The Pagan Lord

Twelve

Had Edward of Wessex decided to stay behind his burh walls? I could well believe that Æthelred was cowering in East Anglia because if he tried to return to Mercia he would be faced by a much larger enemy and he was probably terrified of facing Danes in open battle, but would Edward just abandon Mercia to Cnut’s forces? It was possible. His advisers were cautious men, frightened of all the Northmen, but confident that the stout burh walls of Wessex could resist any attack. Yet they were not fools. They knew that if Cnut and Sigurd were to capture both Mercia and East Anglia then thousands of warriors would come from across the sea, all of them eager to feast off the carcass of Wessex. If Edward waited behind his walls then his enemies would grow in strength. He would not face four thousand Danes, but ten or twelve. He would be overwhelmed.

Yet it was possible he had decided to stay on the defensive.

On the other hand what else would Jarl Sigurd say to me? He would hardly tell me that the West Saxons were marching. He had wanted to unsettle me, and I knew that, yet I was still unsettled.

And what else could I tell my men except that Sigurd had lied? I could only sound confident. ‘Sigurd has the greased tongue of a weasel,’ I told them, ‘and of course Edward is coming!’

And we were fleeing, riding westwards through the night. When I was young I liked the night. I taught myself not to fear the spirits that haunt the darkness, to walk like a shadow through the shadows, to hear the vixen’s cry and the owl’s call and not tremble. The night is the domain of the dead, and the living fear it, but that night we rode through the dark as if we belonged to it.

We came to Liccelfeld first. I knew the town well. It was here that I had thrown the treacherous Offa’s corpse into a stream. Offa, who had trained his dogs, sold news and posed as a friend, and then had tried to betray me. It was a Saxon town, yet mostly undisturbed by the Danes who lived all around it, and I assumed that most of the Saxons, like the dead Offa, purchased that peace by paying tribute to the Danes. Some of them were probably in Cnut’s army and doubtless they had gone to the grave of Saint Chad in Liccelfeld’s big church and prayed for Cnut’s victory. The Danes permitted Christian churches, but if I had tried to make a shrine to Odin on Saxon land the Christian priests would be sharpening their gutting knives. They worship a jealous god.

Bats wheeled over the town’s roofs. Dogs barked as we passed and were hushed by fearful folk who were wise to be frightened of hoofbeats in the night. Shutters stayed shut. We splashed through the stream where I had thrown Offa and I remembered his widow’s shrill curses. The moon was almost full, silvering the road that now rose into low wooded hills. The trees cast hard black shadows. We rode in silence except for the thud of hooves and jangle of bridles. We were following the Roman road that led westwards from Liccelfeld, a road that ran spear-shaft straight across the low hills and wide valleys. We had ridden this road before, not often, but even by moonlight the land looked familiar.

Finan and I stopped at a bare hilltop from where we gazed southwards as the horsemen passed along the road behind us. A long slope of stubble fell away in front of us, and beyond it were dark woods and more hills, and somewhere far off a small glimmer of firelight. I turned to look eastwards, looking back the way we had come. Was there a glow in the sky? I wanted to see some proof that Cnut had stayed in Tameworþig, that his huge army was waiting for the dawn before marching, but I could see no fires lighting the horizon. ‘The bastard’s following us,’ Finan grunted.

‘Probably.’

But far off to the south there was a glow. At least I thought there was. It was hard to tell because it was so far away, and perhaps it was just a trick of the darkness. A hall burning? Or the camp fires of a distant army? An army I just hoped was there? Finan stared too and I knew what he was thinking, or what he was hoping, and he knew I was thinking and hoping the same, but he said nothing. I thought for a moment the glow lightened, but I could not be sure. Sometimes there are lights in the night sky, great shimmering sheets of brightness that ripple and tremble like water, and I wondered if this was one of those mysterious shinings that the gods cascade through the darkness, but the longer I stared the less I saw. Just night and the horizon and the black trees.

‘We’ve come a long way since that slave ship,’ Finan said wistfully.

I wondered what had made him remember those far-off days, then realised he was thinking that all his days would end soon, and a man facing death does well to look back on life. ‘You make it sound like the end,’ I chided him.

He smiled. ‘What is it you like to say? Wyrd bið ful āræd?’

‘Wyrd bið ful āræd,’ I repeated.

Fate is inexorable. And right at that moment, as we gazed forlornly towards the darkness where we hoped to see the light, the three Norns were weaving my life’s threads at the foot of the great tree. And one held a pair of shears. Finan still gazed south, hoping against hope that there was a glow in the sky that would announce the presence of another army, but that southern horizon was dark beneath the stars. ‘The West Saxons have always been cautious,’ Finan said ruefully, ‘unless you were leading them.’

‘And Cnut isn’t cautious.’

‘And he’s coming for us,’ Finan said. He looked back to the east. ‘They’ll be an hour behind us?’

‘Their scouts will be, yes,’ I said, ‘but it will take Cnut the best part of the night to get his army across the river.’

‘But once he’s across …’ Finan began and did not finish.

‘We can’t run for ever,’ I said, ‘but we’ll slow them down.’

‘We’ll still have two or three hundred men biting our arses by dawn,’ Finan said.

‘We will,’ I agreed, ‘and whatever happens, it happens tomorrow.’

‘So we have to find somewhere to fight.’

‘That, and slow them down tonight.’ I gave the south one last look, but decided the glow had been in my dreams.

‘If I remember right,’ Finan turned his horse towards the west, ‘there’s an old fort on this road.’

‘There is,’ I said, ‘but it’s too big for us.’ The fort was Roman, four earth walls enclosing a great square space where two roads met. I could remember no settlement at the crossroads, just the remnants of the mighty fortress. Why had they built it? Had their roads been haunted by thieves?

‘It’s too big for us to defend,’ Finan agreed, ‘but we can slow the bastards there.’

We followed the column west. I twisted constantly in my saddle, looking for pursuers, but seeing none. Cnut must have known we would try to escape and he would have sent men on light horses across the river with orders to find us. Their job was to track us so that Cnut could follow and crush us. He was in a hurry, and he would also be angry, not with me, but with himself. He had abandoned his hunting of Æthelred and by now he must know that had been a bad decision. His army had been rampaging in Mercia for days, but it had yet to defeat any Saxon army, and those armies were getting stronger, perhaps even marching, and time was running out for him. But I had distracted him. I had taken his family, burned his ships and destroyed his halls, and he had turned on me in rage, only to discover he had been tricked and that his wife and children lived. If he had any sense he would abandon me because I was not the enemy he needed to defeat. He needed to massacre Æthelred’s army and then go south to slaughter Edward’s West Saxons, but I suspected he would still pursue me. I was too close, too tempting, and killing me would give Cnut even more reputation, and he knew our small war-band was easy prey. Kill us, rescue his son, then turn south to fight the real war. It would take him one day to crush us, then he could deal with the larger enemy.

And my only hope of living was if that larger enemy was not being cautious, but marching to help me.

The great fort was black with mooncast shadow. It was an immense place, an earthwork built on low land where the two roads crossed. I supposed it had once held wooden buildings where the Roman soldiers were quartered, but now the grass-grown walls enclosed nothing but a wide pasture inhabited by a herd of cows. I spurred through the shallow ditch and over the low rampart to be met by two howling dogs that were instantly silenced by the cowherd. He dropped to his knees when he saw my helmet and mail. He bowed his head, put his hands on the necks of his growling hounds and shivered with fear. ‘What do you call this place?’ I asked him.

‘The old fort, master,’ he said, not raising his head.

‘There’s a village?’

‘Up yonder.’ He jerked his head northwards.

‘Its name?

‘We calls it Pencric, master.’

I remembered the name when he said it. ‘And there’s a river here?’ I asked, recalling the last time I had been on this road.

‘Over yonder,’ he said, jerking his bowed head westwards.

I tossed him a scrap of hacksilver. ‘Keep your hounds quiet,’ I said.

‘Not a sound, master.’ He gazed at the silver in the moonlit grass, then lifted his face to look at me. ‘God bless you, master,’ he said, then saw my hammer. ‘The gods protect you, master.’

‘Are you a Christian?’ I asked him.

He frowned. ‘I think so, master.’

‘Then your god hates me,’ I said, ‘and you will too if your dogs make any noise.’

‘Quiet as mouses they’ll be, master, like little mouses. No noises, I swear.’

I sent most of my men on westwards, but with orders to turn south when they reached the nearby river, which, if I remembered rightly, was neither deep nor wide. ‘Just follow the river south,’ I told them, ‘and we’ll find you.’

I wanted Cnut to think we were fleeing westwards, aiming for the dubious sanctuary of the Welsh hills, but in truth the hoofmarks would betray our southerly turn. Still, if it gave him even a short pause that would help because I needed all the time I could gain, and so my horsemen vanished west towards the river while I stayed with fifty of my men behind the grassy ramparts of the ancient fort. We were lightly armed, carrying spears or swords, though Wibrund, the Frisian, carried an axe on my orders. ‘Hard to fight on horseback with an axe, lord,’ he had grumbled.

‘You’ll need it,’ I said, ‘so keep it.’

We did not wait long. Perhaps less than an hour passed before horsemen appeared on the eastern road. They were hurrying. ‘Sixteen,’ Finan said.

‘Seventeen,’ my son corrected.

‘They should have sent more,’ I told them, and watched the distant road in case more men appeared from the far woods. There would be more men coming, and soon, but these sixteen or seventeen had raced ahead, eager to find us and to report back to Cnut. We let them get close, then spurred the horses over the earthen rampart. Finan led twenty men hard to the east to cut off their retreat while I led the rest straight at the approaching men.

We killed most of them. It was not hard. They were fools, they rode rashly, they were not expecting trouble, they were outnumbered and they died. A few escaped southwards, then turned east in panic. I called to Finan to let them go. ‘Now, Wibrund,’ I said, ‘cut off their heads. Do it quickly.’

The axe fell eleven times. We threw the headless corpses into the fort’s old ditch, but arranged the heads across the Roman road with their dead eyes staring eastwards. Those dead eyes would greet Cnut’s men and, I suspected, suggest that something dire and sorcerous had been done. They would smell magic and they would hesitate.

Just give me time, I prayed to Thor, just give me time.

And we rode on south.

We caught up with the rest of my men and rode through the dawn. Birds were singing everywhere, that joyful song of a new day, and I hated the sound because it greeted the day on which I thought I must die. Still we rode on south towards distant Wessex and hoped against hope that the West Saxons were riding towards us.

And then we just stopped.

We stopped because the horses were tired, we were tired. We had ridden through low hills and placid farmland and I had found nowhere I wanted to fight. What had I expected? A Roman fort small enough to be garrisoned by my two hundred and sixty-nine men? A fort on a convenient hill? An outcrop of steep rock where a man could die of old age while his enemies raged about the rock’s base? There were just fields of stubble, pastures where sheep grazed, woods of ash and oak, shallow streams and gentle slopes. The sun rose higher. The day was warm and our horses wanted water.

And we had come to the river and so we just stopped.

It was not much of a river, more of a stream trying to be a river, and succeeding only in looking like a deep ditch, but it would cause problems for anyone trying to cross it. The ditch’s banks were steep and muddy, though those banks became shallow and gentle where the road crossed the water. The ford was not deep. The river or stream spread there and at its centre the slow-moving water scarcely reached a man’s thighs. The western bank was lined with pollarded willows, and still farther west was a low ridge where a few poor houses stood and I sent Finan to explore that higher ground while I roamed up and down the river’s bank. I could find no fort, no steep hill, but there was this sluggish ditch that was just wide and deep enough to slow an attack.

And so we stopped there. We put the horses into a stone-walled paddock on the western bank and we waited.

We could have pressed on southwards, but Cnut would catch us sooner or later, and at least the river would slow him. Or so I told myself. In truth I had little hope, and even less when Finan came down from the low ridge. ‘Horsemen,’ he said bluntly, ‘to the west.’

‘To the west?’ I asked, thinking he must have been mistaken.

‘To the west,’ he insisted. Cnut’s men were north and east of us and I expected no enemies from the west. Or, rather, I hoped no enemies would come from the west.

‘How many?’

‘Scout parties. Not many.’

‘Cnut’s men?’

He shrugged. ‘Can’t say.’

‘The bastard can’t have crossed this ditch,’ I said, though of course Cnut could have done just that.

‘That’s no ditch,’ Finan said, ‘it’s the River Tame.’

I looked at the muddy water. ‘That’s the Tame?’

‘So the villagers told me.’

I laughed sourly. We had ridden all the way from Tameworþig to find ourselves back on the headwaters of the same river? There was something futile about that, something that seemed fitting to this day on which I supposed I would die. ‘So what do they call this place?’ I asked Finan.

‘Bastards don’t seem to know,’ he said, amused. ‘One man called it Teotanheale and his wife said it was Wodnesfeld.’

So it was either Teotta’s dell or Odin’s field, but whatever it was called it was still the end of our road, the place where I would wait for a vengeful enemy. And he was coming. The scouts were visible across the ford now, which meant horsemen were north, east and west of us. At least fifty men were on the Tame’s far bank, but still a long way from the river, and Finan had seen more horsemen to the west and I supposed Cnut had divided his army, sending some men down the west bank and some down the east.

‘We could ride south still,’ I said.

‘He’ll catch us,’ Finan said bleakly, ‘and we’ll be fighting in open country. At least here we can retreat to that ridge.’ He nodded to where the few hovels crowned the low hill.

‘Burn them,’ I said.

‘Burn them?’

‘Burn the houses. Tell the men it’s a signal to Edward.’

The belief that Edward was close enough to see the smoke would give my few men hope, and men with hope fight better, and then I looked at the paddock where the horses were gathered. I was wondering whether we should ride west, beat our way through the few scouts who lurked in that direction and hope to reach still higher ground. It was probably a futile hope, and then I thought how strange it was that the paddock had a stone wall. This was a country of hedges, yet someone had gone to the immense trouble of piling heavy stones into a low wall. ‘Uhtred!’ I bellowed at my son.

He ran to me. ‘Father?’

‘Take that wall apart. Get every man to help, and fetch me stones about the size of a man’s head.’

He gaped at me. ‘A man’s head?’

‘Just do it! Bring the stones here, and hurry! Rolla!’

The big Dane ambled over. ‘Lord?’

‘I’m going up to the ridge, and you’re putting stones into the river.’

‘I am?’

I told him what I wanted, watched him grin. ‘And make sure those bastards,’ I pointed to Cnut’s scouts who were waiting well to the east, ‘don’t see what you’re doing. If they come close just stop work. Sihtric!’

‘Lord?’

‘Banners, here.’ I pointed to where the road led west from the ford. I would plant our standards there to show Cnut where we wanted to fight. To show Cnut where I would die. ‘My lady!’ I called to Æthelflaed.

‘I’m not leaving,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Did I ask you to?’

‘You will.’

We walked to the low ridge where Finan and a dozen men were shouting at the villagers to empty their cottages. ‘Take everything you want!’ Finan told them. ‘Dogs, cats, children even. Your pots, your spits, everything. We’re burning the houses!’ Eldgrim was carrying an old woman from a house as her daughter screamed in protest.

‘Must we burn the houses?’ Æthelflaed asked.

‘If Edward’s marching,’ I said bleakly, ‘he has to know where we are.’

‘I suppose so, yes,’ she said simply. Then she turned to gaze eastwards. The scouts were still watching us from a safe distance, but there was no sign yet of Cnut’s horde. ‘What do we do with the boy?’

She meant Cnut’s son. I shrugged. ‘We threaten to kill him.’

‘But you won’t. And Cnut knows you won’t.’

‘I might.’

She laughed at that, a grim laugh. ‘You won’t kill him.’

‘If I live,’ I said, ‘he’ll be fatherless.’

She frowned in puzzlement, then saw what I meant. She laughed. ‘You think you can beat Cnut?’

‘We’ve stopped,’ I said, ‘we’ll fight. Perhaps your brother will come? We’re not dead yet.’

‘So you’ll raise him?’

‘Cnut’s son?’ I shook my head. ‘Sell him, probably. Once he’s a slave there’ll be no one to tell him who his father was. He won’t know that he’s a wolf, he’ll think he’s a puppy.’ If I lived, I thought, and, truly, I did not expect to survive that day. ‘And you,’ I touched Æthelflaed’s arm, ‘should ride away.’

‘I …’

‘You’re Mercia!’ I snapped at her. ‘Men love you, they follow you! If you die here then Mercia loses its heart.’

‘And if I run away,’ she said, ‘then Mercia is cowardly.’

‘You leave so that you can fight another day.’

‘And how do I leave?’ she asked. She was gazing westwards and I saw the horsemen there, just a handful, but they were also watching us. There were six or seven men, all of them at least two miles away, but they could see us. And there were probably others who were closer. If I was to send Æthelflaed away then those men would follow her, and if I sent her with an escort large enough to fight through whatever enemy she found then I just made my own death more certain. ‘Take fifty men,’ I told her, ‘take fifty men and ride south.’

‘I’m staying.’

‘If you’re captured …’ I began.

‘They’ll rape and kill me,’ she said calmly, then put a finger on my hand. ‘It’s called martyrdom, Uhtred.’

‘It’s called stupidity.’

She said nothing to that, just turned and looked north and east and there, at last, were Cnut’s men. Hundreds upon hundreds of men darkening the land, coming south down the road from the Roman fort where we had left the severed heads. Their leading horsemen had almost reached the turn in the road that led west to the ford where my men laboured in the shallow water. Rolla must have seen the enemy because he called the men back to the river’s western bank where we would make our shield wall.

‘Did you ever hear of Æsc’s Hill?’ I asked Æthelflaed.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘my father loved to tell that tale.’

Æsc’s Hill was a battle fought long ago, when I was a boy, and on that winter day I had been in the Danish army and we had been so confident of victory. Yet the frosted ground had been warmed by Danish blood and the cold air had been filled with Saxon cheers. Harald, Bagseg and Sidroc the Younger, Toki the Shipmaster, names from my past, they had all died, killed by the West Saxons who, under Alfred, had waited behind a ditch. The priests, of course, ascribed that unlikely victory to their nailed god, but in truth the ditch defeated the Danes. A shield wall is strong so long as it stays intact, shield against shield, men shoulder to shoulder, a wall of mail, wood, flesh and steel, but if the wall breaks then slaughter follows, and crossing the ditch at Æsc’s Hill had broken the Danish wall and the Saxon foemen had made a great slaughter.

And my little shield wall was protected by a ditch. Except the ditch was broken by the ford, and it was there, in that shallow water, that we would fight.

The first cottage burst into flames. The thatch was dry under its moss and the flames were hungry. Rats scrambled from the roof as my men carried the fire to the other houses. I was sending a signal to whom? To Edward? Who might still be cowering behind his burh walls? I stared south, hoping against all hope to see horsemen approaching, but there was just a falcon riding the high wind above the empty fields and woods. The bird was almost motionless, wings flickering, then it stooped, wings folded, streaking down to kill. A bad omen? I touched my hammer. ‘You should go,’ I told Æthelflaed, ‘go south. Ride hard, ride fast! Don’t stop at Gleawecestre, but keep going to Wessex. Go to Lundene! Those walls are strong, but if it falls you can take a ship to Frankia.’

‘My banner is there,’ she said, pointing to the ford, ‘and where my banner is I am.’ Her banner showed a white goose clutching a cross and a sword. It was an ugly flag, but the goose was the symbol of Saint Werburgh, a holy woman who had once frightened a flock of geese away from a cornfield, a feat that had earned her sainthood, and the goose-frightener was also Æthelflaed’s protector. She would have to work hard this day, I thought.

‘Who do you trust?’ I asked her.

She frowned at that question. ‘Trust? You, of course, your men, my men, why?’

‘Find a man you trust,’ I said. The fire of the nearest house was scorching me. ‘Tell him to kill you before the Danes capture you. Tell him to stand behind you and make the stroke on the back of your neck.’ I pushed a finger through her hair to touch her skin where the skull meets the spine. ‘Just there,’ I said, pressing my finger. ‘It’s fast, it’s quick and it’s painless. Don’t be a martyr.’

She smiled. ‘God is on our side, Uhtred. We shall win.’ She spoke very flatly, as if what she said was beyond all contradiction, and I just looked at her. ‘We shall win,’ she said again, ‘because God is with us.’

What fools these Christians are.

I went down to my death-place and watched the Danes approach.

There is a way of battle. In the end the shield walls must meet and the slaughter will begin and one side will prevail and the other will be beaten down in a welter of butchery, but before the blades clash and before the shields crash, men must summon the nerve to make the charge. The two sides stare at each other; they taunt and insult each other. The young fools of each army will prance ahead of the wall and challenge their enemy to single combat, they will boast of the widows they plan to make and of the orphans who will weep for their fathers’ deaths. And the young fools fight and half of them will die, and the other half strut their bloody victory, but there is still no true victory because the shield walls have not met. And still the waiting goes on. Some men vomit with fear, others sing, some pray, but then at last one side will advance. It is usually a slow advance. Men crouch behind their shields, knowing that spears, axes and arrows will greet them before the shields slam together, and only when they are close, really close, does the attacker charge. Then there is a great bellow of noise, a roar of anger and fear, and the shields meet like thunder and the big blades fall and the swords stab and the shrieks fill the sky as the two shield walls fight to the death. That is the way of battle.

And Cnut broke it.

It began in the usual way. My shield wall stood at the very edge of the ford, which was no more than twenty paces across. We were on the western bank, Cnut’s men were arriving from the east and, as they reached the crossroads, they dismounted. Boys took the horses and led them to a pasture while the warriors unslung their shields and looked for their battle-companions. They were arriving in groups. It was plain they had hurried and were strung out along the road, but their numbers grew swiftly. They gathered some five hundred paces from us where they formed a swine’s horn. I had expected that.

‘Confident bastards,’ Finan muttered.

‘Wouldn’t you be?’

‘Probably,’ he said. Finan was to my left, my son to my right. I resisted the temptation to give Uhtred advice. He had practised the shield wall for years, he knew all I had to teach him, and to repeat it now would only betray my nervousness. He was silent. He just stared at the enemy and knew that in a few moments he would have to face his first battle of the shield walls. And, I thought, he would probably die.

I tried to count the arriving enemy and reckoned the swine’s horn held about five hundred men. So, they outnumbered us two to one, and still more men were coming. Cnut and Sigurd were there, their banners bright above the shields. I could see Cnut because he was still mounted, his pale horse somewhere deep in the big wedge of men.

A swine’s horn. I noticed that not one man had come forward to look at the ford, which told me they knew this stretch of country, or someone in their army knew it. They knew about the ditch-like river and they knew that the west-leading road had a shallow ford that would be easy to cross and so they did not need to make any exploration. They would just advance, and Cnut had formed them into the swine’s horn to make that advance irresistible.

The shield wall is usually straight. Two straight lines that crash together and men struggle to break the opposing line, but a swine’s horn is a wedge. It comes fast. The biggest and bravest men are placed at the point of the wedge and their job is to smash through the opposing shield wall like a spear shattering a door. And, once our line was broken, the wedge would widen as they hacked along our lines and so my men would die.

And to make sure of that Cnut had sent men to cross the river north of us. A boy rode down from the ridge where the houses burned to bring me that bad news. ‘Lord?’ he asked nervously.

‘What’s your name, boy?’

‘Godric, lord.’

‘You’re Grindan’s son?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Then your name is Godric Grindanson,’ I said, ‘and how old are you?’

‘Eleven, lord, I think.’

He was a snub-nosed, blue-eyed boy wearing an old leather coat that had probably belonged to his father because it was so big. ‘So what does Godric Grindanson want to tell me?’ I asked.

He pointed a tremulous finger north. ‘They’re crossing the river, lord.’

‘How many? And how far away?’

‘Hrodgeir says there are three hundred men, lord, and they’re still a long way north and more of them are crossing all the time, lord.’ Hrodgeir was a Dane whom I had left on the ridge so he could keep watch on what the enemy did. ‘And, lord …’ Godric went on until his voice faltered.

‘Tell me.’

‘He says there are more men to the west, lord, hundreds!’

‘Hundreds?’

‘They’re among trees, lord, and Hrodgeir says he can’t count them.’

‘He hasn’t got enough fingers,’ Finan put in.

I looked up at the frightened boy. ‘Shall I tell you something about battles, Godric Grindanson?’

‘Yes please, lord.’

‘One man always survives,’ I said. ‘He’s usually a poet and his job is to write a song that tells how bravely all his companions died. That might be your job today. Are you a poet?’

‘No, lord.’

‘Then you’ll have to learn. So when you see us dying, Godric Grindanson, you ride south as fast as you can and you ride like the wind and you ride till you’re safe and you write the poem in your head that tells the Saxons that we died like heroes. Will you do that for me?’

He nodded.

‘Go back to Hrodgeir,’ I told him, ‘and tell me when you see the horsemen from the north or the ones from the west getting close.’

He went. Finan grinned. ‘Bastards on three sides of us.’

‘They must be scared.’

‘Shitting themselves, probably.’

I was expecting Cnut to ride to the ford, bringing his war-leaders with him to enjoy his insults. I had thought to have his son at my side with a knife at his throat, but rejected the thought. Cnut Cnutson could stay with Æthelflaed. If he stayed with me I could only threaten him, and if Cnut dared me to cut the boy’s throat, what would I do? Cut it? We would still have to fight. Let him live? Then Cnut would despise me for being weak. The boy had served his purpose by luring Cnut away from the East Anglian borderlands to this corner of Mercia, and now he must wait till the battle was done to learn his fate. I gripped my shield and drew Serpent-Breath. In almost every clash of the shield walls I preferred Wasp-Sting, my short-sword that was so deadly when you were being forced into the embrace of your enemy, but today I would begin with the longer, heavier blade. I hefted her, kissed her hilt, and waited for Cnut’s arrival.

Only he did not come to insult me, nor did any young men come forward to challenge us to single combat.

Instead Cnut sent the swine’s horn.

Instead of insults and challenges there was a great roar of battle-shout from the mass of men assembled under the banners of Cnut and Sigurd, and then they advanced. They came down the road fast. The land was flat, there were no obstacles and they kept their tight formation. Their shields overlapped. We saw the painted symbols on the shields, the shattered crosses, ravens, hammers, axes, and eagles. Above those broad round shields were helmets with face-guards so that the enemy seemed to be black-eyed, steel-clad, and in front of the shields were the heavy spears, their blades catching the day’s half-clouded light, and beneath the shields hundreds of feet trampled the ground in time to the heavy drums that had started to beat the war-rhythm behind the swine’s horn.

No insults, no challenges. Cnut knew he outnumbered me by so many that he could afford to divide his army. I glanced to my left and saw still more horsemen crossing the ditch far to the north. Some five or six hundred men were pounding towards us in the swine’s horn, and at least that many were now on our side of the river and ready to fall on our left flank. More men, those on slower horses, were still arriving, but Cnut must have known that his swine’s horn would do the necessary work. It thundered towards us and as it came closer I could see faces behind the cheek-pieces, I could see eager eyes and grim mouths, I could see Danes coming to kill us.

‘God is with us!’ Sihtric shouted. The two priests had been shriving men all morning, but now they retreated behind the shield wall and knelt in prayer, their clasped hands lifted to the sky.

‘Wait for my order!’ I called. My shield wall knew what they must do. We would advance into the ford as the swine’s horn reached the far bank. I planned to meet the charge almost halfway across the river and there I planned a slaughter before I died. ‘Wait!’ I shouted.

And I thought Cnut should have waited. He should have let his swine’s horn wait until the men to the north were ready to attack, but he was so confident. And why not? The swine’s horn outnumbered us and it should have shattered our shield wall and scattered my men and led to a slaughter by the river, and so he had not waited. He had sent the swine’s horn and it was almost at the far bank now.

‘Forward!’ I shouted. ‘And slowly!’

We went forward steadily, our shields overlapping, our weapons held hard. We were in four ranks. I was in the front and at the centre, and the point of the swine’s horn came straight at me like a boar’s tusk ready to rip through flesh and muscle and sinew and mail to shatter bone and spill guts and wreath the slow river water with Saxon blood.

‘Kill!’ a man shouted from the Danish ranks and they saw how few we were and knew they would overwhelm us and now they quickened, eager to slay, cheering as they came, their voices raw with threat, their shields still touching, their mouths grimaces of battle-hate, and it was as if they raced to reach us in the certainty that their poets would sing of a great slaughter.

And then they reached the stones.

Rolla had made a ragged line of stones at the ford’s deepest point. The stones were large, each about the size of a man’s head, and they were invisible. Almost invisible. I knew they were there and could just see them, and I could see how the water rippled irritably about the sunken rocks, but the Danes could not see them because their shields were held high and those shields blocked their view downwards. They were staring at us over the shields’ rims, planning our deaths, and instead they ran into the stones and tripped. What had been a wedge of men charging irresistibly to our slaughter became a chaos of falling men, and even though those at the sides of the wedge tried to halt the men behind pushed them on and still more tripped on the hidden stones, and then we struck.

And we killed.

It is so easy to kill men who are in chaos, and every man we killed became an obstacle to the ones behind. The man at the point of the wedge had been a big, black-haired warrior. His hair sprang like a horse’s wild mane from beneath his helmet, his beard half hid his mail coat, his shield bore the sign of Sigurd’s raven and his arms were bright with the silver and gold he had earned as a warrior. He had taken the place of honour, the sharp point of the swine’s horn, and he had carried an axe with which he had hoped to hack down my shield, break my skull open and cut his way through our wall.

Instead he sprawled in the river, face down, and Serpent-Breath stabbed down hard, piercing mail to cut his spine and he bent backwards as I twisted and ripped the blade and then I thrust my shield forward to crash against a man who was on his knees and trying desperately to stab me with his sword. I put my foot on the dying warrior’s back, tore my blade free, and thrust it hard. Her point went into the second man’s open mouth so that he seemed to swallow Serpent-Breath and I rammed her forward and watched his eyes widen as the blood gurgled from his open mouth, and all along the river my men were hacking and cutting and lunging at Danes who were fallen or off balance or dying.

And we screamed. We screamed our war cry, our shout of slaughter, our joy of being men in battle who are driven by terror. At that moment it did not matter that we were fated to die, that our enemy outnumbered us, that we could have killed all the swine’s horn and still they would have enough numbers to overwhelm us. At that moment we were released to be death’s servants. We were living and they were dying, and all the relief of being alive fed into our butchery. And we were butchers. The swine’s horn had stopped dead, it was in utter disarray, the shield wall was broken and we were killing. Our shields were still touching, we were shoulder to shoulder, and we were advancing slowly, stepping on dead men, finding footholds between the stones, chopping and stabbing, spears lancing down into fallen men, axes splitting helmets, swords piercing flesh, and the Danes still did not understand what had happened. The men in the rear ranks were pressing forward and driving the front ranks onto the obstacles and onto our blades, except you could not talk of ranks any longer because Cnut’s swine’s horn had become a rabble. Chaos and panic spread through them as the river swirled with blood and the sky echoed with the screams of dying men whose guts were being washed by the Tame.

And someone on the Danish side realised that disaster was just begetting disaster, and that there was no need for more good men to be killed by Saxon blades. ‘Back!’ he shouted. ‘Back!’

And we jeered them. We mocked them. We did not follow them because what small safety we had lay in staying west of the stones in the ford, and now those stones were humped with dead and dying men, a tangle of blood-laced bodies, and those bodies, weighed down by their mail, made a low wall across the river. We stood amidst that wall and called the Danes cowards, called them weaklings, and mocked their manhood. We lied, of course. They were warriors and brave men, but we were doomed men and we had our moment of triumph as we stood knee-deep in the river with our blades bloodied and with relief coursing through veins heated by fear and anger.

And the remnant of the swine’s horn, a remnant that still outnumbered us, went back to the river’s eastern bank and there they were formed into a new shield wall, a bigger shield wall because the latecomers were joining them. There were hundreds of men now, thousands perhaps, and we were prancing fools who had stung a boar that was about to eviscerate us.

‘Lord!’ It was Hrodgeir the Dane who had ridden down from the ridge where the fires still burned to send their futile message into the empty sky. ‘Lord!’ he called urgently.

‘Hrodgeir?’

‘Lord!’ He turned in his saddle and pointed and I saw beyond the ridge, up the river’s bank, a second shield wall. And that shield wall had hundreds too, and it was coming. Those men had crossed the ditch-like river, dismounted, and now they came towards us. ‘I’m sorry, lord,’ Hrodgeir said, as if he was responsible for not stopping that second attack.

‘Uhtred!’ a voice bellowed from across the river. Cnut stood there, legs apart, Ice-Spite in his hand. ‘Uhtred Worm-shit!’ he called. ‘Come and fight!’

‘Lord!’ Hrodgeir called again and he was staring westwards and I turned to look that way and saw horsemen streaming from the woods to climb the ridge. Hundreds of men. So the enemy was in front of us, they were behind us, and they were to the north of us.

‘Uhtred Worm-turd!’ Cnut bellowed. ‘You dare fight? Or have you lost your bravery? Come and die, you piece of shit, you turd, you piece of oozing shit! Come to Ice-Spite! She yearns for you! I’ll let your men live if you die! You hear me?’

I stepped ahead of the shield wall and stared at my enemy. ‘You’ll let my men live?’

‘Even that whore of yours can live. They can all go! They can live!’

‘And what value is the promise of a man who dribbled from his mother’s arse when he was born?’ I called back.

‘Does my son live?’

‘Unharmed.’

‘Your men can take him as surety. They will live!’

‘Don’t, lord,’ Finan said urgently, ‘he’s too fast. Let me fight him!’

The three Norns were laughing. They sat at the foot of the tree and two of them held the threads, and one of them held the shears.

‘Let me go, Father,’ Uhtred said.

But wyrd bið ful āræd. I had always known it would come to this. Serpent-Breath against Ice-Spite. And so I clambered over the bodies of my enemies and went to fight Cnut.