Norseman Raider (The Norseman Chronicles Book 4) (23 page)

Three more of the slow moving wounded who had defended the dock from the villagers finally struggled their way onto the boat.  One began throwing buckets down to the Welshman standing in the water, which had been my plan all along.  The other two found a blanket, wet from the morning mist and covered the second burning man.  They stamped at the blaze as best they could.  When the flames that sprang from that man were finally out, the pair pulled back the wet blanket.  Entire sheets of the burnt man’s skin came up
with the cloth, stuck in its fibers.  We all cringed.  In a way the norns spared the man the worst.  He was already dead.

The fight went on.  After many long moments and several score of buckets we discovered that the worst was avoided.  The ship was saved, as were the rest.  This one, which was a vessel pilfered from Maredubb days earlier, would only require
a spare sail from another vessel, a new yard, and several fadmr of rope.

“Rope!” I said out loud.

The others looked at me, confused.

“I’m here for cord, lots of it.”  I scanned the shore to see if I could lay my eyes on the blacksmith who carried Aoife.  Only a
glimmer of his motley band’s clothing flashed as they disappeared into a distant forest to the south and east.  It is embarrassing to admit.  I certainly didn’t own up to my thoughts back then, for I was young and proud.  But, in truth, I hesitated for a few moments.  I considered abandoning my quest for the cord in order to pursue the thrall thief.  In the end I decided that Leif, with his keen mind, would better help me retrieve my little wretch than if I went headlong into an unknown forest alone.

To the hobbling woun
ded I shouted, “Go to the ships. Bag up every length of leather cord you can find.”  None of them complained for I think they realized that my mere presence had saved their lives.  They did, however, moan from the gashes in their sides that reopened as they bent to fill sacks with cord.

At last it was time to return to Godfrey, whose impatience would outstrip everyone’s combined.  “Will you tell the king to send just a few warriors to guard us and the ships?” asked a nervous Norseman.

“No,” I answered plainly.  “If you had a good look at what we’ve got to assault in that fort on the hill, then you’d know the king needs every able man he can muster.”

“But he has treasure already loaded on these ships.  Another lucky toss from a villager will have it all underwater,” the man protested.

He made sense.  We should have had more guards.  Well, we should have had just some guards where we had none.  We also should have landed at Watchet and met no resistance as the parchment found by Leif and Killian had said.  I should not have been cast out from my own people in Greenland for a basket of horse dung.  As I’ve said in another writing at a different place and time, should is meaningless. 
Is
is all that matters.  The reality of daily life is what determines whether a man lives or dies.  Freeze from fear one day while the spears are flying?  Dead.  Freeze another day in the same situation?  Live.  Should?  That is just the wishful thinking of senseless dreamers.  Admittedly, I’m one of those senseless dreamers, guilty of pondering how this man or that woman should act or how I should respond.

Every man has the norns weaving him a crooked, harsh path.  He must do what he will.  Most men try to seize control and steer the path with a firm hand on the oak rudder.  Leif did it.  His father did it.  By Hel, I did it.  And now King Godfrey steered. 
Godfrey, though, not only attempted to maneuver, he was reaching.  His arm was growing longer by the day and he was stretching it further.  The king was trying to build his treasury and his army, but I think along the way and during those weeks of raiding he began to believe that he could build a truly respectable kingdom from his hodgepodge of islands that dotted the Irish Sea.

Life
was about what a man could do and would do.  Godfrey would seize what he could.

“No,” I repeated and ran off
lugging bags bulging with cord.

. . .

Godfrey cursed up a thunderous storm at my tardiness.  There is no sense in repeating his already repetitious words.  It should suffice to say that I was some version of an ox or turd or a worn-out whore’s sagging tits.  At one point I was a combination of all three.  When I explained to him that I nearly single-handedly fought off a mess of villagers and put out a fire on a treasure-laden ship, the king’s anger waned.  Only for a few moments, for then he found out that I had not brought sailcloth.  He resumed his swearing.  Neither I nor anyone else was again sent back.  Godfrey was eager to move before real trouble arrived.

Leif and the others worked feverishly
.  They pulled out the tangle of cords from the sacks and began lashing together the narrow logs into ladders.  Leif had efficiently directed his workers to lay out the rails in parallel with the rungs placed across them with an ell of spacing between. The work quickly drew to a close.  It doesn’t take long for a few dozen sailors to tie off as many knots.

“Are we ready?” asked Godfrey, surveying the crew when the last cord was cinched.

Killian examined the crowd and answered for them.  “By God’s strength, power, and grace, we are ready.”  The priest crossed himself.  His Christian brethren did the same.

Godfrey signaled that we should prepare.  I grabbed a ladder by myself.  Most of the ladders would be carried by two men just because they were so awkwardly long. 
Hauling them between one another enabled our attackers to carry their shields in their other hands for protection as we neared the mint.  Brandr tried to take up the other end of my ladder.  I curled my lip at him like a surly dog.  He returned the gesture, but backed off.  Tyrkr would carry my shield and his own until I set the ladder in place.

We crossed the narr
ow brook and foisted our newly constructed equipment on the bank that faced the fortress.  Thorns and briars hooked men’s clothing and tore skin as we pushed through to the edge of the long clearing.  It took many moments, complete with grumbling, for us to assemble.  We were in plain view of the sentinels, a far, safe distance, but obvious nonetheless.  We could hear their loud calls of warning to their comrades behind the stone wall.  A tiny sliver of smoke curled up from the torched timbers of the bridge that led to the mint’s gate.

Godfrey stepped in front of us.  I loved a leader that went into harm’s way before his men.  Of course, it was foolish for a king to stand at the front.  Yet, it made his men work for him and bleed for him and die for him, if they must.  Godfrey, though partially Christian, was from a line of Norseman from old.  It would have been wrong for him to command from the rear.  He was a Viking from when the word meant something.  If he wanted respect at the gloaming, he better earn it at dawn, every morning.  Such was the fickleness of followers.  I saw his confidence etched in
every wrinkle of his taut, weathered face.  I saw the tension in the muscles of his arm as he clutched his shield.  The sight of the warrior king made me forget all about the harsh words he sent in my direction only moments before.

“Let us kill some more Englishmen,” said King Godfrey in a calm tone as he marched forward.

The Welshmen erupted in cheers, for the meaning was clear enough.  They thought we were going to rush ahead.  They ran a few paces before realizing their error.  Killian told them, “Slow now, lads.  Save your energy.  We don’t hurry until we’re nearly at the ditch.”

We walked up the hill at such a relaxed pace it was as if we ambled hand-in-hand with our secret lovers to our favorite spot in the forest.  Godfrey, showing his poise or covering his nerves, chatted with Randulfr about a hunt they had a few years earlier. 
It was in Normandy, they said.  Neither could remember many of the details, for both had been inebriated to silliness at the time.  They did recall that they had killed a few wolves that day.

“Why did we want sailcloth?” Tyrkr asked of Leif.  I was glad he asked because I didn’t know and wasn’t about to appear the fool.  For Tyrkr, it was a fine part.

“As I looked up the hill at the fort, I saw that trail of smoke where the entrance bridge once stood.  They burned it to make us struggle through the ditch.  It’s what I would have done if I sat behind those walls and watched what our force did to their army on the beach.  If I commanded the garrison, I would have sent a rider for help and penned myself in until assistance arrived.”  Leif picked a catchfly.  He lazily tapped the rim of his shield with the wildflower.  Its pale violet petals sprinkled down the front.  A few came to rest on the iron boss, a fine example of the beauty of the meadow next to the harshness of what was to come.

“And the sailcloth?” asked Tyrkr.

Almost as if he’d forgotten what the question was, Leif answered, “Oh, I was going to stretch it around three or four of the ladders so that if we had to use them as bridges, the men wouldn’t have to tiptoe across the rungs.”  He threw the splattered flower over his shoulder.  The petals that had briefly rested on his shield fell away as well.  “Too late now, though.  Where’s your thrall, my gift to you, Halldorr?”

The little bastard, I thought.  Leif a
nd his divining!  It was like Leif knew that I had lost the girl and he was goading me.  “I left her to guard the ships,” I answered.

We were climbing the last part of the hill, approaching the ditch.  We could see
close-up that the fort’s soldiers had burned the bridge sometime that morning after the defeat of their army on the shingle.  What was left of the timbers smoldered.  It would hold no one’s weight.  Godfrey extended his arms, telling us to spread out and cross the ditch at several places.  In this way the defenders could not concentrate their spears and arrows on one area.

I walked behind Tyrkr, who raised both shields to protect us.  Leif, Loki, and Magnus
, whose leather armor creaked as he slid through the grasses, followed behind.  I reached a hand down to absentmindedly clutch the grip of my father’s saex.  It wasn’t there, I remembered.  It was in the hands of a blacksmith along with . . .

“And does she guard the ships?” asked Leif as the first arrow smacked into the shield
Tyrkr held.  The missile’s force tipped the top of the shield back so that it just kissed Tyrkr’s helm.  A second arrow glanced off the iron rim of the other shield and flew harmlessly over our heads.  Without those bits of tree going before me, I would have already fallen into the grass.  I would have been like most young men who died on the battlefield, calling for my long-dead mother.

“You must already know, if you ask,” I barked.  “Shouldn’t we focus on getting into the fort?”
  I snuck a peek back to see Leif’s response.

Leif gave a lazy, maddening shrug.  “I suppose,” he said.
  Then he sniggered.  “It’s a shame, you know.  How careless a man can be with a gift.  It cost him nothing so he feels free to lose it or, worse yet, discard it.”

“Green-eyed snot,” I began.  Our brotherly argument was cut short by the screams of our fellow raiders.

. . .

The king’s small group of raiders had reached their section of the ditch a few moments before did ours.  Rather than struggle through the stagnant slurry of the trench, they heaved the ladder across.  One of them was struck on his exposed rump while
he bent to sling the make-shift bridge.  His was the first wailing I had heard.

Godfrey
slid his sword home.  He used his shield to protect the fallen man while clamping a firm hand on the leather armor on his shoulder.  “Over the trough,” he encouraged his men.  “Huddle under shields at the foot of the wall until enough of us cross to tilt up the ladder.”  Godfrey dragged the wounded man some distance away, propped a shield in front of him, and raced back up the hill to cross with the rest.

Our team’s ladder was across.  My shield was back in my strong hand.  Leif snuck across, hoisting his shield with two hands, balancing on the rungs with nimble feet.  Tyrkr followed.  Then the rest of us went.  Just two
, perhaps three, arrows and a spear rained down on us.  Godfrey’s tack of spreading us was working.  The garrison, made thin by our victory in the morning, was unable to defend evenly along the wall.

Killian’s Welshmen were not faring so well.  The English had enough numbers at that location of the wall to put up a proper fight.  It did not help our cause that the first man across Killian’s ladder lost his footing.  He slipped down, straddling a rung, bringing the
full weight of his person, shield, and weapons on his most sensitive of areas.  The Welshman winced and doubled over only to be rewarded with a bevy of arrows.  The easily pierced his back, which was naked of armor.

The priest held up a shield and ventured out on the ladder to move the body.  Killian was strong for a little man.  He was certainly muscular for a priest.  However, given the awkward footing and rain of death from above, Killian couldn’t disentangle the
heavy corpse.  He tried stepping over him, but couldn’t do so.  Killian backed his way off the ladder all while he prayed for the dead man’s soul.

We clustered under our shields at the base of the wall, waiting for others to cross their ladders so that we could all go up at once and overwhelm the defenders.  The going was slow.  Nearly half of the bri
dges had a dead man wedged in them, preventing others from crossing.  Leif’s sailcloth, if stretched tightly enough, would have made for a lightweight bridge that was not a death trap.  Only a dozen and a half men had been able to cross.  It wouldn’t take the English long to redirect their storm and finish our raid off once and for all.