And then the door opened. It seemed that the men inside wanted to loose the dogs on us.
Two dogs came, both big dogs, both black and tan with slavering mouths, both with yellow teeth and matted hair. They leaped at us. The first one tried to take a bite from my belly and got a mouthful of mail instead. Serpent-Breath sliced once, Vidarr cut from my left, then I stepped over the poor dying beast, saw Finan despatch the other, and both of us charged into the huge warehouse. It was dark inside. A spear flashed by my left side and thumped into the doorpost. There were screams.
The men defending the warehouse had loosed the dogs, and fighting dogs are formidable beasts. They attack savagely, apparently without fear, and though they are easily enough despatched their attack will force men to break ranks, so the skill of using war dogs is to attack at the same time. Let the dogs distract the enemy and, while that enemy is fighting off tooth and claw, hit him with spears and swords.
But the warehouse defenders thought the dogs could do all the work and, instead of attacking us, they just waited in a line that stretched between two cages. Women were screaming to my right, but I had no time to look because the defenders faced me, men with small shields and long-swords. I could not count them, it was too dim, so I just charged them and bellowed a war cry. ‘Bebbanburg!’
I teach my young warriors that caution is a virtue in warfare. There is always the temptation to attack blindly, to go screaming at the enemy’s shield wall and hope that sheer anger and savagery will break it. That temptation comes from fear and sometimes the best way to overcome fear is to shriek a war cry, charge and kill, but the enemy is likely to have the same impulse and the same fear. He will kill too. Given a choice I would rather be attacked by men maddened by fear than make the attack myself. Men in a rage, men acting on mindless impulse, will fight like wolves, yet sword-skill and discipline will almost always beat them.
Yet here I was, screaming a war cry and charging straight at a group of men who blocked the whole width of the passage between the cages. They had not made a shield wall, their shields were too small and merely meant to parry a blow, but they were a wall of swords. But they were also a slaver’s guards, which meant they were paid to keep order, paid to frighten, and paid to use their whips on helpless victims. They were not paid to face Northumbrian warriors. Some, I was sure, had seen service in the shield wall. They had learned their skills, they had beaten down an enemy’s shield, they had killed and they had survived, but since then I doubted they had practised as my men practised. They no longer spent hours with heavy swords and shields because their enemies were unarmed slaves, many of them women and children. The worst they expected was a truculent man who could easily be cudgelled senseless. Now they faced warriors; my warriors.
Finan was beside me, shouting in his own language, while Beornoth was to my left. ‘Bebbanburg!’ I bellowed again, and doubtless it meant nothing to them, but they saw warriors in mail and helmets, warriors who seemed fearless in the fight, warriors who screamed for their deaths, warriors who killed.
I was running towards a man in a leather jerkin, a man as tall as I was with a stubby black beard and a sword held like a spear. He took a pace backwards as we came near, but still held the sword straight in front of him. Did he hope I would impale myself? Instead I cuffed his blade aside with my mail-clad left arm and sank Serpent-Breath in his belly as I smelled the stink of his breath. He was big, but I threw him backwards into the man behind, and to my right a man was screaming because Finan’s quick sword had taken his eyes and Beornoth was beside me, blade red, and I twisted to my right, dragged my blade free of the falling man and stepped into the next man, who carried a seax. My mail stopped his blade. He pushed, but he was already stepping back in terror and his thrust had no power. He began to whimper, tried to shake his head, and perhaps he was trying to surrender, but I slammed my helmeted head into his face, the whimper turned to a grunt, then his eyes opened wide as Beornoth’s blade took him in the ribs. They were the eyes of a man about to sink into the torments of hell. He fell, I took one more step and I was behind the makeshift line of enemies, ahead of me was an open door beyond which sunlight glittered on water and on the ship we needed. I turned back, still shouting, and dragged Serpent-Breath’s hungry edge across a man’s neck and suddenly there were no enemies, just men shouting for mercy, men twitching in agony, men dying, blood on the stone floor, and one heavy man fleeing in panic up a stairway that was built beside the women’s cage.
We are warriors.
‘Gerbruht!’
‘Lord?’
‘Fetch Benedetta and the children.’
We had faced nine men, I counted them. Five were dead or dying, three were on their knees, and one had fled upstairs. Women were crying with fear behind the bars on one side, there were men cowering in the gloom on the other. ‘Beornoth!’ I pointed to the three men on their knees. ‘Bring the bugger we captured in the yard to join those three, strip them all of their mail, lock them up and see if any of the slaves want to be rowers!’
I had been given a mere glimpse of the man who had fled up
