‘He didn’t need many fingers,’ I said.
How long did we stand there? It seemed an age, but for the life of me I cannot remember whether it was a few minutes or an hour. None of us rode out to accept the enemy’s challenges, Æthelstan had ordered us to ignore them, and so the young fools mocked us, rode their stallions proudly, and we just waited. The sky clouded over and a spatter of rain swept in from the sea. Some of my men sat. They shared flasks of ale. A Mercian priest came to my ranks and some of the men knelt to him as he touched their foreheads and muttered a prayer.
Anlaf plainly hoped we would advance on him, but he must have known that we were not such fools. If we attacked his line we would have to extend ours to fill the widening gap between the streams, and our ranks would thin still further. And we would have to advance uphill, which meant that the battle was his to begin, but he also waited, hoping we would become ever more frightened, ever more overawed by the number of warriors he had brought to the field.
‘Bastards are rearranging themselves,’ Finan said, and I saw that the Scots on the extreme left of the enemy line were moving men. Some who had been in the centre of the front rank were being ordered to the edges, while others took their places. ‘Eager, aren’t they?’ I asked, then called to Egil. ‘Svinfylkjas, Egil!’
‘I see it!’
A svinfylkjas was what we called a swine-wedge because it was shaped like the tusk of a boar. The enemy, instead of crashing their shield wall into ours, were putting their strongest men and best fighters into three groups and, as they neared us, those groups would make wedges that would try to burst through our shield wall like boar tusks ripping through wattle fencing. If it worked it would be quick and savage, tearing bloody gaps in our shield wall that the Scots would widen and so get behind Æthelstan’s line. Constantine no doubt knew that Anlaf’s plan was to break our left, but he wanted his share of the glory and so was forming his most formidable warriors into swine-wedges that he would hurl onto my men in the hope of breaking our right before the Norsemen shattered the left.
‘Trust in God!’ a voice called and I saw Bishop Oda riding from the Mercians to call to my men. ‘If God is with us, none can prevail against us!’
‘Half of these men are pagans,’ I told him as he came close.
‘Odin will protect you!’ he called, now in his native Danish. ‘And Thor will send a mighty thunderbolt to destroy that rabble!’ He curbed his horse close to mine and smiled. ‘Is that better, lord?’
‘I approve, lord Bishop.’
‘I am sorry,’ he spoke very low, ‘about your son.’
‘Me too,’ I said bleakly.
‘He was a brave man, lord.’
‘Brave?’ I asked, remembering my son’s fear.
‘He defied you. That takes bravery.’
I did not want to talk about my son. ‘When the fighting starts, lord Bishop,’ I said, ‘stay well back. The Norse like to use arrows, and you’re a tempting target.’ He wore his bishop’s robes, embroidered with crosses, though I could see there was a mail coat showing at his neckline.
He smiled. ‘When the fighting starts, lord, I shall stay with the king.’
‘Then make sure he doesn’t go into the front line.’
‘Nothing I can say will stop him. He’s ordered Prince Edmund to stay back.’ Edmund, Æthelstan’s half-brother, was the heir.
‘Edmund should fight,’ I said. ‘Æthelstan has nothing to prove, Edmund does.’
‘He’s a brave young man,’ Oda said. I grunted at that. I was not fond of Edmund, but in truth I had only known him as a petulant child and men now spoke well of him. ‘You saw the Scots rearrange themselves?’ Oda asked.
‘Did Æthelstan send you to ask me that?’
He smiled. ‘He did.’
‘They’re making three svinfylkjas, lord Bishop,’ I did not need to explain the word to Oda, a Dane, ‘and we’re going to slaughter them.’
‘You sound confident, lord.’ He wanted reassurance.
‘I’m frightened, lord Bishop. I always am.’
He flinched at those words. ‘But we will win!’ he insisted, though without much conviction. ‘Your son is in heaven now, lord, and though God already knew what is at stake here today, your son will have told him more. We cannot lose! Heaven is on our side.’
‘You believe that?’ I asked him. ‘Aren’t there priests telling the Scots the same thing?’
He ignored those questions. His hands were fidgeting on his reins. ‘Why are they waiting?’
‘To give us plenty of time to count them. To scare us.’
‘It works,’ he said very quietly.
‘Tell the king he has nothing to worry about on his right flank.’ I touched the hammer, hoping I was right, ‘And as for the rest? Pray.’
‘Unceasingly, lord,’ he said, then reached out and I gripped his hand. ‘God be with you, lord.’
‘And you, lord Bishop.’
He rode back towards Æthelstan who was standing his horse at the centre of our line, surrounded there by a dozen of his household warriors. He was staring intently towards the enemy and I saw him suddenly jerk his reins so that his horse took a backwards step before he reached out and patted its neck. I turned to see what had startled him.
The enemy had lifted their shields and lowered their spears.
And were coming at last.
The enemy came slowly, still beating blades against their shields. They came slowly because they wanted to keep their shield wall solid, their line as straight as possible. Yet they were nervous too. Even when you outnumber an enemy, when you hold the high ground, when victory is almost certain, the fear still grips you. The sudden lunge of a spear, the fall of an axe, the edge of a blade can kill even at the moment
