platforms built to left and right. A large group of mounted men waited behind the gate, doubtless ready to pursue the beaten attackers when they were repulsed from the palisade. I tried to count the defenders, but they were too many, so I looked to the right and saw a stout ladder climbing to the fighting platform on the western stretch of ramparts. That, I thought, is where we should go. Climb that ladder, capture the western wall and we could let Ragnar inside and so revenge his father and free Thyra and astonish all Northumbria.
I grinned, suddenly elated at the realization that we were inside Dunholm. I thought of Hild and imagined her praying in her simple chapel with the beggars already huddled outside her nunnery’s gate. Alfred would be working, ruining his eyes by reading manuscripts in the dawn’s thin light. Men would be stirring on every fortification in Britain, yawning and stretching. Oxen were being harnessed. Hounds would be excited, knowing a day’s hunting was ahead, and here we were, inside Kjartan’s stronghold and no one suspected our presence. We were wet, we were cold, we were stiff, and we were outnumbered by at least twenty to one, but the gods were with us and I knew we were going to win and I felt a sudden exultation. The battle-joy was coming and I knew the skalds would have a great feat to celebrate.
Or perhaps the skalds would be making a lament. For then, quite suddenly, everything went disastrously wrong.
TEN
The sentry beneath the ash tree turned and spoke to us. “They’re wasting their time,” he said, obviously referring to Ragnar’s forces. The sentry had no suspicions, he even yawned as we approached him, but then something alarmed him. Perhaps it was Steapa, for there could surely be no man in Dunholm who was as tall as the West Saxon. Whatever, the man suddenly realized we were strangers and he reacted quickly by backing away and drawing his sword. He was about to yell a warning when Steapa hurled his spear that struck hard in the sentry’s right shoulder, pitching him backward and Rypere followed fast, running his spear into the man’s belly with such force that he pinned the man to the feeble ash tree. Rypere silenced him with his sword, and just as that blood flowed, two men appeared around the corner of the smaller hall to our left and they immediately began shouting that enemies were in the compound. One turned and ran, the other drew his sword, and that was a mistake for Finan feinted low with his spear and the man lowered his blade to parry and the spear flashed up to take him in the soft flesh beneath his jaw. The man’s mouth bubbled blood onto his beard as Finan stepped close and brought his short-sword up into the man’s belly.
Two more corpses. It was raining harder again, the drops hammering onto the mud to dilute the fresh blood and I wondered if we had time to dash across the wide open space to reach the rampart ladder, and just then, to make things worse, the door to Kjartan’s hall opened and three men jostled in the doorway and I shouted at Steapa to drive them back. He used his ax, killing the first with an upward blow of ghastly efficiency and thrusting the gutted man back into the second who took the ax-head straight in the face, then Steapa kicked the two men aside to pursue the third who was now inside the hall. I sent Clapa to help Steapa. “And get him out of there fast,” I told Clapa because the horsemen by the gate had heard the commotion now and they could see the dead men and see our drawn swords and they were already turning their horses.
And I knew then that we had lost. Everything had depended on surprise, and now that we had been discovered we had no chance of reaching the northern wall. The men on the fighting platforms had turned to watch us and some had been ordered off the ramparts and they were making a shield wall just behind the gate. The horsemen, there were about thirty riders, were spurring toward us. Not only had we failed, but I knew we would be lucky to survive. “Back,” I shouted, “back!” All we could hope now was to retreat into the narrow alleys and somehow hold the horsemen off and reach the well gate. Gisela must be rescued and then there would be a frantic retreat downhill in front of a vengeful pursuit. Maybe, I thought, we could cross the river. If we could just wade through the swollen Wiire we might be safe from pursuit, but it was a tremulous hope at best. “Steapa!” I shouted, “Steapa! Clapa!” and the two came from the hall, Steapa with a blood-soaked ax. “Stay together,” I shouted. The horsemen were coming fast, but we ran back toward the stables and the horsemen seemed wary of the dark, shadowed spaces between the buildings for they reined in beside the ash tree with its dead man still pinned to the trunk and I thought their caution would let us survive just long enough to get outside the fortress. Hope revived, not of victory, but of life, and then I heard the noise.
It was the sound of hounds baying. The horsemen had not stopped for fear of attacking us, but because Kjartan had released his dogs and I stared, appalled, as the hounds poured around the side of the smaller hall and came toward us. How many? Fifty? At least fifty. They were impossible to count. A huntsman drove them on with yelping shouts and they were more like wolves than hounds. They were rough-pelted, huge, howling, and I involuntarily stepped backward. This was the hellish pack of the wild hunt, the ghost-hounds that harry the darkness and pursue their prey across the shadow world when night falls. There was no time now to reach the gate. The hounds would surround us, they would drag us down, they would savage us, and I thought this must be my punishment for killing the defenseless Brother J?nberht in Cetreht, and I felt the cold, unmanning shudder of abject fear. Die well, I told myself, die well, but how could one die well beneath the teeth of hounds? Our mail coats would slow their savagery for a moment, but not for long. And the hounds could smell our fear. They wanted blood and they came in a howling scrabble of mud and fangs, and I lowered Serpent-Breath to take the first snarling bitch in the face and just then a new voice called to them.
It was the voice of a huntress. It called clear and loud, saying no words, just chanting a weird, shrieking call that pierced the morning like a sounding horn, and the hounds stopped abruptly, twisted about and whined in distress. The closest was just three or four paces from me, a bitch with a mud-clotted pelt, and she writhed and howled as the unseen huntress called again. There was something sad in that wordless call that was a wavering, dying shriek, and the bitch whined in sympathy. The huntsman who had released the hounds tried to whip them back toward us, but again the weird, ululating voice came clear through the rain, but sharper this time, as if the huntress were yelping in sudden anger, and three of the hounds leaped at the huntsman. He screamed, then was overwhelmed by a mass of pelts and teeth. The riders spurred at the dogs to drive them off the dying man, but the huntress was making a wild screeching now that drove the whole pack toward the horses, and the morning was filled with the seethe of rain and the unearthly cries and the howl of hounds, and the horsemen turned in panic and spurred back toward the gatehouse. The huntress called again, gentler now, and the hounds obediently milled around the feeble ash tree, letting the riders go.
I had just stared. I still stared. The hounds were crouching, teeth bared, watching the door of Kjartan’s hall and it was there that the huntress appeared. She stepped over the gutted corpse Steapa had left in the doorway and she crooned at the hounds and they flattened themselves as she stared at us.
It was Thyra.
I did not recognize her at first. It had been years since I saw Ragnar’s sister, and I only remembered her as a fair child, happy and healthy, with her sensible mind set on marrying her Danish warrior. Then her father’s hall had been burned, her Danish warrior was killed, and she had been taken by Kjartan and given to Sven. Now I saw her again and she had become a thing from nightmare.
She wore a long cloak of deerskin, held by a bone brooch at her throat, but beneath the cloak she was naked. As she walked among the hounds the cloak kept being dragged away from her body that was painfully thin and foully dirty. Her legs and arms were covered with scars as though someone had slashed her repeatedly with a knife, and where there were no scars there were sores. Her golden hair was lank, matted, and greasy, and she had woven strands of dead ivy into the tangle. The ivy hung about her shoulders. Finan, seeing her, made the sign of the cross. Steapa did the same and I clutched at my hammer amulet. Thyra’s curled fingernails were as long as a gelder’s knives, and she waved those sorceress’s hands in the air and suddenly screamed at the hounds who whined and writhed as if in pain. She glanced toward us and I saw her mad eyes and I felt a pulse of fear because she was suddenly crouching and pointing directly at me, and those eyes were bright as lightning and filled with hate. “Ragnar!” she shouted, “Ragnar!” The name sounded like a curse and the hounds twisted to stare where she pointed and I knew they would leap at me as soon as Thyra spoke again.
“I’m Uhtred!” I called to her, “Uhtred!” I took off my helmet so she could see my face. “I’m Uhtred!”
“Uhtred?” she asked, still looking at me, and in that brief moment she looked sane, even confused. “Uhtred,” she said again, this time as if she were trying to remember the name, but the tone turned the hounds away from us and then Thyra screamed. It was not a scream at the hounds, but a wailing, howling screech aimed at the clouds, and suddenly she turned her fury on the dogs. She stooped and clutched handfuls of mud that she hurled at them. She still used no words, but spoke some tongue that the hounds understood and they obeyed her, streaming across
