Blood Eye(37)

'We can't lose with the All-Father watching over us,' Olaf said, spitting at a tapestry by the open doorway. 'We've made enough noise for him to find us. Glad to have you with us, lad,' he added. I clutched the sword grip with white knuckles and gripped the shield's leather-bound handle so tightly that I could feel the veins in my forearm straining. For I had chosen to die with these men, these warriors who had burned my village and taken my freedom. There had been no thought, just the vain hope to survive and hurt this treacherous ealdorman, and now the Norsemen buoyed each other with dark jokes. They filled Ealdred's hall with the warrior's pride, and it was all I could do to catch my breath in that stinking place of death.





'Come, Ealdred!' Sigurd snarled, breathing heavily. 'We've iron for all of you!' He spat a wad of blood. I stole a look at the English shieldwall and saw in men's eyes the seeds of doubt. Uncertainty made their movements cautious. Their own dead lay before them, whilst unbloodied fighters at their rear shouted at them to advance. I sensed that the balance had shifted. Seeing no way out, those I stood with accepted death now, embraced it even. But the English had thought it would be easy slaughter and now caught the whiff of their own deaths in the thick air and were afraid. The shieldwalls clashed again.





This is the blood the old godi warned of, I thought, glancing at Asgot who stood in the second line, thrusting his spear into English faces. His own face was contorted with rage and bloodlust and he seemed like an old grey wolf, long past his prime but with teeth and claws still sharp. An arrow thudded into my shield. 'Find a helmet, Raven,' Svein said, smashing his sword on to the raised shield of a man trying to force a way into the hall. 'Here!' Svein tore the shield from the man's grasp, grabbed his neck and threw him into the wet rushes at my feet. 'But kill the pig first.' The dazed Englishman drew his knife and slashed it across my shin as I brought my sword down to cave in his face with a crack. The body shuddered and was still. For a moment I was still, too, unable to take my eyes off the man's broken face and the white bone shining wetly between the gash. A moment before, he had been a living, breathing man with fears and hopes. Now because of me he was nothing. 'Hey, wake up, lad!' Svein shouted. I bent to the corpse and cursed it for trying to kill me. Then I took its bloodied helmet with its sweat-soaked sheepskin lining and limped to the door, my leg stinging like hell, though it was not bleeding much yet. 'It fits you,' Svein said approvingly, shoving against the enemy. 'You have Sigurd's luck, lad!' But anyone would have thought Sigurd's luck had deserted him as the shieldwalls clashed and clanged and desperate men grunted and heaved.





'The door, Raven, bring it here!' Olaf shouted. 'Quickly!' Guessing his intentions I hefted the heavy door from the rushes and slid it lengthways across the gap he and Svein defended, as an arrow clattered off the doorframe. Then I took two benches and set them against the makeshift barrier to lend it some weight. At least it would protect the Norsemen's lower halves from the arrows that came at us from a night now alive with moving flames. Torches streaked about like flying demons and harsh voices filled the shadowy landscape.





'Looks like every whelp in this cursed land has come to watch us die,' Olaf said, as he and Svein peered over the rims of their arrow-filled shields. Dead men littered the earth before them and it seemed that, for now at least, the English had broken off their attack at the hall's entrance. Inside, men still strained, slashed and cut.





'Sigurd will get us out of this,' Svein said in his deep voice, and I realized I was wrong to think the Norsemen accepted death. Clearly Svein did not.





'Right now I'd settle for a barrel of Ealdred's Honey Drop,' Olaf grumbled, screwing up his eyes to allow the sweat to run over them. 'My tongue's bigger than my cock! How's it looking, lad?' he asked, peering into the night beyond.





Sigurd stood like a rock at the centre of his shieldwall. I had seen Ealdred's bodyguard drag his lord, like a carcass, clear of the mêlée to the hall's dark rear. 'Sigurd's holding them,' I said, knuckling my eyes. 'They keep trying to get down the sides, but we're holding them.' Then, like the last great wave before the tide turns, the English shieldwall closed again, its warriors desperate to tear a way through. They knew that one hole in the Norsemen's line would make the whole thing cave in, but the Norsemen knew it too and none of them would let himself prove the weakest stone; not whilst blood still filled his veins, or whilst he stood in the sight of his friends. The English failed again and began to shuffle backwards, the men at the rear allowing this to happen for the first time. Sigurd did not miss his chance. Stepping over broken bodies he took his line forward, keeping pressure on English shields until Ealdred's were forced back to the Christ tapestries and out of the door behind. Out they poured like bad ale stuttering from a skin, and when the last two Englishmen were at the door, Sigurd raised his shield.