The shield wall shattered in moments.
What had been a bulwark of five hundred Norse warriors collapsed like a rotted dam before the flood. The charge of the Franks struck with such annihilating force that courage itself gave way; one man's fall unsteadied three more, and when that fragile line broke, it broke all at once.
"Damn it all," Rurik spat as he wheeled his horse northward, mud flying from the hooves. "Why in the name of Odin did the Franks come? Who called them here?"
His mind reeled with what he had seen in the mêlée — the fluttering surcoats of the enemy knights, dyed in varied hues but marked, most of them, with a single device: the golden fleur-de-lis. The royal emblem of Francia.
The sight of it chilled him to the marrow. They had come for Wessex's aid — and the man behind this must be Charles the Bald, king of the western Franks. A distant monarch in Paris, yes — but his arm had reached across the sea with four hundred of his best-trained horsemen.
