AHC: Win the Battle of Hastings for Harold

The catch? The POD must be DURING the battle. Oh, and William the Conquerer has to be killed for this one. Have fun trying to do this!
 

Typo

Banned
I don't think this one is particularly difficult.

Better luck and Harold lives, worse luck for William and a stray arrow hit him instead.
 
The catch? The POD must be DURING the battle. Oh, and William the Conqueror has to be killed for this one. Have fun trying to do this!

After an hour of fighting, the Breton division on William's left faltered and broke completely, fleeing down the hill. Suffering heavy casualties and realising they would be quickly outflanked, the Norman and Flemish divisions retreated with the Bretons. Unable to resist the temptation, many of the English broke ranks, including hundreds of fyrdmen and Harold's brothers, Leofwyne and Gyrthe.

POD = Harold takes a huge gamble and leads the rest of the English Army in a downhill charge in support of his brothers!

In the following fighting, William's horse was killed from underneath him, and he toppled to the ground. Initially, many of William's soldiers thought that he had been killed, and an even greater rout ensued. To rally his fleeing troops William stands up and throws off his helmet so that everyone can see he is still alive.

Seconds later a great 2H axe wielded by The King of England splits William's unarmored head in two. :eek:

The invaders are routed. England is saved. Harold the Great resumes what will be the third longest reign of any English monarch.

HoC
 
Cream the Bastard!

Harold had been advised to wait until
  1. The Cheshire and Glocestershire levies arrived. These were very strong and may have included longbowmen.
  2. Gyrth and his brother proposed to weaken William with an initial attack, then Harold would sweep in with fresh and rested troops and pick up the pieces.
  3. Yes, I know what you'll say, but Senlac I and II were the best choice. William's army was eating out the neighbourhood and he had to move or starve.
  4. I'd have recruited some old Varangian Guards to prepare and fire ballistae at William's standard and skewer the Bastard.
  5. And my ancestors came from Gloucestershire, part of the Hwicce tribe that Wessex only recorded their victories over, so we weren't so bad at fighting for Mierce.
 
William committed the mistake to not reveal to his soldiers he was still alive. The Normans fled and William was captured and killed during the retreat.
 

Art

Monthly Donor
you are forgeting. . .

the the Anglo-Saxon contigent of the Varangian Guard came to be AFTER the Norman Conquest. But the English having archers would have negated the Norman advantage, in that the Saxons had no real distance weapons beyond javelins, and were being bombarded constantly with arrows. That had to have an effect, and probably led to the final collapse of the Saxon line. If the English have large contingents of archers, then the Norman archers will be taking fire, and may be even driven off the field in retreat. That could start a general retreat.
 
the the Anglo-Saxon contigent of the Varangian Guard came to be AFTER the Norman Conquest. But the English having archers would have negated the Norman advantage, in that the Saxons had no real distance weapons beyond javelins, and were being bombarded constantly with arrows. That had to have an effect, and probably led to the final collapse of the Saxon line. If the English have large contingents of archers, then the Norman archers will be taking fire, and may be even driven off the field in retreat. That could start a general retreat.

Art

Some sources say that the English army did have some archers but they had gone north with it and, lacking horses like the housecarls were unable to get back from Stamford Bridge in time.

As it was it was a close run thing, even with the loss of Harold's brothers and so much of the fyrd. If Harold had avoided being killed, whether by arrow or being cut down by Norman knights, until night fell then things could have been very different. As corditeman says the Normans were basically isolated on a peninsula and had already taken heavy losses. Further English reinforcements were arriving and without the death of the king it could easily have been so different.:mad::mad::mad:

Steve
 
You do the Gotts Proud.

Seconds later a great 2H axe wielded by The King of England splits William's unarmored head in two. :eek:

The invaders are routed. England is saved. Harold the Great resumes what will be the third longest reign of any English monarch.
HoC
This just became the single Most METAL PoD I have ever had the privilege to read.
 
I'd say William being killed - with or without a two handed axe to the head - would do nicely.

The point his army thought it had happened OTL was pretty demoralizing, after all.

No need for anything all that fancy.
 
JRR Tolkein always thought if the English had cavalry they would have routed the Normans, this is why he had the Rohannon in Middle Earth!
 
the the Anglo-Saxon contigent of the Varangian Guard came to be AFTER the Norman Conquest. But the English having archers would have negated the Norman advantage, in that the Saxons had no real distance weapons beyond javelins, and were being bombarded constantly with arrows. That had to have an effect, and probably led to the final collapse of the Saxon line. If the English have large contingents of archers, then the Norman archers will be taking fire, and may be even driven off the field in retreat. That could start a general retreat.

The Norman archers were firing uphill at a shield wall. Their effectiveness wasn't all that great.
Saxon archers would have been effective, however.
 
when William's horse is killed underneath him, it bucks him off and falls on him, preventing him from getting up in time to rally the Normans, who retreat from Hastings. William himself isn't necessarily killed, but he never becomes King of England in any case.
 
A bunch of EDL fanatics turn up prior to the battle and equip Harold's army with AK47s

or has something like that been done before? ;)
 

Art

Monthly Donor
how about. . .

Shef's army from the end of The Hammer and the Cross. You can't go wrong with Scandinavian Waymen, freed thralls with halberds and crossbows, and Onagers and Ballistas as well, some used by woman. You even have irregular units from the same general area!

Shef, for those of you on this board who do not know, is a part-Viking, part East Anglian bastard, who comes to command part of the Viking Great Army that attacked England in 864. He is a follower of The Way, which is a organized group of priests of the Norse pantheon, like the Hindus, which looks for new ways of living and working. In the course of the war between the Vikings and the English he redicovers the halberd, invents or reinvents the crossbow, Onager, and Ballista. He is crowned Jarl of East Anglia, but has to fight both the Ragnarssons under the command of Ivar the Boneless, and the Frankish armies of Charles the Bald. He defeats both forces.


Here's how:

Daniel and Alfgar had spent many angry days of frustration, first finding the base of the Frankish Cross-wearers, and then getting through its guards and outposts to see its leader. Their appearance had been against them: two men in soiled and sodden cloaks after nights in the open, riding bareback on the sorry nags that Alfgar had stolen. The first sentry they had approached had been amazed to see any Englishmen come near the camp of their own will: the local churls had fled long since, taking their wives and daughters with them if they were lucky. Yet he had not troubled to call an interpreter for Alfgar's English or Daniel's Latin. After several minutes of shouting up at him above the gate of the camp stockade, he had meditatively fitted arrow to bow and shot it into the ground at Daniel's feet. Alfgar had pulled Daniel away at once.

After that they had tried several times to approach the daily cavalcade of warriors streaming out from the Hastings base, to rob and forage while King Charles waited unhurriedly for the further challenge he was sure must come. The first time had cost them their horses, the second, Daniel's episcopal ring, which he had waved too eagerly. Eventually, and in despair, Alfgar had taken a hand. As Daniel shouted angrily at a Frankish priest they had discovered picking over the ruins of a ransacked church, he pushed him aside.

"Machina," he said clearly, in the fragment of Latin he possessed. "Ballista. Catapulta. Nos videre"—he pointed to his eyes. "Nos dicere. Rex." He waved at the camp with its flying banners, two miles off, made speaking gestures.

The priest looked at him, nodded, turned back to the barely coherent bishop and began to talk to him in strangely accented Latin, cutting Daniel's furious complaints short, demanding information. After a while he had called to his guard of mounted archers and set off back toward the camp, taking the two Englishmen with him. After that they had been passed from hand to hand, with cleric after cleric coming in to extract more and more of Daniel's story.

But now at last the clerics had gone. It was Alfgar, his cloak brushed and a substantial meal inside him, who stood in front of Daniel, facing a trestle-table, behind it a group of men with the look of warriors: one of them wearing the gold circle of royalty over a bald head. At his side stood an Englishman, listening carefully to what the king said. Eventually he turned to Alfgar, speaking the first English they had heard since they arrived in the camp.

"The priests have told the king," he said, "that you have more sense than the bishop behind you. But the bishop says that you two alone know the truth of what has happened up there in the North. And that for some reason"—the Englishman smiled—"you are anxious to help the king and the Christian religion with information. Now the king takes no interest in your bishop's complaints and proposals. He wants to know, first about the army of Mercia, second about the army of the heathen Ragnarssons, and thirdly about this army of heretics which his own bishops are especially anxious for him to meet and fight. Tell him all that, behave yourself sensibly, and it will do you good. The king will have to have some Englishmen he can trust once his kingdom is established."

Putting on his sincerest expression of loyalty, and looking the Frankish king firmly in the eye, Alfgar began his account of the death of Burgred and the defeat by the Ouse. As he spoke on, his English translated phrase by phrase into French, he began to act out the workings of the machines with which Ivar had demoralized Burgred's army. He laid stress on the machines which the Way-folk also had, and which he had seen again and again in the previous winter's battles. His courage rising, he drew the hammer-sign in wine on the king's table, told of the freeing of Church-slaves.

Eventually the king stirred, threw a question over his shoulder. A cleric appeared from the shadows, took stylus and wax, began to draw on his tablets the picture of an onager. Then a torsion-catapult. Then a counterweight-machine.

"He says, are these what you have seen?" asked the translator.

Alfgar nodded.

"He says, interesting. His learned men know how to make them also, taking them from a book by one Vegetius. He says he did not know the English were learned enough to make such things. But among the Franks these are used only for sieges. To use them against an army of horsemen would be foolish. Horsemen move too fast for them to be effective. But the king thanks you for your goodwill, and wishes you to ride with him when he takes the field. He believes your knowledge of his enemies will be useful. Your companion will be sent to Canterbury, to await the inquiry of the legate of the Pope." The English interpreter smiled again. "I think your chances will be better than his."

Alfgar straightened, bowed, and walked backward from the table as he would never have done for Burgred, firmly resolving to find a teacher of French before nightfall.

King Charles the Bald watched him go, turned again to his wine. "The first of the rats," he remarked to his constable Godefroi.

"Rats with siege-engines they use in the field. Do you not fear what he says?"

The king laughed. "Crossing the Narrow Sea is like going back to the time of our forefathers, when the kings rode to battle in ox-chariots. In all this country there is nothing to fight but the Norse brigands, harmless away from their ships, and the brave, stupid swordsmen we beat the other day. Long mustaches and slow feet. No horses, no lances, no stirrups, no generals.

"We must take our precautions now we know their way of fighting." He scratched his beard thoughtfully. "But it will take more than a few machines to beat the strongest army in Christendom."

Frankish fools!

Now for the Saxons and men of Scandanavia!


They heard the commotion before they had gone a hundred yards down the path: clash of weapons, shrieking, horses neighing. Both men began to run toward the Wayman camp, but the thorns and thickets held them. By the time they arrived, gasping, at the edge of the wood, it was over.

"What happened?" said Shef to the men who turned disbelievingly toward them.

Farman the priest appeared from behind a slashed tent. "Frankish light cavalry. Not many of them, maybe a hundred. They knew we were here, came all at once out of the wood. Where were you?"

But Shef was looking past him, at Thorvin pushing through the crowd of excited men, holding Godive firmly by one hand.

"We came just after dawn," said Thorvin. "Got here just before the Franks attacked."

Shef ignored him, looked only at Godive. She raised her chin, stared back at him. He patted her shoulder gently. "I am sorry if I have forgotten you. There are things—if... soon... I will try to make amends for what I did.

"But not now. Now I am still the jarl. First we must set guards on the camp, so we are not surprised again. Then we must march. But before that—Lulla, Farman, all priests and leaders to me as soon as the guards are set.

"And Osmod, one thing before that. Send twenty women to me now."

"Women, lord?"

"Women. There are plenty with us. Wives, friends, drabs, I don't care. As long as they can push a needle."

Two hours later, Thorvin, Farman and Geirulf—the only priests of the Way present among a half dozen English unit commanders—stared unhappily at the new device hastily stitched onto the army's main battle-banner. Instead of the white Hammer standing upright on a red field, there were now a Hammer and Cross, set diagonally, one across the other.

"It is dealing with the enemy," said Farman. "More than they would ever do for us."

"It is a condition made by the king for his support," said Shef.

Eyebrows raised as the priests looked at the shabby, solitary figure of the king.

"Not just my support," said Alfred. "The support of my kingdom. I may have lost one army. But there are still men who will fight against the invaders. It will be easier if they do not have to change religion at the same time."

"We need men, for sure," said Osmod the camp marshal and leader of the catapulteers. "What with this morning and the desertions we've had—seven, eight men to a team left, where we need a dozen. And Udd has more crossbows in store than men to use them. But we need 'em right now. And where are we to find them? In a hurry, like?"

Shef and Alfred stared uncertainly at each other, digesting the problem, groping for an solution.

An unexpected voice cut the silence from the back of the tent. Godive's.

"I can tell you the answer to that," she said. "But if I tell you, you must grant me two things. One, a seat on this council. I do not care to be disposed of in future like a lame horse or a sick hound. Two, I do not want to hear the jarl say again, 'Not now. Not now, because I am the jarl.' "

Eyes turned; first, in amazement, to her, then in doubt and alarm to Shef. Shef, hand fumbling automatically for reassurance to his whetstone, found himself looking into Godive's brilliant eyes as if for the first time. He remembered: the whetstone was no longer there, nor what it stood for. He looked down.

"I grant both conditions," he said hoarsely. "Now tell us your answer, councillor."

"The men you need are already in the camp," said Godive. "But they aren't men, they're women. Hundreds of them. You find more in every village. They may be only drabs to you, as the jarl said before. Needle-pushers. But they are as good as men for some things. Put six with every catapult-team. The men released can go to Udd, to carry a crossbow, or the strongest of them to Lulla, to use a halberd. But I would also advise this to Udd: pick as many of the youngest women as you can, those who are not afraid, and put them with your crossbows as well."

"We can't do that," said Cwicca incredulously.

"Why not?"

"Well—they aren't strong enough."

Shef laughed. "That's what the Vikings said about you, Cwicca, remember? How much strength does it take to pull a rope? Turn a lever? Wind a pulley? The machine gives the strength."

"They'll get frightened and run away," Cwicca protested.

Icily, Godive overrode him. "Look at me, Cwicca. You saw me climb into that dung-cart. Was I frightened then? And if I was, I still did it.

"Shef. Let me talk to the women. I will find the ones you can trust, and if need be I will lead them. Don't forget, everyone"—she looked round the circle challengingly—"it may be that women have more to lose than any of you. And so more to gain."

In the silence Thorvin said, still skeptically, "This is all very well. But how many men had King Alfred here when he marched against the Franks? Five thousand? Trained warriors. Even if we use every woman in the camp, how can a third of that number hope to win? People, men or women, who have never shot so much as a bird-bolt before? You cannot make a warrior in a day."

"You can teach someone to shoot a crossbow in a day," said Udd unexpectedly. "Just wind 'em and point 'em."

"Just the same," said Geirulf, Tyr's priest. "We learned this morning the Franks will not stand still to be shot down. So what are we to do?"

"Listen," said Shef, drawing a deep breath, "and I will tell you."

Women! but to stop Frankish scum they'll fight!




Chapter Eleven

Like a great steel reptile, the Frankish army moved out of its base at Hastings, a little after dawn. First, the light cavalry in their hundreds, armed only with steel caps, leather jackets and sabers: their duty, to search out the enemy, hold the flanks, exploit breakthrough. Then, file after file of archers, mounted like every man in the army, but expecting to dismount for battle, when they would close to within fifty yards of an enemy line and pour in the arrows from their breast-bows: their duty, to fix the enemy, make them raise shields to cover faces, crouch down to cover unarmored legs.

In the center, the heavy cavalry, the weapon which had brought the Franks victory after victory on the plains of central Europe. Each man with mail-shirt and thigh-guards, back and bowels protected by the high-reaching saddle, each man with helmet and longsword, and above all, shield, lance and stirrups. The kite-shaped shield to cover the body, the lance with which to strike overhand or underhand, the stirrups to brace the feet for the stroke. Few men, and no Englishmen, could at once wield a lance in one hand, strap the other arm into an unmoving shield, and control a war-stallion with thigh-pressure and the fingertips of one hand alone. Those men who could, they believed, could ride down any infantry in the world, once they came out from their ships or their walls.

At the head of his main battle, nine hundred riders strong, King Charles the Bald turned in his saddle and looked back at the banners flying immediately behind him, at his guarded base beyond, at the ships clustered off the beach. His scouts had brought him good news. The last army south of the Humber, marching to meet him, careless and unprepared, but ready to give battle. That was what he wanted: one decisive shock, the leaders dead on the field, then surrender and the transfer of all the reins of government to his own hand. It should have come sooner, after the defeat of the gallant but foolish Alfred. Then the summer would not have been so far on.

At least the time was ripe. Maybe overripe. But today, or at worst, tomorrow, the decision would be made. Charles realized that his view was blurred by rain drifting in from the Channel. He turned, rode on, waved the English renegade up to ride by him with the translator.

"You live in this God-forsaken country," he said. "How long is this rain going to last?"

Alfgar glanced at the drooping banners, noted the slow wind from the southwest, thought to himself that it looked as if it was settled in for a week-long soak. Not what the king wants to hear, he realized.

"I think it will soon pass over," he said. The king grunted, urged on his horse. Slowly, as the army picked its way over the unharvested fields, the damp earth churned into mud—the advance-guards leaving a broad black swathe across the turf.



Five miles northwest, on a ridge a little south of Caldbeck Hill, Shef watched the Franks moving toward him. His banner flew from an ox-cart, the Hammer and Cross athwart each other. He knew the scouts would already have picked it up, told King Charles where he was. He had moved forward at dusk the day before, after the marauding Frankish light horsemen had pulled back to their base. His men—and women—had taken up their positions at night. Almost none of them were with him. This was a battle he could control no more. The real question, he knew, was whether his army could act according to plan—and keep on acting after they had lost touch with him and with each other.

One thing Shef was sure of: there were more people in his army than he knew about. All day the day before, he had overtaken little groups of men heading toward the battleground, churls with spears, woodsmen with their axes, even grimy charcoal-burners out of the Weald, called out by Alfred's summons of the fierd, the ancestral levy of Wessex and its dominions. All were told the same thing. Do not stand up to them. Do not form a line. Wait round the edges. Press in if you see your chance. It was a simple order, and they had taken it gladly, the more gladly from their king in person.

But the rain, thought Shef. Would it help or hinder? He would know soon enough.

The first shot came from the shelter of a half-burned hamlet. Fifty Frankish light horsemen, well forward and to the flank of the army's main advance, crossed the sights of "Dead Level." Oswi squeezed the trigger, felt the thump of release, saw the great dart flash half a mile. Driving clear into the solid target of horsemen. Instantly the team—seven men and four women—were rewinding, dropping the next bolt into its slot. Thirty slow heartbeats before it could shoot again.



The leader of the hobbelars saw his man on the ground, shaft driven below his ribs, and bit his lip with surprise. Siege-engines, in the open. Yet the answer was clear. Spread out, scatter the targets, ride round behind them. The shot must have come from the right, the open flank. He spurred his horse, shouting, sent his men pouring across the fields.

Thick hedgerows, designed to keep the cattle in and the wild pigs out, channeled his rush into a sunken lane. As the hobbelars swept by, faces looked out from the thorns. At ten-foot range, the crossbow bolts thumped into leather-jerkined backs. As soon as the boots left the stocks, the shooters turned and ran, not even waiting to see if they had hit. In instants they too were astride ponies, spurring hard for cover.

"Ansiau's in trouble," remarked the leader of another conroy of horsemen, watching the growing turmoil. "An ambush. We'll hook round behind it and catch them between him and us. Teach 'em a lesson; they won't try it again."

As he began to lead his men round in a wide sweep, there came a thud in the air and a sudden terrible shrieking behind him: a great dart from nowhere, striking a man in the thigh, driving through, pinning the screaming man to his dead horse. Not from the ambush. From somewhere else. The leader stood up in his stirrups, searching round the featureless landscape for something to show him where to charge. Trees, fields of standing wheat. Hedges everywhere. As he hesitated, a crossbow-bolt, shot from a steady rest by a man under a hedge a hundred and fifty yards off, caught him full in the face. The marksman, a poacher from Ditton-in-the-Fen, made no attempt to leap to his feet and run. In ten heartbeats he was twenty yards away, crawling like an eel in a half-filled ditch. The waxed and twisted gut of his crossbow, he had already discovered, had took little harm from the wet. As the horsemen hesitated, spurred in the end toward the place where they thought the shot might have come from, the sights of another twist-shooter trained round.

Slowly, without horns or trumpets, like a cogwheel tightening a rope, twenty separate skirmishes began to grow into battle.



From his vantage point on the ridge, Shef saw the Frankish main force still riding forward: but slowly, at no more than a walk, with many checks. They did not like to advance without their flanks secured. And on the flanks, for long moments, there was scarcely anything to be seen. Then horsemen would appear, spurring round a copse, or charging a burned-out village in extended line. What they were charging or spurring after was usually invisible. Then, as Shef strained his one eye in the blurring rain, he caught a flash of movement far out to one side: a pair of horses side by side at full gallop, one of the twist-shooters bouncing behind, its team drumming their ponies with their heels in a long trail behind. Oswi and "Dead Level" pulling out at one end of a hamlet as the Franks poured in the other, the flanking movement that was meant to cut him off delayed and confused by shots from other directions. The catapult disappeared behind a dip in the ground. In seconds it would be unlimbered again, once more menacing a wide arc anywhere within its half-mile range.

Shef's strategy depended on three things. One was local knowledge: only those who lived, farmed and hunted over the landscape knew where there were passable tracks, safe lines of retreat. Every group he had sent out had attached to it a man or boy picked from those who had fled the area. Others were scattered in hiding places everywhere over twenty square miles, told not to fight but to guide and pass messages. The second thing was the shooting-power of the torsion-catapults with their great darts, and the new crossbows. Both were slow to load, but even the crossbows would pierce mail at up to two hundred paces. And they were best shot by men lying down in cover.

The most important part of Shef's strategy was his realization that there are two ways to win a battle. Every battle he had ever seen—every battle fought in the Western world for centuries—had been won one way. By shock. By forming lines and clashing till one line broke. The line might be broken by axe and sword, as the Vikings preferred; by horse and lance, in the Frankish style; or by stone and dart, as Shef had introduced. Breaking the line meant winning the battle.

This might be a completely new way to win a battle. To have no line, to produce no shock, but to wear and shred the enemy away by missile attack. Only Shef's unprofessional and unwarlike troops would do it: it went against too many ingrained habits of lifetime warriors. Ground was not important. It was there to be yielded. Face-to-face courage was not important. It was a mark of failure. But there could be none of the usual battlefield boosts to morale—the horns, war-songs, leaders shouting, most of all the sense of comrades alongside you. In a battle like this one it would be easy to desert, or simply to hide, to come out when all was over. Shef hoped his teams would keep on covering each other: they had gone out in bands of about fifty—a catapult, twenty crossbows, a few halberdiers together. But it was in the nature of the battle that they would split up. Once that happened, would they come back again?

Remembering the dogged, snarling attacks that the Yorkshire peasants had put in against him in the snow outside York, he thought they might. The men and women out there could see the country over which they were fighting, see its unreaped crops, its burned barns and cut-down orchards. To the children of the poor, food and land were sacred. They had too many hungry winters to remember.

As he watched the battle develop, Shef felt an odd sense of—not of freedom, but freedom from care. He was only a cog now. Cogs had to turn when they were wound. But they did not have to think about the rest of the machine. That would wind, or it would break, and the cog could do nothing about it. It had only to perform its part.

He dropped a hand on Godive's shoulder, standing beside him. She looked sideways at his ravaged face, allowed his hand to lie there.



King Charles, still moving forward toward the ridge of Caldbeck Hill—where from time to time through the rain he could see the taunting banner of his enemies displayed—held up his hand for the twentieth time for his main battle to halt. The leader of his light horse cantered up to him, rain now soaking through his wool and leather.

"Well, Rogier?"

The hobbelar shook his head disgustedly. "It's like fifty dogfights out there all at once. No one stands up to us. We chase them out and chase them out. Then when we reform and fall back they come back after us, or they come in behind."

"What would happen if we just held together and rode forward? Up there." The king jerked his thumb at the banner on the skyline a mile away.

"They'd shoot the hell out of us all the way."

"But only as long as it takes us to ride a mile. All right, Rogier. Discourage these varlets and their bows as much as you can, but tell your men to ride forward in line with the main battle now. Once we have broken their center we can turn and deal with the flanks."

Turning, the king raised his lance and swept it forward. His riders cheered hoarsely, once, and began to push their horses into a trot.



"They're coming now," said Shef to Alfred, standing next to Godive. "But it's soft ground and they will save their speed for the last rush." Barely fifty people stood by the three leaders on the ridge, mostly runners and message-bearers, but he had kept one pull-thrower team by him, with its clumsy, immobile machine. "Swan-stones," he ordered.

Glad to move after hours of inactivity, the team—men and women together—sprang to their places. They too had only one role to play today. Early in their practicing, Shef's English machinists had discovered that chipping grooves in the stones their engines lobbed produced a strange warbling note as they flew through the air, like the noise of a swan. For their own amusement they had competed to see who could carve out the loudest. Now Shef meant to send a signal to his scattered troops that all could recognize.

His team loaded, braced, loosed. Launched one eerily whistling stone to one flank, heaved the machine round, launched to another. The dart-thrower and crossbow teams still lurking in ambush in front of the Frankish advance heard the signal, hitched up, retreated and swung round to join their leaders for the first time that day. As they appeared one by one, Shef pushed aside the farm-carts which he had set on the skyline, set the machines in the gaps, posted crossbows inside the carts. For every man, woman and machine, a horse or a horse-team stood no more than five yards away, horse-holders ready.

Shef walked up and down the line, repeating the order. "Three shots from each catapult, no more. Start at extreme range. One shot from each crossbow, on the word."



As King Charles reached the foot of the ridge, his spirits rose in spite of the rain. His enemy had tried to harass and delay him, and now he was counting on the slope and the mud to take the force out of his charge. But the hobbelars had done their job in taking the casualties of skirmishing. And the English still did not appreciate the plan of the Frankish charge. Setting spurs to his horse, he drove up the hill at a canter rising to a gallop, overtaken in seconds by the counts of his bodyguard pulling ahead.

The catapults twanged, black lines streaking through the air, swirls in the massive body of metal plunging up the hill. Still they came on as the levers twirled behind the farm-carts. Again the musical notes, the streaks, the cries of pain from men and horses, the rear ranks hurdling over those who fell. Strange, Charles thought as the obstacle in front of him came into focus. A barricade, but no shields, no warriors. Did they think to stop him with wood alone?



"Shoot," said Shef as the front ranks of the charge reached the white sticks he had planted that morning. Then, instantly, in a Brand-like roar, drowning the simultaneous thump of the crossbows, "Now run! Hitch up and run!"

In moments the slope behind the ridge was a flood of ponies, crossbows well in the lead, catapults taking seconds to hitch up, one team-leader cursing a sticking toggle. Then they too were away. Last of the throng, Godive suddenly turned back, jerked the Hammer and Cross from its frame, swung astride her gelding, and pounded off, banner dragging behind her like a lady's train.



Eyes glaring, lances poised, the Frankish cavalry swept up to the ridge-line, furious to strike at their harassers. A few drove their horses straight at the gaps in the enemy line, whirled round, stallions rearing to strike with their steel hooves at the foot soldiers who must be lurking there.

No one. Carts. Hoofprints. One single siege-engine, the pull-thrower Shef had abandoned. More and more squeezed through the gaps between carts, some finally dismounting and hauling the obstacles away. The king gaped up at the stout wooden frame from which Godive had hauled the Hammer and Cross. As he did so, tauntingly, the same banner rose again, on another ridge-line above a tangle of wood and gully, a long half-mile away. Some of the hotheads in his ranks, fury undispersed by action, yelled and began to spur again toward it. Sharp orders brought them back.

"I have brought a knife to cut beef," the king muttered to his constable Godefroi. "But what is set before me is soup. Thin soup. We will go back to Hastings and think again."

His eye fell on Alfgar. "I thought you said this rain of yours would stop."

Alfgar said nothing, looked at the ground. Charles glanced again at the high frame from which the Hammer and Cross had been torn, still standing sturdily on its cart. He jerked a thumb at it. "Hang the English traitor," he ordered.

"I warned you about the machines," shrieked Alfgar as the hands seized him.

"What's he say?" asked one of the knights.

"I don't know. Some gabble in English."



On a knoll well to one side of the track of the Franks, Thorvin, Geirulf and Farman conferred.

"What do you think?" asked Thorvin.

Geirulf, priest of Tyr, chronicler of battles, shook his head. "It is something new. Completely new. I have never heard of such a thing before. I have to ask: who puts it in his mind? Who but the Father of Warriors? He is a son of Othin. And such men are dangerous."

"I do not think so," said Thorvin. "And I have talked to his mother."

"We know what you told us," said Farman. "What we do not know is what it means. Unless you have a better explanation, I must agree with Geirulf."

"This is not the time to give it," said Thorvin. "See, things are moving again. The Franks are retreating."



Shef watched the heavy lancers turn back from the ridge, with foreboding. He had hoped they would come on again, take more losses, weary their horses and exhaust themselves. If they pulled back now, there was too much chance that they would reach their base and come out another day of their choosing and renew the attack. Instinctively he knew that an irregular army cannot do one thing: defend territory. He had not tried to do so today, and the Frankish king had not tried to make him, sure that both sides desired the traditional, decisive clash. But there must be a way to make him attack. An undefended population all over southern England stood at the king's mercy.

He needed victory today. It meant taking greater risks for greater gains. Fortunately, retreating armies are vulnerable in a way that advancing ones are not. So far, hardly half of Shef's forces had been engaged. Time to commit the rest. Calling his errand-lads around him, Shef began to pass his orders.



Down on the sodden slopes rising from the sea to the down-lands, the Frankish hobbelars were learning sense. No longer did they ride in bunched groups presenting easy targets. Instead they too lurked in cover, moving only when they had to and then in short gallops. By a path through a dripping copse, one group tensed as they heard running feet. As the barefoot lad rushed by, intent only on his message, one rider spurred out, slashed savagely with his saber.

"He had no weapon," said one of the Franks, looking down at the body draining blood in the rain-pocked puddles.

"His weapon was in his head," grunted the sergeant in charge. "Get ready to move again."

The boy's brother, running fifty paces behind, hid quiet as a vole behind a red-berried rowan tree, watched them go. Slipped off to find avengers.

The Frankish archers, so far, had done nothing but endure random shot, their bowstrings long since so wet as to be valueless. Their commanders, now, were using them to hold strategic spots as the army fell back. They, too, were starting to use woodcraft.

"Look." One pointed to a conroy of hobbelars falling back over a field, one of them suddenly clutching his side and tipping from his horse. The archers, behind a wrecked barn, saw a figure suddenly slip from a hedgerow, seize a pony, and ride off unseen by its victims. But straight toward their ambush. As it came round the edge of the barn at full gallop, two men drove their short swords into the pony's chest, seized the marksman as the pony collapsed.

"What devil's work is this?" asked one, snatching the crossbow. "See, a bow, arrows. What is this at the belt?"

"Never mind the belt, Guillaume," shouted one of his mates. "Look, it's a girl." The men stared at the slight, short-kilted figure.

"Women shooting men from cover," muttered Guillaume.

"All right. We've time to teach her a lesson. Give her some memories to take to Hell with her."

As the soldiers crowded round the writhing, splayed-out figure, a dozen churls of the Kentish fierd crawled closer, wood-axes and billhooks ready. They could not stand up to mailed horsemen. Mere prowlers and robbers they could deal with.

Leaking men and horses, the great steel reptile oozed sullenly back toward its base.

King Charles, sunk in thought, did not notice the check in front of him till he was almost on his own archers. Then he paused, looked down. A sergeant caught his stirrup, pointed. "Sire, they are in front of us. Standing, for once."



The village reeve Shef had found was positive that a day's rain and the passage of thousands of horses would turn the brook between the Brede and Bulverhythe into a quagmire. Shef had decided to take the chance and believe him. His runners had got through—most of them. The pull-thrower teams with their heavy guards of halberdiers had closed in from the far flanks where they had waited immobile. Assembled their weapons, lined up five yards apart along a hundred and fifty yards of front. On a fine day, in the open, against cavalry, suicide.

Osmod the marshal, peering through the rain, judged the Frankish vanguard within range. As he called the order, twenty beams lashed the air together, slings whirled, stones shot into the sky.



Charles's horse reared as the brains of a dismounted archer flicked its face. Another stallion, leg broken, screamed and pawed at the air. Almost before one volley had landed another was in the air. For a moment the Frankish army, surprised again and again, came close to panic.

Charles rode forward bellowing, ignoring the stones now aimed deliberately at him. Imperiously he drove the archers forward, launching feeble arrows. Behind them, following his example, his heavy lancers broke into a slow trot. Into the quagmire where a brook had been.

Charles himself was pulled clear of his bogged horse by two counts of his stable, stood in the end to watch. His men floundered through, some on horses still, some on foot, to reach the machines that flung an unending rain of stones. They were met by a line of men in strange helmets, swinging and stabbing with huge axes like woodmen's tools. Robbed of the élan which was their birthright, the Frankish knights stood and fought them weapon to weapon. Slowly, the big men in mail forced their smaller, strangely armed adversaries back. Back. Almost to the line of the machines, which they must stand to defend.

Horn-blasts from both sides. Floundering through the mud, Charles tensed, expecting the counterattack, the desperate last charge. Instead his enemies turned suddenly, all together, and ran. Ran unashamedly, like hares or leverets. Leaving their machines to the conqueror.

Gasping with exertion, Charles realized there was no way to carry the things off. Nor to burn them. "Cut them up," he ordered. An archer looked doubtfully at the heavy timbers. "Cut the ropes! Do something to them."

"They lost a few," said one of his counts. "And they ran like cowards. Left their weapons behind."

"We lost many," said the king. "And how many swords and mail-shirts have we left behind us today? Give me my horse. If we reach base with half the strength we started, we'll be lucky."

Yes, he thought. But we're through. Through all the traps. And half, behind a safe stockade, may be enough another day.

As if to encourage him, the rain began to ease.



Guthmund the Greedy, sweeping down the Channel under oars alone, ignored the rain and welcomed the poor visibility it brought. If he was going to go ashore he would much prefer it to come as a surprise. Also, in rain or fog, there was a chance of snapping up information. In the prow of the leading ship, he pointed off to starboard, called an order to increase the stroke. In moments the longship was alongside the six-oar fishing-boat, its crew looking up in fear. Guthmund pulled the hammer-pendant from round his neck and showed it, noted the expressions fading from fear to wariness.

"We are here to fight the Franks," he called, using the half-English pidgin of the Wayman camp. The expressions relaxed another degree as the men realized they could understand him, took in what he said.

"You're too late," a fisherman called back. "They fight today."

"You'd better come aboard," replied Guthmund.

As he took in the sense of what the fishermen told him, his pulse began to beat stronger. If there was one principle of successful piracy, it was to land where the defenses were down. He checked again and again: the Frankish army had been seen marching out that morning. It had left camp-guards and ship-guards. The loot of the countryside, Canterbury included, was in the lightly guarded camp. The fishermen had no hope that the Franks would find anything but victory. Still, Guthmund told himself, if his friend and jarl was defeated, it could do no harm to rob the conqueror. And a stroke in the rear might be a vital distraction. He turned to the fishermen again with another string of questions: The fleet drawn up in a bay? The stockaded camp on a hill? The nearest inlet to it? Steep sides but a path?

In the drenching rain the Wayman fleet, rowed now by chained Ragnarsson survivors, pulled one by one into the narrow mouth of the stream below Hastings and its camp.

"Do you mean to climb the walls with ladders?" asked one of the fishermen doubtfully. "They are ten feet high."

"That's what those are for," said Guthmund, waving cheerfully at the six onagers being slung over the side by derricks.

"Too heavy for the path," said the fisherman, eyeing the way the boats heeled.

"I have plenty of carriers," replied Guthmund, watching keenly as his men, weapons poised, unshackled the dangerous Ragnarsson galley-slaves a few at a time and made them fast again to the onagers' frames and carry-bars.

As the narrow inlet filled with men, Guthmund decided to make a short speech of encouragement.

"Loot," he said, "lots of it. Stolen from the Christian Church, so we'll never have to give any back. Maybe we have to share it with the jarl, if he wins today. Maybe not. Let's go."

"What about us?" said one of the chained men.

Guthmund looked at him attentively. Ogvind the Swede: a very hard man. Threats no good. And he needed these men to use their full strength up the steep hillside.

"This is how it is," he said. "If we win, I'll let you go. If we lose, I'll leave you chained to the machines. Maybe the Christians will be merciful to you. Fair?"

Ogvind nodded. Struck by a sudden thought, Guthmund turned to the black deacon, the machine-master.

"What about you? Will you fight these for us?"

Erkenbert's face set. "Against Christians? The emissaries of the Pope, the Holy Father, whom I myself and my master called to this abode of savages? Rather will I embrace the crown of holy martyrdom and go..."

A hand plucked at Guthmund's sleeve: one of the few slaves taken from York Minster who had survived both Ivar's furies and Erkenbert's discipline.

"We'll do it, master," he whispered. "Be a pleasure."

Guthmund waved the mixed party up the steep hillside, going first himself with the fishermen and minster-men to reconnoiter, the Ragnarssons struggling up next under their ton-and-a-half burdens. Slowly, still cloaked by the rain, six onagers and a thousand Vikings moved into position four hundred yards from the Frankish stockade. Guthmund shook his head disapprovingly as he realized that there were not even sentries posted on the seaward side—or if there had been, they had all drifted over to the other side to watch and listen to the far-off rumor of battle.

The first sighting shot from an onager bounced short, kicked up and flicked a ten-foot post stump-first out of the ground. The minster-men pulled out coigns, lifted the frames a trifle. The next volley of five twenty-pound boulders smashed down twenty feet of stockade in a moment. Guthmund saw no point in waiting for a second volley. His army headed straight for the gap at a run. The startled Franks, mostly archers, bowstrings useless, faced with a thousand veteran warriors ready to fight on foot at close quarters, broke and ran almost to a man.



Two hours after setting foot onshore, Guthmund looked out from the Frankish gate. All his training told him to parcel the loot, abandon the now-unnecessary machines, and get back to sea before vengeance fell On him. Yet what he saw looked uncommonly like a beaten army streaming back. If so, if so...

He turned, shouted orders. Skaldfinn the interpreter, priest of Heimdall, looked at him in surprise.

"You're taking a risk," he said.

"Can't help it. I remember what my grandpa told me. Always kick a man if he's down."



As his men saw the Hammer ensign break out over what they had thought was their secure camp, Charles the Bald felt the morale of his army break. Every man and horse was soaked, cold and weary. As they straggled out of the copses and hedgerows and formed once more into ranks, the hobbelars could see that at least half their number were still lying out in the sodden fields, dead or waiting for death from some peasant's knife. The archers had been mere passive targets all day. Even the core of his army, the heavy lancers, had left a third of their best on slope or in quagmire, with never a chance to show their skill. The stockade in front of him looked unharmed and heavily manned. No assault would go in willingly.

Cutting his losses, Charles stood in his saddle, raised his lance, pointed toward the ships drawn up on the beach or anchored in the road. Sullenly, his men changed their direction of march, angled down towards the beach on which they had landed weeks before.

As they reached it, one by one, the dragon-boats cruised round from the inlet where their crews had re-embarked. Rowed into position, halted all together on the calm sea, swung bows on with the skill of veterans. From a vantage point by the stockade, an onager tried a ranging shot. The missile plumped into the gray water a cable's length over the cog Dieu Aide. Gently, the onagers trained round.



Looking down on the crowded beach, Shef realized that where the Frankish army had shrunk, his had swollen. The dart-throwers and crossbows were in place as he expected, hardly fewer than when they had started. His stone-throwers were coming up at a rush, recaptured from where the Franks had left them, unharmed or hastily re-rigged and now carried along still assembled by hundreds of willing hands. Only the halberdiers had lost more than a handful. And in their place had come thousands, literally thousands of angry churls out of the woodlands, clutching axes and spears and scythes. If the Franks were to break out it would have to be uphill. On weary horses. Under withering fire.

Into Shef's mind, unbidden, came the memory of his duel with Flann the Gaddgedil. If you wanted to consign a man, or an army, to Naströnd, to Dead Man's Shore, you cast the spear over their heads as a sign that all were given to Othin. Then no prisoners could be taken. A voice spoke inside him, a cold voice, the voice he recognized as the Othin of his dreams.

"Go on," it said. "Pay me my due. You do not wear my sign yet, but do they not say you belong to me?"

As if sleepwalking, Shef drifted over to Oswi's catapult—"Dead Level," wound and loaded, trained on the center of the Frankish army, milling in confusion below them. He looked down at the crosses on the shields: remembered the orm-garth. The wretched slave Merla. His own torments at the hands of Wulfgar. Godive's back. Sibba and Wilfi, burned to ashes. The crucifixions. His hands were steady as they pulled out the coigns, trained the weapon up to launch its missile over the Frankish heads.

Inside him the voice spoke again, the voice like a calving glacier. "Go on," it said. "Give the Christians to me."

Suddenly Godive was beside him, hand on his sleeve. She said nothing. As he looked at her, he remembered Father Andreas, who had given him life. His friend Alfred. Father Boniface. The poor woman in the forest clearing. He looked round from his daze, realized that the priests of the Way, all of them, had appeared from somewhere, were gazing at him with grave and intent faces.

He stepped back from the catapult with a deep sigh.

"Skaldfinn," he said. "You are an interpreter. Go down and tell the Frankish king to surrender or be killed. I will give them their lives and passage home. No more."

Again he heard a voice: but this time, the amused one of the wanderer in the mountains, which he had first heard over the gods' chessboard.

"Well done," it said. "You defeated Othin's temptation. Maybe you are my son. But who knows his own father?"


Shef! and Harold!
 
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