Бернард Корнуэлл: War Lord

That first charge had been stopped and the Scottish front rank had suffered grievously, most of them now a blood-soaked barrier to the men behind, and those men were content to wait rather than stumble over the dead and dying and so come to my unbroken shield wall. They shouted insults and beat blades against shields, but few tried to assault us, and those few retreated when spears reached for them. I saw Domnall, his face furious, dragging men to make a new front rank, and then a hand suddenly grabbed the collar of my mail coat and hauled me backwards. It was Finan. ‘You old fool,’ he growled as he pulled me clear of the last rank, ‘you want to die?’

‘They’re beaten,’ I said.

‘They’re Scots, they’re never beaten till they’re dead. They’ll come again. The bastards always come again. Let the youngsters deal with them.’ He had dragged me to the back of the shield wall where arrows were still falling, but to little effect because the archers behind the enemy shield wall were shooting long to avoid their own men. I looked left to see that Æthelstan’s shield wall was holding firm all along the line, though Anlaf’s right wing, which we suspected was his main attack, still hung back. ‘Where’s Æthelstan?’ I asked. I could see his riderless horse with its distinctive saddle cloth, but there was no sign of the king.

‘He’s a fool like you,’ Finan said, ‘he went into the Mercian wall.’

‘He’ll live,’ I said, ‘he’s got a bodyguard, and he’s good.’ I stooped, tore out a handful of coarse grass and used it to clean Wasp-Sting’s blade. I saw one of my archers dipping his arrowhead in a cow pat, then he stood, notched the arrow and sent it over our shield wall. ‘Save your arrows,’ I told him, ‘till the bastards come again.’

‘They’re not very eager, are they?’ Finan said, sounding almost disapproving of the enemy.

And it was true. The Scottish troops had made a savage effort to break my shield wall, but had been thwarted by the holes we had dug, then shocked by their own losses. Their best and fiercest warriors had been put in the swine-wedges, now most of those men were corpses and the rest of Constantine’s troops were wary, content to threaten, but in no hurry to try again to break us. My men, heartened by their success, were jeering the enemy, inviting them to come and be killed. I could see Constantine in their rear, mounted on a grey horse, his blue cloak bright. He was watching us, but making no effort to throw his men forward, and I guessed he had wanted to smash through my line and so show Anlaf that his troops could win the battle without the help of the savage Norsemen from Ireland, but that effort had failed and his men had suffered horribly.

But if the Scots were showing caution, so was the rest of Anlaf’s line. They had failed to break my men nor had they pierced the much larger contingent of Mercian troops, and now the enemy was staying out of range of any spear thrust. They were shouting, and occasionally men would move forward, only to retreat when the Mercian troops beat them off. The arrow showers had diminished, and only a few spears were being thrown. The first assault had been as fierce as I expected, but its repulse seemed to have taken the rage from the enemy, and so the battle, scarcely begun, had paused all along the opposing shield walls, and that struck me as strange. The first collision of shield walls is usually the fiercest moment of battle, a sustained savagery of blades and rage as men try to prise open the enemy and carve through his ranks. That opening fight is fierce, as men, keyed up by fear, try to end the battle fast. Then, if that first vicious clash does not break the wall, men do step back to catch their breath and try to work out how best to break the enemy, and they come again. But in this battle the enemy had hit us, failed to break us, and stepped back quickly to wait beyond the reach of our spear lunges. They still threatened, still snarled insults, but they were not eager to make a second assault. Then I saw how men in the enemy army were constantly looking to their right, glancing up the shallow slope to where Anlaf’s fearsome Norsemen still hung back. ‘He’s made a mistake,’ I said.

‘Constantine?’

‘Anlaf. He told his army what he planned, and they don’t want to die.’

‘Who does?’ Finan said drily, but still looked puzzled.

‘All these men,’ I swept my seax to indicate the enemy’s stalled shield wall, ‘know that Anlaf plans to win the battle with the Norsemen on his right. So why die waiting for that attack? They want that attack to panic us and break us, then they’ll fight again. They want his Norsemen to win the battle for them.’

I was certain I was right. The enemy had been told that Anlaf’s fearsome úlfhéðnar , the Norsemen of Dyflin who had won battle after battle, would splinter Æthelstan’s left wing and so destroy our army. Now they waited for that to happen, reluctant to die before the men of Dyflin gave them victory. The heathland was still noisy. Thousands of men were shouting, the great war drum was still thumping, but the real sounds of battle, the screams, the clash of blades on blades, was lacking. Æthelstan had ordered us not to attack, to defend, to stay on our ground and hold the enemy until he broke their wall, and so far his army had done his bidding. There were still some clashes along the length of the shield walls as men summoned the courage to attack and there would be a brief fight, but Æthelstan’s shield wall was holding. If it was to be broken then Anlaf’s own men must do the breaking and the rest of his army was waiting for that ferocious attack, but Anlaf’s wild Norsemen were still a hundred paces from Æthelstan’s left wing. Anlaf was probably holding them back in the hope that Æthelstan would weaken that unengaged wing to strengthen his centre, but that would not happen unless there was a disaster among the Mercian troops. And Anlaf, I thought, must send his úlfhéðnar soon, and when they came the battle would start again.

Then Thorolf decided he could win it.

Egil, like me, was behind his troops, leaving his brother to stand as the shield wall’s leader. They had broken one of the swine-wedges, leaving a heap of bloodied corpses in their front, and now the Scots who opposed them were content to shout insults, but were reluctant to add their bodies to the corpse pile. Their shield wall had shrunk, not just from the men who had died in their first screaming assault, but because all shield walls have a tendency to move to their right. Men close with the enemy and, as the axes, swords and spears try to find gaps between the shields, men instinctively shuffle to their right to gain the protection of their neighbour’s shield. The Scots had done that, opening a small gap at the very end of their line, a gap between the shields and the stream’s deep gully. It was only two or three paces wide, but Thorolf was tempted by it. He had defeated the best that Constantine could hurl against him, now he saw a chance to turn the enemy’s flank. If he could lead men through the gap, turn on Constantine’s flank and so widen the gap, we could get behind the Scottish shield wall, panic it, and start a collapse that would spread up the enemy’s line.

Thorolf did not ask Egil, nor me, he just moved some of his best men to the right of the line, then stalked in front of the shield wall, taunting the Scots, daring any of them to come and fight him. None did. He was a daunting man, tall and broad-shouldered, with a heavy-browed face beneath his shining helmet that was crowned with an eagle’s wing. He carried a shield with his family’s eagle emblem, and in his right hand was his favourite weapon, a heavy, long-hafted war axe that he called Blood-Drinker. He wore gold at his neck, his thick forearms were bright with arm rings, he looked what he was, a Norse warrior of renown.