Storm of Steel

by Matthew Harffy

  Chapter 33

  Beobrand had almost forgotten about the dragon prow carving and Ferenbald’s fixation with it when he stepped out into the night. His head was muzzy with Mantican’s wine and the cold air made him gasp. The snow was still coming down thick and fast, and the great gusts of wind that blew from the sea were pushing it into banks and drifts. He trudged a few paces away from the hall, his feet sinking into the deep blanket of snow. Beobrand instantly regretted coming outside to relieve himself.

  He had considered staying inside, but decided it was better to brave the cold than risk causing trouble. Earlier in the evening one of Mantican’s men had pissed in a corner. A fight had quickly erupted when another warrior saw that his shield, which had been leaning against the wall, was being splashed. Later, Beobrand had seen some of the men pissing into a bucket in the corner of the hall nearest the door. But one of them had drunkenly kicked it over, soaking the rushes and making that end of the hall reek. The womenfolk had shouted at the man, pushing him away and cleaning up as best they could. The men had jeered at the man, but the women had glared at them and forbidden any more of the drinkers from relieving themselves inside.

  Beobrand’s feet were already cold, and he could feel the icy wet seeping through his leg bindings and shoes. But he had needed to clear his head, and part of him was glad of the clear chill air after the cloying smokiness of the cluttered hall, with its dangling treasures. The inside of the hall felt like the lair of some great, trophy-taking bird, as if a giant shrike had hung gilded keepsakes rather than prey from the thorns of its bushy home.

  Mantican had been a congenial enough host, but the constant dismissive jibes and barbs he aimed at his wife had grated on Beobrand. More than once he had found himself about to respond with an angry retort in the lady’s defence. But each time, he reined in his anger and swallowed the words. This was not his hall, or his wife. The man could speak to her as he wished. By Woden, the man could beat her if he so chose and it was none of Beobrand’s concern. But something in the way Mantican spat such incessant insults in the lady’s direction needled Beobrand and he began to wonder if the old lord was not doing it on purpose. As if he could sense his reproach and was goading him for a reaction.

  With each taunt, Beobrand’s smile grew thinner and more fixed. He would take another sip of wine and nod absently, and then draw the conversation in a different direction. They talked of the storm, and how heavy the snow was likely to be at this time of year. Later they spoke of trading and Frankia. It seemed Mantican had travelled there several times in his youth and Beobrand questioned him about Rodomo. Mantican told him little though, except to say that it was a large town that had been built by the Romans on the great river Secoana.

  They had talked and drunk wine until Beobrand’s thoughts were blurred and he feared he might disgrace himself by losing his temper. He’d looked down to the lower tables and wished he could sit with his comitatus and the other warriors. He would have enjoyed their company better, he was sure. But he was their lord, so he must sit with the lord of the hall and endure his ramblings interjected with hate-filled attacks at his wife.

  From time to time, Beobrand had found his gaze drawn back to the great sword. He’d wondered whether Mantican would allow him to buy it from him and if so, what price he would ask. Each time he’d contemplated the weapon, he would turn back to find Mantican looking at him with a knowing twinkle in his eye and a smile tugging at his mouth.

  A huge buffeting blast of cold air rushed in from the south, slowing Beobrand in his tracks with its force. The ash trees near the hall shook and rattled. Devoid now of any leaves, their skeletal limbs were dressed in an ever-thickening shroud of snow. Above the moaning of the wind and the muffled sounds of laughter from the hall, he could discern the roar of waves crashing on the beach and rocks far in the distance. He shivered, wishing he had brought his cloak. Still, he would only be outside for a short while.

  Stumbling through another drift of snow, he almost fell, as his foot found a hidden dip in the ground. He managed to keep upright and staggered around the side of the long, squat building. In the wind-shadow there was much less snow, and the rage of the storm was muted. But it was still bitterly cold. He quickly unlaced his breeches and sighed as he started to piss.

  Movement to his left made him tense. He was suddenly acutely aware that he had no weapon. And he was alone out here in the freezing darkness. A heartbeat later, he allowed himself to relax. There was enough thin moonlight reflecting from the snow to allow him to make out the figure of Ferenbald, his great shaggy mane of hair and beard making his head appear other-worldly, almost monstrous in the gloom.

  Beobrand grunted by way of a welcome and continued with the business of emptying his bladder.

  Ferenbald stood close to him and his voice hissed in the dark.

  “Lord, we have little time,” he said, and something in his tone went further to sobering Beobrand than the cold air.

  “What do you mean?” asked Beobrand, and he heard the slur in his words and cursed himself for a trusting fool. He should never have drunk so much in a stranger’s hall.

  “Mantican. These men.” Ferenbald spoke in a rush. “They mean us no good.” Clearly he had been waiting for just such a moment to be able to speak to Beobrand away from the men in the hall.

  Beobrand shook his head, seeking to clear it of the fuzziness of drink.

  “Why do you speak so? Mantican has fed us and given us wine. I grant you the pottage was poorer fare than you could expect from a ceorl in Solmonath, but at least it was warm. Something which I am not, out here in the snow.”

  “Do you not wonder at the fires?” asked Ferenbald. “Think, lord. Mantican said they were not expecting visitors. They had no reason to be there on the cliff with those beacons and so many men.”

  In the darkness, Beobrand frowned. His mouth was suddenly dry.

  “They light those beacons to guide ships surely…” he said, but even as he said the words, he heard their hollowness.

  “I do not think the fires we followed were meant to lead us to safety,” said Ferenbald, lowering his voice now, so that Beobrand had to strain to hear him. “I think they were meant to lead us to our deaths.”

  Beobrand thought of the huge teeth of rock that had narrowly avoided rending Brimblæd’s hull to splintering ruin, of Ferenbald’s sea-skill in manoeuvring the sea-steed onto the shingle beach of the sheltered cove. He recalled how the men at the beacons had hesitated on the clifftop before climbing down to aid Brimblæd’s crew.

  Beobrand now understood Ferenbald’s taciturn silence during the evening.

  “But you cannot be sure. It could just be as they say,” he said. “That they light the fires to guide ships in when the weather is poor. Just like the men of Hastingas.”

  “No, I am sure of it. Mantican and his men mean us nothing but ill. I fear that they had thought to see Brimblæd wrecked. But now that we live, they will seek to slay us as we sleep.”

  Beobrand shivered. It would explain much. Even the bad food. Why feed someone well when you plan to kill them shortly afterwards?

  “But how can you know this?”

  “You remember back in Hithe we told you how Swidhelm had gone missing last spring?”

  “Of course. Lost at sea, with his ship and all his crew.”

  “That dragon that Mantican said he bought from a Frankish merchant a score of years ago was on the prow of Swidhelm’s ship.”

  “Perhaps you are mistaken,” said Beobrand, but he heard the deadly certainty in Ferenbald’s voice. And the skipper did not strike him as a man prone to fanciful fears. Still he did not want to face what was quickly becoming the obvious truth. Gods, all he wanted was to be warm and to rest. Was that so much to ask? “Couldn’t that carving be from another ship?” he ventured.

  “No,” replied Ferenbald, “I am sure. There is no doubt. That is Swidhelm’s prow beast.”

  “How can you be so certain?” asked Beobrand, desperately hoping
that he could somehow refute Ferenbald’s assertion. That they could go back and wrap themselves in blankets and sleep peacefully until the morning when the storm would have blown over and the land would be bright and light. But Ferenbald quickly dashed his hopes.

  “I carved it for him,” he said, his tone as chill and bleak as the snow-riven night.

  Beobrand sighed and then spat into the snow.

  Two things were suddenly clear to him. There would be no peace for them that night, and before the dawn, blood would be shed in Mantican’s hall.

  Chapter 34

  They came for them in the darkest part of the night. It is the moment when men are sleeping at their deepest, furthest from the light of the dawn. It is the time for hall burnings and treachery, secret murders and silent villainy. Tidgar and his men had expected to find Beobrand’s gesithas and the crew of Brimblæd lost in the embrace of wine-soaked slumber. They had thought they would find easy prey, that the visitors to Mantican’s hall would struggle up from sleep as heavy as the thick blanket of snow that smothered the land outside.

  They were wrong.

  Beobrand drank no more wine after Ferenbald’s revelation. And, as the night drew on, they managed to pass word of Mantican’s treachery to the men, so that when the time came, they were all ready. It had not been easy to spread the ill tidings through the group without arousing the suspicions of Mantican or Tidgar, but Ferenbald managed a few whispered words to Cargást, and Beobrand joined Coenred and Attor at their prayers. Both men had known something was wrong the instant that he knelt beside them. He called out to Mantican that he never missed his night-time prayers and asked if the old lord would care to join them.

  Mantican sneered.

  “I’ve not time for your soft Christ,” he said. “Woden was good enough for my father and his father before him. The one-eyed one is good enough for me.”

  Coenred and Attor looked at Beobrand askance, but they had enough presence of mind not to voice their surprise. Beobrand whispered warnings and plans in between the offices and prayers that Coenred recited. The only acknowledgement he received from Attor was a grimly whispered, “We will be ready, lord.” Coenred said nothing, but nodded his understanding.

  Shortly after, Mantican withdrew with his wife behind the partition at the rear of the hall and the rest of the men and women in the hall prepared to sleep. As they wrapped themselves in their blankets by the pitiful fire that had almost completely died down to ash-covered embers, Beobrand fretted. Had the word been spread? Would Mantican’s men strike in the night, as he suspected? If they did, would his gesithas be able to stand against them, unarmed as they were?

  As the storm continued to batter the hall with great, roof-shaking gusts of wind and the snow piled ever deeper against the walls, he watched from hooded lids as his men positioned themselves around the hall into small groups. Dreogan and Garr and a couple of sailors rolled out their blankets beside the rack of spears. Fraomar and Bearn and some more of the crew lay down nearer the hearth, within reach of shields, seaxes and axes. And Attor and Cynan, along with Coenred, made their resting places closer to the hall’s wide doors.

  One of Tidgar’s warriors called out something to them about sleeping so far from the fire.

  Cynan laughed and replied, “There is not enough heat in that fire to make us want to sleep close to Dreogan and his farts. It may be colder here, but trust me, you’ll realise why we prefer a bit of fresh air from the door by the time morning comes.”

  Laughter rippled through the men of the hall. To Beobrand’s ears it sounded forced, false and jagged, but nobody spoke again and the men settled themselves down for the night.

  To await the blades in the darkness.

  The night dragged on longer than Beobrand would have believed possible. The sounds of the dark threatened to drag him down into sleep, and he wondered how many of the men, both his and Mantican’s, had drifted into the realm of dreams. A few men snored. The hall creaked. The wind moaned, gripping the hall in its invisible grasp and shaking it until more dust fell from the roof.

  In the darkness Beobrand felt specks of soot caress his face. His eyes snapped open. Had he been sleeping? His heart hammered and he lifted his head to peer into the gloom. He could sense that time had passed. Gods, he had been asleep. Cursing himself, he thanked Woden and all the gods that the hall was yet quiet and still. The only sounds were from the storm outside and sleeping men and women. Mayhap Ferenbald was wrong. Perhaps Mantican was what he had seemed all along, just a lonely old lord who ordered beacons lit on his coast to guide hapless ships to safety.

  Then he saw the movement. Shadows, barely discernible in the faint glimmer of the hearth’s embers, rose up, silent as barrow wights. The shades slipped stealthily about the hall. After a few moments, it was clear that they were positioning themselves. Preparing themselves. Readying for a bloodletting they believed would be as easy as Blotmonath sacrifices.

  Beobrand sensed movement behind him. Was that the quiet rasp of a blade being drawn from a scabbard? From the other side of the embers, close to Dreogan and Garr, there was the briefest lambent glimmer of steel in the darkness. The moment was upon them.

  Throwing back his blankets, Beobrand surged to his feet with a bellow.

  “Now!” he yelled. “Treachery is upon us!”

  Mantican’s gesithas had believed they would slaughter sleeping drunks. Instead, they were met with a storm of steel.

  All around the hall men who had appeared to be asleep leapt to their feet. And the very treasures that Mantican and his band of wreckers had surely stolen from their previous victims became the salvation of Beobrand’s warband and Brimblæd’s crew. For, despite having left their weapons at the door, as was customary, they now snatched up spears, seaxes, axes and shields from the plethora of items dotted about the beams and pillars of the hall.

  The stillness of the darkened building was shattered with the clangour of metal on metal and the grunting shouts and oaths of fighting men. Women screamed. Flashes of light flickered as sparks flew from clashing blades. But Beobrand could not pause for a moment to see how his men fared. Even as he sprang up, he sensed death coming for him from behind. He spun around and more by instinct than any conscious thought, avoided the wicked knife that sliced through the darkness towards him. Before his assailant could recover his balance, Beobrand shoved the man backward and hauled Ferenbald to his feet.

  Beobrand could make out the shapes of three attackers. The man he had pushed crashed into one of the others and Beobrand seized the opportunity to twist away. In two quick steps his hand was upon the hilt of the fabulous sword that had so captivated him. He wrenched it free of the leather thongs that supported it and swung it in a great arc towards the three opponents. As they had planned, Ferenbald snatched up a small Frankish axe that had hung nearby and the two of them moved to stand back to back. Their enemies closed in, wary now of these men who were no longer defenceless.

  Someone threw a stool onto the hearth stone, stirring the embers into life. Small, tentative flames began to lick at the wood. They provided scant light, but after the near complete darkness of the hall, the new illumination seemed bright, making the men blink.

  The new glow of light seemed to spark their attackers into action and one of the men, armed with a vicious-looking langseax, jumped forward. He swung his blade at Ferenbald’s side, but Beobrand spun on the balls of his feet and hacked the sword’s broad blade into his shoulder. It cut deeply, smashing through flesh, sinew and bone. The man let out a mewling cry, like a newborn lamb born in a blizzard only to die. Sobbing and gasping, the man slumped to the rush-strewn floor.

  Beobrand twisted the sword, tugging it clear of the bloody wound and swinging it around once more to ward off the attack he knew would come from the man before him. The flickering flame light picked out the features of Tidgar, who was smiling sardonically. In his hand he held a sword that was the mirror of the one Beobrand now wielded. It too was finely wrought, long and broad with a ri
nged pommel encrusted with gold and garnets. Tidgar’s blade was also of the finest patterned steel and, thought Beobrand, if it was the sister of the sword in his own hand, it was perfectly weighted and thrummed and sang at the taste of blood.

  “We are not such easy prey as if we had been shipwrecked upon the rocks!” shouted Beobrand, allowing all of his anger, his frustrations and worries, to boil up within him. The hall was a cacophony of killing now. Men screamed and women wailed. The flames caught the chair on the hearth and the shadows of the battling men danced, tall and dark around the hall. Beside him, Ferenbald was locked in a fight with a scrawny-looking warrior clutching a seax. Ferenbald could deal with him, Beobrand decided.

  Beobrand did not take his gaze from Tidgar.

  From the way that Tidgar carried himself, Beobrand could see he was a killer, a man to reckon with. They both dropped into the warrior stance, swords raised, their weight on the balls of their feet.

  “I knew we should have killed you on the beach,” Tidgar said, spitting.

  “The sea will not do your killing this night, Tidgar the craven,” Beobrand said, provoking his foe and circling away from Ferenbald. “Tonight you must stand against men and fight!”

  The hall rang with the weapon-clash and the howling wind outside matched the moaning of the bleeding and the dying. Outside, the snow was piling in drifts against the walls. Here, in the gloom, cooling corpses were heaped in drifts of death. Whether those of his men, or of Mantican’s, Beobrand did not know. He could not spare a moment to look. Despite his words to Tidgar, taunting him for a coward, he could tell from his gait and the way in which he moved, that he was a skilled swordsman, a man who was no stranger to the sword-song or death-dealing.

  As though he were listening to Beobrand’s thoughts and wished to prove him right, Tidgar grinned and launched himself forward, scything his deadly blade towards Beobrand’s throat.

  Chapter 35

  Tidgar was as fast as a striking adder. And as slippery.