I suddenly understood the magnitude of the risk I was running. I had assumed 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.
‘God be praised,’ Æthelflæd interrupted from behind us.
Because there was a glint of sun-reflecting steel from the far distant trees.
And more horsemen appeared. Hundreds of horsemen.
The army of Wessex 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 poet’s 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.
It was a swift slaughter too. Most battles take time to start as the two sides summon their courage, hurl insults and watch to see what the enemy will do, but Steapa, leading Alfred’s seven hundred men, saw the confusion on the river’s southern bank and, just as soon as he had sufficient men in hand, charged on horseback. Æthelred, Steapa told me later, had wanted to wait till all seven hundred had gathered, but Steapa ignored the advice. He began with three hundred men and allowed the others to catch up as they emerged from the trees into the open land.
The three hundred attacked the enemy’s rear where, as might be expected, the least enthusiastic of Harald’s army were waiting to cross the river. They were the laggards, the servants and boys, some women and children, and almost all of them were cumbered with pillage. None was ready to fight; there was no shield wall, some did not even possess shields. The Danes most eager for a battle had already crossed the river and were forming to attack the hill, and it took them some moments to understand that a vicious slaughter had begun on the river’s farther bank.
‘It was like killing piglets,’ Steapa told me later. ‘A lot of squealing and blood.’
The horsemen slammed into the Danes. Steapa led Alfred’s own household troops, the remainder of my men, and battle-hardened warriors from Wiltunscir and Sumorsæte. They were eager for a fight, well mounted, armed with the best weapons, and their attack caused chaos. The Danes, unable to form a shield wall, tried to run, except the only safety lay across the ford and that was blocked by the men waiting to cross, and so the panicked enemy clawed at their own men, stopping any chance of a shield wall forming, and Steapa’s men, huge on their horses, hacked and slashed and stabbed their way into the crowd. More Saxons came from the woods to join the fight. Horses were fetlock deep in blood, and still the swords and axes crushed and cut. Alfred had endured the ride despite the pain the saddle caused him, and he watched from the edge of the trees while the priests and monks sang praises to their god for the slaughter of the heathen that was reddening the water-meadows on the Wey’s southern bank.
Edward fought with Steapa. He was a slight young man, but Steapa was full of praise afterwards. ‘He has courage,’ he told me.
‘Does he have sword craft?’
‘He has a quick wrist,’ Steapa said approvingly.
Æthelred understood before Steapa that eventually the horsemen must be stopped by the sheer crush of bodies, and he persuaded Ealdorman Æthelnoth of Sumorsæte to dismount a hundred of his men and form a shield wall. That wall advanced steadily and, as horses were wounded or killed, more Saxons joined that wall, which went forward like a row of harvesters wielding sickles. Hundreds of Danes died. On that southern bank, under the high sun, there was a massacre, and the enemy never once managed to organise themselves and so fight back. They died or else they crossed the river or else they were taken captive.
Yet perhaps half of Harald’s army had crossed the ford, and those men were ready for a fight and, even as the slaughter began behind them, they came to kill us. Harald himself had arrived, a servant bringing a packhorse behind, and Harald came a few steps forward of his swelling shield wall to make certain we saw the ritual with which he scared his enemies. He faced us, huge in cloak and mail, then spread his arms as though crucified, and in his right hand was a massive battle axe with which, after bellowing that we would all be fed to the slime worms of death, he killed the horse. He did it with one stroke of the axe and, while the beast was still twitching in its death throes, he slit open its belly and plunged his unhelmeted head deep into the bloody entrails. My men watched in silence. Harald, ignoring the spasms of the hooves, held his head deep in the horse’s belly, then stood and turned to show a blood-masked face and blood-soaked hair and a thick beard dripping with blood. Harald Bloodhair was ready for battle. ‘Thor!’ he shouted, lifting his face and axe to the sky, ‘Thor!’ He pointed the axe towards us. ‘Now we kill you all!’ he screamed. A servant brought him his great axe-painted shield.
I am not certain Harald knew what happened on the river’s farther bank, that was hidden from him by the houses in Fearnhamme. He must have known that Saxons were attacking his rear, indeed he would have heard reports of fighting all morning because, as Steapa was to tell me, the pursuing Saxons were forever meeting Danish stragglers on the road from Æscengum, but Harald’s attention was fixed on Fearnhamme’s hill where, he believed, Alfred was trapped. He could lose the battle on the river’s southern bank and still win a kingdom on the northern bank. And so he led his men forward.
I had planned to let the Danes attack us, and to rely on the ancient earthwork to give us added protection, but as Harald’s line advanced with a great bellow of rage, I saw they were vulnerable. Harald might have been unaware of the disaster his men were suffering across the river, but many of his Danes were turning, trying to see what happened there, and men scared of an attack on their rear will not fight with full vigour. We had to attack them. I sheathed Serpent-Breath and drew Wasp-Sting, my short-sword. ‘Swine head!’ I shouted, ‘swine head!’
My men knew what I wanted. They had rehearsed it hundreds of times until they were tired of practising it, but now those hours of practice paid off as I led the way off the earthen bank and crossed the ditch.
A swine head was simply a wedge of men, a human spear-point, and it was the fastest way I knew to break a shield wall. I took the lead, though Finan tried to edge me aside. The Danes had slowed, perhaps surprised that we were abandoning the earthwork, or perhaps because at last they understood the trap that closed on them. There was only one way out of that trap, and that was to destroy us. Harald knew it and bellowed at his men to charge uphill. I was shouting at my men to charge downhill. That fight started so fast. I was taking the swine head down the shallow slope and he was urging his men up, but the Danes were confused, suddenly frightened, and his wall frayed before we even reached it. Some men obeyed Harald, others hung back, and so the line bent, though at the centre, where Harald’s banner of the wolf-skull and the axe flew, the shield wall remained firm. That was where Harald’s own crewmen were concentrated, and where my swine head was aimed.
We were screaming a great shout of defiance. My shield, iron-rimmed, was heavy on my left arm, Wasp-Sting was drawn back. She was a short stabbing blade. Serpent-Breath was my magnificent sword, but a long sword, like a long-hafted axe, can be a hindrance in a battle of shield walls. I knew when we clashed, that I would be pressed close as a lover to my enemies
