The Pale Horseman

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Now Alfred will kill me,” he said miserably.

  “He ought to,” I said, “but I owe you a favor.”

  “You think you can persuade him to let me live?” he asked eagerly.

  “You’ll do the persuading,” I said. “You’ll kneel to him, and you’re going to say that you’ve been waiting for a chance to escape the Danes, and at last you succeeded, and you got away, found us, and have come to offer him your sword.”

  Æthelwold just stared at me.

  “I owe you a favor,” I explained, “and so I’m giving you life. I’ll untie your hands, you go to Alfred, and you say you’re joining him because that’s what you’ve wanted to do ever since Christmas. You understand that?”

  Æthelwold frowned. “But he hates me!”

  “Of course he does,” I agreed, “but if you kneel to him and swear you never broke your allegiance to him, then what can he do? He’ll embrace you, reward you, and be proud of you.”

  “Truly?”

  “So long as you tell him where the Danes are,” Pyrlig put in.

  “I can do that,” Æthelwold said. “They’re coming south from Cippanhamm. They marched this morning.”

  “How many?”

  “Five thousand.”

  “Coming here?”

  “They’re going to wherever Alfred is. They reckon they’ll have a chance to destroy him, and after that it’s just a summer of women and silver.” He said the last three words plaintively and I knew he had been relishing the prospect of plundering Wessex. “So how many men does Alfred have?” he asked.

  “Three thousand,” I said.

  “Sweet Jesus,” he said fearfully.

  “You always wanted to be a warrior,” I said, “and what name can you make for yourself fighting a smaller army?”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  The last of the light went. There was no moon, but by keeping the river on our left we knew we could not get lost and after a while we saw the glow of firelight showing over the loom of the hills and knew we were seeing Alfred’s encampment. I twisted in the saddle then and thought I saw another such glow far to the north. Guthrum’s army.

  “If you let me go,” Æthelwold asked sulkily, “what’s to stop me going back to Guthrum?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” I said, “except the certainty that I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

  He thought about that for a short while. “You’re sure my uncle will welcome me?”

  Pyrlig answered for me. “With open arms!” he said. “It will be like the return of the prodigal son. You’ll be welcomed by slaughtered calves and psalms of rejoicing. Just tell Alfred what you told us, about Guthrum marching toward us.”

  We reached the Wilig and the going was easy now, for the light of the campfires was much brighter. I cut Æthelwold free at the edge of the encampment, then gave him back his swords. He carried two, as I did, a long one and a short saxe. “Well, my prince,” I said, “time to grovel, eh?”

  We found Alfred at the camp’s center. There was no pomp here. We did not have the animals to drag wagons loaded with tents or furniture, so Alfred was seated on a spread cloak between two fires. He looked dispirited and later I learned that he had assembled the army in the twilight and made them a speech, but the speech, even Beocca admitted, had been less than successful. “It was more a sermon than a speech,” Beocca told me glumly. Alfred had invoked God, spoken of Saint Augustine’s doctrine of a righteous war, and talked about Boethius and King David, and the words had flown over the heads of the tired, hungry troops. Now Alfred sat with the leading men of the army, all of them eating stale hard bread and smoked eel. Father Adelbert, the priest who had accompanied us to Cippanhamm, was playing a lament on a small harp. A bad choice of music, I thought. Then Alfred saw me and waved Adelbert to silence. “You have news?” he asked.

  For answer I stood aside and bowed to Æthelwold, gesturing him toward the king. “Lord,” I said to Alfred, “I bring you your nephew.”

  Alfred stood. He was taken aback, especially as Æthelwold was plainly no prisoner for he wore his swords. Æthelwold looked good; indeed, he looked more like a king than Alfred. He was well made and handsome, while Alfred was much too thin and his face was so haggard that he looked many years older than his twenty-nine years. And of the two it was Æthelwold who knew how to behave at that moment. He unbuckled his swords and threw them with a great clatter at his uncle’s feet. Then he went to his knees and clasped his hands and looked up into the king’s face. “I have found you!” he said with what sounded like utter joy and conviction.

  Alfred, bemused, did not know what to say, so I stepped forward. “We discovered him, lord,” I said, “in the hills. He was searching for you.”

  “I escaped Guthrum,” Æthelwold said. “God be praised, I escaped the pagan.” He pushed his swords to Alfred’s feet. “My blades are yours, lord king.”

  This extravagant display of loyalty gave Alfred no choice except to raise his nephew and embrace him. The men around the fires applauded. Then Æthelwold gave his news, which was useful enough. Guthrum was on the march and Svein of the White Horse came with him. They knew where Alfred was and so they came, five thousand strong, to give him battle in the hills of Wiltunscir.

  “When will they get here?” Alfred wanted to know.

  “They should reach these hills tomorrow, lord,” Æthelwold said.

  So Æthelwold was seated beside the king and given water to drink, which was hardly a fit welcome for a prodigal prince and caused him to throw me a wry glance, and it was then that I saw Harald, shire reeve of Defnascir, among the king’s companions. “You’re here?” I asked, surprised.

  “With five hundred men,” he said proudly.

  We had expected no men from either Defnascir or Thornsæta, but Harald, the shire reeve, had brought four hundred of his own fyrd and a hundred more from Thornsæta. “There’s enough men left to protect the coast against the pagan fleet,” he said, “and Odda insisted we help defeat Guthrum.”

  “How is Mildrith?”

  “She prays for her son,” Harald said, “and for all of us.”

  There were prayers after the meal. There were always prayers when Alfred was around, and I tried to escape them, but Pyrlig made me stay. “The king wants to talk with you,” he said.

  So I waited while Bishop Alewold droned, and afterward Alfred wanted to know whether Æthelwold had truly run away from the Danes.

  “That’s what he told me, lord,” I said, “and I can only say we found him.”

  “He didn’t run from us,” Pyrlig offered, “and he could have run.”

  “So there’s good in the boy,” Alfred said.

  “God be praised for that,” Pyrlig said.

  Alfred paused, gazing down into the glowing embers of a camp fire. “I spoke to the army tonight,” he told us.

  “I heard you did, lord,” I said.

  He looked up at me sharply. “What did you hear?”

  “That you preached to them, lord.”

  He flinched at that, then seemed to accept the criticism. “What do they want to hear?” he asked.

  “They want to hear,” Pyrlig answered, “that you are ready to die for them.”

  “Die?”

  “Men follow, kings lead,” Pyrlig said. Alfred waited. “They don’t care about Saint Augustine,” Pyrlig went on. “They only care that their women and children are safe, that their lands are safe, and that they’ll have a future of their own. They want to know that they’ll win. They want to know the Danes are going to die. They want to hear that they’ll be rich on plunder.”

  “Greed, revenge, and selfishness?” Alfred asked.

  “If you had an army of angels, lord,” Pyrlig went on, “then a rousing speech about God and Saint Augustine would doubtless fire their ardor, but you have to fight with mere men, and there’s nothing quite like greed, revenge, and selfishness to inspire mortals.”

  Alfred frowned at that advice, but did not argue with it. “So
I can trust my nephew?” he asked me.

  “I don’t know that you can trust him,” I said, “but nor can Guthrum. And Æthelwold did seek you out, lord, so be content with that.”

  “I shall, I shall.” He bade us good night, going to his hard bed.

  The fires in the valley were dying. “Why didn’t you tell Alfred the truth about Æthelwold?” I asked Pyrlig.

  “I thought I would trust your judgment,” he said.

  “You’re a good man.”

  “And that constantly astonishes me.”

  I went to find Iseult, then slept.

  Next day the whole of the northern sky was dark with cloud, while over our army, and above the hills, was sunlight.

  The West Saxon army, now almost three and a half thousand strong, marched up the Wilig, then followed the smaller river that Pyrlig and I had explored the previous evening. We could see the Danish scouts on the hills and knew they would be sending messengers back to Guthrum.

  I led fifty men to one of the hilltops. We were all mounted, all armed, all with shields and helmets, and we rode ready to fight, but the Danish scouts yielded the ground. There were only a dozen of them and they rode off the hill long before we reached the summit where a host of blue butterflies flickered above the springy turf. I gazed northward at the ominous dark sky and watched a sparrowhawk stoop. Down the bird went, and I followed its plunging fall and suddenly saw, beneath the folded wings and reaching claws, our enemy.

  Guthrum’s army was coming south.

  The fear came then. The shield wall is a terrible place. It is where a warrior makes his reputation, and reputation is dear to us. Reputation is honor, but to gain that honor a man must stand in the shield wall where death runs rampant. I had been in the shield wall at Cynuit and I knew the smell of death, the stink of it, the uncertainty of survival, the horror of the axes and swords and spears, and I feared it. And it was coming.

  I could see it coming, for in the lowlands north of the hills, in the green ground stretching long and level toward distant Cippanhamm, was an army. The great army, the Danes called it, the pagan warriors of Guthrum and Svein, the wild horde of wild men from beyond the sea.

  They were a dark smear on the landscape. They were coming through the fields, band after band of horsemen, spread across the country, and because their leading men were only just emerging into the sunlight, it seemed as if their horde sprang from the shadowlands. Spears and helmets and mail and metal reflected the light, a myriad glints of broken sunlight that spread and multiplied as yet more men came from beneath the clouds. They were nearly all mounted.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Leofric said.

  Steapa said nothing. He just glowered at them.

  Osric, the shire reeve of Wiltunscir, made the sign of the cross. “Someone has to tell Alfred,” he said.

  “I’ll go,” Father Pyrlig offered.

  “Tell him the pagans have crossed the Afen,” Osric said. “Tell him they’re heading toward”—he paused, trying to judge where the horde was going—“Ethandun,” he finally said.

  “Ethandun.” Pyrlig repeated the name.

  “And remind him there’s a fort of the old people there,” Osric said. This was his shire, his country, and he knew its hills and fields, and he sounded grim, doubtless wondering what would happen if the Danes found the old fortress and occupied it. “God help us,” Osric said. “They’ll be in the hills tomorrow morning, tell him.”

  “Tomorrow morning, at Ethandun,” Pyrlig said, then turned his horse and spurred away.

  “Where’s the fort?” I asked.

  Osric pointed. “You can see it.” From this distance the ancient fastness looked like nothing more than green wrinkles on a far hilltop. All across Wessex there were such forts with their massive earthen walls, and this one was built at the top of the escarpment that climbed from the lowlands, a place guarding the sudden edge of the chalk downs. “Some of the bastards will get up there tonight,” Osric said, “but most won’t make it till morning. Let’s just hope they ignore the fort.”

  We had all thought that Alfred would find a place where Guthrum must attack him, a slope made for defense, a place where our smaller numbers would be helped by the difficult ground, but the sight of that distant fort was a reminder that Guthrum might adopt the same tactics. He might find a place where it would be hard for us to attack him, and Alfred would have a grim choice then. To attack would be to court disaster, while to retreat would guarantee it. Our food would be exhausted in a day or two, and if we tried to withdraw south through the hills Guthrum would release a horde of horsemen against us. And even if the army of Wessex escaped unscathed, it would be a beaten army. If Alfred brought the fyrd together, then marched it away from the enemy, men would take it for a defeat and begin to slip away to protect their homes. We had to fight, because to decline battle was a defeat.

  The army camped that evening to the north of the woods where I had found Æthelwold. He was in the king’s entourage now and went with Alfred and his war leaders to the hilltop to watch the Danish army as it closed on the hills. Alfred looked a long time. “How far away are they?” he asked.

  “From here,” Osric answered, “four miles. From your army, six.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” Alfred said, making the sign of the cross. The northern clouds were spreading, darkening the evening, but the slanting light reflected from spears and axes at the old people’s fort. It seemed Guthrum had not ignored the place after all.

  We went back down to the encampment to find yet more men arriving. Not many now, just small bands, but still they came, and one such band, travel weary and dusty, was mounted on horses and all sixteen men had chain mail and good helmets.

  They were Mercians and they had ridden far to the east, crossed the Temes, then looped through Wessex, ever avoiding Danes, and so come to help Alfred. Their leader was a short young man, wide in the chest, round-faced, and with a pugnacious expression. He knelt to Alfred, then grinned at me, and I recognized my cousin, Æthelred.

  My mother was a Mercian, though I never knew her, and her brother Æthelred was a power in the southern part of that country and I had spent a short time in his hall when I first fled from Northumbria. Back then I had quarreled with my cousin, called Æthelred like his father, but he seemed to have forgotten our youthful enmity and embraced me instead. The top of his head just came up to my collarbone. “We’ve come to fight,” he told me, his voice muffled by my chest.

  “You’ll have a fight,” I promised him.

  “Lord.” He let go of me and turned back to Alfred. “My father would have sent more men, but he must protect his land.”

  “He must,” Alfred said.

  “But he sent the best he has,” Æthelred went on. He was young and bumptious, a little strut of a youth, but his confidence pleased Alfred, as did the gleaming silver crucifix hanging over Æthelred’s chain mail. “Allow me to present Tatwine,” my cousin went on, “the chief of my father’s household troops.”

  I remembered Tatwine, a barrel of a man and a real fighter, whose arms were smothered in blotchy black marks, each made with a needle and ink and representing a man killed in battle. He gave me a crooked smile. “Still alive, lord?”

  “Still alive, Tatwine.”

  “Be good to fight alongside you again.”

  “Good to have you here,” I said, and it was. Few men are natural-born warriors, and a man like Tatwine was worth a dozen others.

  Alfred had ordered the army to assemble again. He did it partly so the men could see their own numbers and take heart from that, and he did it, too, because he knew his speech the previous night had left men confused and uninspired. He would try again. “I wish he wouldn’t,” Leofric grumbled. “He can make sermons, but he can’t make speeches.”

  We gathered at the foot of a small hill. The light was fading. Alfred had planted his two banners, the dragon and the cross, on the summit of the hill, but there was small wind so the flags stirred rather than flew. He cli
mbed to stand between them. He was alone, dressed in a mail coat over which he wore the faded blue cloak. A group of priests began to follow him, but he waved them back to the hill’s foot. Then he just stared at us huddled in the meadow beneath him and for a time he said nothing and I sensed the discomfort in the ranks. They wanted fire put into their souls and expected holy water instead.

  “Tomorrow!” he said suddenly. His voice was high, but it carried clearly enough. “Tomorrow we fight! Tomorrow! The Feast of Saint John the Apostle!”

  “Oh God,” Leofric grumbled next to me, “up to our arseholes in more saints.”

  “John the Apostle was condemned to death!” Alfred said. “He was condemned to be boiled in oil! Yet he survived the ordeal! He was plunged into the boiling oil and he lived! He came from the cauldron a stronger man! And we shall do the same.” He paused, watching us, and no one responded. We all just gazed at him, and he must have known that his homily on Saint John was not working, for he made an abrupt gesture with his right hand as if he was sweeping all the saints aside. “And tomorrow,” he went on, “is also a day for warriors. A day to kill your enemies. A day to make the pagans wish they had never heard of Wessex!”

  He paused again, and this time there were some murmurs of agreement.

  “This is our land! We fight for our homes! For our wives! For our children! We fight for Wessex!”

  “We do,” someone shouted.

  “And not just Wessex!” Alfred’s voice was stronger now. “We have men from Mercia, men from Northumbria, men from East Anglia!” I knew of none from East Anglia and only Beocca and I were from Northumbria, but no one seemed to care. “We are the men of England,” Alfred shouted, “and we fight for all Saxons.”

  Silence again. The men liked what they heard, but the idea of England was in Alfred’s head, not theirs. He had a dream of one country, but it was too big a dream for the army in the meadow. “And why are the Danes here?” Alfred asked. “They want your wives for their pleasure, your children for their slaves, and your homes for their own, but they do not know us!” He said the last six words slowly, spacing them out, shouting each one distinctly. “They do not know our swords,” he went on. “They do not know our axes, our spears, our fierceness! Tomorrow we teach them! Tomorrow we kill them! Tomorrow we hack them into pieces! Tomorrow we make the ground red with their blood and make them whimper! Tomorrow we shall make them call for our mercy!”