The Pale Horseman. Bernard Cornwell

of Danish Vikings, and now he discovered we were West Saxons and he was not happy, so I drew Serpent-Breath and banged her blade against my limewood shield. ‘You want to fight this battle or not?’ I asked him through Asser.

      Peredur decided he wanted to fight, or rather he wanted us to fight the battle for him, and so we slogged on up the hill which had a couple of false crests so it was well into the afternoon before we emerged onto the long, shallow summit and could see Dreyndynas’s green turf walls on the skyline. A banner flew there. It was a triangle of cloth, supported on its pole by a small cross-staff, and the banner showed a white horse prancing on a green field.

      I stopped then. Peredur’s banner was a wolf’s tail hung from a pole, I carried none, though, like most Saxons, mine would have been a rectangular flag. I only knew one people who flew triangular banners and I turned on Brother Asser as he sweated up the hill. ‘They’re Danes,’ I accused him.

      ‘So?’ he demanded. ‘I thought you were a Dane, and all the world knows the Danes will fight anyone for silver, even other Danes. But are you frightened of them, Saxon?’

      ‘Your mother didn’t give birth to you,’ I told him, ‘but farted you out of her shrivelled arsehole.’

      ‘Frightened or not,’ Asser said, ‘you’ve taken Peredur’s silver, so you must fight them now.’

      ‘Say one more word, monk,’ I said, ‘and I’ll cut off your scrawny balls.’ I was gazing uphill, trying to estimate numbers. Everything had changed since I had seen the white horse banner because instead of fighting against half-armed British savages we would have to take on a crew of lethal Danes, but if I was surprised by that, then the Danes were equally surprised to see us. They were crowding Dreyndynas’s wall, which was made of earth fronted with a ditch and topped with a thorn fence. It would be a hard wall to attack, I thought, especially if it was defended by Danes. I counted over forty men on the skyline and knew there would be others I could not see, and the numbers alone told me this assault would fail. We could attack, and we might well get as far as the thorn palisade, but I doubted we could hack our way through, and the Danes would kill a score of us as we tried, and we would be lucky to retreat down the hill without greater loss.

      ‘We’re in a cesspit,’ Leofric said to me.

      ‘Up to our necks.’

      ‘So what do we do? Turn on them and take the money?’

      I did not answer because the Danes had dragged a section of the thorn fence aside and three of them now jumped down from the ramparts and strolled towards us. They wanted to talk.

      ‘Who the hell is that?’ Leofric asked.

      He was staring at the Danish leader. He was a huge man, big as Steapa Snotor, and dressed in a mail coat that had been polished with sand until it shone. His helmet, as highly polished as his mail, had a face-plate modelled as a boar’s mask with a squat, broad snout, and from the helmet’s crown there flew a white horsetail. He wore arm rings over his mail, rings of silver and gold that proclaimed him to be a warrior chief, a sword-Dane, a lord of war. He walked the hillside as if he owned it, and in truth, he did own it because he possessed the fort.

      Asser hurried to meet the Danes, going with Peredur and two of his courtiers. I went after them and found Asser trying to convert the Danes. He told them that God had brought us and we would slaughter them all and their best course was to surrender now and yield their heathen souls to God. ‘We shall baptise you,’ Asser said, ‘and there will be much rejoicing in heaven.’

      The Danish leader slowly pulled off his helmet and his face was almost as frightening as the boar-snouted mask. It was a broad face, hardened by sun and wind, with the blank, expressionless eyes of a killer. He was around thirty years old, had a tightly-cropped beard and a scar running from the corner of his left eye down across his cheek. He gave the helmet to one of his men and, without saying a word, hauled up the skirt of his mail coat and began pissing on Asser’s robe. The monk leaped back.

      The Dane, still pissing, looked at me. ‘Who are you?’

      ‘Uhtred Ragnarson. And you?’

      ‘Svein of the White Horse,’ he said it defiantly, as though I would know his reputation, and for a heartbeat I said nothing. Was this the same Svein who was said to be gathering troops in Wales? Then what was he doing here?

      ‘You’re Svein of Ireland?’ I asked.

      ‘Svein of Denmark,’ he said. He let the mail coat drop and glared at Asser who was threatening the Danes with heaven’s vengeance. ‘If you want to live,’ he told Asser, ‘shut your filthy mouth.’ Asser shut his mouth. ‘Ragnarson,’ Svein looked back to me. ‘Earl Ragnar? Ragnar Ravnson? The Ragnar who served Ivar?’

      ‘The same,’ I said.

      ‘Then you are the Saxon son?’

      ‘I am. And you?’ I asked. ‘You’re the Svein who has brought men from Ireland?’

      ‘I have brought men from Ireland,’ he admitted.

      ‘And gather forces in Wales?’

      ‘I do what I do,’ he said vaguely. He looked at my men, judging how well they would fight, then he looked me up and down, noting my mail and helmet, and noting especially my arm rings, and when the inspection was done he jerked his head to indicate that he and I should walk away a few paces and talk privately.

      Asser objected, saying anything that was spoken should be heard by all, but I ignored him and followed Svein uphill. ‘You can’t take this fort,’ Svein told me.

      ‘True.’

      ‘So what do you do?’

      ‘Go back to Peredur’s settlement, of course.’

      He nodded. ‘And if I attack the settlement?’

      ‘You’ll take it,’ I said, ‘but you’ll lose men. Maybe a dozen?’

      ‘Which will mean a dozen fewer oarsmen,’ he said, thinking, and then he looked past Peredur to where two men carried the box. ‘Is that your battle price?’

      ‘It is.’

      ‘Split it?’ he suggested.

      I hesitated a heartbeat. ‘And we’ll split what’s in the town?’ I asked.

      ‘Agreed,’ he said, then looked at Asser who was hissing urgently at Peredur. ‘He knows what we’re doing,’ he said grimly, ‘so a necessary deception is about to happen.’ I was still trying to understand what he meant when he struck me in the face. He struck hard, and my hand went to Serpent-Breath and his two men ran to him, swords in hand.

      ‘I’ll come out of the fort and join you,’ Svein said to me softly. Then, louder, ‘You bastard piece of goat-dropping.’

      I spat at him as his two men pretended to drag him away, then I stalked back to Asser. ‘We kill them all,’ I said savagely. ‘We kill them all!’

      ‘What did he say to you?’ Asser asked. He had feared, rightly as it happened, that Svein and I had made our own alliance, but Svein’s quick display had put doubts in the monk’s mind, and I fed the doubts by raging like a madman, screaming at the retreating Svein that I would send his miserable soul to Hel who was the goddess of the dead. ‘Are you going to fight?’ Asser demanded.

      ‘Of course we’re going to fight!’ I shouted at him, then I crossed to Leofric. ‘We’re on the same side as the Danes,’ I told him quietly. ‘We kill these Britons, capture their settlement and split everything with the Danes. Tell the men, but tell them quietly.’

      Svein, true to his word, brought his men out of Dreyndynas. That should have warned Asser and Peredur of treachery, for no sensible man would abandon a fine defensive position like a thorn-topped earth wall to fight a battle on open ground, but they put it down to Danish arrogance. They assumed Svein believed he could destroy us all in open battle, and he made that assumption more likely by parading a score of his men