“So what is dangerous about them? How can I fight them? I have to ask you, for no one else in the army has met them in the field and lived. Yet many say they have had years of good plunder from the Frankish kingdom. How can they let themselves be robbed and still be enemies even you would rather not face?”
Shef could see Brand trying to work out not the answer, but how to say the answer in fewest words. Finally he spoke, in a gravelly whisper.
“They fight among themselves. That is what has always let us in. They are no seamen. And they breed few warriors. With us—a spear, a shield, an axe—you are a warrior. With them, it takes a whole village to arm one man. Mail-shirt, sword and lance and helmet. But most of all, the horse. Big horses. Stallions a man can hardly control. Have to learn to ride them with a shield on one arm and a lance in the other. Start when you're a baby. Only way.
“One Frankish lancer, no problem. Get behind him, hamstring horse. Fifty of 'em, problem. A thousand…”
“Ten thousand?” asked Shef.
“Never believed it. Aren't that many. Lot of light horsemen. Can be dangerous because they're quick, turn up when you don't think they're near.”
Brand summoned his failing energies. “They'll ride over you if you let 'em. Or cut you up on the march. Stick to rivers is what we do. Or keep behind a stockade.”
“To beat them in open field?”
Brand shook his head faintly. Shef could not tell whether he meant “Impossible,” or “I don't know.” After a moment Ingulf's hand fell on his shoulder, urged him out.
As he came blinking from the tent into daylight, Shef found himself once more besieged with problems. Guards to be detailed for the substantial plunder of Ivar's army, on its way to the treasury in Norwich. Prisoners' fate to be decided: some of them Ivar's torturers, some of them mere rank and file. Messages to be received and dispatched. At the back of Shef's mind there hung always the query: Godive. Why had she gone off with Thorvin? And what did Thorvin himself think was so important that it could not wait?
But now, immediately in front of him, Father Boniface, his own priest-turned-scribe, beside him another little man in clerical black with an expression of bitter, malignant spite on his face. Slowly Shef realized that he had seen him before, if only from a distance. In York.
“This is Deacon Erkenbert,” said Boniface. “We took him from Ivar's own ship. He is the master of the machines. The slaves who wound the machines—slaves first to York Minster and then to Ivar—they say that he built the machines for Ivar. They say the whole Church in York now works night and day for the Ragnarssons.” He looked down at Erkenbert with heartfelt contempt.
The master of the machines, thought Shef. There was a day when I would have given everything for a chance to talk with this man. Now, I wonder what he can tell me. I can guess how his machine works, and in any case I can go to see for myself. I know how slowly they shoot, how hard they hit. One thing I do not know: how much else is there in his head and in his books? But I do not think he will tell me that.
Yet I think I can use him. Dimly, Brand's words were working inside Shef's brain. Collecting into a plan.
“Keep close watch on him, Boniface,” said Shef. “See the York slaves are well treated, and tell them they are free from this moment. Then send Guthmund to me. After him, Lulla and Osmod. And Cwicca, Udd and Oswi, too.”
“We don't want to do that,” said Guthmund flatly.
“But you could do it?” asked Shef.
Guthmund hesitated, not wanting to tell a lie, reluctant to concede a point.
“Could do it. Still don't think it's a good idea. Take all the Vikings out of the army, load them into Ivar's boats, press Ivar's men into service as galley-slaves, and head round the coast to some rendezvous near this Hastings place…
“Look, lord.” Guthmund spoke pleadingly, as near to wheedling as his character would go. “I know, me and the boys, we haven't always been fair to the English you've hauled in. Called them midgets. Called them
“But there was a reason for what we said, and it goes double if you're going to fight these Franks and their horses. Your English can shoot machines. One of them with a halberd hits as good as one of our boys with a sword. But there's still a lot of things they can't do, no matter how hard they try. They aren't strong enough.
“Now these Franks. Why are they dangerous? Everyone knows it's because of the horses. How much does a horse weigh? A thousand pounds? That's what I'm telling you, lord. To even get a few shots in at these Franks, you'll have to hold them off for a while. Maybe our boys could do it, with the halberds and all. Maybe. They've never done it before. But it's dead sure they can't if you've sent them all off. What happens if you get caught with just a line of your little fellows between you and the Franks? They can't do it, lord. They haven't the strength.” Nor the training, Guthmund thought silently. Not to watch armed men walk right up to you and start hacking away. Or ride up to you. They've always had us to help them.
“You are forgetting King Alfred and his men,” said Shef. “He will have gathered his army by now. You know the English thanes are as strong and brave as your men—they just have no discipline. But I can supply that.”
Guthmund nodded, grudgingly.
“So each group must do what it does best. Your men, sail. With the ship and the machines. My freedmen, wind their machines and shoot. Alfred and his Englishmen, stand still to do what they're told. Trust me, Guthmund. You did not believe me last time. Or the time before. Or when we raided the minster at Beverley.”
Guthmund nodded again, slightly more willingly this time. As he turned to go he added one more remark.
“Lord jarl, you aren't a sailor. But don't forget another thing in all this. It's harvest now. When the night grows as long as the day, every sailor knows, the weather changes. Don't forget the weather.”
The news of Alfred's total defeat reached Shef and his truncated army two days' march south. Shef listened to the exhausted, white-faced thane who brought the news in the center of an interested circle—he had abandoned the custom of council meetings in private as soon as the still-grumbling Guthmund and his Norse fellows had boarded their captured boats. The freedmen watched his face as he listened, marking that it changed expression only twice. The first time, when the thane cursed the Frankish archers—who had shot such a rain of arrows that twice Alfred's advancing army had been forced to stand and raise its shields, only to be caught motionless both times by the Frankish cavalry charge. The second time when the thane admitted that no one had seen or heard of Alfred the king since the day of the disaster.
In the silence that followed the story, Cwicca, presuming on his status as Shef's companion and rescuer, had asked what all thought. “What do we do now, lord? Turn back, or go on?”
Shef answered immediately. “Go on.”
Opinion round the campfires that night was divided about the sense of that. Ever since the Viking Waymen had left with Guthmund, the army had seemed a different creature. The freed English slaves had always secretly feared their allies—so like their former masters in strength and violence, superior to any English master in warlike reputation. With the Vikings gone, the army marched as if on holiday: pipes playing, laughter in the ranks, calling out to the harvesters in the fields, who no longer fled at the sight of the first scouts and advance-guard.
Yet the fear the army had felt had also been a guarantee. Proud as they were of their machines, their halberds and their crossbows, the ex-slaves did not have the self-belief that comes from a lifetime of winning battles.
“All right saying ‘Go on,’ ” said one anonymous voice that night. “What happens when we get there? No Alfred. No Norse-folk. No Wessexers to help out like we were promised. Just us. Eh? What then?”
“We'll shoot 'em down,” said Oswi confidently. “Like we did with Ivar and them Ragnarssons. 'Cos we got the machines and they haven't. And the crossbows and all.”
A mutter of agreement greeted his statement. Yet every morning the camp marshals came to Shef with a new and growing figure: the number of men who had slipped away in the night, taking with them freedom and the silver pennies already paid to each man from the spoils of Ivar, but forfeiting the promise of land and stock in the future. Already, Shef knew, he had not enough men in the ranks both to man his fifty machines—pull-throwers and twist-shooters—and to use the two hundred pulley-wound crossbows that Udd's forges had produced.
