Shieldwall

by Justin Hill

  Godwin took his place while Edmund Ironside rode along the line, pointing and joking and recalling men’s names. He greeted each thegn and war leader in turn as the Sumersæton fyrd gathered about their alderman. His name was Elfric the Short, on account of his great height. He was a stunning man with yellow hair that shone almost silver in the sun, and a drooping moustache that reached his belt. There was not a maiden in the whole kingdom who would not give her right hand for such golden hair, Godwin thought, or lashes so long. He found himself staring at the man, for he was both handsome and wild. If he went against Thorkel in mortal combat, then it would be like a tale of old, when the giants fought the gods.

  Elfric wore a coat of long mail, hard and hand-wrought, that hung almost to his knees, each link cunningly crafted, and his men were well armoured. They talked quickly and laughed easily, and although the bosses of their shields were of a fashion that Godwin’s grandfather might have used, their spears and swords were as finely decorated as any Godwin had seen.

  Edmund put them on the left wing, where Thorkel liked to fight.

  ‘Strike hard!’ Edmund said to Elfric and his retainers. ‘Strike true! Do not give ground. A pound of gold to the man who kills Knut!’

  The Sumersæton fyrd cheered and grinned at him, and the king passed by, Elfric unfurled the banner of Sumersæton: the red dragon on a field of white. He knelt and shook the king’s hands with both of his own, put his helmet back on and lifted up his red shield and his men gave three hurrahs.

  In the centre, the men of Defenascir were gathering. They were shorter and darker than the Sumersæton men, and few of them had the silver-blond hair of Elfric’s house. They carried light throwing spears and short stabbing spears, and stank of cider.

  Their alderman was named Ethelsy and was Edmund’s cousin. They shared the same lanky build of the House of Cerdic, but Ethelsy was a full-grown man, and his son Ethelward was there.

  Along the line of the river bank the fyrds of Hamtunscir and Oxenefordscire were coalescing from the milling crowds to form the right wing. Abbot Wulsy led the men of Hamtunscir. Their alderman, Aylmar the Darling, was noticeably absent.

  ‘He now follows Knut and brings shame on us all,’ Wulsy declared. ‘Let us make up for his shame by placing ourselves against Knut’s best warriors. Each one of us shall fight as three and so make up for the men who failed you!’

  Abbot Wulsy had brought St Swithun’s clavicle with him from Wincestre. His monks had carried the reliquary through the camp the night before, swinging incense and singing hymns, while Wulsy drank half a hogshead and performed his old party trick of saying the catechism in Latin forwards and then backwards, before bawdy riddling began. His banner was St Swithun’s Cross, yellow on blue, flapping proudly between the Red Dragon of Sumersæton and the White Dragon of Wessex.

  Next came the men of Oxenefordscire, who had suffered most at the hands of the Danes. They were eager for vengeance and it was in the centre that the battle would be won or lost. There between the two wings Edmund placed his household retainers, against Knut’s hersirs.

  ‘Knut’s Army is larger than ours, so we’ll just have to do without a reserve today,’ he said simply as the captains came to share the Eucharist. ‘It’ll make the men fight harder if they know there is no one behind them, and the main battle will be in the centre, king to king.’

  Edmund paused on his horse for a moment and took in the whole battle line as the last men filed into place.

  ‘So, here we are,’ he said to Godwin as his horse was led away from the field.

  ‘Here we are.’

  ‘It’s going to be a hell of a battle,’ Edmund said to his companions and grinned. ‘It has been a long road for many of us. Are you ready, brothers?’

  They nodded and murmured, and some of them smiled, or looked across to the enemy, or adjusted their shield straps.

  Godwin caught Edmund’s eye.

  Yes, the look in his eye said. Ready.

  When the Army had finished drawing themselves up around their banners Knut made a great show of having his horses led well back from the battlefield.

  ‘All the easier to catch him,’ Godwin said.

  The banter all about was cheery, but the cheerier the men were, the more nervous Godwin felt. He stamped to feel the ground beneath his feet, drew in a deep breath and stepped out to check the lines. The various banners shuffled either forwards or backwards, and the men in the front line prayed as they lifted their shields and overlapped them. Prayers were chanted, songs sung, lucky rhymes and words of bravery and encouragement sounded out all around, and when someone farted, the Sumersæton ranks rippled with laughter.

  Between the restless ranks was a broad, lush meadow, a tapestry of rich green embroidered with the reds and blues and yellows of many flowers, buzzing gently with bees and tiny yellow butterflies and the occasional noisy bumblebee. The close-packed Danes started silently across the fields. They trudged towards them like ploughmen going to the furrow, a line of reapers marching towards the corn.

  All soldiers pray to God before battle, for even in the company of their fellows, a man is never so alone. The businesslike manner of the enemy made Godwin nervous. He prayed for strength and pride. Prayed that God would bring them victory, as He had brought it to the Israelites. Prayed that it was not the English homes that wept that night. Prayed that it was the Danish widows who waited at the ends of empty lanes and wept.

  Remember your boasts, Godwin told himself, felt the mood of the men around him. They joked and laughed and began to mock the Danes for being dull and serious, wild or illiterate. And they all fed off their king’s mood too, and Edmund was determined and bloody-minded.

  The war cry was ‘Ironside!’ and Ironside would lead them to victory. They would not die that day. They would be victorious. Godwin felt the courage flow from man to man like a rumour as he stood by the side of Edmund’s banner-bearer, a fellow Sudsexe lad named Egbert Halftroll.

  Godwin had practically lived in his mail and now he marvelled at how little weight he felt. He crossed himself, wished he had kept every oath he had ever made, wished he had prayed more devoutly, wished he had given money to the Church, wished that he had not killed Ulf in the duel, wished he had not cursed his father’s name, wished the damned battle would start.

  Edmund couldn’t have more than two thousand men, Knut thought as he looked up at the English shieldburg perched precariously along the lip of the steep and pebbly bank. He had nearly twice that many, in depth of ten men, with his own English on the left and the Danes and the Norwegians in the centre and the right, where a hedge defined the edge of the battlefield.

  It was there that Thorkel would lead the best men. A blunt snout, like a boar spear, driven into the guts of the English. The men who were to lead the charge were warming up now. Jomsvikings and berserkers – big men who butted their helmets against one another, laughed and shouted, swung their axes in big circles to loosen up their shoulders.

  Knut thanked Christ he was not facing them. Each man wore long shirts of iron mail. They carried long bearded axes, chased and damascened and lovingly polished, that could cut through helm and head and split a man down to his navel. Shield-bearers protected them from enemy blows, and it would not take long for their ferocity to batter the enemy back. And once their shieldwall was broken, their line divided, the English would break and run, and then the slaughter would begin. It was like watching a wolf seize a lamb and crunch its bones. They’d tear the soft heart out of them.

  Knut had seen these berserkers rip open shieldwalls from the Baltic to the Irish Sea. It was a simple ruse, but then it seemed to Knut that battles were simple enough. He had forgotten how many he’d seen in the last four years, fighting Dane and Wendel, Norwegian and English. Some battles were lost before the two sides came to blows. You could sense it in the enemy, how willing they were to stand against you. If both sides wanted to fight, then they beat at each other till one lost heart and courage and ran for the nearest hedge o
r hollow. This could come quite suddenly and without any obvious reason. The slaughter could go on for miles.

  Knut smelt the wind and sensed a new will this morning among the bristling English line. Maybe it would take a little longer than usual, he thought to himself, but all his captains – who had spent most of their lives butchering Englishmen – agreed: the English only had the spirit for a short, stiff fight; then they would break. It had happened more times than they could count. The English fled, and only the companions of a wounded lord – too lame or old to run – would stand about him till they were cut down.

  Knut had saddled horses picketed near his reserve so that they could mount up at a moment’s notice. His riders had carefully scouted out the land in the last two days and determined not to let fugitives flee to the safety of Malmesberie; instead they would force them into an unfordable reach of the river, where they would either be slaughtered or drowned.

  The crucial thing was that Edmund died. When he was dead, no one would dispute God’s choice. Knut did not doubt that by the time the evening star rose in the east, Edmund Ironside would be a hacked and stripped corpse. It was a simple fact. He could almost taste it, like a feast that is being prepared on the kitchen table.

  Knut led the toughest warriors in Christendom. They strained at the leash like fighting hounds. Knut put his war horn to his lips. His blast was answered from both shieldburgs, and there was a roar like thunder as his dogs charged towards the English.

  Godwin gripped his shield as the Danes came forward. The monks paced in front of the lines, hurriedly finishing the last masses and then rushing to safety at the back. Godwin pressed his eyes shut. A sense of guilt and unworthiness pressed down upon him.

  Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned, he prayed as the Danes lined up at the base of the far river bank. Forgive me, Lord, for I am a pitiless sinner.

  Godwin could hear them now, make out their faces, smell the leather of their harnesses and the stink of horse that worked its way into any marching host. His hand was shaking violently. He stamped his feet. The man next to him undid the thongs at his crotch and pissed into the ground. Godwin felt the same need and pissed where he stood, lest men think he was trying to seek the safety of the rear. Irwyn was next to him.

  ‘We will win!’ he whispered.

  Godwin wished he had the same faith.

  Edmund stood before the English.

  ‘Can you see them?’ someone behind him called forward.

  ‘I can see them and they’re a cursed ugly bunch!’ Godwin shouted.

  They all laughed. A few archers sent deadly barbs thudding into the Danish shields. The Danes paused on the far bank of the defile and slid down into the valley. They redressed their lines, took in the English position with a clinical eye, as if looking for the weakest spot, and then came steadily onwards. The English checked their ranks, checked their shield straps, their sword hilts, wiped the sweat from their sword-palms, checked their footing and their consciences, bit back their fear and waited. Men started to shout and curse. All along the English line men were hurling insults at the Danes.

  Whoreson!

  Heathen!

  Bastards!

  Even men who could not see the enemy joined in. The noise swelled from individual voices to a great and voiceless din, filled with fear and hate and anger.

  ‘Ironside!’ someone shouted, and the war cry caught. Soon it was a chant, roaring at the Danes who were wading across the narrow water. ‘Ironside! Ironside!’

  The Danes paused thirty feet away, took a few moments to steady themselves, as the horns bellowed and javelins and arrows flashed through the air.

  The Danes let out a great roar and charged. Godwin could feel the thunder of their footfalls, could hear their voices and shouts, could smell the unwashed horde of sea-wolves. The front ranks of the English went silent. Stones rained down, rattling against shield board like thunder. Spears, axes and pieces of wood made a deafening tattoo on the Danish shields.

  Edmund led the men to the lip of the bank that the Danes had to climb. The rear ranks pressed too eagerly forward and Godwin pushed against them. ‘Back!’ he shouted as the first of them began to spill over the lip of the embankment. ‘Back!’

  The Black Raven banner led the Danish charge. As it reached the bottom of the bank the White Dragon of Wessex surged down to meet it.

  ‘Edmund cannot keep his men in check!’ one of the men next to Knut shouted over the din.

  Knut stood at the back of his men and he nodded and laughed, for they had given up the height advantage. With the banner came Edmund, at the fore of his household troops, a magnificent warrior in silver armour and a gold-worked shield, blond hair streaming in the wind.

  Knut had often wondered where the good men in England were, and it seemed then that they were all with Edmund.

  It was a shame that the best of England should die that day, but die they would.

  Edmund’s companions fought like men possessed. They soaked up wounds that would have killed others three times over. They were so eager to kill that many Danish veterans who thought they had dealt a death blow were cut down by the return slash, while others clung to spear or shield with their dead fingers. They were like the ivy that takes a tall, proud building and topples it. The English fought beyond themselves. They fought with a common aim: to kill the Danish king.

  Closer and closer they came. Edmund looked over the fray and caught Knut’s eye. Edmund shouted at him, but the words were lost in the tumult.

  ‘Kill him!’ Knut shouted to his men. ‘You crowded my father’s benches. Earn your keep! What are afeared of? These are only Englishmen!’

  His toughest retainers heard his words and battled back, but the fury of the English onslaught stunned them. There was a furious tumult of spear shafts and helmets and hacking swords, and Knut felt fear.

  ‘There he is!’ Edmund shouted, closer now.

  Knut drew his sword and hefted his shield, and his bodyguard closed about him, like men preparing for a last stand. Knut had no intention of dying this day. He wiped the sweat from his palms and checked which way his horses were tethered, then readied himself and pushed his retainers forward.

  ‘Kill him!’ Knut raged, but the Danes fell back before the English fury.

  Ealdgyth could not bear to sit in Malmesberie and wait for news.

  ‘Bring horses!’ she told her men.

  She and her companions rode cautiously along the Fosse Way, wary of carrion Danes. The fields were quiet, and when the breeze was stilled, all they could hear were birdsong and insects, buzzing in the meadows. The land rose gently before them. A gurgling steam meandered to their right, before them were stands of woodland, the spring green replaced with dark summer green. An aspen flashed its rainy sounding silver leaves as the breeze went through it. A skylark sang somewhere above them.

  Ealdgyth could feel her baby kicking. Royal blood flowed in the child’s veins, Woden’s blood, mixed with her own Danelaw fathers. It was a potent mix, the royal line blended with the new blood of the conquerors, as a sword was forged from iron and steel. Iron for subtlety, steel for the strength and the sharp cutting edge.

  In her heart her babe was a boy. ‘Soon,’ she assured. ‘You will see your father’s victory soon.’

  An open gateway led on to the next field. The passage of the English fyrd was clear in the muddy hoof prints of three thousand horses. They passed through the screen of trees and suddenly they could hear the sounds of battle.

  Ealdgyth’s horse snorted.

  ‘Hush!’ she assured it. It is only battle.

  ‘Only a little further,’ one of the women said, and their horses walked to the top of the hill. and the battle sounded suddenly much closer.

  Ealdgyth held her breath. Battle!

  She had never seen such a sight before. It was two fields wide, a seething and confused mass, gleaming with steel and surging back and forth about the banners while shouts and roars surged up almost like surf on a shore.
r />   ‘Are we winning?’ she asked, but every sinew was tense and eager. ‘Surely we are winning!’

  One of her retainers came forward. ‘Danes have been pushed off the crest of the bank, but the men of Hamtunscir and Oxenefordscire still hold the lip. See! At their fore flies St Swithun’s Cross. That must be Abbot Wulsy!’

  Fat Abbot Wulsy had lost his helm, but he was furiously urging his men forward, waving his sword above his head.

  ‘Where is the king?’

  ‘In the centre. See his banner? There he is, in the silver helm.’

  Ealdgyth knew the helm, for she had lovingly polished it, and set it, that morning, upon her husband’s head. But she was too fearful to judge for herself. ‘How goes it there?’ she asked.

  There was a long pause.

  She held her breath and the child in her womb kicked again.

  ‘Edmund’s shieldwall has been broken,’ the man said at last. His voice was heavy.

  Another boy spoke up. ‘Both shieldwalls are shattered. The two kings battle towards the other’s banner. See! The White Dragon surges forward and against it comes the Black Raven.’

  ‘You have keen eyes. Keep talking,’ Ealdgyth told him, but then the boy shuddered.

  ‘It is a terrible press. There is barely room to swing a blade.’

  The battle raged for more than an hour without either side retreating or advancing. Both sides pushed and drove and seethed against the other. Many lay sprawled face down in the dust, English and Dane beside one another. At last the sun broke through and Edmund’s silver helm shone suddenly out, before it was hidden again among the surging tide of death.

  One of the women cried out, ‘That is Edmund! The king yet lives!’

  Occasionally they could hear a single voice or scream rising amongst the general melee. Sometimes it was an English voice, sometimes Danish. Grief, pain, anger, desperation – the meaning was not lost, though the words were unclear. The women strained to see where their lords’ banners were, tried to gauge consolation from the confused and angry crowd.