by Barry Sadler
These men-beasts had been careful to avoid any of the farmhouses. They took no chances of being spotted, of the warning being given so that the villagers could rally to the fort below.
Their leader watched. Big. Singularly repulsive. His teeth were black and worn-down almost to the gums. He suffered constantly from toothache and had been known to bash in the skull of his nearest comrade just for being too close when the worst aching came. His beard was black, streaked with gray. He was not tall for one of his race, but he made up for it in width; his shoulders and hips were almost the same size, and his legs were like tree stumps in their fur wrappings. A hide of bearskin served to keep out the worst of the icy wind, but it failed to cover all the matted, dirty hair and skin beneath.
The reason he had been cast out from his own tribe was that he was so cruel even his own kin could not tolerate him. He had been driven from their camps for killing all the members of his family in a black rage even the children of his own body. Malgak the Killer, he was named and he was so in truth. No man had ever stood before his axe and lived to speak of it. This well-used chunk of iron weighed over fifteen pounds, yet its owner handled it as a child would a toy.
Malgak turned from watching the fort and grunted to his men to move back to the rude shelters they had set up. No fires for cooking. They would eat cold meat, most of it raw. Like wolves, they had developed a taste for blood… and not only that of animals… With the night they would take the Hold. Two hundred and eleven of them should be more than enough to settle with these farmers and fishermen.
Malgak crawled on his knees into the small skin tent he called home and looked at the slender form of the young girl he had taken captive a week before when they burned out her home and put her family to the sword. Her face was dirty and frightened. She whimpered when he entered and drew back against the tent wall, trying to make herself as small as possible. Her hair had once been blonde and her skin fair, but now she was merely a dirty child, bruised, with matted hair and sores.
Malgak stripped his breeches off and threw her under him, taking the fourteen-year-old girl as he would an animal. He thrust, grunted, and sweated over her, slapping her in a futile attempt to get some response. It did not take him long to finish. He looked at her then, thinking of the women they would have when they took the fort tonight. He no longer needed this one, so he took her small head in his hands and snapped her neck as one would snap the neck of a chicken. Throwing the carcass out the flap of skin that served as a door, he immediately dismissed her from his mind, as though she were nothing.
Satisfying his hunger on a piece of raw horseflesh, he thought again of the fort below and grinned, his black stumps worrying over the tough flesh. They had butchered the last of their horses and pack animals two days before. Their food would be gone tomorrow. But no matter. They would have their fill before dawn.
The rest of his hairy band slept as best they could, wrapped in their fur robes and skins, curling up in knots to get warmth from each other's bodies, in the process exchanging an unknown quantity of lice and fleas. They, too, dreamed of the women and food in the fort. The only clean things about them were their weapons. These showed no signs of mistreatment or rust. They were clean, sparkling, sharp ready for use. Earlier they had cut down fifty tall pines and trimmed the branches off short, leaving just enough to use as hand and foot grips. These would be their scaling ladders. With fifty of them there would be no way the forty defenders of the small fort below could keep them from scaling the walls and getting inside.
Between the midnight hour and the dawn, when men sleep the deepest and the sentries' eyes are fogged from looking out into the dark, Malgak gathered his men, his human vermin, and they slipped silently close to the walls, first walking, then crawling, the snow and ice sliding inside their furs and leaving cold, clean spots unseen beneath the rags they wore.
Inside the fort, Casca could not sleep. The image of Lida kept returning to haunt him… Lida as she was when she was young and beautiful. That was how he saw her, even to the end when she quietly wasted away and fell into the sleep of no return. To him she would always be young.
He checked his sentries, giving an encouraging word and a slap on the back to those who looked too drowsy. He walked the ramparts. The cold wind coming in from the sea had the taste of salt to it and chilled his skin into a red glow. It felt good.
Casca wore only a light cloak and trousers of flax, dyed blue. There was no need for armor this night, only for sword and dagger. His sword hung from a shoulder belt on his right side, in the Roman manner. The dagger was in the wide black leather stomach belt that fastened in the back with straps. He looked out on the darkened countryside. Old habits die hard, he thought. Even though there had been no sign of trouble for months, he scanned the blackness, using his eyes as he had been taught; turning his head slightly off-center, he searched the shadows with his side vision, knowing that he would be able to see better with such peripheral sight.
Nothing.
He leaned between the stone crenellations and looked down, letting his eyes sweep the rocky, snow-covered ground and keeping his ears alert for any unusual sound.
What the Hades!?
A muffled thump, barely audible, seemed to flow vaguely out of the dark, and then Casca definitely heard an involuntary, whispered curse. Someone is out there… Casca slowly, now more carefully, focused his eyes on every shadow and saw movement. Here one movement, there another. Finally he made out definite figures. Oh, shit. There's a bunch of them out there. And it looks like they're carrying something to scale the walls with. Probably trimmed trees… How many? Now that he had spotted the first, his eyes seemed to sharpen tenfold and the figures became clearer. From his height they looked in the dim light and ground fog more like the trolls out of Norse legend than men. He came to a quick decision: Too many of them to meet on the walls. We'd be spread too thin to cover every approach.
Casca cursed himself for his carelessness. He had been sunk so deep in self-pity that he had forgotten that others needed his care and attention. Guilt slapped him. He was responsible for this.
Turning swiftly, and half-running, he reached the first of his watch. Vlad the Dark stood as silent as his name, spear relaxed in his grip, but the man's physical attitude spoke of his instant ability to turn into action. Whispering in Vlad's ear, Casca sent him to circle the walls and also to send a runner to the sleeping quarters and quietly rouse the men. They were to put those unable to fight down into the dungeons where they were to bar themselves in until the fight was over. The women and children were to be especially quiet this night. There must be no sound from anyone. They had but minutes before the invaders would begin climbing the walls. They must hurry.
As Casca was securing his people, Malgak and his scabby force had reached the walls. Frost from their breaths made small wispy clouds rise from each bearded face. No sound reached them from the top of the walls to indicate they had been seen. Malgak grinned his black-stumped leer, pleased that they had reached the wall without being noticed. It was better luck than he had counted on. Those toads behind the walls and on the ramparts must be asleep. He motioned silently to his men.
The logs were put into position and raised. The invaders tried to maintain that silence that pervaded all in this night. Even the cold breeze from the sea seemed to add to the crisp sense of silence. They began to climb. Those with swords went first, carrying their blades between their teeth. These were followed by the others with shields and weapons in scabbards or slung by thongs and belts from their backs and waists. Fortune was smiling upon them.
Casca had no time to return to his rooms and don his armor. As he was, he would fight. His men silently went to the positions assigned them and lay quiet, waiting for their lord's word to fight. Until then, silence was the rule. The torches lighting the way down the halls were extinguished. Only in the main room of the Hold were the fires and torches kept burning. The rest of the stone fort was wrapped in cold dark. Glam was in charge of the m
en in the feast room. Casca had taken Glam's son and Vlad with him, along with Holdbod the Berserker, as a reserve force to the hall leading to the feasting room where Glam and the others waited with swords drawn and battleaxes held ready. Anticipation brought cold drops of sweat to more than one young Viking's brow. Many would soon be experiencing their first true battle. They had practiced often enough, spearing and striking with blunted swords and axes, but there they had stopped short of killing. There would be no stopping this night.
In the hall leading to the sanctuary, the way had been lined with piles of fresh straw to keep the deep chill from giving a man's feet frostbite. A door opened on both ends, leading to the hall and further down to the feasting room. The invaders would have to come this way to reach them. Even the entrance to the dungeons and storage rooms below were in this room. The women and children and the old men could not be reached until the invaders had disposed of those in this room.
They waited.
The only sounds were the soft breathing of the men and the thin rasp of metal against metal. Most of Casca's men had on their helmets, conical steel caps with horns of oxen or wings of birds attached according to the owner's taste. Only a few had any kind of armor to cover the chest. Most wore only tunics of flax or leather, but each had his shield, a round thing of stretched hide with a round steel boss in the center. A dozen archers lined the walkway leading to the upper chambers, bows strung, steel-tipped arrows at the ready.
The first invader on the ramparts was a wiry, quick Marcomanni, one of the fierce German tribes. He held his weapon low and ready for the fight. Making no sound, no alarm, like wraiths in the night, his associates in death joined him until the ramparts were covered. Malgak was the last to climb. He was no fool. If they were to be caught on the logs climbing, he would be sure that the brunt of the defenders' killing fell on someone other than himself. Not a coward, he still valued his own flea-infested hide more than those of his men.
But the lack of opposition puzzled him.
"Where the shit are they? Surely they must have sentries posted somewhere on the walls."
The word sent to him by others of his band was that there was indeed no sign of life on the walls, that the ramparts had been completely deserted.
Malgak chewed on his mustache, killing one of its inhabitants, a particularly large flea. He spat it out, along with a few of his own hairs. His face took on a slightly confused look. Warily, he slowly scanned all of the fort in sight… the courtyard beneath, the storerooms by the main building.
No sign of life. No sound of alarm.
"I like this not," Malgak muttered. "But no matter. We know their numbers. They must be here someplace." Still, he was a little uncertain. He passed the word that there might be a trap and then motioned for his men to leave the wall. They raced down the stone steps. One man hit a patch of slick ice, slipped, and fell to the courtyard below with a dull thump that was accented by his back cracking.
Even this brought no response from the Hold's defenders… wherever they were.
The invaders swarmed into the courtyard, ready for bloodletting. Surely, here the defenders must fight… but, again, nothing…
Vlad the Dark slipped back from the doorway where he had watched the advance of the invaders. He whispered in Casca's ear. Casca nodded and, in low tones, told him to deliver a message to Glam, waiting in the feasting room. Vlad disappeared. The shadows seemed to swallow him as he went to do his master's bidding.
Glam grunted in amusement as he received Casca's instructions.
Casca had his men spread a container of liquid over the straw floor from end to end.
Laughter reached the ears of the silent invaders. Malgak listened to the boisterous, loud laughter coming from the interior. He could make out slurred speech and boasting. He grinned his death's-head leer. "So, that's it. The bastards are drunk. That's why the walls are deserted." He hoped the defenders had not consumed too much of their master's cellar. He and his men thirsted. They had had no more than a few barrels of thin beer for the last two weeks, beer they had gotten when they burned the girl's home.
He gave the order to attack.
Weapon ready, the Marcomanni led the way into the hall leading to the source of the laughter. The rest followed, crowded shoulder to shoulder in the narrow passage. They moved step by step. Slowly. Closer and closer. A single torch lighted the way down the hall. They smiled to themselves. They would have no problem in disposing of the drunken household. It would be easy.
Swearing under his breath, Malgak moved to the front alongside the Marcomanni. He grunted a command. The invaders prepared to rush inside the room. From here Malgak could make out at least four men slumped over tables in drunken stupor, and another two laughing over their cups while they tore at chunks of beef and washed it down with great mugs of mead. Raising his fifteen-pound axe above his head, Malgak readied himself.
Shouting his tribal battlecry, he rushed into the room followed by the packed body of his men. The apparently sleeping defenders all too quickly awoke and raced to the back of the room. The two drinking did likewise and ran to the walls. Malgak and his men stopped in the center of the room in surprise. Their fur-clad bodies sweating from the night's labors and their eyes wild, they looked like brute animals. They stood thus for only a moment, and then a flight of arrows from the walls reached out for them, striking into unprotected throats and stomachs. The archers' orders were no fancy shooting, just aim for the largest part of the body and put as many out of commission as possible. Feathered barbs pinned a dozen of the invaders before the fact that they were in a trap registered in their minds. Glam and ten men raced from the entranceway nearest the door through which Malgak and his wolves had entered. Another twenty formed a line in front of the stairs where the invaders would have to come at them a few men at a time. Glam struck out with his great two-handed sword at the nearest of the invaders who were still trying to get into the chamber with their comrades. Three fell with one thrust as Glam made a great sweeping slice that startled the ones behind and froze them in their tracks for a moment. A moment was all Glam needed. With the aid of two Vikings he swung the hall door of stout oak shut in the faces of the invaders, locking them out of the room. When this happened, at the other end Olaf, Glam's son, slammed that door from the outside, locking at least half of Malgak's men packed into the dark and narrow confines of the hall. The invaders beat at the doors with sword and axe. Their first sense that all was not well was quickly confirmed and true panic set in when a flickering light dropped from above. The grinning Casca had lit a lamp of seal oil and tossed it burning onto the straw they had recently soaked with oil. Fire raced under the feet of the invaders. Crying, they alternately tried to stamp out the growing flames, and cursed when they burned their feet and tried to avoid it. To no avail. Smoke filled the hall. Choking, tear-starting smoke filled their lungs, taking the place of life-giving air. Casca grinned once more and disappeared through the small doorway and joined Olaf, Vlad, and Holdbod. Swiftly they moved through the passageway to the feasting room where the archers were doing such deadly work. The cries for help from those choking to death in the hall reached deaf ears. None could save them. The flames licked up and set fire to leggings, and then bodies. Many beat their own comrades to death with axes and swords trying to escape the choking smoke and body-searing flames. Smoke works fast. Casca had time to look over the situation below from where he and his men had come out of the passageway. The crying stopped, and the stench of burning hair and flesh reached them. In the hall almost a hundred bodies were piled on top of each other, mouths black, noses groping for air that would never come, those on the bottom charred from the flames, their dead fingers empty of weapons they had dropped when they covered their mouths and tried to expel the thick, oily smoke that filled their lungs and took them to their own individual hells.
Glam held off the invaders with sword and shield until the screaming stopped from behind the door. The archers on the stairs kept their missiles flying
and provided cover to take most of Malgak's men off him until his chore had been completed. They also gave the cover necessary for a short rush from the warriors in front to let Glam back in their ranks with the loss of only two men. These were overrun and chopped to pieces by the enraged outcasts. The invaders' disdain for the bow as a coward's and woman's weapon proved costly to them as the slender shafts searched out the tender spots of their bodies and buried themselves up to half their lengths in the fur-clad figures. Less than two minutes had passed since Malgak had entered the room, and already half of his men were either wounded or dead behind the oak doors. Screaming in frustrated passion, he and his horde rushed the defenders on the stairs, trying to tear them from the steps and break through so they could butcher those cowards with the deadly flying barbs.
Casca joined the others, coolly giving orders. He formed his men in sections, one section to fight and then step back, their places to be taken by the next rank. That way, no one had to fight too long before given a break. This was the Roman manner when the legion formed a square. The invaders could only come at them four or five men at a time while those behind, in their rage, helped hinder the effectiveness of their comrades facing Casca's men on the stairs by packing in too close and restricting their ability to move and fight. Indeed, many of their men were already dead, being held up by the press of the men behind them.
Malgak sliced with his great axe and downed two of the defenders, leaving one trailing his intestines behind him as he fell to the floor. The dead Viking was quickly dismembered and pieces of his body tossed back up the stairs to let the others know the fate that awaited them if they lost. Smoke sliding in under the oak door lay in a cloud over the interior, the gleam from the fireplace casting a red glow over the men locked in the death struggle. Even with Malgak's urging and threats the outcasts could make no progress on the stairs. They had twice almost reached the door leading off from the stairway to the dungeons below, but had been driven back by fierce counterattacks from the young warriors.