A Song Of Steel (The Light of the North saga Book 1)

by James Duncan

  All this he took in in a few moments as he tried to decide what to do. A knight rode up the hill to him, muddy and bloodied, filth flying from his horse’s hooves. The man reined in and greeted him with a broad smile. ‘Missed the attack?’ Hans frowned in return, and the man ignored him and continued. ‘It’s down to the levies now. We tried charging that group in the centre, but they formed a tight wall and we couldn’t press home. Damn spears!’ The man laughed. ‘Never mind. We played our part. Should have seen it – we crushed them! Crushed them!’ The excitement dripped off him, and his eyes were wide.

  Hans bridled at the man’s enthusiasm. He was one of the leading knights of the crusade, and he had missed the battle? No, that would not do. It was not over. He eyed the remaining fight with a fierce stare. He made up his mind.

  He looked behind him and raised his spear, angling it out to his left. ‘Form line!’ he shouted. ‘Close formation!’ The knight in front of him looked on in confusion. ‘What are you doing? You can’t mean to… Our battle is over, man. Leave the levies to finish it off.’

  Hans untied his helmet from his saddle and jammed it onto his head, not even bothering to tie it on. He turned the steel faceplate to the knight and stared at him through the slits. ‘Sir, I would get out of the way.’

  The man looked around at the lines of fresh knights that were forming to the left and right of the man with the steel face and backed his horse up. ‘You’re mad.’ But then he turned and galloped off to the side.

  Hans turned to his left and shouted down the line. ‘Close up! Knee to knee! We go in as one line. Don’t let your horse turn and don’t stop. We go through them. Our men are dying down there, and I won’t stand here and watch it!’

  The men shuffled their horses together and formed a straight line, wrestling their excitable horses into place. The horses could smell the blood, hear the battle. Ears were pinned back and nostrils flared. But they had practised this, the close formation, the line breaker. Few of them had ever done it in battle, but Hans sensed the moment, felt the weight of it on him. He was sure this was the right time. His time.

  ‘Forward!’ he roared. Not into a gallop, just a walk. When the line was moving together, he shouted again, and they sped up into a trot, men jostling to keep their horses in place, in line, together. They sped up again and moved down the hill at a canter, eating the distance between them and the enemy. The enemy had seen the threat now. Men were repositioning from the front line to the rear, urged on by dozens of commanders. The shield wall shuffled into place, spears out and level, axes waiting behind the line.

  Hans was sweating profusely under his helmet. The line looked solid, unbreakable, the snarling faces and bloodied steel of the men in it getting bigger by the moment. There was still time to break off the attack. Still time to turn around or to the side. No one would blame him.

  He took a deep breath and held it for a moment, judging the right time to call for the gallop, the charge that would take them over the last fifty paces, letting them arrive in a single armoured wave, at a full gallop, irresistible and deadly. The horse on his right missed a step and lurched into him, crushing his leg between the two beasts. He cursed and lost his breath with the scale of the pain.

  But the distance was still closing, the wall looming large. There was no time. He drew in a quick breath and shouted again, dropping his spear into the crouch. All along the small line, a hundred spears dropped down in near unison, and two hundred spurs dug into the flanks of terrified horses. A single arrow could have toppled half their line, they were so closely packed, but the Norse had none left to spend. So tightly constrained, the superbly trained horses couldn’t turn aside, couldn’t slow down. Hans felt his horse’s steps through the seat of his saddle, felt the smooth wood of the shaft of his spear tightly gripped in his hand, smelled the blood in the air that rushed under the rim of his faceplate. He leaned forward in the saddle, watching the onrushing enemy line through the slits in his helmet, judging his moment. His horse pinned its ears back, turned its head, desperate to stop, but Hans urged it on with his knees, forcing the terrified beast to continue. On towards the line of battered men that waited for them with narrow eyes and broad blades.

  The horses did what horses won’t do: they ran into the shield wall at a gallop. The spears, swords and horses hit the shield wall with a thunder that was heard around the field and simply crushed it. Hans nearly lost his seat, his spear ripped from his hand as it hammered through a shield and the owner behind it, and he clung desperately to his horse’s neck, trying to get upright to draw his sword. Some horses went down. Knights were thrown and broke bones and necks. Some were catapulted into the Norse ranks ahead and died under a flurry of axe blows. But most held their seats or regained their feet once thrown, slashing at the shocked Norse warriors around them. Hans blocked an axe swing with his shield and countered with an overhand swing of his sword that cut the axeman’s hand from his arm. Then he spurred forward again, his horse sluggish and swaying under him, and he stabbed down at a man who was trying to stab his leg with a broad knife, the blade bouncing ineffectually off the maille chausses he wore. He sank the tip of his sword down into the frenzied man’s shoulder, who fell with a weak cry.

  Hans’ horse was staggering drunkenly now, and Hans cried out in alarm and tried to steady it, but then the horse’s front legs buckled, and Hans was pitched over its neck, rolling and sprawling, jumping to get back to his feet. He looked back at his horse in confusion only to see a spear shaft snapped off in its chest. Blood was frothing in the brave beast’s nose as its lungs filled. Hans felt a pang of pride and pity as his horse finally collapsed onto its side. He tore his eyes away and looked around him for danger, but there was none.

  His horse had carried him just long enough. As he looked around, the circle collapsed into a rout. The victorious Christian infantry surged through the gaps and swarmed over the last defenders. No quarter given. The victory was absolute. Hans staggered over and gave his dying horse’s long nose a gentle caress, whispering into its ear as it gently whinnied and its struggles died down.

  For Ordulf, it was a long day standing in the field. Much as he had hated being in a battle, waiting for one had almost been worse. The baggage train was mobilised to move to the battlefield to help with the wounded, clear the dead and prepare camp for the army. They set off down the road. As the battlefield came into view, Ordulf was shocked at the scale of the carnage. He had imagined neat lines of men lying on the grass. What he saw was chaos and horror. Hundreds and hundreds of bodies were strewn about the field with dozens of dead horses. Some were alone, some in clumps, some in piles two to three deep along the centre. The whole field on both sides of the road was churned to mud. A narrow ditch filled with spikes marked the main line of defence and was where the bodies started lying thickly. The carnage was thickest above and beyond the ditch, and then, beyond that, it thinned out again. Blood was actually running down the hill and collecting in the ditch in such quantity that it was overspilling the lower end and flowing down the hill in a small stream. All this Ordulf could see from the rise. What he couldn’t yet do was smell the stink of death or hear the pleas of the injured or the moans of the dying. Not yet.

  It was a vision of hell. He crossed himself instinctively.

  Men were moving through the carnage, killing wounded horses and Norsemen alike, finding injured Christians and helping them back down the hill, stripping the dead of gear and wealth. Ordulf had been told the Norse wore their wealth into battle as a sign of their confidence and prowess and a mark of their standing. Much good it had done them. The Christians were removing arm rings and other decorative items, dragging off choice pieces of armour and rifling through clothes for coins with no one appearing to stop them.

  ‘Nothing worse than the field after a battle, lad,’ said his veteran comrade Henry sombrely, walking alongside the wagon next to him. They stopped the wagon at the base of the rise, below where the fighting had taken place. Clumps of injured men sat
around or lay on the ground. The men of the baggage train spread out to help, handing out water or cloth for bandaging wounds or helping carry men back. The old veterans with the baggage train came into their own, a lifetime of binding wounds and cutting arrows from violated flesh.

  Ordulf followed Henry around, helping him as the day wore into evening and the shadows lengthened and finally disappeared. They helped wounded men, Ordulf in a sickened daze doing as the veteran directed him before finally making a fire by their wagon and collapsing down beside it with a group of soldiers who had stripped their armour and were sitting with their backs against the wagon wheels, eating cold meat and talking in low voices.

  ‘So, lads. Tell me what happened,’ Henry said, once they were all settled around the fire, a scene being repeated hundreds of times across the valley, relieved survivors eating what food they could get and swapping tales of their battle.

  One of the men, an archer who had seen the whole battle unfold from behind the Saxon lines, spoke up. He told them of the struggle for the ditch and the rise beyond. Of the crushing cavalry charge on the wings. ‘You should have seen it, boys. It was fucking spectacular,’ the archer said, gesturing with a stub of bread, eyes staring off into the distance as he remembered the view of the charge. ‘Our lot had been slogging up that hill for so long I ran out of arrows. Me and the lads were just being sent up to join the fight with our knives and axes, the situation was that desperate. Then we heard the horns and saw the horsemen charging down that hill. I’ll never whinge about those pampered knights again, I swear it,’ the archer solemnly intoned, jabbing his finger for emphasis. ‘They crushed the fight right out of the Northmen we were about to face. Saved a lot of our lives they did, and they lost of a few of their own to do it too.’ He nodded grimly at the memory and shook his head in wonder. ‘Never saw nothing like it. ‘Honestly, lads, long as I live, I’ll never forget seeing that.’

  Ordulf and the other men with him listened in wonder and fascination as darkness fell and men wandered off or slept where they sat, dead tired. Ordulf thought of the true dead men cooling out on the field or still dying in the hospital lines. He could hear their soft moans and cries. Even now in the darkness, men were still dying out on that bloody ditch line, curled up undiscovered among the bodies, too weak to call out or crawl back, losing their last grip on life.

  He shivered despite the fading fire and succumbed to a fitful sleep. He dreamed of the man who had died on the run to the engine at Danevirke, eyes open, mouth gaping, the shadow of death chasing him off that fearful field of shattered bodies and into his very dreams. He woke shivering and with tears flowing down his cheek, which he angrily cuffed away.

  In the morning, the army wearily dragged itself into activity. There were graves to dig, equipment to repair and clean, and water canteens to fill and carry. The army had lost nearly a thousand men. Thirteen of Sir Hans’ hundred mounted knights and men-at-arms were dead, thirty-six of Adolf’s levy foot soldiers. Double that would never fight again, cursed to live as cripples if they survived the coming nights. Ordulf knew this because Orbert had read them the casualty list.

  Ordulf was delighted to come across Leuter, the ox of a farmhand who had beaten him on the patch, helping carry recovered weapons and equipment down from the hill. Ordulf tried not to think about their previous owners.

  ‘Leuter! You great oaf!’ He strode over and slapped the big man on the back as he dumped a pile of chain maille onto a wagon.

  ‘Ordulf, I’ll be damned. What’s a smith doing here? You didn’t join the levy, I’d ha’ seen you.’ He looked at Ordulf quizzically.

  ‘No, I got asked to come here as a smith, to fix stuff, you know, things like that…’ Ordulf trailed off, aware how trivial it sounded to a man who had just fought in a great battle.

  ‘Oh, yeah, makes sense. Lotsa stuff to fix, eh?’ Leuter said, glancing at the wagons of gear they were collecting.

  Ordulf winced. He hadn’t thought of that. The quantity of damaged weapons this battle would have produced was beyond reckoning. He looked into his future and saw a lifetime of sword repairs that needed to be done. He shook the thought aside and clapped his friend on the back as the man returned to work with a cheery wave. He watched them trudge back up the hill past the bodies, which they ignored as they swept the field for things more valuable than the dead.

  It seemed everything was more valuable than the dead. Forty-nine men of Lower Saxony had died for their lord’s ambition. The thought churned inside him, competing with his admiration for the count. He had expected to find honour and glory on this campaign. That was always what he had heard described back home in Minden, old soldiers sitting in the alehouse telling tales of magnificent victories and daring deeds of arms. He had seen only terror and death. Churned, body-strewn mud and a river of blood.

  Chapter 11

  A Gathering of Crowns

  Aarhus, kingdom of Denmark

  Mid-May 1116

  Sedemonr carried Jarl Ragnvald into Aarhus on a fresh southerly breeze and into a world of chaos. As soon as they landed, they were aghast to find that the bulk of the Danish army, and most of the lords of Jutland, had been utterly defeated three days before, twenty miles to the south. Few men had survived the battle to report back to the city of the carnage, of the terror, of the Christian knights.

  King Magnus ‘Barefoot’ Olafsson of Norway was in Aarhus too. He and his small army had landed in the north of Jutland a few days before at Aalborg and marched south. The king of Denmark had survived the battle by the simple mechanism of not being present and staying in the city. He was old and half-mad, and his sons, who had died on the field, had been ruling for him for a decade.

  It was chaos. The few Danish scouts still alive and doing their jobs reported that the Christian army was just a day away from the city, inciting further panic into an already disintegrating population. Into this maelstrom arrived the Swedish fleet. A hundred ships, five thousand men, all that could be brought at such short notice, and yet it seemed they were too late. All three kings of the Norse nations were gathered in one place for the first time in a generation, but none had control of the situation.

  King Eric called his leading jarls together, to his credit laying their dispute aside and including Ragnvald, and went to meet the Norwegians and those of the Danish lords who had survived. The party hurried to the hall of the king in Aarhus and found King Magnus was there with many of his lords and the remaining Danes of note. The Danish king was not present, and no one cared to ask or explain why.

  ‘King Eric, I am pleased to see you here, come to join us as brothers.’ Magnus embraced his fellow king warmly, and Eric returned the gesture stiffly. He put his hand to his mouth and coughed sharply, waving Magnus away when he showed concern.

  ‘It seems our arrival is too late. Why did the Danes march to battle without us?’ he asked with a scowl as the cough receded.

  ‘Why?’ shouted a Danish jarl. ‘We marched because you were not here!’

  ‘We came as soon as we could. Our lands are vast, and it takes time to gather our forces,’ snapped the king.

  ‘And yet you took so long and arrived with so few,’ sneered another jarl.

  ‘Yet here we are,’ boomed Magnus.

  ‘And you, with even fewer. How many men did you bring? Four thousand?’

  ‘We came to our enemies’ lands to help you defend yourselves, and you question us?’ roared Eric, raising his voice for once.

  ‘I know the price you extracted for your ill-timed aid, Silverfist,’ the man spat, turning his back on the king, who was roiling with anger.

  ‘And why did you march without us? With nine thousand more men, would you not have won? Were you too proud to have help? Did you, in your pride and foolishness, hope to avoid paying my price by winning before we could help? Your foolishness has cost you your country.’

  ‘Enough!’ shouted Magnus above the rising tension in the room. ‘What happened before does not matter. We are here now, and we
must act with what we have. Denmark is not lost, and we have a fine army here, with fresh men, and the Christians are tired and worn from marching and battle.’

  ‘You think we can carry on the fight?’ a Danish jarl asked incredulously. ‘If you had seen their army, seen them fight, you would not be talking of facing them in battle.’

  ‘Then tell us how they fight, and tell us how to beat them,’ said Magnus in a placating tone.

  ‘Beat them? We will beat them by leaving this place. Their engines will tear these walls down like angry sows going through a reed fence. Their knights go through a shield wall like a scythe through hay.’ The man shuddered. ‘The best men of our nation died on the field against them. We had the hill, we had the defences and we had the numbers. They destroyed us. Utterly.’

  ‘If the best men of your nation died there, what are you doing here wasting my time with your weasel words?’ sneered King Eric, putting his hand to his mouth as he coughed again. Magnus saw with alarm that as the king’s hand came back down, there were flecks of blood on it. The king deftly wiped them on his brown cloak.

  The Danish man blanched and spat a string of curses. ‘I hope you face them and all destroy each other. My folk and I are going north. There are strong fortresses there, and marsh and woodland no army can pass. We will survive this catastrophe, wait until it passes and the Christians leave, then rebuild our people. We will not die to salve the pride of those who were too late to join the fight.’

  A Norwegian jarl made to step forward and draw his sword to avenge the insult to his king, but Magnus grabbed him and shoved him back.

  ‘Enough. Let him go. Men such as those who run from battles are of no use to us.’ He straightened his neat beard and turned to the Danes who yet remained in the hall. ‘And what do you say?’

  The men looked at each other uneasily. ‘We are sworn to the king. We will stay here to defend his hall.’