The Warrior Chronicles

by Bernard Cornwell

  I smiled, though he did not see my smile behind the glinting steel of the cheek-pieces. ‘Lord,’ I said humbly, then backswung Serpent-Breath into his horse’s mouth and the beast reared up, screaming, blood frothing in the night, and Sigelf fell backwards from the saddle. I hauled him down to the mud, slapped the horse’s rump to send it charging into the ealdorman’s scattered men, then kicked Sigelf in the face as he tried to get up. I put my right boot on his skinny chest and pinned him to the ground. ‘I’m Uhtred,’ I said, but only loud enough for Sigelf himself to hear me. ‘You hear me, traitor? I’m Uhtred,’ and I saw his eyes widen before I rammed the sword hard down into his scrawny throat and his scream turned to a gurgle and the blood spilled wide onto the damp ground and he was twisting and shaking as he died.

  ‘Horn!’ I called to Oswi. ‘Now!’

  The horn sounded. My men knew what to do. They turned back towards the marsh, retreating into the dark beyond the fires, and as they went a second horn sounded and I saw Osferth leading a shield wall from the trees. My banner of the wolf’s head and Osferth’s charred cross showed above the advancing wall. ‘Men of Cent!’ Osferth shouted. ‘Men of Cent, your king is coming to save you! To me! To me! Form on me!’

  Osferth was the son of a king, and all his ancient lineage was in his voice. In a night of cold and chaos and death, he sounded confident and certain. Men who had seen their ealdorman cut down, who had seen his blood splash colour into the firelit dark, went towards Osferth and joined his shield wall because he promised safety. My men were retreating into the shadows, then going southwards to join Osferth’s right flank. I pulled off my helmet and tossed it to Oswi, then strode along the face of the growing shield wall. ‘Edward sent us to save you!’ I shouted at the Centishmen. ‘The Danes betrayed you! The king is coming with all his army! Form the wall! Shields up!’

  There was a grey edge to the eastern sky. The rain was still spitting, but dawn was close. I glanced north and saw horsemen. The Danes must have wondered why the sound of battle and the bray of horns had disturbed the night’s ending, and some were riding down the road to see for themselves and what they saw was a growing shield wall. They saw my banner of the wolf’s head, they saw Osferth’s blackened cross, and they saw men lying amidst the wreckage of the fires. Sigelf’s leaderless men were still in chaos, with no more idea than the Danes what was happening, but our shield wall offered safety and they were picking up their own shields, their helmets and weapons and running to join the ranks. Finan and Osferth were pushing men into position. A tall man, helmetless, but carrying a bare sword ran to me. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Wulferth,’ he said.

  ‘And who is Wulferth?’ I asked, sounding calm. He was a thegn, one of Sigelf’s richer followers, who had brought forty-three men to East Anglia. ‘Your lord is dead,’ I said, ‘and the Danes will attack us very soon.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said, ‘and Edward is coming. We have to hold the Danes till the king reaches us.’ I plucked Wulferth’s elbow and walked him towards the western marsh on the left of our defensive position. ‘Form your men here,’ I said, ‘and fight for your country, for Cent, for Wessex.’

  ‘For God!’ Osferth shouted from close by.

  ‘Even for God,’ I said.

  ‘But…’ Wulferth began, still confused by the night’s events.

  I looked him in the eye. ‘Who do you want to fight for? Wessex or the Danes?’

  He hesitated, not because he was unsure of the answer, but because everything was changing and he was still trying to understand what was happening. He had expected to march south towards Lundene, and instead he was being asked to fight.

  ‘Well?’ I prompted him.

  ‘Wessex, lord.’

  ‘Then fight well,’ I said, ‘and you’re in charge of this flank. Form your men, tell them the king is coming.’

  I had seen no sign of Sigebriht, but as the weak grey daylight suffused the east I saw him approaching from the north. He had been with the Danes, doubtless sleeping in whatever warmth and comfort Huntandon had to offer, while now he was on horseback and behind him a man carried the standard of the bull’s head. ‘Oswi!’ I shouted. ‘Find me a horse! Finan! Six men, six horses! Wulferth!’ I turned back on the thegn.

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Find Sigelf’s banner, have a man raise it next to mine.’

  There were plenty of Centish horses tethered in the woods behind our position. Oswi brought me one, ready saddled, and I hauled myself up and kicked the animal towards Sigebriht who had stopped some fifty or sixty paces away. He and his standard-bearer were with five other men, none of whom I knew. I did not want the men of Cent responding to that bull’s head flag, but luckily the rain made it hang damp and forlorn.

  I curbed the horse close to Sigebriht. ‘You want to make a name for yourself, boy?’ I challenged him. ‘Kill me now.’

  He looked past me to where his father’s troops were readying for battle. ‘Where’s my father?’ he asked.

  ‘Dead,’ I said, and drew Serpent-Breath. ‘This killed him.’

  ‘Then I’m ealdorman,’ he said, and he took a deep breath and I knew he was going to shout at his father’s men to demand their loyalty, but before he could speak I had kicked the borrowed horse forward and brought the blade up.

  ‘Talk to me, boy,’ I said, holding Serpent-Breath close to his face, ‘not to them.’

  Finan had joined me and five more of my men were just paces away now.

  Sigebriht was frightened, but forced himself to look brave. ‘You’ll all die,’ he said.

  ‘Probably,’ I agreed, ‘but we’ll take you with us.’

  His horse backed away and I let it take him out of reach of my sword. I looked past him and saw contingents of Danes crossing the bridge. Why had they waited? If they had crossed the previous evening they could have joined Sigelf and been marching south by now, but something had held them back. Then I remembered those mysterious fires burning in the night, the three great blazes of burning halls or fiery villages. Had someone attacked the Danish rear? It was the only explanation for the Danish delay, but who? Yet the Danes were crossing the river now, hundreds of them, thousands, and streaming over the bridge with them were Æthelwold’s men and Beortsig’s Mercians, and I reckoned the enemy army outnumbered us by at least eight to one.

  ‘I give you three choices, puppy,’ I spoke to Sigebriht. ‘You can join us and fight for your rightful king, or you can fight against me, you and me, right here, or you can run away to your Danish masters.’

  He looked at me, but found it difficult to hold my gaze. ‘I’ll feed your carcass to the dogs,’ he said, trying to sound scornful.

  I just stared at him and he finally turned away. He and his men rode back to the Danes and I watched him go, and only when he had vanished among the enemy’s thickening ranks did I turn the horse and walk it back to our shield wall. ‘Men of Cent!’ I curbed the horse in front of them. ‘Your ealdorman was a traitor to his country and to his god! The Danes promised to make him king, but when have the Danes ever kept a promise? They wanted you to fight for them, and when you had done their work they planned to take your wives and your daughters for their pleasure! They promised Æthelwold the throne of Wessex, but do any of you think he would keep the throne longer than a month? The Danes want Wessex! They want Cent! They want our fields, they want our women, they want our cattle, they want our children! And tonight they treacherously attacked you! Why? Because they decided they didn’t need you! They have enough men without you so they decided to kill you!’

  Much of what I had told them was true. I looked along the Centish ranks, along the shields and spears and axes and swords. I saw anxious faces, scared faces. ‘I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I shouted, ‘and you know who I am and who I have killed. You’ll fight alongside me now, and all we need do is hold this treacherous enemy at bay until our king reaches us. He’s coming!’ I h
oped that was true, because if it was not then this day would be my death-day. ‘He’s close,’ I shouted, ‘and when he reaches us we will slaughter those Danes like wolves ravaging lambs. You!’ I pointed at a priest. ‘Why are we fighting?’

  ‘For the cross, lord,’ he said.

  ‘Louder!’

  ‘For the cross!’

  ‘Osferth! Where’s your banner?’

  ‘I have it, lord!’ Osferth shouted.

  ‘Then let us see it!’ I waited till Osferth’s cross was at the front and centre of our line. ‘That is our banner!’ I shouted, pointing Serpent-Breath at the charred cross and hoping my own gods would forgive me. ‘Today you fight for your god, for your country, for your wives and for your families, because if you lose,’ I paused again, ‘if you lose then all those things will be gone for ever!’

  And from behind me, from beside the houses close to the river, the thunder began. The Danes were clashing their spears and swords against their shields, making the war-thunder, the noise to weaken a man’s heart, and it was time to dismount and take my place in the shield wall.

  The shield wall.

  It terrifies, there is no place more terrible than the shield wall. It is the place where we die and where we conquer and where we make our reputation. I touched Thor’s hammer, prayed that Edward was coming, and readied to fight.

  In the shield wall.

  I knew the Danes would try to get behind us, but that would take time. They needed to either skirt the marshland or find a way across the swamp, and neither could be done in less than an hour, probably two. I had a messenger back down the road with orders to find Edward and urge haste on him, because his troops were the only ones who could block a Danish encirclement. And if the Danes did try to surround us, they would also want to pin me in place, which meant I could expect a frontal attack to keep me busy while part of their forces looked for a way to reach our rear.

  And if Edward did not come?

  Then this was where I would die, where Ælfadell’s prophecy would come true, where some man would claim the boast that he had killed Uhtred.

  The Danes advanced slowly. Men do not relish the shield wall. They do not rush to death’s embrace. You look ahead and see the overlapping shields, the helmets, the glint of axes and spears and swords, and you know you must go into the reach of those blades, into the place of death, and it takes time to summon the courage, to heat the blood, to let the madness overtake caution. That is why men drink before battle. My own men had no ale or mead, though the Centish forces had enough and I could see the Danes passing skins down their line. They were still beating their weapons on their willow shields and the day was lightening to cast long shadows across the frost. I had seen horsemen go east and knew they were looking for a way around my flank, but I could not worry about those men for I did have enough troops to counter them. I had to hold the Danes in front till Edward came to kill those behind.

  Priests were walking down our line. Men knelt to them and the priests blessed them and put pinches of mud on their tongues. ‘This is Saint Lucy’s Day,’ one priest called to the shield-warriors, ‘and she will blind the enemy! She will protect us! Blessed Saint Lucy! Pray to Saint Lucy!’

  The rain had stopped, though much of the winter sky was still shrouded by cloud beneath which the enemy banners were bright. Sigurd’s flying raven and Cnut’s shattered cross, Æthelwold’s stag and Beortsig’s boar, Haesten’s skull and Eohric’s weird beast. There were lesser jarls among the enemy ranks and they had their own symbols; wolves and axes and bulls and hawks. Their men shouted insults and beat their weapons on their shields, and slowly they came forward, a few steps at a time. The Saxons and East Anglians of the enemy army were being encouraged by their priests, while the Danes were calling on Thor or Odin. My men were mostly silent, though I suppose they made jokes to cover their fear. Hearts were beating faster, bladders emptying, muscles shaking. This was the shield wall.

  ‘Remember!’ the Centish priest shouted, ‘that Saint Lucy was so filled with the Holy Spirit that twenty men could not move her! They harnessed a team of oxen to her and still she could not be moved! That is how you must be when the pagans come! Immovable! Filled by the Spirit! Fight for Saint Lucy!’

  The men who had gone eastwards had vanished in a morning mist that seeped from the marshes. There were so many of the enemy, a horde, a killing horde, and they came closer still, a hundred paces, and horsemen galloped in front of their tightknit shield wall and called encouragement. One of those horsemen slewed towards us. He wore bright mail, thick arm rings and a glittering helmet, and his horse was a magnificent beast, newly groomed and oiled, its harness bright with silver. ‘You’re going to die!’ he shouted at us.

  ‘If you want to fart,’ I shouted back, ‘go to your own side and stink them out.’

  ‘We’ll rape your wives,’ the man called. He spoke in English. ‘We’ll rape your daughters!’

  I was happy enough that he should call such hopes, for they would only encourage my men to fight. ‘What was your mother?’ a Centishman called back. ‘A sow?’

  ‘If you lay your weapons down,’ the man shouted, ‘then we shall spare you!’ He turned his horse and I recognised him. He was Oscytel, Eohric’s commander, the brutal-looking warrior I had met on Lundene’s wall.

  ‘Oscytel!’ I shouted.

  ‘I hear a lamb bleating!’ he called back.

  ‘Get off your horse,’ I said, taking a step forward, ‘and fight me.’

  He rested his hands on his saddle’s pommel and stared at me, then he glanced at the flooded ditch that had sheets of thin ice crusting its water. I knew that was why he had come, not just to insult, but to see what obstacle faced the Danish charge. He looked back to me and grinned. ‘I don’t fight old men,’ he said.

  That was strange. No one had ever called me old before. I remember laughing, but there was shock behind my laughter. Weeks before, talking with Æthelflaed, I had mocked her because she was staring at her face in a great silver platter. She was worried because she had lines about her eyes and she had responded to my mockery by thrusting the plate at me, and I had looked at my reflection and seen that my beard was grey. I remember staring at it as she laughed at me, and I did not feel old even though my wounded leg could be treacherously stiff. Was that how people saw me? As an old man? Yet I was forty-five years old that year, so yes, I was an old man. ‘This old man will slit you from the balls to the throat,’ I called to Oscytel.

  ‘This day Uhtred dies!’ he shouted at my men. ‘And you all die with him!’ With that he circled his horse and spurred back towards the Danish shield wall. Those shields were eighty paces away now. Close enough to see men’s faces, to see the snarls. I could see Jarl Sigurd, magnificent in mail and with a black bear’s pelt humped from his shoulders. His helmet was crested with a raven’s wing, black in the dawn’s grey light. I could see Cnut, the man with the quick sword, his cloak white, his thin face pale, his banner the broken Christian cross. Sigebriht was beside Eohric, who in turn was flanked by Æthelwold, and with them were their fiercest, strongest warriors, the men who had to keep the kings and the jarls and lords alive. Warriors were touching crosses or hammers. They were shouting, but what they bellowed I could not tell because the world seemed silent in that moment. I was watching the enemy ahead, judging which one would come to kill me and how I would kill him first.

  My banner was behind me and that banner would attract ambitious men. They wanted my skull as a drinking cup, my name as a trophy. They watched me as I watched them and they saw a man covered in mud, but a warlord with a wolf-crested helmet and arm rings of gold and with close-linked mail and a cloak of darkest blue hemmed with golden threads and a sword that was famous throughout Britain. Serpent-Breath was famous, but I sheathed her anyway, because a long blade is no help in the shield wall’s embrace, and instead I drew Wasp-Sting, short and lethal. I kissed her blade then bellowed my challenge at the winter wind. ‘Come and kill me! Come and kill me!’


  And they came.

  The spears came first, launched by men in the third or fourth enemy ranks, and we took them on our shields, the blades thumping hard into the willow, and the Danes were screaming as they rushed us. They must have been warned about the ditch, but even so it trapped scores of men who tried to leap it and instead skidded on our bank, their feet flying out from under them as our long-hafted axes flashed down. When we practise the shield wall I put an axeman next to a swordsman, and the axeman’s job is to hook his blade over the rim of the enemy’s shield and haul it down so the sword can slide over the top and into the enemy’s face, but now the axes crunched down through helmets and skulls and suddenly the world exploded in noise, in screams, in the butcher’s sound of blades cleaving skulls, and the men behind the Danes’ first rank were pushing through the ditch and their long spears were thumping into our shields. ‘Close up!’ I bellowed. ‘Shields touching! Shields touching! Forward a pace!’

  Our shields overlapped. We had spent hours practising this. Our shields made a wall as we pushed forward to the ditch’s edge where the steepness of the slick bank made the killing easy. A fallen man tried to stab his sword up under my shield, but I kicked him in the face and my iron-reinforced boot slammed into his nose and eyes and he slid back and I was thrusting Wasp-Sting forward, finding the gap between two enemy shields, ramming the stiff short blade through mail into flesh, shouting, always watching their eyes, seeing the axe come down and aware that Cerdic, behind me, caught it on his shield, though the force of the blow hammered his shield down onto my helmet and for a moment I was dazed and blinded, but still grinding Wasp-Sting forward. Rollo, beside me, had hooked a shield down and as my vision cleared I saw the gap and flicked Wasp-Sting into it, saw her tip take an eye, skewered it hard. A massive blow hit my shield, splintering a board.

  Cnut was trying to reach me, bellowing at his men to make space, and that was foolish because it meant they lost their cohesion to let their lord come to the killing place. Cnut and his men were in a frenzy, desperate to break our wall, and their shields were not overlapping and the ditch trapped them and two of my men drove spears hard into the oncoming men. Cnut tripped on one and sprawled in the ditch and I saw Rypere’s axe smash into his helmet, only a glancing blow, but hard enough to stun him because he did not get up. ‘They’re dying!’ I shouted. ‘Now kill all the bastards!’