The gate-guards were a different matter. Surprising them would be hard. Any fight would be on level ground and on even terms, where the Vikings' great axes and iron-shafted javelins would have easy play. Anyone who did manage to get through them would in any case only find himself fighting his way through rank after rank of warriors, in a tangle of tents and ropes.
The pens, now… They occupied an area of their own near the east wall: a sorry strip of posts hammered into the ground, leather ropes binding them together. Inside, men huddled under makeshift coverings of canvas against the rain. Iron fetters on their feet, iron manacles on their hands. Held together, though, Shef noted, only by leather. Chain was too dear. But by the time a man had chewed through the leather bonds, even the least alert guard should have noticed—and penalty for any disobedience in the slave-pens was fierce. As Shef's guide pointed out, if you marked up a slave too much you couldn't sell him anyway, so you might as well go ahead and finish the job to frighten the others.
As he peered over the logs into the pen, Shef noticed a familiar-looking head lying on the ground, its owner sunk in a depth of despair: a blond head, curls matted with grime. His half brother, son of the same mother. Alfgar. Part of the prey of Emneth. The head stirred as if sensing the eyes upon it, and Shef dropped his gaze instantly, as he would have done had he been stalking a doe or a wild pig of the marshes.
“You haven't sold any slaves since you arrived?”
“Nay. Too much trouble getting them out to sea, with the English ambushing all the time. Sigvarth owns that lot.” The young man spat again, eloquently. “He's waiting for someone else to clear the road for him. Will, too.”
“Clear the road?”
“Ivar's taking half the army out in two days, to make the kinglet Jatmund—Edmund, you English call him— fight, or destroy his country for him. We'd rather have done it the easy way, but we wasted too much time already. Be bad news for Jatmund when Ivar catches up with him, I tell you….”
“Are we going out or staying here?”
“Our crew stays.” Again, the young man looked half curiously, half angrily at Shef. “Why you think I'm telling you all this? We'll be providing guards all the time. I wish I was going. I'd like to see what they'll do to that king when he's caught. I told you about Knowth. Well, I was there at the Boyne when Ivar robbed the tombs of the dead kings and this Christ-priest tried to stop us. What Ivar did, he…”
The subject occupied the young man and his mates all through the dinner of broth, salt pork and cabbage. There was a barrel of ale, someone had taken a hatchet or an axe to its top, and they all dipped into it liberally. Shef drank more than he realized, the day's events circling in his head. His mind was revolving what he had learned, trying to put together the rudiments of a plan. He lay down that night exhausted. The Irishman leaping in death in his arms was a detail, a matter of the past.
Then exhaustion seized him, drove him into sleep, into something more than sleep.
Shef woke with a start, the smell of burning in his nostrils. For several seconds, half-drugged with fatigue, his mind circled around that: strange smell, something acrid, like tar—what could be burning tar? Then there was a confusion of movement all around him, a foot stamping on his guts jerked him into full wakefulness. The tent was abroil with men scrambling for breeches, boots, weapons, all in full darkness; there was a glare of fire on one side of the tent. Shef realized suddenly that there was a continuous roar in the background. Voices shouting, timber crackling, and over it all a deafening metallic clanging, the impact of blade on blade and blade on shield. The noise of full-scale battle.
The men in the tent were shouting, crowding past each other. Voices outside shouting, yelling in English, voices suddenly only yards away. Shef understood suddenly, the mighty voice still ringing in his ears. He hurled himself back to the ground again, fighting his way to the middle of the floor, away from the walls. As he did so the whole side of the tent caved in and through it there flashed a spear-blade. The young man who had guided him turned half toward it, his feet still trapped in folds of blanket, met the spear full in the chest. Shef grabbed the falling body and pulled it on top of him, feeling for the second time in a dozen hours the convulsive leap and start of a heart bursting.
As he did so, the whole tent collapsed and a wave of trampling feet ran over it, spears stabbing down into the trapped pile of struggling men. The body in his arms jerked again and again; in the darkness inches away there came screams of pain and fear; a blade plunged into the dirt, scraping against Shef's sprawling knee. Then suddenly the feet were gone, a rush of bodies and voices swarmed past in the lane outside, a new hubbub of clanging and shrieking broke out ten yards toward the center of the camp.
Shef knew what had happened. The English king had taken the Vikings' dare, had attacked their camp in the night, and by some miracle of organization and his enemies' overconfidence, had broken through or over the stockade, driving for the ships and the tents of the leaders, killing as many trapped in their blankets as they could. The English were pouring on, driving toward the center of the river-line. Shef seized his breeches, his boots and his sword-belt and wriggled past the corpses of his temporary fellows into the open. Pulled the gear on, ran, keeping low to the ground. There was no one standing within twenty yards. Between himself and the stockade was a swathe of leveled tents with bodies sprawled among them, some calling feebly for help or trying to struggle to their feet. The English raiders had charged through the camp hacking frenziedly at anything that moved. They had left few survivors.
Before the Vikings could recover, join together, the raiders would be deep in the heart of their enemies' fortress, the battle irrecoverably won or lost.
All along the river-line there was glare and smoke, leaping up as sails caught or the fire took hold of some new-tarred timber hull; against the blaze a frieze of capering demons, hurling spears, swinging swords and axes. The English must have met little resistance down by the ships in their first charge. But the Vikings closest to the ships had rallied swiftly and fiercely to defend their wave-stallions. What was going on by the tents of the Ragnarssons? Was this the moment? Shef thought with a calm and intent calculation which left no room for self- doubt. Was this the moment to try to get Godive out?
No. Clearly there was battle and fierce resistance on all sides. If the Vikings beat off the assault, then she would remain as she was: a slave, the bedslave of Ivar. But if the attack succeeded—and if he were there to save her…
He ran, heading not toward the fighting, where one more half-armed man would find nothing but quick death; but in the opposite direction, toward the stockade walls, still dark, still quiet. Not completely. Shef realized now that there was battle not only close to him but also far away, in all directions round the further walls of the stockade. Spears were flying in the blackness, firebrands coming looping over the logs of the stockade. King Edmund had sent in simultaneous assaults from all sides at once. Each Viking had rushed to the nearest point of danger. By the time they realized where help was needed most, again Edmund would have won or lost.
