not been conditioned from birth to war. Who had not felt the bite of edges over the linden-shield. A dozen Mercian warriors swarmed together at the dark doors of the hall. Behind them, now that concealment was gone, horns blew for the assault.
The double doors of the hall were six feet across, a man's full arm-span. Room only for two armed men to enter at once. Two champions rushed in together, shields up, faces glaring.
Neither saw the blows that killed them. As they peered into the gloom for men to face them, faces to hack at, the halberds swept from both sides, at thigh level, below shield and mail-shirt. The halberd-heads, axe one side, spike the other, were twice the weight of a broadsword. One shore through a warrior's leg and deep into the facing thigh. The other sliced upward from the bone, deep into the pelvis. As one man lay in the flow of blood that would kill him in seconds, the other flapped and twisted, shrieking, trying to tear free the great blade lodged in bone.
More men pushed over them. This time spearpoints met them from in front, driving through wooden shields and metal rings, hurling men back into the confusion of the doorway, groaning from belly wounds. Now the long blades, sweeping in six-foot arcs, chopped down the mailed warriors like cattle before the poleaxe. For a few seconds it seemed as if the sheer weight and numbers of the first rush would break through the defenders.
But against the dim-seen menace, nerves failed. The Mercians scrambled back, those in front weaving desperately behind their shields, trying to drag their dead and wounded with them.
“So far so good,” muttered one of the Waymen.
“They'll come again,” said Sibba.
Four more times the Mercians came on, each time more warily, trying now, as they realized the tactics and the weapons against them, to draw the blow and evade it, to leap forward before the halberdiers could recover their cumbrous weapons. The Norfolk freedmen used their advantage of numbers, two men to face each door, a man striking from each side. Slowly the casualties on both sides grew.
“They're trying to cut through the walls,” muttered Elfstan to Sibba, still on his feet as the sky began to pale.
“Makes no difference,” replied Sibba. “They still have to climb in. As long as there's enough of us to block each gap.”
Outside, a fair angry face stared at a bleeding exhausted one. Alfgar had come with the attackers to watch the destruction of the Waymen. He was not pleased.
“You can't break in?” he shouted. “Against a handful of slaves?”
“We've lost too many good men to this handful of slaves. Eight dead, a dozen hurt and all of them badly. I'm going to do what we should have done first.”
Turning to his men, he waved a group forward to the undamaged gable end of the hall. With them they carried thorn fencing. They piled it against the wall, stamped it into a pile of thick brush. Steel struck flint, sparks dropping onto dried straw. The fire flared up.
“I want prisoners,” Alfgar said.
“If we can get them,” said the Mercian. “Anyway, now they have to come to us.”
As the smoke began to pour into the drafty hall, Sibba and Elfstan exchanged glances. They could see each other now in the growing dawn. “They might still take you prisoner, if you went out,” said Sibba. “Hand you over to your own king. You being a thane, who knows?”
“I doubt that strongly.”
“What are we going to do?”
“What is always done. We will wait in here for every breath we can draw, until the smoke is thickest. Then we will run out and hope one or two of us may get away in the confusion.”
The smoke poured in more thickly, followed by the red gleams of fire eating at planking. Elfstan moved to draw a wounded man lying on the floor out of the smoke, but Sibba waved him back.
“Breathing smoke is the easy death,” he said. “Better than feeling the fire in your flesh.”
One by one, as their endurance waned, the halberdiers ran out in the smoke, trying to run downwind for a few yards of screen. Gleefully their enemies pounced, blocking their path, making them strike or lunge, leaping in behind with sword and dagger, and a long night of loss and frustration to avenge. Last and unluckiest ran Sibba. As he came out two Mercians, realizing by now which way their prey would go, stretched a rawhide rope across the path. Before he could rise or draw his short knife, there was a knee on his back, brawny arms on his wrists.
The last man left in the shell of his home, Elfstan stepped slowly forward, not running downwind like the others, but taking three long strides out of the smoke, shield raised, broadsword drawn. The Mercians running in hesitated. Here at last was a man like themselves. At a safe distance Elfstan's serfs and tenants watched, to see how their lord faced death.
Huskily Elfstan snarled a challenge, gesturing to the Mercians to come on. One detached himself, stepped forward, swinging backhand, forehand, clubbing upward with his iron shield-boss. Elfstan parried, edge to edge with the skill of a lifetime's practice, chopping with his own shield, circling one way then the other as he tried to detect a weakness in his enemy's wrist or balance or technique. For minutes the grave ballet of the sword-duel, the thing thanes were bred for, went on. Then the Mercian sensed the Wessex thane's exhaustion. As the shield-arm facing him drooped, he feinted a low cut, turned it into sudden short thrust. The blade drove in below the ear. As he fell, Elfstan stuck one last failing blow. His enemy staggered, looked unbelievingly at the arterial blood spouting from his thigh, and fell also, struggling to cover the flow with his hands.
A groan rose from the men of Stanford-in-the-Vale. Elfstan had been a hard master, and many had felt the weight of his fist if slaves, or the power of his wealth if free. Yet he had been their neighbor. He had fought the invaders of the village.
“Good death,” the Mercian captain said professionally. “He lost, but maybe he took his man with him.”
Alfgar moaned with disgust. Behind him, men rolled the traveling can of his father forward. Through the shattered palisade of the village, a further cortege advanced, black-robed priests in the van. In the midst of it the rising sun glittered on the bishop's gilded crozier.
“At least we have
“Two?” asked Bishop Daniel disbelievingly. “You killed nine and caught two?”
No one bothered to answer him.
“We must make the best of it,” said Wulfgar. “Now, how are you going to deal with them? ‘Make an example,’ you said.”
The two freedmen stood in front of them, each held by two warriors. Daniel paced forward, stretched his hand out, pulled a thong from round one captive's neck, broke it with a jerk. He stared at what lay in his hand, did the same to the other prisoner. A silver hammer, for Thor, a silver sword, for Tyr. He tucked them into his pouch. For the archbishop, he thought. No, Ceolnoth is too much a weakling, feeble as the weathercock Wulfhere of York.
These are for Pope Nicholas. With this silver in his hand he may reflect that the Church in England cannot afford weakling archbishops any longer.
“I swore to burn the canker out,” he said. “And so I will.”
An hour later Wilfi of Ely stood tethered to the stake, legs tightly bound to prevent him kicking out. The brushwood burned brightly, caught at his woolen breeches. As the fire blistered his skin he began to twist in his bonds, gasps of agony forced from him despite his efforts. The Mercian warriors stared at him judgementally, interested to see how a slave-born bore pain. The villagers watched more fearfully. Many had seen executions. But even the wickedest, secret murderers and housebreakers, faced no more than the noose. To kill a man slowly was outside English law. Though not outside Church law.
“Breathe the smoke,” yelled Sibba suddenly. “Breathe the smoke!”
Through the pain Wilfi heard him, ducked his head, breathed in great gasps. As his tormentors hesitated to approach, he began to fall forward in his bonds. As unconsciousness came on him, he rallied for an instant, looked upward.
“Tyr,” he called, “Tyr aid me!” The smoke billowed up round him as if in reply. When it cleared he hung limp. A rumble of talk rose from the watchers.
“Not much of an example there,” observed Wulfgar to the bishop. “Why don't you let me show you how to do
