Читать книгу The Last Kingdom Series Books 4-6: Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 18

We had agreed at Wintanceaster that Æthelred would come downriver to Coccham, bringing with him the troops from Alfred’s household guard, his own warriors, and whatever men he could raise from his extensive lands in southern Mercia. Once he arrived we would jointly march on Lundene with the Berrocscire fyrd and my own household troops. Alfred had stressed the need for haste, and Æthelred had promised to be ready in two weeks.

Yet a whole month passed and still Æthelred had not come. The year’s first nestlings were taking wing among trees that were still not in full leaf. The pear blossom was white, and wagtails flitted in and out of their nests under the thatched eaves of our house. I watched a cuckoo staring intently at those nests, planning when to leave her egg among the wagtail’s clutch. The cuckoo had not started calling yet, but it would soon, and that was the time by which Alfred wanted Lundene captured.

I waited. I was bored, as were my household troops, who were ready for war and suffered peace. They numbered just fifty-six warriors. It was a small number, scarcely sufficient to crew a ship, but men cost money and I was hoarding my silver in those days. Five of those men were youngsters who had never faced the ultimate test of battle, which was to stand in the shield wall, and so, as we waited for Æthelred, I put those five men through day after day of hard training. Osferth, Alfred’s bastard, was one of them. ‘He’s no good,’ Finan said to me repeatedly.

‘Give him time,’ I said just as frequently.

‘Give him a Danish blade,’ Finan said viciously, ‘and pray it slits his monkish belly.’ He spat. ‘I thought the king wanted him back in Wintanceaster?’

‘He does.’

‘So why don’t you send him back? He’s no use to us.’

‘Alfred has too many other things on his mind,’ I said, ignoring Finan’s question, ‘and he won’t remember Osferth.’ That was not true. Alfred had a most methodical mind, and he would not have forgotten Osferth’s absence from Wintanceaster, nor my disobedience in not sending the youth back to his studies.

‘But why not send him back?’ Finan insisted.

‘Because I liked his uncle,’ I said, and that was true. I had loved Leofric and, for his sake, I would be kind to his nephew.

‘Or are you just trying to annoy the king, lord?’ Finan asked, then grinned and strode away without waiting for an answer. ‘Hook and pull, you bastard!’ he shouted at Osferth. ‘Hook and pull!’

Osferth turned to look at Finan and was immediately struck on the head by an oak cudgel wielded by Clapa. If it had been an axe the blade would have split Osferth’s helmet and cut deep into his skull, but the cudgel just half stunned him, so he fell to his knees.

‘Get up, you weakling!’ Finan snarled. ‘Get up, hook and pull!’

Osferth tried to get up. His pale face looked miserable under the battered helmet that I had given him. He managed to stand, but immediately wobbled and knelt again.

‘Give me that,’ Finan said, and snatched the axe out of Osferth’s feeble hands. ‘Now watch! It isn’t difficult to do! My wife could do this!’

The five new men were facing five of my experienced warriors. The youngsters had been given axes, real weapons, and told to break the shield wall that opposed them. It was a small wall, just the five overlapping shields defended by wooden clubs, and Clapa grinned as Finan approached.

‘What you do,’ Finan was speaking to Osferth, ‘is hook the axe blade over the top of the enemy bastard’s shield. Is that so difficult? Hook it, pull the shield down, and let your neighbour kill the earsling behind it. We’ll do it slowly, Clapa, to show how it’s done, and stop grinning.’

They made the hook and pull in ludicrously slow motion, the axe coming gently overhand to latch its blade behind Clapa’s shield, and Clapa then allowing Finan to pull the shield’s top down towards him. ‘There,’ Finan turned on Osferth when Clapa’s body had been exposed to a blow, ‘that’s how you break a shield wall! Now we’ll do it for real, Clapa.’

Clapa grinned again, relishing a chance to clout Finan with the cudgel. Finan stepped back, licked his lips, then struck fast. He swung the axe just as he had demonstrated, but Clapa tilted the shield back to take the axe head on the wooden surface and, at the same time, rammed his cudgel under the shield in a savage thrust at Finan’s groin.

It was always a pleasure to watch the Irishman fight. He was the quickest man with a blade that I ever saw, and I have seen many. I thought Clapa’s lunge would fold him in two and drive him to the grass in agony, but Finan sidestepped, seized the lower rim of the shield with his left hand and jerked it hard upwards to drive the top iron rim into Clapa’s face. Clapa staggered backwards, his nose already red with blood, and the axe was somehow dropped with the speed of a striking snake and its blade was hooked around Clapa’s ankle. Finan pulled, Clapa fell back and now it was the Irishman who grinned. ‘That isn’t hook and pull,’ he said to Osferth, ‘but it works just the same.’

‘Wouldn’t have worked if you’d been holding a shield,’ Clapa complained.

‘That thing in your face, Clapa?’ Finan said, ‘thing that flaps open and closed? That ugly thing you shovel food into? Keep it shut.’ He tossed the axe to Osferth who tried to snatch the handle out of the air. He missed and the axe thumped into a puddle.

The spring had turned wet. Rain sheeted down, the river spread, there was mud everywhere. Boots and clothes rotted. What little grain was left in store sprouted and I sent my men hunting or fishing to provide us with food. The first calves were born, slithering bloodily into a wet world. Every day I expected Alfred to come and inspect Coccham’s progress, but in those drenched days he stayed in Wintanceaster. He did send a messenger, a pallid priest who brought a letter sewn into a greased lambskin pouch. ‘If you cannot read it, lord,’ he suggested tentatively as I slit the pouch open, ‘I can …’

‘I can read,’ I growled. I could too. It was not an achievement I was proud of, because only priests and monks really needed the skill, but Father Beocca had whipped letters into me when I was a boy, and the lessons had proved useful. Alfred had decreed that all his lords should be able to read, not just so they could stagger their way through the gospel books the king insisted on sending as presents, but so they could read his messages.

I thought the letter might bring news of Æthelred, perhaps some explanation of why he was taking so long to bring his men to Coccham, but instead it was an order that I was to take one priest for every thirty men when I marched to Lundene. ‘I’m to do what?’ I asked aloud.

‘The king worries about men’s souls, lord,’ the priest said.

‘So he wants me to take useless mouths to feed? Tell him to send me grain and I’ll take some of his damned priests.’ I looked back to the letter, which had been written by one of the royal clerks, but at the bottom, in Alfred’s bold handwriting, was one line. ‘Where is Osferth?’ the line read. ‘He is to return today. Send him with Father Cuthbert.’

‘You’re Father Cuthbert?’ I asked the nervous priest.

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Well you can’t take Osferth back,’ I said, ‘he’s ill.’

‘Ill?’

‘He’s sick as a dog,’ I said, ‘and probably going to die.’

‘But I thought I saw him,’ Father Cuthbert said, gesturing out of the open door to where Finan was trying to goad Osferth into showing some skill and enthusiasm. ‘Look,’ the priest said brightly, trying to be of assistance.

‘Very likely to die,’ I said slowly and savagely. Father Cuthbert turned back to speak, caught my eye and his voice faltered. ‘Finan!’ I shouted, and waited till the Irishman came into the house with a naked sword in his hand. ‘How long,’ I asked, ‘do you think young Osferth will live?’

‘He’ll be lucky to survive one day,’ Finan said, assuming I had meant how long Osferth would last in battle.

‘You see?’ I said to Father Cuthbert. ‘He’s sick. He’s going to die. So tell the king I shall grieve for him. And tell the king that the longer my cousin waits, the stronger the enemy becomes in Lundene.’

‘It’s the weather, lord,’ Father Cuthbert said. ‘Lord Æthelred cannot find adequate supplies.’

‘Tell him there’s food in Lundene,’ I said and knew I was wasting my breath.

Æthelred finally came in mid April, and our joint forces now numbered almost eight hundred men, of whom fewer than four hundred were useful. The rest had been raised from the fyrd of Berrocscire or summoned from the lands in southern Mercia that Æthelred had inherited from his father, my mother’s brother. The men of the fyrd were farmers, and they brought axes or hunting bows. A few had swords or spears, and fewer still had any armour other than a leather jerkin, while some marched with nothing but sharpened hoes. A hoe can be a fearful weapon in a street brawl, but it is hardly suitable to beat down a mailed Viking armed with shield, axe, short-sword and long blade.

The useful men were my household troops, a similar number from Æthelred’s household, and three hundred of Alfred’s own guards who were led by the grim-faced, looming Steapa. Those trained men would do the real fighting, while the rest were just there to make our force look large and menacing.

Yet in truth Sigefrid and Erik would know exactly how menacing we were. Throughout the winter and early spring there had been travellers coming upriver from Lundene and some were doubtless the brothers’ spies. They would know how many men we were bringing, how many of those men were true warriors, and those same spies must have reported back to Sigefrid on the day we had last crossed the river to the northern bank.

We made the crossing upstream of Coccham, and it took all day. Æthelred grumbled about the delay, but the ford we used, which had been impassable all winter, was running high again and the horses had to be coaxed over, and the supplies had to be loaded on the ships for the crossing, though not on board Æthelred’s ship, which he insisted could not carry cargo.

Alfred had given his son-in-law the Heofonhlaf to use for the campaign. It was the smaller of Alfred’s river ships, and Æthelred had raised a canopy over the stern to make a sheltered spot just forward of the steersman’s platform. There were cushions there, and pelts, and a table and stools, and Æthelred spent all day watching the crossing from beneath the canopy while servants brought him food and ale.

He watched with Æthelflaed who, to my surprise, accompanied her husband. I first saw her as she walked the small raised deck of the Heofonhlaf and, seeing me, she had raised a hand in greeting. At midday Gisela and I were summoned to her husband’s presence and Æthelred greeted Gisela like an old friend, fussing over her and demanding that a fur cloak be fetched for her. Æthelflaed watched the fuss, then gave me a blank look. ‘You are going back to Wintanceaster, my lady?’ I asked her. She was a woman now, married to an ealdorman, and so I called her my lady.

‘I am coming with you,’ she said blandly.

That startled me. ‘You’re coming …’ I began, but did not finish.

‘My husband wishes it,’ she said very formally, then a flash of the old Æthelflaed showed as she gave me a quick smile, ‘and I’m glad. I want to see a battle.’

‘A battle is no place for a lady,’ I said firmly.

‘Don’t worry the woman, Uhtred!’ Æthelred called across the deck. He had heard my last words. ‘My wife will be quite safe, I have assured her of that.’

‘War is no place for women,’ I insisted.

‘She wishes to see our victory,’Æthelred insisted, ‘and so she shall, won’t you, my duck?’

‘Quack, quack,’ Æthelflaed said so softly that only I could hear. There was bitterness in her tone, but when I glanced at her she was smiling sweetly at her husband.

‘I would come if I could,’ Gisela said, then touched her belly. The baby did not show yet.

‘You can’t,’ I said, and was rewarded by a mocking grimace, then we heard a bellow of rage from the bows of Heofonhlaf.

‘Can’t a man sleep!’ the voice shouted. ‘You Saxon earsling! You woke me up!’

Father Pyrlig had been sleeping under the small platform at the ship’s bows, where some poor man had inadvertently disturbed him. The Welshman now crawled into the sullen daylight and blinked at me. ‘Good God,’ he said with disgust in his voice, ‘it’s the Lord Uhtred.’

‘I thought you were in East Anglia,’ I called to him.

‘I was, but King Æthelstan sent me to make sure you useless Saxons don’t piss down your legs when you see Northmen on Lundene’s walls.’ It took me a moment to remember that Æthelstan was Guthrum’s Christian name. Pyrlig came towards us, a dirty shirt covering his belly where his wooden cross hung. ‘Good morning, my lady,’ he called cheerfully to Æthelflaed.

‘It is afternoon, father,’ Æthelflaed said, and I could tell from the warmth in her voice that she liked the Welsh priest.

‘Is it afternoon? Good God, I slept like a baby. Lady Gisela! A pleasure. My goodness, but all the beauties are gathered here!’ He beamed at the two women. ‘If it wasn’t raining I would think I’d been transported to heaven. My lord,’ the last two words were addressed to my cousin and it was plain from their tone that the two men were not friends. ‘You need advice, my lord?’ Pyrlig asked.

‘I do not,’ my cousin said harshly.

Father Pyrlig grinned at me. ‘Alfred asked me to come as an adviser.’ He paused to scratch a fleabite on his belly. ‘I’m to advise Lord Æthelred.’

‘As am I,’ I said.

‘And doubtless Lord Uhtred’s advice would be the same as mine,’ Pyrlig went on, ‘which is that we must move with the speed of a Saxon seeing a Welshman’s sword.’

‘He means we must move fast,’ I explained to Æthelred, who knew perfectly well what the Welshman had meant.

My cousin ignored me. ‘Are you being deliberately offensive?’ he asked Pyrlig stiffly.

‘Yes, lord!’ Pyrlig grinned, ‘I am!’

‘I have killed dozens of Welshmen,’ my cousin said.

‘Then the Danes will be no problem to you, will they?’ Pyrlig retorted, refusing to take offence. ‘But my advice still stands, lord. Make haste! The pagans know we’re coming, and the more time you give them, the more formidable their defences!’

We might have moved fast had we possessed ships to carry us downriver, but Sigefrid and Erik, knowing we were coming, had blocked all traffic on the Temes and, not counting Heofonhlaf, we could only muster seven ships, not nearly sufficient to carry our men and so only the laggards and the supplies and Æthelred’s cronies travelled by water. So we marched and it took us four days, and every day we saw horsemen to the north of us or ships downstream of us, and I knew those were Sigefrid’s scouts, making a last count of our numbers as our clumsy army lumbered ever nearer Lundene. We wasted one whole day because it was a Sunday and Æthelred insisted that the priests accompanying the army said mass. I listened to the drone of voices and watched the enemy horsemen circle around us. Haesten, I knew, would already have reached Lundene, and his men, at least two or three hundred of them, would be reinforcing the walls.

Æthelred travelled on board the Heofonhlaf, only coming ashore in the evening to walk around the sentries I had posted. He made a point of moving those sentries, as if to suggest I did not know my business, and I let him do it. On the last night of the journey we camped on an island that was reached from the north bank by a narrow causeway, and its reed-fringed shore was thick with mud so that Sigefrid, if he had a mind to attack us, would find our camp hard to approach. We tucked our ships into the creek that twisted to the island’s north and, as the tide went down and the frogs filled the dusk with croaking, the hulls settled into the thick mud. We lit fires on the mainland that would illuminate the approach of any enemy, and I posted men all around the island.

Æthelred did not come ashore that evening. Instead he sent a servant who demanded that I go to him on board the Heofonhlaf and so I took off my boots and trousers and waded through the glutinous muck before hauling myself over the ship’s side. Steapa, who was marching with the men from Alfred’s bodyguard, came with me. A servant drew buckets of river water from the ship’s far side and we cleaned the mud from our legs, then dressed again before joining Æthelred under his canopy at the Heofonhlaf’s stern. My cousin was accompanied by the commander of his household guard, a young Mercian nobleman named Aldhelm who had a long, supercilious face, dark eyes and thick black hair that he oiled to a lustrous sheen.

Æthelflaed was also there, attended by a maid and by a grinning Father Pyrlig. I bowed to her and she smiled back, but without enthusiasm, and then bent to her embroidery, which was illuminated by a horn-shielded lantern. She was threading white wool onto a dark grey field, making the image of a prancing horse that was her husband’s banner. The same banner, much larger, hung motionless at the ship’s mast. There was no wind, so the smoke from the fires of Lundene’s two towns was a motionless smear in the darkening east.

‘We attack at dawn,’ Æthelred announced without so much as a greeting. He was dressed in a mail coat and had his swords, short and long, belted at his waist. He was looking unusually smug, though he tried to make his voice casual. ‘But I will not sound the advance for my troops,’ he went on, ‘until I hear your own attack has started.’

I frowned at those words. ‘You won’t start your attack,’ I repeated cautiously, ‘until you hear mine has started?’

‘That’s plain, isn’t it?’ Æthelred demanded belligerently.

‘Very plain,’ Aldhelm said mockingly. He treated Æthelred in the same manner that Æthelred behaved to Alfred and, secure in my cousin’s favour, felt free to offer me veiled insult.

‘It’s not plain to me!’ Father Pyrlig put in energetically. ‘The agreed plan,’ the Welshman went on, speaking to Æthelred, ‘is for you to make a feint attack on the western walls and, when you have drawn defenders from the north wall, for Uhtred’s men to make the real assault.’

‘Well I’ve changed my mind,’ Æthelred said airily. ‘Uhtred’s men will now provide the diversionary attack, and my assault will be the real one.’ He tilted up his broad chin and stared at me, daring me to contradict him.

Æthelflaed also looked at me, and I sensed she wanted me to oppose her husband, but instead I surprised all of them by bowing my head as if in acquiescence. ‘If you insist,’ I said.

‘I do,’ Æthelred said, unable to conceal his pleasure at gaining the apparent victory so easily. ‘You may take your own household troops,’ he went on grudgingly, as though he possessed the authority to take them away from me, ‘and thirty other men.’

‘We agreed I could have fifty,’ I said.

‘I have changed my mind about that too!’ he said pugnaciously. He had already insisted that the men of the Berrocscire fyrd, my men, would swell his ranks, and I had meekly agreed to that, just as I had now agreed that the glory of the successful assault could be his. ‘You may take thirty,’ he went on harshly. I could have argued and maybe I should have argued, but I knew it would do no good. Æthelred was beyond argument, wanting only to demonstrate his authority in front of his young wife. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘that Alfred gave me command here.’

‘I had not forgotten,’ I said. Father Pyrlig was watching me shrewdly, doubtless wondering why I had yielded so easily to my cousin’s bullying. Aldhelm was half smiling, probably in the belief that I had been thoroughly cowed by Æthelred.

‘You will leave before us,’ Æthelred went on.

‘I shall leave very soon,’ I said, ‘I have to.’

‘My household troops,’ Æthelred said, now looking at Steapa, ‘will lead the real attack. You will bring the royal troops immediately behind.’

‘I’m going with Uhtred,’ Steapa said.

Æthelred blinked. ‘You are the commander,’ he said slowly, as though he talked with a small child, ‘of Alfred’s bodyguard! And you will bring them to the wall as soon as my men have laid the ladders.’

‘I’m going with Uhtred,’ Steapa said again. ‘The king ordered it.’

‘The king did no such thing!’ Æthelred said dismissively.

‘In writing,’ Steapa said. He frowned, then felt in a pouch and brought out a small square of parchment. He peered at it, not sure which way up the writing went, then just shrugged and gave the scrap to my cousin.

Æthelred frowned as he read the message in the light of his wife’s lantern. ‘You should have given me this before,’ he said petulantly.

‘I forgot,’ Steapa said, ‘and I’m to take six men of my own choosing.’ Steapa had a way of speaking that discouraged argument. He spoke slowly, harshly and dully, and managed to convey the impression that he was too stupid to understand any objection raised against his words. He also conveyed the thought that he might just slaughter any man who insisted on contradicting him. And Æthelred, faced with Steapa’s stubborn voice, and by the sheer presence of the man who was so tall and broad and skull-faced, surrendered without a fight.

‘If the king orders it,’ he said, offering back the scrap of parchment.

‘He does,’ Steapa insisted. He took the parchment and seemed uncertain what to do with it. For a heartbeat I thought he was going to eat it, but then he tossed it over the ship’s side and then frowned eastwards at the great pall of smoke that hung above the city.

‘Be certain you’re on time tomorrow,’ Æthelred said to me, ‘success depends on it.’

That was evidently our dismissal. Another man would have offered us ale and food, but Æthelred turned away from us and so Steapa and I stripped our legs bare again and waded ashore through the cloying mud. ‘You asked Alfred if you could come with me?’ I asked Steapa as we pushed through the reeds.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it was the king who wanted me to come with you. It was his idea.’

‘Good,’ I said, ‘I’m glad.’ I meant it too. Steapa and I had begun as enemies, but we had become friends, a bond forged by standing shield to shield in the face of an enemy. ‘There’s no one I’d rather have with me,’ I told him warmly as I stooped to pull on my boots.

‘I’m coming with you,’ he said in his slow voice, ‘because I’m to kill you.’

I stopped and stared at him in the darkness. ‘You’re to do what?’

‘I’m to kill you,’ he said, then remembered there was more to Alfred’s orders, ‘if you prove to be on Sigefrid’s side.’

‘But I’m not,’ I said.

‘He just wants to be sure of that,’ Steapa said, ‘and that monk? Asser? He says you can’t be trusted, so if you don’t obey your orders then I’m to kill you.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ I asked him.

He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter whether you’re ready for me or not,’ he said, ‘I’ll still kill you.’

‘No,’ I said, amending his words, ‘you’ll try to kill me.’

He thought about that for quite a long time, then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ll kill you.’ And so he would.

We left in the black of night under a sky smothered with clouds. The enemy horsemen who had been watching us had withdrawn to the city at dusk, but I was certain Sigefrid would still have scouts in the darkness and so for an hour or more we followed a track that led north through the marshes. It was hard keeping to the path, but after a while the ground became firmer and climbed to a village where small fires burned inside mud-walled huts piled with great heaps of thatch. I pushed a door open to see a family crouched in terror about their hearth. They were frightened because they had heard us, and they knew nothing moves at night except creatures that are dangerous, sinister and deadly. ‘What’s this place called?’ I asked and for a moment no one answered, then a man bowed his head convulsively and said he thought the settlement was named Padintune. ‘Padintune?’ I asked, ‘Padda’s estate? Is Padda here?’

‘He’s dead, lord,’ the man said, ‘he died years ago, lord. No one here knew him, lord.’

‘We’re friends,’ I told him, ‘but if anyone here leaves their house, we won’t be friends.’ I did not want some villager running to Lundene to warn Sigefrid that we had stopped in Padintune. ‘You understand that?’ I asked the man.

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Leave your house,’ I said, ‘and you die.’

I assembled my men in the small street and had Finan place a guard on every hovel. ‘No one’s to leave,’ I told him. ‘They can sleep in their beds, but no one’s to leave the village.’

Steapa loomed from the dark. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be marching north?’ he asked.

‘Yes, and we’re not,’ I retorted. ‘So this is when you’re supposed to kill me. I’m disobeying orders.’

‘Ah,’ he grunted, then crouched. I heard the leather of his armour creak and the chink of his chain mail settling.

‘You could draw your sax now,’ I suggested, ‘and gut me in one move? One cut up into my belly? Just make it fast, Steapa. Open my belly and keep the blade moving till it reaches my heart. But just let me draw my sword first, will you? I promise not to use it on you. I just want to go to Odin’s hall when I’m dead.’

He chuckled. ‘I’ll never understand you, Uhtred,’ he said.

‘I’m a very simple soul,’ I told him. ‘I just want to go home.’

‘Not Odin’s hall?’

‘Eventually,’ I said, ‘yes, but home first.’

‘To Northumbria?’

‘Where I have a fortress by the sea,’ I said wistfully, and I thought of Bebbanburg on its high crag, and of the wild grey sea rolling endlessly to break on the rocks, and of the cold wind blowing from the north and of the white gulls crying in the spindrift. ‘Home,’ I said.

‘The one your uncle stole from you?’ Steapa asked.

‘Ælfric,’ I said vengefully, and I thought of fate again. Ælfric was my father’s younger brother and he had stayed in Bebbanburg while I had accompanied my father to Eoferwic. I was a child. My father had died in Eoferwic, cut down by a Danish blade, and I had been given as a slave to Ragnar the Older, who had raised me like a son, and my uncle had ignored my father’s wishes and kept Bebbanburg for himself. That treachery was ever in my heart, seeping anger, and one day I would revenge it. ‘One day,’ I told Steapa, ‘I shall gut Ælfric from his crotch to his breastbone and watch him die, but I won’t do it quickly. I won’t pierce his heart. I shall watch him die and piss on him while he struggles. Then I’ll kill his sons.’

‘And tonight?’ Steapa asked. ‘Who do you kill tonight?’

‘Tonight we take Lundene,’ I said.

I could not see his face in the dark, but I sensed that he smiled. ‘I told Alfred he could trust you,’ Steapa said.

It was my turn to smile. Somewhere in Padintune a dog howled and was quieted. ‘But I’m not sure Alfred can trust me,’ I said after a long pause.

‘Why?’ Steapa asked, puzzled.

‘Because in one way I’m a very good Christian,’ I said.

‘You? A Christian?’

‘I love my enemies,’ I said.

‘The Danes?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t,’ he said bleakly. Steapa’s parents had been slaughtered by Danes. I did not respond. I was thinking of destiny. If the three spinners know our fate, then why do we make oaths? Because if we then break an oath, is it treachery? Or is it fate? ‘So will you fight them tomorrow?’ Steapa asked.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But not in the way Æthelred expects. So I’m disobeying orders, and your orders are to kill me if I do that.’

‘I’ll kill you later,’ Steapa said.

Æthelred had changed our agreed plan without ever suspecting that I had never intended to keep to it anyway. It was too obvious. How else would an army assault a city, except by trying to draw defenders away from the targeted ramparts? Sigefrid would know our first assault was a feint, and he would leave his garrison in place until he was certain he had identified the real threat, and then we would die under his walls and Lundene would remain a stronghold of the Northmen.

So the only way to capture Lundene was by trickery, stealth and by taking a desperate risk. ‘What I’m going to do,’ I told Steapa, ‘is wait for Æthelred to leave the island. Then we go back there, and we take two of the ships. It will be dangerous, very, because we have to go through the bridge’s gap in the dark and ships die there even in daylight. But if we can get through then there is an easy way into the old city.’

‘I thought there was a wall along the river?’

‘There is,’ I said, ‘but it’s broken in one place.’ A Roman had built a great house by the river and had cut a small channel beside his house. The channel pierced the wall, breaking it. I assumed the Roman had been wealthy and he had wanted a place to berth his ship and so he had pulled down a stretch of the river wall to make his channel and that was my way into Lundene.

‘Why didn’t you tell Alfred?’ Steapa asked.

‘Alfred can keep a secret,’ I said, ‘but Æthelred can’t. He would have told someone and within two days the Danes would have known what we planned.’ And that was true. We had spies and they had spies, and if I had revealed my real intentions then Sigefrid and Erik would have blocked the channel with ships and garrisoned the big house beside the river with men. We would have died on the wharves, and we still might die because I did not know that we could find the gap in the bridge, and if we did find it whether we could shoot through that perilous broken space where the river level dropped and the water foamed. If we missed, if one of the ships was just a half oar’s length too far south or north, then it would be swept onto the jagged pilings and men would be tipped into the river and I would not hear them drown because their armour and weapons would drag them under instantly.

Steapa had been thinking, always a slow process, but now he posed a shrewd question. ‘Why not land upriver of the bridge?’ he suggested. ‘There must be gates through the wall?’

‘There are a dozen gates,’ I said, ‘maybe a score, and Sigefrid will have blocked them all, but the last thing he’ll expect is for ships to try and run the gap in the bridge.’

‘Because ships die there?’ Steapa said.

‘Because ships die there,’ I agreed. I had watched it happen once, watched a trading ship run the gap at slack water, and somehow the steersman had veered too far to one side and the broken pilings had ripped the planks from the bottom of his hull. The gap was some forty paces wide and, when the river was calm with neither tide nor wind to churn the water, the gap looked innocent, but it never was. Lundene’s bridge was a killer, and to take Lundene I had to run the bridge.

And if we survived? If we could find the Roman dock and get ashore? Then we would be few and the enemy would be many, and some of us would die in the streets before Æthelred’s force could ever cross the wall. I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt and felt the small silver cross that was embedded there. Hild’s gift. A lover’s gift. ‘Have you heard a cuckoo yet?’ I asked Steapa.

‘Not yet.’

‘It’s time to go,’ I said, ‘unless you want to kill me?’

‘Maybe later,’ Steapa said, ‘but for the moment I’ll fight beside you.’

And we would have a fight. That I knew. And I touched my hammer amulet and sent a prayer into the darkness that I would live to see the child in Gisela’s belly.

Then we went back south.

Osric, who had brought me away from Lundene with Father Pyrlig, was one of our shipmasters, and the other was Ralla, the man who had carried my force to ambush the Danes whose corpses I had hanged beside the river. Ralla had negotiated the gap in Lundene’s bridge more times than he could remember. ‘But never at night,’ he told me that night when we returned to the island.

‘But it can be done?’

‘We’re going to discover that, lord, aren’t we?’

Æthelred had left a hundred men to guard the island where the ships lay and those men were under the command of Egbert, an old warrior whose authority was denoted by a silver chain hanging about his neck, and who challenged me when we unexpectedly returned. He did not trust me and believed I had abandoned my northern attack because I did not want Æthelred to succeed. I needed him to give me men, but the more I pleaded the more he bristled with hostility. My own men were boarding the two ships, wading through the cold water and hauling themselves over the sides. ‘How do I know you’re not just going back to Coccham?’ Egbert asked suspiciously.

‘Steapa!’ I called. ‘Tell Egbert what we’re doing.’

‘Killing Danes,’ Steapa growled from beside a campfire. The flames reflected from his mail coat and from his hard, feral eyes.

‘Give me twenty men,’ I pleaded with Egbert.

He stared at me, then shook his head. ‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘We have to guard the Lady Æthelflaed,’ he said. ‘Those are the Lord Æthelred’s orders. We’re here to guard her.’

‘Then leave twenty men on her ship,’ I said, ‘and give me the rest.’

‘I can’t,’ Egbert insisted doggedly.

I sighed. ‘Tatwine would have given me men,’ I said. Tatwine had been the commander of the household troops for Æthelred’s father. ‘I knew Tatwine,’ I said.

‘I know you did. I remember you.’ Egbert spoke curtly and the hidden message in his tone was that he did not like me. As a young man I had served under Tatwine for a few months, and back then I had been brash, ambitious and arrogant. Egbert plainly thought I was still brash, ambitious and arrogant, and perhaps he was right.

He turned away and I thought he was dismissing me, but instead he watched as a pale and ghostly shape appeared beyond the campfires. It was Æthelflaed, who had evidently seen our return and had waded ashore wrapped in a white cloak to discover what we did. Her hair was unbound and fell in golden tangles over her shoulders. Father Pyrlig was with her.

‘You didn’t go with Æthelred?’ I asked, surprised to see the Welsh priest.

‘His lordship felt he needed no more advice,’ Pyrlig said, ‘so asked me to stay here and pray for him.’

‘He didn’t ask,’ Æthelflaed corrected him, ‘he ordered you to stay and pray for him.’

‘He did,’ Pyrlig said, ‘and as you can see, I am dressed for praying.’ He was in a mail coat and had his swords strapped at his waist. ‘And you?’ he challenged me. ‘I thought you were marching to the city’s north?’

‘We’re going downriver,’ I explained, ‘and attacking Lundene from the wharf.’

‘Can I come?’ Æthelflaed asked instantly.

‘No.’

She smiled at that curt refusal. ‘Does my husband know what you’re doing?’

‘He’ll find out, my lady.’

She smiled again, then walked to my side and pulled my cloak aside to lean against me. She wrapped my dark cloak over her white one. ‘I’m cold,’ she explained to Egbert, whose face showed surprise and indignation at her behaviour.

‘We are old friends,’ I said to Egbert.

‘Very old friends,’ Æthelflaed agreed, and she put an arm around my waist and clung to me. Egbert could not see her arm beneath my cloak. I was aware of her golden hair just beneath my beard, and I could feel her thin body shivering. ‘I think of Uhtred as an uncle,’ she told Egbert.

‘An uncle who is going to give your husband victory,’ I told her, ‘but I need men. And Egbert won’t give me men.’

‘He won’t?’ she asked.

‘He says he needs all his men to guard you.’

‘Give him your best men,’ she said to Egbert in a light, pleasant voice.

‘My lady,’ Egbert said, ‘my orders are to …’

‘You will give him your best men!’ Æthelflaed’s voice was suddenly hard as she stepped from beneath my cloak into the harsh light of the campfires. ‘I am a king’s daughter!’ she said arrogantly, ‘and wife to Mercia’s Ealdorman! And I am demanding that you give Uhtred your best men! Now!’

She had spoken very loudly so that men all across the island were staring at her. Egbert looked offended, but said nothing. He straightened instead and looked stubborn. Pyrlig caught my eye and smiled slyly.

‘None of you have the courage to fight alongside Uhtred?’ Æthelflaed demanded of the watching men. She was fourteen years old, a slight, pale girl, yet in her voice was the lineage of ancient kings. ‘My father would want you to show courage tonight!’ she went on, ‘or am I to return to Wintanceaster and tell my father that you sat by the fires while Uhtred fought?’ This last question was directed at Egbert.

‘Twenty men,’ I pleaded with him.

‘Give him more!’ Æthelflaed said firmly.

‘There’s only room in the boats for forty more,’ I said.

‘Then give him forty!’ Æthelflaed said.

‘Lady,’ Egbert said hesitantly, but stopped when Æthelflaed held up one small hand. She turned to look at me.

‘I can trust you, Lord Uhtred?’ she asked.

It seemed a strange question from a child I had known nearly all her life and I smiled at it. ‘You can trust me,’ I said lightly.

Her face grew harder and her eyes flinty. Perhaps that was the reflection of the fire from her pupils, but I was suddenly aware that this was far more than a child, she was a king’s daughter. ‘My father,’ she said in a clear voice so that others could hear, ‘says you are the best warrior in his service. But he does not trust you.’

There was an awkward silence. Egbert cleared his throat and stared at the ground. ‘I have never let your father down,’ I said harshly.

‘He fears your loyalty is for sale,’ she said.

‘He has my oath,’ I replied, my voice still harsh.

‘And I want it now,’ she demanded and held out a slender hand.

‘What oath?’ I asked.

‘That you keep your oath to my father,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘and that you swear loyalty to Saxon over Dane, and that you will fight for Mercia when Mercia asks it.’

‘My lady,’ I began, appalled at her list of demands.

‘Egbert!’ Æthelflaed interrupted me. ‘You will give Lord Uhtred no men unless he swears to serve Mercia while I live.’

‘No, lady,’ Egbert muttered.

While she lived? Why had she said that? I remember wondering about those words, and I remember, too, thinking that my plan to capture Lundene hung in the balance. Æthelred had stripped me of the forces I needed, and Æthelflaed had the power to restore my numbers, but to win my victory I had to lock myself in yet another oath that I did not want to swear. What did I care for Mercia? But I cared that night about taking men through a bridge of death to prove that I could do it. I cared about reputation, I cared about my name, I cared about fame.

I drew Serpent-Breath, knowing that was why she held out her hand, and I gave the blade to her, hilt first. Then I knelt and I folded my hands around hers that, in turn, were clasped about the hilt of my sword. ‘I swear it, lady,’ I said.

‘You swear,’ she said, ‘that you will serve my father faithfully?’

‘Yes, lady.’

‘And, as I live, you will serve Mercia?’

‘As you live, lady,’ I said, kneeling in the mud, and wondering what a fool I was. I wanted to be in the north, I wanted to be free of Alfred’s piety, I wanted to be with my friends, yet here I was, swearing loyalty to Alfred’s ambitions and to his golden-haired daughter. ‘I swear it,’ I said, and gave her hands a slight squeeze as a signal of my truthfulness.

‘Give him men, Egbert,’ Æthelflaed ordered.

He gave me thirty and, to give Egbert his due, he gave me his fit men, the young ones, leaving his older and sick warriors to guard Æthelflaed and the camp. So now I led over seventy men and those men included Father Pyrlig. ‘Thank you, my lady,’ I said to Æthelflaed.

‘You could reward me,’ she said, and once again sounded child-like, her solemnity gone and her old mischief back.

‘How?’

‘Take me with you?’

‘Never,’ I said harshly.

She frowned at my tone and looked up into my eyes. ‘Are you angry with me?’ she asked in a soft voice.

‘With myself, lady,’ I said and turned away.

‘Uhtred!’ She sounded unhappy.

‘I will keep the oaths, lady,’ I said, and I was angry that I had taken them again, but at least they had provided me with seventy men to take a city, seventy men on board two boats that pushed away from the creek into the Temes’s strong current.

I was on board Ralla’s boat, the same ship that we had captured from Jarrel, the Dane whose hanged body had long been reduced to a skeleton. Ralla was at the stern, leaning on the steering-oar. ‘Not sure we should be doing this, lord,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

He spat over the side into the black river. ‘Water’s running too fast. It’ll be spilling through the gap like a waterfall. Even at slack water, lord, that gap can be wicked.’

‘Take it straight,’ I said, ‘and pray to whatever god you believe in.’

‘If we can even see the gap,’ he said gloomily. He peered behind, looking for a glimpse of Osric’s boat, but it was swallowed in the darkness. ‘I’ve seen it done on a falling tide,’ Ralla said, ‘but that was in daylight, and the river wasn’t in spate.’

‘The tide’s falling?’ I asked.

‘Like a stone,’ Ralla said gloomily.

‘Then pray,’ I said curtly.

I touched the hammer amulet, then the hilt of Serpent-Breath as the boat gathered speed on the surging current. The riverbanks were far off. Here and there was a glimmer of light, evidence of a fire smouldering in a house, while ahead, under the moonless sky, was a dull glow smeared with a black veil, and that, I knew, was the new Saxon Lundene. The glow came from the sullen fires in the town and the veil was the smoke of those fires, and I knew that somewhere beneath that veil Æthelred would be marshalling his men for their advance across the valley of the Fleot and up to the old Roman wall. Sigefrid, Erik and Haesten would know he was there because someone would have run from the new town to warn the old. Danes, Norsemen and Frisians, even some masterless Saxons, would be rousing themselves and hurrying to the old city’s ramparts.

And we swept down the black river.

No one spoke much. Every man in both boats knew the danger we faced. I edged my way forward between the crouching figures, and Father Pyrlig must have sensed my approach or else a gleam of light reflected from the wolf’s head that served as the silver crest of my helmet because he greeted me before I saw him. ‘Here, lord,’ he said.

He was sitting on the end of a rower’s bench and I stood beside him, my boots splashing in the bilge water. ‘Have you prayed?’ I asked him.

‘I haven’t stopped praying,’ he said seriously. ‘I sometimes think God must be tired of my voice. And Brother Osferth here is praying.’

‘I’m not a brother,’ Osferth said sullenly.

‘But your prayers might work better if God thinks you are,’ Pyrlig said.

Alfred’s bastard son was crouching by Father Pyrlig. Finan had equipped Osferth with a mail coat that had been mended after some Dane had been belly-gutted by a Saxon spear. He also had a helmet, tall boots, leather gloves, a round shield and both a long-and a short-sword, so that at least he looked like a warrior. ‘I’m supposed to send you back to Wintanceaster,’ I told him.

‘I know.’

‘Lord,’ Pyrlig reminded Osferth.

‘Lord,’ Osferth said, though reluctantly.

‘I don’t want to send the king your corpse,’ I said, ‘so stay close to Father Pyrlig.’

‘Very close, boy,’ Pyrlig said, ‘pretend you love me.’

‘Stay behind him,’ I ordered Osferth.

‘Forget about being my lover,’ Pyrlig said hurriedly, ‘pretend you’re my dog instead.’

‘And say your prayers,’ I finished. There was no other useful advice I could give Osferth, unless it was to strip off his clothes, swim ashore and go back to his monastery. I had as much faith in his fighting skills as Finan, which meant I had none. Osferth was sour, inept and clumsy. If it had not been for his dead uncle, Leofric, I would have happily sent him back to Wintanceaster, but Leofric had taken me as a young raw boy and had turned me into a sword warrior and so I would endure Osferth for Leofric’s sake.

We were abreast of the new town now. I could smell the charcoal fires of the smithies, and see the reflected glow of fires flickering deep in alleyways. I looked ahead to where the bridge spanned the river, but all was black there.

‘I need to see the gap,’ Ralla called from the steering platform.

I worked my way aft again, stepping blindly between the crouching men.

‘If I can’t see it,’ Ralla heard me coming, ‘then I can’t try it.’

‘How close are we?’

‘Too close.’ There was panic in his voice.

I clambered up beside him. I could see the old city now, the city on the hills surrounded by its Roman wall. I could see it because the fires in the city made a dull glow and Ralla was right. We were close.

‘We have to make a decision,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to land upriver of the bridge.’

‘They’ll see us if we land there,’ I said. The Danes would be certain to have men guarding the river wall upstream of the bridge.

‘So you either die there with a sword in your hand,’ Ralla said brutally, ‘or you drown.’

I stared ahead and saw nothing. ‘Then I choose the sword,’ I said dully, seeing the death of my desperate idea.

Ralla took a deep breath to shout at the oarsmen, but the shout never came because, quite suddenly and far ahead, out where the Temes spread and emptied into the sea, a scrap of yellow showed. Not bright yellow, not a wasp’s yellow, but a sour, leprous, dark yellow that leaked through a rent in the clouds. It was dawn beyond the sea, a dark dawn, a reluctant dawn, but it was light, and Ralla neither shouted nor turned the steering-oar to take us into the bank. Instead he touched the amulet at his neck and kept the boat on its headlong course. ‘Crouch down, lord,’ he said, ‘and hold hard to something.’

The boat was quivering like a horse before battle. We were helpless now, caught in the river’s grip. The water was sweeping down from far inland, fed by spring rains and subsiding floods, and where it met the bridge it piled itself in great white ragged heaps. It seethed, roared and foamed between the stone pilings, but in the bridge’s centre, where the gap was, it poured in a sheeting, gleaming stream that fell a man’s height to the new water level beyond where the river swirled and grumbled before becoming calm again. I could hear the water fighting the bridge, hear the thunder of it loud as wind-driven breakers assaulting a beach.

And Ralla steered for the gap, which he could just see outlined against the dull yellow of the broken eastern sky. Behind us was blackness, though once I did see that sour morning light reflect from the water-glossed stem of Osric’s ship and I knew he was close behind us.

‘Hold hard!’ Ralla called to our crew, and the ship was hissing, still quivering, and she seemed to race faster, and I saw the bridge come towards us and it loomed black over us as I crouched beside the ship’s side and gripped the timber hard.

And then we were in the gap, and I had the sensation of falling as though we had tipped into an abyss between the worlds. The noise was deafening. It was the noise of water fighting stone, water tearing, water breaking, water pouring, a noise to fill the skies, a noise louder even than Thor’s thunder, and the ship gave a lurch and I thought she must have struck and would slew sideways and tip us to our deaths, but somehow she straightened and flew on. There was blackness above, the blackness of the stub ends of the bridge’s broken timbers, and then the noise doubled and spray flew across the deck and we were slamming downwards, ship tipping, and there was a crack like the gates of Odin’s hall banging shut and I was spilled forward as water cascaded over us. We had struck stone, I thought, and I waited to drown and I even remembered to grip Serpent-Breath’s hilt so I would die with my sword in my hand, but the ship staggered up and I understood the crash had been the bows striking the river beyond the bridge and that we were alive.

‘Row!’ Ralla shouted. ‘Oh you lucky bastards, row!’

Water was deep in the bilge, but we were afloat, and the eastern sky was ragged with rents and in their shadowy light we could see the city, and see the place where the wall was broken. ‘And the rest,’ Ralla said with pride in his voice, ‘is up to you, lord.’

‘It’s up to the gods,’ I said, and looked behind to see Osric’s boat fighting up from the maelstrom where the river fell. So both our ships had lived, and the current was sweeping us downstream of the place we wished to land, but the oarsmen turned us and fought against the water so that we came to the wharf from the east, and that was good, because anyone watching would assume we had rowed upriver from Beamfleot. They would think we were Danes who had come to reinforce the garrison that now readied itself for Æthelred’s assault.

There was a large sea-going ship moored in the dock where we wanted to land. I could see her clearly because torches blazed on the white wall of the mansion the dock served. The ship was a fine thing, her stem and stern rearing high and proud. There were no beast-heads on the ship, for no Northman would let his carved heads frighten the spirit of a friendly land. A lone man was on board the ship and he watched us approach. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted.

‘Ragnar Ragnarson!’ I called back. I heaved him a line woven from walrus hide. ‘Has the fighting started?’

‘Not yet, lord,’ he said. He took the line and twisted it around the other ship’s stem. ‘And when it does they’ll get slaughtered!’

‘We’re not too late, then?’ I said. I staggered as our ship struck the other, then stepped over the sheer-strakes onto one of the empty rowers’ benches. ‘Whose ship is this?’ I asked the man.

‘Sigefrid’s, lord. The Wave-Tamer.’

‘She’s beautiful,’ I said, then turned back. ‘Ashore!’ I shouted in English and watched as my men retrieved shields and weapons from the flooded bilge. Osric’s ship came in behind us, low in the water, and I realised she had been half swamped as she shot the bridge’s gap. Men began clambering onto the Wave-Tamer and the Northman who had taken my line saw the crosses hanging from their necks.

‘You …’ he began, and found he had nothing more to say. He half turned to run ashore, but I had blocked his escape. There was shock on his face, shock and puzzlement.

‘Put your hand on your sword hilt,’ I said, drawing Serpent-Breath.

‘Lord,’ he said, as if about to plead for his life, but then he understood his life was ending because I could not leave him alive. I could not let him go, because then he would warn Sigefrid of our arrival, and if I had tied his hands and feet and left him aboard the Wave-Tamer then some other person might have found and released him. He knew all that, and his face changed from puzzlement to defiance and, instead of just gripping his sword’s hilt, he began to pull the weapon free of its scabbard.

And died.

Serpent-Breath took him in the throat. Hard and fast. I felt her tip pierce muscle and tough tissue. Saw the blood. Saw his arm falter and the blade drop back into its scabbard, and I reached out with my left hand to grip his sword hand and hold it over his hilt. I made sure that he kept hold of his sword as he died, for then he would be taken to the feasting hall of the dead. I held his hand tight and let him collapse onto my chest where his blood ran down my mail. ‘Go to Odin’s hall,’ I told him softly, ‘and save a place for me.’

He could not speak. He choked as blood spilled down his windpipe.

‘My name is Uhtred,’ I said, ‘and one day I will feast with you in the corpse-hall and we shall laugh together and drink together and be friends.’

I let his body drop, then knelt and found his amulet, Thor’s hammer, which I cut from his neck with Serpent-Breath. I put the hammer in a pouch, cleaned my sword’s tip on the dead man’s cloak, then slid the blade back into her fleece-lined scabbard. I took my shield from Sihtric, my servant.

‘Let’s go ashore,’ I said, ‘and take a city.’

Because it was time to fight.