“Look, lord.” Guthmund spoke pleadingly, as near to wheedling as his character would go. “I know, me and the boys, we haven’t always been fair to the English you’ve hauled in. Called them midgets. Called them skraelingiar. Said they’re no use and never will be. Well, they’ve proved us wrong.
“But there was a reason for what we said, and it goes double if you’re going to fight these Franks and their horses. Your English can shoot machines. One of them with a halberd hits as good as one of our boys with a sword. But there’s still a lot of things they can’t do, no matter how hard they try. They aren’t strong enough.
“Now these Franks. Why are they dangerous? Everyone knows it’s because of the horses. How much does a horse weigh? A thousand pounds? That’s what I’m telling you, lord. To even get a few shots in at these Franks, you’ll have to hold them off for a while. Maybe our boys could do it, with the halberds and all. Maybe. They’ve never done it before. But it’s dead sure they can’t if you’ve sent them all off. What happens if you get caught with just a line of your little fellows between you and the Franks? They can’t do it, lord. They haven’t the strength.” Nor the training, Guthmund thought silently. Not to watch armed men walk right up to you and start hacking away. Or ride up to you. They’ve always had us to help them.
“You are forgetting King Alfred and his men,” said Shef. “He will have gathered his army by now. You know the English thanes are as strong and brave as your men—they just have no discipline. But I can supply that.”
Guthmund nodded, grudgingly.
“So each group must do what it does best. Your men, sail. With the ship and the machines. My freedmen, wind their machines and shoot. Alfred and his Englishmen, stand still to do what they’re told. Trust me, Guthmund. You did not believe me last time. Or the time before. Or when we raided the minster at Beverley.”
Guthmund nodded again, slightly more willingly this time. As he turned to go he added one more remark.
“Lord jarl, you aren’t a sailor. But don’t forget another thing in all this. It’s harvest now. When the night grows as long as the day, every sailor knows, the weather changes. Don’t forget the weather.”
The news of Alfred’s total defeat reached Shef and his truncated army two days’ march south. Shef listened to the exhausted, white-faced thane who brought the news in the center of an interested circle—he had abandoned the custom of council meetings in private as soon as the still-grumbling Guthmund and his Norse fellows had boarded their captured boats. The freedmen watched his face as he listened, marking that it changed expression only twice. The first time, when the thane cursed the Frankish archers—who had shot such a rain of arrows that twice Alfred’s advancing army had been forced to stand and raise its shields, only to be caught motionless both times by the Frankish cavalry charge. The second time when the thane admitted that no one had seen or heard of Alfred the king since the day of the disaster.
In the silence that followed the story, Cwicca, presuming on his status as Shef’s companion and rescuer, had asked what all thought. “What do we do now, lord? Turn back, or go on?”
Shef answered immediately. “Go on.”
Opinion round the campfires that night was divided about the sense of that. Ever since the Viking Waymen had left with Guthmund, the army had seemed a different creature. The freed English slaves had always secretly feared their allies—so like their former masters in strength and violence, superior to any English master in warlike reputation. With the Vikings gone, the army marched as if on holiday: pipes playing, laughter in the ranks, calling out to the harvesters in the fields, who no longer fled at the sight of the first scouts and advance-guard.
Yet the fear the army had felt had also been a guarantee. Proud as they were of their machines, their halberds and their crossbows, the ex-slaves did not have the self-belief that comes from a lifetime of winning battles.