The Pale Horseman (41 page)

But in these last months he had been released from Alfred's leash and his thwarted
ambition had been given encouragement. He dressed in mail and carried swords. He was a
startling looking man, handsome and tall, and he looked the part of the warrior, though he
had no warrior's soul. He had pissed himself when I put Serpent-Breath to his throat, and
now that he was my captive he showed no defiance. He was submissive, frightened and glad
to be led.

He told us how he had pestered Wulfhere to be allowed to fight, and when Osbergh had
brought a score of men to guide the Danes in the hills, he had been given notional charge of
them. 'Wulfhere said I was in command,' Æthelwold said sullenly, 'but I still had to obey
Osbergh.'

'Wulfhere was a damned fool to let you go so far from him,' I said.

'I think he was tired of me,' Æthelwold admitted.

'Tired of you? You were humping his women?'

'She's only a servant.' But I wanted to join the scouting parties, and Wulfhere said I
could learn a lot from Osbergh.'

'You've just learned never to piss into a hawthorn bush,' I said, 'and that's worth
knowing.'

Æthelwold was riding Pyrlig's horse and the Welsh priest was leading the beast by its
reins. I had tied Æthelwold's hands. There was still a hint of light in the western sky, just
enough to make our journey down the smaller river easy.

I explained to Pyrlig who Æthelwold was, and the priest grinned up at him. 'So you're a
prince of Wessex, eh?'

'I should be king,' Æthelwold said sullenly.

'No you shouldn't,' I said.

'My father was! And Guthrum promised to crown me.'

'And if you believed him,' I said, 'you're a damned fool. You'd be king as long as he
needed you, then you'd be dead.'

'Now Alfred will kill me,' he said miserably.

'He ought to,' I said, 'but I owe you a favour.'

'Do you think you can persuade him to let me live?' he asked eagerly.

'You'll do the persuading,' I said. 'You'll kneel to him, and you're going to say that
you've been waiting for a chance to escape the Danes, and at last you succeeded, and you
got away, found us, and have come to offer him your sword.'

Æthelwold just stared at me.

'I owe you a favour,' I explained, 'and so I'm giving you life. I'll untie your hands,
you go to Alfred, and you say you're joining him because that's what you've wanted to do
ever since Christmas. You understand that?'

Æthelwold frowned. 'But he hates me!'

'Of course he does,' I agreed, 'but if you kneel to him and swear you never broke your
allegiance to him, then what can he do? He'll embrace you, reward you and be proud of
you.'

'Truly?'

'So long as you tell him where the Danes are,' Pyrlig put in.

'I can do that,' Æthelwold said, 'they're coming south from Cippanhamm. They marched
this morning.'

'How many?'

'Five thousand.'

'Coming here?'

'They're going to wherever Alfred is. They reckon they'll have a chance to destroy
him, and after that it's just a summer of women and silver.' He said the last three words
plaintively and I knew he had been relishing the prospect of plundering Wessex. 'So how
many men does Alfred have?' he asked.

'Three thousand,' I said.

'Sweet Jesus,' he said fearfully.

'You always wanted to be a warrior,' I said, 'and what name can you make for yourself
fighting a smaller army?'

'Jesus Christ!'

The last of the light went. There was no moon, but by keeping the river on our left we
knew we could not get lost and after a while we saw the glow of firelight showing over the
loom of the hills and knew we were seeing Alfred's encampment. I twisted in the saddle
then and thought I saw another such glow far to the north. Guthrum's army.

'If you let me go,' Æthelwold asked sulkily, 'what's to stop me going back to
Guthrum?'

'Absolutely nothing,' I said, ‘except the certainty that I'll hunt you down and kill
you.'

He thought about that for a short while. 'You're sure my uncle will welcome me?'

Pyrlig answered for me. 'With open arms!' he said. 'It will be like the return of the
prodigal son. You'll be welcomed by slaughtered calves and psalms of rejoicing. Just tell
Alfred what you told us, about Guthrum marching towards us.'

We reached the Wilig and the going was easy now for the light of the campfires was much
brighter. I cut Æthelwold free at the edge of the encampment, then gave him back his swords.
He carried two, as I did, a long one and a short sax.

'Well, my prince,' I said, 'time to grovel, eh?'

We found Alfred at the camp's centre. There was no pomp here. We did not have the animals
to drag wagons loaded with tents or furniture, so Alfred was seated on a spread cloak
between two fires. He looked dispirited and later I learned that he had assembled the
army in the twilight and made them a speech, but the speech, even Beocca admitted, had been
less than successful. It was more a sermon than a speech,' Beocca told me glumly. Alfred
had invoked God, spoken of Saint Augustine's doctrine of a righteous war and talked about
Boethius and King David, and the words had flown over the heads of the tired, hungry troops.
Now Alfred sat with the leading men of the army, all of them eating stale hard bread and
smoked eel. Father Adelbert, the priest who had accompanied us to Cippanhamm, was
playing a lament on a small harp. A bad choice of music, I thought, then Alfred saw me and
waved Adelbert to silence. 'You have news?' he asked.

For answer I stood aside and bowed to Æthelwold, gesturing him towards the king.
'Lord,' I said to Alfred, 'I bring you your nephew.'

Alfred stood. He was taken aback, especially as Æthelwold was plainly no prisoner
for he wore his swords. Æthelwold looked good, indeed he looked more like a king than
Alfred. He was well made and handsome, while Alfred was much too thin and his face was so
haggard that he looked much older than his twenty-nine years. And of the two it was
Æthelwold who knew how to behave at that moment. He unbuckled his swords and threw them
with a great clatter at his uncle's feet, then he went to his knees and clasped his hands and
looked up into the king's face.

'I have found you!' he said with what sounded like utter joy and conviction.

Alfred, bemused, did not know what to say so I stepped forward.

‘We discovered him, lord,' I said, 'in the hills. He was searching for you.'

'I escaped Guthrum,' Æthelwold said, 'God be praised, I escaped the pagan.' He pushed
his swords to Alfred's feet. 'My blades are yours, lord king.'

This extravagant display of loyalty gave Alfred no choice except to raise his nephew
and embrace him. The men around the fires applauded, then Æthelwold gave his news, which
was useful enough. Guthrum was on the march and Svein of the White Horse came with him. They
knew where Alfred was and so they came, five thousand strong, to give him battle in the
hills of Wiltunscir.

'When will they get here?' Alfred wanted to know.

'They should reach these hills tomorrow, lord,' Æthelwold said.

So Æthelwold was seated beside the king and given water to drink, which was hardly a
fit welcome for a prodigal prince and caused him to throw me a wry glance, and it was then
that I saw Harald, shire-reeve of Defnascir, among the king's companions.

'You're here?' I asked surprised.

'With five hundred men,' he said proudly.

We had expected no men from either Defnascir or Thornsaeta, but Harald, the
shire-reeve, had brought four hundred of his own fyrd and a hundred more from
Thornsaeta.

'There's enough men left to protect the coast against the pagan fleet,' he said, 'and
Odda insisted we help defeat Guthrum.'

'How is Mildrith?'

'She prays for her son,' Harald said, 'and for all of us.'

There were prayers after the meal. There were always prayers when Alfred was around, and
I tried to escape them, but Pyrlig made me stay.

'The king wants to talk with you,' he said.

So I waited while Bishop Alewold droned, and afterwards Alfred wanted to know whether
Æthelwold had truly run away from the Danes.

'That's what he told me lord,' I said, 'and I can only say we found him.'

'He didn't run from us,' Pyrlig offered, 'and he could have done.'

'So there's good in the boy,' Alfred said.

'God be praised for that,' Pyrlig said.

Alfred paused, gazing down into the glowing embers of a campfire.

'I spoke to the army tonight,' he told us.

'I heard you did, lord,' I said.

He looked up at me sharply. 'What did you hear?'

'That you preached to them, lord.'

He flinched at that, then seemed to accept the criticism. 'What do they want to hear?' he
asked.

'They want to hear,' Pyrlig answered, 'that you are ready to die for them.'

'Die?

‘They follow, kings lead,' Pyrlig said. Alfred waited. 'They don't care about Saint
Augustine,' Pyrlig went on, 'they only care that their women and children are safe, that
their lands are safe, and that they'll have a future of their own. They want to know that
they'll win. They want to know the Danes are going to die. They want to hear that they'll be
rich on plunder.'

'Greed, revenge and selfishness?' Alfred asked.

'If you had an army of angels, lord,' Pyrlig went on, 'then a rousing speech about God and
Saint Augustine would doubtless fire their ardour, but you have to fight with mere men, and
there's nothing quite like greed, revenge and selfishness to inspire mortals.'

Alfred frowned at that advice, but did not argue with it.

'So I can trust my nephew?' he asked me.

'I don't know that you can trust him,' I said, 'but nor can Guthrum. And Æthelwold did seek
you out, lord, so be content with that.'

'I shall, I shall.' He bade us goodnight, going to his hard bed.

The fires in the valley were dying.

'Why didn't you tell Alfred the truth about Æthelwold?' I asked Pyrlig.

'I thought I would trust your judgement,' he answered.

'You're a good man.'

'And that constantly astonishes me.'

I went to find Iseult, then slept.

Next day the whole of the northern sky was dark with cloud, while over our army, and above
the hills, was sunlight.

The West Saxon army, now almost three and a half thousand strong, marched up the Wilig,
then followed the smaller river that Pyrlig and I had explored the previous evening. We
could see the Danish scouts on the hills, and knew they would be sending messengers back to
Guthrum.

I led fifty men to one of the hilltops. We were all mounted, all armed, all with shields
and helmets, and we rode ready to fight, but the Danish scouts yielded the ground. There
were only a dozen of them and they rode off the hill long before we reached the summit where
a host of blue butterflies flickered above the springy turf. I gazed northwards at the
ominous dark sky, and watched a sparrow hawk swoop. Down the bird went, and I followed its
plunging fall and suddenly saw, beneath the folded wings and reaching claws, our
enemy.

Guthrum's army was coming south.

The fear came then. The shield wall is a terrible place. It is where a warrior makes his
reputation, and reputation is dear to us. Reputation is honour, but to gain that honour
a man must stand in the shield wall where death runs rampant. I had been in the shield wall at
Cynuit and I knew the smell of death, the stink of it, the uncertainty of survival, the
horror of the axes and swords and spears, and I feared it. And it was coming.

I could see it coming, for in the lowlands north of the hills, in the green ground
stretching long and level towards distant Cippanhamm, was an army. The Great Army, the
Danes called it, the pagan warriors of Guthrum and Svein, the wild horde of wild men from
beyond the sea.

They were a dark smear on the landscape. They were coming through the fields, band after
band of horsemen, spread across the country, and because their leading men were only ,just
emerging into the sunlight it seemed as if their horde sprang from the shadowlands. Spears
and helmets and mail and metal reflected the light, a myriad glints of broken sunlight
that spread and multiplied as yet more men came from beneath the clouds. They were nearly
all mounted.

'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' Leofric said.

Steapa said nothing. He just glowered at them.

Osric, the shire-reeve of Wiltunscir, made the sign of the cross.

'Someone has to tell Alfred,' he said.

'I'll go,' Father Pyrlig offered.

'Tell him the pagans have crossed the Afen,' Osric said. 'Tell him they're heading
towards,' he paused, trying to judge where the horde was going, 'Ethandun,' he finally
said.

'Ethandun,' Pyrlig repeated the name.

'And remind him there's a fort of the old people there,' Osric said. This was his shire,
his country, and he knew its hills and fields, and he sounded grim, doubtless wondering
what would happen if the Danes found the old fortress and occupied it. 'God help us,' Osric
said. 'They'll be in the hills tomorrow morning, tell him.’

'Tomorrow morning, at Ethandun,' Pyrlig said, then turned his horse and spurred away.

'Where's the fort?' I asked.

Osric pointed. 'You can see it.' From this distance the ancient fastness looked like
nothing more than green wrinkles on a far hilltop. All across Wessex there were such forts
with their massive earthen walls, and this one was built at the top of the escarpment that
climbed from the lowlands, a place guarding the sudden edge of the chalk downs. 'Some of the
bastards will get up there tonight,' Osric said, 'but most won't make it till morning. Let's
just hope they ignore the fort.'

We had all thought that Alfred would find a place where Guthrum must attack him, a slope
made for defence, a place where our smaller numbers would be helped by the difficult
ground, but the sight of that distant fort was a reminder that Guthrum might adopt the same
tactics. He might find a place where it would be hard for us to attack him, and Alfred would
have a grim choice then. To attack would be to court disaster, while to retreat would
guarantee it. Our food would be exhausted in a day or two, and if we tried to withdraw
south through the hills, Guthrum would release a horde of horsemen against us. And even if
the army of Wessex escaped unscathed it would be a beaten army. If Alfred brought the fyrd
together, then marched it away from the enemy, men would take it for a defeat and begin to
slip away to protect their homes. We had to fight, because to decline battle was a
defeat.