The Burning Land (44 page)

I had turned left at the wall’s top and was fighting my way along the narrow platform, and Steapa had understood why, and he did most to clear the defenders in front of us so we could reach the larger platform that stood above the gate. And there we made our shield wall, and there we fought against the Danes as Pyrlig and his men used their axes on the big gate.

I must have shouted at the Danes, though what I cannot tell now. The usual insults. And the Danes fought back with a wild ferocity, but now we had our best warriors on the wall and more were coming all the time, so many that some jumped down into the fort and the fighting began there. One man kicked the shattered remains of a hive down into the fort and more bees swarmed out, but I was above the gate, protected now by the corpses of Danes who had tried to evict us. They still came. Their best weapons were heavy spears that they lunged over the corpse-barrier, but our shields were stout. “We need to get down to the gate!” I shouted at Steapa.

Osferth heard me. It had been Osferth who leaped from the gate’s top when we had defended Lundene, and now he leaped again. There were other Saxons inside the fort, but they were horribly outnumbered and were dying fast. Osferth did not care. He jumped to the ground just inside the gate. He sprawled for a moment, then was on his feet and shouting. “Alfred! Alfred! Alfred!”

I thought it was a strange war cry, especially from a man who resented his natural father as much as Osferth, but it worked. Other West Saxons leaped to join Osferth who was fending off two Danes with his shield and hacking his sword at two others.

“Alfred!” Another man took up the shout, then Edward gave a great scream and leaped off the rampart to join his half-brother. “Alfred!”

“Protect the Ætheling,” I shouted.

Steapa, who regarded his first duty as keeping Edward alive, jumped down. I stayed on the rampart with Cerdic because we had to stop the Danes from recapturing the stretch of wall where our ladders were set. My shield was battered with spears. The linden wood was splintering, but the corpses at our feet were an obstacle and more than one Dane stumbled on the bodies to add his own to the pile. Still they came. A man started clearing the bodies away, tipping them down inside the fort, and I lunged Serpent-Breath into his armpit. Another Dane thrust a spear at me. I took the thrust on my shield and sliced Serpent-Breath back at the grimacing face framed by a bright steel helmet, but the man twisted aside. I saw him glance down and knew he was thinking of leaping down to attack my men below and I stepped onto a corpse and stabbed Serpent-Breath under his shield, twisting her as she tore into the flesh of his upper thigh, and he slammed his shield at me, then Cerdic was beside me and his ax chopped into the spearman’s shoulder. My shield was heavy with the weight of two spears that were lodged in the wood. I tried to shake them off, then ducked as a huge Dane, bellowing curses, charged me with an ax that he swung at my helmet. He crashed bodily into my shield, helpfully dislodging the spears, and Sihtric split the man’s helmet with an ax. I remember seeing blood drip from the rim of my shield, then I hurled the dying man off. The man
was shaking as he died. I rammed Serpent-Breath over his body and the blade jarred on a Danish shield. Below me I heard the swelling shouts. “Alfred!” they bellowed, then “Edward! Edward!”

Steapa was worth any three men and he was killing with his huge strength and his uncanny sword-craft, but he had help now. More and more men leaped down to make a shield wall just inside the closed gate. Osferth and Edward were shield-neighbors. Father Coenwulf, who was determined to stay close to the Ætheling, had leaped down and he now turned and lifted the gate’s locking bar. For a moment he could not push the gate open because Pyrlig’s axmen were still chopping at its huge timbers, then they heard Coenwulf’s shouts that they should stop. And so the gates opened and, under the rising sun, and beneath the smoke and amidst the swarming bees, we took death to Beamfleot.

The Danes had been surprised by our attack. They had thought Steapa’s men were withdrawing in the dawn, and instead we had assaulted them, but the surprise had not lessened their resolve, nor had it given us any great advantage. They had recovered fast, they had defended the wall stoutly, and if we had not sent the bees to join the fight they would surely have repulsed us. But a man being stung by a swarm of enraged bees cannot fight properly, and so we had been given that small chance to reach the parapet, and now we had opened the gate and Saxons were scrambling across the moat and charging into the fort, and the Danes, sensing disaster, broke.

I have seen it so often. A man will fight like a hero, he will make widows and orphans, he will give the poets a challenge to find new words to describe his achievements, and then, quite suddenly, the spirit fails. Defiance becomes terror. Danes who, a moment before, would have been dreadful foemen, became desperate seekers for safety. They fled.

There were only two places they could go. Some, the less fortunate, retreated along the fort to the buildings which filled its western end, while most jostled through a gate in the long southern wall which led to a wooden quay built on the creek’s bank. Even at low tide the creek was too deep for a man to cross on foot and there was no bridge; instead a ship was tethered athwart the chan
nel and the Danes were scrambling over its rowing benches to reach Caninga’s shore where a mass of men who had played no part in the fort’s defense waited. I sent Steapa to clear those men away and he led Alfred’s housecarls across the makeshift bridge, but the Danes were in no mood to face him. They fled.

A few Danes, very few, leaped from the southern and western ramparts to wade the ditches, but Weohstan’s horsemen were in the marsh and they gave short and brutal ends to those fugitives. Many more Danes stayed inside the fort, retreating to its farther end behind a ragged shield wall that broke apart under a flail of Saxon blades. Women and children screamed. Dogs howled. Most of the women and children were on Caninga, and they were already demanding that their men take to their ships. A Dane’s ultimate safety is his ship. When all goes wrong a man puts back to sea and lets the Fates take him to another opportunity. But most of the Danish ships were beached because there were simply too many vessels to moor in the narrow channel. The men on Caninga ran from Steapa’s attack. Some waded into the creek to board the floating ships, but it was then that Finan struck. He had waited until the men guarding the channel’s eastern end were distracted by the evident disaster unfolding to the west, and then he had led his West Saxons, all of them from Alfred’s own household troops, across the mudflats. “The fools had only raised the ship’s flank on the seaward side,” he told me later, “so we attacked the other. It was easy.”

I doubted that. He lost eighteen men to their graves and another thirty were gravely wounded, but he took the ship. He could not cross the creek, nor block the channel, but he was where I wanted him to be. And we were in the fort.

Howling Saxons were taking revenge for the smoke above Mercia. They were massacring the Danes. Men trying to protect their families shouted that they surrendered and instead were chopped down by ax and sword. Most of the women and children ran to the big hall, and it was there that the vast plunder sent back by Haesten’s men was collected.

I had sailed to Frisia to find a treasure hall and instead I found it in Beamfleot. I found leather sacks bulging with coins, crucifixes of
silver, pyxes of gold, heaps of iron, ingots of bronze, piles of pelts, I found a hoard. The hall was dark. A few shafts of sunlight came through the small windows of the eastern gable that was hung with the horns of a bull, but otherwise the only light came from the fire burning in the central hearth and around which the treasure had been heaped. It was on display. It told the Danes of Beamfleot that Haesten, their lord, would be a gift-giver. The men who had given Haesten their allegiance would become rich, and they only had to come into this hall to see the proof. They could stare at that shining hoard and see new ships and new lands. It was the hoard of Mercia, only instead of being guarded by a dragon, it was protected by Skade.

And she was angrier than any dragon. I think at that moment she was possessed by the furies who had given her a madness that was terrible. She was standing on the treasure heap, her black hair unhelmeted and tangled to wild strands. She was screaming challenges. A black cloak hung from her shoulders, beneath which she wore a mail coat, and over which she had draped as many gold chains as she had been able to scoop from the plunder. Behind her, on the high dais where a great table stood, was a huddle of women and children. I saw Haesten’s wife there, and his two sons, but they were as scared of Skade as they were of us.

Skade’s shrieking howls had stopped my men. They were half filling the hall, but her fury had cowed them. They had killed a score of Danes, hacking them down onto the rush-covered floor, which was soaked with fresh blood, but now they just gazed at the woman who cursed them. I pushed through them, Serpent-Breath red in my hand, and Skade saw me and pointed her own sword-blade toward me. “The traitor,” she spat, “the oath-breaker!”

I bowed to her. “Queen of a marsh,” I sneered.

“You promised!” she screamed at me, then her eyes widened in surprise, a surprise that was instantly overtaken by fury. “Is that her?” she demanded.

Æthelflæd had come to the hall. She had no business there. I had told her to watch and wait at the old high fort, but as soon as she saw our men crossing the ramparts she had insisted on coming
down the hill. Now the men parted for her, and for the four Mercian warriors who had been deputed to guard her. She wore a pale blue dress, very simple, its skirt wet from crossing the creek. Over it she had a linen cloak and around her neck was a silver crucifix, yet she looked like a queen. She wore no gold, and her dress and cloak were mud-smeared, yet she glowed, and Skade looked from Æthelflæd to me and screamed like a dying vixen. Then, lithe and sudden, she leaped from the treasure heap and, her mouth a rictus of hate, lunged with the sword at Æthelflæd.

I simply stepped in front of her. Her sword slid from the iron rim of my battered shield and I thrust the iron boss hard forward. The heavy shield crashed into Skade with such force that she let go of the sword and cried aloud as she was thrown back onto the treasures. She lay there, tears now at her eyes, but with the fury of madness still in her voice. “I curse you,” she said, pointing at me, “I curse your children, your woman, your life, your grave, the air you breathe, the food you eat, the dreams you have, the ground you tread.”

“As you cursed me?” a voice said, and out of the shadows at the hall’s edge there crawled a thing that had once been a man.

It was Harald. Harald who had led the first assault on Wessex, who had promised Skade the queen’s crown of Wessex, who had been wounded so gravely at Fearnhamme and who had found refuge among the thorns. There he had inspired a defense so stout that Alfred had eventually paid him to leave, and he had come here, seeking Haesten’s protection. He was a broken man, crippled. He had watched his woman go to Haesten’s bed and he had a hate in him that was every bit as great as Skade’s.

“You cursed me,” he told her, “because I did not give you a throne.” He lurched toward her, his legs helpless, dragging himself along by his strong arms. His yellow hair that had been so thick was straggling now, hanging like string about his pain-lined face. “Let me make you a queen,” he said to Skade, and he took a golden torque from the treasure pile. It was a beautiful thing, three strands of gold twisted together and capped with two bear heads that had eyes of emerald. “Be
a queen, my love,” he told her. His beard had grown to his waist. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes dark, and his legs twisted. He wore a simple tunic and leggings beneath a rough woolen cloak. Harald Bloodhair, who had once led five thousand men, who had burned Wessex and struck fear into Alfred, pulled himself across the rushes and held the torque toward Skade, who looked at him and just moaned.

She did not take the offered crown and so he lifted the gold and placed it on her hair and it sat there, askew, and she began to cry. Harald dragged himself still closer. “My love,” he said in a strangely affectionate voice.

Æthelflæd had come to my side. I do not think she was aware of it, but she had taken my shield arm and clung to me. She said nothing.

“My precious one,” Harald said softly, and he stroked her hair. “I loved you,” he said.

“I loved you,” Skade said, and she put her arms around Harald and they clung to each other in the fire’s light and a man beside me started forward with an ax. I stopped him. I had seen Harald’s right hand move. He was stroking Skade’s hair with his left hand, now he fumbled beneath his cloak with his right.

“My love,” he said, and he crooned those two words again and again, then his right hand moved fast, and a man who has lost the use of his legs develops great strength in his arms, and he drove the blade of the knife through the links of Skade’s coat, and I saw her first stiffen, then her eyes widened, her mouth opened, and Harald kissed her open mouth as he ripped the blade upward, ever upward, dragging the mail coat with the steel that tore through her guts and up to her chest, and still she embraced him as her blood spilled across his withered lap. Then at last she gave a great cry and her grip loosened and her eyes faded and she fell backward.

“Finish what you began,” Harald growled without looking at me. He reached for Skade’s fallen sword, wanting it to be the key to reaching Valhalla, but I remembered how he had murdered the woman at Æscengum. I remembered how her child had cried and so
I kicked the sword away and he looked up at me, surprised, and my face was the last thing he ever saw in this world.

We took thirty of their ships and the rest we burned. Three escaped, sliding past Finan’s men as they hurled spears they had discovered stacked in the bilge of the grounded boat that was one of the two forts guarding the entrance. The Danish garrison of the other boat, the one beached on Caninga, released the big chain that blocked the entrance and so the three boats escaped to sea, but the fourth had no such luck. It was almost past Finan when a well thrown spear thumped into the steersman’s chest and he slumped over, the steering oar slewed hard in the water and the ship ran her bows into the bank. The next ship rammed her and she began to take on water through sprung strakes as the incoming tide floated her back up the creek.