Erlan looked away, looked down into the sea of slaughter about to break. His place was down there. His urðr. His fate.
He hefted his shield and went to find it.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
‘You need to finish this soon,’ Saldas murmured into Sigurd’s ear.
The king dropped his voice. ‘What troubles you now? Is it not plain we have the greater strength?’
‘Do you see the Wartooth’s banner among them? Where is his boar? There must be another force.’
‘If Harald doesn’t stand against us today, we’ll finish him on another.’
‘Fool! He may be close by. You have to end this quickly and then ready your men to face another army. Maybe even before sunset.’
‘You forget yourself – presuming to advise me on matters of war. Anyway, our numbers will tell soon enough.’ He turned away but she pulled him back.
‘Can’t you see the ground he’s chosen? He’s bottled you in. You can’t outflank him, unless your wolf-warriors there can swim.’ She pointed towards their eastern wing. ‘He’s forcing you to break his centre. But there, he has the higher ground to fall back on. They might hold all day.’
‘Against the men I’ve gathered? Against these champions?’ Sigurd replied, raising his voice to the man stood a little way forward. ‘There’s no host but Odin’s hall of heroes could stand against all these. Starkad – what say you?’
The huge warrior turned. This was Starkad the Sea-King, who had brought with him three thousand spears and shields. Born in far-off Hordaland, and renowned in every land of the north. His hands rested on the pommel of his long-sword with a lightness that belied their strength. To Saldas’s eye, he might have been cut from a mountain. His mailshirt bulged with the hulking muscle beneath. But, she wondered, had he the brains to match? He stank of the sea, yet men seemed to follow him.
‘We’ll soon see what luck the Wartooth’s son has,’ Starkad answered, his voice strangely soft. ‘But he’s no fool. Nor is he stood among fools. I’ve seen the banners of Ubbi the Hundred, and those Hedmarker lads, Grim and Geir. It’ll be a fight, all right.’ He said no more and Saldas was none the wiser as to his brains, though that fearful blade did give some assurance.
‘Victory’s in the rain,’ said another called Egil, his shorn head a motley of black tattoos. ‘When the plain turns to a mire, the day will be ours.’
‘It’s Odin’s will how fares the day,’ Saldas said. ‘There’s a battle to be fought and won both here and there.’ She pointed to the sky. ‘I’ll do my part. See you do yours.’
‘What is your counsel then, my queen?’ said Sigurd irritably. ‘Perhaps you’d like a place in the shieldwall with us.’ He allowed himself a snigger.
‘Puncture his centre like a dagger through the heart. Form your line into a spear-point. Attack with no mercy.’
‘A spear-point?’ Sigurd looked sceptical. ‘That will weaken the shieldwall.’
‘Not with your best men at its point, and behind them Starkad’s víkingar. Then drive with all strength and speed at Ringast’s banner. Cut him down, cut their line in two and our greater numbers will swallow the rest.’
Sigurd looked at the hard faces around him, judging what they made of this.
‘It means breaking the strongest part of their line while their arms are still fresh,’ said Starkad. Then his rugged face broke into a laugh. ‘But we have to kill them one way or another before sunfall. May as well set to it.’
‘Very well. Send forward the sons of Alrek and their hird. Egil, add your Kurslanders to the point of attack. Starkad, your men will form the second wave. Strike hard and swift.’ He lifted his voice and cried, ‘Sound the horns!’
As a gale of noise rose around them, Saldas touched his arm. ‘Remember, my love... if you see him... I want his heart.’
Sigurd snorted. ‘Patience, my love. You’ll have it soon enough.’
She nodded, satisfied, her hand moving absently to the crude-cut amulet hanging from her neck. Sigurd’s face curdled. ‘I begin to think you have a fondness for this cripple.’
She dropped her hand. ‘My heart is yours, husband. You know that.’
‘Do I?’ He scowled and turned away.
She reached out and turned his face to her, softening her gaze. ‘Fear not, my love. I told you – I’ve seen your return to me. I’ve seen you come to me in the Kingshelm. Victorious. I’ve seen it.’
‘So I must trust to your dreams, must I?’
‘And my love.’ She smiled.
He looked at her, trying to read whether she was in earnest, but she saw the doubt in his eyes. So she kissed him, engulfing his senses with all the passion she knew. After all, even the meanest thrall needed encouragement from time to time.
‘The Wide-Realm, my husband,’ she whispered. ‘It will be yours.’
‘Aye,’ he growled, resolutely. ‘The Wide-Realm.’ Then he lifted his voice over the heads of his champions. ‘The Wide-Realm!’
Saldas turned away, her face setting into a mask, while Sigurd’s war-cry rolled away down the line.
Einar rested his hands on his belly.
At least he had a full stomach. One thing to go into a fight with no sleep, sore feet and little faith in the man leading you, but on an empty belly? That was plain stupid.
Still, much good it would do him if he took a length of steel in his gut. And truth be told, he was scared shitless. There were enough mad buggers within pissing distance to bring the whole world to an end. And all of ’em seemed like they couldn’t wait to make it happen.
He cursed. He needed to piss. Again.
At least it wasn’t the other. The place already stank enough, of vomit and piss and excrement, nerves voiding warriors’ bodies of anything surplus to the pure business of killing.
And dying.
Einar tried to think of something else. He’d had his share of fights, raiding here and there. Even stood in the Sveär wall more than once. But this was going to be butchery on a scale none of them had seen. Odin’s bench and all the rest of it seemed a far throw away. Dying face down in agonizing pain, an awful lot closer.
He belched and wiped his hand across dry lips.
‘Pass me some more of that stuff, eh?’ he said to the man in a wolf-skin beside him.
The wolf-warrior took a gourd from his belt and tossed it to him. Einar caught it and put it to his lips. The fiery liquid warmed his innards and put flames in his skull, blinding him to his surroundings for a merciful moment.
‘Frey’s cock!’ he gasped, handing it back. ‘That gives you a kick in the pants harder ’n my wife! What the Hel d’you put in that?’
‘Wolf’s blood for one,’ answered the other, with a snicker. ‘The rest ain’t for telling.’ He flashed yellow teeth, revealing the grooves he’d filed across them. ‘Makes you a fierce fucker, though!’
‘If it makes me half as fierce as you look, that lot should be shitting themselves.’
They both laughed at that. Although Einar had been deadly serious. Suddenly, behind them, Arwakki’s bannerman started blowing his horn. The earl roused his men with a shout.
‘Here we go then,’ grinned the Sveär wolf-warrior.
‘Aye,’ muttered Einar, picking up his shield. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’
The wolf-warrior started howling.
Erlan stood ahead of Ringast’s banner. Ubbi, a little to his left, with the best of Ringast’s oathmen ranged behind them under the raven banner fluttering above Visma’s head.
The plain was ringing with horn-blasts heralding the slaughter. Wendish ox-horns, Norsk goat-horns, Gotar ram-horns, all joined together in a cacophony of noise with mad berserker howls, Sveär war-cries and the weird yells of the Skanskar vassals.
Erlan watched silently, his tortured body now forgotten, his hand shaking on his shield-grip.
The storm is here.
All a man could do was try to outlive its blast.
Sigurd’s shieldwall came on. Then suddenl
y its centre folded forward into a point, so that the whole line aimed like a spearhead straight for where Erlan stood. The Gotar centre, meanwhile, stood stolid, in a flat line to receive them.
‘Ringast!’ Erlan cried.
‘I see it!’ shouted the prince through the din.
For a second, he seemed uncertain. Then he was yelling orders left and right, which were bellowed down the line. It seemed an age before anything happened, until, at last, Thrand’s berserkers to the east and the Hedmarkers to the west began to advance.
Seeing this, Ringast ordered his centre to fall back fifty paces. The Sveär shieldwall was two hundred paces off, but a colossal cheer went up from them, perhaps thinking Ringast’s centre had quailed before their overwhelming numbers. They came on even faster. But suddenly Ringast’s men turned and took their stand. His shieldwall was ready, open like the jaws of a wolf, inviting in their enemy.
‘Archers, loose!’ screamed Ringast. The spitting sky went dark as five hundred arrows sped through the air. They plunged to earth and the first men fell, black fletching jutting from their bodies.
Sigurd’s bowmen were quick to answer. A deadly cloud rose behind the Sveär shieldwall.
‘Cover!’ shouted someone. The front rows dropped to their knees and raised their shields, Erlan with them. Behind, men lifted shields above their heads. Then the first arrows were raining all around. Erlan heard arrowheads slit the dirt, the clatter and ring as they pierced limewood shields or bounced off iron helms. Then other sounds – the rip of mail and flesh, awful screams. His arm shook against the impact – once, twice. Through the shield-gaps, he saw the first men in the Sveär wall approaching fast – shields locked, eyes aflame, mouths agape, spear-points bristling. The man next to him fell out of line, an arrow buried to its fletching through his chest. His mouth bit vainly at the air, blood bubbling through his teeth over the white braids of his beard.
‘Close up!’ men screamed as the dying Gotar was yanked away and shield-rims rattled back together.
‘Stand up,’ someone yelled. Erlan glanced left and saw the crimson cloak of Ubbi stalking behind the shieldwall. Another slew of arrows fell, but now they had to take their chances. Erlan stood, raking his spear down his shield, snapping off the arrow shafts. Blood thundered in his head, the tramp of two thousand feet sending tremors through his body. He looked ahead, glimpsing Sigurd’s banner.
‘I swore it,’ he whispered, and in that last moment Kai’s face, with its bloody smear of crimson tears, flashed through his mind.
The two walls came together in a rending, roaring, grinding crash of wood and metal.
Erlan’s feet slewed as a weight like a mountain slammed against him. Behind, men braced him to hold the massive surge, crushing him from both sides. Spear-points thrust like viper heads through gaps in the wall. There was no time to think. His arm thrust and stabbed and thrust again. Men were screaming as the first ones were cut down. Others leaped over them to take their place. A filthy face appeared above a shield-rim. He lunged, his spear-point gripped, he ripped it back and came away with half the man’s face. Erlan thrust again, saw the point vanish into the man’s neck, twisted, pulled. The man crashed to the ground, clutching his throat. Another filled his place.
Shapes flashed past Erlan’s head, javelins from behind hurled point-black into the Sveär ranks. Men cursed and growled and shrieked and he smelled the stench of viscera for the first time that day.
Overhead arrows zipped, long-spears flew – a deluge of death, throwing screams from the men behind up into the sky. A sea of raging faces writhed and jostled behind Sveär shields. But Sigurd’s attack had been checked and Ringast’s wall had given little ground.
A huge long-axe crashed into the Gotar wall a couple of yards to Erlan’s right. There was a shattering thud, then an arc of blood sprayed the air, spattering his face. The press was too tight for the headless body to fall and the blood-shower spurted ever weaker over the swarming warriors until it was spent.
‘Death! Death!’ a voice was bellowing to his left. He glimpsed a crimson figure driving forward into the Sveär wall. Ubbi the Hundred. For a second, Sigurd’s line bowed inwards as Ubbi’s Frieslanders piled forward in a gale of steel. Erlan heard Ringast’s shout behind. ‘Cut off the head!’
Cut off the head?
Left and right the Gotar wall surged and suddenly he understood. Ringast meant to puncture their wall and sever the point of Sigurd’s attack. Like a wolf ripping off the snout of a boar – if the jaws could close, Sigurd’s best men would be trapped and destroyed.
Erlan heaved against the mountain of men, his throat raw with a scream. A blade flashed. A stinging pain streaked his cheekbone. Steel rang as a point struck his helm. He felt blood stream down his face into his mouth.
He swallowed it, tasting iron. At once, a searing heat tore down his throat, coursing through his body like liquid fire. He gasped, trying to steady himself. The heat sucked back into a tight ball inside him that felt like it would burst out of his chest. Then his limbs cooled. They felt stronger, harder, as if now made of metal. The fire burned but he was in control again.
At least something was.
Only now he thought nothing of tactics or position or even victory. Now he thought only of the slaughter – a fierce flaming rage inside him – the battle-song, the blood-cries, the killing joy! Faces and limbs and heads and helms were nothing but a red harvest to reap. And he laughed a mad, dark laugh that rang in his ears and echoed in the caverns of his wounded heart.
The man who cut him tried again, thrusting his spear. Erlan roared and, with a deft flick of his wrist, sent his long-spear straight for the man’s head. The other slumped like a sack of rocks, his face caved in, the spear-shaft swinging wildly at his comrades.
Erlan’s hand was already on Wrathling’s hilt. The fields were high. The harvest before him, bountiful. With a yell like a fire-wight, he set to making Wrathling sing.
And sing she did.
In the mad whirlwind, the Vendling sword went to its bloody work. Fear crept into the eyes of the men around him, as he opened rifts of flesh in the Sveär wall. And slowly Ringast’s line pushed forward.
Through his red fury, he spied the whip of Ubbi’s crimson cloak. There was a crack, a shower of splinters, then a wild shout of triumph.
‘They’re broken!’ a voice bellowed. ‘Their wall is broken!’
Erlan saw Ubbi vanish into the gap, his Friesland oathmen plunging after him, and he flung himself in their wake.
An axe struck at him. His shield parried the blow. He stabbed and felt steel pierce leather and flesh. The old warrior was bellowing for champions to face him.
Suddenly the air filled with the whistle of arrows.
Thuk, thuk, thuk – they fell around Ubbi but his luck stayed with him. The old champion just shrieked with savage laughter and plunged on.
Erlan was now close to Ubbi. Just ahead he saw Sigurd’s standard. His mouth was filled with mad words, his head with mad thoughts. Two bull-headed brutes leaped into his path.
‘Hold, Gotar! The sons of Alrek will not let you pass.’
‘No Gotar, me!’ he screamed. ‘I’m the night and the nowhere and the black abyss of Hel!’
Two strides and he’d knocked aside the first man’s spear, roaring as Wrathling scythed into the man’s face. He heard a raging howl as the brother flew at him. But Erlan only laughed. Did this fool really think he could kill him?
Something flashed between them and the brother’s severed arm squelched in the dirt. He screamed until Erlan silenced him, sending him crashing on top of his dead kinsman.
He looked up, grinning, his thirst unslaked. Not twenty paces forward was the wolf-eagle banner and under it surely Sigurd. Ahead, Ubbi’s axe was flying like an iron wind. Then a shout went up.
Starkad! Starkad!
The crush of men parted for a moment and down the channel came a monster of a man.
Ubbi was closer. He turned. If he wanted a champion to face
, none was bigger than this bastard. He stood wide as a mountain, tall as the sky. Starkad the Old, the Bloody Ox, the Giant’s Bane. No shield – only a massive long-sword gripped in both fists.
Ubbi bellowed his war-cry of ‘Death!’ – eyes glinting with savage glee.
‘If it’s death you want, I’ll show you to his gates,’ roared Starkad.
Ubbi laughed. ‘You can try, villain! Come – my blade is thirsty!’
The champions closed, striking out blow for blow, while the battle broke around them like storm-waves round two pillars of rock. And who could say which would fell the other? None but the Spear-God himself.
But Odin had other fates for each of them.
Erlan’s eyes, meanwhile, were fixed on Sigurd’s standard. The Frieslanders had driven a wedge deep into the Sveär line, but there was no sign of any link-up with Ringast’s men from the other side. And now momentum was waning. Limbs were tiring. Breath was short.
Rallying cries rang amid the Sveär host. A heave of muscle, a clatter of shields, and the wall closed once more. Erlan yelled in frustration. One man couldn’t break a shieldwall, after all.
Then suddenly he glimpsed a splendid bronze and iron mask. The ancient Kingshelm, forged an age ago for the Yngling kings. Wearing it was the man he must kill. He hurled himself at it but the Sveär ranks seemed to have multiplied again, as though every man slaughtered had risen from the dead.
Then another war-cry sounded.
Kursland! Kursland!
Ahead, a mass of men surged towards the shieldwall and was driving back the Frieslanders. Arrows fell thick as hail. Erlan looked for Ubbi and saw a flash of crimson a distance off.
There, Starkad and Ubbi were trading blows and trading wounds, but even they couldn’t withstand the Kurslander flood. The fresh waters swelled about them and broke them apart.
Ubbi raged, cheated of his chance to fell the man-mountain, as Starkad was borne away, leaving Ubbi surrounded by a mob of blue-black tattooed faces. And from their number stepped a bald brute with a face half-black like the split face of Hel.
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