The Burning Land

  The stallion collapsed, twisting and kicking, still screaming, and my right leg was trapped beneath him. Another horse stepped a hair’s breadth from my face. I covered my body with the shield and tried to drag myself free. A blade crashed into the shield. A horse stepped on Serpent- Breath and I almost lost the blade. My world was a thunder of hooves, screams, and confusion. I tried to pull free again then something, blade or hoof, struck the back of my helmet and the confused world turned black. I was dazed, and in the darkness I heard someone making pathetic moaning noises. It was me. A man was trying to drag my helmet off and, when he realized I was alive he put a knife at my mouth and I remember thinking of Gisela and desperately checking that Serpent- Breath’s hilt was in my hand, and it was not, and I screamed, knowing I was denied the joys of Valhalla, and then my vision turned red. There was warmth on my face and red before my eyes, and I recovered my senses to realize that the man who would have killed me was dying himself and his blood was pouring onto my face, then Cerdic heaved the dying man away and pulled me from beneath the dead horse. “Here!” Sihtric thrust Serpent- Breath into my hand. Both he and Cerdic were dismounted. A Dane shouted victory and lunged with a thick- hafted spear from his saddle and Cerdic deflected the thrust with a blade- scored shield. I stabbed the horseman’s thigh with Serpent- Breath, but the blow had no force and his spear sliced at me, thumping hard into my shield. The Danes were scenting triumph and they pressed forward and we felt their blows chopping on the linden wood. “Kill their horses,” I shouted, though it came out as a croak, and some of Weohstan’s men arrived on our right and drove their horses at the Danes and I saw a Saxon twist in his saddle, his spear hand hanging from his bloody arm by a scrap of bone or tendon.

  “Jesus! Jesus!” a man shouted and it was Father Pyrlig who joined us. The Welsh priest was on foot, belly stretching his mail, a spear like a small tree trunk in his hands. He carried no shield and so used the spear two- handed, driving the blade at the enemy’s horses to keep them at a distance.

  “Thank you,” I said to Cerdic and Sihtric.

  “We should go back, lord,” Cerdic said.

  “Where’s Finan?”

  “Back!” Cerdic shouted, and he unceremoniously grabbed my left shoulder and pulled me away from the Danes.

  Finan was fighting behind us, hammering an ax at the Danes on the southern part of the crest where he was supported by most of my men and by AElfwold’s Mercians. “I need a horse,” I snarled.

  “This is a muddle,” Pyrlig said, and I almost laughed because his tone and his words were so mild. It was more than a muddle, it was a disaster. I had led my men onto the hill’s edge and the Danes had recovered from the attack and now they surrounded us. There were Danes to the east, to the north and to the south, and they were trying to drive us over the crest and pursue us down the steep slope where our bodies would be a smear of blood beneath the rising sun. At least a hundred of my Saxons were dismounted now and we formed a circle inside a desperate shield wall. Too many were dead, some killed by their own side for, in the maelstrom, it was hard to know friend from foe. Many Saxons had a cross on their shield, but not all. There were plenty of Danish corpses too, but their living outnumbered us. They had my small shield wall surrounded, while their horsemen were harrying the still mounted Saxons back into the woods.

  AElfwold had lost his stallion and the Mercian forced his way to my side. “You bastard,” he said, “you treacherous bastard.” He must have thought I had deliberately led his men into a trap, but it was only my stupid carelessness, not treachery, that had led to this disaster. AElfwold raised his shield as the Danes came and the blows hammered down. I thrust Serpent- Breath into a horse’s chest, twisted and thrust again, and Pyrlig half hoisted a man from the saddle with a tremendous lunge of his heavy spear. But AElfwold was down, his helmet ripped open, his blood and brains spilling onto his face, but he retained enough consciousness to look at me reproachfully before he started to quiver and spasm and I had to look away to ram the sword at another Dane whose horse tripped on a corpse, and then the enemy pulled back from our shield wall to ready themselves for another attack.

  “Jesu, Jesu,” AElfwold said, and then the breath stuttered in his throat and he said no more. Our shield wall was shrunken, our shields splintered and bloodied. The Danes mocked us, snarled at us, and promised us agonizing deaths. Men moved closer together and I should have encouraged them, but I did not know what to say because this was my fault, my recklessness. I had attacked without first discovering the enemy’s strength. My death, I thought, would be just, but I would go to the afterlife knowing I had taken too many good men with me.

  So the only course was to die well, and I pushed past Sihtric’s shield and went toward the enemy. A man accepted the challenge and rode at me. I could not see his face because the rising sun was behind him, blinding me, but I slashed Serpent- Breath across his stallion’s mouth and thrust my shield up to take his sword’s blow. The horse reared, I thrust at its belly and missed as another man swung an ax from my left, and I stepped away and my foot slid in a slippery tangle of guts spilled from a corpse eviscerated by an ax. I went onto one knee, but again my men came to rescue me. The stallion thumped down and I stood, lunging at the rider, sword striking him somewhere, but I was sun- dazzled and could not see where. To my right a stallion, a spear impaled in its chest, was coughing blood. I was shouting, though I do not remember what I shouted, and from my left came a new charge of horsemen. The newcomers were screaming war cries.

  Die well. Die well. What else can a man do? His enemies must say of him that he died like a man. I lunged again, driving the horse away and a sword smacked into the top of my shield, splitting the iron rim and driving a splinter of wood into my eye. I rammed the blade again and felt Serpent- Breath scrape on bone as she tore the rider’s thigh. He hacked down. I blinked the splinter away as his sword cracked on my helmet, glanced off and thumped my shoulder. The mail stopped the blow that had been suddenly weakened because Father Pyrlig had speared the rider in his side. The Welshman dragged me back toward the shield wall. “God be thanked!” he was saying over and over.

  The newcomers were Saxons. They rode under the banner of Wessex’s dragon, and at their head was Steapa, and he was worth ten other men, and they had come from the north and were slicing into the Danes.

  “A horse!” I shouted, and someone brought me a stallion. Pyrlig held the nervous beast as I mounted. I pushed my boots into the unfamiliar stirrups and shouted at my dismounted men to find themselves horses. There were too many dead beasts, but enough riderless stallions still lived white- eyed amidst the slaughter.

  A huge crash announced the collapse of the burning hall’s roof. The flaming beams fell one by one, each spewing a new thrust of sparks into the smoke- darkened sky. I spurred to the ancient votive stone, leaned from the saddle, and touched the stone’s top as I said a prayer to Thor. A spear had lodged itself through the hole in the pillar and I sheathed Serpent- Breath and took the long- hafted weapon. The blade was bloodied. The spearman, a Dane, lay dead beside the stone. A horse had stepped on his face, mangling it and leaving an eyeball dangling over his helmet’s edge. I gripped the ash shaft and spurred the horse toward the remnants of the fight. Steapa and his men had utterly surprised the Danes who were turn ing to flee back to the safety of the fort, and Steapa was following. I tried to catch him, but he vanished among the trees. All the Saxons were in pursuit now, the thick woods filled with horses and fugitives. Finan somehow discovered me and rode alongside, ducking beneath branches. A wounded and dismounted Dane flinched from us, then fell to his knees, but we ignored him.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Finan shouted to me, “but I thought we were doomed!”

  “Me too!”

  “How did you know Steapa’s men were coming?” he asked, then spurred after a fleeing Dane who kicked his horse frantically.

  “I didn’t!” I shouted, though Finan was too intent on his prey to hear me. I caught up and aimed the spear at th
e small of the Dane’s back. Leaf mold flew up into my face from the hooves of the enemy’s horse, then I lunged and Finan sliced back with his sword and the Dane dropped from the saddle as we galloped past.

  “AElfwold’s dead!” Finan called.

  “I saw it! He thought I betrayed him!”

  “He kept his brains in his arse then. Where have the bastards gone?”

  The Danes were riding for the fort and our pursuit had taken us slightly eastward. I remember the green sunlight bright in the leaves, remember thumping past a badger’s earth, remember the sound of all those hooves in the greenwood, the relief of living after what seemed certain death, and then we were at the edge of the trees.

  And still there was chaos.

  In front of us was a great stretch of grass where sheep and goats normally grazed. The land sloped down to a saddle, then rose more steeply to the gate of the old fort high on its domed hill. The Danes were galloping for the fort, eager to gain the protection of its ditch and ramparts, but Steapa’s men were among the fugitives, slashing and hacking from their saddles.

  “Come on!” Finan shouted at me, and kicked back with his spurs.

  He saw the opportunity before I did. My immediate thought was to stop him and to stop Steapa’s undisciplined charge, but then the recklessness took hold again. I shouted some wordless challenge and spurred after Finan.

  I had lost all sense of time. I could not tell how long that fight on the hill’s edge had taken, but the sun was risen now and its light shimmered off the Temes and lit the high grass saddle a glowing green. The stream of horsemen stretched from the woods to the fort. My laboring horse was breathing hard, sweat white on its flanks, but I kicked it on as we converged on that turf- churning horde of pursuers and pursued. And what Finan had understood before me was that the Danes might close the gate too late. He understood that they might be in such panic that they did not even think to close the gate. So long as their own men pounded across the ditch’s causeway and beneath the wooden arch they would leave the gate open, but Steapa’s men were so mixed with the Danes that some might get through, and if enough of us could get inside that wall then we could take the fort.

  Later, much later, when the poets told of that day’s fight, they said Steapa and I attacked Thunresleam’s old hall together, and that we drove the Danes in panic and that we assaulted the fort while the enemy was still reeling from that defeat. They got the story wrong, of course, but then, they were poets, not warriors. The truth was that Steapa rescued me from certain defeat, and neither of us assaulted the fort because we did not need to. The first of Steapa’s men were allowed through the gate and it was only when they were inside that the Danes realized the enemy had entered with their own men. Another desperate fight started. Steapa ordered his men to dismount and they made a shield wall at the gate, a wall that faced both into the fort and out toward the sunlit slope, and the Danes trapped outside could not break that shield wall and fled instead. They spurred down the steep westward- facing slope, riding desperately toward the new fort. And we simply dismounted and walked through the gate to join Steapa’s spreading shield wall inside the old fort.

  I saw Skade then. I never discovered whether she had led the horsemen to Thunresleam’s burning hall, but she commanded the men in the old fort and she was screaming at them to attack us. But we were now in overwhelming numbers. There were at least four hundred Saxons in Steapa’s wall, and more kept arriving on horseback. The proud banner of Wessex flew above us, the embroidered dragon spattered with blood, and Skade screamed at us. She was on horseback, in mail, bareheaded, her long black hair lifting in the wind as she brandished a sword. She kicked her horse toward the shield wall, but had enough sense to check as the round shields lifted in unison and the long spears reached toward her.

  Weohstan came with more horsemen, and he led them about the right flank of Steapa’s wall and ordered a charge. Steapa shouted at the wall to advance and we marched up the slight slope toward the great halls that crowned the hill. Weohstan’s men swept ahead of us and the Danes, understanding their fate, fled.

  And so we took the old fort. The enemy fled downhill, a man dragging Skade’s horse by its bridle. She sat twisted in her saddle, staring at us. We did not follow. We were weary, bloodied, bruised, wounded, and amazed. Besides, there was a shield wall of Danes guarding the bridge which led to the new fort. Not all the fugitives were going to that bridge, some were swimming their horses across the deep narrow creek to reach Caninga.

  The dragon was flown from the old fort’s walls and, next to it, AElfwold’s cross. The flags announced a victory, but that victory would mean nothing unless we could capture the new fort, which, for the first time, I saw clearly.

  And cursed.

  Saxon 5 - The Burning Land

  FIVE

  AEthelflaed joined me on the rampart. She said nothing at first, but, careless of who watched, just put her arms round me. I could feel her body trembling. My battered shield was still looped on my left arm and it covered her when I drew her close. “I thought you were dead,” she said after a while.

  “Who told you that?”

  “No one,” she said. “I was watching.”

  “Watching? Where?”

  “From the edge of the encampment,” she said calmly.

  “Are you mad?” I asked angrily, and pushed her away so I could look down at her. “You wanted the Danes to capture you?”

  “There’s blood all over your face,” she said, touching my cheek with a finger. “It’s dried. Was it bad?”

  “Yes, but that will be far worse.” I nodded down at the new fort.

  The fort was built at the foot of the hill, where the steep grassy drop leveled into a gentler slope that ended as a low ridge snaking into the marsh beside the creek. It was near low tide and I could see the intricate mudbanks where the creek melded into marsh, and I saw how Haesten had built his new fort on that last tongue of firmer ground, but then had dug a broad moat to protect the eastern wall from a frontal assault. He had made the fort into an island, three times as long as it was wide. The southern rampart stretched along the creek and was protected by the deep- water channel, the western and northern walls looked over wide flooded inlets and endless tide- haunted marshes, while the short eastern palisade, which held the main gate and was facing us, was protected by its newly dug moat. A wooden bridge crossed the moat, but now that the last fugitives were safely across, men were dismantling it and carrying the roadway’s wide planks back into the fort. Some of the men were working in the water, which, at the center of the moat, only came to their waists. So the moat could be crossed at low tide, though that was small consolation because the difference between high and low tide here was at least twice the height of a well- grown man, which meant that when the moat was fordable the farther bank would be a steep slope of glutinous and slick mud.

  The interior of the fort was crammed with buildings, some roofed with planks and others with sailcloth, but no thatch, meaning Haesten was guarding against the possibility of fire- arrows setting his stronghold alight. I guessed many of the beams and posts to make the houses had been taken from the village which had been dismantled and burned, its ruins lying to the east of the new fort where the hill’s lower slope was widest. There were scores of Danes inside the long fort, but even more were evidently living aboard their ships. Over two hundred of the high- prowed war vessels were beached high on the creek’s farther bank. Most had been dismasted and some had awnings stretched across their crutch- supported masts. Washed clothes were drying on the awnings, while in the hulls’ shadows children played in the mud or else gaped up at us. I also counted twenty- three moored ships, all of them with their masts in place and with sails furled on their yards. Every one of those moored ships had men aboard, suggesting they could be made ready for sea at a moment’s notice. I had been thinking of bringing vessels downstream from Lundene, but the evident preparedness of the moored ships suggested that any small fleet we deployed would quickly b
e overwhelmed.

  Steapa shambled toward us. His face, so fearsome because of the taut skin and feral eyes, looked suddenly nervous as he knelt to AEthelflaed and pulled off his helmet, leaving his hair tangled. “My lady,” he said, blinking.

  “Get up, Steapa,” she said.

  This was a man who would take on a dozen Danes and whose sword was feared in three kingdoms, but he was in awe of AEthelflaed. She was royalty and he was a slave’s son. “The Lady AEthelflaed,” I said imperiously, “wants you to go down the hill, cross the moat, beat down the gates, and bring the Danes out.”

  For a moment he believed me. He looked alarmed, then he frowned at me, but did not know what to say.