The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell Page B

the horsemen must be stopped by the sheer crush of bodies, and he persuaded Ealdorman Æthelnoth of Sumorsæte to dismount a hundred of his men and form a shield wall. That wall advanced steadily and, as horses were wounded or killed, more Saxons joined that wall, which went forward like a row of harvesters wielding sickles. Hundreds of Danes died. On that southern bank, under the high sun, there was a massacre, and the enemy never once managed to organize themselves and so fight back. They died or else they crossed the river or else they were taken captive.
    Yet perhaps half of Harald’s army had crossed the ford, and those men were ready for a fight and, even as the slaughter began behind them, they came to kill us. Harald himself had arrived, a servant bringing a packhorse behind, and Harald came a few steps forward of his swelling shield wall to make certain we saw the ritual with which he scared his enemies. He faced us, huge in cloak and mail, then spread his arms as though crucified, and in his right hand was a massive battle ax with which, after bellowing that we would all be fed to the slime worms of death, he killed the horse. He did it with onestroke of the ax and, while the beast was still twitching in its death throes, he slit open its belly and plunged his unhelmeted head deep into the bloody entrails. My men watched in silence. Harald, ignoring the spasms of the hooves, held his head deep in the horse’s belly, then stood and turned to show a blood-masked face and blood-soaked hair and a thick beard dripping with blood. Harald Bloodhair was ready for battle. “Thor!” he shouted, lifting his face and ax to the sky, “Thor!” He pointed the ax toward us. “Now we kill you all!” he screamed. A servant brought him his great ax-painted shield.
    I am not certain Harald knew what happened on the river’s farther bank, that was hidden from him by the houses in Fearnhamme. He must have known that Saxons were attacking his rear, indeed he would have heard reports of fighting all morning because, as Steapa was to tell me, the pursuing Saxons were forever meeting Danish stragglers on the road from Æscengum, but Harald’s attention was fixed on Fearnhamme’s hill where, he believed, Alfred was trapped. He could lose the battle on the river’s southern bank and still win a kingdom on the northern bank. And so he led his men forward.
    I had planned to let the Danes attack us, and to rely on the ancient earthwork to give us added protection, but as Harald’s line advanced with a great bellow of rage, I saw they were vulnerable. Harald might have been unaware of the disaster his men were suffering across the river, but many of his Danes were turning, trying to see what happened there, and men scared of an attack on their rear will not fight with full vigor. We had to attack them. I sheathed Serpent-Breath and drew Wasp-Sting, my short-sword. “Swine head!” I shouted, “swine head!”
    My men knew what I wanted. They had rehearsed it hundreds of times until they were tired of practicing it, but now those hours of practice paid off as I led the way off the earthen bank and crossed the ditch.
    A swine head was simply a wedge of men, a human spear-point, and it was the fastest way I knew to break a shield wall. I took the lead, though Finan tried to edge me aside. The Danes had slowed,perhaps surprised that we were abandoning the earthwork, or perhaps because at last they understood the trap that closed on them. There was only one way out of that trap, and that was to destroy us. Harald knew it and bellowed at his men to charge uphill. I was shouting at my men to charge downhill. That fight started so fast. I was taking the swine head down the shallow slope and he was urging his men up, but the Danes were confused, suddenly frightened, and his wall frayed before we even reached it. Some men obeyed Harald, others hung back, and so the line bent, though at the center, where Harald’s banner of the wolf-skull and