Conqueror (25 page)

As the morning wore on and the horizon remained empty, the tension in Alfred’s camp rose inexorably, until even Cynewulf could bear it no more. But the King himself sat on his throne, and consulted with his advisors, prayed with his priests, and read his precious books.

It was after midday when the first cries went up from the sentries. ‘They come! They come!’

Cynewulf rushed to see for himself. These were no Roman legions. This was the fyrd, an army of farmers, and they came in parties of three, four or five, straggling across the countryside as if showing up for a spring fair. They were armed with rusty weapons handed down since their grandfathers’ time, and some carried nothing more than pitchforks and clubs. Many of the men were gaunt, half-starved, even the nobles. And yet they came, responding to the King’s call, from north, south and west, from Sumorsaete, Wiltunscir, Hamptonscir - only the east did not respond, where the Danes’ control was too tight.

Alfred waited on his giving-throne, the expression on his long face as calm as it had always been.

In the end, more than a thousand responded to his call.

Alfred climbed up on the seat of his throne so they could all see him and his glittering crown. The farmers before him fell silent, rows of them in their grimy earth-coloured clothes, their faces turned to him like flowers towards the sun.

Alfred spoke loudly enough for the furthest man to hear. He said simply: ‘It ends here.’

He was answered by a roar.

The rest of the day was spent in preparations for the battle to come.

The only professional warriors under Alfred’s command were his thegns, including Arngrim, and the farmers’ only experience of Danes was to run away from them. So the thegns coached the fyrdmen in how to fight the English way, in the shield wall. Arngrim worked hard at this, picking out the younger, stronger and the braver-looking of the farmers and equipping them with shields, mail and decent swords. But there weren’t enough weapons to go round.

While Arngrim worked on the farmers’ martial skills, Cynewulf tended to their souls. As the day wore on he baptised one scared farmer after another, hastily splashing their heads with water from wooden cups, and sprinkling holy water on their shields. Evidently not all the population of this part of Wessex was as Christian as he might have imagined. But even if they hadn’t lived in Christ these farmer-warriors would fight and die as Christians.

At the end of the day Alfred’s priests led a long evening of fasting, praying and the singing of hymns and psalms. The camp became an open-air cathedral of Christian piety. Alfred himself was at the centre of this, as tireless in his worship as he had been in preparation for the battle. He was the first to dedicate his life and his victory to God, swearing oaths on a Bible and on the holy sacrament, and he sang until his voice was scratchy with fatigue.

But these final services were conducted under high gibbets on which dangled the corpses of Danes, captured, drained of their useful information, and then summarily hanged. Alfred was pious, but he was a warrior-king.

Not all Alfred’s thegns were Christian. Arngrim was nowhere to be seen during these services. With others, he crept off to a bonfire away from the Christian celebrations.

At about midnight, with a couple of his hearth-companions at his side, Alfred left his camp and made for the pagans’ bonfire. Cynewulf was worn out with praying, and yet he was too excited to sleep, and he followed the King.

By the light of their bonfire the pagan thegns with their followers stood around a pit. Arngrim was here, and Cynewulf saw Ibn Zuhr tending Arngrim’s horse, nearly invisible in the dark. As Cynewulf watched, a pig was dragged squealing to the edge of the pit. A brisk sword-stroke slit open the pig’s belly. As grey ropy guts tumbled out of the screaming animal, the thegns took turns to stab it; Arngrim stepped up in his turn and thrust Ironsides into the bloody mess. Then the pig was hurled into the pit. The warriors raised their dripping swords over the hole in the earth and bellowed an oath in a tongue that had come across on Cerdic’s boats:
‘To Woden! To victory! To death!’

As the warriors prepared to drag forward another animal, a goat this time, the King walked forward. The thegns turned to him respectfully.

‘A waste of good pork, that.’

Arngrim smiled. ‘We who fall will enjoy it in the Upperworld with Woden.’

Alfred took his shoulder. ‘If you were Christian you would be my hearth-companion. You know that.’

‘That and if I could read.’

‘Well, that too. Do you understand that I will build my kingdom on Christ and on literacy? For Christianity is the root of the morality that underpins the law, and if a law is written down all men may understand it and see that it is fair.’

Cynewulf was struck by the vision of this man who dreamed of law codes even as he prepared for the battle of his life.

Arngrim said, ‘But it’s not for me, my lord. I’m no monk.’

‘No. But tomorrow is for you, Arngrim. I dream of a civilised time when we no longer name our swords. But tomorrow I need warriors.

‘I have pondered what was said to me that night, when the damaged girl-child recited her prophetic calendar for me. The prophecy made me aware of our place in history - for these are days that men will talk of for ever, Arngrim, whatever becomes of us. What are we, we English? Four centuries ago we were as these Northmen are now. We gazed with incomprehension on the Romans’ mighty ruins. Now these Northmen erupt in our lives, illiterate pagan savages,
who are as we were.
The priests say that pagans remember hell. Well, the Northmen are our own deep lost memory of hell. And to fight them we will have to reach back for our own true selves, our hell-souls.’ He squeezed Arngrim’s shoulder tighter. ‘And so I reach to you. I need you in the shield wall, Arngrim, at its very centre.’

‘You will have me there, lord.’

‘But, Arngrim, remember this—you must
think.
For it is by thinking that we will prevail.’ Alfred held his gaze a moment longer, then released him, and moved on to the next man.

The pagan ceremony went on. The goat was dragged forward, butchered in its turn, and its blood stained a dozen swords before its carcass was thrown after the pig’s into the pit.

Arngrim, his brow streaked with blood, grinned at Cynewulf. ‘A bit more exciting than your chanting monks, isn’t it, priest?’

‘Goading me is unworthy at such a time, cousin.’

‘Well, perhaps. We all have our own ways of preparing to die.’ Arngrim held up his sword and kissed its bloody blade. ‘I have sworn to Woden that if he spares my life tomorrow I will give him Ironsides - I will break his blade and hurl him into the river myself. And tonight I must make a greater sacrifice.’ He gestured at the pit. ‘A goose, a dog, a sheep and a goat, a pig, a boar, a bull, a stallion - and a man. That’s what is required of us tonight, to feed the pit. And so it falls on me to supply the horse.’

He turned. Ibn Zuhr, standing nearby, stroked the neck of Strong-and-Fleet. The horse pawed the ground and shook his head, disturbed by the stink of blood and fire.

Cynewulf gasped. ‘You can’t be serious. You love that horse.’

‘Better than most of my family. But he has already done his job, in carrying me here; I will have no need of him tomorrow. Or,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I could discharge my obligation to Woden by giving him a
man.’
And he flashed his sword at Ibn Zuhr, pressing the tip of its blade under the Moor’s chin. ‘We kept a Dane alive for the purpose, but a Moor will do just as well. That way I get to keep my horse, and rid myself of a mouth that flaps before kings. What do you think, cousin?’

Cynewulf dared say nothing. With astonishing calm Ibn Zuhr continued to stroke the restless horse. Arngrim turned away with a laugh, lowered the sword, and the moment was broken.

Arngrim took the horse’s reins from Ibn Zuhr, ignoring the Moor. He patted Strong-and-Fleet on the muzzle, and the fine old horse ducked his head. ‘Come on, Fleet. You’ve one last service to perform for me ...’ He led the horse towards the pit. Cynewulf saw a Dane being dragged forward by two burly English, cowed and beaten.

Through all this Ibn Zuhr had said not a word. But, Cynewulf saw, his eyes burned.

In the cold light of dawn, under a sky empty of cloud, the army of Wessex marched to the head of the ridge over Ethandune. The Danes, as confident as Arngrim had said, did not bother trying to stop the English taking the higher ground.

Once they were on the ridge the English sorted themselves out, with the King and his hearth-companions to the rear under the fluttering dragon banner of Wessex, then the reserve troops - and then the front line, who would make the shield wall when the battle came.

Arngrim pushed through to the front of the English line, in the very centre, as Alfred had ordered. He looked down on the Danes from his height on the ridge. The lines of the Force were orderly, wooden shields shining and mail gleaming in the misty light. They watched the English with an ominous stillness.

Like the men around him Arngrim had his sword in its scabbard on his back, and his axe and his stabbing sword to hand. He wore his shirt of chain-mail, on his arm was his shield, wooden with an iron frame, and on his head was his pointed iron helmet. A strip of iron came down before his face to protect his nose, so that he saw the world framed by straight edges. He was already hot, encased in heavy iron. But he was ready.

The men around him formed into rough ranks. There was some jostling as the men tried to find a place in the front rank - or to squeeze back out of it, depending on their courage - and there was a clatter of shield on shield as they practised forming the wall. These fellows close to the front were thegns or the sons of thegns, and some of the healthier and braver of the fyrd; they were Alfred’s best soldiers, with the best equipment. Looking around, Arngrim was dismayed to see how much younger than him most of them were. At his right hand side, for instance, was Ordgar, Aethelnoth’s man, who had stopped him on his return from Eoforwic. He must have been a good ten years Arngrim’s junior.

Perhaps that was why he felt a curious detachment about today. He felt none of the pulsing energy he used to know in battle, the longing to pound an enemy’s flesh - the secret thrill that surely fuelled man’s lust for war, the knowledge that it was
fun.
Perhaps Arngrim was too old for such fun. But even so he must do his duty, and he hefted his stabbing sword, getting used to its weight.

Ordgar was nervous, though he was trying to hide it. ‘We outnumber them,’ he said. ‘The Danes. And we have the advantage of the higher ground. But they are all warriors. We are farmers. They have the cream of armour and weaponry robbed from all the English kingdoms. We have pitchforks.’

‘We have advantages; they have advantages.’

‘The best of us are here. But it is a thin crust, and if they break through ...’

‘We must be sure they do not.’

‘Yes.’ Ordgar looked down the hill. ‘I have fought before. I have killed Danes. But I have never served in a shield wall.’

Arngrim growled, ‘It is the ultimate test.’

‘Will I fail?’

Arngrim knew there was little he could say. Even Alfred could not be certain of surviving the day; kings had fallen before. Alfred had given orders that if he fell today his wife and family were to be taken to the kingdom of the Franks, where an infant king would be raised in exile. ‘Ordgar, you are thinking too much. But don’t worry. In the thick of it there is no time to think—’

Something flashed in the corner of Arngrim’s vision, like a bird flying.

A man cried,
‘Lift your shields!’

A spear thudded harmlessly into the ground before the front rank. But a second flew further, and pierced the body of an English warrior. His blood was bright as a flower in the spring sunlight.

More spears flew.

Arngrim raised his shield above his head. ‘To me! To me!’ Ordgar and others near him came together and held up their shields. Arngrim could hear the screams of more men falling, and heard a steady hail on the shields, as arrows and spears buried themselves in the wood.

And now he heard the whip of bow-strings, the hiss of arrows as the English bowmen replied.

‘They are coming!’ somebody cried. ‘The Danes!’

Arngrim held up his shield, risking a glimpse down the hill. The Danes were marching steadily up the slope, their shields locked: it was their wall, their
skjaldborg,
the shield-fort. They moved without a sound, without a cry or a drumbeat, save for the thud of their footsteps on the ground. Some fell to the English arrows, but the rest came on without flinching.

Arngrim cried, ‘Make the wall!’ The call was echoed by others, up and down the English line. ‘Shield wall! Make the wall!’

The front line held their shields before their bodies and overlapped them, locking them together, each man braced against the next. This exposed them to the deadly hail from the sky, but they had rehearsed for this, and the line behind pushed forward, sharing the cover of their shields with the front rank. To be in the middle of it was close, hot, intimate, with each man pressed up against the next. Arngrim felt the heavy mass of the bodies of the men behind, the anxious breath of a nervous warrior on his neck, and the stench of sweat and piss.

As they closed the Danes suddenly ran at the English. They clattered their swords against their shields, and roared, the noise overpowering. In their helmets and mail they might have been mirror-images of the English. And as they covered the last few paces Arngrim could see individual faces, pale and strong, broken into grins as they hurled abuse. Arngrim clasped his sword and roared defiance.

The walls clashed with a slam of wood and iron.

The Danes, running, had the momentum, and Arngrim staggered back. He was surrounded by a mass of hot, struggling bodies, the English at his back, the Danes before him, their faces not an arm’s length away from his own. There was no space to stand back, no room to take Ironsides from its scabbard on his back. He had to make his own space by shoving forward with the shield strapped to his left arm, so he could stab with the short sword in his right.