Norseman Raider (The Norseman Chronicles Book 4) (24 page)

I knew it the same time Godfrey knew it.  His raid was a boy’s whisker away from losing it all.  I stared across at the king’s face.  It was etched in worry as he scrambled under the hale
to shift men from an encumbered ladder to one that remained open.

I have come to accept it today, but did not understand it then, that a warrior’s vision becomes narrow while the contest is on.  You see your opponent, his spear, your target
, and not much else.  Normally, when a warrior is at peace and home playing his part as a farmer in the field broadcasting seed, a flash or blur in the corner of his vision startles him.  He ducks and prepares to meet the sudden threat.  It could be a bear, a bandit, or a leaf blowing by in the breeze.  The point is that the farmer is ready for anything.  Put the same man on the battlefield and he is called a warrior.  You would think that he sees everything, that his senses are heightened.

When chaos is the norm, when flashes of spears and running men are everywhere, your mind focuses in on the narrow. 
It is a simplistic mechanism of survival.  Kill what is in front of you.  Move forward or flee.  Those Manx, Norse, and Welsh men, who had yet to cross over, could not see the open ladders.  They knew only one way forward.  Some of them jumped over their dead friends.  When they landed, even if in balance, their shields were down.  It was an invitation to spears.  They splashed down into the stinking black of the ditch, adding to the tally of our dead.

Godfrey shoved some
of them and they moved over to his crossing.  He smacked others and they did too.  Killian could not get his inexperienced Welshmen to budge.  They huddled on the far side of the ditch, massing together.  Every few moments another missile found a gap and hit one.  They would not last long.

“Tyrkr, follow me!” I shouted as I thrust my shield back at him.  He understood and for the second time raised his and my trees above our heads.  We crouched and ran toward where the priest struggled.

The English did not immediately notice us – remember what I said about the narrow vision of battle.  We came to the fort side of Killian’s ladder.  The priest was again on the ladder trying to inspire or will his men across.  The body was still stretched out in his path.  Its blood still ran down its arms underneath its coat.  Crimson rivers coursed over the dead man’s hands and flowed down into the murky water just three ells below.

“Off the bridge, priest,” I shouted.  The Engli
sh heard me and sent Tyrkr and me their welcome.

“
I’ve got to get them across,” Killian protested.  He shouted over the one-sided battle’s din.

I put my hands under the
rail ends and gave it a jiggle.  “Off or you’ll be in the drink.”

Killian carefully skipped the few steps to the other side.

Godfrey was having success getting men across open ladders.  The garrison had shifted their defense with the king and continued to harry him.  I could hear the enemy calling to one another from above.  We might be able to make the assault without the Welshmen Killian commanded, but their numbers might be the difference between victory and defeat.

I rammed a boot on
the end of one rail of the ladder.  With both hands, I heaved on the other rail.  Slowly at first, but with increasing speed it began to turn.  Tyrkr’s arm was driven into my back from a particularly heavy spear sent from the wall.  We each swore, I in Norse, he in his native German.  The ladder rolled over.  The dead man splashed down into the ditch, bobbing.  Killian didn’t wait any longer.  He foisted his small shield and gingerly stepped on the rungs.  Halfway across, where the dead man’s blood had made the footing slick, Killian slipped down to one knee.  I held my breath as an English arrow pinned the priest’s garment to the ladder.  Killian recovered, though.  He drew his knife, cut the skirt, and finished the trek.

Reluctantly, his Welshmen followed.  They inched across.  A full third of them died, being struck by missiles since they provided the English such slow-moving targets.  None of them was hemmed into and amongst the rungs, though.
  Instead, the projectiles shoved them off their feet and into the trench.

What was left of our force was assembled.

It was time for the hard tasks to be done.

. . .

Since our numbers had so dwindled, Godfrey called to us, "Raise four ladders.  Abandon the rest.”

I ran to what I now considered my ladder since it was I who lugged it across the field, up the hill, and set it in place.  A quick tug untied the slipknot of a cord that ran from the first rung to the last rung across the ditch. 
It took only a moment to wrap the cord’s end around my wide palm.  I planted both feet on the end of the rails and leaned back.  A heavy rock clattered off Tyrkr’s shield and cracked my cheek.  The English were throwing large stones.  Still I leaned.

Slowly the far end of the ladder rose.  Three others did likewise.  I believe all of the garrison’s soldiers now converged on our narrow front.  More rocks fell.  Spears rained.  Even several buckets of burning embers splashed down among us.  Orange coals snuck down a man’s back.  He roared in pain and without thinking leapt into the stagnant waters of the ditch.  He
came up screaming.  Just when his shouting began to wane, a large stone rapped his skull, making a splat.  He slipped beneath the black.

Tyrkr took an arrow to the elbow.  It wasn’t fatal, yet when the shields he held jumped from his pain, a large rock came down and smashed my toes.  Half of them on one foot were broken.  I clenched my teeth.  The top of
my ladder rattled to a stop against the curtain wall.

Godfrey pushed past me
, too anxious to wait for his ladder to reach the top.  He tucked himself under his brightly striped shield and climbed while clutching a sword.  His specific words, I’ve forgotten.  Whatever he said, I remember that he spat them.  His lips turned into an angry snarl.  Spittle popped with the start of each phrase.  Magnus followed with a spear.

Killian’s ladder clattered against the battlements.  The priest made sure he thrust himself in line first to ascend.  He cranked his legs and arms rapidly, willing himself forward.  Killian used his native tongue, his Irish, to call the One God’s wrath down on the English.

I stole my shield back from Tyrkr who appeared glad to get rid of the extra weight.  He inspected his elbow wound.  His filthy hand brushed away a patch of blood that looked worse than what the wound actually was.  I stepped back and shook out the pain in my foot.  I rubbed my cheek where the rock had struck.  “English,” I said as if it were a curse.  Why I already hated them, I know not.  But have another set of men throw rocks on you and you’ll soon find that you develop a pointed distaste for them.  Ignore the fact, just like I did when I was young and hungry for food, riches, and glory, that I was raiding their precious, fertile lands in the first place.

Leif ran up the ladder.  I craned my head back.  Godfrey had just jumped over the wall.
  The hail storm of carnage falling on those of us remaining below paused as the English defenders addressed the king.  Magnus followed.  Other men did as well.  I was missing the thick of it.  I felt left out and angry.

I made a place in line by pushing Randulfr out of the way.  Normally, the two of us would have grappled or argued, but not that time.  He let me pass. 
Well, he allowed me to go before him because I sent my forearm into his mouth.  I scaled the rungs, favoring my foot with the broken toes that had swelled up inside my tough leather boot.  To my right, what had been Godfrey’s bridge, his original ladder, was finally up.  Loki was the first to climb it.  He carried two spears in one hand and used the other to hang on.  He did not carry a shield.  Over him, an English bowman drew back.  Loki was going to die.

Until the knot on
the cord that tied one of the rungs gave way and Loki, the ladder, and the men behind him fell to the side.  The English arrow harmlessly whizzed through where Loki’s body had been a heartbeat sooner.  The tangled mess of men crashed to the ground and rolled into the wall or the ditch.

So we had only three small rivers of men flowing into the garrison.  It wouldn’t be enough.
  They would choke us.

Only it was
more than enough.

I leapt over the battlement to meet the enemy.  I saw sparkling stars when my injured foot landed on the hard-packed earthen wall that sat behind the stone curtain wall of the fortress.  No enemy came to meet me.  They were already in full retreat down the bank and across the bailey.  Our men, led by Godfrey and Killian, cut them down from behind.  Just one of the English sold
iers laid a hand on the thick wooden door of their keep.  He died with his hand turning the latch.

Stunned, I panted and scanned the sight before me.  Brandr jostled me from behind as he jumped into the fort.  I drove the meat of my palm into his chest.  He growled and continued on.  Again, I scanned the scene.  We’d won.

The bodies of the fort’s defenders seemed few.  I counted them.  As near as I could tell twenty-four of them were all that had held us off so valiantly.  We’d killed most of the garrison on the shingle that morning, a fortunate thing for us.  Had more men occupied that fortress, sending spear point after arrowhead down our backs, we would not have made it.  Godfrey’s quest for greatness would have ended on a batch of rickety, sloppily built ladders.  Our blood would have brought forth generations of grasses and wildflowers on that English hillside.

We’d won.  We’d taken the mint from the English.
  Her coins were ours.

Godfrey meant to become a rich king in the vein of Aethelred of England or
Louis of the Franks.  He now had those means.

I meant to retrieve my
saex and my thrall.

. . .

Brandr came running out of the garrison commander’s quarters carrying the man’s personal stash of ale.  Godfrey had it and many more casks tapped so that our tired men lounged while guzzling the brew.  A few of the Welshmen still had enough energy to revel.  They danced and laughed, taking turns throwing rocks at the dead Englishmen.  It was no way to treat a soldier who had died in battle, but they did and Godfrey allowed it.  The men tossing the rocks became quite good at it, backing away farther and farther and hitting proscribed parts of the men’s bodies from a distance.  All the while, they gambled away their share of the treasure which had not yet been counted and they’d certainly not yet received.  If a hastily assembled army of nuns arrived to counter us during those moments, we would have been swept from the fort.

None came, which doesn’t excuse the king’s unpreparedness.

The king finally began making more responsible decisions after many pots of ale had been consumed by his men.  Godfrey commandeered two pairs of oxen and two carts.  He loaded them first with buckets upon buckets of already-stamped silver pennies.  His hard-won treasure took precedence.  Our fallen brothers would have to wait for their cart rides until after the plunder was fully released.

I’ve said that Godfrey was reaching and he was.  His priority was
obviously the treasure with which he would build his great kingdom that centered on the piratical Isle of Man.  With each passing bucket of coins I saw his mind swirl as the king conjured new ways to fashion his current lands into an empire.

The men who assisted him in taking the booty?  Well, they’d share in his wealth and glory, but they’d have to be prepared to take a distant second t
o the riches.  It was a fact that made me grumble.

He was not the best leader I’ve followed
before or since.  Godfrey was a good fighter.  He inspired his men in battle by doing that which he commanded them.  He sometimes listened to Killian’s counsel.  Other times he ignored the wise priest.  This was one of those latter times so that Killian was left comforting the wounded in and around the fort while we loaded the treasure.

“What am I doing?” the priest asked himself over and over.  “I help a sometimes Christian who is sometimes a king slaughter forever Christians so that I may pay for the ministry on Man.”  Killian shook his head in disgust.

I set the last tub of coins in a cart and walked to the mint’s well.  Tyrkr and Leif came over, their rucksacks bulging with fresh morning bread from the fortress’s kitchens.  England seemed like a land of plenty to me.  We drew water and rinsed off the blood and grime from the two battles.  I even pulled out my walrus-tooth comb and ran it through my hair and beard.

The three of us turned to walk out the now-open gates and across the planks that served as a temporary bridge.  Godfrey trotted over on a stolen horse.  “Where do you think you are going?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but Leif stepped in front of me.  “We go to the east side of the town.  We’ll hide there in the woods and send word if reinforcements come down the English herepath.”  It was a lie.  In truth we went to retrieve Aoife and my saex.

Godfrey was not the most brilliant of kings.  His wife, Gudruna, and Killian had fooled him into taking on this entire expedition in the first place.  He was not stupid, however.  “A little late for that don’t you think?  We’re nearly done with the work.  The last of the pennies are on that
cart now.”  The rickety cart rattled over the uneven bridge.  “We’ve just the wounded to transport and then we’re off.”  King Godfrey flashed a bright smile.  “And Leif, you’ve proven your worth – first Anglesey, then here.  You’ve a brilliant mind.”