The Pale Horseman (9 page)

It came, carried in a chest by two men, and so at last, under the afternoon sun, we
climbed the eastern hill. Some women followed us, shrieking their battle-screams, which was
a waste of breath because the enemy was still too far away to hear them.

'So what do we do?' Leofric asked me.

'Form a wedge,' I guessed. 'Our best men in the front rank and you and me in front of them,
then kill the bastards.'

He grimaced. 'Have you ever assaulted one of the old people's forts?'

'Never.'

'It can be hard,' he warned me.

'If it's too hard,' I said, 'we'll just kill Peredur and his men and take their silver
anyway.'

Brother Asser, his neat black robes muddied about their skirts, hurried over to me. 'Your
men are Saxons!' he said accusingly.

'I hate monks,' I snarled at him. 'I hate them more than I hate priests. I like killing them.
I like slitting their bellies. I like watching the bastards die. Now run off and die before
I cut your throat.'

He ran off to Peredur with his news that we were Saxons. The king stared at us morosely.
He had thought he had recruited a crew of Danish Vikings, and now he discovered we were West
Saxons and he was not happy, so I drew Serpent-Breath and banged her blade against my
limewood shield.

'You want to fight this battle or not?' I asked him through Asser.

Peredur decided he wanted to fight, or rather he wanted us to fight the battle for him,
and so we slogged on up the hill which had a couple of false crests so it was well into the
afternoon before we emerged onto the long, shallow summit and could see Dreyndynas's
green turf walls on the skyline. A banner flew there. It was a triangle of cloth, supported
on its pole by a small cross-staff, and the banner showed a white horse prancing on a green
field.

I stopped then. Peredur's banner was a wolf's tail hung from a pole, I carried none,
though, like most Saxons, mine would have been a rectangular flag. I only knew one people
who flew triangular banners and I turned on Brother Asser as he sweated up the hill.

'They're Danes,' I accused him.

'So?' he demanded. 'I thought you were a Dane, and all the world knows the Danes will fight
anyone for silver, even other Danes. But are you frightened of them, Saxon?'

'Your mother didn't give birth to you,' I told hint, 'but farted you out of her shrivelled
arsehole.'

'Frightened or not,' Asset said, 'you've taken Peredur's silver, so you must fight them
now.'

'Say one more word, monk,' I said, 'and I'll cut off your scrawny balls.'

I was gazing uphill, trying to estimate numbers. Everything had changed since I had
seen the white horse banner because instead of fighting against half-armed British savages
we would have to take on a crew of lethal Danes, but if I was surprised by that, then the Danes
were equally surprised to see us. They were crowding Dreyndynas's wall, which was made of
earth fronted with a ditch and topped with a thorn fence. It would be a hard wall to attack, I
thought, especially if it was defended by Danes. I counted over forty men on the skyline
and knew there would be others I could not see, and the numbers alone told me this assault
would fail. We could attack, and we might well get as far as the thorn palisade, but I doubted
we could hack our way through, and the Danes would kill a score of us as we tried, and we would
be lucky to retreat down the hill without greater loss.

'We're in a cesspit,' Leofric said to me.

'Up to our necks.'

'So what do we do? Turn on them and take the money?'

I did not answer because the Danes had dragged a section of the thorn fence aside and three
of them now jumped down from the ramparts and strolled towards us. They wanted to talk.

'Who the hell is that?' Leofric asked.

He was staring at the Danish leader. He was a huge man, big as Steapa Snotor, and dressed
in a mail coat that had been polished with sand until it shone. His helmet, as highly
polished as his mail, had a face-plate modelled as a boar's mask with a squat, broad snout,
and from the helmet's crown there flew a white horsetail. He wore arm rings over his mail,
rings of silver and gold that proclaimed him to be a warrior chief, a Sword-Dane, a lord of
war. He walked the hillside as if he owned it, and in truth, he did own it because he
possessed the fort.

Asser hurried to meet the Danes, going with Peredur and two of his courtiers. I went
after them and found Asser trying to convert the Danes. He told them that God had brought us
and we would slaughter them all and their best course was to surrender now and yield their
heathen souls to God.

'We shall baptise you,' Asser said, 'and there will be much rejoicing in heaven.'

The Danish leader slowly pulled off his helmet and his face was almost as frightening
as the boarsnouted mask. It was a broad face, hardened by sun and wind, with the blank,
expressionless eyes of a killer. He was around thirty years old, had a tightly cropped beard
and a scar running from the comer of his left eye down across his check. He gave the helmet to
one of his men and, without saying a word, hauled up the skirt of his mail coat and began
pissing on Asser's robe. The monk leaped back.

The Dane, still pissing, looked at me. 'Who are you?'

'Uhtred Ragnarson. And you?'

'Svein of the White Horse,' he said it defiantly, as though I would know his reputation,
and for a heartbeat I said nothing. Was this the same Svein who was said to be gathering
troops in Wales? Then what was he doing here?

'You're Svein of Ireland?' I asked.

'Svein of Denmark,' he said. He Iet the mail coat drop and glared at Asser who was
threatening the Danes with heaven's vengeance. 'If you want to live,' he told Asser, 'shut
your filthy mouth.' Asser shut his mouth.

'Ragnarson,' Svein looked back to me. 'Earl Ragnar? Ragnar Ravnson? The Ragnar who
served Ivar?'

'The same,' I said.

'Then you are the Saxon son?'

'I am. And you?' I asked. 'You're the Svein who has brought men from Ireland?'

"I have brought men from Ireland,' he admitted.

'And gather forces in Wales?'

'I do what I do,' he said vaguely. He looked at my men, judging how well they would fight,
then he looked me up and down, noting my mail and helmet, and noting especially my arm
rings, and when the inspection was done he jerked his head to indicate that he and I should
walk away a few paces and talk privately.

Asser objected, saying anything that was spoken should be heard by all, but I ignored
him and followed Svein uphill.

'You can't take this fort,' Svein told me.

'True.'

'So what do you do?'

'Go back to Peredur's settlement, of course.'

He nodded. 'And if I attack the settlement?'

'You'll take it,' I said, 'but you'll lose men. Maybe a dozen?'

'Which will mean a dozen fewer oarsmen,' he said, thinking, and then he looked past
Peredur to where two men carried the box. 'Is that your battle price?'

'It is.'

'Split it?' he suggested.

I hesitated a heartbeat. 'And we'll split what's in the town?' I asked.

'Agreed,' he said, then looked at Asser who was hissing urgently at Peredur. 'He knows
what we're doing,' he said grimly, 'so a necessary deception is about to happen.' I was
still trying to understand what he meant when he struck me in the face. He struck hard, and my
hand went to Serpent-Breath and his two men ran to him, swords in hand.

'I'll come out of the fort and join you,' Svein said to me softly.

Then, louder, 'You bastard piece of goat-dropping.'

I spat at him as his two men pretended to drag him away, then I stalked back to Asset.

'We kill them all,' I said savagely. 'We kill them all!'

'What did he say to you?' Asser asked. He had feared, rightly as it happened, that Svein
and I had made our own alliance, but Svein's quick display had put doubts in the monk's mind,
and I fed the doubts by raging like a madman, screaming at the retreating Svein that I would
send his miserable soul to Hel who was the goddess of the dead. 'Are you going to fight?'
Asser demanded.

'Of course we're going to fight!' I shouted at him, then I crossed to Leofric. 'We're on
the same side as the Danes,' I told him quietly. 'We kill these Britons, capture their
settlement and split everything with the Danes. Tell the men, but tell them quietly.'

Svein, true to his word, brought his men out of Dreyndynas. That should have warned Asser
and Peredur of treachery, for no sensible man would abandon a fine defensive position
like a thorn topped earth wall to fight a battle on open ground, but they put it down to Danish
arrogance. They assumed Svein believed he could destroy us all in open battle, and he made
that assumption more likely by parading a score of his men on horseback, suggesting that
he intended to tear our shield wall open with his swords and axes and then pursue the
survivors with spear-armed cavalry. He made his own shield wall in front of the horsemen,
and I made another shield wall on the left of Peredur's line, and once we were in the proper
array we shouted insults at each other. Leofric was going down our line, whispering to
the men, and I sent Cenwulf and two others to the rear with their own orders, and just then
Asser ran across to us.

'Attack,' the monk demanded, pointing at Svein.

'When we're ready,' I said, for Leofric had not yet given every man his orders.

'Attack now!' Asser spat at me, and I almost gutted the bastard on the spot and would
have saved myself a good deal of future trouble if I had, but I kept my patience and Asser
went back to Peredur where he began praying, both hands held high in the air, demanding that
God send fire from heaven to consume the pagans.

'You trust Svein?' Leofric had come back to my side.

'I trust Svein,' I said. Why? Only because he was a Dane and I liked the Danes. These days,
of course, we are all agreed that they are the spawn of Satan, untrustworthy pagans,
savages, and anything else we care to call them, but in truth the Danes are warriors and they
like other warriors, and though it is true that Svein might have persuaded me to attack
Peredur so that he could then attack us, I did not believe it.

Besides, there was something I wanted in Peredur's hall and, to get her, I needed to
change sides.

'Fyrdraca!' I shouted, and that was our signal, and we swung our shield wall around to the
right and went at it.

It was, of course, an easy slaughter. Peredur's men had no belly for a fight. They had been
hoping that we would take the brunt of the Danish assault and that they could then scavenge
for plunder among Svein's wounded, but instead we turned on them, attacked them, and cut them
down, and Svein came on their right, and Peredur's men fled. That was when Svein's horsemen
kicked back their heels, levelled their spears and charged.

It was not a fight, it was a massacre. Two of Peredur's men put up some resistance, but
Leofric swatted their spears aside with his axe and they died screaming, and Peredur went
down to my sword, and he put up no fight at all, but seemed resigned to his death that I gave
him quickly enough. Cenwulf and his two companions did what I had ordered them to do, which
was to intercept the chest of silver, and we rallied around them as Svein's riders chased
down the fugitives. The only man to escape was Asser, the monk, which he managed by running
north instead of west. Svein's horsemen were ranging down the hill, spearing Peredur's men
in the backs, and Asser saw that only death lay that way and so, with surprising quickness,
he changed direction and sprinted past my men, his skirts clutched up about his knees, and I
shouted at the men on the right of the line to kill the bastard, but they simply looked at me
and let him go.

'I said kill him!' I snarled.

'He's a monk!' One of them answered. 'You want me to go to hell?'

I watched Asser run slantwise into the valley and, in truth, I did not much care whether
he lived or died. I thought Svein's horsemen would catch him, but perhaps they did not see him.
They did catch Father Mardoc and one of them took off the priest's head with a single swing of
his sword which made some of my men cross themselves.

The horsemen made their killing, but Svein's other Danes made a shield wall that faced us,
and in its centre, beneath the white horse banner, was Svein himself in his hoar-mask
helmet. His shield had a white horse painted on its boards and his weapon was an axe, the
largest war axe I had ever seen. My men shifted nervously. 'Stand still!' I snarled at
them.

'Up to our necks in it,' Leofric said quietly.

Svein was staring at us and I could see the death light in his eyes. He was in a killing
mood, and we were Saxons, and there was a knocking sound as his men hefted shields to make the
wall, and so I tossed Serpent-Breath into the air. Tossed her high so that the big blade
whirled about in the sun, and of course they were all wondering whether I would catch her or
whether she would thump onto the grass.

I caught her, winked at Svein and slid the blade into her scabbard. He laughed and the
killing mood passed as he realised he could not afford the casualties he would inevitably
take in fighting us.

'Did you really think I was going to attack you?' he called across the springy turf.

'I was hoping you would attack me,' I called back, 'so I wouldn't have to split the plunder
with you.'

He dropped the axe and walked towards us, and I walked towards him and we embraced. Men on
both sides lowered weapons. 'Shall we take the bastard's miserable village?' Svein
asked.

So we all went back down the hill, past the bodies of Peredur's men, and there was no one
defending the thorn wall about the settlement so it was an easy matter to get inside, and a
few men tried to protect their homes, but very few. Most of the folk fled to the beach, but
there were not enough boats to take them away, and so Svein's Danes rounded them up and began
sorting them into the useful and the dead. The useful were the young women and those who
could be sold as slaves, the dead were the rest.