Part 6 (1/2)

The land was open, a stretch of river meadow where folk grazed their goats and sheep. To the east, where the Danes were coming, was woodland, to the west was the road Harald would expect us to take, and to the north were the crumbling stone piers of the bridge the Romans had made across the Wey. Fearnhamme and its low hill were on the ruined bridge's farther side. I stared at the hill and could see no troops.

”That's where I wanted Aldhelm,” I snarled, pointing to the hill.

”Lord!” Finan shouted in warning.

The pursuing Danes were gathering at the edge of a wood a half-mile eastward. They could see us clearly, and they understood that we were too many to attack until more pursuers arrived, but those reinforcements were appearing by the minute. I looked across the river again and saw no one. The hill, with its ancient earthwork, was supposed to be my anvil strengthened with five hundred Mercian warriors, yet it looked deserted. Would my two hundred men be enough?

”Lord!” Finan called again. The Danes, who now outnumbered us by two to one, were spurring their horses toward us.

”Through the ford!” I shouted. I would spring the trap anyway, and so we kicked our tired horses through the deep ford which lay just upstream of the bridge and, once across, I called for my men to gallop to the hill's top. I wanted the appearance of panic. I wanted it to look as though we had abandoned our ambitions to reach Wintanceaster and instead were taking refuge on the nearest hill.

We rode through Fearnhamme. It was a huddle of thatched huts around a stone church, though there was one fine-looking Roman building that had lost its tiled roof. There were no inhabitants, just a single cow bellowing pathetically because she needed to be milked. I a.s.sumed the folk had fled from the rumors of the approaching Danes. ”I hope your d.a.m.ned men are on the hill!” I shouted to aethelflaed, who was staying close to me.

”They'll be there!” she called back.

She sounded confident, but I was dubious. Aldhelm's first duty, at least according to her husband, was to keep the Mercian army intact. Had he simply refused to advance on Fearnhamme? If he had, then I would be forced to fight off an army of Danes with just two hundred men, and those Danes were approaching fast. They smelled victory and they pounded their horses through the river and up into Fearnhamme's street. I could hear their shouts, and then I reached the gra.s.sy bank that was the ancient earthwork and, as Smoka crested the bank's summit, I saw that aethelflaed was right. Aldhelm had come, and he had brought five hundred men. They were all there, but Aldhelm had kept them at the northern side of the old fortress so they would be hidden from an enemy approaching from the south.

And so, just as I had planned, I had seven hundred men on the hill, and another seven hundred, I hoped, approaching from aescengum, and between those two forces were some two thousand rampaging, careless, overconfident Danes who believed they were about to achieve the old Viking dream of conquering Wess.e.x.

”s.h.i.+eld wall!” I shouted at my men. ”s.h.i.+eld wall!”

The Danes had to be checked for a moment, and the easiest way to do that was to show them a s.h.i.+eld wall at the hill's top. There was a moment of chaos as men slid from their saddles and ran to the bank's top, but these were good men, well trained, and their s.h.i.+elds locked together fast. The Danes, coming from the houses onto the hill's lower slope, saw the wall of iron-bound willow, they saw the spears, the swords and the ax blades, and they saw the steepness of the slope, and their wild charge stopped. Scores of men were crossing the river and still more were coming from the trees on the southern bank, so in a few moments they would have more than enough warriors to overwhelm my short s.h.i.+eld wall, but for now they paused.

”Banners!” I said. We had brought our banners, my wolf's-head flag and Wess.e.x's dragon, and I wanted them flown as an invitation to Harald's men.

Aldhelm, tall and sallow, had come to greet me. He did not like me and his face showed that dislike, but it also showed astonishment at the number of Danes who converged on the ford.

”Divide your men into two,” I told him peremptorily, ”and line them either side of my men. Rypere!”

”Lord?”

”Take a dozen men and tether those horses!” Our abandoned horses were wandering the hilltop and I feared some would stray back over the bank.

”How many Danes are there?” Aldhelm asked.

”Enough to give us a day's good killing,” I said. ”Now bring your men here.”

He bridled at my tone. He was a thin man, elegant in a superb long coat of mail that had bronze crescent moons sewn to the links. He had a cloak of blue linen, lined with red cloth, and he wore a chain of heavy gold looped twice about his neck. His boots and gloves were black leather, his sword belt was decorated with golden crosses, while his long black hair, scented and oiled, was held at the nape of his neck with a comb of ivory teeth clasped in a golden frame. ”I have my orders,” he said distantly.

”Yes, to bring your men here. We have Danes to kill.”

He had always disliked me, ever since I had spoiled his handsome looks by breaking his jaw and his nose, though on that far day he had been armed and I had not. He could barely bring himself to look at me, instead he stared at the Danes gathering at the foot of the hill. ”I am instructed,” he said, ”to preserve the Lord aethelred's forces.”

”Your instructions have changed, Lord Aldhelm.” A cheerful voice spoke from behind us, and Aldhelm turned to gaze in astonishment at aethelflaed, who smiled from her high saddle.

”My lady,” he said, bowing, then glancing from her to me. ”Is the Lord aethelred here?”

”My husband sent me to countermand his last orders,” aethelflaed said sweetly. ”He is now so confident of victory that he requires you to stay here despite the numbers opposing us.”

Aldhelm began to reply, then a.s.sumed I did not know what his last orders from aethelred had been. ”Your husband sent you, my lady?” he asked instead, plainly confused by aethelflaed's unexpected presence.

”Why else would I be here?” aethelflaed asked beguilingly, ”and if there were any real danger, my lord, would my husband have allowed me to come?”

”No, my lady,” Aldhelm said, but without any conviction.

”So we are going to fight!” aethelflaed called those words loudly, speaking to the Mercian troops. She turned her gray mare so they could see her face and hear her more clearly. ”We are going to kill Danes! And my husband sent me to witness your bravery, so do not disappoint me! Kill them all!”

They cheered her. She rode her horse along their front rank and they cheered her wildly. I had always thought Mercia a miserable place, defeated and sullen, kingless and downtrodden, but in that moment I saw how aethelflaed, radiant in silver mail, was capable of lifting the Mercians to enthusiasm. They loved her. I knew they had small fondness for aethelred, Alfred was a distant figure and, besides, King of Wess.e.x, but aethelflaed inspired them. She gave them pride.

The Danes were still gathering at the foot of the hill. There must have been three hundred men who had dismounted and who now made their own s.h.i.+eld wall. They could still only see my two hundred men, but it was time to sweeten the bait. ”Osferth,” I shouted, ”get back on your horse, then come and be kingly.”

”Must I, lord?”

”Yes, you must!”

We made Osferth stand his horse beneath the banners. He was cloaked, and he now wore a helmet that I draped with my own gold chain so that, from a distance, it looked like a crowned helmet. The Danes, seeing him, bellowed insults up the gentle slope. Osferth looked kingly enough, though anyone familiar with Alfred should have known the mounted figure was not Wess.e.x's king simply because he was not surrounded by priests, but I decided Harald would never notice the lack. I was amused to see aethelflaed, obviously curious about her half-brother, push her horse next to his stallion.

I turned to look back to the south where still more Danes were crossing the river and, so long as I live, I will never forget that landscape. All the country beyond the river was covered with Danish hors.e.m.e.n, their stallions' hooves kicking up dust as the riders spurred toward the ford, all eager to be present at the destruction of Alfred and his kingdom. So many men wanted to cross the river that they were forced to wait in a great milling herd at the ford's farther side.

Aldhelm was ordering his men forward. He probably did it unwillingly, but aethelflaed had inspired them and he was caught between her disdain and their enthusiasm. The Danes at the foot of the hill saw my short line lengthen, they saw more s.h.i.+elds and more blades, more banners. They would still outnumber us, but now they would need half their army to make an a.s.sault on the hill. A man in a black cloak and carrying a red-hafted war ax was marshaling Harald's men, thrusting them into line. I guessed there were five hundred men in the enemy s.h.i.+eld wall now, and more were coming every moment. Some of the Danes had stayed on horseback, and I supposed they planned to ride about our rear to make an attack when the s.h.i.+eld walls met. The enemy line was only a couple of hundred paces away, close enough for me to see the ravens and axes and eagles and serpents painted on their iron-bossed s.h.i.+elds. Some began clas.h.i.+ng their weapons against those s.h.i.+elds, making the thunder of war. Others bellowed that we were milksop children, or goat-begotten b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

”Noisy, aren't they?” Finan remarked beside me. I just smiled. He raised his drawn sword to his helmet-framed face and kissed the blade. ”Remember that Frisian girl we found in the marshes? She was noisy.” It is strange what men think of before battle. The Frisian girl had escaped a Danish slaver and had been terrified. I wondered what had happened to her.

Aldhelm was nervous, so nervous that he overcame his hatred of me and stood close. ”What if Alfred doesn't come?” he asked.

”Then we each have to kill two Danes before the rest lose heart,” I said with false confidence. If Alfred's seven hundred men did not come then we would be surrounded, cut down, and slaughtered.

Only about half the Danes had crossed the river, such was the congestion at the narrow ford, and still more hors.e.m.e.n were streaming from the east to join the crowd waiting to cross the Wey. Fearnhamme was filled with men pulling down thatch in search of treasure. The unmilked cow lay dead in the street. ”What,” Aldhelm began, then hesitated. ”What if Alfred's forces come late?”

”Then all the Danes will be across the river,” I said.

”And attacking us,” Finan said.

I knew Aldhelm was thinking of retreat. Behind us, to the north, were higher hills that offered greater protection, or perhaps, if we retreated fast enough, we could cross the Temes before the Danes caught and destroyed us. For unless Alfred's men came we would surely die, and at that moment I felt the death-serpent slither cold about my heart that was thumping like a war drum. Skade's curse, I thought, and I suddenly understood the magnitude of the risk I was running. I had a.s.sumed the Danes would do exactly what I wanted, and that the West Saxon army would appear at just the right moment, but instead we were stranded on a low hill and our enemy was getting ever stronger. There was still a great crowd on the river's far bank, but in less than an hour the whole of Harald's army would be across the river, and I felt the imminence of disaster and the fear of utter defeat. I remembered Harald's threat, that he would blind me, geld me, and then lead me about on a rope's end. I touched the hammer and stroked Serpent-Breath's hilt.

”If the West Saxon troops don't arrive,” Aldhelm began, his voice grim with purpose.

”G.o.d be praised,” aethelflaed interrupted from behind us.

Because there was a glint of sun-reflecting steel from the far distant trees.

And more hors.e.m.e.n appeared. Hundreds of hors.e.m.e.n.

The army of Wess.e.x had come.

And the Danes were trapped.

Poets exaggerate. They live by words and my household bards fear I will stop throwing them silver if they do not exaggerate. I remember skirmishes where a dozen men might have died, but in the poets' telling the slain are counted in the thousands. I am forever feeding the ravens in their endless recitations, but no poet could exaggerate the slaughter that occurred that Thor's Day on the banks of the River Wey.