"Harry Harrison - Hammer Cross 1 - The Hammer and the Cross" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

Bridlington, or Beverley Minster itself? They could not enslave him any more
than he was
already. Maybe foreign heathens would be better masters than the people of
Christ at home.
Too late to think that now. The sky was clearing, momentarily. He could see,
even if his
weak-eyed landlubber of a master could not. He nodded.
"Two Viking ships, master. Two mile out to sea. Southeast."
Godwin was away, bellowing instructions, calling to his other slaves, shouting
for his
horse, his horn, his small, reluctant force of conscripted freemen. Merla
straightened,
walked slowly to the southwest angle of the palisade, looked out thoughtfully
and carefully.
The weather cleared momentarily, and for a few heartbeats he could see plain.
He looked at
the run of the wavesтАФthe turbid yellow line a hundred yards offshore which
marked the
long, long expanse of tidal sandbanks which ran the full length of this barest
and most
harborless, wind- and current-swept stretch of English shoreтАФtossed a handful
of moss
from the palisade into the air and studied the way it flew. Slowly a grim and
humorless
smile creased his careworn face.
Great sailors those Vikings might be. But they were in the wrong place, on a
lee shore
with a widow- maker blowing. Unless the wind dropped, or their heathen gods
from
Valhalla could help them, they stood no chance. They would never see Jutland
or the Vik
again.
Two hours later fivescore men stood clustered on the beach south of the Head,
at the
north end of the long, long, inlet- less stretch of coast that ran down to
Spurn Head and the
mouth of the Humber. They were armed: leather jackets and caps, spears, wooden
shields, a
scattering of the broadaxes they used to shape their boats and houses. Here
and there a sax,
the short chopping sword from which the Saxons to the south took their name.
Only
Godwin had a metal helmet and mail-shirt to pull on, a brass-hilted broadsword
to buckle
round his waist. In the normal way of things men like these, the coast-watch
of Bridlington,
would not hope or expect to stand on the shore and trade blows with the
professional
warriors of Denmark and Norway. Rather, they would fade away, taking as much
as they