The Last Kingdom

by Bernard Cornwell

  But at Æsc’s Hill disaster had come to the side that first split its forces.

  “It could work,” Odda said tentatively.

  “Give me fifty men,” I urged him, “young ones.”

  “Young?”

  “They have to run down the hill,” I said. “They have to go fast. They have to reach the ships before the Danes, and they must do it in the dawn.” I spoke with a confidence I did not feel and I paused for his agreement, but he said nothing. “Win this, lord,” I said, and I did not call him “lord” because he outranked me, but because he was older than me, “then you will have saved Wessex. Alfred will reward you.”

  He thought for a while and maybe it was the thought of a reward that persuaded him, for he nodded. “I will give you fifty men,” he said.

  Ravn had given me much advice and all of it was good, but now, in the night wind, I remembered just one thing he had said to me on the night we first met, something I had never forgotten.

  Never, he had said, never fight Ubba.

  The fifty men were led by the shire reeve, Edor, a man who looked as hard as Leofric and, like Leofric, had fought in the big shield walls. He carried a cutoff boar spear as his favorite weapon, though a sword was strapped to his side. The spear, he said, had the weight and strength to punch through mail and could even break through a shield.

  Edor, like Leofric, had simply accepted my idea. It never occurred to me that they might not accept it, yet looking back I am astonished that the battle of Cynuit was fought according to the idea of a twenty-year-old who had never stood in a slaughter wall. Yet I was tall, I was a lord, I had grown up among warriors, and I had the arrogant confidence of a man born to battle. I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred, son of another Uhtred, and we had not held Bebbanburg and its lands by whimpering at altars. We are warriors.

  Edor’s men and mine assembled behind Cynuit’s eastern rampart where they would wait until the first ship burned in the dawn. Leofric was on the right with the Heahengel’s crew, and I wanted him there because that was where the blow would fall when Ubba led his men to attack us at the river’s edge. Edor and the men of Defnascir were on the left and their chief job, apart from killing whomever they first met on the riverbank, was to snatch up flaming timbers from the Danish fires and hurl them into more ships. “We’re not trying to burn all the ships,” I said. “Just get four or five ablaze. That’ll bring the Danes like a swarm of bees.”

  “Stinging bees,” a voice said from the dark.

  “You’re frightened?” I asked scornfully. “They’re frightened! Their auguries are bad, they think they’re going to lose, and the last thing they want is to face men of Defnascir in a gray dawn. We’ll make them scream like women, we’ll kill them, and we’ll send them to their Danish hell.” That was the extent of my battle speech. I should have talked more, but I was nervous because I had to go down the hill first, first and alone. I had to live my childhood dream of shadow-walking, and Leofric and Edor would not lead the hundred men down to the river until they saw the Danes go to rescue their ships, and if I could not touch fire to the ships then there would be no attack and Odda’s fears would come back and the Danes would win and Wessex would die and there would be no more England. “So rest now,” I finished lamely. “It will be three or four hours till dawn.”

  I went back to the rampart and Father Willibald joined me there, holding out his crucifix that had been carved from an ox’s thigh bone. “You want God’s blessing?” he asked me.

  “What I want, father,” I said, “is your cloak.” He had a fine woolen cloak, hooded and dyed a dark brown. He gave it me and I tied the cords around my neck, hiding the sheen of my mail coat. “And in the dawn, father,” I said, “I want you to stay up here. The riverbank will be no place for priests.”

  “If men die there,” he said, “then it is my place.”

  “You want to go to heaven in the morning?”

  “No.”

  “Then stay here.” I spoke more savagely than I intended, but that was nervousness, and then it was time to go for, though the night was still dark and the dawn a long way off, I needed time to slink through the Danish lines. Leofric saw me off, walking with me to the northern flank of Cynuit, which was in moon-cast shadow. It was also the least guarded side of the hill, for the northern slope led to nothing except marshes and the Sæfern sea. I gave Leofric my shield. “I don’t need it,” I said. “It will just make me clumsy.”

  He touched my arm. “You’re a cocky bastard, earsling, aren’t you?”

  “Is that a fault?”

  “No, lord,” he said, and that last word was high praise. “God go with you,” he added, “whichever god it is.”

  I touched Thor’s hammer, then tucked it under my mail. “Bring the men fast when you see the Danes go to the ships,” I said.

  “We’ll come fast,” he promised me, “if the marsh lets us.”

  I had seen Danes cross the marsh in the daylight and had noted that it was soft ground, but not rank bogland. “You can cross it fast,” I said, then pulled the cloak’s hood over my helmet. “Time to go,” I said.

  Leofric said nothing and I dropped down from the rampart into the shallow ditch. So now I would become what I had always wanted to be, a shadow-walker. Childhood’s dream had become life and death, and touching Serpent-Breath’s hilt for luck, I crossed the ditch’s lip. I went at a crouch, and halfway down the hill I dropped to my belly and slithered like a serpent, black against the grass, inching my way toward a space between two dying fires.

  The Danes were sleeping, or close to sleep. I could see them sitting by the dying fires, and once I was out of the hill’s shadow there was enough moonlight to reveal me and there was no cover for the meadow had been cropped by sheep, but I moved like a ghost, a belly-crawling ghost, inching my way, making no noise, a shadow on the grass, and all they had to do was look, or walk between the fires, but they heard nothing, suspected nothing, and so saw nothing. It took an age, but I slipped through them, never going closer to an enemy than twenty paces, and once past them I was in the marsh and there the tussocks offered shadow and I could move faster, wriggling through slime and shallow water, and the only scare came when I startled a bird from its nest and it leapt into the air with a cry of alarm and a swift whirr of wings. I sensed the Danes staring toward the marsh, but I was motionless, black, and unmoving in the broken shadow, and after a while there was only silence. I waited, water seeping through my mail, and I prayed to Hoder, blind son of Odin and god of the night. Look after me, I prayed, and I wished I had made a sacrifice to Hoder, but I had not, and I thought that Ealdwulf would be looking down at me and I vowed to make him proud. I was doing what he had always wanted me to do, carrying Serpent-Breath against the Danes.

  I worked my way eastward, behind the sentries, going to where the ships were beached. No gray showed in the eastern sky. I still went slowly, staying on my belly, going slowly enough for the fears to work on me. I was aware of a muscle quivering in my right thigh, of a thirst that could not be quenched, of a sourness in the bowels. I kept touching Serpent-Breath’s hilt, remembering the charms that Ealdwulf and Brida had worked on the blade. Never, Ravn had said, never fight Ubba.

  The east was still dark. I crept on, close to the sea now so I could gaze up the wide Sæfern and see nothing except the shimmer of the sinking moon on the rippled water that looked like a sheet of hammered silver. The tide was flooding, the muddy shore narrowing as the sea rose. There would be salmon in the Pedredan, I thought, salmon swimming with the tide, going back to the sea, and I touched the sword hilt for I was close to the strip of firm land where the hovels stood and the ship guards waited. My thigh shivered. I felt sick.

  But blind Hoder was watching over me. The ship guards were no more alert than their comrades at the hill’s foot, and why should they be? They were farther from Odda’s forces, and they expected no trouble; indeed they were there only because the Danes never left their ships unguarded, and these ship guards had mostly gone
into the fishermen’s hovels to sleep, leaving just a handful of men sitting by the small fires. Those men were motionless, probably half asleep, though one was pacing up and down beneath the high prows of the beached ships.

  I stood.

  I had shadow-walked, but now I was on Danish ground, behind their sentries, and I undid the cloak’s cords, took it off, and wiped the mud from my mail, and then walked openly toward the ships, my boots squelching in the last yards of marshland, and then I just stood by the northernmost boat, threw my helmet down in the shadow of the ship, and waited for the one Dane who was on his feet to discover me.

  And what would he see? A man in mail, a lord, a shipmaster, a Dane, and I leaned on the ship’s prow and stared up at the stars. My heart thumped, my thigh quivered, and I thought that if I died this morning at least I would be with Ragnar again. I would be with him in Valhalla’s hall of the dead, except some men believed that those who did not die in battle went instead to Niflheim, that dreadful cold hell of the Norsemen where the corpse goddess Hel stalks through the mists and the serpent Corpse-Ripper slithers across the frost to gnaw the dead, but surely, I thought, a man who died in a hall-burning would go to Valhalla, not to gray Niflheim. Surely Ragnar was with Odin, and then I heard the Dane’s footsteps and I glanced at him with a smile. “A chilly morning,” I said.

  “It is.” He was an older man with a grizzled beard and he was plainly puzzled by my sudden appearance, but he was not suspicious.

  “All quiet,” I said, jerking my head to the north to suggest I had been visiting the sentries on the Sæfern’s side of the hill.

  “They’re frightened of us,” he said.

  “So they should be.” I faked a huge yawn, then pushed myself away from the ship and walked a couple of paces north as though I was stretching tired limbs, then pretended to notice my helmet at the water’s edge. “What’s that?”

  He took the bait, going into the ship’s shadow to bend over the helmet, and I drew my knife, stepped close to him, and drove the blade up into his throat. I did not slit his throat, but stabbed it, plunging the blade straight in and twisting it and at the same time I pushed him forward, driving his face into the water and I held him there so that if he did not bleed to death he would drown, and it took a long time, longer than I expected, but men are hard to kill. He struggled for a time and I thought the noise he made might bring the men from the nearest fire, but that fire was forty or fifty paces down the beach and the small waves of the river were loud enough to cover the Dane’s death throes, and so I killed him and no one knew of it, none but the gods saw it, and when his soul was gone I pulled the knife from his throat, retrieved my helmet, and went back to the ship’s prow.

  And waited there until dawn lightened the eastern horizon. Waited till there was a rim of gray at the edge of England.

  And it was time.

  I strolled toward the nearest fire. Two men sat there. “Kill one,” I sang softly, “and two then three, kill four and five, and then some more.” It was a Danish rowing chant, one that I had heard so often on the Wind-Viper. “You’ll be relieved soon,” I greeted them cheerfully.

  They just stared at me. They did not know who I was, but just like the man I had killed, they were not suspicious even though I spoke their tongue with an English twist. There were plenty of English in the Danish armies.

  “A quiet night,” I said, and leaned down and took the unburned end of a piece of flaming wood from the fire. “Egil left a knife on his ship,” I explained, and Egil was a common enough name among the Danes to arouse no suspicion, and they just watched as I walked north, presuming I needed the flame to light my way onto the ships. I passed the hovels, nodded to three men resting beside another fire, and kept walking until I had reached the center of the line of beached ships. There, whistling softly as though I did not have a care in the world, I climbed the short ladder left leaning on the ship’s prow and jumped down into the hull and made my way between the rowers’ benches. I had half expected to find men asleep in the ships, but the boat was deserted except for the scrabble of rats’ feet in the bilge.

  I crouched in the ship’s belly where I thrust the burning wood beneath the stacked oars, but I doubted it would be sufficient to set those oars aflame and so I used my knife to shave kindling off a rower’s bench. When I had enough scraps of wood, I piled them over the flame and saw the fire spring up. I cut more, then hacked at the oar shafts to give the flames purchase, and no one shouted at me from the bank. Anyone watching must have thought I merely searched the bilge and the flames were still not high enough to cause alarm, but they were spreading and I knew I had very little time and so I sheathed the knife and slid over the boat’s side. I lowered myself into the Pedredan, careless what the water would do to my mail and weapons, and once in the river I waded northward from ship’s stern to ship’s stern, until at last I had cleared the last boat and had come to where the gray-bearded corpse was thumping softly in the river’s small waves, and there I waited.

  And waited. The fire, I thought, must have gone out. I was cold.

  And still I waited. The gray on the world’s rim lightened, and then, suddenly, there was an angry shout and I moved out of the shadow and saw the Danes running toward the flames that were bright and high on the ship I had fired, and so I went to their abandoned fire and took another burning brand and hurled that into a second ship, and the Danes were scrambling onto the burning boat that was sixty paces away and none saw me. Then a horn sounded, sounded again and again, sounding the alarm, and I knew Ubba’s men would be coming from their camp at Cantucton, and I carried a last piece of fiery wood to the ships, burning my hand as I thrust it under a pile of oars. Then I waded back into the river to hide beneath the shadowed belly of a boat.

  The horn still sounded. Men were scrambling from the fishermen’s hovels, going to save their fleet, and more men were running from their camp to the south, and so Ubba’s Danes fell into our trap. They saw their ships burning and went to save them. They streamed from the camp in disorder, many without weapons, intent only on quenching the flames that flickered up the rigging and threw lurid shadows on the bank. I was hidden, but knew Leofric would be coming, and now it was all timing. Timing and the blessing of the spinners, the blessing of the gods, and the Danes were using their shields to scoop water into the first burning ship, but then another shout sounded and I knew they had seen Leofric, and he had surely burst past the first line of sentries, slaughtering them as he went, and was now in the marsh. I waded out of the shadow, out from beneath the ship’s overhanging hull, and saw Leofric’s men coming, saw thirty or forty Danes running north to meet his charge, but then those Danes saw the new fires in the northernmost ships and they were assailed by panic because there was fire behind them and warriors in front of them, and most of the other Danes were still a hundred paces away and I knew that so far the gods were fighting for us.

  I waded from the water. Leofric’s men were coming from the marsh and the first swords and spears clashed, but Leofric had the advantage of numbers and Heahengel’s crew overran the handful of Danes, chopping them with ax and sword, and one crewman turned fast, panic in his face when he saw me coming, and I shouted my name, stooped to pick up a Danish shield, and Edor’s men were behind us and I called to them to feed the ship fires while the men of Heahengel formed a shield wall across the strip of firm land. Then we walked forward. Walked toward Ubba’s army that was only just realizing that they were being attacked.

  We marched forward. A woman scrambled from a hovel, screamed when she saw us, and fled up the bank toward the Danes where a man was roaring at men to form a shield wall. “Edor!” I shouted, knowing we would need his men now, and he brought them to thicken our line so that we made a solid shield wall across the strip of firm land, and we were a hundred strong and in front of us was the whole Danish army, though it was an army in panicked disorder, and I glanced up at Cynuit and saw no sign of Odda’s men. They would come, I thought, they would surely come, and then L
eofric bellowed that we were to touch shields, and the limewood rattled on limewood and I sheathed Serpent-Breath and drew Wasp-Sting.

  Shield wall. It is an awful place, my father had said, and he had fought in seven shield walls and was killed in the last one. Never fight Ubba, Ravn had said.

  Behind us the northernmost ships burned and in front of us a rush of maddened Danes came for revenge and that was their undoing, for they did not form a proper shield wall, but came at us like mad dogs, intent only on killing us, sure they could beat us for they were Danes and we were West Saxons, and we braced and I watched a scar-faced man, spittle flying from his mouth as he screamed, charge at me and it was then that the battle calm came. Suddenly there was no more sourness in my bowels, no dry mouth, no shaking muscles, but only the magical battle calm. I was happy.

  I was tired, too. I had not slept. I was soaking wet. I was cold, yet suddenly I felt invincible. It is a wondrous thing, that battle calm. The nerves go, the fear wings off into the void, and all is clear as precious crystal and the enemy has no chance because he is so slow, and I swept the shield left, taking the scar-faced man’s spear thrust, lunged Wasp-Sting forward, and the Dane ran onto her point. I felt the impact run up my arm as her tip punctured his belly muscles, and I was already twisting her, ripping her up and free, sawing through leather, skin, muscle, and guts, and his blood was warm on my cold hand, and he screamed, ale breath in my face, and I punched him down with the shield’s heavy boss, stamped on his groin, killed him with Wasp-Sting’s tip in his throat, and a second man was on my right, beating at my neighbor’s shield with an ax, and he was easy to kill, point into the throat, and then we were going forward. A woman, hair unbound, came at me with a spear and I kicked her brutally hard, then smashed her face with the shield’s iron rim so that she fell screaming into a dying fire and her unbound hair flared up bright as burning kindling, and Heahengel’s crew was with me, and Leofric was bellowing at them to kill and to kill fast. This was our chance to slaughter Danes who had made a foolish attack on us, who had not formed a proper shield wall, and it was ax work and sword work, butchers’ work with good iron, and already there were thirty or more Danish dead and seven ships were burning, their flames spreading with astonishing speed.