Conqueror

XV

In the cold light of dawn, under a sky empty of cloud, the army of Wessex marched to the head of the ridge over Ethandune. The Danes, as confident as Arngrim had said, did not bother trying to stop the English taking the higher ground.

Once they were on the ridge the English sorted themselves out, with the King and his hearth-companions to the rear under the fluttering dragon ba

Arngrim pushed through to the front of the English line, in the very centre, as Alfred had ordered. He looked down on the Danes from his height on the ridge. The lines of the Force were orderly, wooden shields shining and mail gleaming in the misty light. They watched the English with an ominous stillness.

Like the men around him Arngrim had his sword in its scabbard on his back, and his axe and his stabbing sword to hand. He wore his shirt of chain-mail, on his arm was his shield, wooden with an iron frame, and on his head was his pointed iron helmet. A strip of iron came down before his face to protect his nose, so that he saw the world framed by straight edges. He was already hot, encased in heavy iron. But he was ready.

The men around him formed into rough ranks. There was some jostling as the men tried to find a place in the front rank – or to squeeze back out of it, depending on their courage – and there was a clatter of shield on shield as they practised forming the wall. These fellows close to the front were thegns or the sons of thegns, and some of the healthier and braver of the fyrd; they were Alfred's best soldiers, with the best equipment. Looking around, Arngrim was dismayed to see how much younger than him most of them were. At his right hand side, for instance, was Ordgar, Aethelnoth's man, who had stopped him on his return from Eoforwic. He must have been a good ten years Arngrim's junior.

Perhaps that was why he felt a curious detachment about today. He felt none of the pulsing energy he used to know in battle, the longing to pound an enemy's flesh – the secret thrill that surely fuelled man's lust for war, the knowledge that it was fun. Perhaps Arngrim was too old for such fun. But even so he must do his duty, and he hefted his stabbing sword, getting used to its weight.

Ordgar was nervous, though he was trying to hide it. 'We outnumber them,' he said. 'The Danes. And we have the advantage of the higher ground. But they are all warriors. We are farmers. They have the cream of armour and weaponry robbed from all the English kingdoms. We have pitchforks.'

'We have advantages; they have advantages.'

'The best of us are here. But it is a thin crust, and if they break through…'

'We must be sure they do not.'

'Yes.' Ordgar looked down the hill. 'I have fought before. I have killed Danes. But I have never served in a shield wall.'

Arngrim growled, 'It is the ultimate test.'

'Will I fail?'

Arngrim knew there was little he could say. Even Alfred could not be certain of surviving the day; kings had fallen before. Alfred had given orders that if he fell today his wife and family were to be taken to the kingdom of the Franks, where an infant king would be raised in exile. 'Ordgar, you are thinking too much. But don't worry. In the thick of it there is no time to think-'

Something flashed in the corner of Arngrim's vision, like a bird flying.

A man cried, 'Lift your shields!'

A spear thudded harmlessly into the ground before the front rank. But a second flew further, and pierced the body of an English warrior. His blood was bright as a flower in the spring sunlight.

More spears flew.

Arngrim raised his shield above his head. 'To me! To me!' Ordgar and others near him came together and held up their shields. Arngrim could hear the screams of more men falling, and heard a steady hail on the shields, as arrows and spears buried themselves in the wood.

And now he heard the whip of bow-strings, the hiss of arrows as the English bowmen replied.

'They are coming!' somebody cried. 'The Danes!'

Arngrim held up his shield, risking a glimpse down the hill. The Danes were marching steadily up the slope, their shields locked: it was their wall, their skjaldborg, the shield-fort. They moved without a sound, without a cry or a drumbeat, save for the thud of their footsteps on the ground. Some fell to the English arrows, but the rest came on without flinching.

Arngrim cried, 'Make the wall!' The call was echoed by others, up and down the English line. 'Shield wall! Make the wall!'

The front line held their shields before their bodies and overlapped them, locking them together, each man braced against the next. This exposed them to the deadly hail from the sky, but they had rehearsed for this, and the line behind pushed forward, sharing the cover of their shields with the front rank. To be in the middle of it was close, hot, intimate, with each man pressed up against the next. Arngrim felt the heavy mass of the bodies of the men behind, the anxious breath of a nervous warrior on his neck, and the stench of sweat and piss.

As they closed the Danes suddenly ran at the English. They clattered their swords against their shields, and roared, the noise overpowering. In their helmets and mail they might have been mirror-images of the English. And as they covered the last few paces Arngrim could see individual faces, pale and strong, broken into grins as they hurled abuse. Arngrim clasped his sword and roared defiance.

The walls clashed with a slam of wood and iron.

The Danes, ru

His first thrust was into the open mouth of a Dane. His war scream turned to bloody gurgles as Arngrim dragged his sword out of his wrecked throat. Another took his place, but Arngrim was able to sweep him aside with a slap of his blade. But another took his place and Arngrim hammered at his smooth young face as if his sword were a club.

All the time he was wary of axes being swung under the wall, efforts to hamstring him. And already there was blood everywhere, all over his hands and arms and mail shirt, and the ground was slippery with it, and bits of flesh clung to his sword.

Still the young Danes came, one after another to be cut down.

This was the reality of the shield wall, the nightmare of it. No matter how many you killed there was always another, as if your enemy was not human at all but a monster with many heads. But as the grim work continued, as his lungs strained and fatigue built up in his muscles, a kind of calm descended on him. He passed beyond the need for air, and found strength from reserves his body hadn't known it possessed. It was the reverie of battle, of slaughter.

He heard laughter beside him. It was Ordgar, who wielded his sword with a will, lost in his own universe of killing, lost to the battle-fever.

But then a mighty axe-blade fell over the shield wall and slammed through the young man's helmet, and cleft his skull. Ordgar fell instantly – but his place was taken just as quickly by another Englishman. So Ordgar was gone, Arngrim thought, his young dreams terminated in a flash of iron, and the shield wall had already closed around his fallen body as the sea enfolds a raindrop.

Arngrim looked over to see who on the Danish side had wielded that immense blow. He saw a giant of a man, who used only an axe, the crudest of weapons, that he slammed down into English flesh, over and over, dragging it back with his huge muscled arms.