Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [140]
I hissed at four of my men to join me in the ditch. They stood there, making a line across it, and those four guided the rest down the treacherously slippery bank, through the water and up the farther side. My boots squelched as I climbed the far bank. I crouched there as my men came over the ditch and as they spread into a battle line. ‘Shield wall!’ I hissed the order at my vanguard of Danes and Frisians. ‘Osferth?’
‘Lord?’
‘You know what to do.’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Then do it.’
I had given Osferth almost half my men and careful instructions. He hesitated. ‘I’ve prayed for you, lord,’ he said.
‘Then let’s hope the damned prayers work,’ I whispered, and touched the hammer around my neck.
My men were forming the shield wall. Any moment, I thought, someone would see us, and the enemy, because for the moment Sigelf’s men were our enemy, would make their own shield wall and would outnumber us by four or five to one, but victory does not come to men who listen to their fears. My shield touched Rollo’s and I drew Serpent-Breath. Her long blade sighed through the scabbard’s throat. ‘Sigurd!’ I hissed. Then louder, ‘Forward!’
We charged. We bellowed our enemy’s name as we ran, ‘Sigurd!’ we shouted, ‘Sigurd! Sigurd!’
‘And kill!’ I shouted in Danish. ‘Kill!’
We killed. We were killing Saxons, men of Wessex, though this night they had been betrayed by their ealdorman into serving the Danes, yet we killed them and ever since there have been rumours of what we did that night. I deny them, of course, but few believe my denials. At first the killing was easy. The Centishmen were half asleep, off-guard, their sentries looking towards the south instead of guarding against an attack from the north, and we sliced and hacked our way deep into their encampment. ‘Sigurd!’ I shouted, and stabbed Serpent-Breath into a waking man, then kicked him into the campfire and heard him scream as I backswung the blade against a youngster, and we were not taking the time to finish off the men we attacked, but leaving that to the rank behind us. We crippled the men of Cent, wounded them, downed them, and the men who followed stabbed down with sword or spear and I heard men shouting for mercy, shouting that they were on our side, and I bellowed our war cry even louder. ‘Sigurd! Sigurd!’ That first charge took us a third of the way into their encampment. Men fled from us. I heard a man bellowing to form a shield wall, but panic had spread through Sigelf’s men. I watched a man trying to find his own shield from a pile, desperately tugging at the arm straps and watching us with terrified eyes. He abandoned the shields and ran. A spear arced through the firelight, vanishing over my shoulder. Our shield wall had lost its cohesion, but it did not need to be tight because the enemy was scattering, though it would only be moments before they realised how ridiculously small my attacking force was, but then the gods proved they were on our side because Ealdorman Sigelf himself galloped towards us on horseback. ‘We’re with you!’ he shouted. ‘For God’s sake, you damned fools, we’re with you!’
My helmet cheek-pieces were closed. We carried no banner, because that had gone with Osferth. Sigelf had no idea who I was, though he undoubtedly saw the richness of my helmet and the finely-forged links of my mud-spattered mail. I held up my sword, checking my men.
Sigelf was shaking with fury. ‘You damned fools,’ he snarled, ‘who are you?’
‘You’re on our side?’ I asked.
‘We’re allied with Jarl Sigurd, you damned fool, and I’ll have your head for this!’
I smiled, though he did not see my smile behind the glinting steel of the cheek-pieces. ‘Lord,’ I said humbly, then backswung Serpent-Breath into his horse’s mouth and the beast reared up, screaming,