I remember a priest, a clever fellow, visiting me to ask for my memories of Alfred, which he wanted to put in a book. He never did, because he died of the flux shortly after he saw me, but he was a shrewd man and more forgiving than most priests, and I recall how he asked me to describe the joy of battle. “My wife’s poets will tell you,” I said to him.
“Your wife’s poets never fought,” he pointed out, “and they just take songs about other heroes and change the names.”
“They do?”
“Of course they do,” he had said, “wouldn’t you, lord?”
I liked that priest and so I talked to him, and the answer I eventually gave him was that the joy of battle was the delight of tricking the other side. Of knowing what they will do before they do it, and having the response ready so that, when they make the move that is supposed to kill you, they die instead. And at that moment, in the damp gloom of the Lundene street, I knew what Sigefrid was doing and knew too, though he did not know it, that he was giving me Ludd’s Gate.
The courtyard belonged to a stone-merchant. His quarries were Lundene’s Roman buildings and piles of dressed masonry were stacked against the walls ready to be shipped to Frankia. Still more stones were heaped against the gate that led through the river wall to the wharves. Sigefrid, I thought, must have feared an assault from the river and had blocked every gate through the walls west of the bridge, but he had never dreamed anyone would shoot the bridge to the unguarded eastern side. But we had, and my men were hidden in the courtyard while I stood in the entrance and watched the enemy throng at Ludd’s Gate.
“We’re hiding?” Osferth asked me. His voice had a whine to it, as if he were perpetually complaining.
“There are hundreds of men between us and the gate,” I explained patiently, “and we are too few to cut through them.”
“So we failed,” he said, not as a question, but as a petulant statement.
I wanted to hit him, but managed to stay patient. “Tell him,” I said to Pyrlig, “what is happening.”
“God in his wisdom,” the Welshman explained, “has persuaded Sigefrid to lead an attack out of the city! They’re going to open that gate, boy, and stream across the marshes, and hack their way into Lord ?thelred’s men. And as most of Lord ?thelred’s men are from the fyrd, and most of Sigefrid’s are real warriors, then we all know what’s going to happen!” Father Pyrlig touched his mail coat where the wooden cross was hidden. “Thank you, God!”
Osferth stared at the priest. “You mean,” he said after a pause, “that Lord ?thelred’s men will be slaughtered?”
“Some of them are going to die!” Pyrlig allowed cheerfully, “and I hope to God they die in grace, boy, or they’ll never hear that heavenly choir, will they?”
“I hate choirs,” I growled.
“No, you don’t,” Pyrlig said. “You see, boy,” he looked back to Osferth, “once they’ve gone out of the gate, then there’ll only be a handful of men guarding it. So that’s when we attack! And Sigefrid will suddenly find himself with an enemy in front and another one behind, and that predicament can make a man wish he’d stayed in bed.”
A shutter opened in one of the high windows over the courtyard. A young woman stared out at the lightening sky, then stretched her hands high and yawned hugely. The gesture stretched her linen shift tight across her breasts, then she saw my men beneath her and instinctively clutched her arms to her chest. She was clothed, but must have felt naked. “Oh, thank you dear Savior for another sweet mercy,” Pyrlig said, watching her.
“But if we take the gate,” Osferth said, worrying at the problems he saw, “the men left in the city will attack us.”
“They will,” I agreed.
“And Sigefrid…” he began.
“Will probably turn back to slaughter us,” I finished his sentence for him.
“So?” he said, then checked, because he saw nothing but blood and death in his future.
“It all depends,” I said, “on my cousin. If he comes to our aid then we should win. If he doesn’t?” I shrugged, “then keep good hold of your sword.”
A roar sounded from Ludd’s Gate and I knew it had been swung open and that men were streaming down the road that led to the Fleot. ?thelred, if he was still readying his assault, would see them coming and have a choice to make. He could stand and fight in the new Saxon town, or else run. I hoped he would stand. I did not like him, but I never saw a lack of courage in him. I did see a great deal of stupidity, which suggested he would probably welcome a fight.
It took a long time for Sigefrid’s men to get through the gate. I watched from the shadows at the courtyard’s entrance and reckoned at least four hundred men were leaving the city. ?thelred had over three hundred good troops, most of them from Alfred’s household, but the rest of his force was from the fyrd and would never stand against a hard, savage attack. The advantage lay with Sigefrid whose men were warm, rested, and fed, while ?thelred’s troops had stumbled through the night and would be tired.
“The sooner we do it,” I said to no one in particular, “the better.”
“Go now, then?” Pyrlig suggested.
“We just walk to the gate!” I shouted to my men. “You don’t run! Look as if you belong here!”
Which is what we did.
And so, with a stroll down a Lundene street, that bitter fight began.
There were no more than thirty men left at Ludd’s Gate. Some were sentries posted to guard the archway, but most were idlers who had climbed to the rampart to watch Sigefrid’s sally. A big man with one leg was climbing the uneven stone steps on his crutches. He stopped halfway and turned to watch our approach. “If you hurry, lord,” he shouted to me, “you can join them!”
He called me lord because he saw a lord. He saw a warrior lord.
A handful of men could go to war as I did. They were chieftains, earls, kings, lords; the men who had killed enough other men to amass the fortune needed to buy mail, helmet, and weapons. And not just any mail. My coat was of Frankish make and would cost a man more than the price of a warship. Sihtric had polished the metal with sand so that it shone like silver. The hem of the coat was at my knees and was hung with thirty-eight hammers of Thor; some made of bone, some of ivory, some of silver, but all had once hung about the necks of brave enemies I had killed in battle, and I wore the amulets so that when I came to the corpse-hall the former owners would know me, greet me, and drink ale with me.
I wore a cloak of wool dyed black on which Gisela had embroidered a white lightning flash that ran from my neck to my heels. The cloak could be an encumbrance in battle, but I wore it now, for it made me look larger, and I was already taller and broader than most men. Thor’s hammer hung at my neck, and that alone was a poor thing, a miserable amulet made of iron that rusted constantly, and all the scraping and cleaning had worn it thin and misshapen over the years, but I had taken that little iron hammer with my fists when I was a boy and I loved it. I wear it to this day.
My helmet was a glorious thing, polished to an eye-blinding shine, inlaid with silver and crested with a silver wolf’s head. The face-plates were decorated with silver spirals. That helmet alone told an enemy I was a man of substance. If a man killed me and took that helmet he would be instantly rich, but my enemies would rather have taken my arm rings, which, like the Danes, I wore over my mail sleeves. My rings were silver and gold, and there were so many that some had to be worn above my elbows. They spoke of men killed and wealth hoarded. My boots were of thick leather and had iron plates sewn around them to deflect the spear thrust that comes under the shield. The shield itself, rimmed with iron, was painted with a wolf’s head, my badge, and at my left hip hung Serpent- Breath and at my right Wasp-Sting, and I strode toward the gate with the sun rising behind me to throw my long shadow on the filth-strewn street.
I was a warlord in my glory, I had come to kill, and no one at the gate knew it.
They saw us coming, but assumed we were Danes. Most of the enemy were on the high rampart, but five were standing in the open gate and all were watching Sigefrid’s force that streamed down the brief steep slope to the Fleot. The Saxon settlement was not far beyond and I hoped ?thelred was still there. “Steapa,” I called, still far enough from the gate so that no one there could hear me speak English, “take your men and kill those turds in the archway.”
