Conqueror

XVIII

With victory secured, Alfred's priests launched themselves into a long sequence of services of thanksgiving. Alfred endured this for an hour.

Then he broke up the services and put the priests to work. In their vestments they were sent down to the battlefield, where they were to tend the English wounded. His clerks too were sent to the field, to work their way across broken soil soaked in blood, to retrieve the weapons of the dead, swords and spears and shields. Even arrow-heads were to be retrieved for their precious iron, Alfred ordered, plucked from the bodies of the dead if necessary.

Alfred knew the fight was not yet done, and even in the aftermath of this great triumph he was thinking ahead. The surviving Danes were retreating to their old quarters at Cippanhamm. There they would have to be starved out by a siege – and for that the English would need all the weapons they could muster.

Cynewulf waited in the camp until Arngrim was brought in.

Two thegns bore the body, laid out on two shields set on spears. Arngrim's face was battered to bloody meat, his mail shirt punctured in a dozen places, and even the shields on which he was carried were splintered and broken. With him on his improvised bier was his sword Ironsides, undamaged but bloodstained – and the severed arm of the beast Egil.

Alfred had the arm of the Beast nailed to the great oak tree at the heart of the camp, above his giving-throne, where all men could see it. Alfred announced that the English had won the day because of the advantage of the high ground, because they had taken the battle to the Danes after a winter of containment – and because of the courage and intelligence of Arngrim, who had made the crucial break in the skjaldborg.

Cynewulf had his cousin laid out in a tent, on a heap of blankets. He immediately found the main wound. It was a rip in Arngrim's lower belly, made by a blow powerful enough to have cut through his mail. Though one of the King's own physicians fussed around, Cynewulf chased him away. He would have nobody tend his cousin save Ibn Zuhr. Though he had always despised the Moor Cynewulf had no doubt that his foreign medicine was better than anything the King's doctors could muster.

But Ibn Zuhr said there was little he could do. 'The wound is too deep,' he murmured. 'His intestines are gashed too – there will be internal bleeding, infection from the spilled contents of his gut-'

Cynewulf, sickened, said, 'Just do your best, Moor.'

So Ibn Zuhr cleaned his hands in hot water, and made a potion of his obscure herbs, a kind of tea which he had Cynewulf hold under the thegn's nose. This would deepen his unconscious state, the Moor said, while he worked. Then he cleaned out the wound. This was a rough job, as Ibn Zuhr scooped out dirt and dried blood and yellow fat and pus from the cavity, as if gutting a pig. Then he pulled the thegn's organs back into place. He had Cynewulf hold the two ragged sides of the wound together – it was difficult, the flesh was slippery with blood, and the priest needed all his strength – while Ibn Zuhr stitched the wound with a bone needle and gut thread. When it was done he washed the wound with wine, and covered it with a light silken cloth.

The Moor stood back, breathing hard, his arms bloodied to the elbow. 'I have done my best,' he said.

'I believe you,' murmured Cynewulf.

'I don't.' The voice was a gurgle, as if his throat was full of blood. But Arngrim's eyes were open.

'Cousin! You are alive!'

'The gates of the Upperworld are closed to me yet.'

'Does it hurt?'

Arngrim grimaced, as if trying to laugh. 'For a priest you are an idiot, Cynewulf. I half-woke while the Moor was rummaging in my gut. Imagine how that felt. Worse than the Dane's blade.'

'I'm not ready to give you the last rites yet.'

'My sword. And my trophy.'

'Ironsides is here, at the foot of the bed. And the King nailed the Beast's arm to the oak tree.'

Amgrim snorted. 'That will do. Egil lived, I think. But by Woden's eyes I hope the bastard dies of the wound I inflicted on him today. Listen, Cynewulf. When I die – my sword – I promised it to the river-'

'Arngrim, I'm a priest of Christ. I can't perform a pagan ritual.'

'You must,' Arngrim croaked. 'Or my way to the Upperworld will be barred. You are kin, Cynewulf. Isn't human blood more important than an argument between gods? And my family in Brycgstow. Tell my sons how their father died.'

Cynewulf, through tears, had to smile. 'You speak of your sword before your family.'

Arngrim grunted. 'Tell them that too. Make them laugh instead of cry. And don't you go baptising them on the sly, you pious bastard.' He coughed, and groaned as the spasm tore at his wound.

Ibn Zuhr stepped forward. 'You must rest now.' He held a cup full of another of his teas. 'Drink this, and you will sleep a while.' One arm was concealed by his body as he leaned over Arngrim, the other arm raised the cup. Arngrim accepted the drink. But as the liquid touched his lips his eyes widened. Then he fell back into unconsciousness.

Cynewulf stayed with his cousin all night, praying. But the thegn did not wake again.

And as the dawn light broke over a green country that was once again English, Arngrim breathed his last. Cynewulf closed his cousin's mouth and eyes, and wiped his face clean of the last of his blood and sweat.

It was only then, as Cynewulf stood back from his cousin's body, that he noticed the dagger which protruded from Arngrim's side, buried up to the hilt. And he knew how he had finally died, what Ibn Zuhr had done in that moment when he had leaned over Arngrim's body to give him the sleeping potion.

For the rest of the day Cynewulf searched for the Moorish slave, but he had vanished.

That evening Cynewulf rode alone to the river bank, bearing Ironsides. The weapon was so heavy Cynewulf could barely lift it, let alone imagine wielding it in combat.

At the river bank, Cynewulf tethered his horse at a tree. The water lapped peacefully, and birds fluttered away as he walked. He would never have known that yesterday hundreds of men had wilfully murdered each other, not an hour's ride from here.

He walked along the bank until he found an outcropping of rock. He jammed the sword into a break in the rock face, and hauled at its hilt. The mighty blade would barely bend at his pulling, let alone break. Cynewulf told himself there was no shame in using his mind in carrying out this pagan ritual. He found a broken branch about as long as the sword, and with his belt fixed it to Ironsides' hilt. After a couple of false starts, with his whole weight applied to his lever, he managed at last to bend the sword, and break it.

Then, breathing hard, he took the two halves of the sword and hurled them into the river, muttering prayers to God, and to Woden.