The Lords of the North (38 page)

The heavy spears crashed down. They banged into the shield and splashed into the mud, and at
least two pierced through the shield's limewood boards. I felt a blow on my left forearm, and
the shield became heavier and heavier as the spears weighed it

down, but then I was under the arch, and safe. The dogs were howling and fighting. Steapa
was bellowing at the enemy to come and fight him, but men avoided him. I could see the wings
of Kjartan's wall closing and knew we would die if I could not open the gate. I saw I would
need two hands to lift the huge locking bar, but one of the spears hanging from the shield had
penetrated the mail of my left forearm and I could not pull it free, so I had to use
Wasp-Sting to cut the leather shield-handles away. Then I could wrench the spear-point out of
my mail and arm. There was blood on the mail-sleeve, but the arm was not broken and I lifted
the huge locking bar and dragged it away from the gates.

Then I pulled the gates inward and Ragnar and his men were fifty paces away and they
shouted when they saw me and ran with raised shields to protect themselves from the spears and
axes thrown from the ramparts, and they joined the shield wall, lengthening it and carrying
their blades and fury against Kjartan's astonished men.

And that was how Dunholm, the rocky fortress in its river-loop, was taken. Years later I
was flattered by a lord in Mercia whose skald chanted a song of how Uhtred of Bebbanburg
scaled the fortress crag alone and fought his way through two hundred men to open the
dragon-guarded high gate. It was a fine song, full of sword-work and courage, but it was all
nonsense. There were twelve of us, not one, and the dogs did most of the fighting, and Steapa
did much of the rest, and if Thyra had not come from the hall then Dunholm might be ruled by
Kjartan's descendants to this day. Nor was the fight over when the gate was opened, for we
were still outnumbered, but we had the remaining dogs and Kjartan did not, and Ragnar
brought his shield wall into the compound and there we fought the defenders.

It was shield wall against shield wall. It was the horror of two shield walls fighting. It
was the thunder of shields crashing together and the grunts of men stabbing with
short-swords or twisting spears into enemy bellies. It was blood and shit and guts spilled
in the mud. The shield wall is where men die and where men earn the praise of skalds. I joined
Ragnar's wall and Steapa, who had taken a shield from a hound-ripped horseman, bulled in
beside me with his great war axe. We stepped over dead and dying dogs as we drove forward. The
shield becomes a weapon, its great iron boss a club to drive men back, and when the enemy
falters you close up fast and ram the blade forward, then step over the wounded and let the
men behind you kill them. It rarely lasts long before one wall breaks, and Kjartan's line
broke first. He had tried to outflank us and send men around our rear, but the surviving
hounds guarded our flanks, and Steapa was flailing with his axe like a madman, and he was so
huge and strong that he hacked into the enemy line and made it look easy. 'Wessex!'

he kept shouting, 'Wessex!' as though he fought for Alfred, and I was on his right and
Ragnar on his left and the rain crashed on us as we followed Steapa through Kjartan's shield
wall. We went clean through so that there was no enemy in front of us, and the broken wall
collapsed as men ran back towards the buildings.

Kjartan was the man in the dirty white cloak. He was a big man, almost as tall as Steapa,
and he was strong, but he saw his fortress fall and he shouted at his men to make a new shield
wall, but some of his warriors were already surrendering. Danes did not give up readily,
but they had discovered they were fighting fellow Danes, and there was no shame in yielding
to such an enemy. Others were fleeing, going through the well gate, and I had a terror that
Gisela would be discovered there and taken, but the women who had gone to draw water
protected her. They all huddled inside the well's small palisade and the panicked men fled
past them towards the river.

Not all panicked or surrendered. A few gathered about Kjartan and locked their shields
and waited for death. Kjartan might have been cruel, but he was brave. His son, Sven, was not
brave. He had commanded the men on the gatehouse ramparts, and almost all those men fled
northwards, leaving Sven with just two companions. Guthred, Finan and Rollo climbed to deal
with them, but only Finan was needed. The Irishman hated fighting in the shield wall. He
was too light, he reckoned, to be part of such weight-driven killing, but in the open he was a
fiend. Finan

the Agile, he had been called, and I watched, astonished, as he leaped ahead of both
Guthred and Rollo and took on the three men alone, and his two swords were as fast as a viper's
strike. He carried no shield. He dazzled Sven's defenders with feints, twisted past their
attacks, and killed them both with a grin on his face, and then turned on Sven, but Sven was a
coward. He had backed into a corner of the rampart and was holding his sword and shield wide
apart as if to show he meant no mischief. Finan crouched, still grinning, ready to drive his
long sword into Sven's exposed belly.

'He's mine!' Thyra wailed. 'He's mine!'

Finan glanced at her and Sven twitched his sword arm, as if to strike, but Finan's blade
whipped towards him and he froze. He was whimpering for mercy.

'He's mine!' Thyra shrieked. She was writhing her ghastly fingernails towards Sven and was
sobbing with hatred. 'He's mine!' she cried.

'You belong to her,' Finan said, 'so you do,' and he feinted at Sven's stomach and when
Sven brought his shield down to protect himself, Finan just rammed his body into the shield,
using his light weight to tip Sven backwards over the rampart. Sven screamed as he fell. It
was not a long drop, no more than the height of two tall men, but he thumped into the mud like a
sack of grain. He scrabbled on his back, trying to get up, but Thyra was standing over him and
she had given a long, wailing call, and the surviving hounds had come to her. Even the
crippled hounds hauled themselves through muck and blood to reach her side.

'No,' Sven said. He stared up at her with his one eye. 'No!'

'Yes,' she hissed, and she bent down and took the sword from his unresisting hand, and then
she gave one yelp and the hounds closed on him. He twitched and screamed as the fangs took him.
Some, trained to kill quickly, went for his throat, but Thyra used Sven's sword to fend them
off, and so the hounds killed Sven by chewing him from the groin upwards. His screams pierced
the rain like blades. His father heard it all and Thyra watched it and just laughed. And still
Kjartan lived. Thirty-four men stood with him and they knew they were dead men and they were
ready to die as Danes, but then Ragnar walked towards them, the eagle wings on his helmet
broken and wet, and he mutely pointed his sword at Kjartan and Kjartan nodded and stepped
out of the shield wall. His son's guts were being eaten by hounds and Thyra was dancing in
Sven's blood and crooning a victory song.

'I killed your father,' Kjartan sneered at Ragnar, 'and I'll kill you.'

Ragnar said nothing. The two men were six paces apart, judging each other.

'Your sister was a good whore,' Kjartan said, 'before she went mad.' He darted forward,
shield up, and Ragnar stepped right to let Kjartan go past him and Kjartan anticipated the
move and swept his sword low to slice Ragnar's ankles, but Ragnar had stepped back. The two
men watched each other again.

'She was a good whore even after she went mad,' Kjartan said, 'except we had to tie her
down to stop her struggling. Made it easier, see?'

Ragnar attacked. Shield high, sword low, and the two shields cracked together and
Kjartan's sword parried the low strike, and both men heaved, trying to topple the other, and
then Ragnar stepped back again. He had learned that Kjartan was fast and skilful.

'She's not a good whore now, though,' Kjartan said. 'She's too raddled. Too filthy. Even a
beggar won't hump her now. I know. I offered her to one last week and he wouldn't have her.
Reckoned she was too dirty for him.' And suddenly he came forward fast and hacked at Ragnar.
There was no great skill in his attack, just sheer strength and speed, and Ragnar retreated,
letting his shield take the fury, and I feared for him and took a pace forward, but Steapa
held me back.

'It's his fight,' Steapa said.

'I killed your father,' Kjartan said, and his sword drove a splinter wood from Ragnar's
shield. 'I burned your mother,' he boasted, and another blow rang on the shield boss, 'and I
whored your sister.' he said, and the next sword blow drove Ragnar back two paces. 'And I
shall piss on your gutted body.' Kjartan shouted and he reversed a swing, took his blade low
and swept it at Ragnar's ankles again. This time he struck and Ragnar staggered. His
crippled hand had instinctively dropped his shield low and Kjartan brought his own shield
over the top to drive his enemy down, and Ragnar, who had said nothing throughout the fight,
suddenly screamed. For a heartbeat I thought it was a doomed man's scream, but instead it was
rage. He drove his body under Kjartan's shield, pushing the bigger man back by sheer
strength, and then he stepped nimbly aside. I thought he had been lamed by the blow to his
ankle, but he had iron strips on his boot and, though one strip was almost cut in two, and
though he was bruised, he had not been injured and suddenly he was all anger and movement. It
was as though he had woken up. He began to dance around Kjartan, and that was the secret of a
duel. Keep moving. Ragnar moved, and he was filled with rage, and his speed almost matched
Finan's swiftness, and Kjartan, who thought he had found his enemy's measure, was suddenly
desperate. He had no more breath for insults, only enough to defend himself, and Ragnar
was all ferocity and quickness. He hacked at Kjartan, turned him, hacked again, lunged,
twisted away, feinted low, used his shield to knock away a parry and swept his sword,
Heart-Breaker, to strike Kjartan's helmet. He dented the iron, but did not pierce it, and
Kjartan shook his head and Ragnar banged shield on shield to drive the big man back. His next
blow shattered one of the limewood boards of Kjartan's shield, the next took the shield's
edge, splitting the iron rim, and Kjartan stepped back and Ragnar was keening, a sound so
horrible that the hounds around Thyra began yelping in sympathy.

Over two hundred men watched. We all knew what would happen now for the battle-fever had
come to Ragnar. It was the rage of a sword-Dane. No man could resist such anger, and Kjartan
did well to survive as long as he did, but at last he was driven back and he tripped on a
hound's corpse and fell on his back and Ragnar stepped over the frantic sweep of his enemy's
heavy sword and thrust down hard with Heart-Breaker. The blow broke through the mail-sleeve of
Kjartan's coat and severed the tendons of his sword arm. Kjartan tried to get up, but Ragnar
kicked him in the face, then brought his heel hard down on Kjartan's throat. Kjartan choked.
Ragnar stepped back and let his battered shield slide off his left arm. Then he used his
crippled left hand to take away Kjartan's sword. He used his two good fingers to pull it from
Kjartan's nerveless hand and he threw it into the mud and then he killed his enemy. It was a
slow death, but Kjartan did not scream once. He tried to resist at first, using his shield to
fend off Ragnar's sword, but Ragnar bled him to death cut by cut. Kjartan said one thing as he
died, a plea to be given back his sword so he could go to the corpse-hall with honour, but
Ragnar shook his head. 'No.' he said, and never spoke another word until the last blow. That
blow was a two-handed downwards thrust into Kjartan's belly, a thrust that burst through
the mail links and pierced Kjartan's body, and went through the mail beneath Kjartan's spine
to stab the ground beneath, and Ragnar left Heart-Breaker there and stepped back as Kjartan
writhed in his death pain. It was then that Ragnar looked up into the rain, his abandoned
sword swaying where it pinned his enemy to the ground, and he shouted at the clouds.

'Father!' he shouted, 'Father!' He was telling Ragnar the Elder that his murder was
avenged.

Thyra wanted vengeance as well. She had been crouching with her hounds to watch Kjartan's
death, but now she stood and called to the hounds who ran towards Ragnar. My first thought was
that she was sending the beasts to eat Kjartan's corpse, but instead they surrounded
Ragnar. There were still twenty or more of the wolf-like beasts and they snarled at Ragnar,
ringing him, and Thyra screamed at him. 'You should have come before! Why didn't you come
before?'

He stared at her, astonished at her anger. 'I came as soon . . .' he began.

'You went viking!' she screamed at him. 'You left me here!' The dogs were anguished by her
grief and they writhed around Ragnar, their hides blood-matted and their tongues lolling over
blood-streaked fangs, just waiting for the word that would let them tear him to red ruin. 'You
left me here!' Thyra wailed, and she walked into the dogs to face her brother. Then she dropped
to her knees and began to weep. I tried to reach her, but the dogs turned on me, teeth bared and
eyes wild, and I stepped hurriedly away. Thyra wept on, her grief as great as the storm which
raged over Dunholm. 'I shall kill you!' she screamed at Ragnar.

'Thyra,' he said.

'You left me here!' she accused him. 'You left me here!' She stood again, and suddenly her
face looked sane once more, and I could see she was still a beauty beneath the filth and the
scars. 'The price of my life,' she said to her brother in a calm voice, 'is your death.'

'No,' a new voice said, 'no, it is not.'

It was Father Beocca who had spoken. He had been waiting under the high gate's arch and
now he limped through the carnage and spoke with a stern authority. Thyra snarled at him.
'You're dead, priest!' she said, and she gave one of her wordless yelps and the dogs turned on
Beocca as Thyra began to twitch like a madwoman again. 'Kill the priest!' she screamed at the
dogs. 'Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!'