Maybe they suspected we had given up any hope of capturing the forts and, under the cover of night, had slunk back toward the distant city. Instead we were coming from the east with the growing light behind us, and they turned as they heard the first screams and shouts.
We were lit red by the growing fire of the old hall’s burning thatch. Red fire was flashing from the horses’ bared teeth, from our mail, from our blades, and I was still shouting as I swung my sword at the first man. He was on foot and holding a broad-bladed spear that he tried to level at my horse, but Serpent-Breath caught him on the side of the head and I lifted the sword and lunged it at another man, not bothering to see what damage I did, just spurring on to provoke more fear. We had surprised them, and for a moment we were the lords of slaughter as we spread from the track and cut down dismounted men who searched for plunder around the dying campfires. I saw Osferth hammer a man’s head with the flat of an ax blade, knocking off the man’s helmet and hurling him back into one of the fires. The man must have been in the habit of cleaning his hands after eating by running them through his hair because the grease caught the flames and flared sudden and bright. He screamed and writhed, head like a beacon as he staggered to his feet, then a rush of horsemen overrode him. A hoof threw up a spew of sparks and riderless horses fled in panic.
Finan was with me. Finan and Cerdic and Sihtric, and together we rode for the large group of mounted warriors who had been staring west across the night-shadowed land. I was still shouting as I charged into them, sword swinging at a yellow-bearded man who deflected the blow with his raised shield, then he was struck by a spear below the shield, the blade ripping through mail and into his belly. I felt something strike my shield, but could not look to my left because a gap-toothed man was trying to lunge his sword through my stallion’s neck. I knocked his blade down with Serpent-Breath and cut at his arm, but his mail stopped the blow. We were deep among the enemy now, unable to ride farther, but more of my men were coming to help. I lunged at the gap-toothed man, but he was quick and his shield intercepted the sword, then his horse stumbled. Sihtric slashed with an ax and I had a glimpse of splitting metal and sudden blood.
I was trying to keep my horse moving. There were dismounted Danes among the riders, and a slash across my stallion’s legs could bring me down and a man was never so vulnerable as when he topples from a saddle. A spear slid from my right, sliding across my belly to lodge in the underside of my shield and I just back-swung Serpent-Breath into a bearded face. I felt her shatter teeth and ripped her back to saw her edge deeper. A horse screamed. ?lfwold’s men were deep in the fight now and our charge had split the Danes. Some had retreated down the hill, but most had gone either north or south along the crest and now they reformed and came at us from both directions, bellowing their own war cries. The sun had risen, dazzling and blinding, the hall was an inferno and the air a whirl of sparks in the new brightness.
Chaos. For a moment we had held the advantage of surprise, but the Danes recovered quickly and closed on us. The hill’s edge was a confusion of trampling horses, shouting men, and the raw sound of steel on steel. I had turned northward and was trying to drive those Danes off the hill, but they were just as determined to slaughter us. I parried a sword blow, watching the man’s gritted teeth as he tried to cut my head off. The clash of swords jarred up my arm, but I had stopped his swing and I punched him in the face with Serpent-Breath’s hilt. He swung again, striking my helmet, filling my head with noise as I punched a second time. I was too close to him to use the sword’s edge, and he hit my sword arm hard with the rim of his shield. “Turd,” he grunted at me. His helmet was decorated with twists of wool dyed yellow. He wore arm rings over his mail, denoting a man who had won treasure in battle. There was fury in his fire-reflecting eyes. He wanted my death so badly. I wore the silver-decorated helmet, had more arm rings than he did and he knew I was a warrior of renown. Perhaps he knew who I was, and he wanted to boast that he had killed Uhtred of Bebbanburg and I saw him grit his teeth again as he tried to slice the sword at my face and then the grimace turned into surprise, and his eyes widened and the red went from them as he made a gurgling sound. He shook his head, desperate to keep hold of his faltering sword as the ax blade cut his spine. Sihtric had swung the ax and the man made a mewing noise and fell from the saddle, and just then my horse screamed and staggered sideways and I saw a dismounted Dane thrusting a spear up into the stallion’s belly. Finan drove the man over with his horse as I kicked my feet out of the stirrups.
The stallion collapsed, twisting and kicking, still screaming, and my right leg was trapped beneath him. Another horse stepped a hair’s breadth from my face. I covered my body with the shield and tried to drag myself free. A blade crashed into the shield. A horse stepped on Serpent-Breath and I almost lost the blade. My world was a thunder of hooves, screams, and confusion. I tried to pull free again then something, blade or hoof, struck the back of my helmet and the confused world turned black. I was dazed, and in the darkness I heard someone making pathetic moaning noises. It was me. A man was trying to drag my helmet off and, when he realized I was alive he put a knife at my mouth and I remember thinking of Gisela and desperately checking that Serpent-Breath’s hilt was in my hand, and it was not, and I screamed, knowing I was denied the joys of Valhalla, and then my vision turned red. There was warmth on my face and red before my eyes, and I recovered my senses to realize that the man who would have killed me was dying himself and his blood was pouring onto my face, then Cerdic heaved the dying man away and pulled me from beneath the dead horse. “Here!” Sihtric thrust Serpent-Breath into my hand. Both he and Cerdic were dismounted. A Dane shouted victory and lunged with a thick-hafted spear from his saddle and Cerdic deflected the thrust with a blade-scored shield. I stabbed the horseman’s thigh with Serpent-Breath, but the blow had no force and his spear sliced at me, thumping hard into my shield. The Danes were scenting triumph and they pressed forward and we felt their blows chopping on the linden wood. “Kill their horses,” I shouted, though it came out as a croak, and some of Weohstan’s men arrived on our right and drove their horses at the Danes and I saw a Saxon twist in his saddle, his spear hand hanging from his bloody arm by a scrap of bone or tendon.
“Jesus! Jesus!” a man shouted and it was Father Pyrlig who joined us. The Welsh priest was on foot, belly stretching his mail, a spear like a small tree trunk in his hands. He carried no shield and so used the spear two- handed, driving the blade at the enemy’s horses to keep them at a distance.
“Thank you,” I said to Cerdic and Sihtric.
“We should go back, lord,” Cerdic said.
“Where’s Finan?”
“Back!” Cerdic shouted, and he unceremoniously grabbed my left shoulder and pulled me away from the Danes.
Finan was fighting behind us, hammering an ax at the Danes on the southern part of the crest where he was supported by most of my men and by ?lfwold’s Mercians. “I need a horse,” I snarled.
“This is a muddle,” Pyrlig said, and I almost laughed because his tone and his words were so mild. It was more than a muddle, it was a disaster. I had led my men onto the hill’s edge and the Danes had recovered from the attack and now they surrounded us. There were Danes to the east, to the north and to the south, and they were trying to drive us over the crest and pursue us down the steep slope where our bodies would be a smear of blood beneath the rising sun. At least a hundred of my Saxons were dismounted now and we formed a circle inside a desperate shield wall. Too many were dead, some killed by their own side for, in the maelstrom, it was hard to know friend from foe. Many Saxons had a cross on their shield, but not all. There were plenty of Danish corpses too, but their living outnumbered us. They had my small shield wall surrounded, while their horsemen were harrying the still mounted Saxons back into the woods.
?lfwold had lost his stallion and the Mercian forced his way to my side. “You bastard,” he said, “you treacherous bastard.” He must have thought I had deliberately led his men into a trap, but it was only my stupid carelessness, not treachery, that had led to this disaster. ?lfwold raised his shield as the Danes came and the blows hammered down. I thrust Serpent-Breath into a horse’s chest, twisted and thrust again, and Pyrlig half hoisted a man from the saddle with a tremendous lunge of his heavy spear. But ?lfwold was down, his helmet ripped open, his blood and brains spilling onto his face, but he retained enough consciousness to look at me reproachfully before he started to quiver and spasm and I had to look away to ram the sword at another Dane whose horse tripped on a corpse, and then the enemy pulled back from our shield wall to ready themselves for another attack.
“Jesu, Jesu,” ?lfwold said, and then the breath stuttered in his throat and he said no more. Our shield wall was shrunken, our shields splintered and bloodied. The Danes mocked us, snarled at us, and promised us agonizing deaths. Men moved closer together and I should have encouraged them, but I did not know what to say because this was my fault, my recklessness. I had attacked without first discovering the enemy’s strength. My death, I thought, would be just, but I would go to the afterlife knowing I had taken too many good men with me.
So the only course was to die well, and I pushed past Sihtric’s shield and went toward the enemy. A man accepted the challenge and rode at me. I could not see his face because the rising sun was behind him, blinding
