The Amber Road

XXIX

Norvasund

They came in the night. No beacons flared. Ballista was awake, but the first he knew of their arrival was the northern picket boat flying in from the Little Belt, her crew hailing wildly.

There was a certain chaos as torches flared, horns rang and leaders shouted. Men bundled out of tents and shelters to rush to their posts. The five longships were run out. Maximus helped Ballista arm. Around them, in the guttering lights on the top of the hill, members of the hearth-troop did the same for each other. Riders were despatched north and south to light the warning signals further up and down the coast. Others spurred away inland to bring word to the tribes of the Cimbric peninsula.

Over the black waters Bronding warships stole down into Norvasund. Ballista counted six or seven. Maximus saw eight or nine. More moved out in the darkness of the sea.

The lights and commotion on the waterfront would have told the enemy that surprise was not with them. Nevertheless one ship slid to within long bowshot of the sea barrage. Volleys whickered out from the two nearest of Ballista’s boats. The arrows could be heard, but their fall was unseen in the dark. The enemy vessel backed, turned and followed the others out again.

In the greyness of pre-dawn Ballista ate porridge and waited for their return. The enemy had come up the inlet and moored against the eastern shore no more than half a mile away. Some around him — Rikiar the Vandal, Mord, son of Morcar, and the Heathobard known as Dunnere Tethered-Hound — had urged an attack from the land. Ballista had overruled them. The numbers of the fiend were unknown. Night attacks were notorious for confusion. The defenders would hold to their plan.

The light was gaining. Ballista put the bowl aside. It was always difficult to eat before a fight. He stood to study the disposition of his forces.

Across the water Castricius had about four hundred men under arms. Should the little Roman fall, Diocles was to take over. The defences there were incomplete. To their rear was nothing except the shallow stream.

Ballista ran his gaze over the inlet. The sea barrage was finished, more than forty great oaks lashed into place. The five warships, the Warig among them, each crewed by fifty Angles, were under the orders of Ivar Horse-Prick. Ballista had appointed Eadric, son of eorl Eadwine, as the second-in-command there. He was young, but he showed good sense, and both he and his father were held in high regard by the Angles. For this section of the defences the only thing lacking was that the line of sharp stakes concealed below the waterline ran only halfway across the sound from the eastern bank.

On this side, below where Ballista stood, the palisade was complete. Behind it were just over three hundred warriors commanded by Wada the Short and a Heathobard called Grim. Up on the hill, things were less good. The defences had not even been started. In the course of the night, since the alarm, a rough barricade had been thrown together from baggage, stacked timber and what remained of the village. Running along the crest, it would somewhat hinder any enemy advancing out along the headland. Ballista had kept most of his hearth-troop around him: Maximus and Tarchon, Rikiar and the Rugian pilot, the atheling Mord and six more young Angles of the nobility, Dunnere Tethered-Hound and five other Heathobards, fifteen Olbians, and eight Romans, including the bald mutineer Heliodorus. It amounted to only forty-one shields, but, the young Angles aside, they were all proven warriors. The men from the south had acquired much equipment from the Brondings of Widsith. Clad in this northern armour, intermingled with the others, there was little sign that they were from the imperium.

It had been eight days since the coming of the hooded man and his prisoner. Another two or three, and the defences would have been accomplished. Four or five more and there would have been caltrops, hidden traps, perhaps even artillery. Still, as the Greeks said, it was no use crying over the stubble on a pretty boy’s cheeks. When some things are gone, like youth, they are gone.

After the man calling himself Vandrad had spoken, Ballista had sent everyone except Maximus and Tarchon away. He had listened to what the captive had been forced to say. Then, his deep hood still hiding his identity, Vandrad had departed.

The prisoner, now masked as well as bound, was being guarded by the maimed Olbian guide Hieroson and a Heathobard called Vermund. They were to remain out of the fighting. Should the day go badly, they were to get their charge away. A rowing boat was ready. They were to go inland to a village of the Chali. From there they were to skirt back to the coast, get a boat from the Aviones, and take the captive to eorl Eadwine on Varinsey. It would be a heavy task, but the eorl would know what had to be done. Hieroson and Vermund had taken great oaths. They would do this or die in the trying.

Ballista waited. It was hard enough to face what might be the end, even without the waiting. But, always before battle there was the waiting, the awful time when fear crept into a man’s heart, tried to steal his courage. He thought of his sons, the awfulness of never seeing them again. He thought of his wife, and of Kadlin.

The sun had not yet crossed the horizon. To the east the sky was a smooth band of purple-gold. Arching back from there its vault was ribbed with darker purple clouds. In the distance the tiny black dots of a flock of crows fluttered north-east towards where the enemy lay.

‘What if they put some ashore elsewhere?’ Mord asked. ‘If they attacked from inland as well as from down Norvasund it would go badly for us.’

Ballista leaned down and fussed Mord’s dog. ‘They may not have the numbers.’ He spoke reassuringly, for all those standing about to hear. ‘And they do not have the time. They know Oslac and your father will be here soon.’

Was that true? Ballista did not know. Neither Oslac nor Morcar had any love for him. Oslac had looked like he wanted to kill him outside the feast, when he saw him with Kadlin. But surely Oslac would not sacrifice this many of their people out of personal animosity. And Morcar was with their father. He would have to be seen to do the right thing.

The sun was still not up. The colour had leached out of the morning. The westerly breeze had shifted the clouds, bringing a trail of white smudges against the blue sky overhead. It was going to be a fine day.

The call of a horn. The deep echo of a drum. The whole of Norvasund was filling with ships — sixty, seventy, still more. Soon it was as if a man could walk dry-shod from shore to shore.

‘Allfather!’ someone muttered in the hush.

As the sun rose, it picked out innumerable standards above the fleet. The bull with silver horns of the Brondings of Abalos, the double-headed beast of the Geats of Solfell, the gold-on-black lion of the Wylfings of Hindafell, the killer and the slain of the Dauciones; each banner repeated again and again. The islands and eastern Scadinavia must have been stripped of fighting men.

In the centre, shielded on all sides by his vassals, flew the enormous black standard with the wolf Fenris picked out in silver, the sign of Unferth, the man who would be Amber Lord of the North.

Ballista’s eyes flicked here and there, trying to count the ships, estimate their size, calculate the numbers. At least three thousand men, most likely yet more; perhaps as many as four thousand. There had not been an armada like this on the Suebian Sea in his lifetime, not since Starkad and Isangrim defeated the Goths. If only there had been time to build artillery. The slaughter it would have brought down in these confined waters on those close-packed ships.

Achilles, hold your hands over us … Allfather, turn your baleful grey eye on them … Different prayers rose in divergent tongues. Even the toughened men of the hearth-troop were shaken.

‘A lot of the fuckers,’ Maximus said. ‘Makes them hard to miss.’

Men laughed, some immoderately because of the tension.

‘The Hibernian is right.’ Ballista pitched his voice to carry, tried to make it exude confidence. ‘Every missile will find a home. They cannot all fight at once. They will get in the way of each other. Their ships will foul each other. And they will burn. Light the fires!’

Fuck, this is not good, Ballista thought. One thousand men against four times that number, with only a few stakes and a flimsy barricade to even the odds. Even if they survived the first onslaught, Oslac and Morcar would have to get here soon. But Ballista still wondered whether they would come at all. The former had reason to hate him, and the latter had sacrificed as many before. Ballista looked at his own white draco writhing above his head. How many men would Unferth send up here to avenge his son? Would this be the end? A stand with forty men on this windy little hill?

Across the water, the sound of the horn rang out again. The drum beat a different rhythm. Slowly the enemy fleet opened up, like the carapace of some massive water insect. The ships flying the standards with the killer and the slain man nosed into the eastern bank. The small figures of Dauciones warriors could be seen jumping ashore. Ballista reckoned there to be about a thousand of them. Castricius and Diocles would have much to do to hold out. Further away down the inlet, ten longships carrying the bull with silver horns of Abalos — half the Bronding contingent — moved to the nearer bank. These warriors would have a longer march to come to the base of the headland where Ballista stood.

As the warriors disembarked on either shore, the rest of the fleet advanced in two divisions. First came twenty longships of the Geats, the double-headed beast of Solfell fluttering above each of them. They were in line abreast filling the water, rowing straight for the sea barrage. Behind them were another twenty vessels. These flew the rampant lion of Hindafell. In two ranks, these Wylfings were angling towards the palisade at the foot of the hill held by Wada the Short and Grim the Heathobard.

Ballista looked for the largest battle standard with the silver wolf on black. Unferth himself with ten longships remained further out as a reserve. Briefly, and with no real hope, Ballista scanned beyond, towards the two tiny islands and the mouth of Norvasund. As he expected, the sun shone on empty water. There was no realistic chance of any relief for at least another day, maybe more, as the beacons had not tracked the approach of the enemy.

The enemy had come down the Little Belt from the north. They must have slipped through the Sound between Hedinsey and Scadinavia the night before last and spent the previous day lying up somewhere on the west coast of Scadinavia. It had been a dark night when they made their passage through the Sound, but it was strange they had not been seen by any of Morcar’s watchers on Hedinsey. A dreadful foreboding gripped Ballista. Even Morcar could not have added such a greater betrayal to his earlier treacheries.

Ballista pushed his fears to one side. Long ago, at the siege of Novae, his old commander Gallus had taught him that an essential aspect of command was to ignore what cannot be altered. There was more than enough to worry about here in Norvasund today.

The Geat longships were picking up speed, their oars rising and falling, white water curling from their prows. As they came into range, volleys of bright fletched arrows shot out from the five guardships and fell on and around them like swarms of wasps. Some oars swung dead in their wake, but their speed did not slacken.

Ballista stared at the deceptive surface about twenty paces from the barrage where the stakes were hidden. Surely they were there? Now; it must be now. With a wonderful suddenness, a Geat ship juddered to a stop. Another veered sideways. Even from such a distance Ballista could see the planks torn from its side, men thrown into the water. Over near the far bank, a third crashed to a halt, then a fourth. Three others banked down hard, the water creaming as their oars fought the water to bring them to a standstill.

As the rest closed with the barrier, Ballista saw what they intended. At full speed, just before impact, their crews scrambled towards the stern. For four or five, it did no good. They ran bow on into the oaks or tangled in the untrimmed branches. The raised prows of the others slid up over the floating trunks. The warriors piled forward. For a couple the momentum was not enough. They slid backwards. Three more stuck fast. Men jumped out on to the treacherous, shifting barrage. As they hauled at the ships, from both banks arrows sliced among them.

Three of the Geat ships scraped over the obstacle. Ballista’s five longships were alongside in moments, men pouring over the gunnels. One of the Geats held out for a time, but when surrounded by four vessels its end was inevitable.

With fire arrows from Castricius’s men on the far bank arcing down at them, the remaining Geat longboats attempted to pick up men from the wrecked vessels and pull back some way down Norvasund.

There was no time to celebrate. The boats of the Wylfings had reached the palisade on the nearer shore. They ran into a storm of missiles. Using the rising ground, Wada’s three hundred men shot and threw everything to hand without cease. The plunging shafts and stones swept the decks. Flames blossomed briefly, before they were stamped out. The frontage allowed only ten longships to come prow on to the wooden defences. The bravest Wylfings hurled themselves at the rampart. Some got over; most were hurled back into their boats or down into the shallows. Those who made it inside were surrounded and hacked apart. Soon, those in charge had had enough. The boats backed water. Missiles flew back and forth, smoke trails coiled through the air, men still suffered and died, but it could bring no decisive result.

Ballista gazed over to the far side of Norvasund. Those under Castricius were not yet engaged. But things did not bode well. Whatever his orders from Unferth, the leader of the Dauciones was exercising more discretion than the other tribal chiefs. He had formed up the majority of his warriors in a shieldwall just out of bowshot. The backs of a smaller group could be seen disappearing into the trees. Ballista had no doubt they were setting off on a flank march which would bring them around behind Castricius’s position, where there were no defences apart from a shallow stream. Attacked from all sides except the water, there would be no salvation for Castricius’s men. The professional in Ballista could not help admire the unknown leader of the Dauciones.

‘They are coming,’ Maximus said.

The Brondings were about three hundred paces away. They were jostling into a shield-burg at the base of the headland. Behind their overlapping shields, numbers were difficult to judge. Exactitude mattered little. Ballista’s hearth-troop had to be outnumbered by something like ten to one. A slope and a makeshift barricade would make no difference. This could only end one way.

Ballista searched around for Hieroson and Vermund the Heathobard. They were down near the rowing boat with the prisoner. Ballista considered sending them away. He could join them, row to safety with Maximus and Tarchon. He dismissed the nithing thought. He would not run, and if he sent anyone away now, it would undermine the fragile morale of the hearth-troop. Things would have to play out as the Norns had spun.

Rikiar the Vandal raised his voice:

‘Let us make our drawn swords glitter

You who stain wolf’s teeth with blood;

Now that the fish of the valleys thrive,

Let us perform brave deeds.

Here before sunset we will

Make noisy clamour of spears.’

The warriors hoomed their approval, slowly beat their weapons on the linden boards of their shields. Ballista felt tears prick his eyes with pride at being one of this brave, doomed band.

Mord’s hunting dog was baying. Ballista spoke gently to the youth. ‘Are you content with this? I forgot your grandmother was a Bronding.’

The boy grinned. ‘My mother is from the Eutes, and my father is an Angle. I am a Himling atheling, like you.’

Ballista grinned back.

The Brondings were advancing. When they came in range, Ballista shouted for those with bows to shoot. It did little good — the shields of the Brondings soon quivered with shafts — but the hearth-troop had more arrows than they could use today, and they would not need them tomorrow. It made them feel they were doing something.

The shield-burg came on slowly, but to those waiting it took all too little time.

Twenty paces out, the shield-burg broke open. With a roar, the Brondings rushed forward. Now arrows found their mark. Men were snatched backwards, as if they had run into an invisible rope. But far too few to break the charge.

Ballista carefully weighted then threw a stone the size of his fist. He saw it smash into a shield. Its owner staggered, but came on. Ballista dragged out Battle-Sun.

A warrior grasped the barricade with his shield hand, swung himself up. Ballista back-handed his blade into the man’s leading leg. He collapsed at Ballista’s feet. Another hurdled the obstacle. Ballista got Battle-Sun into his guts. The dying Bronding fell into him, driving him back. Ballista took a blow from an unseen assailant to the right shoulder.

All along the line the Brondings were swarming over. Ballista saw Dunnere the Heathobard cut down. Somewhere, a dog howled in pain.

‘Back! Form on me!’ Ballista retrieved his weapon, took quick steps back to the young Angle holding the white draco. Maximus was on one shoulder, Tarchon the other.

Often in battle there came a pause. Having cleared the barricade, the Brondings held off as they lapped around the defenders.

A tight knot of men, completely surrounded. Perhaps twenty left; half the hearth-troop gone. Young Mord howling defiance over Ballista’s shoulder. An Olbian muttering ‘Let us be men’ in Greek. No point in trying to run, begging would do nothing. Die like a man among men. The heartbreaking sorrow of never seeing his sons again.

A tremor, like wind through a cornfield, among the Brondings. Heads turning, anxious words.

Battle-Sun shook in Ballista’s hands. The Rugian pilot was dead at his feet, near cut in half. Ballista’s right shoulder stung. The mail was broken, blood hot on his arm. He was panting with pain, or shock, or effort.

The ring of Brondings backed away. Then, at a command, turned and ran, clambering over the ruined barricade.

Ballista and the survivors stared at each other, not yet daring to hope.

‘Look, out to sea.’ It was Maximus, keen-eyed as ever.

Ballista looked, struggling to comprehend the turn of events. The seaworthy Geat longships were retreating, the Wylfings following. On the far shore, Dauciones were running back to their boats.

‘Fuck me,’ Maximus said. ‘You never would have thought it.’

A great forest of masts out at the entrance to Norvasund. Any number of longships, under oars, coming down the Little Belt from the north. Banners flew above them: the White Horse of Hedinsey, the Deer and Fawn of Varinsey and the Three-headed Man of the Wrosns. Four of the Bronding reserve were swinging out line abreast to delay them. But the largest enemy ship, the one with the huge black flag showing Fenris the wolf in silver, was pulling out of Norvasund and away south into the Little Belt. Unferth was fleeing from the fleet of the Himlings.

Morcar stood at the edge, where solid ground gave way to mud. The other leaders of the fleet stood a little apart; his brother Oslac, eorl Eadwine, Hathkin son of Heoroweard, and Hrothgar of the Wrosns. The marsh was no distance inland from Norvasund. As they and the crowd waited for the cowards, he listened to the wind hissing through the alder scrub, and turned things over in his mind.

Mercy, in the two days since the battle, had been on everyone’s lips, along with forgiveness and reconciliation. Morcar had used the words as assiduously as any. It had been necessary. Half the Geats had got away, and three ships of the Wylfings, but not a single vessel of the Dauciones had escaped south down the Little Belt, and the only Bronding longship to win clear had been that carrying Unferth himself. Conspicuous mercy and many assurances had been required to bring some three thousand defeated and trapped warriors and their eorls back into allegiance to the Himlings. But mercy was a virtue which all too easily could be interpreted as weakness. It had to be balanced by severity. Politics had precluded severity to the losers, but it had to be exhibited. The cowards among the victors would provide that display.

Morcar felt strangely alone. It was not so much that the other leaders were standing at a slight distance, the crowd further away still, more that neither his two particular confidants nor his son were at his side. It had been essential that Glaum, son of Wulfmaer, stay on Hedinsey. Someone reliable had to be with Isangrim, otherwise the old cyning was all too susceptible to malign influences. Swerting Snake-Tongue had been a long time in the west. He should have returned by now. Perhaps it had proved necessary for Swerting to travel into Gaul to the court of Postumus. If so, that might not be good. And Mord had vanished with Dernhelm.

In the distance a guard of warriors could be seen through the oaks bringing the convicted to the marsh.

Where had Dernhelm gone? Why had Mord gone with him? The very day of the battle, Dernhelm had retaken command of his longship Warig, quietly gathered his hearth-troop, Mord among them, and slipped away. The last time Dernhelm had vanished he had returned in triumph with the head of Widsith. Now most likely he had slunk back to Hedinsey, to their father. Glaum could deal with that.

Morcar smiled. Norvasund had been a triumph to rank with any of those won by the Himlings of the past, with those of Hjar over the Franks or Starkad over the Heruli and Goths. The scops would sing of it for generations. And it was not Dernhelm’s but Morcar’s own. Morcar had ordered the beacon fires not be lit when Unferth’s fleet was spotted in the Sound. Instead he had trailed the enemy. Fast ships had summoned Oslac and Hrothgar. They had met with him off the north coast of Varinsey. Under his command, they had pursued Unferth down the Little Belt, caught him at the entrance to Norvasund, and there crushed his pretensions to the title of Amber Lord.

Doubtless the scops would make much of Morcar being first to board a Bronding longship, of how he had cleared its prow, struck down five warriors with his own hand. It had been a creditable feat of arms, but it was nothing compared with the leadership he had shown.

It had always been about leadership, everything, all the hard things he had done. All of it had been for the good of the Angles. A people could have only one leader, and the theoden must be the best man. It was a fact of nature. Froda had been vainglorious and thoughtless. Froda had been their father’s favourite. A man of no substance, as cyning he would have brought disaster to the Himlings and the Angles. Eadwulf had been fickle, drunken, intemperate in all things. It would have been better if he had been executed, as Morcar had intended, but his exile for the murder of Froda had dealt with Eadwulf Evil-Child. Morcar claimed no credit for Dernhelm being sent away into the imperium. It had been luck, or the will of the Norns. But the betrayal of Arkil in Gaul had been a second masterstroke. It had been a difficult decision, not reached without consideration. That so many valuable Angle warriors had had to be sacrificed with Arkil had been unfortunate. Yet leadership was indivisible. It demanded hard choices. When Isangrim stepped down, as the old man soon must, Oslac would stand aside. The Angles would be united under one Himling ruler. Morcar knew he would give them the leadership they needed.

All had been in place, and then Dernhelm had returned. Isangrim doted on his youngest son, doted on Dernhelm in a way their father had never doted on Morcar himself. Dernhelm had to be removed again. Unsurprisingly, Oslac had shown himself weak. Morcar had arranged for his brother to find his whore of a wife alone with her old lover outside the feast, and Oslac had done nothing but whine and quote gloomy lines about betrayal from the verse of the Romans. Still, the Norns had given Morcar a new thread. Back on Hedinsey, the imperial envoy Zeno had made a clandestine approach. The repulsive little Greek claimed Dernhelm was carrying secret orders from Gallienus, orders to overthrow their father and take the throne himself. When confronted with documentary evidence of such treachery, of attempted parricide, the senile affections of Isangrim must give way. There could be no punishment for the hateful crime except death.

The condemned were herded down through the poles which marked the sacred site. Morcar felt no more sympathy for them than did the bleached skulls, the visible symbols of ancient piety, which were set on top of every one of the ash stakes. Each of the six men had hung back from the fight, had thrown down their swords like nithings. The cowardice of each had endangered their companions.

At the edge of the marsh, Morcar spoke the ritual words. ‘Deeds of shame should be buried out of the sight of men, stamped down, trodden deep. Take them.’

One by one, the bound men were thrown into the marsh. Some struggled and sobbed, others lay still; all alike again unmanned by the weakness that had brought them to this. The wattled hurdles were brought down, and they were drowned.

The crowd — the loyal Angles and Wrosns, and the Brondings, Wylfings and the rest returned to allegiance — watched in solemn silence.

Morcar turned away, satisfied. No one would mistake the Himlings’ mercy of the last two days as weakness.