The thane’s voice was almost affectionate. “Look at them, both sides. Those are the king’s warmen and the best of the pirates. They are the drengir, the hard here-chempan. How long would we last against them? Me—maybe I could give one a little trouble for half a minute. You—I don’t know. These—” He gestured with his thumb at the peasants behind him. “Make sausage meat of them.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Alfgar abruptly. The peasants stirred and muttered.
Suddenly the thane had Alfgar by the arm, fingers sinking deep.
“No. Listen. That is the king’s voice. He is calling on his true men. Hear what he wants.”
“He wants the head of Ivar,” snarled a peasant.
Suddenly they were all moving forward, raising spears, bracing shields, the thane among them.
He knows it won’t work, Shef realized—but I know what will!
He leapt in front of them, pointing, gesturing. Slowly the men caught his meaning, turned away, dropped their weapons, headed for the nearest of the blazing longships.
Over the clash of steel the Vikings too heard the king’s voice calling, and understood him—many of them had had English bedslaves for years, and their fathers before them.
“King Jatmund wants your head,” cried one of the jarls.
“I don’t want Jatmund’s head,” Ivar called back. “He must be taken alive.”
“What do you want him for?”
“I will give that much thought. Something new. Something instructive.”
Something to put heart back into the men. This had all been much too close for comfort, Ivar reflected, edging from side to side to keep a clear view of the action. He would never have thought that the king of a little kingdom like this would have had the guts to challenge the Great Army in its own base.
“All right,” he said quietly to the Gaddgedlar, waiting behind the battle-line as his personal reserve. “No need to wait much longer. They aren’t going to break through. Over here, between the tents. Now, when I give the word we are going to charge. Go right through them, don’t bother to fight. I want you to catch the kinglet. King Jatmund. See him. There. The little man, the one with the war-mask over his face.”
Ivar filled his lungs to shout, over the din of battle, in mockery of the cry of Edmund. “Twenty ounces, twenty ounces of gold to the man who brings me the English king. But don’t kill him. He must be taken alive.”
But before he could speak he felt Muirtach and the Irish gasp and stiffen around him. “Will you look at that!” “It’s a fiery cross coming for us!” “Mac na hoige slan.” “Mother of God be merciful.” “What in the name of Othin is it?” Over the heads of the struggling men a giant shape rushed toward them like a cross, a monstrous, blazing cross. The ranks of the English parted, Killer-Brand leapt forward with his axe raised. Then the huge timber fell forward, half hurled by the capering furies who grasped it.
Brand sprang aside, tripped over a rope and fell with a clang to the ground. Something struck Ivar a numbing blow on the shoulder. The Gaddgedlar scattered in all directions as the waxed flax walls of the tents started to blaze. The shrieking of women rose to add itself to all the other noises of the battle.
And instantly, running along the blazing timber itself, his face contorted with rage and delight, there came a half-naked churl, the slave manacles still on his wrist, hurtling through the scattered ranks of his captors. A spear stabbed at Ivar’s face. Without thought he parried it, slicing the point from its shaft at the same moment his shoulder shrieked protest. The peasant raced on, reversing his clumsy weapon and smashing it at the side of Ivar’s head.
The blow, the ground rising up, the fall into burning wax and skin. Struck by a peasant, Ivar’s brain thought in the last instant of consciousness, darkness embracing him. But I am the champion of the North.
Through the flames other figures came leaping. It’s that boy, thought Ivan, the one who fought the duel by the washing-place. But I thought he was one of mine….