Men panicked, didn’t think straight. The obvious thing to do was to dive for the water or the boats, that was the best shelter from the charge. But they were spread out along the beach, exhausted from fighting, their minds not quite accepting they had another battle on their hands.
Some did run for the boats; some ran for the dunes, up towards the monastery; some turned and faced the enemy.
‘Together. Shields together! Hold, hold!’ screamed Giuki, but it was no good. The knights were too quick, streaming across the hard sand at a flat gallop, their lances before them. The cavalry crashed into the Vikings like a pulverising wave. Some tried to fight and were taken by the lances, some ran and were smashed down by the flying horses.
Aelis had the impression of men broken, shattered and pulped.
The noise of the first impact was awful, like the smack of a hammer tenderising a steak but magnified many times. This was a work of demolition, not war. The knights worked together. Even after the mass charge, they rode in twos and threes. Any warrior who faced them had two lances to deal with, the hooves of two horses even if he was lucky enough to avoid the spears. Few chose to stand. Most ran hard for anything that might afford them protection and they were scattered like field mice before a scythe.
And then the horses were on Aelis. She was paralysed by fear. She felt the vibration of the hooves through the sand, a deep drumming that seemed capable of casting her to the ground on its own. She saw the crazed faces of the horses, lips pulled back, teeth bared and eyes wide, heard the insane whoops of the riders, and then she was down, rolling in the water.
‘Get to the boat! Run!’ screamed Ofaeti.
He had torn her away at the last second and pulled her sprawling into a deep pool in the sand. She stood.
The Franks wheeled and charged again. Ofaeti had her by the back of her tunic, driving her towards the shelter of the longship. He lost his grip and she fell headlong into the water. She looked up and saw Moselle lose his lance in the chest of a Viking, its crosspiece breaking with the impact and failing to prevent the weapon going clean through its target. Moselle dropped it, drew his sword and beheaded a fleeing man. Then he turned his horse and, cackling with delight, he spurred it into another confrontation.
No more than ten paces from her, a horseman had come to a halt, three Vikings around him. One was on his left-hand side, away from the horseman’s sword arm, and leaped on him with his knife, but suddenly he wasn’t there. A horseman had come past at the gallop taking the Viking’s head with the point of his lance as easily as he’d spear a target in the practice yard. In a blink the other two were dead, similarly dispatched by racing horsemen.
Some Vikings did get away: ten made a longboat and got it out to sea; five climbed the dunes towards the monastery.
‘These are your people?’ said Ofaeti. They were crouching in the beached longboat.
‘Yes.’
She read his face. He was going to threaten her, force an oath from her, tell her that if she didn’t promise to save them he would cut her throat there and then. But she saw him dismiss the idea. It was useless, he could see. ‘Can you save us?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘I got you here. You might have died under their lances too if it had not been for me.’
‘I cannot save you.’
Ofaeti nodded. ‘Then let’s go to them, lads,’ he said. ‘Best die on the attack than cringing here like shrews from a hawk.’
Aelis looked up at the monastery. A sensation of icy air, the glimmer of hail under the moon that she had seen from across the water, came to her. She said a name: ‘Munin.’ Nothing had changed. She was still pursued by terrible forces, still in the grip of unseen and dangerous enemies. She still needed to get to Helgi. The wolfman had died for her striving to take her there.
She looked at Ofaeti. ‘Will you take me to Helgi?’
‘If he’ll pay the ransom, love, he’s as good as the next king.’
‘Is that a yes?’
‘Yes. On my oath, if you save us.’
She nodded. The battle was over. There was laughter. Two Frankish knights were chasing a Viking up and down the beach. The man had no weapon, and the riders kept cutting him off, slapping him with the flats of their swords, making him turn and turn again.
A rider came alongside the boat and looked in.
‘Moselle! It’s me, Lady Aelis. It’s me. Put down your sword.’
‘Lady! You’re hard to find! We lost word of you halfway down the Somme. It’s only by the grace of God we came up here. We heard downriver there were Normans at the monastery and thought we might as well take a look. We’ve been watching them here for days looking for our chance and then God gave it to us on a golden plate. It’s good to have seen such a day!’
His face was flecked with sand and blood, his horse sweating up a lather, but he was grinning like an imbecile on the steps of a monastery.
‘Well, you caught them.’
‘You’ve seen your error, I take it. Shall I free you from these barbarians? You can die easy or hard, Norman. Touch the lady and you’ll suffer for a month, I vouch that.’
‘He doesn’t understand you, Moselle,’ said Aelis, ‘but he won’t harm me. These men are my paid protectors.’
‘You have a preference for foreigners over your own men, lady. A Frank would die before he took money to fight against his kin.’
‘A wonder then that we find so many of our fine swords sold to the enemy, and that the Norsemen have any spies at all. Let’s thank God for the help these Danes have offered me. They are good men. Look, this one carries the cross chalked on his shield. He is of Christ.’
‘Then I can have even fewer qualms about killing him if his soul is sure of heavenly reward.’
‘You will not kill him because, by the right of my family, I command you not to. Do you have any food?’
Moselle nodded and glanced behind him. As a man of the aristocracy he did not find it at all odd that Aelis, from a better family, should demand his unquestioning deference. He would have found it odd if she did not, and would certainly have expected any one baser born than him to obey his orders without question.
‘The monastery’s as good a place as any to spend the night. My God, when I think what these heathens have done to this land I should rather crucify the lot of them — make that abbey a new Golgotha — than share my fire with them.’ Moselle’s attention had shifted to shelter and a meal.
‘I ask again,’ she said, ‘do you have food?’
‘Plenty. Let’s go up to the monastery. They’ll have a warming room, and it’ll be good to sit by a fire and tell the deeds of the day. Not a man of us dead.’ He smiled and pointed his sword at Ofaeti. ‘All my life I’ve dreamed of catching these bastards in open order, and tonight that dream came true. If we could fight all our battles on sand like this there’d be no Norman threat. I’ll allow myself a cup of wine, I think.’
‘Good,’ said Aelis. ‘Lead the way. And tell your men not to harm my Danes.’
Moselle nodded. ‘I’ll tell them, though the northerners don’t eat with us or share our fire. They can sit apart in their own stink.’
‘Very good,’ said Aelis.
‘End your game!’ he shouted to the men chasing the Viking along the beach. One of the horsemen drew his sword and tried to behead the tormented man with a stroke. The Viking raised his arms and blocked the blow but at a terrible cost. His right hand was severed at the wrist. He sank to his knees, and the second horseman trotted in behind him, impaling him with his sword by hanging off his saddle and stabbing it through him with a scooping motion. The knight leaped into a dismount to bow to Aelis, then he and his companion joined their fellows looting the dead.
Ofaeti watched them. Aelis could see he was longing to rifle a few bodies himself but knew it would anger the Frankish knights.
‘Keep ready,’ said Aelis in Norse to the big man. ‘We’ll leave tonight.’
Ofaeti nodded. ‘Might as well be warm before we go then,’ he said and turned towards the monastery. Aelis sensed Ofaeti’s desire for a good fire — more than a fire, for the hearth, for home. He was sick of travelling, this Viking, and wanted to be among his people. That was why he would take her to Helgi and the Rus, the Normans of the east, to sit down in safety for a while among people he understood.
She looked up at the monastery. That sensation was gone: no more of that cold and silver rain that she had seen from the ship, no longer even the call of the wolf. But they would be back. The monsters were still hunting her, and she knew something had taken root in her mind, was growing there, sustaining her and being sustained — those symbols that seemed to burn and fizz, to chime and howl inside her. Their presence disturbed her. How had she controlled Moselle’s horse? How had she survived on that beach while around her Death feasted? How had Moselle found her? Had she called to him without knowing it? Was she a witch, unknown to herself, claimed by the devil? The thought nauseated her.
Aelis followed Ofaeti across the sand and up towards the monastery. She still needed his protection, no matter how uncomfortable that made her feel.