Fenrir

51

Aelis went to the stern of the longship. There was no talk at all as the men put on their war gear, only small scrapes and clangs as mail coats, axes, swords and daggers were unpacked from barrels, spears unstrapped, helmets tied on and shields put into place on the side of the boat.

The purpose in the men’s actions frightened Aelis. There were no faint hearts, she could tell. These men were used to battle and ready for what was ahead of them. There was excitement, slight nervousness, even mild glee. It reminded her of how the ladies at Loches had reacted when a marriage was arranged for one of them. But there was a darker current here. It was almost as if the men were conjuring something between themselves, something that smelled of iron and blood, something that waited behind their eyes like a wolf in a byre, ready to spring out.

‘Best if we can keep the element of surprise.’ Giuki’s voice was low.

‘They haven’t heard us yet and it’s dark enough that we won’t be seen until we’re almost upon them. They’re up at the monastery. We can kill the guards and be out to sea by the time they react,’ said a man by his side.

‘We’ve got a couple of bows. Get them forward as soon as you can. There’s a lot of ground between the monastery and boats. We’ll make them pay for every step. Regin, are you ready?’

From forty feet away across the water came a strong low voice: ‘As we’ll ever be, lord.’

‘Signal to the other boat to follow me in carefully. We don’t know the waters and don’t want to tear our hulls out. Let’s go. Quietly. And let’s make quick work of it.’

The boats turned towards the shore. Aelis gripped her sword, still in its scabbard. Her disguise put her at more risk now than if she was wearing a gown and wimple.

Giuki came to her. ‘Stay here in the stern. There won’t be too many guarding their boats. It will be done very quickly.’

Aelis nodded. The longboats streaked towards the shore. She couldn’t believe the men on the beached boats couldn’t hear the straining of the oars.

Then they did. ‘Raiders!’ She recognised the Norse word.

Now all attempt at quiet left the men on the attacking ships; all caution was abandoned.

The drakkar had seemed narrow and cramped, even badly designed, while they were making their way down the coast. It had been quick but unsteady. Now she saw its true function. As a sailing boat it worked about as well as a sword works for cutting cheese. That is, it can do it, but it’s not the job it’s intended for. Under oar, sprinting for the shore, the craft was transformed, singing through the waves like an arrow through the air. She saw the reason for the shields on the sides. They increased the freeboard. At speed the ship created more of a wake, and might even be swamped and sink if it ran too fast. The shields added half a cubit’s height to the sides. Aelis had a sensation of great speed, the bulk of the land looming closer, the great moon behind her, the monastery low on the horizon of the headland as if crouching. The beach was white in the moonlight.

A tumult of shouts erupted from the attacking boats. She heard the names she’d heard screamed from the walls of Paris: ‘Tyr is with me! Thor guides my hand! The wolf and the crow will feed tonight! Odin, death-maker, is our king and battle mate! Your ancestors are waiting for you, Danes, and I will send you to meet them!’

One man from the beached longboats went tearing across the sand towards the monastery. The others seemed to panic. They had been left there to guard the boats from land attack; they had not anticipated an assault from the sea. There was no time to launch the craft and they couldn’t outrun or outmanoeuvre three quick ships. They knew that if they ran for reinforcements their ships would be taken. So they leaped out of the boats to meet the onrushing drakkar, knowing they would die and calling out to say that they knew.

‘My father will have a welcome for me in the halls of the All Father tonight. You can serve my drinks, foreigner, because I’m going to take you with me.’

Aelis’s ship crunched into the beach, throwing her forward. She jumped up but already most of the crew were over the side, screaming and hacking. There were perhaps ten of the enemy and they had marshalled themselves well, fighting in close formation, shields locked together, spears forward, trying to kill their opponents as they stepped from the ship.

Some men were leaping onto the empty boats while a scrum of nine or ten struggled to shove one off into the sea. The landing had been chaotic. The moon was not reliable, scudding in and out of the clouds, and the ships had beached some way from each other. No cordon of archers had been set despite Giuki’s orders. In short order the raiders overwhelmed the last of the guards and ran to push a big snekke out to sea. It wouldn’t budge and men were now streaming down the beach from the monastery. Aelis thought there were at least a hundred of them, all armed, though many had not had time to even grab their shields, armour or boots and were sprinting across the hard wet sand barefoot.

Giuki’s men shoving the boats turned to meet the onrushing warriors. Those who had already got into the longships jumped out again onto the beach.

There was no order to attack or defence, just warrior against warrior with the moon turning the wide wet beach into a bridge of light on which men fought to decide who stayed on the earthly side and who passed over into the afterlife.

Aelis was terrified and shrank down in her longship.

A face popped up over the side. She recognised it. It was the big Viking, the fat one she had seen at Leshii’s camp and who had led her to the confessor’s torture. He peered at her in disbelief. Aelis didn’t hesitate. She jumped down from the ship into the sea on the side away from the Viking, falling into waist-high water.

She ran. The berserkers she’d seen at Paris were shoving the drakkar out into the waves. She had to warn Giuki that his boat was being stolen or she would never get to Helgi. She grabbed at the back of the nearest Viking she saw. ‘Your ship is-’

She never finished the sentence. The man spun round and smashed his fist into her face. White light splintered her vision and she went spinning to the sand. It was Kylfa, whose brother she had killed.

‘There’s my weregild, whore.’

He drew his knife and jumped on top of her. She regained her vision, though it was a blur, the beach was cold on her back, the moon danced behind the man’s shoulder. The man raised his knife and stabbed it down, but then something happened that Aelis did not understand. The man’s arm disappeared, there was a flood of red, a scream and he fell away from her.

A big arm was round her, bundling her towards the drakkar.

‘You should choose your friends more carefully, lady,’ said Ofaeti. She looked back at the sand. The arm of the man who had attacked her was lying five paces from his body and the top of his skull was caved in at the front from a second axe blow.

‘They are stealing your ship! They are stealing you ship!’ screamed Aelis as she was bundled down the beach.

A couple of Giuki’s warriors heard her and came sprinting.

Ofaeti heaved her over the low side of the longship, where Fastarr took charge of her. Then he turned to face the men rushing towards him. The first ran into his shield as if into a wall and bounced back into the man behind. Ofaeti sunk his axe into the first man’s head, released it and drew his knife to stab the second through the belly.

Aelis got to her feet, her senses scrambled. She stared up at the monastery. A light was there but not like any light she had ever seen. It was as if the moon had plunged into the body of the building and was now shining from within it. Again she heard that howl. Where was it coming from? She found herself answering it.

‘I am here,’ she said, ‘and I am coming to you.’

Ofaeti had retrieved his axe and was in the boat as it slipped free of the sand, but four of Giuki’s Vikings had followed him in. One ran towards Aelis, his axe high, and she cringed, but he went straight past her, smashing the axe into the ropes that tied the rudder to the back of the ship. In a couple of blows he’d cut them and made the boat unsailable at anything above a crawl. Then he turned to face the berserkers.

Aelis curled up into a ball in the bottom of the ship. There was screaming, shouting, a smack next to her. The fat Viking had fallen and crashed to the boards beside her. The other berserkers were fighting fiercely but they were being overwhelmed. She saw Varn lose his axe and four of his fingers to a seax blow, but the berserker grabbed at his man and leaped over the rail of the ship into the sea with him, pushing his head under the water to drown him.

The battle on the beach was still raging, though Giuki’s men were outnumbered and giving ground towards the sea. Everywhere along the wide strand men lay, knelt or sat dying, some quietly rocking, nursing wounds to the stomach or the chest, others with no sign of damage unmoving on the sand. All around them the living fought, seax against spear, spear against sword against axe. Men staggered, screamed, hacked and were hacked. Shields were split, weapons broken, helmets were struck from heads to lie battered in the sand. Warriors were swinging at each other like drunks, some pausing to catch their breath halfway through an encounter; fighters on both sides wheezing and panting until they were strong enough to renew the fight or until someone cut them down from behind.

Giuki had two swords, parrying with one and attacking with the other in the Frankish style. Three men lay dead at his feet, though he was fighting a wearying encounter with a spearman — unable to get close enough to strike at him, always having to look to defence first, never getting the chance to attack. The battle’s rhythm had changed. Where it had been a frenzy, now it was a sporadic and fitful thing, each man thinking more of his own security than his enemy’s harm.

On the longship, though, the fight was still fierce. Two men crashed past Aelis down the length of the boat. Both had lost their weapons and were wrestling, kicking and biting. A spear stabbed into the deck by her thigh. A berserker ran through a man right in front of her, and she watched him fall and die at her feet, the berserker cursing as he struggled to free his sword from the corpse.

There was a judder and the boat tipped sideways. Aelis realised it was almost free of the beach. She forced herself to her feet — she needed to get to Giuki. She leaped for the side of the drakkar but a berserker caught her in one hand despite panting like a dog coming in from the hunt. The berserkers on the boat had finished off Giuki’s men but they had paid a high price. Only four of them were left. The fat Viking had got up from where he’d fallen but he was bent double. At first she thought he was hurt but she saw he was only panting with exhaustion, fighting to regain his breath.

How long had the fight been going on? It seemed for ever. The beach was strewn with the wounded and the dying. The sides had now parted and stood facing each other, almost too weary to even insult each other. One warrior actually sat down, eyes on his enemy twenty paces away but catching his breath while he had the chance. Then the fight was renewed as if the men were fresh to it. Aelis saw terrible sights: a man impaled by a spear, his legs pumping like a bug on a pin, a man crawling for his weapon despite his hand being cut off.

Then a voice: ‘Hold! I ask for peace!’ It was Giuki.

The sides were glad of the rest and backed away from each other. Giuki moved between the warriors. His shield had only one plank remaining on its boss and his remaining sword was bent almost into an L. Other warriors were in the same condition, trying to straighten their weapons with their feet but finding no purchase on the sand.

‘Brothers, we have fought a good scrap, but now it seems that the profit in it is over. There’ll be none of us left by morning. Surely this is the time to call a truce. Make peace even. You’re good foes, lads; you could become good friends. Freyr knows we could do with your numbers now.’

A man from the other side put up his hand, panting and shaking his head. ‘There is too much blood here to forget.’

‘On both sides. We have served each other amply.’

Ofaeti touched Aelis’s arm. ‘We are too few now to sail this boat. Come away. I offer you safety and a guarantee you will not be raped.’ His voice was low but insistent.

Aelis shook free of him. ‘I will not be sold by pirates,’ she said. ‘I will stay here in the ship.’

‘You will be sold, lady, one way or the other, as all women are, high-born or low. You are unusual, however, because you get to choose your seller.’

Giuki was addressing the warriors on the beach again: ‘We were many men when this battle began. Now we have a hundred men, sixty between us truly able. It’s time to act together brothers, though the blood we have spilled makes that difficult.’

Aelis spoke to Ofaeti: ‘You are in my grip. Each side thinks you belong to the other. While they do, you live. As soon as they discover you are interlopers you will die.’

Ofaeti smiled. ‘You would have been a power behind the Frankish throne, lady.’

‘I still intend to be,’ said Aelis.

‘You have been in my care once and come to no harm. Be in it again.’

‘I am going to Helgi.’

Ofaeti laughed. ‘As are we. Let us guard you. I promise you can choose the king I sell you to. We can even try to ransom you to your brother. Come on. These are wild men and will slit each other’s throats by morning. We can walk off this beach while they are busy with other things.’

Aelis saw the sense in what Ofaeti said. She looked at the men Giuki was negotiating with. Could he control them as he controlled he own? And Ofaeti had acted with decency in the past — and when he had no profit in so doing. He had thought her a slave and treated her kindly. How much more care would he take of her now her true identity was known to him?

She let Ofaeti take her hand. Creeping to the side of the boat furthest from the carnage on the beach, they climbed down, Fastarr, Egil and Astarth following, their eyes flicking back to their dead fellows on the boat.

All the time the two groups of warriors were talking. ‘We must think on this,’ said a tall Viking. ‘You are the aggressors here and owe us compensation. There can be no deal without it, for the sake of our honour.’

Giuki nodded. ‘We have a girl with us, a Frankish princess. She is worth many pounds of silver in ransom.’

‘Where is she?’

Giuki looked around. ‘Aelis, lady, show yourself.’

‘Aelis?’

‘Yes, of the line of that bastard Robert the Strong.’

‘We’ve been looking for her the length of this coast. Hand her over and you are our brothers. Our seeress will bless you. We travel with Munin, that wide-seeing lady.’

‘I have heard of her. It’s painful to part with this girl because Helgi of the Rus wants her for his bride. But ours is the offence and you must have her.’

Aelis was amazed at the sudden courtesy with which the Vikings addressed each other, though she noticed they still kept a wary distance of thirty or so paces between the bands.

All this time Ofaeti, Aelis and the other berserkers kept moving. They were fifty paces away from the two sides when Giuki called after them: ‘Do I know you, brothers? You are no Danes and yet you’re not with us, either. Where are you going with the lady?’

All faces turned to Ofaeti. He drew his sword.

‘I am Thiorek, called Ofaeti, son of Thetmar, war chief of the Horda. I have lived well and in many battles, but now, I think, my time is over. Come on, lads, step forward. Let’s take each other to the All Father’s hall.’

‘Thiorek? What are you doing here?’

Aelis could almost touch the dismay in Giuki’s voice. She guessed the fat man had a reputation as a great warrior.

‘Ship-stealing, same as you,’ said Ofaeti.

‘And making off with our hostage,’ said another voice.

‘That girl is promised as weregild,’ said Giuki. ‘She is not yours to take.’

‘And yet I’m taking her,’ said Ofaeti, ‘unless you are so jealous of your dead friends here on the beach that you would follow them to the halls of the slain. Step forward. The All Father has a place at his mead bench for you.’

Ofaeti had three men with him. Those still standing on the beach numbered nearer sixty. They were exhausted from the fighting, a rabble with bent swords, broken spears and shattered shields, but were too many for so few to stand against.

‘We will come on,’ said Giuki. ‘What did I tell you, Danes? We are brothers. No sooner do we discuss it than the gods give us a reason to fight together.’

The Vikings did not charge. The battle had seen them spread across the wide beach and some had sat to listen to their leaders talking. But all now stood, all picked up their weapons, or the remains of their weapons, and came towards Ofaeti and Aelis with purpose in their movement.

‘You belong to the vala, girl, to the seeress. There’s nowhere to run,’ said a voice.

For a second Aelis considered running, but it would have been futile. The beach was too long. The Vikings might be tired but they would catch her sooner or later. The nearest cover was the monastery five hundred paces away or a treeline four times that distance on the headland. The route to the monastery was blocked and she didn’t even know if there was a way off the flats if she ran for the trees. Behind Giuki were some dunes maybe two hundred paces away, but she couldn’t run through the Vikings.

There was a noise from along the beach, faint, almost like a breath of wind, though there was none. It was like the tug of the wind at an ill-set sail or distant thunder. The Vikings didn’t notice it but Aelis recognised the sound instantly. It was the cry of a horse, but not just any horse. She knew its voice, even from so far away.

‘Kill the thieves!’ said a Dane.

‘Those are the bastards who’ve been skulking about killing our men in the monastery,’ said another.

‘Not me,’ said Ofaeti, ‘but come forward. I’ll kill you without the skulking. You might want to get another sword, though; yours looks like it’s taken a clout too many, son.’ Ofaeti and the three berserkers at his side brandished their weapons. ‘Come on, boys. You can serve me my first drink in the afterlife, because we’re all going there tonight.’

Aelis’ eyes were drawn to the dark dunes two hundred paces away. At first she thought it was just an effect of the moonlight. The dunes seemed to ripple. Then the horse cried again and there was a sound like thunder, like the beating of many drums. She said a word under her breath — ‘Moselle’ — and the Franks came on at the charge across the hard slick sand.