FIFTEEN

'FALL BACK, MY LORD, fall back.' Strykar was still pleading with Harald. 'Let us make a fighting retreat. It is best we make our stand near the ships when the rest of our men have joined us.'
'No!' retorted Harald sharply. 'We make our stand here. Let the rest of our forces come to join us. Send riders to summon them. They must come at once or they will miss our victory.'
The look on Styrkar's face made it clear that he disagreed profoundly with Harald's decision, but he was in no position to argue with his king. The marshal beckoned to three of our few horsemen.
'Ride to the ships. Spread out so that at least one of you gets through,' he ordered. 'Ask Prince Olaf to send up the rest of the army and not lose a moment, or they may arrive too late. They must get here before dusk.'
The marshal glanced up at the sky. The sun was past its zenith, still blazing from a clear blue sky. I saw the marshal's lips move, and I wondered to which God he was praying. He lacked Harald's utter conviction that our ill-prepared army would survive the English attack, and when I had watched the three riders kick their mounts into a gallop and ride back along the trail we had taken, I took a moment to count how many horsemen still remained. There were fewer than fifty.
Harald, by contrast, was behaving with as much swagger and self-assurance as if he, not the king of England, held the advantage. He cut a regal figure in a cloak of richly ornamented blue brocade and his customary browband of scarlet silk to hold back his shaggy blond hair. To complete the dashing effect he was mounted on a glossy black stallion with a white blaze, a trophy from his victory three days earlier and the only blood horse in our company. But he was not dressed in Emma, his famous full-length shirt of chain mail said to be impenetrable by any weapon. Emma, like so much of our body armour, had been left behind with the fleet.
'Form shield wall!' bellowed Strykar, and the cry was taken up and passed along by the veterans in our army. Our men began to shuffle into position, shoulder to shoulder, the rims of their round, leather-covered shields overlapping. 'Extend the line!'
The marshal rode out a little way in front of our troops and turned to face the men. He was mounted on a tough little Norwegian pony, and was gesturing to indicate that the shield wall should be as wide as possible.
Suddenly Harald shouted, 'Wait!' He rode forward and, turning to face his men, he called out, 'In honour of this battle, I have composed a poem.' Then, to my mingled astonishment and pride, he proceeded to declaim:
'We go forward into battle without armour against blue blades. Helmets glitter.
My coat of mail
And all our armour
Are at the ships.'
I found a lump was gathering in my throat. Not for a generation had any war leader in the northern lands been sufficiently skilled in the old traditions to be able to compose a paean on the eve of a battle. Harald was honouring a custom that had almost passed from use. It was a mark of his deep-felt longing to restore the glory of the Norse kingdoms, and for all his vanity and arrogance I loved him for it. Yet even as I felt the rug of admiration and remembered the oath which I had sworn to serve him, I knew in my heart that it was all a show. Harald was seeking to encourage his men, but the harsh truth would reveal itself when the arrows began to fly and the two armies locked in battle.
Harald was not finished. His horse was giving trouble, fidgeting and turning from side to side, so that there was a short pause while Harald brought his mount back under control. Then he shouted at his troops, 'That was a poor verse for such a momentous occasion! This one is better. Remember it as you fight!' and he proceeded to declaim:
"We never kneel in battle
Before the storm of weapons and crouch behind our shields;
So the noble lady told me.
She told me once to carry my head
always high in battle
where swords seek
to shatter the skulls
of doomed warriors.'
When his words died away, a strange silence fell. Some of our men in the army, the older ones at least, had grasped the sombre import of Harald's words. From them came a low murmur. Others, I am sure, were not close enough to hear the king, while still more would have lacked the knowledge to understand the significance of his verse. Harald was warning us that we could be facing our final battle. For a moment there was a brooding lull, and from it emerged an eerie sound. A harp was being played somewhere in our ranks. Whoever had brought the instrument was a mystery. Probably it was one of those small light harps favoured by the northern English, and the harpist had picked it up on the earlier battlefield and brought it with him instead of his weapons. Whatever the reason, the first few clear notes hung in the air as a doleful lament. It was as if the harpist was playing a sorrowful tribute to our coming downfall.
As I and the army listened to the melancholy tune, it seemed as if the entire host was holding its collective breath. Not a sound came from the English lines. They too must have been listening. Then, cutting across the tune, came another sound, equally unexpected. In that hot, airless afternoon a single rooster crowed. The creature must have escaped from the toppled cart at the bridge, and now, for some unknown reason, it chose to let loose its raucous call, jarring across the plangent notes of the harp.
Once again Styrkar was bellowing at the top of his voice. 'Extend the line, extend the line. Wings fall back, form circle.' Slowly the flanks of our shield wall curved, the outer men stepping backward, glancing over their shoulders so that they did not trip, until our entire line had re-formed into a ring. In the first and second ranks stood those men who wore some of their armour, and all of our veterans. Behind them, within the circle, waited our archers and hundreds of our troops who were virtually defenceless. They wore no body armour, and some even lacked helmets. They clutched only their swords and daggers, and wore shirts and leggings, nothing more. When it came to a fight, they would be fatally vulnerable.
Harald and Strykar rode the perimeter, checking the shield wall. 'You are facing cavalry,' Styrkar called out. 'So remember, front rank direct the points of your spears at the riders. Second rank, plant the butts of your spears in the ground and hold them steady, aim lower, at the horses themselves. Above all, keep the line intact. Do not let the English break through. Should that happen, leave the king himself and our own horsemen to deal with the intruders. We will be waiting inside the ring behind you, ready to ride to any point where there is need.'
Harald and the marshal made the full circuit of our shield wall, and as they turned and began to ride in, preparing to take up their places, Harald's black stallion put its foot into a hole and stumbled. Harald lost his balance. He clutched at the animal's mane to steady himself, but too late. He lurched forward over the stallion's shoulder and tumbled to the ground while the startled horse danced away. Harald kept hold of the reins and pulled the stallion back to him, but the harm was done. The watching troops let out a groan, seeing the poor omen. But Harald laughed it off as he rose and dusted himself off. 'No matter,' he shouted, 'a fall means that fortune is on its way,' and rode into the shield ring. But many of his troops looked uneasy and afraid.
On my humble pack pony I found myself with the mounted force in the centre of our defensive circle. I glanced around nervously, looking for someone to lend me a weapon to carry. But everyone was preoccupied, watching the enemy. Harald, Tostig, Styrkar and two squadrons of perhaps twenty riders each were all we had to plug any breaches in the shield wall; all the rest of our army was on foot. By contrast the entire first wave of the English army now advancing against us was composed of mounted cavalry - huscarls armed with long spears and lances.
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