LITMIR.BIZ

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but I ignored him and followed Svein uphill. ‘You can’t take this fort,’ Svein told me.

      ‘True.’

      ‘So what do you do?’

      ‘Go back to Peredur’s settlement, of course.’

      He nodded. ‘And if I attack the settlement?’

      ‘You’ll take it,’ I said, ‘but you’ll lose men. Maybe a dozen?’

      ‘Which will mean a dozen fewer oarsmen,’ he said, thinking, and then he looked past Peredur to where two men carried the box. ‘Is that your battle price?’

      ‘It is.’

      ‘Split it?’ he suggested.

      I hesitated a heartbeat. ‘And we’ll split what’s in the town?’ I asked.

      ‘Agreed,’ he said, then looked at Asser who was hissing urgently at Peredur. ‘He knows what we’re doing,’ he said grimly, ‘so a necessary deception is about to happen.’ I was still trying to understand what he meant when he struck me in the face. He struck hard, and my hand went to Serpent-Breath and his two men ran to him, swords in hand.

      ‘I’ll come out of the fort and join you,’ Svein said to me softly. Then, louder, ‘You bastard piece of goat-dropping.’

      I spat at him as his two men pretended to drag him away, then I stalked back to Asser. ‘We kill them all,’ I said savagely. ‘We kill them all!’

      ‘What did he say to you?’ Asser asked. He had feared, rightly as it happened, that Svein and I had made our own alliance, but Svein’s quick display had put doubts in the monk’s mind, and I fed the doubts by raging like a madman, screaming at the retreating Svein that I would send his miserable soul to Hel who was the goddess of the dead. ‘Are you going to fight?’ Asser demanded.

      ‘Of course we’re going to fight!’ I shouted at him, then I crossed to Leofric. ‘We’re on the same side as the Danes,’ I told him quietly. ‘We kill these Britons, capture their settlement and split everything with the Danes. Tell the men, but tell them quietly.’

      Svein, true to his word, brought his men out of Dreyndynas. That should have warned Asser and Peredur of treachery, for no sensible man would abandon a fine defensive position like a thorn-topped earth wall to fight a battle on open ground, but they put it down to Danish arrogance. They assumed Svein believed he could destroy us all in open battle, and he made that assumption more likely by parading a score of his men on horseback, suggesting that he intended to tear our shield wall open with his swords and axes and then pursue the survivors with spear-armed cavalry. He made his own shield wall in front of the horsemen, and I made another shield wall on the left of Peredur’s line, and once we were in the proper array we shouted insults at each other. Leofric was going down our line, whispering to the men, and I sent Cenwulf and two others to the rear with their own orders, and just then Asser ran across to us.

      ‘Attack,’ the monk demanded, pointing at Svein.

      ‘When we’re ready,’ I said, for Leofric had not yet given every man his orders.

      ‘Attack now!’ Asser spat at me, and I almost gutted the bastard on the spot and would have saved myself a good deal of future trouble if I had, but I kept my patience and Asser went back to Peredur where he began praying, both hands held high in the air, demanding that God send fire from heaven to consume the pagans.

      ‘You trust Svein?’ Leofric had come back to my side.

      ‘I trust Svein,’ I said. Why? Only because he was a Dane and I liked the Danes. These days, of course, we are all agreed that they are the spawn of Satan, untrustworthy pagans, savages, and anything else we care to call them, but in truth the Danes are warriors and they like other warriors, and though it is true that Svein might have persuaded me to attack Peredur so that he could then attack us, I did not believe it. Besides, there was something I wanted in Peredur’s hall and, to get her, I needed to change sides.

      ‘Fyrdraca!’ I shouted, and that was our signal, and we swung our shield wall around to the right and went at it.

      It was, of course, an easy slaughter. Peredur’s men had no belly for a fight. They had been hoping that we would take the brunt of the Danish assault and that they could then scavenge for plunder among Svein’s wounded, but instead we turned on them, attacked them, and cut them down, and Svein came on their right, and Peredur’s men fled. That was when Svein’s horsemen kicked back their heels, levelled their spears and charged.

      It was not a fight, it was a massacre. Two of Peredur’s men put up some resistance, but Leofric swatted their spears aside with his axe and they died screaming, and Peredur went down to my sword, and he put up no fight at all, but seemed resigned to his death that I gave him quickly enough. Cenwulf and his two companions did what I had ordered them to do, which was to intercept the chest of silver, and we rallied around them as Svein’s riders chased down the fugitives. The only man to escape was Asser, the monk, which he managed by running north instead of west. Svein’s horsemen were ranging down the hill, spearing Peredur’s men in the backs, and Asser saw that only death lay that way and so, with surprising quickness, he changed direction and sprinted past my men, his skirts clutched up about his knees, and I shouted at the men on the right of the line to kill the bastard, but they simply looked at me and let him go. ‘I said kill him!’ I snarled.

      ‘He’s a monk!’ One of them answered. ‘You want me to go to hell?’

      I watched Asser run slantwise into the valley and, in truth, I did not much care whether he lived or died. I thought Svein’s horsemen would catch him, but perhaps they did not see him. They did catch Father Mardoc and one of them took off the priest’s head with a single swing of his sword which made some of my men cross themselves.

      The horsemen made their killing, but Svein’s other Danes made a shield wall that faced us, and in its centre, beneath the white horse banner, was Svein himself in his boar-mask helmet. His shield had a white horse painted on its boards and his weapon was an axe, the largest war axe I had ever seen. My men shifted nervously. ‘Stand still!’ I snarled at them.

      ‘Up to our necks in it,’ Leofric said quietly.

      Svein was staring at us and I could see the death light in his eyes. He was in a killing mood, and we were Saxons, and there was a knocking sound as his men hefted shields to make the wall, and so I tossed Serpent-Breath into the air. Tossed her high so that the big blade whirled about in the sun, and of course they were all wondering whether I would catch her or whether she would thump onto the grass.

      I caught her, winked at Svein and slid the blade into her scabbard. He laughed and the killing mood passed as he realised he could not afford the casualties he would inevitably take in fighting us. ‘Did you really think I was going to attack you?’ he called across the springy turf.

      ‘I was hoping you would attack me,’ I called back, ‘so I wouldn’t have to split the plunder with you.’

      He dropped the axe and walked towards us, and I walked towards him and we embraced. Men on both sides lowered weapons. ‘Shall we take the bastard’s miserable village?’ Svein asked.

      So we all went back down the hill, past the bodies of Peredur’s men, and there was no one defending the thorn wall about the settlement so it was an easy matter to get inside, and a few men tried to protect their homes, but very few. Most of the folk fled to the beach, but there were not enough boats to take them away, and so Svein’s Danes rounded them up and began sorting them into the useful and the dead. The useful were the young women and those who could be sold as slaves, the dead were the rest.

      I took no part in that. Instead, with all of my men, I went straight to Peredur’s hall. Some Danes, reckoning that was where the silver would be, were also climbing the hill, but I reached the hall first, pushed open the door and saw Iseult waiting there.

      I swear she was expecting me for her face showed no fear and no surprise. She was sitting in the king’s throne, but stood as if welcoming me as I walked up the hall. Then

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