slit his throat, but stabbed it, plunged the blade straight in and twisted it and at the same time I pushed him forward, driving his face into the water and I held him there so that if he did not bleed to death he would drown, and it took a long time, longer than I expected, but men are hard to kill. He struggled for a time and I thought the noise he made might bring the men from the nearest fire, but that fire was forty or fifty paces down the beach and the small waves of the river were loud enough to cover the Dane’s death throes, and so I killed him and no one knew of it, none but the gods saw it, and when his soul was gone I pulled the knife from his throat, retrieved my helmet, and went back to the ship’s prow.
And waited there until dawn lightened the eastern horizon. Waited till there was a rim of grey at the edge of England.
And it was time.
I strolled towards the nearest fire. Two men sat there. ‘Kill one,’ I sang softly, ‘and two then three, kill four and five, and then some more.’ It was a Danish rowing chant, one that I had heard so often on the Wind-Viper. ‘You’ll be relieved soon,’ I greeted them cheerfully.
They just stared at me. They did not know who I was, but just like the man I had killed, they were not suspicious even though I spoke their tongue with an English twist. There were plenty of English in the Danish armies.
‘A quiet night,’ I said, and leaned down and took the unburned end of a piece of flaming wood from the fire. ‘Egil left a knife on his ship,’ I explained, and Egil was a common enough name among the Danes to arouse no suspicion, and they just watched as I walked north, presuming I needed the flame to light my way onto the ships. I passed the hovels, nodded to three men resting beside another fire, and kept walking until I had reached the centre of the line of beached ships and there, whistling softly as though I did not have a care in the world, I climbed the short ladder left leaning on the ship’s prow and jumped down into the hull and made my way between the rowers’ benches. I had half expected to find men asleep in the ships, but the boat was deserted except for the scrabble of rats’ feet in the bilge.
I crouched in the ship’s belly where I thrust the burning wood beneath the stacked oars, but I doubted it would be sufficient to set those oars aflame and so I used my knife to shave kindling off a rowers’ bench and, when I had enough scraps of wood, I piled them over the flame and saw the fire spring up. I cut more, then hacked at the oar shafts to give the flames purchase, and no one shouted at me from the bank. Anyone watching must have thought I merely searched the bilge and the flames were still not high enough to cause alarm, but they were spreading and I knew I had very little time and so I sheathed the knife and slid over the boat’s side. I lowered myself into the Pedredan, careless what the water would do to my mail and weapons, and once in the river I waded northwards from ship’s stern to ship’s stern, until at last I had cleared the last boat and had come to where the grey-bearded corpse was thumping softly in the river’s small waves, and there I waited.
And waited. The fire, I thought, must have gone out. I was cold.
And still I waited. The grey on the world’s rim lightened, and then, suddenly, there was an angry shout and I moved out of the shadow and saw the Danes running towards the flames that were bright and high on the ship I had fired, and so I went to their abandoned fire and took another burning brand and hurled that into a second ship, and the Danes were scrambling onto the burning boat that was sixty paces away and none saw me. Then a horn sounded, sounded again and again, sounding the alarm and I knew Ubba’s men would be coming from their camp at Cantucton, and I carried a last piece of fiery wood to the ships, burned my hand as I thrust it under a pile of oars, then I waded back into the river to hide beneath the shadowed belly of a boat.
The horn still sounded. Men were scrambling from the fishermen’s hovels, going to save their fleet, and more men were running from their camp to the south, and so Ubba’s Danes fell into our trap. They saw their ships burning and went to save them. They streamed from the camp in disorder, many without weapons, intent only on quenching the flames that flickered up the rigging and threw lurid shadows on the bank. I was hidden, but knew Leofric would be coming, and now it was all timing. Timing and the blessing of the spinners, the blessing of the gods, and the Danes were using their shields to scoop water into the first burning ship, but then another shout sounded and I knew they had seen Leofric, and he had surely burst past the first line of sentries, slaughtering them as he went, and was now in the marsh. I waded out of the shadow, out from beneath the ship’s overhanging hull, and saw Leofric’s men coming, saw thirty or forty Danes running north to meet his charge, but then those Danes saw the new fires in the northernmost ships and they were assailed by panic because there was fire behind them and warriors in front of them, and most of the other Danes were still a hundred paces away and I knew that so far the gods were fighting for us.
I waded from the water. Leofric’s men were coming from the marsh and the first swords and spears clashed, but Leofric had the advantage of numbers and Heahengel’s crew overran the handful of Danes, chopping them with axe and sword, and one crewman turned fast, panic in his face when he saw me coming, and I shouted my name, stooped to pick up a Danish shield, and Edor’s men were behind us and I called to them to feed the ship-fires while the men of Heahengel formed a shield wall across the strip of firm land. Then we walked forward. Walked towards Ubba’s army that was only just realising that they were being attacked.
We marched forward. A woman scrambled from a hovel, screamed when she saw us and fled up the bank towards the Danes where a man was roaring at men to form a shield wall. ‘Edor!’ I shouted, knowing we would need his men now, and he brought them to thicken our line so that we made a solid shield wall across the strip of firm land, and we were a hundred strong and in front of us was the whole Danish army, though it was an army in panicked disorder, and I glanced up at Cynuit and saw no sign of Odda’s men. They would come, I thought, they would surely come, and then Leofric bellowed that we were to touch shields, and the limewood rattled on limewood and I sheathed Serpent-Breath and drew Wasp-Sting.
Shield wall. It is an awful place, my father had said, and he had fought in seven shield walls and was killed in the last one. Never fight Ubba, Ravn had said.
Behind us the northernmost ships burned and in front of us a rush of maddened Danes came for revenge and that was their undoing, for they did not form a proper shield wall, but came at us like mad dogs, intent only on killing us, sure they could beat us for they were Danes and we were West Saxons, and we braced and I watched a scar-faced man, spittle flying from his mouth as he screamed, charge at me and it was then that the battle-calm came. Suddenly there was no more sourness in my bowels, no dry mouth, no shaking muscles, but only the magical battle-calm. I was happy.
I was tired too. I had not slept. I was soaking wet. I was cold, yet suddenly I felt invincible. It is a wondrous thing, that battle-calm. The nerves go, the fear wings off into the void, and all is clear as precious crystal and the enemy has no chance because he is so slow, and I swept the shield left, taking the scar-faced man’s spear thrust, lunged Wasp-Sting forward and the Dane ran onto her point. I felt the impact run up my arm as her tip punctured his belly muscles, and I was already twisting her, ripping her up and free, sawing through leather, skin, muscle and guts, and his blood was warm on my cold hand, and he screamed, ale breath in my face, and I punched him down with the shield’s heavy boss, stamped on his groin, killed him with Wasp-Sting’s tip in his throat, and a second man was on my right, beating at my neighbour’s shield with an axe, and he was easy to kill, point into the throat, and then we were going forward. A woman, hair unbound, came at me with a spear and I kicked her brutally hard, then smashed her face with the shield’s iron rim so that she fell screaming into a dying fire and her unbound hair flared up bright as burning kindling, and Heahengel’s crew was with me, and Leofric was bellowing at them to kill and to kill fast. This was our chance to slaughter Danes who had made a foolish attack on us, who had not formed a proper shield wall, and it was axe work and sword work, butchers’ work with good iron, and already there were thirty or more Danish dead and seven
