“Give me some horsemen,” Alfred begged. “Burgred’s a fool, but he’s my sister’s husband. I have to save him. We’ll pension him off, send him to the Pope…”
Yes, thought Shef. And that will be one piece still on the board. And Ivar—even if we beat him Ivar will get away, by boat or horse, like he did last time. And that will be another. But we must have fewer pieces now. In the end, one piece alone. I want the mills to stop.
Blessedly, as he stepped forward, he felt some dreadful thing rising inside him, his mouth filling with the terrible cold saliva he had felt only once before, the time he had eaten carrion one hard winter. Grimly he clamped it down. All eyes, all eyes.
He turned, looked at the men rising from bracken and bush, eyes glaring, teeth showing with expectant rage. “Forward,” he shouted, lifting his halberd from the ground and sweeping it toward the river. “Men of the Way…”
The vomit shot from his mouth so fiercely it caught Alfred high up on his enameled shield. The king gaped, uncomprehending. Shef doubled up, acting no more; his halberd dropped. Again the great retchings took him, again and again, lifting him off his feet.
As he rolled on the fouled earth the Wayman army hesitated, staring in horror. Alfred raised an arm to shout for his horse, for his companions, then dropped it, turned back to stare at the figure writhing on the ground. Thorvin was running forward from his place in the rear. A buzz of doubt ran along the ranks: What’s the order? Are we going forward? Sigvarthsson is down? Who commands? Is it the Viking? Do we obey a pirate? An Englishman? The Wessex king?
As he sprawled in the grass, gasping for breath before the next upheaval, Shef heard the voice of Brand, looking down at him with stony disapproval.
“There is an old saying,” it said. ” ‘When the army-leader weakens, then the whole army wavers.’ What do you expect it to do when he spews his guts out?”
Stand fast, thought Shef, and wait till he’s better. Please, Thor. Or God. Or whoever. Just do it.
Ivar, his eyes as pale as watered milk, stared out across the battlefield for the trap he knew must be there. At his feet—he had fought by choice at the tip of the wedge of his ship’s crew—lay three champions of the Mark, each in turn eager for the fame that would ring through the whole of Christendom for the bane of Ivar, crudest of the pirates of the North. Each discovering in turn that Ivar’s slim height belied his extraordinary strength of arm and body, though not his snakelike speed. One of them, cut through mail and leather from collarbone to ribcage, moaned involuntarily as he waited for death. Quick as a snake’s tongue Ivar’s sword licked out, stabbing through Adam’s apple and spine beneath. Ivar did not want sport, for the moment. He wanted quiet, for consideration.
Nothing in the woods. Nothing to either flank. Nothing behind him. If they did not spring the trap soon it would be too late. It was almost too late already. Round Ivar his army, without orders or briefing, was crying out one of its many experienced battle-drills: securing a battlefield after victory. It was one of the many strengths of Viking armies that their leaders did not have to waste their energies in telling the rank and file how to do anything that could be turned into a routine. They could watch and plan instead. Now, some men went forward in pairs, one to stab, one to guard, making doubly and triply sure that no Englishman was lying still but conscious, ready to take a last enemy with him. Behind them came the loot-gatherers with their sacks, not stripping the dead of everything, as would be done later, but taking everything visible and valuable. In the ships, leeches were splinting and binding.
And at the same time every man kept a tense eye on their leader, for further orders. All knew that the moment of victory was a time to exploit advantage. They carried out their immediate tasks with savage haste.