The Pale Horseman

by Bernard Cornwell

  “We must help them,” Eanflæd said and, when I said nothing, she protested that one of the women was holding a baby. “We have to help them!” she insisted.

  I was about to retort that the last thing we needed was more hungry mouths to feed, but her harsh words in the night had persuaded me that I had to do something to show her I was not as treacherous as she evidently believed, so I stood, hefted my shield, and started down the hill. The others followed, but before we were even halfway down I heard shouts from the west. The lone priest who had gone that way was now with four soldiers and they turned as horsemen came from the trees. There were six horsemen, then eight more appeared, then another ten, and I realized a whole column of mounted soldiers was streaming from the dead winter trees. They had black shields and black cloaks, so they had to be Guthrum’s men. One of the priests stranded in the swamp ran back along the path and I saw he had a sword and was going to help his companions.

  It was a brave thing for the lone priest to do, but quite useless. The four soldiers and the single priest were surrounded now. They were standing back-to-back and the Danish horsemen were all around them, hacking down, and then two of the horsemen saw the priest with his sword and spurred toward him. “Those two are ours,” I said to Leofric.

  That was stupid. The four men were doomed, as was the priest if we did not intervene, but there were only two of us and, even if we killed the two horsemen, we would still face overwhelming odds, but I was driven by Eanflæd’s scorn and I was tired of skulking through the winter countryside and I was angry. So I ran down the hill, careless of the noise I made as I crashed through brittle undergrowth. The lone priest had his back to the swamp now and the horsemen were charging at him as Leofric and I burst from the trees and came at them from their left side.

  I hit the nearest horse’s flank with my heavy shield. There was a scream from the horse and an explosion of wet soil, grass, snow, and hooves as man and beast went down sideways. I was also on the ground, knocked there by the impact, but I recovered first and found the rider tangled with his stirrups, one leg trapped under the struggling horse, and I chopped Serpent-Breath down hard. I cut into his throat, stamped on his face, chopped again, slipped in his blood, then left him and went to help Leofric who was fending off the second man who was still on horseback. The Dane’s sword thumped on Leofric’s shield, then he had to turn his horse to face me and Leofric’s ax took the horse in the face and the beast reared, the rider slid backward, and I met his spine with Serpent-Breath’s tip. Two down. The priest with the sword, not a half dozen paces away, had not moved. He was just staring at us. “Get back into the marsh!” I shouted at him. “Go! Go!” Iseult and Eanflæd were with us now and they seized the priest and hurried him toward the path. It might lead nowhere, but it was better to face the remaining Danes there than on the firm ground at the hill’s foot.

  And those black-cloaked Danes were coming. They had slaughtered the handful of soldiers, seen their two men killed, and now came for vengeance. “Come on!” I snarled at Leofric and, taking the wounded horse by the reins, I ran onto the small twisting path.

  “A horse won’t help you here,” Leofric said.

  The horse was nervous. Its face was wounded and the path was slippery, but I dragged it along the track until we were close to the small patch of land where the refugees huddled, and by now the Danes were also on the path, following us. They had dismounted. They could only come two abreast and, in places, only one man could use the track and in one of those places I stopped the horse and exchanged Serpent-Breath for Leofric’s ax. The horse looked at me with a big brown eye. “This is for Odin,” I said, and I swung the ax into its neck, chopping down through mane and hide, and a woman screamed behind me as the blood spurted bright and high in the dull day. The horse whinnied and tried to rear, and I swung again; this time the beast went down, thrashing hooves, blood, and water splashing. Snow turned red as I axed it a third time, finally stilling it, and now the dying beast was an obstacle athwart the track and the Danes would have to fight across its corpse. I took Serpent-Breath back.

  “We’ll kill them one by one,” I told Leofric.

  “For how long?” He nodded westward and I saw more Danes coming, a whole ship’s crew of mounted Danes streaming along the swamp’s edge. Fifty men? Maybe more, but even so they could only use the path in ones or twos and they would have to fight over the dead horse into Serpent-Breath and Leofric’s ax. He had lost his own ax, taken from him when he was brought to Cippanhamm, but he seemed to like his stolen weapon. He made the sign of the cross, touched the blade, then hefted his shield as the Danes came.

  Two young men came first. They were wild and savage, wanting to make a reputation, but the first to come was stopped by Leofric’s ax banging into his shield and I swept Serpent-Breath beneath the shield to slice his ankle and he fell, cursing, to tangle his companion, and Leofric wrenched the wide-bladed ax free and slashed it down again. The second man stumbled on the horse and Serpent-Breath took him under the chin, above his leather coat, and the blood ran down her blade in a sudden flood and now there were two Danish corpses added to the horse-flesh barricade. I was taunting the other Danes, calling them corpse worms, telling them I had known children who could fight better. Another man came, screaming in rage as he leaped over the horse, and he was checked by Leofric’s shield and Serpent-Breath met his sword with a dull crack and his blade broke, and two more men were trying to get past the horse, struggling in water up to their knees and I rammed Serpent-Breath into the belly of the first, pushing her through his leather armor, left him to die, and swung right at the man trying to get through the water. Serpent-Breath’s tip flicked across his face to spray blood into the thickening snowfall. I went forward, feet sinking, lunged again, and he could not move in the mire and Serpent-Breath took his gullet. I was screaming with joy because the battle calm had come, the same blessed stillness I had felt at Cynuit. It is a joy, that feeling, and the only other joy to compare is that of being with a woman.

  It is as though life slows. The enemy moves as if he is wading in mud, but I was kingfisher fast. There is rage, but it is a controlled rage, and there is joy, the joy that the poets celebrate when they speak of battle, and a certainty that death is not in that day’s fate. My head was full of singing, a keening note, high and shrill, death’s anthem. All I wanted was for more Danes to come to Serpent-Breath and it seemed to me that she took on her own life in those moments. To think was to act. A man came across the horse’s flank; I thought to slice at his ankle, knew he would drop his shield and so open his upper body to an attack, and before the thought was even coherent it was done and Serpent-Breath had taken one of his eyes. She had gone down and up, was already moving to the right to counter another man trying to get around the horse, and I let him get past the stallion’s bloodied head, then scornfully drove him down into the water and there I stood on him, holding his head under my boot as he drowned. I screamed at the Danes, told them I was Valhalla’s gatekeeper, that they had been weaned on coward’s milk, and that I wanted them to come to my blade. I begged them to come, but five men were dead around the horse and the others were now wary.

  I stood on the dead horse and spread my arms. I held the shield high to my left and the sword to my right, and my mail coat was spattered with blood, and the snow fell about my wolf-crested helmet, and all I knew was the young man’s joy of slaughter. “I killed Ubba Lothbrokson!” I shouted at them. “I killed him! So come and join him! Taste his death! My sword wants you!”

  “Boats,” Leofric said. I did not hear him. The man I thought I had drowned was still alive and he suddenly reared from the marsh, choking and vomiting water, and I jumped down off the horse and put my foot on his head again.

  “Let him live!” a voice shouted behind me. “I want a prisoner!”

  The man tried to fight my foot, but Serpent-Breath put him down. He struggled again and I broke his spine with Serpent-Breath and he was still.

  “I said I wanted a
prisoner,” the voice behind protested.

  “Come and die!” I shouted at the Danes.

  “Boats,” Leofric said again, and I glanced behind and saw three punts coming through the marsh. They were long flat boats, propelled by men with poles, and they grounded on the other side of the huddled refugees who hurried aboard. The Danes, knowing Leofric and I had to retreat if we were to gain the safety of the boats, readied for a charge and I smiled at them, inviting them.

  “One boat left,” Leofric said. “Room for us. You’ll have to run like hell.”

  “I’ll stay here,” I shouted, but in Danish. “I’m enjoying myself.”

  Then there was a stir on the path as a man came to the front rank of the Danes and the others edged aside to give him room. He was in chain mail and had a silvered helmet with a raven’s wing at its crown, but as he came closer he took the helmet off and I saw the gold-tipped bone in his hair. It was Guthrum himself. The bone was one of his mother’s ribs and he wore it out of love for her memory. He stared at me, his gaunt face sad, and then looked down at the men we had killed. “I shall hunt you like a dog, Uhtred Ragnarson,” he said, “and I shall kill you like a dog.”

  “My name,” I said, “is Uhtred Uhtredson.”

  “We have to run,” Leofric hissed at me.

  The snow whirled above the swamp, thick enough now so that I could hardly see the ridgetop from where we had glimpsed the pigeons circling. “You are a dead man, Uhtred,” Guthrum said.

  “I never met your mother,” I called to him, “but I would have liked to meet her.”

  His face took on the reverent look that any mention of his mother always provoked. He seemed to regret that he had spoken so harshly to me for he made a conciliatory gesture. “She was a great woman,” he said.

  I smiled at him. At that moment, looking back, I could have changed sides so easily and Guthrum would have welcomed me if I had just given his mother a compliment, but I was a belligerent young man and the battle joy was on me. “I would have spat in her ugly face,” I told Guthrum, “and now I piss on your mother’s soul, and tell you that the beasts of Niflheim are humping her rancid bones.”

  He screamed with rage and they all charged, some splashing through the shallows, all desperate to reach me and avenge the terrible insult, but Leofric and I were running like hunted boars, and we charged through the reeds and into the water and hurled ourselves onto the last punt. The first two were gone, but the third had waited for us and, as we sprawled on its damp boards, the man with the pole pushed hard and the craft slid away into the black water. The Danes tried to follow, but we were going surprisingly fast, gliding through the snowfall, and Guthrum was shouting at me and a spear was thrown, but the marshman poled again and the spear plunged harmlessly into the mud.

  “I shall find you!” Guthrum shouted.

  “Why should I care?” I called back. “Your men only know how to die!” I raised Serpent-Breath and kissed her sticky blade. “And your mother was a whore to dwarves!”

  “You should have let that one man live,” a voice said behind me, “because I wanted to question him.” The punt only contained the one passenger besides Leofric and myself, and that one man was the priest who had carried a sword and now he was sitting in the punt’s flat bow, frowning at me. “There was no need to kill that man,” he said sternly and I looked at him with such fury that he recoiled. Damn all priests, I thought. I had saved the bastard’s life and all he did was reprove me, and then I saw that he was no priest at all.

  It was Alfred.

  The punt slid over the swamp, sometimes gliding across black water, sometimes rustling through grass or reeds. The man poling it was a bent, dark-skinned creature with a massive beard, otter-skin clothes, and a toothless mouth. Guthrum’s Danes were far behind now, carrying their dead back to firmer ground. “I need to know what they plan to do,” Alfred complained to me. “The prisoner could have told us.”

  He spoke more respectfully. Looking back I realized I had frightened him, for the front of my mail coat was sheeted in blood and there was more blood on my face and helmet.

  “They plan to finish Wessex,” I said curtly. “You don’t need a prisoner to tell you that.”

  “Lord,” he said.

  I stared at him.

  “I am a king!” he insisted. “You address a king with respect.”

  “A king of what?” I asked.

  “You’re not hurt, lord?” Leofric asked Alfred.

  “No, thank God. No.” He looked at the sword he carried. “Thank God.” I saw he was not wearing priest’s robes, but a swathing black cloak. His long face was very pale. “Thank you, Leofric,” he said, then looked up at me and seemed to shudder. We were catching up with the other two punts and I saw that Ælswith, pregnant and swathed in a silver fox-fur cloak, was in one. Iseult and Eanflæd were also in that punt whereas the priests were crowded onto the other, and I saw that Bishop Alewold of Exanceaster was one of them.

  “What happened, lord?” Leofric asked.

  Alfred sighed. He was shivering now, but he told his story. He had ridden from Cippanhamm with his family, his bodyguard, and a score of churchmen to accompany the monk Asser on the first part of his journey. “We had a service of thanksgiving,” he said, “in the church at Soppan Byrg. It’s a new church,” he added earnestly to Leofric, “and very fine. We sang psalms, said prayers, and Brother Asser went on his way rejoicing.” He made the sign of the cross. “I pray he’s safe.”

  “I hope the lying bastard’s dead,” I snarled.

  Alfred ignored that. After the church service they had all gone to a nearby monastery for a meal, and it was while they were there that the Danes had come. The royal group had fled, finding shelter in nearby woods while the monastery burned. After that they had tried to ride east into the heart of Wessex but, like us, they had constantly been headed off by patrolling Danes. One night, sheltering in a farm, they had been surprised by Danish troops who had killed some of Alfred’s guards and captured all his horses and ever since they had been wandering, as lost as us, until they came to the swamp. “God knows what will happen now,” Alfred said.

  “We fight,” I said. He just looked at me and I shrugged. “We fight,” I said again.

  Alfred stared across the swamp. “Find a ship,” he said, but so softly that I hardly heard him. “Find a ship and go to Frankia.” He pulled the cloak tighter around his thin body. The snow was thickening as it fell, though it melted as soon as it met the dark water. The Danes had vanished, lost in the snow behind. “That was Guthrum?” Alfred asked me.

  “That was Guthrum,” I said. “And he knew it was you he pursued?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What else would draw Guthrum here?” I asked. “He wants you dead. Or captured.”

  Yet, for the moment, we were safe. The island village had a score of damp hovels thatched with reeds and a few storehouses raised on stilts. The buildings were the color of mud, the street was mud, the goats and the people were mud-covered, but the place, poor as it was, could provide food, shelter, and a meager warmth. The men of the village had seen the refugees and, after a discussion, decided to rescue them. I suspect they wanted to pillage us rather than save our lives, but Leofric and I looked formidable and, once the villagers understood that their king was their guest, they did their clumsy best for him and his family. One of them, in a dialect I could scarcely understand, wanted to know the king’s name. He had never heard of Alfred. He knew about the Danes, but said their ships had never reached the village, or any of the other settlements in the swamp. He told us the villagers lived off deer, goats, fish, eels, and wildfowl, and they had plenty of food, though fuel was scarce.

  Ælswith was pregnant with her third child, while her first two were in the care of nurses.

  There was Edward, Alfred’s heir, who was three years old and sick. He coughed, and Ælswith worried about him, though Bishop Alewold insisted it was just a winter’s cold. Then there was Edward’s elder sister, �
�thelflaed, who was now six and had a bright head of golden curls, a beguiling smile, and clever eyes. Alfred adored her, and in those first days in the swamp, she was his one ray of light and hope. One night, as we sat by a small, dying fire and Æthelflaed slept with her golden head in her father’s lap, he asked me about my son.

  “I don’t know where he is,” I said. There were only the two of us, everyone else was sleeping, and I was sitting by the door staring across the frost-bleached marsh that lay black and silver under a half-moon.

  “You want to go and find him?” he asked earnestly.

  “You truly want me to do that?” I asked. He looked puzzled. “These folk are giving you shelter,” I explained, “but they’d as soon cut your throats. They won’t do that while I’m here.”

  He was about to protest, then understood I probably spoke the truth. He stroked his daughter’s hair. Edward coughed. He was in his mother’s hut. The coughing had become worse, much worse, and we all suspected it was the whooping cough that killed small children. Alfred flinched at the sound. “Did you fight Steapa?” he asked.

  “We fought,” I said curtly. “The Danes came, and we never finished. He was bleeding, I was not.”

  “He was bleeding?”

  “Ask Leofric. He was there.”

  He was silent a long time, then, softly, “I am still king.”

  Of a swamp, I thought, and said nothing.

  “And it is customary to call a king ‘lord,’” he went on.

  I just stared at his thin, pale face that was lit by the dying fire. He looked so solemn, but also frightened, as if he was making a huge effort to hold on to the shreds of his dignity. Alfred never lacked for bravery, but he was not a warrior and he did not much like the company of warriors. In his eyes I was a brute: dangerous, uninteresting, but suddenly indispensable. He knew I was not going to call him lord, so he did not insist. “What do you notice about this place?” he asked.