or back as the launchers' heaves fluctuated, but never missing the causeway itself. Only those who crowded forward into the ditch closest to the Vikings remained safe.
At the end of the three minutes the warriors leading the attack saw only chaos and ruin behind them. Those who fled to the rear saw now that at a certain distance they were safe.
Cwichelm, in the fore, waved his broadsword, yelled out in rage to Sigvarth, “Come out! Come out from your ditch and fight like men. With swords, not stones.”
Sigvarth's yellow teeth showed again in a grin. “Come and make me,” he called, in an approximation of English. “You so brave. How many of you you need?”
More hours gained, he thought. How long does it take an Englishman to learn sense?
Not quite long enough, he reflected as the short February day drew toward its end in rain and sleet. The ditch and the stone-throwers had shocked them. But very, very slowly, maybe not quite slowly enough, they had got over their shock and worked out what they should have done in the first place.
Which was everything—and all at once. Frontal assault to keep Sigvarth busy. Spears and arrows launched overhead, to harass. Brushwood under the feet of the fighters, to build up a platform. Men coming up in thin lines, eyes alert, to give poor targets for the stone-throwers. Others floundering through the marsh in small bodies, to try to climb the causeway behind his block, splitting his meager force. Commandeered boats poling along to get behind him and threaten to cut off his retreat. Sigvarth's men were looking behind them now. One solid push by the English, regardless of casualties, and they really would be through.
One of the slaves from the stone-throwers was tugging at Sigvarth's sleeve, talking in broken Norse.
“We go now,” he said. “No more rocks. Master Shef, he said, shoot till rocks gone, then go. Cut ropes, throw machines in swamp. Go now!”
Sigvarth nodded, watching the puny figure scamper away. Now he had his own honor to think of. His own destiny to fulfill. He walked forward toward the front line of the fighters, clapping men on the shoulder. “Move,” he said to each one. “Get your horse. Get out of this now. Ride straight for March and they won't catch you.”
His helmsman Vestlithi hesitated as Sigvarth tapped him, “Who's bringing your horse, jarl? You'll have to move quick.”
“I have something to do yet. Go, Vestlithi. This is my fate, not yours.”
As the feet splashed away behind him, Sigvarth faced the five leading champions of the Mark, probing suspiciously forward, made wary of every opportunity by a long day of slaughter.
“Come on,” he called to them. “Only me!”
As the foot of the center man slipped, he leapt forward with appalling speed, slashed, countered, thrust sword through beard, leapt back again, feinting from one side to the other as the enraged Englishmen closed in.
“Come on!” he shouted, yelling again the words of Ragnar's death-song, which Ivar Ragnarsson's skald had made:
Over the clash of combat, one man against an army, Wulfgar's deep tones carried.
“Take him alive! Pin him with shields! Take him alive!”
I must let them do it, thought Sigvarth as he whirled and slashed. I have not bought my son quite enough time. But there is a way to buy him yet one more night.
It will be a long one for me.
Chapter Eleven
Shef and Brand, standing close together, watched the battleline, two-hundred-men wide, tramping slowly to ward them across the level meadowland turf. Over the advancing line battle-standards waved, the personal flags of jarls and champions. Not the Raven Banner of the Ragnarssons, which flew only when all four brothers consented to it. But above the central reserve a gust puffed out one long ensign: the Coiling Worm of Ivar Ragnarsson himself. Even at this distance Shef thought he could catch the glint of the silver helmet, the scarlet cloak.
“Going to be a killing-ground today. We're too evenly matched,” Brand muttered. “Even the side that wins is going to take very heavy losses. Takes guts to walk forward in the front rank, knowing that. Ivar's not in the front, pity. I was hoping he would be; I could have a go at him myself. The only cheap way for us to win this will be to kill a leader and take the heart out of the rest.”
“Is there a cheap way for them?”
“I doubt it. Our lads have seen the money. They've only heard about it.”
“But you still think we're going to lose?”
Brand patted Shef reassuringly. “Heroes never think things like that. But everybody loses some time. And we're outnumbered.”
“You haven't counted my thralls.”
“I've never known thralls to win battles.”
“Wait and see.”
Shef ran back a few paces from where he and Brand had been standing, beneath the Flag of the Hammer, at the rear center of their own—the Wayman line. It was drawn up in exactly the same style as Ivar's force, but only five-deep, with fewer reserves. Shef had placed his wheeled torsion-catapults—the dart-shooters—in the line, screened only by a single rank of men and shields. Well back behind the line stood the traction-catapults—the stone-throwers—all of them except for the pair he had left with Sigvarth, their half-crews clutching the flapping ropes.
But it was the twist-shooters that would do the work now. Using his halberd, Shef vaulted onto the central cart of the nine he had left, still drawn up, oxen still hitched. He looked up and down the line of men, seeing the faces of his catapult-crews turned toward him.
“Clear your line!”
The Vikings masking the line of fire shuffled sideways. The ropes were wound tight; loader stood ready with bundles of javelins; they were aimed and ready. The slowly advancing line of men was a target impossible to miss. Over the turf came the hoarse chanting of the Ragnarsson army:
Shef dropped the head of his halberd forward as he shouted, “Shoot!”
Black streaks, rising at the launch, falling as they flashed through the air. Plunging into the lines of advancing men.
The lever-men were rewinding furiously, javelins dropped into place. Shef waited until the last one was reloaded, the last hand up to signal readiness.
“Shoot!”
Again the thrums, the streaks, the swirls. A hum of excitement rose from the Wayman army. And there was something happening with the Ragnarsson line as well. They had abandoned their steady walk, their chanting wavered and died. Now they were trotting forward, anxious to close before they were impaled like roast pigs— without a blow struck. Running half a mile in armor would tire them nicely. The shooters had done one job already.
But they could not shoot much longer. Shef calculated that he could shoot twice more before the attackers reached the line. Kill a few more men, unsettle the rest.
As the machines leapt back on their wheels for the last time he ordered them back.
