The Pale Horseman

by Bernard Cornwell

  “It’s nothing.” Pyrlig tried to calm my anger.

  Æthelwold looked as if he would protest, then suddenly jerked forward and vomited. I turned away from him. I was angry, but I was also disappointed. The bowel-loosening fear was gone, but the fighting had seemed halfhearted and ineffective. We had seen off the Danes who had attacked us, but we had not hurt them so badly that they would abandon the fight. I wanted to feel the battle rage, the screaming joy of killing, and instead all seemed ponderous and difficult.

  I had looked for Ragnar during the fight, fearing having to fight my friend, and when the Danes had gone back to the fort I saw he had been engaged farther down the line. I could see him now, on the rampart, staring at us. Then I looked right, expecting to see Svein lead his men in an assault on us, but instead I saw Svein galloping to the fort and I suspected he went to demand reinforcements from Guthrum.

  The battle was less than an hour old, yet now it paused. Some women brought us water and moldy bread while the wounded sought what help they could find. I wrapped a rag around Eadric’s left arm where an ax blade had gone through the leather of his sleeve. “It was aimed at you, lord,” he said, grinning at me toothlessly.

  I tied the rag into place. “Does it hurt?”

  “Bit of an ache,” he said, “but not bad. Not bad.” He flexed his arm, found it worked, and picked up his shield. I looked again at Svein’s men, but they seemed in no hurry to resume their attack. I saw a man tip a skin of water or ale to his mouth. Just ahead of us, among the line of dead, a man suddenly sat up. He was Danish and had plaited black hair that had been tied in knots and decorated with ribbons. I had thought he was dead, but he sat up and stared at us with a look of indignation and then, seemingly, yawned. He was looking straight at me, his mouth open, and then a flood of blood rimmed and spilled over his lower lip to soak his beard. His eyes rolled white and he fell backward. Svein’s men were still not moving. There were some eight hundred of them arrayed in their line. They were still the left wing of Guthrum’s army, but that wing was much smaller now that it had been shorn of Wulfhere’s men, and so I turned and pushed through our ranks to find Alfred. “Lord!” I called, getting his attention. “Attack those men!” I pointed to Svein’s troops. They were a good two hundred paces from the fort and, for the moment at least, without their leader because Svein was still inside the ramparts. Alfred looked down on me from his saddle and I urged him to attack with every man in the center division of our army. The Danes had the escarpment at their back and I reckoned we could tip them down that treacherous slope. Alfred listened to me, looked at Svein’s men, then shook his head dumbly. Beocca was on his knees, hands spread wide and face screwed tight in an intensity of prayer.

  “We can drive them off, lord,” I insisted.

  “They’ll come from the fort,” Alfred said, meaning that Guthrum’s Danes would come to help Svein’s men.

  Some would, but I doubted enough would come. “But we want them out of the fort,” I insisted. “They’re easier to kill in open ground, lord.”

  Alfred just shook his head again. I think, at that moment, he was almost paralyzed by the fear of doing the wrong thing, and so he chose to do nothing. He wore a plain helmet with a nasal, no other protection for his face, and he looked sickly pale. He could not see an obvious opportunity, and so he would let the enemy make the next decision.

  It was Svein who made it. He brought more Danes out of the fort, three or four hundred of them. Most of Guthrum’s men stayed behind the ramparts, but those men who had made the first attack on Alfred’s bodyguard now streamed onto the open downland where they joined Svein’s troops and made their shield wall. I could see Ragnar’s banner among them.

  “They’re going to attack, aren’t they?” Pyrlig said. The rain had washed much of the blood from his face, but the split in his helmet looked gory. “I’m all right,” he said, seeing me glance at the damage. “I’ve had worse from a row with the wife. But those bastards are coming, aren’t they? They want to keep killing us from our right.”

  “We can beat them, lord,” I called back to Alfred. “Put all our men against them. All of them!”

  He seemed not to hear.

  “Bring Wiglaf’s fyrd across, lord!” I appealed to him.

  “We can’t move Wiglaf,” he said indignantly.

  He feared that if he moved the Sumorsæte fyrd from its place in front of the fort, then Guthrum would lead all his men out to assault our left flank, but I knew Guthrum was far too cautious to do any such thing. He felt safe behind the turf ramparts and he wanted to stay safe while Svein won the battle for him. Guthrum would not move until our army was broken; then he would launch an assault. But Alfred would not listen. He was a clever man, perhaps as clever as any man born, but he did not understand battle. He did not understand that battle is not just about numbers, it is not about moving tafl pieces, and it is not even about who has the advantage in ground, but about passion and madness and a screaming, ungovernable rage.

  And so far I had felt none of those things. We in Alfred’s household troops had fought well enough, but we had merely defended ourselves. We had not carried slaughter to the enemy, and it is only when you attack that you win. Now, it seemed, we were to defend ourselves again, and Alfred stirred himself to order me and my men to the right of his line. “Leave the standards with me,” he said, “and make sure our flank is safe.”

  There was honor in that. The right end of the line was where the enemy might try to wrap around us and Alfred needed good men to hold that open flank, and so we formed a tight knot there. Far off across the down I could see the remnants of Osric’s fyrd. They were watching us. Some of them, I thought, would return if they thought we were winning, but for the moment they were too full of fear to rejoin Alfred’s army.

  Svein rode his white horse up and down the face of his shield wall. He was shouting at his troops, encouraging them. Telling them we were weaklings who needed only one push to topple.

  “‘And I looked,’” Pyrlig said to me, “‘and I saw a pale horse, and the rider’s name was death.’” I just stared in astonishment. “It’s in the gospel book, “he explained sheepishly, “and it just came to mind.”

  “Then put it out of your mind,” I said harshly, “because our job is to kill him, not fear him.” I turned to tell Æthelwold to make certain he kept his shield up, but saw he had taken a new place in the rear rank. He was better there, I decided, so let him alone. Svein was shouting that we were lambs waiting to be slaughtered, and his men had begun beating weapons against their shields. There were just over a thousand men in Svein’s ranks now, and they would be assaulting Alfred’s division, which numbered about the same, but the Danes still had the advantage, for every man in their shield wall was a warrior, while over half our men were from the fyrds of Defnascir, Thornsæta, and Hamptonscir. If we had brought Wiglaf’s fyrd to join us we could have overwhelmed Svein, but by the same token he could have swamped us if Guthrum had the courage to leave the fort. Both sides were being cautious. Neither was willing to throw everything into the battle for fear of losing everything.

  Svein’s horsemen were on his left flank, opposite my men. He wanted us to feel threatened by the riders, but a horse will not charge into a shield wall. It will sheer away, and I would rather face horsemen than foot soldiers. One horse was tossing its head and I could see blood on its neck. Another horse was lying dead out where the corpses lay in the cold wind, which was bringing the first ravens from the north. Black wings in a dull sky. Odin’s birds.

  “Come and die!” Steapa suddenly shouted. “Come and die, you bastards! Come on!”

  His shout prompted others along our line to call insults to the Danes. Svein turned, apparently surprised by our sudden defiance. His men had started forward, but stopped again, and I realized, with surprise, that they were just as fearful as we were. I had always held the Danes in awe, reckoning them the greatest fighting men under the sky. Alfred, in a moment of gloom, once told me it took fo
ur Saxons to beat one Dane, and there was truth in that, but it was not a binding truth, and it was not true that day, for there was no passion in Svein’s men. There was unhappiness there, a reluctance to advance, and I reckoned that Guthrum and Svein had quarreled. Or perhaps the cold, damp wind had quelled everyone’s ardor. “We’re going to win this battle!” I shouted, and surprised myself by shouting it.

  Men looked at me, wondering if I had been sent a vision by my god.

  “We’re going to win!” I was hardly aware of speaking. I had not meant to make a speech, but I made one anyway. “They’re frightened of us!” I called out. “They’re scared! Most of them are skulking in the fort because they daren’t come out to face Saxon blades! And those men,” I gestured at Svein’s ranks with Wasp-Sting, “know they’re going to die! They’re going to die!” I took a few paces forward and spread my arms to get the Danes’ attention. I held my shield out to the left and Wasp-Sting to the right. “You’re going to die!” I shouted it in Danish, loud as I could, then in English. “You’re going to die!”

  And all Alfred’s men took up that shout. “You’re going to die! You’re going to die!”

  Something odd happened then. Beocca and Pyrlig claimed that the spirit of God wafted through our army, and maybe that did happen, or else we suddenly began to believe in ourselves. We believed we could win and as the chant was shouted at the enemy, we began to go forward, step by step, beating swords against shields and shouting that the enemy would die. I was ahead of my men, taunting the enemy, screaming at them, dancing as I went, and Alfred called me back to the ranks. Later, when all was done, Beocca told me that Alfred called me repeatedly, but I was capering and shouting, out ahead on the grass where the corpses lay, and I did not hear him. And Alfred’s men were following me and he did not call them back though he had not ordered them forward.

  “You bastards!” I screamed, “you goat turds! You fight like girls!” I do not know what insults I shouted that day, only that I shouted them and that I went ahead, on my own, asking just one of them to come and fight me man-to-man.

  Alfred never approved of those duels between the shield walls. Perhaps, sensibly, he disapproved because he knew he could not have fought one himself, but he also saw them as dangerous. When a man invites an enemy champion to a fight, man on man, he invites his own death, and if he dies he takes the heart from his own side and gives courage to the enemy, and so Alfred ever forbade us to accept Danish challenges, but on that cold wet day one man did accept my challenge.

  It was Svein himself. Svein of the White Horse, and he turned the white horse and spurred toward me with his sword in his right hand. I could hear the hooves thumping, see the clods of wet turf flying behind, see the stallion’s mane tossing, and I could see Svein’s boar-masked helmet above the rim of his shield. Man and horse coming for me, and the Danes were jeering and just then Pyrlig shouted at me. “Uhtred! Uhtred!”

  I did not turn to look at him. I was too busy sheathing Wasp-Sting and was about to pull Serpent-Breath from her scabbard, but just then Pyrlig’s thick-shafted boar spear skidded beside me in the wet grass, and I understood what he was trying to tell me. I left Serpent-Breath on my shoulder and snatched up the Briton’s spear just as Svein closed on me. All I could hear was the thunder of hooves, see the white cloak spreading, the bright shine of the lofted blade, the tossing horsehair plume, white eyes on the horse, teeth bared, and then Svein twitched the stallion to his left and cut the sword at me. His eyes were glitters behind the eyepieces of his helmet as he leaned to kill me, but as his sword came I threw myself into his horse and rammed the spear into the beast’s guts. I had to do it one-handed, for I had my shield on my left arm, but the wide blade pierced hide and muscle, and I was screaming, trying to drive it deeper, and then Svein’s sword struck my lifted shield like a hammer blow and his right knee struck my helmet so that I was thrown hard back to sprawl on the grass. I had let go of the spear, but it was well buried in the horse’s belly and the animal was screaming and shaking, bucking and tossing, and thick blood was pouring down the spear’s shaft that banged and bounced along the grass.

  The horse bolted. Svein somehow stayed in the saddle. There was blood on the beast’s belly. I had not hurt Svein, I had not touched him, but he was fleeing from me, or rather his white horse was bolting in pain, and it ran straight at Svein’s own shield wall. A horse will instinctively swerve away from a shield wall, but this horse was blinded by pain, and then, just short of the Danish shields, it half fell. It slid on the wet grass and skidded hard into the skjaldborg, breaking it open. Men scattered from the animal. Svein tumbled from the saddle, and then the horse somehow managed to get back on its feet, and it reared and screamed. Blood was flying from its belly, and its hooves were flailing at the Danes, and now we were charging them at the run. I was on my feet, Serpent-Breath in my right hand, and the horse was thrashing and twisting, and the Danes backed away from it, and that opened their shield wall as we hit them.

  Svein was just getting to his feet as Alfred’s men arrived. I did not see it, but men said Steapa’s sword took Svein’s head off in one blow, a blow so hard that the helmeted head flew into the air. Perhaps that was true, but what was certain was that the passion was on us now: the blinding, seething passion of battle. The blood lust, the killing rage, and the horse was doing the work for us, breaking the Danish shield wall apart so all we had to do was ram into the gaps and kill.

  And so we killed. Alfred had not meant this to happen. He had expected to wait for the Danish attack and hoped we would resist it, but instead we had thrown off his leash and were doing his work, and he had the wit to send Arnulf’s men out to the right because my men were among the enemy. The horsemen had tried to come around our rear, but the men of Suth Seaxa saw them off with shields and swords, then guarded the open flank as all Alfred’s men from Æthelingæg and all Harald’s men from Defnascir and Thornsæta joined the slaughter. My cousin was there, with his Mercians, and he was a stout fighter. I watched him parry, stab, put down a man, take on another, kill him, and go on steadily. We were making the hilltop rich with Danish blood because we had the fury and they did not, and the men who had fled the field, Osric’s men, were coming back to join the fight.

  The horsemen went. I did not see them go, though their tale will be told. I was fighting, screaming, shouting at Danes to come and be killed, and Pyrlig was beside me, holding a sword now, and the whole left-hand side of Svein’s shield wall had broken and its survivors were making small groups, and we attacked them. I charged one group with the shield, using its boss to slam a man back, and stabbing with Serpent-Breath, feeling her break through mail and leather. Leofric appeared from somewhere, ax swinging, and Pyrlig was ramming his sword’s tip into a man’s face, and for every Dane there were two Saxons and the enemy stood no chance. One man shouted for mercy and Leofric broke his helmet apart with the ax so that blood and brains oozed onto the jagged metal. I kicked the man aside and plunged Serpent-Breath into a man’s groin so that he screamed like a woman in childbirth. The poets often sing of that battle, and for once they get something right when they tell of the sword joy, the blade song, the slaughter. We tore Svein’s men to bloody ruin, and we did it with passion, skill, and savagery. The battle calm was on me at last and I could do no wrong. Serpent-Breath had her own life and she stole it from the Danes who tried to oppose me, but those Danes were broken and running and all the left wing of Svein’s vaunted troops was defeated.

  And there was suddenly no enemy near me except for the dead and injured. Alfred’s nephew, Æthelwold, was jabbing his sword at one of the wounded Danes. “Either kill him,” I snarled, “or let him live.” The man had a broken leg and had an eye hanging down his bloody cheek and he was no danger to anyone.

  “I have to kill one pagan,” Æthelwold said. He prodded the man with the sword tip and I kicked his blade aside and would have helped the wounded man except it was then that I saw Haesten.

  He was at the hill’s edge, a
fugitive, and I shouted his name. He turned and saw me, or saw a blood-drenched warrior in mail and a wolf-crested helmet, and he stared at me. Then perhaps he recognized the helmet, for he fled. “Coward!” I shouted at him. “You treacherous, bastard coward! You swore me an oath! I made you rich! I saved your rotten life!”

  He turned then, half grinned at me, and waved his left arm on which hung the splintered remnants of a shield. Then he ran to what remained of the right-hand side of Svein’s shield wall, and that was still in good order, its shields locked tight. There were five or six hundred men there, and they had swung back, then retreated toward the fort, but now they checked because Alfred’s men, having no one left to kill, were turning on them. Haesten joined the Danish ranks, pushing through the shields, and I saw the eagle-wing banner above them and knew that Ragnar, my friend, was leading those survivors.

  I paused. Leofric was shouting at men to form a shield wall and I knew this attack had lost its fury, but we had damaged them. We had killed Svein and a good number of his men, and the Danes were now penned back against the fort. I went to the hill’s edge, following a trail of blood on the wet grass, and saw that the white horse had bolted over the down’s lip and now lay, its legs grotesquely cocked in the air and its white pelt spattered with blood, a few yards down the slope.

  “That was a good horse,” Pyrlig said. He had joined me on the edge of the hill. I had thought this crest was the top of the escarpment, but the land was tangled here, as though a giant had kicked the hillside with a massive boot. The ground fell away to make a steep valley that suddenly climbed to a farther crest that was the real edge of the downs. The steep valley sloped up to the fort’s eastern corner, and I wondered whether it would offer a way into the fastness. Pyrlig was still staring at the dead horse. “You know what we say at home?” he asked me. “We say that a good horse is worth two good women, that a good woman is worth two good hounds, and that a good hound is worth two good horses.”