“There’s still time to run, you know?”

Wulfnoð glanced up at his father and mutely shook his head. The older man had been towards the centre of the shield wall for much of the day, and his exhaustion showed. Three times the blue-painted warriors from over the river had charged down at them. On each occasion, their line had held and they’d forced the attackers back up the hill.

No one thought it would happen again.

“Someone needs to let the village know we’ve fallen. You could buy your mother half a day’s head start if you were quick . . .”

He knew his father, Æbbe, did not mean anything by it, but his words cut Wulfnoð to the quick. As the youngest member of the fyrd that had been raised in response to talk of raids across the border, he had been kept in reserve during the battle thus far. Only the day’s heavy losses had brought him so close to the front of the line. With the end in sight, his father had sought him out.

In frustration, Wulfnoð crashed his borrowed sword against his too-large shield, startling the older man. “Stop treating me like a child! You were years younger than me when you first stood in a wall.”

Æbbe smiled sadly. He’d been barely into his teens when his own father had dragged him along on raids. There had been little of glory in what had been done in those days, and he had wanted something so much more than dark slaughter under a moonless sky for his boy.

But, as in all things, there was no second-guessing fate.

There had seemed little danger in the boy tagging along with the fyrd to repel an opportunistic raid. It had been years since those from across the river had done anything more than indulge in mild banditry. When they set out the week before, Æbbe had expected nothing more than a chance to give his son a taste of the boredom that came with warfare. To dispel any romantic notions he had of the heroism of the warriors he so looked up to. Few such starry-eyed ideals survived days of marching, sleeping countless nights in the mud and rain, before returning home without seeing hide or hair of the enemy.

The tales of a minor incursion, however, had somewhat underestimated the scale of the force arrayed against them.

Æbbe was not a stupid man, but he could not count high enough to describe the numbers of the invaders that had swarmed down the hill that morning. That their line had held at all through the day’s clashes spoke less to the stoutness of the fyrd, and more as to their recognition that to break was to ensure death reached them even faster.

He considered his boy; big for his age, but with no beard yet showing on his chin. His hair had the dusty brown blonde that spoke of the years of intermarriage between his people and those they now fought. Although, he supposed ‘marriage’ did not accurately describe the regular stealing of young women in which the various tribes engaged. He hoped his wife had her wits about her to ensure their family’s safety when these invaders swept outwards towards their village.

Wulfnoð clearly thought he had been kept from the front lines due to some misguided wish to protect him. The truth was more mundane. No one wanted a child at their shoulder in the shield wall if there were any other options. Brave he may be, but bravery only goes so far when your survival depends on the strength of the man beside you.

Now the final battle was upon them, there was no longer that luxury. Æbbe had not sought him out because he wanted to encourage him to run; rather, it was so that no one else had to have a weak shield-mate when that last clash came. He was comfortable, as far as anyone could be, with their impending deaths. That was the way of fate, after all. But he did not want any of his friends to fall because his son could not hold the line.

He did not want that to be his last sight in this world.

“I meant no disrespect, Wulf.” He held his son’s eyes and smiled broadly. “You are certainly no child, and I am proud to share this day with you.” In his peripheral vision, he could see the force at the top of the hill begin to form up.

Whoever was in charge up there seemed to know their business. For as long as Æbbe could remember, clashes with those from across the river had been chaotic affairs. The ones painted in blue would charge, madly, towards them, and should their shield wall hold, they would push the attackers backwards until they broke. Or, much more rarely, the frenzied attack would breach their line, and things would descend into a melee.

Today had not worked out like that.

For a start, whoever was leading this invasion had somehow persuaded enough horses to cross the river to field a significant cavalry force. That accounted for the fyrd finding itself trapped within a tight square at the base of the hill. Although no horse would charge into a forest of shields and spears, no running man could hope to outpace pursuit on flat ground. So, they had been forced to cluster up into a tight group.

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It was the worst possible formation for when the opposing force had archers. Oh, and a wizard.

Æbbe could not remember the last time he had faced a wizard on the field of battle. Thirty? Forty years? He had assumed the people from across the river had lost the knowledge to produce them. That or they were all too afraid of Merlin to risk making themselves known.

But, there he was, throwing balls of flame into what remained of the fyrd. Wooden shields could keep a man safe from inexpertly launched arrows. Fireballs, not so much.

He pressed his hand down on his son’s shoulder and turned to face the attackers. Æbbe knew how this would go. There would be a final volley from the archers, a last ball of flame from the wizard, and this would make the fyrd take refuge behind their shields. As that was launched, a mass of warriors would hurtle down the hill to crash against their front row.

If they were lucky, the shield wall would hold, as it had three times already today. But if, as Æbbe knew it would, the line buckled, then those horsemen would immediately sweep down upon them and into the gap. He mentally rehearsed the movement of his shield arm to protect his boy from a downward swing from a mounted foe.

He might be able to buy him the time to retreat and -

But, no. The commander of that force would not want any word of quite how extensive was this raid to leak out. So, there would be no surrender; not that Æbbe felt anyone would wish to seek it. Tales of the grisly fate of those captured by the blue-painted ones were used to keep children up at night. Æbbe was fairly sure similar stories were probably told on the other side too, but no one was going to risk that theory.

“Arrows!” The shout went up, and Wulfnoð, as he had been taught, raised his shield to slot it in against his father’s and the man to his other side. Seconds later, they felt repeated impacts and searing heat as a fireball followed the arrows.

There was just a moment for Wulfnoð and Æbbe to meet each other’s eyes for a final time before a horde of blue-painted warriors surged into their shields, and their line, inevitably, broke.

***

I don’t know if you’ve ever had your soul forced inside the dead body of a dark-age warrior?

I’m going to assume not because, if you had, I would like to think you might have left the rest of us some tips. Because, as an experience, it is a lot.

One minute, I am looking onrushing death straight in the face, and the next, I’m lying on a battlefield, surrounded by mangled corpses – are some of them on fire? - and a crow is trying to peck out my eye.

Don’t move.

“Sure, disembodied voice. Now is just the time for a game of musical statues. I have another eye, after all. I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun.”

If you move, they will see you still live, and then they will kill you.

“If I don’t move, I’m going to lose an eye and scream like a banshee. I imagine that will also let them see I am alive, and then they will kill me. I just will see it coming fifty per cent less well.”

I am beginning to regret my choice—one moment.

I hear a caw of pain – when did I get so good at interpreting the vocal stylings of birds? – and then there was the unmistakable smell of roast chicken. In which I guess I was mistaken as, presumably, my unseen friend had just flash-fried the crow.

As someone who has spent most of their . . . I guess my previous ‘life’ in a state of crippling anxiety, I was enjoying how chilled I seemed to be in my new body. Reincarnated? No problem. Unseen voices flinging magic spells at birds? Bring it on. Apparently, all those years of SSRIs could have been avoided by simply moving my soul into somewhere else’s noggin. Who knew?

Speaking of which, as I fumbled around inside my new skull for a moment, I stumbled upon the memories of the body I was now inhabiting. I seemed to be called Wulfnoð. Well, that was a hard ‘no’. I have this thing about my name being composed of letters I can pronounce. Picky, I know.

I also seemed to be a boy.

I turn my head and feel a little burst of sorrow at seeing the man lying next to me. That was a bit unnerving. Did that mean Wulfnoð was still in here somewhere with me? That would be weird. Weirder. Actually, that aspect of weirdness could take a ticket and get in line. Of all the weird things about today, a bit of Wulfnoð’s soul still being in this body was not going to feature in the top ten.

Anyway, the memories I had access to told me that the body I was looking at was Wulfnoð’s father, Æbbe. This dude was extremely dead. From how his shield was lying partly over my body, it did not take a huge leap of deductive reasoning to recognise he had sacrificed his life to protect his son.

He was a good man. Even at the end, he chose his son rather than his own life.

“I’m sure Wulfnoð was very touched for the few more seconds of life that bought him.”

It did not buy the boy any more time at all. Instead, Æbbe’s sacrifice allowed me to pluck you from your own impending death and move your soul here to replace his just as it fled.

I did not immediately have anything to say about that.

Wulfnoð’s memories overwhelm me for a moment. He seems to have had a pretty good life, as far as my understanding of sixth-century England went. Was this even England? The people in Wulfnoð’s memory all looked pretty Anglo-Saxon, and there were all those weird letters too. There was a mother who seemed to care quite a lot about me. Wulfnoð. I need to keep that clear in my head, or that way madness lay. He had a bunch of siblings that hated each other with exactly the right amount of red-hot heat to suggest they were extremely close.

And then there was Æbbe, who he adored.

Yeah, mooching about in these memories is going to make me sad. The last thing I need right now, on top of everything else, is to realise I have possessed the body of an illiterate barbarian from the beginning of history who had a deeper emotional bond with his family than I did with my own.

That was the sort of wound that could fester.

A group of faces from my own life seek to swim upwards in my memory. I drown them with the ruthless efficiency of the owner of a cattery two months after a feral tom got loose.

Goodness. That was a bleak metaphor. Moving swiftly on. “I’m going to need a bit of a catch-up here on what’s going on, oh voice with the skill to cremate crows with the power of thought. Who are you, and what do you want with my dead arse?”

I am more than happy to enlighten you, my dear. But, to reassure you, there is absolutely nothing about your arse that interests me. My name is Merlin, and I am going to need you to help me save the world.