‘Wolf-teeth,’ Alyosha said, when his chosen men had sweated it into place; they beamed with satisfaction. Finn and others strolled round it, eyeing it with a professional air, for we were raiders, when all was said and done and avoided anything that looked like this bristling terror.
‘A place to hang their cloaks and hats when they come,’ Finn said eventually, which was admiration enough to make Alyosha beam.
‘Growl not at guests, nor drive them from the gate,’ Ospak added, ‘as Red Njal’s granny would say.’
‘No more on that,’ Finn growled. ‘Without it coming from his mouth, I would sooner see Red Njal’s granny laid to rest.’
Ospak merely nodded and smiled, twisting his dirt and blood-crusted face into a hard knot.
Not long after, hidden watchers peering through slits on the gate tower announced that the enemy were coming again.
I stood behind the barrier with Finn at one shoulder and Ospak at the other, fetid with fear and old blood, rot-red with rust. My bowels curled like waves on the shore and the first great boom of the ram on the door almost loosened them entirely.
On the ramparts, Finnlaith and Alyosha and others hunkered down and heaved the last of our stones as well as spike-studded timbers down on the heads of the ram party; we heard them clatter and bounce off the roof of shields, though there was an occasional scream to let us know they were not having it all their own way.
We sweated and shivered behind the wolf fangs, while the gate rang like a bell and heaved in another little bit with each blow, the bar on it creaking and dancing in the locks. Great gouts of muddy slurry spurted up from the hinges.
Crowbone slid up to the tower steps with a party bringing up more timbers, manhandling them up the ladder, with the gate bulging in right at their ears. Alyosha, his helmet flaps up and laced across the top of his head so that his ears were free and he could hear better, saw it and bellowed out something, lost in the mad din. Crowbone merely waved at him and Alyosha, scowling, half-stood to make his way to the steps and tell Crowbone to go away.
The arrow took him in the neck, just under the ear; if he had had his helmet flaps down it might have saved him, but they were up like little birdwings and the arrow went in one side and out the other. He jerked and pawed at it, a puzzled look on his face, then reared up; blood came out of his mouth in a great, black gout and he fell sideways and clattered down the steps to Crowbone’s feet.
The boy howled – but someone grabbed him just then, dragging him back and under the cradle of wolf fangs, just as the gate crashed open with a splintering rend of wood and hinge.
The first man through was a mad-mouthed frother, black hair flying, lunging in with a spear up and a leather helmet askew on his forehead; he had time to see what he was running at, time to skid to a halt – then the ones behind crashed on him and he was shot forward, shrieking for his ma, to be impaled like a shrike’s breakfast.
The first half-dozen ended up like that – there were longer blades with two and three bodies on them; some of the shafts snapped under the weight.
Those behind realised something was up when they were brought up short and found they could go neither ahead, nor to the side, while those in the gate tower above were hurling slabs of spiked wood down on them.
I hacked and stabbed and cut and slashed; the wooden cradle started to shift and slide back under the press, so men put their shoulders to it on our side and shoved, while others elbowed for room to fight. There was a fine haze of steam and stink and misted blood, a great bellowing shriek of fear and dying; the earth under the gate tower churned to a thick broth of muddy blood.
I saw Finn take a jaw off with a wild stroke. I saw one of Randr Sterki’s men eat the point of a spear and go down, gargling. Arrows whirred and shunked and men from both sides screamed and died; the Pols were shooting through the open gateway, heedless of who they hit.
Yan Alf went crazed then and leaped up on top of the wolffang cradle and its smother of hanging bodies, then hurled himself, screaming, into the middle of the pack; I never saw him alive again. Finnlaith, screaming ‘Ui Neill’ and spittle, followed him, leaping off the top of the watchtower and I saw him once after that, rising through a frothing sea of enemy like a breaching whale; then he disappeared.
That broke them. One minute I was slashing and stabbing, my breathing high and shrill, my arm aching, seeing the blood curve off the end of the axe blade in fat, greasy spray – then I was slumped against the scarred, gouged cradle where bodies writhed and groaned. The Pols backed off through their own arrows and Finn yelled out a warning as the full weight of shafts fell on us.
Shields up, we stood there until men brought up some thick timber doors torn off the houses and used them as shelter. In the end, the arrows stopped and men went out to heave corpses aside and shut the gates again, though they were so badly splintered that they could not be barred.
I know I shouted instructions for some of this, for Finn told me. I know I helped carry Alyosha away and consoled a weeping Crowbone, while the crew of
Short Serpent
– what was left of them – stood, covered in gore and grim silence while Alyosha was shield-carried to a pyre. Ospak and Murrough, the last Irishers left, stood like dumb posts, unable to go out and find Finnlaith; in the end, Onund whacked their shoulders and gave them work to keep their minds off the loss.
I know all this, but was aware of none of it. I only came back to life later, when Bjaelfi was binding up my ankle – the old injury, which burned like fire. I had gone over on it, according to folk who saw, and limped about for a long time until Bjaelfi and others managed to pin me down and tend my wounds.
I had a scratch down one cheek, my ribs ached from a blow I did not even know I had come by and my nose thundered with pain and trickled new blood, so that Finn, unharmed and grinning through the stains on his face, shook his head.
‘That neb of yours will not last much longer if you persist in getting it dunted,’ he noted and Ospak, staggering past with an armful of timber to be spiked with spear and arrow points, stopped long enough to look and tilt his head almost onto his shoulder.
‘Every time I look at it,’ he said, ‘I have to stand at more of a list to steerboard than before, just to keep it straight on your face.’
Then he laughed, a shrill, high sound. They all laughed, those that were left, hair stiff with clotted filth, armour red-rusted and weapons stained with gore. They moved as though their legs were wood – yet they moved, getting ready for the next attack.
Finnlaith was dead, Yan Alf was dead. Thorbrand was dead. Hjalti Svalr had the Red Pest, had lost most of his right hand and was groaning and babbling of home. Others were stacked like winter wood, their weapons bound to cold hands. And those who were left mourned with laughter, like wolves.
I had no belly left for laughing. As the shadows lengthened and weary fires sprang up, Bjaelfi came to me, his face scored with misery, carrying a limp little bundle which he laid at my feet like an offering. It was so small, that bundle, yet it broke us all like a falling tree and men groaned and bowed their heads; some even wept, leaving wet white streaks through the filth of their cheeks.
Koll. He was wrapped warmly and his face was so swollen his father would not have known him but for the bone-white of his hair. One hand rested on his chest under the warm wrap, but one had flopped free and the blue veins on it stood proudly out, so proud it was hard to believe that blood did not pump through them. The rest of the hand was pale, the shrinking flesh spatterered with white pustules.
Bjaelfi looked at me, waiting to take the small body to the burning; men stopped and made Hammer signs for mourning and not just because Koll was dead. He was what we had struggled all this way to get, had fought for, had watched oarmates die for – and we had failed.
I tied his little hands round the hilt of his father’s sword and gave him to the Odin-fire. It was like the death of hope itself, watching that small, wrapped body smoke up into the dark.
That night, Dark Eye came to me, silent as a summer breeze, yet when I reached for her she was limp and slick-sheened with sweat, hot as embers in my arms. To the question in my eyes, she simply slithered from her shapeless tunic-dress and raised her arms; even in the dark, where her silver shape glowed, the red spots on her thighs and under her arms were clear, almost as big as the tender tips of her hard breasts.
She shivered and sweated.
‘In the morning,’ she said, ‘I will go to them.’
I argued. I swore. I ranted. I babbled. In the end she pressed hot, cracked lips on mine to silence me.
‘This is my wyrd,’ she said, her breath fetid on my cheek. ‘This is best. I am what they want – let them take me, for it will be their own doom. This is what the Sea-Finn’s drum saw.’
I saw it, then, hot in her eyes, with a coldness deep in my bowels. It was her wyrd – at one stroke she saved us, saved her people and would spread the red, ruinous pest through Czcibor’s army.
‘It must be done in the morning,’ she said, ‘before I am too weak to pretend.’
I nodded then, still frantic with the loss of her, with the sight of those great, liquid seal eyes already filming blue-white with sickness. I held her most of that night, leaving her only long enough to take a stained, unbleached linen scrap and wrap it round a shield.
There was not enough dark in all the world that would keep back the creeping dawn.
When it spilled up, staining the rampart, making it like the jaw of some snarling prow beast, men stood, shaking and weary, beards and hair stiff with filth, eyes bright with the knowledge that today they would stand before their gods – and were amazed to see me walk Dark Eye to the gate.
I handed my axe to Finn and left Dark Eye with him while I shoved through the splintered ruin, stepping over the bodies and through the bloody crust of mud. I held the linen-wrapped shield high, hoping it was white enough to be noticed as a truce-sign. I paused only once to look Randr Sterki in his red-rimmed eyes. His grin was a curve of snarl.
Picking my way through the festering dead, I stumbled out to where Czcibor sat on his horse; he looked more gaunt now, I was thinking and I wondered if the Red Pest had already reached his army.
‘Be quick,’ he said harsh and haughty, so I was.
‘Is she trade enough for our lives?’ I asked and he looked over my shoulder to the small figure in the broken gateway, having to look across the heaped bundles of his own dead men, having to see the spears and blades still defending the rampart, the cradle of wolf-teeth gleaming just inside the gate.
When he looked back at me, his eyes were hard and cold and bleak, which did not bother me much – I knew he would agree, for he could not stay here longer. He ached to stake us out, but the cost was high and he was too much of a good commander to let his hate ruin his army and his ambition.
What stabbed me to the bone was the rest of his look, the bit just behind his eyes which curled a sneer at me for giving up this slip of a woman to save our lives.
Perhaps it choked him, perhaps he was too tired to do more – but he nodded, which was enough.
I walked back to the gate and took my axe back from Finn. Dark Eye, impassive as a carving, wrapped the tattered cloak round her and walked out, the way she had always walked, as if she had gold between her legs, into the maw of the Pols. She did not look back.
I came back into the faces of those who knew the business was finished and that they would not die today. Yet there remained, hovering like a waiting hawk, the knowledge that it had been the girl the Pols had wanted all along – but no-one who saw my face wanted to bare their teeth on that, all the same.
Save one, of course. There is always one.
‘You fuck,’ yelled Styrbjorn, trembling with the nearness of that fearful stake. ‘It was the girl. All this time. We died so you could have a hump while the…’
I hit him with the haft of the axe, a wet smack in his face that sent him crashing to the ground, where he lay and snored out bubbling blood and teeth. Uddolf moved to him, turning him over so that he would not choke.
I was cold with it all, cold and sick. A little shape was burning on a pyre, another was staggering away to die among enemies and both had held skeins of my wyrd in their hands; with their loss, I could not see one more step in front of me. I was almost on my knees, begging Odin to take his sacrifice and I half-turned to where Randr Sterki stood, silent and watchful, almost willing him to make his move.
‘Good blow,’ said Bjaelfi after a swift look at Styrbjorn. ‘Though I am thinking it would have been better to have used the edge. A head hacked off cannot conspire, as Red Njal’s granny would say.’
Finn shifted slightly and cleared the rheum from his throat.
‘Make that the last of Red Njal’s granny,’ he growled, so that everyone could hear, ‘and be content that our Orm used the shaft and not the edge. He was always the one for leaving folk alive who should be dead, yet is known for a man who can fall in a bucket of shite and come up with a handful of silver. Perhaps there is worth in Styrbjorn yet.’
He frowned down at the groaning Styrbjorn, then hefted The Godi and clawed everyone with his gaze.
‘This needs cleaning. Then we can quit this Nowhere place.’
There were twenty of us quitting, no more; the rest were dead, and those who were not, we killed for mercy’s sake and then burned them, with all their gear and even their sea-chests, the black feathers trailing accusingly into a sullen sky behind us as we moved across fresh green and birdsong.
For most of that first day we moved grim and fearful, a scar on the land, always looking over one shoulder, for no-one trusted the Pols and we were on their side of the Odra now, heading for a tributary river called Notec, which we would have to cross. After a while, when it seemed as if we had, truly, escaped, men began to look round at the green tips and buds, to turn to where a raven harshed, or a small bird peeped.
They took deeper breaths of spring air and started to grin at each other – except the sick, who staggered or were carried, babbling. The Red Pest stayed with us, tagging along like a dog that could not be sent home and still they grinned at each other, as if they had thrown particularly good dice.