We had to watch it being crafted, too, for there was no place to hide out on that plain and every hammer and axestroke that shaped it rattled us to the bone, for we had no way of stopping such a beast. Their archers would keep our heads down — it was almost impossible to put your head above the timber-teeth of the rampart now, unless there were enemy climbing over it — and the ram would come up to the gate and splinter it to ruin.
‘Barrier the inside of the gate,’ I suggested and Alyosha nodded, then grinned.
‘Battle luck for you, Orm Bear Slayer, that you have skilled men here. Better than a barrier is our wolf-teeth.’
Alyosha and the Rus were old hands, having fought in sieges on both sides of the ramparts and they knew what was needed.
They had a house demolished for the great timbers of the roof-tree and lashed them together like a cradle. Then they gathered up spears and split the heads from them, or cut the shafts short, so that they were fixed to the cradle, all odd lengths and all deadly.
After that, it was shifted to a point just beyond where the curved groove of dirt showed how far the gate opened inwards.
‘Wolf-teeth,’ Alyosha said, when his chosen men had sweated it into place; they beamed with satisfaction. Finn and others strolled round it, eyeing it with a professional air, for we were raiders, when all was said and done and avoided anything that looked like this bristling terror.
‘A place to hang their cloaks and hats when they come,’ Finn said eventually, which was admiration enough to make Alyosha beam.
‘Growl not at guests, nor drive them from the gate,’ Ospak added, ‘as Red Njal’s granny would say.’
‘No more on that,’ Finn growled. ‘Without it coming from his mouth, I would sooner see Red Njal’s granny laid to rest.’
Ospak merely nodded and smiled, twisting his dirt and blood-crusted face into a hard knot.
Not long after, hidden watchers peering through slits on the gate tower announced that the enemy were coming again.
I stood behind the barrier with Finn at one shoulder and Ospak at the other, fetid with fear and old blood, rot-red with rust. My bowels curled like waves on the shore and the first great boom of the ram on the door almost loosened them entirely.
On the ramparts, Finnlaith and Alyosha and others hunkered down and heaved the last of our stones as well as spike-studded timbers down on the heads of the ram party; we heard them clatter and bounce off the roof of shields, though there was an occasional scream to let us know they were not having it all their own way.
We sweated and shivered behind the wolf fangs, while the gate rang like a bell and heaved in another little bit with each blow, the bar on it creaking and dancing in the locks. Great gouts of muddy slurry spurted up from the hinges.
Crowbone slid up to the tower steps with a party bringing up more timbers, manhandling them up the ladder, with the gate bulging in right at their ears. Alyosha, his helmet flaps up and laced across the top of his head so that his ears were free and he could hear better, saw it and bellowed out something, lost in the mad din. Crowbone merely waved at him and Alyosha, scowling, half-stood to make his way to the steps and tell Crowbone to go away.
The arrow took him in the neck, just under the ear; if he had had his helmet flaps down it might have saved him, but they were up like little birdwings and the arrow went in one side and out the other. He jerked and pawed at it, a puzzled look on his face, then reared up; blood came out of his mouth in a great, black gout and he fell sideways and clattered down the steps to Crowbone’s feet.
The boy howled — but someone grabbed him just then, dragging him back and under the cradle of wolf fangs, just as the gate crashed open with a splintering rend of wood and hinge.
The first man through was a mad-mouthed frother, black hair flying, lunging in with a spear up and a leather helmet askew on his forehead; he had time to see what he was running at, time to skid to a halt — then the ones behind crashed on him and he was shot forward, shrieking for his ma, to be impaled like a shrike’s breakfast.
The first half-dozen ended up like that — there were longer blades with two and three bodies on them; some of the shafts snapped under the weight.
Those behind realised something was up when they were brought up short and found they could go neither ahead, nor to the side, while those in the gate tower above were hurling slabs of spiked wood down on them.
I hacked and stabbed and cut and slashed; the wooden cradle started to shift and slide back under the press, so men put their shoulders to it on our side and shoved, while others elbowed for room to fight. There was a fine haze of steam and stink and misted blood, a great bellowing shriek of fear and dying; the earth under the gate tower churned to a thick broth of muddy blood.
I saw Finn take a jaw off with a wild stroke. I saw one of Randr Sterki’s men eat the point of a spear and go down, gargling. Arrows whirred and shunked and men from both sides screamed and died; the Pols were shooting through the open gateway, heedless of who they hit.
Yan Alf went crazed then and leaped up on top of the wolffang cradle and its smother of hanging bodies, then hurled himself, screaming, into the middle of the pack; I never saw him alive again. Finnlaith, screaming ‘Ui Neill’ and spittle, followed him, leaping off the top of the watchtower and I saw him once after that, rising through a frothing sea of enemy like a breaching whale; then he disappeared.
That broke them. One minute I was slashing and stabbing, my breathing high and shrill, my arm aching, seeing the blood curve off the end of the axe blade in fat, greasy spray — then I was slumped against the scarred, gouged cradle where bodies writhed and groaned. The Pols backed off through their own arrows and Finn yelled out a warning as the full weight of shafts fell on us.
Shields up, we stood there until men brought up some thick timber doors torn off the houses and used them as shelter. In the end, the arrows stopped and men went out to heave corpses aside and shut the gates again, though they were so badly splintered that they could not be barred.
I know I shouted instructions for some of this, for Finn told me. I know I helped carry Alyosha away and consoled a weeping Crowbone, while the crew of Short Serpent — what was left of them — stood, covered in gore and grim silence while Alyosha was shield-carried to a pyre. Ospak and Murrough, the last Irishers left, stood like dumb posts, unable to go out and find Finnlaith; in the end, Onund whacked their shoulders and gave them work to keep their minds off the loss.
I know all this, but was aware of none of it. I only came back to life later, when Bjaelfi was binding up my ankle — the old injury, which burned like fire. I had gone over on it, according to folk who saw, and limped about for a long time until Bjaelfi and others managed to pin me down and tend my wounds.
I had a scratch down one cheek, my ribs ached from a blow I did not even know I had come by and my nose thundered with pain and trickled new blood, so that Finn, unharmed and grinning through the stains on his face, shook his head.
‘That neb of yours will not last much longer if you persist in getting it dunted,’ he noted and Ospak, staggering past with an armful of timber to be spiked with spear and arrow points, stopped long enough to look and tilt his head almost onto his shoulder.
‘Every time I look at it,’ he said, ‘I have to stand at more of a list to steerboard than before, just to keep it straight on your face.’
Then he laughed, a shrill, high sound. They all laughed, those that were left, hair stiff with clotted filth, armour red-rusted and weapons stained with gore. They moved as though their legs were wood — yet they moved, getting ready for the next attack.