The Road to Vengeance

by Judson Roberts

  As the Bretons headed back to their own lines, horns sounded and all along our battle line the rest of the Franks began withdrawing. On each of our flanks, where regular Frankish cavalry had attacked, rather than Bretons, Ragnar’s plan appeared to have met with some success. In the disorganized melees that had resulted when the Franks’ charge had been stopped against the spears of the shield-wall and our archers had poured their fire into them, many of the Franks’ mounts had gone down. I could see many riders on the ground—some motionless, others climbing to their feet or trying to stagger back toward their own lines. As I watched, groups of Danish warriors sprinted out from our shield-wall, cutting down the Frankish wounded.

  It was different story in the center. A few of the Bretons’ horses had fallen to our arrows. A few of the Bretons themselves had been hit, too, and knocked from their mounts. But we had lost far more men than our attackers. All along the center of the shield-wall, men were down. Some were writhing in pain at the javelins piercing their bodies, others lay motionless with the stillness of death. As the thunder of the Franks’ hoof beats receded, it was replaced by the moans and cries of wounded men and horses.

  Our heaviest losses had occurred around the two standards—the Bretons had concentrated their fire there. The shield of almost every man around the standards had been pierced—some by more than one missile. To my relief, I saw that Torvald and Hastein still stood, though both were pulling on the shafts of javelins embedded in their shields. Ragnar, too, had escaped harm.

  In their zeal to strike at our leaders and the warriors who guarded their standards, the Bretons had not aimed any of their fire at the second line along the ridge. None of the archers had fallen.

  “Did you bring any down?” Odd asked me. “Did you kill any?”

  I shook my head. “I shot four arrows,” I said. “But only my last struck its target. And though wounded, even that rider still managed to regain the Frankish line.”

  “I did no better,” he said. “I, too, got four arrows off, but none brought down man or horse. Their armor is too heavy. How did you fare, Tore?”

  But Tore did not answer. He was striding down the slope to meet Hastein, who was climbing toward us.

  “It is no good,” Tore exclaimed to him. “Ragnar’s plan. It is no good against the Bretons.”

  “Then we must change the plan,” Hastein told him. He continued walking, Tore following beside him until he stood just below Odd and me. Hastein’s shield, though pierced with two holes where the heads of javelins had struck it, did not look to be badly damaged. I noticed it was not a shield I’d seen him carry before. Although painted in the colors and pattern he favored, it was considerably thicker than a normal shield and covered on both front and back with leather.

  “You three are my best archers,” he said in a quiet voice so others would not overhear. “How can we deal with these Bretons? We cannot continue to take losses like we did in this attack and not bleed them in return.”

  “At Ruda, we broke the Franks’ charge by bringing down their horses,” I suggested. We had done so at Tore’s direction, then, and it had worked well. I was surprised he did not suggest it again here.

  “At Ruda, the horses were not armored,” Tore said bitterly. “These are Bretons.”

  “We must shoot at their horses’ heads,” I told him. “It is the only unprotected target. All of us must launch our first arrows together in a volley as before, but wait to shoot until they are very close. Wait until just before they are ready to launch their own missiles to make certain we can hit our marks. Their horses’ heads are unarmored. Hit the head, and the horse will fall. And if enough fall, it may even throw off the fire by the other riders around them.”

  “The head of a galloping horse is a difficult target,” Odd protested, shaking his head dubiously.

  “That is why we must wait until they are very close,” I explained.

  Tore shook his head. “I do not like it. I do not like this at all. But Halfdan is right. It is the best target we have.” I wondered fleetingly what he did not like—the difficulty of the target, or that I had thought of it?

  “Do it then,” Hastein told him, and returned back down the hill to his standard.

  “At least the Bretons did not shoot their spears at us,” Odd said.

  “Do not expect that to last,” Tore replied.

  Out on the plain, the Franks had reformed their line and were beginning to walk their horses in our direction again. “They are coming,” I said.

  Tore hurried out in front of the archers’ line. “Archers!” he shouted. “Listen to me. We must change our tactics. These are Bretons we face, not regular Frankish cavalry. Do not waste your arrows on shots that their armor will deflect.

  “Again you must hold your fire until my signal. We will let them draw closer this time before we loose. You must mark as your target the unprotected face of a horse in the front rank of the charge.” A low grumbling passed up and down the line. Odd was right. The front of a horse’s head was a small target, particularly when it was moving as fast as the Bretons were riding. “We must break the Bretons’ charge,” Tore continued. “Our comrades’ lives depend upon it. And spread yourselves out—stagger the line. Every other man move up the hill a few steps. Bunched together as we are now, we will make too easy a target for the Bretons’ javelins.”

  When Tore rejoined the line, Odd moved up the hill and stood behind us. I searched through my quiver and found an arrow I had made long ago on my father’s estate in the shed of Gudrod the Carpenter. It was one I knew shot true.

  As the Bretons neared, I picked my target. The rider held his shield high across the front of his body and peered intently over its top as he rode. He protected himself well, but I did not care. His horse, a fine black stallion, had a white star-shaped patch between its eyes. That would be my target.

  “Ready!” Tore cried. I pulled my bow to full draw and looked past the sharply pointed iron head on the end of my arrow out to the white blaze that was my target. It was constantly moving—the horse’s head was jouncing up and down as it ran. I would have to lead it. But how to judge how much? How swiftly was the horse approaching? I focused my eyes on the white patch of hair and tried to free my mind of conscious thought, giving myself over to the arrow and my bow. The Bretons raced on. They were almost to the base of the ridge.

  “Loose!” Tore shouted.

  My arrow leaped forward off my bow, then seemed to float toward the oncoming horse. It flew so straight I could not see its shaft—only the three feathers of its fletching.

  Suddenly the arrow was there, dark against the white patch. Blood gushed around the shaft embedded in the horse’s skull. As its galloping hooves struck the ground, the horse’s front legs seemed to fold under it, no longer possessing the strength to support its weight. Its massive body plowed into the ground, the impact flinging its rider forward over its neck. He hit hard, landing on one shoulder and the side of his head, and did not move after he stopped rolling.

  Up and down the oncoming wave of Bretons, horses and their riders were down or falling. Fully a third of the charging line fell. But of those riders who escaped harm, many now realized where the danger lay. Although some of the Bretons still hurled their javelins at our warriors in the shield-wall, as in their first attack, most launched their missiles up the hill at the line of archers who had just struck down their comrades. Exposed, with no shields to protect us, we paid a heavy price for the Breton blood we’d spilled, and fell like wheat before the scythe.

  Hauk, he who had spoken to me earlier that morning, who had been shooting from a position in our line just three men down from me, fell with a javelin piercing his chest. The warrior beside him took a javelin in his thigh. And many others fell, too—our mail brynies alone were no match for the heavy, hard-thrown missiles.

  I saw a Breton with a thick black beard cock his arm back to launch his javelin. His eyes were locked on mine, and I knew he was aiming at me. His mouth was open, but in the
din of battle, I could hear no sound coming from it. I raised my bow, drawing as I did, and snapped off a shot at the gaping hole of his mouth. Just as I loosed, he whipped his arm forward. The deadly spear arced up toward me. I watched it coming, but could not move.

  As the Breton’s missile flashed past me, slightly to one side, I saw my arrow strike him in the eye. He flopped backward off his horse. At the same instant, I heard a scream of pain from just beside me. I turned toward the cry and saw Odd seated on the ground, his legs splayed out in front of him, clutching with both hands at a wooden shaft protruding from his belly. The bloody, barbed head of the javelin was sticking out of his back. Odd’s legs were jerking in spasms and as I watched, his chest heaved and blood spurted from his mouth.

  “Odd!” Tore cried and knelt beside him.

  Below us, the Bretons had wheeled their mounts to the right, as with their first charge, just before reaching our line. This time, though, the hillside was littered with the bodies of fallen horses and men. The tightness and order of the Bretons’ formation disintegrated while they struggled to guide their mounts over or around the fallen. As they did, our archers that remained standing poured fire down on them. More Bretons fell, and those men’s bodies and mounts further blocked the way for those who sought to escape.

  A rider below me was whipping his horse furiously with the haft of a javelin, trying to force it between two riderless horses that blocked his way. He held his shield high, covering his side and head. I shot an arrow into his thigh, through the skirt of his long mail brynie. He screamed and lowered his shield, reaching for the wound. Another arrow from farther along our line—I could not see who shot it—struck him in the side of his face and killed him.

  Another Breton, seeking an unobstructed path, spurred his horse so close to our line he was almost in range of the spears that reached out for him as he galloped across the front of our shield-wall. I turned, tracking him with my bow, and as he passed in front of me, I stuck an arrow into the side of his horse’s head. It staggered for a few more strides then sagged to the ground. As the Breton tried to leap free, two warriors lunged out from the shield-wall and stabbed their spears into him.

  Abandoning all efforts to maintain any sort of unified formation, the remaining Bretons spurred their horses desperately back toward their own lines. Fewer than half of the Bretons who had made the second charge returned to the Frankish side of the field.

  Hastein again climbed the hillside up to our line. He had a grim expression as he surveyed the number of dead and wounded archers lying along the side of the ridge.

  “Where is Tore?” he asked me.

  “I am here,” Tore said, from the hillside behind me. He was still kneeling beside Odd, who now was stretched out unmoving on the ground. I walked up to them with Hastein.

  Odd was dead, his throat cut. Tore was holding a bloody knife in his hand. He looked up at us, and I saw tears streaming down his cheeks.

  “He could not have survived,” he said. “He was my comrade. He has been my shipmate for years. I could not let him suffer so.”

  “I need you,” Hastein told him. “You must leave him now.”

  Tore wiped his knife on the grass and sheathed it, then picked up his bow and stood. “I am ready, my Jarl,” he said.

  “You have done well. You and your men have broken the might of the Bretons,” Hastein told him. He looked again at the numerous dead and wounded archers who lay upon the hillside. “But at a very high price.”

  “No man can escape his fate,” Tore said woodenly.

  “How goes the rest of the battle?” I asked.

  “On our flanks, the enemy has not come close to breaking the shield-wall, and their losses have been far higher than our own. Ragnar’s plan was a good one. But in the center…” Hastein sighed and looked around again at the numerous warriors lying dead or wounded on the hillside. “It is the way of battle. We could not have anticipated the Bretons being here, this far north of their own lands.”

  Hastein looked out across the field of battle, in the direction of the Frankish lines. He squinted, then called Torvald up from the shield-wall.

  “I need your eyes,” he told him. “They are sharper than mine.”

  As Torvald reached us, I saw that he was staring at Tore, at the tears on his cheeks. For once he did not taunt him.

  “The Franks look to be realigning their forces,” Hastein said. “Can you tell what they are doing?”

  Torvald stared hard at the Frankish line. “They have moved their reserve up into the main line,” he finally said. “The remaining Bretons are formed in a single rank in front of them, in the very center.”

  I did not understand how Torvald could do it. To me, the distant Frankish line looked nothing more than a confused, swirling mass of tiny figures.

  “If they are committing their reserve, this will likely be their final attack,” Hastein said. “They will give their all, but if they do not break us, I think they will withdraw from the field. We must stand against their attack and hold them, while Ivar closes the trap.”

  “What do you wish me to do?” Tore asked him.

  “We must destroy the remaining Bretons when they charge. They will be trying to weaken our line in the center, around the standards, and create gaps in the shield-wall just before the Franks’ main charge hits it. It is what I would do. Their only chance for victory now is to kill our leaders and hope that doing so breaks the army’s will to fight. It is up to you, to the archers, to stop them. I need one more volley of arrows from your men. As with this last attack, aim it at their horses’ heads when they draw near, to break their charge and disrupt their fire. But hold your fire until the last possible moment, just before the Bretons launch their own missiles, and make every shot count.

  “This time, bring your men down closer and shoot from just behind the shield-wall,” Hastein continued. “Tell them that as soon as they loose their arrows—before the Bretons can return fire—they should take cover behind us. Let our shields give you shelter this time.”

  I could feel the earth shaking under my feet as the Frankish army galloped toward us one final time. The Bretons no longer had enough warriors for their line to stretch across our entire center. They had closed in, concentrating their attack around our standards, as Hastein had predicted. As they charged, their line was as straight and even across its front as it had in their first attack. After their last charge, the remaining Bretons must surely have known they rode to almost certain death. I stared out at them, wondering how these men found such courage. Then I nocked an arrow on my bowstring, selected a target, and prepared to kill him.

  Tore did not give the cry, “Loose!” until the Bretons were climbing up the slope toward us and raising their javelins to throw. Though many archers in our army would never shoot again, still the missile fire that struck the Bretons was withering. All along their line, horses fell, throwing their riders to the ground.

  I shot, watched long enough to see that my arrow was flying true, then scurried down behind the back row of the shield-wall. Moments later, I heard thuds, the splintering of shields, and screams of pain as the javelins launched by those Bretons who had survived smashed into the ranks of warriors around the standards of Ragnar and Hastein.

  This time the Bretons who survived did not wheel aside. They drew their swords and spurred their mounts forward, urging them against our shield-wall, hacking and battering furiously at the spears that stabbed out at them and slashed at their horses’ faces.

  Moments later, the warriors of the Frankish reserve—a tight mass of riders five ranks deep, fresh troops unhindered by any archery fire from our lines—thundered up the slope of the ridge behind the Bretons and smashed against the shield-wall, too.

  The Bretons’ fire, concentrated at the center of our line, had felled enough men in the front two ranks below the standards to create gaps in the shield-wall. Though other warriors pressed forward to take the places of their fallen comrades, trying to close the holes in the l
ine, the Franks spurred their horses forward, pushing into the openings, stabbing down left and right with their spears at the warriors who tried to block their way.

  Many men on both sides fell. But our line was stretched thin. As warriors fell, there were fewer and fewer to step forward and take their place. And the Franks, five ranks deep of fresh warriors, kept pressing in, their spears stabbing down, their battle-crazed horses kicking and slashing with their hooves.

  Hastein, Torvald, and the warriors fighting closest to them had been pushed back almost to the standard pole. Our line there was only moments from being irretrievably broken. Four Franks had forced their horses forward into the widening gap in our line in front of Hastein’s standard, and others were pressing close behind them.

  I ran back up the hill to a position just behind Hastein ’s standard, and pulled an arrow from my quiver. The Franks atop their horses towered above our men. They held their shields tight against their bodies to protect against the thrusts of spear and sword that reached up at them, while they stabbed down at the faces and chests of our warriors with their long, broad-bladed spears. They gave no thought to the lone warrior standing farther up the hillside behind the standard.

  They were so close, I could have hit them with my helm if I’d thrown it. In quick succession, I shot arrows—one, two, three—into the faces of the leading Frankish riders pressing forward into the crumbling shield-wall. Seeing them fall, Torvald lunged forward past one of the suddenly riderless horses and stabbed his long sword into the belly of the fourth rider who’d pushed into the gap, reaching under the edge of the Frank’s shield and forcing his blade through the links of his mail brynie.

  “Archers!” I cried. “To me!” I loosed another arrow, and another Frank who’d pushed his way into the gap fell backwards, an arrow in his eye.

  Hastein turned and looked behind him. Spotting me, he pointed with his sword. “Halfdan!” he cried. “Look to Ragnar!”