northwards at the ominous dark sky, and watched a sparrow hawk swoop. Down the bird went, and I followed its plunging fall and suddenly saw, beneath the folded wings and reaching claws, our enemy.
Guthrum's army was coming south.
The fear came then. The shield wall is a terrible place. It is where a warrior makes his reputation, and reputation is dear to us. Reputation is honour, but to gain that honour a man must stand in the shield wall where death runs rampant. I had been in the shield wall at Cynuit and I knew the smell of death, the stink of it, the uncertainty of survival, the horror of the axes and swords and spears, and I feared it. And it was coming.
I could see it coming, for in the lowlands north of the hills, in the green ground stretching long and level towards distant Cippanhamm, was an army. The Great Army, the Danes called it, the pagan warriors of Guthrum and Svein, the wild horde of wild men from beyond the sea.
They were a dark smear on the landscape. They were coming through the fields, band after band of horsemen, spread across the country, and because their leading men were only ,just emerging into the sunlight it seemed as if their horde sprang from the shadowlands. Spears and helmets and mail and metal reflected the light, a myriad glints of broken sunlight that spread and multiplied as yet more men came from beneath the clouds. They were nearly all mounted.
'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' Leofric said.
Steapa said nothing. He just glowered at them.
Osric, the shire-reeve of Wiltunscir, made the sign of the cross.
'Someone has to tell Alfred,' he said.
'I'll go,' Father Pyrlig offered.
'Tell him the pagans have crossed the Afen,' Osric said. 'Tell him they're heading towards,' he paused, trying to judge where the horde was going, 'Ethandun,' he finally said.
'Ethandun,' Pyrlig repeated the name.
'And remind him there's a fort of the old people there,' Osric said. This was his shire, his country, and he knew its hills and fields, and he sounded grim, doubtless wondering what would happen if the Danes found the old fortress and occupied it. 'God help us,' Osric said. 'They'll be in the hills tomorrow morning, tell him.’
'Tomorrow morning, at Ethandun,' Pyrlig said, then turned his horse and spurred away.
'Where's the fort?' I asked.
Osric pointed. 'You can see it.' From this distance the ancient fastness looked like nothing more than green wrinkles on a far hilltop. All across Wessex there were such forts with their massive earthen walls, and this one was built at the top of the escarpment that climbed from the lowlands, a place guarding the sudden edge of the chalk downs. 'Some of the bastards will get up there tonight,' Osric said, 'but most won't make it till morning. Let's just hope they ignore the fort.'
We had all thought that Alfred would find a place where Guthrum must attack him, a slope made for defence, a place where our smaller numbers would be helped by the difficult ground, but the sight of that distant fort was a reminder that Guthrum might adopt the same tactics. He might find a place where it would be hard for us to attack him, and Alfred would have a grim choice then. To attack would be to court disaster, while to retreat would guarantee it. Our food would be exhausted in a day or two, and if we tried to withdraw south through the hills, Guthrum would release a horde of horsemen against us. And even if the army of Wessex escaped unscathed it would be a beaten army. If Alfred brought the fyrd together, then marched it away from the enemy, men would take it for a defeat and begin to slip away to protect their homes. We had to fight, because to decline battle was a defeat.
The army camped that evening to the north of the woods where I had found ?thelwold. He was in the king's entourage now, and went with Alfred and his war-leaders to the hilltop to watch the Danish army as it closed on the hills. Alfred looked a long time.
'How far away are they?' he asked.
'From here?' Osric answered. 'Four miles. From your army? Six.'
'Tomorrow, then,' Alfred said, making the sign of the cross. The northern clouds were spreading, darkening the evening, but the slanting light reflected from spears and axes at the old people's fort. It seemed Guthrum had not ignored the place after all.
We went back down to the encampment to find yet more men arriving. Not many now, just small bands, but still they came, and one such band, travel-weary and dusty, was mounted on horses and all sixteen men had chain mail and good helmets.
They were Mercians and they had ridden far to the east, crossed the Thames, then looped through Wessex, ever avoiding Danes, and so come to help Alfred. Their leader was a short young man, wide in the chest, round- faced, and with a pugnacious expression.
He knelt to Alfred, then grinned at me, and I recognised my cousin, Ethelred.
My mother was a Mercian, though I never knew her, and her brother Ethelred was a power in the southern part of that country and I had spent a short time in his hall when I first fled from Northumbria. Back then I had quarrelled with my cousin, called Ethelred like his father, but he seemed to have forgotten our youthful enmity and embraced me instead. The top of his head just came up to my collar-bone.
'We've come to fight,' he told me, his voice muffled by my chest.
'You'll have a fight,' I promised him.
'Lord,' he let go of me and turned back to Alfred, 'my father would have sent more men, but he must protect his land.'
'He must,' Alfred said.
'But he sent the best he has,' Ethelred went on. He was young and bumptious, a little strut of a youth, but his confidence pleased Alfred, as did the gleaming silver crucifix hanging over Ethelred's chain mail. 'Allow me to present Tatwine,' my cousin went on, 'the chief of my father's household troops.'
