The Great Pagan Army Read online

  The onager crews worked tirelessly. They ratcheted the twin handles with efficient speed. Another man fit a stone into the cup. The fourth yanked the release lever. A whirl of noise sounded; the firing arm thudded against the crossbeam. Wood groaned and a stone sped at the tower. The fourth man watched the stone’s flight while the first two began ratcheting the roll bar once again. All along the line, the catapults thumped and kicked. The Siege Master stumped from one machine to the next. He squatted at some and with his finger tested the skeins that gave the onagers their deadly power. As the firing continued throughout the morning, the crews moved their catapults forward or dragged them backward. Sometimes they merely adjusted them, a matter of inches and facing.

  Odo and his men endured the long pelting, the hail of bone-breaking stones. Rocks smacked against the tower. Projectiles whooshed overhead. Too often missiles landed upon the tower top. Unless a man braced himself (they all crouched low), the stone knocked him off his feet. It cracked linden wood or splintered the shield’s edge. One man perished as a stone clipped him on the head. He had been a carpenter and he had only worn a leather hat, no iron helmet. Soon they all crowded together, squeezed down behind the battlement, the stone merlons and crenels. It was uncomfortable. Occasionally a man rose and glanced around to make sure the Northmen hadn’t snuck up on the tower.

  After what must have been the seven hundredth stone, Robert asked, “How long can they keep this up?”

  Odo looked over the parapet. Steam rose from the backs of the onager crews. Their faces shone with sweat. Danes waddled forward with more baskets of stones, taking the used-up baskets. Odo chewed his lip. Surely, the skeins couldn’t last forever. Hadn’t the charcoal-burner said that over time a skein lost its power? Was that over a matter of hours or days? Odo swore by Saint Germain’s beard. He hadn’t envisioned this. He shook his head and then ducked as stones flew and cracked against the tower. He felt the strikes through the battlement. Could the Danes batter the parapets into dust? It seemed impossible with such small stones. The Northmen would need bigger catapults for that, bigger missiles.

  “Damn them,” groaned Wulf.

  Men panted. Some shook with fear.

  “If only there was some way of hitting back!” Robert said.

  Inspiration struck Odo. He shouted, “Be of good cheer, men! This sort of attack means that the Danes fear you. Why otherwise do they endlessly hammer us with rocks? I’ll tell you, because they’re afraid to come to grips with us man to man.” He forced himself to laugh. “They think this will make you afraid. What fools Northmen are.”

  Wulf’s eyes became round with wonder. Then he nodded sharply. “Yes, they’re damn fools!” he shouted.

  “These are like the Devil’s darts,” said Abbot Ebolus. “But the Devil cannot harm you if you trust in God, if you raise the shield of faith.”

  Men nodded to one another. A few gave tremulous smiles. Yet the terrible pelting continued. Some time later, horns blared, those hateful horns.

  Odo raised his face, and as he did Danish archers ran forward and then skidded to a halt. Their bows lifted, strings drew back and twanged. Flights of arrows rose into the sky. They flew up and up, climbing into the cold blue air, and then reached their apogee and began their fast descent.

  “Raise your shields!” Odo shouted. “Get up your shields. Hurry, hurry!” he shouted.

  Men fumbled with their big shields. Then the arrows struck. The Danes had shot the arrows at a high angle, steeply to fly almost straight up and then fall straight down. The arrows hissed and fell like iron-tipped rain, rattling upon linden wood. A man screamed; so did another.

  “Keep up your shields,” Odo said. “Keep under them.”

  Bows twanged anew. Arrows flew into the sky. Stones, meanwhile, continued striking the tower.

  “This is no good!” snarled Robert. “We have to hit back.”

  Odo darted up and barely ducked down in time as rocks splintered and sprayed sharp fragments. He panted, and forced himself up again. The effort made his gut tighten. The archers crept nearer, the shield-men with them. He threw himself down.

  “Listen,” he whispered hoarsely, as he crouched behind the battlement. “Are you listening? My knights and retainers must grab angons. You must aim for the shields. Pepper them. The rest of you—Listen!” he shouted. “You must listen to me. Everyone else must stand when I shout and fling two javelins. We cannot allow them to shoot us so freely. First, though, everyone must dart up and see where the archers are. Go,” he said.

  Men rose. Not all of them did, but most looked up and then ducked back down behind the battlement.

  “Knights and retainers use the angons and aim for the shields,” Odo said. “Everyone one else, hurl your javelin hard like you’ve been trained. And don’t forget to lift up your shield.” He waited as men slid angons and javelins across the floor into waiting hands.

  The angon was an ancient Germanic weapon, a special type of javelin. It had a 30-inch iron socket, thirty inches of thin iron and a barbed head. (From reading Vegetius, Odo had concluded that the angon was a copy from the Roman pilum.) A properly thrown angon sank the barbs into a shield, making it hard to pry back out. The thin iron also bent under the impact. That made the shield worthless, too heavy and cumbersome to wield well. Only the knights and retainers were to throw the angons because they had practiced long years hurling spears and javelins. The blacksmiths and carpenters had trained only a few weeks. Their javelins were often just fire-hardened ash, which meant that there were fifteen to twenty javelins for every angon. A hand-hurled angon or javelin moved slowly in flight. It had little of the arrow’s swift passage. An ordinary man could easily dodge a javelin cast over a distance. Thus, the normal military usage of javelins was to hurl them in mass at packed ranks of enemy. Unlike an arrow, a javelin weighed one or two pounds. Hard-thrown, especially down from a height, javelins sometimes went through shields or pierced tough leather barbing. Of course, a trained shield-man didn’t take the javelin straight on, but tried to deflect it at an angle, to make the javelin skip as a stone tossed across a stream. Unfortunately, the javelin’s killing distance was less than an arrow’s, about thirty-to-forty paces (each pace being the length of a man’s stride). Thrown from a height, of course, that killing distance increased.

  “Are you ready?” Odo asked.

  Men nodded.

  Odo licked his lips, waited as a flurry of onager stones struck the tower and then shouted: “Now!”

  The defenders of the Petit Pont Tower shouted with rage, stood up and hurled angons and javelins. The knights and retainers, better trained and long practiced, hurled harder and with better aim. The others just threw; their numbers were more dangerous than their skill. The Danish shield-men raised their linden-wood shields. They protected the archers. Knights and retainers threw a second volley. Some of the others did likewise. Many angons hit and bit. That dragged down a few shields. An archer screamed, pitching onto the snow, a javelin passed clear through his chest. A shield-man collapsed around a shaft of ash. Others staggered backward.

  The tower’s handful of Frank archers strung and released arrow after arrow.

  The Danish archers backpedaled. Shield-men dragged the wounded. Others limped back. The Northmen didn’t panic. They didn’t break and run, but they retreated out of the javelin range, panting, glaring at the cheering, fist-shaking Franks.

  Now however a deadly game began, albeit from a longer range: Danish bowman verses Frankish javelin thrower. These Northmen were marksmen, and onager-stones made every Frankish rise a risk. Nevertheless, the Franks held certain advantages. The tower’s height (small though it was) added momentum to each javelin and stole that of upward-fired arrows. Maybe even more important was that a Frank could curl up against the battlement and rest in almost complete safety, but the archers could never really rest behind a shield. Lastly, the bowmen’s arrows ran out and then they had to race back for another sheaf, while stacks of javelins rested within hand-reach of
the Franks. Odo had realized they would need thousands of javelins, and thousands they had—if many of those were only fire-hardened. They had far fewer angons.

  Even with all these advantages, however, and with the deadly first javelin-strike against the Danish archers, the stones and arrows took a toll among the defenders. Men carried down the dead carpenter and another with terrible arrow wound. The shaft had pierced his upper chest just under the collarbone, sinking straight down into his body. He had thrashed and screamed, until a butcher had cracked him over the head with a bludgeon. Stone fragments gashed cheeks. The original man hit in the chest with a stone had stopped breathing. Arrows furrowed arms and shoulders. Blood soaked into tunics and in places stained the tower floor. Two men had taken arrow shafts deep in their thighs. The arrows were barbed, impossible to yank out, and with the stones and arrows flying, it was unwise for others to hold the wounded men down while a third pushed the arrow through the back of the thigh and thus drew it out. So the two, thigh-wounded men endured, pale and trembling, but keeping their station. Odo praised them, as did Abbot Ebolus.

  Then the arrow-fire slackened, and the number of onager stones lessened until for a full minute or more no rocks rained down. On the tower men rose up like gophers; they rose as those who had endured a long nightmare.

  Odo stretched, rubbed his eyes and wondered why he felt so fatigued. He hadn’t swung his sword, just crouched as stones and arrows fell among them. The Danish archers retreated behind the onager crews. Those crews sat on their machines, swilling from jugs as they gnawed bread and cheese. Other men trundled up with more baskets of stones and took the empty baskets away. The majority of that mighty host, stationed well behind the onagers, sat on their shields. They had watched the long pelting. Now they too drank and ate.

  Odo whirled around. “Let’s eat while we can. Break out the biscuits, and let’s be quick about it. This may be our last chance to eat for quite some time.”

  Knights and militiamen alike munched on hard biscuits and drank watery beer. Odo pointed out the fifty ‘catapults’ that faced the Merchant Quarter. None of those had fired. From the pristine snow before those walls, it didn’t look as if any arrows had been shot either. Before this tower lay many spent arrows, stones and flakes and gravely bits of battlement.

  Horns blared. The Northman host rose. Warriors discarded ale-skins and picked up their shields. They drew swords, readied spears or raised wicked axes. Onager crews wiped their hands, raced to their locations and hurriedly began ratcheting their dreadful machines. Kettledrums boomed like thunder. It was a terrible and ominous sound. The noise rolled across the plain. Odo located them. Big brass kettles sat on the snow, rows of them. They gleamed golden as muscled men hammered the stretched skins with leather-wrapped mallets.

  “Look out!” Ebolus shouted.

  The boom of the kettledrums drowned out the by now familiar sound of catapults. It almost caught them by surprise. Stones flew. The men of the tower threw themselves down behind the battlements.

  Now those kettledrums roared. The intensity and speed of the beat increased. It was as if the Northman’s sky-god, red-bearded Thor of Asgard, had climbed out of the clouds and marched among his worshippers. It was a frightening noise. It struck the tower with more impact than the pelting stones. When Odo looked up it was to a dizzying sight. Archers fired arrows. They had snuck up on them, but that was the least of it. The ladder squads had risen to their feet and rushed forward. They didn’t walk in sequenced time, didn’t jog, but ran fast to reach the tower before showers of javelins might stop them.

  At that moment, a shout mingled with the thundering kettledrums. The Northman host, those thousands of warriors, held their big shields up against their bearded faces. They bellowed, roared and then began clashing their swords, spears and axes against linden-wood. Such a sound might greet a lost soul in hell. It chilled Odo’s blood. It brought goosebumps onto his arms and neck. He opened his mouth. The archers sidled closer and closer, their shield-men warily watching the tower. The ladder teams were almost upon them. Now streams of Northmen raced from the host and toward the tower. It looked as if the entire plain was alive with killers bent on slaughtering all those in this little fort.

  “Arise men of Paris!” Odo shouted. “Arise, the Northmen are upon you!”

  ***

  Fierce sea rovers thrust up ladders amid a hail of angons and javelins. Ladder wood clacked against the merlons. Maddened warriors in mail and with shields scrambled up the wooden rungs. They charged with the names of Odin and Thor on their lips. Behind them, several paces back of the ladders, archers fired straight up at the exposed Franks.

  “Throw rocks!” screamed Abbot Ebolus, spit spraying from his mouth. “Hit them with rocks!”

  Odo clutched the leather handle of his shield with manic strength as his sweaty palm clamped onto the hilt of his father’s sword. His iron helm was jammed down tight upon his head. Trained retainers surrounded his handful of knights. Every other Frank on the tower, the hastily assembled Parisians, tunic-wearers, dropped their shields and grabbed rocks, heavy rocks carted one by one over the weeks and set in piles for just this moment. Screaming Parisians hurled those rocks directly on the Northmen. The crunch of stone against linden-wood was a good sound. Northmen shouted as they fell. Some reavers landed at odd angles, breaking their legs or snapping ankles. Some warriors were cunning and deflected these rocks. They advanced several more ladder rungs before another rock bashed against their shield. Elsewhere a ladder broke under a rock’s impact, and three Northmen plunged down to the foot of the tower.

  The Danish archers were the worst. They had easy targets, and they drilled their shafts into yielding flesh. Luckily, Wulf had sense enough to gather a handful of men and arched several flights of javelins into them, driving the archers back.

  Then there occurred what every man on the tower dreaded: a snarling Dane, his red beard bristling and with blood pouring from his nose, clambered atop the battlement. A tunic-clad Frank lunged with a spear. The Dane howled, twisted aside and bashed the man’s brains out with a great iron axe. Two other Northmen scrambled up behind the first. The maddened axe-man laid out two more Franks. Abbot Ebolus rushed forward, swung, missed and staggered back as the axe clove his shield, splintering the top, a wooden shard gashing the abbot’s fat cheek. It was old Gerold, a battle-trained man, who lifted and heaved a rock. It obliterated the raging Dane’s face and sent the Northman reeling backward. He struck one of his own and the two toppled over the battlement.

  Odo bellowed, and from the side he shield-bashed the last Dane. The shock numbed Odo’s arms. The Dane pitched backwards and followed his brethren. “Heave your missiles!” Odo shouted. “Don’t let them get back on the wall!”

  Below, a sea of Northmen surged toward their lone tower. Howling, bearded warriors with mad-glaring eyes pressed in, shoved and pushed for a chance to scramble up those ladders. Their courage dazed Odo. They kept coming. Danish archers kept firing. Corpses and gore littered the foot of the tower. Reavers dragged themselves away, legs and ankles broken. Rocks rained down a deadly hail. Yet still they came. The kettledrums pounded that booming thunder of Thor. It ignited something awful in the Danes.

  To the left, three raiders gained the parapet. One swiveled his head, gore pouring from an arrow-pierced eye. A young knight named Frederick traded blows with the Dane as retainers thrust with their spears. The crazed Dane jumped down from the parapet and onto the tower’s plank flooring. He bashed Frederick’s shield with his own and thrust his sword. It punched through iron links and stabbed into Frederick’s chest. The Dane brayed devilish laughter, but when he tried to yank his sword free, it didn’t come. His sword had lodged in Frederick’s ribs. Spearmen riddled the Dane with points. One spearman jumped up and wrestled with a different Dane on the parapet. Both fell to their deaths below.

  For how long the terrible battle raged Odo had no idea. Time seemed eternal. He panted and sweat drenched him. A Dane on the ladder reached up an
d clanged his hand-axe against Odo’s iron helm. The helmet held, but the rim gashed his forehead. Odo’s swing crunched into the raider’s cheekbone. The Dane clutched his ruined face and plunged out of sight. Odo leaned over the parapet and cut another Dane’s upturned features. Then two Franks hurled rocks at the rest of those on that ladder.

  “Back, back,” Odo said, dragging one man from the exposed position. The other slumped to the tower floor, an arrow in his throat.

  It was then that the kettledrums fell silent. Trumpets (it was a much different sound than the horns) pealed into the comparatively eerie silence. The trumpets continued their brazen call. It must have penetrated the blood-enraged souls of the Northmen. For those in the rear of the mighty throng retreated. That slackened the pressure on those trying to gain the ladders. While those before the ladders had already begun to hesitate. The dead and badly wounded lay at the foot of the tower. Reavers picked up their comrades. Bowmen winged a few last arrows. Then the onagers resumed.

  “Down!” shouted a hoarse Abbot Ebolus. “Get down.”

  It was then Odo knew they had beaten off the attack. When those hated onager-stones smacked against the battlements he realized that their tower and Paris, too, had survived the initial assault of the Great Pagan Army.

  34.

  That evening Bishop Gozlin inspected the tower by torchlight. He wore rich vestments and held his crosier. His rings flashed as he listened to the brave tales and then he bade all fall onto their knees. His priests carried a silver shrine. Men fell into reverent silence as torches crackled. Other priests set down a wooden bust of Saint Genevieve. Gozlin swept aside the shrine’s curtain. Bones lay on fine linen. With his hand on the bones and as he kneeled he prayed aloud, thanking Saint Genevieve for victory and begging for renewed aid tomorrow. Then he blessed them in her name.

  Later, Gozlin motioned aside the weary Count.

  Odo spoke first. “Your Grace, as you prayed I received an inspiration. We cannot face many more assaults like this. Somehow, we must change the nature of the battle. Then it came to me: heighten the tower. That will steal just a bit more of an archer’s power and add power to our javelins and rocks. It will also make a Dane’s climb longer. Thus I need every spare carpenter and piece of lumber you have.”