and the slaughter fresh, but our men were plundering the dead and the dying and none had the energy to renew the assault, and that meant we would have the harder task of killing Danes protected by a rampart. I thought of my father, killed in an attack on a wall. He had not shown much liking for me, probably because 1 had been a small child when he died, and now I would have to follow him into the death-trap of a well protected wall. Fate is inexorable.
Svein's banner of the white horse had been captured and a man was waving it towards the Danes.
Another had Svein's helmet on the tip of a spear, and at first I thought it was Svein's head, then I saw it was only the helmet. The white horsetail plume was pink now. Father Willibald was holding his hands to heaven, saying a prayer of thanks, and that was premature, I thought, for all we had done was break Svein's men and Guthrum's troops still waited for us behind their walls. And Ragnar was there too, safe in the fort. Its walls made a semi-circle jutting into the downs, ending at the escarpment's lip. They were high walls, protected by a ditch.
'It'll be a bastard crossing those ramparts,' I said.
'Maybe we won't have to,' Pyrlig answered.
'Of course we have to.'
'Not if Alfred can talk them out of there,' Pyrlig said, and he pointed and I saw that the king, accompanied by two priests and by Osric and Harald, was approaching the fort. 'He's going to let them surrender,' Pyrlig said.
I could not believe this was the time to talk. This was the killing time, not a place for negotiations.
'They won't surrender,' I said, 'of course they won't! They still think they can beat us.'
'Alfred will try to persuade them,' Pyrlig said.
'No,' I shook my head. 'He'll offer them a truce.' I spoke angrily. 'He'll offer to take hostages. He'll preach to them. It's what he always does.'
I thought about going to join him, if for nothing else to add some sourness to his reasonable suggestions, but I could not summon the effort. Three Danes had gone to talk to him, but I knew they would not accept his offer. They were not beaten, far from it. They still had more men than we did and they had the walls of the fort, and the battle was still theirs to win.
Then I heard the shouts. Shouts of anger and screams of pain, and I turned and saw that the Danish horsemen had reached our women, and the women were screaming and there was nothing we could do.
The Danish horsemen had expected to slaughter the broken remnants of Alfred's shield wall, but instead it had been Svein's men who had been broken and the riders, out on Svein's left flank, had retreated into the downs. They must have thought to circle about our army and rejoin Guthrum from the west, and on the way they had seen our women and horses and smelled easy plunder.
Yet our women had weapons, and there were a few wounded men there, and together they had resisted the horsemen. There was a brief flurry of killing, then the Danish riders, with nothing to show for their attack, rode away westwards. It had taken a few moments, nothing more, but Hild had snatched up a spear and run at a horseman, screaming hate for the horrors the Danes had inflicted on her in Cippanhamm, and Eanflaed, who saw it all, said that Hild sank the spear in a Dane's leg and the man had chopped down with his sword, and Iseult, who had gone to help Hild, had parried the blow with another sword, and a second Dane caught her from behind with an axe, and then a rush of screaming women drove the Danes away. Hild lived, but Iseult's skull had been broken open and her head almost split into two. She was dead.
'She has gone to God,' Pyrlig told me when Leofric brought us the news. I was weeping, but I did not know whether it was sorrow or anger that consumed me, I could say nothing. Pyrlig held my shoulders. 'She is with God, Uhtred.'
'Then the men who sent her there must go to hell,' I said. 'Any hell. Freeze or burn, the bastards!'
I pulled away from Pyrlig and strode towards Alfred. I saw Wulfhere then. He was a prisoner, guarded by two of Alfred's bodyguard, and he brightened when he saw me as though he thought I was a friend, but I just spat at him and walked on past. Alfred frowned when I joined him. He was escorted by Osric and Harald, and by Father Beocca and Bishop Alewold, none of whom spoke Danish, but one of the Danes was an English-speaker. There were three of them, all strangers to me, but Beocca told me their spokesman was called Hrothgar Ericson and I knew he wasone of Guthrum's chieftains.
'They attacked the women,' I told Alfred. The king just stared at me, perhaps not understanding what I had said. 'They attacked the women!' I repeated.
'He's whimpering,' the Danish interpreter spoke to his two companions, 'that the women were attacked.'
'If I whimper,' I turned on the man in fury, 'then you will scream.' I spoke in Danish. 'I shall pull your guts out of your arsehole, wrap them around your filthy neck and feed your eyeballs to my hounds. Now if you want to translate, you shrivelled bastard, translate properly, or else go back to your vomit.'
The man blinked, but said nothing. Hrothgar, resplendent in mail and Silvered helmet, half smiled.
'Tell your king,' he said, 'that we might agree to withdraw to Cippanhamm, but we shall want hostages.'
I turned on Alfred: 'How many men does Guthrum still have?' He was still unhappy that I had joined him, but he took the question seriously. 'Enough,' he said.
'Enough to hold Cippanhamm and a half-dozen other towns. We break them now.'
'You are welcome to try,' Hrothgar said when my words were translated.
I turned back to him. 'I killed Ubba,' I said, 'and I put Svein down, and next I shall cut Guthrum's throat and send him to his whore-mother. We'll try.'
'Uhtred.' Alfred did not know what I had said, but he had heard my tone and he tried to calm me.
'There's work to be done, lord,' I said. It was anger speaking in me, a fury at the Danes and an equal fury at Alfred, who was once again offering the enemy terms. He had done it so often. He would beat them in battle and immediately make a truce because he believed they would become Christians and live in brotherly peace. That was his desire, to live in a Christian Britain devoted to piety, but on that day I was right. Guthrum was not beaten, he still outnumbered us, and he had to be destroyed.
'Tell them,' Alfred said, 'that they can surrender to us now. Tell them they can lay down their weapons and come out of the fort.' Hrothgar treated that proposal with the scorn it deserved. Most of Guthrum's men had yet to fight. They were far from defeated, and the green walls were high and the ditches were deep, and it was the sight
