Forged in Blood

by Ken Hagan

  My battle-axe swings in rapid motion, its force diverted, though not diminished, by the splintered spear. I feel the weight of the iron in my hands. It has a power of its own. It circles my body, as I swivel, unsighted, moving always to leftward.

  ‘Thor’s sake, Kregin, keep the axe moving.’ Cormac’s voice in my ears.

  I am blinded by sweat, by soot off the beacon-fire, by midges; by haw-petals. I swing at a man’s moving shadow in front of me — my axe pike-ended, now at waist-height — to where the second Erse-man will attack.

  The axe-head whistles in the air, not finding a target — the axe-handle almost slips my grip. The Erse-man has taken to his heels; he has fled from my madness, fled from Drafdrit, fled from the spinning axe. For a split moment Drafdrit is stupefied, rooted to the ground — as am I.

  I let the axe rest on the ground at my feet, the long shaft against my right thigh.

  The slave-master glares at the fleeing man, and then at me. Some dark cowardly thought holds him back. Some evil greed beckons him.

  ‘Come, Kregin, now!’ Beyveen screams from the leet. ‘Leave him be!’

  Her scream brings me to my senses. The wounded Erse-man is still out cold. He lies bleeding to death: his death will be at my hands, though my axe didn’t draw an ounce of blood.

  Tioc’s daughter calls again.

  ‘I am coming now,’ I reply. ‘He is not worth it!’

  Belt tightened to secure the axe to my waist at the back — no thought now of Drafdrit, only of Beyveen — I plunge into the leet and swim to her, head above water. I put my feet down beside hers.

  At the bottom my toes sink into squelch. But something is wrong. Tioc’s daughter is tall for a woman — almost as tall as me — and yet, though we stand side by side in the leet, the ditch-water is only up my chest, whereas already it has reached her chin.

  While at mid-stream, standing still, waiting for me, she has been sucked into the sludge.

  ‘I’m sinking. I am stuck,’ she yells, gulping as the flow touches her lips.

  Her head slips below the surface.

  I duck under into the sunlit murk. With one arm I clasp her knees; my shoulder supports her waist. Digging underwater with my free hand I scoop one foot, then the other, out of the mud. I wrench her upwards. Our heads surge with a shower of mud above water.

  Coughing up water and mud, we wade forward in short steps, testing on tip-toe for a firmer footing in the leet. Clutching fingers claw at my feet. Long slender fibres — not the underwater sprites that I used to fear as a child, but merely the winding roots of a hawthorn tree, washed free by the water — stretch through the mud.

  ‘Keep on the move! Do you feel the roots? Hold me! Don’t stop!’

  A choked reply from Beyveen, but I know she has understood.

  *

  We clamber out of the ditch over a slurry of leaves and mud.

  A steady stream of floodwater is brimming over the bank on this side of the leet. The stubble is dry as dust where the water is draining off; the overflow here has just begun and the flood-spill runs in trickling streamlets down through the hayfield to reed-ford. Across the leet from us — on the upper bank under the hawthorns — Drafdrit has knelt over the dying Erse-man, with hunting-knife in hand. The slave-master is tugging at something on the man’s body.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ asks Beyveen.

  ‘The Erse-man was wearing his wealth — gold or maybe brass — thick arm-bands on both wrists. Drafdrit won’t let them go to waste. He is hacking them off the man’s body.

  *

  Drafdrit leaps into the leet. The brass arm-bands, now on his wrists, flash gaudily in the sunshine. Three steps in — and the slave-master is up to his chest. Once he has made it across the flooded ditch, he will be after us through the hayfield. The pursuit won’t end until he and I come face to face.

  ‘I will wait for him.’

  ‘No,’ yells Beyveen. ‘We can’t linger! Look down there!’

  I follow her hand down into the river valley. The gravel shores, normally deep under water, are swarming with men. Flooding the meadows by opening the sluice upstream has slowed the flow of the river in the lower reaches. The river runs shallower than before. At the river-bend below Inis-tioc, even the reed-beds of an-Uir are free of water — something I have not seen before, even at ebb-tide.

  Scores of lightly armed men — could be close to a hundred — have cut across the river-bend to attack reed-ford from the gravel bed, not from the bank, where Gil-Phatric’s warriors are waiting, but off the river from the south. They are a spear’s throw away from the Rath. These are the men who had separated from Glun at the outset, back at Cluddy, and disappeared without trace into the thicket of river-willows. They have been able to advance quickly along the river-bank on dried-up shores, and through unexpected shallows, while the main force under Glun has been struggling to cross the flooded meadows.

  Gil-Phatric’s clansmen are assembled on this side of river to defend the ford. They are on the blind side of the river-bend. Unless they are warned of an attack from downstream, they will be taken unawares from behind.

  ‘No time to lose,’ cries Beyveen. ‘We have get down there and warn Gil-Phatric. He can’t have seen those men on the gravel-beds.’

  ‘You go and warn him! I can’t go with you! I must wait here for Drafdrit.’

  I turn abruptly from her and pull my axe from the belt. I spread my feet and wait, dripping wet in warrior stance — no thought of my promise to Beyveen’s father and the peaceful people of the Rath, no thought for the safety of my crew. One resolve, shutting off all others, has entered my head: to wait for Drafdrit as he climbs the watery ditch, to hack him down before he can get to his feet and, as he clambers up the leet on all fours over mud and brimming flood, to show the bastard no mercy.

  ‘Go now! I will follow you down as soon as I have finished here.’

  Beyveen doesn’t move; doesn’t answer.

  ‘Fecking water!’ Splashing and cries from the ditch: gargled cries for help from Drafdrit!

  On the spot where Beyveen had foundered, the slave-master has sunk to his grey jowls in the leet. Neck straining to hold nose and mouth above water; arms flailing furiously, he gasps for air through his clenched teeth. His feet are stuck on the bottom. Squelch carried by the flood has him in its grip; leet waters pulling him down.

  We watch Drafdrit’s head go under. His hands clutch above water, catching at straws, but nothing on the surface to save him. On his skinny wrists, the brass arm-bands that he hacked off the dying Erse-man glint in the sun. Drafdrit’s fingers claw in vain. Outstretched fingertips, leafy mud-bubbles above his sinking head, are the last I see of him. He is swallowed under by the flood.

  Chapter 48

  Passing through a screen of drooping willow fronds, Beyveen and I hasten down the bank and wade into the shallows at reed-ford. We disturb a heron among the reeds. The bird flies off through the willow heads. Our running churns up the river-waters. Spray leaps into our faces; it splashes over our heads. We take a wide turn across the ford, crossing upstream to where the horse-paddocks stand at the north tip of the isle. We move from shadow under the willows into the rippling glare of sunlight on the river. Our eyes are dazzled by sunlit spray kicked up under our feet. In full sun, with the men of Osri splashing hard on our heels, we barely see where we are going.

  At mid-ford, Gil-Phatric and his clansmen, naked but for battle-skirts tied loosely at midriff, overtake us in their retreat. Some of his warriors have chosen to take to an-Uir at the main crossing lower downstream. They leap over the stepping-stones exposed yesterday by the low-flowing river. We were able to warn Gil-Phatric that an attack was coming from the gravel beds. No sooner had we told him, than Ostmen’s voices among the reeds came within hearing. The young chieftain acted quickly. He ordered his men to withdraw across the ford. Once back on the isle they will re-group and face the assault.

  Tioc awaits them on the shore. Clad in battle-skirts, with sword drawn a
nd buckler held to his chin, the old chieftain looks at ease, as if he turns out for battle every day of the year. Around him are the proud menfolk of the Rath, armed with wood-axes; the ironsmith has a sword; the gillies are there with hunting-spears, old men with hayforks; boys with cudgels, all grim-faced and anxious, ready for the invaders. The cattle herders are not among their kin — the young men have failed to return to the Rath.

  My crewmen are upstream in the shade of the ancient oak, too far away from me to see their faces.

  Our spare ropes from the Meuris are tied to the girth of the oak, two full lengths pulled taut, which hold Shaynat’s pontoon of fish-traps in position across the river. There is a great bustle among the women. They have gathered with Shaynat and Leasha beside the cauldron of boiling tar. Some have undressed to their shifts. Others have what look like unwieldy sheep-shears and seem to be shortening their smocks and skirts.

  No children to be seen. The youngsters who had such great fun this morning ‘water walking’ on the river, and the infants who watched them at play, have been sent away somewhere to hide. I will miss the children, miss their giddy laughter. I fear for them, if the day should go badly for us.

  My regret for the children’s absence, and a concern for their safety, soon passes as I close in on the shore, and sight the crewmen of the Meuris. I am taken aback by the sorry state of my men. They look forlorn and abandoned. It is as if, while I had been at Cluddy, they have been sitting in a huddle under the oak, anxiously awaiting my return — rooted to the same spot where I had spoken to them earlier.

  Hrut sees me first. He pushes joyfully through the crowding women of the Rath and runs into the water to greet me. As with Hrut, change in the other crewmen’s faces is instant. They raise their voices, raise fists; raise sword-hands; raise axe-arms at the sight of their skipper. Kru, made aware by Baldr of my arrival, opens his toothless gums, and gives a bright, wordless greeting in mute accord with his crewmates. They hurry to the shore.

  *

  The attackers, bristling with spears and staves, break cover from the river willows. They spread out on the gravel-beds. The noise of the Ostmen’s onslaught is deafening. Their spearmen and stave-men are still a river’s breadth away on the far shore, but their shouting carries over the waters. With their clamour in my head and ears, I come to a halt at mid-ford, believing us to be in danger. Deceived by the noise, and blinded by dazzling spray kicked up by our feet, I brace myself to shield Beyveen with body and axe. I find, not her, but young Hrut at my side. Tioc’s daughter has forsaken me. She has broken off to my right, running upstream to join her mother and sister with the other women on the bank.

  The ironsmith’s cauldron of boiling tar, tended by the women, belches smoke, sparking fiery yellow into the air. Shaynat, with hands on hips, red-faced from the cauldron fire, has a look of impatience as though she too, like her husband, appears reconciled to conflict and is restless for battle. The red-tailed hunting-hawk perches atop her shoulder.

  I push young Thrandtson from me and yell at him. ‘Thor’s sake, man. Not here! Go back!’

  Gil-Phatric, freed of monk’s robes, stripped to a loose battle-skirt like his men, has halted at my side at mid-ford. On the river-bank sixty paces back, his warriors have lined up, three men deep, in readiness to charge against the foe.

  Hrut, on my word, has fled back to the bank to join the others.

  Dunchad’s son, sword in hand, holy cross at his neck, is the only man beside me in the water.

  We turn and face the assault across the river. He yells over the noise of the attack.

  ‘Our clansmen — they wait for a sign — one line at a time — they won’t come till a sign is given.’

  I take no notice. I barely give thought to what he means by ‘one line at a time’. My eyes are fixed on a face that I have recognised among the Ostmen invaders.

  The monk grabs my shoulder; demands my attention. ‘From here, Thralson, see! The cross of Saint Bhraan! The saint’s presence will protect the Rath. From this hallowed water our Lord will turn back the evil. I swear on the Saint’s name that those devils will run in terror from the face of God!’

  His words are swallowed up by devilish war-cries; by the clash of angry feet in the water.

  *

  Finn-buna — it was his face I recognised from across the ford — Finn leads the Ostmen’s attack on the isle. Einar’s midshipman from the Hrafentyr rushes, spear-handed, at the head of his rabble. Behind him, his men run tight and close; their knees pound, their legs kick, their feet divide the water.

  Gil-Phatric mumbles a last prayer towards the cross of Saint Bhraan, sword aloft to beckon and bless; then, a sign-of-the-cross to his clansmen, and he runs to take battle stance on the stepping-stones.

  I can’t turn around to look, but at my back I hear a thud of feet on the water from the men of Osri, from the crew of the Meuris, from men and boys of the Rath, and now their battle-cries as they rush into the ford.

  Against us — from the far shore — surges a tide of men. As if governed — like the sea — by a will of its own, the tide of men rolls from the far bank and breaks into two waves.

  One wave of the foe heads downstream towards Gil-Phatric. A line of his clansmen — one third of their number, less than a score of warriors — now waits with their leader on the stepping-stones at mid-ford. Two lines of clansmen have not advanced from the isle; they are held in reserve — ‘one line at a time’ — they await their summons on the shore.’

  The other wave of the Ostmen’s attack, with Finn at its head, rushes upstream. This stretch of water where we stand is not the best place on the river to defend — but now there is no going forward or back. Too late for that. Crewmen of the Meuris are with me: Tioc and his gillies, the ironsmith, men and greybeards, boys of the Rath — for better or worse, we must put up our defence, knee-deep in the river-waters, here at mid-ford.

  *

  At breakneck speed — a furious assault — Finn’s rabble runs to crush our defence of the ford. Two waves of fighting men — one wave upstream against us — the other against Gil-Phatric on the stepping- stones.

  *

  Amidst battle-mad faces and howling mouths of the enemy I catch sight of another man I know. He is leading the wave of Ostmen that bears down upon Gil-Phatric. Downstream, under spraying water kicked up by men’s feet, within a solid body of forward-pointing hands, arms, spear-heads and staves, is Ragni Gislison, my former crewmate from the Hrafentyr.

  As fellow oarsman, Ragni sat at my elbow on the rowing benches of Einar’s ship. He and I are of the same height and reach. We were paired together on the thwarts. He was a talkative oarsman. I was the silent one, but his cheerful, jesting manner, while we sculled, never failed to make me laugh. Ragni hasn’t spotted me. His eyes are glazed and staring. He splashes through shallows downstream like a runaway horse maddened by water clashing under his hooves.

  *

  A hawk is in the air. The bird hovers above our heads, drops lower in the sky, circles, squawks into the face of the foe; flies across the ford — red-tailed and small for a hawk: it is Shaynat’s tiercel on the hunt.

  *

  At breakneck speed — a furious assault — Finn’s rabble runs to crush our defence of the ford. Two waves of fighting men — one wave against Gil-Phatric on the stones — the other upstream against us.

  Men from the Meuris, and from the Rath: aging Tioc, his ironsmith, men with wood-axes, gillies with their hunting-spears, ageing men and willing boys, bearing hayforks and cudgels — they all join me at mid-river. We stand to the left of the ford, upstream, looking out eastward from the isle.

  For the assault against us, Finn has made do with fewer men than he has sent downstream. He has played it shrewd. Having cast his eyes over our ragged bunch, and seen how many among us are old or young or lacking in stature, he must have decided that our defences would fall after little resistance. He has seen no need to outnumber us, paltry as we are, and has sent the greater part of his rabble
downstream under Ragni. There he expects, by sheer weight of men, to overwhelm Gil-Phatric and the able-bodied warriors of Osri.

  Having fewer pitched against us gives our men here a fighting chance — or it would, if it were not for one thing: we are at a standstill in the water. The assailants come at us hell-for leather, charging at full-pelt. The swiftness of the Ostmen’s run will weigh against us. Finn knows he has the advantage of a surge; he will exploit it. We see him kicking out. He breaks into a sprint, out-pacing his men, broad shoulders butting forward to hasten his path through the water. He runs, spear in hand; head down, sure-footed over the shallows. His sword is scabbarded. As he runs, he steadies the sword’s rattling hilt at his hip. From his face, no hint of recognition; no looking up; no eyes on his quarry. Finn’s spear jolts menacingly in hand.

  And, menacing with a host of spear-heads, too many to count, the Ostmen follow at his back.

  *

  As he approaches mid-ford, Finn at last has me in his sights — head up, his gaze glued on mine, eyes black, unblinking. No doubting his target — Finn has known all along the target of his assault.

  Finn eyes me across the water.

  *

  At breakneck speed — a furious assault — Finn’s rabble runs to crush our defence of the ford. Two waves of fighting men — one wave against Gil-Phatric on the stones — the other upstream against us.

  *

  Upstream, where the river narrows into a deep bend past the isle, the first women of the Rath have taken to the pontoon. Shaynat is at their head, Beyveen bravely at her mother’s shoulder, and Derdriu third in line. They carry their besom torches aloft — the mop-heads of smoking black tar set alight. They move in single file. The line of those waiting to cross stretches back as far as the oak.