One of the Normans came at me, his sword raised, but his mail and his shield made him slow, and I was able to duck under his swing and clatter my axe into his neck. His head jerked back and he fell, and I hurled myself at the next. I was howling with rage, seeking vengeance for all my friends they’d killed. Before he knew what was happening I’d brought my blade round and smashed it into his face, carving a gash from temple to jaw. His cheek was gushing crimson, thick and dark, and he was yelling something in his own tongue that I didn’t understand, and I was turning, stumbling over the corpses underfoot, the corpses that lay sprawled over one another, arms outstretched, legs crooked.
The soles of my shoes were slick with mud and blood, and the ground was still hard with frost, and when I glanced down the faces of Leofstan and Eadbald stared up at me, their eyes empty and their mouths hanging open. Their bodies broken. Wihtred too, lying on his belly, his face buried in the grass, a feathered shaft lodged in his back, his tunic soaked and matted against his torso.
Another scream from the rampart. I looked up at the Frenchman holding Eawen. Drawing his knife. Raising it to her face. Her eyes were wide, and she was shaking her head from side to side, twisting and kicking and twisting again, doing everything she could to get away from that blade, and she was shouting my name, screaming for help. Over and over and over she called out, and even now I hear her cries every night in my dreams.
*
He breaks off, trying to hide his face behind his hand. The tears are streaming down his face and the fire is reflected in his cheeks.
‘What?’ Tova asks. ‘What happened to her?’
But she can already guess.
*
I don’t know if she’d seen me. Maybe she hadn’t and just supposed I was there, but anyway she kept on calling my name, and it was like a great spear was being driven through my heart and twisted, twisted. At once all the strength left my limbs, and I felt helpless like I’ve never done before or since. Another of the Normans was coming at me, and behind him was another, and behind him two more, but I knew somehow I had to get to her.
She was still shouting my name, and maybe there was more but that’s all I was able to make out.
Eawen, I yelled as I ducked beneath the first Norman’s strike and hooked my axe around his ankle, bringing him down.
Eawen, I yelled again, and I hoped that over the shouting and the dying and the ringing of steel upon steel she could hear me and know that I was there and I was coming.
She didn’t answer. I risked another glance up towards her.
A bright line blossomed straight across her throat where the Frenchman’s knife had slit it. He was holding her up by the hair as she raised a powerless hand to her neck, and I was roaring, refusing to accept what I was seeing, but there was no denying it.
Eawen, I shouted and shouted again. Eawen!
He let go, and her limp body sank to the ground, the weight of her head carrying her forward, down the slope, rolling and tumbling, her arms and legs everywhere. Her brow struck a stone on the way down, her neck jerked back, and when she reached the bottom she was still.
After that I don’t remember much. Things happened so quickly. I remember Cynehelm yelling above the clash of steel. I remember the clatter of lime wood and the shouts of pain and the Normans’ war cries and the pleas for mercy. I remember the hatred pounding inside my skull. Cynehelm’s helmet had come off, and his cheek was grazed and his nose was streaming and his lip was cut and his tunic was torn where his shoulder had been gashed. It was just him and another man, Tatel with the red hair, I think it was, against four of the foreigners, but he wasn’t giving in. He was swearing death upon them, striking out on all sides, fighting like I’d never seen him fight before, but there were too many of them, and I think he knew that his death was near.
Run, Cynehelm was saying, over and over and over. While you still can, run!
But I wasn’t going to give up the fight, not like that. I heaved my axe into the mailed back of one of his attackers, sending him sprawling to the ground, but just as I did so, another of them plunged his sword into Tatel’s gut, driving it deep, so deep that it went all the way through, and I was yelling through my tears. A little way off, where the thorns grew dense and tall, there was more fighting, but there could only have been one or two of our band left by then. They were surrounded, and I realised there was nothing I could do for them.
Then I couldn’t hear Cynehelm shouting any more, and when I glanced around he was nowhere. And I knew. I didn’t need to see his bloodied corpse to be sure. He was gone. Cynehelm was dead.