an axe blade and a short-hafted, heavy-bladed war axe as his chosen weapon. He was shouting like a fiend, his eyes fixed on me, his mouth a snarl in a mask of blood. I remember thinking as we charged downhill that he would use the axe to chop down at me, which would make me raise my shield, and his neighbour, a dark-faced man with a short stabbing sword, would slide the blade beneath my shield to gut my belly. But Finan was on my right and that meant the dark-faced man was doomed. ‘Kill them all!’ I shouted Æthelflæd’s war cry, ‘kill them all!’ I did not even turn to see if Aldhelm had brought his men forward, though he had. I just felt the fear of the shield wall fight and the elation of the shield wall fight. ‘Kill them all!’ I screamed.
And the shields crashed together.
The poets say six thousand Danes came to Fearnhamme, and sometimes they reckon it was ten thousand and, doubtless, as the story gets older the number will become higher. In truth I think Harald brought around sixteen hundred men, because some of his army stayed close to Æscengum. He led many more men than those who were at Æscengum and Fearnhamme. He had crossed from Frankia with some two hundred ships, and maybe five or six thousand men came in all those ships, but fewer than half had found horses, and not all those mounted men rode to Fearnhamme. Some stayed in Cent where they laid claim to captured land, others stayed to plunder Godelmingum, so how many men did we face? Perhaps half of Harald’s force had crossed the river, so my troops and Aldhelm’s warriors were attacking no more than eight hundred, and some of those were not even in the shield wall, but were still seeking plunder in Fearnhamme’s houses. The poets tell me we were outnumbered, but I think we probably had more men.
And we were more disciplined. And we had the advantage of the higher ground. And we hit the shield wall.
I struck with my shield. To make the swine head work the thrust must be hard and fast. I remember shouting Æthelflæd’s war cry, ‘kill them all!’ then leaping the last pace, all my weight concentrated into my left arm with its heavy shield, and it slammed into Harald’s shield and he was thrown back as I rammed Wasp-Sting beneath the lower rim of my round shield. The blade struck and pierced. That moment is vague, a confusion. I know Harald swung down with his axe because the blade mangled the mail on my back, though without touching my skin. My sudden leap must have carried me inside the swing. I later found my left shoulder was bruised a deep black, and I guess that was where his axe’s haft struck, but I was unaware of the pain during the fight.
I call it a fight, but it was soon over. I do remember Wasp-Sting piercing and I felt the sensation of the blade in flesh, and I knew I had wounded Harald, but then he twisted away to my left, thrust aside by the weight and speed of our attack, and Wasp-Sting was wrenched free. Finan, on my right, covered me with his shield as I slammed into the second rank and I lunged Wasp-Sting again, and still I was moving forward. I slammed the shield’s iron boss at a Dane and saw Rypere’s spear take him in the eye. There was blood in the air, screaming, and a sword lunged from my right, going between the shield and my body, and I just kept going forward as Finan sliced his short-sword at the man’s arm. The sword fell feebly away. I was moving slowly now, pushing against a crush of men and being pushed by my men behind. I was stabbing Wasp-Sting in short hard lunges, and in my memory that passage of the battle was quite silent. It cannot have been silent, of course, but so it seems when I remember Fearnhamme. I see men’s mouths open, full of rotting teeth. I see grimaces. I see the flash of blades. I recall crouching as I shoved forward, I remember the axe swing that came from my left, and how Rypere caught it on his shield, that split open. I remember tripping on the corpse of the horse Harald had sacrificed to Thor, but I was pushed upright by a Dane who tried to gut me with a short blade that was stopped by the gold buckle of my sword belt, and I remember ripping Wasp-Sting up between his legs and sawing her backwards and watching his eyes open in terrible pain, and then he was suddenly gone and, just as suddenly, so very suddenly, there were no shields in front of me, just a vegetable plot and a dungheap and a cottage with its mauled thatch heaped on the ground, and I remember all that, but I do not remember any noise.
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