The Pale Horseman

  It was time to make the shield wall, and that is a cumbersome business. Some men offer to be in the front rank, but most try to be behind, and Osric and his battle leaders were shoving and shouting as they tried to settle the men. “God is with us!” Alfred was shouting at them. He was still mounted and rode down Osric’s slowly forming shield wall to encourage the fyrd. “God is with us!” he shouted again. “We cannot lose! God is with us!” The rain fell harder. Priests were walking down the lines offering blessings and adding to the rain by throwing handfuls of holy water at the shields. Osric’s fyrd was mostly five ranks thick, and behind them was a scatter of men with spears. Their job, as the two sides met, was to hurl the spears over their comrades’ heads, and the Danes would have similar spear-throwers readying their own weapons. “God is with us!” Alfred shouted. “He is on our side! Heaven watches over us! The holy saints pray for us! The angels guard us! God is with us!” His voice was already hoarse. Men touched amulets for luck, closed their eyes in silent prayer, and tugged at buckles. In the front rank they obsessively touched their shields against their neighbors’ shields. The right-hand edge of every man’s shield was supposed to overlap the next shield so that the Danes were confronted with a solid wall of iron-reinforced limewood. The Danes would make the same wall, but they were still jeering us, daring us to attack. A young man stumbled from the back of Osric’s fyrd and vomited. Two dogs ran to eat the vomit. A spear-thrower was on his knees, shaking and praying.

  Father Beocca stood beside Alfred’s standards with his hands raised in prayer. I was in front of the standards with Steapa to my right and Pyrlig to my left. “Bring fire on them, oh most holy Lord!” Beocca wailed. “Bring fire on them and strike them down! Punish them for their iniquities.” His eyes were closed tight and his face raised to the rain so that he did not see Alfred gallop back to us and push through our ranks. The king would stay mounted so he could see what happened, and Leofric and a dozen other men were also on horseback so that their shields could protect Alfred from thrown spears and axes.

  “Forward!” Alfred shouted.

  “Forward!” Leofric repeated the order because the king’s voice was so hoarse.

  No one moved. It was up to Osric and his men to begin the advance, but men are ever reluctant to go against an enemy shield wall. It helps to be drunk. I have been in battles where both sides struggled in a reeking daze of birch wine and ale, but we had little of either and our courage had to be summoned out of sober hearts and there was not much to be found on that cold wet morning.

  “Forward!” Leofric shouted again, and this time Osric and his commanders took up the shout and the men of Wiltunscir shuffled a few paces forward and the Danish shields clattered into the wall and locked together and the sight of that skjaldborg checked the advance. That is what the Danes call their shield wall, the skjaldborg or shield fort. The Danes roared mockery, and two of their younger warriors strutted out of their line to taunt us and invite a duel. “Stay in the wall!” Leofric roared.

  “Ignore them!” Osric shouted.

  Horsemen rode from the fort, perhaps a hundred of them, and they trotted behind the skjaldborg that was formed of Svein’s warriors and Wulfhere’s Saxons. Svein joined the horsemen. I could see his white horse, the white cloak, and the white horsetail plume. The presence of the horsemen told me that Svein expected our line to break and he wanted to ride our fugitives down just as his riders had slaughtered Peredur’s broken Britons at Dreyndynas. The Danes were full of confidence, and so they should have been, for they outnumbered us and they were all warriors, while our ranks were filled with men more used to the plow than the sword.

  “Forward!” Osric shouted. His line quivered, but did not advance more than a yard.

  Rain dripped from the rim of my helmet. It ran down inside the faceplate, worked itself inside my mail coat, and ran in shivers down my chest and belly.

  “Strike them hard, lord!” Beocca shouted. “Slaughter them without mercy! Break them in pieces!”

  Pyrlig was praying, at least I think he was praying, for he was speaking in his own tongue, but I heard the word duw repeated over and over and I knew, from Iseult, that duw was the Britons’ word for god. Æthelwold was behind Pyrlig. He was supposed to be behind me, but Eadric had insisted on being at my back, so Æthelwold would protect Pyrlig instead. He was chattering incessantly, trying to cover his nervousness, and I turned on him. “Keep your shield up,” I told him.

  “I know, I know.”

  “You protect Pyrlig’s head, understand?”

  “I know!” He was irritated that I had given him the advice. “I know,” he repeated petulantly.

  “”Forward! Forward!” Osric called. Like Alfred he was on horseback and he went up and down behind his line, sword drawn, and I thought he would jab the blade at his men to goad them onward. They went a few paces and the Danish shields came up again and the limewood made a knocking sound as the skjaldborg was made and once again our line faltered. Svein and his horsemen were now at the very far flank, but Osric had placed a group of picked warriors there, ready to guard the open end of his line.

  “For God! For Wiltunscir!” Osric shouted. “Forward!”

  Alfred’s men were on the left of Osric’s fyrd where we were bent slightly back, ready to receive the expected flank attack from the fort. We went forward readily enough, but then we were mostly warriors and knew we could not advance in front of Osric’s more nervous troops. I almost stepped into a scrap of the ground where, astonishingly, three leverets lay low and quivering. I stared at them and hoped that the men behind me would avoid the little beasts and knew they would not. I do not know why hares leave their young in the open, but they do and there they lay, three sleek leverets in a hollow of the downs, doubtless the first things to die in that day of wind and rain.

  “Shout at them!” Osric called. “Tell them they’re bastards! Call them sons of whores! Say they’re shit from the north! Shout at them!” He knew that was one way to get men moving. The Danes were screaming at us, calling us women, saying we had no courage, and no one in our ranks was shouting back, but Osric’s men started now and the wet sky was filled with the noise of weapons banging on shields and men calling insults.

  I had hung Serpent-Breath on my back. In the crush of battle a sword is easier to draw over the shoulder than from the hip, and the first stroke can then be a vicious downward hack. I carried Wasp-Sting in my right hand. Wasp-Sting was a saxe, a short sword, a stout blade for stabbing, and in the press of men heaving against an enemy shield wall a short sword can do more damage than a long blade. My shield, iron-rimmed, was held on my left forearm by two leather loops. The shield had a metal boss the size of a man’s head, a weapon in itself. Steapa, to my right, had a long sword, not as long as the one with which he had fought me at Cippanhamm, but still a hefty blade, though in his big hand it looked almost puny. Pyrlig carried a boar spear, short and stout and with a wide blade. He was saying the same phrase over and over. “Ein tad, yr hwn wyt yn y nefoedd, sancteiddier dy enw.” I learned later it was the prayer Jesus had taught his disciples. Steapa was muttering that the Danes were bastards. “Bastards,” he said, then, “God help me, bastards.” He kept saying it. Over and over. “Bastards, God help me, bastards.” My mouth was suddenly too dry to speak, and my stomach felt sour and my bowels loose.

  “Forward! Forward!” Osric called and we shuffled on, shields touching, and we could see the enemies’ faces now. We could see men’s unkempt beards and yellow-toothed snarls, see their scarred cheeks, pocked skin, and broken noses. My faceplate meant I could only see directly ahead. Sometimes it is better to fight without a faceplate, to see the attacks coming from the side, but in the clash of shield walls a faceplate is useful. The helmet was lined with leather. I was sweating. Arrows flicked from the Danish line. They did not have many bowmen and the arrows were scattered, but we raised shields to protect our faces. None came near me, but we were bent back from the line to watch the fort’s green walls that w
ere rimmed with men, thick with sword Danes, and I could see Ragnar’s eagle-wing banner there and I wondered what would happen if I found myself face-to-face with him. I could see the axes and spears and swords, the blades that sought our souls. Rain drummed on helmets and shields.

  The line paused again. Osric’s shield wall and Svein’s skjaldborg were only twenty paces apart now and men could see their immediate foes, could see the face of the man they must kill or the man who would kill them. Both sides were screaming, spitting anger and insults, and the spear-throwers had their first missiles hefted.

  “Keep close!” someone shouted.

  “Shields touching!”

  “God is with us!” Beocca called.

  “Forward!” Another two paces, more of a shuffle forward than stepping.

  “Bastards,” Steapa said. “God help me, bastards.”

  “Now!” Osric screamed. “Now! Forward and kill them! Forward and kill them! Go! Go! Go!” And the men of Wiltunscir went. They let out a great war shout, as much to hearten themselves as to frighten the enemy, and suddenly, after so long, the shield wall went forward fast, men screaming, and the spears came over the Danish line and our own spears were hurled back and then came the clash, the real battle thunder as shield wall met skjaldborg. The shock of the collision shook our whole line so that even my troops, who were not yet engaged, staggered. I heard the first screams, the clangor of blades, the thump of metal driving into shield wood, the grunting of men, and then I saw the Danes coming over the green ramparts, a flood of Danes charging us, intent on hacking into the flank of our attack, but that was why Alfred had put us on the left of Osric’s force.

  “Shields!” Leofric roared.

  I hoisted my shield, touched Steapa’s and Pyrlig’s shields, then crouched to receive the charge. Head down, body covered by wood, legs braced, Wasp-Sting ready. Behind us and to our right Osric’s men fought. I could smell blood and shit. Those are the smells of battle. Then I forgot Osric’s fight for the rain was in my face, and the Danes were coming at a run, no shield wall formed, just a frenzied charge intent on winning the battle in one furious assault. There were hundreds of them, and then our spear-throwers let their missiles go.

  “Now!” I shouted, and we stepped one pace forward to meet the charge and my left arm was crushed into my chest as a Dane hit me, shield against shield, and he slammed an ax down and I rammed Wasp-Sting forward, past his shield, into his flank, and his ax buried itself in Eadric’s shield that was above my head. I twisted Wasp-Sting’s blade, pulled her free, and stabbed again. I could smell ale on the Dane’s sour breath. His face was a grimace. He yanked his ax free. I stabbed again and twisted the saxe’s tip into mail or bone, I could not tell which. “Your mother was a piece of pig shit,” I told the Dane, and he screamed in rage and tried to bring the ax down onto my helmet, but I ducked and shoved forward, and Eadric protected me with his shield, and Wasp-Sting was red now, warm and sticky with blood, and I ripped her upward.

  Steapa was screaming incoherently, his sword slashing left and right, and the Danes avoided him. My enemy stumbled, went down onto his knees, and I hit him with the shield boss, breaking his nose and teeth, then shoved Wasp-Sting into his bloody mouth. Another man immediately took his place, but Pyrlig buried his boar spear in the newcomer’s belly.

  “Shields!” I shouted, and Steapa and Pyrlig instinctively lined their shields with mine. I had no idea what happened elsewhere on the hilltop. I only knew what happened within Wasp-Sting’s reach.

  “Back one! Back one!” Pyrlig called, and we stepped back one pace so that the next Danes, taking the place of the men we had wounded or killed, would trip over the fallen bodies of their comrades, and then we stepped forward as they came so that we met them when they were off balance. That was how to do it, the way of the warrior, and we in Alfred’s immediate force were his best soldiers. The Danes had charged us wildly, not bothering to lock shields in the belief that their fury alone would overwhelm us. They had been drawn, too, by the sight of Alfred’s banners and the knowledge that should those twin flags topple, then the battle was as good as won, but their assault hit our shield wall like an ocean wave striking a cliff, and it shattered there. It left men on the turf and blood on the grass, and now the Danes at last made a proper shield wall and came at us more steadily.

  I heard the enemy shields touching, saw the Danes’ wild eyes over the round rims, saw their grimaces as they gathered their strength. Then they shouted and came to kill us.

  “Now!” I shouted and we thrust forward to meet them.

  The shield walls crashed together. Eadric was at my back, pressing me forward, and the art of fighting now was to keep a space between my body and my shield with a strong left arm, and then to stab under the shield with Wasp-Sting. Eadric could fight over my shoulder with his sword. I had space to my right for Steapa was left-handed, which meant his shield was on his right arm, and he kept moving it away from me to give his long sword room to strike. That gap, no wider than a man’s foot is long, was an invitation to the Danes, but they were scared of Steapa and none tried to burst through the small space. His height alone made him distinctive, and his skull-tight face made him fearsome. He was bellowing like a calf being gelded, half shriek and half belligerence, inviting the Danes to come and be killed. They refused. They had learned the danger of Pyrlig, Steapa, and me, and they were cautious. Elsewhere along Alfred’s shield wall there were men dying and screaming, swords and axes clanging like bells, but in front of me the Danes hung back and merely jabbed with spears to keep us at bay. I shouted that they were cowards, but that did not goad them onto Wasp-Sting, and I glanced left and right and saw that all along Alfred’s line we were holding them. Our shield wall was strong. All that practice in Æthelingæg was proving itself, and for the Danes the fight grew ever more difficult for they were attacking us, and to reach us they had to step over the bodies of their own dead and wounded. A man does not see where he treads in battle for he is watching the enemy, and some Danes stumbled, and others slipped on the rain-slicked grass, and when they were off balance we struck hard, spears and swords like snake tongues, making more bodies to trip the enemy.

  We of Alfred’s household troops were good. We were steady. We were beating the Danes, but behind us, in Osric’s larger force, Wessex was dying.

  Because Osric’s shield wall unraveled.

  Wulfhere’s men did it. They did not break Osric’s shield wall by fighting it, but by trying to join it. Few of them wanted to fight for the Danes and, now that the battle was joined, they shouted at their countrymen that they were no enemy and wanted to change sides, and the shield wall opened to let them through, and Svein’s men went for the gaps like wildcats. One after the other those gaps widened as sword Danes burst through. They cut Wulfhere’s men down from behind; they prized open Osric’s ranks and spread death like a plague. Svein’s Vikings were warriors among farmers, hawks among pigeons, and all of Alfred’s right wing shattered. Arnulf saved the men of Suth Seaxa by leading them to the rear of our ranks, and they were safe enough there, but Osric’s fyrd was broken, harried, and driven away east and south.

  The rain had stopped and a cold damp wind scoured the edge of the downs now. Alfred’s men, reinforced by Arnulf’s four hundred and a dozen or so of Osric’s fugitives, stood alone as the Wiltunscir fyrd retreated. They were being driven away from us, and Svein and his horsemen were panicking them. The fyrd had been eight hundred strong, ranked firm, and now they were shattered into small groups that huddled together for protection and tried to fend off the galloping horsemen who thrust with their long spears. Bodies lay all across the turf. Some of Osric’s men were wounded and crawled south as if there might be safety where the women and horses were gathered around a mounded grave of the old folk, but the horsemen turned and speared them, and the unmounted Danes were making new shield walls to attack the fugitives. We could do nothing to help, for we were still fighting Guthrum’s men who had come from the fort and, though we were
winning that fight, we could not turn our backs on the enemy. So we thrust and hacked and pushed, and slowly they went backward, and then they realized that they were dying man by man, and I heard the Danish shouts to go back to the fort, and we let them go. They retreated from us, walking backward, and when they saw we would not follow, they turned and ran to the green walls. They left a tide line of corpses, sixty or seventy Danes on the turf, and we had lost no more than twenty men. I took a silver chain off one corpse, two arm rings from another, and a fine bone-handled knife with a knob of amber in its hilt from a third.

  “Back!” Alfred called.

  It was not till we retreated to where we had begun the fight that I realized the disaster on our right. We had been the center of Alfred’s army, but now we were its right wing, and what had been our strong right flank was splintered chaos. Many of Osric’s men had retreated to where the women and horses waited, and they made a shield wall there, which served to protect them, but most of the fyrd had fled farther east and was being carved into smaller and smaller groups.

  Svein at last hauled his men back from the pursuit, but by then nearly all our right wing was gone. Many of those men lived, but they had been driven from the field and would be reluctant to come back and take more punishment. Osric himself had survived, and he brought the two hundred men who had retreated to the women and horses back to Alfred, but that was all he had left. Svein formed his men again, facing us, and I could see him haranguing them. “They’re coming for us,” I said.

  “God will protect us,” Pyrlig said. He had blood on his face. A sword or ax had pierced his helmet and cut open his scalp so that blood was crusted thick on his left cheek.

  “Where was your shield?” I demanded of Æthelwold.

  “I’ve got it,” he said. He looked pale and frightened.

  “You’re supposed to protect Pyrlig’s head,” I snarled at him.