Tim Severin - Odinn's Child

As Brodir backed away slowly from his attackers, it dawned on me that he should not have been fighting alone. Members of his war band should have been on hand to protect their leader's retreat, but no one was coming to his assistance. Cautiously I twisted my head around to see what was going on elsewhere. The sound of battle was ebbing, and I guessed that there would soon be another lull in the fighting to allow the two armies to pull back and regroup. Lying prone on the ground, I could not see what had happened on the rest of the battlefield, who had sustained the heaviest losses or who had gained the upper hand. But the fighting between Brodir's men and Ospak's followers must have been murderous. Beyond the body of the tall soldier whose collapse had knocked me down lay three dead men. Judging by their armour, they were from the front line of our swine array, and they had not given up their lives cheaply. In front of them were two enemy corpses and one casualty, whether he was friend or foe I could not tell, who was still alive. He was lying on his back and moaning with pain. He had lost an arm, chopped off at the elbow, and was trying to sit up, but was so unbalanced by his maiming, that he never managed to rise more than a few inches before falling with a small whimper. Soon he must bleed to death. Cautiously I began to check my own injuries. I stretched out one arm, then the other, and half-rolled onto my side. The pain from my back pierced deep into me, but I was encouraged to find that I could feel sensation in my right leg. My left leg was completely numb and then I saw that it was still trapped under the dead soldier. Cautiously I worked the leg free and, like a crab, pulled myself away from the corpse. After a pause to gather more strength, I struggled up onto my hands and knees, and reached back to feel the spot where the axe had struck me. Under my shirt my hand touched a hard, jagged edge and for one awful moment I thought I was touching the end of a broken rib emerging from my flesh. But I was imagining. What I was feeling was the broken haft of the small knife, which I usually wore out of sight, protected in a wooden sheath and hanging loosely from a thong around my neck. During the turmoil of the battle, the knife must have swung round behind my back, and it had taken the full force of the axe blow. The crack that the Gall-Gael thought was my spine breaking was the knife and wooden sheath snapping in two.

Slowly I rose to my feet as waves of dizziness swept over me, and set off at a hobbling run, weaving my way between the scatter of dead and wounded men and heading for the one symbol that I could recognise: the black raven banner of Earl Sigurd, which marked where the Orkneymen still rallied to their leader. There were not nearly as many of them as I had remembered, and at least half of those who were still on their feet appeared to be wounded. Sigurd himself was in the centre of the group and unharmed, so I guessed that his bodyguard had done their duty. Then I noticed that most of his surviving bodyguard were Burners. They must have stood together in the battle as fellow Icelanders and that is what had saved them. To my surprise, Sigurd the Stout noticed me at once. 'Here's Kari Solmundarson's young friend,' he called out cheerfully. 'You wanted to come to Ireland and find out what it is like. Now you know.' At the mention of Kari's name, several of the Burners glanced round and I was sure that the Burner who had been puzzling over my identity finally realised who I was and that he had seen me at the Althing. But there was nothing he could do, at least for the moment.

Sigurd was demanding everyone's attention. An overweight butterball of a man, he did not look as if his place was among the cut and thrust of the battlefield, but his courage matched his corpulence. Purple in the face and hoarse from shouting, he began to stamp up and down, exhorting his men to get ready for the next clash, to fight boldly and to maintain their honour. His mother's seidr spell on the black raven banner was holding true, he told them. The Orkneymen had been the most successful of Sigtryggr's allies on the battlefield. They had withstood the enemy onslaught better than anyone else, and he praised the sacrifice of the three men who had been cut down while carrying the standard.

'Even now the Valkyries are escorting them to Valholl, where each man has rightly earned his place. Soon he will tell the tale of how he defended Odinn's raven though it meant his own certain death.' Few of the Orkneymen seemed impressed. They looked utterly exhausted and when Sigurd called for a volunteer to carry the banner at the next assault, there was no response. There was an awkward silence into which I stepped. Why I did this, I still cannot say for sure. Perhaps I was dizzy and disorientated from the battering I had received; perhaps I had decided that I had nothing to lose now that I had been recognised by the Burners. I only know that as I walked unsteadily to where the flagstaff was stuck in the ground I was feeling the same sensation of calm and inevitability that I had felt years earlier when, as a boy, I had crossed the clearing in the wood in Vinland and entered the hut of the Skraelings. My legs were acting on their own and my body was separate from my mind. I felt as if I was floating at a little distance outside and above my physical self and calmly looking down on a familiar stranger. I tugged the flagpole from the earth. For a moment Sigurd looked astonished. Then he gave a roar of approval. 'There you are,' he called to his men 'we've got our lucky bannerman! The lad's unarmed, yet he'll carry the black raven for us.'

My role as the earl's standard bearer was brief and inglorious. For a third time the High King's forces came swarming down the slope at us, and once again it was Murchad's shock troops who led the way. We had now been on the battlefield all morning and both sides were torn and weary, but somehow Murchad's people seemed to find the strength to smash down at us as fiercely as ever. Sigurd's raven banner was their supreme prize. First it was a half-crazed, kilted Irish clansman leaping down the hill determined to show his courage to his colleagues by seizing the standard. Then came a pair of grim-faced Norse mercenaries heavily chopping their way through the shield wall, concentrating at the spot nearest to the raven banner. For a short interval Fat Sigurd's Orkneymen held firm. They stood solid, shields locked together, resisting the onslaught and exchanging axe sweeps with the enemy. Two paces behind them, for I was in the second rank of the swine array now, I could do no more than use the banner staff as my crutch, leaning on it for support with my head bowed and one end of the pole resting on the ground. I was in agony from my damaged back and I tried desperately to think of a galdr spell chant that might help me, but my mind was in turmoil. I heard and felt the conflict rather than saw it. Once again there was the shouting of voices, much hoarser now, the clang of metal, the thump and thud of bodies meeting and falling, the press and jostle as our formation bent and buckled. I do not even know who struck — Gall-Gael, kern or Ostmen. But suddenly there was a terrible pain in the hand that held the staff and the banner was wrenched from my grasp as I doubled over, clasping my injured hand into my belly. Someone swore in Norse, and I was aware of a tussle as two men fought over the flag, each trying to wrench the shaft from the other. Neither won the contest. I looked up to see one of Sigurd's bodyguards, it was one of the Burners — Halldor Gudmundsson, receive a killing sword thrust in his left side, just as another of the Burners stepped behind the other man and crippled him with a downward blow behind the knee. The man fell sideways and was lost beneath the stamping feet.

'Rally to the Raven!' It was Sigurd's voice, shouting over the tumult, and the tubby earl himself pushed through the brawl and grabbed the banner staff. 'Here! Thorstein, you may carry our emblem,' and he held it out to a tall man standing nearby. It was another of the Burners.