Haraldr studied the rapidly moving vanguard. Fast cavalry, thousands of them. That was why there was so much dust. ‘The fyrd of Northumbria could not have that many horses left,’ he observed to Tostig, his own logic chilling him.
Tostig and Haraldr watched in silence for a long while as the horsemen, followed by a solid mass of infantry, came spilling down the ridge in glittering rows. The banners in the vanguard were like gold lanterns flickering in the dusty pall. Across the river, the cattle raiders abandoned their few trophies and began to form for a valiant defence of the river. Haraldr did not order them called back. He would need the time their lives would buy.
The wind at last blew, almost as if the huge vault of Heaven had been stirred by the massive movement across the River Derwent. Haraldr felt the chill against his back. The gold-embroidered English banners lifted. Styrkar pointed to the tiny figures in the distance, two gold-threaded scintillae rising above the steel-silvered English vanguard. ‘There,’ said Tostig softly, incredulity reducing his voice almost to a whisper. ‘The Dragon of Wessex. And the Fighting Man of Harold Godwinnson. The banners of the King of England. Somehow my brother has attached wings to his army and flown it north.’
‘The wings of the dragon,’ said Haraldr as he watched the huge army come down to the river like a silver avalanche.
‘We must withdraw to the ships,’ said Tostig. ‘Our armour and our reinforcements--’
‘No,’ said Haraldr. ‘Their horse would overtake us easily and cut down our backs. I will dispatch couriers to the ships to summon Eystein. And then we will stand and fight.’
The reed-stubbled shallows were coppery with blood. The Norse cattle raiders had fought valiantly, but the English van had forded the river and now waited just out of bowshot on the banks below the flats on the east side of the river. Their ranks were disciplined and murmuring quiet, a sound far more frightening than the pointless bravado of a rabble. The English ambassadors, a group of about twenty richly armoured officers, rode forward on their horses; at their head was a medium-sized, red-bearded man who wore a golden helm and carried a red-enamelled shield embossed with a gilded hawk. The man announced himself as a representative of the English King. Haraldr ordered his spear-bristled shield-wall to open and admit them.
Haraldr dispatched Tostig as his ambassador. He watched from thirty ells away as Tostig conversed with the King’s representative, who remained sitting proudly in his saddle. It was obvious that the dialogue was as stiff and formal as the emissary’s postures. After a curt exchange the horsemen bowed and rode back through the shield-wall. Tostig returned to Haraldr.
‘He offers me a third of his kingdom if I will abandon you,’ said Tostig.
‘Indeed. And what is offered Norway’s King?’
‘He offers you seven feet of English earth.’
Haraldr laughed. ‘Well spoken. Do you wish to accept his parlay?’
‘Too little and too late. I will take what is offered the King of Norway.’
Haraldr nodded; Ulfr had not been wrong. ‘Who was the man you spoke with? He was a fine sight, so tall in his stirrups for a little man.’
Tostig dropped his dark grey eyes. ‘That was the King Harold Godwinnson.’
Haraldr’s rage flared momentarily; had he known, he might have sacrificed his honour to save his men. But kinship was the strangest of all bonds; he had seen that time and again in his life. ‘I understand why you would not give him up,’ said Haraldr after his anger had subsided. ‘I am grateful you did not give me up.’ Haraldr laughed again. ‘Seven feet of English earth. A man once told me that a king would one day show me mercy. But then that particular man was a craven liar.’ Haraldr turned to Styrkar. ‘We have not accepted terms. Tell the men their king has composed some verse for them.’
Haraldr was announced, and for a moment he stood silently at the centre of the immense, square shield-fort. He wondered if Odin had merely fooled him with the verses that had seemed so fully formed minutes ago. He had become too much a Christian. Odin had been the boy’s god. And then the wind rustled from the spirit world and he found the words. The ring of spear points around him seemed ineffably beautiful, like a garden of silver blossoms.
In Battle-storm
No refuge we seek
Behind our hollowed shields.
As once I was bade
By the highborn maiden
High to hold my head
When the Valkyrja flock
To the clash of swords and skulls.
When he was finished with the words, he could hear only the wind whistling in his ears.
‘Hold them back, Styrkar!’ The grotesque carpet of fallen Englishmen sprawled over the slope beneath the Norse shield-wall; the shadows of the dead had lengthened in the descending sun and begun to take on eerie life, as if they were dark little demons fleeing the flesh. The English cavalry had not sortied against the invincible Norse defences for a quarter of an hour now, a quarter of an hour in which the frenzy of the Norsemen had built with the violent suddenness of a summer storm. And now came the thunder of axes on shields, the footsteps of an army of Titans, unbidden by the Norse commanders, the spontaneous rage of men who had fought well all afternoon as defenders and now lusted for their own attack.
‘Hold them back!’ Haraldr shouted again, but he was already too late. The shield-wall bulged into a broad snout, and then the bright cloaks and gleaming steel blades and helms swept down the rise.
Nothing could be done to stop the mass suicide. The wall that the overwhelming English force had been unable to dent had now been broken by the very will that had kept it intact all afternoon. The din below was deafening as English cavalry and infantry rallied along their broad front on the river. Even Styrkar and Tostig had disappeared into the raging fray. As the Norse charged to the river, the entire English formation seemed to contract, an enormous organism preparing to engulf and ingest the Norse salient. Quickly the massed Norse attack was isolated into desperate pockets of survival. Haraldr had fostered the cult of bravery among his men, and now their deaths were their terrible homage to him. Haraldr stood on the plateau above the trickling coppery Derwent and realized that there was only one way to save Norway’s legacy. Follow the doomed attack with an assault of such devastating force that the shield-wall could re-form.
Haraldr turned and faced the weapon-bristled ring of his house-karls, four score strong, the bravest men in the north. No words were necessary. Their proud eyes glowed with the fury of their calling. He wondered for a moment if he was still equal to such youthful passion. And then he mastered his fear with the reflex of a lifetime. Too many had gone before him, were waiting for him, for death to daunt his breast now.
The Norse boar plunged down the embankment, at its deadly snout the King of Norway, the gold-threaded banner called Landravager snapping in the breeze above him. And as the Norse house-karls ripped aside the English ranks, the golden dragon above the head of the King of Norway moved inexorably towards the golden Dragon of Wessex flying above England’s King. But Haraldr Sigurdarson was only vaguely conscious of this collision of destinies. He knew only the cold black wind of the spirit world. He did not know how long he remained in the underworld, only that his quest in the darkness was much longer than ever before. And he emerged to a silent world viewed through a strange glass that scattered images of banners and bright cloaks and thrusting diamond-tipped spears like the tesserae of a shattered mosaic, yet presented the tiniest details in the sharpest focus: the white halo on the edge of a swinging sword, the sparks leaping like tiny fireflies as a javelin pierced a steel byrnnie.