“Forward!”
We went as warriors, confident and disciplined. We could have charged as we had at Fearnhamme, but I wanted fear to work its wicked decay on Skirnir’s men, and so we went slowly, the shields of our front rank overlapping, while the men behind beat blades against their shields in time to our steps. “Kill the scum!” I shouted and my men took up the shout. “Kill the scum, kill the scum!” We went step by step, slow and inexorable, and the blades between our shields promised death.
We were just eight men broad, but, as the causeway widened, Rollo brought his men onto our right. Most of the front rank carried spears, while I had Serpent-Breath. She was not the best blade for the close work of shield wall fighting, but I reckoned Skirnir’s men would not stand long because they were not used to this kind of warfare. Their skill was the sudden rush onto a half-defended boat, the wild killing of frightened men, but now they faced sword-warriors and spearmen and behind them was Finan. And Finan now attacked.
He left just two boys on
And we struck at the same moment. “Now!” I shouted, and my shield wall lunged forward, spears seeking foemen, blades driving into flesh, and I slammed Serpent-Breath under a Frisian shield and twisted her long blade in the man’s soft belly. “Kill them!” I bellowed, and Finan echoed the cry.
Spear-blades buried themselves in Frisian flesh. Men then dropped the spears’ long ash shafts and drew swords or took axes from the men behind. Skirnir’s men had not broken because they could not break. They were confined in a small space and my attack pushed them back against their dark ship’s bows, while Finan’s assault on the ship drove the remaining crew toward the prow platform. We pushed forward, giving them no room to fight, and we did the grim work of shield fighting. Cerdic was on my right and he used the blade of his ax like a hook to pull down the rim of the man to his front and, as soon as the shield was down, I lunged Serpent-Breath into the enemy’s throat, and Cerdic drove the ax blade against the man’s face, crushing it, then reached to hook down another shield. Rollo was screaming in Danish. He had dropped his shield and wielded his ax two-handed as he chanted a hymn to Thor. Rorik, one of the Danes who served me, was on his knees behind me, using a spear to rip open the legs of the Frisian pirates, and when they fell we killed them.
It was slaughter in a small space. We had given hours, days, weeks, and months to practicing this kind of fight. It does not matter how often a man stands in a shield wall, he will only live if he has rehearsed it, drilled it, and practiced it, and Skirnir’s men had never trained as we did. They were seamen, and some did not even have shields because a great round slab of iron-bossed wood is a cumbersome thing to carry in a fight aboard a ship where the footing is uncertain and the rowing benches are obstacles. They were untrained and ill-equipped and so we killed them. They were in terror. They did not see our faces. Most of our helmets have cheek-pieces and so the enemy saw men of metal, metal-masked, metal-clad, and the steel of our weapons lanced at them, and we went relentlessly forward, metal-clad warriors behind overlapping shields, our blades remorseless until, on that gray morning, blood spread bright in the salt tide creek.
Finan had the harder job, but Finan was a warrior of renown who took joy in hard fighting, and he led his men up the dark boat and screamed as he killed. He sang the song of the sword, keening as he fed his blade, and Rollo, standing thigh-deep in the creek, ax swinging in murderous blows, blocked the enemy’s escape. The Frisians, transported from confidence to bowel-loosening fear, began to drop their weapons. They knelt, they shouted for mercy, and I shouted at my rear rank to turn and be ready to face the men who had taken Skirnir’s own ship higher up the creek to come around our rear.
Those men appeared about the dune just in time to see that the fighting was over. A few had sensibly jumped over the ship’s farther side and struggled into the swamp beyond, but most of Skirnir’s force were dead or prisoners. One of those prisoners was Skirnir himself, who was backed against the grounded strakes of his second ship with a spear-blade held at his beard. Cerdic was pressing the blade just enough to keep the big man still. “Shall I kill him, lord?”
“Not yet,” I said, distracted. I was watching the newly arrived enemy. “Rollo? Keep them at a distance.”
Rollo formed his men into a shield wall. He shouted at the uncertain Frisians, inviting them to come and taste the blood already on his blades, but they did not move.
A man screamed. He was a Frisian lying at the sand’s edge and his legs were thrashing in the shallow, blood-tinged water. He had been wounded, and Skade now knelt beside him and was driving a dagger slowly into one eye and so through to his brain. “Stop that!” I shouted. The man was mewing in a high, pitiable voice, the ooze of his punctured eye spilling down his blood-laced cheek.
She turned to look at me and there was a wildness in her face like the savagery of a cornered beast. “I hate them,” she said, and edged the dagger in again so that the man screamed and lost control of his bowels.
“Sihtric!” I snarled, and Sihtric stepped to the man and drove his sword hard into his throat to end his misery.
“I want to kill them all,” Skade hissed at me. She was shuddering. “And him!” She pointed to Skirnir. “Especially him!”
“She’s crazed,” Finan said softly. He had jumped down to the beach beside me and now dipped his blade in the water to wash the blood away. “Sweet Jesus Christ,” he said, “she’s as crazy as a bitch in heat.”
My men were staring at Skade in horror. It is one thing to kill in battle, but an enemy is a warrior too, and in defeat he deserves respect. I have killed often, and the killing can go on long after the fighting has finished, but that is the blood lust and battle fear that frenzies men who endure the shield wall, and when the lust dies then mercy takes its place. “You’re not going to let them live!” Skade spat at me.
“Cerdic,” I said, not turning around to look at him, “make it quick!”
I heard, but did not see, Skirnir die. The spear-blade was thrust so hard that it pierced his throat and then drove into the planks of the ship. “I wanted to kill him!” Skade shrieked.
I ignored her. Instead I walked past Rollo to approach the undefeated Frisians. These men were Skirnir’s own crew, maybe sixty in all, who watched me come in silence. I had dropped my shield so they could see the blood spattered on my mail and see the blood streaked across my helmet’s mask and see the blood congealing on Serpent-Breath’s blade. My helmet was surmounted by a silver wolf, my belt had plates of gold, and my arm rings shone through their gloss of blood. They saw a warlord and I walked to within ten paces of them to show that I had no fear of pirates.
“I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” I said, “and I give you a choice. You can live or you can die.”
Rollo, behind me, had started the shield music. His men were beating blades against linden wood in the dark rhythm of death’s promise.
“We are Danes,” I told the Frisians, “and we are Saxons, and we are warriors who love to fight. In our halls at night we chant the tales of the men we have killed, of the women we have widowed, and of the children we have orphaned. So make your choice! Either give me a new song to sing or else lay down your weapons.”
They laid down their weapons. I made them take off their mail, those that possessed it, or else their leather tunics. I took their boots, their belts, their armor, and their weapons and we piled that plunder in
Skirnir had come with one hundred and thirty-one men. We had killed twenty-three of those, while another sixteen were grievously wounded. One of Rollo’s men had lost an eye to a spear thrust, and ?lric, a Saxon in my service, lay dying. He had fought beside Finan and had tripped on a rower’s bench and had taken an ax blow in the back, and I knelt beside him on the sand and held his hand firm around his sword’s hilt and promised I would give his widow gold and raise his children as though they were my own. He heard me, though he could not speak back, and I held his hand until the noise rattled in his throat and his body quivered as his soul went to the long darkness. We took his corpse away with us and buried him at sea. He was a Christian, and Osferth said a prayer over the dead ?lric before we tipped him into eternity. We took another corpse with us, Skirnir’s, that we stripped naked and hung from our wolf’s-head prow to show that we had conquered.
We poled
