The Amber Road

XXX

The Island of Abalos

The new moon had risen. It was a clear night. From the copse, Ballista watched the isolated farm about half a mile away. Behind the dark line of the fence and the outbuildings, the high ridge of the hall was silhouetted against the azure sky. Grey smoke puffed up, smudged the stars and was pulled away to the east. Chinks of light came from the shutters. Now and then one of the doors was opened, and the sudden spill of golden torchlight threw everything else into blackness. When his night vision returned, Ballista could see the dark standard flying from the gable. He could not make out its insignia, but he knew it bore Fenris the wolf in silver.

They had sailed direct from Norvasund. The wind on the starboard beam, the current had helped them south down the Little Belt. The westerly had remained constant as they steered south-east around Varinsey and the islands of Latris, then north-east past Cape Arcona and across the open sea to Abalos. It had been a fast passage, just three days.

Behind Ballista, someone smothered a sneeze. It should not matter. They had come up from the south. The wind was across their faces. Ballista raised himself on his elbow, and looked back. The men were blackened and muffled, their outlines broken and indistinct in the banded moonlight under the trees. A Black-Harii such as Wada the Short could have found little at which to complain. After Olbia and Ouiadoua Bank, even the Romans and Olbians must be becoming accustomed to night fighting. At least those who survived.

The hearth-troop had been hit hard at Norvasund. Twenty-three had fallen there: Dunnere Tethered-Hound and another three Heathobards, the Rugian pilot, four Romans, seven Olbians and seven of the young Angle nobles. All had been cut down around Ballista on the hill, except two Angles who had met their end fighting under Wada at the palisade, and another lost from one of the boats commanded by Ivar Horse-Prick. When all those left had been gathered, just thirty-six men had filed on to the Warig, several of them carrying wounds.

The previous afternoon, they had put in at a deserted stretch of coast near the main port of Abalos, hidden the Warig in a creek. Mord had volunteered to go on foot into the settlement. His grandmother was a Bronding. He had relatives there who would not betray him. Eadric, son of Eadwine, had gone with him. To look peaceful, they had taken off their helmets and coats of mail, left behind their shields and bows. It had taken much courage from both of them.

The young men had returned in the gloaming. The news they brought could not have been better. Unferth had withdrawn from the port. He was with his sworn companions in his hall on Gnitaheath.

Mord had led them to this concealed vantage point. Ballista looked up through the branches at the moon. They must have lain here for four hours or more. At first, messengers had come and gone up the road to the hall, riding hard. Unferth must be trying to gather what support remained to him, plan his next move. After Norvasund, Ballista could not imagine what that might be. But a cornered animal was always dangerous.

Now the doors of the hall had not opened and there had been no movement for some time. The light seeping around the shutters had dimmed to almost nothing.

Ballista whispered for Castricius, Ivar Horse-Prick and Wada to come close. He outlined his plan. Like those at Gudme, the hall had two main doors. They were situated opposite each other in the long walls. Ballista would take the one facing west with ten men. Castricius with the same number would take the other. There might be smaller doors. Ivar and five warriors were to ring the north of the building, Wada and the remaining five the south. They should stay at a distance and be vigilant. Some halls had underground passages designed for those inside to escape. When they were all in position, Ballista would call on Unferth to surrender, or those around him to give him up. Most probably, these would be refused. If the defenders were so minded, Ballista’s men would let any women and children leave. Then they would break open the doors. They had brought axes, but it would be better if they could find timbers among the farm buildings with which to batter down the doors. If all else failed, they had tinderboxes.

With not much noise, they separated into the four groups. Huddled around Ballista were Maximus, Tarchon, Rikiar the Vandal, the Romans Diocles and Heliodorus, and Mord, with four other young Angles. There was no telling how many fighting men were in the hall with Unferth. The thirty-four of Ballista’s party might be outnumbered, possibly by some margin. Surprise would be lost by the summons, but it could not be helped.

Ballista smiled at Mord in the gloom. The youth grinned back. Ballista thought of what lay ahead of the atheling. Vermund the Heathobard and Hieroson the Olbian were back at the boat with the prisoner. When they returned to Gudme and the court of the cyning, when finally the captive was unmasked, the words he would be forced to repeat would strike at the heart of Mord’s young life. If, of course, Mord or any of them lived to return to Varinsey. Ballista put it all out of his mind.

There was nothing to be gained by delay. Do not think, just act. Ballista got to his feet. The others got up, too. He led them out of the wood.

In the blue moonlight, they jogged along a hedge which divided two meadows. They could hear nothing over the thump of their boots, the creak of leather, their grunted breathing. Ballista’s bow and quiver banged against his back, his shield dragged at his arm.

Silent on great white wings, an owl glided overhead.

From nowhere, Ballista half remembered a line from Plato: ‘The greatest hunting is the hunting of men.’

The ridge of the hall loomed closer.

No alarm rang out.

Ballista reached the fence. With his dagger, he cut the rope securing the wicket gate. He slipped into the farmyard, the others at his back.

The homely smells of woodsmoke and animal dung, the reek of a midden. Hard-trodden earth underfoot. The sounds of a horse shifting in its stable. Still no outcry. No dogs or geese loose to give a warning. Ballista angled to the left, close under the overhanging eaves. He stopped before the western door. Dark shapes around him. Ivar and his men passed behind.

Ballista whispered for Rikiar and Heliodorus to look for a timber which could serve as a ram. They disappeared into the outbuildings. Ballista waited. So far, so good. They had outrun the news of their coming, outrun all expectation. Unferth had no sentries posted. He had arrived on Abalos but hours before them. No one would have considered such close pursuit.

Heliodorus spoke in Ballista’s ear. Beams could be pulled from a cowshed, but it would make a noise. Ballista said they would do it later.

Ballista drew Battle-Sun. The serpentine pattern in the blade shimmered in the moonlight. Alone, he walked to the door. It was tall and wide. There was a pile of dry chickweed to one side. He put his ear against the boards; why, he was not sure. The sound of a man snoring, of more than one, reverberating in the big space.

Ballista straightened up and struck the pommel of Battle-Sun against the door. The boards jumped and rattled. The sound boomed into the hall, out over the yard. He struck again.

‘Unferth! You are surrounded. It is over. Surrender.’

Shouts from inside. The crash of a table or bench overturning. Feet drumming on the floorboards. The scrape of steel; weapons being tugged free.

Ballista stepped back, locked his shield with the others. They crouched in the night, linden boards well out and angled upwards. If the door opened, the first response might well be a flight of steel-tipped shafts.

Above, a shutter squealed and swung open from a previously unseen window in the thatch. So, the hall had a loft. The head and shoulders of a man in the opening. The face glittered with cold, immobile metal.

‘Who is there?’ The mask gave an inhuman quality to the voice.

‘Dernhelm, son of Isangrim, the one the Romans call Ballista.’

The carved face looked down. ‘The killer of my son.’

‘You know me then. Unferth, do not make your followers share your death. Show yourself a man. Release them from their oaths. Give yourself up.’

There was something uncanny about the silent, unmoving regard of the silvered mask.

Ballista raised his voice. ‘You Brondings and any others in there, your leader has no more luck. Hand him over, and you will go free.’

‘No!’ A shout came from the floor of the hall, behind the door. ‘We gave our sword-oath. We would be dishonoured.’

Keeping his eye on the upper window, Ballista addressed the unseen warrior. ‘There is no dishonour in renouncing an oath extracted under compulsion, an oath to an evil man.’

The voice answered from behind the door. ‘Save your cunning arguments for yourself, Oath-breaker. We stay. Every man must give up the days that are lent to him.’

Ballista called up to where Unferth still stood in the window. ‘If there are women and children in there, we will let them depart unharmed.’

The mask nodded. ‘It is not possible to bend fate, nor stand against nature. It will be as you say.’

‘Have them come out of this door, no other.’

The mask withdrew, pulling the shutters to behind it.

They heard the bar lifted, then the door opened. Only the low remains of the hearth fire illuminated the cavernous interior. A dozen figures emerged: three children, nine women, one with a swaddled babe in arms. Before the door closed, Ballista saw the dull gleam of serried ranks of helms and mailcoats. Many men would die before the hall could be cleared; perhaps too many.

‘Wada, have two of your men lead them away,’ Ballista called.

Grim and another Heathobard went up to the women.

‘Wait!’ It was Maximus. ‘That one in the middle — the big one with the broad shoulders — grab her!’

The woman threw her cloak in Grim’s face. Steel flashed from a concealed blade. It cut deep into Grim’s leg. He howled as he fell. The other Heathobard hacked down the warrior disguised as a woman.

Screaming, the women and children scattered into the night. Their cries and the ways they ran vouched for the genuine nature of their gender and age.

Grim was dragged away. As his compatriot tied a tourniquet around the Heathobard’s thigh, Ballista gave new orders to Diocles.

When the Roman had vanished around the hall towards Castricius, Ballista and his men moved back into the obscurity between two farm buildings. They unslung their bows, notched arrows and trained them on the door.

From the far side of the hall came the noise of heavy things being manhandled, of loud hammering.

Ballista knew it was a terrible thing that he had decided to do, but he could see no other way.

The noise from the east side stopped. All was quiet in the farmyard, as if it were a normal night, as if awful things were not unfolding. When a cow lowed in its byre, it sounded unnaturally loud.

‘What are they doing in there?’ Mord whispered.

‘Waiting,’ Ballista said. The women would have loved ones in the hall. They would spread the news. It was only four or five miles to the port. Time was not an ally to the attackers. At any moment Fate could turn them into quarry, hunted down across a dark, alien landscape. You could never rely on Wyrd.

Diocles rounded the hall, Castricius and eight of his men in his wake. ‘All done,’ he said.

‘Nailed up tight as a vestal’s cunt,’ Castricius said. ‘I left two to keep watch.’

‘The chickweed,’ Ballista said.

Diocles darted forward. As he crossed the twenty or so paces of open ground before the doors, an arrow whipped out from the tiny window high above. It missed the soldier by a hand’s breadth. He dived under the overhanging thatch.

Sparks dropping in the darkness. A glow from under Diocles’ hunched body.

When the chickweed was well alight, Diocles leaned out and swung it high on to the thatch. It hung there. The fire in it seemed to diminish. Then little tendrils of flame snaked out across the roof.

Diocles moved away north under the protection of the drooping eaves, took a roundabout route back.

Maximus touched Ballista’s arm, pointed. Three men with torches were moving towards the southern end of the building. They threw them cartwheeling over the gable wall, then faded back into the shadows.

The weather had been dry. The west wind breathed life into the flames.

Ballista sent runners to call Wada and Ivar and their followers to him. As in the east, just two warriors were to remain at the northern and southern ends. The wounded Heathobard Grim was to remain with the latter.

‘Watch the door,’ Ballista said. There should be twenty-six men spread out around him in the darkness. Each should have his bow trained on the door. He wondered if it would be enough.

‘The daemons of death are close.’ Castricius spoke softly in Latin. In the baleful firelight, smeared with soot, he looked like one himself.

The middle of the roof was blazing fiercely, the southern end flaring up. If the women had not already done so, this ghastly beacon would raise the countryside. Would relief arrive before the fire drove the defenders out or buried them under falling timbers?

‘Watch the door,’ Ballista said.

The outlines of black figures emerged up on the roof. Balanced precariously on the beams, they hacked at the burning and smouldering thatch. The great lumps they threw down fell like molten waterfalls.

There was no need for orders. Out of the darkness, arrows flew. The defenders on the roof were illuminated by the fires. They could not see the missiles coming. One after another, shafts found their mark and figures pitched into oblivion.

Above the door, a man’s tunic caught fire. In an awful dumb-show, he beat at it with his hands, until he missed his narrow footing and crashed to earth like a northern Icarus.

After that, the defenders withdrew, and no more ventured on to the roof.

The fire roared. The heat of it was hot on Ballista’s face even at a distance. Deep in the thatch, it seemed to breathe like a great beast. There was a horrible smell, all too like roast pork. Ballista thought of the Goths before Novae, the Persians at Arete, his own at Aquileia; all the men he had seen burnt.

A deep groan from within the hall, a sharp crack, and the southern end of the roof sagged. The first of the beams had burnt through. They must come soon. No one could abide in that inferno.

‘Watch the doors.’

The words were still on Ballista’s lips when the door flew open. On an instant arrows thrummed into the opening. The two warriors pushing the doors fell transfixed by many shafts.

Looking into the hall was like looking into a scene of divine punishment yet to be tenanted. The orange glow played on the empty high seat, the first pairs of great columns. No man could be seen in the swirling smoke.

They came with a yell, out from both sides where they had been huddled against the walls. They rushed together to form a shield-burg in the doorway. They were too slow, too clumsy in their desperation. Arrows plucked men off their feet, hurled them backwards. They collided with those behind. Those on the floor tripped those still on their feet. Ballista released, notched, released again. All around him others did the same. The doorway was filled with shafts flitting like bats.

Standing on their companions, treading them down, a dozen or more defenders linked shields in the opening. Arrows sprouted in the bright-painted boards. The men launched forwards. Arrows sliced all around them. They ran off to Ballista’s right, towards the southern gate in the fence. Wada the Short rose in front of them, other shapes at his side.

A terrible clatter as the fight was joined. Warriors cutting, hacking in the infernal light.

Ballista sensed men near him moving to join the melee. He searched but could not see the flash of the silver mask.

‘Maximus, Tarchon, Rikiar, Mord, stay with me.’

Heliodorus was reeling. The Egyptian’s helmet had been knocked off. His bald pate shone. A swordsman cleaved Heliodorus’s shoulder open. Wada cut Heliodorus’s killer near in half.

Still no silver mask. Ballista’s eyes flicked between the fight and the empty door.

Wada was in the middle of the foe. His blade flickered too fast to follow. The Harii was shouting, the words unintelligible in the uproar. His enemy fell around him. His brother was being avenged.

A flash of something moving in the hall. Gone before Ballista could focus.

Wada staggered. The man behind him swung another blow at his legs. Wada went down, swallowed in the chaos.

Distracted, Ballista did not see the men come from the hall. Six men, their leader’s face a mask of metal. They were on Ballista before he could shoot. He dropped the bow, snatched up his shield. Unferth’s blow split through the lindens, buckled the boss. Agonizing pain; Ballista dropped his shield. He got Battle-Sun in the way of the next downward cut. Unferth swung left and right. Ballista blocked. Sparks bright as lightning as steel met steel. Ballista was driven back. Everywhere the din of fighting, stunning the senses.

Ballista’s back bumped into the wall of an outbuilding. Cattle stamping and shifting, bellowing with fear on the other side. Unferth thrust. Ballista twisted. The tip of the blade scraped off his mail, jabbed into the wood. For a moment Ballista’s face was against the cold surface of the mask. The face of a young man, inhuman in its calm beauty.

Unferth grunted, stepped back, turning. Behind him, Rikiar hacked at his other leg. Unferth’s shield splintered under the blade. Pivoting, all his weight in the blow, Ballista swung. Battle-Sun took Unferth’s right arm, near the elbow. A scream, obscured by the metal. Unferth’s sword fell from his hand. Rikiar chopped into the back of Unferth’s thighs. Ballista thrust. Rings of mail cracking, steel rasping through flesh and bone.

Ballista withdrew Battle-Sun, pushed with his damaged left hand. Unferth took two faltering steps and fell on his back. Ballista, his boot on the bloodied chest of his enemy, the tip of his blade at his throat, reached down and ripped off the mask.

‘You have my luck in the palm of your hand.’ Unferth’s voice was steady.

‘Yes,’ Ballista said, and thrust down.

Ballista held the silver mask high. ‘Unferth is dead.’

The clamour of battle died as men took up the shout. ‘Unferth is dead! Unferth is dead!’

There were six or seven defenders left. They pulled away into a huddle. Backs to the burning hall, they tossed their weapons to the ground. Castricius and the others faced them in a semicircle.

In death, Unferth’s face was unremarkable. Perhaps fifty years old, swarthy skin, long black hair shot with grey.

‘A southerner,’ Maximus said.

‘Where his name tell he from?’ Tarchon asked.

‘It tells nothing,’ Ballista said. ‘It means unrest. His son called himself Widsith.’

‘Stranger,’ Rikiar said.

Maximus looked sharply at Ballista. ‘Do you know it is him?’

‘No.’

They all studied the dead man. The firelight moved over his face.

‘Then you know what you must do,’ Maximus said.

‘Yes,’ Ballista said. He raised his voice. ‘Kill all the others.’