“That’s crazy,” Finan said as we reached the crest. “They could have killed a score of us.”
“They’re confident,” I said. “They must know the walls of their fort will stop us.”
“Or else they don’t know their business,” Finan said.
“When did you last meet a Dane who didn’t know how to fight?”
We sent men to scout the surrounding trees as we approached the old hall at Thunresleam, but still no enemy appeared. We had been to this hall years before, back when we had negotiated with the Norsemen, Sigefrid and Erik, and afterward we had fought a bitter battle in the creek beneath the fort. Those events seemed so distant now and both Sigefrid and Erik were dead. Haesten had survived that long ago fight, and now I had come to oppose him again, though none of us knew whether Haesten himself had returned to Beamfleot. Rumor said he was still ravaging Mercia, which implied he was confident that Beamfleot’s garrison could protect itself.
The oak-beamed hall at Thunresleam would be at the center of my camp. It had once been a magnificent building, but it had been abandoned many years before and the pillars were rotting and the thatch was black, damp and sagging. The great beams were thick with bird droppings while the floor was a mass of weeds. Just outside the hall was a stone pillar about the height of a man. There was a hole through the stone that was filled with pebbles and scraps of cloth, the votive offerings left by the local folk who had fled our arrival. Their village was a mile eastward and I knew it had a church, but the Christians of Thunresleam understood that their high place and old hall were sacred to Thor and so they still came and sent prayers to that older god. Mankind can never be too safe. I might not like the Christian god, but I do not deny his existence and, at hard moments in my life, I have sent prayers to him as well as to my own gods.
“Shall we make a palisade?” Weohstan asked me.
“No.”
He stared at me. “No?”
“Clear out as many trees as you can,” I ordered him, “but no palisade.”
“But…”
“No palisade!”
I was taking a risk, but if I made a palisade I would give my men a place of safety and I knew how reluctant men were to abandon such security. I had often noticed how a bull, brought for entertainment to some feast, will adopt a patch of land as its refuge and defend it self from the attacking dogs with a terrible ferocity so long as it stays in its chosen refuge, but goad the bull out and it loses confidence and the dogs sense the vulnerability and attack with a renewed savagery. I did not want my men to feel safe. I wanted them nervous and alert. I wanted them to know that safety lay not in a fort of their own making, but in capturing the enemy’s fort. And I wanted that capture to be quick.
I ordered Ælfwold’s men to cut trees to the west, clearing the woods back to the hill’s edge and beyond so we could see far across the country toward Lundene. If the Danes brought men back from Mercia I wanted to see them. I put Osferth in charge of our sentries. Their job was to make a screen between us and Beamfleot to warn of any sally by the Danes. Those sentries were in the woods, hidden from the old high fort, and if the Danes came I expected to fight them among the trees. Osferth’s men would slow them until my whole force could be brought against the attackers, and I ordered that every man was to sleep wearing his mail coat and with his weapons close by.
I asked Ælfwold to protect our northern and western flanks. His men would watch for the approach of our supplies and guard against reinforcements coming from Haesten’s men who still smeared the far horizon with smoke. Then, those orders given, I took fifty men to explore the country about our encampment that rang with the sound of axes biting into trees. Finan, Pyrlig, and Osferth accompanied me, as did Æthelflæd who ignored all my advice to stay out of danger.
We went first to the village of Thunresleam. It was a straggle of thick-thatched cottages built about the scorched and collapsed ruin of a church. The villagers had fled when we climbed the hill, but a few braver souls now appeared from the woods beyond their small fields where the first shoots of wheat, barley, and rye greened the furrows. They were Saxons and the first to approach us were led by a burly peasant with matted brown hair, one eye, and work-blackened hands. He looked up at Ælfwold’s banner that showed the Christian cross. I had borrowed the banner to make it clear we were not Danes, and the cross evidently reassured the one-eyed man who knelt to us and beckoned for his companions to kneel. “I am Father Heahberht,” he said.
He told me he was priest to the village and to two other settlements farther east. “You don’t look like a priest,” I said.
“If I did, lord, I’d be dead,” he said, “the witch in the fort kills priests.”
I glanced southward, though from here the old fort on the hill was not visible. “The witch?”
“She is called Skade, lord.”
“I know Skade.”
“She burned our church, lord.”
“And she took the girls, lord,” a woman said tearfully, “even the young ones. She took my daughter and she was only ten years old, lord.”
“Why did she do…” Æthelflæd began the question, then abruptly stopped as she realized the answer was obvious.
“Have they abandoned the old fort?” I asked. “The one on the hill?”
“No, lord,” Father Heahberht answered, “they use it to keep watch. And we have to take food there, lord.”
“How many men there?”
“About fifty, lord. They keep the horses there, too.”
I did not doubt that the priest told the truth, but the Danes had seen us coming and I reckoned the old fort would have been reinforced by now. “How many men are in the new fort?” I asked.
“They won’t let us near the new fort, lord,” Father Heahberht said, “but I’ve watched it from the hill at Hæthlegh, lord, and I could not count all the men inside.” He looked up at me nervously. His dead eye was milky white and ulcerated. He was shivering with fear, not because he thought we were an enemy like the Danes, but because we were lords. He forced himself to speak as calmly as he could. “They number in their hundreds, lord. Three thousand men rode west, lord, but they left all their wives and children in Beamfleot.”
“You counted the ones who left?”
“I tried, lord.”
“Their wives and children are here?” Æthelflæd asked.
“They live on the beached boats, lady,” Heahberht said.
The priest was an observant man and I rewarded him with a silver coin. “So who commands in the new fort?” I asked him. “Haesten himself?”
Father Heahberht shook his head. “Skade does, lord.”
“Skade! She’s in command?”
“We’re told so, lord.”
“Haesten hasn’t returned?” I asked.
“No, lord,” Heahberht said, “not that we’ve heard.” He told us how Haesten had started building his new fort as soon as his fleet arrived from Cent. “They made us cut oak and elm for them, lord.”
“I need to see this new fort,” I said and I gave Heahberht another coin before kicking my horse between two of the cottages and onto a field of growing barley. I was thinking of Skade, of her cruelties, of her desperate lust to be a ruler. She could order men by the pure strength of her will, but did she have the skills to deploy them in battle? Yet Haesten was no fool, he would not have left her in command if he doubted her ability, and I did not doubt that he had also left her sufficient troops and competent advisers. I kicked the horse again, riding south now into the trees. My men followed. I rode recklessly, careless that the Danes might have men in the woods, though we saw none. I sensed that Skade’s garrison was content to stay behind its walls, confident in their ability to resist any attack.
We reached the edge of that high ground where the land dropped steeply to the web of creeks and inlets that threaded the marsh. Beyond that was the wide Temes, its southern shore just visible in the distant haze. Four ships idled in the middle of that great spread of light-reflectin
g water. They were Danes patrolling for prey and watching for any Saxon warships coming downstream from Lundene.
And to my right I could see Caninga and its creek, and the great fleet of boats beached on Caninga’s shore. The new fort was just visible around the shoulder of the high hill where the old fort stood. What had Father Heahberht said? That only about fifty men guarded the old ramparts. I could see spear-tips glinting by the north-facing gate and there looked to be far more than fifty, and the wall they defended was in good condition. I knew that the southern wall, overlooking the creek, had decayed, but the landward defenses had been kept in good repair. “Skade saw us coming,” I said, “and reinforced the old fort.”
“She’s got enough spears there,” Finan agreed.
“So we have to capture two forts,” I said.
“Why not let this one rot?” Finan asked, gesturing at the old fort.
“Because I don’t want those bastards behind our backs when we attack the new fort,” I said, “so we have to kill them first.”
Finan said nothing. No one spoke. The war we had been fighting all our lives had forced rulers to build forts because forts won wars. Alfred protected Wessex with burhs that were nothing but large, well-manned forts. Æthelred of Mercia was building burhs. Haesten, so far as we knew, had not yet dared attack any burh for he knew that his men would die in the ditches and under the high walls. He wanted to weaken Mercia and starve the burh’s defenders before he dared attack those ramparts. The two forts at Beamfleot were not burhs, but their defenses were just as formidable. There were walls, ditches with stakes, and doubtless, down on the creek, a moat. And behind the walls were men who knew how to kill, spear-Danes and sword-Danes, and they waited for us not in one fortress, but two.
“We have to take both forts?” Æthelflæd asked timidly, breaking the silence.
“The first will be easy,” I said.
“Easy, lord?” Finan asked with a crooked grin.
“And quick,” I said, sounding a good deal more confident than I felt. The old fort was formidable, and it was large, but I doubted the Danes had committed enough men to defend every yard of its ramparts. Once the Ætheling Edward’s troops reached me I reckoned I would have enough troops to assail the old fort in several places at once, and those assaults would thin out the defenders until one of our attacks broke through. It was not much of a plan, but it would work, though I feared it would be expensive in men. Yet I had small choice. I had to do the impossible. I had to take two forts and, if truth be told, I had no idea how to take the second newer fort by the water. I just knew it had to be done.
We rode back to our camp.
Everything became confused next morning. It was as though the Danes woke up to the threat we posed and decided to do what they should have done the previous day.
They knew we were camped around Thunresleam’s old hall. I had placed a large number of sentries in the woods south of the hall, but doubtless some clever Dane had avoided them to spy on the newly cleared space about the hall, and Skade, or whoever advised her, decided an attack at dawn would kill many of us and discourage the rest. Which was a clever enough idea, except that it was obvious, and to prepare for it I had roused every man in the heart of the starlit night. I ordered the sentries back from the trees, made sure we were all awake, then we saddled horses, pulled on mail, and left. The campfires still smoldered, suggesting we were sleeping. Our departure made enough noise to disturb the dead in Thunresleam’s small graveyard, but the Danes were presumably making their own noise and had no idea we had decamped.
“We can’t do this every morning,” Ælfwold grumbled.
“If they’re going to attack us,” I said, “it will be this morning. By tomorrow we’ll be in their high fort.”
“By tomorrow?” He sounded surprised.
“If Edward comes today,” I said. I planned to assault the old fortress as soon as I possibly could. I just needed enough men to make eight or nine simultaneous attacks.
We rode to the village and we waited there. We were four hundred men ready for battle. I knew it was possible the Danes had detected our move, and so I insisted we stayed in our saddles. The newly woken villagers brought us sour ale and Father Heahberht nervously offered me a cup of mead. It was surprisingly good, and I told him to give some to Æthelflæd and her two maidservants, the only women with our force. “If the Danes attack,” I told her, “you’ll be staying here with a bodyguard.” She looked at me dubiously, but for once did not argue.
It was still dark. The only sounds were the clink of bridles and the thump of restless hooves. Sometimes a man spoke, but most just slumped asleep in their saddles. Smoke drifted from holes in the hovel roofs, an owl called forlorn from the woods, and I felt a chill bleakness descend on my spirit. I could not rouse myself from that bleakness. I touched Thor’s hammer and sent a prayer to the gods to send me a sign, but all I heard was the owl’s mournful cry repeated. How could I take two forts? I feared the gods had forsaken me, and that by coming south from Northumbria I had forfeited their favor. What had I told Alfred? That we were here to amuse our gods, but how could those gods be amused by my betrayals? I thought of Ragnar’s disappointment and that memory gored my soul. I remembered Brida’s scorn and knew it was deserved. I felt worthless that morning as the sky’s edge lightened behind me to a streak of gray, I felt as though my future held nothing, and the feeling was so strong that I was close to despair. I twisted in the saddle, looking for Pyrlig. The Welsh priest was one of the few men I trusted with my soul, and I wanted his counsel, but before I could summon him a man called out a warning. “There’s a horseman coming, lord!”
I had left Finan and a handful of men as our only sentries. They were posted at the edge of the fields, halfway between the village and the old hall and Finan had sent one man to warn me that the Danes were moving. “They’re in the woods, lord,” the man told me, “by our camp.”
“How many?”
“We can’t tell, lord, but it sounds like a horde.”
Which could mean two hundred or two thousand, and prudence suggested I should wait till Finan could estimate the enemy more accurately, but I was in that bleak mood, feeling doomed and desperate for a sign from the gods, and so I turned to Æthelflæd. “You wait here with your bodyguard,” I said, and did not wait for an answer, but just drew Serpent-Breath, taking comfort from the sound of the long steel scraping through the scabbard’s throat. “The Danes are at our camp!” I shouted, “and we’re going to kill them!” I spurred my horse, the same stallion I had taken from Aldhelm. It was a good horse, properly schooled, but I was still unfamiliar with him.
Ælfwold spurred to catch me. “How many are there?” he asked.
“Enough!” I called to him. I was feeling reckless, careless and I knew it was foolish. But I reckoned the Danes would attack the encampment and almost immediately realize we had anticipated them, and then they would be wary. I wanted them unaware and so I kicked the stallion into a trot. My whole force, over three hundred men, was streaming along the track behind me. The day’s first shadows were being cast into the furrows and birds were flying up from the woods ahead.
I turned in my saddle to see spears and swords, axes and shields. Saxon warriors, gray-mailed in a gray dawn, grim-faced beneath helmets, and I felt the battle anger rising. I wanted to kill. I was in that bleak mood, assailed by the certainty that I had to throw myself on the mercy of the gods. If they wanted me to live, if the spinners were willing to weave my thread back into the golden weft, then I would live through this morning. Omens and signs, we live by them, and so I rode to discover the will of the gods. It was foolish.
Horsemen appeared on our left, startling me, but it was only Finan and his seven remaining men who galloped to join us. “There might be three hundred of them,” he shouted, “or maybe four hundred!”
I just nodded and kicked the horse again. The track to the old hall was wide enough for four or five men to ride abreast. Finan probably expected me to halt our
horsemen short of the space we had cleared about the old hall and line the men in the trees, but the carelessness was on me.
Light flared ahead. The daylight was still gray, night shrouding the western horizon, but the sudden new light was red and bright. Fire. The Danes, I guessed, had lit the hall’s thatch, so now let it light their deaths. I could see the edge of the trees, see the fallen trunks we had felled the day before, see the dull glow of dying campfires and the dark shapes of men and horses and the glimmer of reflected fire from helmets, mail, and weapons, and I kicked the stallion again and roared a challenge. “Kill them!”
We came in a ragged order, bursting from the trees with swords and spears, with hatred and fury, and almost as soon as I entered the clearing I realized we were outnumbered. The Danes had come in force, at least four hundred, and most were still mounted, but they were scattered throughout the encampment and few realized we were approaching until our horses and blades appeared in the dawn. The largest body of the enemy was at the clearing’s western edge, staring across the dark land toward the faint glow of light betraying the fires of Lundene. Maybe they suspected we had given up any hope of capturing the forts and, under the cover of night, had slunk back toward the distant city. Instead we were coming from the east with the growing light behind us, and they turned as they heard the first screams and shouts.
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