The Blood-Tainted Winter (20 page)

In all, Raef counted forty-two enemy dead, in addition to the twelve the Hammerling had lost. It would take a great fire to burn them all. Only when the last body was stacked did Raef see to the wound on his arm. He went to the river and cleaned it with icy water and then asked a village women to bind it with cloth. The arrow had slashed open a deep tear but the cut was clean and would heal well.

Raef found the Hammerling surveying the dead on the winter plain. “Hawthor may join them before the night is through,” Brandulf said. “Though he will fight it with every inch of strength he possesses. He means to die at the moment I defeat the last of the would-be kings.” It was said with humor and yet Raef sensed truth as well. A devoted captain would gladly give his life to raise his lord above all others.

Raef said, “It will take many pyres to send them all off. We should start chopping the wood to build them.”

“Take some rest, Skallagrim.” The Hammerling turned and looked at Raef. “You have done well. There are others who can wield an axe.” He gestured to a boulder set apart from the camp. A small figure sat on it, knees curled up to chest. “Her first battle?”

Raef looked at Cilla, trying to read her mind in her posture. “Yes, but she is no stranger to hardship. I will speak to her.”

Cilla’s gaze was on the swift river and the sky, now blue and streaked with high white clouds. Raef approached but she did not react.

“It is not wrong to feel fear at the sight of so much death, Cilla.” Raef leaned against her boulder, his back to her, not wanting to intrude too much.

“It was not that much death.” Cilla’s voice was quiet but sure.

“I count fifty-four men gone to Valhalla. Is not that enough? It is more than many villages.”

“How many did you kill?”

Raef turned and looked at her. “I do not know.”

Cilla thought for a moment. “How do you know they go to Valhalla? Have you seen the Valkyries come for the dead?”

“No, I have never seen the Valkyries walk the battlefield.”

“I want to see them one day.”

It was a strange wish and Raef wondered at it. “Perhaps you will. But do not long for that day to come sooner than it should.” Cilla glanced at him, a frown crossing her brow. “You are still young, and there is much in this world besides war.”

“War took my father. War killed my mother. War destroyed my home.” Cilla said all this without anger or resentment. “If there is more, I have not seen it.” She slid from the boulder and returned to the camp. Raef watched her go and wondered at her fate.

The stores behind Fengar’s walls were well-stocked and the feast that night was large and varied, having been plucked from the lord’s kitchen. A pair of pigs roasted on spits and ale was abundant. The villagers kept to themselves at first, solemn in sight of their dead, but soon the children began to run about and lost all trace of fear. By the time the fires were lit, the sun had sunk long before and the sky was bright with stars. The air was cold but the fires burned hot as mead was passed in honor of the dead and in honor of the Hammerling.

For two days, the Hammerling’s men rested in that grassy meadow, eating Fengar’s food, drinking his ale, and recovering from their wounds. Late in the evening of the second, two of the Hammerling’s raiding parties joined them, bringing with them the news of Fengar’s march south.

“He will be upon us in two days, maybe less,” a captain told the Hammerling. “His entire host follows.”

The Hammerling looked to Raef, a question in his eyes. Raef did not need to ask what was on his mind. “Vannheim will come,” he said.

On the third day, Raef sent Cilla to the island village to keep her safe from the coming fight. She did not protest but asked him where he thought the best vantage point would be. More and more of the Hammerling’s men returned, filling the meadow with exuberant stories of their success and the plunder they brought with them. Raef and many others moved inside the walls, crowding all of Fengar’s buildings. The army swelled to its former numbers and a watch was set atop the stronghold’s walls to catch the first sighting of the enemy.

The rains began that night, a drizzle at first that turned to an icy downpour that did not relent. Torches sputtered out and were relit, rain beat down on waiting shields, and the ground turned to mud. The dawn brought a weak, grey light to the meadow. Fengar’s hall grew crowded with men seeking a respite from the wet. Raef took a turn on the wall, hoping to glimpse a forest of spears on the horizon, either Fengar’s or his Vannheim warriors, but finding nothing. All day they waited. All day the deluge continued. The rivers, swift and full before, surged inside their confines with even greater strength, threatening to spill over. The meadow grew saturated and looked more and more like a lake.

Not until evening did a shout come down from the gate. Raef raced to the walls, eager to see it for himself. The Hammerling came, too, and they peered into the low light, squinting against the rain. At first all appeared as it had been, but then Raef saw the snaking line of warriors swarming out of the low, undulating hills that rose up northeast of the stronghold.

The stronghold came to life. Captains shouted orders. Horses were brought inside the gates for safe-keeping. Archers lined the wall. A wall of warriors formed on the flooded plain. Raef, without his own warriors to command, chose a position in the front line near the Hammerling. Vakre took the spot on his right, Eira on his left, and Siv next to her. They stood in silence, waiting, rain drumming down on their leather armor and plastering their hair to their skulls. In preparation for a true shield wall, Raef had chosen a short sword from the stockpile of weapons Fengar had left behind. His longer blade, unwieldy in the close quarters of a tight shield wall, would only come out once the walls broke.

Vakre looked at the short sword in Raef’s right hand and the shield in his left. “A strange thing to switch hands in battle.”

“Seldom do I regret my natural inclination for the left. Only in times like this. But I can still stab a man in the belly with this hand,” Raef said, raising his right arm, “and he will die all the same. The strength of the wall is what is important.” Vakre nodded.

The rain made it difficult to see, but Fengar’s men began to take a shadowy shape in front of them as they formed their own shield wall. For a moment, all was still but for the rain. And then the air whistled with the sound of arrows and the first flurry struck home in Fengar’s line. A few men fell; others took their places and the shields locked together. Another flurry and then a third. As the arrows buried themselves in the shields, the Hammerling, beating his sword against his shield, let forth a roaring battle cry and the line, taking up the cry, surged forward as one, splashing through the ankle-deep water.

Closer and closer to the enemy they came. When they were but steps away, the Hammerling’s line locked together as men crouched close to those around them. The shields in front went up and those men behind lifted theirs high to ward off downward blows. With a great crunch the lines smashed together and the battle began.

Pushing forward but staying low and keeping in line with Eira and Vakre, Raef plunged his short blade into any opening he could see in front of him. Some thrusts made contact, others stabbed at air. All around Raef was a mass of heaving, panting bodies. Axes crashed against shields, sending splinters flying. Men screamed and shouted, calling down Odin’s wrath and promising death to all.

An axe hooked over the top of Raef’s shield, trying to tear it from his grasp. Raef dared not move forward, but endured the assault. A spear jabbed in low, ready to pierce ankles. Still Raef hacked with the short blade and the axe fell away as the blade found a home between the shields and in flesh. And then any stability in those first moments of battle, any order fell away into chaos as the world around Raef shrank to one of blood, spit, and slashing steel. There was joy in that world, a battle-joy spawned by madness and desperation.

The lines held. For how long, Raef could not say and did not care. The exact moment of breaking was unknown to him. But at some time he became aware that the wall around him had failed and each man or shieldmaiden fought alone. The short sword had been abandoned and the longer blade now brought slicing, singing death to the enemy.

Mud and blood covered Raef in equal measure as he countered spear and axe and blade, but he was aware that they were losing ground, that the Hammerling’s men were being pushed back. More than once Raef stumbled on bodies and caught himself, desperate to stay on his feet. A man might drown in the flooded meadow if he could not rise.

Evening had given way to night and still the armies fought on in the wolf-light. Raef found himself near the wall and the space around him shrank as the fighting closed in. He fought on, snarling into the face of one dying opponent a moment before blocking the death strike of another. His shield was splintered but held its shape. Blood on his arms was a mixture of his own and of the enemy.

The hooves came to him in a surge of water and a flurry of spears and then he was alone, blocked from battle and harm by solid horseflesh on all sides. Raef knew a strange moment of peace. A figure leaped from a saddle, splashing into the water, and grasped Raef’s elbow. He almost lashed out but then saw the face, saw Thorald’s dark eyes and short beard, and he staid his hand. Raef closed his eyes, relief coursing through him, strengthening his weary limbs. Vannheim had come.

“Lord, are you hurt?” Thorald’s voice was full of concern.

“I do not know.” Raef let his sword arm drop. “How goes the battle?”

“Not well. We swept through some of their ranks but our first thought was to find you.”

The battle raged outside the ring of horses. Raef could see little. “Your horses can turn the tide. Gather these men,” Raef indicated the fifteen that were clustered around them, “for another charge. Then organize the rest as best you can. Take them where we need the most help.”

“We can take you to safety first, lord, to rest.”

“No, Thorald. My place is here.” Raef could see Thorald wanted to protest, but the captain nodded and remounted his horse. Leaving two warriors behind to fight alongside Raef, the rest rode off, disappearing between the rain drops.

In the brief lull before they were set upon, Raef spotted the Hammerling a short distance away and began to fight his way to him. When he was no more than five strides away, a jabbing spear pierced the Hammerling in the thigh and Brandulf dropped to the ground, splashing into the muck. The warriors around him formed a wall of protection just as Raef slipped through and knelt at the Hammerling’s side.

The Hammerling’s face was twisted with pain but he responded to Raef’s efforts to get him on his feet and soon they were up. Half dragging, half carrying him, Raef and the two Vannheim warriors, shielded by the Hammerling’s men, got him to the wall. Archers on the inside opened the gate and shut it quickly behind them.

The Hammerling slumped to the ground. Raef, panting and leaning against the gate, saw that Hauk of Ruderk and three of the Hammerling’s captains had followed them behind the wall. Two men quickly got to work on the Hammerling’s wound, wrapping it tightly to stem the flow of blood. Raef turned to the Hauk and the captains.

“Your horsemen have bought us some time,” one captain said, “but I fear not enough.”

Raef scrambled up the stairs to the top of the wall and, squinting through the unceasing rain, surveyed the scene before them. “Our left flank is smashed but we are holding better on the right. Rally all you can find and make a stand there.” The captains dispersed and returned to the field of battle. Hauk of Ruderk, his face grey and a thin slice across one cheek, looked at Raef. “Stay with the Hammerling,” Raef said. He descended the steps, took a moment to take stock of his own minor wounds, and then, with a deep breath, slipped back through the gate and into the dying ground.

Raef hurried to join the fighting on the right. Here and there, Vannheim men still fought from horseback, but all others worked in the mud. Stepping into the chaos, Raef ripped open a warrior’s chest with a bellow.

“To me! To me!” he cried, his voice a beacon in the night. The warriors rallied and closed ranks on his left and right. Raef finished off another opponent and turned to see Fengar only a few paces away. Without thinking, Raef rushed to meet him, arriving just in time to save a Hammerling warrior from certain death. With a yell, Raef pushed Fengar back, his broken shield shattering with the force of the blow. Fengar kept his feet and recognition came to his eyes. Raef tossed the remnants of his shield to the ground.

“The corpse-hall awaits you, Skallagrim.”

“Look for me there.”

Both men lunged forward, their attacks all fury and no precision. But their blades never met. A great roar filled Raef’s ears and then he was tumbling head over heels, water filling his nose and mouth. Sputtering, he came to the surface, caught some air, and then was swept under again. Orienting himself, Raef got his head above water but only for a moment before a flailing horse, upended in the water, lashed out in terror. A hoof glanced off the side of Raef’s head and all was dark.