Svein rode his white horse up and down the face of his shield wall. He was shouting at his troops, encouraging them. Telling them we were weaklings who needed only one push to topple.
'And I looked,' Pyrlig said to me, 'and I saw a pale horse, and the rider's name was death.' I stared at him in astonishment. 'It's from the gospel book,' he explained sheepishly, 'and it just came to my mind.'
'Then put it out of your mind,' I said harshly, 'because our job is to kill him, not fear him.' I turned to tell Æthelwold to make certain he kept his shield up, but saw he had taken a new place in the rear rank. He was better there, I decided, so left him alone.
Svein was shouting that we were lambs waiting to be slaughtered, and his men had begun beating weapons against their shields. There were just over a thousand men in Svein's ranks now, and they would be assaulting Alfred's division that numbered about the same, but the Danes, still had the advantage, for every man in their shield wall was a warrior, while over half our men were from the fyrds of Defnascir, Thomsaeta and Hamptonscir. If we had brought Wiglaf's fyrd to join us we could have overwhelmed Svein, but by the same token he could have swamped us if Guthrum had the courage to leave the fort. Both sides were being cautious. Neither was willing to throw everything into the battle for fear of losing everything.
Svein's horsemen were on the left flank, opposite my men. He wanted us to feel threatened by the riders, but a horse will not charge into a shield wall. It will sheer away, and I would rather face horsemen than foot-soldiers. One horse was tossing its head and I could see blood on its neck. Another horse was lying dead out where the corpses lay in the cold wind that was bringing the first ravens from the north. Black wings in a dull sky. Odin's birds.
'Come and die!' Steapa suddenly shouted. 'Come and die, you bastards! Come on!'
His shout prompted others along our line to call insults to the Danes. Svein turned, apparently surprised by our sudden defiance. His men had started forward, but stopped again, and I realised, with surprise, that they were just as fearful as we were. I had always held the Danes in awe, reckoning them the greatest fighting men under the sky. Alfred, in a moment of gloom, once told me it took four Saxons to beat one Dane, and there was a truth in that, but it was not a binding truth, and it was not true that day for there was no passion in Svein's men. There was unhappiness there, a reluctance to advance, and I reckoned that Guthrum and Svein had quarrelled. Or perhaps the cold, damp wind had quelled everyone's ardour.
'We're going to win this battle!' I shouted, and surprised myself by shouting it.
Men looked at me, wondering if I had been sent a vision by my gods.
'We're going to win!' I was hardly aware of speaking. I had not meant to make a speech, but I made one anyway. 'They're frightened of us!' I called out, 'they're scared! Most of them are skulking in the fort because they daren't come out to face Saxon blades! And those men,' I gestured at Svein's ranks with Wasp-Sting, 'know they're going to die. They're going to die.' I took a few paces forward and spread my arms to get the Danes' attention. I held my shield out to the left and Wasp-Sting to the right. 'You're going to die' I shouted it in Danish, loud as I could, then in English. 'You're going to die!'
And all Alfred's men took up that shout. 'You're going to die! You're going to die!'
Something odd happened then. Beocca and Pyrlig claimed that the spirit of God wafted through our army, and maybe that did happen, or else we suddenly began to believe in ourselves. We believed we could win and as the chant was shouted at the enemy we began to go forward, step by step, beating swords against shields and shouting that the enemy would die. I was ahead of my men, taunting the enemy, screaming at them, dancing as I went, and Alfred called me back to the ranks. Later, when all was done, Beocca told me that Alfred called me repeatedly, but I was capering and shouting, out ahead on the grass where the corpses lay, and I did not hear him. And Alfred's men were following me and he did not call them back though he had not ordered them forward.
'You bastards!' I screamed, 'you goat-turds! You fight like girls!' I do not know what insults I shouted that day, only that I shouted them and that I went ahead, on my own, asking just one of them to come and fight me man to man.
Alfred never approved of those duels between the shield walls. Perhaps, sensibly, he disapproved because he knew he could not have fought one himself, but he also saw them as dangerous. When a man invites an enemy champion to a fight, man on man, he invites his own death, and if he dies he takes the heart from his own side and gives courage to the enemy, and so Alfred ever forbade us to accept Danish challenges, but on that cold wet day one man did accept my challenge.
It was Svein himself. Svein of the White Horse, and he turned the white horse and spurred towards me with his sword in his right hand. I could hear the hooves thumping, see the clods of wet turf flying behind, see the stallion's mane tossing and I could see Svein's boar-masked helmet above the rim of his shield. Man and horse coming for me, and the Danes were jeering and just then Pyrlig shouted at me.
'Uhtred! Uhtred!'
I did not turn to look at him. I was too busy sheathing Wasp-Sting and was about to pull Serpent-Breath from her scabbard, but just then Pyrlig's thick-shafted boar spear skidded beside me in the wet grass, and I understood what he was trying to tell me.
I left Serpent-Breath on my shoulder and snatched up the Briton's spear just as Svein closed on me. All I could hear was the thunder of hooves, see the white cloak spreading, the bright shine of the lofted blade, the tossing horsehair plume, white eyes on the horse, teeth bared, and then Svein twitched the stallion to his left and cut the sword at me. His eyes were glittering behind the eyepieces of his helmet as he leaned to kill me, but as his sword came I threw myself into his horse and rammed the spear into the beast's guts. I had to do it one-handed, for I had my shield on my left arm, but the wide blade pierced hide and muscle, and I was screaming, trying to drive it deeper, and then Svein's sword struck my lifted shield like a hammer blow and his right knee struck my helmet so that I was thrown hard back to sprawl on the grass. I had let go of the spear, but it was well buried in the horse's belly and the animal was screaming and shaking, bucking and tossing, and thick blood was pouring down the spear's shaft that banged and bounced along the grass.
The horse bolted. Svein somehow stayed in the saddle. There was blood on the beast's belly. I had not hurt Svein, I had not touched him, but he was fleeing from me, or rather his white horse was bolting in pain and it ran straight at Svein's own shield wall. A horse will instinctively swerve away from a shield wall, but this horse was blinded by pain, and then, just short of the Danish shields, it half fell. It slid on the wet grass and skidded hard into the skjaldborg, breaking it open. Men scattered from the animal. Svein tumbled from the saddle, and then the horse somehow managed to get hack on its feet, and it reared and screamed. Blood was flying from its belly, and its hooves were flailing at the Danes, and now we were charging them at the run. I was on my feet, Serpent-Breath in my right hand, and the horse was thrashing and twisting, and the Danes backed away from it, and that opened their shield wall as we hit them.
Svein was just getting to his feet as Alfred's men arrived. I did not see it, but men said Steapa's sword took Svein's head off in one blow. A blow so hard that the helmeted head flew into the air, and perhaps that was true, but what was certain was that the passion was on us now. The blinding, seething passion of battle. The blood lust, the killing rage, and the horse was doing the work for us, breaking the Danish shield wall apart so all we had to do was ram into the gaps and kill.