happiness of battle. The ecstasy. It is not just deceiving an enemy, but feeling like a god. I had once tried to explain it to Gisela and she had touched my face with her long fingers and smiled. ‘It’s better than this?’ she had asked.
‘The same,’ I had said.
But it is not the same. In battle a man risks all to gain reputation. In bed he risks nothing. The joy is comparable, but the joy of a woman is fleeting, while reputation is for ever. Men die, women die, all die, but reputation lives after a man, and that was why I screamed my name as Serpent-Breath took her first soul. He was a tall man with a battered helmet and a long-bladed spear that he instinctively thrust at me and, just as instinctively, I turned his lunge away with my shield and put Serpent-Breath into his throat. There was a man to my right and I shoulder-charged him, driving him down, and stamped on his groin while my shield took a sword swing from my left. I stepped over the man whose groin I had pulped and the rampart’s protective wall was on my right now, where I wanted it, and ahead of me was the enemy.
I drove into them. ‘Uhtred!’ I was shouting, ‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg!’
I was inviting death. By attacking alone I let the enemy get behind me, but at that moment I was immortal. Time had slowed so that the enemy moved like snails and I was fast as the lightning on my cloak. I was shouting still as Serpent-Breath lunged into a man’s eye, driving hard till the bone of his socket stopped her thrust, and then I swept her left to slam down a sword coming at my face, and my shield lifted to take an axe blow, and Serpent-Breath dropped and I pushed her hard forward to pierce the leather jerkin of the man whose sword I had parried. I twisted her so the blade would not be seized by his belly while she gouged his blood and guts, and then I stepped left and rammed the iron boss of the shield at the axeman.
He staggered back. Serpent-Breath came from the swordsman’s belly and flew wide right to crash against another sword. I followed her, still screaming, and saw the terror on that enemy’s face, and terror on an enemy breeds cruelty. ‘Uhtred,’ I shouted, and stared at him, and he saw death coming, and he tried to back from me, but other men came behind to block his retreat and I was smiling as I slashed Serpent-Breath across his face. Blood sprayed in the dawn, and the backswing sliced his throat and two men pushed past him and I parried one with the sword and the other with my shield.
Those two men were no fools. They came with their shields touching and their only ambition was to push me back against the rampart and hold me there, pinned by their shields, so that I could not use Serpent-Breath. And once they had trapped me they would let other men come to jab me with blades until I lost too much blood to stand. Those two knew how to kill me, and they came to do it.
But I was laughing. I was laughing because I knew what they planned, and they seemed so slow and I rammed my own shield forward to crash against theirs and they thought they had trapped me because I could not hope to push two men away. They crouched behind their shields and heaved forward and I just stepped back, snatching my own shield backwards so that they stumbled forward as my resistance vanished. Their shields were slightly lowered as they stumbled and Serpent-Breath flickered like a viper’s tongue so that her bloodied tip smashed into the forehead of the man on my left. I felt his thick bone break, saw his eyes glaze, heard the crash of his dropped shield, and I swept her to the right and the second man parried. He rammed his shield at me, hoping to unbalance me, but just then there was a mighty shout from my left. ‘Christ Jesus and Alfred!’ It was Father Pyrlig, and behind him the wide bastion was now swarming with my men. ‘You damned heathen fool,’ Pyrlig shouted at me.
I laughed. Pyrlig’s sword cut into my opponent’s arm, and Serpent-Breath beat down his shield. I remember he looked at me then. He had a fine helmet with raven wings fixed to its sides. His beard was golden, his eyes blue, and in those eyes was the knowledge of his imminent death as he tried to lift his sword with a wounded arm.
‘Hold tight to your sword,’ I told him. He nodded.
Pyrlig killed him, though I did not see it. I was moving past the man to attack the remaining enemy and beside me Clapa was swinging a huge axe so violently that he was as much a danger to our side as to the enemy, but no enemy wanted to face the two of us. They were fleeing along the ramparts and the gate was ours.
I leaned on the low outer wall and immediately stood upright because the stones shifted under my weight. The masonry was crumbling. I slapped the loose stonework and laughed aloud for joy. Sihtric grinned at me. He had a bloodied sword. ‘Any amulets, lord?’ he asked.
‘That one,’ I pointed to the man whose helmet was decorated with raven wings, ‘he died well, I’ll take his.’
Sihtric stooped to find the man’s hammer-image. Beyond him Osferth was staring at the half-dozen dead men who lay in splats of blood across the stones. He was carrying a spear that had a reddened tip. ‘You killed someone?’ I asked him.
He looked at me wide-eyed, then nodded. ‘Yes, lord.’
‘Good,’ I said and jerked my head towards the sprawling corpses. ‘Which one?’
‘It wasn’t here, lord,’ he said. He seemed puzzled for a moment, then looked back at the steps we had climbed. ‘It was over there, lord.’
‘On the steps?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
I stared at him long enough to make him uncomfortable. ‘Tell me,’ I said at last, ‘did he threaten you?’
‘He was an enemy, lord.’
‘What did he do,’ I asked, ‘wave his one crutch at you?’
‘He,’ Osferth began, then appeared to run out of words. He stared down at a man I had killed, then frowned. ‘Lord?’
‘Yes?’
‘You told us it was death to leave the shield wall.’
I stooped to clean Serpent-Breath’s blade on a dead man’s cloak. ‘So?’
‘You left the shield wall, lord,’ Osferth said, almost reprovingly.
I straightened and touched my arm rings. ‘You live,’ I told him harshly, ‘by obeying the rules. You make a reputation, boy, by breaking them. But you do not make a reputation by killing cripples.’ I spat those last words, then turned to see that Sigefrid’s men had crossed the River Fleot, but had now become aware of the commotion behind them and had stopped to stare back at the gate.
Pyrlig appeared beside me. ‘Let’s get rid of this rag,’ he said, and I saw there was a banner hanging from the wall. Pyrlig hauled it up and showed me Sigefrid’s raven badge. ‘We’ll let them know,’ Pyrlig said, ‘that the city has a new master.’ He hauled up his mail coat and pulled out a banner that had been folded and tucked into his waistband. He shook it loose to reveal a black cross on a dull white field. ‘Praise God,’ Pyrlig said, then dropped the banner over the wall, securing it by weighting its top edge with dead men’s weapons. Now Sigefrid would know that Ludd’s Gate was lost. The Christian banner was flaunted in his face.
Yet, for the next few moments, things were quiet. I suppose Sigefrid’s men were astonished by what had happened and were recovering from that surprise. They were no longer moving towards the new Saxon town, but were still staring back at the cross-hung gate, while inside the city groups of men gathered in the streets and gazed up at us.
I was staring towards the new town. I could see no sign of Æthelred’s men. There was a wooden palisade cresting the low slope
