The Pagan Lord (36 page)

‘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.