Dunholm’s rocky summit to attack the newly made shield wall behind the gate. Thyra followed them, calling to them, spitting and shuddering, filling the hell pack with frenzy, and the fear that had rooted me to the cold ground passed and I shouted at my men to go with her.
They were terrible things, those hounds. They were beasts from the world’s chaos, trained only to kill, and Thyra drove them on with her high, wailing cries, and the shield wall broke long before the dogs arrived. The men ran, scattering across Dunholm’s wide summit and the dogs followed them. A handful, braver than the rest, stayed at the gate and that was where I now wanted to go. “The gate!” I shouted at Thyra, “Thyra! Take them to the gate!” She began to make a barking sound, shrill and quick, and the hounds obeyed her by running toward the gatehouse. I have seen other hunters direct hounds as deftly as a horseman guides a stallion with knees and reins, but it is not a skill I have ever learned. Thyra had it.
Kjartan’s men guarding the gate died hard. The dogs swarmed over them, teeth ripping, and I heard screams. I had still not seen Kjartan or Sven, but nor did I look for them. I only wanted to reach the big gate and open it for Ragnar, and so we followed the hounds, but then one of the horsemen recovered his wits and shouted at the frightened men to circle behind us. The horseman was a big man, his mail half covered by a dirty white cloak. His helmet had gilt-bronze eyeholes that hid his face, but I was certain it was Kjartan. He spurred his stallion and a score of men followed him, but Thyra howled some short, falling cadences, and a score of hounds turned to head the horsemen off. One rider, desperate to avoid the beasts, turned his horse too quickly and it fell, sprawling and kicking in the mud and a half-dozen hounds attacked the fallen beast’s belly while others leaped across to savage the unsaddled rider. I heard the man wail and saw a dog stagger away with a leg broken by a flailing hoof. The horse was screaming. I kept running through the streaming rain and saw a spear come flashing down from the ramparts. The men on the gatehouse roof were trying to stop us with their spears. They hurled them at the pack which still tore at the fallen shield wall remnant, but there were too many hounds. We were close to the gate now, only twenty or thirty paces away. Thyra and her hounds had brought us safe across Dunholm’s summit, and the enemy was in utter confusion, but then the white-cloaked horseman, beard thick beneath his armored eyes, dismounted and shouted at his men to slaughter the dogs.
They made a shield wall and charged. They held their shields low to fend off the dogs and used spears and swords to kill them. “Steapa!” I shouted, and he understood what was wanted and bellowed at the other men to go with him. He and Clapa were first among the dogs and I saw Steapa’s ax thud down into a helmeted face as Thyra hurled the dogs at the new shield wall. Men were clambering down from the fighting platforms to join the wild fight and I knew we had to move fast before Kjartan’s men slaughtered the pack and then came to slaughter us. I saw a hound leap high and sink its teeth into a man’s face, and the man screamed and the dog howled with a sword in its belly, and Thyra was screeching at the hounds and Steapa was holding the center of the enemy shield wall, but it was lengthening as men joined its flanks and in a heartbeat or two the wings of the wall would fold about men and dogs and cut them down. So I ran for the gatehouse archway. That archway was undefended on the ground, but the warriors on the rampart above still had spears. All I had was the dead man’s shield and I prayed it was a good one. I hoisted it over my helmet, sheathed Serpent-Breath, and ran.
The heavy spears crashed down. They banged into the shield and splashed into the mud, and at least two pierced through the shield’s limewood boards. I felt a blow on my left forearm, and the shield became heavier and heavier as the spears weighed it down, but then I was under the arch, and safe. The dogs were howling and fighting. Steapa was bellowing at the enemy to come and fight him, but men avoided him. I could see the wings of Kjartan’s wall closing and knew we would die if I could not open the gate. I saw I would need two hands to lift the huge locking bar, but one of the spears hanging from the shield had penetrated the mail of my left forearm and I could not pull it free, so I had to use Wasp-Sting to cut the leather shield-handles away. Then I could wrench the spear-point out of my mail and arm. There was blood on the mail-sleeve, but the arm was not broken and I lifted the huge locking bar and dragged it away from the gates.
Then I pulled the gates inward and Ragnar and his men were fifty paces away and they shouted when they saw me and ran with raised shields to protect themselves from the spears and axes thrown from the ramparts, and they joined the shield wall, lengthening it and carrying their blades and fury against Kjartan’s astonished men.
And that was how Dunholm, the rocky fortress in its river-loop, was taken. Years later I was flattered by a lord in Mercia whose skald chanted a song of how Uhtred of Bebbanburg scaled the fortress crag alone and fought his way through two hundred men to open the dragon-guarded high gate. It was a fine song, full of sword-work and courage, but it was all nonsense. There were twelve of us, not one, and the dogs did most of the fighting, and Steapa did much of the rest, and if Thyra had not come from the hall then Dunholm might be ruled by Kjartan’s descendants to this day. Nor was the fight over when the gate was opened, for we were still outnumbered, but we had the remaining dogs and Kjartan did not, and Ragnar brought his shield wall into the compound and there we fought the defenders.
It was shield wall against shield wall. It was the horror of two shield walls fighting. It was the thunder of shields crashing together and the grunts of men stabbing with short-swords or twisting spears into enemy bellies. It was blood and shit and guts spilled in the mud. The shield wall is where men die and where men earn the praise of skalds. I joined Ragnar’s wall and Steapa, who had taken a shield from a hound-ripped horseman, bulled in beside me with his great war ax. We stepped over dead and dying dogs as we drove forward. The shield becomes a weapon, its great iron boss a club to drive men back, and when the enemy falters you close up fast and ram the blade forward, then step over the wounded and let the men behind you kill them. It rarely lasts long before one wall breaks, and Kjartan’s line broke first. He had tried to outflank us and send men around our rear, but the surviving hounds guarded our flanks, and Steapa was flailing with his ax like a madman, and he was so huge and strong that he hacked into the enemy line and made it look easy. “Wessex!” he kept shouting, “Wessex!” as though he fought for Alfred, and I was on his right and Ragnar on his left and the rain crashed on us as we followed Steapa through Kjartan’s shield wall. We went clean through so that there was no enemy in front of us, and the broken wall collapsed as men ran back toward the buildings.
Kjartan was the man in the dirty white cloak. He was a big man, almost as tall as Steapa, and he was strong, but he saw his fortress fall and he shouted at his men to make a new shield wall, but some of his warriors were already surrendering. Danes did not give up readily, but they had discovered they were fighting fellow Danes, and there was no shame in yielding to such an enemy. Others were fleeing, going through the well gate, and I had a terror that Gisela would be discovered there and taken, but the women who had gone to draw water protected her. They all huddled inside the well’s small palisade and the panicked men fled past them toward the river.
Not all panicked or surrendered. A few gathered about Kjartan and locked their shields and waited for death. Kjartan might have been cruel, but he was brave. His son, Sven, was not brave. He had commanded the men on the gatehouse ramparts, and almost all those men fled northward, leaving Sven with just two companions. Guthred, Finan, and Rollo climbed to deal with them, but only Finan was needed. The Irishman hated fighting in the shield wall. He was too light, he reckoned, to be part of such weight-driven killing, but in the open he was a fiend. Finan the Agile, he had been called, and I watched, astonished, as he leaped ahead of both Guthred and Rollo and took on the three men alone, and his two swords were as fast as a viper’s strike. He carried no shield. He dazzled Sven’s defenders with feints, twisted past their attacks, and killed them both with a grin on his face, and then turned on Sven, but Sven was a coward. He had backed into a corner of the rampart and was holding his sword and shield wide apart as if to show he meant no mischief. Finan crouched, still grinning, ready to drive his long sword into Sven’s exposed belly.
“He’s mine!” Thyra wailed. “He’s mine!”
Finan glanced at her and Sven twitched his sword arm, as if to strike, but Finan’s blade whipped toward him and he froze. He was whimpering for mercy.
“He’s mine!” Thyra shrieked. She was writhing her ghastly fingernails towards Sven and was sobbing with hatred. “He’s mine!” she cried.
“You belong to her,” Finan said, “so you do,” and he feinted at Sven’s stomach and when Sven brought his shield down to protect himself, Finan just rammed his body into the shield, using his light weight to tip Sven backward over the rampart. Sven screamed as he fell. It was not a long drop, no more than the height of two tall men, but he thumped into the mud like a sack of grain. He scrabbled on his back, trying to get up, but Thyra was standing over him and she had given a long, wailing call, and the surviving hounds had come to her. Even the crippled hounds hauled themselves through muck and blood to reach her side.
“No,” Sven said. He stared up at her with his one eye. “No!”
“Yes,” she hissed, and she bent down and took the sword from his unresisting hand, and then she gave one
