Alfred hurried behind us. ‘Wait,’ Leofric snapped at the king so savagely that Alfred actually obeyed. ‘Put her on the spit!’ Leofric yelled back to the steersman, ‘now!’
Ragnar was there. I could see the eagle wing on its pole, and then I saw him, looking so like his father that for a moment I thought I was a boy again.
‘Ready, Earsling?’ Leofric said. He had assembled his half-dozen best warriors, all of us in the prow, while behind us the bowmen readied to launch their arrows at the Danes who were hurrying towards the narrow stretch of muddy sand. Then we lurched forward as Heahengel’s bow scraped aground. ‘Now!’ Leofric shouted, and we jumped overboard into water that came up to our knees, and then we instinctively touched shields, made the wall, and I was gripping Wasp-Sting as the first Danes ran at us.
‘Kill them!’ Leofric shouted, and I thrust the shield forward and there was the great clash of iron boss on limewood, and an axe whirled overhead, but a man behind me caught it on his shield and I was stabbing under my shield, bringing the short sword up, but she rammed into a Danish shield. I wrenched her free, stabbed again, and felt a pain in my ankle as a blade sliced through water and boot. Blood swirled in the sea, but I was still standing, and I heaved forward, smelling the Danes, gulls screaming overhead, and more of the Danes were coming, but more of our men were joining us, some up to their waists in the tide, and the front of the battle was a shoving match now because no one had room to swing a weapon. It was a grunting, cursing shield battle, and Leofric, beside me, gave a shout and we heaved up and they stepped back a half-pace and our arrows slashed over our helmets and I slammed Wasp-Sting forward, felt her break through leather or mail, twisted her in flesh, pulled her back, pushed with the shield, kept my head down under the rim, pushed again, stabbed again, brute force, stout shield and good steel, nothing else. A man was drowning, blood streaming in the ripples from his twitching body, and I suppose we were shouting, but I never remember much about that. You remember the pushing, the smell, the snarling bearded faces, the anger, and then Cristenlic rammed her bows into the flank of the Danish line, crumpling men into the water, drowning and crushing them, and her crew jumped into the small waves with spears, swords and axes. A third boat arrived, more men landed, and I heard Alfred behind me, shouting at us to break their line, to kill them. I was ramming Wasp-Sting down at a man’s ankles, jabbing again and again, pushing with the shield, and then he stumbled and our line surged forward and he tried to stab up into my groin, but Leofric slammed his axe head down, turning the man’s face into a mask of blood and broken teeth. ‘Push!’ Leofric yelled, and we heaved at the enemy, and suddenly they were breaking away and running.
We had not beaten them. They were not running from our swords and spears, but rather because the rising tide was floating their ships and they ran to rescue them, and we stumbled after them, or rather I stumbled because my right ankle was bleeding and hurting, and we still did not have enough men ashore to overwhelm their crews and they were hurling themselves on board their ships, but one crew, brave men all, stayed on the sand to hold us back.
‘Are you wounded, Earsling?’ Leofric asked me.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Stay back,’ he ordered me. He was forming Heahengel’s men into a new shield wall, a wall to thump into that one brave crew, and Alfred was there now, mail armour shining bright, and the Danes must have known he was a great lord, but they did not abandon their ships for the honour of killing him. I think that if Alfred had brought the dragon banner and fought beneath it, so that the Danes could recognise him as the king, they would have stayed and fought us and might very well have killed or captured Alfred, but the Danes were always wary of taking too many casualties and they hated losing their beloved ships, and so they just wanted to be away from that place. To which end they were willing to pay the price of the one ship to save the others, and that one ship was not Wind-Viper. I could see her being pushed into the channel, could see her creeping away backwards, see her oars striking against sand rather than water, and I splashed through the small waves, skirting our shield wall and leaving the fight to my right as I bellowed at the ship. ‘Ragnar! Ragnar!’
Arrows were flicking past me. One struck my shield, another glanced off my helmet with a click and that reminded me that he would not recognise me with the helmet on and so I dropped Wasp-Sting and bared my head. ‘Ragnar!’
The arrows stopped. The shield walls were crashing, men were dying, most of the Danes were escaping, and Earl Ragnar stared at me across the widening gap and I could not tell from his face what he was thinking, but he had stopped his handful of bowmen from shooting at me, and then he cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Here!’ he shouted at me, ‘tomorrow’s dusk!’ Then his oars bit water, the Wind-Viper turned like a dancer, the blades dragged the sea and she was gone.
I retrieved Wasp-Sting and went to join the fight, but it was over. Our crews had massacred that one Danish crew, all except a handful of men who had been spared on Alfred’s orders. The rest were a bloody pile on the tideline and we stripped them of their armour and weapons, took off their clothes and left their white bodies to the gulls. Their ship, an old and leaking vessel, was towed back to Hamtun.
Alfred was pleased. In truth he had let six ships escape, but it had still been a victory and news of it would encourage his troops fighting in the north. One of his priests questioned the prisoners, noting their answers on parchment. Alfred asked some questions of his own, which the priest translated, and when he had learned all that he could he came back to where I was steering and looked at the blood staining the deck by my right foot. ‘You fight well, Uhtred.’
‘We fought badly, lord,’ I said, and that was true. Their shield wall had held, and if they had not retreated to rescue their ships they might even have beaten us back into the sea. I had not done well. There are days when the sword and shield seem clumsy, when the enemy seems quicker, and this had been one such day. I was angry with myself.
‘You were talking to one of them,’ Alfred said accusingly. ‘I saw you. You were talking to one of the pagans.’
‘I was telling him, lord,’ I said, ‘that his mother was a whore, his father a turd of hell and that his children are pieces of weasel shit.’
He flinched at that. He was no coward, Alfred, and he knew the anger of battle, but he never liked the insults that men shouted. I think he would have liked war to be decorous. He looked behind Heahengel where the dying sun’s light was rippling our long wake red. ‘The year you promised to give me will soon be finished,’ he said.
‘True, lord.’
‘I pray you will stay with us.’
‘When Guthrum comes, lord,’ I said, ‘he will come with a fleet to darken the sea and our twelve ships will be crushed.’ I thought perhaps that was what Leofric had been arguing about, about the futility of trying to stem a seaborne invasion with twelve ill-named ships. ‘If I stay,’ I asked, ‘what use will I be if the fleet dares not put to sea?’
‘What you say is true,’ Alfred said, suggesting that his argument with Leofric had been about something else, ‘but the crews can fight ashore. Leofric tells me you are as good a warrior as any he has seen.’
‘Then he has never seen himself, lord.’
‘Come to me when your time is up,’ he said, ‘and I will find a place for you.’
‘Yes, lord,’ I said, but in a tone which only acknowledged that I understood what he wanted, not that I would obey him.
‘But you should know one thing, Uhtred,’ his voice was stern, ‘if any man commands my troops that man must know how to read and write.’
I
