One King's Way

Chapter Thirty-two

Shef lay in sleep, conscious at some level of his mind that tomorrow would be the day of battle. The fleet lay beached some dozen miles from the entry to the bay of the Braethraborg, strongly guarded against any surprise sortie.

In his sleep he was in the bay of the Braethraborg itself, down at the far end, looking out in the direction that he knew he, Shef, must come in the morning. And indeed it was morning, and the man looking out of a just-unshuttered window could see ships creeping down the fjord towards him. Those ships, he knew, would bring his death.

The man watching swung the shutters fully open, stood facing the oncoming navy, and began to sing. The song he sang was one Shef had heard often before, a famous song among the Vikings, a favorite of Brand's. It was called “The Song of Bjarki,” or “The Old Song of Bjarki.” But this man was not repeating it. He was making it up for the first time. He sang:

The voice of Shef's frequent mentor cut in above the voice of the singing man, amused and ironic as usual.

“Now you will not fight like that,” it said. “You want to win, not to gain glory. Remember though: I have done my best for you, but you must take every advantage you can. There is no room for weakness…”

The voices faded, both the impassioned singer and the cold voice of the god. As he woke—or perhaps they were what woke him—Shef heard the horns of the sentries blowing to signal dawn and battle-morning. Shef lay where he was, aware that now he was a king he could at least wait for someone else to light the fires and make the breakfast. No question of fighting on an empty stomach, not in the heavy manual labor of hand-to-hand battle. He was reflecting on the vision, and on the song. “Men of good stock,” the singer had said, “who scorn to flee.” Was he a man of good stock? He supposed so. Whether his father was a god or a jarl, or even if he had been Wulfgar the thane, there was no churl-blood there. Did that mean that he, Shef, would scorn to flee? That those who fled were always of bad stock? Perhaps the singer thought that not fleeing and being noble were always the same thing. If he did, he was wrong.

And the god had said he must take every advantage. Something told Shef that was wrong too. That was it, there was something that had been bothering him. He sat up, called to his attendant. “Pass the word for the Englishman Udd.”

By the time Shef had his shoes on, Udd was there. Shef looked at him critically. He was trying to hold himself together, but his face was white and strained. He had been looking like that for days. No wonder. He had spent weeks waiting for a painful death, and been rescued only at the last moment. Before that he had gone through more danger and hardship than he would have done in six lifetimes as a smith's helper, which is what he had been once. He had been overtaxed. Yet he would not wish to desert now.

“Udd,” Shef said, “I have a special assignment for you.” Udd's lower lip quivered, the look of fear became more pronounced. “I want you to leave the Fearnought and stay with the rearguard.”

“Why, lord?”

Shef thought quickly. “So you can pass a message for me, if—if the day goes badly. Here, take this money. It will buy you a passage back to England one day, if that is what it comes to. If that happens, you are to greet King Alfred for me, and say I am sorry we could not work together for longer. And greet his queen from me as well.”

Udd was looking surprised, relieved, slightly ashamed. “And what is the message for her, lord?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Just greetings, and the memory of old times. And listen, Udd. I wouldn't trust anyone to do this for me. I'm relying on you. Don't let me down.”

The little man went out, still looking relieved. But less ashamed. Pointless, thought Shef. And directly against what the god said. We might need Udd during the day. But I could not bear to see those terrified eyes any more. Taking Udd out of the battle was an act of kindness. Also of defiance against the cynic-god Rig, his father and mentor.

Shef came out of the tent whistling, startling the sentries, who were used at least to reflective silence on mornings like this one. He hailed Cwicca, listening to Udd's explanation a few feet away. “Have you got that bagpipe you made over the winter, Cwicca? Well, play it today. If that doesn't scare the Ragnarssons, nothing will.”

Hours later, on a calm sea, the fleet crawled towards the bay behind which lay the long-inviolate Braethraborg. To the left of it, as the fleet approached from the north, a spit of land jutted out. On it, just visible, the hulks of the Ragnarssons' four-mule catapult battery, flanked by the twist-shooters or torsion dart-throwers, and flanked again by the cheap, simple, inaccurate stone-lobbers. Out from the spit, almost blocking the entrance to the bay, lay the dozen shapes of the Ragnarssons' largest warships, the coastal patrol that never put out to sea. Behind them clustered the mass of conventional longships, the main body of their fleet, headed by Shef's old enemy, the Frani Ormr.

In the Fearnought Shef could hear the rowers grunting as they heaved on the oars—less oars now than sweeps. They were twice the size of ordinary oars and manned by two men each, the strongest in the fleet, carefully selected by Brand and Hagbarth. They had made their approach under sail, to save the rowers' strength, but now the time had come to strike the mast and yard. Close by, on the same course as the Fearnought, King Olaf's four large craft, each the size of the wrecked Crane, kept pace. Kept pace easily, at a paddling stroke, the rowers looking sideways at the strange ship they convoyed.

Shef had finally given orders to fit the plates of case-hardened steel. The two fighting platforms with the rotating mules on them were armored up to waist height, the plates slanting outwards. It would have been impossible to armor the rest of the ship and still have her float and move, but Shef had rigged a frame that bolted onto each gunwale. On this plates were fitted, overlapping like the shingles on a roof, or like dragon-scales. They too sloped from bottom to top, beginning just above the height of the oarsmen's heads and running up till they almost met six feet above.

“You keep your shield up in battle,” Shef had explained to a doubtful Hagbarth. “At least if you're expecting spears and arrows from a distance. And you keep it slanted so they'll skid off. That's what we're going to try.”

Behind the laboring Fearnought and the large ships, as with the Ragnarsson fleet, came the mass of the attackers in the eighteen-oar-a-side craft that were the backbone of all Viking navies. Each towed behind it, hard to see in the sun-dazzle off the water, a smaller boat, fishermen's skiffs like the grind-boats of the far north, all that the local fishing villages could raise. Each held four to eight rowers and two pairs of extra men jammed in. The rowers had again been carefully selected from the best of the Swedes and Norwegians. In each boat two men clutched crossbows, two more were Bruno's German Ritters.

Watching from his place in the center, Sigurth Ragnarsson remarked, “Masts stepped, I see.”

“Does that mean there'll be no funny business this time?” asked Ubbi.

“I doubt it very much,” answered Sigurth. “But we know some tricks ourselves now. Let's hope they're good ones.”

Shef stood on top of the forward mule, almost the only place left on the Fearnought from which one could now see anything. With his one eye he watched the Ragnarsson catapult battery. He was sharp-sighted, but not enough to see what he needed to. There had to be a way to look closer! He needed to know if they were ready to shoot. If they were cunning, they might hold their first volley till Olaf's ships were in range, conceivably sink all four of them with their first rocks. If that happened the battle would be lost before it started, Shef's “scissors”—for so he had mentally labeled the big vessels in his plan—blunted by the catapults' “stone.” Yet he did not want to stop the ships too far out. The less distance that had to be covered by the small boats, the “paper” in his plan, the better.

They were close to being in range, he decided. He turned and waved to King Olaf, standing next to Brand on the forecastle of his heavy ship fifty yards off, three sweeps from side to side. Olaf waved in reply, called an order. As the rowers tossed their oars and the ship lost way, a thirty-pound boulder came sighing out of the sky, at extreme range. It plumped into the water ten feet from the prow of Olaf's Heron, the splash throwing spray over the king. Shef grimaced. A little too closely calculated. Would they try again?

The four big ships had lost way, were being left behind as the Fearnought ground slowly on into catapult range. Behind them the mass of the fleet had tossed oars as well, were drifting gently forward. As they did so they dropped their tows. The dead silence of the approach was broken suddenly by harsh cheering. The skiffs had cast off, their fresh rowers straining at their oars, each boat making the best pace it could, treating the last mile as a race. As they swept past first their tow-ships and then the leading line of large craft, the oarsmen lined the side, cheering in unison as their boatswains called the time.

The first of the skiffs shot past the Fearnought, its helmsman one of Brand's Halogalanders. Shef could hear him shouting, “Put your backs into it, will you, before some Swedish prick gets past us.” Shef waved to him, to the two skogarmenn crossbows crouched on the rear thwart, to Bruno in one of the pursuing boats, and to the rest of them pouring past, sixty of them spread out like hounds on the scent of a stag. His oarsmen were breathing too deep to cheer, driving their immensely heavy ship on at a quarter the speed of the racing skiffs.

How would the catapults take that? Shef saw spouts of water rise suddenly, two of them, then a third, and felt his heart leap. Every plume was a miss, every miss was one fewer chance to shoot, and a minute gained before they could rewind their clumsy machines. Yet there must have been a hit, yes, there, near the leading skiffs, men struggling in the water by shattered planks. No-one was stopping or slowing to pick them up. Shef had rubbed that in hard. No survivors will be rescued. Keep rowing and leave them. Some of the mailed men would drown, some, he hoped, keep themselves afloat on planks and swim to the nearer shore. The skiffs swept on like so many water-beetles, oars skimming. The Fearnought was perhaps a furlong closer to the grim, banner-waving line of the Ragnarsson fleet.

“Give me a hundred strokes,” shouted Shef to the rowers. “A hundred strokes and you can rest easy. Hagbarth, call the time. Cwicca, play them along.”

The big men began to heave harder, using up the last of their hoarded strength, something they would never do at the start of a normal battle, to be decided by hard hand-strokes. The screeching music urged them on. Cuthred, grinning sourly, looked up from the shadow of the armor plating. “Ogvind here says he'll row harder without the bagpipe, can you shut him up?” Shef waved back and shouted something no-one heard. As the count ran down, Shef looked again at the scene in front of him, estimating distances, looking at the enemy catapults, the racing skiffs, the Ragnarsson front line, suddenly seeming much nearer. Lucky that that at least had not moved. If they had broken their formation instantly, their “scissors” might have cut his “paper,” large ships riding down small ones. But now his “paper” would wrap their “stone,” his “stone” blunt their “scissors.”

“Ten last strokes,” Shef shouted, “and steer to starboard. Put us broadside on. Cwicca, shoot for the one with the Raven Banner. Osmod—” he raised his voice even more to reach the aft catapult, “—shoot for the one to the left of the Raven and then work left, left, you hear?”

The ship swung, with a final gasp the rowers completed the stroke, slumped sweating over their oars. Shef jumped from his place and ran to another vantage-point clear of the catapults. As the Fearnought drifted to a stop, Cwicca and Osmod stared along the trails of their mules, through the gaps left in the plating.

Cwicca dropped his hand, Hama pulled the retainer bolt, the whole ship shuddered to the thwack of the throwing arm striking its padded bar. Shuddered again a moment later as Osmod followed suit. Shef watched the skimming black dots of boulders tensely. Cwicca and Osmod had had to train most of their crews. They had missed the Crane at a critical moment. Would they do better this time?

Both dots came to an abrupt end in the center of the Ragnarsson line, Shef was almost sure he could see splinters fly. He waited for the sudden collapse, the disappearance of a ship opened up like a flower, as he had seen happen at the battle off the Elbe. Nothing. The line was still there, dragon-heads glaring. What had the Ragnarssons done? Had they armored their ships?

“Two hits,” Shef shouted. “Work out to left and right, as ordered.” He did not know what was happening. But in machine-war, as in the old kind, once battle was joined you just had to put your head down and keep doing your job.

The winders whirled their levers, the oarsmen backed water gently to Hagbarth's directions, trying to keep the ship broadside onto the enemy line. Again the double shudder as the stones released, again the black streaks of boulders flying into the line of ships. Still no gaps, no sagging prows. But he could see men running, leaping from ship to ship. Something was taking effect.

As he stared out, the Fearnought was suddenly battered down in the water. A great clang made Shef cringe, something whirred over his head in pieces. He looked round, realized that the catapults up on the spit of land had changed their aim, were shooting now not at the skiffs closing on them, but at the ship destroying their battle-line. If the Fearnought had not been armored she would have sunk then and there. The boulder had hit dead center, in line with the stepped mast, had shattered on impact with the case-hardened plates, the fragments whistling overhead. Shef stepped through the rowers to join Hagbarth looking at the damage. The plates were unharmed, but the wooden frame that held them had cracked clean through, leaving the outer shell sagging.

Again the Fearnought quivered to her own discharges, and again and again came the violent clangs of boulders striking. One struck forward of center, again shattering the frame, the other on the aft catapult platform. Osmod stepped up, pushing sagging plates out of the way, shoving winders back to their places. “Some rope,” he called, “tie these timbers back, we can shoot again.” The whole platform was out of line, Shef saw, something broken deep in its mounting. They could not take very much more of this battering. A steel plate slid free of its broken frame, fell into the sea, leaving a gap of sunlight. “Turn the ship while they're winding,” Shef shouted. “Turn the undamaged side towards them. Three more volleys and we're done.”

The leading skiffs had reached the shore, on the spit a hundred yards short of the battery. As they closed they had been engaged first by the dart-shooters, then the quick-shooting stone lobbing devices Shef's men called pull-throwers. The former were no danger to boats, but demoralizing as they drove their huge darts through man and mail. The latter could sink a boat, but only by random shooting, unaimable. The boats pressed on, clumping at the last moment to make a concerted charge onto the shore.

Two hundred picked men faced them, knee-deep in the water, ready to beat them back, protect their own catapults, give them more time to destroy the ship that was destroying their own front line. In the boats the cross-bowmen cocked their weapons, prepared to shoot them down. In machine-war all the parts had to fit together, each part doing its job. If the parts separated, they were useless. If they fitted together, battle turned into butchery. The air filled with the zip of crossbow quarrels shot at short range through shield and mail. As the Ragnarsson champions fell, shot down by unarmored skogarmenn, the heavily-armed Germans stumbled from the boats, formed a line in the water, locked shields and marched forward, Bruno in the center. The Swedish and Norwegian oarsmen grabbed swords and axes and followed. For a few moments there was the traditional melee of battle, the clang of blade on blade. Then the Ragnarsson line, already shot full of holes, disintegrated completely, became a scatter of men fighting back to back or trying to struggle to safety. Bruno called his men together, dressed their ranks, took them up the slope at a steady trot. Some catapulteers ran at once, others tried for a last shot or groped for sword and shield.

How the Ragnarsson ships stayed afloat Shef could not tell, but someone seemed to have had enough. Behind the front line he could see their smaller craft beginning to sweep put, to come forward in a charge. And the front line might not be sinking, but they were lower in the water, he could see a dragon-head tip sideways. The Fearnought had almost done her duty. She had battered the Ragnarssons' twelve largest into unmaneuverable hulks, though they were grapneled together so that the one held the other up. Now the smaller craft would have to take over.

But as they swept forward King Olaf, also reading the battle from half a mile behind, ordered his horns to blow and his rowers to pull. The Heron and her three consorts drove forward to engage the enemy, horns blaring relentlessly across the shivering water. Paper had wrapped stone—small boats against catapults. Stone had blunted scissors—the Fearnought's catapults against the large craft. Now, as King Olaf's giant warships swept towards the Ragnarssons' conventional longships, it was scissors to cut paper.

Shef watched as the Heron swept past, seeing Olaf and Brand on the forecastle directing the course, watching the two leading Ragnarsson ships boldly steer to take her on each side, like mastiffs trying to pull down a bull. They were met by a volley of crossbows, a shower of javelins hurled downwards, great rocks as heavy as a man could lift flung over the side to shatter the bottom-boards. One smaller ship hurled grapnels, managed to pull herself alongside though already starting to sink. Her crew scrambled up the sides of the larger ship, met spear-thrusts and sword-blows before they could free a hand. The Heron brushed them aside, steered to run down another. Behind her and her consorts the main body of Shef's fleet poured on, aiming for gaps in the enemy ranks, picking their targets.

Shef leaned on the gunwale, looking round. That was it, he thought. The battle was over, except for finishing off. He could see the Ragnarsson catapults had been captured, could see the row of abandoned skiffs drawn up on the shore. King Olaf's late but well-timed charge had broken the back of the enemy fleet. The biggest Ragnarsson ships had never come into action at all, been battered down by the Fearnought.

How easily it could have gone the other way! Without the crossbows the skiffs might not have made their landing. Then the Fearnought would have been battered to pieces, and King Olaf's ships as soon as they moved forward. If the Fearnought had not been there, then even if the Ragnarsson catapults had not done the business, their twelve great dragon-boats would have come out and engaged Olaf three to one. But paper wraps stone, stone blunts scissors, scissors cut paper. Every time. That is how it is with machine-war.

“She's going to the bottom,” Hagbarth said briefly. “I think one of those boulders broke her back, finally. Look.” He pointed to the water swilling round the open hold.

“Cwicca, Osmod,” shouted Shef. “Get your crews bailing. All right, Hagbarth, see if you can beach her. Over there, on the spit below the catapults.”

The crippled Fearnought crept across the water, while the battle both in the bay and on land moved rapidly away from her, leaving her limping across an empty sea dotted with wreckage and the heads of exhausted swimmers.