The Pale Horseman (43 page)

I looked for Ragnar's eagle-wing banner and thought I saw it in the fort, but it was
hard to be certain, for every crew of Danes flew their standard, and the small flags were
crowded together and the rain had started to fall again, obscuring the symbols, but off
to my right, outside the fort and close to the bigger standard of the white horse, was a
Saxon flag. It was a green flag with an eagle and a cross, which meant Wulfhere was there
with that part of the Wiltunscir fyrd which had followed him. There were other Saxon
banners in the enemy horde. Not many, maybe a score, and I guessed that the Danes had brought
men from Mercia to fight for them. All the Saxon banners were in the open ground, none was
inside the fort.

We were still a long way apart, much farther than a man could shoot an arrow, and none of
us could hear what the Danes were shouting. Osric's men were making our right wing as Wiglaf
led his Sumorsaete fyrd off to the left. We were making a line to oppose their line, but
ours would inevitably be shorter. The odds were not quite two Danes to one Saxon, but it was
close.

'God help us,' Pyrlig said, touching his crucifix.

Alfred summoned his commanders, gathering them under the rain-sodden banner of the
dragon. The Danish thunder went on, the clattering of thousands of weapons against
shields, as the king asked his army's leaders for advice.

Amulf of Suth Seaxa, a wiry man with a short beard and a perpetual scowl, advised
attack. 'Just attack,' he said, waving at the fort. 'We'll lose some men on the walls, but
we'll lose men anyway.'

'We'll lose a lot of men,' my cousin, Ethelred warned. He only led a small band, but his
status as the son of a Mercian ealdorman meant he had to be included in Alfred's
council of war.

'We do better defending,' Osric growled. 'Give a man land to defend and he stands, so
let the bastards come to us.' Harald nodded agreement.

Alfred cast a courteous eye on Wiglaf of Sumorsaete who looked surprised to be
consulted. 'We shall do our duty, lord,' he said, 'do our duty whatever you decide.'

Leofric and I were present, but the king did not invite our opinion so we kept
silent.

Alfred gazed at the enemy, then turned back to us.

'In my experience,' he said, 'the enemy expect something of us.' He spoke
pedantically, in the same tone he used when he was discussing theology with his priests.
'They want us to do certain things. What are those things?'

Wiglaf shrugged, while Amulf and Osric looked bemused. They had both expected something
fiercer from Alfred. Battle, for most of us, was a hammering rage, nothing clever, a
killing orgy, but Alfred saw it as a competition of wisdom, or perhaps as a game of tall
that took cleverness to win. That, I am sure, was how he saw our two armies, as tall pieces
on their chequered board.

'Well?' he asked.

'They expect us to attack!' Osric said uncertainly.

'They expect us to attack Wulfhere,' I said.

Alfred rewarded me with a smile. 'Why Wulfhere?'

'Because he's a traitor and a bastard and a piece of whore-begotten goat-shit,' I
said.

'Because we do not believe,' Alfred corrected me, 'that Wulfhere's men will fight with
the same passion as the Danes. And we're right, they won't. His men will pull hack from
killing fellow Saxons.'

'But Svein is there,' I said.

'Which tells us?' he asked.

The others stared at him. He knew the answer, but he could never resist being a
teacher, and so he waited for a response.

'It tells us,' I supplied it again, 'that they want us to attack their left, but they
don't want their left to break. That's why Svein is there. He'll hold us and they'll launch an
assault out of the fort to hit the flank of our attack. That breaks the right of our army and
then the whole damned lot come and kill the rest of us.'

Alfred did not respond, but looked worried, suggesting that he agreed with me. The
other men turned and looked at the Danes, as if some magical answer might suggest itself,
but none did.

'So do as Lord Amulf suggests,' Harald said, 'attack the fort.'

'The walls are steep,' Wiglaf warned. The Ealdorman of Sumorsaete was a man of sunny
disposition, frequent laughter and casual generosity, but now, with his men arrayed
opposite the fort's green ramparts, he was downcast.

'Guthrum would dearly like us to assail the fort,' the king observed.

This caused some confusion for it seemed, according to Alfred, that the Danes wanted
us to attack their right just as much as they wanted us to attack their left. The Danes,
meanwhile, were jeering at us for not attacking at all. One or two ran towards our lines
and screamed insults, and their whole shield wall was still banging weapons in a steady,
threatening rhythm. The rain made the colours of the shields darker. The colours were black
and red and blue and brown and dirty yellow.

'So what do we do?' Ethelred asked plaintively.

There was silence and I realised that Alfred, though he understood the problem, had no
answer to it. Guthrum wanted us to attack and probably did not care whether we went against
Svein’s seasoned warriors on the left of the enemy line or against the steep, slippery
ditches in front of the fort's walls. And Guthrum must also have known that we dared not
retreat because his men would pursue and break us like a horde of wolves savaging a
frightened flock.

'Attack their left,' I said.

Alfred nodded as though he had already come to that conclusion.

'And?' he invited me.

'Attack it with every man we've got,' I said. There were probably two thousand men
outside the fort and at least half of those were Saxons. I thought we should assault them in
one violent rush, and overwhelm them by numbers. Then the weakness of the Danish
position would be revealed, for they were on the very lip of the escarpment and once they
were forced over the edge they had nowhere to go but down the long, precipitous slope. We
could have destroyed those two thousand men, then reformed our lines for the harder task of
attacking the three thousand inside the fort.

'Employ all our men?' Alfred asked. 'But then Guthrum will attack our flank with every
man he has.'

'Guthrum won't,' I said. 'He'll send some men to attack our flank, but he'll keep most of
his troops inside the fort. He's cautious. He won't abandon the fort, and he won't risk much
to save Svein. They don't like each other.'

Alfred thought about it, but I could see he did not like the gamble. He feared that while
we attacked Svein the other Danes would charge from the fort and overwhelm our left. I still
think he should have taken my advice, but fate is inexorable and he decided to imitate
Guthrum by being cautious.

'We will attack on our right,' he said, 'and drive off Wulfhere's men, but we must be ready
for their counter-stroke and so our left stays where it is.'

So it was decided. Osric and Arnulf, with the men of Wiltunscir and Suth Seaxa, would
give battle to Svein and Wulfhere on the open land to the east of the fort, but we suspected
that some Danes would come from behind the ramparts to attack Osric's flank and so Alfred
would take his own bodyguard to be a bulwark against that assault. Wigulf, meanwhile, would
stay where he was, which meant a third of our men were doing nothing. 'If we can defeat
them,' Alfred said, 'then their remnant will retreat into the fort and we can besiege it.
They have no water there, do they?’

'None,' Osric confirmed.

'So they're trapped,' Alfred said as though the whole problem was neatly resolved and
the battle as good as won. He turned to Bishop Alewold. 'A prayer, bishop, if you would be
so kind.'

Alewold prayed, the rain fell, the Danes went on jeering, and I knew the awful moment,
the clash of the shield walls, was close. I touched Thor's hammer, then Serpent-Breath's
hilt, for death was stalking us. God help me, I thought, touching the hammer again, Thor
help us all, for I did not think we could win.