The Burning Land. Bernard Cornwell
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to Wintanceaster we would have stayed south of the river and taken the Roman road which led west, and I wanted the Danes to believe that was our intention. So, when we reached the river, we stopped just south of the ford. I wanted our pursuers to see us, I wanted them to think we were indecisive, I wanted them, eventually, to think we panicked.
The land was open, a stretch of river meadow where folk grazed their goats and sheep. To the east, where the Danes were coming, was woodland, to the west was the road Harald would expect us to take, and to the north were the crumbling stone piers of the bridge the Romans had made across the Wey. Fearnhamme and its low hill were on the ruined bridge’s farther side. I stared at the hill and could see no troops.
‘That’s where I wanted Aldhelm,’ I snarled, pointing to the hill.
‘Lord!’ Finan shouted in warning.
The pursuing Danes were gathering at the edge of a wood a half-mile eastwards. They could see us clearly, and they understood that we were too many to attack until more pursuers arrived, but those reinforcements were appearing by the minute. I looked across the river again and saw no one. The hill, with its ancient earthwork, was supposed to be my anvil strengthened with five hundred Mercian warriors, yet it looked deserted. Would my two hundred men be enough?
‘Lord!’ Finan called again. The Danes, who now outnumbered us by two to one, were spurring their horses towards us.
‘Through the ford!’ I shouted. I would spring the trap anyway, and so we kicked our tired horses through the deep ford which lay just upstream of the bridge and, once across, I called for my men to gallop to the hill’s top. I wanted the appearance of panic. I wanted it to look as though we had abandoned our ambitions to reach Wintanceaster and instead were taking refuge on the nearest hill.
We rode through Fearnhamme. It was a huddle of thatched huts around a stone church, though there was one fine-looking Roman building that had lost its tiled roof. There were no inhabitants, just a single cow bellowing pathetically because she needed to be milked. I assumed the folk had fled from the rumours of the approaching Danes. ‘I hope your damned men are on the hill!’ I shouted to Æthelflæd, who was staying close to me.
‘They’ll be there!’ she called back.
She sounded confident, but I was dubious. Aldhelm’s first duty, at least according to her husband, was to keep the Mercian army intact. Had he simply refused to advance on Fearnhamme? If he had, then I would be forced to fight off an army of Danes with just two hundred men, and those Danes were approaching fast. They smelt victory and they pounded their horses through the river and up into Fearnhamme’s street. I could hear their shouts, and then I reached the grassy bank that was the ancient earthwork and, as Smoka crested the bank’s summit, I saw that Æthelflæd was right. Aldhelm had come, and he had brought five hundred men. They were all there, but Aldhelm had kept them at the northern side of the old fortress so they would be hidden from an enemy approaching from the south.
And so, just as I had planned, I had seven hundred men on the hill, and another seven hundred, I hoped, approaching from Æscengum, and between those two forces were some two thousand rampaging, careless, over-confident Danes who believed they were about to achieve the old Viking dream of conquering Wessex.
‘Shield wall!’ I shouted at my men. ‘Shield wall!’
The Danes had to be checked for a moment, and the easiest way to do that was to show them a shield wall at the hill’s top. There was a moment of chaos as men slid from their saddles and ran to the bank’s top, but these were good men, well-trained, and their shields locked together fast. The Danes, coming from the houses onto the hill’s lower slope, saw the wall of iron-bound willow, they saw the spears, the swords and the axe blades, and they saw the steepness of the slope, and their wild charge stopped. Scores of men were crossing the river and still more were coming from the trees on the southern bank, so in a few moments they would have more than enough warriors to overwhelm my short shield wall, but for now they paused.
‘Banners!’ I said. We had brought our banners, my wolf’s-head flag and Wessex’s dragon, and I wanted them flown as an invitation to Harald’s men.
Aldhelm, tall and sallow, had come to greet me. He did not like me and his face showed that dislike, but it also showed astonishment at the number of Danes who converged on the ford.
‘Divide your men into two,’ I told him peremptorily, ‘and line them either side of my men. Rypere!’
‘Lord?’
‘Take a dozen men and tether those horses!’ Our abandoned horses were wandering the hilltop and I feared some would stray back over the bank.
‘How many Danes are there?’ Aldhelm asked.
‘Enough to give us a day’s good killing,’ I said, ‘now bring your men here.’
He bridled at my tone. He was a thin man, elegant in a superb long coat of mail that had bronze crescent moons sewn to the links. He had a cloak of blue linen, lined with red cloth, and he wore a chain of heavy gold looped twice about his neck. His boots and gloves were black leather, his sword belt was decorated with golden crosses, while his long black hair, scented and oiled, was held at the nape of his neck with a comb of ivory teeth clasped in a golden frame. ‘I have my orders,’ he said distantly.
‘Yes, to bring your men here. We have Danes to kill.’
He had always disliked me, ever since I had spoiled his handsome looks by breaking his jaw and his nose, though on that far day he had been armed and I had not. He could barely bring himself to look at me, instead he stared at the Danes gathering at the foot of the hill. ‘I am instructed,’ he said, ‘to preserve the Lord Æthelred’s forces.’
‘Your instructions have changed, Lord Aldhelm.’ A cheerful voice spoke from behind us, and Aldhelm turned to gaze in astonishment at Æthelflæd, who smiled from her high saddle.
‘My lady,’ he said, bowing, then glancing from her to me. ‘Is the Lord Æthelred here?’
‘My husband sent me to countermand his last orders,’ Æthelflæd said sweetly. ‘He is now so confident of victory that he requires you to stay here despite the numbers opposing us.’
Aldhelm began to reply, then assumed I did not know what his last orders from Æthelred had been. ‘Your husband sent you, my lady?’ he asked instead, plainly confused by Æthelflæd’s unexpected presence.
‘Why else would I be here?’ Æthelflaed asked beguilingly, ‘and if there were any real danger, my lord, would my husband have allowed me to come?’
‘No, my lady,’ Aldhelm said, but without any conviction.
‘So we are going to fight!’ Æthelflæd called those words loudly, speaking to the Mercian troops. She turned her grey mare so they could see her face and hear her more clearly. ‘We are going to kill Danes! And my husband sent me to witness your bravery, so do not disappoint me! Kill them all!’
They cheered her. She rode her horse along their front rank and they cheered her wildly. I had always thought Mercia a miserable place, defeated and sullen, kingless and downtrodden, but in that moment I saw how Æthelflæd, radiant in silver mail, was capable of lifting the Mercians to enthusiasm. They loved her. I knew they had small fondness for Æthelred, Alfred was a distant figure and, besides, King of Wessex, but Æthelflæd inspired them. She gave them pride.
The Danes were still gathering at the foot of the hill. There must have been three hundred men who had dismounted and who now made their own shield wall. They could still only see my two hundred men, but it was time to sweeten the bait. ‘Osferth,’ I shouted, ‘get back on your horse, then come and be kingly.’
‘Must I, lord?’
‘Yes, you must!’
We made Osferth stand his horse beneath the banners. He was cloaked, and he now wore a helmet that I draped with my own gold chain so that, from a distance, it looked like a crowned helmet. The Danes, seeing him, bellowed insults up the gentle slope. Osferth looked kingly