The same wind, that dawn, blew across the bows of the forty dragon-boats cruising down the English coast from the Humber, almost in their teeth, making it impossible to rig sail. Ivar Ragnarsson, in the prow of the first boat, did not care. His oarsmen were rowing at their paddling-stroke, which they could keep up for eight hours a day if need be, grunting in unison as they heaved their oars through the water, feathering with the ease of long practice, continuing their conversations with a word or two as they swept them back, dipping and heaving again.
Only in the first six boats was there extra work for the men. In each, a ton and a half of dead weight squatted, carefully stowed before the mast: the onagers of Erkenbert, all the forges of York Minster had been able to turn out in the weeks Ivar had given them. Ivar had raged furiously about the weight, demanded that they be lightened. Impossible, the black archdeacon had replied. This is the way they are drawn in Vegetius. More convincingly, lighter models had knocked themselves to pieces in a dozen shots. The kick of the wild ass that gave these machines their name came when the throwing-arm struck the crossbeam. If there were no crossbeam the stone would not be hurled out with its astonishing force and velocity. A light crossbeam, however padded, would crack.
Ivar’s meditations were interrupted by loud retching from behind him. Each onager was served by a dozen slaves from the minster; in command of them all, torn deeply against his will from the studies and library of the minster, Erkenbert himself. Now one of the lubbers had succumbed to the long, North Sea swell and was vomiting his heart out over the side. The wrong side, naturally, so that the meager contents of his stomach blew back over the nearest rowers, provoking shouts and curses, disruption of the long, automatic rowing-stroke.
As Ivar stepped toward the disturbance, hand dropping to the gutting-knife at his belt, Hamal the horse-swain, the man who had saved Ivar from the lost battle at March, moved quickly. The slave grasped the man by the scruff of his neck. A violent blow across the side of the head, repeated as Hamal heaved the wretched man off his feet and flung him across the thwarts to the lee side, there to retch in peace.
“We’ll have the hide off him tonight,” said Hamal. Ivar stared unblinkingly for a moment, knowing well what Hamal was doing. Decided to leave it for the moment. Turned back to his thoughts in the prow.
Hamal caught the eye of one of the rowers, mimed wiping sweat from his brow. Ivar killed a man a day now on average, mostly from the valueless slaves of the minster. At that rate they would have no one left to wind a machine at all by the time they met the enemy. And no one could be sure who Ivar would turn on next. He could be diverted, sometimes, by sufficient cruelty.
Thor send that we meet the enemy soon, thought Hamal. The only thing that will cool Ivar’s temper for good is the head and balls of the man who bested him—Skjef Sigvarthsson. Without that, he will destroy everyone around him. That is why his brothers have sent him out this time on his own. With me as his nursemaid, and the Snakeeye’s foster father to report.
If we don’t meet the enemy soon, thought Hamal, I am going to desert the first chance I get. Ivar owes me his life. But he is too mad to pay. And yet if he takes his rage out in the right quarter, something tells me there are fortunes yet to be gained, here in the rich kingdoms of the South. Rich and ripe to fall.
“It’s a bugger,” said Oswi, once slave to St. Aethelthryth’s of Ely, now captain of a catapult-team in the Army of Norfolk and the Way. There were nods of agreement from his crew as they looked thoughtfully at their much-loved but not-quite-trusted artillery piece. It was one of the torsion-catapults, the wheeled twist-shooters. Every man in the crew was desperately proud of it. They had given it a name weeks before: “Dead Level.” They had polished every wooden part of it many times over. Yet they were afraid of it.