The enemy who had come from the fort were getting closer. Their banners were bright; banners with crosses, with saints, with the dragon of Wessex, with Æthelhelm’s leaping stag and, leading all of them, a banner I had never seen before. It was being waved from side to side so we could see it clearly and it showed a dull grey dragon of Wessex beneath a leaping stag embroidered in deep scarlet. A small cross showed in the upper corner.
‘God is with us!’ Oda shouted. ‘And your king is coming!’
I hoped he was right and dared not leave the shield wall to find out. The gate was open and we just had to keep it open until Æthelstan arrived.
Rumwald stood to my right. He was shaking slightly. ‘Keep together!’ he called to his men. ‘Stand fast!’ His voice was uncertain. ‘He is coming, lord?’ he asked me. ‘Of course he’s coming. He won’t let us down.’ He talked on, saying nothing of importance, just talking to cover his fear. The drums became louder. Horsemen rode on the flanks of the approaching West Saxons and still more footmen came, their spears thick. I could see the leaping stags on the shields now. The front rank, that was ragged because men were stepping over the remnants of walls, numbered about twenty, but there were at least twenty ranks behind. It was a daunting mass of household warriors who advanced in front of a group of horsemen, and there were still more ranks behind those mounted men. They had begun shouting, though they were still too far away to hear their insults.
I picked up my shield, wincing at the stab of pain, then drew Wasp-Sting, and even that short blade felt heavy. I beat her against the shield. ‘Æthelstan is coming!’ I shouted. ‘Æthelstan is coming!’ I remembered the boy I had taught how to kill, a boy who, on my command, had killed his first man. He had executed a traitor in a ditch where bog-myrtles grew. Now that boy was a warrior king, and my life depended on him. ‘Æthelstan is coming!’ I shouted again, and kept clashing Wasp-Sting’s blade on the ironbound boards of willow. Rumwald’s men took up the chant and began to beat their swords on shields. The second rank just shouted. They carried spears with shafts axe-hacked to half their length. A spear needs two hands, but a short spear can be wielded with one hand. They would close up behind us and thrust the spears between our shields. The fighting on the walls had stopped because the enemy there, frustrated by our makeshift barriers, was content to watch as the larger force overwhelmed us. Wihtgar had brought twenty men down from the ramparts and now waited with them under the gate’s arch, ready to reinforce any part of our shield wall that looked to be fragile. I wished I had Wihtgar beside me instead of Rumwald, who still chattered needlessly, but Rumwald had provided most of the men for this fight and I could not deny him his place of honour beside me.
Honour was his word, not mine. ‘It’s an honour to stand in a shield wall with you, lord,’ he had said more than once. ‘I shall tell my grandchildren!’ And that had made me touch the silver hammer that I had pulled out from under my mail. I touched it because my grandchildren were in Eoferwic and we had heard no denials of the rumours of plague in the north. Let them live, I prayed, and I was not the only man praying in that shield wall, nor was I the only one praying to Thor. These men might all call themselves Christians, but many warriors had a lurking fear that the older gods were just as real, and when the enemy is coming near and the drums of war are beating and the shields are heavy then men pray to any god and every god.
‘God is our shield!’ Father Oda had come inside our half-circle of men and was now standing on the steps leading to the ramparts. ‘We must prevail!’ he shouted hoarsely, and he needed to shout because the West Saxons were very near now. A horseman was leading them across our front, driving the East Anglians still further away.
I gazed at our enemy. Good troops, I thought. Their mail, their helmets, and their weapons looked well maintained. ‘Æthelhelm’s household warriors?’ I muttered to Finan.
‘Looks like it,’ he said. It was too hot for men to wear Æthelhelm’s red cloaks, and besides a cloak is an encumbrance in battle, but all the shields were painted with the leaping stag. They stopped forty paces away, too far for a spear’s throw, turned towards us, and began beating swords against their shields. ‘Four hundred of them?’ Finan suggested, but they were just the beginning because still more men came to beat their blades on shields, some painted with the stag and others with the badges of West Saxon noblemen. This was the army of Wessex, forged by Alfred to fight the Danes and now arrayed against their fellow Saxons, and all led by the men on horseback who, under their gaudy banners, rode to confront us.
Æthelhelm, wearing a red cloak despite the heat, sat on a magnificent bay stallion. His mail had been cleaned and polished, and on his chest was a cross of gold. His face was hidden by the gold-encrusted cheek-pieces of his helmet, which was crested with a golden stag. The hilt of his sword glittered with gold, his stallion’s bridle and girth were decorated with small golden plates, and even his stirrups had golden decorations. His eyes were shadowed by his lavish helmet, but
