The Saxon Tales Collection, Books 1-4 by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Wulfhere’s men did it. They did not break Osric’s shield wall by fighting it, but by trying to join it. Few of them wanted to fight for the Danes and, now that the battle was joined, they shouted at their countrymen that they were no enemy and wanted to change sides, and the shield wall opened to let them through, and Svein’s men went for the gaps like wildcats. One after the other those gaps widened as sword Danes burst through. They cut Wulfhere’s men down from behind; they prized open Osric’s ranks and spread death like a plague. Svein’s Vikings were warriors among farmers, hawks among pigeons, and all of Alfred’s right wing shattered. Arnulf saved the men of Suth Seaxa by leading them to the rear of our ranks, and they were safe enough there, but Osric’s fyrd was broken, harried, and driven away east and south.

The rain had stopped and a cold damp wind scoured the edge of the downs now. Alfred’s men, reinforced by Arnulf’s four hundred and a dozen or so of Osric’s fugitives, stood alone as the Wiltunscir fyrd retreated. They were being driven away from us, and Svein and his horsemen were panicking them. The fyrd had been eight hundred strong, ranked firm, and now they were shattered into small groups that huddled together for protection and tried to fend off the galloping horsemen who thrust with their long spears. Bodies lay all across the turf. Some of Osric’s men were wounded and crawled south as if there might be safety where the women and horses were gathered around a mounded grave of the old folk, but the horsemen turned and speared them, and the unmounted Danes were making new shield walls to attack the fugitives. We could do nothing to help, for we were still fighting Guthrum’s men who had come from the fort and, though we were winning that fight, we could not turn our backs on the enemy. So we thrust and hacked and pushed, and slowly they went backward, and then they realized that they were dying man by man, and I heard the Danish shouts to go back to the fort, and we let them go. They retreated from us, walking backward, and when they saw we would not follow, they turned and ran to the green walls. They left a tide line of corpses, sixty or seventy Danes on the turf, and we had lost no more than twenty men. I took a silver chain off one corpse, two arm rings from another, and a fine bone-handled knife with a knob of amber in its hilt from a third.

“Back!” Alfred called.

It was not till we retreated to where we had begun the fight that I realized the disaster on our right. We had been the center of Alfred’s army, but now we were its right wing, and what had been our strong right flank was splintered chaos. Many of Osric’s men had retreated to where the women

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