LITMIR.BIZ

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ship-guards at the mouth of the Pedredan.’

      ‘Around seventy,’ I said. ‘There could be more we didn’t see.’

      ‘Fewer than a hundred, though?’

      ‘I suspect so, lord.’

      ‘So we must deal with them,’ Alfred said, ‘before the rest return to their ships.’ There was another silence. All of us knew how weak we were. A few men arrived every day, like the half-dozen who had come with Beocca, but they came slowly, either because the news of Alfred’s existence was spreading slowly, or else because the weather was cold and men do not like to travel on wet, cold days. Nor were there any thegns among the newcomers, not one. Thegns were noblemen, men of property, men who could bring scores of well-armed followers to a fight, and every shire had its thegns who ranked just below the reeve and ealdorman, who were themselves thegns. Thegns were the power of Wessex, but none had come to Æthelingæg. Some, we heard, had fled abroad, while others tried to protect their property. Alfred, I was certain, would have felt more comfortable if he had a dozen thegns about him, but instead he had me and Leofric and Egwine. ‘What are our forces now?’ Alfred asked us.

      ‘We have over a hundred men,’ Egwine said brightly.

      ‘Of whom only sixty or seventy are fit to fight,’ I said. There had been an outbreak of sickness, men vomiting and shivering and hardly able to control their bowels. Whenever troops gather such sickness seems to strike.

      ‘Is that enough?’ Alfred asked.

      ‘Enough for what, lord?’ Egwine was not quick-witted.

      ‘Enough to get rid of Svein, of course,’ Alfred said, and again there was silence because the question was absurd.

      Then Egwine straightened his shoulders. ‘More than enough, lord!’

      Ælswith bestowed a smile on him.

      ‘And how would you propose doing it?’ Alfred asked.

      ‘Take every man we have, lord,’ Egwine said, ‘every fit man, and attack them. Attack them!’

      Beocca was not writing. He knew when he was hearing nonsense and he was not going to waste scarce ink on bad ideas.

      Alfred looked at me. ‘Can it be done?’

      ‘They’ll see us coming,’ I said, ‘they’ll be ready.’

      ‘March inland,’ Egwine said, ‘come from the hills.’

      Again Alfred looked at me. ‘That will leave Æthelingæg undefended,’ I said, ‘and it will take at least three days, at the end of which our men will be cold, hungry and tired, and the Danes will see us coming when we emerge from the hills, and that’ll give them time to put on armour and gather weapons. And at best it will be equal numbers. At worst?’ I just shrugged. After three or four days the rest of Svein’s forces might have returned and our seventy or eighty men would be facing a horde.

      ‘So how do you do it?’ Alfred asked.

      ‘We destroy their boats,’ I said.

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘Without boats,’ I said, ‘they can’t come up the rivers. Without boats, they’re stranded.’

      Alfred nodded. Beocca was scratching away again. ‘So how do you destroy the boats?’ the king asked.

      I did not know. We could take seventy men to fight their seventy, but at the end of the fight, even if we won, we would be lucky to have twenty men still standing. Those twenty could burn the boats, of course, but I doubted we would survive that long. There were scores of Danish women at Cynuit and, if it came to a fight, they would join in and the odds were that we would be defeated. ‘Fire,’ Egwine said enthusiastically. ‘Carry fire in punts and throw the fire from the river.’

      ‘There are ship-guards,’ I said tiredly, ‘and they’ll be throwing spears and axes, sending arrows, and you might burn one boat, but that’s all.’

      ‘Go at night,’ Egwine said.

      ‘It’s almost a full moon,’ I said, ‘and they’ll see us coming. And if the moon is clouded we won’t see their fleet.’

      ‘So how do you do it?’ Alfred demanded again.

      ‘God will send fire from heaven,’ Bishop Alewold said, and no one responded.

      Alfred stood. We all got to our feet. Then he pointed at me. ‘You will destroy Svein’s fleet,’ he said, ‘and I would know how you plan to do it by this evening. If you cannot do it then you,’ he pointed to Egwine, ‘will travel to Defnascir, find Ealdorman Odda and tell him to bring his forces to the river mouth and do the job for us.’

      ‘Yes, lord,’ Egwine said.

      ‘By tonight,’ Alfred said to me coldly, and then he walked out.

      He left me angry. He had meant to leave me angry. I stalked up to the newly-made fort with Leofric and stared across the marshes to where the clouds heaped above the Sæfern. ‘How are we to burn twenty-four ships?’ I demanded.

      ‘God will send fire from heaven,’ Leofric said, ‘of course.’

      ‘I’d rather he sent a thousand troops.’

      ‘Alfred won’t summon Odda,’ Leofric said. ‘He just said that to annoy you.’

      ‘But he’s right, isn’t he?’ I said grudgingly. ‘We have to get rid of Svein.’

      ‘How?’

      I stared at the tangled barricade that Haswold had made from felled trees. The water, instead of flowing downstream, was coming upstream because the tide was on the flood and so the ripples ran eastwards from the tangled branches. ‘I remember a story,’ I said, ‘from when I was a small child.’ I paused, trying to recall the tale which, I assume, had been told to me by Beocca. ‘The Christian god divided a sea, isn’t that right?’

      ‘Moses did,’ Leofric said.

      ‘And when the enemy followed,’ I said, ‘they were drowned.’

      ‘Clever,’ Leofric said.

      ‘So that’s how we’ll do it,’ I said.

      ‘How?’

      But instead of telling him I summoned the marshmen and talked with them, and by that night I had my plan and, because it was taken from the scriptures, Alfred approved it readily. It took another day to get everything ready. We had to gather sufficient punts to carry forty men and I also needed Eofer, the simple-minded archer. He was unhappy, not understanding what I wanted, and he gibbered at us and looked terrified, but then a small girl, perhaps ten or eleven years old, took his hand and explained that he had to go hunting with us. ‘He trusts you?’ I asked the child.

      ‘He’s my uncle,’ she said. Eofer was holding her hand and he was calm again.

      ‘Does Eofer do what you tell him?’

      She nodded, her small face serious, and I told her she must come with us to keep her uncle happy.

      We left before the dawn. We were twenty marshmen, skilled with boats, twenty warriors, a simple-minded archer, a child and Iseult. Alfred, of course, did not want me to take Iseult, but I ignored him and he did not argue. Instead he watched us leave, then went to Æthelingæg’s church that now boasted a newly-made cross of alder-wood nailed to its gable.

      And low in the sky above the cross was the full moon. She was low and ghostly pale, and as the sun rose she faded even more, but as the ten punts drifted down the river I stared at her and said a silent prayer to Hoder because the moon is his woman and it was she who must give us victory. Because, for the first time since Guthrum had struck in a winter’s dawn, the Saxons were fighting back.

      

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