The Burning Land

FOUR

Next day was a Thursday, Thor’s Day, which I took as a good omen. Alfred had once proposed renaming the days of the week, suggesting the Thursday become Maryday, or perhaps it was Haligastday, but the idea had faded like dew under the summer sun. In Christian Wessex, whether its king liked it or not, Tyr, Odin, Thor, and Frigg were still remembered each week.

And on that Thor’s Day I was taking two hundred warriors to Fearnhamme, though more than six hundred horsemen gathered in the burh’s long street before the sun rose. There was the usual chaos. Stirrup leathers broke and men tried to find replacements, children darted between the big horses, swords were given a last sharpening, the smoke of cooking fires drifted between the houses like fog, the church bell clanged, monks chanted, and I stood on the ramparts and watched the river’s far bank.

The Danes who had crossed to our bank the previous day had gone back before nightfall. I could see smoke from their fires rising among the trees, but the only visible enemy was a pair of sentries crouching at the river’s edge. For a moment I was tempted to abandon everything I had planned and instead lead the six hundred men across the river and let them rampage through Harald’s camp, but it was only a fleeting temptation. I assumed most of his men were in Godelmingum, and they would be well awake by the time we reached them. A swirling battle might result, but the Danes would inevitably realize their advantage in numbers and grind us to bloody shreds. I wanted to keep my promise to Æthelflæd. I wanted to kill them all.

I made my first move when the sun rose, and I made it loudly. Horns were sounded inside Æscengum, then the northern gate was dragged open, and four hundred horsemen streamed into the fields beyond. The first riders gathered at the river bank, in clear view of the Danes, and waited while the rest of the men filed through the gate. Once all four hundred were gathered they turned west and spurred away through the trees toward the road that would eventually lead to Wintanceaster. I was still on the ramparts from where I watched the Danes gather to stare at the commotion on our bank, and I did not doubt that messengers were galloping to find Harald and inform him that the Saxon army was retreating.

Except we were not retreating because, once among the trees, the four hundred men doubled back and reentered Æscengum by the western gate, which was out of the enemy’s sight. It was then that I went down to the main street and hauled myself into Smoka’s saddle. I was dressed for war in mail, gold, and steel. Alfred appeared at the church door, his eyes half closing against the sudden sunlight as he came from the holy gloom. He returned my greeting with a nod, but said nothing. Æthelred, my cousin, was noisier, demanding to know where his wife was. I heard a servant report that Æthelflæd was at prayer in the nunnery, and that seemed to satisfy Æthelred, who assured me loudly that his Mercian troops would be waiting at Fearnhamme. “Aldhelm’s a good man,” he said, “he likes a fight.”

“I’m glad of it,” I said, pretending friendship with my cousin, just as Æthelred was pretending that Aldhelm had not been given secret instructions to retreat northward if he took fright at the numbers opposing him. I even held my hand down from Smoka’s high saddle. “We shall win a great victory, Lord Æthelred,” I said loudly.

Æthelred seemed momentarily astonished by my apparent affability, but clasped my hand anyway. “With God’s help, cousin,” he said, “with God’s help.”

“I pray for that,” I answered. The king gave me a suspicious look, but I just smiled cheerfully. “Bring the troops when you think best,” I called to Alfred’s son, Edward, “and always take Lord Æthelred’s advice.”

Edward looked to his father for some guidance on what he should reply, but received none. He nodded nervously. “I shall, Lord Uhtred,” he said, “and God go with you!”

God might go with me, but Æthelred would not. He had chosen to ride with the West Saxon troops who would follow the Danes, and thus be part of the hammer that would shatter Harald’s forces on the anvil of his Mercian warriors. I had half feared he would come with me, but it made sense for Æthelred to stay with his father-in-law. That way, if Aldhelm chose to retreat, Æthelred could not be blamed. I suspected there was another reason. When Alfred died, Edward would be named king unless the witan wanted an older and more experienced man, and Æthelred doubtless believed he would gain more renown by fighting with the West Saxons this day.

I pulled on my wolf-crested helmet and nudged Smoka toward Steapa who, grim in mail and hung with weapons, waited beside a smithy. Charcoal smoke sifted from the door. I leaned down and slapped my friend’s helmet. “You know what to do?” I asked.

“Tell me one more time,” he growled, “and I’ll rip your liver out and cook it.”

I grinned. “I’ll see you tonight,” I said. I was pretending that Edward commanded the West Saxons, and that Æthelred was his chief adviser, but in truth I trusted Steapa to make the day go as I had planned. I wanted Steapa to choose the moment when the seven hundred warriors left Æscengum to pursue Harald’s men. If they left too soon Harald could turn and cut them to ribbons, while leaving too late would mean my seven hundred troops would be slaughtered at Fearnhamme. “We’re going to make a famous victory this day,” I told Steapa.

“If God wills it, lord,” he said.

“If you and I will it,” I said happily, then leaned down and took my heavy linden shield from a servant. I hung the shield on my back, then spurred Smoka to the northern gate where Alfred’s gaudy wagon waited behind a team of six horses. We had harnessed horses to the cumbersome cart because they were faster than oxen. Osferth, looking miserable, was the wagon’s only passenger. He was dressed in a bright blue cloak and wearing a circlet of bronze on his head. The Danes did not know that Alfred eschewed most symbols of kingship. They expected a king to wear a crown and so I had ordered Osferth to wear the polished bauble. I had also persuaded Abbot Oslac to give me two of his monastery’s less valuable reliquaries. One, a silver box molded with pictures of saints and studded with stones of jet and amber, had held the toe bones of Saint Cedd, but now contained some pebbles which would puzzle the Danes if, as I hoped, they captured the wagon. The second reliquary, also of silver, had a pigeon feather inside, because Alfred famously traveled nowhere without the feather that had been plucked from the dove Noah had released from the ark. Besides the reliquaries we had also put an iron-bound wooden chest in the wagon. The chest was half filled with silver and we would probably lose it, but I expected to gain far more. Abbot Oslac, wearing a mail coat beneath his monkish robes, had insisted on accompanying my two hundred men. A shield hung at his left side and a monstrous war ax was strapped to his broad back. “That looks well used,” I greeted him, noting the nicks in the ax’s wide blade.

“It’s sent many a pagan to hell, Lord Uhtred,” he answered happily.

I grinned and spurred to the gate where Father Beocca, my old and stern friend, waited to bless us. “God go with you,” he said as I reached him.

I smiled down at him. He was lame, white-haired, cross-eyed, and clubfooted. He was also one of the best men I knew, though he mightily disapproved of me. “Pray for me, father,” I said.

“I never cease,” Beocca said.

“And don’t let Edward lead the men out too soon! Trust Steapa! He might be dumb as a parsnip, but he knows how to fight.”

“I shall pray that God gives them both good judgment,” my old friend said. He reached up his good hand to clutch my gloved hand. “How is Gisela?”

“Maybe a mother again. And Thyra?”

His face lit up like tinder catching flame. This ugly, crippled man who was mocked by children in the street had married a Dane of startling beauty. “God keeps her in his loving hand,” he told me. “She is a pearl of great price!”

“So are you, father,” I said, then ruffled his white hair to annoy him.

Finan spurred beside me. “We’re ready, lord.”

“Open the gate!” I shouted.

The wagon was first through the wide arch. Its holy banners swayed alarmingly as it lurched onto the rutted track, then my two hundred men, bright in mail, rode after it and turned westward. We flew standards, braying horns announced our departure, and the sun shone on the royal wagon. We were the lure, and the Danes had seen us. And so the hunt began.

The wagon led the way, lumbering along a farm track that would lead us to the Wintanceaster road. A shrewd Dane might well wonder why, if we wanted to retreat to the larger burh at Wintanceaster, we would use Æscengum’s northern gate instead of the western, which led directly onto the road, but I somehow doubted those worries would reach Harald. Instead he would hear that the King of Wessex was running away, leaving Æscengum to be protected by its garrison that was drawn from the fyrd. The men of the fyrd were rarely trained warriors. They were farmers and laborers, carpenters and thatchers, and Harald would undoubtedly be tempted to assault their wall, but I did not believe he would yield to the temptation, not while a much greater prize, Alfred himself, was apparently vulnerable. The Danish scouts would be telling Harald that the King of Wessex was in the open country, traveling in a slow wagon protected by a mere couple of hundred horsemen, and Harald’s army, I was certain, would be ordered to the pursuit.

Finan commanded my rearguard, his job to tell me when the enemy pursuit got too close. I stayed near the wagon and, just as we reached the Wintanceaster road a half-mile west of Æscengum, a slender rider spurred alongside me. It was Æthelflæd, clad in a long mail coat that appeared to be made from silver rings close-linked over a deerskin tunic. The mail coat fitted her tightly, clinging to her thin body, and I guessed that it was fastened at the back with loops and buttons because no one could pull such a tight coat over their head and shoulders. Over the mail she wore a white cloak, lined with red, and she had a white-scabbarded sword at her side. A battered old helmet with face-plates hung from her saddle’s pommel and she had doubtless used the helmet to hide her face before we left Æscengum, though she had also taken the precaution of covering her distinctive cloak and armor with an old black cape that she tossed into the ditch as she joined me. She grinned, looking as happy as she had once looked before her marriage, then nodded toward the lumbering wagon. “Is that my half-brother?”

“Yes. You’ve seen him before.”

“Not often. Doesn’t he look like his father!”

“He does,” I said, “and you don’t, for which I’m grateful.” That made her laugh. “Where did you get the mail?” I asked.

“Æthelred likes me to wear it,” she said. “He had it made for me in Frankia.”

“Silver links?” I asked. “I could pierce those with a twig!”

“I don’t think my husband wants me to fight,” she said drily, “he just wants to display me.” And that, I thought, was understandable. Æthelflæd had grown to be a lovely woman, at least when her beauty was not clouded by unhappiness. She was clear-eyed and clear-skinned, with full lips and golden hair. She was clever, like her father, and a good deal cleverer than her husband, but she had been married for one reason only, to bind the Mercian lands to Alfred’s Wessex, and in that sense, if in no other, the marriage had been a success.

“Tell me about Aldhelm,” I said.

“You already know about him,” she retorted.

“I know he doesn’t like me,” I said happily.

“Who does?” she asked, grinning. She slowed her horse, that was getting too close to the crawling wagon. She wore gloves of soft kid leather over which six bright rings glittered with gold and rare stones. “Aldhelm,” she said softly, “advises my husband, and he has persuaded Æthelred of two things. The first is that Mercia needs a king.”

“Your father won’t allow it,” I said. Alfred preferred Mercia look to Wessex for its kingly authority.

“My father will not live forever,” she said, “and Aldhelm has also persuaded my husband that a king needs an heir.” She saw my grimace and laughed. “Not me! Ælfwynn was enough!” She shuddered. “I have never known such pain. Besides, my dear husband resents Wessex. He resents his dependency. He hates the hand that feeds him. No, he would like an heir from some nice Mercian girl.”

“You mean…”

“He won’t kill me,” she interrupted blithely, “but he would love to divorce me.”

“Your father would never allow that!”

“He would if I was taken in adultery,” she said in a remarkably flat tone. I stared at her, not quite believing what she told me. She saw my incredulity and mocked it with a smile. “Well,” she said, “you did ask me about Aldhelm.”

“Æthelred wants you to…”

“Yes,” she said, “then he can condemn me to a nunnery and forget I ever existed.”

“And Aldhelm encourages this idea?”

“Oh, he does, he does.” She smiled as if my question was silly. “Luckily I have West Saxon attendants who protect me, but after my father dies?” She shrugged.

“Have you told your father?”

“He’s been told,” she said, “but I don’t think he believes it. He does, of course, believe in faith and prayer, so he sent me a comb that once belonged to Saint Milburga and he says it will strengthen me.”

“Why doesn’t he believe you?”

“He thinks I am prone to bad dreams. He also finds Æthelred very loyal. And my mother, of course, adores Æthelred.”

“She would,” I said gloomily. Alfred’s wife, Ælswith, was a sour creature and, like Æthelred, a Mercian. “You could try poison,” I suggested. “I know a woman in Lundene who brews some vicious potions.”

“Uhtred!” she chided me, but before she could say more, one of Finan’s men came galloping from the rearguard, his horse throwing up clods of earth torn from the meadow beside the road.

“Lord!” he shouted, “time to hurry!”

“Osferth!” I called, and our pretend king happily jumped from his father’s wagon and hauled himself into the saddle of a horse. He threw the bronze circlet back into the wagon and pulled on a helmet.

“Dump it,” I shouted to the wagon’s driver. “Take it into the ditch!”

He managed to get two wheels in the ditch and we left the heavy vehicle there, canted over, the frightened horses still in their harness. Finan and our rearguard came pounding up the road and we spurred ahead of them into a stretch of woodland where I waited until Finan caught up, and just as he did so the first of the pursuing Danes came into sight. They were pushing their horses hard, but I reckoned the abandoned wagon with its tawdry treasures would delay them a few moments and, sure enough, the leading pursuers milled about the vehicle as we turned away.

“It’s a horse race,” Finan told me.

“And our horses are faster,” I said, which was probably true. The Danes were mounted on whatever animals their raiding parties had succeeded in capturing, while we were riding some of Wessex’s best stallions. I snatched a last glance as dismounted enemies swarmed over the wagon, then plunged deeper into the trees. “How many of them are there?” I shouted at Finan.

“Hundreds,” he called back, grinning. Which meant, I guessed, that any man in Harald’s army who could saddle a horse had joined the pursuit. Harald was feeling the ecstasy of victory. His men had plundered all eastern Wessex, now he believed he had turned Alfred’s army out of Æscengum, which effectively opened the way for the Danes to maraud the whole center of the country. Before those pleasures, however, he wanted to capture Alfred himself and so his men were wildly following us, and Harald, unconcerned about their lack of discipline, believed his good fortune must hold. This was the wild hunt, and Harald had loosed his men and sent them to deliver him the King of Wessex.

We led them, we enticed them, and we tempted them. We did not ride as fast as we might; instead we kept the pursuing Danes in sight and only once did they catch us. Rypere, one of my valued men, was riding wide to our right and his horse thrust a hoof into a molehill. He was thirty paces away, but I heard the crack of breaking bone and saw Rypere tumbling and the horse flailing as it collapsed in screaming pain. I turned Smoka toward him and saw a small group of Danes coming fast. I shouted at another of my men, “Spear!”

I grabbed his heavy ash-shafted spear and headed straight toward the leading Danes who were spurring to kill Rypere. Finan had turned with me, as had a dozen others, and the Danes, seeing us, tried to swerve away, but Smoka was pounding the earth now, nostrils wide, and I lowered the spear and caught the nearest Dane in the side of his chest. The ash shaft jarred back, my gloved hand slid along the wood, but the spear-point pierced deep and blood was welling and spilling in the spaces between the links of the Dane’s mail coat. I let the spear go. The dying man stayed in his saddle as a second Dane flailed at me with a sword, but I threw the stroke off with my shield and turned Smoka by the pressure of my knees as Finan ripped his long blade across another man’s face. I snatched the reins from the man I had speared and dragged his horse to Rypere. “Throw the bastard off and get up,” I called.

The surviving Danes had retreated. There had been fewer than a dozen and they were the forerunners, the men on the fastest horses, and it took time for reinforcements to reach them and by then we had spurred safely away. Rypere’s legs were too short to reach his new stirrups, and he was cursing as he clung to the saddle’s pommel. Finan was smiling. “That’ll annoy them, lord,” he said.

“I want them mad,” I said.

I wanted them to be impetuous, careless, and confident. Already, on that summer’s day, as we followed the road alongside a meandering stream where crowsfoot grew thick, Harald was doing all I could ask. And was I confident? It is a dangerous thing to assume that your enemy will do what you want, but on that Thor’s Day I had a growing conviction that Harald was falling into a carefully laid trap.

Our road led to the ford where we could cross the river to reach Fearnhamme. If we had truly been fleeing to Wintanceaster we would have stayed south of the river and taken the Roman road which led west, and I wanted the Danes to believe that was our intention. So, when we reached the river, we stopped just south of the ford. I wanted our pursuers to see us, I wanted them to think we were indecisive, I wanted them, eventually, to think we panicked.

The land was open, a stretch of river meadow where folk grazed their goats and sheep. To the east, where the Danes were coming, was woodland, to the west was the road Harald would expect us to take, and to the north were the crumbling stone piers of the bridge the Romans had made across the Wey. Fearnhamme and its low hill were on the ruined bridge’s farther side. I stared at the hill and could see no troops.

“That’s where I wanted Aldhelm,” I snarled, pointing to the hill.

“Lord!” Finan shouted in warning.

The pursuing Danes were gathering at the edge of a wood a half-mile eastward. They could see us clearly, and they understood that we were too many to attack until more pursuers arrived, but those reinforcements were appearing by the minute. I looked across the river again and saw no one. The hill, with its ancient earthwork, was supposed to be my anvil strengthened with five hundred Mercian warriors, yet it looked deserted. Would my two hundred men be enough?

“Lord!” Finan called again. The Danes, who now outnumbered us by two to one, were spurring their horses toward us.

“Through the ford!” I shouted. I would spring the trap anyway, and so we kicked our tired horses through the deep ford which lay just upstream of the bridge and, once across, I called for my men to gallop to the hill’s top. I wanted the appearance of panic. I wanted it to look as though we had abandoned our ambitions to reach Wintanceaster and instead were taking refuge on the nearest hill.

We rode through Fearnhamme. It was a huddle of thatched huts around a stone church, though there was one fine-looking Roman building that had lost its tiled roof. There were no inhabitants, just a single cow bellowing pathetically because she needed to be milked. I assumed the folk had fled from the rumors of the approaching Danes. “I hope your damned men are on the hill!” I shouted to Æthelflæd, who was staying close to me.

“They’ll be there!” she called back.

She sounded confident, but I was dubious. Aldhelm’s first duty, at least according to her husband, was to keep the Mercian army intact. Had he simply refused to advance on Fearnhamme? If he had, then I would be forced to fight off an army of Danes with just two hundred men, and those Danes were approaching fast. They smelled victory and they pounded their horses through the river and up into Fearnhamme’s street. I could hear their shouts, and then I reached the grassy bank that was the ancient earthwork and, as Smoka crested the bank’s summit, I saw that Æthelflæd was right. Aldhelm had come, and he had brought five hundred men. They were all there, but Aldhelm had kept them at the northern side of the old fortress so they would be hidden from an enemy approaching from the south.

And so, just as I had planned, I had seven hundred men on the hill, and another seven hundred, I hoped, approaching from Æscengum, and between those two forces were some two thousand rampaging, careless, overconfident Danes who believed they were about to achieve the old Viking dream of conquering Wessex.

“Shield wall!” I shouted at my men. “Shield wall!”

The Danes had to be checked for a moment, and the easiest way to do that was to show them a shield wall at the hill’s top. There was a moment of chaos as men slid from their saddles and ran to the bank’s top, but these were good men, well trained, and their shields locked together fast. The Danes, coming from the houses onto the hill’s lower slope, saw the wall of iron-bound willow, they saw the spears, the swords and the ax blades, and they saw the steepness of the slope, and their wild charge stopped. Scores of men were crossing the river and still more were coming from the trees on the southern bank, so in a few moments they would have more than enough warriors to overwhelm my short shield wall, but for now they paused.

“Banners!” I said. We had brought our banners, my wolf’s-head flag and Wessex’s dragon, and I wanted them flown as an invitation to Harald’s men.

Aldhelm, tall and sallow, had come to greet me. He did not like me and his face showed that dislike, but it also showed astonishment at the number of Danes who converged on the ford.

“Divide your men into two,” I told him peremptorily, “and line them either side of my men. Rypere!”

“Lord?”

“Take a dozen men and tether those horses!” Our abandoned horses were wandering the hilltop and I feared some would stray back over the bank.

“How many Danes are there?” Aldhelm asked.

“Enough to give us a day’s good killing,” I said. “Now bring your men here.”

He bridled at my tone. He was a thin man, elegant in a superb long coat of mail that had bronze crescent moons sewn to the links. He had a cloak of blue linen, lined with red cloth, and he wore a chain of heavy gold looped twice about his neck. His boots and gloves were black leather, his sword belt was decorated with golden crosses, while his long black hair, scented and oiled, was held at the nape of his neck with a comb of ivory teeth clasped in a golden frame. “I have my orders,” he said distantly.

“Yes, to bring your men here. We have Danes to kill.”

He had always disliked me, ever since I had spoiled his handsome looks by breaking his jaw and his nose, though on that far day he had been armed and I had not. He could barely bring himself to look at me, instead he stared at the Danes gathering at the foot of the hill. “I am instructed,” he said, “to preserve the Lord Æthelred’s forces.”

“Your instructions have changed, Lord Aldhelm.” A cheerful voice spoke from behind us, and Aldhelm turned to gaze in astonishment at Æthelflæd, who smiled from her high saddle.

“My lady,” he said, bowing, then glancing from her to me. “Is the Lord Æthelred here?”

“My husband sent me to countermand his last orders,” Æthelflæd said sweetly. “He is now so confident of victory that he requires you to stay here despite the numbers opposing us.”

Aldhelm began to reply, then assumed I did not know what his last orders from Æthelred had been. “Your husband sent you, my lady?” he asked instead, plainly confused by Æthelflæd’s unexpected presence.

“Why else would I be here?” Æthelflaed asked beguilingly, “and if there were any real danger, my lord, would my husband have allowed me to come?”

“No, my lady,” Aldhelm said, but without any conviction.

“So we are going to fight!” Æthelflæd called those words loudly, speaking to the Mercian troops. She turned her gray mare so they could see her face and hear her more clearly. “We are going to kill Danes! And my husband sent me to witness your bravery, so do not disappoint me! Kill them all!”

They cheered her. She rode her horse along their front rank and they cheered her wildly. I had always thought Mercia a miserable place, defeated and sullen, kingless and downtrodden, but in that moment I saw how Æthelflæd, radiant in silver mail, was capable of lifting the Mercians to enthusiasm. They loved her. I knew they had small fondness for Æthelred, Alfred was a distant figure and, besides, King of Wessex, but Æthelflæd inspired them. She gave them pride.

The Danes were still gathering at the foot of the hill. There must have been three hundred men who had dismounted and who now made their own shield wall. They could still only see my two hundred men, but it was time to sweeten the bait. “Osferth,” I shouted, “get back on your horse, then come and be kingly.”

“Must I, lord?”

“Yes, you must!”

We made Osferth stand his horse beneath the banners. He was cloaked, and he now wore a helmet that I draped with my own gold chain so that, from a distance, it looked like a crowned helmet. The Danes, seeing him, bellowed insults up the gentle slope. Osferth looked kingly enough, though anyone familiar with Alfred should have known the mounted figure was not Wessex’s king simply because he was not surrounded by priests, but I decided Harald would never notice the lack. I was amused to see Æthelflæd, obviously curious about her half-brother, push her horse next to his stallion.

I turned to look back to the south where still more Danes were crossing the river and, so long as I live, I will never forget that landscape. All the country beyond the river was covered with Danish horsemen, their stallions’ hooves kicking up dust as the riders spurred toward the ford, all eager to be present at the destruction of Alfred and his kingdom. So many men wanted to cross the river that they were forced to wait in a great milling herd at the ford’s farther side.

Aldhelm was ordering his men forward. He probably did it unwillingly, but Æthelflæd had inspired them and he was caught between her disdain and their enthusiasm. The Danes at the foot of the hill saw my short line lengthen, they saw more shields and more blades, more banners. They would still outnumber us, but now they would need half their army to make an assault on the hill. A man in a black cloak and carrying a red-hafted war ax was marshaling Harald’s men, thrusting them into line. I guessed there were five hundred men in the enemy shield wall now, and more were coming every moment. Some of the Danes had stayed on horseback, and I supposed they planned to ride about our rear to make an attack when the shield walls met. The enemy line was only a couple of hundred paces away, close enough for me to see the ravens and axes and eagles and serpents painted on their iron-bossed shields. Some began clashing their weapons against those shields, making the thunder of war. Others bellowed that we were milksop children, or goat-begotten bastards.

“Noisy, aren’t they?” Finan remarked beside me. I just smiled. He raised his drawn sword to his helmet-framed face and kissed the blade. “Remember that Frisian girl we found in the marshes? She was noisy.” It is strange what men think of before battle. The Frisian girl had escaped a Danish slaver and had been terrified. I wondered what had happened to her.

Aldhelm was nervous, so nervous that he overcame his hatred of me and stood close. “What if Alfred doesn’t come?” he asked.

“Then we each have to kill two Danes before the rest lose heart,” I said with false confidence. If Alfred’s seven hundred men did not come then we would be surrounded, cut down, and slaughtered.

Only about half the Danes had crossed the river, such was the congestion at the narrow ford, and still more horsemen were streaming from the east to join the crowd waiting to cross the Wey. Fearnhamme was filled with men pulling down thatch in search of treasure. The unmilked cow lay dead in the street. “What,” Aldhelm began, then hesitated. “What if Alfred’s forces come late?”

“Then all the Danes will be across the river,” I said.

“And attacking us,” Finan said.

I knew Aldhelm was thinking of retreat. Behind us, to the north, were higher hills that offered greater protection, or perhaps, if we retreated fast enough, we could cross the Temes before the Danes caught and destroyed us. For unless Alfred’s men came we would surely die, and at that moment I felt the death-serpent slither cold about my heart that was thumping like a war drum. Skade’s curse, I thought, and I suddenly understood the magnitude of the risk I was running. I had assumed the Danes would do exactly what I wanted, and that the West Saxon army would appear at just the right moment, but instead we were stranded on a low hill and our enemy was getting ever stronger. There was still a great crowd on the river’s far bank, but in less than an hour the whole of Harald’s army would be across the river, and I felt the imminence of disaster and the fear of utter defeat. I remembered Harald’s threat, that he would blind me, geld me, and then lead me about on a rope’s end. I touched the hammer and stroked Serpent-Breath’s hilt.

“If the West Saxon troops don’t arrive,” Aldhelm began, his voice grim with purpose.

“God be praised,” Æthelflæd interrupted from behind us.

Because there was a glint of sun-reflecting steel from the far distant trees.

And more horsemen appeared. Hundreds of horsemen.

The army of Wessex had come.

And the Danes were trapped.

Poets exaggerate. They live by words and my household bards fear I will stop throwing them silver if they do not exaggerate. I remember skirmishes where a dozen men might have died, but in the poets’ telling the slain are counted in the thousands. I am forever feeding the ravens in their endless recitations, but no poet could exaggerate the slaughter that occurred that Thor’s Day on the banks of the River Wey.

It was a swift slaughter too. Most battles take time to start as the two sides summon their courage, hurl insults, and watch to see what the enemy will do, but Steapa, leading Alfred’s seven hundred men, saw the confusion on the river’s southern bank and, just as soon as he had sufficient men in hand, charged on horseback. Æthelred, Steapa told me later, had wanted to wait till all seven hundred had gathered, but Steapa ignored the advice. He began with three hundred men and allowed the others to catch up as they emerged from the trees into the open land.

The three hundred attacked the enemy’s rear where, as might be expected, the least enthusiastic of Harald’s army were waiting to cross the river. They were the laggards, the servants and boys, some women and children, and almost all of them were cumbered with pillage. None was ready to fight; there was no shield wall, some did not even possess shields. The Danes most eager for a battle had already crossed the river and were forming to attack the hill, and it took them some moments to understand that a vicious slaughter had begun on the river’s farther bank.

“It was like killing piglets,” Steapa told me later. “A lot of squealing and blood.”

The horsemen slammed into the Danes. Steapa led Alfred’s own household troops, the remainder of my men, and battle-hardened warriors from Wiltunscir and Sumorsæte. They were eager for a fight, well mounted, armed with the best weapons, and their attack caused chaos. The Danes, unable to form a shield wall, tried to run, except the only safety lay across the ford and that was blocked by the men waiting to cross, and so the panicked enemy clawed at their own men, stopping any chance of a shield wall forming, and Steapa’s men, huge on their horses, hacked and slashed and stabbed their way into the crowd. More Saxons came from the woods to join the fight. Horses were fetlock-deep in blood, and still the swords and axes crushed and cut. Alfred had endured the ride despite the pain the saddle caused him, and he watched from the edge of the trees while the priests and monks sang praises to their god for the slaughter of the heathen that was reddening the water-meadows on the Wey’s southern bank.

Edward fought with Steapa. He was a slight young man, but Steapa was full of praise afterward. “He has courage,” he told me.

“Does he have sword craft?”

“He has a quick wrist,” Steapa said approvingly.

Æthelred understood before Steapa that eventually the horsemen must be stopped by the sheer crush of bodies, and he persuaded Ealdorman Æthelnoth of Sumorsæte to dismount a hundred of his men and form a shield wall. That wall advanced steadily and, as horses were wounded or killed, more Saxons joined that wall, which went forward like a row of harvesters wielding sickles. Hundreds of Danes died. On that southern bank, under the high sun, there was a massacre, and the enemy never once managed to organize themselves and so fight back. They died or else they crossed the river or else they were taken captive.

Yet perhaps half of Harald’s army had crossed the ford, and those men were ready for a fight and, even as the slaughter began behind them, they came to kill us. Harald himself had arrived, a servant bringing a packhorse behind, and Harald came a few steps forward of his swelling shield wall to make certain we saw the ritual with which he scared his enemies. He faced us, huge in cloak and mail, then spread his arms as though crucified, and in his right hand was a massive battle ax with which, after bellowing that we would all be fed to the slime worms of death, he killed the horse. He did it with one stroke of the ax and, while the beast was still twitching in its death throes, he slit open its belly and plunged his unhelmeted head deep into the bloody entrails. My men watched in silence. Harald, ignoring the spasms of the hooves, held his head deep in the horse’s belly, then stood and turned to show a blood-masked face and blood-soaked hair and a thick beard dripping with blood. Harald Bloodhair was ready for battle. “Thor!” he shouted, lifting his face and ax to the sky, “Thor!” He pointed the ax toward us. “Now we kill you all!” he screamed. A servant brought him his great ax-painted shield.

I am not certain Harald knew what happened on the river’s farther bank, that was hidden from him by the houses in Fearnhamme. He must have known that Saxons were attacking his rear, indeed he would have heard reports of fighting all morning because, as Steapa was to tell me, the pursuing Saxons were forever meeting Danish stragglers on the road from Æscengum, but Harald’s attention was fixed on Fearnhamme’s hill where, he believed, Alfred was trapped. He could lose the battle on the river’s southern bank and still win a kingdom on the northern bank. And so he led his men forward.

I had planned to let the Danes attack us, and to rely on the ancient earthwork to give us added protection, but as Harald’s line advanced with a great bellow of rage, I saw they were vulnerable. Harald might have been unaware of the disaster his men were suffering across the river, but many of his Danes were turning, trying to see what happened there, and men scared of an attack on their rear will not fight with full vigor. We had to attack them. I sheathed Serpent-Breath and drew Wasp-Sting, my short-sword. “Swine head!” I shouted, “swine head!”

My men knew what I wanted. They had rehearsed it hundreds of times until they were tired of practicing it, but now those hours of practice paid off as I led the way off the earthen bank and crossed the ditch.

A swine head was simply a wedge of men, a human spear-point, and it was the fastest way I knew to break a shield wall. I took the lead, though Finan tried to edge me aside. The Danes had slowed, perhaps surprised that we were abandoning the earthwork, or perhaps because at last they understood the trap that closed on them. There was only one way out of that trap, and that was to destroy us. Harald knew it and bellowed at his men to charge uphill. I was shouting at my men to charge downhill. That fight started so fast. I was taking the swine head down the shallow slope and he was urging his men up, but the Danes were confused, suddenly frightened, and his wall frayed before we even reached it. Some men obeyed Harald, others hung back, and so the line bent, though at the center, where Harald’s banner of the wolf-skull and the ax flew, the shield wall remained firm. That was where Harald’s own crewmen were concentrated, and where my swine head was aimed.

We were screaming a great shout of defiance. My shield, iron-rimmed, was heavy on my left arm, Wasp-Sting was drawn back. She was a short stabbing blade. Serpent-Breath was my magnificent sword, but a long sword, like a long-hafted ax, can be a hindrance in a battle of shield walls. I knew when we clashed, that I would be pressed close as a lover to my enemies and in that crush a short blade could be lethal.

I aimed for Harald himself. He wore no helmet, relying on the sun-glistening blood to terrify his enemies, and he was terrifying; a big man, snarling, eyes wild, ropy hair dripping red, his shield painted with an ax blade and a short-hafted, heavy-bladed war ax as his chosen weapon. He was shouting like a fiend, his eyes fixed on me, his mouth a snarl in a mask of blood. I remember thinking as we charged downhill that he would use the ax to chop down at me, which would make me raise my shield, and his neighbor, a dark-faced man with a short stabbing sword, would slide the blade beneath my shield to gut my belly. But Finan was on my right and that meant the dark-faced man was doomed. “Kill them all!” I shouted Æthelflæd’s war cry, “Kill them all!” I did not even turn to see if Aldhelm had brought his men forward, though he had. I just felt the fear of the shield wall fight and the elation of the shield wall fight. “Kill them all!” I screamed.

And the shields crashed together.

The poets say six thousand Danes came to Fearnhamme, and sometimes they reckon it was ten thousand and, doubtless, as the story gets older the number will become higher. In truth I think Harald brought around sixteen hundred men, because some of his army stayed close to Æscengum. He led many more men than those who were at Æscengum and Fearnhamme. He had crossed from Frankia with some two hundred ships, and maybe five or six thousand men came in all those ships, but fewer than half had found horses, and not all those mounted men rode to Fearnhamme. Some stayed in Cent where they laid claim to captured land, others stayed to plunder Godelmingum, so how many men did we face? Perhaps half of Harald’s force had crossed the river, so my troops and Aldhelm’s warriors were attacking no more than eight hundred, and some of those were not even in the shield wall, but were still seeking plunder in Fearnhamme’s houses. The poets tell me we were outnumbered, but I think we probably had more men.

And we were more disciplined. And we had the advantage of the higher ground. And we hit the shield wall.

I struck with my shield. To make the swine head work the thrust must be hard and fast. I remember shouting Æthelflæd’s war cry, “Kill them all!” then leaping the last pace, all my weight concentrated into my left arm with its heavy shield, and it slammed into Harald’s shield and he was thrown back as I rammed Wasp-Sting beneath the lower rim of my round shield. The blade struck and pierced. That moment is vague, a confusion. I know Harald swung down with his ax because the blade mangled the mail on my back, though without touching my skin. My sudden leap must have carried me inside the swing. I later found my left shoulder was bruised a deep black, and I guess that was where his ax’s haft struck, but I was unaware of the pain during the fight.

I call it a fight, but it was soon over. I do remember Wasp-Sting piercing and I felt the sensation of the blade in flesh, and I knew I had wounded Harald, but then he twisted away to my left, thrust aside by the weight and speed of our attack, and Wasp-Sting was wrenched free. Finan, on my right, covered me with his shield as I slammed into the second rank and I lunged Wasp-Sting again, and still I was moving forward. I slammed the shield’s iron boss at a Dane and saw Rypere’s spear take him in the eye. There was blood in the air, screaming, and a sword lunged from my right, going between the shield and my body, and I just kept going forward as Finan sliced his short-sword at the man’s arm. The sword fell feebly away. I was moving slowly now, pushing against a crush of men and being pushed by my men behind. I was stabbing Wasp-Sting in short hard lunges, and in my memory that passage of the battle was quite silent. It cannot have been silent, of course, but so it seems when I remember Fearnhamme. I see men’s mouths open, full of rotting teeth. I see grimaces. I see the flash of blades. I recall crouching as I shoved forward, I remember the ax swing that came from my left, and how Rypere caught it on his shield, which split open. I remember tripping on the corpse of the horse Harald had sacrificed to Thor, but I was pushed upright by a Dane who tried to gut me with a short blade that was stopped by the gold buckle of my sword belt, and I remember ripping Wasp-Sting up between his legs and sawing her backward and watching his eyes open in terrible pain, and then he was suddenly gone and, just as suddenly, so very suddenly, there were no shields in front of me, just a vegetable plot and a dungheap and a cottage with its mauled thatch heaped on the ground, and I remember all that, but I do not remember any noise.

Æthelflæd told me later that our swine head had gone straight through Harald’s line. It must have seemed that way as she watched from the hilltop, though to me it had seemed slow and hard work, but we did get through, we split Harald’s shield wall and now the real slaughter could begin.

The Danish shield wall was shattered. Now, instead of neighbor helping neighbor, each man was on his own, and our men, West Saxon and Mercian alike, were still ranked shield to shield and they slashed and cut and stabbed at frantic enemies. The panic spread fast, like fire in dry stubble, and the Danes fled and my only regret was that our horses were still on the hilltop, guarded by boys, or else we could have pursued and cut them down from behind.

Not all the Danes ran. Some horsemen who had been readying to circle the hill and attack us from behind charged our shield wall, but horses are reluctant to slam home into a well-made wall. The Danes rammed spears at shields and forced our line to bend, and more Danes came to help the horsemen. My swine head was no longer wedge-shaped, but my men were still staying together and I led them toward the sudden fury. A horse reared at me, hooves flailing, and I let my shield take the thumping blows. The stallion snapped its teeth at me and the rider hacked down with a sword that was stopped by the shield’s iron rim. My men were encircling the attackers, who realized their danger and pulled away, and it was then I saw why they had attacked in the first place. They had come to rescue Harald. Two of my men had captured Harald’s standard, the red-colored wolf-skull still fixed to its ax-banner staff, but Harald himself lay in blood among pea-plants. I shouted that we should capture him, but the horse was in my way and the rider was still slashing wildly with the sword. I rammed Wasp-Sting into the beast’s belly and saw Harald being dragged backward by his ankles. A huge Dane threw Harald over a saddle and other men led the horse away. I tried to reach him, but Wasp-Sting was embedded in the shuddering horse and the rider was still ineptly trying to kill me, so I let go of the short-sword’s hilt, grabbed his wrist, and hauled. I heard a shriek as the rider toppled from the saddle. “Kill him,” I snarled at the man beside me, then pulled Wasp-Sting free, but it was too late, the Danes had managed to rescue the wounded Harald.

I sheathed Wasp-Sting and drew Serpent-Breath. There would be no more shield wall fighting this day, because now we would hunt the Danes through Fearnhamme’s alleys and beyond. Most of Harald’s men fled eastward, but not all. Our two attacks had pinched Harald’s horde, splitting it, and some had to run westward, deeper into Wessex. The first Saxon horsemen were crossing the river now and they pursued the fugitives. The Danes that survived that pursuit would be hunted by peasants. The men who went eastward, the ones who carried their fallen leader, were more numerous and they checked to rally a half-mile away, though as soon as West Saxon horsemen appeared those Danes went on retreating. And still there were Danes in Fearnhamme, men who had taken refuge in the houses where we hunted them like rats. They shouted for mercy, but we showed none because we were still under the thrall of Æthelflæd’s savage wish.

I killed a man on a dungheap, hacking him down with Serpent-Breath and slicing his throat with her point. Finan chased two into a house and I hurried after him, but both were dead when I crashed through the door. Finan tossed me a golden arm ring, then we both went into the sunlit chaos. Horsemen cantered up the street, looking for victims. I heard shouting from behind a hovel and Finan and I ran there to see a huge Dane, bright with silver and gold rings and with a golden chain about his neck, fighting off three Mercians. He was a shipmaster, I guessed, a man who had brought his crews to Harald’s service in hope of finding West Saxon lands, but instead he was finding a West Saxon grave. He was good and fast, his sword and his battered shield holding off his attackers, and then he saw me and recognized the wealth in my war-gear and, at the same moment, the three Mercians stepped back as if to give me the privilege of killing the big man. “Hold your sword tight,” I told him.

He nodded. He glanced at the hammer hanging at my neck. He was sweating, but not with fear. It was a warm day and we were all in leather and mail.

“Wait for me in the feast hall,” I said.

“My name is Othar.”

“Uhtred.”

“Othar the Storm-Rider,” he said.

“I have heard that name,” I said politely, though I had not. Othar wanted me to know so that I could tell men that Othar the Storm-Rider had died well, and I had told him to keep a tight hold of his sword so that Othar the Storm-Rider would go to the feast hall in Valhalla where all warriors who die bravely go after death. These days, although I am old and feeble, I always wear a sword, so that when death comes I will go to that far hall where men like Othar wait for me. I look forward to meeting them.

“The sword,” he said, lifting the weapon, “is called Brightfire.” He kissed the blade. “She has served me well.” He paused. “Uhtred of Bebbanburg?”

“Yes.”

“I met Ælfric the Generous,” Othar said.

It took me a heartbeat or two to realize he meant my uncle who had usurped my inheritance in Northumbria. “The generous?” I asked.

“How else does he keep his lands?” Othar asked in return, “except by paying Danes to stay away?”

“I hope to kill him too,” I said.

“He has many warriors,” Othar said, and with that he thrust Brightfire fast, hoping to surprise me, hoping that he could go to Valhalla with my death as a boast, but I was as quick as him and Serpent-Breath sliced the lunge aside and I hammered my shield boss into him, pushing him back, and brought my sword round fast and realized he was not even trying to parry as Serpent-Breath slid across his throat.

I took Brightfire from his dead hand. I had cut his throat to keep his mail from further damage. Mail is expensive, a trophy as valuable as the rings on Othar’s arms.

Fearnhamme was filled with the dead and with the triumphant living. Almost the only Danes to survive were those who had taken refuge in the church, and they only lived because Alfred had crossed the river and insisted that the church was a refuge. He sat in the saddle, his face tight with pain, and the priests surrounded him as the Danes were led out of the church. Æthelred was there, his sword bloody. Aldhelm was grinning. We had won a famous victory, a great victory, and news of the slaughter would spread wherever the northmen took their boats, and shipmasters would know that going to Wessex was a short route to the grave. “Praise God,” Alfred greeted me.

My mail was sheeted with blood. I knew I was grinning like Aldhelm. Father Beocca was almost crying with joy. Æthelflæd appeared then, still on horseback, and two of her Mercians were leading a prisoner. “She was trying to kill you, Lord Uhtred!” Æthelflæd said happily, and I realized the prisoner was the rider whose horse I had stabbed with Wasp-Sting.

It was Skade.

Æthelred was staring at his wife, no doubt wondering what she did in Fearnhamme dressed in mail, but he had no time to ask because Skade began howling. It was a terrible shrieking like the screams of a woman being eaten by the death-worm, and she tore at her hair and fell to the ground and started writhing. “I curse you all,” she wailed. She grabbed handfuls of earth and rubbed them into her black hair, crammed them into her mouth, and all the time she writhed and screeched. One of her guards was carrying the mail coat she had been wearing in battle, leaving her in a linen shift that she suddenly ripped open to expose her breasts. She smeared earth on her breasts and I had to smile as Edward, beside his father, stared wide-eyed at Skade’s nakedness. Alfred looked even more pained.

“Silence her,” he ordered.

One of the Mercian guards cracked a spear pole across her skull and Skade fell sideways onto the street. There was blood mixed with the soil in her raven hair now, and I thought she was unconscious, but then she spat out the soil and looked up at me. “Cursed,” she snarled.

And one of the spinners took my thread. I like to think she hesitated, but maybe she did not. Maybe she smiled. But whether she hesitated or not, she thrust her bone needle sideways into the darker weave.

Wyrd bið ful ãræd.