Storm of War, page 24
‘Now we draw them out,’ said Beornoth as he came alongside Byrhtnoth. ‘I need their heads.’
‘We have put ten of their men in the ground these last seven days,’ said the Ealdorman, grimacing at Beornoth’s request.
‘They will feel that loss, Lord,’ said Beornoth. ‘These are Ragnar’s men, warriors his men have shared rowing benches with, stood in the shield wall with, some may even be blood relatives. They will want to kill us, but they will worry that we have roused the shire fyrd, and we now outnumber them. If we can’t get Ragnar and his dogs out of that palisade, this last insult might be enough.’
‘So, we bring the heads, and give them a look at us.’
‘Not all of us, Lord. If they see we have a score and half of warriors, all men in byrnies and therefore warriors of distinction and reputation, he won’t come out.’
‘So, let’s bait the wolf then,’ the Ealdorman said, and Beornoth reached for his axe, because he needed heads.
Beornoth, Brand and Wulfhere had met Byrhtnoth and his men at Leofsunu’s home at Sturmer before riding north-east towards East Anglia in search of Ragnar and his beast-men. ‘Time to let you loose on the Vikings, Beo,’ Byrhtnoth had said, and so it proved to be. They were thirty riders, and all wore mail and carried swords, axes and spears. Most of the men had sworn the blood oath in Irmin’s hall. They were Thegns and experienced warriors, for only the wealthiest of men could afford byrnie and sword. They were the marks of the warrior caste, men who held a heriot and who made their living fighting. As the war band heard the caw of gulls and smelled the sea in the air, they had met the depredations of Ragnar the Flayer and the scar he had carved into the land. There were no questions that pursuing Ragnar was the right thing to do when Byrhtnoth’s men rode through the third village burned to ash. Swollen corpses rotted in the brittle remains of house timbers, where families had once laughed and lived. Crows tore at the skin of the dead men, women and children who had nobody to give them a Christian burial, with all their family and friends dead or fled.
Earlier that day, Beornoth and Byrhtnoth had watched Ragnar’s camp from a high bluff around a sheer range of cliffs. The shore curled around like a scythe into a wide river mouth, and at its narrowest point a long finger-like sandbank topped with rock poked into the lapping water. Ragnar’s camp centred around his two drakkar warships pulled up onto the shale beach within the river’s shelter with their grey sails cast as awnings to make large tents, and a palisade of cut timbers surrounding that section of beach rising high into rolling dunes. The stakes of the palisade were only as high as a man, but to get across that obstacle and the dunes, with Viking axes swinging at heads and hands, would cost lives. So Byrhtnoth had decided that they would give the Vikings a taste of their own low cunning. Beornoth took the sack of heads towards Ragnar’s enclosure, and on the night following the slaughter in the river, he and Brand stood on the edge of a strip of sycamore trees watching the Viking camp. It was late evening; the sun had retired for the day and a sliver of moon made the darkness as thick as day-old porridge. The fresh timber posts of Ragnar’s camp seemed to glow gold in the night where they were lit by torches above the palisade at ten-pace intervals. Spears bristled beyond the posts of the palisade where warriors patrolled its perimeter, and beyond that timber wall, smoke rose in wisping tendrils from cook fires and Beornoth had the rich smell of roasting meat in his nose.
‘Do you think this will work?’ asked Brand, curling his lip at the bloodstained sack in Beornoth’s fist.
‘Yes,’ said Beornoth. ‘They won’t want their pride pricked by fellow northmen. You should know that better than anyone. How many spears do you count?’
‘Ten,’ said Brand after a brief pause.
‘Come on, then.’ Beornoth marched into the darkness and stopped when he came into the glow carved into the night from the wall torches. The flickering light danced on the rings of his byrnie, and Beornoth stopped when he was sure the light bathed him in its orange glow. Brand stood next to him, his spear held forth and his long hair falling in two braids over his shoulders onto his chest. Beornoth emptied the sack of heads so that they fell with a dull thud onto the grass. He kicked three of them towards the gates.
‘I am Halvdan Hrafnsson,’ Beornoth lied, calling out in Norse. ‘I killed some of your nithing warriors in the forest. They told me you have plundered silver and slaves from this land.’
‘Do you know whose men you have killed there, little man?’ came a shout from beyond the gate.
‘Yes, I heard Ragnar the nithing is over those walls, and I also hear he and his men fight like old women. So, I thought I would bring my ships here and relieve you of your spoils. Come out and fight like men. Don’t skulk in there like the cowards you are. Tell Ragnar that Halvdan is better than he. Come out and fight, unless you have pissed in your breeches at the mere sight of me.’
Beornoth watched as the spear points above the walls moved along behind the palisade, first in ones and twos, and then more until there was a bristle of them like a hedgehog’s back. They came to see whose heads rolled, bloody and grim, before their camp, and because a Viking cannot resist a challenge to his honour.
‘I think that’s most of them drawn away from the edges to the front gate,’ said Brand, counting the spear points.
‘You murdering bastard!’ came a shout from behind the gate. ‘You are the nithing, coming here in the dark like a fetch. We’ll find you and cut your balls off.’
‘I am standing right here. Come and do it now, nithings,’ Beornoth called back. There was a silence for a moment, and then two of the spear points jigged up and down and retreated from the gate.
‘They have gone to get Ragnar,’ said Brand.
‘Good. Any moment now…’
A loud crunch suddenly shook the night air as though the earth itself had cracked open.
‘Let’s go,’ said Brand, grinning at Beornoth. They turned and ran towards the trees and clambered up onto their horses. There was shouting and panic in the Viking camp, and the rumbling sound of horses galloping somewhere in the darkness. Beornoth leant to pick his spear up from where it rested against a trunk. He clicked his tongue and urged Hengist into a canter. Beornoth’s heart pounded in his chest because he knew the plan had worked. While he had distracted the Vikings at the gate, Byrhtnoth and his men had looped hemp rope around the stakes on the western side of the walls and tied the other ends to their saddles. They had then raced their mounts away from the walls to tear that whole section of wall from the earth and create an opening for a company of Saxon warlords to ride into the Viking camp and bring swords, axes and shields to wreak revenge for the murdered Saxon souls in the burned and ravaged villages.
Beornoth heard the whoops of Byrhtnoth’s men as they poured into the gaping hole ripped in Ragnar’s palisade, and the shouts of alarm from inside the camp. He brought Hengist around towards them and the horse jumped over the snapped remnants of the stakes sticking up from the ground in jagged stubs like broken teeth. Before him horsemen whirled through a snarl of tents and running men, blades flashing in the torchlight. Beornoth reined Hengist in and slid from the saddle. He shrugged the heavy shield off his back and kept hold of his spear. A clutch of three spearmen were running from the gate shouting and making a charge towards Byrhtnoth’s riders. Beornoth swept his own spear around into an overhand grip, took two steps forward and grunted as he launched the weapon through the darkness. It flew in a low, flat arc before slamming into the thigh of one of the three spearmen. He shrieked in pain and dropped to one knee. And before the other two men could identify their attacker, Beornoth drew his sword and charged at them. He held his blade two-handed and as a wide-jawed man hissed and stabbed his spear forwards, Beornoth batted it aside and with the strength in his shoulders, arms and wrists he slashed the edge of his sword down the chest of that man, slicing through his leather breastplate. Without pausing, Beornoth whirled and drove the point of his blade into the gullet of the man howling with Beornoth’s spear in his leg. The man gurgled and choked on blood and steel, before Beornoth yanked his sword point free and slashed the edge across the face of the man whose breastplate he had cut open.
The iron tang of blood was in the air, and the Vikings were dying. They were dirty-faced men with greasy hair and brown, foul teeth. They were evil men, but Beornoth was meaner and more vicious than their evil, and he had come for them. He looked up to see a rider thundering towards him with a spear levelled. Beornoth’s heart stopped because the rider was Brand, and for a horrifying moment he thought the man he had taken as a hostage but who had become his brother in arms was coming to kill him, but the spear flew over his shoulder and Beornoth heard a guttural cry behind him. He spun to see the third spearman falling to his arse with Brand’s spear in his belly. The man had been about to drive his spear into Beornoth’s back, and Brand had saved his life. The Viking had sworn he would repay that debt and Beornoth raised his sword in salute, and Brand nodded, before wheeling his horse around to find more men to kill.
Beornoth strode through the camp. Viking bodies writhed and moaned on the ground, clutching at wounds and, as he passed by them, he struck with his sword, sending their screaming souls to hell. In the dark shadows, amidst swirling smoke wafting from a flaming tent, Beornoth saw a gigantic figure swathed in mail and a black bear-fur cloak. That figure clutched a long, two-handed war axe, and he swung it with an ear-rattling war cry to pluck one of Byrhtnoth’s riders from the saddle. The Saxon flew backwards in the air whilst his horse continued riding. The big Viking swung his monstrous war axe again and its oversize bearded blade arced through the shadows and slammed into the earth, taking the fallen Saxon’s head as it did so. Beornoth strode towards the Viking giant, who stood a head taller even than he.
‘Nithing!’ Beornoth roared at the man, and he turned to face him, flashing a gap-toothed grin. The Viking had one eye missing, a black pit in place of his left eye, and a beard folded into a thick braid falling to his mailed chest. Beornoth had seen no mail-clad warriors in the Viking camp, and though this man was not Ragnar the Flayer himself, he must be one of their champions.
‘Saxon turd!’ the Viking spat back at him, and he wrenched his axe head from the dirt and came at Beornoth, swinging his axe around him in great twirling circles so that it moved in a blur, swishing through the smoke and darkness and coming towards Beornoth like a wheel of death. Beornoth gripped his sword and stood his ground, watching the blade flow around the giant faster than the eye could follow. The Viking grinned at him, a murderous, slanted grin. Beornoth imagined the pain this man had caused the people of East Anglia, the women and children, and swung his sword low. The blade swept towards the Viking’s ankles, and he had to leap backwards to avoid the low blow. The jump fouled his intricate axe swings and as the axe faltered Beornoth kicked the axe haft back towards the Viking, and because his sword was low, he followed the kick in to slam the cross guard of his sword hard into the Viking’s face, sending him stumbling back. Beornoth kept moving and brought his sword up above his head, ready to strike down and end the life of his enemy, but the Viking came up with a snarl and punched Beornoth in the gut and the wind whooshed out of him like a gale, and he almost fell over from the pain and surprise of it. The Viking was fast, and it was Beornoth’s turn to spin away in pain.
‘I am going to use your skull as a pisspot,’ the Viking said, and he unclasped the heavy bear-fur cloak from his shoulders, letting it fall to the ground. He shrugged his boulder shoulders and came on again, two hands on his axe and ready to kill. Beornoth sucked in huge gasps of air, but it seemed to go nowhere, and his body felt as though a giant hand squeezed him as he desperately tried to get air into his chest. The axe head came at him, and he parried it with his sword, the blow jarring up his wrist and arm, the weight in the strike sending pain screaming through Beornoth’s bones. Another blow came, and he twisted away from it, kicking his attacker in the knee. The Viking grunted as his leg extended, and he had to pause and regain his balance.
‘No,’ growled Beornoth through gritted teeth. He had come here to kill Ragnar and his slavers, not to die under the axe of this Norse monster. His breath came back and he held his blade before him in his right hand and slid his seax from his sheath at the back of his belt. The fight raged around him in the smoke and darkness, hoof beats, the clash of iron, and the shouts and screams of men. The Viking came for him again, and Beornoth parried the overhand below with his sword and seax, and then slid his seax down the long axe haft and felt the blade catch on the Viking’s finger bones. Beornoth sliced the blade harder and twisted away as the Viking roared in pain. Beornoth ducked and sidestepped around his attacker and dragged the edge of his sword across the Viking’s left calf and the warrior fell to his knees, howling up at the night sky. The giant backswung his axe desperately, but it was a clumsy strike weakened by his wounds and Beornoth stepped away from it and brought his sword blade down onto the Viking’s forearm, cracking the bones. The enormous axe fell to the earth and Beornoth stalked around to face his enemy. The warrior looked up at Beornoth, his face twisted into a rictus of hate. He was about to speak, but Beornoth stepped in to ram his seax blade underneath the man’s beard and up through his mouth so that blood pumped dark across Beornoth’s hand and down onto the man’s byrnie.
‘They are running,’ a shout came from somewhere in the darkness, and Beornoth searched the dark, smoke-filled camp, fearful that Ragnar was escaping the vengeance Beornoth had come to lay upon him.
27
‘The ships, to the ships,’ screamed a Norse voice, high-pitched and desperate.
Beornoth cursed and dashed through the camp, horsemen thundered around him, and he swerved and leapt over corpses and the writhing figures of wounded men. Ahead, torches gathered through the gloom, and as he approached them a curved prow reared from the night, its snarling beast head glaring down at him. Where there had been two ships, there was now only one. Men were in the water, splashing and shouting.
‘Where is the other ship?’ Beornoth said, grabbing one of Byrhtnoth’s men by the shoulder.
‘Bastards fought their way to the shore and got one of their ships away. Their leader is amongst them,’ said the man, his face spattered with the blood of his enemies. ‘Look at those poor souls,’ he said, and made the sign of the cross. He pointed his spear towards a fenced pen on the shore, from which pale hands reached out to them, with long faces as white as the moon, their mouths curled into terrified arcs. Saxon slaves taken by Ragnar and his men.
‘No,’ Beornoth whispered. He remembered the slaves murdered by Ragnar and his men during their last encounter, and the Saxon flesh stretched over the Viking shields. He could not allow Ragnar to sail away. Beornoth thought about pushing the remaining ship into the water to pursue them, but he was no sailor and nor were any of Byrhtnoth’s men. The Vikings sailed the vastness of the Whale Road in their sleek warships and a pursuit on water would be no pursuit at all. Ragnar’s camp lay beside a river, but on the cusp of where that waterway opened up into the wide sea. If he didn’t act quickly then the Vikings would be surging across the white-tipped waves and gone. He saw a riderless horse stood idly, chewing on a patch of grass, and Beornoth ran to it and hauled himself into the saddle. He dug his heels in, and the horse set off at a canter, following the coastline. The men in the water had waded up to their waists, Saxon warriors who had tried to stop Ragnar from slipping away. Torches bobbed ahead of him, the flaming staves held by men who rode after Ragnar’s ship. Beornoth urged the horse into a gallop and felt the power of the beast beneath him as it raced across the muddy riverbank. He caught up with the group of horsemen and slowed as he recognised Wulfhere and Leofsunu amongst the riders.
‘How many are on the ship?’ he shouted.
‘A dozen,’ yelled Wulfhere. The ship was level with them on the black but shimmering water with a flaming torch flickering in the darkness gripped by one of the crew, two banks of four oars dipping into the water and hauling the ship along. They were moving slowly with so few oarsmen, but they were moving. The Vikings could keep up that pace forever, and there was little he and his men could do about it. Then he remembered the view from the bluff where he and Byrhtnoth had observed Ragnar’s camp. Along the shoreline, towards the sea, was a spit of sand and rock which stretched out into the water like a long finger. There were old and rotten posts across its length as though it had once been a jetty of sorts. Beornoth clicked his tongue and rose with the power of the horse as he drove it into a gallop again. Beornoth heard Wulfhere calling after him, but rage had overcome him like a madness. If he could reach that spit of land stretching into the river then there was a chance to stop Ragnar from getting away: a desperate, wild chance, but Beornoth rode towards it like a maddened bull.
He rode with his sword in one hand, and his seax in its sheath at his back. Beornoth glanced to his right, and he raced past Ragnar’s ship. Ahead of him, the sandbank emerged from the darkness to cut into the smooth surface of the water like the neck of a sea beast. He drove the horse up onto the bank, and he had to drive it hard across the treacherous surface of rocks, sand and dirt, but the horse ran, and the ship approached. Beornoth’s heart pounded in his chest because he suddenly realised the madness in what he was doing. He wore his heavy byrnie, and to fall into the deep water would mean death in its icy embrace, but he could not allow Ragnar to survive again. The ship drew closer, oars splashing and her crew shouting desperately at one another to pull harder. Beornoth dug his heels in savagely to the racing horse’s flanks and sawed on the reins so that the beast leapt into the air. Beornoth jumped from the saddle, the fear of what he was doing hot like a fire in his belly. He closed his eyes and flew through the darkness, curling himself into a ball as he did so, and then suddenly he crashed into the hard timbers of the ship’s deck. He landed heavily on his front, and the impact drove the sword from his hand and sent him rolling across the deck. The horse snorted and splashed behind him, where it had plunged into the river. The desperate leap had worked, and Beornoth raised himself up on his forearms just as a boot thudded into his ribs to send him sprawling. Beornoth grunted at the pain and rolled into the ship’s sheer strake. He looked up and saw a boot coming for his face and Beornoth grabbed it and twisted it, rising on his haunches to throw the man backwards. A spear came at him and Beornoth swerved to his right, but the blade punched into his chest, knocking him backwards. The links of his byrnie held, and the blow did not pierce his skin, but the force of it was like a hammer.
