Steapa, as smothered in blood as I was, pushed into the rank beside me. Leofric was to my left and Pyrlig was now behind me. 'Spears and long swords,' Pyrlig advised us, 'not those short things.'
'Why not?' Leofric asked.
'You climb that steep wall,' he said, 'and all you can do is go for their ankles. Bring them down. I've done it before. You need a long reach and a good shield.'
'Jesus help us,' Leofric said. We were all fearful, for there is little in warfare as daunting as an assault on a fortress. If I had been in my senses I would have been reluctant to make that attack, but I was filled with a keening sorrow for Iseult and nothing except revenge filled my mind.
'Let's go,' I said, 'let's go.'
But we could not go. Men were collecting spears thrown in the earlier fighting, and the bowmen were being brought forward. Whenever we attacked we wanted a shower of spears to precede us, and a plague of stinging arrows to annoy the enemy, but it took time to array the spearmen and archers behind the men who would make the assault.
Then, ominously for our archers, it began to rain again. Their bows would still work, but water weakened the strings. The sky became darker as a great belly of black cloud settled over the down and the rain started to drum on helmets. The Danes were lining the ramparts, clashing their weapons against shields as our army curled about their fastness.
'Forward!' Alfred shouted, and we went towards the ramparts, but stopped just out of bowshot.
Rain headed the rim of my shield. There was a new, bright scar in the iron there, a blade strike, but I had not been aware of the blow. The Danes mocked us. They knew what was coming, and they probably welcomed it. Ever since Guthrum had climbed the escarpment and discovered the fort he had probably imagined Alfred's men assaulting its walls and his men cutting the enemy down as we struggled up the steep banks. This was Guthrum's battle now. He had placed his rival, Svein, and his Saxon ally, Wulfhere, outside the fort, and doubtless he had hoped they could destroy a good part of our army before the assault on the ramparts, but it would not matter much to Guthrum that those men had been destroyed themselves. Now his own men would fight the battle he had always envisaged.
'In the name of God!' Alfred called, then said no more for suddenly a clap of thunder crashed, a vast sound that consumed the heavens and was so loud that some of us flinched. A crack of lightning splintered white inside the fort. The rain pelted now, a cloudburst that hammered and soaked us, and more thunder rolled away in the distance, and perhaps we thought that noise and savage light was a message from God for suddenly the whole army started forward. No one had given a command, unless Alfred's invocation was an order. We just went.
Men were shouting as they advanced. They were not calling insults, but just making a noise to give themselves courage. We did not run, but walked, because the shields had to be kept close. Then another bellow of thunder deafened us, and the rain seemed to have a new and vicious intensity. it seethed of the dead and the living, and we were close now, very close, yet the rain was so thick it was hard to see the waiting Danes. Then 1 saw the ditch, already flooding, and the bows sounded and the spears flew and we were splashing down the ditch's side and Danish spears were thumping into us.
One stuck in my shield, fell away and I stumbled on its shaft, half sprawled in the water, then recovered and began the climb.
Not all the army tried to cross the ditch. Many men's courage faltered at the brink, but a dozen or more groups went into the attack. We were what the Danes call the svinfylkjas, the swinewedges, the elite warriors who try to pierce the skjaldborg like a boar trying to gouge the hunter with its tusks. But this time we not only had to gouge the skjaldborq, but cross the rain-flooded ditch and clamber up the bank.
We held our shields over our heads as we splashed through the ditch. Then we climbed, but the wet bank was so slippery that we constantly fell back, and the Danish spears kept coming, and someone pushed me from behind and I was crawling up the bank on my knees, the shield over my head, and Pyrlig's shield was covering my spine and I heard a thumping above me and thought it was thunder.
Except the shield kept banging against my helmet and I knew a Dane was hacking at me, trying to break through the limewood to drive his axe or sword into my spine, and I crawled again, lifted the shield's lower edge and saw boots. I lunged with Serpent-Breath, tried to stand, felt a blow on my leg and fell again. Steapa was roaring beside me. There was mud in my mouth, and the rain hammered at us and I could hear the crash of blades sinking in shields and I knew we had failed, but I tried to stand again and lunged with Serpent-Breath and on my left Leofric gave a shrill cry and I saw blood streaming into the grass. The blood was instantly washed away by the rain, and another peal of thunder crashed overhead as I slithered back to the ditch.
The bank was scarred where we had tried to climb, the grass had been gouged down to the white chalk. We had failed utterly and the Danes were screaming defiance, then another rush of men splashed through the ditch and the banging of blades and shields began again. I climbed a second time, trying to dig my boots into the chalk, and my shield was raised so I did not see the Danes coming down to meet me, and the first I knew was when an axe struck the shield so hard that the boards splintered, and a second axe gave me a glancing blow on the helmet and I fell backwards and would have lost Serpent-Breath if it had not been for the loop of Iseult's hair about my wrist. Steapa managed to seize a Danish spear and pulled its owner down the bank where a half-dozen Saxons hacked and stabbed in-fury so that the ditch was churning with water, blood and blades, and someone shouted for us to go again, and I saw it was Alfred, dismounted, coming to cross the ditch and I roared for my men to protect him.
Pyrlig and I managed to get in front of the king and we stayed there, protecting him as we tried to climb that blood-fouled bank a third time. Pyrlig was screaming in his native tongue, I was cursing in Danish, and somehow we got halfway up and stayed on our feet, and someone, perhaps it was Alfred, was pushing me from behind. Rain hammered us, soaked us. A peal of thunder shook the heavens and I swung Serpent-Breath, trying to hack the Danish shields aside, then swung again, and the shock of the blade striking a shield boss jarred up my arm. A Dane, all beard and wide eyes, lunged a spear at me. I lunged back with the sword, shouted Iseult's name, tried to climb and the Spear-Dane slammed his spear forward again, and the blade struck my helmet's forehead and my head snapped back and another Dane hit me on the side of the head and all the world went drunken and dark. My feet slid and I was half aware of falling down into the ditch-water. Someone pulled me clear and dragged me back to the ditch's far side, and there I tried to stand, but fell again.
The king. The king. He had to be protected and he had been in the ditch when I had last seen him, and I knew Alfred was no warrior. He was brave, but he did not love the slaughter as a warrior loves it.
I tried to stand again, and this time succeeded, but blood squelched in my right boot and flowed over the boot-top when I put my weight on that leg. The ditch bottom was thick with dead and dying men, half drowned by the flood, but the living had fled from the ditch and the Danes were laughing at us.
'To me!' I shouted. There had to be one last effort. Steapa and Pyrlig closed on me, and Eadric was there, and I was groggy and my head was filled with a ringing sound and my arm seemed feeble, but we had to make that last effort.