Lord of the Sea Castle

  ‘This is my castle and you will break like a wave upon its walls,’ Raymond whispered in the direction of his enemy before leaping down onto the fighting platform. He had many preparations to make and only minutes to save his army from utter annihilation.

  The yells of the charging Gaels seemed to bounce off the flat timber palisade at Jarl Sigtrygg’s back to ring in his ears. He could no longer hear the booming ocean over the din, and he grimaced. His clenched teeth seemed to rattle in his head and he snarled as he wrapped his forearms around his ears.

  At his side, his remaining crewmen looked nervously at the mass of savage Uí Drona and Déisi as they ran headlong in their direction, swarming across the headland like a stampeding herd of cattle.

  ‘We need to get out of their way,’ Amlaith shouted in his direction. Though only arm’s length away Jarl Sigtrygg’s ship-master had to lean close to his jarl’s ear and repeat his comment to make himself heard. ‘If they don’t trample us they will cut us down as soon as look at us, the bastards.’

  Jarl Sigtrygg agreed and, with a look towards the top of the rampart to make sure none of the foreigners’ archers had appeared, he led his men along the bottom of the fortifications. Every few steps Jarl Sigtrygg stole a glance at his allies as well as of the empty battlements above him.

  ‘Where are the Normans?’ Amlaith shouted. They had neared the middle of the rampart.

  ‘Probably jumped off the cliffs to escape,’ Jarl Sigtrygg barked as he chanced another look up at the outer wall of Dun Domhnall. ‘Come on,’ he told his men and, without waiting for them, began running away from the Norman defences His chainmail thumped onto his toughened leather armour as he galloped northwards. Jarl Sigtrygg cursed as he realised that he had lost his shield in the melee between the walls and had no cover should an archer shoot at him. He fought the urge to turn and look at the stockade, and doubled his efforts to get out of range of the cursed bowmen. Sweat poured from underneath his helmet, picking up the dried perspiration from his earlier efforts to sting his eyes.

  It was only a few seconds later that Jarl Sigtrygg passed the first Gaels as they ran in the opposite direction. They had already changed their course towards the open gates of the foreigners’ fort and were getting ever further away from the jarl and his crew. A few on the periphery of the army noticed the small group of Ostmen as they passed, but only one Gael slowed, and then only briefly, raising his short axe and tiny buckler shield in their direction. Whether it was in salute or as a threat Jarl Sigtrygg could not tell, and he did not stop to find out, but led his men away towards the estuary to the west.

  Somewhere in the midst of the Gaels, a piper’s jaunty tune encouraged them onwards towards glory. Jarl Sigtrygg scowled as he considered how close he had come to taking the foreigners’ fort with only his eighty-strong crew. Now it would fall to the Gael, of that he was sure, and the victory that should’ve been his would go to another. The jarl turned his head and spat. All the slaves taken by the Uí Drona and Déisi would be given over to Ragnall, he thought sullenly, while he, who had taken the outer rampart, would leave with nothing; no riches, no glory, and only a third of the crewmen who had followed him into battle.

  ‘Get back to River-Wolf and make sure she is ready to depart these waters,’ he ordered Amlaith as he slowed and finally came to a stop close to where his crew had come up from the beach. It seemed like hours had passed since he had landed his vessel below the headland and set the Norman ship on fire. ‘The tide is at its height,’ he remarked.

  Amlaith had his hands on his knees and sweat spat off the ends of his moustache. ‘You want to leave? What about the slaves you promised us?’

  ‘There will be no slaves. Ragnall will keep them all. But we can still make it to Dubhlinn to sell the three we took from Dun Conán and lessen our losses.’

  ‘“Lessen our losses?”‘ Amlaith repeated. ‘We lost over fifty oarsmen today! How do you suppose that we will even get to Dubhlinn? Do you think twenty-five can do the work of eighty at the oars when we enter the river?’

  ‘You are the sailing master. I am the jarl. I tell you where I wish to go and you get me there. No excuses.’

  The ferocity of his retort shocked Amlaith, who did not argue. Instead he turned and made for the beach, calling the remaining crewmen to follow him from the headland so that he could attempt to get River-Wolf afloat.

  Jarl Sigtrygg watched them go, his temper flaring at Amlaith’s brief show of defiance, but he calmed down by swearing to put the ship-master in his place as soon as he was able to do without his skills. His father was another against whom he promised to have a reckoning and he turned on his heel to see if he could identify the Konungr of Veðrarfjord amongst those attacking Dun Domhnall. He had to shield his eyes from the sun, now burning in the sky to the far south-west, but he was able to spot the white raven standard in the distance above the heads of the attacking army. Ragnall and his jarls were at the back of the advance and Sigtrygg felt his lip curl into a sneer as he watched the old cowards walk calmly forward to claim victory – his victory – and rob him of his vengeance against Raymond de Carew.

  He guessed that Jarl Gufraid, his father’s cousin, would be at Ragnall’s side and Jarl Sigtrygg, who men called Fionn, too. Suspicion had been growing in his chest since his escape from the archers’ threat; a suspicion that he and his men had been betrayed, and he guessed that if there was a conspiracy against him Gufraid and Sigtrygg Fionn would be behind it. They were the men who had spoken against him when he had been exiled from Veðrarfjord months before. At that time Jarl Sigtrygg had guessed that it had been their plan all along to supplant him and deprive him of rightful position and responsibility in his father’s city, but now he wondered if they had also convinced Ragnall to abandon his son during his attack on the foreigners’ fort. The more he considered the notion the more it worked its way into his feelings of injustice. Jarl Sigtrygg did not doubt that Gufraid and Sigtrygg Fionn would already be working their poison into Ragnall’s ear, spreading more lies about him. He knew the circumstances of his defeat at the gates of Dun Domhnall would act against him, as would his flight from Dun Conán, but if his father could not see that it had been for Veðrarfjord’s benefit that he had acted then he was a poor king indeed.

  Even from half a mile away, he could see Sigtrygg Fionn at his father’s side. He wanted to race over to Ragnall and accuse the other jarls of holding unnatural influence over the konungr, to force them to unveil their enmity towards him in front of his father; to dare Sigtrygg Fionn to defend his name with the strength of his battle-axe. But he knew that he could do nothing. Without a crew of fighting men he did not have the power to back up his claims and he cursed the luck that had led to his men being cut down by arrows when on the cusp of victory. Somehow, he swore, he would build a new crew and then return to Veðrarfjord to oust his father’s faithless jarls. He would make Ragnall Mac Giolla Mhuire understand in whom he should place his trust.

  A roar of rage dispensing from the walls of the fort made Jarl Sigtrygg turn away. From his position he watched as the Uí Drona and the Déisi poured through the outer gates and into the passageway between the ramparts. The first men barely broke stride as they waded over the bodies of his crewmen to attack their foreign enemy. Despite his innate hatred of the Gael, he felt his head nod in admiration at their bravery to charge headlong into a place where so many had already fallen. He suddenly realised that he was holding his breath and forced himself to exhale, angry that his experience under the Norman arrow-storm had any lasting effect on him. Nevertheless he could still feel the cloying expectancy that at any second he would hear the slap of bowstrings and the howl of death emanating from between the wooden walls. When this did not occur, Jarl Sigtrygg began to wonder if the Normans had exhausted their supply of arrows to decimate his crew. He shook with fury at that realisation, his ire quickly moving from the foreigners to the Gael and then to his own crew’s inability to defeat the two men who had stopped their charge on the in
ner gate. Raymond de Carew’s unctuous face and his nauseating yellow and red robes returned to his mind’s eye. The Norman had challenged him and now Jarl Sigtrygg would never have the chance to show him that he was the superior man. As the thought rolled around the jarl’s mind it picked up speed and impetus. For several seconds Jarl Sigtrygg considered joining the attack on the fort, to fight his way to the frontline and to hunt out his enemy. He would kill the bastard who had murdered his crewmen and broken his nose. He would slaughter the cur who had defied him.

  It took Jarl Sigtrygg several moments to calm down, but when he did he realised that there was no way that he would be able to force his way to the fore. Ragnall’s allies continued to cram into the fort, but Jarl Sigtrygg could see that the flow had slowed to barely a trickle. Behind those men inside the walls a logjam had formed and hundreds stood immobile awaiting the opportunity to test their blade against the few foreigners who had dared raise their banners in warfare.

  As Jarl Sigtrygg watched some of those outside the rampart broke away from the press and began to scale the outer wall, using the shoulders and heads of their kin to aid their climb to the top. Several were slingers for – their ascent completed – he could see their rhythmic dance as they built up the force to unleash their bombardment upon the inner fortifications. The few Normans opposing the Gael must’ve known the futility of their position. Jarl Sigtrygg counted only sixty on the battlements, their feeble efforts largely confined to throwing items down onto the heads of those below. He spat on the ground. Vengeance and glory should’ve been his, but they had been taken away by the cruel hand of fate.

  At least Raymond will die, he thought. Not by my hand, but he will be no more.

  For Norman defeat was inevitable. A hundred could not overcome three thousand.

  ‘Here they come!’ Borard’s bellow could not hide the fear he felt as the enemy poured through the outer gates and between the fortifications. ‘Get ready to repel them from our walls!’ Few of his men could hear his cry, such was the tumult echoing from the army beneath, but Borard could see the sixty Welshmen ready themselves for the oncoming violence. With no arrows remaining, the archers had taken up spears, axes, and maces. Two senior men had vicious short swords in hand.

  ‘Easy, boy,’ Borard told the lad closest. He was taking deep breaths and was shaking like a leaf in the wind. And well he might, Borard thought. The boy, like his kin, was a killer with a bow in hand, but it took a different type of training to slay an enemy up close. Few, if any, of the Welshmen were practised in hand-to-hand combat, but Borard did not have the time to tell the youth what to expect when one took a life in this sort of fighting. In Raymond’s service he had killed twelve men and Borard remembered the details of each one; the sound and impact of steel and wood as he had speared a Welshman’s flesh the summer before, the strain and horror in the German bandit’s eyes as pain flooded his dying body in the spring of 1168. He recalled the smell of shit and blood and days-old sweat as an Englishman had slumped against his shield during a brawl over some sheep near St Briavels, Borard’s weapon buried in his breast. And from those below he recognised the furore of terror, excitement and anger as they ran towards the frontline. He knew that from some of those he would soon hear the blubber of sorrow as they left this world for the one beyond.

  ‘Do not hesitate,’ he told the boy instead. ‘If some ugly savage with strange hair comes over that wall, strike and strike true. If you give them a second chance they will skewer you.’ The youth gave no indication that he had understood the words, instead closing his eyes and mumbling a prayer in his own tongue.

  Borard had taken a place directly opposite the outer barbican on Raymond’s orders and it was from there that he would command the defence of Dun Domhnall while his captain put his plan into action. Borard’s task was simple: he had to hold the two hundred-yard-long inner wall with sixty of the seventy archers left in the fort. Without one arrow between them, that was, and against a force of thousands.

  ‘But’, Raymond had told him, ‘the enemy will be lucky to be able to get more than two hundred to the wall at any time. So you’ll only be outnumbered by three to one.’

  With that terrifying assessment still ringing in his ears, Borard had watched his captain gallop off down the palisade, to what end he did not know for Raymond had not fully disclosed the plan he said would save the garrison. Borard had fought beside him for long enough to know that he would soon discover it. That Raymond had trusted him to command the defence of Dun Domhnall both encouraged and daunted him, and Borard prayed that he would play his part as best as he was able. He owed Raymond, and refused to countenance even the thought of surrender or defeat.

  ‘Get ready,’ he shouted and waited while the order was echoed to all the men under his command. The torrent of warriors still poured down between the walls like the Afon Gwy the day after heavy rain had fallen upon the Cambrian Hills. Those at the front of the assault were pushed onwards by those behind while outside the walls he could see a great multitude of men awaiting their chance to force their way into the fortress. Not one could lay a hand on the men above, but all found the breath to scream insults before being swept onwards towards the inner gates. Borard could see that many had a handful of short darts for throwing as well as a larger spear or short axe for the close quarter fight.

  It was when he heard the first strike of axe upon the wooden gates to Dun Domhnall that Borard gave the order.

  ‘Now!’ he shouted and stooped down to pick up a large block taken from their store of firewood. All along the rampart the Welshmen copied his actions, launching wooden blocks the size of helmeted heads down onto the foreigners beneath.

  Borard roared with effort as he lobbed his projectile over the edge of the battlements. He did not see it strike but he knew it could not have missed, such was the jam of men in the passageway between the walls. Each of Borard’s warriors had gathered large blocks, stones and broken timbers, onto the allure yet within seconds each had exhausted his store. He had cursed Raymond’s name when the captain had given him the task of cutting and collecting the wood pile from the forests further inland, but now he thanked whatever saint had given the captain foresight; the cries from the attackers let him know that the bombardment had caused real damage.

  ‘Come and help me,’ Borard shouted as he tried to lift his last piece, a long length of driftwood, from the allure. It took two of the archers’ assistance but they soon were able to get the heavy missile over the edge of the rampart and Borard saw it strike home, taking down three men. He watched the trio of Gaels as they disappeared below the slow-moving river of men, tripping two more, their screams engulfed by the stomp of feet. For a second Borard felt unsteady on his feet, and he cursed his timidity before realising that it had been the press of bodies beneath that had caused the fortification to shudder rather than any swoon that had come over him. All the archers had felt the movement for Borard could see that many had grabbed onto the rampart to steady their stance. He could see uncertainty on their faces at the sudden reverberation beneath their feet and he, like them, wondered how long the timber walls could hold before they were torn down by Ragnall’s vast army.

  He had only turned to order the archers to prepare for men scaling the walls when the first bare-chested man appeared in front of him. Despite his words to the boy, his arrival shocked Borard so much that by the time he had hefted his spear the warrior had already clambered on the palisade beside him. He was, to Borard’s mind, the strangest-looking human whom he had ever set eyes on. His red hair was shaved from both sides to leave a knotted ridge down the middle of his head, giving him a reptilian appearance. His beard had been trimmed so that it only surrounded his mouth. Strange shapes were painted in dark ash upon his bare chest.

  Borard’s shock was momentary and he stabbed at the Gael, but the nimble-footed warrior danced out of the way and cut at the Norman with a short axe in his left hand. Borard barely had his spear in the way of the second attempt before the weapon
was knocked from his grip, clattering onto the palisade. The red-headed Gael had a large hand planted on the middle of Borard’s chest before he knew what was happening. The axe was raised, ready to strike, and Borard could only grip onto the man’s forearm and yell incomprehensibly as his enemy tensed his arm to deliver the blow that would claim his life.

  A loud thud sounded. Blood splashed his face. He did not know what had happened, though he felt the grip on his chest relent. Borard furiously swiped at the blood from his eyes, ready to grapple with his adversary with his fists if necessary. He was able to open his right eye first and found the Gael prostrate on the allure at his feet, seemingly dead.

  ‘Get down!’ came a shout. ‘Slingers!’

  Borard immediately ducked his head below the level of the rampart and dropped onto his backside where he listened to the staccato whack of stone striking timber palisade. He could feel the fortifications tremor behind him with each impact while more landed with soft thuds in the bailey to his front. The rocks were accompanied by short darts cast from assailants on the outer defences. Borard kept his head down and, as he dabbed the blood from his face, he poked the red-haired Gael who had attacked him with his foot. The man was either dead or out cold. Next to the man’s head he found a rock the size of a fist which had struck his opponent full in his face. The Gael’s mouth was a mess, his front teeth shattered in his head. A moan of agony escaped from his smashed face and Borard could see his hand begin to twitch. He snatched the axe from his hand and buried the blade in the back of the man’s neck. Breathing deeply, he clambered to his feet and shoved the Gaelic warrior’s body over the edge of the allure so that it fell into the bailey.