The Burning Land

FOUR

Next day Ealdorman Ælfwold came to Lundene. His lands lay in the northern parts of Saxon Mercia, which made them the most vulnerable to Danish attacks, and he had only kept his estates by the expense of hiring warriors, by bribing the Danes, and by fighting. He was old, a widower, and tired of the struggle. “As soon as the harvest is gathered,” he said, “the Danes come. Rats and Danes, they arrive together.”

He brought nearly three hundred men, most of whom were well armed and properly trained. “They might as well die with you as rot at Gleawecestre,” he remarked. He was homeless because his hall had been burned by one of Haesten’s bands. “I abandoned it,” he admitted. “I’m used to fighting off a couple of hundred of the bastards, but not thousands.” He had sent his household servants, his daughters, and grandchildren to Wessex in the hope they would be safe there. “Are the northern jarls truly planning an attack on Alfred?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“God help us,” he said.

Folk were moving into the old city. Lundene is really two cities, the Roman one built on the high ground and, to the west, beyond the River Fleot, the new Saxon city. The first was a place of high stone walls and the faded glory of marble pillars, while the other was a malodorous swamp of thatch and wattle, but folk preferred the swamp because they swore the crumbling Roman buildings were haunted by ghosts. Now, fearing Haesten’s men more than any specter, they were crossing the Fleot and finding themselves shelter in the older houses. The city stank. The Roman sewers had caved in, the cesspits were not large enough, and the streets became fouled. Cattle were penned in the old Roman arena and pigs roamed the streets. Weohstan’s garrison manned the walls, which were high and stout. Most of the battlements were Roman-built, but where time had decayed the stonework there were thick oak palisades.

Finan was leading horsemen north and east every day and brought back news of Danes returning eastward. “They’re taking plunder to Beamfleot,” he said, “plunder and slaves.”

“Are they staying in Beamfleot?”

He shook his head. “They go back to Mercia.” He was angry because we did not have enough men for him to attack the Danish horsemen. He could only watch.

Ralla, scouting downriver in the Haligast, saw more Danes arriving from across the sea. Rumors had spread that both Wessex and Mercia were in disarray and the crews were hurrying to share the plunder. Haesten, meanwhile, tore destruction across Mercia’s farmlands while Æthelred waited at Gleawecestre for an attack that never came. Then, the day after Ælfwold brought his housecarls to Lundene, came the news I had been expecting. The Northumbrian fleet had landed in Defnascir and had made a camp above the Uisc, which meant Alfred’s West Saxon army marched to protect Exanceaster.

The Saxons seemed doomed. A week after my foray downriver I sat in the palace hall and watched the fire-cast shadows flicker on the high ceiling. I could hear monks chanting from Erkenwald’s cavernous church, which lay next to the Mercian palace. If I had climbed to the roof I would have seen the glow of fires far to the north and west. Mercia was burning.

That was the night Ælfwold abandoned hope. “We can’t just wait here, lord,” he told me at the evening meal, “the city has enough men to defend it, and my three hundred are needed elsewhere.”

I ate that evening with my usual companions; Æthelflæd, Finan, Ælfwold, Father Pyrlig, and Beornoth. “If I had another three hundred,” I said, and despised myself for saying it. Even if fate brought me another three hundred warriors I would still not have nearly enough men to capture Beamfleot. Æthelred had won. We had challenged him, we had lost.

“If you were me, lord,” Ælfwold, a shrewd man, asked quietly, “what would you do?”

I gave him an honest answer. “Rejoin Æthelred,” I said, “and persuade him to attack the Danes.”

He crumbled a piece of bread, finding a chip of millstone that he rubbed between his fingers. He was not aware of what he did. He was thinking of the Danes, of the battle he knew must be fought, of the battle he feared would be lost. He shook his head. “Tomorrow,” he said quietly, “I take my men west.” He looked up at me. “I’m sorry.”

“You have no choice,” I said.

I felt like a man who had lost almost everything playing at dice and then, like a fool, had risked all that remained on one last throw. I had failed. What had I thought? That men would come to me because of reputation? Instead they had stayed with their gold-givers. Æthelred did not want me to succeed and so he had opened his chests of silver and offered wealth to men if they joined his army. I needed a thousand men and I could not find them, and without them I could do nothing. I thought bitterly of Iseult’s prophecy made so many years before, that Alfred would give me power, that I would lead a shining horde and have a woman of gold.

That night, in the upper room of the palace where I had a straw mattress, I gazed at the dull glow of distant fires beyond the horizon and I wished I had stayed in Northumbria. I had been drifting, I thought, ever since Gisela’s death. I thought Æthelflæd’s summons had given my life a new purpose, but now I could see no future. I stood at the window, a great stone arch that framed the sky, and I could hear singing from the taverns, the shouts of men arguing, a woman’s laughter, and I thought that Alfred had taken away the power he had given me and the promised shining horde was a half-crew of men who were beginning to doubt my ability to lead them anywhere.

“So what will you do?” Æthelflæd asked from behind me.

I had not heard her come. Her bare feet made no sound on the stone floor. “I don’t know,” I admitted.

She came and stood beside me. She touched my hand where it rested on the sill, tracing the ball of my thumb with a gentle finger. “The swelling has gone,” she said.

“The itch too,” I said.

“See?” she asked, amusement in her voice, “the sting was no omen.”

“It was,” I said, “but I’ve yet to discover what it means.”

She left her hand on mine, her touch light as a feather. “Father Pyrlig says I have a choice.”

“Which is?”

“To go back to Æthelred or find a nunnery in Wessex.”

I nodded. Monks still chanted in the church, their droning punctuated by laughter and singing from the taverns. Folk were seeking oblivion in ale or else they were praying. They all knew what the fires of the burning sky meant, that the end was coming. “Did you turn my eldest son into a Christian?” I asked.

“No,” Æthelflæd said, “he found it for himself.”

“I’ll take him north,” I said, “and beat the nonsense out of him.” Æthelflæd said nothing to that, just pressed her hand on mine. “A nunnery?” I asked bleakly.

“I’m married,” she said, “and the church tells me that if I am not with my God-given husband then I must be seen to be virtuous.” I was still gazing at the fire-smeared horizon where the flames lit the underside of clouds. Above Lundene the sky was clear so that moonlight cast sharp shadows from the edges of the Roman roof tiles. Æthelflæd leaned her head on my shoulder. “What are you thinking?”

“That unless we defeat the Danes there’ll be no convents left.”

“Then what will I do?” she asked lightly.

I smiled. “Father Beocca liked to talk of the wheel of fortune,” I said, and wondered why I had spoken of him as if he lay in the past. Did I see the end coming? Would those distant fires creep ever closer till they burned Lundene and seared the last Saxon from Britain? “At Fearnhamme,” I said, “I was your father’s warlord. Now I’m a fugitive with not enough men to fill a ship’s benches.”

“My father calls you his miracle worker,” Æthelflæd said. “True,” she said when I laughed, “that’s what he calls you.”

“I could work him a miracle,” I said bitterly, “if he gave me men.” I thought again of Iseult’s prophecy, how Alfred would give me power and my woman would be golden, and that was when I turned at last from the distant fires and looked down at Æthelflæd’s golden hair and took her into my arms.

And next day Ælfwold would leave Lundene and I would be left powerless.

Three horsemen came first. They arrived in the dawn, galloping across the Fleot’s filthy valley and up to the city gates. I heard the horn calling from the ramparts and I threw on clothes, pulled on boots, kissed Æthelflæd, and ran down the stairs to the palace’s hall just as the door was thrown open and the three mailed men strode in, their feet splintering the already splintered tiles. Their leader was tall, grim and bearded. He stopped two paces from me. “You must have some ale in this shit-stinking city,” he said. I was staring with disbelief. “I need breakfast,” he demanded, and then could not help himself. He laughed. It was Steapa, and with him were two younger men, both warriors. I shouted for the servants to bring food and ale, still hardly believing that Steapa had come. “I’m bringing you twelve hundred men,” he said briskly.

For a moment I could hardly speak. “Twelve hundred?” I echoed feebly.

“Alfred’s best,” Steapa said, “and the Ætheling is coming too.”

“Edward?” I was too astonished to make any sensible response.

“Edward and twelve hundred of Alfred’s best men. We rode ahead of them,” he explained, then turned and bowed as Æthelflæd, swathed in a great cloak, entered the hall. “Your father sends his greetings, lady,” he said.

“And he sends your brother,” I said, “with twelve hundred men.”

“God be praised,” Æthelflæd said.

The hall filled as the news spread. My children were there, and Bishop Erkenwald and Ælfwold and Father Pyrlig, then Finan and Weohstan. “The Ætheling Edward will lead the forces,” Steapa said, “but he is to accept Lord Uhtred’s guidance.”

Bishop Erkenwald looked astonished. He was glancing from Æthelflæd to me and I could tell he was scenting sin with the eagerness of a terrier smelling a fox’s earth. “The king sent you?” he asked Steapa.

“Yes, lord.”

“But what of the Danes in Defnascir?”

“They’re just scratching…” Steapa said, then reddened because he had almost said something that he thought would offend the bishop, let alone a king’s daughter.

“Scratching their arses?” I finished for him.

“They’re doing nothing, my lady,” Steapa muttered. He was the son of slaves and, for all his eminence as the commander of Alfred’s bodyguard, he was awed by Æthelflæd’s presence. “But the king wants his men back soon, lord,” Steapa said, looking at me, “just in case the Northumbrian Danes do wake up.”

“So finish your breakfast,” I said, “then ride back to Edward. Tell him he’s not to enter the city.” I did not want the West Saxon army inside Lundene with its tempting taverns and whores. “He’s to march north around the city,” I ordered, “and keep marching east.”

Steapa frowned. “He’s expecting to find supplies here.”

I looked at Bishop Erkenwald. “You’ll send food and ale to the army. Weohstan’s garrison will provide escorts.”

The bishop, offended by my peremptory tone, hesitated, then nodded. He knew I spoke now with Alfred’s authority. “Where do I send the supplies?” he asked.

“You remember Thunresleam?” I asked Steapa.

“The old hall on the hill, lord?”

“Edward’s to meet me there. You too.” I looked back to the bishop. “Send the supplies there.”

“To Thunresleam?” Bishop Erkenwald asked suspiciously, smelling still more sin because the name reeked of paganism.

“Thor’s Grove,” I confirmed. “It’s close to Beamfleot.” The bishop made the sign of the cross, but he dared not protest. “You and one hundred of your men are coming with me,” I told Weohstan.

“My orders are to defend Lundene,” Weohstan said uncertainly.

“If we’re at Beamfleot,” I said, “there’ll be no Danes threatening Lundene. We march in two hours.”

It took nearer four hours, but with Ælfwold’s Mercians, Weohstan’s West Saxons, and my own men we numbered over four hundred mounted warriors who clattered through the city’s eastern gate. I left my children in the care of Æthelflæd’s servants. Æthelflæd insisted on riding with us. I argued against that, telling her she should not risk her life, but she refused to stay in Lundene. “Didn’t you take an oath to serve me?” she asked.

“More fool me, yes.”

“Then I give the orders,” she said, smiling.

“Yes, my duck,” I said, and earned a thump on the arm. At the beginning of their marriage Æthelred had always called Æthelflæd “my duck,” an endearment that annoyed her. So now she rode beneath my banner of the wolf’s head, Weohstan flew the West Saxon dragon, while Ælfwold’s Mercians displayed a long flag showing the Christian cross. “I want my own banner,” Æthelflæd told me.

“Then make one,” I said.

“It will show geese,” she said.

“Geese! Not ducks?”

She made a face at me. “Geese are Saint Werburgh’s symbol,” she explained. “There was a huge flock of geese ravaging a cornfield and she prayed and God sent the geese away. It was a miracle!”

“The abbess at Lecelad did that?”

“No, no! The abbess was named after Saint Werburgh. The saint died a long time ago. Maybe I’ll show her on my banner. I know she protects me! I prayed to her last night and see what she did?” She gestured at the men following us. “My prayers were answered!”

I wondered if she had prayed before or after she had come to my room, but decided that was a question best left unasked.

We rode just north of the drab marshes that edged the Temes. This was East Anglian territory, but there were no great estates close to Lundene. There had once been beamed halls and busy villages, but the frequent raids and counter-raids had left the halls in ashes and the villages in terror. The Danish King Eohric of East Anglia was supposedly a Christian and had signed a peace treaty with Alfred, agreeing that his Danes would stay away from both Mercia and Wessex, but the two kings might as well have signed an agreement to stop men drinking ale. The Danes were forever crossing the frontier and the Saxons retaliated, and so we rode past impoverished settlements. The people saw us coming and fled to the marshes or else to the woods on the few small hills. We ignored them.

Beamfleot lay at the southern end of the great line of hills which barred our path. Most of the hills were heavily wooded, though above the village, where the slopes were highest and steepest, we could see the old fort which had been made on the grassy dome above the river. We swerved northward, climbing a steep track which led to Thunresleam, and we rode cautiously because the Danes would have seen us coming and they could easily have sent a force to attack us as we rode uphill through the thick trees. I expected that attack. I had sent Æthelflæd and her two maidservants to the center of our column and had ordered every man to ride with his shield looped onto his arms and weapons ready. I listened for the sound of birds fleeing through the leaves, for the clink of harness, for the thud of a hoof on leaf mold, for the sudden shout that would announce a charge of Viking horsemen from the hill above, but the only birds clattering through the leaves were the pigeons we ourselves scared away. The defenders of Beamfleot had evidently yielded the hill to us, and not one Dane tried to stop us.

“That’s crazy,” Finan said as we reached the crest. “They could have killed a score of us.”

“They’re confident,” I said. “They must know the walls of their fort will stop us.”

“Or else they don’t know their business,” Finan said.

“When did you last meet a Dane who didn’t know how to fight?”

We sent men to scout the surrounding trees as we approached the old hall at Thunresleam, but still no enemy appeared. We had been to this hall years before, back when we had negotiated with the Norsemen, Sigefrid and Erik, and afterward we had fought a bitter battle in the creek beneath the fort. Those events seemed so distant now and both Sigefrid and Erik were dead. Haesten had survived that long ago fight, and now I had come to oppose him again, though none of us knew whether Haesten himself had returned to Beamfleot. Rumor said he was still ravaging Mercia, which implied he was confident that Beamfleot’s garrison could protect itself.

The oak-beamed hall at Thunresleam would be at the center of my camp. It had once been a magnificent building, but it had been abandoned many years before and the pillars were rotting and the thatch was black, damp and sagging. The great beams were thick with bird droppings while the floor was a mass of weeds. Just outside the hall was a stone pillar about the height of a man. There was a hole through the stone that was filled with pebbles and scraps of cloth, the votive offerings left by the local folk who had fled our arrival. Their village was a mile eastward and I knew it had a church, but the Christians of Thunresleam understood that their high place and old hall were sacred to Thor and so they still came and sent prayers to that older god. Mankind can never be too safe. I might not like the Christian god, but I do not deny his existence and, at hard moments in my life, I have sent prayers to him as well as to my own gods.

“Shall we make a palisade?” Weohstan asked me.

“No.”

He stared at me. “No?”

“Clear out as many trees as you can,” I ordered him, “but no palisade.”

“But…”

“No palisade!”

I was taking a risk, but if I made a palisade I would give my men a place of safety and I knew how reluctant men were to abandon such security. I had often noticed how a bull, brought for entertainment to some feast, will adopt a patch of land as its refuge and defend it self from the attacking dogs with a terrible ferocity so long as it stays in its chosen refuge, but goad the bull out and it loses confidence and the dogs sense the vulnerability and attack with a renewed savagery. I did not want my men to feel safe. I wanted them nervous and alert. I wanted them to know that safety lay not in a fort of their own making, but in capturing the enemy’s fort. And I wanted that capture to be quick.

I ordered Ælfwold’s men to cut trees to the west, clearing the woods back to the hill’s edge and beyond so we could see far across the country toward Lundene. If the Danes brought men back from Mercia I wanted to see them. I put Osferth in charge of our sentries. Their job was to make a screen between us and Beamfleot to warn of any sally by the Danes. Those sentries were in the woods, hidden from the old high fort, and if the Danes came I expected to fight them among the trees. Osferth’s men would slow them until my whole force could be brought against the attackers, and I ordered that every man was to sleep wearing his mail coat and with his weapons close by.

I asked Ælfwold to protect our northern and western flanks. His men would watch for the approach of our supplies and guard against reinforcements coming from Haesten’s men who still smeared the far horizon with smoke. Then, those orders given, I took fifty men to explore the country about our encampment that rang with the sound of axes biting into trees. Finan, Pyrlig, and Osferth accompanied me, as did Æthelflæd who ignored all my advice to stay out of danger.

We went first to the village of Thunresleam. It was a straggle of thick-thatched cottages built about the scorched and collapsed ruin of a church. The villagers had fled when we climbed the hill, but a few braver souls now appeared from the woods beyond their small fields where the first shoots of wheat, barley, and rye greened the furrows. They were Saxons and the first to approach us were led by a burly peasant with matted brown hair, one eye, and work-blackened hands. He looked up at Ælfwold’s banner that showed the Christian cross. I had borrowed the banner to make it clear we were not Danes, and the cross evidently reassured the one-eyed man who knelt to us and beckoned for his companions to kneel. “I am Father Heahberht,” he said.

He told me he was priest to the village and to two other settlements farther east. “You don’t look like a priest,” I said.

“If I did, lord, I’d be dead,” he said, “the witch in the fort kills priests.”

I glanced southward, though from here the old fort on the hill was not visible. “The witch?”

“She is called Skade, lord.”

“I know Skade.”

“She burned our church, lord.”

“And she took the girls, lord,” a woman said tearfully, “even the young ones. She took my daughter and she was only ten years old, lord.”

“Why did she do…” Æthelflæd began the question, then abruptly stopped as she realized the answer was obvious.

“Have they abandoned the old fort?” I asked. “The one on the hill?”

“No, lord,” Father Heahberht answered, “they use it to keep watch. And we have to take food there, lord.”

“How many men there?”

“About fifty, lord. They keep the horses there, too.”

I did not doubt that the priest told the truth, but the Danes had seen us coming and I reckoned the old fort would have been reinforced by now. “How many men are in the new fort?” I asked.

“They won’t let us near the new fort, lord,” Father Heahberht said, “but I’ve watched it from the hill at Hæthlegh, lord, and I could not count all the men inside.” He looked up at me nervously. His dead eye was milky white and ulcerated. He was shivering with fear, not because he thought we were an enemy like the Danes, but because we were lords. He forced himself to speak as calmly as he could. “They number in their hundreds, lord. Three thousand men rode west, lord, but they left all their wives and children in Beamfleot.”

“You counted the ones who left?”

“I tried, lord.”

“Their wives and children are here?” Æthelflæd asked.

“They live on the beached boats, lady,” Heahberht said.

The priest was an observant man and I rewarded him with a silver coin. “So who commands in the new fort?” I asked him. “Haesten himself?”

Father Heahberht shook his head. “Skade does, lord.”

“Skade! She’s in command?”

“We’re told so, lord.”

“Haesten hasn’t returned?” I asked.

“No, lord,” Heahberht said, “not that we’ve heard.” He told us how Haesten had started building his new fort as soon as his fleet arrived from Cent. “They made us cut oak and elm for them, lord.”

“I need to see this new fort,” I said and I gave Heahberht another coin before kicking my horse between two of the cottages and onto a field of growing barley. I was thinking of Skade, of her cruelties, of her desperate lust to be a ruler. She could order men by the pure strength of her will, but did she have the skills to deploy them in battle? Yet Haesten was no fool, he would not have left her in command if he doubted her ability, and I did not doubt that he had also left her sufficient troops and competent advisers. I kicked the horse again, riding south now into the trees. My men followed. I rode recklessly, careless that the Danes might have men in the woods, though we saw none. I sensed that Skade’s garrison was content to stay behind its walls, confident in their ability to resist any attack.

We reached the edge of that high ground where the land dropped steeply to the web of creeks and inlets that threaded the marsh. Beyond that was the wide Temes, its southern shore just visible in the distant haze. Four ships idled in the middle of that great spread of light-reflecting water. They were Danes patrolling for prey and watching for any Saxon warships coming downstream from Lundene.

And to my right I could see Caninga and its creek, and the great fleet of boats beached on Caninga’s shore. The new fort was just visible around the shoulder of the high hill where the old fort stood. What had Father Heahberht said? That only about fifty men guarded the old ramparts. I could see spear-tips glinting by the north-facing gate and there looked to be far more than fifty, and the wall they defended was in good condition. I knew that the southern wall, overlooking the creek, had decayed, but the landward defenses had been kept in good repair. “Skade saw us coming,” I said, “and reinforced the old fort.”

“She’s got enough spears there,” Finan agreed.

“So we have to capture two forts,” I said.

“Why not let this one rot?” Finan asked, gesturing at the old fort.

“Because I don’t want those bastards behind our backs when we attack the new fort,” I said, “so we have to kill them first.”

Finan said nothing. No one spoke. The war we had been fighting all our lives had forced rulers to build forts because forts won wars. Alfred protected Wessex with burhs that were nothing but large, well-manned forts. Æthelred of Mercia was building burhs. Haesten, so far as we knew, had not yet dared attack any burh for he knew that his men would die in the ditches and under the high walls. He wanted to weaken Mercia and starve the burh’s defenders before he dared attack those ramparts. The two forts at Beamfleot were not burhs, but their defenses were just as formidable. There were walls, ditches with stakes, and doubtless, down on the creek, a moat. And behind the walls were men who knew how to kill, spear-Danes and sword-Danes, and they waited for us not in one fortress, but two.

“We have to take both forts?” Æthelflæd asked timidly, breaking the silence.

“The first will be easy,” I said.

“Easy, lord?” Finan asked with a crooked grin.

“And quick,” I said, sounding a good deal more confident than I felt. The old fort was formidable, and it was large, but I doubted the Danes had committed enough men to defend every yard of its ramparts. Once the Ætheling Edward’s troops reached me I reckoned I would have enough troops to assail the old fort in several places at once, and those assaults would thin out the defenders until one of our attacks broke through. It was not much of a plan, but it would work, though I feared it would be expensive in men. Yet I had small choice. I had to do the impossible. I had to take two forts and, if truth be told, I had no idea how to take the second newer fort by the water. I just knew it had to be done.

We rode back to our camp.

Everything became confused next morning. It was as though the Danes woke up to the threat we posed and decided to do what they should have done the previous day.

They knew we were camped around Thunresleam’s old hall. I had placed a large number of sentries in the woods south of the hall, but doubtless some clever Dane had avoided them to spy on the newly cleared space about the hall, and Skade, or whoever advised her, decided an attack at dawn would kill many of us and discourage the rest. Which was a clever enough idea, except that it was obvious, and to prepare for it I had roused every man in the heart of the starlit night. I ordered the sentries back from the trees, made sure we were all awake, then we saddled horses, pulled on mail, and left. The campfires still smoldered, suggesting we were sleeping. Our departure made enough noise to disturb the dead in Thunresleam’s small graveyard, but the Danes were presumably making their own noise and had no idea we had decamped.

“We can’t do this every morning,” Ælfwold grumbled.

“If they’re going to attack us,” I said, “it will be this morning. By tomorrow we’ll be in their high fort.”

“By tomorrow?” He sounded surprised.

“If Edward comes today,” I said. I planned to assault the old fortress as soon as I possibly could. I just needed enough men to make eight or nine simultaneous attacks.

We rode to the village and we waited there. We were four hundred men ready for battle. I knew it was possible the Danes had detected our move, and so I insisted we stayed in our saddles. The newly woken villagers brought us sour ale and Father Heahberht nervously offered me a cup of mead. It was surprisingly good, and I told him to give some to Æthelflæd and her two maidservants, the only women with our force. “If the Danes attack,” I told her, “you’ll be staying here with a bodyguard.” She looked at me dubiously, but for once did not argue.

It was still dark. The only sounds were the clink of bridles and the thump of restless hooves. Sometimes a man spoke, but most just slumped asleep in their saddles. Smoke drifted from holes in the hovel roofs, an owl called forlorn from the woods, and I felt a chill bleakness descend on my spirit. I could not rouse myself from that bleakness. I touched Thor’s hammer and sent a prayer to the gods to send me a sign, but all I heard was the owl’s mournful cry repeated. How could I take two forts? I feared the gods had forsaken me, and that by coming south from Northumbria I had forfeited their favor. What had I told Alfred? That we were here to amuse our gods, but how could those gods be amused by my betrayals? I thought of Ragnar’s disappointment and that memory gored my soul. I remembered Brida’s scorn and knew it was deserved. I felt worthless that morning as the sky’s edge lightened behind me to a streak of gray, I felt as though my future held nothing, and the feeling was so strong that I was close to despair. I twisted in the saddle, looking for Pyrlig. The Welsh priest was one of the few men I trusted with my soul, and I wanted his counsel, but before I could summon him a man called out a warning. “There’s a horseman coming, lord!”

I had left Finan and a handful of men as our only sentries. They were posted at the edge of the fields, halfway between the village and the old hall and Finan had sent one man to warn me that the Danes were moving. “They’re in the woods, lord,” the man told me, “by our camp.”

“How many?”

“We can’t tell, lord, but it sounds like a horde.”

Which could mean two hundred or two thousand, and prudence suggested I should wait till Finan could estimate the enemy more accurately, but I was in that bleak mood, feeling doomed and desperate for a sign from the gods, and so I turned to Æthelflæd. “You wait here with your bodyguard,” I said, and did not wait for an answer, but just drew Serpent-Breath, taking comfort from the sound of the long steel scraping through the scabbard’s throat. “The Danes are at our camp!” I shouted, “and we’re going to kill them!” I spurred my horse, the same stallion I had taken from Aldhelm. It was a good horse, properly schooled, but I was still unfamiliar with him.

Ælfwold spurred to catch me. “How many are there?” he asked.

“Enough!” I called to him. I was feeling reckless, careless and I knew it was foolish. But I reckoned the Danes would attack the encampment and almost immediately realize we had anticipated them, and then they would be wary. I wanted them unaware and so I kicked the stallion into a trot. My whole force, over three hundred men, was streaming along the track behind me. The day’s first shadows were being cast into the furrows and birds were flying up from the woods ahead.

I turned in my saddle to see spears and swords, axes and shields. Saxon warriors, gray-mailed in a gray dawn, grim-faced beneath helmets, and I felt the battle anger rising. I wanted to kill. I was in that bleak mood, assailed by the certainty that I had to throw myself on the mercy of the gods. If they wanted me to live, if the spinners were willing to weave my thread back into the golden weft, then I would live through this morning. Omens and signs, we live by them, and so I rode to discover the will of the gods. It was foolish.

Horsemen appeared on our left, startling me, but it was only Finan and his seven remaining men who galloped to join us. “There might be three hundred of them,” he shouted, “or maybe four hundred!”

I just nodded and kicked the horse again. The track to the old hall was wide enough for four or five men to ride abreast. Finan probably expected me to halt our horsemen short of the space we had cleared about the old hall and line the men in the trees, but the carelessness was on me.

Light flared ahead. The daylight was still gray, night shrouding the western horizon, but the sudden new light was red and bright. Fire. The Danes, I guessed, had lit the hall’s thatch, so now let it light their deaths. I could see the edge of the trees, see the fallen trunks we had felled the day before, see the dull glow of dying campfires and the dark shapes of men and horses and the glimmer of reflected fire from helmets, mail, and weapons, and I kicked the stallion again and roared a challenge. “Kill them!”

We came in a ragged order, bursting from the trees with swords and spears, with hatred and fury, and almost as soon as I entered the clearing I realized we were outnumbered. The Danes had come in force, at least four hundred, and most were still mounted, but they were scattered throughout the encampment and few realized we were approaching until our horses and blades appeared in the dawn. The largest body of the enemy was at the clearing’s western edge, staring across the dark land toward the faint glow of light betraying the fires of Lundene. Maybe they suspected we had given up any hope of capturing the forts and, under the cover of night, had slunk back toward the distant city. Instead we were coming from the east with the growing light behind us, and they turned as they heard the first screams and shouts.

We were lit red by the growing fire of the old hall’s burning thatch. Red fire was flashing from the horses’ bared teeth, from our mail, from our blades, and I was still shouting as I swung my sword at the first man. He was on foot and holding a broad-bladed spear that he tried to level at my horse, but Serpent-Breath caught him on the side of the head and I lifted the sword and lunged it at another man, not bothering to see what damage I did, just spurring on to provoke more fear. We had surprised them, and for a moment we were the lords of slaughter as we spread from the track and cut down dismounted men who searched for plunder around the dying campfires. I saw Osferth hammer a man’s head with the flat of an ax blade, knocking off the man’s helmet and hurling him back into one of the fires. The man must have been in the habit of cleaning his hands after eating by running them through his hair because the grease caught the flames and flared sudden and bright. He screamed and writhed, head like a beacon as he staggered to his feet, then a rush of horsemen overrode him. A hoof threw up a spew of sparks and riderless horses fled in panic.

Finan was with me. Finan and Cerdic and Sihtric, and together we rode for the large group of mounted warriors who had been staring west across the night-shadowed land. I was still shouting as I charged into them, sword swinging at a yellow-bearded man who deflected the blow with his raised shield, then he was struck by a spear below the shield, the blade ripping through mail and into his belly. I felt something strike my shield, but could not look to my left because a gap-toothed man was trying to lunge his sword through my stallion’s neck. I knocked his blade down with Serpent-Breath and cut at his arm, but his mail stopped the blow. We were deep among the enemy now, unable to ride farther, but more of my men were coming to help. I lunged at the gap-toothed man, but he was quick and his shield intercepted the sword, then his horse stumbled. Sihtric slashed with an ax and I had a glimpse of splitting metal and sudden blood.

I was trying to keep my horse moving. There were dismounted Danes among the riders, and a slash across my stallion’s legs could bring me down and a man was never so vulnerable as when he topples from a saddle. A spear slid from my right, sliding across my belly to lodge in the underside of my shield and I just back-swung Serpent-Breath into a bearded face. I felt her shatter teeth and ripped her back to saw her edge deeper. A horse screamed. Ælfwold’s men were deep in the fight now and our charge had split the Danes. Some had retreated down the hill, but most had gone either north or south along the crest and now they reformed and came at us from both directions, bellowing their own war cries. The sun had risen, dazzling and blinding, the hall was an inferno and the air a whirl of sparks in the new brightness.

Chaos. For a moment we had held the advantage of surprise, but the Danes recovered quickly and closed on us. The hill’s edge was a confusion of trampling horses, shouting men, and the raw sound of steel on steel. I had turned northward and was trying to drive those Danes off the hill, but they were just as determined to slaughter us. I parried a sword blow, watching the man’s gritted teeth as he tried to cut my head off. The clash of swords jarred up my arm, but I had stopped his swing and I punched him in the face with Serpent-Breath’s hilt. He swung again, striking my helmet, filling my head with noise as I punched a second time. I was too close to him to use the sword’s edge, and he hit my sword arm hard with the rim of his shield. “Turd,” he grunted at me. His helmet was decorated with twists of wool dyed yellow. He wore arm rings over his mail, denoting a man who had won treasure in battle. There was fury in his fire-reflecting eyes. He wanted my death so badly. I wore the silver-decorated helmet, had more arm rings than he did and he knew I was a warrior of renown. Perhaps he knew who I was, and he wanted to boast that he had killed Uhtred of Bebbanburg and I saw him grit his teeth again as he tried to slice the sword at my face and then the grimace turned into surprise, and his eyes widened and the red went from them as he made a gurgling sound. He shook his head, desperate to keep hold of his faltering sword as the ax blade cut his spine. Sihtric had swung the ax and the man made a mewing noise and fell from the saddle, and just then my horse screamed and staggered sideways and I saw a dismounted Dane thrusting a spear up into the stallion’s belly. Finan drove the man over with his horse as I kicked my feet out of the stirrups.

The stallion collapsed, twisting and kicking, still screaming, and my right leg was trapped beneath him. Another horse stepped a hair’s breadth from my face. I covered my body with the shield and tried to drag myself free. A blade crashed into the shield. A horse stepped on Serpent-Breath and I almost lost the blade. My world was a thunder of hooves, screams, and confusion. I tried to pull free again then something, blade or hoof, struck the back of my helmet and the confused world turned black. I was dazed, and in the darkness I heard someone making pathetic moaning noises. It was me. A man was trying to drag my helmet off and, when he realized I was alive he put a knife at my mouth and I remember thinking of Gisela and desperately checking that Serpent-Breath’s hilt was in my hand, and it was not, and I screamed, knowing I was denied the joys of Valhalla, and then my vision turned red. There was warmth on my face and red before my eyes, and I recovered my senses to realize that the man who would have killed me was dying himself and his blood was pouring onto my face, then Cerdic heaved the dying man away and pulled me from beneath the dead horse. “Here!” Sihtric thrust Serpent-Breath into my hand. Both he and Cerdic were dismounted. A Dane shouted victory and lunged with a thick-hafted spear from his saddle and Cerdic deflected the thrust with a blade-scored shield. I stabbed the horseman’s thigh with Serpent-Breath, but the blow had no force and his spear sliced at me, thumping hard into my shield. The Danes were scenting triumph and they pressed forward and we felt their blows chopping on the linden wood. “Kill their horses,” I shouted, though it came out as a croak, and some of Weohstan’s men arrived on our right and drove their horses at the Danes and I saw a Saxon twist in his saddle, his spear hand hanging from his bloody arm by a scrap of bone or tendon.

“Jesus! Jesus!” a man shouted and it was Father Pyrlig who joined us. The Welsh priest was on foot, belly stretching his mail, a spear like a small tree trunk in his hands. He carried no shield and so used the spear two-handed, driving the blade at the enemy’s horses to keep them at a distance.

“Thank you,” I said to Cerdic and Sihtric.

“We should go back, lord,” Cerdic said.

“Where’s Finan?”

“Back!” Cerdic shouted, and he unceremoniously grabbed my left shoulder and pulled me away from the Danes.

Finan was fighting behind us, hammering an ax at the Danes on the southern part of the crest where he was supported by most of my men and by Ælfwold’s Mercians. “I need a horse,” I snarled.

“This is a muddle,” Pyrlig said, and I almost laughed because his tone and his words were so mild. It was more than a muddle, it was a disaster. I had led my men onto the hill’s edge and the Danes had recovered from the attack and now they surrounded us. There were Danes to the east, to the north and to the south, and they were trying to drive us over the crest and pursue us down the steep slope where our bodies would be a smear of blood beneath the rising sun. At least a hundred of my Saxons were dismounted now and we formed a circle inside a desperate shield wall. Too many were dead, some killed by their own side for, in the maelstrom, it was hard to know friend from foe. Many Saxons had a cross on their shield, but not all. There were plenty of Danish corpses too, but their living outnumbered us. They had my small shield wall surrounded, while their horsemen were harrying the still mounted Saxons back into the woods.

Ælfwold had lost his stallion and the Mercian forced his way to my side. “You bastard,” he said, “you treacherous bastard.” He must have thought I had deliberately led his men into a trap, but it was only my stupid carelessness, not treachery, that had led to this disaster. Ælfwold raised his shield as the Danes came and the blows hammered down. I thrust Serpent-Breath into a horse’s chest, twisted and thrust again, and Pyrlig half hoisted a man from the saddle with a tremendous lunge of his heavy spear. But Ælfwold was down, his helmet ripped open, his blood and brains spilling onto his face, but he retained enough consciousness to look at me reproachfully before he started to quiver and spasm and I had to look away to ram the sword at another Dane whose horse tripped on a corpse, and then the enemy pulled back from our shield wall to ready themselves for another attack.

“Jesu, Jesu,” Ælfwold said, and then the breath stuttered in his throat and he said no more. Our shield wall was shrunken, our shields splintered and bloodied. The Danes mocked us, snarled at us, and promised us agonizing deaths. Men moved closer together and I should have encouraged them, but I did not know what to say because this was my fault, my recklessness. I had attacked without first discovering the enemy’s strength. My death, I thought, would be just, but I would go to the afterlife knowing I had taken too many good men with me.

So the only course was to die well, and I pushed past Sihtric’s shield and went toward the enemy. A man accepted the challenge and rode at me. I could not see his face because the rising sun was behind him, blinding me, but I slashed Serpent-Breath across his stallion’s mouth and thrust my shield up to take his sword’s blow. The horse reared, I thrust at its belly and missed as another man swung an ax from my left, and I stepped away and my foot slid in a slippery tangle of guts spilled from a corpse eviscerated by an ax. I went onto one knee, but again my men came to rescue me. The stallion thumped down and I stood, lunging at the rider, sword striking him somewhere, but I was sun-dazzled and could not see where. To my right a stallion, a spear impaled in its chest, was coughing blood. I was shouting, though I do not remember what I shouted, and from my left came a new charge of horsemen. The newcomers were screaming war cries.

Die well. Die well. What else can a man do? His enemies must say of him that he died like a man. I lunged again, driving the horse away and a sword smacked into the top of my shield, splitting the iron rim and driving a splinter of wood into my eye. I rammed the blade again and felt Serpent-Breath scrape on bone as she tore the rider’s thigh. He hacked down. I blinked the splinter away as his sword cracked on my helmet, glanced off and thumped my shoulder. The mail stopped the blow that had been suddenly weakened because Father Pyrlig had speared the rider in his side. The Welshman dragged me back toward the shield wall. “God be thanked!” he was saying over and over.

The newcomers were Saxons. They rode under the banner of Wessex’s dragon, and at their head was Steapa, and he was worth ten other men, and they had come from the north and were slicing into the Danes.

“A horse!” I shouted, and someone brought me a stallion. Pyrlig held the nervous beast as I mounted. I pushed my boots into the unfamiliar stirrups and shouted at my dismounted men to find themselves horses. There were too many dead beasts, but enough riderless stallions still lived white-eyed amidst the slaughter.

A huge crash announced the collapse of the burning hall’s roof. The flaming beams fell one by one, each spewing a new thrust of sparks into the smoke-darkened sky. I spurred to the ancient votive stone, leaned from the saddle, and touched the stone’s top as I said a prayer to Thor. A spear had lodged itself through the hole in the pillar and I sheathed Serpent-Breath and took the long-hafted weapon. The blade was bloodied. The spearman, a Dane, lay dead beside the stone. A horse had stepped on his face, mangling it and leaving an eyeball dangling over his helmet’s edge. I gripped the ash shaft and spurred the horse toward the remnants of the fight. Steapa and his men had utterly surprised the Danes who were turn ing to flee back to the safety of the fort, and Steapa was following. I tried to catch him, but he vanished among the trees. All the Saxons were in pursuit now, the thick woods filled with horses and fugitives. Finan somehow discovered me and rode alongside, ducking beneath branches. A wounded and dismounted Dane flinched from us, then fell to his knees, but we ignored him.

“Sweet Jesus,” Finan shouted to me, “but I thought we were doomed!”

“Me too!”

“How did you know Steapa’s men were coming?” he asked, then spurred after a fleeing Dane who kicked his horse frantically.

“I didn’t!” I shouted, though Finan was too intent on his prey to hear me. I caught up and aimed the spear at the small of the Dane’s back. Leaf mold flew up into my face from the hooves of the enemy’s horse, then I lunged and Finan sliced back with his sword and the Dane dropped from the saddle as we galloped past.

“Ælfwold’s dead!” Finan called.

“I saw it! He thought I betrayed him!”

“He kept his brains in his arse then. Where have the bastards gone?”

The Danes were riding for the fort and our pursuit had taken us slightly eastward. I remember the green sunlight bright in the leaves, remember thumping past a badger’s earth, remember the sound of all those hooves in the greenwood, the relief of living after what seemed certain death, and then we were at the edge of the trees.

And still there was chaos.

In front of us was a great stretch of grass where sheep and goats normally grazed. The land sloped down to a saddle, then rose more steeply to the gate of the old fort high on its domed hill. The Danes were galloping for the fort, eager to gain the protection of its ditch and ramparts, but Steapa’s men were among the fugitives, slashing and hacking from their saddles.

“Come on!” Finan shouted at me, and kicked back with his spurs.

He saw the opportunity before I did. My immediate thought was to stop him and to stop Steapa’s undisciplined charge, but then the recklessness took hold again. I shouted some wordless challenge and spurred after Finan.

I had lost all sense of time. I could not tell how long that fight on the hill’s edge had taken, but the sun was risen now and its light shimmered off the Temes and lit the high grass saddle a glowing green. The stream of horsemen stretched from the woods to the fort. My laboring horse was breathing hard, sweat white on its flanks, but I kicked it on as we converged on that turf-churning horde of pursuers and pursued. And what Finan had understood before me was that the Danes might close the gate too late. He understood that they might be in such panic that they did not even think to close the gate. So long as their own men pounded across the ditch’s causeway and beneath the wooden arch they would leave the gate open, but Steapa’s men were so mixed with the Danes that some might get through, and if enough of us could get inside that wall then we could take the fort.

Later, much later, when the poets told of that day’s fight, they said Steapa and I attacked Thunresleam’s old hall together, and that we drove the Danes in panic and that we assaulted the fort while the enemy was still reeling from that defeat. They got the story wrong, of course, but then, they were poets, not warriors. The truth was that Steapa rescued me from certain defeat, and neither of us assaulted the fort because we did not need to. The first of Steapa’s men were allowed through the gate and it was only when they were inside that the Danes realized the enemy had entered with their own men. Another desperate fight started. Steapa ordered his men to dismount and they made a shield wall at the gate, a wall that faced both into the fort and out toward the sunlit slope, and the Danes trapped outside could not break that shield wall and fled instead. They spurred down the steep westward-facing slope, riding desperately toward the new fort. And we simply dismounted and walked through the gate to join Steapa’s spreading shield wall inside the old fort.

I saw Skade then. I never discovered whether she had led the horsemen to Thunresleam’s burning hall, but she commanded the men in the old fort and she was screaming at them to attack us. But we were now in overwhelming numbers. There were at least four hundred Saxons in Steapa’s wall, and more kept arriving on horseback. The proud banner of Wessex flew above us, the embroidered dragon spattered with blood, and Skade screamed at us. She was on horseback, in mail, bareheaded, her long black hair lifting in the wind as she brandished a sword. She kicked her horse toward the shield wall, but had enough sense to check as the round shields lifted in unison and the long spears reached toward her.

Weohstan came with more horsemen, and he led them about the right flank of Steapa’s wall and ordered a charge. Steapa shouted at the wall to advance and we marched up the slight slope toward the great halls that crowned the hill. Weohstan’s men swept ahead of us and the Danes, understanding their fate, fled.

And so we took the old fort. The enemy fled downhill, a man dragging Skade’s horse by its bridle. She sat twisted in her saddle, staring at us. We did not follow. We were weary, bloodied, bruised, wounded, and amazed. Besides, there was a shield wall of Danes guarding the bridge which led to the new fort. Not all the fugitives were going to that bridge, some were swimming their horses across the deep narrow creek to reach Caninga.

The dragon was flown from the old fort’s walls and, next to it, Ælfwold’s cross. The flags announced a victory, but that victory would mean nothing unless we could capture the new fort, which, for the first time, I saw clearly.

And cursed.