The Edge of Light

by Joan Wolf

  And so nearly four thousand Danes thundered out of Wareham, past the watching West Saxon guard, and onto the coast road that led to Exeter. It had been Harald Bjornson, the captain of Guthrum’s fleet, who had known of the old Roman site of Exeter, protected still by the original walls and accessible to the sea via the estuary of the River Exe.

  It was the strategic position of the Danish fleet that had been the deciding factor in Guthrum’s decision to ride for Exeter. Alfred’s ships were still in Poole harbor, blockading Wareham, hence there was nothing between the Viking ships and Exeter save the waters of the southern channel. The Danish fleet, with its cargo of three thousand men, would be in the estuary of the Exe before the West Saxon ships could do aught to stop them. Once the ship army had landed, Guthrum would have seven thousand men under his command, Wessex would be his.

  Four men from the guard at Wareham galloped through the night to bring word to Alfred at Wilton of what had happened. They arrived at the royal manor to find the household at breakfast. Within minutes of hearing the news, Alfred had the thanes flying for their horses, scattering rushes as they raced across the floor of the great hall, stuffing the last of their bread into their mouths as they ran.

  “The supply wagons?” Elswyth asked as she watched Alfred putting on his byrnie in their sleeping chamber.

  “To come after us. The reeve will see to them. Check the horses before they are harnessed, Elswyth, to make sure all are sound.”

  “All right,” She swallowed. “Do you think you can catch them?”

  “It depends upon how far they are going. If they are aiming for Exeter, which has the best land defense for them, then perhaps. It depends upon whether or not they stop for rest.”

  “Why Exeter?” She came to help him belt his sword.

  “There are still Roman walls around the town, and then there are the estuary and the river.” He stood still and let her buckle his swordbelt. “There will be nothing to hinder Guthrum from landing his ships to disembark his men and unload his supplies.” She finished with the belt and looked up at him. The line of his mouth was very grim. He said, “That is where I would go were I Guthrum. He may be a treacherous bastard, but he is clever. I think he is heading for Exeter.”

  “My lord, we are ready.” It was Brand from the door.

  “All right. You have the hostages horsed?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “I shall be right there, Brand,” Alfred said, and waited while the thane closed the door behind him. Then he looked once more at his wife. She said, “You are taking the hostages?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose you must.”

  “Yes,” he said again.

  She looked up into strange eyes that were fierce and pitiless as the eyes of a hawk. Her mouth felt dry as dust. “Godspeed,” she said. “I love you.”

  He bent his head, kissed her on the mouth, quick and hard, and then was gone.

  Alfred had over two thousand horsemen pounding after him as they galloped down the Roman road that would take them first to Dorchester, and then, if the Danes were not there, west along the coast toward Exeter. They stopped only when it was necessary to rest the horses.

  The Danes were not at Dorchester, but the folk there told the king that they had been through many hours before, riding west. Alfred exchanged some of the more exhausted of his horses for fresh mounts and then turned toward the west himself to follow. As the day progressed, the sky had turned an ominous gray, and as night came on, the rain began to fall.

  The wind whipped up and the lightning bolts shot from the sky and the rain fell in driving sheets. Alfred was forced to halt for several hours; both horses and men were exhausted, the weather was making a muddy morass of the road, and it was too dark to see beyond the length of an arm. The West Saxons found what shelter they could and waited out the worst of the storm, many of the men wrapped in their sodden cloaks and sleeping on the wet ground, oblivious to the storm that raged about them.

  On the sea, Alfred’s fleet sought shelter within the protective wings of Poole harbor. Guthrum’s ships were not so lucky. They were off the cliffs of Swanage in Dorset, on their way westward to Exeter, when the storm caught them. There was no safe harbor. They fought the sea for hours, with the heavy winds driving them back against the cliffs and the heavy seas rushing over the low sides of their shield-lined long ships. When the dawn came, gray and wet, and the seas began to subside, Guthrum’s captain was finally able to assess the extent of the damage.

  One hundred and twenty Danish ships had gone down in the seas off Swanage that night. Nearly three thousand men had been drowned. After a futile search for survivors, a grim-faced Harald Bjornson turned his remaining thirty ships and sailed west and south. Not to Exeter in Devon, as previously planned, but to Cornwall, to the land of the West Welsh.

  Part of Guthrum’s plan for this autumn’s campaign had been to approach the West Welsh, and perhaps win them to a Danish alliance. Harald at least hoped to accomplish this mission for Guthrum. Then the remnants of the Danish fleet would sail even further west, in search of Ubbe, brother of Halfdan, whose ships should be sailing the seas between Dublin and the coast of Wales. It was necessary for Harald to gather another fleet if he hoped to relieve the Danish army at Exeter. He dispatched one of his remaining ships to bring the news of shipwreck and of his revised plan to Guthrum at Exeter, and then set sail himself for Cornwall.

  The decisive blow of the campaign had been struck off Swanage, but neither Alfred nor Guthrum would learn of it for several days. It was very late in the evening when an exhausted West Saxon army finally came to rest before Exeter and saw the Raven banner flying from the Roman walls of the old city.

  Alfred pulled up his men on the plain to the east of the city and bade them make camp for the night. Then he called for Brand. “I want a scaffold built within full sight of the walls,” he said. “Make sure it is out of range of arrowshot. See to it first thing in the morning.”

  Brand looked at the king’s face, then looked away. “Yes, my lord.”

  The West Saxon army ate the provisions they had left in their saddlebags and settled down for the night. The following morning the first reinforcements from the Devon fyrd, led by their ealdorman, Odda, came riding into camp. They were just in time to see Alfred hang his five Danish hostages, one after the other, in full view of the Danes who lined the walls of Exeter, watching in grim silence.

  The West Saxon thanes looked after their king as he strode away once the last Dane had been cut down, and respect and admiration could be plainly read on all their faces.

  “Thus does Alfred deal with oath-breakers,” said one of Alfred’s hearthband to a shire thane from the Devon fyrd. “The king knows well how to answer a treacherous enemy.”

  Brand stood beside Edgar, and the two of them also watched Alfred stride away. “I hope to God he will not have a headache on the morrow,” Brand muttered in a low voice to his friend.

  Edgar’s face was grim. The Danish boys had died bravely, but it had not been an edifying spectacle. “He will,” said Edgar in reply. “I would wager you my sword upon it.”

  To the satisfaction of neither thane, they both proved to be in the right. Alfred was incapacitated for the whole of the following day by a headache, It was the day after that that the West Saxons learned of the disaster off Swanage.

  It was Wareham all over again, Erlend thought as he stood on the walls of Exeter and watched the West Saxon camp. Alfred’s ships lay in the estuary blockading the entrance to the river, and Alfred’s fyrds lay outside the gates, guarding against any raiding parties Guthrum might send out for food and fodder. And the winter was coming on.

  “Our only hope lies in rousing the West Welsh,” Erlend said to Guthrum, who was standing beside him. “That was your original plan, to win a Danish base in Dumnonia. Perhaps Harald Bjornson will be successful among the Celts.”

  “I do not see how he can fail to be,” Guthrum said. “All of Europe does know how the S
axons did drive the Welsh from their lands, did push them back into Wales and into Cornwall. The Welsh would be fools not to take advantage of the chance to turn on their ancient enemies.”

  “One would think so,” Erlend murmured.

  Guthrum scowled. “You are the one who is always singing those Saxon songs of victories over the Welsh.”

  “I know.” Erlend shaded his eyes with his hand to screen the glare of the sun. “And if it were the Welsh in Wales and the Mercians, I should have little doubt as to the outcome. But the West Saxons have ever been more generous toward their Celtic neighbors, Uncle. There were Celts serving in Alfred’s hearthband when I was with him, and Celts are recognized under law as having a wergild half as great as that of a Saxon thane. This is not true in Mercia, but it is true in Wessex. The West Welsh may not be so disaffected as we would like.”

  “Name of the Raven!” Guthrum swore. “Who could have predicted such a storm in October? It has ruined all my well-laid plans.”

  Erlend could not resist saying, “Perhaps Odin did not like the way you broke your oath.”

  Guthrum swung around, violence flickering across his face like summer lightning. “Odin loves the strong,” Guthrum said, and his voice was like the lash of a whip. “Not the weak of stomach. Yon Alfred is no lily-liver, Nephew. He hanged our men without a qualm.” Then, grudgingly: “I did not think he had it in him.”

  “He is no lily-liver,” Erlend agreed, and his own voice was cold as ice, “nor do I think he will trust you a second time,”

  Guthrum looked back toward the West Saxon camp. “How many men do you judge that he has?”

  “He will have his own household thanes as well as the fyrds of Somerset, Dorset, and Devon,” Erlend answered. “At the least. With the men of Wiltshire ready to come at his call. Equal numbers to us, I should think. At the least.”

  “It is too chancy,” Guthrum said. “They are good fighters, these West Saxons.” Then, grimly: “We shall have to wait them out. He has never yet managed to keep such a large force in the field. We shall wait until his numbers are low, and then we shall press for a fight.”

  There was silence as both men trained their eyes on the moving figures in the West Saxon camp. “Yes,” said Erlend at last. “That will be the best.”

  But the time of year was not in the Danes’ favor. The harvest was already in, and Alfred offered good geld to the men who would stay with him at Exeter. For most of the squire thanes and the ceorls, the geld would more than compensate them for the work time they might lose at home. A month went by and the West Saxon army kept its numbers. Nor was there any news of the West Welsh.

  The cold of winter set in. Guthrum sent his raiding parties out at night, when it was easy to get over the wall unseen by the watching West Saxons. Sometimes the raiding parties got back with food, sometimes they did not. By the end of January the Danes had stripped the surrounding area of all the food and fodder that was easily come by. And wagonloads of supplies were rolling in for the West Saxons.

  “I can hold out here no longer,” Guthrum said to his council of jarls one day in early February. “We desire to obtain land to settle upon in Wessex and to win security for all Danes on this island by eliminating the threat posed by Alfred of Wessex. I can do neither of these things by starving my army to death in Exeter.”

  Grunts of agreement came from all the men seated around the fire. Then Jarl Svein asked, “What will you do, Guthrum?”

  “Sue for a peace and remove into Mercia. The plan we had here was not at fault. It was the wreckage of our ships in the storm that was our undoing.”

  Louder grunts of agreement.

  A muscle jumped in Guthrum’s cheek. He said, “I have heard of the discontent among my men. I have heard it said that those who went with Halfdan are masters of their own lands by now, sitting at warm hearths with willing wives to warm their beds by night, while we are still in the field.”

  A faint rustle went around the circle. Erlend had heard some of the jarls say much the same thing. Guthrum’s eyes began to smolder. “I shall divide up the lands of Mercia,” he said. “Let those who are weary of war take up their plows. I lead no man who does not wish to follow me,”

  There was an uncomfortable silence. “That will be best,” said Jarl Svein finally. “You are right when you say our men are weary of war, have lost their hunger for gold and for blood. It is land they want, Guthrum.”

  “I will give them land.” Guthrum rose to his feet and looked down at the circle of men seated before him. He added scornfully, “No good to have such as they at your back in battle.”

  Another silence, this one even more uncomfortable than the first. Few of the jarls were able to meet Guthrum’s eyes.

  “Will Alfred agree to a peace?” It was Erlend’s voice for the first time in the council.

  Guthrum hooked his thumbs into his belt and stared through the smoke of the fire at his nephew. “I think so. We are not so ill-matched that we cannot break out of Exeter by force of arms if we must. We would lose many men in so doing, but so would he. He cannot afford to throw away his men, this Alfred of Wessex. I think he will make a peace.”

  “Send Erlend to the Saxon camp,” said Svein, “and we will find out,” The rest of the council grunted their approval.

  Guthrum had read Alfred’s situation with some accuracy. Much as the West Saxon king would have liked to finish forever the Danish army at Exeter, he knew he did not have the numbers of men to enable him to do so. In fact, Alfred had considerably fewer men than had Guthrum, though thus far he had managed to disguise this lack successfully. It was best for all to make a peace.

  The making of the peace, however, did not proceed as smoothly as had such negotiations in the past. To begin with, while Alfred agreed to allow the Danes free passage from his kingdom, he refused to pay a geld, even the modest geld that Erlend had suggested.

  “It is a question of pride, my lord,” Erlend tried to explain to Alfred when he met with the West Saxon king to discuss the terms of the peace. “It will not look well for Guthrum if he must leave the kingdom without having taken a geld.”

  “Wessex has its pride as well,” came Alfred’s cold reply. They were meeting in the West Saxon camp, within the king’s tent, and they were alone. Erlend was completely disarmed; Alfred wore a small dagger thrust through his belt beneath his cloak. The day was heavy with fog and it was cold.

  “You have paid Danegeld before,” Erlend said.

  “This time the Danes are under more compulsion than are we.” Alfred’s breath hung white in the chill air. “I will agree to let you go because it will be easier thus for my men, but if you insist upon a geld, then I will fight.”

  Erlend had prepared himself for this meeting, had armored himself with all the ancient grudges he bore against Alfred, had determined to be as objective and unemotional in his dealings with Alfred as the king was in his dealings with him. So now he looked Alfred in the face steadily and assessed what he saw there.

  Alfred had changed in these last five years, he thought. Or perhaps not changed … perhaps just grown more completely into what he had always been. All the delicacy of boyhood was gone from that clean-shaven face, had been hammered into a fine-drawn, purely masculine beauty. Well, Alfred was … twenty-seven, it must be. Five years older than Erlend himself. Fifteen years younger than Guthrum.

  “And I want hostages,” Alfred said.

  Erlend let out the breath he had unconsciously been holding. “Why?” he asked.

  Alfred smiled. It was not a smile of amusement. “I realize that Guthrum’s word is as reliable as is the sky in spring,” he said. “Nor does he appear to care overmuch about the men he gives away as hostages. But I must have some guarantee that it will cost him to break his word. I will take fifty hostages this time, Erlend. And I want one of them to be a jarl.”

  Guthrum had been furious when Erlend returned to Exeter with Alfred’s demands. It had taken Erlend nearly an hour to calm his uncle enough to enable
them to speak sensibly.

  “He is right, my lord,” Erlend said. “We are under more constraint than are they. If you were in Alfred’s position, you would not pay a geld either.”

  Guthrum ignored this insulting observation. Danes took gelds, they did not pay them, Instead, “How many men do you think he has in his camp?” Guthrum was pacing up and down the room, as he had been for the last hour. “Did you get a good look around?”

  “I tried, but they took me to the king’s tent immediately. The point is, however, that even if he has not our equal number in camp just now, he has his ships still in the estuary. If they are filled with fighting men, then could they come in on our rear and catch us between.”

  Guthrum cursed.

  “Nor are our men in the best of heart,” Erlend continued remorselessly. “We have been besieged for too many months, first in Wareham and now here. It is not a way of life to the liking of a Dane.”

  Guthrum cursed again.

  “About these hostages …” Erlend said.

  Guthrum sat down. “I cannot send him a jarl.”

  “No.”

  “Name of the Raven, I cannot send him anyone of rank!”

  “Not after what happened to the last hostages,” Erlend agreed smoothly.

  “I will keep to my word this time. Now Guthrum was sounding aggrieved. “I have every intention of removing into Mercia. If he will agree to return the hostages when once I have left Wessex, then perhaps—”

  “I do not think that is what Alfred had in mind.”

  Guthrum gave Erlend a piercing blue look. “What is it that you have in mind, Nephew?” he asked. “I can see from your face that you have something to say.”

  “I think I might have a solution,” Erlend admitted.

  “Tell me,” Guthrum said.

  It took the better part of the night to convince the Danish leader to accede to the proposal Erlend put forth. On the following morning, Erlend rode once more into the West Saxon camp.