Then Finan shouted a warning and I saw horsemen ahead of us. I cursed, but kept riding. I drew Serpent-Breath. ‘Just charge them!’ I shouted. There could be nothing clever to do. We were trapped, and our only hope was to fight through the men ahead and I reckoned we outnumbered them. ‘Kill and keep going!’ I shouted at my men and spurred the horse so I could lead the charge. We were close to a road now, its muddy surface pitted by hooves and wheel ruts. There were cottages, small plots of vegetables, manure heaps and pig pens. ‘Straight down the road,’ I called as I reached the head of our small column, ‘kill them and keep going!’
‘They’re ours!’ Finan called urgently. ‘Lord, they’re ours! They’re ours!’
It was Merewalh who spurred to meet us. ‘That way, lord,’ he shouted at me, pointing down the road, and his men joined mine, hooves thudding on the turf either side of the Roman road’s broken stones. I looked over my left shoulder and saw Danes not far behind, but ahead of us was a low hill and at the top of the hill was a palisade. A fort. It was old, it was in ruins, but it was there and I swerved towards it, then glanced behind again and saw that a half-dozen Danes had far outstripped their companions.
‘Finan!’ I shouted, hauled on a rein and turned the stallion. A dozen of my men saw what I was doing and their horses also slewed around, throwing up gobbets of mud. I kicked the horse and slapped its rump with the flat of Serpent-Breath and to my astonishment the six Danes turned almost as fast. One of their horses slipped and fell in a great flail of hooves and the man sprawled onto the road, scrambled up, seized one of his companions’ stirrups and ran alongside the horse as they rode away. ‘Stop!’ I shouted, not to the Danes, but to my own men because the greater body of Danes was now in sight and coming fast. ‘Back!’ I called. ‘Back and up the hill!’
The hill, with its dilapidated fort, stood on a neck of land made by a great loop of the Sæfern. There was a village inside the loop with a church and a huddle of houses, though most of the land was scrub or marsh. Fugitives had come here, and their cattle, pigs, geese and sheep crowded about the small thatched houses. ‘Where are we?’ I called to Merewalh.
‘It’s called Scrobbesburh, lord,’ he called back.
It was made for defence. The neck was about three hundred paces wide and to defend it I had my one hundred and forty-three men, now joined by Merewalh’s, but a good number of the fugitives were men who served in the fyrd and they had axes, spears, hunting bows and even a few swords. Merewalh had already lined them across the neck. ‘How many men do you have?’ I asked him.
‘Three hundred, lord, besides my eighty-three warriors.’
The Danes were watching. There were perhaps a hundred and fifty of them now, and many more were coming from the north. ‘Put a hundred fyrd in the fort,’ I told Merewalh. The fort lay on the southern side of the neck, leaving the long northern stretch to be defended. Close to the river the land was marshy and I doubted any Dane could cross that land, so I made my shield wall between the fort’s low hill and the marsh’s edge. The sun was sinking. The Danes, I thought, should attack now, but though they arrived in ever greater numbers they did not try. Our deaths, it seemed, must wait till morning.
There was little sleep. I lit fires across the neck so that we could see if the Danes made an attack in the night, and we watched the Danish campfires spread to the north as more men arrived and more fires were lit until the sky was a glow of flame reflected from low clouds. I ordered Rypere to explore the village and find whatever food he could. There were at least eight hundred people trapped in Scrobbesburh and I had no idea how long we would be there, but I doubted we would find provisions for more than a few days, even after we had slaughtered the livestock. Finan had a dozen men dismantling the houses so their timbers could be used to make a barrier across the neck. ‘The sensible thing,’ Merewalh said to me sometime during that long nervous night, ‘would be to swim the horses across the river and keep going south.’
‘So why don’t you do that?’
He smiled and nodded towards some children sleeping on the ground. ‘And leave them to the Danes, lord?’
‘I don’t know how long we can hold here,’ I warned him.
‘Lord Æthelred will send an army,’ Merewalh answered.
‘You believe that?’
He half smiled. ‘Or maybe King Edward?’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but it will take two or three days for your messengers to reach Wessex and they’ll talk for another two or three days, and by then we’ll be dead.’ Merewalh flinched at that brutal truth, but unless help was already on the way we were doomed. The fort was a pathetic thing, a remnant from some ancient war against the Welsh who were forever harrying Mercia’s western lands. It had a ditch that would not have stopped a cripple, and the palisade was so rotten that it could be pushed over with one hand. The barrier we made was risible, just a straggling line of roof timbers that might trip a man, but would never stop a determined assault. I knew Merewalh was right, that our duty was to cross the Sæfern and keep riding south until we reached a place where an army could assemble, but to do that would be to abandon all the folk who had taken refuge in the river’s great loop.
And the Danes would probably be over the river already. There were fords to the west and they would want to surround Scrobbesburh to stop reinforcements reaching us. In truth, I thought, our best hope was that the Danes would want to keep their invasion moving and so, rather than lose men defeating us, they would ride on south. It was a thin and unconvincing hope, and in the late night, just before the grey of dawn stained the eastern sky, I felt the despair of the doomed. The three Norns had given me no choice except to plant my banner and die with Serpent-Breath in my hand. I thought of Stiorra, my daughter, and wished I could see her one more time, and then the grey light came, and with it a mist, and the clouds were low again and brought a small rain spitting from the west.
Through the mist I could see the Danish banners. At their centre was Haesten’s symbol, the skull on its long pole. The wind was too light to flaunt the flags and so I could not see whether they showed eagles, ravens or boars. I counted the banners. I could see at least thirty, and the mist hid some, and beneath those damp flags the Danes were making a shield wall.
We had two banners. Merewalh was showing Æthelred’s flag of a prancing white horse, which he had placed in the fort. It hung limp from its long pole. My banner of the wolf’s head was in the lower land to the north and I ordered Oswi, my servant, to cut down a sapling to make a second pole so that I could spread the flag and show the Danes who it was they faced. ‘That’s just an invitation, lord,’ Finan said. He stamped his feet in the wet ground. ‘Remember the angels said you’d die. They all want your skull nailed to their gable.’
‘I’m not going to hide from them,’ I said.
Finan made the sign of the cross and stared bleakly at the enemy ranks. ‘At least it will be quick, lord,’ he said.
The mist slowly lifted, though the small rain drizzled on. The Danes had formed a line between two copses a half-mile away. The line, thick with painted shields, filled the space between the trees and I had the impression the line continued on into the woods. That was strange, I thought, but then nothing about this sudden war had been predictable. ‘Seven hundred men?’ I guessed.
‘About that,’ Finan said, ‘plenty enough of them. And there’s more in the trees.’
‘Why?’
‘Maybe the bastards want us to attack them?’ Finan suggested. ‘Then close on us from either side?’
‘They know we won’t attack,’ I said. We were fewer in number and most of our men were not trained warriors. The Danes would know that, simply because the fyrd was rarely equipped with shields. They would see my shield wall at the centre of our line, but on either side, that shield wall was flanked by men carrying no protection. Easy meat, I thought, and I did not doubt the fyrd would break like a twig when the Danes advanced.
Except they stayed between the trees as the mist vanished
and the rain thickened. At times the Danes beat swords against shields to make the war-thunder, and I half heard men shouting, though they were too far away to hear the words. ‘Why don’t they come?’ Finan asked plaintively.
I could not answer because I had no idea what the Danes were doing. They had us at their mercy and they were standing instead of charging. They had advanced so slowly the previous day, now they were immobile, and this was their great invasion? I remember staring at them, wondering, and two swans flew overhead, wings beating the rain. A sign, but what did it mean? ‘If they kill us to the last man,’ I asked Finan, ‘how many of them will die?’
‘Two hundred?’ he guessed.
‘That’s why they’re not attacking,’ I suggested and Finan looked at me, puzzled. ‘They’re hiding men in the trees,’ I said, ‘not in hope we attack, but so we don’t know how many they are,’ I paused, sensing an idea taking shape in my mind, ‘or more accurately,’ I went on, ‘how few they are.’
‘Few?’ Finan asked.
‘This isn’t their great army,’ I said, suddenly sure of it. ‘This is a feint. Sigurd’s not there, nor is Cnut.’ I was guessing, but it was the only explanation I could find. Whoever commanded these Danes had fewer than a thousand men and did not want to lose two or three hundred in a fight that was not part of the main invasion. His job was to hold us here and draw other Saxon troops to the valley of the Sæfern, while the real invasion came. From where? From the sea?
‘I thought Offa told you…’ Finan began.
‘That bastard was crying,’ I said savagely, ‘he was weeping to convince me that he spoke the truth. He told me he was repaying my kindness, but I was never kind to him. I paid him, just like everyone else. And the Danes must have paid him more to tell me a pack of lies.’ Again I did not know whether that was true, but why were these Danes not coming to slaughter us?
Then there was movement in the centre of their line and the shields parted to let three horsemen through. One carried a leafy branch, a sign that they wanted to talk, while another wore a high, silver-crested helmet from which trailed a plume of raven feathers. I called to Merewalh, then walked with him and Finan past our feeble barrier and across the wet grassland towards the approaching Danes.
Haesten was the man in the raven-plumed helmet. It was a magnificent piece of workmanship, decorated by the Midgard serpent that twisted around the crown, its tail protecting the nape of his neck while the mouth formed the crest that held the raven plumes. The cheek-pieces were incised with dragons, between which Haesten’s face grinned at me. ‘The Lord Uhtred,’ he said happily.
‘You’re wearing your wife’s bonnet,’ I said.
‘It was a gift from the Jarl Cnut,’ he said, ‘who will be here by nightfall.’
‘I wondered why you were waiting,’ I said, ‘now I know. You need help.’
Haesten smiled as if he indulged my insults. The man with the green branch was a few paces behind him, while next to him was a warrior wearing another ornate helmet, this one with its cheek-pieces laced together so I could not see his face. His mail was expensive, his saddle and belt decorated with silver, and his arms thick with precious rings. His horse was nervous and he struck it hard on the neck, which only made it sidestep in the soft ground. Haesten leaned over and stroked the skittery stallion. ‘Jarl Cnut is bringing Ice-Spite,’ he said to me.
‘Ice-Spite?’
‘His sword,’ Haesten explained. ‘You and he, Lord Uhtred, will fight in the hazel branches. That’s my gift to him.’
Cnut Ranulfson was reputed to be the greatest swordsman among all the sword-Danes, a magician with a blade, a man who smiled as he killed and was proud of his reputation. I confess I felt a tremor of fear at Haesten’s words. A fight contained in a space marked by hazel branches was a formal fight, and always to the death. It would be a demonstration of skill by Cnut. ‘It will be a pleasure killing him,’ I said.
‘But didn’t your angels say you were to die?’ Haesten asked, amused.
‘My angels?’
‘A clever idea,’ Haesten said, ‘young Sigurd here brought them back to us. Two such pretty girls! He enjoyed them! So did most of our men.’
So the horseman with Haesten was Sigurd’s son, the puppy who had wanted to fight me at Ceaster, and the raid on Turcandene had been his doing, his initiation as a leader, though I did not doubt his father had sent older and wiser men to make sure his son made no fatal errors. I remembered the flies around Ludda’s body and the crudely drawn raven on the Roman plaster. ‘When you die, puppy,’ I told him, ‘I’ll make sure you have no sword in your hand. I’ll send you to Hel’s rotten flesh instead. See how you enjoy that, you dribble of bat shit.’
Sigurd Sigurdson drew his sword, he drew it very slowly as if to demonstrate that he was not issuing an immediate challenge. ‘She is called Fire-Dragon,’ he said, holding the blade upright.
‘A puppy’s blade,’ I scoffed.
‘I want you to know the name of the sword that will kill you,’ he said, then wrenched his stallion’s head around as if to drive the beast into me, but the horse half reared and young Sigurd had to cling to the mane to stay in the saddle. Haesten again leaned over and took hold of the stallion’s bridle.
‘Put the sword away, lord,’ he told the boy, then smiled at me. ‘You have till evening to surrender,’ he said, ‘and if you do not surrender,’ his voice was harder now, riding over the comment I had been about to make, ‘then every one of you will die. But if you yield, Lord Uhtred, we shall spare your men. Till evening!’ He turned his horse, dragging young Sigurd with him. ‘Till evening!’ he called again as he rode away.
This was the war that passeth understanding, I thought. Why wait? Unless Haesten so feared losing a quarter or a third of his force. But if this truly was the vanguard of a great Danish army then it had no business loitering at Scrobbesburh. They should be pushing fast and hard into the soft underbelly of Saxon Mercia, then crossing the Temes to ravage Wessex. Every day that the Danes waited now was a day to assemble the fyrd and bring house-warriors from the Saxon shires, unless my suspicion was right and this Danish thrust was intended to deceive because the real attack was taking place somewhere else.
There were more Danes nearby. Late in the morning, as the rain at last ended and a watery sun showed weak through the clouds, we saw more smoke in the eastern sky. The smoke was thin at first, but thickened fast, and within an hour two more plumes appeared. So the Danes were harrying the nearby villages, and another band had crossed the river and were patrolling the great loop that trapped us. Osferth had found two boats, just skins stretched over willow frames, and had wanted to make a big raft like the one we had found to cross the Use, but the presence of the Danish horsemen ended that idea. I ordered my men to stiffen the barricade across the neck, raising it with beams and rafters to protect the men of the fyrd and channel any attack into my shield wall. I had small hope of surviving a determined assault, but men must be kept busy and so they pulled down six of the cottages and carried the timbers to the neck where the barrier slowly became more formidable. A priest who had taken refuge in Scrobbesburh walked along my defensive line giving men small scraps of bread. They knelt before him, he placed the crumbs on their lips, then added a pinch of soil. ‘Why’s he doing that?’ I asked Osferth.
‘We come from the earth, lord, and that’s where we’ll go.’
‘We’ll go nowhere unless Haesten attacks,’ I said.
‘He fears us?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s a trap,’ I said, and there had been so many traps, from the moment the men tried to kill me on Saint Alnoth’s day and the summons to seal a treaty with Eohric, and my burning of Sigurd’s ships, and the creation of the angels, but now I suspected the Danes had sprung the largest trap and it had worked because in the afternoon there was a sudden flurry of panic on the river’s far bank as the patrolling Danes spurred their horses westwards. Something had frightened them, and a few moments later a much larger band of horsemen
appeared and these men were flaunting two banners, one with a cross and the other a dragon. They were West Saxons. Haesten was drawing men to Scrobbesburh, and I was convinced we were all needed in some place far away where the real Danish attack must be unfolding.
Steapa led the newcomers. He dismounted and clambered down the river bank to a small shelf of mud where he cupped his hands. ‘Where can we cross?’
‘To the west,’ I shouted back, ‘how many are you?’
‘Two hundred and twenty!’
‘We’ve got seven hundred Danes here,’ I called, ‘but I don’t think this is their great army!’
‘More of our people are coming!’ he called, ignoring my last words and I watched him clamber back up the bank.
He went west, vanishing in the trees as he sought a ford or bridge. I went back to the neck and saw the Danes still sitting in their line. They had to be bored, but they made no effort to provoke us, even when evening came and went. Haesten must have known I would not meekly surrender, yet he made no move to enforce his morning threat. We watched the Danish campfires spring up again, we watched westwards for the arrival of Steapa, we watched and we waited. Night fell.
And in the dawn the Danes were gone.
Æthelflaed arrived an hour after the sun rose, bringing almost one hundred and fifty warriors. Like Steapa she had to ride west to find a ford and it was midday before we were all together. ‘I thought you were going south,’ I greeted her.
‘Someone has to fight them,’ she retorted.
‘Except they’ve gone,’ I said. The land to the north of the neck was still dotted with smouldering campfires, but there were no Danes, only hoof tracks going eastwards. We now had an army, but no one to fight. ‘Haesten never meant to fight me,’ I said, ‘he just wanted to draw men here.’
Steapa looked at me with a puzzled expression, but Æthelflaed understood what I was saying. ‘So where are they?’
‘We’re in the west,’ I said, ‘so they must be in the east.’