The next morning dawned black and ominous, as threatening a sky as Bécc had ever witnessed, a sure sign from God that today would be a momentous day, a Day of Judgment for many. A day that would see untold numbers of heathen souls cast down into hell.
“Brother Bécc,” Bressal said, coming to a stop at Bécc’s side. He was nervous, Bécc could see that. Most of the men were, the captains included. It was not the pending fight, he knew that. Bressal and the others, the men-at-arms, anyway, were trained warriors. They were not afraid of going into battle, even against Northmen.
It was the weather. The low, black clouds, the cold gusts of wind from the north and, increasingly, the far off rumble of thunder had them on edge. It was frightening, there was no doubt about that. But it did not frighten Bécc because, unlike the others, Bécc knew that he was reading it right.
“Yes?” Bécc said.
“The men…they’re ready. Ready to move as you ordered. But…the fires…from the cook fires this morning. Sure the heathens must have seen them, even with this wind. They must know we’re here.”
“Good,” Bécc said.
Bressal squinted, looked away, looked back at Bécc. “Won’t they be ready then, for us to attack?”
“They will,” Bécc said. Bressal’s expression suggested he expected Bécc to further explain, which Bécc did not intend to do. Instead he said, “We’ll have Father Niall offer one last prayer. He knows how to be brief. And then we move.”
Father Niall was indeed brief. When he was done he raised his hand in blessing, and all the soldiers there made the sign of the cross and knew that this holy man had brought God’s blessing down upon them.
“Let’s go,” Bécc growled to Bressal. Bressal turned and relayed the orders to the other captains, a dozen of them, leading the contingents sent by the many rí túaithe who stood to lose a great deal if the heathens were allowed to range over the countryside.
Bécc led the way. He was on foot and he walked with Bressal a little behind him and some of the more senior captains behind Bressal and the men spread out in three columns behind them. Bécc felt like the tip of the arrow, the deadly point that would be thrust into the heart of the heathens. He liked that. Overhead the thunder rumbled, louder and closer, and the wind picked up, hitting him nearly head-on and making him stagger a bit. He liked that as well.
The earthen wall surrounding the heathens’ makeshift seaport was a couple hundred yards away when Bécc stopped at the edge of the tall grass that may or may not have hidden them from the men watching from the wall. If there were any. He could not tell.
“Bressal,” he said, and Bressal appeared at his side. “Are there any sentries on the wall, that you can see?”
Bressal paused and scanned the distant earthworks. “Two, maybe, that I can see, Brother Bécc.”
“How well can you see?” Bécc asked.
“Very well,” Bressal assured him.
Bécc grunted. He might have expected the heathens to be more alert, if they had seen the cooking fires. Which of course they might not have done. They might have been too drunk, or engaged in some other debauchery. He turned and looked behind him.
Three divisions of men, each with their captain leading them on. In the center division the men held a ten-foot section of log, a foot thick, with a series of ropes lashed along its length by which they were holding it. A battering ram, one that would make short work of the sorry lash-up of a gate that was built into the heathens’ earthen wall.
“You know your duty!” Bécc shouted, his voice carrying over all the hundreds of men arrayed behind him. He nodded to one of the young men in the center division who held in his hand a long wooden shaft with a banner wrapped around the end. The young man stepped up to stand beside Bécc. He unwound the banner. The cloth stood out immediately in the stiff breeze, a pure white background, and on it a simple cross, deep red, the color of blood.
“Forward!” Bécc shouted. He stepped off and behind him he heard the men moving as well, a great army, as great an army as he had ever led, moving toward the heathens’ camp, that blight on the shores of sacred Ireland.
He moved a little faster, but not too fast, because he did not want the men to break into a run. Now even he could see men on the walls. More than the handful that had been there before. The Northmen, when they saw the Irish coming at last, must have sent more men to defend the earthworks. Now they were pointing and running and apparently shouting to those on the far side. They were scrambling to make ready, it seemed, because they had been caught unawares.
We shall see , Bécc thought. The heathens would be fools to think their pathetic defenses would hold anyone at bay for long. But he had learned long ago not to underestimate an enemy, any enemy. And the devil, the cleverest enemy of all, whispered in the Northmen’s ears. And no one seemed to hear and heed the devil’s cunning advice more than the heathen Thorgrim.
There were more men on the wall now, armed with bows, a weapon not much used by the Irish. Bécc half turned his head to the men behind him. “Shields!” he shouted, and the men obeyed as they had been told to do, lifting shields up high to defend against the coming arrows, while the men-at-arms who flanked the battering ram held their shields to cover those laboring under that burden.
Bécc, too, raised his shield, but just a bit, just enough to set an example. He did not feel the need for such protection. He was in God’s hands. Which did not mean he thought God would shield him from death. Not at all. He might well be struck down that day. But regardless of what happened, it would be God’s will, not his.
Overhead, as if to reinforce the notion of God’s omnipotence, the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed. Bécc stole a look up at the sky and shook his head. Here is the power of God’s wrath , he thought. The sky was so black, the clouds swirling so that he would not have been surprised at all to see them part and see God Himself descend to His creation.
There was nothing Bécc would have more liked to do than sink to his knees and revel in the glory of the Lord, but there was God’s work yet to do. Thirty feet from the earthen wall and the arrows started to come, streaking down from above, thudding into shields or embedding in the soft ground or finding a mark that was followed by a grunt or a shriek.
Not so many… Bécc thought. He would have guessed the heathens would have more archers and spearmen on the wall. The best chance they had for stopping the attack was to prevent the Irish from breaching the defenses. Once Bécc had his men past the wall, the heathens were done for, and he had to imagine Thorgrim knew as much.
He stepped aside, his flag-bearer still with him, despite two arrows standing out from his shield. Bécc reached up and jerked the arrows free and tossed them aside and the men with the battering ram and those protecting them with shields hurried past. They crowded around the gate and Bécc could not see what was happening through the press of men, but he heard the sound of the ram’s blow against the gates, heavy and substantial. A pause and then another blow, and with it a cracking sound.
This will not take long, Bécc thought.
He could hear shouting now from behind the walls, the sounds of confusion and panic. The heathens seemed as unprepared as Bécc had hoped they might be, and now they were trying mightily to organize for a fight. The battering ram pounded, then pounded again. The sound of shattering wood grew louder.
Bécc looked up, ran his eyes along the top of the wall. There were only two archers left, and they were being met with a shower of spears from the Irish gathered at the foot of the wall. He saw one of the heathens take a spear in the shoulder, the impact spinning him around and knocking him off the far side. That was enough for his partner who disappeared after him, putting the earthen rampart between himself and the Irish army.
There was another thump of the battering ram and the sound of rending wood and a shout from the crowd of men and Bécc knew that the gate had come apart, and now his men-at-arms could flood unimpeded into the longphort and start that morning’s real work.
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“Follow me,” Bécc said to his flag-bearer, and he headed for the edge of the wall, slinging his shield over his back as he did.
The wall, of course, was built as vertical as it could be, but since it was essentially just a great mound of earth it could only be made to stand if there was a considerable slope to the sides. Once such a wall was grown over with grass which held it together it could be made steeper, but this one was new, and still bare earth.
Bécc led the way down into the ditch from which the dirt of the wall had been dug and up the far side, then up the slope of the wall. It was not an easy climb, and anyone trying it would have been an easy victim for defenders on the top, which was the wall’s chief purpose. But there were no defenders now, as Bécc had seen, and using feet and hands he managed to get up the steep slope and pull himself onto the flattened top of the barrier.
He straightened just as his flag-bearer came up beside him. He opened his mouth to admonish the flag-bearer to make certain the flag was restrained and not flying in the wind, but the boy, a clever one, had already done so, holding the cloth against the wooden shaft with both hands.
Bécc turned and looked out across the longphort. It was a place he knew well, since he had insisted on accompanying every delivery made from Ferns to that place. He told Thorgrim it was to be certain that nothing was stolen along the way, but he doubted Thorgrim believed him. Bécc came to observe the defenses, the number of men there, the state of the ships. To seek out any potential weakness. It was not to assure the safety of the deliveries, though for the sake of peace he and Thorgrim pretended that it was.
What he saw now, from his perch fifteen feet above the ground, made him smile. It was not a smile of pleasure, but one of appreciation. Appreciation of his enemy. Because Thorgrim had not been caught off guard, not at all.
The heathens had built makeshift walls out of the logs they used to roll their ships in and out of the water. Not tall, no more than four feet high, but enough to give them a considerable advantage. The walls flanked the main gate and stood perpendicular to the earthen wall, forming something like a long, narrow pen, and the space between them narrowed as they reached into the longphort.
The heathens, with spears and swords and axes, stood behind the barriers. The Irish would be trapped between the two walls like deer driven into an enclosure and cut down. It was what Thorgrim had hoped would happen. It was why he had not really tried to defend the wall.
But Bécc had guessed Thorgrim might try something like that. He had not guessed at the walls exactly—that was more clever than he had thought the heathens would be—but he suspected there would be some trickery. That was why he had arranged things as he had. That was why the center division, going in through the gate, was made up mostly of the farmers, the bóaire and fuidir. Better to sacrifice them than the men-at-arms, who were of much greater value in a fight. It was an unhappy fact, but a fact nonetheless.
He waited for a moment, watching as the first men burst through the gate and ran into the longphort, flanked by the log walls on their right and left. He saw their enthusiasm for battle fade as they realized the trap, and the first men in the column were cut down by spear thrusts and arrows. He saw the woman, Failend, standing on top of the log wall, nocking and shooting arrows faster than he would have thought a person could.
The men pushing through the gate were slowing, hesitating as they saw their companions fall and understood the trap into which they were charging. But the men who were still outside the gate, who could not see into the longphort, were pushing forward, driving the reluctant farmers into the gauntlet of the Northmen’s weapons. It was a butcher’s yard, the center of the fighting, and it held the attention of every man there.
Bécc turned to his flag-bearer. “Now,” he said. The flag-bearer released the cloth and the flag stood out in the growing wind and overhead the thunder rolled in God’s powerful voice. The flag-bearer raised the staff and waved the flag back and forth in a great sweeping arc, and continued to wave it.
The fighting below was a bloody mess, but Bécc lifted his eyes from that and looked off to his left, and then his right. Nothing. He wondered if perhaps the flag could not be seen. But then he saw something: a man, climbing up onto the semi-circular wall on which he stood, but far off, closer to the far end of the wall where it met the bay.
“There,” Bécc said, nodding toward the distant figure. “What do you see?”
The flag-bearer did not pause in his waving, but answered, “It looks like Bressal, Brother Bécc, but he’s far off.”
Bécc grunted. It should be Bressal. He looked to his right and now he could see more men coming up over the wall on the other side. In the twilight dark of the building storm, and with his poor eyesight, it was hard to be certain, but they appeared to have shields and helmets on their heads. The men-at-arms. The left and right divisions. While the poor bastard farmers fought it out in the pen the heathens had built, the real fighters were coming unseen over the walls behind them.
Just as Bécc had planned.
He looked back to his left-hand side. Bressal was over the wall and half climbing, half sliding down to the trampled ground below, and behind him more of his division were following, while still more were climbing up over the edge of the wall. One hundred and fifty men following Bressal, another one hundred and fifty in the division to the right, led by a man named Fergal, an experienced old campaigner.
Bécc looked down at the slaughter below him. The farmers and the few men-at-arms among them were fighting back, facing the heathen enemy on either side. There were quite a few dead among the Irishmen, lying bloody and sprawled at the feet of the fighting men. But there were dead and wounded among the heathens as well. And still no one seemed to have noticed the warriors coming up from behind.
Bécc looked up again. The two divisions were over the walls and formed up into loose shield walls, but they were not wasting a lot of time making their lines nice. Speed and surprise were their chief weapons.
“Now, kill them! Kill them all!” Bécc shouted, but in that same instant a great boom of thunder rolled down from heaven and obliterated his words.
Twenty-Two
Spear screeched in his wound
sorely — I cannot be sorry.
Gisli Sursson’s Saga
Standing on the earthen wall, the storm building, a cold wind whipping their hair out like tattered rigging on a ship at sea, Thorgrim had said to Jorund, “Breakfast. Before we make ready for Bécc. But be quick about it. We have much to do.”
Jorund had nodded and called out to his men to eat now and eat quickly and Godi and Harald did the same and soon the men were scrambling to fill their stomachs. Thorgrim could not know when the fighting would start, but he did not think it would be until the morning was well along, and he knew men should not fight on empty stomachs if it could be helped.
He himself did not go for his morning meal, but remained on the top of the wall, staring out at the columns of smoke. They were more difficult to see as the wind continued to rise and blow them away, and as the men in the distant camp finished with them and let them die.
Thorgrim could picture what was going on now in the Irish camp: the men-at-arms shuffling into mail and running stones over the edges of swords. The Christ priests chanting their chants and going through their magic rituals. The country folk that the Irish called up for fighting trying not to look as afraid as they were.
In Thorgrim’s homeland every man was trained with weapons from a young age, whether they fought for their king or went a’viking or spent all their days in farming. They would make a formidable enemy. But not the Irish. For the Irish, the farmers who were put under arms were little more than an obstacle to be placed between the enemy and the real warriors.
How many men do you have, Bécc ? Thorgrim wondered as he looked out over the land. The sky right down to the hills in the distance was awesome and frightening. It looked the way the sky would look during Ragnarok, the final battle and the en
d of Midgard, the world of men. It made Thorgrim wonder if he was indeed witnessing the start of it, the beginning of the world’s end.
He saw movement beside him and turned as Failend came walking up. She held a wooden bowl full of porridge that steamed in the cool morning, a wooden spoon half buried in the mush. She handed it to him and he took it and nodded his thanks.
“You send the men to eat, but you don’t eat yourself,” Failend chided.
Thorgrim smiled. “The other men don’t have you to bring them their breakfast.”
“You were so sure I would serve you in that way?” Failend asked. Thorgrim shrugged. In truth he had not thought about it one way or the other, had not considered eating at all. He had other concerns.
He took a spoonful and ate it. There was honey in it and it was warm and sweet and wonderful. “I never know what you’ll do,” Thorgrim said to Failend and meant it. “But I thank you. And I’m grateful for you.” And he meant that as well.
For a moment they were silent, looking out over the dark countryside, while Thorgrim finished off every bit of the porridge. He was hungry and had not even realized it. Finally Failend spoke.
“Jorund was right, you know. We can just row away. We don’t need this fight.” That was the truth, and Failend alone among them dared to say such a thing. Jorund had brought it up as a practical matter, but once Thorgrim had spoken his mind, Jorund would say no more. None of them would. They would not risk being thought cowards.
A Vengeful Wind: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 8) Page 21