The Burning Land

‘Maybe a mother again. And Thyra?’

His face lit up like tinder catching flame. This ugly, crippled man who was mocked by children in the street had married a Dane of startling beauty. ‘God keeps her in his loving hand,’ he told me. ‘She is a pearl of great price!’

‘So are you, father,’ I said, then ruffled his white hair to annoy him.

Finan spurred beside me. ‘We’re ready, lord.’

‘Open the gate!’ I shouted.

The wagon was first through the wide arch. Its holy banners swayed alarmingly as it lurched onto the rutted track, then my two hundred men, bright in mail, rode after it and turned westwards. We flew standards, braying horns announced our departure and the sun shone on the royal wagon. We were the lure, and the Danes had seen us. And so the hunt began.

The wagon led the way, lumbering along a farm track that would lead us to the Wintanceaster road. A shrewd Dane might well wonder why, if we wanted to retreat to the larger burh at Wintanceaster, we would use Æscengum’s northern gate instead of the western, which led directly onto the road, but I somehow doubted those worries would reach Harald. Instead he would hear that the King of Wessex was running away, leaving Æscengum to be protected by its garrison that was drawn from the fyrd. The men of the fyrd were rarely trained warriors. They were farmers and labourers, carpenters and thatchers, and Harald would undoubtedly be tempted to assault their wall, but I did not believe he would yield to the temptation, not while a much greater prize, Alfred himself, was apparently vulnerable. The Danish scouts would be telling Harald that the King of Wessex was in the open country, travelling in a slow wagon protected by a mere couple of hundred horsemen, and Harald’s army, I was certain, would be ordered to the pursuit.

Finan commanded my rearguard, his job to tell me when the enemy pursuit got too close. I stayed near the wagon and, just as we reached the Wintanceaster road a half-mile west of Æscengum, a slender rider spurred alongside me. It was Æthelflæd, clad in a long mail coat that appeared to be made from silver rings close-linked over a deerskin tunic. The mail coat fitted her tightly, clinging to her thin body, and I guessed that it was fastened at the back with loops and buttons because no one could pull such a tight coat over their head and shoulders. Over the mail she wore a white cloak, lined with red, and she had a white-scabbarded sword at her side. A battered old helmet with face-plates hung from her saddle’s pommel and she had doubtless used the helmet to hide her face before we left Æscengum, though she had also taken the precaution of covering her distinctive cloak and armour with an old black cape that she tossed into the ditch as she joined me. She grinned, looking as happy as she had once looked before her marriage, then nodded towards the lumbering wagon. ‘Is that my half-brother?’

‘Yes. You’ve seen him before.’

‘Not often. Doesn’t he look like his father!’

‘He does,’ I said, ‘and you don’t, for which I’m grateful.’ That made her laugh. ‘Where did you get the mail?’ I asked.

‘Æthelred likes me to wear it,’ she said. ‘He had it made for me in Frankia.’

‘Silver links?’ I asked. ‘I could pierce those with a twig!’

‘I don’t think my husband wants me to fight,’ she said drily, ‘he just wants to display me.’ And that, I thought, was understandable. Æthelflæd had grown to be a lovely woman, at least when her beauty was not clouded by unhappiness. She was clear-eyed and clear-skinned, with full lips and golden hair. She was clever, like her father, and a good deal cleverer than her husband, but she had been married for one reason only, to bind the Mercian lands to Alfred’s Wessex, and in that sense, if in no other, the marriage had been a success.

‘Tell me about Aldhelm,’ I said.

‘You already know about him,’ she retorted.

‘I know he doesn’t like me,’ I said happily.

‘Who does?’ she asked, grinning. She slowed her horse, that was getting too close to the crawling wagon. She wore gloves of soft kid leather over which six bright rings glittered with gold and rare stones. ‘Aldhelm,’ she said softly, ‘advises my husband, and he has persuaded Æthelred of two things. The first is that Mercia needs a king.’

‘Your father won’t allow it,’ I said. Alfred preferred Mercia look to Wessex for its kingly authority.

‘My father will not live for ever,’ she said, ‘and Aldhelm has also persuaded my husband that a king needs an heir.’ She saw my grimace and laughed. ‘Not me! Ælfwynn was enough!’ She shuddered. ‘I have never known such pain. Besides, my dear husband resents Wessex. He resents his dependency. He hates the hand that feeds him. No, he would like an heir from some nice Mercian girl.’

‘You mean. …’

‘He won’t kill me,’ she interrupted blithely, ‘but he would love to divorce me.’

‘Your father would never allow that!’

‘He would if I was taken in adultery,’ she said in a remarkably flat tone. I stared at her, not quite believing what she told me. She saw my incredulity and mocked it with a smile. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you did ask me about Aldhelm.’

‘Æthelred wants you to. …’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘then he can condemn me to a nunnery and forget I ever existed.’

‘And Aldhelm encourages this idea?’

‘Oh, he does, he does,’ she smiled as if my question was silly. ‘Luckily I have West Saxon attendants who protect me, but after my father dies?’ she shrugged.

‘Have you told your father?’

‘He’s been told,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think he believes it. He does, of course, believe in faith and prayer, so he sent me a comb that once belonged to Saint Milburga and he says it will strengthen me.’

‘Why doesn’t he believe you?’

‘He thinks I am prone to bad dreams. He also finds Æthelred very loyal. And my mother, of course, adores Æthelred.’

‘She would,’ I said gloomily. Alfred’s wife, Ælswith, was a sour creature and, like Æthelred, a Mercian. ‘You could try poison,’ I suggested. ‘I know a woman in Lundene who brews some vicious potions.’

‘Uhtred!’ she chided me, but before she could say more, one of Finan’s men came galloping from the rearguard, his horse throwing up clods of earth torn from the meadow beside the road.

‘Lord!’ he shouted, ‘time to hurry!’

‘Osferth!’ I called, and our pretend king happily jumped from his father’s wagon and hauled himself into the saddle of a horse. He threw the bronze circlet back into the wagon and pulled on a helmet.

‘Dump it,’ I shouted to the wagon’s driver. ‘Take it into the ditch!’

He managed to get two wheels in the ditch and we left the heavy vehicle there, canted over, the frightened horses still in their harness. Finan and our rearguard came pounding up the road and we spurred ahead of them into a stretch of woodland where I waited until Finan caught up, and just as he did so the first of the pursuing Danes came into sight. They were pushing their horses hard, but I reckoned the abandoned wagon with its tawdry treasures would delay them a few moments and, sure enough, the leading pursuers milled about the vehicle as we turned away.

‘It’s a horse race,’ Finan told me.

‘And our horses are faster,’ I said, which was probably true. The Danes were mounted on whatever animals their raiding parties had succeeded in capturing, while we were riding some of Wessex’s best stallions. I snatched a last glance as dismounted enemies swarmed over the wagon, then plunged deeper into the trees. ‘How many of them are there?’ I shouted at Finan.

‘Hundreds,’ he called back, grinning. Which meant, I guessed, that any man in Harald’s army who could saddle a horse had joined the pursuit. Harald was feeling the ecstasy of victory. His men had plundered all eastern Wessex, now he believed he had turned Alfred’s army out of Æscengum, which effectively opened the way for the Danes to maraud the whole centre of the country. Before those pleasures, however, he wanted to capture Alfred himself and so his men were wildly following us, and Harald, unconcerned about their lack of discipline, believed his good fortune must hold. This was the wild hunt, and Harald had loosed his men and sent them to deliver him the King of Wessex.

We led them, we enticed them and we tempted them. We did not ride as fast as we might, instead we kept the pursuing Danes in sight and only once did they catch us. Rypere, one of my valued men, was riding wide to our right and his horse thrust a hoof into a molehill. He was thirty paces away, but I heard the crack of breaking bone and saw Rypere tumbling and the horse flailing as it collapsed in screaming pain. I turned Smoka towards him and saw a small group of Danes coming fast. I shouted at another of my men, ‘spear!’

I grabbed his heavy ash-shafted spear and headed straight towards the leading Danes who were spurring to kill Rypere. Finan had turned with me, as had a dozen others, and the Danes, seeing us, tried to swerve away, but Smoka was pounding the earth now, nostrils wide, and I lowered the spear and caught the nearest Dane in the side of his chest. The ash shaft jarred back, my gloved hand slid along the wood, but the spear-point pierced deep and blood was welling and spilling in the spaces between the links of the Dane’s mail coat. I let the spear go. The dying man stayed in his saddle as a second Dane flailed at me with a sword, but I threw the stroke off with my shield and turned Smoka by the pressure of my knees as Finan ripped his long blade across another man’s face. I snatched the reins from the man I had speared and dragged his horse to Rypere. ‘Throw the bastard off and get up,’ I called.

The surviving Danes had retreated. There had been fewer than a dozen and they were the forerunners, the men on the fastest horses, and it took time for reinforcements to reach them and by then we had spurred safely away. Rypere’s legs were too short to reach his new stirrups, and he was cursing as he clung to the saddle’s pommel. Finan was smiling. ‘That’ll annoy them, lord,’ he said.

‘I want them mad,’ I said.

I wanted them to be impetuous, careless and confident. Already, on that summer’s day, as we followed the road alongside a meandering stream where crowsfoot grew thick, Harald was doing all I could ask. And was I confident? It is a dangerous thing to assume that your enemy will do what you want, but on that Thor’s Day I had a growing conviction that Harald was falling into a carefully laid trap.

Our road led to the ford where we could cross the river to reach Fearnhamme. If we had truly been fleeing to Wintanceaster we would have stayed south of the river and taken the Roman road which led west, and I wanted the Danes to believe that was our intention. So, when we reached the river, we stopped just south of the ford. I wanted our pursuers to see us, I wanted them to think we were indecisive, I wanted them, eventually, to think we panicked.

The land was open, a stretch of river meadow where folk grazed their goats and sheep. To the east, where the Danes were coming, was woodland, to the west was the road Harald would expect us to take, and to the north were the crumbling stone piers of the bridge the Romans had made across the Wey. Fearnhamme and its low hill were on the ruined bridge’s farther side. I stared at the hill and could see no troops.

‘That’s where I wanted Aldhelm,’ I snarled, pointing to the hill.

‘Lord!’ Finan shouted in warning.

The pursuing Danes were gathering at the edge of a wood a half-mile eastwards. They could see us clearly, and they understood that we were too many to attack until more pursuers arrived, but those reinforcements were appearing by the minute. I looked across the river again and saw no one. The hill, with its ancient earthwork, was supposed to be my anvil strengthened with five hundred Mercian warriors, yet it looked deserted. Would my two hundred men be enough?

‘Lord!’ Finan called again. The Danes, who now outnumbered us by two to one, were spurring their horses towards us.

‘Through the ford!’ I shouted. I would spring the trap anyway, and so we kicked our tired horses through the deep ford which lay just upstream of the bridge and, once across, I called for my men to gallop to the hill’s top. I wanted the appearance of panic. I wanted it to look as though we had abandoned our ambitions to reach Wintanceaster and instead were taking refuge on the nearest hill.

We rode through Fearnhamme. It was a huddle of thatched huts around a stone church, though there was one fine-looking Roman building that had lost its tiled roof. There were no inhabitants, just a single cow bellowing pathetically because she needed to be milked. I assumed the folk had fled from the rumours of the approaching Danes. ‘I hope your damned men are on the hill!’ I shouted to Æthelflæd, who was staying close to me.

‘They’ll be there!’ she called back.

She sounded confident, but I was dubious. Aldhelm’s first duty, at least according to her husband, was to keep the Mercian army intact. Had he simply refused to advance on Fearnhamme? If he had, then I would be forced to fight off an army of Danes with just two hundred men, and those Danes were approaching fast. They smelt victory and they pounded their horses through the river and up into Fearnhamme’s street. I could hear their shouts, and then I reached the grassy bank that was the ancient earthwork and, as Smoka crested the bank’s summit, I saw that Æthelflæd was right. Aldhelm had come, and he had brought five hundred men. They were all there, but Aldhelm had kept them at the northern side of the old fortress so they would be hidden from an enemy approaching from the south.

And so, just as I had planned, I had seven hundred men on the hill, and another seven hundred, I hoped, approaching from Æscengum, and between those two forces were some two thousand rampaging, careless, over-confident Danes who believed they were about to achieve the old Viking dream of conquering Wessex.

‘Shield wall!’ I shouted at my men. ‘Shield wall!’

The Danes had to be checked for a moment, and the easiest way to do that was to show them a shield wall at the hill’s top. There was a moment of chaos as men slid from their saddles and ran to the bank’s top, but these were good men, well-trained, and their shields locked together fast. The Danes, coming from the houses onto the hill’s lower slope, saw the wall of iron-bound willow, they saw the spears, the swords and the axe blades, and they saw the steepness of the slope, and their wild charge stopped. Scores of men were crossing the river and still more were coming from the trees on the southern bank, so in a few moments they would have more than enough warriors to overwhelm my short shield wall, but for now they paused.

‘Banners!’ I said. We had brought our banners, my wolf’s-head flag and Wessex’s dragon, and I wanted them flown as an invitation to Harald’s men.

Aldhelm, tall and sallow, had come to greet me. He did not like me and his face showed that dislike, but it also showed astonishment at the number of Danes who converged on the ford.

‘Divide your men into two,’ I told him peremptorily, ‘and line them either side of my men. Rypere!’

‘Lord?’

‘Take a dozen men and tether those horses!’ Our abandoned horses were wandering the hilltop and I feared some would stray back over the bank.

‘How many Danes are there?’ Aldhelm asked.

‘Enough to give us a day’s good killing,’ I said, ‘now bring your men here.’

He bridled at my tone. He was a thin man, elegant in a superb long coat of mail that had bronze crescent moons sewn to the links. He had a cloak of blue linen, lined with red cloth, and he wore a chain of heavy gold looped twice about his neck. His boots and gloves were black leather, his sword belt was decorated with golden crosses, while his long black hair, scented and oiled, was held at the nape of his neck with a comb of ivory teeth clasped in a golden frame. ‘I have my orders,’ he said distantly.

‘Yes, to bring your men here. We have Danes to kill.’

He had always disliked me, ever since I had spoiled his handsome looks by breaking his jaw and his nose, though on that far day he had been armed and I had not. He could barely bring himself to look at me, instead he stared at the Danes gathering at the foot of the hill. ‘I am instructed,’ he said, ‘to preserve the Lord Æthelred’s forces.’

‘Your instructions have changed, Lord Aldhelm.’ A cheerful voice spoke from behind us, and Aldhelm turned to gaze in astonishment at Æthelflæd, who smiled from her high saddle.

‘My lady,’ he said, bowing, then glancing from her to me. ‘Is the Lord Æthelred here?’

‘My husband sent me to countermand his last orders,’ Æthelflæd said sweetly. ‘He is now so confident of victory that he requires you to stay here despite the numbers opposing us.’

Aldhelm began to reply, then assumed I did not know what his last orders from Æthelred had been. ‘Your husband sent you, my lady?’ he asked instead, plainly confused by Æthelflæd’s unexpected presence.

‘Why else would I be here?’ Æthelflaed asked beguilingly, ‘and if there were any real danger, my lord, would my husband have allowed me to come?’

‘No, my lady,’ Aldhelm said, but without any conviction.

‘So we are going to fight!’ Æthelflæd called those words loudly, speaking to the Mercian troops. She turned her grey mare so they could see her face and hear her more clearly. ‘We are going to kill Danes! And my husband sent me to witness your bravery, so do not disappoint me! Kill them all!’

They cheered her. She rode her horse along their front rank and they cheered her wildly. I had always thought Mercia a miserable place, defeated and sullen, kingless and downtrodden, but in that moment I saw how Æthelflæd, radiant in silver mail, was capable of lifting the Mercians to enthusiasm. They loved her. I knew they had small fondness for Æthelred, Alfred was a distant figure and, besides, King of Wessex, but Æthelflæd inspired them. She gave them pride.

The Danes were still gathering at the foot of the hill. There must have been three hundred men who had dismounted and who now made their own shield wall. They could still only see my two hundred men, but it was time to sweeten the bait. ‘Osferth,’ I shouted, ‘get back on your horse, then come and be kingly.’

‘Must I, lord?’

‘Yes, you must!’

We made Osferth stand his horse beneath the banners. He was cloaked, and he now wore a helmet that I draped with my own gold chain so that, from a distance, it looked like a crowned helmet. The Danes, seeing him, bellowed insults up the gentle slope. Osferth looked kingly enough, though anyone familiar with Alfred should have known the mounted figure was not Wessex’s king simply because he was not surrounded by priests, but I decided Harald would never notice the lack. I was amused to see Æthelflæd, obviously curious about her half-brother, push her horse next to his stallion.

I turned to look back to the south where still more Danes were crossing the river and, so long as I live, I will never forget that landscape. All the country beyond the river was covered with Danish horsemen, their stallions’ hooves kicking up dust as the riders spurred towards the ford, all eager to be present at the destruction of Alfred and his kingdom. So many men wanted to cross the river that they were forced to wait in a great milling herd at the ford’s farther side.

Aldhelm was ordering his men forward. He probably did it unwillingly, but Æthelflæd had inspired them and he was caught between her disdain and their enthusiasm. The Danes at the foot of the hill saw my short line lengthen, they saw more shields and more blades, more banners. They would still outnumber us, but now they would need half their army to make an assault on the hill. A man in a black cloak and carrying a red-hafted war axe, was marshalling Harald’s men, thrusting them into line. I guessed there were five hundred men in the enemy shield wall now, and more were coming every moment. Some of the Danes had stayed on horseback, and I supposed they planned to ride about our rear to make an attack when the shield walls met. The enemy line was only a couple of hundred paces away, close enough for me to see the ravens and axes and eagles and serpents painted on their iron-bossed shields. Some began clashing their weapons against those shields, making the thunder of war. Others bellowed that we were milksop children, or goat-begotten bastards.

‘Noisy, aren’t they?’ Finan remarked beside me. I just smiled. He raised his drawn sword to his helmet-framed face and kissed the blade. ‘Remember that Frisian girl we found in the marshes? She was noisy.’ It is strange what men think of before battle. The Frisian girl had escaped a Danish slaver and had been terrified. I wondered what had happened to her.

Aldhelm was nervous, so nervous that he overcame his hatred of me and stood close. ‘What if Alfred doesn’t come?’ he asked.

‘Then we each have to kill two Danes before the rest lose heart,’ I said with false confidence. If Alfred’s seven hundred men did not come then we would be surrounded, cut down and slaughtered.

Only about half the Danes had crossed the river, such was the congestion at the narrow ford, and still more horsemen were streaming from the east to join the crowd waiting to cross the Wey. Fearnhamme was filled with men pulling down thatch in search of treasure. The unmilked cow lay dead in the street. ‘What,’ Aldhelm began, then hesitated. ‘What if Alfred’s forces come late?’

‘Then all the Danes will be across the river,’ I said.

‘And attacking us,’ Finan said.

I knew Aldhelm was thinking of retreat. Behind us, to the north, were higher hills that offered greater protection, or perhaps, if we retreated fast enough, we could cross the Temes before the Danes caught and destroyed us. For unless Alfred’s men came we would surely die, and at that moment I felt the death-serpent slither cold about my heart that was thumping like a war drum. Skade’s curse, I thought, and I suddenly understood the magnitude of the risk I was running. I had assumed the Danes would do exactly what I wanted, and that the West Saxon army would appear at just the right moment, but instead we were stranded on a low hill and our enemy was getting ever stronger. There was still a great crowd on the river’s far bank, but in less than an hour the whole of Harald’s army would be across the river, and I felt the imminence of disaster and the fear of utter defeat. I remembered Harald’s threat, that he would blind me, geld me and then lead me about on a rope’s end. I touched the hammer and stroked Serpent-Breath’s hilt.

‘If the West Saxon troops don’t arrive,’ Aldhelm began, his voice grim with purpose.

‘God be praised,’ Æthelflæd interrupted from behind us.

Because there was a glint of sun-reflecting steel from the far distant trees.

And more horsemen appeared. Hundreds of horsemen.

The army of Wessex had come.

And the Danes were trapped.

Poets exaggerate. They live by words and my household bards fear I will stop throwing them silver if they do not exaggerate. I remember skirmishes where a dozen men might have died, but in the poet’s telling the slain are counted in the thousands. I am forever feeding the ravens in their endless recitations, but no poet could exaggerate the slaughter that occurred that Thor’s Day on the banks of the River Wey.

It was a swift slaughter too. Most battles take time to start as the two sides summon their courage, hurl insults and watch to see what the enemy will do, but Steapa, leading Alfred’s seven hundred men, saw the confusion on the river’s southern bank and, just as soon as he had sufficient men in hand, charged on horseback. Æthelred, Steapa told me later, had wanted to wait till all seven hundred had gathered, but Steapa ignored the advice. He began with three hundred men and allowed the others to catch up as they emerged from the trees into the open land.

The three hundred attacked the enemy’s rear where, as might be expected, the least enthusiastic of Harald’s army were waiting to cross the river. They were the laggards, the servants and boys, some women and children, and almost all of them were cumbered with pillage. None was ready to fight; there was no shield wall, some did not even possess shields. The Danes most eager for a battle had already crossed the river and were forming to attack the hill, and it took them some moments to understand that a vicious slaughter had begun on the river’s farther bank.