And so we killed. Alfred had not meant this to happen. He had expected to wait for the Danish attack and hoped we would resist it, but instead we had thrown off his leash and were doing his work, and he had the wit to send Arnulf's men out to the right because my men were among the enemy. The horsemen had tried to come around our rear, but the men of Suth Seaxa saw them off with shields and swords, then guarded the open flank as all Alfred's men from Æthelingaeg, and all Harald's men from Defnascir and Thornsaeta joined the slaughter. My cousin was there, with his Mercians, and he was a stout fighter. I watched him parry, stab, put down a man, take on another, kill him, and go on steadily.
We were making the hilltop rich with Danish blood because we had the fury and they did not, and the men who had fled the field, Osric's men, were coming back to join the fight.
The horsemen went. I did not see them go, though their tale will be told. I was fighting, screaming, shouting at Danes to come and be killed, and Pyrlig was beside me, holding a sword now, and the whole left-hand side of Svein's shield wall had broken and its survivors were making small groups, and we attacked them. I charged one group with the shield, using its boss to slam a man back and stabbing with Serpent-Breath, feeling her break through mail and leather, and Leofric appeared from somewhere, axe swinging, and Pyrlig was ramming his sword's tip into a man's face, and for every Dane there were two Saxons and the enemy stood no chance. One man shouted for mercy and Leofric broke his helmet apart with the axe so that blood and brains oozed onto the jagged metal and I kicked the man aside and plunged Serpent-Breath into a man's groin so that he screamed like a woman in childbirth. The poets often sing of that battle, and for once they get something right when they tell of the sword joy, the blade song, the slaughter. We tore Svein's men to bloody ruin, and we did it with passion, skill and savagery. The battle-calm was on me at last and I could do no wrong. Serpent-Breath had her own life and she stole it from the Danes who tried to oppose me, but those Danes were broken and running and all the left wing of Svein's vaunted troops was defeated.
And there was suddenly no enemy near me except for the dead and injured. Alfred's nephew, Æthelwold, was jabbing his sword at one of the wounded Danes,
'Either kill him,' I snarled, 'or let him live.' The man had a broken leg and had an eye hanging down his bloody cheek and he was no danger to anyone.
'I have to kill one pagan,' Æthelwold said. He prodded the man with the sword tip and I kicked his blade aside, and would have helped the wounded man except it was then that I saw Haesten.
He was at the hill's edge, a fugitive, and I shouted his name. He turned and saw me, or saw a blood-drenched warrior in mail and a wolf-crested helmet, and he stared at me, then perhaps he recognised the helmet for he fled.
'Coward!' I shouted at him. 'You treacherous, bastard coward! You swore me an oath! I made you rich! I saved your rotten life!'
He turned then, half grinned at me and waved his left arm on which hung the splintered remnants of a shield, then he ran to what remained of the right-hand side of Svein's shield wall, and that was still in good order, its shields locked tight. There were five or six hundred men there, and they had swung back, then retreated towards the fort, but now they checked because Alfred's men, having no one left to kill, were turning on them. Haesten joined the Danish ranks, pushing through the shields, and I saw the eagle-wing banner above them and knew that Ragnar, my friend, was leading those survivors.
I paused. Leofric was shouting at men to form a shield wall and I knew this attack had lost its fury, but we had damaged them. We had killed Svein and a good number of his men, and the Danes were now penned back against the fort. I went to the hill's edge, following a trail of blood on the wet grass, and saw that the white horse had bolted over the down's lip and now lay, its legs grotesquely cocked in the air and its white pelt spattered with blood, a few yards down the slope.
'That was a good horse,' Pyrlig said. He had joined me on the edge of the hill. I had thought this crest was the top of the escarpment, but the land was tangled here, as though a giant had kicked the hillside with a massive boot. The ground fell away to make a steep valley that suddenly climbed to a farther crest that was the real edge of the downs, and the steep valley sloped up to the fort's eastern corner, and I wondered whether it would offer a way into the fastness.
Pyrlig was still staring at the dead horse. 'You know what we say at home?' he asked me. 'We say that a good horse is worth two good women, that a good woman is worth two good hounds, and that a good hound is worth two good horses.'
'You say what?'
'Never mind,' he touched my shoulder. 'For a Saxon, Uhtred, you fight well. Like a Briton.'
I decided the valley offered no advantage over a direct assault and turned away to see that Ragnar was retreating step by step towards the fort. I knew this was the moment to attack him, to keep the battle-anger alive and the slaughter fresh, but our men were plundering the dead and the dying and none had the energy to renew the assault, and that meant we would have the harder task of killing Danes protected by a rampart. I thought of my father, killed in an attack on a wall. He had not shown much liking for me, probably because 1 had been a small child when he died, and now I would have to follow him into the death-trap of a well protected wall. Fate is inexorable.
Svein's banner of the white horse had been captured and a man was waving it towards the Danes.
Another had Svein's helmet on the tip of a spear, and at first I thought it was Svein's head, then I saw it was only the helmet. The white horsetail plume was pink now. Father Willibald was holding his hands to heaven, saying a prayer of thanks, and that was premature, I thought, for all we had done was break Svein's men and Guthrum's troops still waited for us behind their walls. And Ragnar was there too, safe in the fort. Its walls made a semi-circle jutting into the downs, ending at the escarpment's lip. They were high walls, protected by a ditch.
'It'll be a bastard crossing those ramparts,' I said.
'Maybe we won't have to,' Pyrlig answered.
'Of course we have to.'
'Not if Alfred can talk them out of there,' Pyrlig said, and he pointed and I saw that the king, accompanied by two priests and by Osric and Harald, was approaching the fort. 'He's going to let them surrender,' Pyrlig said.
I could not believe this was the time to talk. This was the killing time, not a place for negotiations.
'They won't surrender,' I said, 'of course they won't! They still think they can beat us.'
'Alfred will try to persuade them,' Pyrlig said.
'No,' I shook my head. 'He'll offer them a truce.' I spoke angrily. 'He'll offer to take hostages. He'll preach to them. It's what he always does.'
I thought about going to join him, if for nothing else to add some sourness to his reasonable suggestions, but I could not summon the effort. Three Danes had gone to talk to him, but I knew they would not accept his offer. They were not beaten, far from it. They still had more men than we did and they had the walls of the fort, and the battle was still theirs to win.