Читать книгу The Lords of the North - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 11

Thorkild let the boat drift downstream a hundred paces, then rammed her bows into the bank close to a willow. He jumped ashore, tied a sealhide line to tether the boat to the willow’s trunk, and then, with a fearful glance at the armed men watching from higher up the bank, scrambled hurriedly back on board. ‘You,’ he pointed at me, ‘find out what’s happening.’

‘Trouble’s happening,’ I said. ‘You need to know more?’

‘I need to know what’s happened to my storehouse,’ he said, then nodded towards the armed men, ‘and I don’t want to ask them. So you can instead.’

He chose me because I was a warrior and because, if I died, he would not grieve. Most of his oarsmen were capable of fighting, but he avoided combat whenever he could because bloodshed and trading were bad partners. The armed men were advancing down the bank now. There were six of them, but they approached very hesitantly, for Thorkild had twice their number in his ship’s bows and all those seamen were armed with axes and spears.

I pulled my mail over my head, unwrapped the glorious wolf-crested helmet I had captured from a Danish boat off the Welsh coast, buckled on Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting and, thus dressed for war, jumped clumsily ashore. I slipped on the steep bank, clutched at nettles for support and then, cursing because of the stings, clambered up to the path. I had been here before, for this was the wide riverside pasture where my father had led the attack on Eoferwic. I pulled on the helmet and shouted at Thorkild to throw me my shield. He did and, just as I was about to start walking towards the six men who were now standing and watching me with swords in their hands, Hild jumped after me. ‘You should have stayed on the boat,’ I told her.

‘Not without you,’ she said. She was carrying our one leather bag in which was little more than a change of clothes, a knife and a whetstone. ‘Who are they?’ she asked, meaning the six men who were still fifty paces away and in no hurry to close the distance.

‘Let’s find out,’ I said, and drew Serpent-Breath.

The shadows were long and the smoke of the city’s cooking fires was purple and gold in the twilight. Rooks flew towards their nests and in the distance I could see cows going to their evening milking. I walked towards the six men. I was in mail, I had a shield and two swords, I wore arm rings and a helmet that was worth the value of three fine mail coats and my appearance checked the six men, who huddled together and waited for me. They all had drawn swords, but I saw that two of them had crucifixes about their necks and that made me suppose they were Saxons. ‘When a man comes home,’ I called to them in English, ‘he does not expect to be met by swords.’

Two of them were older men, perhaps in their thirties, both of them thick-bearded and wearing mail. The other four were in leather coats and were younger, just seventeen or eighteen, and the blades in their hands looked as unfamiliar to them as a plough handle would to me. They must have assumed I was a Dane because I had come from a Danish ship and they must have known that six of them could kill one Dane, but they also knew that one war-Dane, dressed in battle-splendour, was likely to kill at least two of them before he died and so they were relieved when I spoke to them in English. They were also puzzled. ‘Who are you?’ one of the older men called.

I did not answer, but just kept walking towards them. If they had decided to attack me then I would have been forced to flee ignominiously or else die, but I walked confidently, my shield held low and with Serpent-Breath’s tip brushing the long grass. They took my reluctance to answer for arrogance, when in truth it was confusion. I had thought to call myself by any name other than my own, for I did not want Kjartan or my traitorous uncle to know I had returned to Northumbria, but my name was also one to be reckoned with and I was foolishly tempted to use it to awe them, but inspiration came just in time. ‘I am Steapa of Defnascir,’ I announced, and just in case Steapa’s name was unknown in Northumbria, I added a boast. ‘I am the man who put Svein of the White Horse into his long home in the earth.’

The man who had demanded my name stepped a pace backwards. ‘You are Steapa? The one who serves Alfred?’

‘I am.’

‘Lord,’ he said, and lowered his blade. One of the younger men touched his crucifix and dropped to a knee. A third man sheathed his sword and the others, deciding that was prudent, did the same.

‘Who are you?’ I demanded.

‘We serve King Egbert,’ one of the older men said.

‘And the dead?’ I asked, gesturing towards the river where another naked corpse circled slow in the current, ‘who are they?’

‘Danes, lord.’

‘You’re killing Danes?’

‘It’s God’s will, lord,’ he said.

I gestured towards Thorkild’s ship. ‘That man is a Dane and he is also a friend. Will you kill him?’

‘We know Thorkild, lord,’ the man said, ‘and if he comes in peace he will live.’

‘And me?’ I demanded, ‘what would you do with me?’

‘The king would see you, lord. He would honour you for the great slaughter of the Danes.’

‘This slaughter?’ I asked scornfully, pointing Serpent-Breath towards a corpse floating downriver.

‘He would honour the victory over Guthrum, lord. Is it true?’

‘It is true,’ I said, ‘I was there.’ I turned then, sheathed Serpent-Breath, and beckoned to Thorkild who untied his ship and rowed it upstream. I shouted to him across the water, telling him that Egbert’s Saxons had risen against the Danes, but that these men promised they would leave him in peace if he came in friendship.

‘What would you do in my place?’ Thorkild called back. His men gave their oars small tugs to hold the ship against the river’s flow.

‘Go downstream,’ I shouted in Danish, ‘find sword-Danes and wait till you know what is happening.’

‘And you?’ he asked.

‘I stay here,’ I said.

He groped in a pouch and threw something towards me. It glittered in the fading light, then vanished among the buttercups that made the darkening pasture yellow. ‘That’s for your advice,’ he called, ‘and may you live long, whoever you are.’

He turned his ship which was a clumsy manoeuvre for the hull was almost as long as the Ouse was wide, but he managed it skilfully enough and the oars took him downstream and out of my life. I discovered later that his storehouse had been ransacked and the one-armed Dane who guarded it had been slaughtered and his daughter raped, so my advice was worth the silver coin Thorkild had thrown to me.

‘You sent him away?’ one of the bearded men asked me resentfully.

‘I told you, he was a friend.’ I stooped and found the shilling in the long grass. ‘So how do you know of Alfred’s victory?’ I asked.

‘A priest came, lord,’ he said, ‘and he told us.’

‘A priest?’

‘From Wessex, lord. All the way from Wessex. He carried a message from King Alfred.’

I should have known Alfred would want the news of his victory over Guthrum to spread throughout Saxon England, and it turned out that he had sent priests to wherever Saxons lived and those priests carried the message that Wessex was victorious and that God and his saints had given them the triumph. One such priest had been sent to King Egbert in Eoferwic, and that priest had reached the city just one day before me, and that was when the stupidity began.

The priest had travelled on horseback, his clerical frock wrapped in a bundle on the back of his saddle, and he had ridden from Saxon house to Saxon house through Danish-held Mercia. The Mercian Saxons had helped him on his way, providing fresh horses each day and escorting him past the larger Danish garrisons until he had come to Northumbria’s capital to give King Egbert the good news that the West Saxons had defeated the Great Army of the Danes. Yet what appealed even more to the Northumbrian Saxons was the outrageous claim that Saint Cuthbert had appeared to Alfred in a dream and shown him how to gain the victory. The dream was supposed to have come to Alfred during the winter of defeat in Æthelingæg where a handful of fugitive Saxons hid from the conquering Danes, and the story of the dream was aimed at Egbert’s Saxons like a huntsman’s arrow, for there was no saint more revered north of the Humber than Cuthbert. Cuthbert was Northumbria’s idol, the holiest Christian ever to live in the land, and there was not one pious Saxon household that did not pray to him daily. The idea that the north’s own glorious saint had helped Wessex defeat the Danes drove the wits from King Egbert’s skull like partridges fleeing the reapers. He had every right to be pleased at Alfred’s victory, and he doubtless resented ruling on a Danish leash, but what he should have done was thank the priest who brought the news and then, to keep him quiet, shut him up like a dog in a kennel. Instead he had ordered Wulfhere, the city’s archbishop, to hold a service of thanks in the city’s largest church. Wulfhere, who was no fool, had immediately developed an ague and ridden into the country to recover, but a fool called Father Hrothweard took his place and Eoferwic’s big church had resounded to a fiery sermon which claimed Saint Cuthbert had come from heaven to lead the West Saxons to victory, and that idiotic tale had persuaded Eoferwic’s Saxons that God and Saint Cuthbert were about to deliver their own country from the Danes. And so the killing had started.

All this I learned as we went into the city. I learned too that there had been less than a hundred Danish warriors in Eoferwic because the rest had marched north under Earl Ivarr to confront a Scottish army that had crossed the border. There had been no such invasion in living memory, but the southern Scots had a new king who had sworn to make Eoferwic his new capital, and so Ivarr had taken his army north to teach the fellow a lesson.

Ivarr was the true ruler of southern Northumbria. If he had wanted to call himself the king then there was no one to stop him, but it was convenient to have a pliable Saxon on the throne to collect the taxes and to keep his fellow-Saxons quiet. Ivarr, meanwhile, could do what his family did best; make war. He was a Lothbrok and it was their boast that no male Lothbrok had ever died in bed. They died fighting with their swords in their hands. Ivarr’s father and one uncle had died in Ireland, while Ubba, the third Lothbrok brother, had fallen to my sword at Cynuit. Now Ivarr, the latest sword-Dane from a war-besotted family, was marching against the Scots and had sworn to bring their king to Eoferwic in slave manacles.

I thought no Saxon in his right mind would rebel against Ivarr, who was reputed to be as ruthless as his father, but Alfred’s victory and the claim that it was inspired by Saint Cuthbert had ignited the madness in Eoferwic. The flames were fed by Father Hrothweard’s preaching. He bellowed that God, Saint Cuthbert and an army of angels were coming to drive the Danes from Northumbria and my arrival only encouraged the insanity. ‘God has sent you,’ the men who had accosted me kept saying, and they shouted to folk that I was Svein’s killer and by the time we reached the palace there was a small crowd following Hild and me as we pushed through narrow streets still stained with Danish blood.

I had been to Eoferwic’s palace before. It was a Roman building of fine pale stone with vast pillars holding up a tiled roof that was now patched with blackened straw. The floor was also tiled, and those tiles had once formed pictures of the Roman gods, but they were all torn up now and those that were left were mostly covered by rushes that were stained by the previous day’s blood. The big hall stank like a butcher’s yard and was wreathed with smoke from the blazing torches that lit the cavernous space.

The new King Egbert turned out to be the old King Egbert’s nephew and he had his uncle’s shifty face and petulant mouth. He looked scared when he came onto the dais at the hall’s end, and no wonder, for the mad Hrothweard had summoned up a whirlwind and Egbert must have known that Ivarr’s Danes would be coming for revenge. Yet Egbert’s followers were caught up in the excitement, sure that Alfred’s victory foretold the final defeat of the Northmen, and my arrival was taken as another sign from heaven. I was pushed forward and the news of my coming was shouted at the king who looked confused, and was even more confused when another voice, a familiar voice, called out my name. ‘Uhtred! Uhtred!’

I looked for the speaker and saw it was Father Willibald.

‘Uhtred!’ he shouted again and looked delighted to see me. Egbert frowned at me, then looked at Willibald. ‘Uhtred!’ the priest said, ignoring the king, and came forward to embrace me.

Father Willibald was a good friend and a good man. He was a West Saxon who had once been chaplain to Alfred’s fleet, and fate had decreed that he would be the man sent north to carry the good news of Ethandun to the Northumbrian Saxons.

The clamour in the hall subsided. Egbert tried to take command. ‘Your name is,’ he said, then decided he did not know what my name was.

‘Steapa!’ one of the men who had escorted us into the city called out.

‘Uhtred!’ Willibald announced, his eyes bright with excitement.

‘I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I confessed, unable to prolong my deception.

‘The man who killed Ubba Lothbrokson!’ Willibald announced and tried to hold up my right hand to show I was a champion. ‘And the man,’ he went on, ‘who toppled Svein of the White Horse at Ethandun!’

In two days, I thought, Kjartan the Cruel would know that I was in Northumbria, and in three my uncle Ælfric would have learned of my coming, and if I had possessed an ounce of sense I would have forced my way out of that hall, taken Hild with me, and headed south as fast as Archbishop Wulfhere had vanished from Eoferwic.

‘You were at Ethandun?’ Egbert asked me.

‘I was, lord.’

‘What happened?’

They had already heard the tale of the battle from Willibald, but his was a priest’s version, heavy with prayers and miracles. I gave them what they wanted which was a warrior’s story of dead Danes and sword-slaughter, and all the while a fierce-eyed priest with bristly hair and an unruly beard interrupted me with shouts of hallelujah. I gathered this was Father Hrothweard, the priest who had roused Eoferwic to slaughter. He was young, scarce older than I was, but he had a powerful voice and a natural authority that was given extra force by his passion. Every hallelujah was accompanied by a shower of spittle, and no sooner had I described the defeated Danes spilling down the great slope from Ethandun’s summit than Hrothweard leaped forward and harangued the crowd. ‘This is Uhtred!’ he shouted, poking me in my mail-clad ribs, ‘Uhtred of Northumbria, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a killer of Danes, a warrior of God, a sword of the Lord! And he has come to us, just as the blessed Saint Cuthbert visited Alfred in his time of tribulation! These are signs from the Almighty!’ The crowd cheered, the king looked scared, and Hrothweard, ever ready to launch into a fiery sermon, began frothing at the mouth as he described the coming slaughter of every Dane in Northumbria.

I managed to sidle away from Hrothweard, making my way to the back of the dais where I took Willibald by the scruff of his skinny neck and forced him into a passage which led to the king’s private chambers. ‘You’re an idiot,’ I growled at him, ‘you’re an earsling. You’re a witless dribbling turd, that’s what you are. I should slit your useless guts here and now and feed them to the pigs.’

Willibald opened his mouth, closed it and looked helpless.

‘The Danes will be back here,’ I promised him, ‘and there’s going to be a massacre.’

His mouth opened and closed again, and still no sound came.

‘So what you’re going to do,’ I said, ‘is cross the Ouse and go south as fast as your legs will carry you.’

‘But it’s all true,’ he pleaded.

‘What’s all true?’

‘That Saint Cuthbert gave us victory!’

‘Of course it isn’t true!’ I snarled. ‘Alfred made it up. You think Cuthbert came to him in Æthelingæg? Then why didn’t he tell us about the dream when it happened? Why does he wait till after the battle to tell us?’ I paused and Willibald made a strangled noise. ‘He waited,’ I answered myself, ‘because it didn’t happen.’

‘But …’

‘He made it up!’ I growled, ‘because he wants Northumbrians to look to Wessex for leadership against the Danes. He wants to be king of Northumbria, don’t you understand that? And not just Northumbria. I’ve no doubt he’s got fools like you telling the Mercians that one of their damned saints appeared to him in a dream.’

‘But he did,’ he interrupted me, and when I looked bemused, he explained further. ‘You’re right! Saint Kenelm spoke to Alfred in Æthelingæg. He came to him in a dream and he told Alfred that he would win.’

‘No he did not,’ I said as patiently as I could.

‘But it’s true!’ he insisted, ‘Alfred told me himself! It’s God’s doing, Uhtred, and wonderful to behold.’

I took him by the shoulders, pressing him against the passage wall. ‘You’ve got a choice, father,’ I said. ‘You can get out of Eoferwic before the Danes come back, or you can tip your head to one side.’

‘I can do what?’ he asked, puzzled.

‘Tip your head,’ I said, ‘and I’ll thump you on one ear so all the nonsense falls out of the other.’

He would not be persuaded. God’s glory, ignited by the bloodshed at Ethandun and fanned by the lie about Saint Cuthbert, was glowing on Northumbria and poor Willibald was convinced he was present at the beginning of great things.

There was a feast that night, a sorry business of salted herrings, cheese, hard bread and stale ale, and Father Hrothweard made another impassioned speech in which he claimed that Alfred of Wessex had sent me, his greatest warrior, to lead the city’s defence, and that the fyrd of heaven would come to Eoferwic’s protection. Willibald kept shouting hallelujah, believing all the rubbish, and it was only the next day when a grey rain and a sullen mist enveloped the city that he began to doubt the imminent arrival of sword-angels.

Folk were leaving the city. There were rumours of Danish war-bands gathering to the north. Hrothweard was still shrieking his nonsense, and he led a procession of priests and monks about the city streets, holding aloft relics and banners, but anyone with sense now understood that Ivarr was likely to return long before Saint Cuthbert turned up with a heavenly host. King Egbert sent a messenger to find me, and the man said the king would talk with me, but I reckoned Egbert was doomed so I ignored the summons. Egbert would have to shift for himself.

Just as I had to shift for myself, and what I wanted was to get far from the city before Ivarr’s wrath descended on it, and in the Crossed Swords tavern, hard by the city’s northern gate, I found my escape. He was a Dane called Bolti and he had survived the massacre because he was married to a Saxon and his wife’s family had sheltered him. He saw me in the tavern and asked if I was Uhtred of Bebbanburg.

‘I am.’

He sat opposite me, bowed his head respectfully to Hild, then snapped his fingers to summon a girl with ale. He was a plump man, bald, with a pocked face, a broken nose and frightened eyes. His two sons, both half Saxon, loitered behind him. I guessed one was about twenty and the other five years younger, and both wore swords though neither looked comfortable with the weapons. ‘I knew Earl Ragnar the Elder,’ Bolti said.

‘I knew him too,’ I said, ‘and I don’t remember you.’

‘The last time he sailed in Wind-Viper,’ he said, ‘I sold him ropes and oar-looms.’

‘Did you cheat him?’ I asked sarcastically.

‘I liked him,’ he said fiercely.

‘And I loved him,’ I said, ‘because he became my father.’

‘I know he did,’ he said, ‘and I remember you.’ He fell silent and glanced at Hild. ‘You were very young,’ he went on, looking back to me, ‘and you were with a small dark girl.’

‘You do remember me then,’ I said, and fell silent as the ale was brought. I noticed that Bolti, despite being a Dane, wore a cross about his neck and he saw me looking at it.

‘In Eoferwic,’ he said, touching the cross, ‘a man must live.’ He pulled aside his coat and I saw Thor’s hammer amulet had been hidden beneath it. ‘They mostly killed pagans,’ he explained.

I pulled my own hammer amulet out from beneath my jerkin. ‘Are many Danes Christians now?’ I asked.

‘A few,’ he said grudingly, ‘you want food to go with that ale?’

‘I want to know why you’re talking with me,’ I said.

He wanted to leave the city. He wanted to take his Saxon wife, two sons and two daughters a long way from the vengeful massacre he suspected was coming, and he wanted swords to escort him, and he stared at me with pathetic, despairing eyes and did not know that what he wanted was just what I wanted. ‘So where will you go?’ I asked.

‘Not west,’ he said with a shudder. ‘There’s killing in Cumbraland.’

‘There’s always killing in Cumbraland,’ I said. Cumbraland was the part of Northumbria that lay across the hills and next to the Irish Sea, and it was raided by Scots from Strath Clota, by Norsemen from Ireland and by Britons from north Wales. Some Danes had settled in Cumbraland, but not enough to keep the wild raids from ravaging the place.

‘I’d go to Denmark,’ Bolti said, ‘but there are no warships.’ The only ships left at Eoferwic’s quays were Saxon traders, and if any dared sail they would be snapped up by Danish ships that were doubtless gathering in the Humber.

‘So?’ I asked.

‘So I want to go north,’ he said, ‘and meet Ivarr. I can pay you.’

‘And you think I can escort you through Kjartan’s land?’

‘I think I will do better with Ragnar’s son beside me than on my own,’ he admitted, ‘and if men know you travel with me then they will join us.’

So I let him pay me, and my price was sixteen shillings, two mares and a black stallion, and the price of the last made Bolti go pale. A man had been leading the stallion about the streets, offering it for sale, and Bolti bought the animal because his fear of being trapped in Eoferwic was worth forty shillings. The black horse was battle trained, which meant he was not startled at loud noises and he moved obediently to the pressure of a knee, which left a man free to hold shield and sword and still manoeuvre. The stallion had been plundered from one of the Danes massacred in the last few days for no one knew his name. I called him Witnere, which means Tormentor, and it was apt for he took a dislike to the two mares and kept snapping at them.

The mares were for Willibald and Hild. I told Father Willibald he should go south, but he was scared now and insisted on staying with me and so, the day after I had met Bolti, we all rode north along the Roman road. A dozen men came with us. Among them were three Danes and two Norsemen who had managed to hide from Hrothweard’s massacre, and the rest were Saxons who wanted to escape Ivarr’s revenge. All had weapons and Bolti gave me money to pay them. They did not get much in wages, just enough to buy food and ale, but their presence deterred any outlaws on the long road.

I was tempted to ride to Synningthwait which was where Ragnar and his followers had their land, but I knew there would be very few men there, for most had gone south with Ragnar. Some of those warriors had died at Ethandun and the rest were still with Guthrum, whose defeated army had stayed in Mercia. Guthrum and Alfred had made peace, and Guthrum had even been baptised, which Willibald said was a miracle. So there would be few warriors at Synningthwait. No place to find refuge against my uncle’s murderous ambitions or Kjartan’s hate. So, with no real plan for my future and content to let fate work its will, I kept faith with Bolti and escorted him north towards Kjartan’s land which lay athwart our path like a dark cloud. To pass through that land meant paying a toll, and that toll would be steep, and only powerful men like Ivarr, whose warriors outnumbered Kjartan’s followers, could cross the River Wiire without payment. ‘You can afford it,’ I teased Bolti. His two sons each led packhorses that I suspected were loaded with coins wrapped in cloth or fleece to stop them clinking.

‘I can’t afford it if he takes my daughters,’ Bolti said. He had twin daughters who were twelve or thirteen, ripe for marriage. They were short, plump, fair-haired, snub-nosed and impossible to tell apart.

‘Is that what Kjartan does?’ I asked.

‘He takes what he wants,’ Bolti said sourly, ‘and he likes young girls, though I suspect he’d prefer to take you.’

‘And why do you suspect that?’ I asked him tonelessly.

‘I know the tales,’ he said. ‘His son lost his eye because of you.’

‘His son lost his eye,’ I said, ‘because he stripped Earl Ragnar’s daughter half naked.’

‘But he blames you.’

‘He does,’ I agreed. We had all been children then, but childhood injuries can fester and I did not doubt that Sven the One-Eyed would love to take both my eyes as revenge for his one.

So as we neared Dunholm we turned west into the hills to avoid Kjartan’s men. It was summer, but a chill wind brought low clouds and a thin rain so that I was glad of my leather-lined mail coat. Hild had smeared the metal rings with lanolin squeezed out of newly-shorn fleeces, and it protected most of the metal from rust. She had put the grease on my helmet and sword-blades too.

We climbed, following the well-worn track, and a couple of miles behind us another group followed, and there were fresh hoofprints in the damp earth betraying that others had passed this way not long before. Such heavy use of the path should have made me think. Kjartan the Cruel and Sven the One-Eyed lived off the dues that travellers paid them, and if a traveller did not pay then they were robbed, taken as slaves or killed. Kjartan and his son had to be aware that folk were trying to avoid them by using the hill paths, and I should have been more wary. Bolti was unafraid, for he simply trusted me. He told me tales of how Kjartan and Sven had become rich from slaves. ‘They take anyone, Dane or Saxon,’ he said, ‘and sell them over the water. If you’re lucky you can sometimes ransom a slave back, but the price will be high.’ He glanced at Father Willibald. ‘He kills all priests.’

‘He does?’

‘He hates all Christian priests. He reckons they’re sorcerers, so he half buries them and lets his dogs eat them.’

‘What did he say?’ Willibald asked me, pulling his mare aside before Witnere could savage her.

‘He said Kjartan will kill you if he captures you, father.’

‘Kill me?’

‘He’ll feed you to his hounds.’

‘Oh, dear God,’ Willibald said. He was unhappy, lost, far from home, and nervous of the strange northern landscape. Hild, on the other hand, seemed happier. She was nineteen years old, and filled with patience for life’s hardships. She had been born into a wealthy West Saxon family, not noble, but possessed of enough land to live well, but she had been the last of eight children and her father had promised her to the church’s service because her mother had nearly died when Hild was born, and he ascribed his wife’s survival to God’s benevolence. So, at eleven years old, Hild, whose proper name was Sister Hildegyth, had been sent to the nuns in Cippanhamm and there she had lived, shut away from the world, praying and spinning yarn, spinning and praying, until the Danes had come and she had been whored.

She still whimpered in her sleep and I knew she was remembering her humiliations, but she was happy to be away from Wessex and away from the folk who constantly told her she should return to God’s service. Willibald had chided her for abandoning her holy life, but I had warned him that one more such comment would earn him a new and larger bellybutton and ever since he had kept quiet. Now Hild drank in every new sight with a child’s sense of wonder. Her pale face had taken on a golden glow to match her hair. She was a clever woman, not the cleverest I have known, but full of a shrewd wisdom. I have lived long now and have learned that some women are trouble, and some are easy companions, and Hild was among the easiest I ever knew. Perhaps that was because we were friends. We were lovers too, but never in love and she was assailed by guilt. She kept that to herself and to her prayers, but in the daylight she had begun to laugh again and to take pleasure from simple things, yet at times the darkness wrapped her and she would whimper and I would see her long fingers fidget with a crucifix and I knew she was feeling God’s claws raking across her soul.

So we rode into the hills and I had been careless, and it was Hild who saw the horsemen first. There were nineteen of them, most in leather coats, but three in mail, and they were circling behind us, and I knew then that we were being shepherded. Our track followed the side of a hill and to our right was a steep drop to a rushing stream, and though we could escape into the dale we would inevitably be slower than the men who now joined the track behind us. They did not try to approach. They could see we were armed and they did not want a fight, they just wanted to make sure we kept plodding north to whatever fate awaited us. ‘Can’t you fight them off?’ Bolti demanded.

‘Thirteen against nineteen?’ I suggested. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘if the thirteen will fight, but they won’t.’ I gestured at the swordsmen Bolti was paying to accompany us. ‘They’re good enough to scare off bandits,’ I went on, ‘but they’re not stupid enough to fight Kjartan’s men. If I ask them to fight they’ll most likely join the enemy and share your daughters.’

‘But …’ he began, then fell silent for we could at last see what did await us. A slave fair was being held where the stream tumbled into a deeper dale and in that larger valley was a sizeable village built where a bridge, nothing more than a giant stone slab, crossed a wider stream that I took to be the Wiire. There was a crowd in the village and I saw those folk were being guarded by more men. The riders who were following us came a little closer, but stopped when I stopped. I gazed down the hill. The village was too far away to tell whether Kjartan or Sven were there, but it seemed safe to assume the men in the valley had come from Dunholm and that one or other of Dunholm’s two lords led them. Bolti was squeaking in alarm, but I ignored him.

Two other tracks led into the village from the south and I guessed that horsemen were guarding all such paths and had been intercepting travellers all day. They had been driving their prey towards the village and those who could not pay the toll were being taken captive. ‘What are you going to do?’ Bolti asked, close to panic.

‘I’m going to save your life,’ I said, and I turned to one of his twin daughters and demanded that she gave me a black linen scarf that she wore as a belt. She unwound it and, with a trembling hand, gave it to me and I wrapped it around my head, covering my mouth, nose and forehead, then asked Hild to pin it into place. ‘What are you doing?’ Bolti squawked again.

I did not bother to reply. Instead I crammed my helmet over the scarf. The cheek-pieces were fitted so that my face was now a mask of polished metal over a black skull. Only my eyes could be seen. I half drew Serpent-Breath to make sure she slid easily in her scabbard, then I urged Witnere a few paces forward. ‘I am now Thorkild the Leper,’ I told Bolti. The scarf made my voice thick and indistinct.

‘You’re who?’ he asked, gaping at me.

‘I am Thorkild the Leper,’ I said, ‘and you and I will now go and deal with them.’

‘Me?’ he said faintly.

I waved everyone forward. The band that had circled to follow us had gone south again, presumably to find the next group trying to evade Kjartan’s war-band.

‘I hired you to protect me,’ Bolti said in desperation.

‘And I am going to protect you,’ I said. His Saxon wife was wailing as though she were at someone’s funeral and I snarled at her to be silent. Then, a couple of hundred paces from the village, I stopped and told everyone except Bolti to wait. ‘Just you and I now,’ I told Bolti.

‘I think you should deal with them alone,’ he said, then squealed.

He squealed because I had slapped the rump of his horse so that it leaped forward. I caught up with him. ‘Remember,’ I said, ‘I’m Thorkild the Leper, and if you betray who I really am then I shall kill you, your wife, your sons and then I’ll sell your daughters into whoredom. Who am I?’

‘Thorkild,’ he stammered.

‘Thorkild the Leper,’ I said. We were in the village now, a miserable place of low stone cottages roofed with turf, and there were at least thirty or forty folk being guarded at the village’s centre, but off to one side, close to the stone-slab bridge, a table and benches had been placed on a patch of grass. Two men sat behind the table with a jug of ale in front of them, and all that I saw, but in truth I really only noticed one thing.

My father’s helmet.

It was on the table. The helmet had a closed face-piece which, like the crown, was inlaid with silver. A snarling mouth was carved into the metal, and I had seen that helmet so many times. I had even played with it as a small child, though if my father discovered me with it he would clout me hard about the skull. My father had worn that helmet on the day he died at Eoferwic, and Ragnar the Elder had bought it from the man who cut my father down, and now it belonged to one of the men who had murdered Ragnar.

It was Sven the One-Eyed. He stood as Bolti and I approached and I felt a savage shock of recognition. I had known Sven since he was a child, and now he was a man, but I instantly knew the flat, wide face with its one feral eye. The other eye was a wrinkled hole. He was tall and broad-shouldered, long-haired and full-bearded, a swaggering young man in a suit of richest mail and with two swords, a long and a short, hanging at his waist. ‘More guests,’ he announced our arrival, and he gestured to the bench on the far side of the table. ‘Sit,’ he ordered, ‘and we shall do business together.’

‘Sit with him,’ I growled softly to Bolti.

Bolti gave me a despairing glance, then dismounted and went to the table. The second man was dark-skinned, black-haired and much older than Sven. He wore a black gown so that he looked like a monk except that he had a silver hammer of Thor hanging at his neck. He also had a wooden tray in front of him and the tray was cunningly divided into separate compartments to hold the different coins that gleamed silver in the sunlight. Sven, sitting again beside the black-robed man, poured a beaker of ale and pushed it towards Bolti who glanced back at me, then sat as he had been commanded.

‘And you are?’ Sven asked him.

‘Bolti Ericson,’ Bolti said. He had to say it twice because the first time he could not raise his voice enough to be heard.

‘Bolti Ericson,’ Sven repeated, ‘and I am Sven Kjartanson and my father is lord of this land. You have heard of Kjartan?’

‘Yes, lord.’

Sven smiled. ‘I think you have been trying to evade our tolls, Bolti! Have you been trying to evade our tolls?’

‘No, lord.’

‘So where have you come from?’

‘Eoferwic.’

‘Ah! Another Eoferwic merchant, eh? You’re the third today! And what do you carry on those packhorses?’

‘Nothing, lord.’

Sven leaned forward slightly, then grinned as he let out a huge fart. ‘Sorry, Bolti, I only heard thunder. Did you say you have nothing? But I see four women, and three are young enough.’ He smiled. ‘Are they your women?’

‘My wife and daughters, lord,’ Bolti said.

‘Wives and daughters, how we do love them,’ Sven said, then he looked up at me and though I knew my face was wrapped in black and that my eyes were deep-shadowed by the helmet, I felt my skin crawl under his gaze. ‘Who,’ Sven asked, ‘is that?’

He must have been curious for I looked like a king. My mail and helmet and weapons were of the very best, while my arm rings denoted a warrior of high status. Bolti threw me a terrified look, but said nothing. ‘I asked,’ Sven said, louder now, ‘who that is.’

‘His name,’ Bolti said, and his voice was a trembling squeak, ‘is Thorkild the Leper.’

Sven made an involuntary grimace and clutched at the hammer amulet about his neck, for which I could not blame him. All men fear the grey, nerveless flesh of lepers, and most lepers are sent into the wilderness to live as they can and die as they must.

‘What are you doing with a leper?’ Sven challenged Bolti.

Bolti had no answer. ‘I am journeying north.’ I spoke for the first time, and my distorted voice seemed to boom inside my closed helmet.

‘Why do you come north?’ Sven asked.

‘Because I am tired of the south,’ I said.

He heard the hostility in my slurred voice and dismissed it as impotent. He must have guessed that Bolti had hired me as an escort, but I was no threat, Sven had five men within a few paces, all of them armed with swords or spears, and he had at least forty other men inside the village.

Sven drank some ale. ‘I hear there was trouble in Eoferwic?’ he asked Bolti.

Bolti nodded. I could see his right hand convulsively opening and closing beneath the table. ‘Some Danes were killed,’ he said.

Sven shook his head as though he found that news distressing. ‘Ivarr won’t be happy.’

‘Where is Ivarr?’ Bolti asked.

‘I last heard he was in the Tuede valley,’ Sven said, ‘and Aed of Scotland was dancing around him.’ He seemed to be enjoying the customary exchange of news, as if his thefts and piracy were given a coating of respectability by sticking to the conventions. ‘So,’ he said, then paused to fart again, ‘so what do you trade in, Bolti?’

‘Leather, fleeces, cloth, pottery,’ Bolti said, then his voice trailed away as he decided he was saying too much.

‘And I trade in slaves,’ Sven said, ‘and this is Gelgill,’ he indicated the man beside him, ‘and he buys the slaves from us, and you have three young women I think might prove very profitable to him and to me. So what will you pay me for them? Pay me enough and you can keep them.’ He smiled as if to suggest he was being entirely reasonable.

Bolti seemed struck dumb, but he managed to bring a purse from beneath his coat and put some silver on the table. Sven watched the coins one by one and when Bolti faltered Sven just smiled and Bolti kept counting the silver until there were thirty-eight shillings on the table. ‘It is all I have, lord,’ he said humbly.

‘All you have? I doubt that, Bolti Ericson,’ Sven said, ‘and if it is then I will let you keep one ear of one of your daughters. Just one ear as a keepsake. What do you think, Gelgill?’

It was a strange name, Gelgill, and I suspected the man had come from across the sea, for the most profitable slave markets were either in Dyflin or far off Frankia. He said something, too low for me to catch, and Sven nodded. ‘Bring the girls here,’ he said to his men, and Bolti shuddered. He looked at me again as if he expected me to stop what Sven planned, but I did nothing as the two guards walked to our waiting group.

Sven chatted of the prospects for the harvest as the guards ordered Hild and Bolti’s daughters off their horses. The men Bolti had hired did nothing to stop them. Bolti’s wife screamed a protest, then subsided into hysterical tears as her daughters and Hild were marched towards the table. Sven welcomed them with exaggerated politeness, then Gelgill stood and inspected the three. He ran his hands over their bodies as if he were buying horses. I saw Hild shiver as he pulled down her dress to probe her breasts, but he was less interested in her than in the two younger girls. ‘One hundred shillings each,’ he said after inspecting them, ‘but that one,’ he looked at Hild, ‘fifty.’ He spoke with a strange accent.

‘But that one’s pretty,’ Sven objected. ‘Those other two look like piglets.’

‘They’re twins,’ Gelgill said. ‘I can get a lot of money for twins. And the tall girl is too old. She must be nineteen or twenty.’

‘Virginity is such a valuable thing,’ Sven said to Bolti, ‘don’t you agree?’

Bolti was shaking. ‘I will pay you a hundred shillings for each of my daughters,’ he said desperately.

‘Oh no,’ Sven said. ‘That’s what Gelgill wants. I have to make some profit too. You can keep all three, Bolti, if you pay me six hundred shillings.’

It was an outrageous price, and it was meant to be, but Bolti did not baulk at it. ‘Only two are mine, lord,’ he whined. ‘The third is his woman.’ He pointed at me.

‘Yours?’ Sven looked at me. ‘You have a woman, leper? So that bit hasn’t dropped off yet?’ He found that funny and the two men who had fetched the women laughed with him. ‘So, leper,’ Sven asked, ‘what will you pay me for your woman?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

He scratched his arse. His men were grinning. They were used to defiance, and used to defeating it, and they enjoyed watching Sven fleece travellers. Sven poured himself more ale. ‘You have some fine arm rings, leper,’ he said, ‘and I suspect that helmet won’t be much use to you once you’re dead, so in exchange for your woman I’ll take your rings and your helmet and then you can go on your way.’

I did not move, did not speak, but I gently pressed my legs against Witnere’s flanks and I felt the big horse tremble. He was a fighting beast and he wanted me to release him, and perhaps it was Witnere’s tension that Sven sensed. All he could see was my baleful helmet with its dark eye holes and its wolf’s crest and he was becoming worried. He had flippantly raised the wager, but he could not back down if he wanted to keep his dignity. He had to play to win now. ‘Lost your tongue suddenly?’ he sneered at me, then gestured at the two men who had fetched the women. ‘Egil! Atsur! Take the leper’s helmet!’

Sven must have reckoned he was safe. He had at least a ship’s crew of men in the village and I was by myself, and that convinced him that I was defeated even before his two men approached me. One had a spear, the other was drawing his sword, but the sword was not even halfway out of the scabbard before I had Serpent-Breath in my hand and Witnere moving. He had been desperate to attack, and he leaped with the speed of eight-legged Sleipnir, Odin’s famed horse. I took the man on the right first, the man who was still drawing his sword, and Serpent-Breath came from the sky like a bolt of Thor’s lightning and her edge went through his helmet as if it were made of parchment and Witnere, obedient to the pressure of my knee was already turning towards Sven as the spearman came for me. He should have thrust his blade into Witnere’s chest or neck, but instead he tried to ram the spear up at my ribs and Witnere twisted to his right and snapped at the man’s face with his big teeth and the man stumbled backwards, just avoiding the bite, and he lost his footing to sprawl on the grass and I kept Witnere turning left. My right foot was already free of the stirrup and then I threw myself out of the saddle and dropped hard onto Sven. He was half tangled by the bench as he tried to stand, and I drove him down, thumping the wind from his belly, and then I found my feet, stood, and Serpent-Breath was at Sven’s throat. ‘Egil!’ Sven called to the spearman who had been driven back by Witnere, but Egil dared not attack me while my sword was at his master’s gullet.

Bolti was whimpering. He had pissed himself. I could smell it and hear it dripping. Gelgill was standing very still, watching me, his narrow face expressionless. Hild was smiling. A half-dozen of Sven’s other men were facing me, but none dared move because the tip of Serpent-Breath, her blade smeared with blood, was at Sven’s throat. Witnere was beside me, teeth bared, one front hoof pawing at the ground and thumping very close to Sven’s head. Sven was gazing up at me with his one eye that was filled with hate and fear, and I suddenly stepped away from him. ‘On your knees,’ I told him.

‘Egil!’ Sven pleaded again.

Egil, black-bearded and with gaping nostrils where the front of his nose had been chopped off in some fight, levelled his spear.

‘He dies if you attack,’ I said to Egil, touching Sven with Serpent-Breath’s tip. Egil, sensibly stepped backwards, and I flicked Serpent-Breath across Sven’s face, drawing blood. ‘On your knees,’ I said again, and when he was kneeling I leaned down and took his two swords from their scabbards and lay them beside my father’s helmet on the table.

‘You want to kill the slaver?’ I called back to Hild, gesturing at the swords.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Iseult would have killed him,’ I said. Iseult had been my lover and Hild’s friend.

‘Thou shalt not kill,’ Hild said. It was a Christian commandment and about as futile, I thought, as commanding the sun to go backwards.

‘Bolti,’ I spoke in Danish now, ‘kill the slaver.’ I did not want Gelgill behind my back.

Bolti did not move. He was too scared to obey me, but, to my surprise, his two daughters came and fetched Sven’s swords. Gelgill tried to run, but the table was in his way and one of the girls gave a wild swing that slashed across his skull and he fell sideways. Then they savaged him. I did not watch, because I was guarding Sven, but I heard the slaver’s cries and Hild’s gasp of surprise, and I could see the astonishment on the faces of the men in front of me. The twin girls grunted as they hacked. Gelgill took a long time to die and not one of Sven’s men tried to save him, or to rescue their master. They all had weapons drawn and if just one of them had possessed any sense they would have realised that I dared not kill Sven, for his life was my life. If I took his soul they would have swamped me with blades, but they were scared of what Kjartan would do to them if his son died and so they did nothing and I pressed the blade harder against Sven’s throat so that he gave a half-strangled yelp of fear.

Behind me Gelgill was at last hacked to death. I risked a glance and saw that Bolti’s twin daughters were blood-drenched and grinning. ‘They are Hel’s daughters,’ I told the watching men and I was proud of that sudden invention, for Hel is the corpse-goddess, rancid and terrible, who presides over the dead who do not die in battle. ‘And I am Thorkild!’ I went on, ‘and I have filled Odin’s hall with dead men.’ Sven was shaking beneath me. His men seemed to be holding their breath and suddenly my tale took wings and I made my voice as deep as I could. ‘I am Thorkild the Leper,’ I announced loudly, ‘and I died a long time ago, but Odin has sent me from the corpse-hall to take the souls of Kjartan and his son.’

They believed me. I saw men touch amulets. One spearman even dropped to his knees. I wanted to kill Sven there and then, and perhaps I should have done, but it would only have taken one man to break the web of magical nonsense I had spun for them. What I needed at that moment was not Sven’s soul, but our safety, and so I would trade the one for the other. ‘I shall let this worm go,’ I said, ‘to carry news of my coming to his father, but you will go first. All of you! Go back beyond the village and I shall release him. You will leave your captives here.’ They just stared at me and I twitched the blade so that Sven yelped again. ‘Go!’ I shouted.

They went. They went fast, filled with dread. Bolti was gazing at his beloved daughters with awe. I told each girl they had done well, and that they should take a handful of coins from the table, and then they went back to their mother, both clutching silver and bloody blades. ‘They’re good girls,’ I told Bolti and he said nothing, but hurried after them.

‘I couldn’t kill him,’ Hild said. She seemed ashamed of her squeamishness.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. I kept the sword at Sven’s throat until I was sure all his men had retreated a good distance eastwards. The folk who had been their captives, mostly young boys and girls, stayed in the village, but none dared approach me.

I was tempted then to tell Sven the truth, to let him know that he had been humiliated by an old enemy, but the tale of Thorkild the Leper was too good to waste. I was also tempted to ask about Thyra, Ragnar’s sister, but I feared that if she did live and that if I betrayed an interest in her, then she would not live much longer, and so I said nothing of her. Instead I gripped Sven’s hair and pulled his head back so that he was staring up at me. ‘I have come to this middle earth,’ I told him, ‘to kill you and your father. I shall find you again, Sven Kjartanson, and I will kill you next time. I am Thorkild, I walk at night and I cannot be killed because I am already a corpse. So take my greetings to your father and tell him the dead swordsman has been sent for him and we shall all three sail in Skidbladnir back to Niflheim.’ Niflheim was the dreadful pit of the dishonoured dead, and Skidbladnir was the ship of the gods that could be folded and concealed in a pouch. I let go of Sven then and kicked him hard in the back so he sprawled onto his face. He could have crawled away, but he dared not move. He was a whipped dog now, and though I still wanted to kill him I reckoned it would be better to let him carry my eery tale to his father. Kjartan would doubtless learn that Uhtred of Bebbanburg had been seen in Eoferwic, but he would also hear of the corpse warrior come to kill him, and I wanted his dreams to be wreathed with terror.

Sven still did not move as I stooped to his belt and pulled away a heavy purse. Then I stripped him of his seven silver arm rings. Hild had cut off part of Gelgill’s robe and was using it to make a bag to hold the coins in the slave-trader’s tray. I gave her my father’s helmet to carry, then climbed back into Witnere’s saddle. I patted his neck and he tossed his head extravagantly as though he understood he had been a great fighting stallion that day.

I was about to leave when that weird day became stranger still. Some of the captives, as if realising that they were truly freed, had started towards the bridge, while others were so confused or lost or despairing that they had followed the armed men eastwards. Then, suddenly, there was a monkish chanting and out of one of the low, turf-roofed houses where they had been imprisoned, came a file of monks and priests. There were seven of them, and they were the luckiest men that day, for I was to discover that Kjartan the Cruel did indeed have a hatred of Christians and killed every priest or monk he captured. These seven escaped him now, and with them was a young man burdened with slave shackles. He was tall, well-built, very good-looking, dressed in rags and about my age. His long curly hair was so golden that it looked almost white and he had pale eyelashes and very blue eyes and a sun-darkened skin unmarked by disease. His face might have been carved from stone, so pronounced were his cheekbones, nose and jaw, yet the hardness of the face was softened by a cheerful expression that suggested he found life a constant surprise and a continual amusement. When he saw Sven cowering beneath my horse he left the chanting priests and ran towards us, stopping only to pick up the sword of the man I had killed. The young man held the sword awkwardly, for his hands were joined by links of chain, but he carried it to Sven and held it poised over Sven’s neck.

‘No,’ I said.

‘No?’ The young man smiled up at me and I instinctively liked him. His face was open and guileless.

‘I promised him his life,’ I said.

The young man thought about that for a heartbeat. ‘You did,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t.’ He spoke in Danish.

‘But if you take his life,’ I said, ‘then I shall have to take yours.’

He considered that bargain with amusement in his eyes. ‘Why?’ he asked, not in any alarm, but as if he genuinely wished to know.

‘Because that is the law,’ I said.

‘But Sven Kjartanson knows no law,’ he pointed out.

‘It is my law,’ I said, ‘and I want him to take a message to his father.’

‘What message?’

‘That the dead swordsman has come for him.’

The young man cocked his head thoughtfully as he considered the message and he evidently approved of it for he tucked the sword under an armpit and then clumsily untied the rope belt of his breeches. ‘You can take a message from me too,’ he said to Sven, ‘and this is it.’ He pissed on Sven. ‘I baptise you,’ the young man said, ‘in the name of Thor and of Odin and of Loki.’

The seven churchmen, three monks and four priests, solemnly watched the baptism, but none protested the implied blasphemy or tried to stop it. The young man pissed for a long time, aiming his stream so that it thoroughly soaked Sven’s hair, and when at last he finished he retied the belt and offered me another of his dazzling smiles. ‘You’re the dead swordsman?’

‘I am,’ I said.

‘Stop whimpering,’ the young man said to Sven, then smiled up at me again. ‘Then perhaps you will do me the honour of serving me?’

‘Serve you?’ I asked. It was my turn to be amused.

‘I am Guthred,’ he said, as though that explained everything.

‘Guthrum I have heard of,’ I said, ‘and I know a Guthwere and I have met two men named Guthlac, but I know of no Guthred.’

‘I am Guthred, son of Hardicnut,’ he said.

The name still meant nothing to me. ‘And why should I serve Guthred,’ I asked, ‘son of Hardicnut?’

‘Because until you came I was a slave,’ he said, ‘but now, well, because you came, now I’m a king!’ He spoke with such enthusiasm that he had trouble making the words come out as he wanted.

I smiled beneath the linen scarf. ‘You’re a king,’ I said, ‘but of what?’

‘Northumbria, of course,’ he said brightly.

‘He is, lord, he is,’ one of the priests said earnestly.

And so the dead swordsman met the slave king, and Sven the One-Eyed crawled to his father, and the weirdness that infected Northumbria grew weirder still.