‘They will never get away,’ Abjorn grunted, pointing. He had no need to; we could all see the horsemen, big as distant dogs now and closing.
‘They are heading right towards us,’ Red Njal said, his voice alarmed.
Of course they were — Randr Sterki was no fool and he saw high ground with trees on top, knew if he reached it the horsemen would be easier to fight if they decided to charge in and, if they balked at that, the trees would provide cover from the arrows.
‘Form up — loose and hidden,’ I ordered, peering out, searching for what I had not yet been able to see.
‘We are going to rescue Randr Sterki?’ demanded Styrbjorn incredulously. ‘After all he has put us through? Let him die out there.’
Finn spat, just missing Styrbjorn’s scuffed, water-stained boots.
‘Fud brain,’ he growled. ‘The boy is there.’
Styrbjorn, who had forgotten why we were here at all, scowled, while Alyosha and Abjorn slid away to give orders; men filtered forward into the trees, half-crouched, tightening helmet ties, settling shields.
‘Randr Sterki will not thank us, all the same,’ muttered Red Njal; I had been thinking the same myself and thought to leap that stream when we were near falling in it.
There — two figures, one half-falling, slower than the rest, stumbling. The taller one, black, stopped, hauled the little one up into his arms and half-staggered, half-ran to keep up; I could hear the rasp of his breathing from here, but I was puzzled as to why the monk should care so much to rescue Koll.
A man fell, got up and stumbled on, then fell again. Sick, I was thinking as the monk reeled past him, then let Koll slip to the ground, taking him by one hand. The pair of them ran on and the horsemen were closing fast, spraying water and clotted muck up.
‘An ounce of burnt silver says that small one is first to die,’ Eid muttered close to me, nudging his oarmate, one of Finnlaith’s Dyfflin men.
‘You never had an ounce of burnt silver,’ this one replied and Thorbrand’s curse was reeking.
‘That small one is the boy we came all this way to get,’ he spat at them.
Out on the sodden plain, the first of Randr’s men had reached the foot of the low hill and we could hear the desperate, ragged dog-panting of them. Randr himself stopped and half-turned, bellowing at those who lumbered past, almost on all fours, what he wanted them to do when they got the shelter of the trees. It was a good plan, but I was thinking to myself that none of his men were up for it.
The weak man fell yet again and the first long-shot arrows skittered and spat up water behind him, so that he scrambled up and weaved on, almost at a walk now. A dozen steps further on and he fell again and this time he lay there, so that the horsemen, almost casually, shot him full of arrows, whooping as they ran over him.
‘The boy…’ growled Eid and sprang to his feet. Thorbrand followed and, with a curse, so did the Dyfflin man. They roared out of the treeline, leaving me speechless and stunned with the speed of it all.
The horsemen, felt hats flapping, their bow-nosed ponies at full stretch, were heading for the bulk of the fleeing men; more arrows flew and two or three men went down. Randr himself stopped bellowing and started scrambling up the low hill towards us.
Two or three horsemen had turned off towards Koll and Leo the monk, but they had their sabres out, planning to run them down and slash them to ruin. The monk shoved Koll to the ground and then dived and rolled as the first horseman came on him, lashing out with his left hand as he did so; my heart thundered up into my throat, but the horseman missed and Leo’s slap had no effect, or so it seemed, while the others over-ran the pair.
Then Eid and the other two came howling down the hill like mad wolves and the horsemen, bewildered, milled and circled. Two of them whipped out arrows; the third turned back to Koll and Leo. After that, I remember it in fragments, like a shattered mirror flying everywhere, all the pieces with a different reflection.
Two arrows felled Eid as he ran. Thorbrand and the Dyfflin man crashed down on the two horsemen, stabbing and hacking. The third man’s horse staggered and fell as if Daneaxed, just as the rider urged it towards Koll and Leo; poison, I was thinking, even as I turned to fight. Enough in Leo’s stab to fell a horse in a few heartbeats — so he did have a hidden dagger after all.
The rest of the horsemen came up the slope, slinging their horn and wood bows and hauling out that wicked curve of sabre, a long smile of steel for hacking down on the fleeing. They were Vislanians, I learned later, who wore skin breeks and felt coats and caps and could climb under their ugly dog-ponies and up the other side at full gallop.
Not in the trees, though. They reined in from a gallop; Randr Sterki’s men were on their knees, frothing and gasping, with no fight in them and it looked to be easy enough for the riders — until they discovered the hornet byke they had stepped in.
Kuritsa began it by putting the last of his war arrows in the chest of one of the horses, so that it reared up and rolled its great eyes until the whites showed, pitching the rider off with a scream.
Then it was blood and shrieks and mayhem. Red Njal ran at them, hirpling on his lame leg, bellowing like a bull and his spear took one of the horsemen in the belly, so that his head snapped forward and he went over the plunging horse’s arse. Red Njal let the spear go and whipped out his seax.
Axes scythed, spears stabbed, swords whirled. It was bloody and vicious and my part in it was brutal and short — I came up on the man doing the most shouting, sitting on his dancing, wild-eyed pony, waving a crescent-moon of steel and bellowing.
He saw me come at him and raised the sabre, his eyes wide and red, his black moustaches seeming to writhe as he yelled; then something seemed to catch his arm as he raised it and I saw the shaft, through his forearm and into the shoulder, pinning his arm — a hunting arrow from Kuritsa.
The sabre fell from his fingers and he looked astonished, though he had only a few seconds to think at all, before I took Brand’s sword in a whirling, two-handed backstroke at his waist. Finn and others called this ‘opening the day-meal’ and it was a death-blow even if the victim did not die at once, for his belly split and everything in it fell out, blue-white, red, pale yellow.
He fell like a gralloched stag — and the rest of them tried to flee.
Cut them down, I heard myself screaming, though it sounded far away. None must escape to tell of what had been found and where we were.
The Oathsworn wolfed them, snarling and clawing. The last man turned his pony and flogged it back downhill, men chasing him, screaming. Kaelbjorn Rog, panting and sprinting, fell over his feet, bounced up and hurled his axe at the fleeing back in a fury of impotent rage, but it fell well short.
The arrow hissed out, a blur of speed and the smack of it hitting the rider’s back was almost drowned in the great roar of approval that went up as the fleeing man spilled from the saddle. The pony kept going and I knew, with a cold, heavy sink of feeling, that we had failed.
There was a heavy silence, reeking of blood and vomit and moans. Men moved, counting the cost, clapping each other on the shoulder in the sudden ecstasy that comes with surviving a battle, or else retching, hands on their knees and bent over.
Randr Sterki lay flat out, a great bruise on the side of his face and Onund looming over him like a scowling troll. He had made for Randr as soon as the fight started and slammed him in the face with the boss of his shield. Now Randr lay on his back, propped up on his elbows and spitting out teeth and blood.
‘I owe you that and more,’ Onund growled at him, touching his chest where, under his stained tunic, the glassy scars of Randr’s old burning still wept.
‘The severed hand seldom steals again,’ Red Njal pointed out, scowling. ‘And a head in a tree plots only with the wind.’