butchers’ work with good iron, and already there were thirty or more Danish dead and seven ships were burning, their flames spreading with astonishing speed.
‘Shield wall!’ I heard the cry from the Danes. The world was light now, the sun just beneath the horizon. The northernmost ships had become a furnace. A dragon’s head reared in the smoke, its gold eyes bright. Gulls screamed above the beach. A dog chased along the ships, yelping. A mast fell, spewing sparks high into the silver air, and then I saw the Danes make their shield wall, saw them organise themselves for our deaths and saw the raven banner, the triangle of cloth which proclaimed that Ubba was here and coming to give us slaughter.
‘Shield wall!’ I shouted, and that was the first time I ever gave that order. ‘Shield wall!’ We had grown ragged, but now it was time to be tight. To be shield to shield. There were hundreds of Danes in front of us and they came to overwhelm us, and I banged Wasp-Sting against the metal rim of my shield. ‘They’re coming to die!’ I shouted, ‘they’re coming to bleed! They’re coming to our blades!’
My men cheered. We had started a hundred strong, but had lost half a dozen men in the early fighting, but the remaining men cheered even though five or six times their number came to kill them, and Leofric began the battle chant of Hegga, an English rowers’ chant, rhythmic and harsh, telling of a battle fought by our ancestors against the men who had held Britain before we came, and now we fought for our land again, and behind me a lone voice uttered a prayer and I turned to see Father Willibald holding a spear. I laughed at his disobedience.
Laughter in battle. That was what Ragnar had taught me, to take joy from the fight. Joy in the morning, for the sun was touching the east now, filling the sky with light, driving darkness beyond the world’s western rim and I hammered Wasp-Sting against my shield, making a noise to drown the shouts of the Danes, and I knew we would be hard hit and that we must hold until Odda came, but I was relying on Leofric to be the bastion on our right flank where the Danes were sure to try and lap around us by going through the marsh. Our left was safe, for that was by the ships, and the right was where we would be broken if we could not hold.
‘Shields!’ I bellowed, and we touched shields again for the Danes were coming and I knew they would not hesitate in their attack. We were too few to frighten them, they would not need to work up courage for this battle, they would just come.
And come they did. A thick line of men, shield to shield, new morning light touching axe heads and spear heads and swords.
The spears and throwing axes came first, but in the front rank we crouched behind shields and the second rank held their shields above ours and the missiles thumped home, banging hard, but doing no injury, and then I heard the wild war shout of the Danes, felt a last flutter of fear and then they were there.
The thunder of shield hitting shield, my shield knocked back against my chest, shouts of rage, a spear between my ankles, Wasp-Sting lunging forward and blocked by a shield, a scream to my left, an axe flailing overhead. I ducked, lunged again, hit shield again, pushed back with my own shield, twisted the sax free, stamped on the spear, stabbed Wasp-Sting over my shield into a bearded face and he twisted away, blood filling his mouth from his torn cheek and I took a half-pace forward, stabbed again, and a sword glanced off my helmet and thumped my shoulder and a man pulled me hard backwards because I was ahead of our line and the Danes were shouting, pushing, stabbing, and the first shield wall to break would be the shield wall to die and I knew Leofric was hard pressed on the right, but I had no time to look or help because the man with the torn cheek was thrashing at my shield with a short axe, trying to splinter it. I lowered the shield suddenly, spoiling his stroke, and slashed Wasp-Sting at his face a second time and she grated on skull-bone, drew blood and I hammered his shield with my own and he staggered back, was pushed forward by the men behind him and this time Wasp-Sting took his throat and he was bubbling blood and air from a slit gullet. He fell to his knees, and the man behind him slammed a spear forward that broke through my shield, but stuck there, and the Danes were still heaving, but their own dying man obstructed them and the spearman tripped on him, and the man to my right chopped his shield edge onto his head and I kicked him in the face then slashed Wasp-Sting down. A Dane pulled the spear from my shield, stabbed with it, was cut down by the man on my left. More Danes came and we were stepping back, bending back because there were Danes in the marshland who were turning our right flank, but Leofric brought the men steadily around till our backs were to the burning ships, and I could feel the heat of their burning and I thought we must die here. We would die with swords in our hands and flames at our backs and I hacked frantically at a red-bearded Dane, trying to shatter his shield, and Ida, the man to my right, was on the ground, guts spilling through torn leather, and a Dane came at me from that side and I flicked Wasp-Sting at his face, ducked, took his axe blow on my breaking shield, shouted at the men behind to fill the gap, and stabbed Wasp-Sting at the axeman’s feet, slicing into an ankle, and a spear took him in the side of the head and I gave a great shout and heaved at the oncoming Danes, but there was no space to fight, no space to see, just a grunting mass of men hacking and stabbing and dying and bleeding, and then Odda came.
The Ealdorman had waited till the Danes were crowded on the riverbank, waited till they were pushing each other in their eagerness to reach and to kill us, and then he launched his men across Cynuit’s brow and they came like thunder with swords and axes and sickles and spears. The Danes saw them and there were shouts of warning and almost immediately I felt the pressure lessen to my front as the rearward Danes turned to meet the new threat, and I rammed Wasp-Sting out to pierce a man’s shoulder, and she went deep in, grating against bone, but the man twisted away, snatching the blade out of my hand so I drew Serpent-Breath and shouted at my men to kill the bastards. This was our day, I shouted, and Odin was giving us victory.
Forward now. Forward to battle-slaughter. Beware the man who loves battle. Ravn had told me that only one man in three or perhaps one man in four is a real warrior and the rest are reluctant fighters, but I was to learn that only one man in twenty is a lover of battle. Such men were the most dangerous, the most skilful, the ones who reaped the souls and the ones to fear. I was such a one, and that day, beside the river where the blood flowed into the rising tide, and beside the burning boats, I let Serpent-Breath sing her song of death. I remember little except a rage, an exultation, a massacre. This was the moment the skalds celebrate, the heart of the battle that leads to victory, and the courage had gone from those Danes in a heartbeat. They had thought they were winning, thought they had trapped us by the burning ships and thought to send our miserable souls to the afterworld, and instead the fyrd of Defnascir came on them like a storm.
‘Forward!’ I shouted.
‘Wessex!’ Leofric bellowed, ‘Wessex!’ He was hacking with his axe, chopping men to the ground, leading the Heahengel’s crew away from the fiery ships.
The Danes were going backwards, trying to escape us, and we could choose our victims and Serpent-Breath was lethal that day. Hammer a shield forward, strike a man off balance, thrust the blade forward, push him down, stab into the throat, find the next man. I pushed a Dane into the smouldering remnants of a campfire, killed him while he screamed, and some Danes were now fleeing to their unburned ships, pushing them into the flooding tide, but Ubba was still fighting. Ubba was shouting at his men to form a new shield wall, to protect the boats, and such was Ubba’s hard will, such his searing anger, that the new shield wall held. We hit it hard, hammered it with sword and axe and spear, but again there was no space, just the heaving, grunting, breath-stinking struggle, only this time it was the Danes who stepped back, pace by pace, as Odda’s men joined mine to wrap around the Danes and hammer them with iron.
But Ubba was holding. Holding his rearguard firm, holding them under the raven banner, and in every moment that he held us off another ship was pushed away from the river’s bank. All he wanted to achieve now was to save men and ships, to let a part of his army escape, to let them get away from this press of shield and blade, and six Danish ships were already rowing out to the Sæfern sea, and more were filling
