son.
“The causeway,” said Shef hoarsely. “A few men can block it against the English for a long time.”
“They could,” Brand agreed. “But they will have to be led by one of us. A leader. One who is used to independent command. One who can rely on his own men. Maybe a long hundred of them.”
For long moments the silence was unbroken. Whoever stayed behind was as good as dead. This was asking a lot—even of these Vikings.
Sigvarth stared at Shef coldly, waiting for him to speak. But it was Brand's voice that broke the silence.
“There is one here who has a full crew to back him. One who made the heimnar that now is carried toward us by the English….”
“Do you speak of me, Brand? Do you ask me to set my feet and those of my men on the path to Hell?”
“Yes, Sigvarth, I speak of you.”
Sigvarth started to answer, then turned and looked towards Shef. “Yes, I will do it. I feel that the runes are already cut that tell of this. You said my son's death was the will of the Norns. I think the Norns are weaving fates together on this causeway too. And not the Norns alone.”
He raised his eyes to meet his son's.
The front ranks of the army of the Mark, hurrying on through the night in pursuit of their fleeing enemies, fell into Sigvarth's trap an hour after sunset. In twenty heartbeats of slaughter the Englishmen, packed ten abreast on the narrow causeway through the marsh, lost half a hundred picked champions. The rest—weary, wet, hungry, furious with their leaders—fell back in confusion, not even coming on again to recover the bodies and their armor. For an hour Sigvarth's men, standing tensely ready, heard them shouting and haranguing each other. Then, slowly, the noise of men retreating. Not frightened. Unsure. Wondering if there was a way round. Waiting for orders. Leaving it to the next man. Ready for a night's sleep, even in a sodden blanket on the ground, before risking precious life against something unknown.
Twelve hours gained already, thought Sigvarth, standing his men down. Though not for me. I may as well watch as anything else. I shall not sleep again after the death of my son. My one son. I wonder if the other
With dawn, the English returned, three thousand men, to see the nature of the barrier that blocked their way.
The Vikings had dug into the sodden February soil on both sides of the track through the fens. A foot down they had reached water. Two feet down and only mud came up. Instead of their normal earthwork they had dug a water-filled ditch ten feet broad. On their side of it they had jammed into the ground such bits of timber as they could break up from the cart Shef had left behind. A flimsy obstacle to be cleared in a few moments by a gang of churls. If there had been no men behind it.
There was room on the causeway for only ten to stand. For only five to wield weapons. The warriors of the Mark, coming forward cautiously, shields raised, found themselves floundering thigh-deep in freezing water before they were in sword-range of an enemy. Their leather shoes skidded on the bottom. As they edged on, bearded faces glared at them, two-handed axes resting on shoulders. Strike at the men? A man had to struggle up a muddy slope to get in a blow. While he did, the axemen could pick their spot.
Strike at the timbers then, at the breastwork. But take your eyes off the man above you and he would cut arm from shoulder or head from neck.
Gingerly, striving desperately for balance, the Mercian champions probed crabwise into battle, urged on by cries of encouragement from those not yet engaged.
As the short day drew on, the fighting gathered momentum. Cwichelm, the Mercian captain, deputed by his king to advise and support the new alderman, lost patience with the tentative assaults, pulled his men back, ordered forward a score of bowmen with unlimited arrows to line the track. “Shoot at head level,” he told them. “Doesn't matter if you miss. Just keep them down.”
Other men kept up a barrage with javelins, just over the heads of their fighting fellows. Cwichelm's best swordsmen, spurred on with appeals to their pride, were told to go forward and fence—to not rush forward. Tire them out for a while, then change places with the next rank. Meanwhile a thousand men had been sent miles to the rear, to cut brushwood, bring it forward, throw it under the feet of the fighters, let them trample it under to make, in time, a solid platform.
Alfgar, watching from twenty paces back, pulled his fair beard with vexation.
“How many men do you need?” he asked. “It's only a ditch and a fence. One good push and we'll be through it. It doesn't matter if we lose a few.”
The captain eyed his master-by-title sardonically. “Try telling that to the few,” he said. “Or maybe you'd care to try it yourself? Just take out that big fellow in the middle. The one laughing. With the yellow teeth.”
In the dim light, Alfgar stared across the cold water and the struggling men at Sigvarth, padding from side to side as he beat aside sword-strokes, sparred to get in a blow. Alfgar thrust his hand into his belt as it began to tremble.
“Bring my father forward,” he muttered to his attendants. “There is something for him to see.”
“The English are bringing up a coffin,” observed one of the Viking front-rankers to Sigvarth. “I would have thought they needed more than just one by now.”
Sigvarth stared at the padded box, held almost upright by its bearers, its occupant held in place by chest- and waist-straps. Across the water, his eyes met those of the man he had maimed. After a moment, he threw his head back in a wild cry of laughter, raised his shield, shook his axe, called out in Norse.
“What does he say?” muttered Alfgar.
“He is calling to your father,” translated Cwichelm. “Does he recognize the axe? Does he think it forgot something? Drop his breeches and he will do his best to remember.”
Wulfgar's mouth moved. His son bent to hear the hoarse mumble.
“He says he will give his whole estate to the man who takes that one alive.”
Cwichelm pursed his lips. “Easier said than done. One thing about these devils. You can beat them, sometimes. But it's never easy. Never, never easy.”
From the sky above them came a shrill whistling, dropping closer.
“Lower away!” barked the leader of catapult team one. The twelve freed thralls on the ropes thrust right hand over left hand over right hand, shouting hoarsely as they did so. “One—two—three.” The sling dropped into the leader's hands. As it came down, the loader sprang from his kneeling position, shoved a ten-pound rock into position, leapt instantly back into his place, reaching for the next one.
“Take the strain!” Backs bent, the machine's arm flexed, the leader felt himself pulled up on to his toes.
“Pull!” A simultaneous grunt, the lash of the sling, a rock whirling into the air. As it went, it spun, the chipped grooves on its surface setting up an ominous whistling. In the same moment, the crew heard the cry from behind them of the leader of catapult two.
“Take the strain!”
Traction-catapults were strange beasts in that they had most power at maximum range. They lobbed their missiles up in the sky. The higher they went, the harder they hit. The two teams of ex-slaves Shef had left behind with their cart and their machines had accordingly set up their pull-throwers a carefully paced two hundred yards behind Sigvarth's breastwork on the causeway; their missiles would strike twenty-five yards further on.
The narrow causeway was the ideal killing-ground for the machines. They threw perfectly straight, never deviating more than a few feet either side of the center. The English freedmen had perfected a drill designed to ensure that everyone did everything exactly the same way every time, and as fast as possible. For three minutes they shot. Then stood easy, panting.
The boulders dropped death from the sky on the Mercian column. The first one struck a tall warrior on the head as he stood unmoving, beating his skull almost into his shoulders. The second hit an automatically raised shield, shattering the arm behind it, caroming off to smash in a rib cage. The third hit a turned back, crushing the spine. In instants the causeway was jammed with struggling men, attempting to get back and away from a death they still could not see or understand. On the packed mass the stones continued to fall, varying a few yards forward
