I think Ivarr wished he had not lost his temper, but it was too late. Every man in both shield walls could see that he had drawn his sword and pursued me into the open meadow and he could not just ride away from that challenge. He had to kill me now, and he was not sure he could do it. He was good, but he had suffered injury, his joints were aching, and he knew my reputation.
His advantage was Witnere. I knew that horse, and knew it fought as well as most warriors. Witnere would savage my horse if he could, and he would savage me too, and my first aim was to get Ivarr out of the saddle. Ivarr watched me. I think he had decided to let me attack, for he did not release Witnere to the charge, but instead of riding at him, I turned my stallion toward Ivarr’s shield wall. “Ivarr is a thief!” I shouted at his army. I let Serpent- Breath hang by my side. “He is a common thief,” I shouted, “who ran from the Scots! He ran like a whipped puppy! He was weeping like a child when we found him!” I laughed and kept my eyes on Ivarr’s shield wall. “He was crying because he was hurt,” I said, “and in Scotland they call him Ivarr the Feeble.” I saw, at the edge of my vision, that the goading had worked and that Ivarr was wheeling Witnere toward me. “He is a thief,” I shouted, “and a coward!” And as I screamed the last derisive insult I touched my knee to my horse so he turned and I raised my shield. Witnere was all white eyes and white teeth, big hooves flailing up sodden turf, and as he closed I shouted his name. “Witnere! Witnere!” I knew that was probably not the name Ivarr had given the stallion, but perhaps Witnere remembered the name, or remembered me, for his ears pricked and his head came up and his pace faltered as I spurred my own horse straight at him.
I used the shield as a weapon. I just thrust it hard at Ivarr and, at the same moment, pushed up on my right stirrup, and Ivarr was trying to turn Witnere away, but the big stallion was confused and off balance. My shield slammed into Ivarr’s and I threw myself at him, using my weight to force him backward. The risk was that I would fall and he would stay saddled, but I dared not let go of shield or sword to grip him. I just had to hope that my weight would drive him to the ground. “Witnere!” I shouted again, and the stallion half turned toward me and that small motion, along with my weight, was enough to topple Ivarr. He fell to his right and I collapsed between the two horses. I fell hard, and my own stallion gave me an inadvertent kick that pushed me against Witnere’s hind legs. I scrambled up, slapped Witnere’s rump with Serpent-Breath to drive him away and immediately ducked beneath my shield as Ivarr attacked. He had recovered faster than me, and his sword slammed against my shield, and he must have expected me to recoil from that blow, but I stopped it dead. My left arm, wounded by the thrown spear at Dunholm, throbbed from the force of his sword, but I was taller, heavier, and stronger than Ivarr and I shoved the shield hard to push him back.
He knew he was going to lose. He was old enough to be my father and he was slowed by old wounds, but he was still a Lothbrok and they learn fighting from the moment they are whelped. He came at me snarling, sword feinting high then thrusting low, and I kept moving, parrying him, taking his blows on my shield, and not even trying to fight back. I mocked him instead. I told him he was a pathetic old man. “I killed your uncle,” I taunted him, “and he was not much better than you. And when you’re dead, old man, I’ll gut the rat you call a son. I’ll feed his corpse to the ravens. Is that the best you can do?”
He had tried to turn me, but tried too hard and his foot had slipped on the wet grass and he had gone down onto one knee. He was open to death then, off balance and with his sword hand in the grass, but I walked away from him, letting him rise, and every Dane saw that I did that, and then they saw me throw away my shield. “I’ll give him a chance,” I called to them. “He’s a miserable little thief, but I’ll give him a chance!”
“You whore-born Saxon bastard,” Ivarr snarled, and rushed me again. That was how he liked to fight. Attack, attack, attack, and he tried to use his shield to hurl me back, but I stepped away and clouted him over the back of his helmet with the flat of Serpent-Breath’s blade. The blow made him stumble a second time, and again I walked away. I wanted to humiliate him.
That second stumble gave him caution, so that he circled me warily. “You made me a slave,” I said, “and you couldn’t even do that properly. You want to give me your sword?”
“Goat-turd,” he said. He came in fast, lunging at my throat, dropping the sword to rake my left leg at the last moment, and I just moved aside and slapped Serpent-Breath across his rump to drive him away.
“Give me your sword,” I said, “and I’ll let you live. We’ll put you in a cage and I’ll take you around Wessex. Here is Ivarr Ivarson, a Lothbrok, I’ll tell folk. A thief who ran away from the Scots.”
“Bastard,” he rushed again, this time trying to disembowel me with a savage sweep of the sword, but I stepped back and his long blade hissed past me and he grunted as he brought the blade back, all fury and desperation now, and I rammed Serpent-Breath forward so that she went past his shield and struck his breast and the force of the lunge drove him back. He staggered as my next stroke came, a fast one that rang on the side of his helmet and again he staggered, dizzied by the blow, and my third blow cracked into his blade with such force that his sword arm flew back and Serpent-Breath’s tip was at his throat.
“Coward,” I said, “thief.”
He screamed in fury and brought his sword around in a savage stroke, but I stepped backward and let it pass. Then I slashed Serpent-Breath down hard to strike his right wrist. He gasped then, for the wrist bones were broken.
“It’s hard to fight without a sword,” I told him, and I struck again, this time hitting the sword so that the blade flew from his hand. There was terror in his eyes now. Not the terror of a man facing death, but of a warrior dying without a blade in his hand.
“You made me a slave,” I said, and I rammed Serpent-Breath forward, striking him on one knee and he tried to back away, tried to reach his sword, and I slashed the knee again, much harder, sawing through leather to cut to the bone and he went down on one knee. I slapped his helmet with Serpent-Breath, then stood behind him. “He made me a slave,” I shouted at his men, “and he stole my horse. But he is still a Lothbrok.” I bent, picked up his sword by the blade, and held it to him. He took it.
“Thank you,” he said.
Then I killed him. I took his head half off his shoulders. He made a gurgling noise, shuddered, and went down onto the grass, but he had kept hold of the sword. If I had let him die without the sword then many of the watching Danes would have thought me wantonly cruel. They understood he was my enemy, and understood I had cause to kill him, but none would think he deserved to be denied the corpse-hall. And one day, I thought, Ivarr and his uncle would welcome me there, for in the corpse-hall we feast with our enemies and remember our fights and fight them all over again.
Then there was a scream and I turned to see Ivar, his son, galloping toward me. He came as his father had come, all fury and mindless violence, and he leaned from the saddle to cut me in half with his blade and I met the blade with Serpent-Breath and she was by far the better sword. The blow jarred up my arm, but Ivar’s blade broke. He galloped past me, holding a hand’s breadth of sword, and two of his father’s men caught up with him and forced him away before he could be killed. I called to Witnere.
He came to me. I patted his nose, took hold of the saddle and hauled myself onto his back. Then I turned him toward Ivarr’s leaderless shield wall and gestured that Guthred and Ragnar should join me. We stopped twenty paces from the painted Danish shields. “Ivarr Ivarson has gone to Valhalla,” I shouted, “and there was no disgrace in his death! I am Uhtred Ragnarson! I am the man who killed Ubba Lothbrokson and this is my friend, Earl Ragnar, who killed Kjartan the Cruel! We serve King Guthred.”
“Are you a Christian?” a man shouted.
I showed him my hammer amulet. Men were passing the news of Kjartan’s death down the long line of shields, axes, and swords. “I am no Christian!” I shouted when they were quiet again. “But I have seen Christian sorcery! And the Christians worked their magic on King Guthred! Have none of you been victims of sorcerers? Have none of you known your cattle to die or your wives to be sick? You all know sorcery, and the Christian sorcerers can work great magic! They have corpses and severed heads, and they use them to make magic, and they wove their spells about our king! But the sorcerer made a mistake. He became greedy, and last night he stole a treasure from King Guthred! But Odin has swept the spells away!” I twisted in the saddle and saw that Finan was at last coming from the fort.
He had been delayed by a scuffle at the fort’s entrance. Some churchmen had tried to prevent Finan and Sihtric from leaving, but a score of Ragnar’s Danes intervened and now the Irishman came riding across the pastureland. He was leading Father Hrothweard. Or rather Finan had a handful of Hrothweard’s hair and so the priest had no choice but to stumble along beside the Irishman’s horse.
“That is the Christian sorcerer, Hrothweard!” I shouted. “He attacked King Guthred with spells, with the magic of corpses, but we have found him out and we have taken the spells away from King Guthred! So now I ask
