Magnus walked forward, grinning, clasped hands with Shef as Kolbein too shambled forward. Hund was inside the ring as well, seizing Kolbein’s bleeding and already-swollen arm, clucking over the filthy state of the sleeve. Sigvarth was there also, hovering behind the duellers, trying to say something. An icy voice cut through the babble.
“Well, you are all agreed on one thing and another. If you had meant to stop fighting as soon as two drops of blood were shed, you could have done it all behind the privy and not wasted the whole Army’s time.
“But tell me this, little dunghill cock—” The Boneless One’s voice fell now into a pool of silence as he stalked forward, eyes blazing. “What do you think you can do to get my full friendship and support? Eh? For there is blood between us too. What can you offer me in exchange for it?”
Shef turned and pitched his voice high, allowing once again the note of challenge and contempt to brazen it, so that the Army would know Ivar had been dared.
“I can give you something, Ivar Ragnarsson, that I already tried to get for you once, but that we know you cannot get for yourself. No, I do not mean a woman’s skirts…” Ivar swayed back, eyes never leaving Shef’s face, and Shef knew that now Ivar would never leave him, never forget him till one or the other was dead. “No. Give me five hundred men and I will give you something to share with all of us. I will give you machines stronger than the Christians’. Weapons greater than the one I used here. And when I have all those I will give you something else.
“I will give you York!”
He ended with a shout, and the Army shouted with him, clashing their weapons in tumult and approval.
“It is a good brag,” replied Ivar, glaring round at Sigvarth, at the Hebrideans, at Thorvin and his group of pendant-wearers, all clustered in support of Shef. “But it will be a sad one for the boy if he fails to carry it out.”
Chapter Four
Hard to tell when dawn comes in an English winter, Shef thought. The clouds come down to the ground, the showers of rain or sleet come sweeping across—wherever the sun may be, it has to cut through layer after layer before the light gets through. He needed light for his own men, he needed light to see the English. Till he had it, they could all wait.
He moved his aching body beneath the layer of sweat-sodden wool that was his tunic and the layer of stiff boiled leather that was still the only armor he had had time to acquire. The sweat was chilling now, after the hours of gasping, whispering labor. More than anything he would like to strip everything off and rub himself dry on a cloak. The men in the darkness behind him must feel the same.
But each of them now had only one thing to think about, one duty to carry out, and that duty something painfully and repetitively drilled into them. Only Shef had the image in his mind of all the things that had to happen, all the parts that had to fit. Only he could see all the hundreds of things that could go wrong. Shef was not afraid of death or maiming, of pain or shame or disgrace—the usual terrors of the battlefield, to be dispersed by action and excitement and battle-fury. He was afraid of the unpredicted, the unexpected, the broken spoke, the slippery leaves, the unknown machine.
To an experienced jarl of the pirates, Shef would already have done everything wrong. His men were formed-up, but cold, tired, stiff and uncertain as to what was happening.
But this was going to be a new kind of battle. This one did not depend on how men felt or how well they fought. If everyone did as he was supposed to, nothing needed to be done well. It just needed to be done. This would be battle like ploughing a field, or tearing out tree-stumps. No valor, no heroic deeds.
Shef’s eyes caught a spark of flame. Yes. More sparks, a growing brush of flame, more flames further away, all from separate sources. The shapes of buildings could be seen now, and smoke was beginning to pour from them, blown by the wind. The flames lit up the long line of wall with the gate that the Ragnarssons’ ram had assaulted two weeks before. All along the line facing that eastern wall, men were setting fire to the houses. Long tails of smoke billowing out, men rushing forward through it with ladders raised—a sudden assault, arrows flying, the blast of warhorns, more men coming forward as the first ones withdrew. The noise and flames and rushes were harmless. Soon enough the English leaders would realize this was a feint attack, would turn their attention elsewhere. But Shef remembered the desperate slowness and confusion of the Emneth levies; with the English what the leaders thought hardly mattered much. By the time they persuaded their men not to believe the evidence of their eyes he sincerely hoped that he would have the battle won.