Devil Take The Hindmost

Chronicle of Wulfrun IV

The hides of Toten's Hall, Kingdom of Mercia 9XX AD

The serried ranks of warriors gave the impression of a wave rippling up to shore as each man shifted his weight from foot-to-foot to vent an excess of nervous energy. Those who had seen battle before, some against the very Danes who were drawing up in formation across the shallow valley before them, knew that this would be a long and bloody affair.

Here and there a murmuring of disquiet rose, almost imperceptibly, from behind hands and beneath helmets as the assembled men of Wessex and Mercia recognised that their numbers did not match those of their opponents.

Killing Danes was a difficult business, but to attempt it while outnumbered seemed akin to suicide. The Northmen had slaughtered their way across the Kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons since their grandfathers had first crossed the frigid seas. 

Behind the troops, atop the crest of the hill, two men sat astride stout horses watching their sworn enemy deploy with an equal sense of disquiet.

"Will she come? Your mother?" Lord Aethelweard of Wessex rubbed his chin as if feeling the sparse stubble for the first time.

"She will come," replied Wulfric Spot of Mercia with certainty.

"You are sure? For before this business is done, we will have sore need of her men!" the Wessex man hawked and spat a gobbet of phlegm into the trampled grass.

"She will come," Wulfric Spot insisted. "And it is not the spearmen of her feard who will save us."

"Is that so? I have heard the stories, of course, but I took them to be a fiction intended to vouchsafe her lands from any opportunistic Northmen."

"My mother inspires great loyalty and devotion. In return her lands have prospered and enjoyed peace. A little fear doesn't hurt in that regard, my lord."

"Indeed not!" Aethelweard laughed. "Well, she and her brood will come, or she will not, but it seems we have no more time to sit idly and consider the truth of it. The Danes are intent to be about the day's business."

The nobleman jutted his chin across the valley where the Northmen now arranged themselves into several huge triangular wedge-shaped formations, the tip of which were populated by towering giants of men who wielded fearsome two-handed axes.

Behind the wedges, loose ranks of archers could be seen, flexing their bows and checking their strings.

"Shall we meet them at the charge?" Wulfric Spot enquired of his ally, who shook his head in response.

"No, let them run up the slope and onto the tips of our spears. Besides, if your mother is to arrive, she will do so from the East, through those trees and into the Danes' rear if we hold this position."

"Yes lord, it is just that the men... You must hear their disquiet. To wait for the enemy is to allow the terror to gnaw at their bones," Wulfric persisted.

"Whether a man dies on this hill behind a shield wall, or in that valley in a wild melee, is all the same to God. Many fewer will die on this hill, and so it shall be. Signal our archers."

Wulfric nodded in acknowledgement of this command and wheeled his horse so that he could see the two long lines of Mercian bowmen who stood in defilade on the reverse slope of the hill. Each man had his bow at the ready, two dozen arrows embedded gently by the tips into the soft earth at his feet.

With his sword raised, Wulfric waited for the further command of his ally who was barely audible over the drumming of approaching feet and the shouts and jeers spilling from Danish throats.