‘So what happens now?’ Leofric asked me.
‘You tell me.’
‘A thousand men? We can’t fight the Danes with a thousand men.’
I said nothing. Far off, on the northern horizon, there were dark clouds.
‘We can’t even stay here!’ Leofric said, ‘so where do we go?’
‘Back to the swamp?’ Father Pyrlig suggested.
‘The Danes will bring more ships,’ I said, ‘and eventually they’ll capture the swamp. If they send a hundred ships up the rivers then the swamp is theirs.’
‘Go to Defnascir,’ Steapa growled.
And the same thing would happen there, I thought. We would be safe for a time in Defnascir’s tangle of hills and woods, but the Danes would come and there would be a succession of little fights and bit by bit Alfred would be bled to death. And once the Danes across the sea knew that Alfred was pinned into a corner of Wessex they would bring more ships to take the good land that he could not hold. And that, I thought, was why he had been right to try and end the war in one blow, because he dared not let Wessex’s weakness become known.
Except we were weak. We were a thousand men. We were pathetic. We were dreams fallen to earth, and suddenly I began to laugh. ‘What is it?’ Leofric asked.
‘I was thinking that Alfred insisted I learn to read,’ I said, ‘and for what?’
He smiled, remembering. It was one of Alfred’s rules that every man who commanded sizeable bodies of troops must be able to read, though it was a rule he had ignored when he made Leofric commander of his bodyguard. It seemed funny at that moment. All that effort so I could read his orders and he had never sent me one. Not one. ‘Reading is useful,’ Pyrlig said.
‘What for?’
He thought about it. The wind gusted, flapping his hair and beard. ‘You can read all those good stories in the gospel-book,’ he suggested brightly, ‘and the saints’ lives! How about those, eh? They’re full of lovely things, they are. There was Saint Donwen! Beautiful woman she was, and she gave her lover a drink that turned him into ice.’
‘Why did she do that?’ Leofric asked.
‘Didn’t want to marry him, see?’ Pyrlig said, trying to cheer us up, but no one wanted to hear more about the frigid Saint Donwen so he turned and stared northwards. ‘That’s where they’ll come from, is it?’ he asked.
‘Probably,’ I said, and then I saw them, or thought I did. There was a movement on the far hills, something stirring in the cloud shadow and I wished Iseult was on the hilltop for she had remarkable eyesight, but she would have needed a horse to climb to that summit and there were no horses to spare for women. The Danes had thousands of horses, all the beasts they had captured from Alfred at Cippanhamm, and all the animals they had stolen across Wessex, and now I was watching a group of horsemen on that far hill. Scouts, probably, and they would have seen us. Then they were gone. It had been a glimpse, no more, and so far away that I could not be sure of what I had seen. ‘Or perhaps they won’t come at all,’ I went on, ‘perhaps they’ll march around us. Capture Wintanceaster and everywhere else.’
‘The bastards will come,’ Leofric said grimly, and I thought he was probably right. The Danes would know we were here, they would want to destroy us, and after that all would be easy for them.
Pyrlig turned his horse as if to ride back down to the valley, then paused. ‘So it’s hopeless, is it?’ he asked.
‘They’ll outnumber us four or five to one,’ I said.
‘Then we must fight harder!’
I smiled. ‘Every Dane who comes to Britain, father,’ I explained, ‘is a warrior. The farmers stay in Denmark, but the wild men come here. And us? We’re nearly all farmers and it takes three or four farmers to beat down a warrior.’
‘You’re a warrior,’ he said, ‘all of you! You’re warriors! You all know how to fight! You can inspire men, and lead men, and kill your enemies. And God is on your side. With God on your side, who can beat you, eh? You want a sign?’
‘Give me a sign,’ I said.
‘Then look,’ he said, and pointed down to the Wilig, and I turned my horse and there, in the afternoon sun, was the miracle we had wanted. Men were coming. Men in their hundreds. Men from the east and men from the south, men streaming down from the hills, men of the West Saxon fyrd, coming at their king’s command to save their country.
‘Now it’s only two farmers to one warrior!’ Pyrlig said cheerfully.
‘Up to our arseholes,’ Leofric said.
But we were not alone any longer. The fyrd was gathering.
The site of the Battle of Ethandun, 878
PART THREE
The Fyrd
Twelve
Most men came in large groups, led by their thegns, while others arrived in small bands, but together they swelled into an army. Arnulf, Ealdorman of Suth Seaxa, brought close to four hundred men and apologised that it could not be more, but there were Danish ships off his coast and he had been forced to leave some of his fyrd to guard the shore. The men of Wiltunscir had been summoned by Wulfhere to join Guthrum’s army, but the reeve, a grim man named Osric, had scoured the southern part of the shire and over eight hundred men had ignored their ealdorman’s summons and came to Alfred instead. More arrived from the distant parts of Sumorsæte to join Wiglaf’s fyrd that now numbered a thousand men, while half that many came from Hamptonscir, including Burgweard’s garrison in which were Eadric and Cenwulf, crewmen from the Heahengel, and both embraced me, and with them was Father Willibald, eager and nervous. Almost every man came on foot, weary and hungry, with their boots falling apart, but they had swords and axes and spears and shields, and by mid afternoon there were close to three thousand men in the Wilig valley and more were still coming as I rode towards the distant hill where I thought I had seen the Danish scouts.
Alfred sent me and, at the last moment, Father Pyrlig had offered to accompany me and Alfred had looked surprised, appeared to think about it for a heartbeat, then nodded assent. ‘Bring Uhtred home safe, father,’ he had said stiffly.
I said nothing as we rode through the growing camp, but once we were on our own I gave Pyrlig a sour look. ‘That was all arranged,’ I said.
‘What was?’
‘You coming with me. He had your horse already saddled! So what does Alfred want?’
Pyrlig grinned. ‘He wants me to talk you into becoming a Christian, of course. The king has great faith in my powers of speech.’
‘I am a Christian,’ I said.
‘Are you now?’
‘I was baptised, wasn’t I? Twice, as it happens.’
‘Twice! Doubly holy, eh? How come you got it twice?’
‘Because my name was changed when I was a child and my stepmother thought heaven wouldn’t recognise me under my old name.’
He laughed. ‘So they washed the devil out of you the first time and slopped him back in the second?’ I said nothing to that and Pyrlig rode in silence for a time. ‘Alfred wants me to make you a good Christian,’ he said after a while, ‘because he wants God’s blessing.’
‘He thinks God will curse us because I’m fighting for him?’
Pyrlig shook his head. ‘He knows, Uhtred, that the enemy are pagans. If they win then Christ is defeated. This isn’t just a war over land, it’s a war about God. And Alfred, poor man, is Christ’s servant so he will do all he can for his master, and that means trying to turn you into a pious example of Christian humility. If he can get you onto your knees then it’ll be easy to make the Danes grovel.’
I laughed, as he had meant me to. ‘If it encourages Alfred,’ I said, ‘tell him I’m a good Christian.’
‘I planned to tell him that anyway,’ Pyrlig said, ‘just to cheer him up, but in truth I wanted to come with you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I miss this life. God, I miss it! I loved being a warrior. All that irresponsibility! I relished it. Kill and make widows, frighten children! I was good at it, and I miss it. And I was always good at scout
ing. We’d see you Saxons blundering away like swine and you never knew we were watching you. Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk Christ into you, whatever the king wants.’
Our job was to find the Danes, if they were near. Alfred had marched to the Wilig valley to block any advance Guthrum made into the heartland of Wessex, but he still feared that the Danes might resist the lure of destroying his small army and instead march around us to take southern Wessex, which would leave us stranded and surrounded by Danish garrisons. That uncertainty meant Alfred was desperate for news of the enemy, so Pyrlig and I rode north and east up the valley until we came to where a smaller river flowed south into the Wilig and we followed that lesser stream past a large village that had been reduced to ashes. The small river passed through good farmland, but there were no cattle, no sheep and the fields were unploughed and thick with weeds. We went slowly, for the horses were tired and we were well north of our army now. The sun was low in the west, though it was early May so the days were lengthening. There were mayfly on the river and trout rising to them, and then a scuffling sound made us both pause, but it was only a pair of otter cubs scrabbling down to the water through the roots of a willow. Doves were nesting in the blackthorn, and warblers called from the riverbank, and somewhere a woodpecker drummed intermittently. We rode in silence for a while, turning away from the river to go into an orchard where wrynecks sang among the pink blossom.
Pyrlig curbed his horse under the trees and pointed at a muddy patch in the grass and I saw hoofprints sifted with fallen petals. The prints were fresh and there were a lot of them. ‘Bastards were here, weren’t they?’ he said, ‘and not so long ago.’
I looked up the valley. There was no one in sight. The hills rose steeply on either side with thick woods on their lower slopes. I had the sudden uncomfortable feeling that we were being watched, that we were blundering and the wolves were close. ‘If I were a Dane,’ Pyrlig spoke softly, and I suspected he shared my discomfort, ‘I’d be over there,’ he jerked his head to the western trees.
‘Why?’
‘Because when you saw them, they saw us, and that’s the way to where they saw us. Does that make sense?’ He laughed wryly. ‘I don’t know, Uhtred, I just think the bastards are over there.’
So we went east. We rode slowly, as if we did not have a care in the world, but once we were in the woods we turned north. We both searched the ground for more hoofprints, but saw none, and the feeling of being watched had gone now, though we did wait for a long time to see if anyone was following us. There was only the wind in the trees. Yet I knew the Danes were near, just as a hall’s hounds know when there are wolves in the nearby darkness. The hair on their necks stands up, they bare their teeth, they quiver.
We came to a place where the trees ended and we dismounted, tied the horses, and went to the wood’s edge and just watched.
And at last we saw them.
Thirty or forty Danes were on the valley’s farther side, above the woods, and they had plainly ridden to the top of the hills, looked southwards, and were now coming back. They were scattered in a long line that was riding down into the woods. ‘Scouting party,’ Pyrlig said.
‘They can’t have seen much from that hilltop.’
‘They saw us,’ he said.
‘I think so.’
‘But they didn’t attack us?’ He was puzzled. ‘Why not?’
‘Look at me,’ I said.
‘I get a treat every day.’
‘They thought I was a Dane,’ I said. I was not in mail and had no helmet, so my long hair fell free down my leather-clad back and my arms were bright with rings. ‘And they probably thought you were my performing bear,’ I added.
He laughed. ‘So shall we follow them?’
The only risk was crossing the valley, but if the enemy saw us they would probably still assume I was a fellow Dane, so we cantered over the open ground, then rode up into the further woods. We heard the Danes before we saw them. They were careless, talking and laughing, unaware that any Saxons were close. Pyrlig tucked his crucifix beneath his leather coat, then we waited until we were sure the last of the Danes had passed before kicking the horses uphill to find their tracks and so follow them. The shadows were lengthening, and that made me think that the Danish army must be close for the scouting party would want to reach safety before dark, but as the hilly country flattened we saw that they had no intention of joining Guthrum’s forces that evening. The patrolling Danes had their own camp, and as we approached it we were nearly caught by another group of mounted scouts who rode in from the east. We heard the newcomers and swerved aside into a thicket and watched a dozen men ride by, and then we dismounted and crept through the trees to see how many enemy were in the camp.
There were perhaps a hundred and fifty Danes in a small pasture. The first fires were being lit, suggesting they planned to spend the night where they were. ‘All scouting parties,’ Pyrlig suggested.
‘Confident bastards,’ I said. These men had been sent ahead to explore the hills, and they felt safe to camp in the open countryside, sure that no Saxon would attack them. And they were right. The West Saxon army was a long way south and we had no war-band in the area, and so the Danes would have a quiet night and, in the morning, their scouts would ride again to watch Alfred’s movements.
‘But if they’re here,’ Pyrlig suggested, ‘then it means Guthrum is following them.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. Or perhaps Guthrum was marching well to the east or west and had sent these men to make sure that Alfred was ignorant of his movements.
‘We should go back,’ Pyrlig said. ‘Be dark soon.’
But I had heard voices and I held up a hand to silence him, and then went to my right, keeping to the places where the undergrowth was thickest, and heard what I thought I had heard. English. ‘They’ve got Saxons here,’ I said.
‘Wulfhere’s men?’
Which made sense. We were in Wiltunscir and Wulfhere’s men would know this country, and who better to guide the Danes as they watched Alfred?
The Saxons were coming into the wood and we stayed behind some hawthorn bushes until we heard the sound of axes. They were cutting firewood. There seemed to be about a dozen of them. Most of the men who followed Wulfhere would probably be reluctant to fight Alfred, but some would have embraced their ealdorman’s new cause and doubtless those were the men who had been despatched to guide the Danish scouting parties. Wulfhere would only have sent men he could trust, fearing that less loyal men would desert to Alfred or just run away, so these Saxons were probably from the ealdorman’s household troops, the warriors who would profit most from being on the winner’s side in the war between the Danes and the West Saxons.
‘We should get back to Alfred before it’s dark,’ Pyrlig whispered.
But just then a voice sounded close and petulant. ‘I will go tomorrow,’ the voice said.
‘You won’t, lord,’ a man answered. There was the sound of splashing and I realised one of the two men had come to the bushes for a piss and the other had followed him. ‘You’ll go nowhere tomorrow,’ the second man went on, ‘you’ll stay here.’
‘I just want to see them!’ the petulant voice pleaded.
‘You’ll see them soon enough. But not tomorrow. You’ll stay here with the guards.’
‘You can’t make me.’
‘I can do what I like with you, lord. You might command here, but you take my orders all the same.’ The man’s voice was hard and deep. ‘And my orders are that you’re staying here.’
‘I’ll go if I want,’ the first voice insisted weakly and was ignored.
Very slowly, so that the blade made no noise against the scabbard’s throat, I drew Serpent-Breath. Pyrlig watched me, puzzled. ‘Walk away,’ I whispered to him, ‘and make some noise.’ He frowned in puzzlement at that, but I jerked my head and he trusted me. He stood and walked towards our horses, whistling softly, and immediately the two men followed. The one with the deep voice led. He was an old warrior, s
car-faced and bulky. ‘You!’ he shouted, ‘stop!’ And just then I stepped out from behind the hawthorn and swung Serpent-Breath once and her blade cut under his beard and into his throat, and cut so deep that I felt her scrape against his spine and the blood, sudden and bright in the spring dusk, sprayed across the leaf mould. The man went down like a felled ox. The second man, the petulant man, was following close behind and he was too astonished and much too scared to run away and so I seized his arm and pulled him down behind the bushes.
‘You can’t,’ he began and I placed the flat of Serpent-Breath’s bloody blade against his mouth so that he whimpered with terror.
‘Not a sound,’ I said to him, ‘or you’re dead.’ Pyrlig came back then, sword drawn.
Pyrlig looked at the dead man whose breeches were still untied. He stooped to him and made the sign of the cross on his forehead. The man’s death had been quick, and the capture of his companion had been quiet, and none of the woodcutters seemed to have taken alarm. Their axes went on thumping, the echoes rattling in the trees. ‘We’re taking this one back to Alfred,’ I told Pyrlig, then I moved Serpent-Breath to my captive’s throat. ‘Make one sound,’ I said, pressing the blade into his skin, ‘and I’ll gut you from your over-used gullet to your over-used crotch. Do you understand?’
He nodded.
‘Because I’m doing you the favour I owe you,’ I explained, and smiled nicely.
Because my captive was Æthelwold, Alfred’s nephew and the would-be king of the West Saxons.
The man I had killed was named Osbergh and he had been the commander of Wulfhere’s household troops. His job on the day of his death was to make certain Æthelwold got into no trouble.
Æthelwold had a talent for misfortune. By rights he should have been the King of Wessex, though I daresay he would have been the last king for he was impetuous and foolish, and the twin solaces for having lost the throne to his uncle Alfred were ale and women. Yet he had ever wanted to be a warrior. Alfred had denied him the chance, for he dared not let Æthelwold make a name for himself on the battlefield. Æthelwold, the true king, had to be kept foolish so that no man saw in him a rival for Alfred’s throne. It would have been far easier to have killed Æthelwold, but Alfred was sentimental about family. Or perhaps it was his Christian conscience. But for whatever reason, Æthelwold had been allowed to live and had rewarded his uncle’s mercy by constantly making a fool of himself.
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