With not much noise, they separated into the four groups. Huddled around Ballista were Maximus, Tarchon, Rikiar the Vandal, the Romans Diocles and Heliodorus, and Mord, with four other young Angles. There was no telling how many fighting men were in the hall with Unferth. The thirty-four of Ballista’s party might be outnumbered, possibly by some margin. Surprise would be lost by the summons, but it could not be helped.
Ballista smiled at Mord in the gloom. The youth grinned back. Ballista thought of what lay ahead of the atheling. Vermund the Heathobard and Hieroson the Olbian were back at the boat with the prisoner. When they returned to Gudme and the court of the cyning, when finally the captive was unmasked, the words he would be forced to repeat would strike at the heart of Mord’s young life. If, of course, Mord or any of them lived to return to Varinsey. Ballista put it all out of his mind.
There was nothing to be gained by delay. Do not think, just act. Ballista got to his feet. The others got up, too. He led them out of the wood.
In the blue moonlight, they jogged along a hedge which divided two meadows. They could hear nothing over the thump of their boots, the creak of leather, their grunted breathing. Ballista’s bow and quiver banged against his back, his shield dragged at his arm.
Silent on great white wings, an owl glided overhead.
From nowhere, Ballista half remembered a line from Plato: ‘The greatest hunting is the hunting of men.’
The ridge of the hall loomed closer.
No alarm rang out.
Ballista reached the fence. With his dagger, he cut the rope securing the wicket gate. He slipped into the farmyard, the others at his back.
The homely smells of woodsmoke and animal dung, the reek of a midden. Hard-trodden earth underfoot. The sounds of a horse shifting in its stable. Still no outcry. No dogs or geese loose to give a warning. Ballista angled to the left, close under the overhanging eaves. He stopped before the western door. Dark shapes around him. Ivar and his men passed behind.
Ballista whispered for Rikiar and Heliodorus to look for a timber which could serve as a ram. They disappeared into the outbuildings. Ballista waited. So far, so good. They had outrun the news of their coming, outrun all expectation. Unferth had no sentries posted. He had arrived on Abalos but hours before them. No one would have considered such close pursuit.
Heliodorus spoke in Ballista’s ear. Beams could be pulled from a cowshed, but it would make a noise. Ballista said they would do it later.
Ballista drew Battle-Sun. The serpentine pattern in the blade shimmered in the moonlight. Alone, he walked to the door. It was tall and wide. There was a pile of dry chickweed to one side. He put his ear against the boards; why, he was not sure. The sound of a man snoring, of more than one, reverberating in the big space.
Ballista straightened up and struck the pommel of Battle-Sun against the door. The boards jumped and rattled. The sound boomed into the hall, out over the yard. He struck again.
‘Unferth! You are surrounded. It is over. Surrender.’
Shouts from inside. The crash of a table or bench overturning. Feet drumming on the floorboards. The scrape of steel; weapons being tugged free.
Ballista stepped back, locked his shield with the others. They crouched in the night, linden boards well out and angled upwards. If the door opened, the first response might well be a flight of steel-tipped shafts.
Above, a shutter squealed and swung open from a previously unseen window in the thatch. So, the hall had a loft. The head and shoulders of a man in the opening. The face glittered with cold, immobile metal.
‘Who is there?’ The mask gave an inhuman quality to the voice.
‘Dernhelm, son of Isangrim, the one the Romans call Ballista.’
The carved face looked down. ‘The killer of my son.’
‘You know me then. Unferth, do not make your followers share your death. Show yourself a man. Release them from their oaths. Give yourself up.’
There was something uncanny about the silent, unmoving regard of the silvered mask.
Ballista raised his voice. ‘You Brondings and any others in there, your leader has no more luck. Hand him over, and you will go free.’
‘No!’ A shout came from the floor of the hall, behind the door. ‘We gave our sword-oath. We would be dishonoured.’
Keeping his eye on the upper window, Ballista addressed the unseen warrior. ‘There is no dishonour in renouncing an oath extracted under compulsion, an oath to an evil man.’
The voice answered from behind the door. ‘Save your cunning arguments for yourself, Oath-breaker. We stay. Every man must give up the days that are lent to him.’
Ballista called up to where Unferth still stood in the window. ‘If there are women and children in there, we will let them depart unharmed.’
The mask nodded. ‘It is not possible to bend fate, nor stand against nature. It will be as you say.’
‘Have them come out of this door, no other.’
The mask withdrew, pulling the shutters to behind it.
They heard the bar lifted, then the door opened. Only the low remains of the hearth fire illuminated the cavernous interior. A dozen figures emerged: three children, nine women, one with a swaddled babe in arms. Before the door closed, Ballista saw the dull gleam of serried ranks of helms and mailcoats. Many men would die before the hall could be cleared; perhaps too many.
‘Wada, have two of your men lead them away,’ Ballista called.
Grim and another Heathobard went up to the women.
‘Wait!’ It was Maximus. ‘That one in the middle — the big one with the broad shoulders — grab her!’
The woman threw her cloak in Grim’s face. Steel flashed from a concealed blade. It cut deep into Grim’s leg. He howled as he fell. The other Heathobard hacked down the warrior disguised as a woman.
Screaming, the women and children scattered into the night. Their cries and the ways they ran vouched for the genuine nature of their gender and age.
Grim was dragged away. As his compatriot tied a tourniquet around the Heathobard’s thigh, Ballista gave new orders to Diocles.
When the Roman had vanished around the hall towards Castricius, Ballista and his men moved back into the obscurity between two farm buildings. They unslung their bows, notched arrows and trained them on the door.
From the far side of the hall came the noise of heavy things being manhandled, of loud hammering.
Ballista knew it was a terrible thing that he had decided to do, but he could see no other way.
The noise from the east side stopped. All was quiet in the farmyard, as if it were a normal night, as if awful things were not unfolding. When a cow lowed in its byre, it sounded unnaturally loud.
‘What are they doing in there?’ Mord whispered.
‘Waiting,’ Ballista said. The women would have loved ones in the hall. They would spread the news. It was only four or five miles to the port. Time was not an ally to the attackers. At any moment Fate could turn them into quarry, hunted down across a dark, alien landscape. You could never rely on Wyrd.