The Hammer and The Cross

the wind is wrong! Something is wrong, but it is not the wind.

That dawn, the crews and captains of a hundred impounded trading vessels—half-decked single-masters, round-bellied cogs, English, Frankish and Frisian longships—all rolled unhappily from their blankets to stare at the sky above the port of Dunkerque, as they had done every day for a month and more. To see if the conditions were right. To wonder whether their masters would deign to make a move.

They saw the light that had come from the east, that had raced already across the tangled forests and huddled settlements of Europe, across river and toll-gate, Schloss and chastel and earthwork. Everywhere on the continent it had lit soldiers gathering, provision-carts mustering, horse-boys leading remounts.

As it swept towards the English Channel—though at this time men called it still the Frankish Sea—it touched the topmost banderole on the stone donjon within the wooden keep that guarded the port of Dunkerque. The guard-commander looked at it, nodded. The trumpeter wetted his lips, pursed them, sent a defiant bray down his metal tube. Immediately the quarter-guards answered from each wall, men began to roll from their blankets inside the keep. And outside, in the camp and the port, and along all the horse-lines that trailed off into the open fields, the soldiers stirred and checked their gear and began the day with the same thought as the sailors who were trapped in the port: this time, would their master stir? Would King Charles, with his levies, with the levies sent him by his pious and Pope-fearing brothers and nephews, give the sign for the short trip to England?

In the harbor, the skippers looked at their weathervanes, stared towards the eastern and western horizons. The master of the cog Dieu Aide, the cog which would carry not only the king but the archbishop of York and the Pope's legate himself, nudged his chief mate, jerked a thumb at the flag standing out stiffly from the mast. High tide in four hours, both knew. Current would be with them then and for a while. Wind in the right quarter and not dropping.

Could the landsmen get themselves down and embarked in time? Neither bothered to speculate. Things would be as they would be. But if the king of the Franks, Charles, nicknamed the Bald—if the king seriously wanted to obey the instructions of his spiritual lord the Pope, unite the old dominions of his grandfather Charlemagne, and plunder the wealth of England in the name of holiness, then he would never get a better chance.

As they watched the flag and the wind they heard, half a mile off in the donjon trumpets blaring again. Not for dawn, but for something else. And then, faintly, carried on the southwest wind, the noise of cheering. Soldiers acclaiming a decision. Without wasting words, the captain of the Dieu Aide jerked a thumb at the derricks and the canvas slings, tapped the hatches of the cog's one hold. Get the hatches off. Get the derricks over the side. We'll need them for the horses. The war-horses, the destriers of France.

The same wind, that dawn, blew across the bows of the forty dragon-boats cruising down the English coast from the Humber, almost in their teeth, making it impossible to rig sail. Ivar Ragnarsson, in the prow of the first boat, did not care. His oarsmen were rowing at their paddling-stroke, which they could keep up for eight hours a day if need be, grunting in unison as they heaved their oars through the water, feathering with the ease of long practice, continuing their conversations with a word or two as they swept them back, dipping and heaving again.

Only in the first six boats was there extra work for the men. In each, a ton and a half of dead weight squatted, carefully stowed before the mast: the onagers of Erkenbert, all the forges of York Minster had been able to turn out in the weeks Ivar had given them. Ivar had raged furiously about the weight, demanded that they be lightened. Impossible, the black archdeacon had replied. This is the way they are drawn in Vegetius. More convincingly, lighter models had knocked themselves to pieces in a dozen shots. The kick of the wild ass that gave these machines their name came when the throwing-arm struck the crossbeam. If there were no crossbeam the stone would not be hurled out with its astonishing force and velocity. A light crossbeam, however padded, would crack.

Ivar's meditations were interrupted by loud retching from behind him. Each onager was served by a dozen slaves from the minster; in command of them all, torn deeply against his will from the studies and library of the minster, Erkenbert himself. Now one of the lubbers had succumbed to the long, North Sea swell and was vomiting his heart out over the side. The wrong side, naturally, so that the meager contents of his stomach blew back over the nearest rowers, provoking shouts and curses, disruption of the long, automatic rowing-stroke.

As Ivar stepped toward the disturbance, hand dropping to the gutting-knife at his belt, Hamal the horse- swain, the man who had saved Ivar from the lost battle at March, moved quickly. The slave grasped the man by the scruff of his neck. A violent blow across the side of the head, repeated as Hamal heaved the wretched man off his feet and flung him across the thwarts to the lee side, there to retch in peace.

“We'll have the hide off him tonight,” said Hamal. Ivar stared unblinkingly for a moment, knowing well what Hamal was doing. Decided to leave it for the moment. Turned back to his thoughts in the prow.

Hamal caught the eye of one of the rowers, mimed wiping sweat from his brow. Ivar killed a man a day now on average, mostly from the valueless slaves of the minster. At that rate they would have no one left to wind a machine at all by the time they met the enemy. And no one could be sure who Ivar would turn on next. He could be diverted, sometimes, by sufficient cruelty.

Thor send that we meet the enemy soon, thought Hamal. The only thing that will cool Ivar's temper for good is the head and balls of the man who bested him—Skjef Sigvarthsson. Without that, he will destroy everyone around him. That is why his brothers have sent him out this time on his own. With me as his nursemaid, and the Snakeeye's foster father to report.

If we don't meet the enemy soon, thought Hamal, I am going to desert the first chance I get. Ivar owes me his life. But he is too mad to pay. And yet if he takes his rage out in the right quarter, something tells me there are fortunes yet to be gained, here in the rich kingdoms of the South. Rich and ripe to fall.

“It's a bugger,” said Oswi, once slave to St. Aethelthryth's of Ely, now captain of a catapult-team in the Army of Norfolk and the Way. There were nods of agreement from his crew as they looked thoughtfully at their much-loved but not-quite-trusted artillery piece. It was one of the torsion-catapults, the wheeled twist-shooters. Every man in the crew was desperately proud of it. They had given it a name weeks before: “Dead Level.” They had polished every wooden part of it many times over. Yet they were afraid of it.

“You can count the turns you give to the cogwheels,” said Oswi, “so it don't tighten too much.”

“And I put my head right down on the ropes every time and listen to 'em,” said one of his mates, “till I can hear they're in tune like a harper's harp-strings.”

“But she'll still bloody well break one day when you don't expect it; they always do. Break one or two of us for breakfast.”

A dozen heads nodded gloomily.

“What we need are stronger wooden arms,” said Oswi. “They're what goes.”

“Wrap 'em with rope?”

“No, that would work loose.”

“I used to work in the forge at my village,” the newest member of the team said hesitatingly. “Maybe if they had iron supports…”

“No, those wooden arms bend a bit,” said Oswi firmly. “They have to. Anything iron would stop them doing that.”

“Depends on the iron. If you heat and reheat and hammer it the right way the iron turns into what my old master called steel. But it's steel that bends a bit, not soft, like bad iron, but with spring in it. Now if we put a strip of that along the inside of each of the arms it would bend with the wood—and stop them flying apart if the wood broke.”

Thoughtful silence.

“What about the jarl?” asked a questioning voice.

“Yes, what about the jarl?” came another voice from behind the half-circle. Shef, strolling round the camp in response to Brand's advice, had seen the cluster of intent faces and had walked silently up to overhear.

Consternation and alarm. Swiftly the group of catapulteers rearranged itself so that their newest member