The thane lifted the heavy bar that held closed the main double doors, and pushed them both open together. As he did so a groan came from outside, almost a sigh. There were many men out there, poised for a rush. But now they knew they had been seen.
“My wife and children—coming out!” shouted Elfstan. Quickly the children slipped through the door, his wife scurrying after them. A few feet beyond she turned, beckoned frantically to him. Her husband shook his head.
“They are my guests,” he said. His voice rose to a shout, addressing the ambushers outside. “My guests and the guests of King Alfred. I do not know who are these thieves in the night, within the bounds of Wessex, but they will hang when the king’s reeve catches them.”
“There is no king in Wessex,” shouted a voice from outside. “And we are men of King Burgred. Burgred and the Church. Your guests are vagabonds and heretics. Slaves from outside! We have come to collar and brand them.”
Suddenly the moonlight shone on dark shapes, moving together out of the cover of houses and fences.
They did not hesitate. It would have been easier to catch their enemies sleeping, but they had been told what their enemies were: released slaves, lowest of the low. Men who had never been taught swordplay, who had not been conditioned from birth to war. Who had not felt the bite of edges over the linden-shield. A dozen Mercian warriors swarmed together at the dark doors of the hall. Behind them, now that concealment was gone, horns blew for the assault.
The double doors of the hall were six feet across, a man’s full arm-span. Room only for two armed men to enter at once. Two champions rushed in together, shields up, faces glaring.
Neither saw the blows that killed them. As they peered into the gloom for men to face them, faces to hack at, the halberds swept from both sides, at thigh level, below shield and mail-shirt. The halberd-heads, axe one side, spike the other, were twice the weight of a broadsword. One shore through a warrior’s leg and deep into the facing thigh. The other sliced upward from the bone, deep into the pelvis. As one man lay in the flow of blood that would kill him in seconds, the other flapped and twisted, shrieking, trying to tear free the great blade lodged in bone.
More men pushed over them. This time spearpoints met them from in front, driving through wooden shields and metal rings, hurling men back into the confusion of the doorway, groaning from belly wounds. Now the long blades, sweeping in six-foot arcs, chopped down the mailed warriors like cattle before the poleaxe. For a few seconds it seemed as if the sheer weight and numbers of the first rush would break through the defenders.
But against the dim-seen menace, nerves failed. The Mercians scrambled back, those in front weaving desperately behind their shields, trying to drag their dead and wounded with them.
“So far so good,” muttered one of the Waymen.
“They’ll come again,” said Sibba.
Four more times the Mercians came on, each time more warily, trying now, as they realized the tactics and the weapons against them, to draw the blow and evade it, to leap forward before the halberdiers could recover their cumbrous weapons. The Norfolk freedmen used their advantage of numbers, two men to face each door, a man striking from each side. Slowly the casualties on both sides grew.
“They’re trying to cut through the walls,” muttered Elfstan to Sibba, still on his feet as the sky began to pale.
“Makes no difference,” replied Sibba. “They still have to climb in. As long as there’s enough of us to block each gap.”
Outside, a fair angry face stared at a bleeding exhausted one. Alfgar had come with the attackers to watch the destruction of the Waymen. He was not pleased.
“You can’t break in?” he shouted. “Against a handful of slaves?”
“We’ve lost too many good men to this handful of slaves. Eight dead, a dozen hurt and all of them badly. I’m going to do what we should have done first.”