Sword Song s-4

by Bernard Cornwell

  The poets tell of those battles, but no poet I know was ever in the front rank of a shield wall. They boast of a warrior’s prowess and they record how many men he killed. Bright his blade flashed, they sing, and great was his spear’s slaughter, but it was never like that. Blades were not bright, but cramped. Men swore, pushed and sweated. Not many men died once the shields touched and the heaving began because there was not room enough to swing a blade. The real killing began when a shield wall broke, but ours held against that first attack. I saw little because my helmet had been shoved low over my eyes, but I remember Sigefrid’s open mouth, all rotten teeth and yellow spittle. He was cursing me, and I was cursing him, and my shield shuddered from blows and men were shouting. One was screaming. Then I heard another scream and Sigefrid suddenly stepped back. His whole line was moving away from us and for a moment I thought they were trying to tempt us out of the gate’s archway, but I stayed where I was. I dared not take my little shield wall out of the arch, for the great stone walls on either side protected my flanks. Then there was a third scream and at last I saw why Sigefrid’s men had faltered. Big blocks of stone were falling from the ramparts. Pyrlig was evidently not being attacked and so his men were prising away lumps of masonry and dropping them on the enemy, and the man behind Sigefrid had been struck on the head and Sigefrid stumbled on him.

  “Stay here!” I shouted at my men. They were tempted to go forward and take advantage of the enemy’s disarray, but that would mean leaving the gate’s safety. “Stay!” I bellowed angrily, and they stayed.

  It was Sigefrid who retreated. He looked angry and puzzled. He had expected an easy victory, but instead he had lost men while we were unscathed. Cerdic’s face was covered in blood, but he shook his head when I asked if he had been badly wounded. Then from behind me I heard a roar of voices and my men, packed together in the archway, shuddered forward as an enemy struck from the streets. Steapa was there and I did not even bother to turn and see the fight because I knew Steapa would hold. I could also hear the clash of blades above me and knew that Pyrlig too was now fighting for his life.

  Sigefrid saw Pyrlig’s men fighting and deduced he would be spared their shower of masonry and so he shouted at his men to ready themselves. “Kill the bastards!” he bellowed, “kill them! But take the big one alive. I want him.” He swept his sword to point at me and I remembered his blade’s name; Fear-Giver. “You’re mine!” he shouted at me, “and I still have to crucify a man! And you’re the man!” He laughed, sheathed Fear-Giver and took a long-handled war ax from one his followers. He offered me a malevolent grin, covered his body with his raven-decorated shield, and shouted at his men to advance. “Kill them all! All but the big bastard! Kill them!”

  But this time, instead of pushing close to shove us through the gate like a stopper being forced through a bottle’s neck, he made his men pause at sword’s length and try to haul our shields down with their long-hafted war axes. And so the work became desperate.

  An ax is a vicious weapon in a fight between shield walls. If it does not hook a shield down it can still break the boards into splinters. I felt Sigefrid’s blows crashing into the shield, saw the ax blade appear through a rent in the limewood, and all I could do was endure the assault. I dared not go forward because that would break our wall, and if our whole wall stepped forward then the men on the flanks would be exposed and we would die.

  A spear was jabbing at my ankles. A second ax crashed on the shield. All along our short line the blows were falling, the shields were breaking, and death was looming. I had no ax to swing, for I was never fond of it as a weapon, though I recognized how lethal it was. I kept Wasp-Sting in my hand, hoping Sigefrid would close the gap and I could slide the blade past his shield and deep into his big belly, but Sigefrid stayed an ax’s length away, and my shield was broken, and I knew a blow would soon crack my forearm into a useless mess of blood and shattered bone.

  I risked one step forward. I made it suddenly so that Sigefrid’s next swing was wasted, though the ax shaft bruised my left shoulder. He had to drop his shield to swing the ax and I lunged Wasp-Sting across his body and the blade rammed into his right shoulder, but his expensive mail held. He recoiled. I sliced her at his face, but he rammed his shield into mine, driving me back, and an instant later his ax slammed into my shield again.

  He grimaced then, all rotten teeth and angry eyes and bushy beard. “I want you alive,” he said. He swung the ax sideways and I managed to pull the shield inward just enough so that the blade crashed against the boss. “Alive,” he said again, “and you will die a death fit for a man who breaks his oath.”

  “I made no oath to you,” I said.

  “But you will die as though you had,” he said, “with your hands and feet nailed to a cross, and your screams won’t stop until I tire of them.” He grimaced again as he drew the ax back for a last shield-splintering stroke. “And I’ll flay your corpse, Uhtred the Betrayer,” he said, “and cover my shield with your tanned skin. I’ll piss in your dead throat and dance on your bones.” He swung the ax, and the sky fell.

  A whole length of heavy masonry had been toppled from the rampart and slammed into Sigefrid’s ranks. There was dust and screaming and broken men. Six warriors were either on the ground or clutching shattered bones. All were behind Sigefrid, and he turned, astonished, and just then Osferth, Alfred’s bastard son, jumped from the gate’s top.

  He should have broken his ankles in that desperate leap, but somehow he survived. He landed amid the broken stones and shattered bodies that had been Sigefrid’s second rank and he screamed like a girl as he swung his sword at the huge Norseman’s head. The blade thumped into Sigefrid’s helmet. It did not break the metal, but it must have stunned Sigefrid for an instant. I had broken my shield wall by taking two paces forward and I rammed my broken shield at the dazed man and stabbed Wasp-Sting into his left thigh. This time she broke through the links of his mail and I twisted her, ripping muscle. Sigefrid staggered and it was then that Osferth, whose face was a picture of pure terror, stabbed his sword into the small of the Norseman’s back. I do not think Osferth was aware of what he was doing. He had pissed himself with fear, he was dazed, he was confused, the enemy was recovering their sense and coming to kill him, and Osferth just stabbed his sword with enough desperate force to pierce the bear-fur cloak, Sigefrid’s mail, and then Sigefrid himself.

  The big man screamed with agony. Finan was beside me, dancing as he always danced in battle, and he fooled the man next to Sigefrid with a lunge that was a feint, flicked his sword sideways across the man’s face, then shouted at Osferth to come to us.

  But Alfred’s son was frozen by terror. He would have lived no longer than one more heartbeat if I had not shaken off the remnants of my shattered shield and reached past the screaming Sigefrid to haul Osferth toward me. I shoved him back into the second rank and, with no shield to protect myself, waited for the next attack.

  “My God, thank you, thank you, Lord God,” Osferth was saying. He sounded pathetic.

  Sigefrid was on his knees, whimpering. Two men dragged him away, and I saw Erik staring appalled at his wounded brother. “Come and die!” I shouted at him, and Erik answered my anger with a sad look. He nodded to me, as if to acknowledge that custom forced me to threaten him, but that the threat in no way diminished his regard for me. “Come on!” I goaded him, “come and meet Serpent-Breath!”

  “In my own time, Lord Uhtred,” Erik called back, his courtesy a reproof to my snarl. He stooped beside his wounded brother, and Sigefrid’s plight had persuaded the enemy to hesitate before attacking us again. They hesitated long enough for me to turn and see that Steapa had beaten off the attack from the inside of the city.

  “What’s happening on the bastion?” I asked Osferth.

  He stared at me with pure terror on his face. “Thank you, Lord Jesus,” he stammered.

  I rammed my left fist into his belly. “What’s happening up there!” I shouted at him.

  He gaped
at me, stammered again, then managed to speak coherently. “Nothing, lord. The pagans can’t get up the stairs.”

  I turned back to face the enemy. Pyrlig was holding the bastion’s top, Steapa was holding the inner side of the gate, so I had to hold here. I touched my hammer amulet, brushed my left hand over Serpent-Breath’s hilt, and thanked the gods I was still alive. “Give me your shield,” I said to Osferth. I snatched it from him, put my bruised arm through the leather loops, and saw the enemy was forming a new line.

  “Did you see Æthelred’s men?” I asked Osferth.

  “Æthelred?” he responded as though he had never heard the name.

  “My cousin!” I snarled. “Did you see him?”

  “Oh yes, lord, he’s coming,” Osferth said, giving the news as though it were utterly unimportant, as if he were telling me that he had seen rain in the distance.

  I risked turning to face him. “He is coming?”

  “Yes, lord,” Osferth said.

  And so Æthelred was, and so he did. Our fight more or less ended there, because Æthelred had not abandoned his plan to assault the city, and now brought his men across the Fleot to attack the rear of the enemy, and that enemy fled north toward the next gate. We pursued for a while. I drew Serpent-Breath because she was a better weapon for an open fight, and I caught a Dane who was too fat to run hard. He turned, lunged at me with a spear, and I slid the lunge away with my borrowed shield and sent him to the corpse-hall with a lunge of my own. Æthelred’s men were howling as they fought up the slope, and I reckoned they might easily mistake my men for the enemy and so I called for my troops to return to Ludd’s Gate. The arch was empty now, though on either side were bloodied corpses and broken shields. The sun was higher, but the clouds still made it look a dirty yellow behind their veil.

  Some of Sigefrid’s men died outside the walls and such was their panic that some were even hacked to death with sharpened hoes. Most managed to get through the next gate and into the old city, and there we hunted them down.

  It was a wild and howling hunt. Sigefrid’s troops, those who had not sallied beyond the walls, were slow to learn of their defeat. They stayed on their ramparts until they saw death coming, and then they fled into streets and alleys already choked with men, women, and children fleeing the Saxon assault. They ran down the terraced hills of the city, going for the boats that were tied to the wharves downstream of the bridge. Some, the fools, tried to save their belongings, and that was fatal for they were burdened by their possessions, caught in the streets and cut down. A young girl screamed as she was dragged into a house by a Mercian spearman. Dead men lay in gutters, sniffed by dogs. Some houses showed a cross, denoting that Christians lived there, but the protection meant nothing if a girl in the house was pretty. A priest held a wooden crucifix aloft outside a low doorway, and shouted that there were Christian women sheltering in his small church, but the priest was cut down by an ax and the screaming began. A score of Northmen were caught in the palace where they guarded the treasury amassed by Sigefrid and Erik and they all died there, their blood trickling between the small tiles of the mosaic floor of the Roman hall.

  It was the fyrd that did most destruction. The household troops had discipline and stayed together, and it was those trained troops who chased the Northmen out of Lundene. I stayed on the street next to the river wall, the street that we had followed from our half-swamped ships, and we drove the fugitives as though they were sheep running from wolves. Father Pyrlig had attached his cross banner to a Danish spear and he waved it over our heads to show Æthelred’s men that we were friends. Screams and howling sounded from the higher streets. I stepped over a dead child, her golden curls thick with the blood of her father who had died beside her. His last act had been to seize his child’s arm and his dead hand was still curled about her elbow. I thought of my daughter, Stiorra. “Lord!” Sihtric shouted, “lord!” He was pointing with his sword.

  He had seen that one large group of Northmen, presumably cut off as they retreated toward their ships, had taken refuge on the broken bridge. The bridge’s northern end was guarded by a Roman bastion through which an arch led, though the arch had long lost its gateway. Instead the passage to the bridge’s broken timber roadway was blocked by a shield wall. They were in the same position I had been in Ludd’s Gate with their flanks protected by high stonework. Their shields filled the arch, and I could see at least six ranks of men behind the front line of round overlapping shields.

  Steapa made a low growling noise and hefted his ax. “No,” I said, laying a hand on his massive shield arm.

  “Make a boar’s tusk,” he said vengefully, “kill the bastards. Kill them all.”

  “No,” I said again. A boar’s tusk was a wedge of men that would drive into a shield wall like a human spear-point, but no boar’s tusk would pierce this Northmen’s wall. They were too tightly packed in the archway, and they were desperate, and desperate men will fight fanatically for the chance to live. They would die in the end, that was true, but many of my men would die with them.

  “Stay here,” I told my men. I handed my borrowed shield to Sihtric, then gave him my helmet. I sheathed Serpent-Breath. Pyrlig copied me, taking off his helmet. “You don’t have to come,” I told him.

  “And why shouldn’t I?” he asked, smiling. He handed his makeshift standard to Rypere, laid his shield down, and, because I was glad of the Welshman’s company, the two of us walked to the bridge’s gate.

  “I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” I announced to the hard-faced men staring over their shield rims, “and if you wish to feast in Odin’s corpse-hall this night then I am willing to send you there.”

  Behind me the city screamed and smoke drifted dense across the sky. The nine men in the enemy’s front rank stared at me, but none spoke.

  “But if you want to taste the joys of this world longer,” I went on, “then speak to me.”

  “We serve our earl,” one of the men finally said.

  “And he is?”

  “Sigefrid Thurgilson,” the man said.

  “Who fought well,” I said. I had been screaming insults at Sigefrid not two hours before, but now was the time for softer speech. A time to arrange for an enemy to yield and thus save my men’s lives. “Does the Earl Sigefrid live?” I asked.

  “He lives,” the man said curtly, jerking his head to indicate that Sigefrid was somewhere behind him on the bridge.

  “Then tell him Uhtred of Bebbanburg would speak with him, to decide whether he lives or dies.”

  That was not my choice to make. The Fates had already made the decision, and I was but their instrument. The man who had spoken to me called the message to the men behind on the bridge and I waited. Pyrlig was praying, though whether he beseeched mercy for the folk who screamed behind us or death for the men in front of us, I never asked.

  Then the tight-packed shield wall in the arch shuffled aside as men made a passage down the roadway’s center. “The Earl Erik will speak with you,” the man told me.

  And Pyrlig and I went to meet the enemy.

  SIX

  My brother says I should kill you,” Erik greeted me. The younger of the Thurgilson brothers had been waiting for me on the bridge and, though his words held menace, there was none in his face. He was placid, calm and apparently unworried by his predicament. His black hair was crammed beneath a plain helmet and his fine mail was spattered with blood. There was a rent at the mail’s hem, and I guessed that marked where a spear had come beneath his shield, but he was evidently unwounded. Sigefrid, though, was horribly injured. I could see him on the roadway, lying on his bear-fur cloak, twisting and jerking in pain, and being tended by two men.

  “Your brother,” I said, still watching Sigefrid, “thinks that death is the answer to everything.”

  “Then he’s like you in that regard,” Erik said with a wan smile, “if you are what men say you are.”

  “What do men say of me?” I asked, curious.

  “That you kill like a Northman
,” Erik said. He turned to stare downriver. A small fleet of Danish and Norse ships had managed to escape the wharves, but some now rowed back upstream in an attempt to save the fugitives who crowded the river’s edge, but the Saxons were already among that doomed crowd. A furious fight was raging on the wharves where men hacked at each other. Some, to escape the fury, were leaping into the river. “I sometimes think,” Erik said sadly, “that death is the real meaning of life. We worship death, we give it, we believe it leads to joy.”

  “I don’t worship death,” I said.

  “Christians do,” Erik remarked, glancing at Pyrlig, whose mailed chest displayed his wooden cross.

  “No,” Pyrlig said.

  “Then why the image of a dead man?” Erik asked.

  “Our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead,” Pyrlig said energetically, “he conquered death! He died to give us life and regained his own life in his dying. Death, lord, is just a gate to more life.”

  “Then why do we fear death?” Erik asked in a voice that suggested he expected no answer. He turned to look at the downstream chaos. The two ships we had used to shoot the bridge’s gap had been commandeered by fleeing men, and one of those ships had foundered just yards from the wharf where it now lay on its side, half sunken. Men had been spilled into the water where many must have drowned, but others had managed to reach the muddy foreshore where they were being hacked to death by gleeful men with spears, swords, axes, and hoes. The survivors clung to the wreck, trying to shelter from a handful of Saxon bowmen whose long hunting arrows thudded into the ship’s timbers. There was so much death that morning. The streets of the broken city reeked of blood and were filled with the wailing of women beneath the smoke-smeared yellow sky. “We trusted you, Lord Uhtred,” Erik said bleakly, still staring downriver. “You were going to bring us Ragnar, you were to be king in Mercia, and you were to give us the whole island of Britain.”