“We have to figure that he's already marching to intercept us. So we've got him to the north and the English a couple of miles to the south.”
“How many men?” asked Guthmund.
“They thought—the ones who escaped and rode to meet us—about two thousand. Not the whole York army. None of the other Ragnarssons there. Only Ivar and his lot.”
“We could take them if we were at full strength,” said Guthmund. “Bunch of criminals. Gaddgedlar. Broken men.” He spat.
“We aren't at full strength.”
“But we will be soon,” went on Guthmund. “If Ivar knows about the gold, I bet everyone in that camp knew about it first. They were probably all pissed drunk celebrating when he turned up. As soon as their heads clear, the ones who got away will head straight for the meeting ground at March. We meet them there, we're at full strength, or damn near. Then we'll settle Ivar's lot. You can have Ivar yourself, Brand. You have a score to pay.”
Brand grinned. It was hard, Shef reflected, to scare these people. They had to be killed, one at a time, till they were all dead, to defeat them. Unfortunately that was what was likely to happen.
“What about the English behind us?” he asked.
Brand sobered again, drawn from his dream of single combat.
“They should be a lot less of a problem. We've always beaten them. But if they come up on us from behind while we're engaged with Ivar… We need time. Time to pick up the rest of the army at March. Time to settle Ivar's hash.”
Shef thought of his vision. We have to throw them something they want, he reflected. Not treasure. Brand would never let go of it.
The old king's whetstone from the barrow was still in his belt. He pulled it out, stared at the bearded, crowned faces carved on each end. Savage faces, full of the awareness of power. Kings have to do things other men would not. So do leaders. So do jarls. They had said there would be a price to be paid for the hoard. Maybe this was it. When he looked up he saw Sigvarth was staring round-eyed at the weapon that had beaten out the brains of his son.
“The causeway,” said Shef hoarsely. “A few men can block it against the English for a long time.”
“They could,” Brand agreed. “But they will have to be led by one of us. A leader. One who is used to independent command. One who can rely on his own men. Maybe a long hundred of them.”
For long moments the silence was unbroken. Whoever stayed behind was as good as dead. This was asking a lot—even of these Vikings.
Sigvarth stared at Shef coldly, waiting for him to speak. But it was Brand's voice that broke the silence.
“There is one here who has a full crew to back him. One who made the heimnar that now is carried toward us by the English….”
“Do you speak of me, Brand? Do you ask me to set my feet and those of my men on the path to Hell?”
“Yes, Sigvarth, I speak of you.”
Sigvarth started to answer, then turned and looked towards Shef. “Yes, I will do it. I feel that the runes are already cut that tell of this. You said my son's death was the will of the Norns. I think the Norns are weaving fates together on this causeway too. And not the Norns alone.”
He raised his eyes to meet his son's.
The front ranks of the army of the Mark, hurrying on through the night in pursuit of their fleeing enemies, fell into Sigvarth's trap an hour after sunset. In twenty heartbeats of slaughter the Englishmen, packed ten abreast on the narrow causeway through the marsh, lost half a hundred picked champions. The rest—weary, wet, hungry, furious with their leaders—fell back in confusion, not even coming on again to recover the bodies and their armor. For an hour Sigvarth's men, standing tensely ready, heard them shouting and haranguing each other. Then, slowly, the noise of men retreating. Not frightened. Unsure. Wondering if there was a way round. Waiting for orders. Leaving it to the next man. Ready for a night's sleep, even in a sodden blanket on the ground, before risking precious life against something unknown.
Twelve hours gained already, thought Sigvarth, standing his men down. Though not for me. I may as well watch as anything else. I shall not sleep again after the death of my son. My one son. I wonder if the other is my son. If he is, he is his father's bane.
With dawn, the English returned, three thousand men, to see the nature of the barrier that blocked their way.
The Vikings had dug into the sodden February soil on both sides of the track through the fens. A foot down they had reached water. Two feet down and only mud came up. Instead of their normal earthwork they had dug a water-filled ditch ten feet broad. On their side of it they had jammed into the ground such bits of timber as they could break up from the cart Shef had left behind. A flimsy obstacle to be cleared in a few moments by a gang of churls. If there had been no men behind it.
There was room on the causeway for only ten to stand. For only five to wield weapons. The warriors of the Mark, coming forward cautiously, shields raised, found themselves floundering thigh-deep in freezing water before they were in sword-range of an enemy. Their leather shoes skidded on the bottom. As they edged on, bearded faces glared at them, two-handed axes resting on shoulders. Strike at the men? A man had to struggle up a muddy slope to get in a blow. While he did, the axemen could pick their spot.
Strike at the timbers then, at the breastwork. But take your eyes off the man above you and he would cut arm from shoulder or head from neck.
Gingerly, striving desperately for balance, the Mercian champions probed crabwise into battle, urged on by cries of encouragement from those not yet engaged.
As the short day drew on, the fighting gathered momentum. Cwichelm, the Mercian captain, deputed by his king to advise and support the new alderman, lost patience with the tentative assaults, pulled his men back, ordered forward a score of bowmen with unlimited arrows to line the track. “Shoot at head level,” he told them. “Doesn't matter if you miss. Just keep them down.”
Other men kept up a barrage with javelins, just over the heads of their fighting fellows. Cwichelm's best swordsmen, spurred on with appeals to their pride, were told to go forward and fence—to not rush forward. Tire them out for a while, then change places with the next rank. Meanwhile a thousand men had been sent miles to the rear, to cut brushwood, bring it forward, throw it under the feet of the fighters, let them trample it under to make, in time, a solid platform.
Alfgar, watching from twenty paces back, pulled his fair beard with vexation.
“How many men do you need?” he asked. “It's only a ditch and a fence. One good push and we'll be through it. It doesn't matter if we lose a few.”
The captain eyed his master-by-title sardonically. “Try telling that to the few,” he said. “Or maybe you'd care to try it yourself? Just take out that big fellow in the middle. The one laughing. With the yellow teeth.”
In the dim light, Alfgar stared across the cold water and the struggling men at Sigvarth, padding from side to side as he beat aside sword-strokes, sparred to get in a blow. Alfgar thrust his hand into his belt as it began to tremble.
“Bring my father forward,” he muttered to his attendants. “There is something for him to see.”
“The English are bringing up a coffin,” observed one of the Viking front-rankers to Sigvarth. “I would have thought they needed more than just one by now.”
Sigvarth stared at the padded box, held almost upright by its bearers, its occupant held in place by chest- and waist-straps. Across the water, his eyes met those of the man he had maimed. After a moment, he threw his head back in a wild cry of laughter, raised his shield, shook his axe, called out in Norse.
“What does he say?” muttered Alfgar.
“He is calling to your father,” translated Cwichelm. “Does he recognize the axe? Does he think it forgot something? Drop his breeches and he will do his best to remember.”
Wulfgar's mouth moved. His son bent to hear the hoarse mumble.
“He says he will give his whole estate to the man who takes that one alive.”
<
br /> Cwichelm pursed his lips. “Easier said than done. One thing about these devils. You can beat them, sometimes. But it's never easy. Never, never easy.”
From the sky above them came a shrill whistling, dropping closer.
“Lower away!” barked the leader of catapult team one. The twelve freed thralls on the ropes thrust right hand over left hand over right hand, shouting hoarsely as they did so. “One—two—three.” The sling dropped into the leader's hands. As it came down, the loader sprang from his kneeling position, shoved a ten-pound rock into position, leapt instantly back into his place, reaching for the next one.
“Take the strain!” Backs bent, the machine's arm flexed, the leader felt himself pulled up on to his toes.
“Pull!” A simultaneous grunt, the lash of the sling, a rock whirling into the air. As it went, it spun, the chipped grooves on its surface setting up an ominous whistling. In the same moment, the crew heard the cry from behind them of the leader of catapult two.
“Take the strain!”
Traction-catapults were strange beasts in that they had most power at maximum range. They lobbed their missiles up in the sky. The higher they went, the harder they hit. The two teams of ex-slaves Shef had left behind with their cart and their machines had accordingly set up their pull-throwers a carefully paced two hundred yards behind Sigvarth's breastwork on the causeway; their missiles would strike twenty-five yards further on.
The narrow causeway was the ideal killing-ground for the machines. They threw perfectly straight, never deviating more than a few feet either side of the center. The English freedmen had perfected a drill designed to ensure that everyone did everything exactly the same way every time, and as fast as possible. For three minutes they shot. Then stood easy, panting.
The boulders dropped death from the sky on the Mercian column. The first one struck a tall warrior on the head as he stood unmoving, beating his skull almost into his shoulders. The second hit an automatically raised shield, shattering the arm behind it, caroming off to smash in a rib cage. The third hit a turned back, crushing the spine. In instants the causeway was jammed with struggling men, attempting to get back and away from a death they still could not see or understand. On the packed mass the stones continued to fall, varying a few yards forward or back as the launchers' heaves fluctuated, but never missing the causeway itself. Only those who crowded forward into the ditch closest to the Vikings remained safe.
At the end of the three minutes the warriors leading the attack saw only chaos and ruin behind them. Those who fled to the rear saw now that at a certain distance they were safe.
Cwichelm, in the fore, waved his broadsword, yelled out in rage to Sigvarth, “Come out! Come out from your ditch and fight like men. With swords, not stones.”
Sigvarth's yellow teeth showed again in a grin. “Come and make me,” he called, in an approximation of English. “You so brave. How many of you you need?”
More hours gained, he thought. How long does it take an Englishman to learn sense?
Not quite long enough, he reflected as the short February day drew toward its end in rain and sleet. The ditch and the stone-throwers had shocked them. But very, very slowly, maybe not quite slowly enough, they had got over their shock and worked out what they should have done in the first place.
Which was everything—and all at once. Frontal assault to keep Sigvarth busy. Spears and arrows launched overhead, to harass. Brushwood under the feet of the fighters, to build up a platform. Men coming up in thin lines, eyes alert, to give poor targets for the stone-throwers. Others floundering through the marsh in small bodies, to try to climb the causeway behind his block, splitting his meager force. Commandeered boats poling along to get behind him and threaten to cut off his retreat. Sigvarth's men were looking behind them now. One solid push by the English, regardless of casualties, and they really would be through.
One of the slaves from the stone-throwers was tugging at Sigvarth's sleeve, talking in broken Norse.
“We go now,” he said. “No more rocks. Master Shef, he said, shoot till rocks gone, then go. Cut ropes, throw machines in swamp. Go now!”
Sigvarth nodded, watching the puny figure scamper away. Now he had his own honor to think of. His own destiny to fulfill. He walked forward toward the front line of the fighters, clapping men on the shoulder. “Move,” he said to each one. “Get your horse. Get out of this now. Ride straight for March and they won't catch you.”
His helmsman Vestlithi hesitated as Sigvarth tapped him, “Who's bringing your horse, jarl? You'll have to move quick.”
“I have something to do yet. Go, Vestlithi. This is my fate, not yours.”
As the feet splashed away behind him, Sigvarth faced the five leading champions of the Mark, probing suspiciously forward, made wary of every opportunity by a long day of slaughter.
“Come on,” he called to them. “Only me!”
As the foot of the center man slipped, he leapt forward with appalling speed, slashed, countered, thrust sword through beard, leapt back again, feinting from one side to the other as the enraged Englishmen closed in.
“Come on!” he shouted, yelling again the words of Ragnar's death-song, which Ivar Ragnarsson's skald had made:
“ ‘We struck with the sword. Sixty times and one
I have fought in the front when foemen clashed.
Never yet have I met—young though I started
To mar the mailcoats—my match in battle.
The gods will greet me. I grieve not for death.’ “
Over the clash of combat, one man against an army, Wulfgar's deep tones carried.
“Take him alive! Pin him with shields! Take him alive!”
I must let them do it, thought Sigvarth as he whirled and slashed. I have not bought my son quite enough time. But there is a way to buy him yet one more night.
It will be a long one for me.
Chapter Eleven
Shef and Brand, standing close together, watched the battleline, two-hundred-men wide, tramping slowly to ward them across the level meadowland turf. Over the advancing line battle-standards waved, the personal flags of jarls and champions. Not the Raven Banner of the Ragnarssons, which flew only when all four brothers consented to it. But above the central reserve a gust puffed out one long ensign: the Coiling Worm of Ivar Ragnarsson himself. Even at this distance Shef thought he could catch the glint of the silver helmet, the scarlet cloak.
“Going to be a killing-ground today. We're too evenly matched,” Brand muttered. “Even the side that wins is going to take very heavy losses. Takes guts to walk forward in the front rank, knowing that. Ivar's not in the front, pity. I was hoping he would be; I could have a go at him myself. The only cheap way for us to win this will be to kill a leader and take the heart out of the rest.”
“Is there a cheap way for them?”
“I doubt it. Our lads have seen the money. They've only heard about it.”
“But you still think we're going to lose?”
Brand patted Shef reassuringly. “Heroes never think things like that. But everybody loses some time. And we're outnumbered.”
“You haven't counted my thralls.”
“I've never known thralls to win battles.”
“Wait and see.”
Shef ran back a few paces from where he and Brand had been standing, beneath the Flag of the Hammer, at the rear center of their own—the Wayman line. It was drawn up in exactly the same style as Ivar's force, but only five-deep, with fewer reserves. Shef had placed his wheeled torsion-catapults—the dart-shooters—in the line, screened only by a single rank of men and shields. Well back behind the line stood the traction-catapults—the stone-throwers—all of them except for the pair he had left with Sigvarth, their half-crews clutching the flapping ropes.
But it was the twist-shooters that would do the work now. Using his halberd, Shef vaulted onto the central cart of the nine he had left, still drawn up, oxen still hitched. He looked up and down the line of men, seeing the
faces of his catapult-crews turned toward him.
“Clear your line!”
The Vikings masking the line of fire shuffled sideways. The ropes were wound tight; loader stood ready with bundles of javelins; they were aimed and ready. The slowly advancing line of men was a target impossible to miss. Over the turf came the hoarse chanting of the Ragnarsson army: “Ver thik,” they shouted again and again. “Ver thik, her ek kom.”—“Guard yourself, here I come.”
Shef dropped the head of his halberd forward as he shouted, “Shoot!”
Black streaks, rising at the launch, falling as they flashed through the air. Plunging into the lines of advancing men.
The lever-men were rewinding furiously, javelins dropped into place. Shef waited until the last one was reloaded, the last hand up to signal readiness.
“Shoot!”
Again the thrums, the streaks, the swirls. A hum of excitement rose from the Wayman army. And there was something happening with the Ragnarsson line as well. They had abandoned their steady walk, their chanting wavered and died. Now they were trotting forward, anxious to close before they were impaled like roast pigs—without a blow struck. Running half a mile in armor would tire them nicely. The shooters had done one job already.
But they could not shoot much longer. Shef calculated that he could shoot twice more before the attackers reached the line. Kill a few more men, unsettle the rest.
As the machines leapt back on their wheels for the last time he ordered them back.
The crews lifted the trails, ran their machines back out of the line toward the carts, calling out with triumph. “Shut up! Man the throwers.”
In seconds the ex-thralls were loading and aiming the machines. Vikings would never have done that, thought Shef. They would have needed time to tell each other what deed they had done. He raised his halberd up and ten boulders were hurled simultaneously into the air.
They reloaded as quickly as they could, inched the clumsy frames round as the captains lined them up. A rain of boulders whistled out of the sky, no longer in volleys, each machine shooting as fast as its crew could lower and load.
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