Guthrum heard the drums, finally, responding from the other side of the valley. He sat atop his plow horse and had a good view of the masses of warriors among the bare tree branches. Dressed in their weapons and painted with wode, the blue, frightening faces stared back at him.

"We have burned York!" Guthrum shouted. "We have slaughtered King Ecgwerth! And we will kill that bastard, Aelle!" Silence was his response. "My father said with his dying breath that the little piglets would squeal when they hear what has been done to the old boar, so let them hear me today! Kill every Saxon and burn every structure! There will be no where left to hide!" His face reddened and puckered with emotion. His voice raised and spit flew onto his beard. "We will burn fires so hot and so high that Ragnar will feel their warmth all the way down in the sleet castle. If this bastard is going to deny my father a seat in Valhalla, then I will send the light of Midgard all the way to Neiflheim!"

Tears burned at his eyes and anger boiled in his belly. There were many among his warriors who had asked to attack sooner, to kill the peasants one kingdom at a time. But Guthrum would soon have a son, the grandson of Ragnar Lothbrok. And that son would inherit a whole island, not just a few kingdoms.

The woods resounded with cheers, going back further than Guthrum could see, even from his height. He turned his horse away from them and motioned for his generals to keep the warriors among the trees.

"Someone should go with you, Chief!"

Guthrum turned in his saddle as his horse lumbered forth into the snowy valley. "Imagine the songs they will sing of me!"

A group of riders came down the steep incline on the other side of the valley, flashing with jewels and highly polished armor, rattling with weapons as they came to the center of the valley and stopped, waiting for Guthrum's slower horse to make the trek.

The plow horse had a tough mouth and continued walking even after Guthrum had sawed back on the reigns. As a result, Burgred's horse had to take a step back, and it tossed its head in complaint, and nipped at the plow horse's neck. The large horse crowded them, head down and indifferent. When it stopped, it left Guthrum sitting head and shoulders higher than Aethelbert, and close enough that the two men could have reached out and touched one another.

Burgred, the fat king from the middle kingdom, spoke first. "Why have you come to our border, Northerner? We have made no quarrel with you."

"Where is the bastard? Where is Aelle?" Guthrum demanded to know. "You will turn him over to me and I will rip him into a thousand pieces!"

"There is no Aelle here," Burgred informed him.

Guthrum looked each man in the eye, studying their faces in turn to investigate them. He would never forget the face of the bastard who had literally slipped out of his hands. His glower ended on Aethelbert, the young king from the wealthy southern nation.

"Wessex," Guthrum growled. He turned back to Burgred. "I know he's with you. You are the closest kingdom for him to cower within."

"He has left the island, from what I've heard," Theobald chimed in. "Fled to the continent, or to Ireland. He is not here."

"When I need your lies." Guthrum turned his icy glare on the less-important Saxon. "I will command it from you. Speak again, and you will feel the bite of my sword." He turned back to Burgred with an expression of one who had tasted something bitter. "You have one hour to bring me the pretender. I will not ask you again."

"You will have to be reasonable with your demands," Burgred insisted. "We can give you some gold and …"

"Will that bring my father back from the pit of snakes where he was killed?" His muscles bunched and his face reddened. "Give me that which I seek, or I will burn your kingdoms as well!"

Burgred was stoic. They stared into one another's eyes long enough to realize that neither was going to budge. The King of Mercia backed his horse a few steps and then turned away from Guthrum, fearing a dagger in the back.

Aethelbert followed. Theobald put himself between his king and the pagan, and the other guards did the same as they hurried out of the valley. Behind Guthrum, a battle cry. "YARRRRRR!" came a booming shout from the trees.

They kicked their horses into a gallop and Burgred started yelling for archers before they could hear him. He shouted the command over and over as they reached the base of the incline and dug their heels into their horses' flanks to make them climb quickly.

The first wave of arrows took down Guthrum's horse. He could hear the command and he had dismounted and raised his shield above his head before it was needed. The horse cried out and dropped to the ground. He looked down at the writhing body where arrow wounds gushed blood.

"YARRRRRRR!" the first wave of his army, made up of Saxon slaves, ran past him.

Guthrum could hear the arrows coming again and in an instant, they darkened the sky. He put up his shield and crouched to brace himself, and they came down on him like hail. Some of the slaves around him fell bleeding in the snow as Guthrum got up and marched forward. He walked with purpose through a garden of arrow shafts and a few bleeding bodies, some still and some weeping in the deep snow.

The Saxons roared from either side of their ridge as they sent foot soldiers from the left and right to pour in and kill him from both sides. The surge of the battle came to Guthrum in a sudden whoosh, and then he was fighting on all sides. His sword in one hand, axe in the other, he smashed into enemy weapons and sliced enemy flesh. He loved the rush of battle, which made his heart pulse ice into his veins. The flurry of movement all around him, the warm splatter of blood, the squish under his blade, all helped him forget that his father was trapped in the underworld with Hel, a woman beautiful from the waist up, but a rotting corpse for the rest of her.

"YYAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!" Guthrum destroyed them and called for more.

They sent in the horses, and the ground reverberated with their hooves. Guthrum flashed back to his childhood as he stood in front of a wall of horses that were bearing down on him. He started slashing at the hated beasts. One horse went down in front of him, and Guthrum dispatched the rider. Others were forced to go around the bodies, and he lashed out at their sides as they passed, wounding them on their way into the thick of the battle.

In the skirmish, a glint of red sparkle caught Guthrum's eye, and he saw someone in gleaming armor, inset with rubies, who also had a well-armed servant helping him onto his horse. Guthrum thought about the ransom he could demand before he would break the agreement and shove this Saxon prince into a pit of venomous snakes. He wondered what it had looked like when his father died. Did he cry out in a poisoned delirium? Did his body swell and slowly suffocate him?

Guthrum was suddenly surrounded by a burst of his own countrymen, painted blue and crying out as they raced forward, blades in the air, clearing Guthrum's way to the base of the hill where he could reach the nobleman. He started toward the hapless prince, but an old knight, a man so old he could have been the brother of the All-Father, ran his horse in front of Guthrum and blocked his path.

"By my sword, Pagan!" The old man heaved a massive, gleaming longsword from the sheath on his back and swung it downward at Guthrum's head. It was heavy enough to break bones, but it was also unwieldy, and Guthrum managed to step back as the blade cut the air.

The mounted knight recoiled for another strike, but Guthrum heaved his axe and caught the steel, hooking it so fast that he was able to pull the weapon out of old man's hand, and that was enough to unbalance him.

Wulfheard realized that he was falling. His longsword was lost, so he grabbed the hilt of his short sword and had it halfway from the scabbard before he hit the ground with tremendous force. His horse reared, and lashed out, kicking Guthrum in the ribs with a loud crack.

Guthrum screamed out under the pain of a broken rib and swung his sword with a mighty growl. The weapon embedded deep into the horse's neck, and a flood of hot horse blood washed over the two. Guthrum raised his axe in the air and brought it down in the middle of the old man's skull. Blood spurted in a crimson cascade, washing over Guthrum and everything else around him.

The whole battleground had shifted, and he lunged to try and catch the prince, but he got away. A new target presented itself in the form of a screaming white horse. Guthrum looked up the hill, raising his axe to defend from another horse kick, and he saw the rainbow glint of diamonds as they caught the sun's rays. A second noble did half the work for him and unseated himself. The white horse's momentum pushed it into the battle at the base of the hill, but the rider lay on the ground bleeding profusely from the back of the head.

The Saxon looked up at him, terror in his deep blue eyes. He was young, Guthrum noted, not yet bearded, and looked a lot like the King of Wessex. The young noble held up a hand in defense and started talking. Guthrum recognized some rushed Saxon, and then Latin words.

A squire cried out from the top of the ridge, but Guthrum's warriors had swarmed the hillside and were pushing the enemy back. A deafening clash of weaponry arose around them. Guthrum stood over Alfred, using his helmet to reflect the sun's weak glare into his victim's eyes. Alfred kept his defensive hand raised and peered between his fingers as he panted from the pain of the head wound, which was gushing out on the dark, flat rocks of the muddy hillside.

Guthrum spoke the native tongue with a deep, guttural accent. "Do you belong to Wessex, Saxon?"

Alfred put a hand to the back of his head. "I am not a king. I am a man of God."

"You have one god." Guthrum scoffed. "We have dozens."

"There is only one true God." Alfred tried not to wither under the pain as he pressed his hand against the bleeding wound. "And his son, Jesus Christ, is a warrior for our side."

"Your brother killed my uncle," Guthrum informed him. "A brother for an uncle seems a fair revenge. Draw your sword and I will grant you a death in combat."

Alfred winced, holding one hand up in front of him and the other pressed against the back of his head. "It is more godly for a monk to lay down his life than to pick up a sword."

Guthrum scoffed. "You do not look like a monk."

Alfred dropped his defensive hand and stared at the bloody pagan with the dripping axe, and his entire life flashed before his eyes.

Aethelbert's voice floated through his mind. "God made you the son of a king, Alfred. and He above all knows what it is to be a prince." "You are no monk," Wulfheard had told him. He heard King Charles wrath like static in the back of his brain. Wisigard's smile floated through his vision. The peaks of the alps and the wonders of Rome flashed before his eyes. And then there was a figure so large that it eclipsed the sun.

Alfred could see his father's silhouette on the deck of a ship in the bright, sunny Roman harbor. King Aethelwulf, with his braided beard and a crown set with flashing rubies, knelt in front of him. Alfred could remember his face with crystal clarity. Every hair of his father's beard, the dirt of the sea encrusted in the wrinkles of his face, the dark blue ring of his iris as he looked his son in the eye.

"You carry the honor of your people with this blade."

Carloman had told him that his father did not care for him. Then he thought about punching Carloman in the face. Alfred took his gory hand from the sticky wound and reached for the hilt of his sword, gripping it as he had his seax night after night in the chamber in Paris while tears poured from his eyes and he tried to remember his father.

Guthrum grinned at him and readied the axe, still wet with Wulfheard's blood. Alfred struggled to get his feet under him, and winced with pain as he sat up, shifting the throbbing of his skull. With a shaking hand, Alfred began to pull the sword from his belt, and with a pleading expression, he looked up at his doom.

Guthrum confidently hefted the weight of his axe, half hoping the noble would survive the maiming so that he could get a ransom from Wessex. He did not expect the reflexes of a cornered viper, but suddenly Alfred's sword was not only raised, but swiped in a wide arc and connected with his broken rib. As Alfred swung, the grip slipped in his hand, and he hit Guthrum with the flat side of his sword, but it was enough to elicit a howl of pain. The incline was steep, and the hefty push knocked Guthrum several paces backward.

Alfred remembered every lesson Wulfheard had ever taught him. He fixed the grip on his handle and rushed forward to press his advantage. He only needed the strength to raise the sword, and then the weight of it falling would do the rest. Guthrum held up the wooden handle of his axe to protect himself. The handle managed to stop the blade, but with a loud crack it became two pieces in Guthrum's hands. With arms shaking from the force of the blow, he staggered backwards again. Alfred swung the blade around and got it back over his head before Guthrum could recover his feet.

As Guthrum knew, and Alfred learned, all battles have their own ebb and flow. They crash against land formations, and can be moved by unpredictable forces, and when the tide turns, everyone on the field felt as if a cold wind had blown down their backs.

The power of the Saxons' horses overwhelmed the Norsemen, who came pouring back over the side, rushing down the hill and into the blood-soaked valley in a panicked retreat. Uther and Efrog broke loose from their individual battles and came screaming down the hill behind their lord, blades in the air.

Guthrum dropped his broken axe. The horses lined up along the ridge in a formidable wall that need only slide in his direction and he would be trampled to death, which was his worst recurring nightmare. He turned with the rest of the men, glaring back at the young noble who stood on the battered hillside. Alfred lowered his sword and pointed it menacingly at Guthrum. His arms trembled to hold the massive weight outright, but the sword was stock still as the two locked eyes.

Guthrum turned and raced for the safety of the woods, ribs screaming in pain, and his anger growing with each labored step. He worried about being ridden down, but as he raced into the valley, he realized that the Saxons were not giving chase. Guthrum stopped running and turned back to see Lord Alfred scrambling back up the hill. The hatred he felt for his father's murder collided with the anger he felt about the young Saxon tricking him on the hillside. Saxons were not supposed to understand cunning. They were not told the secrets of Loki. Yet, that dough-faced, un-bearded, skinny brat feigned enervation, and then lashed out as fast as a snake, fooling him and taking the advantage.

Stopping to pull a bow and arrow from a nearby dead Saxon slave, Guthrum pointed it at a glimmering figure on the edge of the ledge. Momentarily isolated from the crowd, the tall, slender noble was haloed by the weak southern sun. Guthrum drew the bow.

A celebratory air filled the hillside, and the people were cheering and jeering at the backs of their enemies. Alfred reached the top of the ledge, and a whooshing sound zipped past his ear, a sound that was almost absorbed by the laughter of the kings, sitting atop their horses above him.

Alfred merely blinked, and when he looked at Aethelbert again, an arrow stuck in his throat, all the way down to its feathers, nearly passing through him. When Aethelbert opened his mouth, a spray of scarlet flew out, and covered his tunic with crimson. Aethelbert's eyes locked on Alfred's, but he could not speak, he could only spew bright red blood.

Theobald's horse shoved Alfred to the ground as its rider rushed to the king.

"Put him on his side," Gwald told Theobald as he jumped from his horse's back. "Put no pressure on the shaft."

The arrow point stuck out of the back of his neck, just under his helmet. Aethelbert grabbed at the arrow, choking, and Gwald pulled his hand away. He spit blood, unable to take a breath.

Alfred crawled to him and grabbed his shoulders. "Aethelbert," he gasped. "I am so sorry!"

Aethelbert reached a hand up and touched Alfred's face, leaving a smear of blood across his cheek. Then his hand dropped away, and he convulsed, as if his spirit were being unwillingly torn from his body.

"Aethelbert!" Alfred called to him, gripping his shoulder. "No!" he cried. "Do not leave us, your highness!" Peace fell over Aethelbert. "NO!" Alfred cried. "Dear God, please, no!"

He had forgotten his headache. The world lost all its brightness in that moment, and a gray cloud fell over the sky, covering the sun. Alfred looked up at Aethelred, who looked terrified. They were both numb all over, as if the snow had crept right into their veins. One by one, Gwald, Uther, Efrog, and all the other men who surrounded the dead king, lifted their eyes, and looked at Aethelred.

Theobald knelt between the two brothers and put a hand on each of their shoulders. "I swear to you," he whispered, and the crowd of shocked people were silent while the snow carried his voice, crisp and flat. "I will hunt down the pagan lord and I will bring you his head. I swear this to you, Aethelred … my king."

Aethelred had tears in his eyes, but they did not spill. "I cannot be the king," he whispered.

"This is not a matter over which you have any choice," Alfred murmured softly. "God has decided your destiny."

Frightened and grieving, Aethelred gripped Alfred's hand. "I need you to help me. You are now the Prince of Wessex."

9