Sword Song

broke and ran. We stumbled backward to follow them. Blades crashed into our shields, axes splintered boards, swords rang on swords, and back we went, unable to hold our ground against so many, and we were driven past the great mooring post and now there was light enough in the sky for me to see the green slime clinging to the post’s base where the huge chain lay rusted.

Haesten’s men screamed a great howl of victory. Their mouths were distended, their eyes were bright with light reflected from the east and they knew they had won, and we just ran away. There is no other way to describe that moment just before the full dawn. Sixty or seventy men were trying to kill us, and they had already killed some of the crewmen from the moored guard-ship, and the rest of us ran back onto the foreshore where the mud was thick and I thought again that I must die there where the sea ran in slithering ripples across the slick flats, but our attackers, content that they had driven us off, turned back to the post and chain. Some watched us, daring us to go back to the firmer ground and challenge them, while the others slashed at the chain with axes. Beyond them, dark against the darkest part of the sky where the last stars faded, I could see Haesten’s ships waiting to slide out to sea.

The axes rang and chopped, and then a cheer sounded and I saw the heavy chain slither snakelike across the mud. The tide had turned now and the new flood was running strong, and the blocking ship was being swung westward, carried into the creek by that surge of water, and I could do nothing but watch as Haesten’s escape was made possible.

Our attackers were running back to their own ship. The chain had vanished into the low water as the blocking ship slowly dragged it away. I remember stumbling forward through the mud, one hand on Rypere’s shoulder and my left foot squelching the blood in my boot. I held Serpent-Breath and knew I was powerless to stop ?thelflaed being carried away to a worse captivity.

The ransom, I thought, would be doubled now, and Haesten would become a lord of warriors, a man wealthy beyond even his inordinate greed. He would assemble an army. He would come to destroy Wessex. He would be king, and all because that chain had been severed and the Hothlege at last was being unblocked.

I saw Haesten then. He was standing in the bows of his ship, which I knew was named the Dragon-Voyager, and she was the first ship waiting for the creek mouth to be fully clear. Haesten stood in cloak and armor, stood proud beneath the raven’s head that crowned his ship’s prow, and his helmet glinted with the new dawn, and his drawn blade was shining, and he was smiling. He had won. ?thelflaed, I was certain, was in that ship, and behind him were twenty other ships; his fleet, his men.

Sigefrid and Erik’s men had reached the creek and had launched some of the boats that had been spared the fire. They had begun to fight Haesten’s rearward ships and in the glare of the burning ships I saw the glint of weapons and knew that more men were dying, but it was all too late. The creek was opening.

The blocking ship, held now by its bow chain alone, swung faster and faster. In a few heartbeats, I knew, the narrow channel would be wide open. I watched Haesten’s oars dip to keep the Dragon- Voyager steady against the flooding tide and knew that at any moment the oars would pull hard instead and I would see his lean vessel speed past the stranded guard-ship. He would row away eastward, away to a new encampment, away to a future that would bring him a kingdom that had once been called Wessex.

None of us spoke. I did not know the men beside whom I had fought, and they did not know me, and we just stood there, disconsolate strangers, watching the channel widen and the sky brighten. The sun had almost touched the world’s rim and the east was ablaze with red, gold and silver light. And that sunlight flashed off Haesten’s wet oar-blades as his men brought them far forward. For a moment the sun slashed into my eyes from all those reflections, then Haesten shouted a command and the blades vanished in the water and his longship surged forward.

And it was then I realized that there had been panic in Haesten’s voice. “Row!” he was shouting, “pull!”

I did not understand his panic. None of Sigefrid’s hastily manned ships were anywhere near him and the open sea lay before him, yet his voice sounded desperate. “Row!” he screamed, “row!” and the Dragon- Voyager slid still faster toward the gold-bright east. Her dragon’s head, snout raised and teeth bared, defied the rising sun.

And then I saw why Haesten panicked.

The Sea-Eagle was coming.

Finan had made the decision. Later he explained it to me, but even days afterward he found it hard to justify the choice he had made. It was instinct as much as anything. He knew I wanted the channel open, yet by bringing Sea-Eagle into the Hothlege he would bar the passage again, yet still he decided to come. “I saw your cloak,” he explained.

“My cloak?”

“The bolt of lightning, lord. And you were defending the chain-post, not attacking it.”

“Suppose I’d been killed?” I suggested. “Suppose an enemy had taken my cloak?”

“And I recognized Rypere, too,” Finan said, “you can’t mistake that ugly little man, can you?” And so Finan had told Ralla to bring the Sea-Eagle into the channel. They had been lurking at the eastern end of Two-Tree Island, the patch of marsh and mud that formed the northern bank of the channel’s entrance, and Ralla had ridden the incoming tide into the Hothlege. Just before they entered the channel he ordered the oars to be shipped inboard, then he had steered the Sea-Eagle so that she struck one bank of the Dragon-Voyager’s oars.

I watched. The Sea-Eagle was in the channel’s center while Haesten’s ship was nearer to me so I did not see the long oar looms snap, though I heard them shatter. I heard the splintering sound as shaft after shaft broke, and I heard the screams from Haesten’s men as the oar handles were driven back to crush their chests, and that is a horrible injury. Those screams were still sounding as the Dragon- Voyager jarred to a sudden stop. Ralla had thrust on the steering-oar to push Haesten’s ship onto Caninga’s mud shelving bank, and then the Sea-Eagle also stopped abruptly as she was trapped between the stranded blocking ship and the newly beached Dragon-Voyager. The channel was closed again, plugged now by three ships.

And the sun rose full above the sea, brilliant as gold, flooding the earth with a dazzling new light.

And Beamfleot’s creek became the killing place.

Haesten ordered his men to board the mastless Sea-Eagle and kill its crew. I doubt he knew whose ship it was, only that it had thwarted him, and his men screamed as they leaped aboard to find Finan leading my household warriors to meet them, and the two shield walls met on the forward rowing benches. Ax and spear, sword and shield. For a moment I could only watch. I heard the crack of shields slamming together, saw that new light flicker from raised blades, and saw more of Haesten’s men crowding onto Sea- Eagle’s bows.

That fight filled the creek’s entrance. Behind those three ships the flooding tide was drifting the rest of Haesten’s fleet back toward the burning boats on the shore, but not all of Sigefrid’s boats were burning, and more and more were being manned and rowed toward Haesten’s rearward vessels. The fighting had started there too. Above me, on Beamfleot’s looming green hill, the hall still burned, and on Hothlege’s shore the ships burned too, and so the new golden light was veiled with palls of smoke beneath which men died while wisps of black ash, fluttering like moths, drifted from the sky.

Haesten’s men ashore, the ones who had driven us onto the mud and released the guard-ship’s chain, splashed through the shallow water to haul themselves onto Dragon-Voyager so they could join the fight aboard Sea-Eagle. “Follow them,” I shouted.

There was no reason for Sigefrid’s men to obey me. They did not know who I was, only that I had fought beside them, but they understood what I wanted and they were infused with a fighting-man’s rage. Haesten had betrayed his agreement with Sigefrid, and these were Sigefrid’s men, and so Haesten’s men must die.

Those men, the ones who had driven us to ignominious flight, had forgotten us. They were on board Dragon-Voyager now and scrambled toward the Sea-Eagle, intent on killing the crew that had frustrated Haesten’s escape, and we were unopposed as we climbed aboard their ship. The men I led were my enemies, but they did not know that and they followed me willingly, eager to serve their lord, and we struck Haesten’s men from the rear and, for an instant, we were the lords of killing. Our blades took men in the spine, they died without knowing they were under attack, and then the survivors turned and we were nothing but a handful of men facing a hundred.