would find anything but victory. Still, Guthmund told himself, if his friend and jarl was defeated, it could do no harm to rob the conqueror. And a stroke in the rear might be a vital distraction. He turned to the fishermen again with another string of questions: The fleet drawn up in a bay? The stockaded camp on a hill? The nearest inlet to it? Steep sides but a path?
In the drenching rain the Wayman fleet, rowed now by chained Ragnarsson survivors, pulled one by one into the narrow mouth of the stream below Hastings and its camp.
“Do you mean to climb the walls with ladders?” asked one of the fishermen doubtfully. “They are ten feet high.”
“That's what those are for,” said Guthmund, waving cheerfully at the six onagers being slung over the side by derricks.
“Too heavy for the path,” said the fisherman, eyeing the way the boats heeled.
“I have plenty of carriers,” replied Guthmund, watching keenly as his men, weapons poised, unshackled the dangerous Ragnarsson galley-slaves a few at a time and made them fast again to the onagers' frames and carry- bars.
As the narrow inlet filled with men, Guthmund decided to make a short speech of encouragement.
“Loot,” he said, “lots of it. Stolen from the Christian Church, so we'll never have to give any back. Maybe we have to share it with the jarl, if he wins today. Maybe not. Let's go.”
“What about us?” said one of the chained men.
Guthmund looked at him attentively. Ogvind the Swede: a very hard man. Threats no good. And he needed these men to use their full strength up the steep hillside.
“This is how it is,” he said. “If we win, I'll let you go. If we lose, I'll leave you chained to the machines. Maybe the Christians will be merciful to you. Fair?”
Ogvind nodded. Struck by a sudden thought, Guthmund turned to the black deacon, the machine- master.
“What about you? Will you fight these for us?”
Erkenbert's face set. “Against Christians? The emissaries of the Pope, the Holy Father, whom I myself and my master called to this abode of savages? Rather will I embrace the crown of holy martyrdom and go…”
A hand plucked at Guthmund's sleeve: one of the few slaves taken from York Minster who had survived both Ivar's furies and Erkenbert's discipline.
“We'll do it, master,” he whispered. “Be a pleasure.”
Guthmund waved the mixed party up the steep hillside, going first himself with the fishermen and minster- men to reconnoiter, the Ragnarssons struggling up next under their ton-and-a-half burdens. Slowly, still cloaked by the rain, six onagers and a thousand Vikings moved into position four hundred yards from the Frankish stockade. Guthmund shook his head disapprovingly as he realized that there were not even sentries posted on the seaward side—or if there had been, they had all drifted over to the other side to watch and listen to the far-off rumor of battle.
The first sighting shot from an onager bounced short, kicked up and flicked a ten-foot post stump-first out of the ground. The minster-men pulled out coigns, lifted the frames a trifle. The next volley of five twenty-pound boulders smashed down twenty feet of stockade in a moment. Guthmund saw no point in waiting for a second volley. His army headed straight for the gap at a run. The startled Franks, mostly archers, bowstrings useless, faced with a thousand veteran warriors ready to fight on foot at close quarters, broke and ran almost to a man.
Two hours after setting foot onshore, Guthmund looked out from the Frankish gate. All his training told him to parcel the loot, abandon the now-unnecessary machines, and get back to sea before vengeance fell On him. Yet what he saw looked uncommonly like a beaten army streaming back. If so, if so…
He turned, shouted orders. Skaldfinn the interpreter, priest of Heimdall, looked at him in surprise.
“You're taking a risk,” he said.
“Can't help it. I remember what my grandpa told me. Always kick a man if he's down.”
As his men saw the Hammer ensign break out over what they had thought was their secure camp, Charles the Bald felt the morale of his army break. Every man and horse was soaked, cold and weary. As they straggled out of the copses and hedgerows and formed once more into ranks, the hobbelars could see that at least half their number were still lying out in the sodden fields, dead or waiting for death from some peasant's knife. The archers had been mere passive targets all day. Even the core of his army, the heavy lancers, had left a third of their best on slope or in quagmire, with never a chance to show their skill. The stockade in front of him looked unharmed and heavily manned. No assault would go in willingly.
Cutting his losses, Charles stood in his saddle, raised his lance, pointed toward the ships drawn up on the beach or anchored in the road. Sullenly, his men changed their direction of march, angled down towards the beach on which they had landed weeks before.
As they reached it, one by one, the dragon-boats cruised round from the inlet where their crews had re- embarked. Rowed into position, halted all together on the calm sea, swung bows on with the skill of veterans. From a vantage point by the stockade, an onager tried a ranging shot. The missile plumped into the gray water a cable's length over the cog
Looking down on the crowded beach, Shef realized that where the Frankish army had shrunk, his had swollen. The dart-throwers and crossbows were in place as he expected, hardly fewer than when they had started. His stone-throwers were coming up at a rush, recaptured from where the Franks had left them, unharmed or hastily re-rigged and now carried along still assembled by hundreds of willing hands. Only the halberdiers had lost more than a handful. And in their place had come thousands, literally thousands of angry churls out of the woodlands, clutching axes and spears and scythes. If the Franks were to break out it would have to be uphill. On weary horses. Under withering fire.
Into Shef's mind, unbidden, came the memory of his duel with Flann the Gaddgedil. If you wanted to consign a man, or an army, to Nastrond, to Dead Man's Shore, you cast the spear over their heads as a sign that all were given to Othin. Then no prisoners could be taken. A voice spoke inside him, a cold voice, the voice he recognized as the Othin of his dreams.
“Go on,” it said. “Pay me my due. You do not wear my sign yet, but do they not say you belong to me?”
As if sleepwalking, Shef drifted over to Oswi's catapult—“Dead Level,” wound and loaded, trained on the center of the Frankish army, milling in confusion below them. He looked down at the crosses on the shields: remembered the orm-garth. The wretched slave Merla. His own torments at the hands of Wulfgar. Godive's back. Sibba and Wilfi, burned to ashes. The crucifixions. His hands were steady as they pulled out the coigns, trained the weapon up to launch its missile over the Frankish heads.
Inside him the voice spoke again, the voice like a calving glacier. “Go on,” it said. “Give the Christians to me.”
Suddenly Godive was beside him, hand on his sleeve. She said nothing. As he looked at her, he remembered Father Andreas, who had given him life. His friend Alfred. Father Boniface. The poor woman in the forest clearing. He looked round from his daze, realized that the priests of the Way, all of them, had appeared from somewhere, were gazing at him with grave and intent faces.
He stepped back from the catapult with a deep sigh.
“Skaldfinn,” he said. “You are an interpreter. Go down and tell the Frankish king to surrender or be killed. I will give them their lives and passage home. No more.”
Again he heard a voice: but this time, the amused one of the wanderer in the mountains, which he had first heard over the gods' chessboard.
“Well done,” it said. “You defeated Othin's temptation. Maybe you are my son. But who knows his own father?”
Chapter Twelve
