Brand grunted again, this time digging his fingers deep into Shef’s arm. Someone by Ivar’s machines had given an order to change targets, was enforcing it with kicks and blows. As the English swordsmen rushed forward, the clumsy standard-carts behind them were left exposed, each one with a waving banner on it—of king or alderman, or the giant cross of bishop or abbot. But now there was one fewer than there had been a moment ago. Splinters still flew in the air, turning end over end. A direct hit. And there again—a whole file of draft-oxen slumped onto their knees in a row and a wheel hurled itself sideways. From the Wayman army behind Shef and his group, all by now watching intently, there rose an exhalation, an exhalation that would have been a cheer without the instant kicks and curses of marshals and team-leaders. A cross held steady for a moment, then tipped inexorably over, crashed to the ground.

Something deep inside Shef clicked like a winding cogwheel. Thoughtfully, unnoticed in the rising excitement around him, he took a deep pull at the flask he had held all day in one hand: good ale. But in it was the contents of the little leather sack he had taken from Hund that morning. He drank deep, forcing himself to ignore the gagging reflex, the vile taste of long-rotten meat. How do you give a man a vomit, for a purge? he had asked. “That is one thing we can do,” Hund had said with somber pride. Shef felt no doubt, as the drench went down, that that was exactly true. He drank the flask to its end, leaving not a drop as evidence, then rose to his feet. A minute, maybe two, he thought. I need all eyes.

“Why are they riding forward?” he asked. “Is it a charge?”

“A cavalry charge like the Franks do?” replied Brand uncertainly. “I’ve heard of that. Don’t know that the English—”

“No, no, no,” snapped Alfred, also on his feet, almost dancing with impatience. “It’s Burgred’s horse-thanes. Oh, look at the fools! They’ve decided that the battle is lost, so they’re riding forward to rescue their lord. But as soon as he mounts … Almighty God, he’s done it!”