Norseman Raider (The Norseman Chronicles Book 4) (38 page)

I remember wishing at that moment that she would jerk on my beard and give me the plan that would save us.  That didn’t happen. 
The once proud, strong, defiant girl was wide-eyed with terror.  She was near frozen.  Tears streamed down her cheeks.  “Home!” she cried.  “I want home.  I want my sisters and my mother!”

My knee slapped the earth and I grabbed her chin in my hand.  Our eyes met.  Hers were buried beneath pools of liquid.  “Be strong,” was all I had time to say.

“Randulfr!  Take my place,” shouted Godfrey.  His favorite warrior stepped in just as Godfrey moved back to talk to me.  He yanked me up by my hair.

“You’re supposed to be inside opening the gate!”  The king panted.  He swiped a bloody paw across his face to clean away sweat and the remains of the enemy.  He
removed the old and replaced it with a new streak of mess.

“The bastards,” I began, “turned on us.”

Godfrey got a sarcastic look on his face and looked around the outside of the shield wall.  “Oh, you must be joking, because things over here are going well.”

“We can’t open the gate,” I said.
  Gudruna’s sword clanged off a man’s helmet.  The riotous noise of the battle that surrounded us cleaved my ears.

“No matter!” answered Godfrey.  “The traitors will be mopped up in just a few more steps.  Then we assault the fort like men, none of your trickery.”

I tugged back on Killian, pulling him into the conversation.  He nearly rammed his short sword into my eye.  “Tell the king that we must withdraw now!  We cannot take that fort.  Without the newcomers on our side our numbers are too small.  And we’ve lost dozens of fighters here.”  I pointed a finger at the gate.  “Maredubb lies in wait.  Horse Ketil and an army, too.”

Killian was shaking his head in disagreement. 
The norns were pulling at the Christian’s adventurous thread.  They must surely have been giggling.  “We’ve got this!  This fort will be ours.  The king has Providence on his side.  He slices the enemy with his fine blade.”  Killian had the bloodlust like I’d never seen.  His face was not his own.  He’d morphed into one of us.  Killian was no longer a priest, temporarily, at least.

Godfrey ran one side of his new sword across his thigh to remove the coagulating blood.  He flipped it to wipe the other side.  Killian’s
battle-mad eyes locked on the sword.  He grabbed the king’s wrist.  “I thought you said this was an +ULFBERH+T!”

The king slapped away the priest’s hand.  “It is an +ULFBERHT+.  It says so right there.”

Godfrey stepped to take his place back in the shield wall.  Killian was suddenly the same priest I’d gotten to know.  The diminutive man tugged back on the larger Godfrey.  “No king.  Halldorr is right.  I lost my senses.  We must leave now.”  He pointed to the king’s sword.  “That is counterfeit!  There are reports all over Europe of men who’ve taken those false blades into battle and find themselves and their armies decorating the foliage.”

Godfrey again sho
ved Killian.  “Superstitious?  What kind of priest are you?”  A spear fell between us all.

Aoife was screaming louder now.  She had moved to the back of the hollow shield wall as it progressed upward.

“Killian is right, lord king!” I called.  “I don’t care what his reason is at this moment, but his conclusion is correct.  We’ll lose if we stay.”

“And if we flee, we’re admitting defeat already!” 
The king grabbed my beard and wrenched it hard.  “One chance!  A man gets one chance in his life at true greatness.  These odds, against me like they are, give me the chance for fame.  If I lose, I join Odin.”  He turned to Killian.  “Sorry, father.”  The priest nodded his understanding.  “But if we win, think of it.  If we somehow take this hill and gain a new kingdom, the legends, the sagas, the songs will be filled with our names for eternity.  Sigurd the dragon slayer will be forgotten.”

The king gritted his bared teeth.  I felt truly stout of heart
at that moment.  I was ready to follow him, damn the costs.  Godfrey turned to face the front again.  He took one step forward when I saw his head snap back.  An arrow glanced off his helmet and shot past me to finish its course.  The king shook his head to recover his senses.  He blinked to clear the spider webs.

We heard a high pitched scream from behind and we all turned to see what made the noise, though I think in our hearts we knew.  Aoife was lying on her back with the arrow jutting from her belly. 
Her mouth was gaping as she belted a constant shriek.  One hand tore at the shaft of the missile.  Another was balled into a fist, beating the sloppy red earth.  The men in the rear of our round shield wall stepped gingerly backward.  One of them stepped on her pounding arm, pinning it to the ground.  He paid no attention since he’d been stepping on bodies and their parts all morning.  I ran to the girl and jerked her out by her ankle.

Pulling her
writhing form into my arms, I awaited her malicious slap for treating her so roughly.  It came not.

“Sword,” she rasped, holding up a
trembling arm.  I could see the print of the man’s boot on her skin.  “Sword,” Aoife coughed.

I screamed at her.  “You’re not so close to death that you need a blade.  Valhalla is closed to you right now.”

Despite my protest, I complied with her wishes.  I reached to the dirt and grabbed a dead man’s blade.  I set the grip into her small hand which firmed at the mere touch.  Aoife smiled with eyes closed.  The grin fled as she began coughing blood.  My lower lip quivered.  Tears came and began washing away the crimson splattered across my cheeks.  Aoife’s hand tightened on the sword even while she convulsed.  She gave two grunts and then exhaled for one long, last time.

The girl I cradled was dead.

My confidence ebbed.

. . .

More arrows slapped the shields of the leading edge of our mass of men.  Spears, too, danced in the morning air.  Both types of missiles leapt over our front ranks.  They killed the unfortunate men who advanced blindly backward up the hill as they themselves did their best to chop down the last of the newcomers.  While cradling Aoife’s lifeless form, I peered ahead to see from where the new deadly menace came.

The morning
became more dreadful.  Maredubb had found the right moment.  The gate clattered open.  He and his men poured through and down the hill, sending their rain of steel as envoys ahead of them.  The negotiations were short as the sharp tips pierced our rugged diplomats.

Godfrey and Killian were already
at their places in the front of the shield wall.  All talk of retreat was forgotten.  It was time to avenge our newly fallen.  I think both men were inspired by Aoife’s sacrifice.  The courage she demonstrated in life didn’t flee with her death.  No.  It sprang from her soul into all of us.  It rejuvenated us.  The time had come for action.  The king called, “Charge!  Keep tight and run up the hill!  Stay strong.  Cut them!”  He pushed forward, Gudruna at his side.  The rest of the men surged behind them.  Even the men at the back of the circular shield wall turned and ran, abandoning the few newcomers who yet lived.  The greater threat was Maredubb’s army.  It was up, not down.

I joined them
, for I had no choice.  I would have preferred to carry Aoife’s body to the river.  There I would have spent a full day constructing a small longboat for the girl.  Such vessels were fit only for warriors.  She was one.  I would have liked to set her in the ship with weapons.  I would have shoved it from the shore already alight.  The flames would have consumed her craft and body even before I stopped crying.  All of that would have been a fitting way for her to be sent to Valhalla.  I could do none of it.

Before going
to my place in the line, I gently set Aoife’s body across the back of a large dead man.  There was no time for more tears, though I had them and they flowed mightily.  They clouded my vision.  I wiped them away.  Snot clogged the moustache of my beard.  Aoife’s straw-like hair was more disheveled than usual.  I pinched a lock and set it behind her ear.  Even a few of the newcomer brigands stopped their fighting and watched.  They had known the precocious girl, too.  They’d liked her.  Everyone did, except those she meant to kill.  I simultaneously laughed and cried at the thought of the little beast acting as a ravaging pirate.  My throat swelled so that I felt like I was trying to swallow an entire apple.  I gave Aoife a soft pat to her forehead.  It was still warm.  More tears came.

“She’s gone, Halldorr,” said one of the newcomers
with surprising tenderness.  He was nothing but a dishonorable traitor.  In a flash I slipped my saex out and into his thigh.  I quickly killed the other two onlookers.  They fell like flower petals decorating Aoife’s resting place.  After one last look at the little demon who had been more alive than any of us, I hoisted my shield and ran to my rightful place.

. . .

The last man from Dyflin fell choking on his own blood.  Our Welsh soldiers were dying.  The Manx toppled.  Yet, we pushed with all our might up that hill.  We actually made headway, for not all of Maredubb’s men could force their way through the narrow gate.  Our tiny army’s progress had checked theirs.  The men in the rear ranks of the enemy helplessly watched our two sides meld together into a writhing mass of flesh and steel.

Horse Ketil pushed the chest of his charger into my shield.  He swung down at me with intense vitriol
lurking in each stroke.  “I’ll repay you, fool!  You used your fists.  I’ll use this steel,” Ketil called.  I leaned into the horse’s neck, using it as protection from his blows.  It would only be a moment, I thought, before the frightened ass would run out of hate-fueled energy.  I’d stab his leg then.

Only he didn’t tire.  Horse Ketil skillfully moved his horse from side to side, exposing me again and again. 
It was a repeat of the madness he’d unleashed when we took over the city of Aberffraw.  Ketil used his sword as would a practiced warrior.  He saw the surprise on my face.  “A drunkard is what you see in me.  Or, you see a man who pretends badly.  I’ve found that being underestimated brings benefits.”  His blade removed the last of my tattered cloak.  “Kings say things in front of you they ought not, when they think you are drunk or just blustering power.  In the process, I gain treasure for myself and my clan.  I gain alliances.  Man will be free.”  He swung again.  I dodged it, but fell backward into a bloody mess.  “Maredubb thinks me a drunk, too!  Soon Anglesey will be under my control.”

Ketil prodded his horse forward to crush me
with its marching hooves.  Killian swung his sword.  It severed Ketil’s leg and buried itself in the beast’s ribs.  Out of instinct, Ketil made a broad retaliatory stroke with his blade.  The tip splayed through Killian’s face.  The priest, my first true Christian friend, fell into the heap of our men’s bodies.  Ketil’s horse sensed his master’s distress, felt the steel lodged in its side, and bolted back toward the gate.  It trampled dozens of the enemy.

Godfrey looked down at Killian, his trusted advisor, friend, and priest. 
Killian peered back with death’s blank stare.  The king suddenly had a renewed vigor, an otherworldly energy.  Out of sheer will, Godfrey pushed ahead.  He killed one, two, then three more of the enemy.  The rest of us saw him.  We were inspired.  I know I was heartened by his prowess.  I climbed to my feet and howled like Fenrir, the wolf of legend.  Our shrinking band came together.  We hacked and stepped.  We cut and walked on a blanket of death.  The corpses made us a path.  We moved closer to the gate.

“Thor’s beard!” screamed Godfrey as he cleaved another man.

Maredubb was there now.  He sat on his beautiful destrier.  Its black coat was marred with red blood and brown dirt even though they’d been in the fight a short while.  King Maredubb’s fancy leather boots were likewise covered.  The ugly king was killing as efficiently as was ours.  With two hands he brought a long handled war axe down at the head of Godfrey.  The king held his blade aloft to block it.  That would be the test of whether or not it was a true work of the famous Frankish craftsmen.

The ax
e was halted in midair.  The two kings shouted strings of curses at one another.  Neither heard what the other said.  They stood there, Maredubb’s different colored eyes angrily burning at Godfrey.

I again took heart.  My king was nearly single-handedly climbing the hill.  His blade was better than a work of art, it was magic.  I knew it. 
Gudruna knew it.  And Godfrey knew it.

Maredubb didn’t know it.  He simply picked up his giant ax
e again.  He raised it with both hands above his head.  King Maredubb leaned into his swing bringing every ounce of his strength, weight, and leverage with him.  He could have split a bull in half with the force he put behind that blow.  Godfrey defiantly stuck the sword in the axe’s path.

The blade snapped in two. 
The +ULFBERHT+, as false as a made-up whore, shattered.  It splintered like the massive whetstone of Hrungnir.  The war axe continued falling as if it had felt no resistance.  It crushed into the helmet of my king, creating a vast chasm on the crown.  Godfrey’s arms went limp.  He teetered.  Some unnamed man in Maredubb’s army shoved a short sword into my king’s neck.  Godfrey collapsed.

Gudruna belched out a terrified wail.  Her face, always beautiful and confident, bent into the faces of all her husband’s victims.  She
stopped fighting.  It got her killed.  A club beat her shoulder.  Gudruna fell to a knee.  The same club came down on the back of her helmeted head.  Her neck snapped.  The Queen of the Isles toppled dead onto her husband.  The hand of her killer clasped on the gold amulet from Anglesey that Godfrey had given her.  He tore it away and melted into the throng.