Читать книгу The Last Kingdom Series Books 1–8: The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, The Lords of the North, Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings, The Pagan Lord, The Empty Throne - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 47

Before the Pedredan reaches the sea it makes a great curve through the swamp, a curve that is almost three-quarters of a circle and on the inside of the bank where the curve begins there was another tiny settlement; just a half-dozen hovels built on stilts sunk into a slight rise in the ground. The settlement was called Palfleot, which means ‘the place with the stakes’, for the folk who had once lived there had staked eel and fish traps in the nearby streams, but the Danes had driven those folk away and burned their houses, so that Palfleot was now a place of charred pilings and blackened mud. We landed there, shivering in the dawn. The tide was falling, exposing the great banks of sand and mud across which Iseult and I had struggled, while the wind was coming from the west, cold and fresh, hinting of rain, though for now there was a slanting sunlight throwing long shadows of marram grass and reeds across the marshes. Two swans flew south and I knew they were a message from the gods, but what their message was I could not tell.

The punts pushed away, abandoning us. They were now going north and east, following intricate waterways known only to the marshmen. We stayed for a while in Palfleot, doing nothing in particular, but doing it energetically so that the Danes, a long way off across the great bend in the river, would be sure to see us. We pulled down the blackened timbers and Iseult, who had acute eyesight, watched the place where the Danish ships’ masts showed as scratches against the western clouds. ‘There’s a man up a mast,’ she said after a while, and I stared, saw the man clinging to the mast top and knew we had been spotted. The tide was falling, exposing more mud and sand, and now that I was sure we had been seen we walked across the drying expanse that was cradled by the river’s extravagant bend.

As we drew closer I could see more Danes in their ships’ rigging. They were watching us, but would not yet be worried for they outnumbered my few forces and the river lay between us and them, but whoever commanded in the Danish camp would also be ordering his men to arm themselves. He would want to be ready for whatever happened, but I also hoped he would be clever. I was laying a trap for him, and for the trap to work he had to do what I wanted him to do, but at first, if he was clever, he would do nothing. He knew we were impotent, separated from him by the Pedredan, and so he was content to watch as we closed on the river’s bank opposite his grounded ships and then slipped and slid down the steep muddy bluff that the ebbing tide had exposed. The river swirled in front of us, grey and cold.

There were close to a hundred Danes watching now. They were on their grounded boats, shouting insults. Some were laughing, for it seemed clear to them that we had walked a long way to achieve nothing, but that was because they did not know Eofer’s skills. I called the big bowman’s niece to my side. ‘What I want your Uncle Eofer to do,’ I explained to the small girl, ‘is kill some of those men.’

‘Kill them?’ She stared up at me with wide eyes.

‘They’re bad men,’ I said, ‘and they want to kill you.’

She nodded solemnly, then took the big man by the hand and led him to the water’s edge where he sank up to his calves in the mud. It was a long way across the river and I wondered, pessimistically, if it was too far for even his massive bow, but Eofer strung the great stave and then waded into the Pedredan until he found a shallow spot which meant he could go even farther into the river and there he took an arrow from his sheaf, put it on the string and hauled it back. He made a grunting noise as he released and I watched the arrow twitch off the cord, then the fledging caught the air and the arrow soared across the stream and plunged into a group of Danes standing on the steering platform of a ship. There was a cry of anger as the arrow cut down. It did not hit any of the group, but Eofer’s next arrow struck a man in his shoulder, and the Danes hurried back from their vantage point by the ship’s sternpost. Eofer, who was compulsively nodding his shaggy head and making small animal noises, turned his aim to another ship. He had extraordinary strength. The distance was too great for any accuracy, but the danger of the long white-fledged arrows drove the Danes back and it was our turn to jeer at them. One of the Danes fetched a bow and tried to shoot back, but his arrow sliced into the river twenty yards short and we taunted them, laughed at them, and capered up and down as Eofer’s arrows slammed into ships’ timbers. Only the one man had been wounded, but we had driven them backwards and that was humiliating to them. I let Eofer loose twenty arrows, then I waded into the river and took hold of his bow. I stood in front of him so the Danes could not see what I was doing.

‘Tell him not to worry,’ I told the girl, and she soothed Eofer, who was frowning at me and trying to remove his bow from my grasp.

I drew a knife and that alarmed him even more. He growled at me, then plucked the bow from my hand. ‘Tell him it’s all right,’ I told the girl, and she soothed her uncle who then let me half sever the woven hemp bowstring. I stepped away from him and pointed at a group of Danes. ‘Kill them,’ I said.

Eofer did not want to draw the bow. Instead he fumbled under his greasy woollen cap and produced a second bowstring, but I shook my head and the small girl persuaded him he must use the half-severed cord and so he pulled it nervously back and, just before it reached the full draw, the string snapped and the arrow span crazily into the sky to float away on the river.

The tide had turned and the water was rising. ‘We go!’ I shouted to my men.

It was now the Danes’ turn to jeer at us. They thought we were retreating because our one bowstring had broken, and so they shouted insults as we clambered back up the muddy bluff, and then I saw two men running along the far beach and I hoped they were carrying the orders I wanted.

They were. The Danes, released from the threat of Eofer’s terrible bow, were going to launch two of their smaller ships. We had stung them, laughed at them and now they would kill us.

All warriors have pride. Pride and rage and ambition are the goads to a reputation, and the Danes did not want us to think we had stung them without being punished for our temerity. They wanted to teach us a lesson. But they also wanted more. Before we left Æthelingæg I had insisted that my men be given every available coat of mail. Egwine, who had stayed behind with the king, had been reluctant to give up his precious armour, but Alfred had ordered it and so sixteen of my men were dressed in chain mail. They looked superb, like an elite group of warriors, and the Danes would win renown if they defeated such a group and captured the precious armour. Leather offers some protection, but chain mail over leather is far better and far more expensive, and by taking sixteen coats of mail to the river’s edge I had given the Danes an irresistible lure.

And they snapped at it.

We were going slowly, deliberately seeming to struggle in the soft ground as we headed back towards Palfleot. The Danes were also struggling, shoving their two ships down the riverbank’s thick mud, but at last the boats were launched and then, on the hurrying flood tide, the Danes did what I had hoped they would do.

They did not cross the river. If they had crossed, then they would merely have found themselves on the Pedredan’s eastern bank and we would have been half a mile ahead and out of reach, so instead the commander did what he thought was the clever thing to do. He tried to cut us off. They had seen us land at Palfleot and they reckoned our boats must still be there, and so they rowed their ships up river to find those boats and destroy them.

Except our punts were not at Palfleot. They had been taken north and east, so that they were waiting for us in a reed-fringed dyke, but now was not the time to use them. Instead, as the Danes went ashore at Palfleot, we made a huddle on the sand, watching them, and they thought we were trapped, and now they were on the same side of the river as us and the two ships’ crews outnumbered us by over two to one, and they had all the confidence in the world as they advanced from the burned pilings of Palfleot to kill us in the swamp.

They were doing exactly what I wanted them to do.

And we now retreated. We went back raggedly, sometimes running to open a distance between us and the confident Danes. I counted seventy-six of them and we were only thirty strong because some of my men were with the hidden punts, and the Danes knew we were dead men and they hurried across the sand and creeks, and we had to go faster, ever faster, to keep them away from us. It began to rain, the drops carried on the freshening west wind and I kept looking into the rain until at last I saw a silver bar of light glint and spill across the swamp’s edge and knew the incoming tide was beginning its long fast race across the barren flats.

And still we went back, and still the Danes pursued us, but they were tiring now. A few shouted at us, daring us to stand and fight, but others had no breath to shout, just a savage intent to catch and kill us, but we were slanting eastwards now towards a line of buckthorn and reeds, and there, in a flooding creek, were our punts.

We dropped into the boats, exhausted, and the marshmen poled us back down the creek that was a tributary of the River Bru which barred the northern part of the swamp, and the flat-bottomed craft took us fast south, against the current, hurrying us past the Danes who could only watch from a quarter-mile away and do nothing to stop us, and the farther we went from them, the more isolated they looked in that wide, barren place where the rain fell and the tide seethed as it flowed into the creek beds. The wind-driven water was running deep into the swamp now, a tide made bigger by the full moon, and suddenly the Danes saw their danger and turned back towards Palfleot.

But Palfleot was a long way off, and we had already left the stream and were carrying the punts to a smaller creek, one that ran down to the Pedredan, and that stream took us to where the blackened pilings leaned against the weeping sky, and where the Danes had tied their two ships. The two craft were guarded by only four men, and we came from the punts with a savage shout and drawn swords and the four men ran. The other Danes were still out in the swamp, only now it was not a swamp, but a tidal flat and they were wading through water.

And I had two ships. We hauled the punts aboard, and then the marshmen, divided between the ships, took the oars, and I steered one and Leofric took the other, and we rowed against that big tide towards Cynuit where the Danish ships were now unguarded except for a few men and a crowd of women and children who watched the two ships come and did not know they were crewed by their enemy. They must have wondered why so few oars bit the water, but how could they imagine that forty Saxons would defeat nearly eighty Danes? And so none opposed us as we ran the ships into the bank, and there I led my warriors ashore. ‘You can fight us,’ I shouted at the few ship-guards left, ‘or you can live.’

I was in chain mail, with my new helmet. I was a warlord. I banged Serpent-Breath against the big shield and stalked towards them. ‘Fight if you want!’ I shouted. ‘Come and fight us!’

They did not. They were too few and so they retreated south and could only watch as we burned their ships. It took most of the day to ensure that the ships burned down to their keels, but burn they did, and their fires were a signal to the western part of Wessex that Svein had been defeated. He was not at Cynuit that day, but somewhere to the south, and as the ships burned I watched the wooded hills in fear that he would come with hundreds of men, but he was still far off and the Danes at Cynuit could do nothing to stop us. We burned twenty-three ships, including the White Horse, and the twenty-fourth, which was one of the two we had captured, carried us away as evening fell. We took good plunder from the Danish camp; food, rigging ropes, hides, weapons and shields.

There were a score of Danes stranded on the low island of Palfleot. The rest had died in the rising water. The survivors watched us pass, but did nothing to provoke us, and I did nothing to hurt them. We rowed on towards Æthelingæg and behind us, under a darkening sky, the water sheeted the swamp where white gulls cried above the drowned men and where, in the dusk, two swans flighted northwards, their wings like drumbeats in the sky.

The smoke of the burned boats drifted to the clouds for three days, and on the second day Egwine took the captured ship downstream with forty men and they landed on Palfleot and killed all the surviving Danes, except for six who were taken prisoner, and five of those six were stripped of their armour and lashed to stakes in the river at low tide so that they drowned slowly on the flood. Egwine lost three men in that fight, but brought back mail, shields, helmets, weapons, arm rings and one prisoner who knew nothing except that Svein had ridden towards Exanceaster. That prisoner died on the third day, the day that Alfred had prayers said in thanks to God for our victory. For now we were safe. Svein could not attack us for he had lost his ships, Guthrum had no way of penetrating the swamp and Alfred was pleased with me.

‘The king is pleased with you,’ Beocca told me. Two weeks before, I thought, the king would have told me that himself. He would have sat with me by the water’s edge and talked, but now a court had formed and the king was hedged with priests.

‘He should be pleased,’ I said. I had been practising weapon-craft when Beocca sought me out. We practised every day, using stakes instead of swords, and some men grumbled that they did not need to play at fighting, and those I opposed myself and, when they had been beaten down to the mud, I told them they needed to play more and complain less.

‘He’s pleased with you,’ Beocca said, leading me down the path beside the river, ‘but he thinks you are squeamish.’

‘Me! Squeamish?’

‘For not going to Palfleot and finishing the job.’

‘The job was finished,’ I said. ‘Svein can’t attack us without ships.’

‘But not all the Danes drowned,’ Beocca said.

‘Enough died,’ I said. ‘Do you know what they endured? The terror of trying to outrun the tide?’ I thought of my own anguish in the swamp, the inexorable tide, the cold water spreading and the fear gripping the heart. ‘They had no ships! Why kill stranded men?’

‘Because they are pagans,’ Beocca said, ‘because they are loathed by God and by men, and because they are Danes.’

‘And only a few weeks ago,’ I said, ‘you believed they would become Christians and all our swords would be beaten into ard points to plough fields.’

Beocca shrugged that off. ‘So what will Svein do now?’ he wanted to know.

‘March around the swamp,’ I said, ‘and join Guthrum.’

‘And Guthrum is in Cippanhamm.’ We were fairly certain of that. New men were coming to the swamp and they all brought news. Much of it was rumour, but many had heard that Guthrum had strengthened Cippanhamm’s walls and was wintering there. Large raiding parties still ravaged parts of Wessex, but they avoided the bigger towns in the south of the country where West Saxon garrisons had formed. There was one such garrison at Dornwaraceaster and another at Wintanceaster, and Beocca believed Alfred should go to one of those towns, but Alfred refused, reckoning that Guthrum would immediately besiege him. He would be trapped in a town, but the swamp was too big to be besieged and Guthrum could not hope to penetrate the marshes. ‘You have an uncle in Mercia, don’t you?’ Beocca asked, changing the subject abruptly.

‘Æthelred. He’s my mother’s brother, and an ealdorman.’

He heard the flat tone of my voice. ‘You’re not fond of him?’

‘I hardly know him.’ I had spent some weeks in his house, just long enough to quarrel with his son who was also called Æthelred.

‘Is he a friend of the Danes?’

I shook my head. ‘They suffer him to live and he suffers them.’

‘The king has sent messengers to Mercia,’ Beocca said.

I grimaced. ‘If he wants them to rise against the Danes they won’t. They’ll get killed.’

‘He’d rather they brought men south in the springtime,’ Beocca said and I wondered how a few Mercian warriors were supposed to get past the Danes to join us, but said nothing. ‘We look to the springtime for our salvation,’ Beocca went on, ‘but in the meantime the king would like someone to go to Cippanhamm.’

‘A priest?’ I asked sourly, ‘to talk to Guthrum?’

‘A soldier,’ Beocca said, ‘to gauge their numbers.’

‘So send me,’ I offered.

Beocca nodded, then limped along the riverbank where the willow fish traps had been exposed by the falling tide. ‘It’s so different from Northumbria,’ he said wistfully.

I smiled at that. ‘You miss Bebbanburg?’

‘I would like to end my days at Lindisfarena,’ he said. ‘I would like to say my dying prayer on that island.’ He turned and gazed at the eastern hills. ‘The king would go to Cippanhamm himself,’ he said, almost as an afterthought.

I thought I had misheard, then realised I had not. ‘That’s madness,’ I protested.

‘It’s kingship,’ he said.

‘Kingship?’

‘The Witan chooses the king,’ Beocca said sternly, ‘and the king must have the trust of the people. If Alfred goes to Cippanhamm and walks among his enemies, then folk will know he deserves to be king.’

‘And if he’s captured,’ I said, ‘then folk will know he’s a dead king.’

‘So you must protect him,’ he said. I said nothing. It was indeed madness, but Alfred was determined to show he deserved to be king. He had, after all, usurped the throne from his nephew, and in those early years of his reign he was ever mindful of that. ‘A small group will travel,’ Beocca said, ‘you, some other warriors, a priest and the king.’

‘Why the priest?’

‘To pray, of course.’

I sneered at that. ‘You?’

Beocca patted his lamed leg. ‘Not me. A young priest.’

‘Better to send Iseult,’ I said.

‘No.’

‘Why not? She’s keeping the king healthy.’ Alfred was in sudden good health, better than he had been in years, and it was all because of the medicines that Iseult made. The celandine and burdock she had gathered on the mainland had taken away the agony in his arse, while other herbs calmed the pains in his belly. He walked confidently, had bright eyes and looked strong.

‘Iseult stays here,’ Beocca said.

‘If you want the king to live,’ I said, ‘send her with us.’

‘She stays here,’ Beocca said, ‘because we want the king to live.’ It took me a few heartbeats to understand what he had said, and when I did realise his meaning I turned on him with such fury that he stumbled backwards. I said nothing, for I did not trust myself to speak, or perhaps I feared that speech would turn to violence. Beocca tried to look severe, but only looked fearful. ‘These are difficult times,’ he said plaintively, ‘and the king can only put his trust in men who serve God. In men who are bound to him by their love of Christ.’

I kicked at an eel trap, sending it spinning over the bank into the river. ‘For a time,’ I said, ‘I almost liked Alfred. Now he’s got his priests back and you’re dripping poison into him.’

‘He …’ Beocca began.

I turned on him, silencing him. ‘Who rescued the bastard? Who burned Svein’s ships? Who, in the name of your luckless god, killed Ubba? And you still don’t trust me?’

Beocca was trying to calm me now, making flapping gestures. ‘I fear you are a pagan,’ he said, ‘and your woman is assuredly a pagan.’

‘My woman healed Edward,’ I snarled, ‘does that mean nothing?’

‘It could mean,’ he said, ‘that she did the devil’s work.’

I was astonished into silence by that.

‘The devil does his work in the land,’ Beocca said earnestly, ‘and it would serve the devil well if Wessex were to vanish. The devil wants the king dead. He wants his own pagan spawn all across England! There is a greater war, Uhtred. Not the fight between Saxon and Dane, but between God and the devil, between good and evil! We are part of it!’

‘I’ve killed more Danes than you can dream of,’ I told him.

‘But suppose,’ he said, pleading with me now, ‘that your woman has been sent by the devil? That the evil one allowed her to heal Edward so that the king would trust her? And then, when the king, in all innocence, goes to spy on the enemy, she betrays him!’

‘You think she would betray him?’ I asked sourly, ‘or do you mean I might betray him?’

‘Your love of the Danes is well known,’ Beocca said stiffly, ‘and you spared the men on Palfleot.’

‘So you think I can’t be trusted?’

‘I trust you,’ he said, without conviction. ‘But other men?’ he waved his palsied hand in an impotent gesture. ‘But if Iseult is here,’ he shrugged, not ending the thought.

‘So she’s to be a hostage,’ I said.

‘A surety, rather.’

‘I gave the king my oath,’ I pointed out.

‘And you have sworn oaths before, and you are known as a liar, and you have a wife and child, yet live with a pagan whore, and you love the Danes as you love yourself, and do you really think we can trust you?’ This all came out in a bitter rush. ‘I have known you, Uhtred,’ he said, ‘since you crawled on Bebbanburg’s rush floors. I baptised you, taught you, chastised you, watched you grow, and I know you better than any man alive and I do not trust you.’ Beocca stared at me belligerently. ‘If the king does not return, Uhtred, then your whore will be given to the dogs.’ He had delivered his message now, and he seemed to regret the force of it for he shook his head. ‘The king should not go. You’re right. It’s a madness. It is stupidity! It is,’ he paused, searching for a word, and came upon one of the worst condemnations in his vocabulary, ‘it is irresponsible! But he insists, and if he goes then you must also go for you’re the only man here who can pass as a Dane. But bring him back, Uhtred, bring him back, for he is dear to God and to all Saxons.’

Not to me, I thought, he was not dear to me. That night, brooding on Beocca’s words, I was tempted to flee the swamp, to go away with Iseult, find a lord, give Serpent-Breath a new master, but Ragnar had been a hostage and so I had no friend among my enemies, and if I fled I would break my oath to Alfred and men would say Uhtred of Bebbanburg could never be trusted again and so I stayed. I tried to persuade Alfred not to go to Cippanhamm. It was, as Beocca had said, irresponsible, but Alfred insisted. ‘If I stay here,’ he said, ‘men will say I hid from the Danes. Others face them, but I hide? No. Men must see me, must know that I live, and know that I fight.’ For once Ælswith and I were in agreement, and we both tried to keep him in Æthelingæg, but Alfred would not be dissuaded. He was in a strange mood, suffused with happiness, utterly confident that God was on his side, and, because his sickness had abated, he was full of energy and confidence.

He took six companions. The priest was a young man called Adelbert who carried a small harp wrapped in leather. It seemed ridiculous to take a harp to the enemy, but Adelbert was famed for his music and Alfred blithely said that we should sing God’s praises while we were among the Danes. The other four were all experienced warriors who had been part of his royal guard. They were called Osferth, Wulfrith, Beorth and the last was Egwine who swore to Ælswith that he would bring the king home, which made Ælswith throw a bitter glance at me. Whatever favour I had gained by Iseult’s cure of Edward had evaporated under the influence of the priests.

We dressed for war in mail and helmets, while Alfred insisted on wearing a fine blue cloak, trimmed with fur, which made him conspicuous, but he wanted folk to see a king. The best horses were selected, one for each of us and three spare mounts, and we swam them across the river, then followed log roads until we came at last to firm ground close to the island where Iseult said Arthur was buried. I had left Iseult with Eanflæd who shared quarters with Leofric.

It was February now. There had been a spell of fine weather after the burning of Svein’s fleet and I had thought we should travel then, but Alfred insisted on waiting until the eighth day of February, because that was the feast of Saint Cuthman, a Saxon saint from East Anglia, and Alfred reckoned that must be a propitious day. Perhaps he was right, for the day turned out wet and bitterly cold, and we were to discover that the Danes were reluctant to leave their quarters in the worst weather. We went at dawn and by mid morning we were in the hills overlooking the swamp which was half hidden by a mist thickened by the smoke from the cooking fires of the small villages. ‘Are you familiar with Saint Cuthman?’ Alfred asked me cheerfully.

‘No, lord.’

‘He was a hermit,’ Alfred said. We were riding north, keeping on the high ground with the swamp to our left. ‘His mother was crippled and so he made her a wheelbarrow.’

‘A wheelbarrow? What could a cripple do with a wheelbarrow?’

‘No, no, no! He pushed her about in it! So she could be with him as he preached. He pushed her everywhere.’

‘She must have liked that.’

‘There’s no written life of him that I know of,’ Alfred said, ‘but we must surely compose one. He could be a saint for mothers?’

‘Or for wheelbarrows, lord.’

We saw our first evidence of the Danes just after midday. We were still on the high ground, but in a valley that sloped to the marshes we saw a substantial house with limewashed walls and thick thatch. Smoke came from the roof, while in a fenced apple orchard were a score of horses. No Dane would ever leave such a place unplundered, which suggested the horses belonged to them and that the farm was garrisoned. ‘They’re there to watch the swamp,’ Alfred suggested.

‘Probably.’ I was cold. I had a thick woollen cloak, but I was still cold.

‘We shall send men here,’ Alfred said, ‘and teach them not to steal apples.’

We stayed that night in a small village. The Danes had been there and the folk were frightened. At first, when we rode up the rutted track between the houses, they hid, thinking we were Danes, but when they heard our voices they crept out and stared at us as if we had just ridden down from the moon. Their priest was dead, killed by the pagans, so Alfred insisted that Adelbert hold a service in the burned-out remnants of the church. Alfred himself acted as precentor, accompanying his chanting with the priest’s small harp. ‘I learned to play as a child,’ he told me. ‘My stepmother insisted, but I’m not very good.’

‘You’re not,’ I agreed, which he did not like.

‘There is never enough time to practise,’ he complained.

We lodged in a peasant’s house. Alfred, reckoning that the Danes would have taken the harvest from wherever we visited, had laden the spare horses with smoked fish, smoked eels and oatcakes, so we provided most of the food and, after we had eaten, the peasant couple knelt to me and the woman tentatively touched the skirt of my mail coat. ‘My children,’ she whispered, ‘there are two of them. My daughter is about seven years old and my boy is a little older. They are good children.’

‘What of them?’ Alfred intervened.

‘The pagans took them, lord,’ the woman said. She was crying. ‘You can find them, lord,’ she said, tugging my mail, ‘you can find them and bring them back? My little ones? Please?’

I promised to try, but it was an empty promise for the children would have long gone to the slave market and, by now, would either be working on some Danish estate or, if they were pretty, sent overseas where heathen men pay good silver for Christian children.

We learned that the Danes had come to the village shortly after Twelfth Night. They had killed, captured, stolen and ridden on southwards. A few days later they had returned, going back northwards, driving a band of captives and a herd of captured horses laden with plunder. Since then the villagers had seen no Danes except for the few on the swamp’s edge. Those Danes, they said, caused no trouble, perhaps because they were so few and dared not stir up the enmity of the country about them. We heard the same tale in other villages. The Danes had come, they had pillaged, then had gone back north.

But on our third day we at last saw a force of the enemy riding on the Roman road which cuts straight eastwards across the hills from Baðum. There were close to sixty of them, and they rode hard in front of dark clouds and the gathering night. ‘Going back to Cippanhamm,’ Alfred said. It was a foraging party, and their packhorses carried nets stuffed with hay to feed their war horses, and I remembered my childhood winter in Readingum, when the Danes first invaded Wessex, and how hard it had been to keep horses and men alive in the cold. We had cut feeble winter grass and pulled down thatch to feed our horses, which still became skeletal and weak. I have often listened to men declare that all that is needed to win a war is to assemble men and march against the enemy, but it is never that easy. Men and horses must be fed, and hunger can defeat an army much faster than spears. We watched the Danes go north, then turned aside to a half-ruined barn that offered us shelter for the night.

It began to snow that night, a relentless soft snow, silent and thick, so that by dawn the world was white under a pale blue sky. I suggested we waited till the snow had thawed before we rode further, but Egwine, who came from this part of the country, said we were only two or three hours south of Cippanhamm and Alfred was impatient. ‘We go,’ he insisted. ‘We go there, look at the town and ride away.’

So we rode north, our hooves crunching the newly fallen snow, riding through a world made new and clean. Snow clung to every twig and branch while ice skimmed the ditches and ponds. I saw a fox’s trail crossing a field and thought that the spring would bring a plague of the beasts for there would have been no one to hunt them, and the lambs would die bloodily and the ewes would bleat pitifully.

We came in sight of Cippanhamm before midday, though the great pall of smoke, made by hundreds of cooking fires, had shown in the sky all morning. We stopped south of the town, just where the road emerged from a stand of oaks, and the Danes must have noticed us, but none came from the gates to see who we were. It was too cold for men to stir themselves. I could see guards on the walls, though none stayed there long, retreating to whatever warmth they could find between their short forays along the wooden ramparts. Those ramparts were bright with round shields painted blue and white and blood-red and, because Guthrum’s men were there, black. ‘We should count the shields,’ Alfred said.

‘It won’t help,’ I said. ‘They carry two or three shields each and hang them on the walls to make it look as if they have more men.’

Alfred was shivering and I insisted we find some shelter. We turned back into the trees, following a path which led to the river and a mile or so upstream we came across a mill. The millstone had been taken away, but the building itself was whole and it was well made, with stone walls and a turf roof held up by stout rafters. There was a hearth in a room where the miller’s family had lived, but I would not let Egwine light a fire in case the trickle of smoke brought curious Danes from the town. ‘Wait till dark,’ I said.

‘We’ll freeze by then,’ he grumbled.

‘Then you shouldn’t have come,’ I snapped.

‘We have to get closer to the town,’ Alfred said.

‘You don’t,’ I said, ‘I do.’ I had seen horses paddocked to the west of the walls and I reckoned I could take our best horse and ride about the town’s western edge and count every horse I saw. That would give a rough estimate of the Danish numbers, for almost every man would have a horse. Alfred wanted to come, but I shook my head. It was pointless for more than one man to go, and sensible that the one man who did go should speak Danish, so I told him I would see him back in the mill before nightfall and then I rode north. Cippanhamm was built on a hill that was almost encircled by the river, so I could not ride clear around the town, but I went as close to the walls as I dared and stared across the river and saw no horses on its farther bank which suggested that the Danes were keeping all of their beasts on the western side of the town. I went there, keeping in the snowy woods, and though the Danes must have seen me they could not be bothered to ride into the snow to chase one man, and so I was able to find the paddocks where their horses shivered. I spent the day counting. Most of the horses were in fields beside the royal compound and there were hundreds of them. By late afternoon I had estimated that there were twelve hundred, and those were only the ones I could see, and the best horses would be in the town, but my reckoning was good enough. It would give Alfred an idea of how large Guthrum’s force was. Say two thousand men? And elsewhere in Wessex, in the towns the Danes had occupied, there must be another thousand. That was a strong force, but not quite strong enough to capture all the kingdom. That would have to wait until spring when reinforcements would come from Denmark or from the three conquered kingdoms of England. I rode back to the watermill as dusk fell. There was a frost and the air was still. Three rooks flew across the river as I dismounted. I reckoned one of Alfred’s men could rub my horse down; all I wanted was to find some warmth and it was plain Alfred had risked lighting a fire, for smoke was pouring out of the hole in the turf roof.

They were all crouched about the small fire and I joined them, stretching my hands to the flames. ‘Two thousand men,’ I said, ‘more or less.’

No one answered.

‘Didn’t you hear me?’ I asked, and looked around the faces.

There were five faces. Only five.

‘Where’s the king?’ I asked.

‘He went,’ Adelbert said helplessly.

‘He did what?’

‘He went to the town,’ the priest said. He was wearing Alfred’s rich blue cloak and I assumed Alfred had taken Adelbert’s plain garment.

I stared at him. ‘You let him go?’

‘He insisted,’ Egwine said.

‘How could we stop him?’ Adelbert pleaded. ‘He’s the king!’

‘You hit the bastard, of course,’ I snarled. ‘You hold him down till the madness passes. When did he go?’

‘Just after you left,’ the priest said miserably, ‘and he took my harp,’ he added.

‘And when did he say he’d be back?’

‘By nightfall.’

‘It is nightfall,’ I said. I stood and stamped out the fire. ‘You want the Danes to come and investigate the smoke?’ I doubted the Danes would come, but I wanted the damned fools to suffer. ‘You,’ I pointed to one of the four soldiers, ‘rub my horse down. Feed it.’

I went back to the door. The first stars were bright and the snow glinted under a sickle moon.

‘Where are you going?’ Adelbert had followed me.

‘To find the king, of course.’

If he lived. And if he did not, then Iseult was dead.

I had to beat on Cippanhamm’s western gate, provoking a disgruntled voice from the far side demanding to know who I was.

‘Why aren’t you up on the ramparts?’ I asked in return.

The bar was lifted and the gate opened a few inches. A face peered out, then vanished as I pushed the gate hard inwards, banging it against the suspicious guard. ‘My horse went lame,’ I said, ‘and I’ve walked here.’

He recovered his balance and pushed the gate shut. ‘Who are you?’ he asked again.

‘Messenger from Svein.’

‘Svein!’ He lifted the bar and dropped it into place. ‘Has he caught Alfred yet?’

‘I’ll tell Guthrum that news before I tell you.’

‘Just asking,’ he said.

‘Where is Guthrum?’ I asked. I had no intention of going anywhere near the Danish chieftain for, after my insults to his dead mother, the best I could hope for was a swift death, and the likelihood was a very slow one.

‘He’s in Alfred’s hall,’ the man said, and pointed south. ‘That side of town, so you’ve still farther to walk.’ It never occurred to him that any messenger from Svein would never ride alone through Wessex, that such a man would come with an escort of fifty or sixty men, but he was too cold to think, and besides, with my long hair and my thick arm rings I looked like a Dane. He retreated into the house beside the gate where his comrades were clustered around a hearth and I walked on into a town made strange. Houses were missing, burned in the first fury of the Danish assault, and the large church by the market place on the hilltop was nothing but blackened beams touched white by the snow. The streets were frozen mud, and only I moved there, for the cold was keeping the Danes in the remaining houses. I could hear singing and laughter. Light leaked past shutters or glowed through smoke-holes in low roofs. I was cold and I was angry. There were men here who could recognise me, and men who might recognise Alfred, and his stupidity had put us both in danger. Would he have been mad enough to go back to his own hall? He must have guessed that was where Guthrum would be living and he would surely not risk being recognised by the Danish leader, which suggested he would be in the town rather than the royal compound.

I was walking towards Eanflæd’s old tavern when I heard the roars. They were coming from the east side of town and I followed the sound which led me to the nunnery by the river wall. I had never been inside the convent, but the gate was open and the courtyard inside was lit by two vast fires which offered some warmth to the men nearest the flames. And there were at least a hundred men in the courtyard, bellowing encouragement and insults at two other men who were fighting in the mud and melted snow between the fires. They were fighting with swords and shields, and every clash of blade against blade or of blade against wood brought raucous shouts. I glanced briefly at the fighters, then searched for faces in the crowd. I was looking for Haesten, or anyone else who might recognise me, but I saw no one, though it was hard to distinguish faces in the flickering shadows. There was no sign of any nuns and I assumed they had either fled, were dead or had been taken away for the conquerors’ amusement.

I slunk along the courtyard wall. I was wearing my helmet and its face-plate was an adequate disguise, but some men threw me curious glances, for it was unusual to see a helmeted man off a battlefield. In the end, seeing no one I recognised, I took the helmet off and hung it from my belt. The nunnery church had been turned into a feasting hall, but there was only a handful of drunks inside, oblivious to the noise outside. I stole half a loaf of bread from one of the drunks and took it back outside and watched the fighting.

Steapa Snotor was one of the two men. He no longer wore his mail armour, but was in a leather coat and he fought with a small shield and a long sword, but around his waist was a chain that led to the courtyard’s northern side where two men held it and, whenever Steapa’s opponent seemed to be in danger, they yanked on the chain to pull the huge Saxon off balance. He was being made to fight as Haesten had been fighting when I first discovered him, and doubtless Steapa’s captors were making good money from fools who wanted to try their prowess against a captured warrior. Steapa’s current opponent was a thin, grinning Dane who tried to dance around the huge man and slide his sword beneath the small shield, doing what I had done when I had fought Steapa, but Steapa was doggedly defending himself, parrying each blow and, when the chain allowed him, counterattacking fast. Whenever the Danes jerked him backwards the crowd jeered and once, when the men yanked the chain too hard and Steapa turned on them, only to be faced by three long spears, the crowd gave him a great cheer. He whipped back to parry the next attack, then stepped backwards, almost to the spear points, and the thin man followed fast, thinking he had Steapa at a disadvantage, but Steapa suddenly checked, slammed the shield down onto his opponent’s blade and brought his left hand around, sword hilt foremost, to hit the man on the head. The Dane went down, Steapa reversed the sword to stab and the chain dragged him off his feet and the spears threatened him with death if he finished the job. The crowd liked it. He had won.

Money changed hands. Steapa sat by the fire, his grim face showing nothing, and one of the men holding the chain shouted for another opponent. ‘Ten pieces of silver if you wound him! Fifty if you kill him!’

Steapa, who probably did not understand a word, just stared at the crowd, daring another man to take him on, and sure enough a half drunken brute came grinning from the crowd. Bets were made as Steapa was prodded to his feet. It was like a bull-baiting, except Steapa was being given only one opponent at a time. They would doubtless have set three or four men on him, except that the Danes who had taken him prisoner did not want him dead so long as there were still fools willing to pay to fight him.

I was sidling around the courtyard’s edge, still looking at faces. ‘Six pennies?’ a voice said behind me and I turned to see a man grinning beside a door. It was one of a dozen similar doors, evenly spaced along the limewashed wall.

‘Six pennies?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘Cheap,’ he said, and he pushed back a small shutter on the door and invited me to look inside.

I did. A tallow candle lit the tiny room which must have been where a nun had slept, and inside was a low bed and on the bed was a naked woman who was half covered by a man who had dropped his breeches. ‘He won’t be long,’ the man said.

I shook my head and moved away from the shutter.

‘She was a nun here,’ the man said. ‘Nice and young? Pretty too. Screams like a pig usually.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Four pennies? She won’t put up a fight. Not now she won’t.’

I walked on, convinced I was wasting my time. Had Alfred been and gone? More likely, I thought grimly, the fool had gone back to his hall and I wondered if I dared go there, but the thought of Guthrum’s revenge deterred me. The new fight had started. The Dane was crouching low, trying to cut Steapa’s feet from under him, but Steapa was swatting his blows easily enough and I sidled past the men holding his chains and saw another room off to my left, a large room, perhaps where the nuns had eaten, and a glint of gold in the light of its dying fire drew me inside.

The gold was not metal. It was the gilding on the frame of a small harp that had been stamped on so hard that it broke. I looked around the shadows and saw a man lying in a heap at the far end and went to him. It was Alfred. He was barely conscious, but he was alive and, so far as I could see, unwounded, but he was plainly stunned and I dragged him to the wall and sat him up. He had no cloak and his boots were gone. I left him there, went back to the church and found a drunk to befriend. I helped him to his feet, put my arm around his shoulders and persuaded him I was taking him to his bed, then took him through the back door to the latrine yard of the nunnery where I punched him three times in the belly and twice in the face, then carried his hooded cloak and tall boots back to Alfred.

The king was conscious now. His face was bruised. He looked up at me without showing any surprise, then rubbed his chin. ‘They didn’t like the way I played,’ he said.

‘That’s because the Danes like good music,’ I said. ‘Put these on.’ I threw the boots beside him, draped him with the cloak and made him pull the hood over his face. ‘You want to die?’ I asked him angrily.

‘I want to know about my enemies,’ he said.

‘And I found out for you,’ I said. ‘There are roughly two thousand of them.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ he said, then grimaced. ‘What’s on this cloak?’

‘Danish vomit,’ I said.

He shuddered. ‘Three of them attacked me,’ he sounded surprised. ‘They kicked and punched me.’

‘I told you, the Danes like good music,’ I said, helping him to his feet. ‘You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.’

‘They thought I was Danish,’ he said, then spat blood that trickled from his swollen lower lip.

‘Were they drunk?’ I asked. ‘You don’t even look like a Dane.’

‘I pretended I was a musician who couldn’t speak,’ he mouthed silently at me, then grinned bloodily, proud of his deception. I did not grin back and he sighed. ‘They were very drunk, but I need to know their mood, Uhtred. Are they confident? Are they readying to attack?’ He paused to wipe more blood from his lips. ‘I could only find that out by coming to see them for myself. Did you see Steapa?’

‘Yes.’

‘I want to take him back with us.’

‘Lord,’ I said savagely, ‘you are a fool. He’s in chains. He’s got half a dozen guards.’

‘Daniel was in a lion’s den, yet he escaped. Saint Paul was imprisoned, yet God freed him.’

‘Then let God look after Steapa,’ I said. ‘You’re coming back with me. Now.’

He bent to relieve a pain in his belly. ‘They punched me in the stomach,’ he said as he straightened. In the morning, I thought, he would have a rare black eye to display. He flinched as a huge cheer sounded from the courtyard and I guessed Steapa had either died or downed his last opponent. ‘I want to see my hall,’ Alfred said stubbornly.

‘Why?’

‘I’m a man who would look at his own home. You can come or stay.’

‘Guthrum’s there! You want to be recognised? You want to die?’

‘Guthrum will be inside, and I just want to look at the outside.’

He would not be dissuaded and so I led him through the courtyard to the street, wondering if I should simply pick him up and carry him away, but in his obdurate mood he would probably struggle and shout until men came to find out the cause of the noise. ‘I wonder what happened to the nuns,’ he said as we left the nunnery.

‘One of them is being whored in there for pennies,’ I said.

‘Oh, dear God.’ He made the sign of the cross and turned back and I knew he was thinking of rescuing the woman, so I dragged him onwards. ‘This is madness!’ I protested.

‘It is a necessary madness,’ he said calmly, then stopped to lecture me. ‘What does Wessex believe? It thinks I am defeated, it thinks the Danes have won, it readies itself for the spring and the coming of more Danes. So they must learn something different. They must learn that the king lives, that he walked among his enemies and that he made fools of them.’

‘That he got given a bloody nose and a black eye,’ I said.

‘You won’t tell them that,’ he said, ‘any more than you’ll tell folk about that wretched woman who hit me with an eel. We must give men hope, Uhtred, and in the spring that hope will blossom into victory. Remember Boethius, Uhtred, remember Boethius! Never give up hope.’

He believed it. He believed that God was protecting him, that he could walk among his enemies without fear or harm, and to an extent he was right for the Danes were well supplied with ale, birch wine and mead, and most were much too drunk to care about a bruised man carrying a broken harp.

No one stopped us going into the royal compound, but there were six black-cloaked guards at the hall door and I refused to let Alfred get close to them. ‘They’ll take one look at your bloodied face,’ I said, ‘and finish what the others began.’

‘Then let me at least go to the church.’

‘You want to pray?’ I asked sarcastically.

‘Yes,’ he said simply.

I tried to stop him. ‘If you die here,’ I said, ‘then Iseult dies.’

‘That wasn’t my doing,’ he said.

‘You’re the king, aren’t you?’

‘The bishop thought you would join the Danes,’ he said. ‘And others agreed.’

‘I have no friends left among the Danes,’ I said. ‘They were your hostages and they died.’

‘Then I shall pray for their pagan souls,’ he said, and pulled away from me and went to the church door where he instinctively pushed the hood off his head to show respect. I snatched it back over his hair, shadowing his bruises. He did not resist, but just pushed the door open and made the sign of the cross.

The church was being used to shelter more of Guthrum’s men. There were straw mattresses, heaps of chain mail, stacks of weapons and a score of men and women gathered around a newly-made hearth in the nave. They were playing dice and none took any particular interest in our arrival until someone shouted that we should shut the door.

‘We’re leaving,’ I said to Alfred. ‘You can’t pray here.’

He did not answer. He was gazing reverently to where the altar had been, and where a half-dozen horses were now tethered.

‘We’re leaving!’ I insisted again.

And just then a voice hailed me. It was a voice full of astonishment and I saw one of the dice players stand and stare at me. A dog ran from the shadows and began to jump up and down, trying to lick me, and I saw the dog was Nihtgenga and that the man who had recognised me was Ragnar. Earl Ragnar, my friend.

Who I had thought was dead.