ve spent in the north. Not that it matters! I think we still have time to position our warriors in ambush positions on the opposite side of the village.’