Death of Kings

Then, from the far trees, across the damp fields, the Danes appeared. A host of Danes, maybe two hundred of them, and they came on horses led by Sigurd who rode a great white stallion beneath his banner of a flying raven. He saw we were waiting for him and that to attack us he must send his men across the narrow bridge and so he curbed his horse some fifty paces away, dismounted, and walked towards us. A younger man accompanied him, yet it was Sigurd who drew attention. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and with a scarred face half hidden by his beard that was long enough to be plaited into two thick ropes that he wore twisted around his neck. His helmet reflected the reddening sunlight. He was not bothering to carry a shield or draw a sword, but he was still a Danish lord in his war-splendour. His helmet was touched with gold, a chain of gold was buried among the plaits of his beard, his arms were thick with golden rings and the throat of his sword’s scabbard, like the weapon’s hilt, glinted with more gold. The younger man had a chain of silver, and a silver ring surrounding his helmet’s crown. He had an insolent face, petulant and hostile.

I stepped over the piled thatch and went to meet the two men. ‘Lord Uhtred,’ Sigurd greeted me sarcastically.

‘Jarl Sigurd,’ I answered in the same tone.

‘I told them you weren’t a fool,’ he said. The sun was now so low above the south-western horizon that he was forced to half close his eyes to see me properly. He spat onto the grass. ‘Ten of your men against eight of mine,’ he suggested, ‘right here,’ he stamped his foot on the wet grass. He wanted to draw my men off the bridge, and he knew I would not accept.

‘Let me fight him,’ the younger man said.

I gave the young man a dismissive glance. ‘I like my enemies to be old enough to shave before I kill them,’ I said, then looked back to Sigurd. ‘You against me,’ I told him, ‘right here,’ I stamped my foot on the road’s frost-hardened mud.

He half smiled, showing yellowed teeth. ‘I would kill you, Uhtred,’ he said mildly, ‘and so rid the world of a worthless piece of rat shit, but that pleasure must wait.’ He pulled up his right sleeve to show a splint on his forearm. The splint was two slivers of wood bound tight with linen bands. I also saw a curious scar on his palm, a pair of slashes that formed a cross. Sigurd was no coward, but nor was he fool enough to fight me while the broken bone of his sword arm was mending.

‘You were fighting women again?’ I asked, nodding at the strange scar.

He stared at me. I thought my insult had gone deep, but he was evidently thinking.

‘Let me fight him!’ the young man said again.

‘Be quiet,’ Sigurd growled.

I looked at the youngster. He was perhaps eighteen or nineteen, nearly coming into his full strength, and had all the swagger of a confident young man. His mail was fine, probably Frankish, and his arms thick with the rings Danes like to wear, but I suspected the wealth had been given to him, not earned on a battlefield. ‘My son,’ Sigurd introduced him, ‘Sigurd Sigurdson.’ I nodded to him, while Sigurd the Younger just stared at me with hostile eyes. He so wanted to prove himself, but his father would have none of it. ‘My only son,’ he said.

‘It seems he has a death wish,’ I said, ‘and if he wants a fight, I’ll oblige him.’

‘It isn’t his time,’ Sigurd said, ‘I know, because I talked to Ælfadell,’ he said.

‘Ælfadell?’

‘She knows the future, Uhtred,’ he said, and his voice was serious without any trace of mockery, ‘she tells the future.’

I had heard rumours of Ælfadell, rumours as vague as smoke, rumours that drifted across Britain and said a northern sorceress could speak with the gods. Her name, that sounded so like our word for nightmare, made Christians cross themselves.

I shrugged as if I did not care about Ælfadell. ‘And what does the old woman say?’

Sigurd grimaced. ‘She says no son of Alfred will ever rule in Britain.’

‘You believe her?’ I asked even though I could see he did because he spoke simply and plainly, as if telling me the price of oxen.

‘You would believe her too,’ he said, ‘except you won’t live to meet her.’

‘She told you that?’

‘If you and I met, she says, then your leader will die.’

‘My leader?’ I pretended to be amused.

‘You,’ Sigurd said grimly.

I spat onto the grass. ‘I trust Eohric is paying you well for this wasted time.’

‘He will pay,’ Sigurd said harshly, then he turned, plucked his son’s elbow, and walked away.

I had sounded defiant, but in truth my soul was crawling with fear. Suppose Ælfadell the Enchantress had told the truth? The gods do speak to us, though rarely in plain speech. Was I doomed to die here on this river’s bank? Sigurd believed it, and he was gathering his men for an attack, which, if its result had not been foretold, he would never have attempted. No men, however battle-skilled, could hope to break a shield wall that was as strong as the one I had placed between the bridge’s sturdy parapets, but men inspired by prophecy will attempt any foolishness in the knowledge that the fates have ordained their victory. I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt, then the hammer of Thor, and went back to the bridge. ‘Light the fire,’ I told Osferth.

It was time to burn the bridge and retreat, and Sigurd, if he was wise, would have let us go. He had lost his chance to ambush us and our position on the bridge was dauntingly formidable, but he had the prophecy of some strange woman ringing in his head and so he began haranguing his men. I heard their shouted responses, heard the blades beating on the shields and watched as Danes dismounted and formed a line. Osferth brought a flaming torch and thrust it deep into the piled thatch, and smoke thickened instantly. The Danes were howling as I elbowed my way into the centre of our shield wall.

‘He must want you dead very badly, lord,’ Finan said with some amusement.

‘He’s a fool,’ I said. I did not tell Finan that a sorceress had foretold my death. Finan might be a Christian, yet he believed in every ghost and every spirit, he believed that elves scuttled through the undergrowth and wraiths twisted in the night clouds, and if I had told him about Ælfadell the Sorceress he would have felt the same fear that shivered my heart. If Sigurd attacked I must fight because I needed to hold the bridge until the fire caught, and Osferth was right about the thatch. It was reed, not wheat straw, and it was damp, and the fire burned sullenly. It smoked, but there was no fierce heat to bite into the bridge’s thick timbers that Osferth had weakened and splintered with war axes.

Sigurd’s men were anything but sullen. They were clattering swords and axes against their heavy shields, and jostling for the honour of leading the attack. They would be half blinded by the sun and choked by the smoke, yet they were still eager. Reputation is everything and is the only thing that survives our journey to Valhalla, and the man who cut me down would gain reputation. And so, in the day’s dying light, they steeled themselves to attack us.

‘Father Willibald!’ I shouted.

‘Lord?’ a nervous voice called from the bank.

‘Bring that big banner! Have two of your monks hold it over us!’

‘Yes, lord,’ he said, sounding surprised and pleased, and a pair of monks brought the vast linen banner embroidered with its picture of Christ crucified. I told them to stand close behind my rearmost rank and had two of my men stand there with them. If there had been the slightest wind the great square of linen would have been unmanageable, but now it was blazoned above us, all green and gold and brown and blue, with a dark streak of red where the soldier’s spear had broken Christ’s body. Willibald thought I was using the magic of his religion to support my men’s swords and axes, and I let him think that.

‘It will shade their eyes, lord,’ Finan warned me, meaning that we would lose the advantage of the low sun’s blinding dazzle once the Danes advanced within the great shadow cast by the banner.

‘Only for a while,’ I said. ‘Stand firm!’ I called to the two monks holding the stout staffs that supported the great linen square. And just then, perhaps goaded by the flaunted banner, the Danes charged in a howling rush.

And as they came I remembered my very first shield wall. I had been so young, so frightened, standing on a bridge no wider than this one with Tatwine and his Mercians as we were attacked by a group of Welsh cattle thieves. They had rained arrows on us first, then charged, and on that distant bridge I had learned the seethe of battle-joy.

Now, on another bridge, I drew Wasp-Sting. My great sword was called Serpent-Breath, but her little sister was Wasp-Sting, a brief and brutal blade that could be lethal in the tight embrace of the shield wall. When men are close as lovers, when their shields are pressing on each other, when you smell their breath and see the rot in their teeth and the fleas in their beards, and when there is no room to swing a war axe or a long-sword, then Wasp-Sting could stab up from beneath. She was a gut-piercing sword, a horror.

And that was a horror-slaughter on a winter’s day. The Danes had seen our piled kindling and assumed there was nothing but reeds smoking damply on the bridge, yet beneath the reeds Osferth had stacked roof timbers and when the leading Danes tried to kick the reeds off the bridge’s roadway they kicked those heavy timbers instead and stumbled.

Some had hurled spears first. Those spears thumped into our shields, making them unwieldy, but it hardly mattered. The leading Danes tripped on the hidden timbers and the men behind pushed the falling men forward. I kicked one in the face, feeling my iron-reinforced boot crush bone. Danes were sprawling at our feet while others tried to get past their fallen comrades to reach our line, and we were killing. Two men succeeded in reaching us, despite the smoking barricade, and one of those two fell to Wasp-Sting coming up from beneath his shield rim. He had been swinging an axe that the man behind me caught on his shield and the Dane was still holding the war axe’s shaft as I saw his eyes widen, saw the snarl of his mouth turn to agony as I twisted the blade, ripping it upwards and as Cerdic, beside me, chopped his own axe down. The man with the crushed face was holding my ankle and I stabbed at him as the blood spray from Cerdic’s axe blinded me. The whimpering man at my feet tried to crawl away, but Finan stabbed his sword into his thigh, then stabbed again. A Dane had hooked his axe over the top rim of my shield and hauled it down to expose my body to a spear-thrust, but the axe rolled off the circular shield and the spear was deflected upwards and I slammed Wasp-Sting forward again, felt her bite, twisted her, and Finan was keening his mad Irish song as he added his own blade to the slaughter. ‘Keep the shields touching!’ I shouted at my men.

This is what we practised every day. If the shield wall breaks then death rules, but if the shield wall holds then it is the enemy who dies, and those first Danes came at us in a wild rush, inspired by a sorceress’s prophecy, and their assault had been defeated by the barricade that had tripped them and so made them easy prey for our blades. They had stood no chance of breaking our shield wall, they were too undisciplined, too confused, and now three of them lay dead among the scattered reeds that still burned feebly, while the smoking beams remained as a low obstacle. The survivors of those first attackers did not stay to be killed, but ran back to Sigurd’s bank where a second group readied to break us. There may have been twenty of them, big men, spear-Danes, coming to kill, and they were not wild like the first group, but deliberate. These were men who had killed in the shield wall, who knew their business, whose shields overlapped and whose weapons glittered in the dying sun. They would not rush and stumble. They would come slowly and use their long spears to break our wall and so let their swordsmen and axemen into our ranks.

‘God, fight for us!’ Willibald called as the Danes reached the bridge. The newcomers stepped carefully, not tripping, their eyes watching us. Some called insults, yet I hardly heard them. I was watching them. There was blood on my face and in the links of my mail coat. My shield was heavy with a Danish spear, and Wasp-Sting’s blade was reddened. ‘Slaughter them, O Lord!’ Willibald was praying. ‘Cut down the heathen! Smite them, Lord, in thy great mercy!’ The monks had started their chanting again. The Danes pulled dead or dying men backwards to make room for their attack. They were close now, very close, but not yet in reach of our blades. I watched their shields touch each other again, saw the spear-blades come up, and heard the word of command.

And I also heard Willibald’s shrill voice over the confusion. ‘Christ is our leader, fight for Christ, we cannot fail.’

And I laughed as the Danes came. ‘Now!’ I shouted at the two men standing with the monks. ‘Now!’

The great banner fell forward. It had taken the women of Alfred’s court months of work, months of making tiny stitches with expensively dyed wool, months of dedication and prayer and love and skill, and now the figure of Christ fell forward onto the leading Danes. The vast linen and wool panel fell like a fisherman’s net to drape itself over their first rank to blind them, and as it engulfed them I gave the order and we charged.

It is easy to pass a spear-blade if the man holding it cannot see you. I shouted at our second rank to grab the weapons and haul them clear while we killed the spearmen. Cerdic’s axe sliced down through linen, wool, iron, bone and brain. We were screaming, slaughtering, and making a new barricade of Danes. Some slashed at the banner, which shrouded and blinded them. Finan was sawing his sharp blade at the wrists holding spears, the Danes were desperately trying to escape their entanglement and we were hacking, cutting and lunging, while all around us and between us the smoke of the scattered reeds thickened. I felt heat on one ankle. The fire was at last catching. Sihtric, his teeth bared in a grimace, was chopping a long-hafted axe again and again, driving the blade down into trapped Danes.

I hurled Wasp-Sting back to our bank and snatched up a fallen axe. I have never liked fighting with an axe. The weapon is clumsy. If the first stroke fails then it takes too long to recover and an enemy can use that pause to strike, but this enemy was already beaten. The ripped banner was red with real blood now, soaked with it, and I struck the axe down again and again, beating the wide blade through mail into bone and flesh, and the smoke was choking me, and a Dane was screaming, and my men were shouting and the sun was a ball of fire in the west and the whole flat wet land was shimmering red.

We pulled back from the horror. I saw Christ’s surprisingly cheerful face being consumed by fire as the linen caught the flames. Linen burns easily, and the black stain spread across the layers of cloth. Osferth had brought still more reeds and timbers from the cottage he had pulled down and we threw them onto the small flames and watched as the fire at last found strength. Sigurd’s men had taken enough. They too pulled back and stood on the river’s far bank and watched as the fire took its grip on the bridge. We dragged four enemy corpses to our side of the bridge and we stripped them of silver chains, arm rings and enamelled belts. Sigurd had mounted his white horse and just stared at me. His sullen son, who had been kept from the fight, spat towards us. Sigurd himself said nothing.