Unbidden, a verse came into his mind, a little English verse from his childhood:

In willow ford, by woody bridge,

The old kings lie, keels beneath them …

No, that was wrong! It was “Dust rose to heaven, dew fell to earth, night went forth”—that was the verse … So what was the other verse … ?

He stopped, doubled over as if stricken by cramp. Something horrible, in his head, just when he had no time to deal with it. He struggled to rise. Saw Brand approaching, concern on his face.

“I lost my count.”

“No matter. We can see forty paces now. We’ll move when Gummi does. Just one thing …” Brand bent and muttered in Shef’s ear. “A man’s come up from the rear. He says the Ragnarssons aren’t behind us. They’re not following our lead.”

“We’ll do this ourselves, then. But I tell you: the Ragnarssons, anyone—those who don’t fight, don’t share!”

“They’re moving.”

Shef was back by his own machine, in the comforting smell of sawdust. He ducked inside its shell, hooked the axe-blade of his halberd over a broken nail he had hammered in himself last night, stepped to his appointed place at the rearmost push-bar, and hurled his weight forward. Slowly, the machine began to creak along the level ground toward the waiting wall.

To the English sentries, it seemed as if the houses moved. But not the little, squat wattle-and-daub houses they knew were there. Rather, it seemed to them as if thane’s halls, church towers, belfries, were rolling toward them out of the rising mist. For weeks they had looked down from their wall at everything the eye could see. Now things were coming toward them at their own level. Were they rams? Disguised ladders? Screens for some other kind of devil-work? A hundred bows bent, loosed arrows. Useless. Anyone could see the constructions coming toward them would take no heed of bolts from a breast-bow.

But they had better weapons than that. Snarling, the thane of the northern gate hurled a white-faced fyrdman, a conscript in the service of some petty lord, back to his place on the battlements, seized one of his slave errand-runners, and barked at him.

“Go to the eastern tower! Tell the machine-folk there to shoot. You! Same tale, western tower. You! Back to the square, tell the men with the stone-hurler that there are machines coming up to the northern wall. Tell them machines! Definitely! Whatever is going on over there, this is not a feint attack. Go on, all of you, move!”

As they scattered he turned his attentions to his own troops, the ones off guard pounding up the ladders to their places, the ones who had seen already shouting and pointing at the shapes rolling closer.