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 men 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
