Chapter Eleven

With one charge they killed twelve men. Asclettin FitzEustace led them, his huge frame terrifying as the Normans burst around the shoulder of the wooded hillock to fall upon the few Gaels who had already alighted upon the riverbank. They were only ten in number, but the line of horsemen was unstoppable as they followed Asclettin into the brawl. His billowing crimson and gold surcoat snapped like a whip as he carved his way through the small company, stabbing left and right with a heavy lance. At his back came squat Thurstin Hore, punching downwards with his spear, and following him was steady Bertram d’Alton, Denis d’Auton with his famously long reach, and the rest of the conrois. Raymond came last, standing tall in his stirrups, to pierce the shoulder of his target.

Those Gaels still in the midst of the river, or those on the far bank, could only watch impotently as the whooping Normans flashed past, all colour and size and steel, and disappeared into the blinding morning sun. One man quickly stooped into the water and found a smooth rock, but by the time he had armed his sling the foreigners had vanished into the foliage with only the thunder of their horses and the peal of victorious acclaim remaining to mock them. First blood had been drawn by the invaders.

‘What are you waiting for?’ King Máel Sechlainn shouted at the men in the stream. ‘Get moving forward and find out if there are more of them out there! Slingers,’ he then demanded of another group, ‘get ready to batter them if they come back.’ Behind him, his whole army had stalled and he knew from experience that those in the rear would have no idea of what was happening at the front of the column. If they tarried for too long the kern would sit down, fall asleep or begin eating, and it would be hours before the army would be on the move again.

‘Get bloody moving, you lot,’ he ordered again with a finger settled on the scouts in the water.

The infantry swapped nervous glances at their king’s command, but edged forward again as they stole uneasy glances at the riverbank and raised their javelins above their shoulders. The re-emergence of drumming horse hooves and breaking foliage stopped the men dead in their tracks.

‘They are coming back,’ one exclaimed and began backtracking into the deepest part of the stream where he fell over, losing his grip on his wicker and hide shield as he plunged into the knee-high water. As the sound from the horsemen grew louder, more warriors began to flee back to the safety of the shore and into the line of slingers, disrupting them as they swung their weapons around their heads.

The ten Normans did not press home another attack. Instead they trotted past in formation, their banners unfurled and whipping like fishes’ tails above their grey armour and bright surcoats. They merely looked down on the enemy with a haughty disregard as they passed by.

‘Get throwing!’ Máel Sechlainn shouted at his slingers, but their bombardment started only as the last man disappeared out of range and the thump of rocks striking sodden earth proved to be a meek echo underneath the rumble of the warhorses’ hooves.

It wasn’t his army that was supposed to be under attack, Máel Sechlainn thought grimly. He was supposed to be facing a beaten enemy, puny in number and hidden behind little more than a turf and timber wall. What the foreigners’ commander believed he could achieve by sending so few men against them, he did not know. All his enemy had accomplished was to delay their inevitable defeat. He turned to look at the vast army behind him. Some at the front had kept their feet and weapons ready, but most, further back from the small action, had sat down to talk and rest as he had feared. His army had stopped and he knew that behind them so would the forces of the Uí Drona and the Ostmen of Veðrarfjord.

‘What now?’ Máel Sechlainn’s tánaiste demanded as he joined his king at the riverbank. ‘The tide will turn soon and this stream will be impassable. We need to get across this one and the one after that as soon as possible.’

Máel Sechlainn had little love for his late cousin’s son, Toirdelbach, but the younger man had been able to raise a band of warriors almost as big as his own and so had the right to air his opinions.

‘What do you suggest?’ Máel Sechlainn asked of the taoiseach from the high hills above his own tribal territory.

‘Send two hundred across as one,’ Toirdelbach advised, ‘and then get the slingers and javelin men in the water. If the foreigners come back they’ll be ready for them.’

Máel Sechlainn nodded in agreement. ‘You can lead them,’ he told Toirdelbach, ‘since you obviously know what to do.’ He couldn’t keep his voice free of derision, but his tánaiste seemed not to notice as he began issuing orders to the army and then plunged into the small stream with his warriors at his back. Máel Sechlainn held his breath as Toirdelbach began climbing the bank on the far side. He was sure that the horsemen would again appear to press home their advantage, and he urged them to come for ten horsemen could not defeat a force of two hundred! That, he was sure, was impossible.

Fifty slingers, up to their waists in water, formed the path between which the detachment of spearmen forded the river and they began to slowly swing their weapons around in an arc as Toirdelbach and his derb-fine prowled around on the riverbank. The slingers were ready to unleash a barrage of fist-sized rocks should the enemy reappear. However, there was no pulse of hooves and soon all two hundred of Toirdelbach’s force was on the bank, their javelins poised to strike and their shields held high.

‘It is all clear,’ Toirdelbach soon shouted back across the stream to his cousin. ‘The foreigners have gone. You can bring the rest across.’

Máel Sechlainn frowned as he wrapped his colourful cloak around his arm and stepped off the bank and into the stream. The water reached to his knees to soak his long mustard shirt and he grimaced at the cold. He wondered why the foreigners had given up so easily. With a hundred warriors he might have held the ford for many days against almost any foe. Máel Sechlainn wanted to believe that it was rank amateurism of his enemy, but something told him that he should be careful to not underestimate the foreigners from across the sea.

‘Get the army moving again,’ King Máel Sechlainn instructed his derb-fine who, as was their station, were at his heels. As they disappeared to affect his orders, their king began wading towards the opposite bank, the cold sandy water splashing up to his middle. Toirdelbach was waiting for him at the riverbank but offered no assistance to help his king from the stream.

‘Which way did they go?’ the king demanded of his tánaiste.

‘South,’ the younger man stated, flapping a hand towards where the sun hung high in the sky.

‘Then that is our way too.’

‘I thought you said we would be fighting Danes!’ Asclettin called to his captain as the Norman conrois trotted southwards through the trees. It was hot and underneath their chainmail all the men felt beads of sweat flow beneath their gambesons, trickling down their spines even after a short period of fighting. ‘Not that I’m complaining. These Irish are easier to kill than Ostmen.’

Raymond did not share in Asclettin’s mirth. Instead he laid his hand on Dreigiau’s sweaty shoulder and patted him fondly. The courser was aware of every shift of his rider’s weight and his ears buzzed with activity as Raymond whispered his appreciation for the animal’s work that day. He snorted excitedly. After his conrois had attacked the enemy, Raymond had led them down the length of the river as it cut a deep, winding rent inland across the Siol Bhroin peninsula. It was only then, as he had counted the warriors in the enemy column on the opposite bank that he had understood the predicament in which his small army found themselves. He had tallied at least two thousand in the enemy host, but he knew that they could easily have the same again hidden from his eyes. Sir Hervey had been correct. Thousands opposed them.

The Norman captain leant forward and, with a click of the tongue, urged Dreigiau into another canter. He was mindful of the conrois mirroring his movement as he led the way to the next stream which blocked the enemy’s path south to Dun Domhnall. The trees, bluebells and nettles were a blur, not because of the speed at which Raymond passed, but due to the thoughts that swept through his head and dulled his mind to his surroundings. His army was outnumbered by at least twenty to one! The enormity of that figure took some time to settle in Raymond’s mind. Only at his most pessimistic had he ever believed that he would face such a force, and already he wondered if he could possibly defend Dun Domhnall against them. His mind pictured the horde of savage, half-naked Irish climbing the fort’s walls, an Ostman shieldwall coming up behind, and Alice of Abergavenny with tears upon her face.

It was little over a mile to the next creek and his conrois covered the distance in minutes, emerging from the wood with the sound of the sea to their left. The little village had been deserted since Borard and Dafydd FitzHywel had raided it for cattle a few days after his army’s arrival in Ireland. The Normans and Welshmen had killed only those who had put up a fight, but the locals had decided to take their remaining possessions and head north to another settlement further up the coast. Raymond had left a small force of ten archers to take up residence in the abandoned homestead and guard the crossing. The Welshmen had started to build a small palisade around the biggest house, knocking down the others for timber, but it was as yet incomplete and in truth was little more than protection against the wolves which roamed the peninsula by night. As they rode downhill towards the nameless creek, Raymond and his conrois were greeted by Fionntán and the archers’ commander.

‘Captain,’ Caradog hailed him as he drew near. The tall archer had his bow strung and a knapsack at his hip containing everything he owned. Raymond guessed that all the men on the picquet line were ready to retreat at the first provocation.

‘What news?’ Fionntán asked without offering a welcome.

Raymond leapt down from Dreigiau’s back. ‘We gave them a bloody nose at the crossing, but at best we only slowed them down.’

‘And what else did you think you would accomplish?’ he asked with an air of annoyance. ‘So how many do they have?’

‘At least two thousand, probably twice that,’ Raymond admitted. ‘From what I saw, they were mostly Gael, but I saw a large body of armoured Ostmen in the column across the river.’

Caradog clenched his jaw determinedly. ‘They’ll be here soon?’

‘By midday, if not before.’ His hand still on Dreigiau’s bridle, Raymond switched his gaze towards the wide creek, a good bow shot in breadth, which streaked between the village and Dun Domhnall which was a mile distant and hidden behind a low ridge. He had to shield his eyes from the sun, but the causeway of blackened wooden trunks was clearly visible now as it had been when Raymond and his conrois had crossed a little after sunrise that morning. The ancient laneway of logs was sturdy enough in the squelching mud, and allowed two men abreast to cross the creek when the tide was at its lowest.

‘How long until high tide?’ the captain asked.

Fionntán looked at the height of the sun and then at the concourse where muddy puddles peppered the creek either side of the wooden causeway. ‘Six hours,’ he answered with certainty.

‘It will be impassable then,’ Caradog, who had been stationed at the village for many days, confirmed.

‘Here at least it will be,’ Fionntán corrected. ‘But it narrows to barely a stream two miles behind that hill.’ His hand fluttered towards the west where an assembly of seagulls silently spun in the air above a group of trees, taller than those around them.

Raymond nodded his head. ‘So the question remains: do we hold our ground and hope that Dun Domhnall’s walls will keep them back, or do we evacuate across the bay in Waverider?’

Caradog looked at his feet rather than answer while Fionntán shrugged. ‘We can fight them here or we will face them there at Banabh. It makes little difference …’

A warning shout from the other side of the village made all three men turn and interrupted Fionntán’s considerations. Up the road an archer appeared and gesticulated wildly towards the woods to the north. The man was too distance for his words to reach the trio, but all three understood his meaning for, over the brow of the knoll, the rumble of cow-skin drums overcame the call of gulls.

The enemy were almost upon them.

‘Get across the causeway,’ Raymond ordered, ‘and get ready to defend the crossing.’

Alice of Abergavenny stood on the stone battlements of the ancient Celtic fort and listened as the noise of livestock arose in the north. Below her the animals in the Normans’ cattle pens stirred and twitched and moaned as they heard the distant baying of their kind in the distance. Their calls peppered the constant din of war drums and horns as the enemy approached the Norman bridgehead.

She had been awoken before dawn by the sound of horsemen leaving the fort and had made it up onto the higher ground above the beach in time to see Raymond leading his small conrois out of Dun Domhnall and northwards. Their torches had produced only enough light for her to identify their bearers. It was from the north that Sir Hervey had reported seeing the army of Ostmen, though Alice could not imagine what Raymond thought ten could do against an army as large as that which Hervey had testified was approaching. She prayed that nothing had befallen her protector and hugged her shoulders against the morning breeze which gusted and hauled at her clothes from the south-west.

‘Sister,’ Geoffrey greeted her nervously as he clambered onto the allure. ‘William de Vale told me that there are ten thousand warriors coming for us.’ He giggled nervously. ‘That can’t be true. Can it? If it was, Raymond would get everyone back in Waverider and take us back to Wales.’ He flapped at hand at the ship which had returned from Banabh an hour before and had again been beached below the cliffs. ‘Wouldn’t he, Alice? Of course he would,’ he replied to his own question, even if his answer lacked conviction. Alice said nothing as she watched the horizon and listened to the sounds of their approaching drums.

‘He must think that he can negotiate with them,’ chanced Geoffrey.

Alice shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know what he plans to do. I’m simply glad he didn’t take you with him today.’

‘I’m his esquire,’ Geoffrey told her gruffly. ‘I should be at his side when he goes into battle. Did you ask him to leave me behind?’

‘Of course not,’ Alice snapped. ‘Of course not,’ she repeated in a friendlier tone. ‘He left before I had risen and I had not spoken to him since Sir Hervey brought news of the enemy. He was too busy with preparations.’

Geoffrey grunted disbelievingly. ‘Well, he won’t leave me behind again.’

She shook her head at his obstinacy and worried for her brother’s safety. Geoffrey did not seem to care about his claim to Abergavenny any longer – it had been some time since he had even mentioned the Welsh castle, or his enmity towards those who had taken their inheritance. He had replaced it with talk of horses and swords, armour and lances, Raymond, castles and battle splendour. Her brother did not seem to understand that by allying himself to Raymond he was not fighting for his own benefit, but for Strongbow’s cause, and that none of his efforts on that earl’s behalf would garner any influence with King Henry. Strongbow was out of favour with the king and Raymond was little better than a brigand, which meant that Alice was as far from getting back her home as ever. Despite her renewed friendship towards Raymond, she cursed the luck that had led to Prince Harry abandoning her, the unfairness of the world, and her brother for not sharing her vision to take back Abergavenny.

‘I want you to promise me that you will not put yourself in danger, Geoffrey.’ Alice turned away from the sparkling inlet to look at her brother. ‘I know you wish to prove yourself, but it would be foolish to throw your life away trying to show your valour to Raymond.’

Geoffrey looked angrily at his sister. ‘He has taught me to fight well,’ he replied, ‘and everyone will be needed to do their part if the enemy has the numbers that William de Vale says they do.’

Alice was no longer looking at her brother. Her hand was outstretched and her eyes wide as they looked out to sea. To the south-west a sail had appeared around the end of the peninsula.

‘Ship,’ she told her brother. ‘Ship!’ she repeated with greater urgency, jabbing her finger towards the sea. Geoffrey spun on his heel and, shading his eyes from the midday sun, he followed the direction given by his sister’s hand where he soon spotted the dark hull going southwards under oar.

‘Is it a warship?’ Alice asked.

The esquire nodded his head. ‘It’s too long to be a merchantman, too low in the water,’ he told her, though how he could tell at this distance, Alice could not comprehend. She could barely see the dark hull and the dipping oars as they rhythmically drew the ship southwards. In fact to her eyes it looked like the warship could not possibly be afloat, so low was she in the water.

‘If you were going to attack Dun Domhnall and you had a fleet of ships,’ she chanced, ‘surely you wouldn’t only send an army to attack from the north.’ She looked her brother deep in the eye. ‘You’d also send warriors by sea and surround the fort from all sides?’ She knew from her fireside conversations with Fionntán that the fortress-city of Veðrarfjord was up a river to the west, much like Cluainmín which was found at the top of the estuary to the east, and so she assumed that any war vessel coming around the western cape would be an enemy.

Geoffrey bit his lip nervously. ‘Do you think…’ he stopped to gather his thoughts. ‘Do you think that they could be the first ship in an enemy fleet?’

Alice nodded her head, deliberately slowly.

‘Then we better tell someone?’

‘We should.’

Geoffrey offered his hand to his sister and, with another glance at the ship in the distance, she hitched her maroon skirts in her left and took it in her right. Together they ran through the citadel’s gate towards the main wall. Her linen headscarf dropped across her shoulders as they sprinted, but Alice did not stop to fix it. She was suddenly reminded of their flight from the Benedictine Priory at Abergavenny a few short months before. Back then, her heart had fluttered with excitement as she had led Geoffrey through the priory’s cloister garth. As they dashed towards the unlocked door by the buttery, she had attempted to convince him of her plans to take back Abergavenny from their cousin. The priest had been waiting for them outside the priory’s walls and on horseback they had fled along the course of the River Wysg and into Wentwood. That was where William de Braose had discovered them. Had Raymond not stumbled upon them and set their captor to flight, she wondered what would have happened. Would they already be dead? Or would they have been forced back into their respective Holy Orders? All that she knew was that she would never have found herself on the strange shores of Ireland with an enemy host bearing down upon them.

Unlike their flight from Abergavenny, it was Geoffrey who now led the way through the broiling bailey of Dun Domhnall. Panic was palpable amongst Raymond’s tiny army and it was understandable, Alice thought, considering the rumours that abounded. All had heard the call of cattle and the bang of drums. Everyone knew what it meant.

‘Sir Hervey?’ Geoffrey shouted as they arrived at the inner gates. Warriors ran hither and thither to prepare the fort for warfare. ‘Sir Hervey?’ he tried again, dropping Alice’s hand to cup the sides of his mouth. Everyone ignored the youngster. Two men carrying bundles of arrows argued with a Welsh archer about the best place to store them. Another stepped between the warring trio to stop them from coming to blows. On the outer walls, pages and esquires distributed heavy rocks in preparation for an assault. They worked quickly with little care and each impact of stone on wooden walkway earned a whinny, squawk or mew from the animals that milled around the crowded pen and nearby in the bailey.

‘Where could he be?’ Geoffrey asked his sister as he dashed away from her to search along the fighting step upon the inner wall. ‘Sir Hervey?’ he called again, scaring some chickens to flight.

‘He has probably high-tailed it to Banabh,’ Alice chanced, though her brother was too far away to hear. It was then that she spotted the knight in the distance upon the outer wall. His profile was unmistakable with his stooped back, grizzled chin, and the long, lank hair which grew from his balding head. ‘There he is,’ Alice shouted to her brother. ‘I see him on the barbican.’

His search of the inner wall complete, Geoffrey ran back to where his sister stood, a little inside the gate, and stared between the double embattlements to where Alice had indicated.

‘You’re right!’ He took off down the dark tunnel between the walls, nimbly dodging warriors and obstructions while scattering wood chips from the pathway beneath his feet. Alice followed more slowly, aware again of the eyes of men upon her. By the time she arrived at the barbican, Sir Hervey and his two ragged liegemen were engrossed in an argument with Geoffrey which she could hear as she climbed the ladder.

‘What about the men who rode out this morning with Raymond?’ Geoffrey demanded of Sir Hervey. Alice had never seen him so forceful and was momentarily unsure if she had heard correctly. Gone, it seemed, was the boy who had not wanted to leave the priory at Abergavenny, the boy reluctant to press his claim as lord and landowner. Gone was the nervous teenager who had quaked before Strongbow in the hall of Striguil. Instead there was Raymond’s esquire, determined, defiant and protective of his master. She reached the top of the wooden structure, but was disregarded by the four quarrelling men.

‘How do we know if they are still alive,’ Sir Hervey wheezed indignantly. ‘That idiot Raymond took ten men to fight ten thousand!’ The knight turned away from Geoffrey to look back over the sea at the Ostman vessel. ‘And now you tell me that there is a fleet on the way to attack us? You think that I will simply sit here and allow us to be wiped out?’

Geoffrey scowled and snorted indignantly. ‘We should wait for Raymond to return. The tide is against anyone coming from the west,’ he said. ‘We still have time.’

Alice wondered what had gone between her brother and Sir Hervey, and what the Frenchman had said to so anger Geoffrey.

‘She has the wind behind her,’ one of Hervey’s ragged companions told his master without acknowledging Geoffrey’s comment. ‘Once they get the sail up it’ll only take them an hour to make land.’ He nodded towards the beach to the west of the Norman fort and closer to the Ostman ship.

‘We could make a shield wall at the top of the path from the beach,’ Geoffrey intervened desperately. ‘We could hold them until Raymond gets back.’

‘Shut your mouth, boy,’ Sir Hervey hissed and shook his head. ‘God alone knows where Raymond is, or if he will even return.’ For his part, Sir Hervey looked distressed by the sight of the ship and he continued to stare at her, his lined face screwed up as the sun beat down upon him. ‘We cannot hold Dun Domhnall,’ he said quietly.

Geoffrey took a deep breath as if he was again about to argue, but Alice took him by the shoulder and pulled him away towards the ladder. Her brother continued complaining as they descended to the ground from the raised wooden platform.

‘What did he say?’ Alice demanded.

Geoffrey shook his head grouchily. ‘That a boy like me knows nothing of tactics…’

‘No!’ Alice snapped. ‘What does he plan to do before Raymond returns?’

‘He wants to take Waverider and evacuate to Banabh Island.’ Geoffrey nodded his chin towards the east, beyond the wall and across the estuary.

Alice was taken aback. ‘He wants to leave Raymond behind?’

‘He wants to leave all our supplies – the horses, the cattle – everything!’ Geoffrey threw his hands out from his sides in exasperation. ‘He’s going to abandon all of it,’ he exclaimed.

The siblings had reached the inner gate and Alice took in the view of the bailey as she emerged from the shadows between the walls: to her left was the cattle pens and marshalsea with its roof thatched with dried reeds from the nearby estuary, and behind that was the ancient fort on the headland where she could see their quarters. She swivelled to her right to where, over the tents and rudimentary huts, she could again see the Ostman vessel. She had cleared the western cape and as Alice watched, the captain turned his stern into the wind and ordered his men to begin raising the square, yellow linen sail.

‘There will be at least sixty warriors on that ship,’ Geoffrey stepped past his sister and looked out to sea. ‘That is nearly as many as are left in Dun Domhnall. If even one more ship follows the first, the fort will be in grave peril.’

Geoffrey sucked air between his teeth and turned to tell his sister to go up to their quarters and gather anything of value to take with her on Waverider. For, he considered, there was no stopping Sir Hervey’s plan, and at the very least his sister would be safe from the army to the north if they crossed the estuary. However, Alice was no longer at his side. Geoffrey frantically turned in a circle to discover where his sister had gone, but she was nowhere to be seen.

‘Alice?’ he called and skipped back towards the battlements. He was halfway up one of the ladders when a sudden stamp of hooves made him turn.

‘Out of my way,’ squealed Alice as, mounted on a sorrel horse from the marshalsea, she cantered past Geoffrey and towards the inner gate. ‘On, Rufus!’ she exclaimed encouragingly as the horse bought in Cluainmín hesitated before the high and looming walls. ‘On, Rufus,’ she called again, and the horse responded, barging into the darkness.

‘Alice, wait!’ her brother called, but she did not turn as warriors jumped aside rather than be trampled below Rufus’ hooves. Geoffrey ran after her, ignoring the insults from the men who had been forced from her path. ‘Alice!’ he shouted again. However, his sister was already through the outer gates and, rather than follow futilely, he quickly clambered onto the allure through the rough-hewn struts. There he watched his sister urge her horse to greater speed, his mane flapping as they headed northwards through the grassland before Dun Domhnall’s walls.

‘Alice!’ he appealed one last time though he knew that his voice would not carry over the grassland to her ears. Yet he knew where she was headed.

She was riding to warn Raymond. She was riding north to save him.

‘Loose!’ Raymond shouted again as he watched the single file of armoured men finally turn and flee back towards the nameless creek’s northern bank. Of the final flight of arrows only one struck home, burying itself in the thigh of an Ostman as he backtracked towards the far side. The remaining arrows splashed into the fast-deepening muddy water or clattered into the causeway, sending shivers up the wooden walkway behind the escaping warriors. Raymond’s ears still rang from the sound of one arrowhead colliding with an Ostman’s shield boss. The Norman captain momentarily marvelled at how such a slender object as an arrow could hit home with such great force. At his side, the ten archers had nocked the next flight, but he gave no order to shoot.

‘That should do it,’ he said instead and as one the archers relaxed their arms, letting the weighty draw of the bowstring gradually release. Sweat poured from the men’s brows as they let the breath finally escape their lungs, and returned their arrows to the pouches by their hips. Raymond congratulated them for their efforts but the Welshmen ignored him, sharing a joke of their own, spoken so quickly that the Norman could not understand. They all laughed.

‘Catch your breath and get some water into your bellies, but stay ready. If they come back you will be needed to do the same again,’ Raymond told the Welshmen as he waved his dismounted milites forward into the heat of the early afternoon sun. As they passed the archers, some of Raymond’s conrois nodded respectfully and joined their captain on the bank of the creek where the causeway met the southern shore.

‘Get ready to link shields here,’ Raymond told his warriors. ‘If they come across the walkway, they will be two abreast at most, so we will be able to stop them. I’ll take the right end, Bertram the left,’ he ordered before calling for Dafydd to run forward onto the causeway and collect as many arrows as he could. ‘We’ll need every one, but don’t forget that they have slingers,’ he warned, ‘so don’t go any further than halfway across.’

Young Dafydd nodded once before scampering onto the willow and board causeway which stretched across the muddy riverbed between the two banks. Under his weight the walkway bent and squeaked and sank into the deep mire. It was, Raymond guessed, already two hours past midday and he could see that, as Dafydd ran across the boards, water squirted in every direction. The tide was slowly starting to turn and he once more allowed himself to hope that he could hold the enemy army here at the causeway. Another day would allow him time to decide what he was going to do. Could Dun Domhnall’s walls hold back an attack by so many foes? Or would he have to admit his failure and flee back to Wales before the might of Veðrarfjord?

He raised his eyes from the sparkling pools which peppered the muddy creek to the low, green ridge which faced him. There, the enemy waited for their chance to flood across the last barrier keeping them from attacking Dun Domhnall. Cattle calls, stomping feet and hide drums had heralded the arrival of the allied army of Gael and Ostman, but now the only thing that Raymond could hear was the rumble of many voices as they carried over the riverbed to where his small force prepared to meet them. He could see the enemy amongst the trees as they sat down in ringed groups, talking and making last minute adjustments to weaponry and armour. Those on the hillside were the men of Veðrarfjord. Even from more than a bowshot away he could identify them as Ostmen. Unlike the Gaelic tribesmen, nearly all wore helmets and most had painted circular shields. Those that had chainmail shone when the sun struck their steel rings, as did the blades of sword, spear and axe as they were sharpened by communal whetstones. Most had hardened leather coats over their clothes and in their hands were knives and axes more used to domestic chores than to war. They were many, he reasoned, but they would be unproven. Where the Irish were camping he could not discern, but from the sound of the cattle mewing, he knew that they too could be not too far away.

‘Raymond!’ an uneasy voice called from below him and his gaze switched swiftly from the treeline above to the riverbed. Dafydd, laden with an arm-full of arrows, was racing towards him, his feet clattering over the thin boards. Splashing water gave the miles the appearance of great speed. Beyond Dafydd, Raymond spied movement on the much-trampled bank opposite. Enemy warriors had again ventured out onto the causeway.

‘Shieldwall,’ Raymond exclaimed and leapt down from his vantage point upon a large stone. Seconds later Asclettin and Thurstin had joined him on the mud and pebble bank, and had linked their shields with his. The jangle of chainmail and snarls of anger from his left told him the remainder of his small company had taken their position alongside their fellows. Raymond stole a glance down the line of locked willow boards, and counted nine lances protruding from his small conrois.

‘Ready,’ Bertram shouted to his captain from the far end of the shield wall, indicating that he was on the extreme left of the position.

‘Stay sharp,’ Raymond called back and settled his eyes on the far shore. The enemy warriors had stopped to rescue the bodies of those killed during the first assault, their feet clattering on the walkway as they were dragged away. Raymond quickly counted seven dead, but it was the party standing behind them that interested him more. The glint of gold at their necks and wrists marked them out as members of the nobility.

‘Archers!’ Raymond shouted over his shoulder to the ten men lounging in the shade of the trees. As they gathered behind the shield wall, he momentarily considered unleashing a volley of arrows on the enemy as they worked, but quickly dismissed the deceitful notion.

Fionntán leapt up onto the rock which Raymond had vacated. His shadow stretched all the way to the river as he raised his hand to his brow to block the reflected sunlight from dazzling him.

‘They want to talk,’ he stated, nodding a head in the direction of the nobles. ‘There are three of them … and one is Ragnall Mac Giolla Mhuire.’ He spat on the muddy bank. ‘The King of bloody Veðrarfjord.’

Raymond allowed his teardrop-shaped shield to dip, and he stared over the rim along the line of the causeway to where a small group tarried by the far bank.

‘They are scared of your archers and are awaiting your permission to come forward,’ Fionntán told the captain. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘We lose nothing by being mannerly,’ Raymond said and removed his spangenhelm from his head. Fionntán scowled and the Norman countered with a wide smile, tossing his lance to one of the archers before strapping his crimson and gold shield across his back.

‘I don’t like it,’ Fionntán told him. ‘They don’t even have a priest with them to assure your safety.’

‘Our safety,’ Raymond corrected, and chuckled as Fionntán gave him a horrified look. ‘You don’t think I’m going out there by myself? It could be dangerous, and I need you to translate.’

Fionntán looked disturbed despite Raymond’s grin. ‘Ragnall speaks French,’ he replied, his lined face giving away a hint of worry. Nevertheless, the exile from the lands of the Osraighe followed the captain onto the rickety causeway with little more than a barely audible curse.

Water and mud sloshed between the boards of the causeway as Raymond walked forward to meet the foreigners. He had not noticed the salty stink as he had led Dreigiau and his conrois across the causeway earlier in the day, but now it annoyed his nostrils like the first step into a castle marshalsea in the morning. Glancing to his right he hoped to see signs of the tide rising, but the estuary was too distant for him to discern. The landscape was filled with squawking waders and gulls which hunted amongst the slimy grasses and bare rocks for insects and molluscs. That those birds remained told Raymond that the water was frustratingly slow in rising. He stopped halfway along the causeway and drew his sword.

‘What are you doing?’ hissed Fionntán.

Raymond did not answer and instead, in full view of the enemy, stabbed his sword downwards into the mud and water alongside the causeway. It slid easily into the mire halfway to the cross guard.

‘I’m at the bottom,’ he told the Irishman and gave the sword two more pushes. ‘There is no way they can cross unless it is by this path.’

‘And now they know that too?’ Fionntán chanced.

Raymond flexed his eyebrows and stood up, feigning study of the wet blade before wiping it on the skirts of his crimson and gold surcoat. ‘And they already know that if they come in single file our archers will fill this waterway with their dead.’ He stooped to recover an arrow which Dafydd had missed, tucking it in his belt by his hip. ‘So they will have to go westwards, or waste another day sitting on the far side of the inlet staring at us. That will give us time to decide if we are going to stay or if we flee from Dun Domhnall.’ He sheathed his sword in his scabbard, waiting for his enemy to join him in the middle of the riverbed. They were led by a thin, unpleasant-looking man whose sharp, angular features stretched his mouth across his face and gave him the look of someone who had come across something foul. The green shirt beneath his chainmail was embroidered with black crosses and, though he wore some ornaments, they were not gaudy like those of his companions. The Ostman did not take his black eyes from Raymond’s face as he came forward.

‘It is Ragnall,’ Fionntán whispered.

Behind the Konungr of Veðrarfjord were two Gaels. The younger man had the front of his head shaved closely from his brow to his ears, though his hair hung down his back almost to his leather belt. The other rattled like he was wearing mail though Raymond could see no armour amongst his thick woollen attire. He realised that the noise came from the man’s wrists, neck and fingers, loaded with gold and silver rings and armlets.

‘Do you recognise the other two?’ he asked Fionntán.

‘Neither, though the younger one has the look of the Uí Fhaolain about him,’ the Irishman replied with a sniff. ‘I fought with them against the Uí Meic Caille, must be fifteen years back,’ he said with a hint of wistfulness. ‘Good people, fond of the mead though.’

Raymond bowed deeply as the men stopped before him. ‘Greetings, Lord King,’ he said. ‘I am –’

‘We know who you are Raymond de Carew,’ Ragnall of Veðrarfjord interrupted in perfect, if accented, French, ‘as I know that you are aware of our names.’ He looked pointedly at Fionntán over Raymond’s shoulder. ‘Don’t think that I don’t remember you, ship-master,’ he told the Gael with the hint of a threat. ‘I remember you very well.’

Raymond felt Fionntán’s discomfort and rather than allow the Konungr of Veðrarfjord to unsettle his ally he took a different tack, mirroring Ragnall by looking around his shoulder towards the two men by his side. ‘I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage,’ he said, ‘for I do not know your names.’ He smiled and nodded to each. The elder seemed shocked at being addressed in the overly familiar fashion, but the younger man returned his welcome. Ragnall, however, turned his toady face on Raymond immediately and searched his eyes for deceit. Finding none, his strained features settled somewhat.

‘He is Donnchadh Ua Riagháin of the Uí Drona,’ he flashed a thumb at the older man, ‘and Máel Sechlainn Ua Fhaolain of the Déisi. Now,’ Ragnall stated without waiting for any further pleasantries to be forced upon him, ‘we will talk of your people and what is going to become of you.’

Raymond ignored the bluster of the Ostman and turned to Fionntán. ‘Day-sha?’ he asked. ‘O-drone-a?’ The wood beneath his feet squeaked as he half-turned towards his companion.

The Irishman nodded. ‘The Déisi are from the mountains west of Veðrarfjord. They pay tribute to Ragnall. The Uí Drona are from lands a long way to the north. I don’t know what brings them here, but it cannot be anything good.’

‘They are here because of your friend, Diarmait Mac Murchada,’ Ragnall stated bluntly. ‘The Uí Drona lands are between those of Diarmait and the Osraighe so no matter to which Donnchadh allies himself he will make an enemy of the other.’

‘So he chooses to pay tribute to you?’ Raymond chanced.

Ragnall scowled. ‘My ships can be up the river to support him in less than a day. How long will it be before your master can join you from Striguil?’

That statement shocked Raymond and he felt the icy grip of fear grapple at his heart. How, he wondered, did the Konungr of Veðrarfjord know about Strongbow?

Ragnall laughed at Raymond’s disquiet. ‘Perhaps you thought us all witless savages? Or just ill-informed to your master’s reasons for sending you to Ireland?’ He sneered widely as Raymond remained mute. ‘You are his cowhand, yes? His chief drover, sent here to steal cattle so that when his actual army arrives it will be well provisioned before his proper warriors attempt to claim my city by siege?’ Ragnall smirked as he delivered his insult.

The captain had been called many names in his life, but to have his position belittled to that usually held by a serf infuriated him. He was no cowhand. His face flushed with anger.

‘I have known about Strongbow’s plans for almost a year, you fool!’ mocked Ragnall. ‘I knew that he had met with Diarmait Mac Murchada, and what that Uí Ceinnselaig bastard offered him for his help. Should I be offended that you are all Strongbow sent to fight me?’ His sneer flashed across his face again as he sniggered. ‘Well, here is what I know of you, since you obviously know nothing of my people: you are done, finished,’ he said bluntly. ‘You have no hope of help…’

‘My uncle, Robert FitzStephen…’ Raymond spluttered.

‘Is in the far west fighting beside the Uí Briain,’ Ragnall countered quickly. ‘So he will be of no help to you.’ He let the implication of his statement hit home, watching Raymond squirm for several seconds, before speaking again. ‘You are alone, without hope of support – not from north, south, east or west – with, what, little more than three hundred men out on your headland?’ Raymond didn’t correct Ragnall’s inflated assessment of his army’s strength. ‘I have over five thousand warriors at my side – five thousand,’ the konungr lied. ‘Do you actually believe that your little cattle pen can withstand us?’

Again the Norman captain did not offer an answer.

‘No,’ the Ostman continued, his eyes narrowing in concentration. ‘For you know as well as I that there can be only one outcome of this campaign. So you will abandon your little fort and scamper away in your ship.’ He smirked knowingly as Raymond shifted his weight nervously between his feet. At his back the usually composed Fionntán cleared his throat and licked his dry lips, equally taken aback by the konungr’s words.

‘But where will you go?’ Ragnall asked. ‘Not back to Wales in disgrace? No, you are a cowhand with ambition. I can see it in your eyes. You wish to prove yourself. So you must be considering merely crossing the estuary?’ The Ostman studied his enemy through narrowed eyes. ‘At Banabh will you be in a better situation than at Dun Domhnall? No, of course not, for you know that I will be only a few days behind you.’ Ragnall jabbed his gnarled finger at Raymond’s heart as he made the declaration. Behind the Konungr of Veðrarfjord, the two Irishmen shared a silent joke which Raymond was sure was at his expense. Ragnall did not join in their laughter.

‘Thus, you will make for Waesfjord,’ he continued. ‘But you will find no friends amongst my folk, only people who hate you and wish to throw off the new Norman yoke imposed by your uncle last summer. Consequently, you will be forced to go north to FitzStephen’s new castle at the crossing of the River Sláine.’ He paused and for the first time a smile spilled across his face, his hands stretched out as if in prayer. ‘And that is where my army will find you in a week’s time.’ His eyes narrowed suddenly, maliciously. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘call me a liar, cowhand.’

Raymond blinked a number of times as he tried to come up with a response to Ragnall’s outline of future events, but the glut of information, delivered with such accuracy and self-assurance, had caught him completely unawares.

‘I still hold the crossing,’ he said belatedly and weakly.

Ragnall was nonplussed as he turned to look at the west where a flock of seagulls had suddenly taken to flight from a large tree a mile distant. ‘And you can keep it,’ he said, ‘for that is all you will have if you remain here. Those birds,’ he flapped a hand towards the gulls, ‘were scared by the three thousand warriors I sent to outflank you two hours ago. They will have already crossed the river and, within an hour or two, they will attack you from the west, and then no amount of archers will prevent you from defeat and death.’

Raymond’s eyes followed the Konungr of Veðrarfjord’s outstretched arm and settled on the great tree in the distance. Birds squawked and flapped in fear and made for the safety of the sea. Raymond considered that he should copy the seagulls’ example. However, before he could gather his thoughts Fionntán’s hand landed upon his shoulder and began to pull him back along the causeway to where the shield wall still stood.

‘Come on. We need to retreat…now,’ the Gael urged.

‘Yes, you must,’ Ragnall laughed as he followed the two men towards the southern shore. ‘Run back to your Lord Strongbow, and tell him that Veðrarfjord will never fall! I will tear down every stone and piece of timber at Dun Domhnall, and claim every cow that you have gathered there. Then I will march on your friends in Cluainmín,’ he exclaimed. ‘I have five thousand warriors at my back and I intend to use them to sweep clean this land of every foreign soul.’ His face turned sour again. ‘I will take Waesfjord and then bring fire to FitzStephen’s little castle while he is in the west.’ He stopped to watch Raymond and Fionntán clamber from the causeway up the bank of the river to join their companions. ‘There will be nowhere safe for Strongbow,’ he shouted in French so that all the warriors could understand. ‘You are finished, you and your cowhand captain!’ He spat disdainfully on the mud of the creek before turning on his heel and walking back towards his vast army.

As he watched Ragnall casually stroll away, Raymond tried to think what he should do. He had expected to be assailed by his warriors’ questions about what had gone between him and the enemy, but they did not come. Instead silence had overtaken his conrois. That, if anything, was more disconcerting. They were stricken dumb with fear; mute in the face of their enemy’s bravado, and the irresistible force arrayed against them. To remain, they all knew, was to die. To return to Wales was to return to ignominy and pitiable poverty in the service of their pauper lord.

The whistling arrow which struck the ground behind their lines came so suddenly and so loudly that it made each warrior jump in fear.

It was Bertram d’Alton who translated the arrow’s significance: ‘A rider approaches from the south!’

‘Holy St Maurice, what next?’ Raymond asked and swapped a wary glance with Fionntán before turning to look at the top of the distant ridge where he had sent a single archer to act as a lookout. ‘Get your gear together,’ he ordered, ‘and get ready to move out. But for now, if anyone puts a foot on that causeway I want you to put an arrow in them.’ With that he began running uphill towards the picquet line.

He could not believe that the flanking force despatched by Ragnall could be so close so soon, but then again, he considered, he had never actually believed that he would face a force even a fifth of the size of the one that currently threatened his small army. His armour thumped on his shoulders as he ran, his shield rolled around on his back, and his sword clattered against his thigh. The face guard of his chainmail coif twice struck painfully against his lip and, irritated, he whipped the headgear onto his shoulders feeling the breeze on his sweaty temples immediately.

‘What’s happening?’ Raymond breathlessly demanded as he reached the small clearing on the hill crest where the lookout waited with the company’s horses.

The archer already had an arrow on his bowstring, but had not yet drawn the weapon. ‘A half a mile to the south-west, coming hard at us,’ he replied.

‘From Dun Domhnall?’

The archer shrugged and said something in his Welsh mother tongue that Raymond did not understand. ‘Could be, could be,’ he added in French as he squinted at the distant figure, ‘though I am almost certain that the rider has long hair.’

The captain held up a hand to shield his eyes against the power of the sun in the south. ‘So he is no Norman?’ Raymond’s mind was a forest of questions: who was the rider thundering towards the crossing? And what could his approach herald? If he pulled back to Dun Domhnall immediately, how long would it take? And how much time would be needed to load their gear onto Waverider? Would the tide be full enough to do that? How many hours would it take Ragnall to get his army across the causeway once the archers retreated? And where would he even take his army once they were at sea? The problems kept coming, threatening to overcome him, and no answers readily arrived to relieve his troubled mind.

‘He could be of Cymru, like me,’ the Welsh archer said encouragingly of the rider when he saw the worry on Raymond’s face. He grabbed the long hair at the nape of his neck and gave it a tug to emphasise his point. ‘You think it is time that we head home to Gwent?’

As the clip of galloping hooves came closer, Raymond turned to the archer and nodded. ‘We can’t do any more good here.’

The Welshman scowled at that. ‘Begging your pardon, for I haven’t been in your employ for long,’ he said, ‘but Seisyll ap Dyfnwal always said that there was never a trap which Raymond the Fat…’ He paused wide-eyed when he realised what he had said.

His captain shook his head to make clear that he was not offended. ‘Go on.’

‘Well,’ the archer cleared his throat, ‘he said that there was never a trap that Strongbow’s captain could bumble into that he couldn’t fight his way out of too.’

‘Not until now,’ Raymond said sadly. A roar sounded suddenly from behind them, louder than anything he had heard that day. Both he and the Welsh archer turned sharply towards the river and stared across at hundreds of Ostmen as they battered their axes on the wooden boards of their shields, shouting curses and singing battle hymns of their fathers.

‘They make a powerful lot of noise,’ the archer told him.

‘And that’s only half of them,’ Raymond admitted.

‘Well, they are terrible singers,’ the Welshman said dismissively as if that was the most important weapon in the hands of a warrior. He turned away from the din of battle and nodded southwards. ‘That rider is coming into my range. Shall I kill him?’

Raymond again squinted into the sunshine. ‘I don’t recognise the rider,’ he paused and concentrated his eyes upon the figure, ‘but I do know the horse!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s Rufus, the horse I bought in Cluainmín!’ he stared at the shadowy figure as he slowed to a canter. At his side, the archer drew the bow back to his ear, awaiting Raymond’s command to kill.

‘So they’ve captured the fort?’ the Welshman said as his arm quivered under strain from the taught bow. The rider was a hundred paces away, an easy shot for the archer. ‘And they’ve sent this emissary on your horse – your own horse – to tell us of their victory, while we stood here and bartered with the Ostmen like fishwives.’

Rather than answer, Raymond put his hand on the archer’s arm and gently forced him to lower the weapon. The Welshman’s grip on the bowstring naturally lessened as it sank towards the ground but Raymond stepped in front of him anyway so that he could see better.

‘Go down to the river,’ he ordered, ‘and tell Fionntán to send the men up here in groups of two; milites first and then the archers.’ His companion looked doubtfully at him until Raymond again ordered him to go. His eyes had not left the dark figure on the horse, and there was some murmur of recognition on his face.

As the archer ran downhill to fulfil his instructions, Raymond jogged over to where his men had hobbled their horses. He quickly removed Dreigiau’s bindings and sprang onto his back, kicking him into a trot. With his thighs striking the inside of his bucket saddle, he urged the reluctant courser upwards towards the summit where the rider had again slowed, this time to a trot.

‘Alice!’ he called and stood in his stirrups to wave his hand above his head. ‘Alice?’ he exclaimed again with disbelief and confusion apparent upon his face. He was finally close enough to see the features of her face, and despite his worry his heart jumped as a smile broke across her sweaty face for him.

‘I found you!’ she gasped and grasped for his hand. Her smile, however, fell away quickly as she looked past Raymond to see the enemy on the far bank of the inlet, still hollering their war cries. ‘O Lord, protect us,’ she said.

‘What are you doing here?’

It took Alice a heartbeat to compose herself, and rip her eyes from the terrifying throng to look at Raymond. ‘It’s Sir Hervey,’ she began, ‘he plans to flee Dun Domhnall in Waverider. You must come back to the fort. Now,’ she stressed, ‘or he will leave you here to be killed.’

‘He wouldn’t…’

‘There is more,’ Alice interrupted and leaned across so that she could lay her left hand atop Raymond’s arm. ‘Geoffrey spotted an Ostman vessel coming around the headland to the south.’

‘A warship?’ Everywhere he looked there were enemies, even within his own camp, Raymond realised and cursed loudly. This time he did not deride himself for breaking his oath to Basilia de Quincy, for there was little hope that he would ever have the chance to apologise to her.

‘I’m sorry, Alice,’ he turned his head away. ‘I should never have brought you here. This venture was always going to be too dangerous…’

Her hand was soft as she reached out and gently turned Raymond’s face back towards her. ‘We can still escape if we race back to the fort. We must go now,’ she emphasised.

The captain took a breath of sea air deep into his lungs and tried to convince himself that he had no choice other than to abandon his bridgehead and make a break for home. He had to admit failure. The thump of many feet coming up the hill forced him to abandon his considerations, and he wheeled Dreigiau around to look back towards the inlet. There he saw his warriors charging towards him as if the hounds of Satan were on their heels. And well they might, for behind them was the enemy. The Ostmen had crossed the creek, forging ahead despite the deep mud underfoot, and the fastest of them were already on the southern bank, screaming profanities and awaiting their comrades to join them.

‘O Lord God save us,’ Alice said, her eyes to the heavens.

Breathing out slowly, Raymond reached up to his neck and forced his much-mended coif back onto his head. ‘Alice,’ he said calmly while he tied the leather cords at the rear of his skull. ‘I need you to ride back to the fort with all haste.’ She began to make a murmur of resistance, but he quickly cut her off when he shoved his spangenhelm onto his head. ‘Please, Alice! We will catch you up, but I must make sure the conrois get to their horses.’ Tight-lipped, Alice cringed as she was assailed by equal part worry for Raymond, and anger at being dismissed. However, rather than argue, she glanced only once at the enemy army before nodding curtly and turning Rufus towards the sun.

‘Follow soon,’ she told him. And then she was gone, trotting southwards.

Raymond forced his eyes from her back and made his way over towards the twenty horses, each secured by a single hobble above the hocks. They had spread out to find better patches of grass to eat, but each quickly raised their heads when Raymond and Dreigiau approached. He rode amongst the grazing horses and encouraged them to flock behind him. It took a minute for one of the younger coursers to fall in behind him at a walk, but thereafter their natural instincts stimulated more of the animals to join the snaking column. Raymond turned in Dreigiau’s saddle to check that he had enough of the horses and then led them into a tight circle at a walk. Minutes later, the first of the archers met the captain and his wandering fleet of coursers.

‘Thank Christ!’ the tired archer exclaimed. He was visibly shaking with the effort of climbing the hill and sweat was discernible at his brow and through his clothes.

Raymond ignored his greeting. ‘Find your horse, get his hobble off and get back up to the top of the ridge,’ he told the warrior. ‘Keep your eyes open for the flanking force to the west.’ The Welshman nodded and quickly moved down the circulating line of horses. Raymond did not wait to see if his orders were carried out for Fionntán was part of the next group to reach him.

‘Ragnall is not messing about. He sent at least a hundred across the causeway at once,’ he described as he gasped for breath. Sweat spat from his top lip as he spoke. ‘We shot all the arrows we could and then had to fall back. We didn’t lose anyone, but we couldn’t slow them down.’ He grabbed the bridle of his horse and began loosening the rope hobble. ‘What the hell is the plan, Raymond?’

The captain grimaced as he watched the last of his men struggle uphill towards him. ‘An army is to our front, a flanking force to the west, and now a shipload of Ostmen is at our backs.’ Raymond ignored the horrified look on Fionntán’s face as the new information hit home. ‘I don’t know what an Irishman would do, but there’s only one place for a Norman to be when he finds himself surrounded.’

‘Behind the walls of a castle?’

Raymond nodded in answer.

‘And then to the sea?’ Fionntán asked as he snatched the hobble from his cob’s legs.

‘And then to the sea,’ Raymond answered resignedly. He circled his horse away from Fionntán to see that all his warriors were either already in the saddle or climbing in that direction. All had the look of hunted men on their faces.

‘Let’s get moving,’ he raised his voice so that the whole conrois could hear his words. ‘A quick canter to the top of ridge and then a trot back to Dun Domhnall,’ he told them for, yet again, the race was on and to come in second on this occasion would mean certain death. He whispered a single word to Dreigiau and they were off.

* * *

The wind was against the tide and so sea spray spiralled over the bows of River-Wolf and collided in great torrents upon the wooden deck. The watery hammer-blows were nothing to the tumult which came with every impact of the white waves upon the ship. They curled and crumbled like rolling white vellum sheets and smashed into her hull as would a sword upon a shield. River-Wolf punched through each one, her dragon prow riding above the bowstave-high waves, dragged onwards by the wind, before again tumbling downwards towards the belly of the ocean and then soaring towards the sky.

‘It’s an unruly sea,’ the ship-master, Amlaith, called as he clung to the steering oar. ‘She’s being a right bitch.’ From his vantage point in the stern, Amlaith saw a rainbow appear above Jarl Sigtrygg as the sun struck the shower of saltwater and he took that to be a good omen.

Flexing his bare arms, the jarl hung from the forestay and howled in delight, seawater dripping from his two beard braids as his cloak billowed around his shoulders. He laughed each time the battle between wave and ship was fought below him, tensing his body before each impact before gasping in delight as his beautiful ship navigated the danger.

‘Maintain this heading,’ Jarl Sigtrygg bellowed at Amlaith. The foreigners’ fort was dead ahead, less than a league, and he could see the closer, western beach which shone invitingly in the midday sun. He could even make out the Norman warriors milling around like ants on the green grass and on the tiny walls. At this distance their fort looked so flimsy that a decent gust of wind would knock it over! The rising waves momentarily hid Dun Domhnall from his sight and as River-Wolf broke through the next swollen wave, the jarl looked to the blue sky and began a prayer to St Olav for the protection of his crew. Impulsively, he added a short appeal for the support of Njord - the old god of the sea. Jarl Sigtrygg awaited some divine punishment, but nothing happened and he laughed, emboldened by the success of the treasonous act. He was Christian, but the ship-folk of Veðrarfjord had always gathered by campfires while on trading missions and told tales of their ancestors and their ancient deities. Huddled on strange shores, they had told of heroic deeds of the gods, and of seafarers who had journeyed the oceans for generation upon generation. They had sung of adventurers and of brave warriors who had come to Ireland and taken land for their own. Sorrowful, funny and full of daring, the stories flooded back to him now as his ship soared towards Dun Domhnall under full sail. Jarl Sigtrygg had often thought about the old gods, especially when he was surrounded by the awesome power of the ocean. Why had they vanished, he wondered? Why had his people chosen the meek Lord Christ over the many aspects of the Northman’s pantheon? Jarl Sigtrygg could not see one feature of Christianity which spoke to him: timidity; forgiveness; abstinence; chastity; denial. He was filled with desires which the priests said were sins.

At his feet the woman captured at Dun Conán whimpered and huddled in the deep, dark belly of River-Wolf. Water clung to her woollen clothes as she gripped her children’s hands to her face and whispered that Lord Jesus would protect them from harm. She told her tearful children to admit their sins and to remember that they had said prayers at a Holy Well. She lied to them and told her children that they would be saved through the loving grace of the Holy Trinity.

Jarl Sigtrygg scoffed at that. It was the sort of mewing, sycophantic whine that he believed Christ would want of his followers. They offered Him their backs to thrash and in return He would give them everlasting life. He was the God of slaves, he reasoned. If there was an afterlife, their only way to get into the next world was to bow and snivel and obey, for they would never be accepted into Valhalla. The Valkyries would never allow a thrall access to the great feasting hall in the sky. Only the brave, who had proven themselves in battle, could share a table with the gods. Not that Jarl Sigtrygg sought that honour at Dun Domhnall. He pursued revenge and glory.

‘Their ship will be on the eastern side of the headland,’ he called to Amlaith and refocused his eyes to study the beach ahead. He had sailed these waters many times and, though he had never landed at Dun Domhnall, knew the lay of the land intimately. ‘Keep her headed towards those islands,’ he shouted down the length of the ship to the ship-master. Amlaith adjusted their course a little more eastwards on a course which would take River-Wolf past the rocky outcropping where the foreigners had their fort. ‘If they are prepared for us to land on the western beach, we’ll give them a surprise!’ Jarl Sigtrygg laughed and began marching down the length of his ship. ‘Get up, you sons of whores,’ he called as he cajoled his eighty warriors to readiness, ‘and prepare to get back on the oars. We’ve a lot of killing to do today, but we must make land before we can do that! Amlaith,’ he shouted to the distant steersman, ‘wait until the fort is off the beam, and then turn her at the point of the headland.’ The jarl pointed one large finger at the eastern extreme of the promontory off the port side. ‘The closer you get us,’ he warned, ‘the less we’ll have to pull to get her onto the beach. The rest of you,’ Jarl Sigtrygg shouted as he tightened up the steerboard side sheet, ‘get your armour on and your weapons ready, for we will not have time once we hit the sand to be pissing around looking for our spears.’ With that he strode across the deck to the port side and stared out at the headland.

If the Normans were ready to repel seaborne warriors, they made no sign of it, for only one warrior had left the walls to watch their ship. He simply stood above the precipice and examined his enemy in the distance. The foreigner’s head and torso were wrapped in dark steel and his hand was upon his sword pommel. It was only when he realised that River-Wolf was not going to land on the beach to the west of Dun Domhnall that he disappeared into the depths of the headland to raise the warning.

‘You’re too late,’ Jarl Sigtrygg shouted after him though the distance was too great for the foreigner to hear. River-Wolf was already over halfway past the sea cliffs and he was able to study their little stone and bracken houses up on the eastern end of the headland. There were certainly not enough shelters for the three hundred warriors that Ragnall had said they would face. At most, Jarl Sigtrygg guessed, there were a hundred and fifty perched out on the rocks and that realisation was followed by a surge of ambition in his chest. Every one of his eighty crewmen was a veteran of many fights and all had stood in at least one shieldwall. Could the foreigners possibly say the same? He thought back to the slave market in Cluainmín when he had first laid eyes on the Normans. Their leader, Raymond, had been a pudgy youth who landed a lucky punch before hiding behind Trygve’s chair and whispering lies about him. If he was their best, then the rest of the warriors would be bloody useless. Of that he was sure.

‘We’re almost ready to come about,’ Amlaith called, and Jarl Sigtrygg raised his head to signal that he understood. With a last look at the headland, now four boat lengths off the stern, he crossed to the mast and called six men to assist him.

‘Now!’ he shouted and released the halyard from the cleat to begin lowering the sail towards the deck. The strain on his upper arms was immense. ‘Turn her into the wind,’ he managed to grunt at Amlaith through gritted teeth and, as the ship-master pushed the steering oar away, River-Wolf swung back towards Dun Domhnall and the estuary. His foot planted on the kerling, Jarl Sigtrygg clung to the mast one-handed and ordered his crewmen to furl the sail to the boom. The job was made all the more difficult due to the crewmen’s cold fingers and the high waves which struck from the leeward side. Hands grasped for the rail of the ship, such was the power of the tide smashing into the steering board side.

‘Keep her turning,’ Jarl Sigtrygg shouted at Amlaith when the soaked warriors finally completed their task. The power of the tide sweeping along the coast had already forced the ship dangerously back towards the sharp black rocks of the headland. Jarl Sigtrygg snarled at the menacing landmass and began hauling the furled sailed back up the mast. ‘Get up there, damn you!’ he roared at the dripping wet bundle of rope, linen and wooden spars as it ascended.

Amlaith did not even wait for his jarl to get the sail out of his way. ‘Get your oars out!’ he called, his voice full of urgency. ‘Pull, you bastards,’ he exclaimed.

With a growl of determination, Jarl Sigtrygg heaved the rope up the last few inches before lashing the excess to the carved stone cleat fastened to the mast. Panting and covered with sweat, he stared balefully at the foreigners’ fort. ‘I’m coming for you,’ he whispered before turning his eyes on the beach below Dun Domhnall. ‘Pull harder!’ he called to his crew. ‘Come on, you bastards, pull!’ he exclaimed and sat down on a chest, extending an oar into the sea to help his warriors. ‘To the oars, my boys, to the oars!’ he sang the old rowing song. ‘We’ll get this boat to shore. She needs a berth and I need a drink so we’ll get this boat to shore.’ Soon the whole crew were howling the fast-paced tune though they were soon lost in the combined effort of both tasks. Their arms, legs and stomach muscles burned and most did not even notice when the headland stole the wind and the waves below them lessened.

Jarl Sigtrygg glanced over his shoulder at the beach and there he saw a tantalising target: the beached Norman ship. He recognised the vessel immediately as the one in which Raymond de Carew had sailed to Cluainmín, the one in which he had hidden for fear that Jarl Sigtrygg would try to murder him. She would provide no refuge for his enemy on this occasion, he thought as he pulled the pine oar through the water.

‘How far is it?’ he demanded of Amlaith. He had to shout so that his voice could be heard over the crew’s continuing song.

‘Eight ship-lengths,’ the ship-master replied and the jarl looked to his right and was surprised to see that River-Wolf was almost alongside the point of the headland. He could see the old Celtic fort walls had been rebuilt. Seconds later, his ship passed the new stables and cow pens. The sight of the double embattlements above the black cliffs gave him pause for thought, but a call from Amlaith that they were nearing shore grabbed his attention before he could give them serious consideration.

‘Stow oars,’ Jarl Sigtrygg boomed as the ship continued to drift towards land, ‘and ready yourselves for battle,’ he shouted as he tossed his oar aside and quickly threw his great helmet upon his head. His heavy belt held all manner of sidearms and they rattled against his chainmailed thighs. He stared at the shoreline. A number of people milling around the beached ship had spotted the danger approaching from the sea.

‘They are running away!’ one of his crewmen laughed when he joined his jarl in the bows. Indeed, at least fifteen boys were dashing away from the Norman vessel, scrambling and pushing up the earth cliff-face like frightened ants.

The jarl also laughed and turned towards his men. Old and young, they shared a fury in their eyes, an excitement for battle and plunder. ‘Kill anyone left on that ship,’ he shouted, ‘and steal anything of any worth.’ A number of the men nodded in agreement. ‘Then we burn it and attack the fort. Are you ready to kill the bastards who humiliated us in Cluainmín? Are you ready to get revenge for the crewmen who died in the English lands?’

As River-Wolf began to skid along the sandy bottom of the estuary, the Ostmen of Veðrarfjord roared their battle cry and waved their weapons above their heads. The ship had barely shuddered to a halt when Jarl Sigtrygg vaulted over the side to land in the shallows with a splash and a bark of pure hatred.

‘Kill them all,’ he screamed and charged out of the waves like a sea-raider of old. ‘Kill them all!’

Raymond spotted the smoke before he saw those fleeing from the beach. A tall, swirling plume swept inland on the early afternoon breeze. It tormented the nostrils of man and courser alike as they trotted southwards along the grassy path under high sun. Generations of Gaels herding cattle between the highland pastures and their winter grazing territory by the brimming sea had caused the well-trodden track to be cut into the landscape, but it suited the mounted Normans well despite the grasping ferns and briars at either side. Dreigiau whinnied and shook his mane as the acrid smoke irritated his eyes, and Raymond soothed him by rubbing his rough hand along the horse’s neck. His eyes did not leave the pumping cloud of smoke, for he guessed its origin and what that entailed; there would be no maritime evacuation from Dun Domhnall for his army. The Normans and the Welshmen were surrounded and they were alone. There was no line of retreat.

Raymond turned in the saddle to reassure his men. They had also spotted the smoke and had guessed that it came from the beached Waverider. Panic was already evident. His warriors flapped hands in the direction of the inferno and babbled to each other in frightened tones like those of the gulls that plagued the pages for scraps at mealtimes in their camp.

‘Asclettin,’ Raymond called to his most senior man, ‘take all the men except Bertram back to Dun Domhnall. Archers, find Borard and replenish your arrow supply. Stable your horses and then get up onto the walls and get ready to repel attackers.’ His orders were delivered so sharply and loudly that his detachment immediately stopped talking and began listening to what their captain told them. ‘Is everyone clear on what to do?’ he asked and received affirmative responses.

‘What about the gates?’ Fionntán called from the midst of the column. ‘They are still closed.’

The captain turned and shielded his eyes from the high sun as he looked southwards over the sparkling grassland. It spilled away from the walls of Dun Domhnall. Flies buzzed around his face, but he could not see if the outer gate was open or closed. However, he trusted the strength of Fionntán’s eyes to discern the truth.

‘Just get to the gates,’ he told the slouching Gael. ‘They will admit you.’ Fionntán looked unconvinced, but Raymond ignored him and lifted his left hand to point at the smoke cloud belching skywards. ‘Waverider is on fire and that means only one thing – we will have to remain in Ireland. Before you let yourself be worried, I will remind you that each of you helped me build the walls of Dun Domhnall. Each of you poured your sweat and effort into them, and you know how bloody hard they were to put up. Imagine how hard they will be to tear down! They will hold. They will be tested, no doubt about it, but they will hold as long as we stand together.’ He let his last word ring in their ears and pulled to the side of the path, allowing each of his men to pass him. Raymond made sure that they saw the defiance in his eyes and, for their part, most returned his stare before kicking their mounts into a canter towards the distant battlements. Only two paused to speak.

‘Why aren’t you coming with us?’ Alice asked as she reached from Rufus’ back for Raymond’s arm. He took her fingers in his own and gave them a supportive squeeze.

‘Bertram and I will make sure those youngsters get safely back to the fort,’ he told her and pointed to the small number of people, pages and esquires, fleeing back towards the wooden rampart from the beach. ‘I hope that the Ostmen have paused to plunder all that they can from Waverider, but that will only stop them for so long.’ He looked past his former lover to address Fionntán. ‘Keep her safe?’ he requested of his new friend.

‘We’ll see you both back at the fort,’ Fionntán sniffed and turned to bid good fortune to Bertram. His face dropped almost immediately for, past Bertram’s shoulder and less than a half mile away, he had spotted a warrior on foot as he emerged from behind the wooded ridge. Within seconds fifty more had followed him into the sun-soaked landscape to the north. ‘The Gael are here,’ he warned, and reached out to take Alice’s bridle. ‘It’s time to go,’ he ordered and tapped his heels into his horse’s sides.

‘Raymond!’ Alice called desperately as she clung to her saddle, but whatever her words they were lost below the thump of their hooves.

Bertram shifted in the saddle to look at the enemy army as they poured towards Dun Domhnall, a hundred, then two hundred, and soon more than he could hope to count. ‘Do you think it might be time to go, captain?’ he asked nervously and rolled his leather reins around in his hands.

Raymond nodded and shrugged his shield from his back and onto his left arm. ‘Forget about them,’ he told his companion. ‘It will take them some time to reach our walls. We will worry about the Ostmen on the beach and getting those lads – and ourselves – safely back behind the palisade.’ Though what safety the walls of Dun Domhnall could provide against the horde of Veðrarfjord, Raymond did not know. He swept the gloomy thought from his mind and focused on the task at hand. Bertram copied his actions and hefted his lance from his shoulder and upright to vertical, balancing the end upon his right foot in the stirrup. He was a cousin of the powerful Staffordshire Verdon family and, like his captain, had little prospect of making his fortune at his home hearth, and so had taken a place in Strongbow’s household with the promise of trappings and armour, and two square meals a day for both his horse and himself. He was a steady warrior who never let his temper get the better of him and this, to Raymond’s mind, made him the best from amongst the conrois.

Both men squeezed with their legs to make their coursers start forward, and a click of the tongue saw them into a trot and then a canter. They had only been riding for a matter of a few minutes when Raymond saw the first Ostman, bearded and helmeted, as he rose from the beach like a demon clambering from the pits of hell. More enemy warriors quickly ascended onto the grasslands before the walls and began running, their colourful, circular shields bouncing on their backs as they galloped forward with steel sparkling in their hands. The Norman boys had already reached the base of the palisade and were running along its length towards the outer gate, but the first Ostmen were only fifty or sixty paces behind them and, despite their armour, were quicker over the ground. At the other side of the small peninsular, the conrois, with Asclettin at their head, were almost to the outer gates.

‘Why aren’t our archers shooting?’ an exasperated Bertram shouted towards his captain and waved his lance in the direction of the rampart. ‘They could drive the Danes off in seconds!’ He had to yell so that his words could be heard over the noise of their cantering hooves and the wind as it swept by.

Raymond did not answer immediately but guessed the reason for the oversight: Sir Hervey had been too engrossed in organising an evacuation from Dun Domhnall and had not readied his archers for a battle. He stole a glance at the wall and could see only the outline of spearmen atop the defences.

‘We’ll have to drive them away from the barbican,’ he replied as both man and horse leapt over a small, watery ditch which interweaved the terrain. ‘That’ll give the esquires and the conrois enough time to get through.’ He did not wait for his companion to realise what that would mean for them if they remained outside the walls when an army of several thousand arrived. Instead he aimed Dreigiau at a point behind the fleeing Norman youths and clipped his heels to the courser’s flanks. A prayer to St Maurice tumbled from his mouth as he rode forward, asking forgiveness of his sins and pardon for leading Bertram and their two coursers towards danger.

Glancing over his right shoulder, Raymond saw that Asclettin’s group had reached the outer gate, but they had still not been permitted to enter. In the circling mass of men and horses he caught sight of Thurstin standing in his stirrups, shouting up at the men on the barbican, threatening violence and then pleading with them to open the gates to allow the conrois through. Raymond did not wait to see if his warrior’s plea was accepted. He fixed his gaze on his enemy. The long line of Ostmen, at least sixty in number, were still in pursuit of the Norman boys on a trajectory that would inevitably take them to the outer gates where the small conrois and archers waited.

‘Keep going!’ Raymond called to the boys as he and Bertram cantered past. He smiled briefly when he saw the sweat-drenched Fulk of Westminster with two tearful and grubby-faced pages thrown across his young shoulders. The boy, no more than sixteen, nodded and redoubled his efforts, bellowing encouragement at his fellows as Raymond and Bertram hurtled in the opposite direction. The captain’s stare settled on the Ostmen who had reacted to the threat of the two horsemen and stopped to organise into a defensive formation, locking their shields together in a line and issuing a roar of defiance.

‘St Maurice!’ the Norman captain bellowed as he kicked Dreigiau into a gallop and stood in the stirrups, ready to strike down with all the weight that their thundering charge could provide. The Ostmen bared their teeth and gripped the leather straps of their shields, prepared for the clash of Norman lance, but the blow did not fall for, rather than waste his energy battering the pine boards and metal bosses of the sturdily made shieldwall, Raymond pulled Dreigiau out of the charge a few paces from the enemy line and, with a whoop, knifed along its length to attack the men who had not yet been able to immerse themselves in the safety of hastily constructed barricade of shields. Raymond lanced one man in the shoulder as he tried to lift his shield to defend himself while Bertram hunted down a beardless youth as he tried to run for cover under a nearby bush. Both men were panting hard when they wheeled away from the Ostmen’s shieldwall and planted themselves between their enemy and the outer gates.

A roar of bellicose anger erupted from the shieldwall as, still in formation, the Ostmen began inching towards the gates of the Norman fort.

‘It is you, you bastard!’ the voice called in French and Raymond turned to see his enemy, Jarl Sigtrygg, leap out of the shieldwall and remove his helmet so that Raymond could see his bearded face. ‘I told you that we would meet again, you whoreson of a Norman,’ he thundered. ‘I warned you that there would be no place that you could hide.’ He waved his men onwards. ‘We’re going to kill everyone in your pathetic little fort, but you’ll be the last to die,’ he screamed as he shoved his helm back on his head. ‘You’ll watch as I send them to hell!’

Raymond ignored the jarl, but noted his position in the shieldwall. ‘Where are the archers?’ he mumbled as he searched the walls of Dun Domhnall again. The Ostmen were an easy target for even a handful of archers, but not one appeared to force them into retreat. Instead one of the Normans threw a lance from the outer wall, but it fell well short, earning a cry of utter disdain from the Ostmen’s ranks.

‘Get some archers onto the wall,’ Raymond cried towards the sentries on the wall. ‘And for God’s sake open the gates!’ he shouted, indicating towards the barbican with his bloodied lance. He could not tell if the men even heard his words, and prayed that they would have the good sense to realise the predicament of those left outside the battlements.

‘They’re moving again, Raymond,’ Bertram warned. A broken spear tip had been buried between the boards of his teardrop shield and the Norman grunted as he pulled it out and tossed it into a patch of nettles.

‘They can’t move forward quickly and keep the shield wall intact,’ the captain replied. ‘So we need to worry them like a wild dog would a flock of sheep,’ he said and hoisted his lance again. ‘If they lose cohesion, give them a bite, but otherwise try to make them bunch up and slow down.’ And pray that we get some archers onto the wall, he thought with a final look towards Dun Domhnall.

With that both men tapped their spurs to their coursers’ sides and cantered towards the line of Ostmen. A cry from Jarl Sigtrygg brought the enemy advance on the gates to a halt and the Ostmen again steeled their resolve to meet the charge of the Norman horsemen. But neither Raymond nor Bertram went close to attacking the line of overlapping shields. Instead they divided and began circling the enemy in opposite directions at a trot, waiting for the opportunity to strike at anyone stupid enough to break the stability of the shieldwall.

‘Move,’ Jarl Sigtrygg bellowed in the language of his fathers. ‘Move,’ he exclaimed and his warriors edged forward again, slower than before as they worked to keep their shield edges locked together. Ostman insults bombarded the two Normans as they orbited their enemy like cats working to kill a vicious rat. The men of Veðrarfjord screamed abuse, claiming that the Normans were cowards, that they would not dare get down from their horses and fight like real men. They cursed their mothers and fathers, and called them curs and runts and worse. Neither Raymond nor Bertram reacted to the slurs, busying themselves by periodically kicking their coursers into action and charging menacingly close to the Ostman lines before wheeling away once the shieldwall had been forced to come to a shuddering halt.

‘Keep going,’ Raymond called to his companion as he retreated back to a safe distance after one such ploy. ‘Don’t give them the chance to get marching forward!’ If Sigtrygg’s crew did build up a rhythm, he knew that he and Bertram would never be able to stop their advance. At its best, a stationary shieldwall was almost as strong as a castle rampart, though it could also be used in attack to devastating effect if its structure could be maintained. Raymond did not doubt that Sigtrygg’s men would be experienced practitioners of the art.

He was already panting hard, and could feel that Dreigiau was similarly fatigued. Nevertheless he pressed the courser into another circuit of the enemy position which, he now realised in alarm, had travelled over halfway along the front of the rampart despite their efforts to stop them. He quietly cursed for he knew that his enemy’s advance was inexorably moving towards his tired conrois.

‘Come on, open up,’ he moaned as his circuit forced him to turn his back on the outer gate. Insults which had blasted Raymond and Bertram now blended and developed into a raucous war song from which the men of Veðrarfjord took their pace. The stomp of their boots and angry crash of steel weapons on wooden shields echoed upon the earthen palisade as Raymond watched Bertram take his turn at attacking the shieldwall. Instantly the war song was quelled and the drumming feet brought to a standstill as the Ostmen turned to face the young miles’ charge. Raymond looked on with pride as Bertram skilfully leant into the turn which took his courser towards the shieldwall before the slightest shift of his weight and a tug on the reins with his one free hand took him out of reach of enemy battle-axes. Bertram whooped in joy at the perfectly performed manoeuvre which had again brought about the desired outcome of stopping the shieldwall in its tracks.

Raymond smiled at Bertram’s victory, but knew that the standoff could not continue for ever and that if Sir Hervey did not allow them to enter, he would face a last stand before the gates of Dun Domhnall alongside eight tired horsemen, the Welsh archers now devoid of arrows, a handful of pages and esquires, and the woman he had sworn to protect from all harm. Their only path of retreat was through the closed gates. All other options had been taken from them.

It was at that moment that Jarl Sigtrygg acted.

‘Now!’ came his cry from amongst the enemy ranks and at either end of the shieldwall the Ostmen circled outwards to wrap around Bertram as he turned his horse towards them and make another charge upon their lines.

‘Look out!’ Raymond roared, but it was already too late. A heavy axe took Bertram’s horse in the neck and the animal screamed in pain as it went down. ‘No!’ the captain yelled and cut back towards the enemy shieldwall. He stabbed down twice, kicking Dreigiau to keep him moving, but Jarl Sigtrygg was ready for the move and had ordered half his men to turn and form a second line between the two Normans. Raymond screamed as he battered the shieldwall with his lance, but he struck nothing other than wooden shields. As he fought, Raymond saw Bertram climb to his feet and draw his sword to defend himself, but it was thirty against one and he could see that his cohort was winded and hurt from the fall. The Ostmen had again stopped in their tracks and had formed into a circle around Bertram, whose injured leg gave way under him as he swept his sword back and forth in wild strokes at those who came forward to meet him. Screaming in agony, Bertram climbed back to his feet and deflected a spear thrust aimed at his chest, but he could not turn quickly enough to meet all those who desired to take his life and, as Raymond abjectly bellowed his companion’s name, a bearded Ostman cut him down from behind before two more began hacking at him with axes as he fell to the floor. Raymond was powerless to prevent the death of his cohort, and he impotently stabbed his lance down once more before pulling on Dreigiau’s reins and scampering away to a safe distance. He would’ve wept for Bertram d’Alton, but he was not afforded the time.

‘Forward!’ Jarl Sigtrygg called, more desperately than his orders had sounded before. He had stepped out of the shieldwall and had his axe pointed directly at Raymond de Carew. His men responded by abandoning their formation and, with a peal of joy mixed with fury, began charging at the Norman captain.

Raymond was momentarily taken aback by the change in Jarl Sigtrygg’s tactics, and for several seconds simply sat astride Dreigiau watching the frenzied stampede. His eyes were drawn to their circular shields bearing hypnotic, swirling devices of all colours as they rushed towards him. Their glittering spear, sword and axe blades were pointed skywards and caught the light from the high, midday sun. They cast a churning dapple of reflections upon the grass before them.

At their head was Jarl Sigtrygg, his red hair wild as it flowed from beneath his iron helmet and across his armoured shoulders to swing furiously in the racing wind. He looked every inch the seaborne warrior of old as he bellowed his war cry and led his men forward. Raymond was reminded of his youth and of the stories that his father had told him and his brothers about the men from the north. Vikingrs, he had called them. They had been the scourge of Christendom and the underlings of the Devil. Watching Jarl Sigtrygg’s attack, Raymond felt sure that he understood the same terror that had been inflicted upon any victim of those attacks.

He sucked air down into his lungs to calm his mind, and made ready to attack the unruly band. He knew that he could not stop them all, but Raymond was sure that from horseback he could avenge the death of Bertram many times over before his own life was claimed. He promised that Jarl Sigtrygg would be first and searched for his foe in the midst of the charging war band. His red, braided beard was easy to find and Raymond had half-turned Dreigiau towards the enemy leader when he noticed that Jarl Sigtrygg’s eyes were not locked on him, but on a target behind him and to his right. He quickly swung around in his bucket saddle to see what had prompted the Ostman’s wild charge.

‘Oh no,’ he wailed and, turning Dreigiau away from his enemy, he kicked his heels into his courser’s sides, for disaster was about to befall the Norman bridgehead and it would require a miracle to save it.

Sir Hervey de Montmorency thought that he had seen war of every kind. As an esquire to Gilbert de Gant, he had seen Scots cast down by arrows on the fog-bound fields of Cowton Moor, while at Lincoln when King Stephen had been captured, he had experienced boring siegecraft as well as knightly combat on the field of battle. He had fought the war of the raider, prowling the countryside to pillage and harry minor lords, their villeins, churchmen and freemen alike, when the wars of the vying royal houses had raged and the barons of England had sought to proclaim their independence. Hervey thought he had seen everything that this world of constant war could throw at him, but he had never faced odds like those which stared at him across the peninsula in the land of Siol Bhroin.

He stood on the barbican of Dun Domhnall gaping out over the little copses of shrubs and smattering of tiny trees, piebald patches of foliage upon an otherwise unending carpet of bountiful green grasses, to where the enemy gathered and made ready to attack. The baying of their vast herds of cattle sounded like the trumpeting of those Gallic savages who had stormed Rome, and the barbarians’ clanged their weapons on their shields and sang animalistic songs of defiance that were so different to the soft songs of his homeland. The clamour was supplemented by the all-encompassing sound of the ocean and the screech of the gulls that circled the headland searching for food. Noise and heat and stress assailed him from all sides. To his right he could hear the roar of flames as they licked clean the shell of his ship. The plume of smoke was carried away from the fort, but he could still taste the devastation of Waverider on the wind. She had been his last hope for escape, and now she was gone.

‘For God’s sake, open the gates,’ the desperate voice came from below him again, but Sir Hervey had no eyes for the frantic conrois left outside the battlements. He was surrounded and he did not know how to save himself.

‘Open the damned gates!’ the voice pleaded and twenty more shouted similar demands of him. The stink of human sweat and horse faeces emanating from below the barbican pulverised his senses, adding to the others which beset him.

‘Sir Hervey!’ another anxious voice, belonging to Borard, called from the inner wall. He turned around and stared across at the other palisade.

‘You need to get some archers onto the walls and kill those Ostmen. You need to do it now!’

‘Shut up, shut up, shut up and let me think!’ Sir Hervey groaned and put his hands to his face. Following Geoffrey of Abergavenny’s warning about the Ostman vessel, he had waited apprehensively for the expected appearance of an enemy fleet from beyond the western landmass, and had despatched all of the archers in the fortress to the cliffs above the beach with orders to bombard them when they made land. Much to his relief no further ships had followed the first and when the vessel had swept past the western beach, he had convinced himself that the crew would trouble him no more. He had been wrong and while he had taken charge of the work to ready Waverider for withdrawal to Waesfjord, the Ostmen had struck. Having burned his ship they had climbed the cliffs from the beach and were now attempting to attack his gates.

‘Let me think, please, let me think!’ Sir Hervey whispered again and, from between his fingers, he watched the white smoke as it pumped from his stricken ship on the beach. He could see the top of her rigging as the flames tore through it. The mast was already ablaze and as he watched it cracked and crumbled from sight. He appealed to God for an escape route, for an army from Waesfjord, or a friendly fleet to appear on the horizon; anything that would save him from inevitable death. He had seen with own eyes what a victorious army did to a fallen enemy, and had taken part in those excesses too, but in a savage land like the one in which he found himself he believed that it would be worse again. The Gael were animals who would murder prisoners with their bare hands, or mutilate them by carving out their eyes or cutting off their genitals. At best a defeated foe could expect to be sold into slavery at one of the great markets at Dubhlinn or Veðrarfjord. Sir Hervey promised that he would throw himself from the cliffs rather than face such an end as that.

It was all Raymond de Carew’s fault, he decided. It had been Strongbow’s captain who had prevented him from launching his offensive against Veðrarfjord when the Ostmen were not expecting an attack. It would have been an unequivocal victory, of that he was sure. Instead of attacking the enemy, Raymond, the fat dolt, had ventured upriver to talk to Cluainmín where he had no doubt eaten and drank his fill before coming back to Dun Domhnall with little more than a verbal agreement of friendship – and how had that benefitted the Normans? Raymond had bypassed Sir Hervey’s authority and had led the army to the brink of utter destruction.

He turned to look at his rival. He felt the hatred course through his veins at the sight of the younger man. The dullard was attacking the eighty-strong crew of the longship with only one other warrior by his side. As Hervey watched, the Ostmen quickly formed into a shieldwall but not before Raymond speared one of their number who lagged behind the rest. Sir Hervey loathed Robert FitzStephen, Raymond’s uncle, and was jealous of his success in capturing Waesfjord the summer before. But Raymond he truly hated. Sir Hervey hated his good nature. He hated his plump, jolly face. He hated that like him, Raymond was a younger son without a penny to his name. He hated that he was enduringly carefree, as if he was too stupid to understand the injustices of the world which saw men like them spend their lives in penury whilst elder brothers lived in opulence. That Raymond had embarrassed him on the first day he had arrived in Dun Domhnall would not be forgotten, but it was that Raymond believed himself to be better than he that truly crawled beneath Sir Hervey’s skin. He promised that if he was ever in a position to kill Raymond de Carew, he would take the opportunity.

Anger seemed to clear Sir Hervey’s mind and he removed his hands from his face and turned towards the warrior who stood next to him. ‘We’ll send an emissary out to negotiate,’ he ordered.

The man, Rechin, was one of the warriors that he had brought back following his last trip to England. He claimed to have served in the north against the Scots, but Sir Hervey had not recognised any of the names of the lords he said that he had served. Sir Hervey was convinced that he was a deserter, perhaps from the Normans who had fought with King Malcolm. Not that it mattered, for Rechin had proved himself to be capable and loyal to the money which Hervey gave him from that earned by his four prostitutes.

‘Why would they want to talk?’ Rechin replied and looked at the army which gathered less than a mile from their walls. ‘They outnumber us by at least twenty to one, and they’ve burned our only means of escape. It’s time to fight,’ he said gruffly and half-drew his sword from the scabbard at his side, testing the edge with his thumb.

Sir Hervey was about to argue, to tell him that it was pointless to battle such a force, but he stopped when he felt a strange sensation course through his lower limbs, the feeling that the whole barbican was moving beneath him.

‘What is that?’ he asked only for Rechin’s answer to be lost beneath a cry of exultation arising from Raymond’s horsemen. ‘The gates,’ Hervey exclaimed and leaned out over the outer wall to see the painted, wooden gateway swing open and Geoffrey of Abergavenny step out from the shadow and begin waving the conrois inside. ‘You damn fool boy, close the gates!’ he shouted towards Raymond’s esquire as Geoffrey grabbed his pretty sister’s bridle and physically dragged both woman and steed through. Yells of anger and the sounds of horses beginning to panic seeped through the hewn wooden walkway beneath Sir Hervey. The horsemen, still mounted, had knocked aside the archers and forced their way to the front where, in their hurry to escape the threat of the enemy, a bottle-neck had formed as each fought to find the safety inside the walls. Sir Hervey had to grab hold of the pointed post as the milites pressed into the small, noise-drenched entrance way. The barbican shook beneath him. Such was the crush that only a trickle of Norman warriors had been able to enter through the gate and even then the congestion seemed to have seeped between the battlements. A more distant cry of acclamation sounded and Sir Hervey turned sharply towards the pumping column of smoke.

‘St Denis, protect me,’ he whispered, his voice chastened by dismay, for the band of warrior Ostmen were no longer advancing in the slow, lumbering shieldwall. They were charging at the open entrance to Dun Domhnall like the berserkers of old. Long hair and beards flapped beneath armoured helms as the wild-eyed mob sprinted along the line of the fortifications, their shields a haze of many colours and their weapons a forest of steel upon them. A few of the twenty Norman warriors on the wall launched spears at the passing enemy ranks, but most fell short or missed the screaming, sprinting pack of Ostmen. Sir Hervey was momentarily frozen by fear, and merely stared open-mouthed at the stampede of leather-bound raiders from the sea.

‘Hurry up, damn you,’ the Frenchman finally stuttered in the direction of the horsemen, but their increased efforts to enter the fortress was nothing to do with his words, and did not speed up their progress.

‘We need archers, where are my archers?’ Sir Hervey demanded of Rechin.

‘You sent them to watch over the beach,’ the mercenary replied and pointed a stubby finger towards the west.

‘Then get those gates closed yourself!’ Sir Hervey demanded. ‘I don’t care if you have to kill all of Raymond’s men, get them closed!’

Rechin hesitated. ‘I’ll need help,’ he called over the commotion of horses and men all fighting to get through the small gap between the double entrenchments.

‘Just do it!’ Sir Hervey ordered as Rechin disappeared onto the battlements. He looked back to the terrifying charge of the Ostmen, now only fifty paces away, and knew instinctively that there was no hope for anyone in Dun Domhnall. Those trying to get through the outer gate would be quickly slaughtered by the Ostman crew and then, with the defences breached, they would turn their axes on those twenty Normans left on the outer wall - and that included Sir Hervey. It would be a massacre. He pictured the brutish enemy screaming heathen curses and clambering between the gaps in the crenulated wall to hack down anyone remaining alive in Dun Domhnall.

Sir Hervey was already scrambling down the ladder from the barbican to the rampart when the first Ostman blades fell upon the archers below, and he was running along the allure towards the inner gate, screaming for them to let him pass, when he heard the Gaelic war horns sound in the distance.

Death approached the Norman fort.

Noise, everywhere noise. Even blinkered by his coif and enclosed by his heavy steel spangenhelm, Raymond was assailed by sound. Monosyllabic peals of panic and rumbling, ascending anger, the thump of running feet, the screams of frightened horses, impact upon impact of weaponry, it surrounded him. His hot breath rasped around his sticky brow, unable to escape through the tiny circlets of steel which protected his jaw and neck. It was not enough to dull his ears to the clamour. At his back, the sea rolled and tumbled and slowly chewed at the black rocks upon which he had built his little fort. On the beach the inferno still crackled and hissed and roared in glory as it triumphantly consumed the hull of Waverider. And to the north Ragnall of Veðrarfjord’s army gathered, their thick cattle-skin drums booming like thunder, intermingling with the flat, metallic din of horns and trumpets. But it was directly ahead, where the sharp, staccato clash of steel pierced most keenly, that Raymond focussed his attention.

Sir Reginald de Bloet, Walter’s father, had once told Raymond that a clever warrior should be able to read the emotions of a battlefield like a good shepherd could the weather, or an experienced sailor might the tide. Any warlord worth his salt could pick a good battlefield, Sir Reginald had told him, and even the most cloddish could use the lay of the land to his advantage, but the best captains also knew how to clear their minds and listen to the sounds going on around him, to discern their meaning.

Read the emotions on a battlefield, he had told his esquire.

It had taken a long time for Raymond to realise the truth in the old man’s advice. He had been midway through his knight-apprenticeship at the time, angry and newly impoverished by his father’s loss of the Barony of Emlyn, and all he had wanted to do was to fight the Welsh rebels who had wronged his family. Sir Reginald had prevented him from running away and joining a battle that he was, at that time, ill-equipped to win, and so he had continued his education in the ways of the frontier warrior. It was only after experiencing hundreds of small skirmishes in the hills of Gwent by Sir Reginald’s side that he had come to understand his master’s words and what they meant, for battle was not glorious and ordered, it was a confusing tumble of action where dust blinds and rain deafens, where well-formulated strategies were defeated by unforeseen circumstances, and commanders lose all sense of control over their armies. Raymond had seen how, in the heat of combat, men quickly became disorientated and had even watched as members of the same conrois had hacked at each other before realising they were on the same side. He had experienced the crush and the collapse of a shieldwall, and had seen the lost look on men’s faces as they were squashed and jostled so that they no longer knew from which direction an enemy blade would fall. Yet Sir Reginald de Bloet’s advice was true: only by deciphering the raw emotions of a battle could a commander form a clear picture and could anticipate how to emerge victorious.

When Jarl Sigtrygg’s crew had made their unexpected charge, Raymond had been forced to flee out of their path rather than be swamped by their sudden move, and by the time he had Dreigiau settled and turned, the first Ostman blows were already beginning to rain down upon his outnumbered conrois in the shadow of the barbican. Swirling dust and shadow had partially obscured his view, but he had quickly spotted the yawning gates of Dun Domhnall over the heads of the charging crewmen of Veðrarfjord. The sounds coming from that fight – as well as the effect that he could see on the agitated men stationed upon the outer wall – told him that his conrois were dying and his fortress about to fall.

Raymond had rarely been afflicted by rage, but in that moment he felt it all: every insult and injustice, each blunder and regret, the bounds of his ambition, the fury of his passions, and the depths of his hates. Basilia, Alice, Sir Hervey, his father, Strongbow, poor Bertram d’Alton, Jarl Sigtrygg, and Roger de Quincy, all their faces came to him. Cowhand, Ragnall had called him. Fury rose in Raymond’s chest and forced the stale breath from his lungs in short, ever quickening bursts. In his hand the lance was sticky with blood and shining sweat, but he barely noticed as he sought glimpses of the fight by the outer gate. Caradog’s archers had wasted their stock of arrows at the causeway, yet they refused to submit and desperately defended themselves with short swords and hand-axes against the armoured Ostmen who attacked them. Beside the Welsh, his conrois had dismounted and fought alongside their old enemy in defence of the gates, and he could even see two of the older esquires, mere boys, with abandoned lances in their blood-covered hands. But it was to no avail, for the Ostmen outnumbered those defending the gate by four to one, and as Jarl Sigtrygg’s men advanced Raymond could see twitching figures of Welsh and Normans left prone upon the ground, the trampled soil soaking deep red around them. One man cried out loud, his hands full of his blue innards as they spilled from below his leather hauberk to rest upon his lap. He cried for his mother in his native Welsh before he was silenced by a single downward cut of a battle-axe.

Raymond could feel the frenzy rising in his heaving chest, and from nowhere the words from the Song of Roland came to him: ‘My sword is in its place at Roncevaux, scarlet I will it stain,’ he softly sang the boast of the Saracen general before he left to ambush Charlemagne’s rearguard. ‘Find I Roland the Proud upon my way I’ll fall on him or trust me not again. And Durendal I’ll conquer with this blade, Franks shall be slain, and France a desert made.’

The great song was Raymond’s favourite and he had delighted in its telling when it had heard it played by visiting minstrels to Strongbow’s hall at Striguil. He had always thought it a fanciful story of Christian bravery victorious over Saracen deceit, of Roland’s brave stand against an overwhelming horde of pagan warriors. Now the flowing, pugnacious verse came to the young captain and every memorised word spoke of primitive horror, not glorious combat. The acts of Aelroth and Olivier, of Falsaron and Turpin, of Oger and Corsablis were played out before him as his outnumbered conrois engaged Jarl Sigtrygg’s warband. And in the distance, Ragnall played the part of King Marsilla perfectly, bringing the main body of his army to bear as if he was singing from the same sheet music that Raymond imagined. In this fight there was no elephant horn for the Normans to summon help from afar. He had no magical sword to give him an advantage, and nor was Dreigiau a charger like swift Veillantif. He was not fighting on God’s behalf against the infidels, and no saint would hear his cry for divine help.

I am no Roland, Raymond thought, and neither could any man in his conrois claim to be as skilled as Charlemagne’s famed paladins. His warriors were outlaws and miscreants, reviled as invaders in their own country, and treated as criminals in that of their king. They were the sworn swords of a beggared lord sent west on a fool’s quest for a crown. Yet it was not Strongbow’s ambition, but Raymond’s, that had brought the band of a hundred to this end; for he could see no conclusion other than the utter destruction of his army, his fort, and of Strongbow’s dreams.

In this theatre, he played treasonous Ganelon, the bringer of destruction on his own kin.

Had the outer gates held, he might have been able to inflict enough damage on Ragnall’s army to allow some of his people to live, to force his enemy to negotiate, but that was no longer likely and all that was left for Raymond de Carew to do was to die beside his comrades.

‘Shame take him that goes off: if we must die, then perish one and all!’ he sang, again from the Song of Roland, and thought once more of sweet Basilia de Quincy, of how she looked at the feast in Striguil. She would never understand that it was for her that he had set himself upon this path, to prove that he was a man deserving of her love, that he was a man worthy of her, a captain who warranted the hand of an earl’s daughter. That dream lay in tatters. All his hopes relied on him winning great renown on the field of battle. But there could be no victory against this enemy. A hundred could not defeat five thousand.

It was for glory that Raymond charged; for ambition and greed, for revenge, and for love. It was for honour and hate and friendship. He felt the emotions collect in his throat and issue forth in an incoherent scream as his heels clipped Dreigiau’s flanks and they jumped forward together, gaining speed as they cantered towards the huddle of Ostmen. He had no plan and no expectation of survival. He simply wanted to lose himself in the fight.

‘Montjoie!’ he screamed Roland’s war cry as he stabbed his lance downwards towards the first Ostman who turned to meet him. As the bearded warrior tumbled to the ground, Dreigiau stamped on him while Raymond deftly reversed his weapon and struck three times at another assailant who came from his right side.

‘On, Dreigiau,’ he exclaimed and squeezed the courser with his knees. Together, man and horse forced their way further into the crowd of Ostmen and Raymond tossed the lance into the air and caught it so that he could use it overarm against the swarming mass of men. As he took an axe blow plum on his shield-boss, Raymond was dimly aware of his conrois fighting valiantly in a tight knot between the open gates. It was in that direction that he urged Dreigiau, rocking his midriff and squeezing his thighs to keep the tough little animal moving forward.

‘Dreigiau, onwards!’

They were still twenty paces from where the packed ranks met when a rancorous bellow made Raymond turn in time to see the Ostmen ranks peel aside like the Red Sea did before Moses, and allow a tall warrior to run at him. His hair was wild and long like his beard and he wielded his huge sword double-handed, ready to chop at the Norman. Raymond ignored his first impulse, to drop his reins and raise his shield, and instead threw his weight down upon his left stirrup, leaning as far as he could out of his saddle to stab at the maddened warrior before he could strike. The captain gasped in relief as the effort hit home, piercing the Ostman’s leather jerkin above his heart and stopping him in his tracks. His respite was all too short as, due to the sudden shift of his rider’s weight, Dreigiau lurched to his left, scattering enemy warriors from his path. Raymond’s stomach muscles screamed in agony as he attempted to right himself without hauling on his reins, but he was only halfway back into the saddle when he felt hands grab him by the left shoulder and began hauling him towards the ground again.

There was little enough hope of reaching his conrois as it was, Raymond knew, but to leave the saddle would mean certain death and so he stabbed his lance into the soil and used it like a crutch to steady himself in his seat. Then, using the spearpoint planted in the soil as a pivot, he punched his assailant in the face with his fist still wrapped around the pine spear shaft. His enemy gasped and slumped against his shoulder, so close that he could feel the hot breath upon his cheek, the reek of salted fish and beer, and Raymond partially recoiled from the stench as he fought against the man’s lessening grip and righted himself in the saddle.

‘On, Dreigiau,’ he shouted again at his tired and frightened courser who stamped his hooves and butted his head forward in answer to his command. Sweat poured from Raymond’s brow and stung his eyes as he gasped down lungfuls of bitter air. Men scattered and fell before him as he forced his way through, stabbing right and left, but he could already see that he was too late for, even though he was almost upon them, he could only watch as the small Norman shieldwall began retreating beneath the barbican and then, moments later, broke under pressure and fled. The Ostmen’s cry of victory boomed and echoed around the wooden enclosure as they swarmed forward to take their prize.

Raymond responded with his own roar of venomous ire, his voice puncturing their triumphant tumult as his charge had their lines. He knew that unless his men were given an opportunity to reform they would be slaughtered and he lunged left and right with his spear with greater resolve than before. Men tumbled aside rather than face him, but he barely noticed as he settled into the killer’s rhythm – stab, withdraw, kick on, stab, withdraw, kick on.

‘Montjoie!’ he called again as he urged Dreigiau to turn sharply, using the courser’s weight to knock two men from their feet as man and horse whirled in the press of men. And suddenly he was aware that there was breathing space between the gates, but Raymond could not take advantage of it as his horse, now thoroughly confused, exhausted and terrified, started to skip and bolt. White froth collected at the edges of Dreigiau’s mouth and his eyes shone with fear.

‘Easy,’ Raymond appealed, but nothing he could say would calm the courser and, as he began to rear, the Norman captain was thrown clear of the saddle. His last sight, as he tumbled backwards towards the broken gates of Dun Domhnall, was of Dreigiau standing on his back legs as if he was battling the horde of Veðrarfjord like one of the boxers that had so impressed him at the spring fair in Germany two years before.

Then, all of a sudden, everything went deathly dark as Raymond impacted with the torn earth.

Ragnall Mac Giolla Mhuire, Konungr of Veðrarfjord, was a patient man, but that forbearance was being sorely tested. He had once negotiated for two weeks with Toirdelbhach Ua Briain, and his bevy of monks, to increase by a hundred the number of cattle that the King of Tuadhmumhain offered to secure Ragnall’s vassalage. Offers, threats and bargaining by the Uí Briain had been met by his stubborn silence and in the end Ragnall had received what he considered a fair proposal for an alliance between their two kingdoms. A summer later he had bartered for almost a month to exact ten more slaves, as well as much-sought bird skins and cow hides, as tuarastal from the Meic Cartaigh of Deasmumhain. In return Ragnall had cast off the rule of the Uí Briain, and his fleet had gone to war against their erstwhile allies. The memory of that campaign, only twenty years before, went some way to soothing his frustrations. He remembered the hundred and ten sleek longships cruising west in the bright summer sunshine, their sails fat-bellied as a pregnant sow, and the sons of his city ready for war. His pride at the memory dragged a long snort of air into his lungs, and it was only the sullen lowing of a cow which interrupted his recollections and set his teeth to clenching in anger once again. Rapidly that whine was taken up by more and more of the dour animals, and the din increased as the slave-drivers and their masters added the crack of whips and coarse commands. Then the stink of the cattle assaulted Ragnall’s senses and the Konungr of Veðrarfjord cursed irately as his frustrations with his allies finally got the better of him.

It had been a week of slow progress since departing Veðrarfjord, first eastwards along the banks of the River Siúire in the company of Máel Sechlainn Ua Fhaolain’s people, and then north, following the Bearú to the crossing at the monastery of St Abbán where they had met with the Uí Drona. Many years had passed since Ragnall had last marched to war alongside the Gael, and he had forgotten how astonishingly slow they could be for, though it was only an army that the konungr had demanded from his Uí Drona and Déisi vassals, what had come to his aid was a civilisation on the move. It seemed to Ragnall that the lands of the two tribes must have been emptied for with the two thousand spearmen came women, children, clerics, slaves, hostages and foster children, poets, brehons, craftsmen, and others of every rank and custom possible. Each had a cart bearing his family’s property and each had his herd of cattle. The Gael did not deal and trade in coin like the men of Veðrarfjord, they transacted in livestock. Of a more difficult form of movable wealth, the konungr could not think! Thousands of heifers followed the army, forced onwards by a mass of slaves and stockmen armed with whips. And it was not only the chiefs and their sons who brought their herds, it was their wives – multiple wives in many cases – and his warriors too, and of course each herd had to be kept separate even from those owned by members of the same extended family. The animals were everywhere and with each step the stink and noise seemed to intensify, hour after hour, day and night. The Gaels fought over fodder and pastures, they fought over access to water. They argued about trade, methods of making butter and oatcakes, and who had the best bull. They disputed in what order they should cross streams and to which saints and spirits to make offerings to keep them safe when doing so. In fact the only thing that united the tribesmen was that all wished for a quick resolution to the campaign so that they could make ready for the harvest, quickly approaching. Nevertheless, cousins, nephews, brothers and uncles, stared balefully at each other, fingering spear shafts and speaking in suspicious tones. Old quarrels started in their great-grandfathers’ time soon spilled over into violence as they marched and two days before Ragnall had watched as two rival sects of the Uí Fhaolain had fought a vicious, impromptu battle as they had stopped for the night. It was only the intercession of a gaggle of churchmen under the Bishop of Laighin that had stopped the fight before a death occurred. It transpired that thirty years before the two combatants’ chiefs had fought each other for rights over a summer pasture in the high hills to the west. It was a common enough tale for amongst the Gael any man, though he had only a single warrior to stand alongside him and a herd of ten cattle, though he was a king and every other a rival. That the two kings, Donnchadh Ua Riagháin and Máel Sechlainn Ua Fhaolain, had managed to get their respective armies this far, intact and ready to fight despite the enmity within their ranks thoroughly impressed Ragnall of Veðrarfjord.

His own army, by comparison, had been easily raised, for the threat to their city was real and nearby. Ragnall’s father had been only a boy when the men of Laighin had last attacked and burnt Veðrarfjord to the ground. It had been before his forefathers had accepted the light of Christ into their hearts, yet the townsfolk still talked of the death and destruction of the outlying farms, the disease and famine which had followed. It was as if the attack had happened in their own lifetimes and as a consequence his jarls had been quick to raise warrior bands of freemen and to offer ships to transport them across the bay. The Ostmen did not have their families amongst their ranks, and nor were they beleaguered by the petty differences which dogged the Gael. They were not slowed by cattle.

Now that Dun Domhnall was in sight, Ragnall at least knew that his frustrations with his allies would soon be over. He would destroy the foreigners’ little fort and then move against Cluainmín and impose his rule over Trygve’s people and his precious silver mine. Then, it would be on to Waesfjord and the skeleton garrison holding FitzStephen’s castle. Two more weeks, he mused, and the threat of the invaders would be gone for ever. However, it was not in Ragnall’s nature to look too far ahead and he refused to allow his focus to wander from the business at hand. Before him the breeze repeatedly forced the long grass downwards as if the land was bowing in submission to the Konungr of Veðrarfjord and he took that to be a favourable portent. Ragnall added a prayer to St Olav to guide his hand before turning his eyes back on Dun Domhnall. From half a mile away the foreigners’ fort looked insignificant and fragile, as if a stiff breeze off the ocean could knock down the timber walls and so allow his army to swarm all over the headland.

‘Are the Uí Drona in position yet?’ he asked one of the jarls who stood alongside awaiting the order to attack. Like Ragnall’s son, he was named Sigtrygg though he was of Norse stock and old in years. He had been nicknamed Sigtrygg Fionn in his youth due to his shock of blond hair which had hung long and loose across his mailed back. Now it was grey and lank, but the nickname remained.

‘Not yet,’ the old jarl replied. Sigtrygg Fionn stared southwards, his right hand across his brow to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun. ‘My warriors are ready, as are Jarl Amlaith and Jarl Gufraid’s men.’

Ragnall scowled and ignored his words. Instead he watched the plume of smoke as it pumped skywards from the beach hidden below the headland. ‘My son’s work, I suppose?’

Sigtrygg Fionn nodded and shifted uneasily. ‘He sailed right up to the beach and burned their ship.’ Although the jarl had not intended it, his konungr heard a reproof in Sigtrygg Fionn’s statement.

‘He is a stupid boy, and anyone who thought to attack them from the sea is as stupid as he,’ Ragnall replied. ‘But our enemy has proven himself to be even stupider again, for they allowed him to get off that beach.’ His eyes narrowed as he imagined what had occurred while his army had made their way across the causeway to the north; his son beaching his vessel and setting fire to that of the Normans; warriors leaping from the shallows to chase those stupid enough to have found themselves outside the fortifications. That the Norman commander had not sent his warriors to stop Jarl Sigtrygg climbing up from the beach was bad enough, but to have opened the gates to allow those attacking to gain a foothold, stunned Ragnall. Yet it was the only explanation that he could envisage for his son’s success.

He remembered the plump youngster who had met him on the causeway and had claimed to be the leader of the foreigners; a mere boy named Raymond who had been easily outmanoeuvred and overawed. Ragnall decided that his opponent had probably grown up in a noble household, the type which his spies described as being common in the English lands – a pampered, soft boy, who had been promoted too early to command and thought of war as a game to be enjoyed as entertainment. Somehow, the konungr felt insulted that this was the captain that the Earl Strongbow had sent to prepare the way for his conquest of Veðrarfjord.

I shall make the boy pay for that slur, he thought.

His eyes settled on the gates of the fort where the battle was taking place. Axe blades flashed through the swirling dust and smoke from the burning ship, while cries of pain, anger and triumph reached even to the eight hundred warriors perched on the crest behind Ragnall and Sigtrygg Fionn. As he watched he saw a single Norman horseman barrel into the midst of the packed ranks of Ostmen, his crimson and gold surcoat and strangely shaped shield bright amongst the dull coloured leather, chainmail and wool coverings of his enemy.

‘Brave lad,’ Ragnall murmured as he recognised Raymond de Carew. Perhaps he had misjudged the Norman, he considered.

Beside him, Sigtrygg Fionn rocked his weight from one foot to the next impatiently. ‘We shouldn’t wait for the Gael,’ he told his konungr. ‘We should help your boy now. If we commit our eight hundred, it would be over in minutes.’

‘Why did no-one tell me that there were two sets of fortifications?’ Ragnall asked rather than acknowledge Sigtrygg Fionn’s words.

‘You have eight hundred of Veðrarfjord’s bravest sons at your side,’ Sigtrygg Fionn hissed irritably. ‘What would it matter if they have three walls, twice as high? The foreigners have shown that they are incapable of holding them against proper fighting men.’

Glowering at his jarl’s impertinence, Ragnall spat on the grass at his feet. It was clear – despite his attempts to change the subject – the fort was indeed ready to fall, as Sigtrygg Fionn said, for no fort could hold once the outer gates had been breached. Still Ragnall hesitated. It wasn’t that he was afraid of defeat or even death. He feared his son.

Many in his army would, like Fionn, think that his son’s actions were heroic rather than foolhardy. For if the foreigners did capitulate, it would only be Jarl Sigtrygg’s daring attack from the sea that would be remembered by his warriors. The recollections of poets and minstrels rarely hung on the folly of an enemy who had allowed the hero to capture their gates. They never noted a commander’s good fortune. They would speak only of the audacious acts of the young prince who had ignored his father’s hesitancy and captured the enemy fortress.

Old, they would say of Ragnall, old, dithering and fallible.

Whether or not his son had the brains or ambition to take advantage of such a state of affairs and depose his father hardly mattered; the Konungr of Veðrarfjord knew from experience what happened to a ruler who was shown to be weak. His own family, the Meic Giolla Mhuire, had seized control of Veðrarfjord in such circumstances. Ragnall, for one, had learned the lesson that he could never allow a rival to rise to challenge his rule, no matter how seemingly insignificant and closely related.

His eyes settled on the walls of the Norman fort, shrouded partially in smoke and dust, where his son battled, not only for victory over the foreigners but potentially for his father’s throne as well. Ragnall knew that if he sent his army forward to help his son, that victory would be assured. However, if he did nothing then Jarl Sigtrygg might yet be forced to retreat and Ragnall could send his eight hundred men forward and claim the triumph for his own. If, on the other hand, Jarl Sigtrygg emerged victorious with only his crew at his side, it would cost many crewmen’s lives. Son or no, a weakened rival to his crown could then be easily toppled before he could regain his strength. After all, the memory of a dead man’s glory would be no threat to the konungr.

‘Ragnall?’ Sigtrygg Fionn appealed again. ‘We should commit to the attack now.’ His voice was slurred and the smell of ale was strong from his breath.

The Konungr of Veðrarfjord stole another look at the battle before the gates of Dun Domhnall and shook his head. ‘We wait for the Uí Drona.’ Though the jarl said nothing, he could sense Fionn’s impatience and suspicion. ‘The boy has to prove himself sometime,’ Ragnall said offhandedly. ‘It was his choice to sail ahead of us, against my orders. If he succeeds in taking the walls then the fort will fall and we will have accomplished what we came to do. If not then, as you say, we have eight hundred other warriors and two thousand Gael to throw against them. The fort will fall one way or another.’

‘Jarl Sigtrygg could die!’

‘I have other sons to replace him.’ And neither is as troublesome as Sigtrygg, he thought, picturing his two teenage sons, safe behind the walls of Veðrarfjord with his most recent wife. There was too much of Sigtrygg’s mother in his eldest son, of that Ragnall had decided many years before. She had come to his bed as part of a long-abandoned pact with her father, the King of the Uí Chinnéide, and she had proven to be as pig-ignorant and uncontrollable as her father’s people. She had eventually succumbed to sickness when Jarl Sigtrygg was on the verge of manhood, though Ragnall had not mourned her loss for long. Although big and strong for his age, the konungr had found her son, Sigtrygg, to be as dumb as an ox with a temper to match, and so he had given him to one of his lesser jarls to foster, and told him to make a sailor of him. He had hoped that the sea would douse his son’s fiery temper, but when he had returned to his father’s hall that spring, ten years after he had been sent away, Jarl Sigtrygg had proven to be the same hot-headed bully the had been in his youth.

The boy had, however, grown into a giant of a man and even on a ship with a crew of hardy men he had been accepted as their captain. Initially his father had been impressed by the man that Jarl Sigtrygg had become, and thought that the boy could yet be turned into something of use. Then the pig-eyed youth had begun making demands of the konungr. First, he had demanded food, wine, and lodgings. Then, when he had grown tired of those, he had demanded recognition as Ragnall’s eldest son. He had demanded responsibility and land. He had not demanded a wife, but that was what his father had given him; an old widow with a voice that could’ve cut a silver coin in two as well as any axe. She also brought slaves and a farm, half a day’s walk from Veðrarfjord, and the title of jarl to their marriage bed, and for a while Sigtrygg had seemed happy with the wealth derived from his new manor. But all too soon rumours of raiding and pillaging of trading vessels began to abound. Ragnall had tried to quash those tales, to blame it on their enemy in Cluainmín. However, when traders had started to avoid Veðrarfjord and take their wares to safer ports such as Corcach, Waesfjord and Dubhlinn, Ragnall had known that he had to act lest the merchants of the city turn against him. Jarl Sigtrygg had been hauled before an assembly of the people in Ragnall’s feasting hall to face charges. Exile and confiscation of his lands was the consensus from the freemen who spoke against Jarl Sigtrygg, and it would’ve been the death of him, Ragnall had known, even as he had pronounced the verdict, for none of his crew should’ve followed his son into penury and the wandering life of an outcast. What misguided impulse had caused Ragnall to offer twenty pounds of silver to save his son from that sentence? He still did not know! Yet the merchants of Veðrarfjord had accepted the offer as fair compensation for their losses that summer, and Jarl Sigtrygg had been released. His son had not even thanked him for saving his life. Rather he had stomped off, gathered his crew, and disappeared into the west for three months.

‘Blasted boy,’ Ragnall murmured.

Rumours of Jarl Sigtrygg’s raiding had soon returned to the city; of a monastery in Tuadhmumhain burned to the ground, of a village in the Uí Maille lands far to the north put to the sword, and of a massacre at an Ostman village on Kerlingfjord. When he had finally returned, Jarl Sigtrygg had denied any involvement in those attacks before dumping a small fortune in good English silver coin onto the floor of his feasting hall to settle-up his debt to his father. Not one word of thanks had passed his lips, and for good measure the ungrateful swine had demanded payment for news from England; news which, he claimed, his father would consider of the highest importance. The konungr had agreed, though his son’s information only confirmed the whispers that Ragnall had already heard from his slave traders in Bristol and Chester: that the Earl Strongbow would bring an army to Ireland, and that he planned to take Veðrarfjord for his own.

A roar of triumph sounded from Jarl Sigtrygg’s war band, startling Ragnall from his reminiscences and his warriors into sudden conversation as they awaited their konungr’s order to engage with the enemy. Sigtrygg Fionn noted his army’s demeanour and pumped his axe into the air, shouting the name of his city each time it reached its highpoint.

‘Veðrarfjord!’ the jarl shouted again and again, and the warriors joined his call to arms, beating their weapons on the back of their shields and shouting curses in the direction of the fort walls. Sigtrygg Fionn was not so stupid as to countermand Ragnall’s orders, but he worked the eight hundred warriors to frenzy and soon men began streaming past their konungr to join the fight by the gates.

Ragnall was a patient man, but he ground his teeth in frustration. His allies amongst the Gael could not be roused to speed while his jarls could not be prevented from plunging into the fray at every opportunity.

‘Lead them on, then,’ he shouted at Sigtrygg Fionn, for what else could he do? His army was on the move and could not be stopped from joining his son’s attack on Dun Domhnall. All Ragnall could do was to make it seem like it had been his order to send them forth. Sigtrygg Fionn grinned as he accepted his konungr’s order and began bellowing the name of their city and invoking the name of the saints who would grant his people victory.

‘Onwards!’ shouted Ragnall of Veðrarfjord as he watched them charge the short distance towards the Norman fortifications. Despite his reservations about helping his son win glory, he watched with great pride as his folk marched towards battle. They sang as they pushed forward. It was the song of their people, of the founding of their city three hundred years before.

One youngster stepped out of the cluster of men and vomited. An older man, an uncle or his father, slapped him twice on the back and pulled the boy back into line.

‘Onwards,’ Ragnall murmured as he watched them go. It was only the sound of savage drums, deep and disjointed, that made him turn his back on his army and Dun Domhnall. On the bluff at his back the Gael had finally arrayed for battle. Two and a half thousand warriors walked towards him, ready to attack, and for the first time in many days a smile broke across the Konungr of Veðrarfjord’s face for he knew now that victory over the foreigners was inevitable.

Light began to seep in, like sunshine behind thick cloud, dazzling yet dull, uncomfortable. Then noise started to force its way past the blur to assail his ears. The sensation lasted only seconds. His head began to spin and his stomach churn. Then, a gust of alarm as he realised that he could not breathe. Raymond choked and panicked and attempted to grapple at his midriff, but only the fingers of his right hand found his chainmailed chest and searched for relief from the pain. His left arm was pinned down and, as he tried to sit up and force air into his lungs, he wondered if he had lost the limb. He did not wish to open his eyes. He did not want to confirm his fears.

‘Wake up,’ a voice shouted desperately, if distantly, from above. ‘Please, wake up!’

He felt his shoulders shake before he was slapped twice across his cheek. Raymond was sure he was dying for no air was flowing down his windpipe, and his left arm was in agony. He felt his eyes bulge and reel below his eyelids while his tongue floundered like a landed trout, but finally, as he rolled over onto his left shoulder, a blast of cold, stinging air fought its way down into his chest, and for several seconds he heaved in and out ferociously. He swallowed back the desire to vomit and clung to the tough leather clothes of the figure kneeling at his side. The person was atop his shield which, still strapped to his forearm, pinned the captain to the ground. Despite his efforts to breathe he realised that he had not lost his arm and thanked the saints for that blessing.

‘Raymond!’ the youth appealed and shook him again by the armour at the nap of his neck.

He quickly recognised that that voice belonged to Geoffrey of Abergavenny and he opened his eyes to look at his esquire. He immediately wished that he had remained unconscious.

His last memory had been of a much different scene to that which he now observed. His brave courser was nowhere in sight, and in Dreigiau’s place was a lone warrior. He stood between Raymond and the packed ranks of Ostmen enemy. The figure was flanked on either side by the torn-down outer gates to Dun Domhnall, a shield on his arm and sword in his hand. But as Raymond and the Ostmen watched, the warrior stabbed his sword into the soil and removed his spangenhelm, casting it at the feet of his enemy while loudly extolling the heavens for strength and support. No-one, other than a man shorn of his wits, would begin a fight without a helmet, especially when faced with such odds as those against the lone warrior. It was suicide, Raymond thought. It was eighty against one.

He only understood when the figure dragged his chainmail coif from his head so that the enemy could clearly see his face.

‘God grant this poor sinner redemption,’ William Ferrand wheezed towards the sky, oblivious it seemed to the threat of the men to his front. ‘Holy David, hear my prayer and give me the strength to stand when all others flee.’ As always, Ferrand’s voice was little more than a gravelly rasp, yet it carried even to where Raymond slumped under the shadow of the barbican. ‘Give me a good death,’ the leper continued ‘Give me back my honour.’

Though only one man now stood between them and their victory, Raymond could see that Jarl Sigtrygg’s crew was hesitant. They encircled the yawning gates of Dun Domhnall, but none was willing to come forward and fight the spectral figure drawn straight from their foulest nightmares.

‘Look,’ Geoffrey whispered, staring over his captain’s head and down the length of the double fortifications. There, two hundred paces away, the second set of gates was opening to allow the survivors of the Ostman attack to pour through. Gasps of elation carried to Raymond and Geoffrey’s ears as the surviving Welsh archers and Norman horsemen attempted to force their way inside before the enemy forced their way past Ferrand.

‘We must hurry,’ Geoffrey insisted and began to help his captain to his feet. ‘We need to get inside before the enemy attack again.’

Raymond leaned hard on Geoffrey’s shoulder as he climbed to his feet. Bodies were everywhere, both Ostmen and his own people, and the ground shone with blood. Injured men’s groans of agony echoed around the small space between the wooden walls while the smell of excrement almost made Raymond gag. He shook his head sharply to clear the daze caused by his fall from Dreigiau’s back. His helmet had come away, but he had no time to assess his injuries for he could see that one of the Ostmen had finally steeled himself to fight against the ghoulish Ferrand.

It was Jarl Sigtrygg.

The giant warrior did not speak as he strode forward. On his arm was a circular shield and in his right a long axe and, as he looked Ferrand up and down contemptuously, he said something in Danish which earned a small laugh from his men.

‘Go, sick man,’ he then told the Norman. ‘Run away or I will kill you.’

Ferrand did not move, but mumbled a prayer to St Maurice as he prepared to meet the Ostman in battle.

Geoffrey whimpered at the sight of the jarl and hauled furiously at Raymond’s arm. ‘We need to run if we are to get into the fortress before the enemy reach the gates.’

‘No,’ Raymond croaked. He could see that the inner gates remained open and that there were still men attempting to gain entry. He turned his eyes towards the eighty-strong crew of Ostmen and then back down the length of the alley between the two walls. He gauged that if Jarl Sigtrygg was to send his men down between the fortifications and attack the gates the fortress would surely fall. ‘You go and I’ll be right behind you,’ he told the esquire, pushing the boy in the direction of the gates.

‘Come on then,’ Geoffrey exclaimed, skidding to a halt a few steps away, and urging Raymond to follow as he had said that he would.

The captain merely shook his head. ‘Go on, Ferrand and I will catch up. Make sure those gates are closed.’ With that Raymond sucked another chest full of air in through his nose and drew his sword from his side. ‘Go,’ he ordered with more force than was necessary, and watched as the shocked esquire took a few steps towards the gates. Raymond did not have time to feel guilty, and turned his back on Geoffrey, locking the edge of his shield to that of Ferrand.

‘We will stand together here,’ Raymond told the leper, ‘the sick man on the left and the fat one to his right. We’ll hold them here and let our people get safely inside the bailey.’ As he turned to make sure Ferrand understood, he spotted the last emotion that he thought possible in the leper’s rheumy eyes: happiness.

‘God has given me a chance to keep my oath,’ Ferrand wheezed, tears of joy pouring down his gnarled and discoloured cheeks. ‘I told you that I would fight alongside you, whatever the odds. Eighty men against two – God will grant us good deaths,’ he said and turned back to meet Jarl Sigtrygg’s angry porcine eyes.

‘God grant us good deaths,’ Raymond repeated and pictured Basilia de Quincy.

‘Montjoie!’ he shouted and lifted his shield to meet his enemy’s blade.

* * *

Strongbow watched as his army sloshed through the ford of the sparkling River Cleddau and into the small town of Haverford on the far bank. Pride bubbled in his chest at the sight of the men who followed his family’s crimson and gold colours. Eight hundred warriors! Such an army had not been seen in Wales since King Henry had forced the native princes to submit to his will six summers before. Strongbow had, of course, not been part of that campaign, the king neglecting to request his presence or that of his diminished household. The earl felt his shoulders stiffen as he recalled that particular insult. It had saved him a great deal of money and trouble, of course, but the affront still found its target. Assailed by atrocious weather and complications with supplies, Henry had been forced into an embarrassing retreat by little more than a handful of Welsh bowmen. A smile broke across Strongbow’s thin lips before he could think better of it; many good men had perished under the Welsh arrow-storm as Henry’s army had crept back towards Shrewsbury. Worse, the Welsh, emboldened by their victory, had soon overrun more fortresses, killing, raping and pillaging as they had passed through Powys.

No, he chastised, that is not a memory to be enjoyed.

The lesson taken from that campaign, however, had to be acknowledged: that a force of only a few archers could meet a host and emerge victorious. Raymond de Carew had believed that to be true and had used his friendship with Seisyll ap Dyfnwal to hire a small troop of bowmen for his vanguard now across the sea in Ireland. Strongbow had no friends among the Welsh, and he refused to go on bended knee to beg assistance from any man, let alone the bandit Seisyll. Instead his requirement to find archers had led him into Little England-beyond-Wales.

They told strange stories about those lands to the west of Pembroke, where the tongues of English serf and Cymric prince were predominant, and only a few barons of breeding spoke French. Traders described strange men, hermits, druids, and ancient evils that could no longer be found in Christian England or Gwent but still lived in the extreme west. They said that Little England-beyond-Wales was a place where faery folk and fantastical beasts still resided, and where forests emerged from the sea at the turning of the tide. They spoke of trolls who lived in the mountains and of spirits that inhabited rivers. It was only the light of Christ in St David’s and the Norman manors and castles which kept the evil at bay. Here, Strongbow was sure he would find a company of bowmen to rival any in Christendom.

From the hall, high up on the plateau to the north of the crossing, Strongbow watched as his army’s vanguard emerged from the river and passed into the darkening streets of the market town on the far bank. He hoped that his captain, Robert FitzBernard, had taken the necessary steps to prevent any of his warriors from disappearing from the column and into one of the many dank taverns of thatched Haverford. His army would only be in the town until dawn when they would make the final leg of their journey to the port of Melrfjord where they would prepare to take ship to Ireland. He could not afford to be without even one of those who had agreed to join him on his expedition and he knew from his youth how an army’s ranks could thin as men deserted their duty for a night’s drinking, never rousing from their drunkenness until it was too late and their comrades departed.

‘Lord?’ a tall man in green vestments hailed Strongbow as he marched into the great hall. Like many Flemings, his French was spoken with the distinctive clipped Germanic tone of his ancestors. He set aside a heavy bow and arrow bag as he came in, trailed by the short, stout steward who had first greeted Strongbow at the manor house door.

‘Greetings sir,’ the earl replied, inclining his head slightly in the man’s direction. Strongbow had never trusted the Flemish as a race, not since he had seen first-hand the depravity of their kind during the reign of King Stephen, but he forced a friendly smile onto his face as he confronted Maurice, the lord of the manor of Prendergast. ‘Your steward was kind enough to show me into your hall to await your return.’

The Fleming slowly nodded his head as he backtracked towards a table and began sorting through a number of rolls of paper, storing them in a box. ‘I’m afraid that my household is quite unprepared for a visit from a person of your eminence, but I can ready a room for you? I suspect that I will not be able to house all your companions.’ Maurice waved a hand in the direction of the army in the belly of the valley and smiled. Strongbow did not share in his attempt at mirth and Prendergast quickly changed tack: ‘Might I offer you some small beer instead?’ Without waiting for a reply he waved his steward forward and, as his mug was filled, he began whispering furiously in his own language into the man’s ear.

Strongbow would’ve gladly accepted wine but, rather than be impolite, he accepted a cup filled to the brim and slowly sipped at the cloudy brown liquid. ‘I am honoured by your offer of hospitality, sir,’ the earl began, ‘but I have already agreed to stay...’ He indicated through the open window at his side towards the church half-hidden behind Haverford Castle on the hill opposite. A morose look passed over Prendergast’s face as both men stared at the town on a high spur of land across the river. Strongbow suddenly remembered hearing news of some trouble between the two neighbouring lords, a squabble over the theft of animals and an abandoned marriage proposal from a few years before. ‘I will not be the guest of Richard FitzTancred,’ Strongbow described quickly to ease any awkwardness. ‘I am to stay with the archdeacon at St Martin’s Church. My army will camp to the south of the town tonight.’

Prendergast smiled politely and for many minutes neither man said anything. Instead each supped silently at their beer and stared out of the keep’s south facing window as the army marched through the town opposite. The murmur of conversation between the warriors reached even to Prendergast’s manor house, two long bow shots away.

It was the Fleming who broke the silence: ‘Lord, I know what brings you to my hall, and I do not wish to waste your time, but I will not return to Ireland with you.’

‘I was led to believe that you had acquired a large estate there.’

Prendergast nodded. ‘I also acquired enemies – Robert FitzStephen and King Diarmait – and I don’t think either would permit me to visit his domain again.’

The Fleming had been Robert FitzStephen’s second-in-command, Strongbow knew, and had fought alongside the Norman when they had stormed the walls of the Norse city of Waesfjord the year before. But something had triggered a breakdown between the two men, leading Prendergast to flee FitzStephen’s side, along with almost a third of their army, and join the service of their enemies on the eve of battle with the High King of Ireland. FitzStephen had somehow managed to win that fight despite facing overwhelming odds and Prendergast had returned home to Wales in defeat with barely the clothes upon his back to show for his efforts across the sea.

The Fleming stepped forward suddenly and put his hand on Strongbow’s sleeve. The earl was taken aback. A man of Prendergast’s lowly standing should not have thought it appropriate to act like they were equals.

‘I have to warn you,’ Prendergast told him, ‘that I have seen things in that savage land of which even the Devil himself could not conceive. No matter what glory or realm which you think you will win, I promise you it will be fleeting. These Gael do not forget and are vicious in their search for retribution. I have seen it,’ he told him earnestly. ‘With God’s grace I lived to tell the tale, but I will not go back.’

Strongbow frowned deeply, not because of Prendergast’s warning, but because he was angry and frustrated. He did not wish the Fleming to see the effect of his words, but his ire bubbled. He wanted to call Prendergast a coward, to challenge him to prove his accusation of spinelessness wrong, but he could see that it would do no good and so he held his tongue. He refused to beg and barter like a cloth merchant on Gloucester’s wharf to secure the services of Prendergast’s two hundred-strong archer warband.

Prendergast had turned away and was waving his mug in the air to attract the attention of his steward bearing the jug of beer. He did not even think to excuse himself before leaving the earl’s side. He roared in the English tongue at the servant on the far side of the room. Strongbow sighed at the small insult and began staring out the window at the town of Haverford. A shadow, cast by the high cliffs above the crossing, seemed to cover the whole of the thatched settlement. Atop that natural motte sat the castle like a squat owl eying a fat mouse at its feet. As with Striguil, Haverford’s castle was perfectly placed to command the river crossing and anyone who chose to use its course to travel further inland. The similarity with his home led Strongbow’s mood to darken further. Haverford was one of the castles which belonged to the Honour of Pembroke, the estate and earldom which his father had won, and of which Strongbow had been unfairly deprived by King Henry. The anger at the injustice burned brightly in his chest. Cilgerran, Emlyn, Pembroke, Manorbier, and Tenby were some of the great Marcher castles that should have been part of his Welsh fief. Instead they were held by low-born royal constables like Richard FitzTancred who sent the profits from his estates to the crown treasury or, more likely, stole it to enrich themselves while he, the lawful owner, was almost ruined. His lips squeezed to white as he fought the all-too-familiar anger.

Had he been earl in deed as well as name, Pembroke would’ve provided him with two hundred knights’ fees, a thousand spearmen and as many archers as he required, while those from his share of the Giffard lands scattered across England and Normandy would’ve given half that number again. Strongbow closed his eyes and remembered a time when that power had been his, almost unmatched by any man in the kingdom, before the ascension of Henry FitzEmpress to the throne. He recalled riding at the head of a column of chainmail-clad warriors all sworn to the House of Pembroke, two thousand knightly pennants flying above their spears. He had been a boy, eighteen years old and raw, when his father had died, but King Stephen had treated him with great respect and in turn Strongbow had raised an army of thousands to serve the goodly monarch against his rebellious subjects in the north. It had been the earl’s proudest moment, exciting and terrifying in equal measure, as he had led his army in defence of his king’s throne. He had not had to scrape and bow to the likes of Maurice de Prendergast, men not worthy of his lineage, but had ordered them to do his bidding. That time had passed, but it would come again, he promised.

He reordered his thoughts to the present as Prendergast returned to his side, his mug refilled without bothering to offer his guest the same. Behind the Fleming, more men had made their way into the hall, talking loudly and bawdily as they entered. Not a few threw interested glances in Strongbow’s direction, but most simply sat down at the tables scattered around the room and called loudly for ale. It was obvious to the earl that Prendergast considered their business over and rather than spend any more time bartering and rebuffing his guest he had simply decided to make Strongbow feel awkward by inviting his captains into the hall.

The manor house was, to Strongbow’s eye, closer in design to a barn than the great hall at Striguil. The building was dry and stoutly built, and in a defensible position, but its lord had either not the sense or the finances to build a proper keep. Even the wooden walls which surrounded its bailey were in need of repair. A man with two hundred archers at his disposal was a powerful man on the March, but that, Strongbow decided, did not make him a rich one and a lord who could not pay his troops would not command them for long. That he knew from experience.

‘I am sorry that I cannot help you,’ Prendergast continued and slumped into a wicker chair, causing it to squeak and stretch beneath his weight. His beer sloshed from his mug, onto his hand and he grimaced as he wiped his fingers clean of the liquid on the thin table top before him. ‘But I will pray that your endeavours will bring you success, Sir Richard.’ A self-satisfied hint of smile twisted the edges of Prendergast’s mouth.

Strongbow summoned his courage. ‘I regret that you feel the opportunity in Ireland too dangerous for your men,’ the earl said. He had never had a strong voice but he now forced it to pierce the hubbub of the hall. ‘I had thought the men of Flanders hardier than that, but nevertheless I will visit with Richard FitzTancred at Haverford Castle this very hour and hope that his stomach is sterner and his ambition greater than that which I have found here at Prendergast.’ With that he turned on his heel and made for the door. His stomach churned as he realised that the clamour in the room had abated following his words and that all eyes were on him as he strode through the main hall. He kept his head high as he made his departure, picking a path directly towards the main door while being careful not to walk too fast or to appear apprehensive.

However, when a tall warrior rose from the bench and placed himself in his path, the earl began to worry that he had indeed miscalculated with his stern words.

‘Out of my way,’ he squeaked at the man before clearing his throat and trying again, more forcefully. ‘Out of my way, I say.’

The Fleming’s only response was to step closer and place a big hand on Strongbow’s chest, preventing him from leaving. The earl felt uneasiness pucker in his stomach. He was alone in this fortress amongst foreigners, foreigners who he had insulted. He gathered his courage to make another effort to move the warrior:

‘You will get out of my path,’ he stated, but the bearded man merely shook his shaggy head.

‘Wait, sir,’ he said and raised his chin to address Prendergast. ‘I don’t understand why you would turn down this opportunity, Maurice. Did you not see the size of that army?’ the Flemish warrior continued, earning a number of supportive grunts from his fellow captains scattered around the feasting hall. ‘We were able to claim Waesfjord last summer with an army half the size of the one that Lord Strongbow has mustered.’ The man kept his palm firmly on the earl’s surcoat as he turned towards the hall to encourage the like-minded amongst the warriors to support him. ‘Why would we not want to go back to Ireland?’

Maurice de Prendergast could not have missed the number of his followers who grunted encouragingly at the man’s words. ‘I did not think that you would speak against me, Osbert de Cusac,’ he said reprovingly, but his words were lost immediately as another man, younger than the first, weighed in:

‘I still don’t know why we left FitzStephen’s side in the first place!’ the second man snarled. ‘I barely made it back home with more money than I had when I landed in Ireland.’

‘That was only because we sold our horses to those crooks in Veðrarfjord,’ Osbert butted in again.

Strongbow, momentarily forgotten, watched quietly as the Flemings argued his cause for him. He stole a glance towards the dais where Maurice de Prendergast had climbed to his feet in an attempt to calm his warriors down. He held up his hands to achieve quiet and allow him to speak, but the discussion had already started between the warriors below.

‘The summer is already upon us,’ Osbert barked, ‘and no offers have come from Philip FitzWizo for our service. We all heard how Rhys ap Gruffydd raided Llandissilio two weeks ago. Yet our lord in Wiston did not summon the men of Prendergast to help him fight our enemies.’ Osbert pointed an accusatory finger at Maurice. ‘There is something amiss when he does not bid his best warriors to join him in a fight! And now another offer falls right in our lap,’ he said, finally removing his hand from Strongbow’s chest and stepping back to allow everyone to see the Norman baron, ‘but Maurice wishes to let it pass him by so that we can sit on our backsides all summer and grow poorer.’

Amid the growls of agreement and ire, Prendergast was finally able to speak. ‘There will be other offers, of that I am sure. I have never let you down. Did I not get a good price from the Bishop of St David’s for our services? Did I not earn us land south of Waesfjord from Robert FitzStephen? Remind me, Osbert, who it was who found work with Donnchadh Mac Giolla Phádraig when our allies betrayed us?’ He nodded his head. ‘That is correct – me. And I will find us riches again. We need not go back to Ireland.’

As Strongbow looked around the faces in the manor, he could see that Osbert was losing the argument. Maurice de Prendergast was obviously a good lord and his men trusted him. In many ways the Fleming reminded Strongbow of Raymond de Carew and he felt a pang of jealousy rise in his chest. His father had possessed that power too, he remembered.

‘If your lord, Maurice, says that he can get you service in Wales, I believe him,’ Strongbow told the room of warriors. All eyes turned to look at him. ‘From what I have heard he has won you much, if not in terms of great wealth, certainly in renown.’ He allowed his words to traverse their minds. ‘I do not offer any man fame,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘I offer only riches and unless Maurice de Prendergast can promise, here and now, to lead you to capture both Bristol and Chester this summer then he cannot match what I offer to those who follow my banner. I mean to take both the Danish cities of Veðrarfjord and Dubhlinn.’ He stressed the names of both the famous Scandinavian settlements in Ireland. ‘You have seen Veðrarfjord for yourselves and Dubhlinn is said to be four times as big. That is what I offer in return for your bows. So you can stay here in hope of employment or you can join me and become rich. You have until I reach the ford to Haverford to make your choice.’

Again the room descended into the murmur of debate and argument and, with a final nod in Maurice de Prendergast’s direction, Strongbow strode from the hall without a backwards glance. He managed to hold off the panic as he climbed down the stairs to the ground floor. He was even able to swap some small talk with an esquire as he retrieved his palfrey from Prendergast’s small stable, but, as he passed through the gate in the defensive walls, worry reached into his stomach and twisted his guts. He had half expected to be called back before he had reached the main door of the manor house, to be told that the Flemish captains had convinced Maurice de Prendergast to take up his offer and follow him to Ireland. That he had made it to the outbuildings without one of the warriors dashing to stop him and beg him to reconsider made him worry that he had misjudged the temper of the room and Maurice’s hold over the Flemish bowmen.

‘Slow there,’ he whispered to the mare and pulled on his reins as he passed through the gates. He wanted to turn in the saddle to see if anyone followed him but he knew that he had to keep up the facade of confidence, his eyes straight ahead and fixed upon Haverford Castle. He emerged from between the heavy timber gateposts into bright sunshine, but his mood was anything but good. Strongbow had set the gates as his Rubicon and beyond them his hopes of securing a company of archers would be over. Before he had departed for Ireland, Raymond had made the earl promise that he would use all his efforts to engage a warband of bowmen, saying that with even a hundred more he would conquer a realm as large as Strongbow could imagine. Without them, his captain had told him, their campaign would be short and unsuccessful.

Strongbow felt a bead of cold sweat separate from his hairline and run down his face. He had not admitted as much to Prendergast, but he had already asked every Norman baron in Glamorgan to permit him to employ their archers, and had been turned down at every hall because he could not pay silver up front. It was the work of William de Braose, he was sure. Strongbow had hoped that in Little England beyond Wales, rather than the infuriating obstinance of landed lords, he would find desperate men willing to take any chance to plunder loot at his side. Strongbow had thought to inspire them as Raymond had Seisyll ap Dyfnwal with stories of great lands won by warriors with no less right than they. He had failed and now all he had accomplished and built in the last weeks and months seemed constructed on unstable foundations. He worried about the men he had appointed to high command and those he had chosen to stay behind. He worried about the condition of the ships that he had procured at Melrfjord and he worried about being cheated by all who surrounded him.

He wiped the perspiration from his brow as his mount began walking down the hillside. He felt his weight shift onto his hips as he leaned back in the saddle. On each side he watched as English serfs toiled in bountiful fields, spreading manure and buckets of water amongst Prendergast’s wheat crop.

It had all been for naught, Strongbow decided. He had reduced himself to penury for a folly that could never have resulted in success. He had gained an army to conquer a kingdom, but without archers he knew the odds were stacked against him. Doubt assailed Strongbow.

Only that morning a brute sent by the moneylender in Gloucester had caught up with his army, thundering along the length of his column on a palfrey worth more than that beneath the earl. The newcomer had demanded that Strongbow hand over silver before he set sail for Ireland in part payment of his debt – even the Godless Jew had realised the recklessness of the campaign and wished to extract what he could before the opportunity was lost for ever. What the debt collector did not know was that the earl had exhausted every single line of finance, and had called in every favour owed to his house. He had nothing left to give. Yossi’s man had argued, of course, had called Strongbow a liar and so the earl had ordered Milo de Cogan to hurry the man, as well as his six gruff and heavily armed companions, down the road without a penny.

Strongbow’s poverty remained. It seemed so long ago that Diarmait had made the offer to name him his heir to the kingdom of Laighin. Now he could not even afford a single sheep to load onto his ships for his army to slaughter when they made land in Ireland. If Raymond had not been successful in maintaining his bridgehead or, worse, had not obtained enough animals for them to eat, then Strongbow and his army would face starvation. They would have to range far and wide foraging for food. Spread thinly, his men would be easy pickings for any army arrayed against them.

Strongbow was so lost in his thoughts that when the shout came it almost made him tumble from his saddle in surprise.

‘Lord Strongbow!’ the Flemish esquire shouted from the manor house gate. ‘Please wait!’

He did not turn immediately, but he did bring his horse to a complete stop. Instead of addressing the boy Strongbow closed his eyes and murmured a prayer to St Benedict in thanks for sending his munificent aid. For he knew the message that the boy would carry: Maurice de Prendergast had reconsidered his decision. He would follow Strongbow to Ireland. And the crown that had seemed so uncertain could still be his – as long as Raymond de Carew remained true and his bridgehead secure.

It was the sudden coldness as it caught in his throat that Raymond noticed first, not the darkness. Only moments before he and Ferrand had been bathed in blazing sunshine as it poured over the inner wall, but now his breath misted before his eyes as their fighting retreat took them backwards between the two battlements towards the inner gates.

Not that Raymond felt cold. His shoulders and legs burned with effort as he fought against Jarl Sigtrygg’s crew. His mind was a blur as he attempted to keep his shield locked with that of Ferrand as well as to strike out and to block the Ostmen’s attempts to kill him. Together, he and Ferrand filled the whole width between the two fortifications, but the weight of men who opposed them was immense and they were pushed inexorably backwards by the wave of colourfully painted circular shields. The only thing in the Norman duo’s favour was that so many of Jarl Sigtrygg’s crew attempted to kill them that they got in each others’ way.

Nevertheless two men could not hold out for long against almost eighty and step by step they fell back down the alleyway. Neither Norman had the chance to steal a glance behind them, to discover if the gates were open or closed, rather they could only block and stab before retreating again. Raymond had not even the breath to call Roland’s war cry, but breathed hot sweat through his chainmail coif as he felled his closest opponent. Another Ostman quickly took the place of the fallen man, leaping over his comrade to engage his retreating enemy. Raymond jabbed twice, low and hard, at his midriff and when the leather-clad Ostman dropped his shield, anticipating a third attempt, Raymond brought his sword pommel down hard on the man’s left shoulder, breaking the bone and sending the man to the ground. He wasted no time and withdrew another step to again lock his shield with that of Ferrand, battling equally hard to his left.

‘Stay beside me,’ Raymond wheezed in the leper’s direction as another warrior armed with a spear disentangled himself from the crush and threw himself upon their shields. The impact rocked both men onto their heels. The Ostman was soon joined by another bearded raider wielding a two-handed axe. He yelled something unintelligible as he swung the weapon in circles around his head to build up momentum, but he only succeeded in forcing the warriors behind and beside him to duck lest he cleave their heads in two. When his axe did fall Ferrand stepped back suddenly, allowing the blade to slam into the pathway at his feet. Woodchips and loose stones scattered everywhere but neither Norman was hurt. The Ostman was unbalanced and abandoned his weapon to slam his shoulder into Ferrand’s shield, tackling the leper backwards beyond Raymond’s vision.

‘Ferrand! Are you alright?’ Raymond called desperately as his small shieldwall disintegrated. He heard no response and Raymond dared not turn to see if Ferrand still lived for another warrior had pulled the axe from where it was buried in the ground and now threatened him alongside the younger man armed with the spear.

The axeman struck first, shouting a challenge as he hooked the blade over the top rim of Raymond’s shield and attempted to rip it from his grasp. By his side, the spearman waited for an opening to stab the Norman’s defenceless midriff.

‘Ferrand!’ Raymond appealed again as he fought the weight coming onto his left arm. He knew that he could not lose his shield, nor could he stab at his assailant lest the other man spear him in his undefended flank. Both his arms quivered with effort, his left from exertion, the other from yearning to attack.

Suddenly a high-pitched scream sounded from his side and a slight figure bounded past Raymond to plant a bloody dagger in the axeman’s upper arm. The pressure immediately relented as the Ostman fell to the floor in agony, but Raymond didn’t give the second warrior a chance to gain an advantage and gave him two huge sword cuts which forced him backwards into the crush of his crewmen. He then turned and stabbed downwards to take the axeman’s life.

‘I told you to run!’ he shouted as he pulled Geoffrey of Abergavenny to his feet, forcing him behind him again. The boy was pale but he stooped to pick up a fallen spear.

‘I’m your esquire,’ Geoffrey exclaimed. He had to yell in order to make himself heard over the noise coming from the Ostmen. ‘I should be at your side when you go into battle.’

‘This isn’t a battle,’ Ferrand hissed as he righted himself beside Raymond. ‘It is a damned street brawl.’ He noticed his captain’s apprehensive glance at his shoulder where blood was seeping through the links in his coat of steel. ‘I’ll be fine. I could fight on all day,’ he insisted, but his hand went briefly to the wound.

Raymond knew that they could not hold off the Ostmen for much longer. Though it felt like hours, they had only been fighting for a matter of minutes and Raymond could see that Ferrand was tiring. There were simply too many for two men, one a leper, and an esquire to fight. He glanced past Geoffrey to where, thirty paces away, the last of his conrois and archers were finally disappearing through the inner gates to the relative safety beyond.

‘Geoffrey, go now before the gates close,’ he ordered, but the boy refused to budge. Raymond looked over his shoulder at him. ‘I need you to make sure that the gates will be closed and that no one keeps them open to wait for Ferrand and me. Go!’

But instead of running to the salvation of the bailey Geoffrey’s eyes widened in alarm forcing Raymond to recognise another threat approached him down the path between the fortifications.

‘Go!’ he told his esquire again before hefting his weapons and turning to meet the next charge of the Ostmen. Instead only one man approached. Jarl Sigtrygg did not run but stared menacingly at the two Normans who blocked his path. Raymond felt Ferrand tense at his side. Even the Ostmen of Veðrarfjord had quieted as they watched their giant leader walk forward. They expected to see him sweep aside the stubborn resistance of the Normans and lead them in an attack on the inner walls of Dun Domhnall. However, rather than attack he put his hand to his ear and arched his neck as if listening to the wooden fortification to his left.

‘Do you hear that sound?’ Jarl Sigtrygg asked and, for the first time since the fight between the walls of Dun Domhnall had begun, Raymond noticed shouting and the thump of feet coming from beyond the outer defences. ‘That is the sound of eight hundred of Veðrarfjord’s best warriors marching towards your little fort,’ Jarl Sigtrygg told the three Normans, his braided beard curling into a smile. ‘They are coming to kill you and the sick man. Then we will storm the gates and kill all inside.’ He dropped his hand and took his axe from his belt, tossing it into the air before catching it and pointing it at Raymond. ‘The good news is that you will not have to see any of that,’ he sneered as he brought his shield up to eye level and stared malevolently over its rim at his enemy. ‘Time to die, Raymond the Fat,’ Sigtrygg shouted at his opponent and that was the signal for six spears to be launched from the crowd behind the jarl. Two soared overhead but the rest struck their target, forcing Ferrand and Raymond to raise their shields to defend themselves from the projectiles.

Jarl Sigtrygg reacted immediately, using the brief distraction to jump forward and smash his shield boss into Raymond’s. Jarl Sigtrygg’s frenzied axe attack did not allow the Norman captain a chance to hit back. Instead Raymond crouched, protecting his head, with both hands pressed against the back of his teardrop shield and his cheeks puffing with effort. The weight of the giant jarl was like that of a stampeding bullock as he attempted to trample Raymond into the ground.

A second man, wearing a bright orange woollen shirt, joined his jarl, colliding with Ferrand as the leper raised his sword arm to slash at Jarl Sigtrygg’s head. The blow missed its target as Ferrand was rocked back on his heels and into Geoffrey who, having speared Sigtrygg’s crewman in the shoulder, was knocked aside in a tangle of bodies. Raymond was almost taken down by his fellows, but he kept his feet as Geoffrey, Ferrand and the injured Ostman tumbled into his legs. Jarl Sigtrygg’s onslaught continued and he was keening now, cursing Raymond for his timidity. The Norman could hear the Ostmen of Veðrarfjord begin to roar their support for their jarl, urging him to lead them to victory.

‘Come on,’ Jarl Sigtrygg shouted. ‘Come out from behind that shield!’ A massive set of fingers appeared and gripped the top of Raymond’s shield close to his head.

He knew what was about to happen; that Sigtrygg would force the top of his shield down and deliver a killing blow to his head with the axe. And he could tell that the jarl was stronger than he. Raymond’s head shook and his vision swirled as he gripped his teeth and clung onto the straps pinned to the back of his shield with both his hands, but nothing he did could turn the fight in his favour. The inevitability of Jarl Sigtrygg’s victory over him forced a roar of frustration and effort from his throat. But in that second, an idea came to him. He acted upon it immediately. He simply let go.

What happened next was a blur. Raymond was aware that he had fallen backwards and that his temple had cracked onto something hard as he had landed. Punch-drunk, he knew that he had to rise and finish Jarl Sigtrygg before his enemy had the chance to recover and do the same to him. But his legs would not respond and he toppled to his knees with dizziness. He fought the sensation, but he found it impossible to focus his eyes and, as he blinked and clung to the struts which held up the fighting platform, he was aware of a strange sound which suddenly punctured his daze. It was like the sound of a hundred serfs with heavy flails threshing wheat. He had heard that noise often during summers spent overseeing Strongbow’s estates though he could not imagine why the task would suddenly be performed during a battle.

‘It’s too early to have brought in the harvest,’ he slurred and collapsed from his knees onto his backside. He attempted to open his eyes again but they continued to roll in his head. ‘One more month at least,’ he babbled as the thwack of wood continued to echo around him though it was now swamped by screaming. Raymond barely had time to register the cause of the new sound for, at that moment, a set of hands slipped under his armpits and he felt himself being dragged away, his heels trailing on the wood chip ground.

‘But the serfs,’ he garbled and flapped his left hand towards the sound of the flails.

‘Have you lost your senses, you dolt?’ wheezed Ferrand. He grunted with the effort that it took to lug his captain away from the fight between the battlements towards the open gates to Dun Domhnall.

Fighting the urge to vomit, Raymond forced his eyes open and found that he had regained control over his sight and was staring straight up into Ferrand’s crumbling features. His mind quickly reordered as he stared at the leper’s upside down face, bounded on all sides by the brightest blue sky that he had ever seen. He remembered talking to Ragnall of Veðrarfjord at the estuary and fighting alongside Bertram d’Alton as Waverider burned. He recalled Dreigiau bucking and Geoffrey of Abergavenny stabbing at the axeman, and all of a sudden he did not feel sick or disorientated any longer. His head flopped forward so that he could look back down the length of the battlements. Raymond half expected that he would find Jarl Sigtrygg standing above him ready to deliver a killing blow to both he and Ferrand, but instead he instantaneously understood that the sound that had so confused him was not that of flails dividing grain from chaff. It had been the sound of bowstrings striking against elm bowstaves.

From the inner wall of Dun Domhnall Welsh archers were shooting downwards onto Jarl Sigtrygg’s crew and Raymond knew instinctively that no warband could live long under that arrow storm. A strange sensation of sadness almost overtook him as he watched the death of an enemy that, a matter of moments before, had been trying to kill him. The sun had shifted position in the sky and the rays now poured directly down between the two battlements, almost blinding him. He was thankful that he had to turn away from the slaughter.

‘Let me go,’ Raymond complained towards Ferrand. ‘I can stand up now.’

‘Be quiet. We are almost there.’ Ferrand hissed as he dragged Raymond to his left. Suddenly Raymond’s world went dark. The Norman captain’s feet collided with wood before he was dumped unceremoniously onto the hard earth back in the dazzling sunshine.

‘Close the gates,’ Ferrand cried, now closer to Raymond’s ear than before. The captain realised that the leper had crumpled to the floor due to his exertions and had dragged Raymond on top of him. Ferrand’s gnarled hand slid across his chest as the creak of wooden gates sliding shut sounded to Raymond’s front.

‘You are safe now,’ an exhausted Ferrand rasped. He held Raymond firm and patted his chest like a mother would do a scared child at night. ‘They cannot get to you. You are safe now.’

Raymond tried to roll off Ferrand, but the leper’s grip around his chest was immense and it was several seconds before he would allow his captain to break free. When he did Raymond immediately turned to comfort the man who had stood alongside side him when the likelihood of survival was lowest. Ferrand was now prone on the ground with what Raymond took to be a satisfied smile across his broken and gnarled face.

‘Ferrand?’ he called and shook the leper. ‘William, are you alright?’ There was no answer from the warrior and Raymond feared that Ferrand had got exactly what he had asked for on the morning that they had first landed in Ireland. He quickly looked around for assistance. Men were running this way and that in disorder and no one was paying any heed to Ferrand’s plight.

‘Geoffrey, bring me water quickly,’ he called, but his esquire was nowhere to be seen. He made a mental note to reprimand his apprentice for being absent when he needed him and turned back to Ferrand. He stared at the man’s face, wracked by disease, and wondered if it would be better that the warrior die now. He bowed his head to say a prayer to St Michael. ‘He kept his oath and I pray that God was indeed watching when he recovered his honour. He saved the fort.’

A cheerful chuckle issued from the man lying beside him.

‘We did that together,’ Ferrand rasped. ‘I only wished to save you,’ he closed his eyes, a smile prominent on his ghastly face. ‘And you are safe now.’ His head flopped onto his shoulder and as much as Raymond tried to rouse him, Ferrand would not open his eyes again. Closer inspection allowed him to feel breath coming from his lungs. In the end Raymond’s only option was to drag Ferrand away from the gates and lay him on the ground by the cattle pens above the beach. The animals, scared by the fighting, mooed and gathered together by the wattle fence as far from the battlements as they could get. The beasts were secure, but the twisted wooden rods squeaked and strained as the cattle pressed against the fence. Raymond momentarily wondered if Ferrand would be trampled if he remained beside the enclosure.

‘Be safe, my friend,’ he told the leper as he stood straight. The rigging and mast had gone, but Waverider still burned by the seashore and Raymond watched as the flames licked the fire-blackened sheer-strake on the steering board side. It was mesmeric as the slight wind off the sea made the fire roar. Even from a hundred paces away, he could feel the heat on his face and he closed his eyes, allowing the sour smoke to tease his nostrils. Raymond knew that he had responsibilities on the fortifications, but for a few seconds his army’s plight and the pain in his arms and head disappeared as he concentrated on the thump of small waves against the cliffs and the grumble of flames as the fire consumed Waverider.

His trance was disturbed by the screams of injured men emanating from between the walls of Dun Domhnall. He tried to ignore them by closing his eyes, but they easily penetrated his thoughts and with a sigh Raymond opened his eyelids, returning to real life. He was amazed to see that Waverider had moved, only a matter of ten paces, but she was floating into the bay, revealing the undamaged Ostman vessel behind. The sight of Waverider escaping into the small waters somehow cheered him.

‘Go on,’ he urged the burning ship, ‘Get out of here.’

Fully laden, Waverider only needed a draught of a few feet to float and, with her rigging and contents having burned away in the inferno, she needed even fewer now. Her prow swung northwards as he watched and she came to rest atop the dark rocks hidden just beneath the surface in the bay. He urged her to break free, his attention completely overtaken by the burning ship’s efforts to escape, and he cursed the tide for not rising faster. Despite the roar of flames he could hear Waverider‘s hull scratch along the rocks and then suddenly she was free again, squeezed between the oncoming tide and the underwater features in the bay so that she again travelled northwards.

Raymond would’ve cheered then, captivated as he was with the ship’s progress, but at that second a new noise broke through the din of battle and forced him to turn away from the sea.

Alice screamed his name.

‘Loose!’ Borard shouted again. Welsh bowstrings slapped sharply against ash heartwood staves and arrows lanced into Jarl Sigtrygg’s crew. The archers barely had the need to aim for they couldn’t miss the enemy crammed into such a small area as that between the fortifications. Instead the fifty men on the wall concentrated on shooting as fast as they could, letting loose a hail of arrows onto their enemy. In a matter of seconds hundreds sliced into the Ostmen.

‘Lay it on,’ Borard snarled as the Welsh archers grabbed for more arrows from the bags at their hips. Another flight whistled through the air to thump into the enemy below, striking face, torso and limb. Those had barely struck before another soared and struck home to rattle wooden wall and shield. The screeches coming from the wounded appalled Borard but he again ordered the men to unleash their fury on the enemy. ‘They would do the same to you given half a chance,’ he shouted. ‘So lay it on them, you Welsh bastards!’

‘They’re running away!’ one of the archers said before nocking another arrow and leaning over the pointed stakes of the wall to shoot one of the retreating Ostmen between his shoulder blades. He whooped as it hit home. So close were the targets that the Welsh arrows powered through the weak points in the shields. They ricocheted and scored through limbs held aloft. They clanged as they struck helmets and cleaved flesh as they passed through hardened leather armour like it was no thicker than vellum parchment.

The Ostmen were brave, but they knew that only death awaited them between the walls of Dun Domhnall and soon those closest to the outer gates had turned and fled to find shelter from the arrow storm on the far side of the fortifications. Quickly, more survivors began to make off in that direction, their colourful circular shields held across their backs to defend them from more Welsh arrows.

‘Cease,’ Borard shouted when he judged the fight to be over. Even with his order it still took several seconds to get all the Welshmen to stop shooting. ‘Save your arrows. They are finished,’ he called and cursed the archers’ native cruelty as they continued to kill the retreating men. It was only when their senior men translated his order that the Welshmen ceased their salvo.

Below Borard there was little movement. It was difficult to tell where one body ended and the next began. Arrows sprouted indiscriminately from flesh and from earth. It was like a terrible harvest. In the few minutes since they had begun their aerial onslaught the seventy archers had all but exhausted their supply of arrows and over two thousand peppered the small area below. Even the archers were quieted by the carnage which they had wrought. Groans and wailing resonated from between the walls.

‘Raymond?’ Borard called into the carnage and desperately searched the crush for any sign of his captain. It seemed like only moments before that Raymond’s esquire had opened the outer gates allowing the Ostmen to pierce Dun Domhnall’s defences. Borard had been certain that the outer wall was about to be captured and so he had leapt from the inner allure where he had been stationed and sprinted to the western extremity of the headland. There he had gathered the archers, who had been sent to watch over the western beach by Sir Hervey, and had brought them back to the wall. He thanked God that he had arrived back in time to stop the Ostman crew, but it had been a close run thing. Borard raised his eyes from the slaughter to look over the wall at the horde which approached the fort; a wave of hard leather and iron about to crash into the broken walls of Dun Domhnall.

‘Raymond!’

Borard did not want to consider what would happen if command of the warband fell to Sir Hervey de Montmorency. His last sight of Strongbow’s uncle had been of him galloping away from the attack of the Ostman crew, up the outer wall towards the inner gate. Might he be dead too? And to who would the captaincy fall then, he wondered. Walter de Bloet, he supposed, given that he was Strongbow’s kinsman.

‘Raymond!’ he called again, more desperate than before. He was becoming ever more anxious. Sunshine dazzled him while flies and sweat annoyed his face. In the distance, drums and horns irritated Borard’s ears. His stomach called out for ale. ‘For God’s sake, Raymond, are you alive down there?’

As he was beginning to lose all hope he spied his captain’s shield. It was lying face up near the inner gates which, praise be to God, had again been closed in the face of the enemy. Of his captain he could see nothing and he prayed that he had made it through the gates and into the bailey before the archers had begun shooting. Several arrows stood proud in the crimson and gold shield. The last time he had seen him, Raymond had been outside the defences and on horseback alongside Bertram d’Alton. How he had managed to fight his way through the Ostman crew so that his shield was a few paces from the inner gate, Borard could not imagine. He turned away from the allure and looked down into the bailey. The survivors of the ten-strong conrois were strewn around the grass, tending to wounds and their horses. Esquires and pages ran to and fro, nervously handing out assistance and awaiting instruction.

‘We need to get someone out there, between the fortifications…’ His voice faded away for not one of the soldiers gave an indication that they had understood his order. He snatched his padded linen cap from his head and wiped it across his sweaty face.

‘Uffern ddiawl,’ one of the Welsh archers exclaimed and poked Borard in the arm with the top of his bow.

‘Oh, what now?’ Borard asked, angrily turning his back on the bailey to follow the archer’s outstretched arm as he gesticulated down into the valley between the walls. There he saw a man climb from his knees to his feet bearing Raymond’s shield. For a moment Borard’s heart leapt as he saw the crimson and gold armorial rise, believing Raymond to have survived by lying beneath the shield as the arrow storm had passed over him. Then Jarl Sigtrygg’s angry, bearded face appeared over the top.

‘Someone shoot that bastard dead,’ Borard ordered and two men close to him obediently nocked arrows on their bowstrings.

Jarl Sigtrygg surveyed the movement atop the wall and, guessing what was about to happen, ducked down to his knees behind the shield so that Borard could only see the top of his helmet. He turned to the two Welshmen at his side on the allure.

‘Ready?’ he asked and received curt nods in response. ‘Next time he looks up I want to see an arrow in each of his eyes.’ He turned back towards his enemy. ‘On my command then.’

If the Ostman had killed his friend Raymond, Borard would make sure Jarl Sigtrygg would pay with his life. He urged his enemy to raise his head but the Ostman positively refused to give the archers a clear shot. Borard could see him rummaging around at his feet, but Jarl Sigtrygg’s shield blocked sight of what he was up to. One of the archer’s at his side murmured something in his own tongue which the Norman did not understand. A flurry of movement amongst the bodies saw Jarl Sigtrygg suddenly climb to his feet again and cast aside Raymond’s shield.

In his eagerness Borard almost dropped his hand to command the two men to loose their arrows, but he managed to stop himself when he saw that Jarl Sigtrygg had sheltered behind a shield of a different kind, one that could not be pierced. And to Borard’s right Alice of Abergavenny screamed in horror.

Raymond skirted the cattle pens at a gallop, ignoring the terrified animals’ calls as he dashed the short distance to the inner gates. Men slumped inside the walls called questions in his direction as he passed by, but he did not stop, save to stoop for his sword which he had abandoned below the barbican. He threw himself at the ladder leading to the battlements, hitting the fourth rung before clambering upwards. The whole structure seemed to judder as he hauled his weight onto the timber platform above.

Momentarily blinded by the late afternoon sun pouring down, Raymond turned away and searched for Alice on the inner barbican, but he could not see her and it was only when she screamed again that he caught sight of her. She was at the far end of the allure, clinging to the top of the timber posts and wailing over the wall in the direction of the outer gates.

‘Raymond!’ One archer hailed him and clapped a big hand on his shoulder, and within seconds the captain was surrounded by smiling Welshmen offering greetings and jabbering in their own tongue in his direction. He had to weave between the outstretched arms as all along the rampart the archers leapt to their feet to cheer his safety, clapping their hands, slapping his back, and cawing happily. The captain returned their welcome as he attempted to push past as fast as possible and go to Alice’s aid.

‘Raymond, thank God you are alive,’ Borard exclaimed as he planted a bear hug across his friend’s chainmailed shoulders. Raymond could only watch as Alice sank to her knees on the walkway, crying uncontrollably.

‘You must save him,’ she whimpered.

Raymond shrugged off Borard and grabbed Alice by the shoulders, lifting her into his arms.

‘What has happened?’

It was his friend Borard who answered. ‘See for yourself.’

Reluctantly, he let go of Alice and rose so that he could see over the battlements to where Borard had indicated with a lift of his chin. He had known that an army was approaching their walls, but Raymond’s mind struggled to comprehend the sheer number that his eyes now beheld. It was a great flood of men, a tidal wave of steel and toughened leather against which even Noah’s great works could not have stood. The whole headland seemed to quake beneath their feet and from a quarter of a mile away the roar of their war songs was deafening.

It was a horde.

Drums rattled and trumpets blared as the warriors thumped the back of their shields to increase the noise assault on the wooden walls of Dun Domhnall. Jarl Sigtrygg had not been lying when he had taunted him during their fight between the walls, Raymond realised. An army of thousands approached the small Norman contingent crouching behind the fort’s creaking walls.

‘St David, preserve our souls,’ Raymond hissed as he stared at them. ‘It looks far worse from up here than it did from horseback.’

‘Aye. There is a terrible lot of them,’ Fionntán told him as he joined the captain on the wall, ‘but that’s not why Lady Alice is upset.’ He spat a long stream of spittle into the gap between the ramparts, nodding his head in the same direction.

Raymond felt his stomach squeeze in anger and fear for there, not ten paces from the outer gates, was his enemy, Sigtrygg. At the jarl’s front was Geoffrey, with a knife pressed to his windpipe, the boy’s body held firm between Jarl Sigtrygg and any Welsh arrow which might otherwise have struck him down. Tears streamed down Geoffrey’s face as he gripped Jarl Sigtrygg’s muscled forearm.

‘Shoot and I’ll kill the boy,’ the jarl shouted up at the inner wall in the French tongue as he continued to carefully pick his way between the bodies of his crewmen towards the outer gates. Hands clawed at his leather-covered thighs. The jarl kicked his wounded crewmen away and struggled towards the gates.

‘You’ll not get an arrow away without hitting Geoffrey,’ Fionntán confirmed.

‘You must save him,’ moaned Alice. ‘You promised that you would keep him safe! At least William de Braose kept him locked up in a monastery – Geoffrey did not end up with a knife to his throat.’

Raymond stared deep into Alice’s eyes. She held his gaze for several seconds, daring him to act, before her rancour turned to desperation and then to sadness as she broke down again. Her tears appalled Raymond and guilt scored through his body as he looked down on Geoffrey’s predicament. Jarl Sigtrygg was a few paces from safety under the barbican and if he was going to rescue his esquire Raymond knew that it would have to be immediate.

He turned to a Welsh archer close by. ‘Quickly, bring me rope.’

Borard was not quick enough to stop the young man from disappearing in response to Raymond’s order, but he did understand its implication.

‘You are not going down there,’ he told his captain.

Raymond ignored Borard, putting a hand to the side of his mouth. ‘Hurry up!’

‘You are not going down there, Raymond,’ Borard repeated.

‘I have to save Geoffrey. I promised I would keep him safe.’

Fionntán shook his head. ‘You will be killed.’

‘I have the beating of Sigtrygg.’

‘He will lure you outside the walls where he still has some of his crew. They will kill you and then he will finish the boy off too,’ the Gael said matter-of-factly. ‘You will be killed.’ His eyes flicked towards Alice. ‘You cannot save Geoffrey.’

Raymond shot Fionntán an angry look. ‘Rope!’

The Irishman threw his hands in the air as the archer returned and handed Raymond a long length of sturdy rope taken from Waverider. With another venomous look at Fionntán, Raymond looped the rope around one timber column and knotted it tightly. He then cast the remainder over the side of the battlements.

‘You are our captain,’ Borard attempted. ‘If you go down there you condemn us all to death.’

Raymond ignored his friend and placed his hands on the top of the wall, preparing to hoist himself up and over with three shallow breaths through his mouth. As he steeled himself to jump Borard’s palm landed on his own right hand. The delicacy of the warrior’s gesture surprised Raymond and stopped him in his tracks. He turned to look into Borard’s dejected eyes.

‘You would rob us of our captain when our need is greatest,’ he said.

‘There are better men than I who can lead you,’ Raymond said weakly as he turned away from Borard’s accusatory gaze to look at Jarl Sigtrygg. The Ostman was almost at the gates and Raymond bared his teeth in desperation. In a few seconds his enemy would have made it to safety. In moments Geoffrey would be dead. ‘Sir Hervey wants command? Then I give it to him.’

‘Do you actually believe that Sir Hervey can lead us to victory over the host of Veðrarfjord? For not one other man here trusts that he can. Yet if you tell these hundred souls that you will lead them to success, they will trust you, Raymond, and they will fight beside you without a moment’s hesitation.’

‘I am not their lord,’ he protested as he hoisted himself up onto the top of the wall, throwing his right leg over so that it dangled over the wall. ‘They have given me no oath.’

Borard smiled. ‘A good lord needs no oath and nor would a good soldier offer one. It is enough that we can trust each other to stand at his side no matter the odds. I have done that for you, Raymond de Carew. Now I need you to lock your shield to mine and to stand beside me. Here and now at Dun Domhnall.’

Raymond paused as he sat astride the walls of his fort, his chin hitting his chest as he tried to decide what he should do. Below him, Alice still sobbed for her brother, inconsolable with Fionntán at her side. He raised his head and looked past her, down the length of the inner wall lined with archers. They were hard men, the Welsh, but each looked terrified as they watched Ragnall’s army approach. Those closest grabbed glances of their captain and Raymond felt the impulse to explain himself to them, to make sure that they understood that he was not running away, that he only intended to save his esquire. They would understand that he had a responsibility to the boy, he told himself. These men, he thought, who spoke a foreign tongue and had crossed the sea to a strange land on the promise from him, an invader of their country, that together they would win great riches. Those men would understand him leaving their side when faced with annihilation by an army twenty times larger than their own.

‘Damn you, Borard,’ Raymond whispered through gritted teeth and shifted his gaze towards the outer gates. Jarl Sigtrygg had reached the barbican and there he paused, turning towards Raymond, perched high above him. The Ostman’s small, angry eyes met those of the Norman.

Jarl Sigtrygg did not smile as he did it, but neither did he take his implacable eyes off the Norman captain. The slice of the knife across Geoffrey’s throat was deliberate and slow and blood gushed from the wound and down Geoffrey’s surcoat. When it was done Jarl Sigtrygg cast the dying boy onto the ground. The jarl tarried a second longer, his eyes still locked on Raymond, before stepping backwards into the safety of the shadow cast by the barbican where no Welshman’s arrow could find him.

By Raymond’s side, Alice again began to scream.