Sword of Kings

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Merewalh?’ Finan suggested.

  ‘Æthelstan, I hope,’ I said fervently, but whoever the far horsemen were, they were just watching.

  ‘So will you please open the damned gate?’ Brihtwulf demanded loudly and angrily from beneath us.

  ‘Twenty-eight men up here,’ Finan said, still talking low. He meant twenty-eight men on the gate’s parapet, most of them crowded onto the half-circles of the twin bastions that jutted out to the ditch’s edge. I nodded.

  Wihtgar and his men had reached the parapet at the far side of the gate. The older man looked at them, frowned, turned back to me, then saw that Immar was carrying the furled banner. ‘Is that a banner, boy!’ he demanded.

  ‘Will you open the gate?’ Brihtwulf called.

  ‘Show me the banner, boy!’

  I turned and held out a hand to Immar. ‘Give it to me,’ I said. I took the staff and unrolled a foot or so of the flag, then tossed it at the older man’s feet. ‘Look for yourself,’ I said, ‘it’s the dragon of Wessex.’ And so it would be, I thought, if the gods were with me today. The man leaned down to the staff and I took a step towards him.

  Finan put a hand on my arm. ‘You’re still slow, lord,’ he said in a very low voice, ‘let me.’

  He kept his hand on my arm, watching as the older man took hold of the flag’s edge to unroll it. All of his men were watching as he pulled to reveal the dragon’s clawed forelegs. He pulled again, about to reveal the lightning bolt in the dragon’s grip. Then Finan moved.

  And it began.

  Finan was the fastest man I have ever seen in a fight. He was thin, lithe, and moved like a wildcat. I have spent hours practising sword-skill with him and I reckon he would have killed me nine times out of ten, and the older man never stood a chance. He was looking up in surprise as Finan reached him, Soul-Stealer was already out of her scabbard, but Finan just kicked him under the chin, jerking his head back, then the blade swung in a savage back cut that threw the man sideways, throat severed and blood spurting high over the inner parapet, and Finan was already threatening the men watching from the bastion. They were not ready, any more than the older man whose life pulsed away onto Æthelstan’s banner had been ready. They were still lowering their spears as Finan attacked, and my borrowed sword was only halfway out of her scabbard as he thrust Soul-Stealer into a man’s belly and ripped her sideways.

  ‘Open the gate!’ I shouted. ‘Open it!’

  I shrugged the shield off my shoulder. Wihtgar was attacking from the far side of the gate. The fighting had started so fast, so unexpectedly, and our enemy was still confused. Their leader was dead, they were suddenly assailed by swords and by Folcbald wielding a massive axe. Hulbert and his Mercians were attacking westwards, driving the defenders on the ramparts away from the gate, while I joined Finan in clearing the bastions and the fighting platform above the arch. We were desperate. We had managed to cross an enemy-held city, we had reached this gate without being discovered, and now we were surrounded by enemies, and our only hope of living was to kill.

  There is pity in war. A dying boy, gutted like a beast and calling for his mother is pitiable, regardless that a moment before he had been screaming curses and trying to kill me. My borrowed sword was no Serpent-Breath, but she went through the boy’s mail and leather easily enough, and I cut off his yelps for his mother with a downwards thrust through his left eye. Beside me Finan, screaming in his Irish tongue, had put two men down and his blade was red to the hilt. Gerbruht, bellowing in his native Frisian, was swinging an axe against men who had not been given time to retrieve their shields. We were thrusting the West Saxons back into the half circle of the bastion, and they were screaming for mercy. Some had not even had time to draw their swords and they were so packed together that their spearmen could not lower their weapons. ‘Drop your blades,’ I bellowed, ‘and jump into the ditch!’

  All that mattered was to clear the gate’s parapet. Wihtgar, with his Mercians, was savaging the enemy on the eastern side of the archway, and his sword, Flæscmangere, was as red as Finan’s Soul-Stealer. I ran back to the steps and saw that Rumwald’s men were thrusting the confused East Anglians away from the gate’s arch, but Brihtwulf, his stallion white-eyed and frightened, was still inside the closed gates. One locking bar had been freed from the iron brackets, but the second was high and heavy. ‘Hurry!’ I bellowed, and four men used spears to push the bar upwards. It fell with a crash, making Brihtwulf’s horse rear, then the huge gates were pushed outwards on squealing hinges. ‘Go!’ I called. ‘Go!’ And Brihtwulf kicked his heels and the stallion bolted across the bridge. The folk waiting outside scattered.

  Rumwald had made a shield wall across the road. Behind it were bodies, some moving, most motionless in puddles of their blood. Father Oda was shouting at the East Anglians, telling them their war was over, that God Almighty had sent King Æthelstan to bring peace and plenty. I let him harangue them and went back to the parapet where terrified West Saxons, relieved of their weapons, were being forced to jump off the high bastion into the filth of the flooded ditch. ‘The shit will kill them if they don’t drown,’ Finan said.

  ‘We have to barricade the parapet,’ I said, ‘both ways.’

  ‘We will,’ Finan said.

  We had taken the twin bastions and the arch’s fighting platform between them, and Rumwald’s men, beating swords against shields, were driving back a larger number of East Anglians who seemed reluctant to fight and equally reluctant to surrender. I knew we would be attacked down there soon, but the immediate danger came from the men manning the walls on either side of the gate. For the moment, dazed and confused by our sudden assault, they were holding back, but other men were running along the walls, coming to retake the gate.

  They were coming because Immar had pulled down the leaping stag and hoisted the blood-drenched banner of King Æthelstan. The dragon and the lightning bolt now flew above the Crepelgate, and revenge for that was coming.

  The Crepelgate. Under the pitiless midday sun we had to hold the gate, and I remembered that Alfred, distressed by the number of maimed and blinded folk in Lundene, many of them men he had led into battle, had issued a decree allowing cripples to beg from travellers at this gate. Was that an omen? We had to defend the gate now and the fight would surely make more cripples. I touched the silver hammer, then cleaned the blood from my borrowed sword and slid her back into her scabbard.

  And knew she must be drawn again soon.

  Thirteen

  The enemy’s first response was ragged, brave, and ineffectual. The troops manning the long stretches of the wall either side of the captured Crepelgate attacked along the ramparts, but a shield wall of just four men could easily defend the width of the fighting platform. A dozen men, arrayed in three ranks, would be an even more formidable obstacle, but the day’s heat and the undoubted ferocity of the enemy’s attacks would wear that small force down fast, so I had men bringing stones from the nearby ruins. We piled them on the fighting platform to make two crude barricades, and by the time the wall’s defenders to our west had organised a disciplined assault, our makeshift wall was already knee high. Gerbruht and Folcbald led that defence, using the spears we had captured from the West Saxons, and within a short time the knee-high wall was heightened by mail-clad corpses. Wihtgar, to the east, faced less opposition, and his men went on piling stones.

  Brihtwulf had left the city and vanished among the far trees, but neither he nor any of Æthelstan’s men had reappeared. Inside the gate the East Anglians had retreated fifty or more paces, and Father Oda was still shouting at them, but they had not dropped their shields nor lowered their banner, which showed a crudely embroidered boar’s head.

  Everything was now happening either very fast or painfully slowly. It was fast on the wall’s top where we piled still more stones as vengeful West Saxons assaulted both crude barricades, but it was slow inside the city where Rumwald’s shield wall stood ready to defend the open gate against an East Anglian force that sh
owed no desire to attack. Yet I knew it was there, on the road between the rubble and weeds of the ruined city, that this fight would be decided.

  The West Saxons on the eastern reach of the wall had been reluctant to attack at first, and had given Wihtgar’s men the chance to make their stone barrier chest high. The enemy there hurled spears over the crude wall, but after the first attackers tried to clamber over the heap of stones and were met by spears thrusting from below, they were more cautious. Yet to the west the fighting was far more vicious. The pile of stones was broad there, but only knee high, and the enemy kept coming, urged on by a black-bearded man in polished mail and wearing a glittering helmet. He shouted his troops forward, though I noted he never joined them as they charged with shields held high and spears levelled. He was screaming at them to kill, to charge faster, and that was a mistake. Men hurried to cross the crude barrier and their haste made them trip on the stones and they came to our shield wall raggedly only to be met by swords, spears, and axes. Their fallen bodies made an ever-growing barrier on top of the first, a new barrier made worse by the men dying in agony who were trodden underfoot by other men trying to cross the blood-soaked obstacle.

  ‘The wall will hold,’ Finan told me. We were standing halfway up the steps, he was watching the fight above as I stared west towards Lundene’s higher hill.

  ‘The men need ale or water,’ I said. The day was getting hotter. Sweat was stinging my eyes and trickling inside my mail.

  ‘There’ll be ale in the guard house,’ Finan said, meaning one of the chambers inside the twin bastions. ‘I’ll have it sent up here.’

  A spear struck the stone between us. The West Saxons on the western wall had seen us, and several had hurled spears, but this was the first to reach us. It skidded off the step and fell down to the road. ‘Bastards will give up soon,’ Finan said.

  He was right. The men attacking us along the wall were tired of dying and had become aware that other men would do the fighting instead, and those men were appearing, heralded by blasts from horns that made us all gaze across the northern stretch of Lundene. Closest to us the land was a ruin of old walls, then it dropped to where the Weala brook flowed towards the Temes. Beyond it the land rose to Lundene’s western hill on which stood the ruins of the amphitheatre and, on the amphitheatre’s further side, the walls of the old Roman fortress. And a stream of men was coming from that fort. Many were mounted, most were on foot, but all were in mail, and even as Finan and I watched, a group of horsemen came through the gate surrounded by standard-bearers, their flags bright in the noonday sun.

  ‘Jesus,’ Finan said quietly.

  ‘We came here to fight,’ I said.

  ‘But how many men does he have?’ Finan asked incredulously, because the procession of mailed warriors seemed unending.

  I made no answer, instead I climbed back to the wall’s top and stared across the pastureland to the far woods where no horsemen were in sight. For now, it seemed, we were alone, and if Æthelstan’s men did not come from those distant woods we would die alone.

  I sent half the men who had been defending the barricades down to stiffen Rumwald’s shield wall, then took one last glance northwards to see no sign of Æthelstan or his men. Come, I urged him silently, if you want a kingdom, come! Then I went down the steps to where a battle must be fought.

  It would be a battle, I thought bitterly, to decide which royal arse would warm a throne, and what business did I have deciding the throne of Wessex? Yet fate, that callous bitch, had tied my life’s threads to King Alfred’s dream. Was there really a Christian heaven? If there was then King Alfred would be gazing down on us even now. And what would he want? Of that I had no doubt. He wanted a Christian country of all the men who spoke the Ænglisc tongue, and he wanted that country led by a Christian king. He would be praying for Æthelstan. So damn him, I thought, damn Alfred and his piety, damn his stern face, always so disapproving, damn his righteousness, and damn him for making me fight for his cause a lifetime after his death. Because today, I thought, if Æthelstan did not come, I would die for Alfred’s dream.

  I thought of Bebbanburg and its windswept ramparts, I thought of Eadith, of my son, and then of Benedetta, and I wanted to ignore that last regret and so I shouted at Rumwald’s men to get ready. They were in three ranks and had made a small half-circle about the open gate. It was a perilously small shield wall and was about to be attacked by the might of Wessex. It was no longer time to think, to indulge in regrets or to wonder about the Christian heaven, but time to fight. ‘You’re Mercians!’ I shouted. ‘You’ve defeated the Danes, you’ve fought off the Welsh, and now you’ll make a new song of Mercia! A new victory! Your king is coming!’ I knew I lied, but men facing battle do not want truth. ‘Your king is coming!’ I shouted again. ‘So stay firm! I am Uhtred! And I am proud to fight alongside you!’ And the poor doomed bastards cheered as Finan and I pushed through the ranks to stand where the shield wall barred the road.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Finan muttered.

  ‘I am here.’

  And I hurt still from the beating Waormund had given me. I hurt all over. I hurt and I was tired, while the weight of the shield made my left shoulder feel as if an augur was twisting into the joint. I lowered the shield to rest it on the roadway, then looked westwards, but none of the troops coming from the fort had yet appeared out of the Weala’s shallow valley. ‘If I die …’ I began in a very low voice.

  ‘Quiet,’ Finan snarled, then, much lower, ‘you shouldn’t be here. Go to the rear rank.’

  I gave him no answer, nor did I move. In all my years I had never fought anywhere except the front rank. A man who leads others to death’s doorway must lead, not follow. I felt stifled, and so I undid the knot that held the boiled-leather cheek-pieces and let them swing free so I could breathe more easily.

  Father Oda paced in front of our wall, talking now to us and seemingly oblivious of the East Anglians behind him. ‘God is with us!’ he called. ‘God is our strength and our shield! Today we shall strike down the forces of evil! Today we fight for God’s country!’

  I stopped paying attention because, not far to the west, the first banners were appearing above the lip of the Weala’s valley. And I could hear drums beating. The heartbeat of war was coming nearer. A man a few paces away in our front rank bent over and vomited. ‘Something I ate,’ he said, but that was not true. Our shields were propped against legs that trembled, there was bile in our throats, our stomachs were sour, and our laughter at bad jests was forced.

  The first men of Wessex appeared from the shallow valley, a line of grey sparked with spear-points. The East Anglians who had faced us so irresolutely began to edge backwards, as if making room for the approaching horde. We had been right, I thought ruefully. The East Anglians did not want to fight, neither for the West Saxons nor, it seemed, for us either.

  The enemy who had come from the fort were getting closer. Their banners were bright; banners with crosses, with saints, with the dragon of Wessex, with Æthelhelm’s leaping stag and, leading all of them, a banner I had never seen before. It was being waved from side to side so we could see it clearly and it showed a dull grey dragon of Wessex beneath a leaping stag embroidered in deep scarlet. A small cross showed in the upper corner.

  ‘God is with us!’ Oda shouted. ‘And your king is coming!’

  I hoped he was right and dared not leave the shield wall to find out. The gate was open and we just had to keep it open until Æthelstan arrived.

  Rumwald stood to my right. He was shaking slightly. ‘Keep together!’ he called to his men. ‘Stand fast!’ His voice was uncertain. ‘He is coming, lord?’ he asked me. ‘Of course he’s coming. He won’t let us down.’ He talked on, saying nothing of importance, just talking to cover his fear. The drums became louder. Horsemen rode on the flanks of the approaching West Saxons and still more footmen came, their spears thick. I could see the leaping stags on the shields now. The front rank, that was ragged because men were stepping
over the remnants of walls, numbered about twenty, but there were at least twenty ranks behind. It was a daunting mass of household warriors who advanced in front of a group of horsemen, and there were still more ranks behind those mounted men. They had begun shouting, though they were still too far away to hear their insults.

  I picked up my shield, wincing at the stab of pain, then drew Wasp-Sting, and even that short blade felt heavy. I beat her against the shield. ‘Æthelstan is coming!’ I shouted. ‘Æthelstan is coming!’ I remembered the boy I had taught how to kill, a boy who, on my command, had killed his first man. He had executed a traitor in a ditch where bog-myrtles grew. Now that boy was a warrior king, and my life depended on him. ‘Æthelstan is coming!’ I shouted again, and kept clashing Wasp-Sting’s blade on the ironbound boards of willow. Rumwald’s men took up the chant and began to beat their swords on shields. The second rank just shouted. They carried spears with shafts axe-hacked to half their length. A spear needs two hands, but a short spear can be wielded with one hand. They would close up behind us and thrust the spears between our shields. The fighting on the walls had stopped because the enemy there, frustrated by our makeshift barriers, was content to watch as the larger force overwhelmed us. Wihtgar had brought twenty men down from the ramparts and now waited with them under the gate’s arch, ready to reinforce any part of our shield wall that looked to be fragile. I wished I had Wihtgar beside me instead of Rumwald, who still chattered needlessly, but Rumwald had provided most of the men for this fight and I could not deny him his place of honour beside me.

  Honour was his word, not mine. ‘It’s an honour to stand in a shield wall with you, lord,’ he had said more than once. ‘I shall tell my grandchildren!’ And that had made me touch the silver hammer that I had pulled out from under my mail. I touched it because my grandchildren were in Eoferwic and we had heard no denials of the rumours of plague in the north. Let them live, I prayed, and I was not the only man praying in that shield wall, nor was I the only one praying to Thor. These men might all call themselves Christians, but many warriors had a lurking fear that the older gods were just as real, and when the enemy is coming near and the drums of war are beating and the shields are heavy then men pray to any god and every god.