by James Wilde
Harold stretched out a steady arm to point to the river crossing two miles away where men swarmed like ants on both banks. ‘See? They are not ready for us. Too confident, like all the Northmen. The Vikings thought we would be as weak and slow as the men who faced them in the time of our fathers’ fathers’ fathers. They thought we would creep like whipped dogs, not strike like wolves.’
‘They did not reckon with Harold Godwinson.’
The king smiled.
Redwald cast his mind back to the beacon blazing in the night on the hills to the north of London. It was the last bonfire in a long line stretching from the north along the east coast. At first, the young man’s heart had filled with ice, but Harold was hot with passion. He had been ready for this moment and his blood was up for battle. If he had waited for mounted messengers to deliver the news of the Northmen’s attack, his war preparations would have been delayed too long. But Harold had been proved right in overriding the Witan, and his system of bonfires meant the news had arrived before the ravens had even taken wing. On the hard ride north, they had encountered white-faced messengers with stories of three hundred dragon-ships blotting out the whale road with their red and white sails. Thousands of fierce Viking warriors under the command of Harald the Ruthless. And Harold’s own brother, Tostig, was among them. The Northmen had sailed up the Humber and sacked Skaresborg before tearing through the forces of Edwin of Mercia and his brother Morcar at Fulford. Eoferwic had fallen with barely a whimper. When the English army had arrived in Tatecastre after the great march, Harold had prepared for an attack. Redwald recalled his master’s fire, the clarity of his planning during the long tactical discussion with the huscarls; for the first time the strength of the Wessex man’s leadership seemed to match his grand ambition, Redwald thought. But the attack never came. The Vikings were indeed over-confident. They waited to resupply thinking they had all the time in the world.
And that morning, the storm of English spears and axes had made their lightning advance to Stamford Bridge.
Harold swept an arm towards the enemy, who raced back and forth to prepare their defences. ‘And now we are here, how would you attack?’
Redwald knew the king was testing him. As in all things, this was part of his education, the knowledge that would help him become great. He thought for a moment and then made two slashes in the air from the north and the south.
The monarch nodded, but his sly smile suggested the answer had not been correct. ‘Look at the men we have arrayed behind us. Why halve the enemy’s attention when we can break it into seven.’
‘Seven?’
‘Seven warbands.’ Harold marked the lines of attack in the air. ‘We strike quickly and tear the Northmen apart. That is only a small part of their full force. The rest of Harald’s men will be with his fleet at Riccall, and he will have sent messengers to call them here. Our victory is assured if we crush the Vikings before the rest of the army arrives.’
‘They will try to hold the bridge to stop us crossing the river to the east.’
‘Of course they will. Only a handful would be needed to make a stand. But we will come like the hammers of a thousand smiths and smash them upon the anvil.’
Redwald stared at the churning Vikings, feeling his heart pound faster as the battle neared. He feared the attack would not go as cleanly as his master suggested. Around the campfire the previous night he had listened to the murmurs of the huscarls as they discussed the coming attack, and he soon understood why the king of the Northmen was called ‘the Ruthless’. Harald had left the ravens feeding on the remains of his foes across all the world, from Byzantium to the frozen rivers of Kievan Rus where the Slavs gnawed on the bones of those they had killed in battle.
Harold’s eyes narrowed as he peered towards the river crossing, the current weak and the waters low after the long weeks without rain. ‘My heart is heavy for my brother. He still feels the pain of his treatment. Let the word go out to take him as our prisoner, if it is within our power. I would have him at my side again, and his good advice in my ear.’
Redwald flinched and quickly turned away before his master could see his concern. If Harold brought Tostig and the rest of his brothers into his closest circle there would be no room for other advisers.
‘You will lead one of the warbands,’ the king said, as if to reassure him. ‘Give the order.’
The king urged his mount back towards the waiting huscarls, and after a moment Redwald followed. Leading a warband into battle was a great honour, yet still he felt uneasy. The warriors, even the men of the fyrd, all carried tokens next to their skin, a strip of linen from the garment of a loved one, a bone cross, secret amulets bearing the marks of one of the old gods. He had nothing except what was in his heart.
‘Let the spears of the English pierce the hearts of the Northmen!’ Harold bellowed as he rode along the front of the huscarls. ‘Let the river run red with their blood! Into battle, English, with God on our side!’ He wrenched his horse around and dug in his heels, leaning across its neck as he roared his fury. Thousands of throats responded, the cry resounding like the waves crashing on the shore. Redwald thought how terrifying it must be for the enemy to hear that sound.
Within moments he was lost to the pounding of hooves and the wind tearing at his face. The army moved behind him like a great beast coming to life, lumbering at first but gathering strength and speed as it thundered towards its prey. Oak and elm flashed by. Lost to the drumming of blood in his head, Redwald could only sense the men riding at his side, their gaze fixed, their lips drawn back from their teeth, spears or axes clutched in their right hands as they gripped the reins with their left.
As the turf blurred by beneath the horses’ hooves, Redwald glimpsed the Northmen jostling against each other as they waited along the river bank and realized yet another error they had made. Many were naked to the waist, their only armour their helmets. In the burning heat of the day, they must have left their mail shirts at their ships. Wooden shields would offer scant protection to the smiting that would be dealt them.
On the extremes of his vision, Redwald saw the mounted javelin-throwers leading the charge from either flank. Each man carried seven javelins in deep leather pouches strapped to their harness. Redwald found himself riveted by the sight of the riders pulling out each narrow, weighted spear and hurling it in one fluid motion before selecting the next weapon. The iron tips caught the sun like fire as they rained down. One Northman threw up his arms as if praising God when a javelin rammed through his right eye socket, down through his body and out of his side. A red mist sprayed upwards. Across the ranks, Vikings convulsed, pinned to the ground by the falling spears like rabbits caught in traps. Fascination gripped Redwald. Truly Harold was a great war leader to bring such a devastating tactic to England.
Shields stretched along the river bank in a bulging semicircle centred on the river crossing, reds, blues and yellows, marked with black and white crosses or stripes, all newly painted for the invasion. Redwald saw gleaming helmets poking out from behind the wall and wondered what thoughts were going through the Northmen’s minds. Did they fear their death was near? Did they trust that even with the vast army ranged against them they could still win? He had been told that the vikingr ’s belief in their own prowess was unshakable.
Spreading oaks and beeches dotted the approach, but the huscarls surged among the trees without checking their pace, before leaping from their horses and attacking on foot. Redwald joined them. With a roar, the English wave broke on the shield wall. Northmen staggered back under the pounding, ripe for the hack of an axe. Spears bristled from behind the shields.
Within a moment, Redwald found himself enveloped in the din of battle cries and the crashing of iron upon wood. Huscarls pressed tightly on either side, the constant motion of chopping axes and thrusting spears like the flapping of birds on the edge of his vision. Redwald threw his blue shield in front of him without a moment to spare. A spear burst from behind the wall towards his face, th
e tip splintering the wood as it raked across his defence. Before the Northman could withdraw his weapon, Redwald rammed his own spear into the warrior’s face. Blood gouted from where the tip ripped through the cheek and out of the back of the head. The man’s dying convulsions wrenched the spear from the Englishman’s grasp.
Cursing, Redwald withdrew to snatch up his axe. As he spun round, he glimpsed the seam of corpses littering the reddening turf in front of the shield wall. Even outnumbered, the Northmen were taking their toll on their English foe. On either side, the plucky ceorls swarmed forward. Many fell within moments, but the sheer weight of bodies began to drive the Vikings back. Redwald felt a rush of blood, but no fear.
Whipping up his axe, he lurched forward with a snarl. Gaps were appearing in the shield wall. Through one, he glimpsed a man who could only be Harald, taller than most of the Northmen who surrounded him, his blond beard glowing in the harsh sun. The red and white banner fluttered above his head.
Raising his fist in the air, Redwald ordered his huscarls towards the enemy king. As the warriors thundered nearer, the Northmen along the front of the shield wall raised their spears. All Viking eyes focused on the attack. Redwald beckoned to one of the archers loosing his shafts from the cover of a broad oak and pointed at Harald. The archer nodded and notched his arrow. Drawing the greased fibre string of his hunting bow, he took aim and fired. The arrow whistled through the gap in the shield wall. Distracted by the huscarls, the king of the Northmen did not raise his red and white shield, and the shaft plunged deep into his throat.
Redwald thought his own heart would burst. The Viking leader went down in a spray of blood, clutching at his wound. Instantly, Redwald could see the dread burn through the ranks of all the Northmen standing near him. Encouraged by the sight, the English crashed once more against the crumbling shield wall, splintering the wood with their axes and driving the enemy back step by step.
Wiping the sweat from his eyes, Redwald felt his jubilation ebb away when he saw another man take the enemy king’s place. But this was no Northman. Shorter than Harald, but with an English helmet and mail, Redwald guessed it could only be Tostig Godwinson. The outlaw barked orders in English, and whether the Vikings understood or not they marshalled their forces to the frantic waving of his hand. The gaps in the shield wall closed as the men began a steady retreat to the bridge.
Redwald realized that Tostig intended to regroup on the other bank. For an instant, the two leaders locked eyes before the outlaw took up his axe and waded to the wall. Gritting his teeth, he hacked with a fury that dwarfed even that of the seasoned Viking warriors. Bodies piled high in front of him. Of all there, only Redwald truly understood him. The young man alone saw the potent resentment, the pain of betrayal, the bitter grief that came only between kin.
Redwald felt a cold calm descend on him. ‘Let my hand be true,’ he whispered to himself.
Stalking forward, he drew his sword and threw himself into the seething mass of English warriors. Voices roared all around him. Buffeted side to side as if by a winter sea, he elbowed his way through the men until he came within sight of Tostig. The outlaw dripped with blood and brain-matter, his teeth clenched in a constant, bestial snarl. His axe fell, again and again. Helmets split and mail shredded. Waiting for his moment, Redwald kept his head down and hoped he would not be recognized.
One English warrior fell, his jaw torn free by Tostig’s axe. Into the gap, a ceorl stumbled with his spear. He was younger than Redwald, plain-featured and simple, with hair like straw. His face looked drained of blood, and his weapon wavered in his untutored hand. Probably never used a spear in battle before, Redwald thought.
When Tostig raised his axe, the ceorl retreated a step to avoid the blow. Redwald lunged into the man’s back, propelling him forward. The axe crunched into the spearman’s skull, killing him instantly, but, wrong-footed by his victim’s forward motion, the king’s brother struggled to withdraw his weapon. Redwald saw his opening. Avoiding the mail that could deflect or break his blade, he drove his sword upwards with both hands, under Tostig’s chin and into his brain. He slid his weapon out of the wound just as quickly and instantly pressed back through the ranks of men before anyone recognized him. Bursting out of the English warriors, he ran to reclaim his mount.
Back on his horse, he saw that Tostig’s death had broken the enemy’s resistance. On the far river bank, the leaderless Vikings massed for a final stand. The reinforcements left at the fleet were finally making their way to the rear, bolstering the ranks. Red-faced and sweating, they had clearly raced all the way from Riccall in the heat. Several collapsed with exhaustion; others threw off their mail.
When all the Northmen had fled to the eastern bank, a lone Viking took a stand on the bridge to prevent the English from swarming across. Clean-shaven, with long brown hair tumbling from under his helmet, he stood as tall as Redwald with a boy upon his shoulders. English warrior after English warrior tried to take him down, but the Northman swung his axe with blows that could have felled a tree. The bodies fell into the now-red river or heaped at his feet so that it was even harder for the English to reach him.
Removing his helmet, Redwald mopped the sweat from his brow. He heard a blast from a horn on the other side of the river and within moments the king’s huscarls tore into the waiting army from the south. The king, as cunning as a snake, must have redirected some of the English army to cross the Derwent at an older bridge a mile further south. For all its ferocity, the battle on the western bank had only been the mildest precursor to what was to come.
A galloping horse distracted Redwald from the furious clash on the far bank. It was Harold, slaked in blood. Where his men massed at the bridge, he leapt from his horse and barged through the ranks, yelling, ‘Stand aside for the king.’ The warriors parted in an instant. At the front, Harold watched the big Viking hack down two more men, his frustration rising. Snatching a javelin from the chest of a dead Northman, he snarled a curse and hurled the weapon with a force that seemed impossible in one who had spent all morning in combat. The javelin flew true. It rammed into the surprised Viking’s chest, ripping through his mail and bursting out of his back in a shower of blood. The man teetered for a moment, clutching at the wooden haft protruding from his front, and then he toppled over the bridge to splash into the river. Harold spat and returned to his horse. Cheering, his men flooded across the bridge to join the bloody battle on the other bank.
By late afternoon, Redwald was sitting in the suffocating heat at the foot of an elm. He looked across a field of bodies seething with black-winged carrion crows to the sunlit high ground rising up in the east. Too weary to stand and sleeked in sweat, he was aware that his arms were burning from the thousands of blows he must have struck that day. His helmet and mail lay beside him, tarnished and dented now.
Blood trickled in thick streams down the bank into the slow-moving Derwent, which had long since turned the colour of rusted mail. The feeding birds cawed hungrily, and behind the din he could hear the cries of the wounded and the dying. The English army had suffered terrible losses. Even leaderless, the Northmen had fought like devils, the reinforcements instilling renewed purpose in their weary fellow warriors. But in the end, the English numbers had proved decisive. When the rout was assured, Harold had ordered the West Saxon mounted troops to hunt out all the enemy survivors. Redwald had watched the Vikings cut down as they fled, or drowned in the river. Some had been trapped in barns and bothies and burned alive. He had just heard from a messenger returning from Riccall: of the three hundred dragon-ships that mounted the invasion, only twenty had escaped. It was the greatest defeat inflicted on the Northmen in their long, brutal history.
‘You fought well.’
His eyelids drooping, Redwald started at the familiar deep voice. The king strode over with the energy of a man half his age. Gathering all his strength, the young man pulled himself up the tree’s rough trunk and rested his back against the bark. ‘I wished to serve in a manner that would
make you proud,’ he replied with an overstated flourish of his right arm. He put on a cocky grin.
‘And you did.’ The king removed his helmet and held it in the crook of his arm. ‘This was a great victory. All Englishmen should be proud.’ A shadow crossed his face as he glanced back to the western bank. ‘Tostig is dead.’
‘I saw your brother brought down in battle,’ Redwald said, the lie springing easily to his lips. ‘Who slew him I do not know, but I failed to prevent the killing blow.’
The king shook his head. ‘It was always a vain hope that Tostig would survive. He was a Godwin. He would fight until his last breath.’
‘Still, though we never met, I grieve for him, for he is your kin.’
Harold turned away to look across the field of the dead. ‘Our victory was hard-won. We have lost many men this day.’
‘But the throne is safe.’
‘For now, though I fear…’ He killed the words in his throat and pointed towards the Archbishop of Eoferwic picking his way through the corpses, his white tunic aglow. Five black-garbed monks accompanied him. ‘Ealdred looks for his pickings. The Northmen left behind a block of gold among their treasures as big as this.’ He put his hands a sword’s length apart. ‘Harald looted it from Greece on one of his raids. It was his talisman, but it failed him this day. That should buy my way to heaven.’ He grinned, his teeth smeared with blood. ‘I need no great churches to earn my final reward.’