Then I heard the shouts. Shouts of anger and screams of pain, and I turned and saw that the Danish horsemen had reached our women, and the women were screaming and there was nothing we could do.
The Danish horsemen had expected to slaughter the broken remnants of Alfred's shield wall, but instead it had been Svein's men who had been broken and the riders, out on Svein's left flank, had retreated into the downs. They must have thought to circle about our army and rejoin Guthrum from the west, and on the way they had seen our women and horses and smelled easy plunder.
Yet our women had weapons, and there were a few wounded men there, and together they had resisted the horsemen. There was a brief flurry of killing, then the Danish riders, with nothing to show for their attack, rode away westwards. It had taken a few moments, nothing more, but Hild had snatched up a spear and run at a horseman, screaming hate for the horrors the Danes had inflicted on her in Cippanhamm, and Eanflaed, who saw it all, said that Hild sank the spear in a Dane's leg and the man had chopped down with his sword, and Iseult, who had gone to help Hild, had parried the blow with another sword, and a second Dane caught her from behind with an axe, and then a rush of screaming women drove the Danes away. Hild lived, but Iseult's skull had been broken open and her head almost split into two. She was dead.
'She has gone to God,' Pyrlig told me when Leofric brought us the news. I was weeping, but I did not know whether it was sorrow or anger that consumed me, I could say nothing. Pyrlig held my shoulders. 'She is with God, Uhtred.'
'Then the men who sent her there must go to hell,' I said. 'Any hell. Freeze or burn, the bastards!'
I pulled away from Pyrlig and strode towards Alfred. I saw Wulfhere then. He was a prisoner, guarded by two of Alfred's bodyguard, and he brightened when he saw me as though he thought I was a friend, but I just spat at him and walked on past. Alfred frowned when I joined him. He was escorted by Osric and Harald, and by Father Beocca and Bishop Alewold, none of whom spoke Danish, but one of the Danes was an English-speaker. There were three of them, all strangers to me, but Beocca told me their spokesman was called Hrothgar Ericson and I knew he wasone of Guthrum's chieftains.
'They attacked the women,' I told Alfred. The king just stared at me, perhaps not understanding what I had said. 'They attacked the women!' I repeated.
'He's whimpering,' the Danish interpreter spoke to his two companions, 'that the women were attacked.'
'If I whimper,' I turned on the man in fury, 'then you will scream.' I spoke in Danish. 'I shall pull your guts out of your arsehole, wrap them around your filthy neck and feed your eyeballs to my hounds. Now if you want to translate, you shrivelled bastard, translate properly, or else go back to your vomit.'
The man blinked, but said nothing. Hrothgar, resplendent in mail and Silvered helmet, half smiled.
'Tell your king,' he said, 'that we might agree to withdraw to Cippanhamm, but we shall want hostages.'
I turned on Alfred: 'How many men does Guthrum still have?' He was still unhappy that I had joined him, but he took the question seriously. 'Enough,' he said.
'Enough to hold Cippanhamm and a half-dozen other towns. We break them now.'
'You are welcome to try,' Hrothgar said when my words were translated.
I turned back to him. 'I killed Ubba,' I said, 'and I put Svein down, and next I shall cut Guthrum's throat and send him to his whore-mother. We'll try.'
'Uhtred.' Alfred did not know what I had said, but he had heard my tone and he tried to calm me.
'There's work to be done, lord,' I said. It was anger speaking in me, a fury at the Danes and an equal fury at Alfred, who was once again offering the enemy terms. He had done it so often. He would beat them in battle and immediately make a truce because he believed they would become Christians and live in brotherly peace. That was his desire, to live in a Christian Britain devoted to piety, but on that day I was right. Guthrum was not beaten, he still outnumbered us, and he had to be destroyed.
'Tell them,' Alfred said, 'that they can surrender to us now. Tell them they can lay down their weapons and come out of the fort.' Hrothgar treated that proposal with the scorn it deserved. Most of Guthrum's men had yet to fight. They were far from defeated, and the green walls were high and the ditches were deep, and it was the sight of those ramparts that had prompted Alfred to speak with the enemy. He knew men must die, many men, and that was the price he had been unwilling to pay a year before when Guthrum had been trapped in Exanceaster, but it was a price that had to be paid. It was the price of Wessex.
Hrothgar had nothing more to say, so turned away. 'Tell Earl Ragnar,' I called after him, 'that I am still his brother.'
'He will doubtless see you in Valhalla one day,' Hrothgar called back, then waved a negligent hand to me. I suspected that the Danes had never intended to negotiate a truce, let alone a surrender, but when Alfred offered to talk they had accepted because it gave them time to organise their defences.
Alfred scowled at me. He was plainly annoyed that I had intervened, but before he could say anything Beocca spoke. 'What happened to the women?' he asked.
'They fought the bastards off,' I said, 'but Iseult died.'
'Iseult,' Alfred said, and then he saw the tears in my eyes and did not know what to say. He flinched, stuttered incoherently, then closed his eyes as if in prayer. 'I am glad,' he said after he had collected his thoughts, 'that she died a Christian.'
'Amen,' Beocca said.
'I would rather she was a live pagan,' I snarled, and then we went back to our army and Alfred again summoned his commanders. There was really no choice. We had to assault the fort. Alfred talked for a time about establishing a siege, but that was not practical. We would have to sustain an army on the summit of the downs and, though Osric insisted the enemy had no springs inside the fort, neither did we have springs close by. Both armies would be thirsty, and we did not have enough men to stop Danes going down the steep embankment at night to fetch water. And if the siege lasted longer than a week, then men of the fyrd would begin to slip home to look after their fields, and Alfred would be tempted to mercy, especially if Guthrum promised to convert to Christianity.
So we urged an assault on Alfred. There could be nothing clever. Shield walls must be made and men sent against the ramparts, and Alfred knew that every man in the army must join the attack.
Wiglaf and the men of Sumorsaete would attack on the left, Alfred's men in the centre, while Osric, whose fyrd had gathered again and was now reinforced by the men who had deserted from Guthrum's army, would assault on the right.
'You know how to do it,' Alfred said, though without any enthusiasm for he knew he was ordering us into a feast of death, 'put your best men in the centre, let them lead, and make the others press behind and on either side.'
No one said anything. Alfred offered a bitter smile. 'God has smiled on us so far,' he said, 'and he will not desert us.'
Yet he had deserted Iseult. Poor, fragile Iseult, shadow queen and lost soul, and I pushed into the front rank because the only thing I could do for her now was to take revenge.