IV

Tall, helmeted men, they wore coats of leather, and they swung gleaming axes. They ran down the central aisle, between the great oak pillars. They even climbed on to the long tables, running. None had shields. Perhaps they believed no shield would be necessary.

And those cruel axes swung, lopping off heads and limbs with single strokes, and swords stabbed into crowded flesh. Suddenly there was blood everywhere, an iron stink, and a fouler smell of loosened bowels. The hall became a churn of flesh. And the English warrior nobility ran screaming, as panicked as sheep.

For Cynewulf, still sitting stunned on his bench, it was a transition from light to dark, from order to chaos, from humanity to something bloody and primeval, and it had happened in a heartbeat, less. And he was shocked by the youth of these rampaging men. Few of them looked much over twenty. There was an avidity about their work, a joy in killing.

Arngrim dragged Cynewulf to his feet and pulled him back against the wall, out of the crush. He was armed with a boar spear he had taken from the walls, and his expression was an iron mask. ‘We have to move.’

‘Arngrim, how can this have happened? There was a truce.’

‘Broken. It doesn’t matter. Are you listening to me? Ibn Zuhr, get him out of here.’

The Moor, calm as ever, took the priest’s arm.

But in that moment Cynewulf saw Aebbe fall under the crush of the mob. He pulled at the Moor, but Ibn Zuhr’s grip was strong, and he couldn’t reach her.

One older man, a bovine brute in a coat of thick chain-mail, stood on a table and pointed to Alfred’s throne. He spoke Danish, a tongue too many English had been forced to learn, and Cynewulf heard clearly what he called. ‘There he is! The King! Follow me, Egil son of Egil! Follow me!’ He went thundering down the tabletop, a mob behind him, scattering plates and cups as he went. He was like a bull, Cynewulf thought, horrified, a huge and heavy animal, not something human at all. And he was heading for the King.

Arngrim leapt up to face him. Without armour or helmet, armed with only the boar-spear, the thegn stood his ground on the tabletop. The assault was reduced to this fundamental essence, two men, one roaring forward, the other standing calm and resolute as a rock.

With his last pace Egil swung his bloody axe.

Arngrim ducked and slashed with his spear, aiming for the Dane’s hip beneath his mail shirt.

Egil’s axe deflected the spear’s tip but its shaft slammed against his rib. Egil lost his balance and fell with a crash off the table into the churning crowd. In an instant he was on his feet, laying about him again, hacking through people as if through a bank of seaweed.

For an instant his eyes met Arngrim’s. Cynewulf had been around warriors enough to understand the bleak promise in that gaze, a pact that could only be resolved in death.

But Cynewulf reached up and grabbed Arngrim’s arm. ‘Never mind him. The King! Save the King!’

Arngrim jumped to the floor and snatched a sword from a pile of armour on a bench. ‘Get him out of here, Moor.’

‘But Aebbe—’

‘She is lost. For now, the King.’ He yelled, ‘Englishmen, with me!’ And, sword raised, he ran down the hall towards the throne.

Alfred was struggling amid a mass of panicking warriors and priests, through which Northmen were hacking to get to him. Arngrim, huge amid the chaos, screamed for discipline. Gradually a bank of fighting men built up before the King.

And there was a stink of smoke. Cynewulf realised that the Danes had torched the building. As Ibn Zuhr dragged him away, Cynewulf was overwhelmed by the stench of blood and fear and death, dizzy at this sudden catastrophe - and bewildered by the loss of Aebbe.