Sword Song

Haesten had sent a whole crew to open the channel. Their ship had been beached fifty paces down the bank and, beyond it, I could see a mass of other ships waiting to row out to sea when the channel was cleared. Haesten and all his men were fleeing Beamfleot, and they were taking Æthelflaed with them, and beyond the creek, on the steep hill beneath the burning hall, I could see Sigefrid and Erik’s men running recklessly down the precipitous slope to assault the treacherous Haesten.

Whose men now came at us in overwhelming numbers.

“Shield wall!” a voice roared. I have no idea who shouted and only remember that I thought we must die here on this muddy bank and I patted Clapa’s bloody cheek and saw his ax lying in the mud and I felt the same rage that Rypere felt. I sheathed Serpent-Breath and snatched up the huge, wide-bladed, long-bearded war ax.

Haesten’s crew came screaming, driven by an urgency to escape the creek before Sigefrid’s men came to slaughter them. Haesten was doing his best to slow that pursuit by burning Sigefrid’s ships where they were beached on the far side of the creek. I was only dimly aware of those new fires, of flames rippling quick up tarred rigging, of smoke blowing across the incoming tide, but I had no time to watch, only to brace myself as the screaming men came closer.

And then they charged the last few paces, and we should have died there, but whoever had shouted at us to form a shield wall had chosen his place well, for one of Caninga’s many ditches snaked across our front. It was not much of a ditch, scarce a muddy rivulet, but our attackers stumbled on its slippery sides and we went forward, our turn to scream, and the fury in me became the red rage of battle. I swung the huge ax at a man recovering from his stumble and my war shout rose to a scream of triumph as my blade slashed through a helmet, chopped into a skull, and sliced a brain in two. Blood sluiced black into the air as I still screamed and jerked the ax free and swung it again. I knew nothing but madness, anger, and desperation. Battle-joy. Blood-mad. Warriors to the slaughter, and our whole shield wall had moved to the ditch’s edge where our enemy was floundering and we had a moment’s furious slaughter, blades in the moonlight, blood black as pitch, and men’s screams as wild as the wild birds’ screams in the darkness.

Yet we were outnumbered and we were outflanked. We should have died there about the post that held the guard-ship’s chain, except that more men dropped overboard from that tethered ship and came running through the shallows to assail our attackers’ left flank. But Haesten’s men still outnumbered us, and the men in the ranks behind pushed past their dying comrades to attack us. We were forced slowly back, as much by their weight as by their weapons. I had no shield. I was swinging the ax two-handed, snarling, keeping men at bay with the heavy blade, though a spearman, out of reach of my ax blade, jabbed repeatedly at me. Rypere, beside me, had found a fallen shield and did his best to cover me, but the spearman managed to dodge the shield and stabbed low to slice open my left calf. I hurled the ax and the heavy blade smashed into his face as I slid Serpent-Breath from her scabbard and let her scream her war song. My wound was trivial, the wounds Serpent-Breath gave were not. A demented man, mouth agape to reveal toothless gums, flailed an ax at me and Serpent-Breath took his soul with elegant ease, so elegant that I laughed in triumph as I wrenched the blade from his upper belly. “We’re holding them!” I bellowed, and no one noticed I shouted in English, but though our small shield wall was indeed holding firm just in front of the great post, our attackers had outflanked the left of our line and the men there, attacked from two sides, broke and ran. We stumbled backward to follow them. Blades crashed into our shields, axes splintered boards, swords rang on swords, and back we went, unable to hold our ground against so many, and we were driven past the great mooring post and now there was light enough in the sky for me to see the green slime clinging to the post’s base where the huge chain lay rusted.

Haesten’s men screamed a great howl of victory. Their mouths were distended, their eyes were bright with light reflected from the east and they knew they had won, and we just ran away. There is no other way to describe that moment just before the full dawn. Sixty or seventy men were trying to kill us, and they had already killed some of the crewmen from the moored guard-ship, and the rest of us ran back onto the foreshore where the mud was thick and I thought again that I must die there where the sea ran in slithering ripples across the slick flats, but our attackers, content that they had driven us off, turned back to the post and chain. Some watched us, daring us to go back to the firmer ground and challenge them, while the others slashed at the chain with axes. Beyond them, dark against the darkest part of the sky where the last stars faded, I could see Haesten’s ships waiting to slide out to sea.

The axes rang and chopped, and then a cheer sounded and I saw the heavy chain slither snakelike across the mud. The tide had turned now and the new flood was running strong, and the blocking ship was being swung westward, carried into the creek by that surge of water, and I could do nothing but watch as Haesten’s escape was made possible.

Our attackers were running back to their own ship. The chain had vanished into the low water as the blocking ship slowly dragged it away. I remember stumbling forward through the mud, one hand on Rypere’s shoulder and my left foot squelching the blood in my boot. I held Serpent-Breath and knew I was powerless to stop Æthelflaed being carried away to a worse captivity.

The ransom, I thought, would be doubled now, and Haesten would become a lord of warriors, a man wealthy beyond even his inordinate greed. He would assemble an army. He would come to destroy Wessex. He would be king, and all because that chain had been severed and the Hothlege at last was being unblocked.

I saw Haesten then. He was standing in the bows of his ship, which I knew was named the Dragon-Voyager, and she was the first ship waiting for the creek mouth to be fully clear. Haesten stood in cloak and armor, stood proud beneath the raven’s head that crowned his ship’s prow, and his helmet glinted with the new dawn, and his drawn blade was shining, and he was smiling. He had won. Æthelflaed, I was certain, was in that ship, and behind him were twenty other ships; his fleet, his men.

Sigefrid and Erik’s men had reached the creek and had launched some of the boats that had been spared the fire. They had begun to fight Haesten’s rearward ships and in the glare of the burning ships I saw the glint of weapons and knew that more men were dying, but it was all too late. The creek was opening.

The blocking ship, held now by its bow chain alone, swung faster and faster. In a few heartbeats, I knew, the narrow channel would be wide open. I watched Haesten’s oars dip to keep the Dragon-Voyager steady against the flooding tide and knew that at any moment the oars would pull hard instead and I would see his lean vessel speed past the stranded guard-ship. He would row away eastward, away to a new encampment, away to a future that would bring him a kingdom that had once been called Wessex.

None of us spoke. I did not know the men beside whom I had fought, and they did not know me, and we just stood there, disconsolate strangers, watching the channel widen and the sky brighten. The sun had almost touched the world’s rim and the east was ablaze with red, gold and silver light. And that sunlight flashed off Haesten’s wet oar-blades as his men brought them far forward. For a moment the sun slashed into my eyes from all those reflections, then Haesten shouted a command and the blades vanished in the water and his longship surged forward.

And it was then I realized that there had been panic in Haesten’s voice. “Row!” he was shouting, “pull!”

I did not understand his panic. None of Sigefrid’s hastily manned ships were anywhere near him and the open sea lay before him, yet his voice sounded desperate. “Row!” he screamed, “row!” and the Dragon-Voyager slid still faster toward the gold-bright east. Her dragon’s head, snout raised and teeth bared, defied the rising sun.

And then I saw why Haesten panicked.

The Sea-Eagle was coming.

Finan had made the decision. Later he explained it to me, but even days afterward he found it hard to justify the choice he had made. It was instinct as much as anything. He knew I wanted the channel open, yet by bringing Sea-Eagle into the Hothlege he would bar the passage again, yet still he decided to come. “I saw your cloak,” he explained.

“My cloak?”

“The bolt of lightning, lord. And you were defending the chain-post, not attacking it.”

“Suppose I’d been killed?” I suggested. “Suppose an enemy had taken my cloak?”

“And I recognized Rypere, too,” Finan said, “you can’t mistake that ugly little man, can you?” And so Finan had told Ralla to bring the Sea-Eagle into the channel. They had been lurking at the eastern end of Two-Tree Island, the patch of marsh and mud that formed the northern bank of the channel’s entrance, and Ralla had ridden the incoming tide into the Hothlege. Just before they entered the channel he ordered the oars to be shipped inboard, then he had steered the Sea-Eagle so that she struck one bank of the Dragon-Voyager’s oars.

I watched. The Sea-Eagle was in the channel’s center while Haesten’s ship was nearer to me so I did not see the long oar looms snap, though I heard them shatter. I heard the splintering sound as shaft after shaft broke, and I heard the screams from Haesten’s men as the oar handles were driven back to crush their chests, and that is a horrible injury. Those screams were still sounding as the Dragon-Voyager jarred to a sudden stop. Ralla had thrust on the steering-oar to push Haesten’s ship onto Caninga’s mud shelving bank, and then the Sea-Eagle also stopped abruptly as she was trapped between the stranded blocking ship and the newly beached Dragon-Voyager. The channel was closed again, plugged now by three ships.

And the sun rose full above the sea, brilliant as gold, flooding the earth with a dazzling new light.

And Beamfleot’s creek became the killing place.

Haesten ordered his men to board the mastless Sea-Eagle and kill its crew. I doubt he knew whose ship it was, only that it had thwarted him, and his men screamed as they leaped aboard to find Finan leading my household warriors to meet them, and the two shield walls met on the forward rowing benches. Ax and spear, sword and shield. For a moment I could only watch. I heard the crack of shields slamming together, saw that new light flicker from raised blades, and saw more of Haesten’s men crowding onto Sea-Eagle’s bows.

That fight filled the creek’s entrance. Behind those three ships the flooding tide was drifting the rest of Haesten’s fleet back toward the burning boats on the shore, but not all of Sigefrid’s boats were burning, and more and more were being manned and rowed toward Haesten’s rearward vessels. The fighting had started there too. Above me, on Beamfleot’s looming green hill, the hall still burned, and on Hothlege’s shore the ships burned too, and so the new golden light was veiled with palls of smoke beneath which men died while wisps of black ash, fluttering like moths, drifted from the sky.

Haesten’s men ashore, the ones who had driven us onto the mud and released the guard-ship’s chain, splashed through the shallow water to haul themselves onto Dragon-Voyager so they could join the fight aboard Sea-Eagle. “Follow them,” I shouted.

There was no reason for Sigefrid’s men to obey me. They did not know who I was, only that I had fought beside them, but they understood what I wanted and they were infused with a fighting-man’s rage. Haesten had betrayed his agreement with Sigefrid, and these were Sigefrid’s men, and so Haesten’s men must die.

Those men, the ones who had driven us to ignominious flight, had forgotten us. They were on board Dragon-Voyager now and scrambled toward the Sea-Eagle, intent on killing the crew that had frustrated Haesten’s escape, and we were unopposed as we climbed aboard their ship. The men I led were my enemies, but they did not know that and they followed me willingly, eager to serve their lord, and we struck Haesten’s men from the rear and, for an instant, we were the lords of killing. Our blades took men in the spine, they died without knowing they were under attack, and then the survivors turned and we were nothing but a handful of men facing a hundred.

There were far too many men aboard Haesten’s ship, and there was not nearly room enough in the Sea-Eagle’s bows for all of them to join that fight. But the men on Dragon-Voyager now had their own enemy. They had us.

But a ship is narrow. Our shield wall, that had easily been outflanked on land, here stretched from side to side of the Dragon-Voyager, and the rowing benches made obstacles that stopped a man charging home. They had to come slowly or else risk tripping on the knee-high benches, but they still came eagerly. They had Æthelflaed, and every man was fighting for a dream of riches, and all they needed to do to become wealthy was kill us. I had picked up a shield from one of the men I had struck down in our first sudden assault, and now I stood, Rypere on my right and a stranger on my left, and let them come.

I used Serpent-Breath. My short-sword, Wasp-Sting, was usually better in a shield wall fight, but here the enemy could not close on us because we stood behind a rowing bench. At the ship’s centerline, where I stood, there was no bench, but a mast crutch served as an obstacle, and I had to keep looking left and right, past the high crutch, to see where the worst danger threatened. A wild-bearded man climbed onto the bench in front of Rypere, meaning to hack an ax down onto his head, but the man held his shield too high and Serpent-Breath pierced his belly from beneath and I turned her, ripped her sideways, and his ax fell behind Rypere as the Northman screamed and twisted on my blade. Something, ax or sword, was beating on my shield, then the stomach-ripped man fell sideways across that weapon, and blood ran down Serpent-Breath’s blade to warm my hand.

A spear slashed beside me, the lunge deflected by my shield. The blade vanished, pulled back, and I overlapped my shield on Rypere’s just before the spear struck again. Let it, I remember thinking. They could thrust spears at shields all morning and get nowhere. To break us they had to cross the obstructing bench and fight us face to face, and I looked over the shield’s rim to see the bearded faces. They were shouting, I have no idea what insults they hurled at us, I only knew that they would come again, and they did, and I thrust the shield up at a man on the bench to my left and stabbed Serpent-Breath at his leg, a puny stroke, but my shield boss caught his belly and hurled him backward, and a blade rammed my lower belly, but the mail did not break. They were crowding down the ship now, the men behind forcing the men in front onto our blades, but the sheer weight of the attack was driving us backward, and I was dimly aware that some of our men were defending our spines against a counterattack from those of Haesten’s men who had boarded Sea-Eagle and now tried to get back on board Dragon-Voyager. Two men managed to get past the crutch and shield-charged me, their slamming impact staggering me sideways and back and I tripped on something and sat heavily on the edge of a rower’s bench and, in blind panic, stabbed Serpent-Breath past the edge of my shield and felt her puncture mail, leather, skin, muscle, and flesh. Things crashed on my shield and I heaved forward, sword still trapped in an enemy’s flesh, and miraculously there was no enemy to keep me down and I touched shields right and left and roared a challenge as I ripped and twisted Serpent-Breath free. An ax hooked on my shield’s upper rim and tried to haul it down, but I dropped the shield, lost the ax, and raised the shield and my sword was free again and I could lunge her at the axman. All instinct, all rage, all screaming hate, all a blur in my mind now.

How long did that fight last?

It might have been a moment or an hour. To this day I do not know. I listen to my poets sing of age-old fights and I think no, it was not like that, and certainly that fight aboard Haesten’s ship was nothing like the version my poets warble. It was not heroic and grand, and it was not a lord of war giving out death with unstoppable sword-skill. It was panic. It was abject fear. It was men shitting themselves with fright, men pissing, men bleeding, men grimacing and men crying as pathetically as whipped children. It was a chaos of flying blades, of shields breaking, of half-caught glimpses, of despairing parries and blind lunges. Feet slipped on blood and the dead lay with curling hands and the injured clutched awful wounds that would kill them and they cried for their mothers and the gulls cried, and all that the poets celebrate, because that is their job. They make it sound marvelous. And the wind blew soft across the flooding tide that filled Beamfleot’s creek with swirling water in which the new-shed blood twisted and faded, faded and twisted, until the cold green sea diluted it.

There had been two battles at the beginning. My crew aboard Sea-Eagle, led by Finan and helped by the remnants of Sigefrid’s warriors who had been manning the stranded blocking ship, fought a desperate defense against Haesten’s household troops. We helped them by boarding Dragon-Voyager while, at the creek’s far end, where the ships burned bright, Sigefrid and Erik’s men attacked the rearward boats of Haesten’s fleet.

But now it changed. Erik had seen what happened at the creek’s mouth and, instead of boarding a ship, he led his men up the southern bank, splashed through the small channel that led to Two-Tree Island, and then swarmed onto the beached blocking ship. From there they jumped onto Sea-Eagle and so added their weight to Finan’s shield wall. And they were needed, for Haesten’s leading ships had at last rowed to their lord’s rescue and still more men were trying to board the Sea-Eagle, while others were climbing aboard the Dragon-Voyager. It was chaos. And when Sigefrid’s men saw what Erik did, many followed, and Sigefrid himself, aboard a smaller longship, found water enough to row against the tide and was bringing that ship toward the fight at the channel’s mouth where the three boats were locked together, and men fought in ignorance of who they fought. Everyone, it seemed, was against everyone. This, I remember thinking, was like the battles that wait for us in Odin’s corpse-hall, that eternity of joy in which warriors will fight all day and are resurrected to drink and eat and to love their women all night.

Erik’s men, flooding aboard the Sea-Eagle, helped Finan drive Haesten’s boarders back. Some jumped into the creek, which was just deep enough to drown a man, others escaped onto the newly arrived ships of Haesten’s fleet, while a stubborn rearguard made a defiant shield wall in the Sea-Eagle’s bows. Finan, helped by Erik, had won his battle, and that meant many of his men could come aboard Dragon-Voyager to stiffen our beleaguered shield wall, and the fight on Haesten’s ship lessened in intensity as his men saw nothing but death. They backed away, stepping over benches and leaving their dead, and snarled at us from a safe distance. Now they waited for us to attack.

And it was then, in that small pause as men on both sides balanced the probabilities of life and death, that I saw Æthelflaed.

She was crouched beneath the steering platform of Dragon-Voyager from where she stared at the tangle of death and blades in front of her, but there was no fear on her face. She had her arms around two of her maidservants and she watched, wide-eyed, but with no apparent fear. She had to have been terrified, for the last few hours had been nothing but fire, death, and panic. Haesten, we later learned, had ordered the fire set to Sigefrid’s thatch and, in the ensuing chaos, his men had rushed the guards Erik had placed on Æthelflaed’s hall. Those guards had died, and Æthelflaed had been snatched from her chamber and dragged precipitately down the hill to the waiting Dragon-Voyager. It had been well done; a clever, simple, and brutal plan, and it might have worked except that Sea-Eagle had been waiting just beyond the creek’s mouth, and now hundreds of men hacked and stabbed at each other in a wild fight where no man knew exactly who his enemy was, and men just fought because fighting was their joy.

“Kill them! Kill them!” That was Haesten, urging his men back to the slaughter. He only had to kill our men and Erik’s men and he would be free of the creek, but behind him, coming fast, Sigefrid’s ship surged past Haesten’s other vessels. Her steersman aimed her at the three ships blocking the channel, and there was room enough for the oars to get three hard strokes so that the smaller ship crashed hard into the fight. She rammed Sea-Eagle’s bows, just where the last of Haesten’s boarders had their shield wall, and I saw those warriors stagger sideways under the shock of the impact, and I also saw Sea-Eagle’s planks driven inward as Sigefrid’s stem-post drove hard into my ship. Sigefrid was almost thrown from his chair by the impact, but he struggled back upright, bear-cloaked, sword in hand, and bellowed at his enemies to come and be killed by his sword, Fear-Giver.

Sigefrid’s men leaped into the battle, while Erik, tousle-haired and sword in hand, had already crossed the Sea-Eagle’s stern to board Dragon-Voyager and was hacking his wild way toward Æthelflaed. The fight was turning. The arrival of Erik and his men and the impact of Sigefrid’s ship had put Haesten’s warriors on the defensive. The remnant on board Sea-Eagle gave up first. I saw them struggling to board Dragon-Voyager and thought Sigefrid’s men must have attacked with a howling intensity to put them to flight so quickly, but then I saw that my ship was sinking. Sigefrid’s ship had splintered her side and the sea was flooding through the broken planks.

“Kill them!” Erik was screaming. “Kill them!” and under his leadership we went forward and the men in front of us gave way, yielding a row of benches. We followed, clambering over the obstacle to receive a rain of blows on our shields. I stabbed Serpent-Breath forward and struck nothing but shield-wood. An ax hissed over my head, the blow missing only because the Dragon-Voyager lurched at that moment and I realized the rising tide had lifted her from the mud. We were afloat.

“Oars!” I heard a huge shout.

An ax buried itself in my shield, splitting the wood apart, and I saw a man with mad eyes staring at me as he tried to retrieve his blade. I pushed the shield wide and lunged Serpent-Breath at his chest, using all my force so that her steel went through his mail and he went on staring at me as the sword found his heart.

“Oars!” It was Ralla, shouting at those of my men who no longer had to defend themselves against Haesten’s attackers. “Oars, you bastards,” he shouted, and I thought he must be mad to try and row a sinking ship.

But Ralla was not mad. He was thinking sensibly. Sea-Eagle was sinking, but Dragon-Voyager was floating, and Dragon-Voyager’s bows were pointing to the open estuary. But Ralla had splintered one bank of her oars and now he forced some of my men to carry Sea-Eagle’s oars across the gap. He was planning to take Haesten’s ship.

Except the Dragon-Voyager was now a maelstrom of desperate men. Sigefrid’s crew had crossed Sea-Eagle’s sinking bows to gain a lodgment on the steering platform above Æthelflaed and from there they were hacking at Haesten’s men, who were being pushed back by my companions and by Erik’s crew, who fought with a maniacal fury. Erik had no shield, just his long-sword, and I thought he must die a dozen times as he hurled himself on his enemies, but the gods loved him at that moment and Erik lived while his enemies died. And still more of Sigefrid’s men came from the stern so that Haesten and his crew were squeezed between us.

“Haesten!” I shouted, “come and die!”

He saw me, and looked astonished, but whether he heard me, I do not know, for Haesten wanted to live to fight again. Dragon-Voyager was floating, but in water so shallow that I could feel her keel bumping on the mud, and behind her were more of Haesten’s ships. He jumped overboard, landing in the knee-deep water, and his crew followed, running down Caninga’s bank to the safety of their next ship. The fighting, that had been so furious, died in an eyeblink.

“I have the bitch!” Sigefrid shouted. He had somehow boarded Haesten’s ship. His men had not carried him, for his chair with its lifting poles was still on the ship that had sunk Sea-Eagle, but the massive strength in Sigefrid’s arms had hauled him across the sinking boat and up into Dragon-Voyager, and now he lay on useless legs, a sword in one hand and Æthelflaed’s unbound hair in his other.

His men grinned. They had won. They had retrieved the prize.

Sigefrid smiled at his brother. “I have the bitch,” he said again.

“Give her to me,” Erik said.

“We’ll take her back,” Sigefrid said, still not understanding.

Æthelflaed was staring at Erik. She had been wrenched down to the deck, her golden hair in Sigefrid’s huge hand.

“Give her to me,” Erik said again.

I will not say there was silence. There could not have been silence for the battle still raged along the line of Haesten’s ships, and the fires roared and the wounded moaned, but it seemed like silence, and Sigefrid’s eyes looked along the line of Erik’s men and settled on me. I was taller than the others, and though my back was to the rising sun, he must have seen something he recognized for he lifted his sword to point the blade at me. “Take off the helmet,” he ordered in his curiously high voice.

“I am not your man to be commanded,” I said.

I still had some of Sigefrid’s men with me, the same men who had come from the blocking ship to thwart Haesten’s first attempt to open the channel, and those men now turned toward me with weapons rising, but Finan was also there, and with him were my household troops.

“Don’t kill them,” I said, “just drop them overboard. They fought beside me.”

Sigefrid let go of Æthelflaed’s hair, shoving her back toward his men, and heaved his huge, black-swathed cripple’s body forward. “You and the Saxon, eh?” he said to Erik. “You and that treacherous Saxon? You betray me, brother?”

“I will pay your share of the ransom,” Erik said.

“You? Pay? In what? Piss?”

“I will pay the ransom,” Erik insisted.

“You couldn’t pay a goat to lick the sweat off your balls!” Sigefrid bellowed. “Take her ashore!” This last command was to his men.

And Erik charged. He did not need to. There was no way that Sigefrid’s men could take Æthelflaed ashore for the Dragon-Voyager had been carried by the incoming tide past the half-sunken Sea-Eagle and now we were drifting down onto Haesten’s next boats, and I feared we would be boarded any minute. Ralla had the same fear and was dragging some of my men to the forward rowers’ benches. “Pull,” he shouted, “pull!”

And Erik charged, meaning to cut down the men who now held Æthelflaed, and he had to pass his brother who squatted dark and angry on the blood-slicked deck, and I saw Sigefrid lift the sword and saw Erik’s look of astonishment that his own brother would raise a blade against him, and I heard Æthelflaed’s scream as her lover ran onto Fear-Giver. Sigefrid’s face showed nothing, neither rage nor sorrow. He held the sword as his brother folded on the blade, and then, without an order, the rest of us charged. Erik’s men and my men, shoulder to shoulder, went to start the killing again and I paused only long enough to seize one of my warriors by the shoulder. “Keep Sigefrid alive,” I ordered him, and never saw who it was, then carried Serpent-Breath to the last slaughter of that bloody morning.

Sigefrid’s men died fast. There were few of them and many of us. They stood for a moment, meeting our rush with a locked shield wall, but we came with a fury born of bitter anger and Serpent-Breath sang like a screaming gull. I had thrown down my shield, wanting only to hack into these men, and my first stroke beat down a shield and sliced off the jaw of a man who tried to scream and only spat blood as Sihtric drove a blade into the open red maw of his mouth. The shield wall broke under our fury. Erik’s men fought to avenge their lord, and my men fought for Æthelflaed who crouched, arms over her head, as Sigefrid’s men died around her. She was shrieking, screaming inconsolably like a woman at the burial of the dead, and perhaps that was what kept her alive because, in that slaughter on the Dragon-Voyager’s stern, men feared those awful shrieks. The noise was terrifying, overwhelming, a sadness to fill the world, and it went on even after the last of Sigefrid’s men had leaped overboard to escape our swords and axes.

And only Sigefrid remained, and the Dragon-Voyager was under way, pulling against the tide to creep out of the channel under her few oars.

I draped my blood-soaked cloak over Æthelflaed’s shoulders. The ship was moving faster as Ralla’s oarsmen found their rhythm and as more men, dropping shields and weapons, snatched up the long oars and fitted them through the holes in Dragon-Voyager’s flanks. “Row!” Ralla called as he came down the blood-slopping deck to take the steering-oar. “Row!”

Sigefrid remained and Sigefrid lived. He was on the deck, his useless legs curled beneath him, his sword hand empty, and with a blade held at his throat. Osferth, Alfred’s son, held that sword, and he looked at me nervously. Sigefrid was cursing and spitting. His brother’s body, with Fear-Giver still piercing the belly, lay beside him. Small waves broke on Caninga’s point as the new tide raced across the wide mudflats.

I went to stand over Sigefrid. I stared down at him, not hearing his insults. I looked at Erik’s corpse and thought that was a man I could have loved, could have fought beside, could have known like a brother, and then I looked at Osferth’s face, so like his father’s. “I told you once,” I said, “that killing a cripple was no way to make a reputation.”

“Yes, lord,” he said.

“I was wrong,” I said, “kill him.”

“Give me my sword!” Sigefrid demanded.

Osferth hesitated as I looked back to the Norseman. “I will spend my life beyond death,” I told him, “in Odin’s hall. And there I shall feast with your brother, and neither he nor I wishes your company.”

“Give me my sword!” Sigefrid was pleading now. He reached for Fear-Giver’s hilt, but I kicked his hand away from Erik’s corpse. “Kill him,” I told Osferth.

We dropped Sigefrid Thurgilson overboard somewhere on the sun-dancing sea beyond Caninga, then turned westward so that the flooding tide could carry us upriver. Haesten had managed to board another of his ships and, for a time, he pursued us, but we had the longer and faster boat, and we drew away from him and, after a time, his ships abandoned the chase and the smoke of Beamfleot receded until it looked like a long low cloud. And Æthelflaed still wept.

“What do we do?” a man asked me. He was one of Erik’s men, the leader now of the twenty-two survivors who had escaped with us.

“Whatever you wish,” I said.

“We hear that your king hangs all Northmen,” the man said.

“Then he will hang me first,” I said. “You will live,” I promised him, “and in Lundene I shall give you a ship and you may go wherever you want.” I smiled. “You can even stay and serve me.”

Those men had laid Erik’s body reverently on a cloak. They pulled Sigefrid’s sword from their lord’s belly and gave it to me, and I in turn handed it to Osferth. “You earned it,” I said, and so he had, for in that welter of death Alfred’s son had fought like a man. Erik held his own sword in his dead hand and I thought he would already be at the feasting hall, waiting for me.

I took Æthelflaed away from her lover’s corpse and led her to the stern and there I held her as she cried in my arms. Her golden hair brushed my beard. She clung to me and cried till she had no more tears, and then she whimpered and hid her face against my bloody mail coat.

“The king will be pleased with us,” Finan said.

“Yes,” I said, “he will.” No ransom would be paid. Wessex was safe. The Northmen had fought and killed each other, and their ships were burning and their dreams were ashes.

I felt Æthelflaed’s body shaking against mine and I stared eastward to where the sun dazzled above the smoke of burning Beamfleot. “You’re taking me back to Æthelred, aren’t you?” she said accusingly.

“I’m taking you to your father,” I said. “Where else can I take you?” She did not answer because she knew there was no choice. Wyrd bi? ful ãræd. “And no one must ever know,” I went on quietly, “about you and Erik.”

Again she did not answer, but now she could not answer. She was sobbing too heavily and I held my arms around her as though I could hide her from the watching men and from the world and from the husband who awaited her.

The long oars dipped, the riverbanks closed on us, and in the west the smoke of Lundene smudged the summer sky.

As I took Æthelflaed home.

HISTORICAL NOTE

There is more fiction in Sword Song than in the previous novels about Uhtred of Bebbanburg. If Æthelflaed ever was captured by the Vikings then the chroniclers were curiously silent about the incident, so that strand of the story is my invention. What is true is that Alfred’s eldest daughter did marry Æthelred of Mercia, and there is a good deal of evidence that the marriage was not made in heaven. I suspect I have been extremely unfair to the real Æthelred, but fairness is not the historical novelist’s first duty.

The records of Alfred’s reign are comparatively rich, partly because the king was a scholar and wanted such records kept, but even so there are mysteries. We know that his forces captured London, but there is controversy over the exact year in which that city was essentially incorporated into Wessex. Legally it remained in Mercia, but Alfred was an ambitious man, and he was evidently determined to keep kingless Mercia subservient to Wessex. With the capture of Lundene he has begun the inexorable northward expansion that will eventually, after Alfred’s death, transmute the Saxon kingdom of Wessex into the land we know as England.

Much of the rest of the story is based on truth. There was a determined Viking attack on Rochester (Hrofeceastre) in Kent that ended in utter failure. That failure vindicated Alfred’s defensive policy of ringing Wessex with burhs that were fortified towns, permanently garrisoned by the fyrd. A Viking chieftain could still invade Wessex, but few Viking armies traveled with siege equipment, and any such invasion thus risked leaving a strong enemy in its rear. The burh system was immaculately organized, a reflection, I suspect, of Alfred’s own obsession with order, and we are fortunate to possess a sixteenth-century copy of an eleventh-century copy of the original document describing the burh’s organization. The Burghal Hildage, as the document is known, prescribes how many men would be needed in each burh, and how those men were to be raised, and it reflects an extraordinary defensive effort. Ancient ruined towns were revived and ramparts rebuilt. Alfred even planned some of those towns and, to this day, if you walk the streets of Wareham in Dorset or Wallingford in Oxford you are following the streets his surveyors laid out and passing property lines that have endured for twelve centuries.

If Alfred’s defensive scheme was a brilliant success, then his first efforts at offensive warfare were less remarkable. I have no evidence that Æthelred of Mercia led the fleet that attacked the Danes in the River Stour, indeed I doubt that foray was any of Æthelred’s business, but other than that the tale is essentially true and the expedition, after its initial success, was overwhelmed by the Vikings. Nor do I have a shred of evidence that Æthelred ever subjected his young wife to the ordeal of bitter water, but anyone fascinated by such ancient and malicious sorcery can find God’s instructions for the ceremony in the Old Testament (Numbers 5).

Alfred the Great, as Sword Song ends, still has some years to reign, Æthelflaed of Mercia has glory to find, and Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a fictional character, though based on a real man who happens to be one of my paternal ancestors, has a long road to travel. England, in the late ninth century, is still a dream in the minds of a few visionaries. Yet dreams, as the more fortunate of my characters discover, can come true, and so Uhtred and his story will continue.