The Last Kingdom (Extract)

I do not know if he told my father of his suspicions, but if he did then I have no doubt my father dismissed them. He did not trust Beocca’s opinions on war. The priest’s usefulness was in encouraging God to smite the Danes and that was all and, to be fair, Beocca did pray mightily and long that God would give us the victory.

And the day after the wall collapsed we gave God his chance to fulfil Beocca’s prayers.

We attacked.

* * *

I do not know if every man who assaulted Eoferwic was drunk, but they would have been had there been enough mead, ale and birch wine to go round. The drinking had gone on much of the night and I woke to find men vomiting in the dawn. Those few who, like my father, possessed mail shirts pulled them on. Most were armoured in leather, while some men had no protection other than their coats. Weapons were sharpened on whetstones. The priests walked round the camp scattering blessings, while men swore oaths of brotherhood and loyalty. Some banded together and promised to share their plunder equally, a few looked pale and more than a handful sneaked away through the dykes that crossed the flat, damp landscape.

A score of men were ordered to stay at the camp and guard the women and horses, though Father Beocca and I were both ordered to mount. “You’ll stay on horseback,” my father told me, “and you’ll stay with him,” he added to the priest.

“Of course, my lord,” Beocca said.

“If anything happens,” my father was deliberately vague, “then ride to Bebbanburg, shut the gate and wait there.”

“God is on our side,” Beocca said.

My father looked a great warrior, which indeed he was, though he claimed to be getting too old for fighting. His greying beard jutted over his mail coat, above which he had hung a crucifix carved from ox bone that had been a gift from Gytha. His sword belt was leather studded with silver, while his great sword, Bone-Breaker, was sheathed in leather banded with gilt-bronze strappings. His boots had iron plates on either side of the ankles, reminding me of his advice about the shield wall, while his helmet was polished so that it shone, and its face piece, with its eyeholes and snarling mouth, was inlaid with silver. His round shield was made of limewood, had a heavy iron boss, was covered in leather and painted with the wolf’s head. Ealdorman Uhtred was going to war.

The horns summoned the army. There was little order in the array. There had been arguments about who should be on the right or left, but Beocca told me the argument had been settled when the bishop cast dice, and King Osbert was now on the right, Ella on the left and my father in the centre, and those three chieftains’ banners were advanced as the horns called. The men assembled under the banners. My father’s household troops, his best warriors, were at the front, and behind them were the bands of the thegns. Thegns were important men, holders of great lands, some of them with their own fortresses, and they were the men who shared my father’s platform in the feasting hall, and men who had to be watched in case their ambitions made them try to take his place, but now they loyally gathered behind him, and the ceorls, free men of the lowest rank, assembled with them. Men fought in family groups, or with friends. There were plenty of boys with the army, though I was the only one on horseback and the only one with a sword and helmet.

I could see a scatter of Danes behind the unbroken palisades either side of the gap where their wall had fallen down, but most of their army filled that gap, making a shield barrier on top of the earthen wall, and it was a high earthen wall, at least ten or twelve feet high, and steep, so it would be a hard climb into the face of the waiting killers, but I was confident we would win. I was ten years old, almost eleven.

The Danes were shouting at us, but we were too far away to hear their insults. Their shields, round like ours, were painted yellow, black, brown and blue. Our men began beating weapons on their shields and that was a fearsome sound, the first time I ever heard an army making that war music; the clashing of ash spear shafts and iron sword blades on shield-wood.

“It is a terrible thing,” Beocca said to me. “War, it is an awful thing.”

I said nothing. I thought it was glorious and wonderful.

“The shield-wall is where men die,” Beocca said, and he kissed the wooden cross that hung about his neck. “The gates of heaven and hell will be jostling with souls before this day is done,” he went on gloomily.

“Aren’t the dead carried to a feasting hall?” I asked.

He looked at me very strangely, then appeared shocked. “Where did you hear that?”

“At Bebbanburg,” I said, sensible enough not to admit that it was Ealdwulf the smith who told me those tales as I watched him beating rods of iron into sword blades.

“That is what heathens believe,” Beocca said sternly. “They believe dead warriors are carried to Woden’s corpse-hall to feast until the world’s ending, but it is a grievously wrong belief. It is an error! But the Danes are always in error. They bow down to idols, they deny the true god, they are wrong.”

“But a man must die with a sword in his hand?” I insisted.

“I can see we must teach you a proper catechism when this is done,” the priest said sternly.

I said nothing else. I was watching, trying to fix every detail of that day in my memory. The sky was summer blue, with just a few clouds off in the west, and the sunlight reflected from our army’s spear-points like glints of light flickering on the summer sea. Cowslips dotted the meadow where the army assembled, and a cuckoo called from the woods behind us where a crowd of our women were watching the army. There were swans on the river that was placid for there was little wind. The smoke from the cooking fires inside Eoferwic rose almost straight into the air, and that sight reminded me that there would be a feast in the city that night, a feast of roasted pork or whatever else we found in the enemy’s stores. Some of our men, those in the foremost ranks, were darting forward to shout at the enemy, or else dare him to come and do private battle between the lines, one man on one man, but none of the Danes broke rank. They just stared, waited, their spears a hedge, their shields a wall, and then our horns blew again and the shouting and the shield-banging faded as our army lurched forward.

It went raggedly. Later, much later, I was to understand the reluctance of men to launch themselves against a shield wall, let alone a shield wall held at the top of a steep earthen bank, but on that day I was just impatient for our army to hurry forward and break the impudent Danes and Beocca had to restrain me, catching hold of my bridle to stop me riding into the rearmost ranks. “We shall wait until they break through,” he said.

“I want to kill a Dane,” I protested.

“Don’t be stupid, Uhtred,” Beocca said waspishly. “You try and kill a Dane,” he went on, “and your father will have no sons. You are his only child now, and it is your duty to live.”

So I did my duty and I hung back, and I watched as, so slowly, our army found its courage and advanced towards the city. The river was on our left, the empty encampment behind our right, and the inviting gap in the city wall was to our front and there the Danes were waiting silently, their shields overlapping.

“The bravest will go first,” Beocca said to me, “and your father will be one of them. They will make a wedge, what the Latin authors call a porcinum capet. You know what that means?”

“No.” Nor did I care.

“A swine’s head. Like the tusk of a boar. The bravest will go first and, if they break through, the others will follow.”

Beocca was right. Three wedges formed in front of our lines, one each from the household troops of Osbert, Ella and my father. The men stood close together, their shields overlapping like the Danish shields, while the rearward ranks of each wedge held their shields high like a roof, and then, when they were ready, the men in the three wedges gave a great cheer and started forward. They did not run. I had expected them to run, but men cannot keep the wedge tight if they run. The wedge is war in slow time, slow enough for the men inside the wedge to wonder how strong the enemy is and to fear that the rest of the army will not follow, but they did. The three wedges had not gone more than twenty paces before the remaining mass of men moved forward.

“I want to be closer,” I said.

“You will wait,” Beocca said.

I could hear the shouts now, shouts of defiance and shouts to give a man courage, and then the archers on the city walls loosed their bows and I saw the glitter of the feathers as the arrows slashed down towards the wedges, and a moment later the throwing spears came, arching over the Danish line to fall on the upheld shields. Amazingly, at least to me, it seemed that none of our men was struck, though I could see their shields were stuck with arrows and spears like hedgehog spines, and still the three wedges advanced, and now our own bowmen were shooting at the Danes, and a handful of our men broke from the ranks behind the wedges to hurl their own spears at the enemy shield wall.

“Not long now,” Beocca said nervously. He made the sign of the cross. He was praying silently and his crippled left hand was twitching.

I was watching my father’s wedge, the central wedge, the one just in front of the wolf’s head banner, and I saw the closely touching shields vanish into the ditch that lay in front of the earthen wall and I knew my father was perilously close to death and I urged him to win, to kill, to give the name Uhtred of Bebbanburg even more renown, and then I saw the shield-wedge emerge from the ditch and, like a monstrous beast, crawl up the face of the wall.

“The advantage they have,” Beocca said in the patient voice he used for teaching, “is that the enemy’s feet are easy targets when you come from below.” I think he was trying to reassure himself, but I believed him anyway, and it must have been true for my father’s formation, first up the wall, did not seem to be checked when they met the enemy’s shield wall. I could see nothing now except the flash of blades rising and falling, and I could hear that sound, the real music of battle, the chop of iron on wood, iron on iron, yet the wedge was still moving. Like a boar’s razor-sharp tusk it had pierced the Danish shield wall and was moving forward, and though the Danes wrapped around the wedge, it seemed our men were winning for they pressed forward across the earthen bank, and the soldiers behind must have sensed that Ealdorman Uhtred had brought them victory for they suddenly cheered and surged to help the beleaguered wedge.

“God be praised,” Beocca said, for the Danes were fleeing. One moment they had formed a thick shield wall, bristling with weapons, and now they were vanishing into the city and our army, with the relief of men whose lives have been spared, charged after them.

“Slowly, now,” Beocca said, walking his horse forward and leading mine by the bridle.

The Danes had gone. Instead the earthen wall was black with our men who were scrambling through the gap in the city’s ramparts, then down the bank’s farther side into the streets and alleyways beyond. The three flags, my father’s wolf head, Ella’s war axe and Osbert’s cross, were inside Eoferwic. I could hear men cheering and I kicked my horse, forcing her out of Beocca’s grasp. “Come back!” he shouted, but though he followed me he did not try to drag me away. We had won, God had given us victory and I wanted to be close enough to smell the slaughter.

Neither of us could get into the city because the gap in the palisade was choked with our men, but I kicked the horse again and she bulled her way into the press. Some men protested at what I was doing, then they saw the gilt-bronze circle on my helmet and knew I was nobly born and so they tried to help me through, while Beocca, stranded at the back of the crowd, shouted that I should not get too far ahead of him. “Catch up!” I called back to him.

Then he shouted again, but this time his voice was frantic, terrified, and I turned to see Danes streaming across the field where our army had advanced. It was a horde of Danes who must have sallied from one of the city’s gates to cut off our retreat, and they must have known we would retreat, because it seemed they could build walls after all, and had built them across the streets inside the city, then feigned flight from the ramparts to draw us in and now they sprang the trap. Some of the Danes were mounted, most were on foot, and Beocca panicked. I do not blame him. The Danes like killing Christian priests and Beocca must have seen death, did not desire martyrdom, and so he turned his horse and kicked it hard and it galloped away beside the river and the Danes, not caring about the fate of one man where so many were trapped, let him go.

It is a truth that in most armies the timid men and those with the feeblest weapons are at the back. The brave go to the front, the weak seek the rear, so if you can get to the back of an enemy army you will have a massacre.

I am an old man now and it has been my fate to see panic flicker through many armies. That panic is worse than the terror of sheep penned in a cleft and being assaulted by wolves, more frantic than the writhing of salmon caught in a net and dragged to the air. The sound of it must tear the heavens apart, but to the Danes, that day, it was the sweet sound of victory and to us it was death.

I tried to escape. God knows I panicked too. I had seen Beocca racing away beside the riverside willows and I managed to turn the mare, but then one of our own men snatched at me, presumably wanting my horse, and I had the wit to draw my short sword and hack blindly at him as I kicked back my heels, but all I achieved was to ride out of the panicked mass into the path of the Danes, and all around me men were screaming and the Danish axes and swords were chopping and swinging. The grim work, the blood feast, the song of the blade, they call it, and perhaps I was saved for a moment because I was the only one in our army who was on horseback and a score of the Danes were also mounted and perhaps they mistook me for one of their own, but then one of those Danes called to me in a language I did not speak and I looked at him and saw his long hair, unhelmeted, his long fair hair and his silver-coloured mail and the wide grin on his wild face and I recognised him as the man who had killed my brother and, like the fool I was, I screamed at him. A standard bearer was just behind the long-haired Dane, flaunting an eagle’s wing on a long pole. Tears were blurring my sight, and perhaps the battle madness came onto me because, despite my panic, I rode at the long-haired Dane and struck at him with my small sword, and his sword parried mine, and my feeble blade bent like a herring’s spine. It just bent and he drew back his own sword for the killing stroke, saw my pathetic bent blade and began to laugh. I was pissing myself, he was laughing, and I beat at him again with the useless sword and still he laughed, and then he leaned over, plucked the weapon from my hand and threw it away. He picked me up then. I was screaming and hitting at him, but he thought it all so very funny, and he draped me belly down on the saddle in front of him and then he spurred into the chaos to continue the killing.

And that was how I met Ragnar, Ragnar the Fearless, my brother’s killer and the man whose head was supposed to grace a pole on Bebbanburg’s ramparts, Earl Ragnar.