The Burning Land sc-5 Page 8

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 cov
ered 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 poi
nted 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.