“We learnt something from King Shef,” remarked Cwicca. “Always work out what you're going to do before you do it.”
“They'll soon bust out,” said Karli.
“Then they'll reckon they've got us trapped. That'll give us a bit more time.”
The cart rolled on to the bridge, in winter logs embedded in ice, in summer with planks laid over the logs now floating. The men were carrying crossbows and halberds openly now, easy to see in the long Northern twilight. But there should be no-one to see or challenge till the other side of the first island and the next bridge.
Hearing the cart roll towards them, and knowing there should be no-one there, the pair of guards manning the second bridge had more warning and more time to decide what to do. Facing a line of crossbows, one of them immediately and sensibly turned and ran, hoping to get away and call for help. Aiming carefully, Fritha put a bolt through his thigh that brought him instantly down. The second man carefully grounded his weapon, eyes glaring vengefully.
Hund walked from his place at the rear to glance at the wound the crossbow-bolt had made, clicking his tongue at the spreading blood, the bolt buried firmly in bone.
Osmod joined him. “Nasty job getting that out,” he remarked. “Still, better alive than dead, and the best leeches in the world over at the college at Kaupang.”
Hund nodded. “You, fellow, when you take him to master Ingulf to have his leg mended, give him the regards of Hund the priest and say the Englishmen spared this man's life, at my urging. Till then, pad the wound, check the blood-flow.” He showed his silver apple-pendant, sign of Ithun goddess of healing, and turned away.
The cart rolled over the second bridge, over the second island, and on to the final span to Drottningsholm. Occasionally looking behind them for signs of pursuit, the freedmen closed up. This time, they knew, they would have to fight.
The third guard post was the main one, a dozen men. They had already spent the day in serious anxiety, following the disappearance of their captain Stein. They had searched every part of the island for him except the queens' quarters, found nothing. They waited now only for word from King Halvdan before they searched the queens' hall too, but even so they did not expect to find him. They knew enemies were nearby, whether human killers or monsters from the deep. Some had seen a school of orcas cruise by, their great fins showing, and wondered if Stein had been fool enough to enter the water. The faint shouts they had heard from the brief clashes to the north had alarmed them further. As the cart and its escort came into view they moved on to the bridge to block it, four men abreast, three deep. From the rear rank an arrow flew, aimed at the horse's head. Whatever the cart and its cargo, they meant to block it. Wilfi, leading the horse still, now carried the new case-hardened shield. He lifted it, caught the shaft square on. It leapt back, point blunted.
Cwicca, Osmod, Hama and Lulla walked forward, halberds ready, dropped on one knee to make a hedge of points facing the Norsemen forty feet away. Four cross-bowmen stood behind them.
“Drop your weapons,” shouted Osmod. He had no hope that his order would be obeyed. A dozen veteran warriors surrender to less than their own number of strangers? Their mothers would disown them. Yet Osmod felt at least a flicker of compunction about shooting men down who were all but helpless, helpless against weapons they did not understand. He waited for the bows to be bent, the javelins to poise before he shouted again.
“Shoot!”
Four crossbows twanged together. At forty feet, against standing targets, no-one could miss. The Viking front line collapsed, one man lifted off his feet by the impact of the bolt, many foot-pounds of energy stored in sprung steel and delivered in a moment. A man in the second line gasped and flinched as a bolt passed through the man in front and plowed up his rib-cage.
Another man broke from the pile of fallen round his feet and hurled himself forward, sword circling back for one mighty slash. Foam splattered his moustache as he ran, desperate for glory and for one blow. He called hoarsely on Othin as he came. A crossbow bolt from the near-sighted Udd hissed past one ear, another from the inexpert Karli flew over his head.
As he came within three strides Osmod straightened from his kneeling position, gripped his long halberd close to the base, thrust forward in a long point from low down. The charging warrior ran straight on to it, splitting his own heart on the leaf-blade, running forward with the last strength in his body till the cross-fixed axe-blade and spike stopped him short. His last breath left him with a grunt, his eyes stared forward in shock.
The sword fell from his hand, the life left him. Osmod twisted the shaft once, cleared his blade, withdrew, dropped back to kneel. A series of clicks behind him as the crossbows cocked again.
The six men in front of him broke and ran, four sideways along the shore, two away along the bridge to Drottningsholm. Osmod gestured briefly. “Put those two down,” he said. “Let the others go.”
Bodies were dragged aside, and the cart rolled forward for the last time, the old horse now encouraged into a trot, some of the Englishmen behind it walking backwards, alert for pursuit. Osmod and Cwicca jogged in front of the others, eyes probing in the dim light for what they had been told to expect.
“There,” said Cwicca, pointing. “Tell Udd and Hund to secure the boat, they're easily spared. They only have to push it off and row it round the point.”
Osmod called directions, and the two men broke away. “The rest of you, put your shoulders to the cart and get it up this slope. The hall's on the other side, and we have to hurry now.”
Heaved on by the horse and eight men, the cart rocked up a brief slope, came through a copse of firs, and broke out into a clearing. In the center of it stood the Hall of the Two Queens, steep-roofed, ornately gabled, stags' antlers nailed up above the doorways. No sign of life except a frightened face peeping from behind a low shutter, but smoke seeped into the air from its one chimney.
The men swung the cart round so that its rear pointed at the hall, whipped away the tarpaulin, dropped the tilt, clustered round the squat bulk of the mule in the wagon-bed.
“Not there,” called Karli. “That's the slaves' room you're pointing at. They'll have him there, in the private chamber. Train round right, right another six feet.”
The ton-and-a-quarter mule could not be lifted from its bed without immense effort. Instead the horse-holder slowly shuffled the horse round, inching the cart sideways on its solid axles.
“On!” grunted Cwicca hoarsely, raising his arm in the team's well-practiced drill. Fritha the loader lifted a twenty-pound water-smoothed rock from the bed of the cart, fitted it into the sling. The crew, all but Cwicca and Hama the launch-man, vaulted over the sides of the cart. They had not shot their weapon, with its monstrous kick, from inside a confined space before, and were not sure what effect it would have.
Cwicca checked his target again, dropped his arm in the signal to shoot.
Shef lay back in the great feather bed, in complete relaxation. In all his life he had never spent so much time lying down before, except when he was bedridden with the marsh-fever. A man who was awake should be working, or eating, or at rare intervals merry-making. That was what everyone he knew believed. The idea of rest did not enter their minds.
They were wrong. A day and a night now, he had hardly stirred from the great bed, except to eat his meals. Even those had been brought to him by the slave-women during the day. He had never felt better.
But then maybe that was the queen. She too had come to him at frequent intervals during the day, more frequent than he had ever imagined possible. In Shef's stern and gloomy home, dominated by the pious, angry Wulfgar his stepfather, all forms of sexuality were forbidden to all on Sundays, on the eve of Sunday, during Lent, in the Advent season, during the fasts of the Church. The servants had evaded his rules, of course, and even more the village folk, but sexuality had taken on an air of furtiveness, something to be snatched, got over in between bouts of work, or between sleep and wake. Someone like Queen Ragnhild had been the stuff of dreams, beyond the imagination or experience of any village-youth.
And what he had done had been beyond his imagination too. In amazement, considering what he had already performed, Shef felt his flesh beginning to rise again at the thought of what he had seen and felt. Yet the queen would not return for a while, gone out, she said, to walk along the shore. Better to save his strength. Better to sleep again, warm and well-fed. As he closed his eyes and lay back against the duck-down bolster, Shef thought vaguely of Karli. Better see what he was doing. One of the slave-women would know. He had never asked their names. Strange. Perhaps he was beginning to behave like a king at long last.
