Rurik's Arc

Chapter 14 of 22

Rurik came down from the tower with the enemy plan clear in his head. The riders would sweep the ravine at dawn, cavalry on both wings, the center pinning his line. He knew where they would come. He had no way to stop the horses once they entered. A ravine with open ends was a road, not a trap. He needed a wall. He gathered the others in the yard. Thorin, the old dwarf who had walked at his shoulder all night, leaned on his rune-carved axe. Bjorn stood apart, blood dried on his arm, still weighing every word Rurik spoke. Gunnar wiped soot from his hands. Kjell watched the south, where torches formed into wings. "Cavalry needs open ground," Rurik said. "We give them none. We close the ravine mouth. Funnel the wings into one narrow throat, then hold it." "With what?" Bjorn said. "We have no wall." Rurik pointed at the brewing hall on the high ground. Barrels lined its front, stacked two deep. "We have those. Full casks, grain sacks, the tower's fallen doors. We build across the ravine mouth before the sun." Thorin frowned. "Barrels won't stop a horse at the gallop." "They'll slow it. Break its legs." Rurik turned to Gunnar. "You breached the tower. Can you drop the iron doors across the gap?" Gunnar looked at the ravine, then the hall. "Doors, casks, a wagon on its side. Lash it. Won't be pretty." He hefted his hammer. "It'll hold long enough to kill on." They worked in the dark. Kjell drove the men in shifts, the way he had at the mead hall. They rolled the full casks down and wedged them mouth to mouth. Gunnar and two others dragged the iron-banded doors from the tower and set them upright, braced with grain sacks. Bjorn heaved a supply wagon onto its side and jammed it into the throat. Rurik brought the wyrm last. The iron-scaled body had drawn back its warmth from the meat and the rest. He walked it into the narrow gap and coiled it low behind the wall, gold eye open. "You wait here," he told it. "When they pile against the barrels, you come over the top." Gunnar drove the final spike as the sky went gray. He stepped back and spat. "Done." The wall crossed the ravine mouth, waist-high, ugly, packed tight. The wide road had become a throat one horse wide. Rurik set his archers on the high sides and his line behind the barrels. Then the ground shook with hooves. The southern host came up the ravine at the gallop, both wings pouring toward the open mouth. The lead horses hit the wall of casks and doors. Legs snapped. Riders pitched forward into the packed throat, and the horses behind crushed into the wreck. The killing ground was made. But the center column did not charge the wall. It split left and climbed the ravine's stone side, coming for the archers on the high ground.