Lord of the Sea Castle

  ‘So much for arrows,’ Caradog told him as he stepped beyond the outer battlements. Raymond gazed in the direction indicated by the Welshman’s outstretched arm, but could see nothing through the blanket of white smoke which poured over the fortifications. It shrouded the entire headland from their view. So complete was the mantle of smoke that, for all Raymond knew, they could be the last men alive outside the walls of Dun Domhnall.

  ‘Can’t shoot at what you can’t see,’ Caradog told the Norman. ‘You hear that?’ the archer said suddenly, tilting his ear towards the grassland beyond the smoke.

  ‘What is it?’ Raymond asked and felt his tired body tense.

  Screams sounded in the distance and blended with the occasional call of cattle and seagull’s whine, but otherwise the loudest noise that he could hear was still the crackling staccato of burning timbers from the marshalsea. ‘Is it the enemy?’ he asked and strained his ears. His eyes flicked to down the line of archers and could see the fear surge through the nine men. Each knew that any further attack would surely see their fort fall.

  ‘I thought I heard…’ Caradog began before his voice drifted away and he looked at his captain, his eyes weighted with unease. ‘Perhaps not…’

  Tired and sore as he was, Raymond could feel dread nagging at his soul. He had to know if there was any further threat to Dun Domhnall and he growled once before darting out of the line and plunging into the bank of smoke. He could hear Caradog calling him back, but he ignored the Welshman’s warning and stomped onwards. His eyes were watering terribly because of the irritation so he concentrated on the sounds that surrounded him as he picked a path through the carpet of bodies which appeared through the smoke. Unlike those caught between the walls, out on the open expanse of the headland there were more injured than slain by the cattle. Those men who had been in their path and still lived moaned in strange languages and sought Raymond’s help. He ignored them all.

  Though he did not fear attack from the wounded, he kept his right hand gripped upon his sword’s hilt. The smoke mixed with the stink of stale sweat, blood and excrement, forcing him to again wrap his chainmailed forearm around his face. He gagged and coughed and almost fell over in surprise as, a few paces to his right, a bare-chested Gael covered in blood rose to his feet. Raymond only had the chance to half-draw his sword before the man stumbled away towards the beach as if drunk. The captain breathed relief and returned his sidearm to the scabbard as he watched the man disappear into the gloom. Nauseating smells assaulted him again.

  This way and that he caught glimpses of the gruesome scene as the wind swirled smoke around the peninsula. He had never imagined that the stampeding cattle could’ve caused so much destruction. As he walked on the same path that they had taken he saw the effect of their charge upon the packed ranks of Ostmen and Gaels. More, he knew, would’ve been trampled by their own folk in their efforts to get out of the way of the charging animals and to flee the battlefield. But had it been enough?

  His contemplations – as well as his progress – were suddenly halted as his ears prickled in warning. Ahead, somewhere in the smoke, he had heard an agitated voice cry out. Raymond licked his dry lips and his eyes flicked this way and that as he attempted to discern what the noise meant. He still feared an attack and knew that if even one leader amongst the enemy could muster together a force of some hundred men his counter would fail. His exhausted and battered warriors could not face another assault on their walls. Raymond’s mind conjured a great silent army of Ostmen beyond the smoke with Jarl Sigtrygg and Konungr Ragnall at their head, their great battle-axes ready to cut down upon the few remaining enemy within the damaged fort.

  As he had before the walls of the fort when Bertram d’Alton had fallen, his mind wandered to the words of the Song of Roland, and Olivier’s famous lines: ‘Pagans from there I saw. Never on earth did a man see more.’ He hummed the song as he took another step forward. His breath was shallow and the smoke acrid. ‘Against us their shields a hundred thousand bore that laced helms and shining hauberks wore.’

  It had all been for naught, he decided, and he again cursed himself for leading his warriors to this sad end on the edge of the world. Internally he apologised to his men, the Norman conrois; to poor Geoffrey who had fallen to Jarl Sigtrygg’s hand, and to Alice of Abergavenny who he had loved; to the pages and the esquires who would never see old age, and to Caradog and his archers who had remained at his side when they could so easily have taken flight.

  ‘And, bolt upright, their bright, brown spearheads shone. Battle we’ll have as never was before.’

  The words to the song tumbled from his mouth as he staggered forward through the broken bodies of the fallen. Ahead he heard the voice cry out again, enraged and close-by. He turned his eyes to the sky and apologised to St Maurice and St David, his family’s protectors, and asked them to protect his lord, Strongbow, who he had failed.

  ‘Lords of the Franks, God keep you in valour! So hold your ground, we be not overborne!‘

  He sang the last few lines at the top of his voice as he drew his sword from his scabbard and raised it, ready to fight the smoke-cloaked figure emerging ahead.

  ‘Basilia!’ he called as he prepared to land the sword stroke.

  ‘Raymond!’ William de Vale cried as he collapsed to his knees in shock at the sudden appearance of his captain before him. William’s hand left the reins of his courser so that he could appeal for Raymond to stop and his captain gasped in relief as he pulled out of the sweeping cut, dropping the point of his blade to the ground at his esquire’s side.

  ‘Thank God it is you,’ William exclaimed and got to his feet. ‘I thought that I was dead.’

  Raymond ignored William’s words and grabbed him by his shoulder. ‘The enemy? Where is the enemy? Are you all that remains of the conrois?’

  ‘Come and see,’ William said, turning his horse around and indicating that Raymond should follow. A coughing fit prevented his captain from demanding an immediate answer from the esquire, and it was only when they cleared the bank of smoke that Raymond understood the full extent of their situation. He had to blink many times, not only because of the smoke, but because he did not believe the evidence that his eyes provided. The landscape was empty, save for an ever-thinning number of bodies which peppered the headland as far as the green horizon.

  The enemy had been swept away as if by an ebbing tide.

  He felt neither joy nor anguish as the evening sunbeams settled upon his face. He felt only fatigue. The pain, he knew, would come later. Raymond legs suddenly felt strange and he collapsed to his knees amongst the slaughtered and the smoke, words of thanks to heavenly saints tumbling from his mouth. It had worked. His plan had worked, he realised. Against all the odds they had won.

  ‘The creek is at high tide,’ William interrupted his captain’s mumbled prayers.

  ‘High tide?’ The captain could not believe that it had been six hours since he had talked to Ragnall of Veðrarfjord on the causeway. It seemed like mere minutes had passed, but, sure enough, he now recognised that the sun had moved far to the west. Night was falling.

  ‘The causeway is completely under water,’ William continued. ‘Some of the enemy swam across as Walter de Bloet led us over the hillock, but most fled inland to the west.’ He held out a long finger in the direction of the setting sun. ‘A lot of Ostmen are trapped on this side, however, as they won’t throw away their armour to make the swim. They look like they will make a fight of it so Walter de Bloet ordered me back here to bring the archers to finish them off.’

  Raymond nodded although the thought of more bloodshed sickened him. ‘Go back and tell Caradog what you have seen,’ he ordered William. The esquire yawned widely as his captain spoke, but nodded to indicate that he understood his orders. ‘Tell him I will lead them forward myself,’ Raymond added.

  William’s hand went to his courser’s muzzle. ‘I can’t believe that we won,’ he told his captain, sweeping an arm over the dead men strewn acros
s the grassland. ‘Who would’ve thought that we could have beaten them?’

  ‘We have survived,’ Raymond corrected him, ‘that is all. I thank God for it, but we are far from victorious.’ An image of Jarl Sigtrygg’s callous murder of Geoffrey of Abergavenny appeared to him followed by Alice’s screams and her accusatory eyes. ‘Just because we are still standing does not mean we have not suffered a defeat.’

  ‘But victory will come later?’

  Raymond nodded his head. Strongbow’s dream of conquest indeed remained alive. His small vanguard had endured attack by a force many times their number and had held their ground. Their bridgehead had not been overborne. His mind drifted to an image of Basilia de Quincy, more distant than it had ever been before, and he prayed that news of his great deeds at Dun Domhnall would soon reach her ears. He hoped that she would hear the tale of his daring and remember his last words to her in Striguil. He was fighting a campaign on two fronts, he now realised. The first was to his front against an enemy who he could meet with sword and shield and spear. It was a battle that would only end when he placed her father upon a throne. The other struggle would be fought on far more troublesome terrain and relied on many factors beyond his control. It was a form of war in which he was but a novice, the rules less defined. It was a battle that was waged not with steel, but with status, wealth and reputation. Those that he would challenge in that arena were seemingly unassailable, rich beyond his dreams with families of the greatest repute. But if he was to earn what he really wanted from life he had to rise to meet those standards, he knew. To merit the love of Basilia, the daughter of the Earl Strongbow, he would have to become a lord of battles.

  ‘I will send the Welshmen out to you,’ William interrupted his thoughts and, with a click of his tongue, he got his courser moving back towards Dun Domhnall’s gates.

  ‘Wait.’ Raymond reached out and stopped him. The thought of the fights to come had given him new vigour and he abandoned the downcast mood which had threatened to overcome him. To attain his goals he would need help. He would not be able to accomplish his aims on his own. He would need men as ambitious and as desperate as he at his side if he was to succeed.

  ‘From this moment on,’ he told William de Vale, ‘you are no longer an esquire in the service of Earl Strongbow. You will receive no more pay from Striguil.’

  William looked shocked and confused at Raymond’s words, worried, it seemed, that he had somehow offended his captain, and he shook his head as if trying to understand what he had done to deserve such treatment. ‘I don’t follow, sir.’

  Raymond smiled at William’s reaction and quickly rummaged under his chainmail. ‘You will no longer be an esquire to any man,’ he said and produced a silver coin from beneath his gambeson. The money sparkled as it tumbled, thrown by the captain towards the boy. William caught it first time. ‘You have proven today that you are much better than the lowly rank of esquire. You proved that you are a warrior.’ William still looked confused as he stared down at the coin in his hand. Raymond sighed and shook his head. ‘I’m giving you a promotion,’ he told him.

  ‘I’ll be miles?’ asked William excitedly before his eyebrows furrowed again. ‘In whose retinue?’

  Exasperated, Raymond threw his hands in the air. ‘In my conrois, you dullard! If you accept, you will be the first miles sworn to my service. Not to Strongbow, but to me.’

  ‘You have no money or land,’ William replied.

  Raymond nodded. ‘But I have a victory and my reward will come later when Earl Strongbow follows us across the sea.’

  William still looked ambivalent, but nodded his head as he regarded the coin. ‘Alright, count me in, Raymond. I’m your man. I’ll go and get Caradog and his archers – then what would you have me do, my Lord?’

  Strongbow’s captain smiled happily when his new miles addressed him by that title. ‘I’m no lord yet, William. I am still merely Raymond the Fat,’ he told his warrior.

  ‘But soon?’

  Raymond smiled and nodded. ‘It will depend on when the earl joins us,’ he told him and turned towards the sea. To the west he spotted a single sail, headed west towards Veðrarfjord, but otherwise the waves were empty of shipping.

  Flames still roared in the marshalsea, pumping ash and obscuring heat waves high into the blue sky. A break in the blanket of smoke revealed the small fort perched on the edge of the cliff face. Even to Raymond’s eyes the hastily constructed battlements looked fragile and insubstantial, much like the company of Marcher warriors who had manned them. They had taken damage – that he could not deny as he caught sight of the battered Welsh archers slumped between the tumbledown gates and broken battlements – but they had withstood a storm.

  He would build the walls again, higher and stronger than before. He would send out his milites to recapture his herds, and his archers to cut wood staves for more arrows. He would tend to his men’s wounds and revisit Trygve in Cluainmín to barter for supplies. Trusted men would make contact with his uncle, Maurice FitzGerald, in Waesfjord and then travel back to Striguil to tell the story of their stand against the horde of Veðrarfjord. He would remain vigilant and await the coming of Strongbow.

  Ahead loomed a campaign of conquest, and Raymond promised that he would be the man to lead it.

  Epilogue

  Tallow lamps burned behind shuttered windows as Ragnall and his followers marched up the timbered High Street in Veðrarfjord. Their clattering feet startled dozing pigs and geese hidden in the allotments along the thoroughfare. Their noise brought townsfolk to the doors of their thatched homes to investigate who was about the streets when the city was asleep. Despite the darkness, the stone palisade topped with timber posts was outlined black against the night sky. The summer sun had given way to mist which partially hid the stars from the konungr’s sight, but the moon’s haze was brighter still and it lit up the heavens over the River Siúire. Ragnall’s hall, and the great tower which his namesake had built five generations before, stood proud and dark against the glowering mist, and it was in that direction that the konungr led his company.

  ‘Where the hell is everyone?’ Sigtrygg Fionn asked as he shivered into the neck his heavy cloak.

  Ragnall growled rather than answer. It had been four days since his army had fled from the field at Dun Domhnall, four days of humiliating retreat. Few of the men who had stayed with Ragnall had slept or eaten in that time and tempers had long since become frayed. After the cattle stampede had torn apart his army, the konungr and his jarls had tried to rally their men, for they had known that even a few hundred warriors could still have turned the day in their favour. But every time they had marshalled a small body of warriors, the Norman horsemen had come speeding through the smoke to break-up their formation and send them running.

  In the end Ragnall had led a group of sixty westwards to escape the rout. The Normans had not tracked them, but screams in the distant east had told the konungr that some, whether Ostman or Gael, had been caught by the vicious foreigners. The greatest danger, as they had turned north towards Dun Conán, had come not from the enemy but from their erstwhile allies. Twice, as they forced their way through the forests of Siol Bhroin, Ragnall had been attacked by some of the more rebellious sects of the Uí Drona. On both occasions he had been lucky to escape. Like wolves, the Gael had come in snarling packs that first night, testing the edges of the Ostman lines and picking off any man who fell behind. They had not been able to pause, to rest, or build a fire that first night, but had pushed onwards. The first sign that they were in real danger had come at sunrise the day after the battle. It had been a red sky that dawn, and that had always been the herald of ill fortune. Ragnall had feared the worst, but they had covered the last mile or so in daylight and it was only upon arrival at Dun Conán that he discovered their true predicament. Few ships remained on the beach, and those that did were burning. Everywhere bodies, both Gael and Ostman, marked zones where impromptu battles had been fought between vying companies of men in the darkn
ess of the night. Defeat had brought about disputes. Fear had led to looting. To the victors had gone a ship and the safety of the river. With no other means of escape, Ragnall had led his men northward, back along the route that he had followed just days before beside the Déisi and the Ui Drona and their vast, lumbering column of camp followers. The sight of the well-trodden paths through the forest had reminded him just how large his army had been and the magnitude of the disaster that had befallen them.

  They had finally made it back to Veðrarfjord that evening, the fourth since their defeat. There were now just fifteen men at Ragnall’s back, the rest having died by the banks of the Bearú or gone with Jarl Gufraid to his manor upriver.

  Ragnall needed news. He desired it more than food or rest. He had to know what had become of his army, and how many had returned to Veðrarfjord. He had to know how many ships had survived the brawls at Dun Conán, and what the jarls were saying of his defeat. Ragnall needed information if he was to re-establish his authority over the city in the wake of the rout at Dun Domhnall.

  The konungr stole a glance of one of the men who had come to the door of his longhouse to check on his animals. His face was shrouded by the light emanating from a fire within, but Ragnall could see recognition and anger emblazoned upon his brow. Perhaps he was a father who had lost a son to the foreigners’ blades? He supposed that few of the townsfolk would’ve escaped loss, close or distant, because of their defeat and he promised that the invaders would pay.

  ‘At least there is no sign of the Englishmen,’ Sigtrygg Fionn spoke at his shoulder. ‘I half expected them to follow up their victory by crossing the river to besiege the city.’

  Ragnall ignored the comment. To have scolded the jarl for his stupidity was to remind all his followers that their konungr had lost to little more than a handful of enemies. It would’ve served no purpose other than to have embarrassed both ruler and subject, and Ragnall knew that he would require all the help he could if he was to keep his position. To his right the high roof of St Olav’s Church soared against the dark sky and Ragnall crossed his chest and prayed to his city’s saintly protector to grant him grace over the coming days and weeks.