Osmod the marshal, peering through the rain, judged the Frankish vanguard within range. As he called the order, twenty beams lashed the air together, slings whirled, stones shot into the sky.
Charles’s horse reared as the brains of a dismounted archer flicked its face. Another stallion, leg broken, screamed and pawed at the air. Almost before one volley had landed another was in the air. For a moment the Frankish army, surprised again and again, came close to panic.
Charles rode forward bellowing, ignoring the stones now aimed deliberately at him. Imperiously he drove the archers forward, launching feeble arrows. Behind them, following his example, his heavy lancers broke into a slow trot. Into the quagmire where a brook had been.
Charles himself was pulled clear of his bogged horse by two counts of his stable, stood in the end to watch. His men floundered through, some on horses still, some on foot, to reach the machines that flung an unending rain of stones. They were met by a line of men in strange helmets, swinging and stabbing with huge axes like woodmen’s tools. Robbed of the elan which was their birthright, the Frankish knights stood and fought them weapon to weapon. Slowly, the big men in mail forced their smaller, strangely armed adversaries back. Back. Almost to the line of the machines, which they must stand to defend.
Horn-blasts from both sides. Floundering through the mud, Charles tensed, expecting the counterattack, the desperate last charge. Instead his enemies turned suddenly, all together, and ran. Ran unashamedly, like hares or leverets. Leaving their machines to the conqueror.
Gasping with exertion, Charles realized there was no way to carry the things off. Nor to burn them. “Cut them up,” he ordered. An archer looked doubtfully at the heavy timbers. “Cut the ropes! Do something to them.”
“They lost a few,” said one of his counts. “And they ran like cowards. Left their weapons behind.”
“We lost many,” said the king. “And how many swords and mail-shirts have we left behind us today? Give me my horse. If we reach base with half the strength we started, we’ll be lucky.”
Yes, he thought. But we’re through. Through all the traps. And half, behind a safe stockade, may be enough another day.
As if to encourage him, the rain began to ease.
Guthmund the Greedy, sweeping down the Channel under oars alone, ignored the rain and welcomed the poor visibility it brought. If he was going to go ashore he would much prefer it to come as a surprise. Also, in rain or fog, there was a chance of snapping up information. In the prow of the leading ship, he pointed off to starboard, called an order to increase the stroke. In moments the longship was alongside the six-oar fishing-boat, its crew looking up in fear. Guthmund pulled the hammer-pendant from round his neck and showed it, noted the expressions fading from fear to wariness.
“We are here to fight the Franks,” he called, using the half-English pidgin of the Wayman camp. The expressions relaxed another degree as the men realized they could understand him, took in what he said.
“You’re too late,” a fisherman called back. “They fight today.”
“You’d better come aboard,” replied Guthmund.
As he took in the sense of what the fishermen told him, his pulse began to beat stronger. If there was one principle of successful piracy, it was to land where the defenses were down. He checked again and again: the Frankish army had been seen marching out that morning. It had left camp-guards and ship-guards. The loot of the countryside, Canterbury included, was in the lightly guarded camp. The fishermen had no hope that the Franks would find anything but victory. Still, Guthmund told himself, if his friend and jarl was defeated, it could do no harm to rob the conqueror. And a stroke in the rear might be a vital distraction. He turned to the fishermen again with another string of questions: The fleet drawn up in a bay? The stockaded camp on a hill? The nearest inlet to it? Steep sides but a path?
In the drenching rain the Wayman fleet, rowed now by chained Ragnarsson survivors, pulled one by one into the narrow mouth of the stream below Hastings and its camp.
“Do you mean to climb the walls with ladders?” asked one of the fishermen doubtfully. “They are ten feet high.”
“That’s what those are for,” said Guthmund, waving cheerfully at the six onagers being slung over the side by derricks.
“Too heavy for the path,” said the fisherman, eyeing the way the boats heeled.
“I have plenty of carriers,” replied Guthmund, watching keenly as his men, weapons poised, unshackled the dangerous Ragnarsson galley-slaves a few at a time and made them fast again to the onagers’ frames and carry-bars.
As the narrow inlet filled with men, Guthmund decided to make a short speech of encouragement.
“Loot,” he said, “lots of it. Stolen from the Christian Church, so we’ll never have to give any back. Maybe we have to share it with the jarl, if he wins today. Maybe not. Let’s go.”
“What about us?” said one of the chained men.
Guthmund looked at him attentively. Ogvind the Swede: a very hard man. Threats no good. And he needed these men to use their full strength up the steep hillside.
“This is how it is,” he said. “If we win, I’ll let you go. If we lose, I’ll leave you chained to the machines. Maybe the Christians will be merciful to you. Fair?”
Ogvind nodded. Struck by a sudden thought, Guthmund turned to the black deacon, the machine-master.
“What about you? Will you fight these for us?”
Erkenbert’s face set. “Against Christians? The emissaries of the Pope, the Holy Father, whom I myself and my master called to this abode of savages? Rather will I embrace the crown of holy martydom and go …”
A hand plucked at Guthmund’s sleeve: one of the few slaves taken from York Minster who had survived both Ivar’s furies and Erkenbert’s discipline.
“We’ll do it, master,” he whispered. “Be a pleasure.”
Guthmund waved the mixed party up the steep hillside, going first himself with the fishermen and minster-men to reconnoiter, the Ragnarssons struggling up next under their ton-and-a-half burdens. Slowly, still cloaked by the rain, six onagers and a thousand Vikings moved into position four hundred yards from the Frankish stockade. Guthmund shook his head disapprovingly as he realized that there were not even sentries posted on the seaward side—or if there had been, they had all drifted over to the other side to watch and listen to the far-off rumor of battle.
The first sighting shot from an onager bounced short, kicked up and flicked a ten-foot post stump-first out of the ground. The minster-men pulled out coigns, lifted the frames a trifle. The next volley of five twenty-pound boulders smashed down twenty feet of stockade in a moment. Guthmund saw no point in waiting for a second volley. His army headed straight for the gap at a run. The startled Franks, mostly archers, bowstrings useless, faced with a thousand veteran warriors ready to fight on foot at close quarters, broke and ran almost to a man.
Two hours after setting foot onshore, Guthmund looked out from the Frankish gate. All his training told him to parcel the loot, abandon the now-unnecessary machines, and get back to sea before vengeance fell on him. Yet what he saw looked uncommonly like a beaten army streaming back. If so, if so …
He turned, shouted orders. Skaldfinn the interpreter, priest of Heimdall, looked at him in surprise.
“You’re taking a risk,” he said.
“Can’t help it. I remember what my grandpa told me. Always kick a man if he’s down.”
As his men saw the Hammer ensign break out over what they had thought was their secure camp, Charles the Bald felt the morale of his army break. Every man and horse was soaked, cold and weary. As they straggled out of the copses and hedgerows and formed once more into ranks, the hobbelars could see that at least half their number were still lying out in the sodden fields, dead or waiting for death from some peasant’s knife. The archers had been mere passive targets all day. Even the core of his army, the heavy lancers, had left a third of their best on slope or in quagmire, with never a chanc
e to show their skill. The stockade in front of him looked unharmed and heavily manned. No assault would go in willingly.
Cutting his losses, Charles stood in his saddle, raised his lance, pointed toward the ships drawn up on the beach or anchored in the road. Sullenly, his men changed their direction of march, angled down towards the beach on which they had landed weeks before.
As they reached it, one by one, the dragon-boats cruised round from the inlet where their crews had re-embarked. Rowed into position, halted all together on the calm sea, swung bows on with the skill of veterans. From a vantage point by the stockade, an onager tried a ranging shot. The missile plumped into the gray water a cable’s length over the cog Dieu Aide. Gently, the onagers trained round.
Looking down on the crowded beach, Shef realized that where the Frankish army had shrunk, his had swollen. The dart-throwers and crossbows were in place as he expected, hardly fewer than when they had started. His stone-throwers were coming up at a rush, recaptured from where the Franks had left them, unharmed or hastily re-rigged and now carried along still assembled by hundreds of willing hands. Only the halberdiers had lost more than a handful. And in their place had come thousands, literally thousands of angry churls out of the woodlands, clutching axes and spears and scythes. If the Franks were to break out it would have to be uphill. On weary horses. Under withering fire.
Into Shef’s mind, unbidden, came the memory of his duel with Flann the Gaddgedil. If you wanted to consign a man, or an army, to Naströnd, to Dead Man’s Shore, you cast the spear over their heads as a sign that all were given to Othin. Then no prisoners could be taken. A voice spoke inside him, a cold voice, the voice he recognized as the Othin of his dreams.
“Go on,” it said. “Pay me my due. You do not wear my sign yet, but do they not say you belong to me?”
As if sleepwalking, Shef drifted over to Oswi’s catapult—“Dead Level,” wound and loaded, trained on the center of the Frankish army, milling in confusion below them. He looked down at the crosses on the shields: remembered the orm-garth. The wretched slave Merla. His own torments at the hands of Wulfgar. Godive’s back. Sibba and Wilfi, burned to ashes. The crucifixions. His hands were steady as they pulled out the coigns, trained the weapon up to launch its missile over the Frankish heads.
Inside him the voice spoke again, the voice like a calving glacier. “Go on,” it said. “Give the Christians to me.”
Suddenly Godive was beside him, hand on his sleeve. She said nothing. As he looked at her, he remembered Father Andreas, who had given him life. His friend Alfred. Father Boniface. The poor woman in the forest clearing. He looked round from his daze, realized that the priests of the Way, all of them, had appeared from somewhere, were gazing at him with grave and intent faces.
He stepped back from the catapult with a deep sigh.
“Skaldfinn,” he said. “You are an interpreter. Go down and tell the Frankish king to surrender or be killed. I will give them their lives and passage home. No more.”
Again he heard a voice: but this time, the amused one of the wanderer in the mountains, which he had first heard over the gods’ chessboard.
“Well done,” it said. “You defeated Othin’s temptation. Maybe you are my son. But who knows his own father?”
Chapter Twelve
“He was tempted,” said Skaldfinn.”Whatever you may say, Thorvin, there is something of Othin in him.”
“It would have been the greatest slaughter since men came to these islands,” added Geirulf. “The Franks on the beach were worn out and helpless. And the English churls would have had no mercy.”
The priests of the Way sat again in their holy circle, around the spear and the fire, within the rowan cords. Thorvin had picked great bunches of the freshest berries of autumn. Their bright scarlet answered the sunset.
“Such a thing would have brought us the worst of luck,” said Farman. “For with such a sacrifice it is essential that no loot or profit be taken. But the English would not have regarded that. They would have robbed the dead. Then we would have had against us both the Christian God and the wrath of Allfather.”
“Nevertheless he did not shoot the dart,” said Thorvin. “He held his hand. That is why I say he is not a creature of Othin. I thought so once. Now I know better.”
“You had better tell us what you learned from his mother,” said Skaldfinn.
“It was like this,” Thorvin began. “I found her easily enough, in the village of her husband the heimnar. She might not have talked to me, but she loves the girl—concubine’s daughter though she is. In the end she told me the story.
“It was much as Sigvarth told it—though he said she enjoyed his attentions and she … Well, after what she suffered it is not surprising that she spoke of him only with hatred. But she bore him out up to the time when he lay with her on the sand, put her in the boat, and then left her and went back to his men and their women on the beach.
“Then, she said, this happened. There was a scratching on the boat’s gunwale. When she looked over, in the night, there was a small boat alongside, just a skiff, with a man in it. I pressed her to know what sort of man, but she could remember nothing. Middle-aged, middle-sized, she said, neither well-dressed nor shabby. He beckoned to her. She thought he was a fisherman who had come out to rescue her, so she got in. He pulled out well clear of the beach, and rowed her down the coast, saying never a word. She got out, she went home to her husband.”
“Maybe he was a fisherman,” put in Farman. “Just as the walrus was a walrus and the skoffin was a foolish boy afraid of keeping watch on his own.”
“I asked her—did he not want a reward? He could have taken her home. Her kin would have paid him, if not her husband. She said he just left her. I pressed her on this, I asked her to remember every detail. She said one more thing.
“When the stranger got her to shore, she said, he pulled the boat up on the beach and looked at her. Then she felt suddenly weary and lay down among the seaweed. When she woke, he had gone.”
Thorvin looked round. “Now, what happened when she lay in this sleep we do not know. I would guess that a woman would know by some sign if she had been taken in her sleep, but who is to say? Sigvarth had been with her not long before. If she had any suspicion, she would have nothing to gain by mentioning it. Or remembering it. But that sleep makes me wonder.
“Tell me now.” Thorvin turned to Farman. “You who are the wisest of us, tell me how many gods there are in Asgarth.”
Farman stirred uneasily. “You know, Thorvin, that is not a wise question. Othin, Thor, Frey, Balder, Heimdall, Njorth, Ithun, Tyr, Loki—those are the ones we speak of most. But there are so many others in the stories: Vithar, Sigyn, Ull …”
“Rig?” asked Thorvin carefully. “What do we know of Rig?”
“That is a name of Heimdall,” said Skaldfinn.
“A name,” mused Thorvin. “Two names, one person. So we hear. Now, I would not say this outside the circle, but it comes to me sometimes that the Christians are right. There is only one god.” He looked round at the shocked faces. “But he—no, it—has different moods. Or parts. Maybe the parts compete against each other, as a man may play chess, right hand against left, for sport. Othin against Loki, Njörth against Skathi, Aesir against Vaenir. Yet the real contest is between all the parts, all the gods, and the giants and monsters who would bring us to Ragnarok.
“Now, Othin has his way of making men strong to help the gods when they shall stand against the giants on that day. That is why he betrays the warriors, chooses the mightiest of them to die. So they will be in his hall the day the giants come.
“But it is in my mind that maybe Rig too has his way. You know the holy story? How Rig went through the mountains, met Ai and Edda and begot on Edda, Thrall. Met Afi and Amma and begot on Amma, Karl. Met Fathir and Mothir and begot on Mothir, Jarl. This jarl of ours has also been thrall and carl. And who is the son of Jarl?”
“Kon the Young,” said Farman.
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�Which is to say Konr ungr which is konungr.”
“Which is King,” said Farman.
“Who can deny our jarl that title now? He is acting out the story of Rig in his own life. Of Rig and his dealings with humanity.”
“Why is the god Rig doing this?” asked Vestmund, priest of Njörth. “And what is Rig’s power? For I confess, I know nothing of him but the story you tell.”
“He is the god of climbers,” replied Thorvin. “And his power is to make men better. Not through war, like Othin, but through skills. There is another old story you know, about Skjef the father of Skjotd—which is to say, Sheaf the father of Shield. Now the kings of the Danes call themselves the sons of Skjold, the war-kings. Yet even they remember that before Skjold the war-king there was a peace-king, who taught men how to sow and reap, instead of living like animals by the chase. What I think has happened now is that a new Sheaf has come, however we pronounce the name, to free us from sowing and reaping and living only from one harvest to the next.”
“And this is ‘the one who comes from the North,’” said Farman doubtfully. “Not of the blood or tongue. One who has allied himself with Christians. It is not what we expected.”
“What the gods do is never what we expected,” replied Thorvin.
Shef watched the gloomy procession of disarmed Frankish warriors filing after their king aboard the ships that would take them home. With them Alfred had insisted on sending not only the papal legate and the Franks’ own Churchmen, but also the archbishop of York, and his own Bishop Daniel of Winchester, Erkenbert the deacon and all the English clerics who had failed to oppose the invaders. Daniel had screamed threats of eternal damnation for the excommunicate at him, but Alfred had remained unmoved. “If you cast me out of your flock,” he had remarked, “I shall begin my own. One with better shepherds. And dogs with sharper teeth.”
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