The Pagan Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  I looked up at the frightened boy. ‘Shall I tell you something about battles, Godric Grindanson?’

  ‘Yes please, lord.’

  ‘One man always survives,’ I said. ‘He’s usually a poet and his job is to write a song that tells how bravely all his companions died. That might be your job today. Are you a poet?’

  ‘No, lord.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to learn. So when you see us dying, Godric Grindanson, you ride south as fast as you can and you ride like the wind and you ride till you’re safe and you write the poem in your head that tells the Saxons that we died like heroes. Will you do that for me?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Go back to Hrodgeir,’ I told him, ‘and tell me when you see the horsemen from the north or the ones from the west getting close.’

  He went. Finan grinned. ‘Bastards on three sides of us.’

  ‘They must be scared.’

  ‘Shitting themselves, probably.’

  I was expecting Cnut to ride to the ford, bringing his war-leaders with him to enjoy his insults. I had thought to have his son at my side with a knife at his throat, but rejected the thought. Cnut Cnutson could stay with Æthelflaed. If he stayed with me I could only threaten him, and if Cnut dared me to cut the boy’s throat, what would I do? Cut it? We would still have to fight. Let him live? Then Cnut would despise me for being weak. The boy had served his purpose by luring Cnut away from the East Anglian borderlands to this corner of Mercia, and now he must wait till the battle was done to learn his fate. I gripped my shield and drew Serpent-Breath. In almost every clash of the shield walls I preferred Wasp-Sting, my short-sword that was so deadly when you were being forced into the embrace of your enemy, but today I would begin with the longer, heavier blade. I hefted her, kissed her hilt, and waited for Cnut’s arrival.

  Only he did not come to insult me, nor did any young men come forward to challenge us to single combat.

  Instead Cnut sent the swine’s horn.

  Instead of insults and challenges there was a great roar of battle-shout from the mass of men assembled under the banners of Cnut and Sigurd, and then they advanced. They came down the road fast. The land was flat, there were no obstacles and they kept their tight formation. Their shields overlapped. We saw the painted symbols on the shields, the shattered crosses, ravens, hammers, axes, and eagles. Above those broad round shields were helmets with face-guards so that the enemy seemed to be black-eyed, steel-clad, and in front of the shields were the heavy spears, their blades catching the day’s half-clouded light, and beneath the shields hundreds of feet trampled the ground in time to the heavy drums that had started to beat the war-rhythm behind the swine’s horn.

  No insults, no challenges. Cnut knew he outnumbered me by so many that he could afford to divide his army. I glanced to my left and saw still more horsemen crossing the ditch far to the north. Some five or six hundred men were pounding towards us in the swine’s horn, and at least that many were now on our side of the river and ready to fall on our left flank. More men, those on slower horses, were still arriving, but Cnut must have known that his swine’s horn would do the necessary work. It thundered towards us and as it came closer I could see faces behind the cheek-pieces, I could see eager eyes and grim mouths, I could see Danes coming to kill us.

  ‘God is with us!’ Sihtric shouted. The two priests had been shriving men all morning, but now they retreated behind the shield wall and knelt in prayer, their clasped hands lifted to the sky.

  ‘Wait for my order!’ I called. My shield wall knew what they must do. We would advance into the ford as the swine’s horn reached the far bank. I planned to meet the charge almost halfway across the river and there I planned a slaughter before I died. ‘Wait!’ I shouted.

  And I thought Cnut should have waited. He should have let his swine’s horn wait until the men to the north were ready to attack, but he was so confident. And why not? The swine’s horn outnumbered us and it should have shattered our shield wall and scattered my men and led to a slaughter by the river, and so he had not waited. He had sent the swine’s horn and it was almost at the far bank now.

  ‘Forward!’ I shouted. ‘And slowly!’

  We went forward steadily, our shields overlapping, our weapons held hard. We were in four ranks. I was in the front and at the centre, and the point of the swine’s horn came straight at me like a boar’s tusk ready to rip through flesh and muscle and sinew and mail to shatter bone and spill guts and wreath the slow river water with Saxon blood.

  ‘Kill!’ a man shouted from the Danish ranks and they saw how few we were and knew they would overwhelm us and now they quickened, eager to slay, cheering as they came, their voices raw with threat, their shields still touching, their mouths grimaces of battle-hate, and it was as if they raced to reach us in the certainty that their poets would sing of a great slaughter.

  And then they reached the stones.

  Rolla had made a ragged line of stones at the ford’s deepest point. The stones were large, each about the size of a man’s head, and they were invisible. Almost invisible. I knew they were there and could just see them, and I could see how the water rippled irritably about the sunken rocks, but the Danes could not see them because their shields were held high and those shields blocked their view downwards. They were staring at us over the shields’ rims, planning our deaths, and instead they ran into the stones and tripped. What had been a wedge of men charging irresistibly to our slaughter became a chaos of falling men, and even though those at the sides of the wedge tried to halt the men behind pushed them on and still more tripped on the hidden stones, and then we struck.

  And we killed.

  It is so easy to kill men who are in chaos, and every man we killed became an obstacle to the ones behind. The man at the point of the wedge had been a big, black-haired warrior. His hair sprang like a horse’s wild mane from beneath his helmet, his beard half hid his mail coat, his shield bore the sign of Sigurd’s raven and his arms were bright with the silver and gold he had earned as a warrior. He had taken the place of honour, the sharp point of the swine’s horn, and he had carried an axe with which he had hoped to hack down my shield, break my skull open and cut his way through our wall.

  Instead he sprawled in the river, face down, and Serpent-Breath stabbed down hard, piercing mail to cut his spine and he bent backwards as I twisted and ripped the blade and then I thrust my shield forward to crash against a man who was on his knees and trying desperately to stab me with his sword. I put my foot on the dying warrior’s back, tore my blade free, and thrust it hard. Her point went into the second man’s open mouth so that he seemed to swallow Serpent-Breath and I rammed her forward and watched his eyes widen as the blood gurgled from his open mouth, and all along the river my men were hacking and cutting and lunging at Danes who were fallen or off balance or dying.

  And we screamed. We screamed our war cry, our shout of slaughter, our joy of being men in battle who are driven by terror. At that moment it did not matter that we were fated to die, that our enemy outnumbered us, that we could have killed all the swine’s horn and still they would have enough numbers to overwhelm us. At that moment we were released to be death’s servants. We were living and they were dying, and all the relief of being alive fed into our butchery. And we were butchers. The swine’s horn had stopped dead, it was in utter disarray, the shield wall was broken and we were killing. Our shields were still touching, we were shoulder to shoulder, and we were advancing slowly, stepping on dead men, finding footholds between the stones, chopping and stabbing, spears lancing down into fallen men, axes splitting helmets, swords piercing flesh, and the Danes still did not understand what had happened. The men in the rear ranks were pressing forward and driving the front ranks onto the obstacles and onto our blades, except you could not talk of ranks any longer because Cnut’s swine’s horn had become a rabble. Chaos and panic spread through them as the river swirled with blood and the sky echoed with the screams of dying men whose guts were being washed
by the Tame.

  And someone on the Danish side realised that disaster was just begetting disaster, and that there was no need for more good men to be killed by Saxon blades. ‘Back!’ he shouted. ‘Back!’

  And we jeered them. We mocked them. We did not follow them because what small safety we had lay in staying west of the stones in the ford, and now those stones were humped with dead and dying men, a tangle of blood-laced bodies, and those bodies, weighed down by their mail, made a low wall across the river. We stood amidst that wall and called the Danes cowards, called them weaklings, and mocked their manhood. We lied, of course. They were warriors and brave men, but we were doomed men and we had our moment of triumph as we stood knee-deep in the river with our blades bloodied and with relief coursing through veins heated by fear and anger.

  And the remnant of the swine’s horn, a remnant that still outnumbered us, went back to the river’s eastern bank and there they were formed into a new shield wall, a bigger shield wall because the latecomers were joining them. There were hundreds of men now, thousands perhaps, and we were prancing fools who had stung a boar that was about to eviscerate us.

  ‘Lord!’ It was Hrodgeir the Dane who had ridden down from the ridge where the fires still burned to send their futile message into the empty sky. ‘Lord!’ he called urgently.

  ‘Hrodgeir?’

  ‘Lord!’ He turned in his saddle and pointed and I saw beyond the ridge, up the river’s bank, a second shield wall. And that shield wall had hundreds too, and it was coming. Those men had crossed the ditch-like river, dismounted, and now they came towards us. ‘I’m sorry, lord,’ Hrodgeir said, as if he was responsible for not stopping that second attack.

  ‘Uhtred!’ a voice bellowed from across the river. Cnut stood there, legs apart, Ice-Spite in his hand. ‘Uhtred Worm-shit!’ he called. ‘Come and fight!’

  ‘Lord!’ Hrodgeir called again and he was staring westwards and I turned to look that way and saw horsemen streaming from the woods to climb the ridge. Hundreds of men. So the enemy was in front of us, they were behind us, and they were to the north of us.

  ‘Uhtred Worm-turd!’ Cnut bellowed. ‘You dare fight? Or have you lost your bravery? Come and die, you piece of shit, you turd, you piece of oozing shit! Come to Ice-Spite! She yearns for you! I’ll let your men live if you die! You hear me?’

  I stepped ahead of the shield wall and stared at my enemy. ‘You’ll let my men live?’

  ‘Even that whore of yours can live. They can all go! They can live!’

  ‘And what value is the promise of a man who dribbled from his mother’s arse when he was born?’ I called back.

  ‘Does my son live?’

  ‘Unharmed.’

  ‘Your men can take him as surety. They will live!’

  ‘Don’t, lord,’ Finan said urgently, ‘he’s too fast. Let me fight him!’

  The three Norns were laughing. They sat at the foot of the tree and two of them held the threads, and one of them held the shears.

  ‘Let me go, Father,’ Uhtred said.

  But wyrd bið ful āræd. I had always known it would come to this. Serpent-Breath against Ice-Spite. And so I clambered over the bodies of my enemies and went to fight Cnut.

  Thirteen

  Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld are the Norns, the three women who spin our threads at the foot of Yggdrasil, the massive ash tree that supports our world. In my mind I see them in a cave: not a cave like the one where Erce had straddled me, but something much larger and almost limitless, a terrifying emptiness through which the world tree thrusts its giant bole. And there, where the roots of Yggdrasil writhe and twist into the bedrock of creation, the three women weave the tapestry of all our lives.

  And that day they held two threads away from the loom. I have always imagined my thread to be yellow like the sun. I do not know why, but so I imagine. Cnut’s had to be white like his hair, like the ivory hilt of Ice-Spite, like the cloak he shrugged from his shoulders as he stepped towards me.

  So Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld would decide our fate. They are not kindly women, indeed they are monstrous and malevolent hags, and Skuld’s shears are sharp. When those blades cut they cause tears that feed the well of Urðr that lies beside the world tree, and the well gives the water that keeps Yggdrasil alive and if Yggdrasil dies then the world dies, and so the well must be kept filled and for that there must be tears. We cry so that the world can live.

  The yellow and the white thread. And the shears hovering.

  Cnut came slowly. We would meet close to the ford’s eastern edge, where the water was shallow, scarce ankle-deep. He held Ice-Spite low in his right hand, but men said he could use either hand with equal skill. He carried no shield because he needed none. He was quick, none faster, and he could parry with Ice-Spite.

  I carried Serpent-Breath. She looked brutal compared to Ice-Spite. She was twice as heavy, a hand’s breadth longer, and a man might be forgiven for thinking that her long blade would shatter Cnut’s sword, but rumour said his blade had been forged in the ice caverns of the gods in a fire that burned colder than ice, and that it was the unbreakable sword, and swifter than a serpent’s tongue. He held it low.

  Ten paces divided us. He stopped and waited. He had a slight smile.

  I took another pace. The water flowed around my boots. Get close to him, I thought, so he has no room to use that vicious blade. He would be expecting that. Maybe I should stand back, let him come to me.

  ‘Lord!’ a voice called behind me.

  Cnut raised Ice-Spite, though he still held her lightly. She had a silvery gleam on the blade that shivered as she moved. He was watching my eyes. A man who uses a sword with lethal skill always watches his opponent’s eyes.

  ‘Lord!’ It was Finan calling.

  ‘Father!’ Uhtred shouted urgently.

  Cnut looked past me and his face suddenly changed. He had been looking amused, but now there was sudden alarm. I stepped back and turned.

  And saw horsemen coming from the west, hundreds of horsemen climbing the ridge where the hovels burned to send their dark signal into the sky. How many? I could not tell, but maybe two, perhaps three hundred? I looked back to Cnut and his face betrayed that the newcomers were not his men. He had sent troops across the ditch to the north of us, but the newly arrived horsemen would block their advance on our flank. If they were Saxons.

  I looked back again to see the newly arrived men dismounting and boys leading their horses back down the ridge, while on the low summit where the cottages burned a new shield wall was forming. ‘Who are they?’ I called to Finan.

  ‘God knows,’ he said.

  And the nailed god did know, because a banner was suddenly unfurled on the skyline, a huge banner, and the new banner showed a Christian cross.

  We were not alone.

  I stepped back, almost tripping on a body. ‘Coward!’ Cnut shouted at me.

  ‘You told me what would happen if I died,’ I called to him, ‘but what happens if you die?’

  ‘If I die?’ The question seemed to puzzle him as though such an outcome was an impossibility.

  ‘Does your army surrender to me?’ I asked.

  ‘They’ll kill you,’ he snarled.

  I jerked my head towards the ridge where the newcomers stood beneath the banner of the cross. ‘You’re going to find that a little more difficult now.’

  ‘Just more Saxons to kill,’ Cnut said. ‘More filth to clean from the land.’

  ‘So if you and I fight,’ I said, ‘and you win, then you go south to face Edward?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And if you lose,’ I said, ‘your army still goes south?’

  ‘I won’t lose,’ he snarled.

  ‘But you’re not offering a fair fight,’ I said. ‘If you lose then your army must surrender to me.’

  He laughed at that. ‘You’re a fool, Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’

  ‘If my death makes no difference,’ I said, ‘why should I fight?’

  ‘Because it�
��s fate,’ Cnut said, ‘you and I.’

  ‘If you die,’ I insisted, ‘then your army must take my orders. Tell them that.’

  ‘I shall tell them to piss on your corpse,’ he said.

  But first he had to kill me and I was stronger now. The newcomers under the big banner of the cross were allies, not enemies. It must have been their scouts we had seen in the west, and now they were here and, though it was no army, there had to be two or three hundred men on the ridge’s crest, enough to halt the Danes who had crossed the river to my north. ‘If we fight,’ I told Cnut, ‘then we fight fair. If you win, my men live; if I win, your men take my orders.’ He said nothing, and I turned from him and rejoined my men. I could see that the Danes to the north had stopped their advance, worried by the newcomers, while Cnut’s larger force across the ford was still not arrayed in a shield wall. They had crowded along the ford’s edge to watch us fight, and Cnut now bellowed at them to form ranks. He wanted to attack fast, but it would take a few moments for his men to make their ranks and lock their shields.

  So while they made their new shield wall I pushed back through my ranks. Young Æthelstan was riding fast and careless down from the ridge. ‘Lord! Lord!’ he shouted. Æthelflaed was following him, but I ignored them both because two horsemen were also coming from the ridge. One was a big, bearded man in mail and helmet, while the other was a priest. The priest wore no armour, just a long black robe, and he smiled as he reached me. ‘I thought you needed help,’ he said.

  ‘He always needs help,’ the larger man said, ‘Lord Uhtred stumbles into a pit of shit and we pull him out.’ He grinned at me. ‘Greetings, my friend.’

  He was Father Pyrlig and he was my friend. He had been a great warrior before he became a priest. He was a Welshman, proud of his tribe. His beard had turned grey and the hair under his helmet was grey, but his face was lively as ever. ‘Would you believe,’ I asked him, ‘that I’m glad to see you?’

  ‘I believe you! Because this is as filthy a pit of shit as any I’ve seen,’ Pyrlig said. ‘I’ve got two hundred and thirty-eight men. How many bastards does he have?’