by Hume, M. K.
Arthur glanced around at his lieutenants.
‘Find Snorri for me, Gareth. I need him now!’
Gareth complied, albeit unwillingly, and Arthur briefly felt a delicious sense of freedom. Like a faithful dog Gareth had refused to permit Arthur to leave his sight in recent days in case his master should vanish.
When Snorri arrived, Arthur explained the strategic situation to him and issued orders that his hundred-strong force should be divided into two groups that could move independently into ambush positions along the opposite banks of the main waterway leading to the sea.
‘Our view of the village won’t be as good as it is from this hillock, but we’ll send scouts into positions where they can inform us of any movement by the Hundings as soon as they begin to stir. We’ll definitely need our archers again for this skirmish, unless all your warriors feel like swimming in the cold water.’ Arthur had seen the men’s downcast faces when the main body of the Sae Denes had left to do battle with the remnants of the Hundings’ main force. He could understand their frustration and disappointment.
‘You can explain how vital it is that we stop the commander of the Hundings from escaping to fight another day. A lizard can lose a leg or cast off a tail and those limbs will re-grow once more. Yet the same lizard will die if the head is crushed! The head of the Hundings lives in that village, so we must crush it.’
‘I will obey, master,’ Snorri answered impassively. ‘Our men are always happy when they understand their mission.’
‘Remain at my side, Snorri, for I need to select the most suitable of the jarls to lead our attack groups. Once they are selected, warn them about the need for complete silence when they are positioning themselves for the ambush. Meanwhile, there’s another important matter for your consideration. You must select a group of good swimmers in case we have to fight in the waterways. Weed out those warriors who can swim, gather them together and leave them with me.’
And so another grey day came to a close. As the light began to fail, small groups of Dene warriors moved cautiously around the village to take up their ambush positions where they could cut off any small boats that attempted to escape towards the open sea.
Arthur was woken from a troubled sleep by the screaming of his mental warnings. Seconds later, Snorri appeared out of the mist and swore sharply when Arthur sat up before the helmsman had even touched him.
‘I wish you wouldn’t do that, Arthur. Shite, it gives a man the queasies when you seem to read my mind. The Hundings are on the move! One of our scouts has returned from his patrol downstream. There are two ceols moored at the mouth of the river. One looks like the main transport vessel, while the other seems ready to assist it if there is an emergency.’
‘In that case, we’d best stop our enemies from reaching these boats,’ Arthur replied. Then, instead of donning his armour, he pulled on a knitted shirt, and knitted socks to wear under his boots. This whole ensemble was covered by his cloak and, instead of his sword he picked up the Dragon Knife. Finally, he tied the scabbard of the Dragon Knife securely around his neck with a thong.
A feeling of paradoxical happiness welled up in Arthur’s chest. The thrill of the chase gave his life texture and meaning; he hoped to save families from the loss of their sons, villagers from being murdered for the sake of their cattle, their sheep or a few jars of grain. At the same time, he hoped to help the many priests and innocents in religious communities who were turned into prey. There were times when a single man could make a difference and, by doing so, influence the turning of Fortuna’s Wheel. He prayed that today would be such a day.
‘Snorri!’ he called, and watched as the helmsman shouldered his way through the group of men.
‘I’m giving you the task of putting together a group of twenty-five men to stop those Hundings who are abandoned in the village by their masters if they try to make an escape bid by land. You’ll be using that group of our men who are on the other side of the stream. Caught between two pincers, the warriors who can’t escape on the dugouts and coracles should be easily crushed. But, before you undertake this task, I want Lars to select twenty men from among our warriors who are good swimmers. He will have first call on these warriors because he will be performing a specific duty for me. The remainder of them are under your command.’
Snorri seemed confused by Arthur’s orders, and the Briton’s irritation rose accordingly.
‘Obey my orders, Snorri! The Hundings don’t have enough boats to move all of their one hundred and fifty men in the one voyage. Or do you doubt that fifty Dene warriors can stop seventy-odd Hundings who have been cruelly abandoned and left to their own devices?’
Snorri flushed guiltily. ‘I’m sorry if I sounded as if I was questioning your instructions, my lord. We should be able to mop up those who have been separated from their masters.’
‘And I’m sorry I snapped at you,’ Arthur added, for he genuinely liked his deputy. ‘Take Rufus and two archers with your group, preferably ones who have mobility. Now! You must hurry! The Hundings are ready to start running and, like all cornered hounds, they’ll be very fast and savage.’
As Snorri began to leave Arthur called out to him, ‘If you can, I’d like you to capture at least one man who can be questioned. One of their senior leaders if possible. But if we can’t have a leader, I’ll take whoever I can get my hands on.’
Unleashed, Snorri ran to the gathered warriors and rapidly separated a group of twenty-five men from the main body of the warriors, leaving behind the twenty swimmers and all but the two bowmen he had been instructed to take.
Like mist, the selected warriors disappeared into the reeds to position themselves close to the outer boundaries of the village. One of the forward scouts wormed his way to the reed beds and crawled across the marshy ground to reach the force that had originally been sent to guard the village. These warriors were briefed on the coming action and instructed to hunker down into the mud to await the attack commands.
‘Lars!’ Arthur called to a tall young blond warrior with a striking red beard.
‘How may I serve you, Master Arthur?’
‘As of now, you’re in command of the swimmers you selected. You can send the Troll King and his archers to me while you’re arranging your warriors. I’ll be joining you in the water, but you’ll be in command of the attack in case I have some other task to deal with. Don’t fuck around, Lars, because the Hundings are on the verge of making a run for it.’
Lars looked towards the village which was still mostly invisible from their ambush position, but several breathless scouts were hastening to strip off their body armour while staying as warmly dressed as possible. Several hundred yards away, lights could be seen bobbing through the reeds as overloaded dugouts and coracles were being alternately dragged or paddled through the choked waterways. As if he had planned their escape for them, Arthur had positioned his men at those points where the water was mostly clear of reeds and the stream had begun to widen.
‘Thorketil! Arrange your archers so that you can pepper the Hundings as they pass into the main part of the channel,’ Arthur ordered brusquely, and then turned back to face Lars.
‘Are all your swimmers here? Come forward, men, because I haven’t the time to give you your orders individually. Move!’
The group parted so that Thorketil could marshal his bowmen as close to the banks of the streams as he dared. Braced, and with bows drawn, they waited. Only twenty of his detachment, as well as Arthur, had admitted to being competent swimmers, so Arthur hastily explained what he required of them.
‘We must use any means at our disposal to stop them from escaping. If I know these Hundings, they won’t have expected us to ambush them. They have some dugout canoes and these boats are surprisingly stable if they are anything like the vessels our peasants use in Britain. If a few of you can get your hands on one of the sides, the boats can be
capsized by rocking one side of the vessel until it begins to ship water and it will sink. I doubt that many of the enemy warriors can swim, so they’ll be quite vulnerable once they’re in the water. But they’ll have an advantage over us while they are in the boats because they can skewer us with relative ease.’
‘Lovely!’ Lars muttered with a jocular grin. He had completed his tasks quickly and efficiently, so Arthur had no objection to his joining the swimmers. The swimming detail would be the most dangerous task in this skirmish and those young men who couldn’t swim were sullen because they would be forced to deal with any exhausted Hundings warrior who reached solid ground.
‘The coracles will be easy to sink with your knives. Once the hides are breached, the coracles will start shipping water immediately. For our part, the water will freeze our balls off when we get in, but you’ll begin to warm up when you start to swim. Keep moving! We must be waiting for them in the middle of the stream.’
The water was so cold that it momentarily robbed Arthur of breath. But he ducked his head under the surface and began to swim slowly towards the middle of the channel while taking pains to minimise the splashing of his arms. As he moved, he prayed that he would be spared numbness in his digits, a side-effect of the intense cold that could kill living tissue. With grim determination, he kept his arms and legs moving vigorously while treading water under the surface.
Once the men were in position, they trod water while keeping their bodies as upright as they could with only their heads above the waterline. In the darkness, they were almost invisible. The faint hubhub of raised and excited voices began to travel to the swimmers over the soughing and clattering of the reeds.
Silent in the water, surrounded by the heads of other swimmers and with the Dragon Knife slung securely around his neck, Arthur listened to the high-pitched laughter and hissed orders coming through the curtain of reeds. Oaths and the sounds of slapping hands removing shattered vegetation from their clothing easily permitted the Briton to plot the movement of the first Hunding craft.
A crude torch barely lit the passage of the escaping Hundings. The faint orange light picked out vaguely defined cheekbones and the curve of shoulders moving oars and poles through the dark water, but their eye sockets and lower faces were invisible in the dim light.
On cue, Arthur and his compatriots sank their heads below the surface. Then, half-a-dozen coracles and two dugout canoes pushed their way through the reeds and entered the open stream. Behind them, even though he was under water, Arthur could hear more small vessels as they struggled to make their way through the reeds. The water was thick with sediment that made visibility difficult while, nearer to the bank, the surface had a visible film of ice forming from the bitter cold. Fortunately only a light breeze brought the freezing chill of winter’s breath onto Arthur’s blueing skin.
Then, as the first coracle passed abeam of him, so close that he could touch it, Arthur kicked upwards with his legs and his body surged up like an attacking shark in pursuit of a school of fish.
The two men in the coracle scarcely had time to scream before Arthur’s hand holding the Dragon Knife leaned on the edge of the vessel, while his free hand grabbed the closest man by a handful of cloak and pulled him over the side. Obviously a non-swimmer, the man immediately began to sink, effectively cutting off his scream of terror.
A quick three-foot slice with the Dragon Knife parted the leather sheath that covered the boat’s spars, leaving it to fill up and slip into the turgid waters.
Arthur grabbed at the head of the sinking warrior as the man was going under for what was obviously the last time and used his left hand to firmly grip the man’s greasy hair and yank him upwards towards the air.
Then the half-drowned man suddenly came to life again, his eyes wide open and glazed with terror as his armour began to drag him down once more.
Mad with terror, the warrior spluttered, coughed and attempted to climb over Arthur’s body in a bid to stay above the waterline. Arthur immediately clouted the man forcefully above the temple with the knife’s hilt then, swimming vigorously, he dragged his unconscious victim to the bank and the waiting mercies of Germanus and Gareth.
Meanwhile, the other warrior had somehow made it to shore where Lorcan despatched him efficiently.
And so, as more and more vessels were sunk, Gareth and several of the Dene warriors along the shoreline were kept busy dragging half-drowned Hundings from the water’s edge. All of the escapees refused to surrender.
Arthur and the other swimmers were still occupied with the first vessels when the second group of motley boats burst out from the reed beds. Thorketil quickly summed up the situation and realised that these dugouts and coracles were likely to escape or would cut down the men in the water without his direct intervention. With a few terse words, he ordered his archers to fire directly at the Hundings’ leadership before they reached the melee taking place in the main channel.
The archers aimed directly at the men holding the torches so, for the most part, the lights were quickly extinguished. The darkness assisted Arthur and the other swimmers, who then had more chances to slice the skins of the coracles or overturn the dugouts. The water soon became a seething mass of struggling men in heavy armour, many of whom were fighting against panic and the debilitating cold while attempting to right their dugouts and make their escape. Unfortunately, any men who did reach the bank were then confronted by armed and dangerous Dene warriors who gave them no mercy.
On Arthur’s instructions, some of the Hundings were given a chance to surrender but, despite being half-drowned and freezing cold, they were determined to fight to the bitter end.
To a man, they elected to die.
Even from low in the water, Arthur could hear the sound of a fierce fight taking place inside the reed beds where Snorri was engaged in a vicious battle for survival with that half of the Hundings force who had expected to be travelling to the safety of the ceols in the second wave of escapees. Instead, the entire group was confronted by cold and determined Dene warriors set on their extermination.
Snorri attempted to obey his master’s orders, so he gave the Saxon Hounds an opportunity to surrender, much as Arthur’s force had done. However, the Hundings sneered at Snorri’s offer, for they deemed surrender to be a sign of cowardice. Snorri was forced to order his men to fight to the death and take no prisoners, an instruction that the Dene warriors enjoyed obeying, although a number of their own warriors were killed in the process.
By the time Snorri returned with thirty-five surviving Dene carrying the bodies of their slain companions, the entire garrison of Hundings had been exterminated. The only exception was Arthur’s original opponent who had been rendered unconscious by the hilt of the Dragon Knife at the start of the ambush. The warrior had lain in the mud until he was found and trussed up like a plucked turkey to prevent him from killing himself. When the bound man regained consciousness, he tried to roll into the stream and drown, but Father Lorcan elected to sit on him to ensure his safety. Meanwhile, Arthur and his fellow swimmers were changing into dry clothing while the rest of the Dene warriors were recovering whatever bodies were relinquished by the stream.
When Arthur rejoined the Dene warriors and his British friends, his mood was ebullient.
‘Perhaps we’ll discover now what, or who, is the traitor in Heorot who’s been betraying us behind the scenes. I would be missing a valuable opportunity if I didn’t check with at least one of the Hundings to find out the identity of the man who has been suborned. Unfortunately, sir, you are the only survivor, and your continued survival will depend on your attitude to the questions I will be asking. I’ve a mind to discover everything you know by whatever means I feel are necessary.’
Around Arthur, Snorri and the three British companions, the Dene warriors were completing the many tasks that followed a victory over their enemies. The bodies of the Hundings were st
ripped of everything of value and their naked corpses were cast into a large hole in the earth. On a small rise to one side of the bank, the dead Dene warriors were laid out, along with their weapons, and their corpses made ready for the cleansing by fire if the weather permitted. At the same time, the Hundings would probably be covered with a thin coating of earth and sufficient stones to discourage scavengers.
Success in battle always determined how the dead warriors made their respective entrances to the shades.
Arthur shivered within his cloak and laughed as he recounted to Lorcan how he had laid his wet tunic and trews over two low bushes as he dried his frozen body and changed into clean clothing.
‘My trews will be frozen as stiff as boards of wood by now and the cloth will splinter like pottery or glass if I should hit it too hard.’
‘I’m sure you’ll manage, Arthur. Now, what do you want to do with our fat friend here?’
Snorri kicked out at the heavy thighs of the trussed Hunding.
The man was richly dressed in clothing that indicated his status, although he was wet, half-frozen and miserable. He should have looked pitiful, but his hard eyes belied that impression. Father Lorcan soon stripped him of his ornate trappings. The priest was particularly enamoured of a quantity of golden necklaces, cloak pins of gold and ivory, rings on every finger and a gold-edged mailed shirt, all immediately confiscated. The ever-present sigil of the leaping hound on his cloak pin told of the man’s senior rank without any need for further explanation.
Afterwards Lorcan had placed his shivering form in an upright position in a simple long shirt; Arthur discovered the Hunding had hidden a little paunch under his previous finery. Distaste for the task ahead filled the Briton’s mouth with salt and bile.
‘I require very little of you, my friend. Once I have the information I require, you will be given warm clothes, food and drink. I, the Last Dragon, give my word that you will be sold back to your people without any harm to your person.’