The Hammer & the Cross

by Harry Harrison

  “It works on the shooters all right,” offered Oswi, watching with interest a ring of catapulteers.

  “I’m wondering if it would work for anything else,” said Shef. “A bow?” He flexed the strip again, this time putting it over one knee and trying to get the weight of his body behind it. The metal resisted him, giving only a couple of inches. Too strong for a bow. Or too strong for a man’s arms? Yet there were many things that were too strong for a man’s arms alone. Catapults. Heavy weights. The yard of a longship. Shef hefted the metal once more. Somewhere in here there was a solution to his puzzle: a mixture of the new knowledge the Way sought and the old knowledge he kept on finding. Now was not the time for him to work the puzzle out.

  “How many of these have you made, Udd?”

  “Maybe a score. After we refitted the shooters, that is.”

  “Stay in the forge tomorrow. Make more. Take as many men and as much iron as you need. I want fivescore—tenscore—as many as you can make.”

  “Does that mean we’ll miss the battle?” cried Oswi. “Never get a chance to shoot old ‘Dead Level’ once?”

  “All right. Udd chooses just one man from each crew to help him. The rest of you get your chance at the battle.”

  If there is a battle, Shef added silently to himself. But that is not my plan. Not a battle for us, at any rate. If England is the gods’ chessboard, and we are all pieces in their game, then to win the game I must clear some of the pieces off the board. No matter how it looks to the others.

  In the early morning mist King Burgred’s army, the army of the Mark—three thousand swordsmen and as many slaves, drivers, muleteers and whores—prepared to continue its march in the true English fashion: slowly, grumpily and inefficiently, but for all that, with mounting expectation. Thanes wandered toward the latrines, or eased themselves onto any unoccupied spot. Slaves who had not done so the night before began to grind meal for the everlasting porridge. Fires began to burn, pots began to bubble, the voices of Burgred’s guardsmen grew hoarse as they attempted to impose the king’s will on his loyal but disorganized subjects: get the bastards fed, get their bowels emptied, and get them moving, as Cwichelm the marshal endlessly repeated. Because today we move into enemy territory. Cross the Ouse, advance on Ely. We can expect a battle any time.

  Driven on by the fury of their king at the violation of his own pavilion, by the exhortations of their priests and the near-incoherent rage of Wulfgar the dreaded heimnar, the army of the Mark struck its tents and donned its armor.

  In the dragon-boats, matters went differently. A shake from the ship-watch, a word from each skipper. The men were over the side in minutes, and every one dressed, booted, armed and ready to fight. Two riders trotted down from the advanced pickets half a mile away, reporting noise to the west and scouts sent out. Another word, this time from Ivar, and half the men in each crew stood down immediately, to prepare food for themselves and the others still formed up. Detachments swarmed round each of the ton-weight machines in the six lead ships, attaching ropes and rigging pulleys. When the word came they would sway them up from the strengthened yards, drop each one onto its waiting carriage. But not yet. “Wait till the last moment and then move fast” was the pirates’ watchword.

  The Wayman camp, four miles off in dense beechwood, made no sound and showed no lights. Shef, Brand, Thorvin and all their lieutenants had been round again and again the day before, impressing it on the most important Viking and dullest ex-slave. No noise. No straggling. Stay in your blankets till you’re called. Get some rest. Breakfast by units. Then form up. Don’t go outside the wood.

  Obeying his own orders, Shef lay alert in his tent, listening to the muted bustle of the army waking. Today was a day of crisis, he thought. But not the last crisis. Maybe the last one he could plan. It was critically important, then, that this day should go well, to. provide him with the start, the reserve of force that he would need before all was over.

  On the pallet beside him lay Godive. They had been together four days now, and yet he had still not taken her, not so much as stripped off her shift. It would be easy to do. His flesh was hard, remembering the one time he had done it. She would not resist. Not only did she expect it, he knew she wondered why he had not. Was he another like the Boneless? Or was he less of a man than Alfgar? Shef imagined the cry she would make as he penetrated her.

  Who could blame her for crying? She still winced every time she moved. Like his, her back must be scarred forever.

  Yet she still had both eyes. She had never faced the mercy of Ivar, the vapna takr. As he thought of the mercy of Ivar, Shef’s erected flesh began to shrink; the thoughts of warm skin and soft resistance dwindled like a catapult-stone going up into the sky.

  Something else entered him instead, something cold and fierce and longsighted. It was not today that mattered, nor the fleeting good opinion of his men. Only the end. Stretched out, relaxed, perfectly aware of himself from crown to toe, Shef reflected on how the day might go.

  Hund, he decided. Time for another call on Hund.

  As the sun sucked up the morning mist, Ivar looked from his place with the ridge-line pickets to the familiar chaos of an English army advancing. Familiar chaos. An English army.

  “It’s not them,” said Dolgfinn beside him. “Not the Way-folk. Not Skjef Sigvarthsson. Look at all the Christ-stuff, the crosses and the black robes. You can hear them singing their morning massa, or whatever they call it. So either Sigvarthsson’s challenge was just a lie, or else …”

  “Or else there’s another army hiding round here somewhere, to finish off the winners,” Ivar completed for him. The grin was back on his face, pinched and painful, like a fox nibbling meat from the wolf-trap.

  “Back to the boats?”

  “I think not,” said Ivar. “The river’s too narrow to turn forty boats in a hurry. And if we row on there’s no certainty they won’t mount and catch us. And if they do that they can take us out one boat at a time. Even the English might manage that.

  “No. At our Bragi boast in the Braethraborg, my brothers and I swore to invade England and conquer all its kingdoms in revenge for our father. Two we have conquered, and today is the day for the third.”

  “And Sigvarthsson?” prompted Dolgfinn.

  The grin spread wider, teeth showing like a rictus. “He will have his chance. We will have to see he doesn’t take it. Now, get down to the boats, Dolgfinn, and tell them to unload the machines. But not this bank. The far bank, understand? A hundred paces back. And rig a sail over each one as if it was a tent. Have men ready to look as if they’re taking them down when the English come in sight. But take them down English-style-you know, as if you were ten old gammers comparing grandchildren. Have the slaves do it.”

  Dolgfinn laughed. “You have trained the slaves to work better than that these months, Ivar.”

  The mirth had drained completely from Ivar’s face, the eyes gone as colorless as his skin. “Then untrain them,” he said. “The machines on that bank. The men on this.” He turned back to his survey of the army coming forward, six-deep, banners waving, great crosses on standard-carts behind its center. “And send up Hamal. He will lead the mounted patrol today. I have special orders for him.”

  From his vantage point beneath a great flowering hawthorn, Shef looked out at the developing battle. The Army of the Way lay in its ranks behind and to either side of him, well spread-out and under cover of wood or hedgerow. The bulky pull-throwers were still not assembled, the twist-shooters with their horse-teams well to the rear. English bagpipers and Viking horn-blowers had all alike been threatened with disgrace, torment and forfeiture of a week’s ale ration if they sounded a note. Shef was sure they had remained undiscovered. And now, as the battle seemed likely to be joined, both sides’ wandering scouts would have been called into the center. So far so good.

  And yet, already there was a surprise. Ivar’s machines. Shef had watched them being swayed from the boats, had noted the way the yards dipped and the b
oats heeled: heavy objects, whatever they were, far heavier than his own. Was that how Ivar had taken Lynn? And they had been put on the wrong bank. Safer from attack, maybe, but unable to move forward if the battle shifted the other way. Nor could even Shef’s keen sight see how the machines were constructed. How would they affect his plan to fight the battle?

  Even more, his plan not to fight the battle.

  Cwichelm the marshal, veteran of many battles, would have halted the army if he could, as soon as his advance-guard reported the dragon-boats on the river in front of him. A Viking fleet was not what he had expected to fight. Anything unexpected should be scouted first—especially when dealing with the folk of the Way, whose many traps he remembered from the fight in the marsh when Sigvarth had died.

  He was not left to make the decision. Vikings and Waymen were all the same to his king: enemies of decency. To Wulfgar and the bishops, all were heathens. Dragon-boats spread out in line? So much the better! Destroy them before they could mass together. “And if they are not Way-folk,” the young Alfgar had added with pointed insolence, “so much less to worry about. At least they will not have the machines you fear so much.”

  Stung by the insult, aware that complex maneuvering would not work with the untrained thanes who made up most of King Burgred’s army, Cwichelm took his men over the slight ridge above the river at a brisk trot, he and his assistants well out in front, shouting their war-cries and waving their broadswords for the rest to come on.

  The English army, seeing the hated dragon-boats in front of them, each crew clumped in a wedge before its boat, cheered and came on with enthusiasm. Just so long as they don’t get disheartened, thought Cwichelm, dropping back till the ranks closed round him. Or get tired before the battle’s even started. He settled his shield firmly on his shoulder, making no effort to lift it to guard-position. It weighed a stone—fourteen English pounds—the rest of his weapons and armor, three stone more. Not too much to carry. A lot to run with. Even more to wield. Through the sweat that ran into his eyes he noted dimly the men on the far bank struggling with canvas. Not often you catch Vikings napping, he thought. It’s usually us that’s up last.

  The first volley from Erkenbert’s onagers smashed six holes in the English battle-line, each stone driving clear through the six-deep ranks. The one aimed for the commanders in the center—conspicuous in gold and garnets and scarlet tunics—lifted a trifle high, at head height. Cwichelm never felt or saw the blow that drove his head straight back till the neckbone snapped, that reaped a file of men behind him and crashed on to bury itself in the earth just short of the cart from which Bishop Daniel was chanting an encouraging psalm. In an instant both he and the army were headless.

  Most of the English warriors behind their visored helmets did not even see what had happened to their right or their left. They could see only the enemy in front of them, the enemy so tantalizingly gathered in isolated clumps and wedges, each one forty-strong in front of its ship, five or ten yards between them. In a yelling wave they ran forward to beat on the Viking wedges with spear and broadsword, hacking at the linden-shields, sweeping at head and leg. Braced and rested, Ivar Ragnarsson’s outnumbered men strained every muscle to hold them for the five minutes their chief had demanded.

  Through the carefully measured firing-lanes the catapults launched their irresistible missiles again and again.

  “Something’s happening already,” grunted Brand.

  Shef made no reply. For several minutes he had strained his one eye desperately to see what he could of the machines that were wreaking such havoc in Burgred’s army. Then he fixed on one, counted his heartbeats carefully between one launch and the next. By now he had a good idea of what the weapons were. They must be torsion-machines—the slow rate of shot showed that, as did the smashing effect, the swirls of men bowled over as each missile struck. They were not on a bow principle. Little as he could see from a mile’s distance, the square, high shape showed that. And the weight of them, the weight he could detect from the way they had to be slung on yards and pulleys—that showed they must be built stoutly to take some sort of impact. Yes. A little experiment, a closer look if he got the chance, and …

  Time now to think more immediately. Shef turned his attention to the battle. Something happening, Brand said. And easy enough to guess what. After a few volleys, the men on the English side, nearest to where the stones were arriving, had started to edge sideways, realizing that safety lay in having wedges of their enemies between them and the machines. But as they edged sideways they hampered the efforts and the sword-arms of the champions trying to break through Ivar’s crewmen. Many of those champions, half-blinded by their helmets, weighed down by their armor, had no idea what was going on, only that something strange was happening round them. Some of them were beginning to step back, to look for space to raise their visors, to shove off the men who should be backing them but were jostling them instead. If Ivar’s men were concentrated they could use such a moment to break out. But they were not. They themselves were in small groups, each one liable to be swallowed instantly by superior numbers if they drove forward from their ships and the protecting riverbank. The battle hung in balance.

  Brand grunted again, this time digging his fingers deep into Shef’s arm. Someone by Ivar’s machines had given an order to change targets, was enforcing it with kicks and blows. As the English swordsmen rushed forward, the clumsy standard-carts behind them were left exposed, each one with a waving banner on it—of king or alderman, or the giant cross of bishop or abbot. But now there was one fewer than there had been a moment ago. Splinters still flew in the air, turning end over end. A direct hit. And there again—a whole file of draft-oxen slumped onto their knees in a row and a wheel hurled itself sideways. From the Wayman army behind Shef and his group, all by now watching intently, there rose an exhalation, an exhalation that would have been a cheer without the instant kicks and curses of marshals and team-leaders. A cross held steady for a moment, then tipped inexorably over, crashed to the ground.

  Something deep inside Shef clicked like a winding cogwheel. Thoughtfully, unnoticed in the rising excitement around him, he took a deep pull at the flask he had held all day in one hand: good ale. But in it was the contents of the little leather sack he had taken from Hund that morning. He drank deep, forcing himself to ignore the gagging reflex, the vile taste of long-rotten meat. How do you give a man a vomit, for a purge? he had asked. “That is one thing we can do,” Hund had said with somber pride. Shef felt no doubt, as the drench went down, that that was exactly true. He drank the flask to its end, leaving not a drop as evidence, then rose to his feet. A minute, maybe two, he thought. I need all eyes.

  “Why are they riding forward?” he asked. “Is it a charge?”

  “A cavalry charge like the Franks do?” replied Brand uncertainly. “I’ve heard of that. Don’t know that the English—”

  “No, no, no,” snapped Alfred, also on his feet, almost dancing with impatience. “It’s Burgred’s horse-thanes. Oh, look at the fools! They’ve decided that the battle is lost, so they’re riding forward to rescue their lord. But as soon as he mounts … Almighty God, he’s done it!”

  Far away across the battlefield, a gold-ringed head rose into view from a ruck of bodies—the king mounting. For a moment he seemed to be resisting, waving his sword forward. But someone else had hold of his bridle. A clot of riders began to walk, then canter from the fighting. As they did so, instantly men began to shred away from the fighting-lines, following their leader, at first casually. Then briskly, hastily. Realizing the movement behind them, others turned to look, to follow. The army of the Mark, still undestroyed, still unbeaten, many of its men still unafraid, began to stream to the rear. As it did so, the stones lashed out again. Men began to run.

  The Wayman army was all on its feet now, all eyes turning expectantly toward the center. The moment, Shef thought. Sweep forward when both sides are fully engaged, take the machines before they can change target, board t
he ships, take Ivar in flank and rear …

  “Give me some horsemen,” Alfred begged. “Burgred’s a fool, but he’s my sister’s husband. I have to save him. We’ll pension him off, send him to the Pope …”

  Yes, thought Shef. And that will be one piece still on the board. And Ivar—even if we beat him Ivar will get away, by boat or horse, like he did last time. And that will be another. But we must have fewer pieces now. In the end, one piece alone. I want the mills to stop.

  Blessedly, as he stepped forward, he felt some dreadful thing rising inside him, his mouth filling with the terrible cold saliva he had felt only once before, the time he had eaten carrion one hard winter. Grimly he clamped it down. All eyes, all eyes.

  He turned, looked at the men rising from bracken and bush, eyes glaring, teeth showing with expectant rage. “Forward,” he shouted, lifting his halberd from the ground and sweeping it toward the river. “Men of the Way …”

  The vomit shot from his mouth so fiercely it caught Alfred high up on his enameled shield. The king gaped, uncomprehending. Shef doubled up, acting no more; his halberd dropped. Again the great retchings took him, again and again, lifting him off his feet.

  As he rolled on the fouled earth the Wayman army hesitated, staring in horror. Alfred raised an arm to shout for his horse, for his companions, then dropped it, turned back to stare at the figure writhing on the ground. Thorvin was running forward from his place in the rear. A buzz of doubt ran along the ranks: What’s the order? Are we going forward? Sigvarthsson is down? Who commands? Is it the Viking? Do we obey a pirate? An Englishman? The Wessex king?