another in their eagerness to reach and to kill us, and then he launched his men across Cynuit’s brow and they came like thunder with swords and axes and sickles and spears. The Danes saw them and there were shouts of warning and almost immediately I felt the pressure lessen to my front as the rearward Danes turned to meet the new threat. I rammed WaspSting out to pierce a man’s shoulder, and she went deep in, grating against bone, but the man twisted away, snatching the blade out of my hand, so I drew SerpentBreath and shouted at my men to kill the bastards. This was our day, I shouted, and Odin was giving us victory.
Forward now. Forward to battle slaughter. Beware the man who loves battle. Ravn had told me that only one man in three or perhaps one man in four is a real warrior and the rest are reluctant fighters, but I was to learn that only one man in twenty is a lover of battle. Such men were the most dangerous, the most skillful, the ones who reaped the souls, and the ones to fear. I was such a one, and that day, beside the river where the blood flowed into the rising tide, and beside the burning boats, I let SerpentBreath sing her song of death. I remember little except a rage, an exultation, a massacre. This was the moment the skalds celebrate, the heart of the battle that leads to victory, and the courage had gone from those Danes in a heartbeat. They had thought they were winning, thought they had trapped us by the burning ships, and thought to send our miserable souls to the afterworld, and instead the fyrd of Defnascir came on them like a storm.
“Forward!” I shouted.
“Wessex!” Leofric bellowed. “Wessex!” He was hacking with his ax, chopping men to the ground, leading theHeahengel ’s crew away from the fiery ships.
The Danes were going backward, trying to escape us, and we could choose our victims; SerpentBreath was lethal that day. Hammer a shield forward, strike a man off balance, thrust the blade forward, push him down, stab into the throat, find the next man. I pushed a Dane into the smoldering remnants of a campfire, killed him while he screamed, and some Danes were now fleeing to their unburned ships, pushing them into the flooding tide, but Ubba was still fighting. Ubba was shouting at his men to form a new shield wall, to protect the boats, and such was Ubba’s hard will, such his searing anger, that the new shield wall held. We hit it hard, hammered it with sword and ax and spear, but again there was no space, just the heaving, grunting, breathstinking struggle, only this time it was the Danes who stepped back, pace by pace, as Odda’s men joined mine to wrap around the Danes and hammer them with iron. But Ubba was holding. Holding his rearguard firm, holding them under the raven banner. In every moment that he held us off another ship was pushed away from the river’s bank. All he wanted to achieve now was to save men and ships, to let a part of his army escape, to let them get away from this press of shield and blade. Six Danish ships were already rowing out to the S?fern sea, and more were filling with men. I screamed at my troops to break through, to kill them, but there was no space to kill, only bloodslicked ground and blades stabbing under shields, and men heaving at the opposing wall, and the wounded crawling away from the back of our line.
And then, with a roar of fury, Ubba hacked into our line with his great war ax. I remembered how he had done that in the fight beside the Gew?sc, how he had seemed to disappear into the ranks of the enemy only to kill them, and his huge blade was whirling again, making space, and our line went back and the Danes followed Ubba who seemed determined to win this battle on his own and to make a name that would never be forgotten among the annals of the Northmen. The battle madness was on him, the runesticks were forgotten, and Ubba Lothbrokson was making his legend. Another man went down, crushed by the ax, and Ubba bellowed defiance, the Danes stepped forward behind him, and now Ubba threatened to pierce our line clean through. I shoved backward, going through my men, and went to where Ubba fought. There I shouted his name, called him the son of a goat, a turd of men, and he turned, eyes wild, and saw me.
“You bastard whelp,” he snarled, and the men in front of me ducked aside as he came forward, mail coat drenched in blood, a part of his shield missing, his helmet dented and his ax blade red.
“Yesterday,” I said, “I saw a raven fall.”
“You bastard liar,” he said, and the ax came around and I caught it on the shield and it was like being struck by a charging bull. He wrenched the ax free and a great sliver of wood was torn away to let the new daylight through the broken shield.
“A raven,” I said, “fell from a clear sky.”
“You whore’s pup,” he said and the ax came again, and again the shield took it and I staggered back, the rent in the shield widening.
“It called your name as it fell,” I said.
“English filth,” he shouted and swung a third time, but this time I stepped back and flicked SerpentBreath out in an attempt to cut off his ax hand, but he was fast, snake fast, and he pulled back just in time.
“Ravn told me I would kill you,” I said. “He foretold it. In a dream by Odin’s pit, among the blood, he saw the raven banner fall.”
“Liar!” he screamed and came at me, trying to throw me down with weight and brute force. I met him, shield boss to shield boss, and I held him, swinging SerpentBreath at his head. But the blow glanced off his helmet and I leaped back a heartbeat before the ax swung where my legs had been, lunged forward, and took him clean on the chest with SerpentBreath’s point. But I did not have any force in the blow and his mail took the lunge and stopped it, and he swung the ax up, trying to gut me from crotch to chest, but my ragged shield stopped his blow, and we both stepped back.
“Three brothers,” I said, “and you alone of them live. Give my regards to Ivar and to Halfdan. Say that Uhtred Ragnarson sent you to join them.”
“Bastard,” he said, and he stepped forward, swinging the ax in a massive sideways blow that was intended to crush my chest, but the battle calm had come on me, and the fear had flown and the joy was there and I rammed the shield sideways to take his ax strike, felt the heavy blade plunge into what was left of the wood, and I let go of the shield’s handle so that the halfbroken tangle of metal and wood dangled from his blade, and then I struck at him. Once, twice, both of them huge blows using both hands on SerpentBreath’s hilt and using all the strength I had taken from the long days atHeahengel ’s oar. I drove him back, cracked his shield, and he lifted his ax, my shield still cumbering it, and then slipped. He had stepped on the spilled guts of a corpse, and his left food slid sideways. While he was unbalanced, I stabbed SerpentBreath forward and the blade pierced the mail above the hollow of his elbow and his ax arm dropped, all strength stolen from it. SerpentBreath flicked back to slash across his mouth, and I was shouting. There was blood in his beard and he knew then, knew he would die, knew he would see his brothers in the corpse hall. He did not give up. He saw death coming and fought it by trying to hammer me with his shield again, but I was too quick, too exultant, and the next stroke was in his neck and he staggered, blood pouring onto his shoulder, more blood trickling between the links of his chain mail, and he looked at me as he tried to stay upright.
“Wait for me in Valhalla, lord,” I said.
He dropped to his knees, still staring at me. He tried to speak, but nothing came and I gave him the killing stroke.
“Now finish them!” Ealdorman Odda shouted, and the men who had been watching the duel screamed in triumph and rushed at the enemy and there was panic now as the Danes tried to reach their boats. Some were throwing down weapons and the cleverest were lying flat, pretending to be dead, and men with sickles were killing men with swords. The women from Cynuit’s summit were in the Danish camp now, killing and plundering.
I knelt by Ubba and closed his nerveless right fist about the handle of his war ax. “Go to Valhalla, lord,”
I said. He was not dead yet, but he was dying for my last stroke had pierced deep into his neck, and then he gave a great shudder and there was a croaking noise in his throat and I kept on holding his hand tight to the ax as he died.
A dozen more boats escaped, all crowded with Danes, but the rest of Ubba’s fleet was ours, and while a handful of the enemy fled into the woods where they were hunted down, the remaining Danes were either dead or prisoners, and the Raven banner fell into Odda’s hands, and we had the victory that day, and Willibald, spear point reddened, was dancing with delight. We took horses, gold, silver, prisoners, women, ships, weapons, and mail. I had fought in the shield wall.
Ealdorman Odda had been wounded, struck on the head by an ax that had pierced his helmet and driven into his skull. He lived, but his eyes were white, his skin pale, his breath shallow, and his head matted with blood. Priests prayed over him in one of the small village houses and I saw him there, but he could not see me, could not speak, perhaps could not hear, but I shoved two of the priests aside, knelt by his bed, and thanked him for taking the fight to the Danes. His son, unwounded, his armor apparently unscratched in the battle, watched me from the
