And on that hill of death we went to the ramparts.

Now they go forth, birds screeching,

The gray wolf howls, the shield-wood clashes,

Shield answers shaft. Wake now, my warriors,

Grasp shields, be strong in valor,

Fight your way forward!

“I never told them to be strong in valor,” I said. “There’s no point in saying something like that. You can’t make a man brave by shouting at him.”

“It’s a—” the young priest began.

“—a poem,” I said, “I know.” I smiled. I liked Father Selwyn. “Bravery is overcoming fear,” I said, “and I don’t know how you do that. Duty helps a little, experience, of course, and not letting down your comrades helps a lot, but really bravery is a kind of madness.”

“Madness, lord?”

“It seems as if you’re watching yourself. You can’t believe what you’re doing. You know you might die, but you keep doing it. Battle madness. It’s what the úlfhéðnar have, but they use henbane or ale or mushrooms to fill them with the madness, but we all have some of it. If we didn’t we’d simply give in to the fear.”

He frowned. “Are you saying,” he hesitated, not sure if he should speak what was on his mind, “are you saying you were frightened, lord?”

“Of course I was frightened,” I admitted. “I was terrified! We were fighting the wrong battle in the wrong place. Sköll had planned it well. He let us come. He didn’t interfere with us as we approached. He wanted us to come to his walls and to be slaughtered in his ditches, and like fools we did just what he wanted. I knew we would lose.”

“You knew—” he began to ask.

“But we still had to fight,” I interrupted him. “We couldn’t retreat, not without being pursued and harried and killed, so we had to try to win. That’s fate. But yes, I knew we would lose. We’d made a mistake and we were doomed, but there’s only one way out of a mess like that. You have to fight your way through it.”

We went forward, and, as I told Father Selwyn, I felt doomed. We were advancing down the side of the fort, which meant that once we had crossed the place where the ditches and banks turned around the tower, we were walking along the ridges, not across them, which made our advance quicker. We went in a rush and I remember being surprised that it suddenly seemed so easy. Spears came from our right, but they rattled or thumped on our shields, and then we turned, crossed two ditches, and closed on the wall. Then it stopped being easy. “Axes!” I shouted.

I had given our biggest and strongest men the long-hafted axes with their broad blades and deep lower beards. Each shaft was as long as a spear, which made the weapons clumsy, but my men had learned how they were to be used. My front rank stood with me under the ramparts and the Norse hammered our raised shields with spears and axes. The wall was not much higher than a man, which meant the defenders were close and their blows heavy. I felt my shield splintering as the ax blades crashed into the boards. The Norse had seen us coming, had seen the gold around my neck, the arm rings glittering, and the silver on my helmet. They knew I was a lord and they wanted the reputation of killing me. I could not fight back. To lower the shield so that I could lunge up with Serpent-Breath’s long blade would expose me to the defenders, which meant our duty, the front rank’s duty, was to stand in the sloppy mud of the ditch and keep those defenders busy by making ourselves into easy targets.