‘Two hundred?’
‘We outnumber them!’ Rumwald said excitedly.
‘And how many on the gate ramparts?’ I asked, ignoring Rumwald.
‘Thirty?’ again Brihtwulf sounded uncertain.
‘And how far away are Æthelstan’s men?’ I asked, though I did not ask it of Brihtwulf or of anyone else because the question was unanswerable until we had climbed the ramparts and could see the country to the north.
‘So what do we do?’ Brihtwulf asked.
I touched my mail where it covered the silver hammer. I looked westwards, but knew that the next city gate was built into the walls of the fort, and that would mean first capturing an entrance to the fort. It was this nearest gate, I thought, or else abandon the whole madness. ‘What we do,’ I answered Brihtwulf, ‘is what we came to do. Wihtgar! Take forty men. You’ll climb the stairs to the right of the gate.’ I looked up at Brihtwulf. ‘I need thirty of your men for the steps to the left. I’ll lead them.’ He nodded, and I turned to Rumwald. ‘And I’ll need your banner. You take every man that’s left and follow Brihtwulf to the gate. You tell the bastards you’ve been ordered to make a sally northwards. They probably won’t believe you so you can start killing them, but open the damned gates first. And once the gate is open,’ I looked up at Brihtwulf again, ‘you will ride like the wind to find Æthelstan.’
‘And if the king doesn’t come in time?’ Father Oda asked.
‘We die,’ I said brutally.
Oda made the sign of the cross. ‘The Lord of Hosts is with us,’ he said.
‘He damned well better be,’ I said grimly. ‘So let’s move.’
We moved.
The city had seemed deserted as we came up from the river, but now we could see men all along the walls, others waiting just inside the gate, and small groups of men, women, and children watching from the edge of the wasteland. Many of those city folk were accompanied by priests, presumably hoping that the clergymen could protect them if the Mercians invaded the city. They might be right, I thought. Æthelstan was famously as pious as his grandfather Alfred, and would doubtless have given his troops dire warnings against offending his god.
We followed a track eastwards until we reached a fine new church, the lower walls of stone, the upper of bright timber, which stood at the edge of the houses. We turned north at the church to follow a road of beaten earth that led to the gate. Two goats cropped weeds on the verge where Roman stonework was half buried. A woman watched us, made the sign of the cross, and said nothing. The men resting inside the gate stood as we came nearer. Many of their shields were unpainted, just bare wood, while others were decorated with a cross. None showed the leaping stag. ‘East Anglians?’ Finan muttered to me.
‘Probably.’
‘They look like the fyrd to me,’ Finan said, meaning they were not household warriors, but ploughmen and carpenters, foresters and masons, dragged from their fields or workshops to fight for their lord. Some had spears or swords, but many carried only an axe or a reaping hook.
Brihtwulf rode ahead, tall on his stolen horse, pointedly ignoring the first men who stood to question his coming. I trudged behind, sweat trickling down my face, sometimes glancing up at the men on the ramparts. They were watching us too, but not with any alarm because most of them would have no idea what was happening. They knew Æthelstan’s forces were near, they had heard the commotion of the city bells, but ever since that first excitement they would have been told little and understood less. They were hot, they were thirsty, they were bored, and we were just more troops coming to wait in the hot sun for something to happen.
‘This way!’ I called to the men who would follow me. ‘Up the steps!’ I slanted off the road and headed for the stairs leading up to the rampart on the left of the gate. Immar was behind me, carrying Æthelstan’s banner that was tightly furled on its pole. ‘You can’t fight holding that thing,’ I told him, ‘so stay out of trouble.’ Hulbert, one of Brihtwulf’s men, would turn left at the rampart’s top and, with ten men, defend our backs as we captured the gate itself.
Brihtwulf had reached the great archway where he was challenged by an older man who leaned over the arch’s rampart. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’
‘I’m Ealdorman Ealhstan,’ Brihtwulf curbed his horse and stared up at the man. ‘And I want the gates opened.’
‘For God’s sake why?’
‘Because Lord Æthelhelm wants it,’ Brihtwulf called. He was keeping both hands on his saddle’s pommel. His shield, fire-scarred with the cross, hung at his back. His sword hung low to his left.
‘I was told not to open the gates to the Lord God Almighty Himself!’ the man answered.
‘He can’t come,’ Brihtwulf said, ‘so Lord Æthelhelm sent me instead.’
‘Why?’ The older man had seen me and my men start up the stairs. ‘Stop!’ he shouted at me, holding out a warning hand. I stopped halfway up the timeworn stairs, the shield heavy on my back. The troops on the gate’s rampart were not from any fyrd, they were in good mail and carried spears and swords.
‘The pretty boy,’ Brihtwulf shouted, ‘is over there.’ He pointed vaguely north-west. ‘We’re sending men out of the western gates to give him a spanking, but we need to keep him in place. If he sees another force coming from this gate he won’t know which one to defend against. Of course you can always go and ask Lord Æthelhelm himself.’
The man had been looking down at Brihtwulf, but now glanced at us to see that I had only paused for a heartbeat and then kept climbing and had now reached the
