“A line on the shore,” he told Borald as they also ran, even though they had talked over a defense more times than he could count. “Another at the gate. The last here, on the walls.” He turned in flight and engaged his captain’s eye. “I want ye at the gate. Do no’ let them in.”
“But ye—”
“I will be on the shore.”
“Aye.” Borald reached out and clasped Quarrie’s arm. “Promise me ye will fall back to the gate, if hard pressed.”
“Aye, so.” If that happened, they would be at least half beaten.
Hastily, in the guards’ room just inside the main gate, Quarrie donned armor and took up his weapons. A knife in his boot. A long knife in the loop at his belt. His sword.
Men streamed in from everywhere, a fair tide of them, and they gathered on the rocks of the shore in a ragged line to watch the Norse boats come in.
Come in they did. They made a fantastical sight under that lowering sky, like four dragons sailing out from eternity. Almost serene, they looked. And strong, so strong.
Quarrie should have known their commander would have grown tired of waiting. If waiting had been difficult for those in the settlement, only imagine fighting men confined to narrow ships in bad weather. This attack had come born of the impatience that was mankind.
If he died here—
He tried to close his mind to that, though it was a thought that tended to press in at such a time. He could hear the men murmuring all around him.
How many would survive?
The Norse flowed over the sides of the longboats and onto the shore as if they were part of the dark water itself, seething in. Men, and men, and men, more than Quarrie could count. Indeed, his mind stuttered, and he set himself to meet what must come with a single thought.
Let none pass to harm what I love.
With the first sword he met—belonging to a tall warrior in good armor with a sneer on his face—an old knowledge flooded up through him. From whence it came he could not say, but it instantly became part of his bone and sinew, not bidden by any conscious intention.
He was a warrior. Had always been.
They fought. The Norse came in bellowing and the Scots screamed back at them. Wild, indistinguishable cries, they were, that made no sense but nevertheless spoke of courage. Of defiance. Of death.
He had committed the bulk of his men to this stand upon the shore. Though he was aware of little beyond the battle with the man who faced him and the man after him, and the next, he thought others of his defenders had disobeyed him. They—and Borald—had run down from the gate to join this fight.
If they could not win it here…
There were too many attackers. That truth came to him inevitably even as he and his fellows beat back the onslaught. As he killed, wounded, and maimed. His companions fell also—both of those on either side of him did. And as the Norse fell back, others came through the water to replace them.
A few got past the line of defenders. As men fell, there were gaps in the line. Quarrie himself whirled to take a couple of those attackers down. Others were cut down by the men who remained at the gate.
The air vibrated with the crash of metal against metal. With screams and cries. His ears full, Quarrie could not think, only react.
It rained.
But nay, that was not an apt enough word for what came. The dark skies parted and water crashed down. He could scarce see his opponents.
The Norse withdrew. They went much as they had come, pulling back like an evil tide, taking their wounded but not their dead. It came to Quarrie that he might live a while longer.
Someone shouted at him, words he could not hear. He turned to see Borald, wet to the skin. On some level, he was glad to see his man still alive.
“Do ye think they are done?” Borald bellowed at him.
“Nay.” Quarrie did not.
Like rats disappearing into a hole in a stone wall, the Norse had gone. The Scots moved about through the rain to gather their own wounded, putting to the dirk what Norse lingerers had been missed.
All but one man, who stared up at Quarrie with fierce blue eyes.
