Alfgar held back. “You did not come with Edmund, half-armed and half-naked. How do you know where to find Godive?”

“Shut up and follow.” Shef sprinted ahead again, hurdling through the confusion towards the tents of the women of Ivar.

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Edmund—son of Edwold, descendant of Raedwald the Great, last of the Wuffingas, and now by God’s grace king of the East Angles—glared through the eyeholes of his war-mask in frustration and rage.

They had to break through! One more thrust and the desperate resistance of the Viking chiefs would crumble, the Ragnarssons would all die together in blood and fire, the rest of the Great Army would fall back in doubt and confusion … . But if they held … If they held, he knew, in a few more minutes the war-wise Vikings would realize that the assaults on their perimeter were no more than angry peasants with torches, that the real attack was here, here … . And then they would be down on the struggle by the riverbank with their overwhelming numbers, and it would be the English who were caught like rats in the last unmown square of the hayfield. He, Edmund, had no sons. The whole future of his dynasty and his kingdom had now narrowed down to this yelling, clanging tumult, maybe one hundred men on each side, as the picked champions of the East English and the last hard core of the Ragnarssons’ personal forces fought it out: the one side straining every nerve in their bodies to break into the three-sided square of the Ragnarssons’ tents down by the river; the other, standing poised and confident among the tangle of their guy-ropes, bracing themselves to hold out for five minutes more after the unimaginable shock of the English assault.

And they were doing it too. Edmund’s hand tensed on the bloody sword-hilt and he swayed as if to move forward. Instantly the brawny shadows on either side of him, the captains of his bodyguard, edged slightly forward, blocking him in with shield and body. They would not let him throw himself into the melee. As soon as the initial slaughter of sleeping men had stopped and the fight had begun, they had been in front of him.

“Easy, lord,” muttered Wigga. “See Totta and the boys there. They’ll get through these bastards yet.”

As he spoke the battle surged in front of them, first a few feet forward as a Viking went down and the English rushed at the momentary gap. Then back, back. Above the helmets and the raised shields a battle-axe whirled, the thuds as it struck lindenwood turning to a crash of steel on mail. The swaying mob ejected a body, cleft through its mail from neck to breastbone. For an instant Edmund saw a giant figure twirling its axe in one hand like a boy’s ox-goad, daring the English to come on. They did, fiercely, and all he could see was straining backs.