“They will charge Æthelred from the east. After they have engaged, we are to attack from the north.”
“From the north?” Eskil said. “But that means we will be charging uphill.”
“It does,” Guthrum said, shaking his head. “I fear this will be a second Ashdown. But we have no choice.”
He ordered his warriors back down the dun, and while Halfdan marched his forces along the ridgeway towards the enemy, Guthrum marched his along the base of the mount. Geirmund trudged through wet ground and kept himself and his company as close to Guthrum as he could, watching the Saxons on the ridge for any sign of movement.
Before long, and as soon as the Danes made clear their strategy, the Saxons did what they had done before and divided their force to meet the two fronts opposing them. Not only did Guthrum and his warriors face an uphill charge, but they also now faced a shield-wall, rather than the enemy’s flank.
Geirmund could not help but question whether this was yet another way for Halfdan to be rid of Guthrum as a rival, along with Geirmund and his Hel-hides. He also wondered if this was the betrayal that Völund had foretold in his fate. He only knew it would not be his surrender.
When the moment came that Guthrum ordered his warriors to turn south and march back up the dun a second time, memories of the charge at Ashdown came unbidden to Geirmund’s mind. He saw that place of battle, and he saw Jarl Sidroc’s men. He heard them dying as if they were there at this battle also, and he remembered holding the warrior Keld as he coughed and gurgled on his blood. Geirmund’s heart pounded, no longer with fear of the unknown, but because he knew battle now.
“Show no mercy!” Guthrum shouted. “Push the enemy hard! Drive them back up the hilltop where we may slaughter them!”
When the Saxon line came within several acre-lengths of distance, Guthrum sounded the final charge and led the front line himself, his sword held high, his voice a bloodthirsty roar. The sight and sound of the jarl drove Geirmund’s fear from him, and he ran to battle with his Hel-hides.
A volley of arrows shot up from the dun above them and came down hard, but the Danes did not slow. Some of them fell, pierced, but most collected arrows in their shields. Guthrum did not even raise his shield against that death-rain, but none of the arrows struck him.
At a dozen paces the Danes brought their shields down from overhead to hold before them, and so did the Saxons. At five paces the armies exchanged spears, and then they smashed into one another. Geirmund’s boots slid in the wet grass, but he stayed upright and crouched, shoving hard against the enemy, his arm ringing from the impact.
The second and third lines behind him roofed the first with their shields, trapping Geirmund in shadow and the echoes of axes and swords on wood. When he could, he jabbed his sword between gaps in the shields, hoping to feel its point tear into yielding flesh. He felt the hammer of metal strikes on his shield. Steinólfur stood at his left, with Thorgrim beside the older warrior, and then Birna beside him. Beyond that distance, Geirmund could not tell Dane from Dane.
Guthrum shouted for his men to push against the Saxons, but the slope of the dun made it difficult for his warriors to hold their ground, and impossible to drive the enemy back. They were pinned to the side of the hill, and within moments Geirmund heard shields splintering and smelled blood.
He feared this battle would end in defeat as Guthrum had predicted, but unlike Sidroc, Guthrum called no retreat. Geirmund stood near enough to the jarl to see the Dane’s face growing redder in frustration and anger, until at last he let out a bone-rattling scream and threw down his shield. Then he charged through the gap in the Dane-wall he had just opened, pushed straight between two Saxon shields, and went behind their front line alone.
Geirmund felt too stunned by that action to take any of his own, but then he noticed the enemy shield on the other side of his weaken slightly, perhaps only in confusion at Guthrum, and perhaps only for a moment.
“Push!” Geirmund shouted. “Push, Hel-hides!”
They heaved, and the enemy line gave way, though not completely. The Saxons before Geirmund, Steinólfur, and Thorgrim fell back in disarray, some of them to the ground. Geirmund stumbled and trampled over them as he charged to join his jarl.
Guthrum fought with axe and sword, cleaving and slicing his way through many Saxons, whose blades seemed unable to touch him.
Geirmund turned towards Thorgrim and Steinólfur. “Open their shield-wall!”
Then he turned and rammed into the back of the enemy line from the side, stabbing and hacking with his Langbardaland sword and his seax. The Saxons either fell bleeding and took their shields with them, or they dropped their shields when they turned to fight him, both of which weakened their wall until the Danes succeeded in completely breaking it.
The battle then turned warrior-to-warrior, and Geirmund quickly slew three Saxons, his Hel-hides at his side. He saw Birna kill two of the enemy at once, and Vetr spinning like the wind with his spear. Skjalgi fought with sword and shield, holding his ground with his back to Steinólfur’s. Geirmund could feel that the fight had shifted as a tide, and after that many of the Saxons pulled back and fled up the dun, as if to rejoin the larger force.
“Stand where you are!” he heard someone shouting, and then he saw their commander. The man wore a bright helmet with gold, and heavy armour. A dozen warriors surrounded him and kept close, engaging only those Danes who attacked them.
Guthrum saw the commander also, a ring-mound of bodies surrounding him as he pointed his sword at the Saxon. “Æthelred!”
Geirmund looked again at the enemy king. “To Guthrum!” he shouted, and he raced to join the fight even as more Saxons flocked to their leader.
The jarl reached the enemy first, alone, and Geirmund feared he would be cut down instantly, but somehow the Saxons failed to strike him as he fought his way through them, straight towards their king.
When Geirmund reached the enemy, he felt something bite into his thigh, but his leg stayed strong beneath him and he kept fighting. He slashed the nearest Saxon through the mouth and opened the side of his face, having aimed at his throat and missed, but the warrior fell away holding his jaw, perhaps believing he had been mortally wounded.
Geirmund looked up just then to see Guthrum hurl a spear, which struck Æthelred in the side, and the Saxon tipped back. A cry went up among his warriors and they swarmed around their king as though to shield him with their bodies, and while some turned to fight and die, the others bore him away.
Guthrum howled after them, but then he turned to his warriors. “To the summit! To Halfdan!”
The Danes roared in reply, and then they charged up the dun, arriving at the Saxon flank as they had been ordered to do. The surprise of that attack, and perhaps word of Æthelred’s fall, broke the main Saxon line not long after. Enemy horns called for retreat, and the Saxons fled from the hill, surrendering the field to the Danes.
A victory cry went up among them. Geirmund howled and raised both his weapons to the evening sky. Had there been more light left in the day, Halfdan would have ordered his warriors to pursue the Saxons to slay as many as they could, but the Danes were too unfamiliar with that country to keep fighting at night.
Instead, they made a camp there and tended to their wounded. Geirmund went among the fallen, searching by the fading daylight for his warriors and for other Danes who could be saved, and helping them if he could. Some warriors would never leave that hill, and all that could be done was to honour them and speed them to Valhalla, if they wished for an end to their suffering. Geirmund showed many Saxons the same mercy.
It was after the sun had gone down that he found Rek. A grim Saxon blade had split his side and spilled his guts, and he lay on the ground unable to move anything but his neck and his head. Geirmund knelt on the heath next to him, wetting his knees with blood.
“I feel no pain,” the Dane said. “Bastard cho
pped my back before he sliced me. But I think… I think I feel the life going out of me. My heart… it slows, I think.”
Geirmund noticed Rek’s hands were empty. He looked about, and nearby he saw his sword, Hámund’s sword, given to Geirmund, and won by the Dane. He retrieved it, and then he put it into Rek’s hands and curled the Dane’s useless fingers around its grip. But when Geirmund let go, the Dane did also.
Geirmund put the sword back into Rek’s hand, and this time he did not let go. “I will help you hold on to it,” he said.
The Dane closed his eyes. “I thank you. I don’t believe it will be for long.”
“We won the battle,” Geirmund said. “This night you go to–”
“I will stay,” said a quiet, approaching shadow. A moment later, Geirmund recognized Eskil. “You may go, Hel-hide,” he said.
Geirmund nodded, but before he went he said to Rek, “May you enter Óðinn hall this night.” Then he rose to his feet and left one brother to die and the other to mourn alone.
At the hilltop camp he sought out his warriors, and he embraced Steinólfur and Skjalgi when he found both of them alive. Skjalgi had a deep gash on his hand, and Steinólfur had received a few cuts as well, but none of their injuries looked able to kill them.
That was when Geirmund remembered his own wound and looked down at his leg, where he discovered that a sword or spear point had stabbed him. It still bled, but not fast, and it wasn’t deep. Despite Steinólfur’s protests, he put off dressing it until he had accounted for all twenty-three of his warriors.
He found twenty of them that night, four of them dead or dying, and he found the remaining three the following morning, already cold. The Hel-hides had lost seven warriors in all, Muli among them, and Geirmund wished he had known the warrior better.
Before the Danes left that place, they built funeral pyres atop the hill for the fallen, and Geirmund helped to cut and gather wood from the forests at the foot of the dun. The strain squeezed blood from his thigh no matter how tightly he wrapped it, but he worked all morning, up and down, up and down. When it was time to burn Rek, Geirmund stood next to Eskil watching the flames, engulfed in meaty smoke.
For a while neither spoke. But then the Dane turned to Geirmund, his face and eyes empty. “I saw what you did.”
Geirmund looked away and stared straight into the heart of the pyre.
“You could have taken that sword,” Eskil went on. “But you put it into my brother’s hand instead.”
The thought of taking it had not even occurred to Geirmund. “The sword was his.”
Eskil nodded. Then he looked back at the fire and sighed. “Too many died here, and Halfdan is to blame for it.”
Geirmund understood the Dane’s anger, but he wondered if the fault for Rek’s death, and Muli’s death, and the death of every other warrior lay with Halfdan, or if the Three Spinners had decided it all. He kept this question to himself, though, as he paid respect and honour to each of the dead warriors from his company.
When the Danes returned to Readingum, they all stopped there to drink ale to honour their friends and countrymen who now drank Óðinn’s mead and feasted in Valhalla. But the empty tents and empty places around the cookfires were apparent to all and held the mood down. There were too few Danes left in the encampment, far fewer than when Geirmund had first arrived, despite Halfdan winning the last two battles, and that did not bode well for the final taking of Wessex.
“Muli is with his son now,” Birna said, staring into her ale. “I am glad of that, at least.”
“Did any of you see Guthrum fighting?” Aslef asked. His good-looking features had been ruined by a gash across his nose and cheek, right below his eye, which was swollen blue. “I’ve never seen the like of it. It is he who won the battle for us.”
“He fought as if no iron or steel could touch him,” Thorgrim said. “And none did.”
Geirmund had seen the same with his own eyes, and when he and Steinólfur shared a glance they also shared an unspoken thought that Völund’s ring might have given the jarl more gifts than mere gold. But it was hard for Geirmund to say how he felt about that. He knew that no power nor craft could deny the Three Spinners the fate they had decreed, not even the might of the gods who would one day meet their doom, and surely not Völund’s skills as a smith. Guthrum had lived because it was his fate to live, and if he had lived because of Hnituðr’s power, then it was also fate that the Dane should have that ring.
“Guthrum will be made a king,” Thorgrim said.
“You think so?” asked Aslef.
“He killed Æthelred,” Birna said. “Many of the jarls would prefer to follow him than Halfdan.”
“Did you see Æthelred die?” Aslef asked.
“If he lives, he won’t for much longer,” Geirmund said. “Guthrum’s spear went into his belly.”
“I would follow King Guthrum,” Rafn said, and next to him Vetr nodded his head in agreement.
Eskil approached their circle then, carrying Geirmund’s former sword, and all turned towards him. When he spoke, he spoke loudly, as though he wanted everyone there to hear him.
“I do not speak for my brother,” he said. “I will make no apologies for him, especially now that he has gone to Valhalla. But I will speak for myself. My brother’s sword has come to me but I chose not to burn it on the pyre. Instead, I say to you, Geirmund Hel-hide, that for your honour and courage this sword belongs to you and no other.” The Dane then crossed the circle and presented the sword to him.
Geirmund hesitated. Then he rose to his feet and took the blade with a nod of respect. “I accept this gift, but not because I believe it is rightfully mine. This sword belonged to Rek. I accept it now to honour your generosity, Eskil, and with this blade I will slay many Saxons to honour Rek.”
That brought cheers and raised ale cups and horns. Eskil returned Geirmund’s nod, and then he left the circle to return to his own company, where he and his warriors dealt with their losses.
Geirmund sat and looked at the sword, and even though he hadn’t been long parted from it, he saw the blade as though it were an acquaintance returning from a long absence. He studied its golden inlay of wheel patterns, which Eskil had cleaned of blood and polished. He pulled it free of its scabbard and, pointing it at the fire, looked down the length of its steel blade that rippled with reflected flames.
“A sword with the life it’s had deserves a name,” Steinólfur said.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Geirmund said.
“What will you call it?” Skjalgi asked.
Geirmund thought for a moment. “Both times this sword has come to me, it has been a brother’s gift, so I will call it Bróðirgjöfr, to honour my brother and Eskil’s brother.”
“Not a name that will put fear into the hearts of your enemies,” Thorgrim said, “but it is a good name.”
The other Hel-hide warriors seemed to agree. After that, they kept drinking late into the night, and the next morning they learned that several of the jarls had rejected Halfdan and chosen Guthrum as their new king, just as Thorgrim had predicted. When Guthrum marched from Readingum back to Wælingford, he took most of his army with him, which now exceeded Halfdan’s in number, leaving only enough warriors to keep watch over his ships, and on the march to Wælingford, Guthrum found Geirmund and travelled beside him for some time.
“I see you are carrying your sword once more,” the king said.
“I see you are no longer wearing Hnituðr,” Geirmund said, for he could no longer see the ring on Guthrum’s arm.
“I wear it,” the king said. “But it is under my sleeve.”
“Why hide it?”
He lowered his voice. “Surely you have heard the rumours.”
“I trust what I saw,” Geirmund said. “Not what I hear. And I know what I saw.”
Guthrum frowned and laid h
is hand over his arm where Geirmund assumed the ring to be hidden. “I know what you gave to me, even if you did not when you gave it. I also know how you fought yesterday, and I plan to give you rich reward, Geirmund Hel-hide. When the time is right, you will be made a jarl.”
Geirmund blinked in surprise. As a jarl, he would be entitled to lands from Guthrum’s conquest, perhaps some of the very Wessex or Mercian lands he had travelled through and admired. “I am grateful, my king.”
“Ah, but I am a newly made king,” Guthrum said. “I now sit equal to Halfdan, which means I can be his enemy as easily as his ally. For now we have a peace, for war between us would serve neither, and I doubt I would win such a war. To fight one son of Ragnar is to fight them all.”
Once again, Geirmund realized that with greater power and wealth came greater danger and threat.
“Until my rule is sure,” Guthrum said, “I do not want it said that I only became a king by virtue of a ring. My crown must be earned, and it must be mine.”
“It is yours,” Geirmund said, ‘regardless of the ring. But I understand. I will speak no more about it, and I will see that my warriors do the same.”
The king nodded. “On the subject of your warriors, there are more who wish to swear to you.”
That surprised Geirmund. “But I lost seven of my twenty-three. The battle proved that neither I nor my Hel-hides defy death, after all.”
“They know you fought by my side,” Guthrum said. “They know you were there when I slew Æthelred. They believe that fighting with you will bring them great honour and reward.”
Geirmund only hesitated for a moment. “I will accept them,” he said.
“You would be a fool not to. Embrace your growing reputation, son of Hjörr, and your countrymen will hear of you not just in Rogaland, but the whole length of the North Way.” He turned toward Geirmund with a wry grin. “At Avaldsnes, you told me I would one day fear the warriors that follow you.”
Geirmund had nearly forgotten that boast. “And do you?”
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