An ax hooked over Lord Wichman’s shield, dragged, tugged, and there was a sudden titanic struggle as the young lord grappled with an Eika soldier braced at his horse’s shoulder. Then—sliding, gripped, tugged—he fell from his horse and vanished under a hail of flailing arms.
Anna gasped out loud and jerked back, bumping into the careful rack of arrows. With a clatter, they fell, but the sound was drowned out by a howl sent up from outside—the young lord’s riders had gone mad with fury.
Anna began to cry.
A man shoved her away roughly and began to set up arrows again. A woman called up from below.
“The longhouse is burning! We’re getting a flood of people in here. What shall I do?”
“Squeeze in as many of the young and weak as you can!” shouted the man next to Anna. “But any who are able-bodied must take to the walls. It’ll be slaughter if the Eika get through those gates. Anything they can fling down—anyone who can lift a hoe or spade or shoot a bow or stab with a spear—” He spun round. “Girl! Don’t be hamhanded again. Now set these arrows upright for those who will need them later!”
He climbed down the ladder.
She did as she was told. Such a din of wailing and shouting had arisen from within the holding—the squawking of chickens, the barking of dogs, the screams of horses and men—that she could only stay moving by pretending nothing was happening, by hearing nothing at all. She concentrated on each arrow as she leaned it with fletching upright against the stone wall.
Smoke billowed in from outside, but she could not, dared not, look again out through the arrow slit. A hugely pregnant woman came up the ladder, blood streaming from a gash on her forehead. With a grunt, she heaved her ungainly bulk up over the lip, got to hands and knees, then with a shove from foot and hand got herself up. She stationed herself with a bow by one of the slits. The man whose place she took scrambled down, disappearing below.
Soon, other women and one adolescent boy had stationed themselves by the arrow slits, each with a bow. The boy played nervously with an arrow, rolling it through his fingers. More people clambered up the ladder and cowered, some weeping, some stunned, against the walls and then along the floor until there was scarcely room for anyone to move. And yet more tried to come up, and more yet. Such a noise swelled up from this mass of terror-stricken people and from the battle raging outside that Anna could only hunker down, clap hands over ears, and pray. The sting of burning timber and thatch made her eyes burn, and the fear made her heart thud hard in her chest. Her breath came in gasps.
“Come, child,” said a woman’s brusque voice. Anna looked up into the heat-seared face, blackened with soot, of Mistress Gisela’s niece. Dozens of tiny burns and charred holes from flying embers pitted her clothing. “Hand me arrows as I shoot.”
“Who are you shooting at?” she breathed. Horror rose in her throat until it choked the breath out of her and she thought she would fall and faint.
But the woman only took careful aim and loosed the arrow and, without thinking, Anna handed her another. She nocked and aimed and shot while screams pierced above the clamor of battle and fire roared and dogs howled and a horn blared long and high and distantly a man’s voice shouted: “Form up to my left! Form up to my left!”
One by one Anna handed her the arrows, and as each one was nocked and loosed, the young woman’s expression wavered not at all from blank concentration. Only once did she grunt with satisfaction, and once she whimpered, suddenly made afraid by some sight in the yard beyond. But she gulped down her fear as everyone had to, or die through being helpless. That was the way of war.
One by one, Anna handed up the arrows until they were all gone.
3
IN the end the Eika retreated, but by that time Steleshame lay in shambles, a quarter of the palisade wall burning or battered down, the longhouse in flames and the outbuildings in ruins. Only the newly built hall still stood, though it was scorched. Some of the roof tiles had fallen in where the smoke hole opened and both doors had been wrenched off their hinges.
It was a miracle anything at all had survived. Of the Dragons there remained no sign, but everyone agreed they, like the flying dragon, had arisen from the Eika enchanter’s magic, a false vision used to strike fear into their hearts and render them incapable of fighting.
It had not worked, not this time.
“That is the weakness of illusion,” Master Helvidius said when the people hiding in the stone keep ventured out to the horrible scene opening before them in the yard. “Once you know it is illusion, it is easier to combat.”
