gouge the skjaldborq, but cross the rain-flooded ditch and clamber up the bank.
We held our shields over our heads as we splashed through the ditch. Then we climbed, but the wet bank was so slippery that we constantly fell back, and the Danish spears kept coming, and someone pushed me from behind and I was crawling up the bank on my knees, the shield over my head, and Pyrlig's shield was covering my spine and I heard a thumping above me and thought it was thunder.
Except the shield kept banging against my helmet and I knew a Dane was hacking at me, trying to break through the limewood to drive his axe or sword into my spine, and I crawled again, lifted the shield's lower edge and saw boots. I lunged with Serpent-Breath, tried to stand, felt a blow on my leg and fell again. Steapa was roaring beside me. There was mud in my mouth, and the rain hammered at us and I could hear the crash of blades sinking in shields and I knew we had failed, but I tried to stand again and lunged with Serpent-Breath and on my left Leofric gave a shrill cry and I saw blood streaming into the grass. The blood was instantly washed away by the rain, and another peal of thunder crashed overhead as I slithered back to the ditch.
The bank was scarred where we had tried to climb, the grass had been gouged down to the white chalk. We had failed utterly and the Danes were screaming defiance, then another rush of men splashed through the ditch and the banging of blades and shields began again. I climbed a second time, trying to dig my boots into the chalk, and my shield was raised so I did not see the Danes coming down to meet me, and the first I knew was when an axe struck the shield so hard that the boards splintered, and a second axe gave me a glancing blow on the helmet and I fell backwards and would have lost Serpent-Breath if it had not been for the loop of Iseult's hair about my wrist. Steapa managed to seize a Danish spear and pulled its owner down the bank where a half-dozen Saxons hacked and stabbed in-fury so that the ditch was churning with water, blood and blades, and someone shouted for us to go again, and I saw it was Alfred, dismounted, coming to cross the ditch and I roared for my men to protect him.
Pyrlig and I managed to get in front of the king and we stayed there, protecting him as we tried to climb that blood-fouled bank a third time. Pyrlig was screaming in his native tongue, I was cursing in Danish, and somehow we got halfway up and stayed on our feet, and someone, perhaps it was Alfred, was pushing me from behind. Rain hammered us, soaked us. A peal of thunder shook the heavens and I swung Serpent-Breath, trying to hack the Danish shields aside, then swung again, and the shock of the blade striking a shield boss jarred up my arm. A Dane, all beard and wide eyes, lunged a spear at me. I lunged back with the sword, shouted Iseult's name, tried to climb and the Spear-Dane slammed his spear forward again, and the blade struck my helmet's forehead and my head snapped back and another Dane hit me on the side of the head and all the world went drunken and dark. My feet slid and I was half aware of falling down into the ditch-water. Someone pulled me clear and dragged me back to the ditch's far side, and there I tried to stand, but fell again.
The king. The king. He had to be protected and he had been in the ditch when I had last seen him, and I knew Alfred was no warrior. He was brave, but he did not love the slaughter as a warrior loves it.
I tried to stand again, and this time succeeded, but blood squelched in my right boot and flowed over the boot-top when I put my weight on that leg. The ditch bottom was thick with dead and dying men, half drowned by the flood, but the living had fled from the ditch and the Danes were laughing at us.
'To me!' I shouted. There had to be one last effort. Steapa and Pyrlig closed on me, and Eadric was there, and I was groggy and my head was filled with a ringing sound and my arm seemed feeble, but we had to make that last effort.
'Where's the king?' I asked.
'I threw him out of the ditch,' Pyrlig said.
‘Is he safe?'
'I told the priests to hold him down. Told them to hit him if he tried to go again.'
'One more attack,' I said. I did not want to make it. I did not want to clamber over the bodies in the ditch and try to climb that impossible wall, and I knew it was stupid, knew I would probably die if I went again, but we were warriors and warriors will not be beaten. It is reputation. It is pride. It is the madness of battle. I began beating Serpent-Breath against my half-broken shield, and other men took up the rhythm, and the Danes, so close, were inviting us to come and be killed, and I shouted that we were coming.
'God help us,' Steapa said.
'God help us,' Pyrlig echoed.
I did not want to go. I was frightened, but I feared being called a coward more than I feared the ramparts, and so I screamed at my men to slaughter the bastards, and then I ran. I jumped over the corpse's in the ditch, lost my footing on the far side, fell on my shield and rolled aside so that no Dane could plunge a spear into my unprotected back. I hauled myself up and my helmet had skewed in the fall so that the face-plate half blinded me, and I fumbled it straight with my sword hand as I began to climb and Steapa was there, and Pyrlig was with me, and I waited for the first hard Danish blow.
It did not come. I struggled up the bank, the shield over my head, and I expected the death blow, but there was silence and I lifted the shield and thought I must have died for all I saw was the rain-filled sky. The Danes had gone. One moment they had been sneering at us, calling us women and cowards, and boasting how they would slice open our bellies and feed our guts to the ravens, and now they were gone. I clambered to the top of the wall and saw a second ditch and second wall beyond, and the Danes were scrambling up that inner rampart and I supposed that they intended to make a defence there, but instead they vanished over its top and Pyrlig grabbed my arm and pulled me on. 'They're running!' he shouted, 'by God, the bastards are running!' He had to shout to make himself heard over the rain.
'On! On!' someone shouted, and we ran into the second flooded ditch and up over the undefended inner bank and I saw Osric's men, the fyrd of Wiltunscir that had been defeated in the opening moments of the fight, had managed to cross the fort's walls. We learned later that they had gone into the valley where the white horse lay dead, and in the blinding rain they had made it to the fort's eastern corner which, because Guthrum thought it unapproachable, was only lightly defended. The rampart was lower there, hardly more than a grassy ridge on the valley's slope, and they had flooded over the wall and so got behind the other defenders.
Who now ran. If they had stayed then they would have been slaughtered to a man, so they fled across the fort's wide interior, and some were slow to realise that the battle was lost and those we trapped. I just wanted to kill for Iseult's sake, and I put two fugitives down, hacking them with Serpent-Breath with such fury that she cut through mail, leather and flesh to bite as deep as an axe. I was screaming my anger, wanting more victims, but we were too many and the trapped Danes were too few.
The rain kept falling and the thunder bellowed as I looked about for enemies to kill, and then I saw one last group of them, back to back, fighting off a swarm of Saxons, and I ran towards them and suddenly saw their banner. The eagle's wing. It was Ragnar.
His men, outnumbered and overwhelmed, were dying.
'Let him live!' I shouted, 'let him live!' and three Saxons turned towards me and they saw my long hair and my arm rings bright on my mailed sleeves, and they must have thought I was a Dane for they ran at me, and I
