LITMIR.BIZ

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thrusting my shield forward, and the crash as our two shields banged together, and the shock of Sigefrid’s weight, though he must have felt the same because neither of us was thrown off balance. He rammed a sword at me and I felt a thudding blow on my shield, and I did the same to him. I had sheathed Serpent-Breath. She was and is a lovely blade, but a long-sword is no use when the shield walls come close as lovers. I had drawn Wasp-Sting, my short-sword, and I felt with her blade for a gap between the enemy’s shields and drove her forward. She struck nothing.

      Sigefrid heaved at me. We heaved back. A line of shields had crashed against another line, and behind them, on both sides, men pushed and swore, grunted and heaved. An axe came towards my head, swung by the man behind Sigefrid, but behind me Clapa had his shield raised and caught the blow, which was powerful enough to drive his shield down onto my helmet. For a moment I could see nothing, but I shook my head and my vision cleared. Another axe had hooked its blade over my shield’s top edge and the man was trying to pull my shield down, but it was crammed so tight against Sigefrid’s shield that it would not move. Sigefrid was cursing me, spitting into my face, and I was calling him the son of a goat-humping whore and stabbing at him with Wasp-Sting. She had found something solid behind the enemy wall and I gouged her, then shoved her hard forward and gouged the blade again, but what damage she did I do not know to this day.

      The poets tell of those battles, but no poet I know was ever in the front rank of a shield wall. They boast of a warrior’s prowess and they record how many men he killed. Bright his blade flashed, they sing, and great was his spear’s slaughter, but it was never like that. Blades were not bright, but cramped. Men swore, pushed and sweated. Not many men died once the shields touched and the heaving began because there was not room enough to swing a blade. The real killing began when a shield wall broke, but ours held against that first attack. I saw little because my helmet had been shoved low over my eyes, but I remember Sigefrid’s open mouth, all rotten teeth and yellow spittle. He was cursing me, and I was cursing him, and my shield shuddered from blows and men were shouting. One was screaming. Then I heard another scream and Sigefrid suddenly stepped back. His whole line was moving away from us and for a moment I thought they were trying to tempt us out of the gate’s archway, but I stayed where I was. I dared not take my little shield wall out of the arch, for the great stone walls on either side protected my flanks. Then there was a third scream and at last I saw why Sigefrid’s men had faltered. Big blocks of stone were falling from the ramparts. Pyrlig was evidently not being attacked and so his men were prising away lumps of masonry and dropping them on the enemy, and the man behind Sigefrid had been struck on the head and Sigefrid stumbled on him.

      ‘Stay here!’ I shouted at my men. They were tempted to go forward and take advantage of the enemy’s disarray, but that would mean leaving the gate’s safety. ‘Stay!’ I bellowed angrily, and they stayed.

      It was Sigefrid who retreated. He looked angry and puzzled. He had expected an easy victory, but instead he had lost men while we were unscathed. Cerdic’s face was covered in blood, but he shook his head when I asked if he had been badly wounded. Then from behind me I heard a roar of voices and my men, packed together in the archway, shuddered forward as an enemy struck from the streets. Steapa was there and I did not even bother to turn and see the fight because I knew Steapa would hold. I could also hear the clash of blades above me and knew that Pyrlig too was now fighting for his life.

      Sigefrid saw Pyrlig’s men fighting and deduced he would be spared their shower of masonry and so he shouted at his men to ready themselves. ‘Kill the bastards!’ he bellowed, ‘kill them! But take the big one alive. I want him.’ He swept his sword to point at me and I remembered his blade’s name; Fear-Giver. ‘You’re mine!’ he shouted at me, ‘and I still have to crucify a man! And you’re the man!’ He laughed, sheathed Fear-Giver and took a long-handled war axe from one his followers. He offered me a malevolent grin, covered his body with his raven-decorated shield, and shouted at his men to advance. ‘Kill them all! All but the big bastard! Kill them!’

      But this time, instead of pushing close to shove us through the gate like a stopper being forced through a bottle’s neck, he made his men pause at sword’s length and try to haul our shields down with their long-hafted war axes. And so the work became desperate.

      An axe is a vicious weapon in a fight between shield walls. If it does not hook a shield down it can still break the boards into splinters. I felt Sigefrid’s blows crashing into the shield, saw the axe blade appear through a rent in the limewood, and all I could do was endure the assault. I dared not go forward because that would break our wall, and if our whole wall stepped forward then the men on the flanks would be exposed and we would die.

      A spear was jabbing at my ankles. A second axe crashed on the shield. All along our short line the blows were falling, the shields were breaking and death was looming. I had no axe to swing, for I was never fond of it as a weapon, though I recognised how lethal it was. I kept Wasp-Sting in my hand, hoping Sigefrid would close the gap and I could slide the blade past his shield and deep into his big belly, but Sigefrid stayed an axe’s length away, and my shield was broken, and I knew a blow would soon crack my forearm into a useless mess of blood and shattered bone.

      I risked one step forward. I made it suddenly so that Sigefrid’s next swing was wasted, though the axe shaft bruised my left shoulder. He had to drop his shield to swing the axe and I lunged Wasp-Sting across his body and the blade rammed into his right shoulder, but his expensive mail held. He recoiled. I sliced her at his face, but he rammed his shield into mine, driving me back, and an instant later his axe slammed into my shield again.

      He grimaced then, all rotten teeth and angry eyes and bushy beard. ‘I want you alive,’ he said. He swung the axe sideways and I managed to pull the shield inwards just enough so that the blade crashed against the boss. ‘Alive,’ he said again, ‘and you will die a death fit for a man who breaks his oath.’

      ‘I made no oath to you,’ I said.

      ‘But you will die as though you had,’ he said, ‘with your hands and feet nailed to a cross, and your screams won’t stop until I tire of them.’ He grimaced again as he drew the axe back for a last shield-splintering stroke. ‘And I’ll flay your corpse, Uhtred the Betrayer,’ he said, ‘and cover my shield with your tanned skin. I’ll piss in your dead throat and dance on your bones.’ He swung the axe, and the sky fell.

      A whole length of heavy masonry had been toppled from the rampart and slammed into Sigefrid’s ranks. There was dust and screaming and broken men. Six warriors were either on the ground or clutching shattered bones. All were behind Sigefrid, and he turned, astonished, and just then Osferth, Alfred’s bastard son, jumped from the gate’s top.

      He should have broken his ankles in that desperate leap, but somehow he survived. He landed amid the broken stones and shattered bodies that had been Sigefrid’s second rank and he screamed like a girl as he swung his sword at the huge Norseman’s head. The blade thumped into Sigefrid’s helmet. It did not break the metal, but it must have stunned Sigefrid for an instant. I had broken my shield wall by taking two paces forward and I rammed my broken shield at the dazed man and stabbed Wasp-Sting into his left thigh. This time she broke through the links of his mail and I twisted her, ripping muscle. Sigefrid staggered and it was then that Osferth, whose face was a picture of pure terror, stabbed his sword into the small of the Norseman’s back. I do not think Osferth was aware of what he was doing. He had pissed himself with fear, he was dazed, he was confused, the enemy was recovering their sense and coming to kill him, and Osferth just stabbed his sword with enough desperate force to pierce the bear-fur cloak, Sigefrid’s mail, and then Sigefrid himself.

      The big man screamed with agony. Finan was beside me, dancing as he always danced in battle, and he fooled the man next to Sigefrid with a lunge that was a feint, flicked his sword sideways across the man’s face, then shouted at Osferth to come to us.

      But Alfred’s son was frozen by terror. He would have lived no longer than one more heartbeat if I had not shaken off the remnants of my shattered shield and reached past the screaming Sigefrid to haul Osferth towards me. I shoved him back into the second rank and, with no shield to protect myself, waited for the next attack.

      ‘My God, thank you, thank you,

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