The Pale Horseman

by Bernard Cornwell

  “You say what?”

  “Never mind.” He touched my shoulder. “For a Saxon, Uhtred, you fight well. Like a Briton.”

  I decided the valley offered no advantage over a direct assault and turned away to see that Ragnar was retreating step by step toward the fort. I knew this was the moment to attack him, to keep the battle anger alive and the slaughter fresh, but our men were plundering the dead and the dying and none had the energy to renew the assault, and that meant we would have the harder task of killing Danes protected by a rampart. I thought of my father, killed in an attack on a wall. He had not shown much liking for me, probably because I had been a small child when he died, and now I would have to follow him into the death trap of a well-protected wall. Fate is inexorable.

  Svein’s banner of the white horse had been captured and a man was waving it toward the Danes. Another had Svein’s helmet on the tip of a spear, and at first I thought it was Svein’s head, then I saw it was only the helmet. The white horsetail plume was pink now. Father Willibald was holding his hands to heaven, saying a prayer of thanks, and that was premature, I thought, for all we had done was break Svein’s men; Guthrum’s troops still waited for us behind their walls. And Ragnar was there, too, safe in the fort. Its walls made a semicircle jutting into the downs, ending at the escarpment’s lip. They were high walls, protected by a ditch. “It’ll be a bastard crossing those ramparts,” I said.

  “Maybe we won’t have to,” Pyrlig answered.

  “Of course we have to.”

  “Not if Alfred can talk them out of there,” Pyrlig said, and he pointed and I saw that the king, accompanied by two priests and by Osric and Harald, was approaching the fort. “He’s going to let them surrender,” Pyrlig said.

  I could not believe this was the time to talk. This was the killing time, not a place for negotiations. “They won’t surrender,” I said. “Of course they won’t! They still think they can beat us.”

  “Alfred will try to persuade them,” Pyrlig said.

  “No.” I shook my head. “He’ll offer them a truce.” I spoke angrily. “He’ll offer to take hostages. He’ll preach to them. It’s what he always does.” I thought about going to join him, if for nothing else than to add some sourness to his reasonable suggestions, but I could not summon the effort. Three Danes had gone to talk to him, but I knew they would not accept his offer. They were not beaten; far from it. They still had more men than we did and they had the walls of the fort, and the battle was still theirs to win.

  Then I heard the shouts. Shouts of anger and screams of pain, and I turned and saw that the Danish horsemen had reached our women, and the women were screaming and there was nothing we could do.

  The Danish horsemen had expected to slaughter the broken remnants of Alfred’s shield wall, but instead it had been Svein’s men who had been broken and the riders, out on Svein’s left flank, had retreated into the downs. They must have thought to circle about our army and rejoin Guthrum from the west, and on the way they had seen our women and horses and smelled easy plunder.

  Yet our women had weapons, and there were a few wounded men there, and together they had resisted the horsemen. There was a brief flurry of killing. Then the Danish riders, with nothing to show for their attack, rode away westward. It had taken a few moments, nothing more, but Hild had snatched up a spear and run at a horseman, screaming hate for the horrors the Danes had inflicted on her in Cippanhamm, and Eanflæd, who saw it all, said that Hild sank the spear in a Dane’s leg and the man had chopped down with his sword, and Iseult, who had gone to help Hild, had parried the blow with another sword, and a second Dane caught her from behind with an ax, and then a rush of screaming women drove the Danes away. Hild lived, but Iseult’s skull had been broken open and her head almost split into two. She was dead.

  “She has gone to God,” Pyrlig told me when Leofric brought us the news. I was weeping, but I did not know whether it was sorrow or anger that consumed me. I could say nothing. Pyrlig held my shoulders. “She is with God, Uhtred.”

  “Then the men who sent her there must go to hell,” I said. “Any hell. Freeze or burn, the bastards!”

  I pulled away from Pyrlig and strode toward Alfred. I saw Wulfhere then. He was a prisoner, guarded by two of Alfred’s bodyguards, and he brightened when he saw me as though he thought I was a friend, but I just spat at him and walked on past.

  Alfred frowned when I joined him. He was escorted by Osric and Harald, and by Father Beocca and Bishop Alewold, none of whom spoke Danish, but one of the Danes was an English speaker. There were three of them, all strangers to me, but Beocca told me their spokesman was called Hrothgar Ericson and I knew he was one of Guthrum’s chieftains. “They attacked the women,” I told Alfred. The king just stared at me, perhaps not understanding what I had said. “They attacked the women!” I repeated.

  “He’s whimpering,” the Danish interpreter said to his two companions, “that the women were attacked.”

  “If I whimper,” I turned on the man in fury, “then you will scream.” I spoke in Danish. “I shall pull your guts out of your arsehole, wrap them around your filthy neck, and feed your eyeballs to my hounds. Now if you want to translate, you shriveled bastard, translate properly, or else go back to your vomit.”

  The man blinked but said nothing. Hrothgar, resplendent in mail and silvered helmet, half smiled. “Tell your king,” he said, “that we might agree to withdraw to Cippanhamm, but we shall want hostages.”

  I turned on Alfred. “How many men does Guthrum still have?”

  He was still unhappy that I had joined him, but he took the question seriously. “Enough,” he said.

  “Enough to hold Cippanhamm and a half dozen other towns. We break them now.”

  “You are welcome to try,” Hrothgar said when my words were translated.

  I turned back to him. “I killed Ubba,” I said, “and I put Svein down, and next I shall cut Guthrum’s throat and send him to his whore-mother. We’ll try.”

  “Uhtred.” Alfred did not know what I had said, but he had heard my tone and he tried to calm me.

  “There’s work to be done, lord,” I said. It was anger speaking in me, a fury at the Danes and an equal fury at Alfred who was once again offering the enemy terms. He had done it so often. He would beat them in battle and immediately make a truce because he believed they would become Christians and live in brotherly peace. That was his desire, to live in a Christian Britain devoted to piety, but on that day I was right. Guthrum was not beaten, he still outnumbered us, and he had to be destroyed.

  “Tell them,” Alfred said, “that they can surrender to us now. Tell them they can lay down their weapons and come out of the fort.”

  Hrothgar treated that proposal with the scorn it deserved. Most of Guthrum’s men had yet to fight. They were far from defeated, and the green walls were high and the ditches were deep, and it was the sight of those ramparts that had prompted Alfred to speak with the enemy. He knew men must die, many men, and that was the price he had been unwilling to pay a year before when Guthrum had been trapped in Exanceaster, but it was a price that had to be paid. It was the price of Wessex.

  Hrothgar had nothing more to say, so he turned away. “Tell Earl Ragnar,” I called after him, “that I am still his brother.”

  “He will doubtless see you in Valhalla one day,” Hrothgar called back, then waved a negligent hand to me. I suspected that the Danes had never intended to negotiate a truce, let alone a surrender, but when Alfred offered to talk they had accepted because it gave them time to organize their defenses.

  Alfred scowled at me. He was plainly annoyed that I had intervened, but before he could say anything Beocca spoke. “What happened to the women?” he asked.

  “They fought the bastards off,” I said, “but Iseult died.”

  “Iseult,” Alfred said, and then he saw the tears in my eyes and did not know what to say. He flinched, stuttered incoherently, then closed his eyes as if in prayer. “I am glad,” he said af
ter he had collected his thoughts, “that she died a Christian.”

  “Amen,” Beocca said.

  “I would rather she was a live pagan,” I snarled, and then we went back to our army and Alfred again summoned his commanders.

  There was really no choice. We had to assault the fort. Alfred talked for a time about establishing a siege, but that was not practical. We would have to sustain an army on the summit of the downs and, though Osric insisted the enemy had no springs inside the fort, neither did we have springs close by. Both armies would be thirsty, and we did not have enough men to stop Danes going down the steep embankment at night to fetch water. And if the siege lasted longer than a week, then men of the fyrd would begin to slip home to look after their fields, and Alfred would be tempted to mercy, especially if Guthrum promised to convert to Christianity.

  So we urged an assault on Alfred. There could be nothing clever. Shield walls must be made and men sent against the ramparts, and Alfred knew that every man in the army must join the attack. Wiglaf and the men of Sumorsæte would attack on the left, Alfred’s men in the center, while Osric, whose fyrd had gathered again and was now reinforced by the men who had deserted from Guthrum’s army, would assault on the right. “You know how to do it,” Alfred said, though without any enthusiasm for he knew he was ordering us into a feast of death. “Put your best men in the center, let them lead, and make the others press behind and on either side.”

  No one said anything. Alfred offered a bitter smile. “God has smiled on us so far,” he said, “and he will not desert us.”

  Yet he had deserted Iseult. Poor, fragile Iseult, shadow queen and lost soul, and I pushed into the front rank because the only thing I could do for her now was to take revenge. Steapa, as smothered in blood as I was, pushed into the rank beside me. Leofric was to my left and Pyrlig was now behind me. “Spears and long swords,” Pyrlig advised us, “not those short things.”

  “Why not?” Leofric asked.

  “You climb that steep wall,” he said, “and all you can do is go for their ankles. Bring them down. I’ve done it before. You need a long reach and a good shield.”

  “Jesus help us,” Leofric said. We were all fearful, for there is little in warfare as daunting as an assault on a fortress. If I had been in my senses I would have been reluctant to make that attack, but I was filled with a keening sorrow for Iseult and nothing except revenge filled my mind. “Let’s go,” I said, “let’s go.”

  But we could not go. Men were collecting spears thrown in the earlier fighting, and the bowmen were being brought forward. Whenever we attacked we wanted a shower of spears to precede us and a plague of stinging arrows to annoy the enemy, but it took time to array the spearmen and archers behind the men who would make the assault.

  Then, ominously for our archers, it began to rain again. Their bows would still work, but water weakened the strings. The sky became darker as a great belly of black cloud settled over the down and the rain started to drum on helmets. The Danes were lining the ramparts, clashing their weapons against shields, as our army curled about their fastness.

  “Forward!” Alfred shouted, and we went toward the ramparts, but stopped just out of bowshot. Rain beaded the rim of my shield. There was a new, bright scar in the iron there, a blade strike, but I had not been aware of the blow. The Danes mocked us. They knew what was coming, and they probably welcomed it. Ever since Guthrum had climbed the escarpment and discovered the fort, he had probably imagined Alfred’s men assaulting its walls and his men cutting the enemy down as we struggled up the steep banks. This was Guthrum’s battle now. He had placed his rival, Svein, and his Saxon ally, Wulfhere, outside the fort, and doubtless he had hoped they could destroy a good part of our army before the assault on the ramparts, but it would not matter much to Guthrum that those men had been destroyed themselves. Now his own men would fight the battle he had always envisaged.

  “In the name of God!” Alfred called, then said no more for suddenly a clap of thunder crashed, a vast sound that consumed the heavens and was so loud that some of us flinched. A crack of lightning splintered white inside the fort. The rain pelted now, a cloudburst that hammered and soaked us, and more thunder rolled away in the distance. Perhaps we thought that noise and savage light was a message from God for suddenly the whole army started forward. No one had given a command unless Alfred’s invocation was an order. We just went.

  Men were shouting as they advanced. They were not calling insults, but just making a noise to give themselves courage. We did not run, but walked, because the shields had to be kept close. Then another bellow of thunder deafened us, and the rain seemed to have a new and vicious intensity. It seethed on the dead and the living, and we were close now, very close, yet the rain was so thick it was hard to see the waiting Danes. Then I saw the ditch, already flooding, and the bows sounded and the spears flew and we were splashing down the ditch’s side and Danish spears were thumping into us. One stuck in my shield, fell away, and I stumbled on its shaft, half sprawled in the water, then recovered and began the climb.

  Not all the army tried to cross the ditch. Many men’s courage faltered at the brink, but a dozen or more groups went into the attack. We were what the Danes call the svinfylkjas, the swine wedges, the elite warriors who try to pierce the skjaldborg like a boar trying to gouge the hunter with its tusks. But this time we not only had to gouge the skjaldborg, but cross the rain-flooded ditch and clamber up the bank.

  We held our shields over our heads as we splashed through the ditch. Then we climbed, but the wet bank was so slippery that we constantly fell back, and the Danish spears kept coming, and someone pushed me from behind and I was crawling up the bank on my knees, the shield over my head, and Pyrlig’s shield was covering my spine and I heard a thumping above me and thought it was thunder. Except the shield kept banging against my helmet and I knew a Dane was hacking at me, trying to break through the limewood to drive his ax or sword into my spine, and I crawled again, lifted the shield’s lower edge, and saw boots. I lunged with Serpent-Breath, tried to stand, felt a blow on my leg, and fell again. Steapa was roaring beside me. There was mud in my mouth, and the rain hammered at us. I could hear the crash of blades sinking in shields and I knew we had failed, but I tried to stand again and lunged with Serpent-Breath and on my left Leofric gave a shrill cry and I saw blood streaming into the grass. The blood was instantly washed away by the rain, and another peal of thunder crashed overhead as I slithered back to the ditch.

  The bank was scarred where we had tried to climb; the grass had been gouged down to the white chalk. We had failed utterly and the Danes were screaming defiance. Then another rush of men splashed through the ditch and the banging of blades and shields began again. I climbed a second time, trying to dig my boots into the chalk, and my shield was raised so I did not see the Danes coming down to meet me, and the first I knew was when an ax struck the shield so hard that the boards splintered, and a second ax gave me a glancing blow on the helmet and I fell backward and would have lost Serpent-Breath if it had not been for the loop of Iseult’s hair about my wrist. Steapa managed to seize a Danish spear and pulled its owner down the bank where a half dozen Saxons hacked and stabbed in fury so that the ditch was churning with water, blood, and blades, and someone shouted for us to go again, and I saw it was Alfred, dismounted, coming to cross the ditch, and I roared for my men to protect him.

  Pyrlig and I managed to get in front of the king and we stayed there, protecting him as we tried to climb that blood-fouled bank a third time. Pyrlig was screaming in his native tongue, I was cursing in Danish, and somehow we got halfway up and stayed on our feet. Someone, perhaps it was Alfred, was pushing me from behind. Rain hammered us, soaked us. A peal of thunder shook the heavens and I swung Serpent-Breath, trying to hack the Danish shields aside, then swung again, and the shock of the blade striking a shield boss jarred up my arm. A Dane, all beard and wide eyes, lunged a spear at me. I lunged back with the sword, shouted Iseult’s name, tried to climb,
and the spear Dane slammed his spear forward again. The blade struck my helmet’s forehead and my head snapped back, and another Dane hit me on the side of the head and all the world went drunken and dark. My feet slid and I was half aware of falling down into the ditch water. Someone pulled me clear and dragged me back to the ditch’s far side, and there I tried to stand, but fell again.

  The king. The king. He had to be protected and he had been in the ditch when I had last seen him, and I knew Alfred was no warrior. He was brave, but he did not love the slaughter as a warrior loves it. I tried to stand again, and this time succeeded, but blood squelched in my right boot and flowed over the boot top when I put my weight on that leg. The ditch bottom was thick with dead and dying men, half drowned by the flood, but the living had fled from the ditch and the Danes were laughing at us. “To me!” I shouted. There had to be one last effort. Steapa and Pyrlig closed on me, and Eadric was there, and I was groggy and my head was filled with a ringing sound and my arm seemed feeble, but we had to make that last effort. “Where’s the king?” I asked.

  “I threw him out of the ditch,” Pyrlig said.

  “Is he safe?”

  “I told the priests to hold him down. Told them to hit him if he tried to go again.”

  “One more attack,” I said. I did not want to make it. I did not want to clamber over the bodies in the ditch and try to climb that impossible wall, and I knew it was stupid, knew I would probably die if I went again, but we were warriors and warriors will not be beaten. It is reputation. It is pride. It is the madness of battle. I began beating Serpent-Breath against my half-broken shield, and other men took up the rhythm, and the Danes, so close, were inviting us to come and be killed, and I shouted that we were coming. “God help us,” Steapa said.

  “God help us,” Pyrlig echoed.

  I did not want to go. I was frightened, but I feared being called a coward more than I feared the ramparts, and so I screamed at my men to slaughter the bastards, and then I ran. I jumped over the corpses in the ditch, lost my footing on the far side, fell on my shield, and rolled aside so that no Dane could plunge a spear into my unprotected back. I hauled myself up and my helmet had skewed in the fall so that the faceplate half-blinded me, and I fumbled it straight with my sword hand as I began to climb and Steapa was there, and Pyrlig was with me, and I waited for the first hard Danish blow.