Twelve hours gained already, thought Sigvarth, standing his men down. Though not for me. I may as well watch as anything else. I shall not sleep again after the death of my son. My one son. I wonder if the other is my son. If he is, he is his father’s bane.
With dawn, the English returned, three thousand men, to see the nature of the barrier that blocked their way.
The Vikings had dug into the sodden February soil on both sides of the track through the fens. A foot down they had reached water. Two feet down and only mud came up. Instead of their normal earthwork they had dug a water-filled ditch ten feet broad. On their side of it they had jammed into the ground such bits of timber as they could break up from the cart Shef had left behind. A flimsy obstacle to be cleared in a few moments by a gang of churls. If there had been no men behind it.
There was room on the causeway for only ten to stand. For only five to wield weapons. The warriors of the Mark, coming forward cautiously, shields raised, found themselves floundering thigh-deep in freezing water before they were in sword-range of an enemy. Their leather shoes skidded on the bottom. As they edged on, bearded faces glared at them, two-handed axes resting on shoulders. Strike at the men? A man had to struggle up a muddy slope to get in a blow. While he did, the axemen could pick their spot.
Strike at the timbers then, at the breastwork. But take your eyes off the man above you and he would cut arm from shoulder or head from neck.
Gingerly, striving desperately for balance, the Mercian champions probed crabwise into battle, urged on by cries of encouragement from those not yet engaged.
As the short day drew on, the fighting gathered momentum. Cwichelm, the Mercian captain, deputed by his king to advise and support the new alderman, lost patience with the tentative assaults, pulled his men back, ordered forward a score of bowmen with unlimited arrows to line the track. “Shoot at head level,” he told them. “Doesn’t matter if you miss. Just keep them down.”
Other men kept up a barrage with javelins, just over the heads of their fighting fellows. Cwichelm’s best swordsmen, spurred on with appeals to their pride, were told to go forward and fence—to not rush forward. Tire them out for a while, then change places with the next rank. Meanwhile a thousand men had been sent miles to the rear, to cut brushwood, bring it forward, throw it under the feet of the fighters, let them trample it under to make, in time, a solid platform.
Alfgar, watching from twenty paces back, pulled his fair beard with vexation.
“How many men do you need?” he asked. “It’s only a ditch and a fence. One good push and we’ll be through it. It doesn’t matter if we lose a few.”
The captain eyed his master-by-title sardonically. “Try telling that to the few,” he said. “Or maybe you’d care to try it yourself? Just take out that big fellow in the middle. The one laughing. With the yellow teeth.”
In the dim light, Alfgar stared across the cold water and the struggling men at Sigvarth, padding from side to side as he beat aside sword-strokes, sparred to get in a blow. Alfgar thrust his hand into his belt as it began to tremble.
“Bring my father forward,” he muttered to his attendants. “There is something for him to see.”
“The English are bringing up a coffin,” observed one of the Viking front-rankers to Sigvarth. “I would have thought they needed more than just one by now.”
Sigvarth stared at the padded box, held almost upright by its bearers, its occupant held in place by chest- and waist-straps. Across the water, his eyes met those of the man he had maimed. After a moment, he threw his head back in a wild cry of laughter, raised his shield, shook his axe, called out in Norse.
“What does he say?” muttered Alfgar.
“He is calling to your father,” translated Cwichelm. “Does he recognize the axe? Does he think it forgot something? Drop his breeches and he will do his best to remember.”