The Lords of the North (36 page)

Dogs.

Kjartan, or whoever guarded this stretch of the wall, had sent the war dogs out through
the small gate which led to the well. I could hear the huntsmen calling to them with the
sing-song voices that drove hounds into undergrowth, and I could hear the dogs baying and I
knew there was no escape from this steep, slippery slope. We had no chance of scrambling back
up the hill and across the big boulder before the dogs would be on us. I pulled the cloth off
the spearhead, thinking that at least I could drive the blade into one beast before the rest
trapped, mauled and savaged us, and just then another splinter of lightning slithered
across the night and the thunder cracked like the sound of the world's ending. The noise
pounded us and echoed like drumbeats in the river valley.

Hounds hate thunder, and thunder was Thor's gift to us. A second peal boomed in the sky and
the hounds were whimpering now. The rain became vicious, driving at the slope like arrows,
its sound suddenly drowning the noise of the frightened dogs. They won't hunt,' Finan
shouted into my ear.

'No?'

'Not in this rain.'

The huntsmen called again, more urgently, and as the rain slackened slightly I heard the
dogs coming down the slope. They were not racing down, but slinking reluctantly. They were
terrified by the thunder, dazzled by the lightning and bemused by the rain's malevolence.
They had no appetite for prey. One beast came close to us and I thought I saw the glint of its
eyes, though how that was possible in that darkness, when the hound was only a shape in the
sodden blackness, I do not know. The beast turned back towards the hilltop and the rain still
slashed down. There was silence now from the huntsmen. None of the hounds had given tongue so
the huntsmen must have assumed no quarry had been found and still we waited, crouching in
the awful rain, waiting and waiting, until at last I decided the hounds were back in the
fortress and we stumbled on.

Now we had to find the well, and that proved the most difficult task of all. First we
remade the rope from the reins and Finan held one end while I prowled uphill. I groped through
trees, slipped on the mud, and continually mistook tree trunks for the well's palisade. The
rope snagged on fallen branches, and twice I had to go back, move everyone some yards
southwards and start my search again. I was very close to despair when I tripped and my left
hand slid down a lichen-covered timber. A splinter drove into my palm. I fell hard against
the timber and discovered it was a wall, not some discarded branch, and then realised I had
found the palisade protecting the well. I yanked on the rope so that the others could
clamber up to join me. Now we waited again. The thunder moved farther north and the rain
subsided to a hard, steady fall. We crouched, shivering, waiting for the first grey hint of
dawn, and I worried that Kjartan, in this rain, would not need to send anyone to the well, but
could survive on the water collected in rain barrels. Yet everywhere, I assume in all the
world, folk fetch water in the dawn. It is the way we greet the day. We need water to cook and
shave and wash and brew, and in all the aching hours at Sverri's oar I had often remembered
Sihtric telling me that Dunholm's wells were beyond its palisades, and that meant that
Kjartan must open a gate every morning. And if he opened a gate then we could get into the
impregnable fortress. That was my plan, the only plan I had, and if it failed we would be
dead. 'How many women fetch water?' I asked Sihtric softly.

Ten, lord?' he guessed.

I peered around the palisade's edge. I could just see the glow of firelight above the
ramparts and I guessed the well was twenty paces from the high wall. Not far, but twenty paces
of steep uphill climbing. There are guards on the gate?' I asked, knowing the answer because
I had asked the question before, but in the dark and with the killing ahead, it was
comforting to speak. There were only two or three guards when I was there, lord.' And those
guards would be dozy, I thought, yawning after a night of broken sleep. They would open the
gate, watch the women go through, then lean on the wall and dream of other women. Yet only
one of the guards had to be alert, and even if the gate guards were dreaming, then one alert
sentinel on the wall would be sufficient to thwart us. I knew the wall on this eastern side
had no fighting platform, but it did have smaller ledges where a man could stand and keep
watch. And so I worried, imagining all that could go wrong, and beside me Clapa snored in a
moment's snatched sleep and I was amazed that he could sleep at all when he was so drenched and
cold, and then he snored again and I nudged him awake. It seemed as though dawn would never
come, and if it did we would be so cold and wet that we would be unable to move, but at last, on
the heights across the river, there was a hint of grey in the night. The grey spread like a
stain. We huddled closer together so that the well's palisade would hide us from any sentry
on the wall. The grey became lighter and cocks crowed in the fortress. The rain was still
steady. Beneath me I could see white flurries where the river foamed on rocks. The trees
below us were visible now, though still shadowed. A badger walked ten paces from us, then
turned and hurried clumsily downhill. A rent of red showed in a thinner patch of the
eastern clouds and it was suddenly daylight, though a gloomy daylight that was shot through
with the silver threads of rain. Ragnar would be making his shield wall now, lining men on
the path to keep the defenders' attention. If the women were to come for water, I thought,
then it must be soon, and I eased my way down the slope so I could see all of my men. 'When we
go,' I hissed, 'we go fast! Up to the gate, kill the guard, then stay close to me! And once we're
inside, we go slowly. Just walk! Look as if you belong there.'

Twelve of us could not hope to attack all Kjartan's men. If we were to win this day we had
to sneak into the fortress. Sihtric had told me that behind the well's gate was a tangle of
buildings. If we could kill the guards quickly, and if no one saw their deaths, then I hoped we
could hide in that tangle and then, once we were certain that no one had discovered us, just
walk towards the north wall. We were all in mail or leather, we all had helmets, and if the
garrison was watching Ragnar approach then they might not notice us at all, and if they
did, they would assume we were defenders. Once at the wall I wanted to capture a part of the
fighting platform. If we could reach that platform and kill the men guarding it, then we
could hold a stretch of the wall long enough for Ragnar to join us. His nimbler men would climb
the palisade by driving axes into the timbers and using the embedded weapons as steps,
and Rypere was carrying our leather rope to help them up. As more men came we could fight our
way down the wall to the high gate and open it to the rest of Ragnar's force.

It had seemed a good idea when I described it to Ragnar and Guthred, but in that cold wet
dawn it seemed forlorn and desperate and I was suddenly struck by a sense of hopelessness.
I touched my hammer amulet. 'Pray to your gods,' I said, 'pray no one sees us. Pray we can reach
the wall.' It was the wrong thing to say. I should have sounded confident, but instead I had
betrayed my fears and this was no time to pray to any gods. We were already in their hands and
they would help us or hurt us according to how they liked what we did. I remember blind Ravn,
Ragnar's grandfather, telling me that the gods like bravery, and they love defiance, and
they hate cowardice and loathe uncertainty. 'We are here to amuse them,' Ravn had said, 'that
is all, and if we do it well then we feast with them till time ends.' Ravn had been a warrior
before his sight went, and afterwards he became a skald, a maker of poems, and the poems
he made celebrated battle and bravery. And if we did this right, I thought, then we would
keep a dozen skalds busy.

A voice sounded up the slope and I held up a hand to say we should all be silent. Then I
heard women's voices and the thump of a wooden pail against timber. The voices came closer.
I could hear a woman complaining, but the words were indistinct, then another woman
answered, much clearer. 'They can't get in, that's all They can't.' They spoke English, so
they were either slaves or the wives of Kjartan's men. I heard a splash as a bucket fell down
the well. I still held up my hand, cautioning the eleven men to stay still. It would take time
to fill the buckets and the more time the better because it would allow the guards to become
bored. I looked along the dirty faces, looking for any sign of uncertainty that would offend
the gods, and I suddenly realised we were not twelve men, but thirteen. The thirteenth man
had his head bowed so I could not see his face, so I poked his booted leg with my spear and he
looked up at me.

She looked up at me. It was Gisela.

She looked defiant and pleading, and I was horrified. There is no number so unlucky as
thirteen. Once, in Valhalla, there was a feast for twelve gods, but Loki, the trickster god,
went uninvited and he played his evil games, persuading Hod the Blind to throw a sprig of
mistletoe at his brother, Baldur. Baldur was the favourite god, the good one, but he could be
killed by mistletoe and so his blind brother threw the sprig and Baldur died and Loki
laughed, and ever since we have known that thirteen is the evil number. Thirteen birds in the
sky are an omen of disaster, thirteen pebbles in a cooking pot will poison any food placed
in the pot, while thirteen at a meal is an invitation to death. Thirteen spears against a
fortress could only mean defeat. Even the Christians know thirteen is unlucky. Father
Beocca told me that was because there were thirteen men at Christ's last meal, and the
thirteenth was Judas. So I just stared in horror at Gisela and, to show what she had done, I
put down my spear and held up ten fingers, then two, then pointed at her and held up one more.
She gave a shake of her head as if to deny what I was telling her, but I pointed at her a
second time and then at the ground, telling her she must stay where she was. Twelve would go to
Dunholm, not thirteen.

'If the babe won't suck,' a woman was saying beyond the wall, 'then rub its lips with
cowslip juice. It always works.'

'Rub your tits with it, too.' another voice said.

'And put a mix of soot and honey on its back.' a third woman advised.

'Two more buckets,' the first voice said, 'then we can get out of this rain.'

It was time to go. I pointed at Gisela again, gesturing angrily that she must stay where
she was, then I picked up the spear in my left hand and drew Serpent-Breath. I kissed her blade
and stood. It felt unnatural to stand and move again, to be in the daylight, to start walking
around the well's palisade. I felt naked under the ramparts and I waited for a shout from a
watchful sentinel, but none came. Ahead, not far ahead, I could see the gate and there was no
guard standing in the open doorway. Sihtric was on my left, hurrying. The path was made of
rough stone, slick and wet. I heard a woman gasp behind us, but still no one shouted the alarm
from the ramparts, then I was through the gate and I saw a man to my right and I swept
Serpent-Breath and she bit into his throat and I sawed her backwards so that the blood was
bright in that grey morning. He fell back against the palisade and I drove the spear into his
ruined throat. A second gate guard watched the killing from a dozen yards away. His armour was
a blacksmith's long leather apron and his weapon a woodcutter's axe which he seemed unable to
raise. He was standing with astonishment on his face and did not move as Finan approached
him. His eyes grew wider, then he understood the danger and turned to run and Finan's spear
tangled his legs and then the Irishman was standing over him and the sword stabbed down into
his spine. I held up my hand to keep everyone still and silent. We waited. No enemy shouted.
Rain dripped from the thatch of the buildings. I counted my men and saw ten, then Steapa came
through the gate, closing it behind him. We were twelve, not thirteen. The women will stay at
the well.' Steapa told me.

'You're sure?'

'They'll stay at the well.' he growled. I had told Steapa to talk to the women drawing
water, and doubtless his size alone had quelled any ideas they might have of sounding an
alarm.

'And Gisela?'

'She'll stay at the well too.' he said.

And thus we were inside Dunholm. We had come to a dark corner of the fortress, a place
where two big dung-heaps lay beside a long, low building. 'Stables.'

Sihtric told me in a whisper, though no one alive was in sight to hear us. The rain fell
hard and steady. I edged about the end of the stables and could see nothing except for more
wooden walls, great heaps of firewood and thatched roofs thick with moss. A woman drove a goat
between two of the huts, beating the animal to make it hurry through the rain.

I wiped Serpent-Breath clean on the threadbare cloak of the man I had killed, then gave
Clapa my spear and picked up the dead man's shield. 'Sheathe swords.' I told everyone. If we
walked through the fortress with drawn swords we would attract attention. We must look like
men newly woken who were reluctantly going to a wet, cold duty. 'Which way?' I asked
Sihtric. He led us alongside the palisade. Once past the stables I could see three large
halls that blocked our view of the northern ramparts. 'Kjartan's hall.'

Sihtric whispered, pointing to the right-hand building.

'Talk naturally.' I told him.

He had pointed to the largest hall, the only one with smoke coming from the roof-hole. It
was built with its long sides east and west, and one gable end was hard up against the ramparts
so we would be forced to go deep into the fortress centre to skirt the big hall. I could see
folk now, and they could see us, but no one thought us strange. We were just armed men walking
through the mud, and they were wet and cold and hurrying between the buildings, much too
intent on reaching warmth and dryness to worry about a dozen bedraggled warriors. An ash
tree grew in front of Kjartan's hall and a lone sentry guarding the hall door crouched under
the ash's leafless branches in a vain effort to shelter from the wind and rain. I could hear
shouting now. It was faint, but as we neared the gap between the halls I could see men on the
ramparts. They were gazing north, some of them brandishing defiant spears. So Ragnar was
coming. He would be visible even