Wolfsangel c-1 Page 18

  ‘Go and find Adisla and her mother. Help them to safety.’

  Drengi nodded and turned to run down the back of the hill, as glad to be spared further conversation with Vali as another attack.

  ‘Die for them!’ shouted Vali after him. Then he called up into the woods, ‘You did well, Hogni. Stay your hand until my command, or if I die, until our foes are about to overwhelm us. Take them at their thickest press. Our wall will stay here, behind the bodies. They can walk to us on a road of their own dead.’ He turned. ‘Bragi, where’s my seax?’

  Bragi shook his head, said, ‘Vali the swordless,’ under his breath and went to the back of the line while Vali retrieved his shield. The old warrior came back with the weapon, which Vali stuffed into his belt.

  There was a knocking sound. Two men fell. Then the sound again. Another man fell.

  ‘Arrows!’ shouted Bragi. ‘Shields up.’

  ‘Reform the wall!’ screamed Vali. ‘Reform the wall!’ He pulled and pushed men into position.

  Vali snatched up a spear as the men packed back in, bunching to shelter under their shields. Vali knew this was far from ideal. The best formation to receive arrow fire was spread out and separate, but to resist an infantry charge they needed to be together. Never mind. He pushed the men in, raising his shield to meet the angle of the incoming arrows. The arrows made a scrabbling sound as they glanced off the shields, like rats running over boards, thought Vali. The noise came again, and again, and he crouched low. He realised that they were safe beneath their shields. Few of the arrows penetrated and those that did had been slowed beyond harm.

  The noise stopped. Vali risked peeking out from over the top of his shield. Seventy warriors at least, all with shields, the men at the front in byrnies and helmets, carrying spears. The dragon standard was brought to the front of the line. This is it, thought Vali: this is where it ends. He had thought his wit and cleverness could triumph, but as he looked at the ranks of the enemy he realised the crushing power of numbers. He had only half believed it when he had told his men they’d die that day. It had been meant to encourage them, to remove the anxiety of battle. If you are certain of death then fear becomes pointless. Looking at the Danes — the strong jarl warriors at the front in their armour, helmets and swords, the young men behind them with their caps and spears — then looking at his own old men and boys, he knew the game was up. Still he’d done his best and maybe bought Adisla some time.

  ‘The back ranks must push forward at the moment they hit us,’ shouted Bragi. ‘That was why we got flattened by the berserk — you didn’t push. You must push. If you don’t they will overrun us.’

  The Danish king looked relaxed and confident beneath his banner, jovial almost, more like a man about to welcome guests on a feast day than a warrior in the field. He was talking to someone — an odd figure. Vali had never seen anyone like him before. Clearly a foreigner, the man was dressed in a blue tunic, skirt and trousers, all edged with red. On his head he wore a blue cap, the top of which took the form of a four-pointed star drooping down over his head. Who was he? What was he doing with the Danes? Vali thought he matched descriptions of the northern Whale People, who were noted sorcerers.

  The king was pointing left and right, weighing up options.

  ‘He must charge,’ muttered Vali. ‘He must charge.’ He knew very well that Haarik had time to cook a meal, sleep even, and then outflank them the next morning. One of the Danish jarls was sweeping his arms, gesturing around to the back of the hill. If he came around the back or even sent ten men that way, they were done for. They were likely done for whatever happened, but if they were to have a glimmer of a chance, head-on confrontation was it. Then Vali saw a beautiful sight. The Danish king shook his head, laughed and patted the jarl on his shoulder. He was too proud to do it the sensible way: he was going to charge the wall down.

  The king put on his helmet and took up a spear.

  ‘Come on,’ said Vali. ‘Come on.’

  But then he saw some men split off. One group of warriors went left, another right, leaving around fifty. Where was the king? His banner was there but he had disappeared. Vali had no time to think about that. The numbers were more even but Vali faced being attacked from the back in very short order. What to do? In king’s table they talked of ‘getting the run’. This meant that though your opponent might be in a better position, you had the advantage of time. If you didn’t let it slip away, he would never get the chance to bring his most threatening pieces to bear. It was the same here — no time for fancy tactics or movement. They just had to kill the enemy at the front before the enemy behind arrived.

  Bragi, crushed in by Vali’s side, saw the significance of what had happened.

  ‘Looks like we’ll have to fight quick, lord.’

  Vali nodded. He would still rather be captured by the Danes, sold into slavery and killed than spend another evening in Bragi’s company, but the man’s loyalty and, more than that, his competence, impressed him. He’d weighed up the situation immediately, not by thinking about it, as Vali had done, but as an instinctive reaction.

  Bragi spoke: ‘You’re your father’s son. I never thought I’d say it, but you are. There was a rumour for years that he’d bought you in the Isle to the West, and not got much for his money either.’

  ‘Your charm is effortless,’ said Vali, but the smile he gave Bragi was genuine enough.

  ‘You can see why people thought that, with you being an ugly black-haired bastard and all,’ said Bragi.

  Vali looked at the enemy. The swords of the men at the front were drawn. It was about to begin.

  ‘Bragi,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘If we make it to Valhalla…’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘Don’t sit next to me.’

  The old man laughed until tears came down his face. ‘You are a king, sir, a king,’ he said.

  Bragi had once told him it was a fine thing to die and Vali had thought it more homespun nonsense, but for just an instant he could feel the warmth of the sun on his face, smell the smoke of the burning village, take the weight of the spear in his hand and believe him. There was a comradeship here that he had never felt before, a bond with his fellows that went beyond any small consideration of actually liking them.

  There was a roar like a landslide, and the enemy were charging, screaming oaths to Thor, the thunder god, and Tyr, god of war. The name of Odin was not on their lips. These were not berserks, and the hanged god was too peculiar, mysterious and mad for the average farmer or bodyguard.

  Vali felt curiously disconnected from the scene and wondered who he should call on for help. None of the gods had ever appealed to him at all. All apart from one.

  ‘Lord Loki,’ he said, ‘prince of lies, friend to man, let me endure. Let me endure.’

  Vali was not religious but for a heartbeat he realised the truth of the gods of his people. Every one was a god of death — of war: Freya, goddess of fertility and war, Thor, god of thunder and war, Freyr, god of pleasure and prosperity but battle bold. Only Loki was not a fighter. Only Loki stood at the sides and laughed, a laughter more deadly to the self-important gods than any sword or spear. No wonder they had chained him.

  The sound of the enemy’s feet in the little lane vibrated through the ground. Now they would throw their missiles. Vali felt confident. His men were cheek by jowl, the front rank of shields locked tight into each other. The enemy were coming on in a mass somewhere between close order and spread out. They were too far apart to offer each other protection with their shields but not spaced enough to dilute the effect of an incoming volley of missiles.

  Vali turned to the man on his other side and thought he had never seen him before. He was a tall pale red-haired fellow in a long brown feathery cloak. Vali wanted to shout at him for being such an idiot as to wear a something like that in the line but found he couldn’t. He struggled for words, desperate to say something to this stranger. In the end he managed it.

/>   ‘Are you with us?’ he said.

  The man, who seemed able to find some space to move in the press of the wall, touched his arm and said, ‘I have been with you since the beginning.’

  ‘And now you’re here at the end.’

  ‘No end for you,’ said the man. ‘None, ever. You are always and eternal, Fenrisulfr, and soon you will see that. The gods, in their dreams, now walk the earth.’

  ‘What?’ said Vali.

  Spears, axes and stones hammered down. Vali ducked into his shield. A man behind him fell. When he looked up, the red-haired stranger was gone and he had no time to think about how odd that was.

  ‘Loose!’ screamed Vali, and the ranks behind him hurled their spears. Three of the Danes fell, one in the front rank. The jarl impeded the men behind him as he fell to his hands and knees, the others spinning and leaping to get past him. Vali gripped his spear, his hands wet with the sweat of fear.

  Bang! The wave of warriors hit the line. The Danes slid their shields into the spears, trying to push them up or aside or snag them, then to release their shields and hack in with sword and axe. Vali found his spear torn from his hand as a Dane came steaming in to him with his shield and struck at him with his axe. Again Vali could not draw his seax and was glad of his helmet as the axe knocked it off with a glancing blow but without hurting him. The press was so tight that it didn’t fall to the ground but wedged at the back of his shield. Then a spear was pushed over his shoulder from behind and the warrior was driven back. The helmet dropped and Vali kicked it towards the enemy. The Danes rushed forward again, under the defenders’ spears. More men pushed in by his side, still more behind him. It was shield to shield in the crush with no room to swing a sword. Those in the front rank became spectators at the fight, shoving forward and hoping not to be stabbed by spears wielded by opponents they had no hope of reaching. A Dane slipped on the body of another but Vali couldn’t move to draw his weapon. No need. The man went down under the feet of his friends.

  More warriors joined the back of the Danish push, throwing weapons and heaving their shoulders into their comrades’ backs in a bid to force the defenders down the lane. Vali shoved, was shoved. He strained forward with every sinew but he felt his line giving ground. Even though the Danes were stumbling and slipping on fallen bodies, there were many more of them than the Rygir. Vali went a pace back, then two. The faces of the enemy were right in his, hurling insults, promising death, spitting, trying to bite even, but there was almost nothing the men in the front could do to hurt each other. They were too close to even kick. Behind Vali someone fell, then another, and it seemed that, in a breath, the wall would be overwhelmed.

  ‘Now, Hogni, now!’ screamed Vali. Hogni couldn’t hear him but the Horda was an attentive and experienced warrior who had listened well to what Vali had told him. ‘Now and quietly,’ he told his archers.

  They came forward out of the woods, five of them, and released a volley of arrows from above at the back of the Danish press at a range of five paces. Then another, and another. Two Danes fell, then three, then two more before they even realised they had been outflanked.

  ‘Push,’ screamed Vali. ‘Push!’

  Danes were trying to scramble up the bank to get at the archers, slipping on the bodies of their comrades, sliding and falling. The archers shot again and again. Vali stuck his shoulder into his shield and shoved as hard as he could. The Dane in front of him lost his footing, grabbing out and taking a companion with him. The Rygir began to gather momentum and stamped forward over the fallen men, driving down with boots, spears and axes.

  The enemy broke and ran. Hogni’s archers continued shooting, though he commanded them to stop. He wanted some of the glory for himself and leaped into the lane to pursue the fleeing invaders.

  Vali’s men streamed past him after the enemy. Vali shouted at them to halt. About twenty Danes had gone off on a flanking movement and he felt sure they were about to attack from the rear. But there was no hope of controlling his men, who sprinted after the Danes, followed down the lane by most of the women and many of the children, waving sticks and house knives as they ran.

  Pushing back through them, Vali then ran to the end of the lane and stared down into the valley behind the hill. No Danes. Instinctively he looked over to Disa’s farm. A pall of smoke hung over it. He gave a shiver. Had Disa been able to run with her burned legs? Had Adisla managed to get her away? Her daughter would not have abandoned her, he knew that.

  He glanced around for help but the only warrior near him was Bjarki, still barely conscious, tied up to the point of strangulation with a couple of small children hitting him with sticks. Vali shooed them away from the berserk, all the time looking around for any of his men who had remained.

  ‘Bragi, with me!’ he shouted, as loud as he could. But Bragi was gone, down to the Danes’ boats, planning to take them out to sea and deny the attackers their escape. Vali was on his own. Dread swamped his exhaustion and he ran towards the burning farm faster than he had ever run in his life.

  19

  Endings

  Drengi had arrived in time to at least face the invaders. He was a farmer not a fighter though, and he was lying by a feed trough with his own axe embedded in his chest. The old Dane Barth had been shown no mercy by his countrymen and was slumped next to him as if dozing in the sun. Little Manni was dead at the doorway of Disa’s house, Vali’s old seax still in his hand.

  Vali closed his eyes and tried to compose himself. He had no time for mourning; he needed to find what had happened to Adisla and her mother. He ran into the smouldering building. The Danes had tried to set it alight but the turf roof would not burn well and the smoke looked more like that from a dung heap than a fire. Disa had been murdered in her bed. Blood was everywhere, a grisly scarf of red extending down the front of her white smock. He approached and saw that her throat was cut. He could imagine all too well what else had happened to her.

  Vali knelt beside her and took her hand. She had been his mother, or the nearest he had to one. He said nothing. So far that day he had learned what it was to believe in a fight and take up arms in a cause that was beyond plunder. Looking into Disa’s eyes, it seemed impossible that he would ever do anything else. He did not cry, which surprised him. There was something inside him too cold for tears. It was a certainty that seemed to lodge in his throat like a bolus, stopping up any emotion. He would have vengeance for this. Adisla had told him to kill a hundred of them. He wouldn’t stop there. He would kill the Danish king and all his stinking race, tear down his halls and burn his lands to ashes. The Danes had unleashed a wolf by what they had done. He had never known such purpose in all his life. But first he had something else to do.

  He went to the top of the bed and kissed Disa on the forehead.

  ‘I will find her,’ he said and then left the house. As he did so he passed the boy’s body. He ruffled his hair and kissed him. He went to take the seax but thought better of it. Instead, he just squeezed the child’s fingers onto the weapon’s handle. ‘You keep it,’ he said, ‘use it in the afterlife. Go to Freya’s halls, not Odin’s.’

  Vali heard a groan. He looked up. Drengi was still alive. He ran over to the fallen man.

  ‘Drengi, it’s me, Vali.’

  Drengi was just about breathing, the axe had caused a terrible wound in his chest and his mouth bubbled with blood.

  Vali didn’t know what to do. Disa or Jodis might have known, but one was dead and the other who knows where.

  ‘Drengi, you’ll live. I’ve seen men with worse wounds survive. You will live.’

  This was not true and they both knew it.

  ‘They came for her, Vali; they came for her.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘No, they came for her. No treasure, no plunder, her.’ He let out an awful cough, fighting to suck in breath. Vali’s mind was too disordered to take in what Drengi was saying.

  ‘You’ll be fine, Drengi. I’ll fetch Ma Jodis and she’ll patch you up. You se
e, you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Vali, they were looking for her. They asked for the healer’s daughter.’

  Vali couldn’t understand why that would be at all.

  ‘Asked who?’

  ‘They had taken the boy Loptr prisoner. He led them here and told them who to look for. They were shouting her name.’ He coughed and blood flowed over his lips.

  ‘Is the boy dead too?’

  ‘No, he ran away. Remove the axe, Vali. Take the axe away. It is a blight to me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Vali put two hands to the shaft near the head. He pulled and Drengi screamed. He pulled again and the axe came free. Drengi coughed and spluttered, hacked and wheezed. Then he was quiet. Vali took his hand. He was dead.

  Vali became aware he was being watched. He looked up to see Loptr peering out from behind a pig shelter.

  ‘You can come out now, child. They’ve gone,’ said Vali.

  The boy didn’t move. He looked very scared.

  ‘Did they take her? Did they take Adisla?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Which way?’

  The child pointed at the track heading south out of the farmstead that led to several broad beaches. If the Danes had got their ships away from the harbour, they might pick up stragglers there.

  ‘Go back down to the harbour,’ said Vali. ‘If you encounter any of our warriors, tell them I’ve gone down to Selstrond to find these pirates. And tell them to come and help me. Quick. Go on!’

  The boy didn’t move, just stared at him. It was no use, Vali decided. Loptr was too shocked by what he’d seen to do anything. ‘Well, don’t go into Ma Disa’s house,’ said Vali, and he set off for the beach.

  When he arrived, the shoe told him all he needed to know. It was where the track petered out in the sand, just at the point that anyone coming onto the beach would find it. It was hers, one of the green leather best she had been wearing to greet him back from his journey. Clearly she had kicked it off.