The Warrior Chronicles

by Bernard Cornwell

  I went back to the rampart and Father Willibald joined me there, holding out his crucifix that had been carved from an ox’s thigh bone. ‘You want God’s blessing?’ he asked me.

  ‘What I want, father,’ I said, ‘is your cloak.’ He had a fine woollen cloak, hooded and dyed a dark brown. He gave it me and I tied the cords around my neck, hiding the sheen of my mail coat. ‘And in the dawn, father,’ I said, ‘I want you to stay up here. The riverbank will be no place for priests.’

  ‘If men die there,’ he said, ‘then it is my place.’

  ‘You want to go to heaven in the morning?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then stay here,’ I spoke more savagely than I intended, but that was nervousness, and then it was time to go for, though the night was still dark and the dawn a long way off, I needed time to slink through the Danish lines. Leofric saw me off, walking with me to the northern flank of Cynuit that was in mooncast shadow. It was also the least guarded side of the hill, for the northern slope led to nothing except marshes and the Sæfern sea. I gave Leofric my shield. ‘I don’t need it,’ I said. ‘It will just make me clumsy.’

  He touched my arm. ‘You’re a cocky bastard, Earsling, aren’t you?’

  ‘Is that a fault?’

  ‘No, lord,’ he said, and that last word was high praise. ‘God go with you,’ he added, ‘whichever god it is.’

  I touched Thor’s hammer, then tucked it under my mail. ‘Bring the men fast when you see the Danes go to the ships,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll come fast,’ he promised me, ‘if the marsh lets us.’

  I had seen Danes cross the marsh in the daylight and had noted that it was soft ground, but not rank bog-land. ‘You can cross it fast,’ I said, then pulled the cloak’s hood over my helmet. ‘Time to go,’ I said.

  Leofric said nothing and I dropped down from the rampart into the shallow ditch. So now I would become what I had always wanted to be, a Shadow-Walker. Childhood’s dream had become life and death, and touching Serpent-Breath’s hilt for luck, I crossed the ditch’s lip. I went at a crouch, and halfway down the hill I dropped to my belly and slithered like a serpent, black against the grass, inching my way towards a space between two dying fires.

  The Danes were sleeping, or close to sleep. I could see them sitting by the dying fires, and once I was out of the hill’s shadow there was enough moonlight to reveal me and there was no cover for the meadow had been cropped by sheep, but I moved like a ghost, a belly-crawling ghost, inching my way, making no noise, a shadow on the grass, and all they had to do was look, or walk between the fires, but they heard nothing, suspected nothing and so saw nothing. It took an age, but I slipped through them, never going closer to an enemy than twenty paces, and once past them I was in the marsh and there the tussocks offered shadow and I could move faster, wriggling through slime and shallow water, and the only scare came when I startled a bird from its nest and it leaped into the air with a cry of alarm and a swift whirr of wings. I sensed the Danes staring towards the marsh, but I was motionless, black and unmoving in the broken shadow, and after a while there was only silence. I waited, water seeping through my mail, and I prayed to Hoder, blind son of Odin and god of the night. Look after me, I prayed, and I wished I had made a sacrifice to Hoder, but I had not, and I thought that Ealdwulf would be looking down at me and I vowed to make him proud. I was doing what he had always wanted me to do, carrying Serpent-Breath against the Danes.

  I worked my way eastwards, behind the sentries, going to where the ships were beached. No grey showed in the eastern sky. I still went slowly, staying on my belly, going slowly enough for the fears to work on me. I was aware of a muscle quivering in my right thigh, of a thirst that could not be quenched, of a sourness in the bowels. I kept touching Serpent-Breath’s hilt, remembering the charms that Ealdwulf and Brida had worked on the blade. Never, Ravn had said, never fight Ubba.

  The east was still dark. I crept on, close to the sea now so I could gaze up the wide Sæfern and see nothing except the shimmer of the sinking moon on the rippled water that looked like a sheet of hammered silver. The tide was flooding, the muddy shore narrowing as the sea rose. There would be salmon in the Pedredan, I thought, salmon swimming with the tide, going back to the sea, and I touched the sword hilt for I was close to the strip of firm land where the hovels stood and the ship-guards waited. My thigh shivered. I felt sick.

  But blind Hoder was watching over me. The ship-guards were no more alert than their comrades at the hill’s foot, and why should they be? They were further from Odda’s forces, and they expected no trouble, indeed they were there only because the Danes never left their ships unguarded, and these ship-guards had mostly gone into the fishermen’s hovels to sleep, leaving just a handful of men sitting by the small fires. Those men were motionless, probably half asleep, though one was pacing up and down beneath the high prows of the beached ships.

  I stood.

  I had shadow-walked, but now I was on Danish ground, behind their sentries, and I undid the cloak’s cords, took it off and wiped the mud from my mail and then walked openly towards the ships, my boots squelching in the last yards of marshland, and then I just stood by the northernmost boat, threw my helmet down in the shadow of the ship, and waited for the one Dane who was on his feet to discover me.

  And what would he see? A man in mail, a lord, a shipmaster, a Dane, and I leaned on the ship’s prow and stared up at the stars. My heart thumped, my thigh quivered, and I thought that if I died this morning at least I would be with Ragnar again. I would be with him in Valhalla’s hall of the dead, except some men believed that those who did not die in battle went instead to Niflheim, that dreadful cold hell of the Northmen where the corpse goddess Hel stalks through the mists and the serpent Corpse-Ripper slithers across the frost to gnaw the dead, but surely, I thought, a man who died in a hall-burning would go to Valhalla, not to grey Niflheim? Surely Ragnar was with Odin, and then I heard the Dane’s footsteps and I glanced at him with a smile. ‘A chill morning,’ I said.

  ‘It is.’ He was an older man with a grizzled beard and he was plainly puzzled by my sudden appearance, but he was not suspicious.

  ‘All quiet,’ I said, jerking my head to the north to suggest I had been visiting the sentries on the Sæfern’s side of the hill.

  ‘They’re frightened of us,’ he said.

  ‘So they should be.’ I faked a huge yawn, then pushed myself away from the ship and walked a couple of paces north as though I was stretching tired limbs, then pretended to notice my helmet at the water’s edge. ‘What’s that?’

  He took the bait, going into the ship’s shadow to bend over the helmet and I drew my knife, stepped close to him and drove the blade up into his throat. I did not slit his throat, but stabbed it, plunged the blade straight in and twisted it and at the same time I pushed him forward, driving his face into the water and I held him there so that if he did not bleed to death he would drown, and it took a long time, longer than I expected, but men are hard to kill. He struggled for a time and I thought the noise he made might bring the men from the nearest fire, but that fire was forty or fifty paces down the beach and the small waves of the river were loud enough to cover the Dane’s death throes, and so I killed him and no one knew of it, none but the gods saw it, and when his soul was gone I pulled the knife from his throat, retrieved my helmet, and went back to the ship’s prow.

  And waited there until dawn lightened the eastern horizon. Waited till there was a rim of grey at the edge of England.

  And it was time.

  I strolled towards the nearest fire. Two men sat there. ‘Kill one,’ I sang softly, ‘and two then three, kill four and five, and then some more.’ It was a Danish rowing chant, one that I had heard so often on the Wind-Viper. ‘You’ll be relieved soon,’ I greeted them cheerfully.

  They just stared at me. They did not know who I was, but just like the man I had killed, they were not suspicious even though I spoke their tongue with an English twist. There w
ere plenty of English in the Danish armies.

  ‘A quiet night,’ I said, and leaned down and took the unburned end of a piece of flaming wood from the fire. ‘Egil left a knife on his ship,’ I explained, and Egil was a common enough name among the Danes to arouse no suspicion, and they just watched as I walked north, presuming I needed the flame to light my way onto the ships. I passed the hovels, nodded to three men resting beside another fire, and kept walking until I had reached the centre of the line of beached ships and there, whistling softly as though I did not have a care in the world, I climbed the short ladder left leaning on the ship’s prow and jumped down into the hull and made my way between the rowers’ benches. I had half expected to find men asleep in the ships, but the boat was deserted except for the scrabble of rats’ feet in the bilge.

  I crouched in the ship’s belly where I thrust the burning wood beneath the stacked oars, but I doubted it would be sufficient to set those oars aflame and so I used my knife to shave kindling off a rowers’ bench and, when I had enough scraps of wood, I piled them over the flame and saw the fire spring up. I cut more, then hacked at the oar shafts to give the flames purchase, and no one shouted at me from the bank. Anyone watching must have thought I merely searched the bilge and the flames were still not high enough to cause alarm, but they were spreading and I knew I had very little time and so I sheathed the knife and slid over the boat’s side. I lowered myself into the Pedredan, careless what the water would do to my mail and weapons, and once in the river I waded northwards from ship’s stern to ship’s stern, until at last I had cleared the last boat and had come to where the grey-bearded corpse was thumping softly in the river’s small waves, and there I waited.

  And waited. The fire, I thought, must have gone out. I was cold.

  And still I waited. The grey on the world’s rim lightened, and then, suddenly, there was an angry shout and I moved out of the shadow and saw the Danes running towards the flames that were bright and high on the ship I had fired, and so I went to their abandoned fire and took another burning brand and hurled that into a second ship, and the Danes were scrambling onto the burning boat that was sixty paces away and none saw me. Then a horn sounded, sounded again and again, sounding the alarm and I knew Ubba’s men would be coming from their camp at Cantucton, and I carried a last piece of fiery wood to the ships, burned my hand as I thrust it under a pile of oars, then I waded back into the river to hide beneath the shadowed belly of a boat.

  The horn still sounded. Men were scrambling from the fishermen’s hovels, going to save their fleet, and more men were running from their camp to the south, and so Ubba’s Danes fell into our trap. They saw their ships burning and went to save them. They streamed from the camp in disorder, many without weapons, intent only on quenching the flames that flickered up the rigging and threw lurid shadows on the bank. I was hidden, but knew Leofric would be coming, and now it was all timing. Timing and the blessing of the spinners, the blessing of the gods, and the Danes were using their shields to scoop water into the first burning ship, but then another shout sounded and I knew they had seen Leofric, and he had surely burst past the first line of sentries, slaughtering them as he went, and was now in the marsh. I waded out of the shadow, out from beneath the ship’s overhanging hull, and saw Leofric’s men coming, saw thirty or forty Danes running north to meet his charge, but then those Danes saw the new fires in the northernmost ships and they were assailed by panic because there was fire behind them and warriors in front of them, and most of the other Danes were still a hundred paces away and I knew that so far the gods were fighting for us.

  I waded from the water. Leofric’s men were coming from the marsh and the first swords and spears clashed, but Leofric had the advantage of numbers and Heahengel’s crew overran the handful of Danes, chopping them with axe and sword, and one crewman turned fast, panic in his face when he saw me coming, and I shouted my name, stooped to pick up a Danish shield, and Edor’s men were behind us and I called to them to feed the ship-fires while the men of Heahengel formed a shield wall across the strip of firm land. Then we walked forward. Walked towards Ubba’s army that was only just realising that they were being attacked.

  We marched forward. A woman scrambled from a hovel, screamed when she saw us and fled up the bank towards the Danes where a man was roaring at men to form a shield wall. ‘Edor!’ I shouted, knowing we would need his men now, and he brought them to thicken our line so that we made a solid shield wall across the strip of firm land, and we were a hundred strong and in front of us was the whole Danish army, though it was an army in panicked disorder, and I glanced up at Cynuit and saw no sign of Odda’s men. They would come, I thought, they would surely come, and then Leofric bellowed that we were to touch shields, and the limewood rattled on limewood and I sheathed Serpent-Breath and drew Wasp-Sting.

  Shield wall. It is an awful place, my father had said, and he had fought in seven shield walls and was killed in the last one. Never fight Ubba, Ravn had said.

  Behind us the northernmost ships burned and in front of us a rush of maddened Danes came for revenge and that was their undoing, for they did not form a proper shield wall, but came at us like mad dogs, intent only on killing us, sure they could beat us for they were Danes and we were West Saxons, and we braced and I watched a scar-faced man, spittle flying from his mouth as he screamed, charge at me and it was then that the battle-calm came. Suddenly there was no more sourness in my bowels, no dry mouth, no shaking muscles, but only the magical battle-calm. I was happy.

  I was tired too. I had not slept. I was soaking wet. I was cold, yet suddenly I felt invincible. It is a wondrous thing, that battle-calm. The nerves go, the fear wings off into the void, and all is clear as precious crystal and the enemy has no chance because he is so slow, and I swept the shield left, taking the scar-faced man’s spear thrust, lunged Wasp-Sting forward and the Dane ran onto her point. I felt the impact run up my arm as her tip punctured his belly muscles, and I was already twisting her, ripping her up and free, sawing through leather, skin, muscle and guts, and his blood was warm on my cold hand, and he screamed, ale breath in my face, and I punched him down with the shield’s heavy boss, stamped on his groin, killed him with Wasp-Sting’s tip in his throat, and a second man was on my right, beating at my neighbour’s shield with an axe, and he was easy to kill, point into the throat, and then we were going forward. A woman, hair unbound, came at me with a spear and I kicked her brutally hard, then smashed her face with the shield’s iron rim so that she fell screaming into a dying fire and her unbound hair flared up bright as burning kindling, and Heahengel’s crew was with me, and Leofric was bellowing at them to kill and to kill fast. This was our chance to slaughter Danes who had made a foolish attack on us, who had not formed a proper shield wall, and it was axe work and sword work, butchers’ work with good iron, and already there were thirty or more Danish dead and seven ships were burning, their flames spreading with astonishing speed.

  ‘Shield wall!’ I heard the cry from the Danes. The world was light now, the sun just beneath the horizon. The northernmost ships had become a furnace. A dragon’s head reared in the smoke, its gold eyes bright. Gulls screamed above the beach. A dog chased along the ships, yelping. A mast fell, spewing sparks high into the silver air, and then I saw the Danes make their shield wall, saw them organise themselves for our deaths and saw the raven banner, the triangle of cloth which proclaimed that Ubba was here and coming to give us slaughter.

  ‘Shield wall!’ I shouted, and that was the first time I ever gave that order. ‘Shield wall!’ We had grown ragged, but now it was time to be tight. To be shield to shield. There were hundreds of Danes in front of us and they came to overwhelm us, and I banged Wasp-Sting against the metal rim of my shield. ‘They’re coming to die!’ I shouted, ‘they’re coming to bleed! They’re coming to our blades!’

  My men cheered. We had started a hundred strong, but had lost half a dozen men in the early fighting, but the remaining men cheered even though five or s
ix times their number came to kill them, and Leofric began the battle chant of Hegga, an English rowers’ chant, rhythmic and harsh, telling of a battle fought by our ancestors against the men who had held Britain before we came, and now we fought for our land again, and behind me a lone voice uttered a prayer and I turned to see Father Willibald holding a spear. I laughed at his disobedience.

  Laughter in battle. That was what Ragnar had taught me, to take joy from the fight. Joy in the morning, for the sun was touching the east now, filling the sky with light, driving darkness beyond the world’s western rim and I hammered Wasp-Sting against my shield, making a noise to drown the shouts of the Danes, and I knew we would be hard hit and that we must hold until Odda came, but I was relying on Leofric to be the bastion on our right flank where the Danes were sure to try and lap around us by going through the marsh. Our left was safe, for that was by the ships, and the right was where we would be broken if we could not hold.

  ‘Shields!’ I bellowed, and we touched shields again for the Danes were coming and I knew they would not hesitate in their attack. We were too few to frighten them, they would not need to work up courage for this battle, they would just come.

  And come they did. A thick line of men, shield to shield, new morning light touching axe heads and spear heads and swords.