The Burning Land Part 29

"What are you doing?" Coenwulf demanded of me.

"Making a king," I told him quietly, then looked back to Edward. "Climb, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Get up here!"

He could not do it, c.u.mbered as he was with heavy mail and with his long sword. He tried to crawl up the bank, but still he slid back. "That's what it's going to be like," I told him, "climbing out of the moat at Beamfleot!"

He stared up at me, filthy and wet. "Do we make bridges?" he suggested.

"How do we make a bridge with a hundred farting Danes throwing spears at us?" I demanded. "Now come on! Climb!" He tried again, and again he failed. Then, as his men and mine watched from the top of the bank, Edward gritted his teeth and hurled himself at the greasy mud for one last determined attempt, and this time he managed to stay on the slope. He used his sword as a stick, inching higher and the men cheered. He kept slipping back, but his determination was obvious, and every small step was applauded. The heir to Alfred's throne was plastered with mud and his precious dignity was gone, but he was suddenly enjoying himself. He was grinning. He kicked his boots into the mud, hauled on the sword, and at last managed to scramble over the bank's edge. He stood, smiling at the cheers, and even Father Coenwulf was beaming with pride. "We have to climb the moat's bank to reach the fort," I told him, "and it will be just as steep and slippery as this slope. We're never going to make it. The Danes will be raining arrows and spears. The bed of the moat will be thick with blood and bodies. We're all going to die there."

"The sails," Edward said, understanding.

"Yes," I said, "the sails." I ordered Osferth to unfold one of the three sails we were stealing. It took six men to unwrap the great sheet of stiff, salt-caked cloth. Mice scampered out of the folds, but once it was spread I had men drape the sail down the mudbank. The sail itself offered no footholds because sailcloth is fragile, but ropes are sewn into it and thus every sail is a crisscross of reinforcing ropes, and those latticed lines would be our ladders. I took Edward's elbow and he and I walked down the sail to the water's edge. "Now," I said, "try again. Full speed. Race me!"

He won. He ran at the bank and his boots caught on the sail ropes and he reached the top without using his hands once. He grinned with triumph as I came behind, then he had a sudden idea. "All of you!" he called to his bodyguard. "Down to the river and climb back up!"

They were suddenly enjoying themselves. All the men, mine as well as Edward's, wanted to try the network of sail ropes. There were too many men, and eventually the sail slid down the bank, which is why I was taking the spars. I would thread the lattice of ropes onto the spars, then lash the spars into place so that the makes.h.i.+ft rope ladder would be stiffened by the spruce frame and, I hoped, stay in place. On that day we just pegged the sail to the bank and ran races, which Edward, to his evident delight, won repeatedly. He even found the courage to talk briefly with Osferth, though they discussed nothing more important than the weather, which the half-brothers evidently found agreeable. After a while I ordered the men to stop scrambling up the sail, which had to be laboriously refolded, but I had proved it would work as a means of climbing out of the fort's moat. That would just leave the wall to cross, and those of us who did not die in the moat would almost certainly die on the ledge of land beneath the wall.

The steward brought me a small horn cup of mead. I took it and for some reason, as my hand closed on the cup, the bee sting, which I had thought long vanished, began to itch again. The swelling was entirely gone, but for a moment the itching was back and I stared at my hand. I did not move, I just stared, and Osferth became worried. "What is it, lord?"

"Get me Father Heahberht," I said and, when the priest arrived, I asked him who made the mead.

"He's a strange man, lord," Heahberht said.

"I don't care if he's got a tail and t.i.ts, just take me to him."

The sails and spars were loaded on the wagon and escorted back to the old fort, but I took a half-dozen men and rode with Heahberht to a village he called Hocheleia. It looked a peaceful and half-forgotten place, just a straggle of cottages surrounded by big willow trees. There was a small church, marked by a wooden cross nailed to the eave. "Skade didn't burn this church?" I asked Father Heahberht.

"Thorstein protected these folk, lord," Heahberht told me.

"But he didn't protect Thunresleam?"

"These are Thorstein's people, lord. They belong to him. They work his land."

"So who's the Lord of Thunresleam?"

"Whoever is in the fort," he said bitterly. "This way, lord." He led me past a duck pond and into a thicket of bushes where a small cottage, thatched so deep that it looked more like a pile of straw than a dwelling, stood in the trees' shadows. "The man is called Brun, lord."

"Brun?"

"Just Brun. Some say he's mad, lord."

Brun crawled from his cottage. He had to crawl to get beneath the thatch's edge. He half stood, saw my mail coat and golden arm rings, and fell back to his knees and scrabbled with dirt-crusted hands in the earth. He mumbled something I did not hear. A woman then emerged from beneath the thatch and knelt beside Brun and the two of them made whimpering noises as they bobbed their heads. Their hair was long, matted and tangled. Father Heahberht told them what we wanted and Brun grunted something, then abruptly stood. He was a tiny man, no taller than the dwarves that are said to live underground. His hair was so thick that I could not see his eyes. He pulled his woman to her feet, and she was no taller than him and certainly no prettier, then the pair of them gabbled at Heahberht, but their speech was so garbled that I could hardly understand a word. "He says we must go to the back of the house," Heahberht said.

"You can understand them?"

"Well enough, lord."

I left my escort in the lane, tied our two horses to a hornbeam, then followed the diminutive couple through thick weeds to where, half hidden by gra.s.s, was what I sought. Rows of hives. Bees were busy in the warm air, but they ignored us, going to and from the cone-shaped hives that appeared to be fas.h.i.+oned from baked mud. Brun, a sudden fondness in his voice, was stroking one hive. "He says the bees talk to him, lord," Heahberht told me, "and he talks back."

Bees crawled up Brun's bare arms and he muttered to them. "What do they tell him?" I asked.

"What happens in the world, lord. And he tells them he's sorry."

"For the world's happenings?"

"Because to get the honey for the mead, lord, he must break the hives open, and then the bees die. He buries them, he says, and says prayers over their graves."

Brun was crooning at his bees, singing like a mother to her infants. "I've only seen straw hives," I said. "Maybe straw hives don't need to be broken? Maybe the bees can live?"

Brun must have understood what I said for he turned angrily and spoke fast. "He doesn't approve of skeps, lord," Heahberht translated, speaking of the woven straw hives. "He makes his hives the old-fas.h.i.+oned way, out of plaited hazel twigs and cow dung. He says the honey is sweeter."

"Tell him what I want," I said, "and tell him I'll pay well."

And so the bargain was struck and I rode back to the old fort on the hill and thought there was a chance. Just a chance. Because the bees had spoken.

That night, and the following two nights, I sent men down the long hill to the new fort. I led them the first two nights, leaving the old fort after dark. Men carried the sails, which had been cut into two, then each half sewn to a pair of spars so that we had six wide rope ladders. When we attacked in earnest we would have to go into the creek, unfurl the six wide ladders, and lay them against the farther bank, then men would have to climb the latticed ropes carrying real ladders that must be laid against the wall.

But for three nights we just feigned attacks. We went close to the moat, we shouted and our archers, of whom we had just over a hundred, shot arrows at the Danes. They, in turn, shot arrows back and hurled spears that thumped into the mud. They also threw fire-brands to light the night and, when they saw we were not attempting to cross the moat, I heard men shouting orders to stop throwing the spears.

I learned the walls were well manned. Haesten had left a large garrison, so many that some Danes were not needed in the fort at all, but instead guarded the s.h.i.+ps drawn up on Caninga's sh.o.r.e.

I did not go down the hill on the third night. I let Steapa lead that feint while I watched from the high fort's walls. Just after dark my men brought a wagon from Hocheleia and in it were eight hives. Brun had told us that the best time to seal a hive was at dusk, and that evening he had closed up the entrances with plugs of mud mixed with cow dung that now slowly hardened. I put my ear next to one hive and heard a strange humming vibration.

"The bees will live till tomorrow night?" Edward asked me.

"They don't have to," I said, "because we're attacking in tomorrow's dawn."

"Tomorrow!" he said, unable to hide his surprise, which pleased me. By making feint attacks during the early darkness I wanted to persuade the Danes that we would be launching our real attack shortly after dusk. Instead I would go at them at daybreak next morning, but I hoped that Skade and her men were already convinced, like Edward, that I planned an attack at nightfall.

"Tomorrow morning," I said, "and we leave tonight, in the dark."

"Tonight?" Edward asked, still astonished.

"Tonight."

He made the sign of the cross. aethelflaed who, with Steapa, was the only other person I had told of my plans, came to stand beside me and put her hand through my arm. Edward seemed to s.h.i.+ver at the sight of our affection, then forced a smile. "Pray for me, sister," he said.

"I always have," she replied.

She looked at him steadily and he met her gaze for an instant, then looked at me. He started to speak, but nervousness made the first word an incoherent croak. He tried again. "You would not give me your oath, Lord Uhtred," he said.

"No, lord."

"But my sister has it?"

aethelflaed's arm tightened on mine. "She has my sworn loyalty, lord," I said.

"Then I have no need of your oath," Edward said with a smile.

That was generous of him and I bowed in acknowledgment. "You don't need my oath, lord," I said, "but your men need your encouragement tonight. Speak to them. Inspire them."

There would be little sleep that night. It took men time to prepare for battle. It was a time of fear, a time when the imagination makes the enemy seem ever more fearsome. Some men, a few, fled the fort and sought shelter in the woods, but they were very few. The rest sharpened swords and axes. I would not let men feed the fires, because I did not want the Danes to see anything different about this night, and so most weapons were honed in the dark. Men pulled on boots, mail, and helmets. They made poor jokes. Some just sat with bowed heads, but they listened when Edward spoke to them. He went from group to group and I remembered how uninspiring his father's first speech had been before the great victory at Ethandun. Edward was not much better, but he had an earnestness that was convincing, and men murmured approval when he promised that he would be the first man in the attack.

"You must keep him alive," Father Coenwulf told me sternly.

"Isn't that the responsibility of your G.o.d?" I asked.

"His father will never forgive you if Edward dies."

"He has another son," I said flippantly.

"Edward is a good man," Coenwulf said angrily, "and he'll make a good king."

I agreed with that. I had not thought so before, but I had begun to like Edward. He had a willingness about him, and I did not doubt he would prove brave. He feared, of course, like all men fear, but he had kept those fears behind the fence of his teeth. He was determined to prove himself an heir, and that meant going to the place of death. He had not balked at that idea, and for that I respected him. "He'll make a good king," I told Coenwulf, "if he proves himself. And you know he must prove himself."

The priest paused, then nodded. "But look after him," he pleaded.

"I've told Steapa to look after him," I told Coenwulf, "and I can't do better than that."

Father Pyrlig, dressed in his rusted mail, a sword at his waist and with an ax and a s.h.i.+eld slung from his shoulders, came from the dark. "My men are ready," he said. I had given him thirty men whose job was to carry the hives down the dark hill and across the moat.

I looked eastward. There was no sign of any new light there, but I sensed the short night was coming to its close. I touched Thor's hammer. "Time to go," I said.

Steapa's men were making a racket at the hill's foot, a noise to distract the Danes as hundreds of men now left the fort and, in the clouded darkness, went down the steep slope. In front were Edward's men carrying the ladders. I saw the torches flaring at the moat's edge and the flicker of arrow feathers whipping up toward the ramparts. The air smelled of salt and sh.e.l.lfish. I thought of aethelflaed's farewell kiss, of her sudden and impetuous embrace, and the fears surged in me. It sounded simple. Cross a moat, place the ladders on the small muddy ledge between moat and wall, climb the ladders. Die.

There was no order to our advance. Men found their own way down the hill and their leaders called softly to a.s.semble them where the charred ruins of the village offered some small concealment. We were close enough to hear the Danes jeering as Steapa's men with drew. The torches that had been thrown to illuminate the ditch smoldered low. Now, I hoped, the Danes would stand down. Men would go to their beds and to their women, while we waited in the dark where we touched our weapons and our amulets and listened to the ripple of water as the tide drained from the wide marshes. Weohstan was out in the tussocked swamps and I had ordered him to display his men to the fort's west in hope that some defenders would be drawn that way. I had two hundred other men to the east, ready to attack the beached s.h.i.+ps at the creek's farther end. Those men were commanded by Finan. I did not like losing Finan as my s.h.i.+eld-neighbor, but I needed a warrior to seal the Danish escape, and there was no man so fierce in battle, nor so clearheaded, as the Irishman.

But neither Weohstan nor Finan could show themselves till dawn. Nothing could happen till dawn. There was a slight drizzle coming cold on a west wind. Priests were praying. Osferth's men, carrying the furled sails, crouched among tall nettles at the edge of the village, just a hundred paces from the moat's nearer bank. I waited with Osferth, a yard or so in front of Edward who spoke not a word, but just clutched the golden cross that hung at his neck. Steapa had found us and waited with the aetheling. My helmet was cold on my ears and neck, and my mail coat felt clammy.

I heard Danes speaking. They had sent men to collect the spears after each of our feint attacks, and I supposed that was what they were now doing in the small light of the dying torches. Then I saw them, just shadows in shadows, and I knew the dawn was almost upon us as the gray light of death spread behind us like a stain on the world's rim. I turned to Edward. "Now, lord," I said to him.

He stood, a young man at battle's edge. For a heartbeat he could not find his voice, then he drew his long sword. "For G.o.d and for Wess.e.x," he shouted, "come with me!"

And so the fight for Beamfleot began.

SIX.

For a moment everything is as you imagined it, then it changes, and the details stand out so stark. Details of irrelevant things. Perhaps it is the knowledge that these small things may be the last you will ever see in this life that makes them so memorable. I recall a star flickering like a guttering candle between the clouds to the west, the clatter of arrows in the wooden quiver of a running archer, the s.h.i.+ne of wolf-light on the Temes to the south, the pale feathers of all the arrows lodged ragged in the fort's wooden wall, and the loose links of Steapa's mail jangling and dangling from the hem of his coat as he ran to Edward's right. I remember a black and white dog running with us, a frayed rope knotted about his neck. It seemed to me we ran in silence, but it could not have been silent. Eight hundred men were running toward the fort as the sun touched the earth's rim with silver.

"Archers!" Beornoth shouted, "archers! To me!"

A few Danes were still collecting spears. One watched us in disbelief, his arms clutching a bundle of ash shafts, then he panicked, dropped the weapons, and ran. A horn sounded from the ramparts.

We had divided our men into troops, and each one had a purpose and a leader. Beornoth commanded the archers who a.s.sembled on our left, immediately in front of the bridge pilings that stood gaunt in the moat. Those archers were to hara.s.s the Danes on the ramparts, to pour arrows at them, to force them to duck as they tried to repel us with spears, axes, and swords. Osferth commanded the fifty men whose job was to place the sailcloth ladders in the moat, and behind him came Egwin, a veteran West Saxon, whose one hundred men would carry the climbing ladders to the wall. The rest of the troops were to make the a.s.sault. As soon as the ladder carriers were across the moat the attacking troops were to follow, climb the ladders and trust in whatever G.o.d they had prayed to through the night. I had ordered the men into troops, and Alfred, who loved lists and order, would have approved, but I knew how soon such careful plans collapsed under the shock of reality.

The horn was challenging the dawn and the fort's defenders were appearing on the ramparts. The men who had been collecting spears climbed the moat's far side with the help of a rope lashed to a piling by the fort's entrance, but one of them had the sense to slash through the rope before running into the fort. The great gates closed behind him. Our archers were shooting, but I knew their arrows would do small damage against mail coats and steel helmets. Yet it would force the Danes to use s.h.i.+elds. It would c.u.mber them, and then I saw Osferth's men vanish into the moat and I bellowed at the following troops to wait. "Stop and wait!" The last thing I needed was a ma.s.s of men trapped in the moat's bed, churning about under a hail of spears and impeding Osferth's men. Better to let those men do their job and Egwin's after them.

The bottom of the moat had sharpened stakes hidden beneath the low water, but Osferth's men found them easy enough to haul from the soft mud. The latticed sails were unrolled on the opposite bank and their spars were anch.o.r.ed by spears that were thrust deep into the mud. A bucket of burning charcoal was thrown from the ramparts. I saw the bright fire fall then die in the wet muck below. The fire hurt no one and I suspected a Dane had panicked and emptied the pail too early. The dog was barking at the moat's edge. "Ladders!" Osferth bellowed, and Egwin's men charged forward as Osferth's warriors hurled spears up at the high wall. I watched approvingly as the ladder carriers scaled the steep moat bank, then shouted for the a.s.sault troops to follow me to the newly placed ladders.

Except it was not like that. I try to tell folk what a battle is like, and the telling comes out halting and lame. After a battle, when the fear has subsided, we exchange stories and out of all those tales we make a pattern of the fight, but in battle it is all confusion. Yes, we did cross the moat, and the rope netting of the spread sails worked, at least for a while, and the ladders reached the Danish wall, but I have left out so much. The welter of men thras.h.i.+ng in the ebbing tide, the fall of heavy spears, blood dark in dark water, screams, the sense of not knowing what happened, of desperation, of hearing the solid thumps of blades hurled from the parapet, the smaller sounds of arrows striking home, the shouts of men who did not know what was happening, men who feared death, men who bellowed at other men to bring ladders or to haul a spar back up the muddy bank. And then there was the mud as thick as hoof glue and just as sticky. Slick and slippery mud, men covered in mud and streaked with blood and dying in mud and always the Danes shrieking insults from the sky. The screams of men dying. Men calling for help, crying for their mothers, weeping on their way to the grave.

In the end it is the small things that win a battle. You can throw thousands of men against a wall, and most will fail, or they will cower beyond the ditch, or crouch in the water, and it is the few, the brave and the desperate, who fight through their fear. I watched a man carry a ladder and slam it against the wall and climb with a drawn sword, and a Dane poised his heavy spear and waited. I shouted a warning, but then the spear was driven straight down and the blade cut through the helmet and the man shook on the ladder and fell backward, blood sudden in the dawn and a second man thrust him out of the way, screamed defiance as he climbed and slashed a long-hafted ax at the spearman. At that moment, as the sun flooded the new day, it was all chaos. I had done my best to order the attack, but the troops were now mixed together. Some were standing up to their waists in the moat's water, and all were helpless because we could not get the ladders to stay against the wall. The Danes, though they were dazzled by the new sun, were knocking the ladders aside with their heavy war axes. Some ladders, their rungs made from green wood, broke, yet still brave men tried to climb the high palisade. One of the sailcloth ladders slid back and I watched men drag it back into place as the spears fell about them. More fire was thrown from the ramparts, the flare of it lighting helmets and blades, but men extinguished the embers by rolling in mud. Spears thudded into s.h.i.+elds.

I picked up a fallen ladder and threw it against the wall and climbed, but a man cannot climb a ladder holding sword and s.h.i.+eld, so my s.h.i.+eld was slung on my back and I had to s.n.a.t.c.h at the rungs one by one with my left hand while holding Serpent-Breath in my right and a Dane caught hold of her blade with a gloved hand and tried to pull her from my grasp, and I ripped her backward and lost my balance and fell onto a corpse, and then Edward began to climb the same ladder. He wore a helmet circled with gold and surmounted by a plume of swan's feathers that made him a target and I could see the Danes waiting to s.n.a.t.c.h him over the rampart so they could take his fine armor, but then Steapa knocked the ladder sideways so that the aetheling fell into the mud.

"Dear G.o.d," I heard Edward say in a mild voice, as though he had spilled some milk or ale, and that made me laugh. The handle of a thrown ax banged on my helmet. I turned, picked up the weapon, and slung it at the faces above me, but it went wide. Father Coenwulf helped Edward to his feet. "You shouldn't be here," I snarled at the priest, but he ignored me. He was a brave man for he wore no armor and carried no weapons. Steapa covered Edward with his huge s.h.i.+eld as the spears hurtled down. Somehow Father Coenwulf survived the blades. He held a crucifix toward the jeering Danes and shouted a curse at them.

"Bring ladders here!" a voice bellowed. "Bring them here!" It was Father Pyrlig. "Ladders!" he shouted again, then he took a hive from one of his men and turned to the wall. "Have some honey!" he roared at the Danes and tossed the hive upward.

The wall was around ten feet high and it took strength to throw that sealed hive up over the parapet. The Danes cannot have known what the hive was, perhaps they mistook it for a boulder, though they surely knew no man could throw a boulder that far. I saw a sword slash at the hive, then it disappeared over the parapet. "Another!" Pyrlig shouted.

The first hive must have landed on the fighting platform. And it must have broken.

The hives were sealed. Brun had waited till the cool of the evening, when all the bees had returned home, and then he had closed off the entrances with mud and dung. Now the first hive's sh.e.l.l, which was nothing but dried cow dung braced with hazel twigs, split like an eggsh.e.l.l.

And the bees came out.

Pyrlig threw a second hive and another man hurled a third. One failed to cross the parapet and fell back to the mud where, miraculously, it did not shatter. Two others were floating in the moat. I never did discover what happened to the rest of the hives, but the first two were sufficient.

Bees began to do our work. Thousands and thousands of angry, confused bees spread among the Danish defenders and I heard sudden shouts of startled pain. Men were being stung on their faces and hands, and the small distraction was all we needed. Pyrlig was bellowing at men to get the ladders set. Edward placed a ladder himself and tried to climb it, but Steapa thrust him aside and went first. I climbed another.

I cannot tell you how the fort at Beamfleot was taken, because I can recall nothing but the chaos. Chaos and bee stings. I do know that Steapa reached the top of the ladder and cleared a s.p.a.ce by swinging a war ax so wildly that the blade very nearly slashed through my wolf-crested helmet, and then he was over the parapet and using the ax with murderous efficiency. Edward followed. Bees flickered all around him.

"Shout at your men," I told him, "tell them to join you!"

He looked wild-eyed at me, then he understood. "For Wess.e.x!" he shouted from the wall.

"For Mercia!" I bellowed, and now men were joining us fast. I did not feel the bee stings, though later I discovered I had been stung at least a dozen times, but we had been expecting to be stung, while the Danes were taken by surprise. They recovered fast enough. I heard a woman's voice screaming at them to kill us, and I knew Skade was close by. A group came along the platform and I faced them with s.h.i.+eld and sword, took an ax strike on the s.h.i.+eld and gouged Serpent-Breath into the man's knee, and Cerdic was with me, and Steapa came to my left and we were screaming like demons as we forced our way along the wall's wooden platform. A spear struck my helmet, knocking it askew. The sun was still showing beneath the clouds, casting a long-shadowed, dazzling brilliance, and its light flashed from sword-blade and ax-edge and spear-point, and I was shoving the s.h.i.+eld into the Danes, stabbing Serpent-Breath past its edge, and Steapa was howling and using his ma.s.sive strength to thrust the defenders aside, and everywhere, everywhere, were bees. A Dane tried to kill me with an ax blow that I took on my s.h.i.+eld and I remember his open mouth, yellow stumps of teeth and bees crawling on his tongue. Edward, just behind me, killed that Dane with a sword thrust into his mouth so that the bees were washed out by the gush of blood. Someone had fetched the dragon banner of Wess.e.x and was waving it from the captured parapet, and men were cheering as they crossed the moat and climbed the remaining ladders.

I had turned left at the wall's top and was fighting my way along the narrow platform, and Steapa had understood why, and he did most to clear the defenders in front of us so we could reach the larger platform that stood above the gate. And there we made our s.h.i.+eld wall, and there we fought against the Danes as Pyrlig and his men used their axes on the big gate.

I must have shouted at the Danes, though what I cannot tell now. The usual insults. And the Danes fought back with a wild ferocity, but now we had our best warriors on the wall and more were coming all the time, so many that some jumped down into the fort and the fighting began there. One man kicked the shattered remains of a hive down into the fort and more bees swarmed out, but I was above the gate, protected now by the corpses of Danes who had tried to evict us. They still came. Their best weapons were heavy spears that they lunged over the corpse-barrier, but our s.h.i.+elds were stout. "We need to get down to the gate!" I shouted at Steapa.

Osferth heard me. It had been Osferth who leaped from the gate's top when we had defended Lundene, and now he leaped again. There were other Saxons inside the fort, but they were horribly outnumbered and were dying fast. Osferth did not care. He jumped to the ground just inside the gate. He sprawled for a moment, then was on his feet and shouting. "Alfred! Alfred! Alfred!"

I thought it was a strange war cry, especially from a man who resented his natural father as much as Osferth, but it worked. Other West Saxons leaped to join Osferth who was fending off two Danes with his s.h.i.+eld and hacking his sword at two others.

"Alfred!" Another man took up the shout, then Edward gave a great scream and leaped off the rampart to join his half-brother. "Alfred!"

"Protect the aetheling," I shouted.

Steapa, who regarded his first duty as keeping Edward alive, jumped down. I stayed on the rampart with Cerdic because we had to stop the Danes from recapturing the stretch of wall where our ladders were set. My s.h.i.+eld was battered with spears. The linden wood was splintering, but the corpses at our feet were an obstacle and more than one Dane stumbled on the bodies to add his own to the pile. Still they came. A man started clearing the bodies away, tipping them down inside the fort, and I lunged Serpent-Breath into his armpit. Another Dane thrust a spear at me. I took the thrust on my s.h.i.+eld and sliced Serpent-Breath back at the grimacing face framed by a bright steel helmet, but the man twisted aside. I saw him glance down and knew he was thinking of leaping down to attack my men below and I stepped onto a corpse and stabbed Serpent-Breath under his s.h.i.+eld, twisting her as she tore into the flesh of his upper thigh, and he slammed his s.h.i.+eld at me, then Cerdic was beside me and his ax chopped into the spearman's shoulder. My s.h.i.+eld was heavy with the weight of two spears that were lodged in the wood. I tried to shake them off, then ducked as a huge Dane, bellowing curses, charged me with an ax that he swung at my helmet. He crashed bodily into my s.h.i.+eld, helpfully dislodging the spears, and Sihtric split the man's helmet with an ax. I remember seeing blood drip from the rim of my s.h.i.+eld, then I hurled the dying man off. The man was shaking as he died. I rammed Serpent-Breath over his body and the blade jarred on a Danish s.h.i.+eld. Below me I heard the swelling shouts. "Alfred!" they bellowed, then "Edward! Edward!"