He'd ordered his men to drop their weapons, though not before the two guards and one other of his company—Otho, who was a good man—lay dead. No great shame surrendering to a score of Jormsvik mercenaries mad enough to be ashore this near to Esferth. He had no idea why they were here: the mercenaries were far too pragmatic to offer themselves for raids as foolhardy as this one would be. Who would pay them enough to even consider it? And why?
It made too little sense. And it was not a puzzle worth having more men die while he tried to solve it. Best surrender, much as it burned to do that, let them sell him back to Aeldred for silver and safe passage to wherever they were really going.
"We yield ourselves!" he cried loudly, and dropped his sword on the moonlit grass. They would understand him. The two languages borrowed from each other, and the older Jormsvik raiders would have been here many times in their youth. "You have been foolish beyond all credit to come here, but sometimes folly is rewarded, for Jad works in ways we do not understand."
The largest of the Erlings—eyes behind a helm—grinned and spat. "Jad, you say? I think not. Your name?" he rasped. He already knew what this was about.
No reason to hide it. Indeed, the whole point was his name, and what it was worth. It would save his life, and the lives of his three surviving men. These were mercenaries. "I am Burgred, Earl of Denferth," he said. "Captain of King Aeldred's fyrd and his Household Guard."
"Hah!" roared the big man in front of him. Laughter and shouts from the others, raucous and triumphant, unable to believe their good fortune. They knew him. Of course they knew him. And experienced men would also know that Aeldred would pay to have him back. Burgred cursed again, under his breath.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, angrily. "Do you not know how little you can win along this coast now? When did the men of Jormsvik begin selling themselves for small coin and certain battle?"
He had spent his entire life, it seemed, fighting them and studying them. He was aware of a hesitation.
"We were told Drengest could be taken," the man in front of him said, finally.
Burgred blinked. "Drengest? You are mocking me."
There was a silence. They weren't mocking him. Burgred laughed. "What fool told you that? What fools listened to him? Have you seen Drengest yet? You must have."
The Erling planted his sword in the earth, removed his helm. His long yellow hair was plastered to his head. "We've seen it," he said.
"You understand there are nearly one hundred men of the fyrd in there, over and above the rest of the people inside the walls? You've seen the walls? You've seen the fleet being built? You were going to attack Drengest? You know how close you are to Esferth here? What do you have, thirty longships? Forty? Fifty? Is Jormsvik emptied for this folly? Are you all summer-mad?"
"Five ships," the Erling said at length, shifting his feet. A professional, not a madman, aware of everything Burgred was saying, which made this even harder to understand.
Five longships meant two hundred men. Fewer, if they had horses. A large raid, an expensive one. But not nearly enough to come here. "You were led to believe you could take that burh, where our fleet's being built and guarded, with five ships? Someone lied to you," Burgred of Denferth said flatly.
Last words spoken in a worthy life.
He had time to recall, bewildered again, that the Erlings had always seen bows as the weapon of a coward, before the moonlight left his eyes and he went to seek the god with an arrow in his chest.
Guthrum Skallson blinked in the moonlight, not quite believing what he'd just seen. Then he did believe it, and turned.
He wasn't a berserkir, had never been that wild on a battlefield, was happy to wear armour, thank you, but the rage that filled him in that moment was very great and he moved swiftly with it. Crossed to the man with the bow and swung his arm in a full backhanded sweep, smashing it into the archer's face, sending him sprawling in the blue-tinted grass.
He followed, still in a fury, swearing. Bent over the crumpled form, seized the fallen bow, cracked it over his knee, then grabbed the belt-quiver and scattered the arrows with one furious, wide, wheeling motion in an arc across the summer field. He was breathing hard, at the edge of murder.
"You'll die for doing that," the man on the ground said, through a smashed mouth, in his eerie voice.
Guthrum blinked again. He shook his head, as if stunned. It was not to be borne. He lifted the man with one hand; he weighed less than any of them, by a good deal. Holding him in the air by the bunched-up tunic, so his feet swung free, Guthrum pulled the knife from his belt.
"No!" shouted Atli, behind him. Guthrum ignored that.
"Say it to me again," he grunted to the little man dangling in front of him.
"I will kill you for that blow," said the man he held at his mercy. The words came out half a whistle, through bleeding lips. "Right, then," said Guthrum.
He moved the knife, in a short, practised motion. And was brought up hard by a heavy hand seizing his wrist, gripping fiercely, pulling it back.
"We won't get final payment if he dies," Atli grunted. "Hold!" Guthrum swore at him. "Do you know how much silver he just cost us?"
"Of course I know!"
"You heard the white-faced coward threaten my life? Mine!" "You struck him a blow."
"Ingavin's blood! He killed our ransom, you thick-headed fool!"
Atli nodded. "Right. He's also paying us. And he's a Volganson. The last one. You want to go home with that blood on your blade? We'll settle this on the ships. Best get out of here now, and off this coast. Aeldred'll be coming soon as they find these bodies."
"Of course he will."
"Then let's go. We kill the last two?" Atli awaited orders.
"Of course we kill them," gasped the little man Guthrum was still holding in the air. Guthrum threw him away, into the grass. He lay there, crumpled and small, not moving.
Guthrum swore. What he wanted to do was send the last two Anglcyn back to Esferth to explain, to say the killing was unintended. That they were leaving these shores. There were a great many Erlings hereabouts, or living not far east of here. The last thing Jormsvik needed was their own people enraged because the Anglcyn had cut off trading rights, or raised the tribute tax, or decided to kill a score of them and display the heads on pikes for the death of Aeldred's earl and friend. It could happen. It had happened.
But he couldn't let them go back. There was no explanation that would achieve anything useful. Living men would name the Jormsvik raiders as the men who'd killed an earl of the Anglcyn with a coward's bow, after he'd surrendered. It wouldn't do at all.
He sighed, glared at the figure in the grass again.
"Kill them," he said, reluctantly. "Then we move."
It is a truth hardly to be challenged that most men prefer not to have others decree the manner and time of their dying. Jormsvik mercenaries, responsible on an individual and collective basis for so many deaths, were not unaware of this. At the same time, the engrossing and unsettling events in that moonlit meadow, from the time the Anglcyn was shot to the moment Guthrum issued that last order, had compelled attention—and diverted it.
One of the captive Anglcyn twisted, in the moment Guthrum spoke, grabbed a boot-top knife, stabbed the nearest of the men guarding him, ripped free of the belated clutch of another, and tore off into the night. Not, normally, a problem. There were twenty of them here, they were swift and experienced fighters.