The Burning Land. Bernard Cornwell
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not surrounded by priests, but I decided Harald would never notice the lack. I was amused to see Æthelflæd, obviously curious about her half-brother, push her horse next to his stallion.
I turned to look back to the south where still more Danes were crossing the river and, so long as I live, I will never forget that landscape. All the country beyond the river was covered with Danish horsemen, their stallions’ hooves kicking up dust as the riders spurred towards the ford, all eager to be present at the destruction of Alfred and his kingdom. So many men wanted to cross the river that they were forced to wait in a great milling herd at the ford’s farther side.
Aldhelm was ordering his men forward. He probably did it unwillingly, but Æthelflæd had inspired them and he was caught between her disdain and their enthusiasm. The Danes at the foot of the hill saw my short line lengthen, they saw more shields and more blades, more banners. They would still outnumber us, but now they would need half their army to make an assault on the hill. A man in a black cloak and carrying a red-hafted war axe, was marshalling Harald’s men, thrusting them into line. I guessed there were five hundred men in the enemy shield wall now, and more were coming every moment. Some of the Danes had stayed on horseback, and I supposed they planned to ride about our rear to make an attack when the shield walls met. The enemy line was only a couple of hundred paces away, close enough for me to see the ravens and axes and eagles and serpents painted on their iron-bossed shields. Some began clashing their weapons against those shields, making the thunder of war. Others bellowed that we were milksop children, or goat-begotten bastards.
‘Noisy, aren’t they?’ Finan remarked beside me. I just smiled. He raised his drawn sword to his helmet-framed face and kissed the blade. ‘Remember that Frisian girl we found in the marshes? She was noisy.’ It is strange what men think of before battle. The Frisian girl had escaped a Danish slaver and had been terrified. I wondered what had happened to her.
Aldhelm was nervous, so nervous that he overcame his hatred of me and stood close. ‘What if Alfred doesn’t come?’ he asked.
‘Then we each have to kill two Danes before the rest lose heart,’ I said with false confidence. If Alfred’s seven hundred men did not come then we would be surrounded, cut down and slaughtered.
Only about half the Danes had crossed the river, such was the congestion at the narrow ford, and still more horsemen were streaming from the east to join the crowd waiting to cross the Wey. Fearnhamme was filled with men pulling down thatch in search of treasure. The unmilked cow lay dead in the street. ‘What,’ Aldhelm began, then hesitated. ‘What if Alfred’s forces come late?’
‘Then all the Danes will be across the river,’ I said.
‘And attacking us,’ Finan said.
I knew Aldhelm was thinking of retreat. Behind us, to the north, were higher hills that offered greater protection, or perhaps, if we retreated fast enough, we could cross the Temes before the Danes caught and destroyed us. For unless Alfred’s men came we would surely die, and at that moment I felt the death-serpent slither cold about my heart that was thumping like a war drum. Skade’s curse, I thought, and I suddenly understood the magnitude of the risk I was running. I had assumed the Danes would do exactly what I wanted, and that the West Saxon army would appear at just the right moment, but instead we were stranded on a low hill and our enemy was getting ever stronger. There was still a great crowd on the river’s far bank, but in less than an hour the whole of Harald’s army would be across the river, and I felt the imminence of disaster and the fear of utter defeat. I remembered Harald’s threat, that he would blind me, geld me and then lead me about on a rope’s end. I touched the hammer and stroked Serpent-Breath’s hilt.
‘If the West Saxon troops don’t arrive,’ Aldhelm began, his voice grim with purpose.
‘God be praised,’ Æthelflæd interrupted from behind us.
Because there was a glint of sun-reflecting steel from the far distant trees.
And more horsemen appeared. Hundreds of horsemen.
The army of Wessex had come.
And the Danes were trapped.
Poets exaggerate. They live by words and my household bards fear I will stop throwing them silver if they do not exaggerate. I remember skirmishes where a dozen men might have died, but in the poet’s telling the slain are counted in the thousands. I am forever feeding the ravens in their endless recitations, but no poet could exaggerate the slaughter that occurred that Thor’s Day on the banks of the River Wey.
It was a swift slaughter too. Most battles take time to start as the two sides summon their courage, hurl insults and watch to see what the enemy will do, but Steapa, leading Alfred’s seven hundred men, saw the confusion on the river’s southern bank and, just as soon as he had sufficient men in hand, charged on horseback. Æthelred, Steapa told me later, had wanted to wait till all seven hundred had gathered, but Steapa ignored the advice. He began with three hundred men and allowed the others to catch up as they emerged from the trees into the open land.
The three hundred attacked the enemy’s rear where, as might be expected, the least enthusiastic of Harald’s army were waiting to cross the river. They were the laggards, the servants and boys, some women and children, and almost all of them were cumbered with pillage. None was ready to fight; there was no shield wall, some did not even possess shields. The Danes most eager for a battle had already crossed the river and were forming to attack the hill, and it took them some moments to understand that a vicious slaughter had begun on the river’s farther bank.
‘It was like killing piglets,’ Steapa told me later. ‘A lot of squealing and blood.’
The horsemen slammed into the Danes. Steapa led Alfred’s own household troops, the remainder of my men, and battle-hardened warriors from Wiltunscir and Sumorsæte. They were eager for a fight, well mounted, armed with the best weapons, and their attack caused chaos. The Danes, unable to form a shield wall, tried to run, except the only safety lay across the ford and that was blocked by the men waiting to cross, and so the panicked enemy clawed at their own men, stopping any chance of a shield wall forming, and Steapa’s men, huge on their horses, hacked and slashed and stabbed their way into the crowd. More Saxons came from the woods to join the fight. Horses were fetlock deep in blood, and still the swords and axes crushed and cut. Alfred had endured the ride despite the pain the saddle caused him, and he watched from the edge of the trees while the priests and monks sang praises to their god for the slaughter of the heathen that was reddening the water-meadows on the Wey’s southern bank.
Edward fought with Steapa. He was a slight young man, but Steapa was full of praise afterwards. ‘He has courage,’ he told me.
‘Does he have sword craft?’
‘He has a quick wrist,’ Steapa said approvingly.
Æthelred understood before Steapa that eventually the horsemen must be stopped by the sheer crush of bodies, and he persuaded Ealdorman Æthelnoth of Sumorsæte to dismount a hundred of his men and form a shield wall. That wall advanced steadily and, as horses were wounded or killed, more Saxons joined that wall, which went forward like a row of harvesters wielding sickles. Hundreds of Danes died. On that southern bank, under the high sun, there was a massacre, and the enemy never once managed to organise themselves and so fight back. They died or else they crossed the river or else they were taken captive.
Yet perhaps half of Harald’s army had crossed the ford, and those men were ready for a fight and, even as the slaughter began behind them, they came to kill us. Harald himself had arrived, a servant bringing a packhorse behind, and Harald came a few steps forward of his swelling shield wall to make certain we saw the ritual with which he scared his enemies. He faced us, huge in cloak and mail, then spread his arms as though crucified, and in his right hand was a massive battle axe with which, after bellowing that we would all be fed to the slime worms of death, he killed the horse. He did it with one stroke of the axe and, while the beast was still twitching in its death throes, he slit open its belly and plunged his unhelmeted head deep into the bloody entrails. My men watched in silence. Harald, ignoring the spasms of the hooves, held his head deep in the horse’s belly, then stood