Uhtred
Hrvesgott had lived for too long, and I wanted victory to come on this day. A stretch of the palisade had fallen to ballistae with thick tethers tied upon the ends for oxen to pull. It was a stroke of genius that I cannot claim to be my own. A fyrdman by the name of Ghalresh had described to me how he had once tugged a thick tree down to be wedged and cut into planks, and it simply made sense. We had taken casualties in that action, for the Hrvesgott defenders had hurled spears and arrows down upon the shields that we had aligned to protect the livestock. But now that palisade was no more, and the shield walls of Nharati had gathered to take the city.
I was not among them this time. I had taken unnecessary risks in the fighting thus far, trying desperately to steal the town away before the winter made my army sick. So now I was upon my war steed, surrounded by those knights whom had filled me with such love and pride in the past. My armour shirting clanked at my thighs as the heavy, black horse shifted underneath my weight. A lance and shield were upon my arms, while my broadsword’s strap was wrapped around my neck. I tied coarse hair from the tails of horses into the stalks of my facial hair so that they wafted like banners below the blank faceplate of my helm.
The ‘gottis had not formed a single shield wall this time. Instead they were forming small wedges in the city streets to kill us in piecemeal skirmishes. The fighting would be brutal in those streets, and my men were murmuring amongst themselves; frightened and exhilarated at the prospect of conquest. I say my men, though by this point I was no longer the sole leader of the oxymoronic Benevolent Army of Nharati. Ealdormen from three counties, good and loyal nobles, had gathered their fyrds to number us an impressive three thousand. And we would need the numbers to take this city. Hrvesgott was a honeycomb of tight alleys and winding, muddy, haphazard cobbled streets.
My hands were cold in the metal plated gloves that wrapped them. A blizzard was threatening to loom, sweeping the plain between the city’s broken defenses and the army. Men scuffed their feet in the slush for warmth, huddled into themselves, and chattered their teeth. Fighting is a terrible thing in winter’s snow. Frost makes weapons stick in their scabbards if the hilts are not rubbed with oil, the metal of men’s mail makes them sick with fever, and all provisions turn into mush. Yet this would be the last of it. I was determined, I was hungry for real slaughter, and that hunger was beloved by my men for men love to be led.
And I was optimistic, for I had a trick to play on the traitors of Hrvesgott. They were standing in front of the shield walls in pairs, with canvas wrapped around them to hide their identities and surrounded by five-man-each teams who would push them into the streets to kill.
Halbrin
I missed my son. I wondered if he was well, for the weeping boil upon his back was ever infected. I wondered whether my cattle had survived the cruel winter, and whether the stable had held, for the grass that had grown upon it would make the snow heavy. Most of all, I wondered whether I would see any of these things again after this day.
I was afraid. I had pissed myself in the first shield wall, but had fought. I had found myself in the very first rank and I had survived through the grace of God. I had burned many candles for Him since I came to this wretched place. Now my bowels churned once more as I stood in the midst of so many men, staring into the waiting maw of men whom the Crown Prince had ordered murdered.
“This standing is unbearable,” the man beside me growled. He was a ghostly-pale fellow with a face marked by pox scars and string tied into his hair. His throat contorted often to keep his bile from spilling onto the man in front of him because he was drunk. I could smell the mead on his breath and it make me sick in turn.
“It will happen soon,” I said, though whether he heard I do not know, for Prince Uhtred seemed to have heard. A low bellow ripped through the rumbling voices and raised the calls of commanding men. The front rows of the shield wall locked their shields, though they would have to do so again in the streets. And then we were marching in the steady one-one pace that would creep us into the bowels of the city and into the Gates of Life.
Svavn
I knew that I was going to die. My fishing trident was shivering in my grip until I dropped it into the street. As I fumbled to pick it up, I heard the shouts of men around me as they pointed to the incoming mass of men. So many men. They filled the plain like a swarm of summer locusts. I bit my tongue until it bled to distract me from fear. I watched as the shield wall met the palisade’s edges without resistance and breached it. And then I watched in horror as the ballistae were stopped short of the defenses. Those terrible weapons had cost us nearly as many lives as the fighting in the shield wall. I could just make out the men as they twisted the tethers tight and slipped in the heavy bolts.
There was something else coming our way, too, but what they were I did not know. I saw men pushing them which indicated wheels, and each was as tall as two men and nearly wide. They came in pairs ahead of the shield wall that was now becoming disjointed. Those men became columns with wedges that filled the streets where those canvassed objects did not go.
The sudden rush of wind opened the battle as ballistae let loose their bolts. One hurdled into our ranks and crumpled four men to unrecognizable pieces as bones from one man ripped into that of another. We were all covered with their blood and it put the fear of death into me once more as I saw the looming wedge headed towards us. We were forced to step over the bodies lest we be overrun, but it was for naught; for abruptly the wedge gave way and horses were now rushing towards us. Horses with men beating down on us with lances tucked into the crutch of their arms, their points wavering in the rocking motion of the charging knights as they crashed into us.
Uhtred
I should not have charged the streets before the shield wall, but I was too anxious. My lance lifted and then plunged downward to take a man above his shield and in the face. The concussion made my javelin break and I dropped it as a club of some kind hit my shield. My horse bowled men over without hesitation and trampled whatever got in his way, but I resisted the urge to dive too deep into their midst lest he be tripped. My sword was in my hand now and I was cutting down at men, giving the gruesome chops to skulls that would make men simple and wound them horribly.
To be a knight in a charge is not to be as honourable as many of them claim. It is the ultimate act of cruelty, for death comes more from the hooves of horses than from the strokes of a sword. Screams filled the air as I roughly pushed a shield down with my sword and thrust it into the throat of a man so that the scream turned into a gurgling whistle. My blade was already twisting to free itself from the flesh and I let the man pull my sword arm back as I pushed my horse forward.
I turned that dragging momentum into another strike with a circling raise of my arm that glanced off a man’s rusted helmet. Bone crunched as my horse bit into a man’s collar. I saw a knight pulled from his horse and stabbed over and over again with pikes and sickles, and I saw a man’s eyes roll back into his head as he was struck by a particularly large knight who preferred a small war hammer to a sword. The man fell to the ground and went into spasms that broke his back.
They were running now. Fear is the ultimate weapon of a cavalry charge. They were running into a tight alley that bottled them in, and the killing was easy then for we were to their back, and when we weren’t they were just as futile. The shield wall behind us continued up the street and the canvassed knife carts were now revealed for what they were. Men were posted behind them to close off the street so that the funneling process would begin. It would be a terrible, slow-moving fight, but soon enough those carts and my brave men would put a stranglehold on the people of Hrvesgott.
Halbrin
To fight in a shield wall here was not to fight in a shield wall, but a long column of death. The cowardly could not afford to linger in the rear any more, for our flanks were turned to defend against the men who would pour out of houses and throw themselves with suicidal fury into us. I was not fighting yet, but once again I had pissed myself. Blood was streaking the walls and pooling in the streets. Knights would dismount and charge into buildings where men threw spears and rocks at us. Often they would simply push the ‘gotti defenders from the windows and roofs to meet their ends in the streets or amongst us. My shield was made heavy with the broken shaft of a spear as I heaved it over my head. The edge of the point scratched at my arm so that blood dripped onto my shoulders and into my hair.
I could feel the wind over our heads as ballista bolts came viciously down, lodging in the wooden structures dwarfed by the tall stone houses of rich men. Once a bolt struck our own ranks and plunged a gruesome path into the center of the column. I watched a man to my right pick up the spear of a fallen colleague and shove it into his own leg to take himself from the fight. Unfortunately for him, his ruse was easily discovered and his face was caved in with a shield. To the front of the column was a heavy mass of defenders that were working push us back, but he pressed on, and through tight alleyways littered with ‘gotti dead we could see other columns making similar progress.
A man fell at the edge of our column and I was forced to take up the line just as a woman, her hair burned and the skin of her left cheek hanging in a despicable rag, came at me with a sickle. She threw herself upon the boss of my shield and seemed to crumple around it. No logic, no strategy to her violence. She just hit my shield like a mace and tried to snake her sickle around it to strike me in the head. And strike me it dead, cutting a superficial groove upon my forehead and putting blood in my eye. I was angry, then, and shoved her off of my shield. Before I knew that I had done it, my axe was hissing through her sickle and into the base of her neck.
I felt appalled by this thing I had done, but I could not think much of it for I was cutting at a swordsman who was threatening to kill the fellow to my right. Neither of us killed him, for he was taken by the rock thrown by his own colleagues. It glanced off his skull and hit the side of the house with a high crack, and both man and bludgeon hit the street at the same time.
It would be the last of the street fighting we would do. We had spent what felt like hours scouring the avenues, but now we were upon the centre of the city, a wide oblong square that we were surprised to find choked with men. And we were not the only ones to reach the square. For we saw other columns flowing from other avenues, creeping just past the street edges to form a wide shield wall that encircled the town, surrounded our enemies, and threatened to choke them.
Uhtred
My knights were slick with gore, the flanks of horses dripping onto the puddles in the streets. We were in a tight avenue, pressed between the shield wall that had coalesced in the square and the mass of men behind it. I dismounted, using my shield to nudge men aside and bring myself to the front. I saw chaos and confusion in the faces of the ‘gottis, and it pleased me. I had put them in a desperate position, surrounded on all fronts so that the weak, scared men of the ranks could not hide in the rear.
I could see that the defenders had released three men to talk, which meant that they no longer wanted to fight. They were coming towards the east portion of the wall, which meant that I had to walk some time from the south to finally meet them. They were simple men, short-cut hair in the ‘gotti way and slick with blood. One man was obviously of high repute, a thegn, for he wore mail and had a rich (once) purple cloak held with an amber brooch. His arm hung limp, dripping blood and twitching.
“I am Bevn,” he said to me.
“I am Prince Uhtred.”
The nod of his head was not a bow, which told me that he still did not recognize me as his lord. He took a moment to look over the mass of men that I had gathered, and the knife carts that had systematically boxed him into this position and sealed off the avenues that were not choked with men. It was a dull, quiet stare; the stare of a man who knew that he had lost his reputation, his land, and his wealth.
“We are willing to negotiate the surrender of Hrvesgott,” he said at last.
“I’m certain you are. But I am not sure that there is anything to negotiate. What I would like to do,” I said while pointing towards the mass of men and women, “is kill every last traitor who dared to take arms against me. To piss on their bodies and carve out their eyes so that they will be blind to the horror that awaits them in hell until the moment the Malevolent One takes them into his clutches.” Such is the talk of victorious men, and Bevn surely expected it for he nodded in tired acquiescence.
“Would you make martyrs of us?” he said, putting his gaze upon me hard now in some semblance of warning. “With our deaths will come the deaths of thousands more who yearn for freedom.”
I must admit that I laughed at that. Revolts came every few months, and were not impossible to handle for they were peasants and thus helpless men. I answered him by reaching back with my broadsword and thrusting it into the throat of the traitor Bevn. I slid it in until it broke his spine and then I kicked his body away, and the dull whistle of air seeping out of the wound was like sweet music. I did not need to give the order to attack. The ealdormen had seen my slaying and simply charged at the men with murderous desire. There was no longer a shield wall, but a wanton host thirsty for blood.
I was running now, my sword raised and my shield up and fury in my eyes. Fury, and the unaltering sense of victory. And that victory brought a driving thought into my mind. As I crashed into my first oppenent, a single word sprung from my lips in a conquering scream that drowned out all other sound.
"Garnett!"
Now was the real slaughter. The good slaughter. And then, on the morrow, we would go home.
Svavn
They were coming for us, and we all wept and cried. Knights had broken through the mass of incoming men and were now chopping down upon our skulls. I vomited, for though I was in the centre I saw offal and blood and brains in the air. My fishing trident was broken, and I now held it like an axe as I shivered violently. They would come here soon enough. Better to go to them. I started to move through the disorganized rabble, but my legs were too shaky and I fell. When I got back to my feet, I saw a man with an axe and broken shield hurdle himself to me. I could not move my spear, nor could I consider what God would think of me when I met him. Instead I just took his axe blade in my belly. My body slumped of its own accord and I fell, and then I knew nothing more.
Fri Oct 17, 2008 8:18 pm