The Pale Horseman (47 page)

'You know how to do it,' Alfred said, though without any enthusiasm for he knew he was
ordering us into a feast of death, 'put your best men in the centre, let them lead, and make
the others press behind and on either side.'

No one said anything. Alfred offered a bitter smile. 'God has smiled on us so far,' he
said, 'and he will not desert us.'

Yet he had deserted Iseult. Poor, fragile Iseult, shadow queen and lost soul, and I pushed
into the front rank because the only thing I could do for her now was to take revenge.

Steapa, as smothered in blood as I was, pushed into the rank beside me. Leofric was to my
left and Pyrlig was now behind me. 'Spears and long swords,' Pyrlig advised us, 'not those
short things.'

'Why not?' Leofric asked.

'You climb that steep wall,' he said, 'and all you can do is go for their ankles. Bring them
down. I've done it before. You need a long reach and a good shield.'

'Jesus help us,' Leofric said. We were all fearful, for there is little in warfare as
daunting as an assault on a fortress. If I had been in my senses I would have been reluctant
to make that attack, but I was filled with a keening sorrow for Iseult and nothing except
revenge filled my mind.

'Let's go,' I said, 'let's go.'

But we could not go. Men were collecting spears thrown in the earlier fighting, and the
bowmen were being brought forward. Whenever we attacked we wanted a shower of spears to
precede us, and a plague of stinging arrows to annoy the enemy, but it took time to array
the spearmen and archers behind the men who would make the assault.

Then, ominously for our archers, it began to rain again. Their bows would still work, but
water weakened the strings. The sky became darker as a great belly of black cloud settled
over the down and the rain started to drum on helmets. The Danes were lining the ramparts,
clashing their weapons against shields as our army curled about their fastness.

'Forward!' Alfred shouted, and we went towards the ramparts, but stopped just out of
bowshot. Rain headed the rim of my shield. There was a new, bright scar in the iron there, a
blade strike, but I had not been aware of the blow. The Danes mocked us. They knew what was
coming, and they probably welcomed it. Ever since Guthrum had climbed the escarpment and
discovered the fort he had probably imagined Alfred's men assaulting its walls and his men
cutting the enemy down as we struggled up the steep banks. This was Guthrum's battle now. He
had placed his rival, Svein, and his Saxon ally, Wulfhere, outside the fort, and doubtless
he had hoped they could destroy a good part of our army before the assault on the ramparts,
but it would not matter much to Guthrum that those men had been destroyed themselves. Now his
own men would fight the battle he had always envisaged.

'In the name of God!' Alfred called, then said no more for suddenly a clap of thunder
crashed, a vast sound that consumed the heavens and was so loud that some of us flinched. A
crack of lightning splintered white inside the fort. The rain pelted now, a cloudburst that
hammered and soaked us, and more thunder rolled away in the distance, and perhaps we thought
that noise and savage light was a message from God for suddenly the whole army started
forward. No one had given a command, unless Alfred's invocation was an order. We just
went.

Men were shouting as they advanced. They were not calling insults, but just making a
noise to give themselves courage. We did not run, but walked, because the shields had to be
kept close. Then another bellow of thunder deafened us, and the rain seemed to have a new
and vicious intensity. it seethed of the dead and the living, and we were close now, very
close, yet the rain was so thick it was hard to see the waiting Danes. Then 1 saw the ditch,
already flooding, and the bows sounded and the spears flew and we were splashing down the
ditch's side and Danish spears were thumping into us. One stuck in my shield, fell away and I
stumbled on its shaft, half sprawled in the water, then recovered and began the climb.

Not all the army tried to cross the ditch. Many men's courage faltered at the brink, but a
dozen or more groups went into the attack. We were what the Danes call the svinfylkjas, the
swinewedges, the elite warriors who try to pierce the skjaldborg like a boar trying to gouge
the hunter with its tusks. But this time we not only had to gouge the skjaldborq, but cross
the rain-flooded ditch and clamber up the bank.

We held our shields over our heads as we splashed through the ditch. Then we climbed, but the
wet bank was so slippery that we constantly fell back, and the Danish spears kept coming,
and someone pushed me from behind and I was crawling up the bank on my knees, the shield over
my head, and Pyrlig's shield was covering my spine and I heard a thumping above me and thought
it was thunder. Except the shield kept banging against my helmet and I knew a Dane was
hacking at me, trying to break through the limewood to drive his axe or sword into my spine,
and I crawled again, lifted the shield's lower edge and saw boots. I lunged with
Serpent-Breath, tried to stand, felt a blow on my leg and fell again. Steapa was roaring
beside me. There was mud in my mouth, and the rain hammered at us and I could hear the crash of
blades sinking in shields and I knew we had failed, but I tried to stand again and lunged with
Serpent-Breath and on my left Leofric gave a shrill cry and I saw blood streaming into the
grass. The blood was instantly washed away by the rain, and another peal of thunder crashed
overhead as I slithered back to the ditch.

The bank was scarred where we had tried to climb, the grass had been gouged down to the white
chalk. We had failed utterly and the Danes were screaming defiance, then another rush of
men splashed through the ditch and the banging of blades and shields began again. I climbed a
second time, trying to dig my boots into the chalk, and my shield was raised so I did not see
the Danes coming down to meet me, and the first I knew was when an axe struck the shield so hard
that the boards splintered, and a second axe gave me a glancing blow on the helmet and I fell
backwards and would have lost Serpent-Breath if it had not been for the loop of Iseult's hair
about my wrist. Steapa managed to seize a Danish spear and pulled its owner down the bank
where a half-dozen Saxons hacked and stabbed in-fury so that the ditch was churning with
water, blood and blades, and someone shouted for us to go again, and I saw it was Alfred,
dismounted, coming to cross the ditch and I roared for my men to protect him.

Pyrlig and I managed to get in front of the king and we stayed there, protecting him as we
tried to climb that blood-fouled bank a third time. Pyrlig was screaming in his native tongue,
I was cursing in Danish, and somehow we got halfway up and stayed on our feet, and someone,
perhaps it was Alfred, was pushing me from behind. Rain hammered us, soaked us. A peal of
thunder shook the heavens and I swung Serpent-Breath, trying to hack the Danish shields
aside, then swung again, and the shock of the blade striking a shield boss jarred up my arm. A
Dane, all beard and wide eyes, lunged a spear at me. I lunged back with the sword, shouted
Iseult's name, tried to climb and the Spear-Dane slammed his spear forward again, and the blade
struck my helmet's forehead and my head snapped back and another Dane hit me on the side of
the head and all the world went drunken and dark. My feet slid and I was half aware of falling
down into the ditch-water. Someone pulled me clear and dragged me back to the ditch's far
side, and there I tried to stand, but fell again.

The king. The king. He had to be protected and he had been in the ditch when I had last seen
him, and I knew Alfred was no warrior. He was brave, but he did not love the slaughter as a
warrior loves it. I tried to stand again, and this time succeeded, but blood squelched in my
right boot and flowed over the boot-top when I put my weight on that leg. The ditch bottom was
thick with dead and dying men, half drowned by the flood, but the living had fled from the
ditch and the Danes were laughing at us.

'To me!' I shouted. There had to be one last effort. Steapa and Pyrlig closed on me, and
Eadric was there, and I was groggy and my head was filled with a ringing sound and my arm
seemed feeble, but we had to make that last effort.

'Where's the king?' I asked.

'I threw him out of the ditch,' Pyrlig said.

‘Is he safe?'

'I told the priests to hold him down. Told them to hit him if he tried to go again.'

'One more attack,' I said. I did not want to make it. I did not want to clamber over the
bodies in the ditch and try to climb that impossible wall, and I knew it was stupid, knew I
would probably die if I went again, but we were warriors and warriors will not be beaten. It
is reputation. It is pride. It is the madness of battle. I began beating Serpent-Breath
against my half-broken shield, and other men took up the rhythm, and the Danes, so close, were
inviting us to come and be killed, and I shouted that we were coming.

'God help us,' Steapa said.

'God help us,' Pyrlig echoed.

I did not want to go. I was frightened, but I feared being called a coward more than I
feared the ramparts, and so I screamed at my men to slaughter the bastards, and then I ran. I
jumped over the corpse's in the ditch, lost my footing on the far side, fell on my shield and
rolled aside so that no Dane could plunge a spear into my unprotected back. I hauled myself
up and my helmet had skewed in the fall so that the face-plate half blinded me, and I fumbled
it straight with my sword hand as I began to climb and Steapa was there, and Pyrlig was with
me, and I waited for the first hard Danish blow.

It did not come. I struggled up the bank, the shield over my head, and I expected the death
blow, but there was silence and I lifted the shield and thought I must have died for all I saw
was the rainfilled sky. The Danes had gone. One moment they had been sneering at us, calling
us women and cowards, and boasting how they would slice open our bellies and feed our guts to
the ravens, and now they were gone. I clambered to the top of the wall and saw a second ditch
and second wall beyond, and the Danes were scrambling up that inner rampart and I supposed
that they intended to make a defence there, but instead they vanished over its top and
Pyrlig grabbed my arm and pulled me on. 'They're running!' he shouted, 'by God, the bastards
are running!' He had to shout to make himself heard over the rain.

'On! On!' someone shouted, and we ran into the second flooded ditch and up over the
undefended inner bank and I saw Osric's men, the fyrd of Wiltunscir that had been
defeated in the opening moments of the fight, had managed to cross the fort's walls. We
learned later that they had gone into the valley where the white horse lay dead, and in the
blinding rain they had made it to the fort's eastern corner which, because Guthrum thought it
unapproachable, was only lightly defended. The rampart was lower there, hardly more
than a grassy ridge on the valley's slope, and they had flooded over the wall and so got
behind the other defenders.

Who now ran. If they had stayed then they would have been slaughtered to a man, so they fled
across the fort's wide interior, and some were slow to realise that the battle was lost and
those we trapped. I just wanted to kill for Iseult's sake, and I put two fugitives down,
hacking them with Serpent-Breath with such fury that she cut through mail, leather and flesh
to bite as deep as an axe. I was screaming my anger, wanting more victims, but we were too
many and the trapped Danes were too few. The rain kept falling and the thunder bellowed as I
looked about for enemies to kill, and then I saw one last group of them, back to back, fighting
off a swarm of Saxons, and I ran towards them and suddenly saw their banner. The eagle's
wing. It was Ragnar.

His men, outnumbered and overwhelmed, were dying.

'Let him live!' I shouted, 'let him live!' and three Saxons turned towards me and they saw
my long hair and my arm rings bright on my mailed sleeves, and they must have thought I was a
Dane for they ran at me, and I fended off the first with Serpent-Breath. The second hammered
my shield with his axe, and the third circled behind me and I turned fast, scything
Serpent-Breath, shouted that I was a Saxon, but they did not hear me. Then Steapa slammed
into them and they scattered, and Pyrlig grabbed my arm, but I shook him off and ran towards
Ragnar, who was snarling at the ring of enemies, inviting any one of them to try to kill him.
His banner had fallen and his crewmen were dead, but he looked like a war god in his shining
mail and with his splintered shield and his long sword and his defiant face, and then the ring
began to close. I ran, shouting, and he turned towards me, thinking I had come to kill him,
and he raised his sword and I brushed it aside with my shield, threw my arms around him and drove
him to the turf.

Steapa and Pyrlig guarded us. They fended off the Saxons, telling them to look for other
victims, and I rolled away from Ragnar, who sat up and looked at me with astonishment. I saw
that his shield hand was bloody. A blade, cutting through the limewood, had sliced into his
palm, hacking down between the fingers so that it looked as though he had two small hands
instead of one.

'I must bind that wound,' I said.

'Uhtred,' he just said, as if he did not really believe it was me.

'I looked for you,' I told him, 'because I did not want to fight you.'

He flinched as he shook the shattered remnants of the shield away from his wounded hand. I
could see Bishop Alewold running across the fort in mud-spattered robes, waving his arms
and shouting that God had delivered the pagans into our hands.

'I told Guthrum to fight outside the fort,' Ragnar said. 'We would have killed you all.'

'You would,' I agreed. By staying in the fort, Guthrum had let us defeat his army piece by
piece, but even so it was a miracle that the day was ours.