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Berthold dropped into a crouch, Odei, Jonas, and Berda gathered around him, kneeling. Ivar stood off to one side, but Brother Heribert was still picking through the mouse nest, dangling the dead creatures by their tails and swinging them gently back and forth as if this movement might restore them to life.
“Listen,” said Berthold. “We have to stay here. Await Wolfhere.”
“Shouldn’t we make a run for it?” asked Jonas.
“No. The Varrens might kill us for trying to escape, and the Wendish attacking might mistake us for Varrens and we’d still be dead. Just stay put.”
“Oh, God.” Jonas pulled a hand through his curly hair and tugged on it nervously, grimacing when he yanked too hard. “I hate staying put.”
Heribert looked up, a tiny corpse hanging by its tail from his fingers. “He comes.” He dropped the mouse on the ground and, when he rose, stepped on it without seeming to see it. Bones crackled, but it had no juice left in it.
Jonas winced. Berda scrambled away as Heribert took a pair of steps closer. Berthold stood.
Shouts and cries clamored from the direction of the town. The rumble of charging horses shook the air. They dashed to the boards and tried to peer through the gaps, where they had a chance of seeing the field of battle. Working two of the boards to get the crack to open wider, Ivar caught a splinter in the stump of his missing little finger. Cursing, he squeezed it out, together with a tiny pinch of blood.
“Do you see?”
“It’s too bright!”
“Could you move? It’s my turn!”
A crash sounded behind them. All turned, except Heribert. Just beyond the byre gate, a wagon had broken its axle and tipped, spilling barrels and weapons onto the ground. One barrel rolled out of sight. Another had broken open, and ale soaked into the dirt. Men swarmed over the wreck, cursing. An arrow whistled out of the sky and slapped harmlessly into earth. Berda lifted her head and sniffed at the air.
“Come quickly.”
Ivar yelped. Jonas shrieked. Berthold jumped and stumbled. Even Odei, usually stolid and passive, skipped back to slam into the wall. Berda was already turning to acknowledge Wolfhere, who stood by the back wall. A cloud—like flour floating around a baker—of white mist evaporated as he beckoned. Light shone through a gap in the boards, illuminating his legs.
“Stay behind me. We’ll run east. If we can make it up the ramp, we can hope to lose ourselves in the hills.”
“Like we did before?” asked Ivar with a sneer.
“Better than staying here,” said Berthold. “Caught in the middle.”
“Put on these.” Wolfhere placed on the ground six amulets, crudely woven out of grass and herbs. He shoved a board to one side, ducked down, and slipped through the opening. Heribert was gone after him before anyone else could react, and then Berthold dashed forward with his attendants behind. Only Ivar hesitated, but he hadn’t the courage to stay behind.
He knelt to pick up the last amulet with his mutilated hand. It was as crudely and hastily woven as a child’s daisy necklace, and when he lifted it to his nose, wondering what plants had been woven into it, he sneezed hard. Fern interlaced with wolfsbane; a few pale flowers he did not recognize were crushed in the tangle.
At the wagon’s wreck, a sergeant showed up, shouting orders. Ivar pushed through the loose boards, then huddled there aghast, blinking in the sunlight, as he realized that the others were gone. Around him, groups of soldiers sprinted toward the entrenchments, but of Wolfhere and the others he saw no sign at all among the farmstead’s buildings, the pitched tents, and the many wagons. Maybe it was only the light that blinded him.
“Hey! You, there!” cried a sergeant, coming around the corner of the byre. “We need help here!”
Ivar settled the amulet around his neck. The sergeant pulled up short, whipped his head from side to side with a comical air, and scratched his head; giving up, he trotted away.
But now Ivar could see a faint cloudy trail twisting and turning away past the farmstead cottage, around and under wagons, and cutting across open ground where it zigged and zagged in the manner of a drunken man weaving to avoid obstacles. He ran after them, praying under his breath. His hand hurt. Blisters rose on his palm, as though he had burned himself, and the scars on the stumps of his fingers began to ooze blood.
He jogged between tents, stumbled on a guide rope, jinked sideways to avoid a line of men marching double-time who did not see him, and paused midway toward the lines to catch his breath, hand pressed to his side. The pain bit deep in his hand. His neck was beginning to itch where the amulet brushed bare skin. He tugged it down, but that pressure broke it, and it unraveled to spill like water onto the ground. Steam hissed over him and dissipated in a cloud of stinging gnats that buzzed around him in two swift circles before roaring heavenward and transmuting into a blaze of falling embers.
“Hey! You there!” A brawny man armed in mail but no tabard strode toward him, brandishing an ax in each hand.
Ivar drew his sword.
“No, you fool! Take these axes and get east to Captain Sigulf’s line there just north of the ramp. Can you take a pair of spears as well?”
“Best run with these and send another man after me,” said Ivar as he sheathed his sword and grabbed the axes. He took off. Without the amulet, he could not find their trail. He reached the road and ran toward the ramp visible in the distance because of its immense size. After a while, he had to stop to get his breath and to measure the lay of the land.
The sun’s heat made him sweat. On all sides, dark clouds built as for a storm. Wind creaked and groaned in the far forest.
The valley of Kassel was like an uneven bowl, with its steeper, higher rim to the north and east and a lower rim to the south and west. Most of the western ground was striped with fields, a long stretch of land that terminated where the slopes rolled up a shallow rise and sprouted trees. A line of unevenly spaced fruit trees ran through the middle of the fields, parallel to a narrow waterway. The Varren camp had been planted where the more rugged eastern and northern slopes gave them some protection, and also to straddle the Hellweg where it cut diagonally from northeast to southwest through the valley. Here, because of the contours of the earth, Ivar could sight easily both downslope and up, southwest and northeast.
