King Hereafter (115 page)

Tuathal said, ‘My lord! Your new Danish fleet. Twenty-five sail.’

He said, ‘
Are you sure?
’

And Tuathal said, ‘Scandlain told me himself.’

Twenty-five ships, and a thousand mercenaries in them. More than could ever come to Siward’s aid, no matter where he sent for them. That they, too, were out of reach at the moment was of no importance. He could afford to wait for them now, if he wanted.

Tuathal said, ‘Siward’s trumpets. They’re regrouping.’

Again, an unmistakable slackening: a foundering of noise as well as action. Thorfinn said, ‘No. They’re withdrawing. Let them.’

He had seen one trumpeter killed. Another, a younger man, had been at his elbow ever since. He turned to speak.

Tuathal said, ‘You have them beaten?’ A spear squealed on the rim of his shield and he lifted his sword. A man thrust past, dragging another, and, seeing the King, stopped and lifted his axe, hatred in his face. Before it came shoulder-high, Thorfinn killed him and saw him drop bleeding over his friend. The axeman wore the first beard of a boy and had big ears that stuck through his hair. For a moment, he was a person and what had happened to him was death. Then the moment passed.

Thorfinn said, ‘Why should we lose men?’ and had the signal blown: to pull back and allow the enemy to withdraw.

Osbern of Eu, ignoring it, led his column of horse, hardly impaired, in another thundering drive through the streaming Northumbrians and pulled up above Thorfinn’s head. His horse fretted, its haunches nudging its neighbours, and flayed the air with a hoof. The frog was thick with what it had galloped through.

‘Herding them into the fire?’ Osbern called. ‘But the wind has changed.’

It had moved to the south-west, isolating untouched the stretch of forest between the high road and the marsh of the river. There, the Northumbrians were running. Thorfinn saw, to his regret, the banners of Durham and Kinrimund. He said, ‘Let them go. They’ll surrender. My big fleet from Denmark has been sighted.’

‘So the saints have heard us,’ said Osbern. He turned and yelled at Hugh de Riveire and his men, who had launched on a private war at his back. He turned back. ‘You have tides in your blood. When will they come?’

‘Not for a while. My own ships will lead them in and show them where to land. Till they do—’

‘I knew it. You want us to lie east of the forest with the fire in our faces and cut off Siward if he tries to make his escape. How will your mercenaries know we are friendly, if they come from the east?’

‘Killer-Bardi will lead them. Take some Moray men. They know him.
Excuse me,’ said Thorfinn. ‘It is not usual for a king to be left alone in the field at the end of a withdrawal. That battle was yours. Celebrate when the reinforcements come.’

It was more than time to cross the field back to his starting-point, along with the wary groups of his van dragging their wounded. One of them shouted. ‘ ’My lord King! Is it true that a great army is coming, and the war has ended?’

Thorfinn was walking backwards, Tuathal and the trumpeter at his side, looking across the trampled mess of earth beaten with turf and heaped with dark shapes like cattle resting on dung.

He was not interested yet in the dead, who would have to be cleared and identified later. He was interested in how far Siward had taken his men back into the untouched part of the forest, where the clearing kept for the highway from Dunedin to the Forth crossing had encouraged the fire to turn to one side, helped by the slight change of wind.

There, the forest was not so thick, and lay close to the bank that sloped down to the bogs by the riverside. Had the disengagement happened in any other way, it would have been worth sending all his army, Normans included, crashing through the trees to clean them out while the fighting-power was still in them and Siward’s troops were disorganised by the sudden descent of the cavalry. Siward himself must have wondered why he abstained. The way the battle was going, another half-hour would have seen the Northumbrian army beaten to shreds.

The heaps of dead reclaimed his interest. They were out of range, most of them, of the forest. He shouted back to the man who had spoken to him, ‘Are you tired of fighting? Reinforcements are coming. The Northumbrians will keep till they get here.’ To the trumpeter, he said, ‘I want the dead on both sides counted quickly. Find Prior Eochaid. I saw him a moment ago. And get him to take out a party.’

He had reached the white standard, with Bishop Jon standing, arms folded, beside it. Bishop Jon looked at Tuathal, and Tuathal answered the look without speaking. There was no point in appearing to notice. Alba was empty enough of men to govern and serve, without throwing them away to no purpose. Thorfinn said, ‘Is there more news from Scandlain?’

Scandlain was the chief of his mounted body of couriers and signalmen. Scandlain could get a simple message from one end of Fife to the other in a matter of minutes. For greater detail, they would have to rely on a chain of fast horses aided by signals, and no one could expect miracles. But sometimes Scandlain could achieve them. And the messengers would come all the time.

Bishop Jon said, ‘Report says that Killer-Bardi’s flotilla had locked horns with Siward’s when your new fleet made its appearance over the ocean and changed course at once to join your ten ships from Orkney, with what sad effect on Siward’s ships is not yet clearly known. Does that man not have a Christian name?’

‘Killer-Bardi?’ said Thorfinn. ‘He’s called Lawrence. It doesn’t suit him.’

‘Oh, you’re elated,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘I’m sure I don’t know for what act of
yours the Deity has seen fit to bless us with mounted Normans, and shiploads of mercenaries, and woods that burn in a trice, but you must have dropped a word somewhere that commended itself.’

‘We declared a trading-peace, heaven and I,’ said Thorfinn. ‘I saw Mael-Isu. Whom else have we lost?’

‘Gillecrist of Strathclyde is dead,’ said the Bishop. ‘And Morgund and Gillocher have had a
minutio
, but nothing serious. You’ve lost a ring or two of your curtain, I see. You’ll be stiff tomorrow. Is your helmet not frying you?’

‘It is,’ said Thorfinn. ‘But it’s also identifying me. I’ll walk through and tell them what’s happening. Tuathal, they can eat, but serve the ale as if every pint of it cost you a toenail. The standard can go back in its socket. Bishop, you and Hrolf and the physicians ought to be busy. Eat in relays.’

‘And you, my lord?’ said Tuathal. Eochaid, approaching behind, looked drawn, but did not walk as if hurt. There was a splash of blood on the roof of the Brecbennoch.

Thorfinn said, ‘The venison of the Naas, the fish of the Boyne and the cresses of the Brosna are the due of the High King, but devil a man of you will have stirred himself over it. How many?’

‘Seventy of ours, and over four hundred of my lord Siward’s,’ said Eochaid. ‘But you have lost two mormaers.’

Odin the Leveller. ‘We shall not need to use that formation again,’ Thorfinn said, and saw that the forest was quiet and the scouts had nothing to disturb them before turning to walk to his men.

They had heard the news of the new fleet already. They were high-hearted and noisy with success; bright-eyed still with the plunge through the wedges, that excited crash of the cavalry ringing in their ears. They were warm under the sun and full of vigour hardly drained in the short battle and soon flooding back. They wanted to drink, failing a quick thrash with a woman, and then tumble back into the field and race shouting into the forest to make the kill of which they had been unkindly baulked. Thorfinn could hardly get a hearing, at first, for the shouting. He simply stood still saying nothing until the cries died away, and then told them what they were waiting for, and that he expected little more fighting.

Someone shouted, ‘But there’s booty in that forest that hasn’t been burnt. And it was us that did the fighting.’

‘Then see that you are there,’ Thorfinn said, ‘when the booty is shared at the standard-pole. The mercenaries fight for their hire; and I fight for Alba. Are you satisfied?’

They cheered him and themselves, and discovered, at the uncovering of the food, how hungry they were. He saw that they kept in their lines, with their helms and weapons in reach, and went back to the awning his servants had raised with a bench under it, and some saddles. Their shields, reversed, served as boards on light trestles. Klakkr, he saw, had brought out a second shield, also silver on white, and was already cleaning his sword. He took off his helmet, his sweating brow cold in the air, and wondered who was lying
outside the pavilion, wrapped in wool cloaking. Then he saw the broken string of a relic-bag and realised it was Mael-Isu of Deer.

He ignored it. The secret of a long day of battle was fitting the components together: the state of caution; the state of preparedness; the state of uncaring action; the state of elation; the state of waiting; so that each stage matched the others in sureness and strength, with every thread of body and mind strung to its finest pitch ready to sing to the touch, from one night’s sleep until the next, or until death itself.

So he did not wish greatly to eat, although he did, and he kept the same singing pitch running through his being as he talked quietly with Tuathal and Eochaid and the others about what was to be done; which meant what Siward would do.

What a man like Siward would do, who was hiding a second time in a forest and had blown the withdrawal within minutes of the Normans’ arrival.

‘You would almost think he had heard the news as well,’ said Morgund of Moray, who had a round red bruise from a spear-butt in the middle of his forehead and had blunted his axe on six men.

‘Could they have learned it from us?’ Thorfinn said.

Tuathal said, ‘If you mean, did any of our Fife men defect, then the answer is yes, but I killed them both. We were opposite Malduin. He said his prayers aloud all through the fighting, but no one from our side ever got near him.’

‘More’s the pity,’ said Malpedar. ‘And the Angus men, I can tell you, were too busy to do more than yell insults at the other Angus men. In any case, if Siward knew fresh forces were coming, you’d expect him either to gather his forces and try to reverse the battle quickly, or to muster them in the forest and get away before the rest of the enemy could arrive.’

‘He hasn’t done that,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And wasn’t even trying to when I posted the Normans behind him. When is the next message due? Whoever brings it—Ferteth?—see that the messenger reaches me without having to walk through the camp. I should like to know this time before the horse-boys do.’

It was unfair, because last time he had been in the thick of the fighting when the message came, and Tuathal had fought to be beside him. It was unfair, but that was the least of it.

The next messenger was Scandlain himself once again, and he was seeking to avoid the encampment even before Ferteth arrived to conduct him. Nor would he say anything at all until he was before Thorfinn under the awning.

So Thorfinn gathered from Ferteth. To Scandlain he said, ‘Sit. There is some ale. The six of us here will all attend to your news, but you will tell it with your back to the men, and you will not expect to read what we think on our faces. What have you to say?’

‘You speak as if you knew,’ Scandlain said.

Under the awning, it was very quiet. The fringe flapped in the little wind, and eddies from over the field brought the resinous warmth of the dying fires and another powdering of silvery ash mixed with charcoal. It had settled already on the mounds still lying heaped on the field, white as quicklime; flesh
not yet cold and consigned already to ashes; bone, juice, and fibre still consuming its fuel, deflating from its last action; sponging off the last image and led already to dust.

‘The fleet from Denmark?’ said Thorfinn.

‘The fleet from Denmark,’ agreed the signalman. ‘Twenty-five ships. I told you, my lord. It appeared in the estuary. Your old ships, my lord King, were already engaged with the ships of Earl Siward and getting much the best of it. Two of the Northumbrian ships were on fire, and one broken-masted and drifting. The other three turned to fly up the estuary, which was stupid, as the tide was against them and they lost the wind.

‘My man could hear from his hilltop the cheering from the Orkney ships, my lord, as the twenty-five new ships sailed into view. Dragons they are, with twenty-five thwarts apiece and maybe seventy-five men packed between the gunwales. Fighting-ships, as you ordered. They identified your ten ships right away and cheered back. The leading ship raised a raven flag to the masthead, and Killer-Bardi ran up another. It was like boys from a priest-school on a feast day, my man reported.’

‘And then?’ Thorfinn said. Under the heated steel rings and leather, his shirt was wet enough to wring water out of, and his skin shivered with cold.

‘The twenty-five ships from Denmark got up to the Orkney ships,’ the signalman said, ‘and surrounded them. The men in them were mercenaries, maybe Swedish: at any rate, they spoke the same language, you could see. They were shouting over the sides as the ships came up close, exchanging nonsense and laughing.’

‘And then?’ Thorfinn said.

‘And then, my lord King,’ Scandlain said, ‘every man in the dragon-ships jumped to his feet with a spear in his hand and cast the spear through the heart of a man in the Orkney ship next to him, and, after that, threw aboard grappling-irons. Then they followed the irons and boarded, axes in their hands, and more spears, and killed every man on the ships, but for two that broke away and fled north.

‘Then the twenty-five ships from Denmark sailed over to Siward’s ships and took aboard the men from the wrecked ships, and greeted the ones on the three ships that were not damaged, and, led by the three ships, set sail across the mouth of the estuary.

‘Twelve ships, led by one of Earl Siward’s unloaded nearly a thousand men at the mouth of the river Leven and then turned and sailed out. Thirteen ships, led by two of Earl Siward’s, continued north past the estuary and were last seen setting round for the mouth of the Tay.