reputation, boy, by breaking them. But you do not make a reputation by killing cripples.” I spat those last words, then turned to see that Sigefrid’s men had crossed the River Fleot, but had now become aware of the commotion behind them and had stopped to stare back at the gate.
Pyrlig appeared beside me. “Let’s get rid of this rag,” he said, and I saw there was a banner hanging from the wall. Pyrlig hauled it up and showed me Sigefrid’s raven badge. “We’ll let them know,” Pyrlig said, “that the city has a new master.” He hauled up his mail coat and pulled out a banner that had been folded and tucked into his waistband. He shook it loose to reveal a black cross on a dull white field. “Praise God,” Pyrlig said, then dropped the banner over the wall, securing it by weighting its top edge with dead men’s weapons. Now Sigefrid would know that Ludd’s Gate was lost. The Christian banner was flaunted in his face.
Yet, for the next few moments, things were quiet. I suppose Sigefrid’s men were astonished by what had happened and were recovering from that surprise. They were no longer moving toward the new Saxon town, but were still staring back at the cross-hung gate, while inside the city groups of men gathered in the streets and gazed up at us.
I was staring toward the new town. I could see no sign of ?thelred’s men. There was a wooden palisade cresting the low slope where the Saxon town was built and it was possible ?thelred’s troops were behind the fence that had decayed in places and was entirely missing in others.
“If ?thelred doesn’t come,” Pyrlig said softly.
“Then we’re dead,” I finished the remark for him. To my left the river slid gray as misery toward the broken bridge and distant sea. Gulls were white on the gray. Far off, on the southern bank, I could see a few hovels where smoke rose. That was Wessex. In front of me, where Sigefrid’s men remained motionless, was Mercia, while behind me, north of the river, was East Anglia.
“Do we shut the gate?” Pyrlig asked.
“No,” I said. “I told Steapa to leave it open.”
“You did?”
“We want Sigefrid to attack us,” I said, and I thought that if ?thelred had abandoned his attack then I would die in the gate where the three kingdoms met. I still could not see ?thelred’s force, yet I was relying on my cousin’s men to give us victory. If I could tempt Sigefrid’s warriors back to the gate, and hold them there, then ?thelred could assail them from behind. That was why I had to leave the gate open, as an invitation to Sigefrid. If I had shut it then he could have used another entrance to the Roman city, and his men would not be exposed to my cousin’s assault.
The more immediate problem was that the Danes who had stayed in the city were at last recovering from their surprise. Some were in the streets while others gathered on the walls either side of Ludd’s Gate. The walls were lower than the gate’s bastion, which meant any attack on us had to be made up the narrow stone steps which climbed from wall to bastion. Each of those steps would need five men to hold them, as would the twin stairways climbing from the street. I thought about abandoning the bastion’s top, but if the fight went badly in the archway, then the high rampart was our best refuge. “You’ll have twenty men,” I told Pyrlig, “to hold this bastion. And you can have him as well,” I nodded toward Osferth. I did not want Alfred’s cripple-killing son in the arch below where the fighting would be fiercest. It was down there that we would make two shield walls, one facing into the city and the other looking out toward the Fleot, and there the shield walls would clash, and there, I thought, we would die because I still could not see ?thelred’s army.
I was tempted to run away. It would have been simple enough to have retreated the way we had come, thrusting aside the enemy in the streets. We could have taken Sigefrid’s boat, the
Fifty of us went down the stairways and filled the gate. Twenty men faced into the city while the rest faced out toward Sigefrid. Inside the gate arch there was just room for eight men to stand abreast with their shields touching and so we made our twin shield walls under the shadows of the stone. Steapa commanded the twenty, while I stood in the front rank of the wall looking west.
I left the shield wall and walked a few paces toward the Fleot valley. The small river, fouled by the tanners’ pits upstream, ran dirty and sluggish toward the Temes. Beyond the river Sigefrid, Haesten, and Erik had at last turned their force around and what had been their rearmost ranks of northern warriors were now wading back across the shallow Fleot to thrust my little force aside.
I stood on their skyline. The cloud-veiled sun was behind me, but its pale light would be reflecting from the silver of my helmet and from the smoky sheen of Serpent-Breath’s blade. I had drawn her again, and now I stood with sword held out to my right and shield to my left. I stood above them, a lord in glory, a man in mail, a warrior inviting warriors to fight, and I saw no friendly troops on the farther hill.
And if ?thelred had gone, I thought, then we would die.
I gripped Serpent-Breath’s hilt. I stared at Sigefrid’s men, then clashed Serpent-Breath’s blade against my shield. I beat her three times and the sound echoed from the walls behind me, and then I turned and went back to my small shield wall.
And, with a roar of anger and the howling of men who see victory, Sigefrid’s army came to kill us.
A poet should have written the tale of that fight.
That is what poets are for.
My present wife, who is a fool, pays poets to sing of Christ Jesus, who is her god, but her poets falter into embarrassed silence when I limp into the hall. They know scores of songs about their saints, and they sing melancholy chants about the day their god was nailed to the cross, but when I am present they sing the real poems, those poems that the clever priest told me had been written about other men whose names had been taken out so mine could be inserted.
They are poems about slaughter, poems about warriors, real poems.
Warriors defend the home, they defend children, they defend women, they defend the harvest, and they kill the enemies who come to steal those things. Without warriors the land would be a waste place, desolate and full of laments. Yet a warrior’s real reward is not the silver and gold he can wear on his arms, but his reputation, and that is why there are poets. Poets tell the tales of the men who defend the land and kill a land’s enemies. That is what poets are for, yet there is no poem about the fight in Ludd’s Gate of Lundene.
There is a poem sung in what used to be Mercia that tells of Lord ?thelred’s capture of Lundene, and it is a fine poem, yet it does not mention my name, nor Steapa’s name, nor Pyrlig’s name, nor the names of the men who really fought that day. You would think, listening to that poem, that ?thelred came and those whom the poet calls “the heathen” just ran.
But it was not like that.
It was not like that at all.
I say that the Northmen came in a rush, and they did, but Sigefrid was no fool when it came to a fight. He could see how few of us blocked that gateway and he knew that if he could break my shield wall quickly then we would all die under that old Roman arch.
I had gone back to my troops. My shield overlapped the shields of the men to my left and right, and it was just as I set myself, ready for their charge, that I saw what Sigefrid planned.
His men had not just been staring at Ludd’s Gate, but had been reorganized so that eight warriors had been placed in the van of his attack. Four of them carried massive long spears that needed two hands to hold level. Those four had no shields, but next to each spearman was a massive warrior armed with shield and ax, and behind them were more men with shields, spears, and long-swords. I knew just what was about to happen. The four men would come at a run and hammer their spears into four of our shields. The weight of the spears and the power of the charge would drive four of us into the rank behind, and then the axmen would strike. They would not try to batter our shields into splinters, but would instead widen the gaps the four spearmen had made, hook and pull down the shields of our second rank, and so expose us to the long weapons of the men following the ax-warriors. Sigefrid had only one ambition, and that was to break our wall fast, and I had no doubt that the eight men were not only trained to break a shield wall quickly, but had done it before.
“Brace yourselves!” I shouted, though it was a pointless shout. My men knew what they had to do. They had to stand and die. That was what they had sworn in their oaths to me.
And I knew we would die unless ?thelred came. The power of Sigefrid’s attack would hammer into our shield
