attempted. No men, however battle-skilled, could hope to break a shield wall that was as strong as the one I had placed between the bridge’s sturdy parapets, but men inspired by prophecy will attempt any foolishness in the knowledge that the fates have ordained their victory. I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt, then the hammer of Thor, and went back to the bridge. ‘Light the fire,’ I told Osferth.
It was time to burn the bridge and retreat, and Sigurd, if he was wise, would have let us go. He had lost his chance to ambush us and our position on the bridge was dauntingly formidable, but he had the prophecy of some strange woman ringing in his head and so he began haranguing his men. I heard their shouted responses, heard the blades beating on the shields and watched as Danes dismounted and formed a line. Osferth brought a flaming torch and thrust it deep into the piled thatch, and smoke thickened instantly. The Danes were howling as I elbowed my way into the centre of our shield wall.
‘He must want you dead very badly, lord,’ Finan said with some amusement.
‘He’s a fool,’ I said. I did not tell Finan that a sorceress had foretold my death. Finan might be a Christian, yet he believed in every ghost and every spirit, he believed that elves scuttled through the undergrowth and wraiths twisted in the night clouds, and if I had told him about Ælfadell the Sorceress he would have felt the same fear that shivered my heart. If Sigurd attacked I must fight because I needed to hold the bridge until the fire caught, and Osferth was right about the thatch. It was reed, not wheat straw, and it was damp, and the fire burned sullenly. It smoked, but there was no fierce heat to bite into the bridge’s thick timbers that Osferth had weakened and splintered with war axes.
Sigurd’s men were anything but sullen. They were clattering swords and axes against their heavy shields, and jostling for the honour of leading the attack. They would be half blinded by the sun and choked by the smoke, yet they were still eager. Reputation is everything and is the only thing that survives our journey to Valhalla, and the man who cut me down would gain reputation. And so, in the day’s dying light, they steeled themselves to attack us.
‘Father Willibald!’ I shouted.
‘Lord?’ a nervous voice called from the bank.
‘Bring that big banner! Have two of your monks hold it over us!’
‘Yes, lord,’ he said, sounding surprised and pleased, and a pair of monks brought the vast linen banner embroidered with its picture of Christ crucified. I told them to stand close behind my rearmost rank and had two of my men stand there with them. If there had been the slightest wind the great square of linen would have been unmanageable, but now it was blazoned above us, all green and gold and brown and blue, with a dark streak of red where the soldier’s spear had broken Christ’s body. Willibald thought I was using the magic of his religion to support my men’s swords and axes, and I let him think that.
‘It will shade their eyes, lord,’ Finan warned me, meaning that we would lose the advantage of the low sun’s blinding dazzle once the Danes advanced within the great shadow cast by the banner.
‘Only for a while,’ I said. ‘Stand firm!’ I called to the two monks holding the stout staffs that supported the great linen square. And just then, perhaps goaded by the flaunted banner, the Danes charged in a howling rush.
And as they came I remembered my very first shield wall. I had been so young, so frightened, standing on a bridge no wider than this one with Tatwine and his Mercians as we were attacked by a group of Welsh cattle thieves. They had rained arrows on us first, then charged, and on that distant bridge I had learned the seethe of battle-joy.
Now, on another bridge, I drew Wasp-Sting. My great sword was called Serpent-Breath, but her little sister was Wasp-Sting, a brief and brutal blade that could be lethal in the tight embrace of the shield wall. When men are close as lovers, when their shields are pressing on each other, when you smell their breath and see the rot in their teeth and the fleas in their beards, and when there is no room to swing a war axe or a long-sword, then Wasp-Sting could stab up from beneath. She was a gut-piercing sword, a horror.
And that was a horror-slaughter on a winter’s day. The Danes had seen our piled kindling and assumed there was nothing but reeds smoking damply on the bridge, yet beneath the reeds Osferth had stacked roof timbers and when the leading Danes tried to kick the reeds off the bridge’s roadway they kicked those heavy timbers instead and stumbled.
Some had hurled spears first. Those spears thumped into our shields, making them unwieldy, but it hardly mattered. The leading Danes tripped on the hidden timbers and the men behind pushed the falling men forward. I kicked one in the face, feeling my iron-reinforced boot crush bone. Danes were sprawling at our feet while others tried to get past their fallen comrades to reach our line, and we were killing. Two men succeeded in reaching us, despite the smoking barricade, and one of those two fell to Wasp-Sting coming up from beneath his shield rim. He had been swinging an axe that the man behind me caught on his shield and the Dane was still holding the war axe’s shaft as I saw his eyes widen, saw the snarl of his mouth turn to agony as I twisted the blade, ripping it upwards and as Cerdic, beside me, chopped his own axe down. The man with the crushed face was holding my ankle and I stabbed at him as the blood spray from Cerdic’s axe blinded me. The whimpering man at my feet tried to crawl away, but Finan stabbed his sword into his thigh, then stabbed again. A Dane had hooked his axe over the top rim of my shield and hauled it down to expose my body to a spear-thrust, but the axe rolled off the circular shield and the spear was deflected upwards and I slammed Wasp-Sting forward again, felt her bite, twisted her, and Finan was keening his mad Irish song as he added his own blade to the slaughter. ‘Keep the shields touching!’ I shouted at my men.
This is what we practised every day. If the shield wall breaks then death rules, but if the shield wall holds then it is the enemy who dies, and those first Danes came at us in a wild rush, inspired by a sorceress’s prophecy, and their assault had been defeated by the barricade that had tripped them and so made them easy prey for our blades. They had stood no chance of breaking our shield wall, they were too undisciplined, too confused, and now three of them lay dead among the scattered reeds that still burned feebly, while the smoking beams remained as a low obstacle. The survivors of those first attackers did not stay to be killed, but ran back to Sigurd’s bank where a second group readied to break us. There may have been twenty of them, big men, spear-Danes, coming to kill, and they were not wild like the first group, but deliberate. These were men who had killed in the shield wall, who knew their business, whose shields overlapped and whose weapons glittered in the dying sun. They would not rush and stumble. They would come slowly and use their long spears to break our wall and so let their swordsmen and axemen into our ranks.
‘God, fight for us!’ Willibald called as the Danes reached the bridge. The newcomers stepped carefully, not tripping, their eyes watching us. Some called insults, yet I hardly heard them. I was watching them. There was blood on my face and in the links of my mail coat. My shield was heavy with a Danish spear, and Wasp-Sting’s blade was reddened. ‘Slaughter them, O Lord!’ Willibald was praying. ‘Cut down the heathen! Smite them, Lord, in thy great mercy!’ The monks had started their chanting again. The Danes pulled dead or dying men backwards to make room for their attack. They were close now, very close, but not yet in reach of our blades. I watched their shields touch each other again, saw the spear-blades come up, and heard the word of command.
And I also heard Willibald’s shrill voice over the confusion. ‘Christ is our leader, fight for Christ, we cannot fail.’
And I laughed as the Danes came. ‘Now!’ I shouted at the two men standing with the monks. ‘Now!’
The great banner fell forward. It had taken the women of Alfred’s court months of work, months of making tiny stitches with expensively dyed wool, months of dedication and prayer and love and skill, and now the figure of Christ fell
