The Pale Horseman (20 page)

'What now?' Leofric asked, and I had no answer and so we sat under the berries of a
wind-bent yew and stared at the immensity of bog, water, grass and reeds. This was the vast
swamp that stretched inland from the Saefern, and if I was to reach Defnascir I either had to
go around it or try to cross it. If we went around it then we would have to go to the Roman
road, and that was where the Danes were, but if we tried to cross the swamp we would face other
dangers. I had heard a thousand stories of men being lost in its wet tangles. It was said
there were spirits there, spirits that showed at night as flickering lights, and there were
paths that led only to quicksands or to drowning pools, but there were also villages in the
swamp, places where folk trapped fish and eels. The people of the swamp were protected by the
spirits and by the sudden surges in the tide that could drown a road in an eyeblink. Now, as
the last snows melted from the reed-banks, the swamp looked like a great stretch of
waterlogged land, its streams and meres swollen by the winter rains, but when the tide rose it
would resemble an inland sea dotted with islands. We could see one of those islands not so
far off and there was a cluster of huts on that speck of higher ground, and that would be a
place to find food and warmth if we could ever reach it. Eventually we might cross the whole
swamp, finding a way from island to island, but it would take far longer than a day, and we
would have to find refuge at every high tide. I gazed at the long, cold stretches of water,
almost black beneath the leaden clouds that came from the sea and my spirits sank for I did
not know where we were going, or why, or what the future held.

It seemed to get colder as we sat, and then a light snow began drifting from the dark
clouds. Just a few flakes, but enough to convince me that we had to find shelter soon. Smoke
was rising from the nearest swamp village, evidence that some folk still lived there. There
would be food in their hovels and a meagre warmth.

'We have to get to that island,' I said, pointing.

But the others were staring westwards to where a flock of pigeons had burst from the trees
at the foot of the slope. The birds rose and flew in circles.

'Someone's there,' Leofric said.

We waited. The pigeons settled in the trees higher up the hill.

'Maybe it's a boar?' I suggested.

'Pigeons won't fly from a boar,' Leofric said. 'Boars don't startle pigeons, any more than
stags do. There are folk there.'

The thought of boars and stags made me wonder what had happened to my hounds. Had Mildrith
abandoned them? I had not even told her where I had hidden the remains of the plunder we had
taken off the coast of Wales. I had dug a hole in a corner of my new hall and buried the gold
and silver down by the poststone, but it was not the cleverest hiding place and if there were
Danes in Oxton then they were bound to delve into the edges of the hall floor, especially if
a, probing spear found a place where the earth had been disturbed.

A flight of ducks flew overhead. The snow was falling harder, blurring the long view across
the swamp.

'Priests,' Leofric said.

There were a half-dozen men off to the west. They were robed in black and had come from the
trees to walk along the swamp's margin, plainly seeking a path into its tangled vastness,
but there was no obvious track to the small village on its tiny island and so the priests
came nearer to us, skirting the ridge's foot. One of them was carrying a long staff and, even
at a distance, 1 could see a glint at its head and I suspected it was a bishop's staff, the
kind with a heavy silver cross. Another three carried heavy sacks.

'You think there's food in those bundles?' Leofric asked wistfully.

'They're priests,' I said savagely. 'They'll be carrying silver.'

'Or books,' Eanflaed suggested. 'Priests like books.'

'It could be food,' Leofric said, though not very convincingly.

A group of three women and two children now appeared. One of the women was wearing a
swathing cloak of silver fur, while another carried the smaller child. The women and
children were not far behind the priests, who waited for them and then they all walked
eastwards until they were beneath us and there they discovered some kind of path twisting
into the marshes. Five of the priests led the women into the swamp while the sixth man,
evidently younger than the others, hurried back westwards.

'Where's he going?' Leofric asked.

Another skein of ducks flighted low overhead, skimming down the slope to the long meres
of the swamp. Nets, I thought. There must be nets in the swamp villages and we could trap fish
and wildfowl. We could eat well for a few days. Eels, duck, fish, geese. If there were enough
nets we could even trap deer by driving them into the tangling meshes.

'They're not going anywhere,' Leofric said scornfully, nodding at the priests who had
stranded themselves a hundred paces out in the swamp. The path was deceptive. It had
offered an apparent route to the village, but then petered out amidst a patch of reeds where
the priests huddled. They did not want to come back and did not want to go forward, and so they
stayed where they were, lost and cold and despairing. They looked as though they were
arguing.

'We must help them,' Eanflaed said and, when I said nothing, she protested that one of the
women was holding a baby. 'We have to help them!' she insisted.

I was about to retort that the last thing we needed was more hungry mouths to feed, but her
harsh words in the night had persuaded me that I had to do something to show her I was not as
treacherous as she evidently believed, so I stood, hefted my shield and started down the
hill. The others followed, but before we were even halfway down I heard shouts from the west.
The lone priest who had gone that way was now with four soldiers and they turned as horsemen
came from the trees. There were six horsemen, then eight more appeared, then another ten and
I realised a whole column of mounted soldiers was streaming from the dead winter trees.
They had black shields and black cloaks, so they had to be Guthrum's men. One of the priests
stranded in the swamp ran back along the path and I saw he had a sword and was going to help
his companions.

It was a brave thing for the lone priest to do, but quite useless. The four soldiers and the
single priest were surrounded now. They were standing back to back and the Danish horsemen
were all around them, hacking down, and then two of the horsemen saw the priest with his sword
and spurred towards him.

'Those two are ours,' I said to Leofric.

That was stupid. The four men were doomed, as was the priest if we did not intervene, but
there were only two of us and, even if we killed the two horsemen, we would still face
overwhelming odds, but I was driven by Eanflaed's scorn and I was tired of skulking through
the winter countryside and I was angry and so I ran down the hill, careless of the noise I
made as I crashed through brittle undergrowth. The lone priest had his back to the swamp now
and the horsemen were charging at him as Leofric and I burst from the trees and came at them
from their left side.

I hit the nearest horse's flank with my heavy shield. There was a scream from the horse and
an explosion of wet soil, grass, snow and hooves as man and beast went down sideways. I was
also on the ground, knocked there by the impact, but I recovered first and found the rider
tangled with his stirrups, one leg trapped under the struggling horse and I chopped
Serpent-Breath down hard. I cut into his throat, stamped on his face, chopped again, slipped
in his blood, then left him and went to help Leofric who was fending off the second man who
was still on horseback. The Dane's sword thumped on Leofric's shield, then he had to turn his
horse to face me and Leofric's axe took the horse in the face and the beast reared, the rider
slid backwards and I met his spine with Serpent-Breath's tip. Two down. The priest with the
sword, not a half dozen paces away, had not moved. He was just staring at us.

'Get back into the marsh!' I shouted at him. 'Go! Go!'

Iseult and Eanflaed were with us now and they seized the priest and hurried him towards the
path. It might lead nowhere, but it was better to face the remaining Danes there than on the
firm ground at the hill's foot.

And those black-cloaked Danes were coming. They had slaughtered the handful of soldiers,
seen their two men killed and now came for vengeance.

'Come on!' I snarled at Leofric and, taking the wounded horse by the reins, I ran onto the
small twisting path.

'A horse won't help you here,' Leofric said.

The horse was nervous. Its face was wounded and the path was slippery, but I dragged it
along the track until we were close to the small patch of land where the refugees huddled, and
by now the Danes were also on the path, following us. They had dismounted. They could only
come two abreast and, in places, only one man could use the track and in one of those places I
stopped the horse and exchanged Serpent-Breath for Leofric's axe. The horse looked at me with
a big brown eye.

'This is for Odin,' I said, and then swung the axe into its neck, chopping down through mane
and hide, and a woman screamed behind me as the blood spurted bright and high in the dull day.
The horse whinnied, tried to rear and I swung again and this time the beast went down,
thrashing hooves, blood and water splashing. Snow turned red as I axed it a third time,
finally stilling it, and now the dying beast was an obstacle athwart the track and the
Danes would have to fight across its corpse. I took Serpent-Breath back.

'We'll kill them one by one,' I told Leofric.

'For how long?' He nodded westwards and I saw more Danes coming, a whole ship's crew of
mounted Danes streaming along the swamp's edge. Fifty men? Maybe more, but even so they could
only use the path in ones or twos and they would have to fight over the dead horse into
Serpent-Breath and Leofric's axe. He had lost his own axe, taken from him when he was brought
to Cippanhamm, but he seemed to like his stolen weapon. He made the sign of the cross, touched
the blade, then hefted his shield as the Danes came.

Two young men came first. They were wild and savage, wanting to make a reputation, but the
first to come was stopped by Leofric's axe banging into his shield and I swept
Serpent-Breath beneath the shield to slice his ankle and he fell, cursing, to tangle his
companion and Leofric wrenched the widebladed axe free and slashed it down again. The
second man stumbled on the horse, and Serpent-Breath took him under the chin, above his
leather coat, and the blood ran down her blade in a sudden flood and now there were two Danish
corpses added to the horseflesh barricade. I was taunting the other Danes, calling them
corpse-worms, telling them I had known children who could fight better. Another man came,
screaming in rage as he leaped over the horse and he was checked by Leofric's shield and
Serpent-Breath met his sword with a dull crack and his blade broke, and two more men were
trying to get past the horse, struggling in water up to their knees and I rammed
Serpent-Breath into the belly of the first, pushing her through his leather armour, left
him to die, and swung right at the man trying to get through the water. Serpent-Breath's tip
flicked across his face to spray blood into the thickening snowfall. I went forward, feet
sinking, lunged again and he could not move in the mire and Serpent-Breath took his gullet. I
was screaming with joy because the battle calm had come, the same blessed stillness I had
felt at Cynuit. It is a joy, that feeling, and the only other joy to compare is that of
being with a woman.

It is as though life slows. The enemy moves as if he is wading in mud, but I was
kingfisher fast. There is rage, but it is a controlled rage, and there is joy, the joy that
the poets celebrate when they speak of battle, and a certainty that death is not in that
day's fate. My head was full of singing, a keening note, high and shrill, death's anthem. All I
wanted was for more Danes to come to SerpentBreath and it seemed to me that she took on her
own life in those moments. To think was to act. A man came across the horse's flank, I thought
to slice at his ankle, knew he would drop his shield and so open his upper body to an attack,
and before the thought was even coherent it was done and SerpentBreath had taken one of his
eyes. She had gone down and up, was already moving to the right to counter another man
trying to get around the horse, and I let him get past the stallion's bloodied head then
scornfully drove him down into the water and there I stood on him, holding his head under
my boot as he drowned. I screamed at the Danes, told them I was Valhalla's gatekeeper, that
they had been weaned on coward's milk and that I wanted them to come to my blade. I begged them
to come, but six men were dead around the horse and the others were now wary.

I stood on the dead horse and spread my arms. I held the shield high to my left and the sword
to my right, and my mail coat was spattered with blood and the snow fell about my wolf-crested
helmet and all I knew was the young man's joy of slaughter. 'I killed Ubba Lothbrokson!' I
shouted at them. 'I killed him! So come and join him! Taste his death! My sword wants you!'

'Boats,' Leofric said. I did not hear him. The man I thought I had drowned was still alive
and he suddenly reared from the marsh, choking and vomiting water, and I jumped down off
the horse and put my foot on his head again.

'Let him live!' A voice shouted behind me. 'I want a prisoner!'

The man tried to fight my foot, but Serpent-Breath put him down. He struggled again and I
broke his spine with Serpent-Breath and he was still.

'I said I wanted a prisoner,' the voice behind protested.

'Come and die!' I shouted at the Danes.

'Boats,' Leofric said again and I glanced behind and saw three punts coming through the
marsh. They were long flat boats, propelled by men with poles, and they grounded on the other
side of the huddled refugees who hurried aboard. The Danes, knowing Leofric and I had to
retreat if we were to gain the safety of the boats, readied for a charge and I smiled at them,
inviting them.