Sword Song: The Battle for London

by Bernard Cornwell

  It was all so simple.

  As we rowed on eastward.

  Before leaving Lundene we had taken down the Sea-Eagle’s mast that now lay in crutches along the ship’s centerline. I had not put her beast-heads on her stem or stern because I wanted her to lie low in the water. I wanted her to be a black shape against blackness, and with no rearing eagle’s head or high mast to show above the horizon. We came in stealth before the dawn. We were the Shadow-Walkers of the sea.

  And I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt and felt no tingle there, no singing, no hunger for blood and I took comfort from that. I thought we would open the creek and watch Æthelflaed sail to freedom and that Serpent-Breath would sleep silently in her fleece-lined scabbard.

  Then, at last, I saw the higher glow in the sky, the dull red glow that marked where fires burned in Sigefrid’s hilltop encampment. The glow grew brighter as we rowed through the slack water of high tide, and beyond it, on the hills that slowly fell away to the east, were more reflections of fire on clouds. Those red glows marked the sites of the new encampments that stretched from high Beamfleot to low Sceobyrig. “Even without the ransom,” Ralla remarked to me, “they might be tempted to attack.”

  “They might,” I agreed, though I doubted Sigefrid had enough men yet to feel sure of success. Wessex, with its newly built burhs, was a hard place to attack, and I guessed Sigefrid would want at least three thousand more men before he rolled the dice of war, and to get those men he needed the ransom. “You know what to do?” I asked Ralla.

  “I know,” he said patiently, also knowing that my question had been provoked by nervousness rather than by necessity. “I’ll go seaward of Caninga,” he said, “and collect you at the eastern end.”

  “And if the channel isn’t open?” I asked.

  I sensed that he grinned in the darkness. “Then I’ll collect you,” he said, “and you make that decision.”

  Because if I failed to move the ship that blocked the channel then Æthelflaed would be trapped in the creek and I would have to decide whether to commit Sea-Eagle to a fight against a ship with higher sides and an angry crew. It was not a fight I wanted and I doubted we could win it, which meant I had to open the channel before such a fight became necessary.

  “Slow!” Ralla called to the oarsmen. He had turned the ship northward and now we rowed slow and cautious toward Caninga’s black shore. “You’ll get wet,” he told me.

  “How long till dawn?”

  “Five hours? Six?” he guessed.

  “Long enough,” I said, and just then the Sea-Eagle’s bows touched the shelving mud and her long hull shivered.

  “Back oars!” Ralla shouted, and the oar banks churned the shallow water to pull the bows away from that treacherous shore. “Go quickly,” he told me, “tide falls fast here. Don’t want to be stranded.”

  I led Clapa and Rypere to the bows. I had debated whether to wear mail, hoping that I would need to do no fighting in the approaching summer dawn, but in the end caution had prevailed and I wore a mail coat, two swords but had no helmet. I feared my helmet, with its bright wolf-symbol, would reflect the night’s small light, and so I wore a dark leather helmet liner instead. I also wore the black cloak that Gisela had woven for me, that dark night-hiding cloak with its savage stab of lightning running down the back from nape to hem. Rypere and Clapa also wore dark cloaks that covered their mail and each of them had swords, while Clapa carried a huge, beard-bladed war ax strapped to his back.

  “You should let me come,” Finan said to me.

  “You’re in charge here,” I told him. “And if we get into trouble you might have to abandon us. That will be your decision.”

  “Back oars!” Ralla shouted again, and the Sea-Eagle retreated another few feet from the threat of being grounded on the falling tide.

  “We won’t abandon you,” Finan said, and held out a hand. I clasped it, then let him lower me over the ship’s side where I splashed into a soggy mess of mud and water.

  “See you at dawn,” I called up to Finan’s dark shape, then led Clapa and Rypere across the wide mudflats. I heard the creak and splashing of Sea-Eagle’s oars as Ralla backed her offshore, but when I turned she had already vanished.

  We had landed at the western end of Caninga, the island that bordered Beamfleot’s creek, and we had come ashore a long way from where Sigefrid’s ships were moored or beached. We were far enough away so that the sentries on the fort’s high walls would not have seen our dark dismasted ship come to the dark land, or so I prayed, and now we had a long walk. We crossed the wide, glistening, moon-rippled stretch of mud that widened as the tide receded, and in places we could not walk, but only struggle. We waded and tripped, fought the sucking mud, we cursed and splashed. That foreshore was neither land nor water, but a sticky, clinging morass, and so I hurried on until, at last, there was more land than water and the shrieks of woken birds surrounded us. The night air was filled with the beat of their wings and the shrillness of their protests. That noise, I thought, would surely alert the enemy, but all I could do was strike inland, praying for higher ground, and at last the going became easier, though still the land smelled of salt. At the highest tides, Ralla had told me, Caninga could vanish entirely beneath the waves and I thought of the Danes I had drowned on the western sea-marshes when I had lured them into just such a rising tide. That had been before Ethandun when Wessex had seemed doomed, but Wessex still lived and the Danes had died.

  We found a path. Sheep were sleeping among the tussocks and this was a sheep track, though it was a crude and treacherous path for it was constantly interrupted by ditches through which the tendrils of the falling tide gurgled. I wondered if a shepherd was close by. Perhaps these sheep, being on an island, did not need guarding from wolves, which would mean no shepherd and, better, no dogs to wake and bark. But if there were dogs, they slept as we moved eastward. I looked for the Sea-Eagle, but though there was moonshine glittering wide on the estuary, I could not see her.

  After a while we rested, first kicking three sleeping sheep awake so we could occupy their patches of warm dry earth. Clapa was soon asleep and snoring, while I gazed out to the Temes trying once more to see the Sea-Eagle, but she was a shadow among shadows. I was thinking of Ragnar, my friend, and how he would react when Erik and Alfred’s daughter turned up at Dunholm. He would be amused, I knew, but how long would that amusement last? Alfred would send envoys to Guthred, King of Northumbria, demanding his daughter’s return, and every Northman with a sword would eye Dunholm’s crag hungrily. Madness, I thought, as the wind rustled across the stiff marsh grasses.

  “What’s happening there, lord?” Rypere asked, startling me. He had sounded alarmed and I turned from searching the water to see a huge blaze springing from Beamfleot’s hilltop. Flames were leaping into the dark sky, outlining the ramparts of the fort, and above those tortuous flames bright sparks whirled in the thick pillar of fire-lit smoke that churned above Sigefrid’s hall.

  I swore, kicked Clapa awake and stood.

  Sigefrid’s hall was ablaze, and that meant the whole encampment was awake, but whether the fire was an accident or deliberate, I could not tell. Perhaps this was the diversion that Erik had planned so he could smuggle Æthelflaed from her smaller hall, but somehow I did not think Erik would risk burning his brother to death. “Whatever caused that fire,” I said grimly, “is bad news.”

  The fire had only just taken hold, but the thatch must have been dry because the flames were spreading with extraordinary swiftness. The blaze grew larger, lighting the hilltop and throwing garish shadows across Caninga’s low, marshy land. “They’ll see us, lord,” Clapa said nervously.

  “We have to risk that,” I said, and hoped that the men on the ship that blocked the channel would be watching the fire instead of looking for enemies on Caninga.

  I planned to reach the creek’s southern bank where the great chain that held the ship against the currents was looped about its huge post. Cut or release that chain and the shi
p must drift with the outgoing tide and so swing open like a great gate as her bow chain held her fast to the post on the northern bank.

  “Let’s go,” I said, and we followed the sheep track, our journey now made easy by the light thrown by the great fire. I kept glancing eastward where the sky was turning pale. Dawn was close, but the sun would not show for a long time. I thought I saw Sea-Eagle once, her low shape stark against the shimmer of gray and black, but I could not be certain of what I saw.

  As we drew closer to the moored guard-ship we moved off the sheep track to push our way through reed beds that grew high enough to conceal us. Birds screamed again. We stopped every few paces and I would look over the reeds and see the crew of the blocking ship staring up at the high burning hill. The fire was vast now, an inferno in the sky, scorching the high clouds red. We reached the edge of the reeds, and crouched there, a hundred paces from the huge post that tethered the ship’s stern.

  “We might not need your ax,” I told Clapa. We had brought the ax to try to chop through the heavy iron links.

  “You’re going to bite the chain, lord?” Rypere asked, amused.

  I gave him a friendly cuff around the head. “If you stand on Clapa’s shoulders,” I said, “you should be able to lift that chain clean off the post. It’ll be quicker.”

  “We should do it before it gets light,” Clapa said.

  “Mustn’t give them time to re-moor the ship,” I said, and wondered if I should have brought more men ashore, and then knew I should.

  Because we were not alone on Caninga.

  I saw the other men and laid a hand on Clapa’s arm to silence him. And everything that had seemed easy became difficult.

  I saw men running down the southern bank of the creek. There were six men armed with swords and axes, six men who ran toward the post that was our goal. And I understood what happened then, or I hoped I did, but it was a moment when all the future hung in the balance. I had an instant to make a decision, and I thought of the three Norns sitting at Yggdrasil’s roots and I knew that if I made the wrong choice, the choice they already knew I would make, then I could ruin all that I wanted of that morning.

  Perhaps, I thought, Erik had decided to open the channel himself.

  Perhaps he believed I would not come. Or perhaps he had realized that he could open the channel without attacking his brother’s men. Perhaps the six men were Erik’s warriors.

  Or perhaps they were not.

  “Kill them,” I said, hardly aware that I spoke, hardly aware of the decision I had made.

  “Lord?” Clapa asked.

  “Now!” I was already moving. “Fast, come on!”

  The guard-ship’s crew were hurling spears at the six men, but none struck home as the three of us raced toward the post. Rypere, lithe and quick, ran ahead of me and I hauled him back with my left hand before drawing Serpent-Breath.

  And so death came in the wolf-light before dawn. Death on a muddy bank. The six men reached the post before we did and one of them, a tall man, swung a war ax at the looped chain, but a spear flung from the ship thudded into his thigh and he staggered back, cursing, as his five companions turned in astonishment to face us. We had surprised them.

  I screamed a huge challenge, an incoherent challenge, and leaped at the five men. It was a mad attack. A sword could have pierced my belly and left me writhing in blood, but the gods were with me. Serpent-Breath struck a shield plumb center and the man went backward, knocked off his feet and I followed him, trusting that Rypere and Clapa would keep his four comrades busy. Clapa was swinging his huge ax, while Rypere danced the sword-dance Finan had taught him. I slashed Serpent-Breath at the fallen man and her blade crashed on his helmet so that he fell back again and then I twisted to lunge Serpent-Breath at the tall man who had been trying to sever the chain.

  He turned, his ax swinging, and there was enough light in the sky to let me see the bright red hair under his helmet’s rim and the bright red beard jutting beneath the helmet’s cheek-plates. He was Eilaf the Red, Haesten’s oath-man, and I knew then what must have happened in this treacherous morning.

  Haesten had set the fire.

  And Haesten must have taken Æthelflaed.

  And now he wanted the channel opened so that his ships could escape.

  So now we had to keep the channel closed. We had come to open it, and now we would fight on Sigefrid’s side to keep it shut up, and I rammed the sword at Eilaf who somehow sidestepped the blade, and his ax struck me at the waist, but there was no power in his blow and I scarce felt the blade’s impact through my cloak and mail. A spear hissed past me, thrown from the ship, then another thudded hard into the post and stayed there, quivering. I had stumbled past Eilaf, my footing uncertain in the marshy ground.

  He was quick and I had no shield. The ax swung and I ducked as I turned back to him, then thrust Serpent-Breath two-handed at his belly, but his shield took the lunge. I heard splashing behind me and I guessed the guard-ship’s crew were coming to our aid. A man screamed where Clapa and Rypere fought, but I had no time to discover what happened there. I thrust again, and a sword is a faster weapon than an ax and Eilaf the Red was still drawing his right arm back and had to move the shield to deflect my blade and I flicked it up and slid it scraping and ringing across his shield’s iron rim and banged her tip into his skull beneath his helmet’s edge.

  I felt bone break. The ax was coming, but slowly, and I caught the haft with my left hand and hauled on it as Eilaf staggered, his eyes glazed from the wound I had given him. I kicked his spear-pierced leg, wrenched Serpent-Breath free, then stabbed her down. She punctured his mail to make him jerk like an eel on a spear, then he thumped into the mud and tried to pull his ax free of my grasp. He was snarling at me, his forehead a mass of blood. I swore at him, kicked his hand free of the ax’s handle, slashed Serpent-Breath down on his neck and watched him quiver. Men from the guard-ship’s crew ran past me to kill Eilaf’s men and I snatched Eilaf’s helmet off his bloody head. It dripped with gore, but I rammed it over my leather headgear and hoped the cheek-plates would conceal my face.

  The men who had come from the ship might well have seen me at Sigefrid’s feast, and if they recognized me they would turn their swords on me. There were ten or eleven of the crewmen and they had killed Eilaf the Red’s five companions, but not before Clapa had been given his last wound. Poor Clapa, so slow in thought, so gentle in manner, so strong in war, and now he lay, mouth open, blood spilling down his beard, and I saw a tremor in his body and jumped to him and found a fallen sword that I put into his empty right hand and closed his fingers about the hilt. His chest had been mangled by an ax blow so that ribs and lung and mail were tangled in a bloody, bubbling mess.

  “Who are you?” a man shouted.

  “Ragnar Olafson,” I invented a name.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Our ship stranded on the coast,” I said, “we were coming to find help.”

  Rypere was in tears. He was holding Clapa’s left hand, saying his friend’s name over and over.

  We make friends in battle. We tease each other, jeer at each other and insult each other, yet we also love each other. In battle you become closer than brothers, and Clapa and Rypere were friends who had known that closeness, and now Clapa, who was Danish, was dying and Rypere, who was Saxon, was weeping. Yet his tears were not from weakness, but from rage, and as I held Clapa’s dying hand tight on the sword hilt I watched Rypere turn and lift his own sword. “Lord,” he said, and I swiveled to see still more men coming down the bank.

  Haesten had sent a whole crew to open the channel. Their ship had been beached fifty paces down the bank and, beyond it, I could see a mass of other ships waiting to row out to sea when the channel was cleared. Haesten and all his men were fleeing Beamfleot, and they were taking Æthelflaed with them, and beyond the creek, on the steep hill beneath the burning hall, I could see Sigefrid and Erik’s men running recklessly down the precipitous slope to assault the treacherous Haes
ten.

  Whose men now came at us in overwhelming numbers.

  “Shield wall!” a voice roared. I have no idea who shouted and only remember that I thought we must die here on this muddy bank and I patted Clapa’s bloody cheek and saw his ax lying in the mud and I felt the same rage that Rypere felt. I sheathed Serpent-Breath and snatched up the huge, wide-bladed, long-bearded war ax.

  Haesten’s crew came screaming, driven by an urgency to escape the creek before Sigefrid’s men came to slaughter them. Haesten was doing his best to slow that pursuit by burning Sigefrid’s ships where they were beached on the far side of the creek. I was only dimly aware of those new fires, of flames rippling quick up tarred rigging, of smoke blowing across the incoming tide, but I had no time to watch, only to brace myself as the screaming men came closer.

  And then they charged the last few paces, and we should have died there, but whoever had shouted at us to form a shield wall had chosen his place well, for one of Caninga’s many ditches snaked across our front. It was not much of a ditch, scarce a muddy rivulet, but our attackers stumbled on its slippery sides and we went forward, our turn to scream, and the fury in me became the red rage of battle. I swung the huge ax at a man recovering from his stumble and my war shout rose to a scream of triumph as my blade slashed through a helmet, chopped into a skull, and sliced a brain in two. Blood sluiced black into the air as I still screamed and jerked the ax free and swung it again. I knew nothing but madness, anger, and desperation. Battle-joy. Blood-mad. Warriors to the slaughter, and our whole shield wall had moved to the ditch’s edge where our enemy was floundering and we had a moment’s furious slaughter, blades in the moonlight, blood black as pitch, and men’s screams as wild as the wild birds’ screams in the darkness.

  Yet we were outnumbered and we were outflanked. We should have died there about the post that held the guard-ship’s chain, except that more men dropped overboard from that tethered ship and came running through the shallows to assail our attackers’ left flank. But Haesten’s men still outnumbered us, and the men in the ranks behind pushed past their dying comrades to attack us. We were forced slowly back, as much by their weight as by their weapons. I had no shield. I was swinging the ax two-handed, snarling, keeping men at bay with the heavy blade, though a spearman, out of reach of my ax blade, jabbed repeatedly at me. Rypere, beside me, had found a fallen shield and did his best to cover me, but the spearman managed to dodge the shield and stabbed low to slice open my left calf. I hurled the ax and the heavy blade smashed into his face as I slid Serpent-Breath from her scabbard and let her scream her war song. My wound was trivial, the wounds Serpent-Breath gave were not. A demented man, mouth agape to reveal toothless gums, flailed an ax at me and Serpent-Breath took his soul with elegant ease, so elegant that I laughed in triumph as I wrenched the blade from his upper belly. “We’re holding them!” I bellowed, and no one noticed I shouted in English, but though our small shield wall was indeed holding firm just in front of the great post, our attackers had outflanked the left of our line and the men there, attacked from two sides, broke and ran. We stumbled backward to follow them. Blades crashed into our shields, axes splintered boards, swords rang on swords, and back we went, unable to hold our ground against so many, and we were driven past the great mooring post and now there was light enough in the sky for me to see the green slime clinging to the post’s base where the huge chain lay rusted.