blood poured down my hand and inside my mail sleeve, and then I shook him off the blade and swept it backhanded at a Dane who recoiled, fell, and I let another man kill him because Oscytel was coming, shouting that I was an old man, and the battle-joy was in me.
That joy. That madness. The gods must feel this way every moment of every day. It is as if the world slows. You see the attacker, you see him shouting though you hear nothing, and you know what he will do, and all his movements are so slow and yours are so quick, and in that moment you can do no wrong and you will live for ever and your name will be blazoned across the heavens in a glory of white fire because you are the god of battle.
And Oscytel came with his sword, and with him was a man who wanted to hook my shield down with an axe, but I tipped the top back towards me at the last moment and the axe skidded down the painted wood to strike the boss and Oscytel was slamming his sword two-handed at my throat, but the shield was still there and its iron rim caught his blade, trapping the tip, and I thrust the shield forward, unbalancing him, and drove Wasp-Sting under the lower edge, and all my old man’s strength was in that wicked blow that comes from beneath the shield, and I felt the blade’s tip scraping up a thigh bone, ripping blood and flesh and muscle, and into his groin and I heard him then. I heard his scream filling the sky as I gouged his groin and spilled his blood into the ice-shattered ditch.
Eohric saw his champion fall and the sight stopped him at the ditch’s far side. His men stopped with him. ‘Shields!’ I shouted, and my men lined their shields. ‘You’re a coward, Eohric,’ I called, ‘a fat coward, a pig spawned in shit, runt of a sow’s litter, a weakling! Come and die, you fat bastard!’
He did not want to, but the Danes were winning. Not, perhaps, in the centre of the line where my banner flew, but off to our left the Danes had crossed the ditch and made a shield wall on our side of the obstacle and there they were thrusting Wulferth’s men back. I had left Finan and thirty men as our reserve and they had gone to bolster that flank, but they were hard pressed, hugely outnumbered, and once the Danes came between that flank and the western marsh then they would curl my line in on itself and we would die. The Danes knew it and took confidence from it, and still more men came to kill me because my name was the name that the poets would give to their glory, and Eohric was thrust across the ditch with the rest of the men and they tripped on the dead, slipped in the mud, climbed over their own dead, and we screamed our war song as the axes fell and the spears stabbed and the swords cut. My shield was in scraps, hacked by blades. My head was bruised, I could feel blood on my left ear, but still we were fighting and killing, and Eohric was gritting his teeth and flailing with a huge sword at Cerdic, who had replaced the man on my left. ‘Hook him,’ I snarled at Cerdic, and he brought his axe up from beneath and the beard of the blade snagged in Eohric’s mail and Cerdic hauled him forward and I hacked Wasp-Sting down on the back of his fat neck and he was screaming as he fell at our feet. His men tried to rescue him, and I saw him stare up at me in despair, and he clenched his teeth so hard that they shattered and we killed King Eohric of East Anglia in a ditch that stank of blood and shit. We stabbed him and slashed him, cut him and trampled him. We screamed like demons. Men were calling on Jesus, calling for their mothers, shrieking in pain, and a king died with a mouth full of broken teeth in a ditch turned red. East Anglians tried to haul Eohric away, but Cerdic kept hold of him and I hacked at his neck, and then I shouted to the East Anglians that their king was dead, that their king was killed, that we were winning.
Only we were not winning. We were indeed fighting like demons, we were giving the poets a tale to tell in the years to come, but the song would end with our deaths because our left flank gave way. They still fought, but they bent back, and the Danes streamed into the gap. The men who had ridden to take us in the rear had no need to come now, because we had been turned, and now we would form a shield wall that faced in every direction and that wall would shrink and shrink and we would go to our graves one by one.
I saw ?thelwold. He was on horseback now, riding behind some Danes, shouting them onwards and with him was a standard-bearer who flew the dragon flag of Wessex. He knew he would become king if they won this battle and he had abandoned his white stag banner to adopt Alfred’s flag instead. He had still not crossed the ditch and he was taking care not to be in the fighting, but instead exhorted the Danes forward to kill us.
Then I forgot ?thelwold because our left flank was pushed hard back and we had become a band of Saxons trapped by a horde of Danes. We made a rough circle, surrounded by shields and by the men we had killed. By our own dead too. And the Danes paused to make a new shield wall, to rescue their wounded and to contemplate their victory.
‘I killed that bastard Beortsig,’ Finan said as he joined me.
‘Good, I hope it hurt.’
‘It sounded that way,’ he said. His sword was bloody, his grinning face smirched with blood. ‘It’s not very healthy, is it?’
‘Not really,’ I said. It had begun to rain again, just a small spitting rain. Our defensive circle was close to the eastern marsh. ‘What we could do,’ I said, ‘is tell the men to run into the marsh and go south. Some will get away.’
‘Not many,’ Finan said. We could see the Danes collecting the Centish horses. They were stripping our dead of their mail, their weapons and whatever else they could find. A priest was in the centre of our men, on his knees, praying. ‘They’ll hunt us down like rats in the marsh,’ Finan said.
‘So we’ll fight them here,’ I said, and there was little other choice.
We had hurt them. Eohric was dead, Oscytel slaughtered, Beortsig was a corpse and Cnut was wounded, yet ?thelwold lived and Sigurd lived and Haesten lived. I could see them on horseback, pushing men into line, readying their troops to slaughter us.
‘Sigurd!’ I bellowed, and he turned to look for me. ‘I killed your runt of a son!’
‘You’ll die slowly,’ he shouted back.
I wanted to goad him into a wild attack and kill him in front of his men. ‘He squealed like a child when he died!’ I shouted. ‘He squealed like a little coward! Like a puppy!’
Sigurd, his great plaits twisted about his neck, spat towards me. He hated me, he would kill me, but in his own time and in his own way.
‘Keep your shields tight!’ I shouted at my men. ‘Keep them tight and they can’t break us! Show the bastards how Saxons fight!’
Of course they could break us, but you do not tell men about to die that they are about to die. They knew it. Some were shaking in fear, yet they stayed in line. ‘Fight beside me,’ I told Finan.
‘We’ll go together, lord.’
‘Swords in hand.’
Rypere was dead, I had not seen him die, but I saw a Dane hauling the mail from his skinny body. ‘He was a good man,’ I said.
Osferth found us. He was usually so neat, so immaculately dressed, but his mail was torn and his cloak was shredded, and his eyes wild. His helmet had a great dent in its crown, yet he seemed unhurt. ‘Let me fight along with you, lord,’ he said.
‘For ever,’ I told him. Osferth’s cross was still aloft at the centre of our circle, and a priest was calling that God and Saint Lucy would work a miracle, that we would win, that we would live, and I let him preach on because he was saying what men needed to hear.
Jarl Sigurd pushed into the Danish shield wall opposite me. He carried a massive war axe, wide-bladed, and on either side of him were spearmen. Their job was to hold me still while he hacked me to death. I had a new shield, one that showed the crossed swords of Ealdorman Sigelf. ‘Has anyone seen Sigebriht?’ I asked.
‘He’s dead,’ Osferth said.
‘You’re sure?’
‘I killed him, lord.’
I laughed. We had killed so many of the enemy’s leaders, though Sigurd and ?thelwold lived, and they had power enough to crush us and then defeat Edward’s army and so put ?thelwold on Alfred’s throne. ‘Do you remember what Beornnoth said?’ I asked Finan.
‘Should I, lord?’
‘He wanted to know how the story ended,’ I said. ‘I’d like to know that too.’
‘Ours ends here,’ Finan said, and made the sign of the cross with the hilt of his sword.
And the Danes came again.
They came slowly. Men do not want to die at the moment of victory. They want to enjoy the triumph, to share the wealth that winning brings, and so they came steadily, keeping their shields tight-locked.
