Читать книгу The Last Kingdom Series Books 1-6 - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 17

Next day we made a pavilion in the valley between the town and the English encampment, stretching two ships’ sails between timber poles, the whole thing supported by seal-hide ropes lashed to pegs, and there the English placed three high-backed chairs for King Burghred, King Æthelred and for Prince Alfred, and draped the chairs with rich red cloths. Ivar and Ubba sat on milking stools.

Both sides brought thirty or forty men to witness the discussions, which began with an agreement that all weapons were to be piled twenty paces behind the two delegations. I helped carry swords, axes, shields and spears, then went back to listen.

Beocca was there and he spotted me. He smiled. I smiled back. He was standing just behind the young man I took to be Alfred, for though I had heard him in the night I had not seen him clearly. He alone among the three English leaders was not crowned with a circlet of gold, though he did have a large, jewelled cloak brooch which Ivar eyed rapaciously. I saw, as Alfred took his seat, that the prince was thin, long-legged, restless, pale and tall. His face was long, his nose long, his beard short, his cheeks hollow and his mouth pursed. His hair was a nondescript brown, his eyes worried, his brow creased, his hands fidgety and his face frowning. He was only nineteen, I later learned, but he looked ten years older. His brother, King Æthelred, was much older, over thirty, and he was also long-faced, but burlier and even more anxious-looking, while Burghred, King of Mercia, was a stubby man, heavy-bearded, with a bulging belly and a balding pate.

Alfred said something to Beocca who produced a sheet of parchment and a quill which he gave to the prince. Beocca then held a small vial of ink so that Alfred could dip the quill and write.

‘What is he doing?’ Ivar asked.

‘He is making notes of our talks,’ the English interpreter answered.

‘Notes?’

‘So there is a record, of course.’

‘He has lost his memory?’ Ivar asked, while Ubba produced a very small knife and began to clean his fingernails. Ragnar pretended to write on his hand, which amused the Danes.

‘You are Ivar and Ubba?’ Alfred asked through his interpreter.

‘They are,’ our translator answered. Alfred’s pen scratched, while his brother and brother-in-law, both kings, seemed content to allow the young prince to question the Danes.

‘You are sons of Lothbrok?’ Alfred continued.

‘Indeed,’ the interpreter answered.

‘And you have a brother? Halfdan?’

‘Tell the bastard to shove his writing up his arse,’ Ivar snarled, ‘and to shove the quill up after it, and then the ink until he shits black feathers.’

‘My lord says we are not here to discuss family,’ the interpreter said suavely, ‘but to decide your fate.’

‘And to decide yours,’ Burghred spoke for the first time.

‘Our fate?’ Ivar retorted, making the Mercian king quail from the force of his skull-gaze, ‘our fate is to water the fields of Mercia with your blood, dung the soil with your flesh, pave it with your bones, and rid it of your filthy stink.’

The discussion carried on like that for a long time, both sides threatening, neither yielding, but it had been the English who called for the meeting and the English who wanted to make peace and so the terms were slowly hammered out. It took two days, and most of us who were listening became bored and lay on the grass in the sunlight. Both sides ate in the field, and it was during one such meal that Beocca cautiously came across to the Danish side and greeted me warily. ‘You’re getting tall, Uhtred,’ he said.

‘It is good to see you, father,’ I answered dutifully. Ragnar was watching, but without any sign of worry on his face.

‘You’re still a prisoner, then?’ Beocca asked.

‘I am,’ I lied.

He looked at my two silver arm rings which, being too big for me, rattled at my wrist. ‘A privileged prisoner,’ he said wryly.

‘They know I am an Ealdorman,’ I said.

‘Which you are, God knows, though your uncle denies it.’

‘I have heard nothing of him,’ I said truthfully.

Beocca shrugged. ‘He holds Bebbanburg. He married your father’s wife and now she is pregnant.’

‘Gytha!’ I was surprised. ‘Pregnant?’

‘They want a son,’ Beocca said, ‘and if they have one …’ he did not finish the thought, but nor did he need to. I was the Ealdorman, and Ælfric had usurped my place, yet I was still his heir and would be until he had a son. ‘The child must be born any day now,’ Beocca said, ‘but you need not worry.’ He smiled and leaned towards me so he could speak in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I brought the parchments.’

I looked at him with utter incomprehension. ‘You brought the parchments?’

‘Your father’s will! The land-charters!’ He was shocked that I did not immediately understand what he had done. ‘I have the proof that you are the Ealdorman!’

‘I am the Ealdorman,’ I said, as if proof did not matter. ‘And always will be.’

‘Not if Ælfric has his way,’ Beocca said, ‘and if he has a son then he will want the boy to inherit.’

‘Gytha’s children always die,’ I said.

‘You must pray that every child lives,’ Beocca said crossly, ‘but you are still the Ealdorman. I owe that to your father, God rest his soul.’

‘So you abandoned my uncle?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I did!’ he said eagerly, plainly proud that he had fled Bebbanburg. ‘I am English,’ he went on, his crossed eyes blinking in the sun, ‘so I came south, Uhtred, to find Englishmen willing to fight the pagans, Englishmen able to do God’s will and I found them in Wessex. They are good men, godly men, stalwart men!’

‘Ælfric doesn’t fight the Danes?’ I asked. I knew he did not, but I wanted to hear it confirmed.

‘Your uncle wants no trouble,’ Beocca said, ‘and so the pagans thrive in Northumbria and the light of our Lord Jesus Christ grows dimmer every day.’ He put his hands together as if in prayer, his palsied left hand quivering against his ink-stained right. ‘And it is not just Ælfric who succumbs. Ricsig of Dunholm gives them feasts, Egbert sits on their throne, and for that betrayal there must be weeping in heaven. It must be stopped, Uhtred, and I went to Wessex because the king is a godly man and knows it is only with God’s help that we can defeat the pagans. I shall see if Wessex is willing to ransom you.’ That last sentence took me by surprise so that instead of looking pleased I looked puzzled, and Beocca frowned. ‘You didn’t hear me?’ he asked.

‘You want to ransom me?’

‘Of course! You are noble, Uhtred, and you must be rescued! Alfred can be generous about such things.’

‘I would like that,’ I said, knowing it was what I was supposed to say.

‘You should meet Alfred,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘You’ll enjoy that!’

I had no wish to meet Alfred, certainly not after listening to him whimper about a servant girl he had humped, but Beocca was insistent and so I went to Ragnar and asked his permission. Ragnar was amused. ‘Why does the squinty bastard want you to meet Alfred?’ he asked, looking at Beocca.

‘He wants me to be ransomed. He thinks Alfred might pay.’

‘Pay good money for you!’ Ragnar laughed. ‘Go on,’ he said carelessly, ‘it never hurts to see the enemy close up.’

Alfred was with his brother, some distance away, and Beocca talked to me as he led me towards the royal group. ‘Alfred is his brother’s chief helper,’ he explained. ‘King Æthelred is a good man, but nervous. He has sons, of course, but both are very young …’ his voice tailed away.

‘So if he dies,’ I said, ‘the eldest son becomes king?’

‘No, no!’ Beocca sounded shocked, ‘Æthelwold’s much too young. He’s no older than you!’

‘But he’s the king’s son,’ I insisted.

‘When Alfred was a small boy,’ Beocca leaned down and lowered his voice, though not its intensity, ‘his father took him to Rome. To see the Pope! And the Pope, Uhtred, invested him as the future king!’ He stared at me as if he had proved his point.

‘But he’s not the heir,’ I said, puzzled.

‘The Pope made him heir!’ Beocca hissed at me. Later, much later, I met a priest who had been in the old king’s entourage and he said Alfred had never been invested as the future king, but instead had been given some meaningless Roman honour, but Alfred, to his dying day, insisted the Pope had conferred the succession on him, and so justified his usurpation of the throne that by rights should have gone to Æthelred’s eldest son.

‘But if Æthelwold grows up,’ I began.

‘Then of course he might become king,’ Beocca interrupted me impatiently, ‘but if his father dies before Æthelwold grows up then Alfred will be king.’

‘Then Alfred will have to kill him,’ I said, ‘him and his brother.’

Beocca gazed at me in shocked amazement. ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.

‘He has to kill them,’ I said, ‘just like my uncle wanted to kill me.’

‘He did want to kill you. He probably still does!’ Beocca made the sign of the cross, ‘but Alfred is not Ælfric! No, no. Alfred will treat his nephews with Christian mercy, of course he will, which is another reason he should become king. He is a good Christian, Uhtred, as I pray you are, and it is God’s will that Alfred should become king. The Pope proved that! And we have to obey God’s will. It is only by obedience to God that we can hope to defeat the Danes.’

‘Only by obedience?’ I asked. I thought swords might help.

‘Only by obedience,’ Beocca said firmly, ‘and by faith. God will give us victory if we worship him with all our hearts, and if we mend our ways and give him the glory. And Alfred will do that! With him at our head the very hosts of heaven will come to our aid. Æthelwold can’t do that. He’s a lazy, arrogant, tiresome child.’ Beocca seized my hand and pulled me through the entourage of West Saxon and Mercian lords. ‘Now remember to kneel to him, boy, he is a prince.’ He led me to where Alfred was sitting and I duly knelt as Beocca introduced me. ‘This is the boy I spoke of, lord,’ he said, ‘he is the Ealdorman Uhtred of Northumbria, a prisoner of the Danes since Eoferwic fell, but a good boy.’

Alfred gave me an intense look which, to be honest, made me uncomfortable. I was to discover in time that he was a clever man, very clever, and thought twice as fast as most others, and he was also a serious man, so serious that he understood everything except jokes. Alfred took everything heavily, even a small boy, and his inspection of me was long and searching as if he tried to plumb the depths of my unfledged soul. ‘Are you a good boy?’ he finally asked me.

‘I try to be, lord,’ I said.

‘Look at me,’ he ordered, for I had lowered my eyes. He smiled when I met his gaze. There was no sign of the sickness he had complained of when I eavesdropped on him and I wondered if, after all, he had been drunk that night. It would have explained his pathetic words, but now he was all earnestness. ‘How do you try to be good?’ he asked.

‘I try to resist temptation, lord,’ I said, remembering Beocca’s words to him behind the tent.

‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘very good, and do you resist it?’

‘Not always,’ I said, then hesitated, tempted to mischief, and then, as ever, yielded to temptation. ‘But I try, lord,’ I said earnestly, ‘and I tell myself I should thank God for tempting me and I praise him when he gives me the strength to resist the temptation.’

Both Beocca and Alfred stared at me as if I had sprouted angel’s wings. I was only repeating the nonsense I had heard Beocca advise Alfred in the dark, but they thought it revealed my great holiness, and I encouraged them by trying to look meek, innocent and pious. ‘You are a sign from God, Uhtred,’ Alfred said fervently. ‘Do you say your prayers?’

‘Every day, lord,’ I said, and did not add that those prayers were addressed to Odin.

‘And what is that about your neck? A crucifix?’ He had seen the leather thong and, when I did not answer, he leaned forward and plucked out Thor’s hammer that had been hidden behind my shirt. ‘Dear God,’ he said, and made the sign of the cross. ‘And you wear those too,’ he added, grimacing at my two arm rings which were cut with Danish rune-letters. I must have looked a proper little heathen.

‘They make me wear them, lord,’ I said, and felt his impulse to tear the pagan symbol off the thong, ‘and beat me if I don’t,’ I added hastily.

‘Do they beat you often?’ he asked.

‘All the time, lord,’ I lied.

He shook his head sadly, then let the hammer fall. ‘A graven image,’ he said, ‘must be a heavy burden for a small boy.’

‘I was hoping, lord,’ Beocca intervened, ‘that we could ransom him.’

‘Us?’ Alfred asked, ‘ransom him?’

‘He is the true Ealdorman of Bebbanburg,’ Beocca explained, ‘though his uncle has taken the title, but the uncle will not fight the Danes.’

Alfred gazed at me, thinking, then frowned. ‘Can you read, Uhtred?’ he asked.

‘He has begun his lessons,’ Beocca answered for me. ‘I taught him, lord, though in all honesty he was ever a reluctant pupil. Not good with his letters, I fear. His thorns were prickly and his ashes spindly.’

I said that Alfred did not understand jokes, but he loved that one, even though it was feeble as watered milk and stale as old cheese. But it was beloved of all who taught reading, and both Beocca and Alfred laughed as though the jest were fresh as dew at sunrise. The thorn, ð and the ash, æ were two letters of our alphabet. ‘His thorns are prickly,’ Alfred echoed, almost incoherent with laughter, ‘and his ashes spindly. His b’s don’t buzz and his i’s,’ he stopped, suddenly embarrassed. He had been about to say my i’s were crossed, then he remembered Beocca and he looked contrite. ‘My dear Beocca.’

‘No offence, my lord, no offence.’ Beocca was still happy, as happy as when he was immersed in some tedious text about how Saint Cuthbert baptised puffins or preached the gospel to the seals. He had tried to make me read that stuff, but I had never got beyond the shortest words.

‘You are fortunate to have started your studies early,’ Alfred said to me, recovering his seriousness. ‘I was not given a chance to read until I was twelve years old!’ His tone suggested I should be shocked and surprised by this news so I dutifully looked appalled. ‘That was grievously wrong of my father and stepmother,’ Alfred went on sternly, ‘they should have started me much earlier.’

‘Yet now you read as well as any scholar, my lord,’ Beocca said.

‘I do try,’ Alfred said modestly, but he was plainly delighted with the compliment.

‘And in Latin too!’ Beocca said, ‘and his Latin is much better than mine!’

‘I think that’s true,’ Alfred said, giving the priest a smile.

‘And he writes a clear hand,’ Beocca told me, ‘such a clear, fine hand!’

‘As must you,’ Alfred told me firmly, ‘to which end, young Uhtred, we shall indeed offer to ransom you, and if God helps us in that endeavour then you shall serve in my household and the first thing you will do is become a master of reading and writing. You’ll like that!’

‘I will, lord,’ I said, meaning it to sound as a question, though it came out as dull agreement.

‘You will learn to read well,’ Alfred promised me, ‘and learn to pray well, and learn to be a good honest Christian, and when you are of age you can decide what to be!’

‘I will want to serve you, lord,’ I lied, thinking that he was a pale, boring, priest-ridden weakling.

‘That is commendable,’ he said, ‘and how will you serve me, do you think?’

‘As a soldier, lord, to fight the Danes.’

‘If God wishes it,’ he said, evidently disappointed in my answer, ‘and God knows we shall need soldiers, though I pray daily that the Danes will come to a knowledge of Christ and so discover their sins and be led to end their wicked ways. Prayer is the answer,’ he said vehemently, ‘prayer and fasting and obedience, and if God answers our prayers, Uhtred, then we shall need no soldiers, but a kingdom always has need of good priests. I wanted that office for myself, but God disposed otherwise. There is no higher calling than the priestly service. I might be a prince, but in God’s eyes I am a worm while Beocca is a jewel beyond price!’

‘Yes, lord,’ I said, for want of anything else to say. Beocca tried to look modest.

Alfred leaned forward, hid Thor’s hammer behind my shirt, then laid a hand on my head. ‘God’s blessing on you, child,’ he said, ‘and may his face shine upon you and release you from your thraldom and bring you into the blessed light of freedom.’

‘Amen,’ I said.

They let me go then and I went back to Ragnar. ‘Hit me,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Thump me around the head.’

He glanced up and saw that Alfred was still watching me, so he cuffed me harder than I expected. I fell down, grinning. ‘So why did I just do that?’ Ragnar asked.

‘Because I said you were cruel to me,’ I said, ‘and beat me constantly.’ I knew that would amuse Ragnar and it did. He hit me again, just for luck. ‘So what did the bastards want?’ he asked.

‘They want to ransom me,’ I said, ‘so they can teach me to read and write, and then make me into a priest.’

‘A priest? Like the squinty little bastard with the red hair?’

‘Just like him.’

Ragnar laughed. ‘Maybe I should ransom you. It would be a punishment for telling lies about me.’

‘Please don’t,’ I said fervently, and at that moment I wondered why I had ever wanted to go back to the English side. To exchange Ragnar’s freedom for Alfred’s earnest piety seemed a miserable fate to me. Besides, I was learning to despise the English. They would not fight, they prayed instead of sharpening their swords, and it was no wonder the Danes were taking their land.

Alfred did offer to ransom me, but balked at Ragnar’s price that was ludicrously high, though not nearly so steep as the price Ivar and Ubba extracted from Burghred.

Mercia was to be swallowed. Burghred had no fire in his big belly, no desire to go on fighting the Danes who got stronger as he grew weaker. Perhaps he was fooled by all those shields on Snotengaham’s walls, but he must have decided he could not beat the Danes and instead he surrendered. It was not just our forces in Snotengaham that persuaded him to do this. Other Danes were raiding across the Northumbrian border, ravaging Mercian lands, burning churches, slaughtering monks and nuns, and those horsemen were now close to Burghred’s army and were forever harassing his forage parties, and so Burghred, weary of unending defeat, weakly agreed to every outrageous demand, and in return he was allowed to stay as King of Mercia, but that was all. The Danes were to take his fortresses and garrison them, and they were free to take Mercian estates as they wished, and Burghred’s fyrd was to fight for the Danes if they demanded it, and Burghred, moreover, was to pay a vast price in silver for this privilege of losing his kingdom while keeping his throne. Æthelred and Alfred, having no part to play in the discussions, and seeing that their ally had collapsed like a pricked bladder, left on the second day, riding south with what remained of their army, and thus Mercia fell.

First Northumbria, then Mercia. In just two years half of England was gone and the Danes were only just beginning.

We ravaged the land again. Bands of Danes rode into every part of Mercia and slaughtered whoever resisted, took whatever they wished, then garrisoned the principal fortresses before sending messages to Denmark for more ships to come. More ships, more men, more families and more Danes to fill the great land that had fallen into their laps.

I had begun to think I would never fight for England because by the time I was old enough to fight there would be no England. So I decided I would be a Dane. Of course I was confused, but I did not spend much time worrying about my confusion. Instead, as I approached twelve years old, I began my proper education. I was made to stand for hours holding a sword and shield stretched out in front of me until my arms ached, I was taught the strokes of the blade, made to practise with throwing spears, and given a pig to slaughter with a war spear. I learned to fend with a shield, how to drop it to stop the lunge beneath the rim, and how to shove the heavy shield boss into an enemy’s face to smash his nose and blind him with tears. I learned to pull an oar. I grew, put on muscle, began to speak in a man’s voice and was slapped by my first girl. I looked like a Dane. Strangers still mistook me for Ragnar’s son for I had the same fair hair that I wore long and tied with a strip of leather at the nape of my neck, and Ragnar was pleased when that happened though he made it plain that I would not replace Ragnar the Younger or Rorik. ‘If Rorik lives,’ he said sadly, for Rorik was still sickly. ‘You will have to fight for your inheritance,’ Ragnar told me, and so I learned to fight and, that winter, to kill.

We returned to Northumbria. Ragnar liked it there and, though he could have taken better land in Mercia, he liked the northern hills and the deep vales and the dark hanging woods where, as the first frosts crisped the morning, he took me hunting. A score of men and twice as many dogs beat through the woods, trying to trap boar. I stayed with Ragnar, both of us armed with heavy boar spears. ‘A boar can kill you, Uhtred,’ he warned me, ‘he can rip you from the crotch to the neck unless you place the spear just right.’

The spear, I knew, must be placed in the beast’s chest or, if you were lucky, down its throat. I knew I could not kill a boar, but if one came, I would have to try. A full-grown boar can be twice the weight of a man and I did not have the strength to drive one back, but Ragnar was determined to give me first strike and he would be close behind to help. And so it happened. I have killed hundreds of boar since, but I will always remember that first beast; the small eyes, the sheer anger, the determination, the stench, the bristling hairs flecked with mud, and the sweet thud of the spear going deep into the chest, and I was hurled back as if I had been kicked by Odin’s eight-legged horse, and Ragnar drove his own spear through the thick hide and the beast squealed and roared, legs scrabbling, and the pursuing dogs howled, and I found my feet, gritted my teeth, and put my weight on the spear and felt the boar’s life pulsing up the ash shaft. Ragnar gave me a tusk from that carcass and I hung it next to Thor’s hammer and in the days that followed I wanted to do nothing except hunt, though I was not allowed to pursue boar unless Ragnar was with me, but when Rorik was well enough he and I would take our bows into the woods to look for deer.

It was on one of those expeditions, high up at the edge of the woods, just beneath the moors that were dappled by melting snow, that the arrow almost took my life. Rorik and I were creeping through undergrowth and the arrow missed me by inches, sizzling past my head to thump into an ash tree. I turned, putting an arrow on my own string, but saw no one, then we heard feet racing away downhill through the trees and we followed, but whoever had shot the arrow ran too fast for us.

‘An accident,’ Ragnar said. ‘He saw movement, thought you were a deer, and loosed. It happens.’ He looked at the arrow which we had retrieved, but it had no marks of ownership. It was just a goose-fledged shaft of hornbeam tipped with an iron head. ‘An accident,’ he decreed.

Later that winter we moved back to Eoferwic and spent days repairing the boats. I learned to split oak trunks with wedge and mallet, cleaving out the long pale planks that patched the rotted hulls. Spring brought more ships, more men, and with them was Halfdan, youngest brother of Ivar and Ubba. He came ashore roaring with energy, a tall man with a big beard and scowling eyes. He embraced Ragnar, thumped me on the shoulder, punched Rorik in the head, swore he would kill every Christian in England, then went to see his brothers. The three of them planned the new war which, they promised, would strip East Anglia of its treasures and, as the days warmed, we readied for it.

Half the army would march by land, while the other half, which included Ragnar’s men, would go by sea and so I anticipated my first proper voyage, but before we left Kjartan came to see Ragnar, and trailing him was his son Sven, his missing eye a red hole in his angry face. Kjartan knelt to Ragnar and bowed his head. ‘I would come with you, lord,’ he said.

Kjartan had made a mistake by letting Sven follow him, for Ragnar, usually so generous, gave the boy a sour look. I call him a boy, but in truth Sven was almost a man now and promised to be a big one, broad in the chest, tall and strong. ‘You would come with me,’ Ragnar echoed flatly.

‘I beg you, lord,’ Kjartan said, and it must have taken a great effort to say those words, for Kjartan was a proud man, but in Eoferwic he had found no plunder, earned no arm rings, and made no reputation for himself.

‘My ships are full,’ Ragnar said coldly, and turned away. I saw the look of hatred on Kjartan’s face.

‘Why doesn’t he sail with someone else?’ I asked Ravn.

‘Because everyone knows he offended Ragnar, so to give him a place at the oars is to risk my son’s dislike.’ Ravn shrugged. ‘Kjartan should go back to Denmark. If a man loses his lord’s trust then he has lost everything.’

But Kjartan and his one-eyed son stayed in Eoferwic instead of going back to Denmark, and we sailed, first flowing with the current back down the Ouse and so into the Humber where we spent the night. Next morning we took the shields off the ships’ sides, then waited till the tide lifted their hulls and we could row eastwards into the first great seas.

I had been offshore at Bebbanburg, going with fishermen to cast nets about the Farne Islands, but this was a different sensation. The Wind-Viper rode those waves like a bird instead of thrashing through like a swimmer. We rowed out of the river, then took advantage of a north-west wind to hoist the great sail and the oars were fiddled out of their holes, the holes were covered with wooden plugs and the great sweeps stored inboard as the sail cracked, bellied, trapped the wind and drove us southwards. There were eighty-nine ships altogether, a fleet of dragon-headed killers, and they raced each other, calling insults whenever they travelled faster than some other boat. Ragnar leaned on the steering oar, his hair flying in the wind and a smile as broad as the ocean on his face. Seal-hide ropes creaked, the boat seemed to leap up the seas, seethe through their tops and slide in flying spray down their faces. I was frightened at first, for the Wind-Viper bent to that wind, almost dropping her leeward side beneath the great green sea, but then I saw no fear on the other men’s faces and I learned to enjoy the wild ride, whooping with delight when the bow smashed into a heavy sea and the green water flew like an arrow shower down the deck.

‘I love this!’ Ragnar called to me. ‘In Valhalla I hope to find a ship, a sea and a wind!’

The shore was ever in sight, a low green line to our right, sometimes broken by dunes, but never by trees or hills, and as the sun sank we turned towards that land and Ragnar ordered the sail furled and the oars out.

We rowed into a water land, a place of marsh and reed, of bird cries and long-legged herons, of eel traps and ditches, of shallow channels and long meres, and I remembered my father saying the East Anglians were frogs. We were on the edge of their country now, at the place where Mercia ended and East Anglia began in a tangle of water, mud and salt flats. ‘They call it the Gewæsc,’ Ragnar said.

‘You’ve been here?’

‘Two years ago,’ he said. ‘Good country to raid, Uhtred, but treacherous water. Too shallow.’

The Gewæsc was very shallow and Weland was in the Wind-Viper’s bow, weighing the depth with a lump of iron tied to a rope. The oars only dipped if Weland said there was sufficient water and so we crept westwards into the dying light followed by the rest of the fleet. The shadows were long now, the red sun slicing into the open jaws of the dragon, serpent and eagle heads on the ships’ prows. The oars worked slowly, their blades dripping water as they swept forward for the next stroke, and our wake spread in long slow ripples touched red by dying sun-fire.

We anchored that night and slept aboard the ships and in the dawn Ragnar made Rorik and me climb his mast. Ubba’s ship was nearby and he too had men clambering up towards the painted wind-vane at the masthead.

‘What can you see?’ Ragnar called up to us.

‘Three men on horseback,’ Rorik answered, pointing south, ‘watching us.’

‘And a village,’ I added, also pointing south.

To the men on shore we were something from their darkest fears. All they could see was a thicket of masts and the savage carved beasts at the high prows and sterns of our ships. We were an army, brought here by our dragon boats, and they knew what would follow and, as I watched, the three horsemen turned and galloped south.

We went on. Ubba’s ship led the way now, following a twisting shallow channel and I could see Ubba’s sorcerer, Storri, standing in the bows and I guessed he had cast the runes and predicted success. ‘Today,’ Ragnar told me wolfishly, ‘you will learn the Viking way.’

To be a Viking was to be a raider, and Ragnar had not conducted a shipborne raid in many years. He had become an invader instead, a settler, but Ubba’s fleet had come to ravage the coastline and draw the East Anglian army towards the sea while his brother, Ivar, led the land army south from Mercia, and so that early summer I learned the Viking ways. We took the ships to the mainland where Ubba found a stretch of land with a thin neck that could easily be defended and, once our ships were safely drawn onto the beach, we dug an earthwork across the neck as a rampart. Then large parties of men disappeared into the countryside, returning next morning with captured horses and the horses were used to mount another war-band that rode inland as Ragnar led his men on foot along the tangled shoreline.

We came to a village, I never did learn its name, and we burned it to the ground. There was no one there. We burned farmsteads, a church, and marched on, following a road that angled away from the shore, and at dusk we saw a larger village and we hid in a wood, lit no fires, and attacked at dawn.

We came shrieking from the half-light. We were a nightmare in the dawn; men in leather with iron helmets, men with round painted shields, men with axes, swords and spears. The folk in that place had no weapons and no armour, and perhaps they had not even known there were Danes in their countryside for they were not ready for us. They died. A few brave men tried to make a stand by their church, but Ragnar led a charge against them and they were slaughtered where they stood, and Ragnar pushed open the church door to find the small building filled with women and children. The priest was in front of the altar and he cursed Ragnar in Latin as the Dane stalked up the small nave, and the priest was still cursing when Ragnar disembowelled him.

We took a bronze crucifix, a dented silver plate and some coins from the church. We found a dozen good cooking pots in the houses and some shears, sickles and iron spits. We captured cattle, goats, sheep, oxen, eight horses, and sixteen young women. One woman screamed that she could not leave her child and I watched Weland spit the small boy on a spear, then thrust the bloodied corpse into the woman’s arms. Ragnar sent her away, not because he pitied her, but because one person was always spared to carry news of the horror to other places. Folk must fear the Danes, Ragnar said, and then they would be ready to surrender. He gave me a piece of burning wood he had taken from a fire. ‘Burn the thatch, Uhtred,’ he ordered, so I went from house to house, putting fire to the reed thatch. I burned the church and then, just as I approached the last house, a man burst from the door with a three-pronged eel spear that he lunged at me. I twisted aside, avoiding his thrust by luck rather than judgement, and I hurled the burning wood at the man’s face and the flames made him duck as I backed away, and Ragnar threw me a spear, a heavy war spear made for thrusting rather than throwing, and it skidded in the dust in front of me and I understood he was letting me fight as I plucked it up. He would not have let me die, for he had two of his bowmen standing ready with arrows on their strings, but he did not interfere as the man ran at me and lunged again.

I parried, knocking the rusted eel spear aside and stepping back again to give myself room. The man was twice my size and more than twice my weight. He was cursing me, calling me a devil’s bastard, a worm of hell, and he rushed me again and I did what I had learned hunting the boar. I stepped to my left, waited till he levelled the spear, stepped back to the right and thrust.

It was not a clean thrust, nor did I have the weight to hurl him back, but the spear point punctured his belly and then his weight pushed me back as he half snarled and half gasped, and I fell, and he fell on top of me, forced sideways because the spear was in his guts, and he tried to take a grip of my throat, but I wriggled out from beneath him, picked up his own eel spear and rammed it at his throat. There were rivulets of blood on the earth, droplets spraying in the air, and he was jerking and choking, blood bubbling at his ripped throat, and I tried to pull the eel spear back, but the barbs on the points were caught in his gullet, so I ripped the war spear from his belly and tried to stop him jerking by thrusting it down hard into his chest, but it only glanced off his ribs. He was making a terrible noise, and I suppose I was in a panic, and I was unaware that Ragnar and his men were almost helpless with laughter as they watched me try to kill the East Anglian. I did, in the end, or else he just bled to death, but by then I had poked and stabbed and torn him until he looked as though a pack of wolves had set on him.

But I got a third arm ring, and there were grown warriors in Ragnar’s band who only wore three. Rorik was jealous, but he was younger and his father consoled him that his time would come. ‘How does it feel?’ Ragnar asked me.

‘Good,’ I said, and God help me, it did.

It was then that I first saw Brida. She was my age, black-haired, thin as a twig, with big dark eyes and a spirit as wild as a hawk in spring, and she was among the captured women and, as the Danes began dividing those captives amongst themselves, an older woman pushed the child forward as if giving her to the Vikings. Brida snatched up a piece of wood and turned on the woman and beat at her, driving her back, screaming that she was a sour-faced bitch, a dried-up hank of gristle, and the older woman tripped and fell into a patch of nettles where Brida went on thrashing her. Ragnar was laughing, but eventually pulled the child away and, because he loved anyone with spirit, gave her to me. ‘Keep her safe,’ he said, ‘and burn that last house.’

So I did.

And I learned another thing.

Start your killers young, before their consciences are grown. Start them young and they will be lethal.

We took our plunder back to the ships and that night, as I drank my ale, I thought of myself as a Dane. Not English, not any more. I was a Dane and I had been given a perfect childhood, perfect, at least, to the ideas of a boy. I was raised among men, I was free, I ran wild, I was encumbered by no laws, was troubled by no priests, was encouraged to violence, and I was rarely alone.

And it was that, that I was rarely alone, which kept me alive.

Every raid brought more horses, and more horses meant more men could go farther afield and waste more places, steal more silver and take more captives. We had scouts out now, watching for the approach of King Edmund’s army. Edmund ruled East Anglia and, unless he wished to collapse as feebly as Burghred of Mercia, he had to send men against us to preserve his kingdom, and so we watched the roads and waited.

Brida stayed close to me. Ragnar had taken a strong liking to her, probably because she treated him defiantly and because she alone did not weep when she was captured. She was an orphan and had been living in the house of her aunt, the woman whom she had beaten and whom she hated, and within days Brida was happier among the Danes than she had ever been among her own people. She was a slave now, a slave who was supposed to stay in the camp and cook, but one dawn as we went raiding she ran after us and hauled herself up behind my saddle and Ragnar was amused by that and let her come along.

We went far south that day, out of the flat lands where the marshes stretched, and into low wooded hills amongst which were fat farms and a fatter monastery. Brida laughed when Ragnar killed the abbot, and afterwards, as the Danes collected their plunder, she took my hand and led me over a low rise to a farm which had already been plundered by Ragnar’s men. The farm belonged to the monastery and Brida knew the place because her aunt had frequently gone to the monastery to pray. ‘She wanted children,’ Brida said, ‘and only had me.’ Then she pointed at the farm and watched for my reaction.

It was a Roman farm, she told me, though like me she had little idea who the Romans really were, only that they had once lived in England and then had gone. I had seen plenty of their buildings before, there were some in Eoferwic, but those other buildings had crumbled, then been patched with mud and reroofed with thatch, while this farm looked as though the Romans had only just left.

It was astonishing. The walls were of stone, perfectly cut, square and close-mortared, and the roof was of tile, patterned and tight-fitting, and inside the gate was a courtyard surrounded with a pillared walkway and in the largest room was an amazing picture on the floor, made up of thousands of small coloured stones, and I gaped at the leaping fish that were pulling a chariot in which a bearded man stood holding an eel spear like the one I had faced in Brida’s village. Hares surrounded the picture, chasing each other through looping strands of leaves. There had been other pictures painted on the walls, but they had faded or else been discoloured by water that had leaked through the old roof. ‘It was the abbot’s house,’ Brida told me, and she took me into a small room where there was a cot beside which one of the abbot’s servants lay dead in his own blood. ‘He brought me in here,’ she said.

‘The abbot did?’

‘And told me to take my clothes off.’

‘The abbot did?’ I asked again.

‘I ran away,’ she said in a very matter-of-fact tone, ‘and my aunt beat me. She said I should have pleased him and he’d have rewarded us.’

We wandered through the house and I felt a wonder that we could no longer build like this. We knew how to sink posts in the ground and make beams and rafters and roof them with thatch from rye or reed, but the posts rotted, the thatch mouldered, and the houses sagged. In summer our houses were winter dark, and all year they were choked with smoke, and in winter they stank of cattle, yet this house was light and clean and I doubted any cow had ever dunged on the man in his fish-drawn chariot. It was an unsettling thought, that somehow we were sliding back into the smoky dark and that never again would man make something so perfect as this small building. ‘Were the Romans Christians?’ I asked Brida.

‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, but I had been thinking that the gods reward those they love and it would have been nice to know which gods had looked after the Romans. I hoped they had worshipped Odin, though these days, I knew, they were Christians because the Pope lived in Rome and Beocca had taught me that the Pope was the chief of all the Christians, and was a very holy man. His name, I remembered, was Nicholas. Brida could not have cared less about the gods of the Romans, instead she knelt to explore a hole in the floor that seemed to lead only to a cellar so shallow that no person could ever get inside. ‘Maybe elves lived there?’ I suggested.

‘Elves live in the woods,’ she insisted. She decided the abbot might have hidden treasures in the space and borrowed my sword so she could widen the hole. It was not a real sword, merely a sax, a very long knife, but Ragnar had given it to me and I wore it proudly.

‘Don’t break the blade,’ I told her, and she stuck her tongue out at me, then began prising the mortar at the hole’s edge while I went back to the courtyard to look at the raised pond that was green and scummy now, but somehow I knew it had once been filled with clear water. A frog crawled onto the small stone island in the centre and I again remembered my father’s verdict on the East Anglians; mere frogs.

Weland came through the gate. He stopped just inside and licked his lips, tongue flickering, then half smiled. ‘Lost your sax, Uhtred?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Ragnar sent me,’ he said, ‘we’re leaving.’

I nodded, said nothing, but knew that Ragnar would have sounded a horn if we were truly ready to leave.

‘So come on, boy,’ he said.

I nodded again, still said nothing.

His dark eyes glanced at the building’s empty windows, then at the pool. ‘Is that a frog,’ he asked, ‘or a toad?’

‘A frog.’

‘In Frankia,’ he said, ‘men say you can eat frogs.’ He walked towards the pool and I moved to stay on the far side from him, keeping the raised stone structure between us. ‘Have you eaten a frog, Uhtred?’

‘No.’

‘Would you like to?’

‘No.’

He put a hand into a leather bag which hung from his sword belt that was strapped over a torn mail coat. He had money now, two arm rings, proper boots, an iron helmet, a long sword and the mail coat which needed mending, but was far better protection than the rags he had worn when he first came to Ragnar’s house. ‘This coin if you catch a frog,’ he said, spinning a silver penny in the air.

‘I don’t want to catch a frog,’ I said sullenly.

‘I do,’ he said, grinning, and he drew the sword, its blade hissing on the scabbard’s wooden throat, and he stepped into the pool, the water not reaching the tops of his boots, and the frog leaped away, plopping into the green scum, and Weland was not looking at the frog, but at me, and I knew he was going to kill me, but for some reason I could not move. I was astonished, and yet I was not astonished. I had never liked him, never trusted him, and I understood that he had been sent to kill me and had only failed because I had always been in company until this moment when I had let Brida lead me away from Ragnar’s band. So Weland had his chance now. He smiled at me, reached the centre of the pool, came closer, raised the sword and I found my feet at last and raced back into the pillared walkway. I did not want to go into the house, for Brida was there, and I knew he would kill her if he found her. He jumped out of the pond and chased me, and I raced down the walkway, around the corner, and he cut me off, and I dodged back, wanting to reach the gateway, but he knew that was what I wanted and he took care to keep between me and my escape. His boots left wet footprints on the Roman flagstones.

‘What’s the matter, Uhtred?’ he asked, ‘frightened of frogs?’

‘What do you want?’ I asked.

‘Not so cocky now, eh? Ealdorman?’ He stalked towards me, sword flashing from side to side. ‘Your uncle sends his regards and trusts you will burn in hell while he lives in Bebbanburg.’

‘You come from …’ I began, but it was obvious Weland was serving Ælfric so I did not bother to finish the question, but instead edged backwards.

‘The reward for your death will be the weight of his newborn child in silver,’ Weland said, ‘and the child should be born by now. And he’s impatient for your death, your uncle is. I almost managed to track you down that night outside Snotengaham, and almost hit you with an arrow last winter, but you ducked. Not this time, but it will be quick, boy. Your uncle said to make it quick, so kneel down, boy, just kneel.’ He swept the blade left and right, his wrist whippy so the sword hissed. ‘I haven’t given her a name yet,’ he said. ‘Perhaps after this she’ll be known as Orphan-Killer.’

I feinted right, went left, but he was quick as a stoat and he blocked me, and I knew I was cornered, and he knew it too and smiled. ‘I’ll make it quick,’ he said, ‘I promise.’

Then the first roof tile hit his helmet. It could not have hurt much, but the unexpected blow jarred him backwards and confused him, and the second tile hit his waist and the third smacked him on the shoulder, and Brida shouted from the roof. ‘Back through the house!’ I ran, the lunging sword missing me by inches, and I twisted through the door, ran over the fish-drawn chariot, through a second door, another door, saw an open window and dove through, and Brida jumped down from the roof and together we ran for the nearby woods.

Weland followed me, but he abandoned the pursuit when we vanished in the trees. Instead he went south, on his own, fleeing what he knew Ragnar would do to him, and for some reason I was in tears by the time I found Ragnar again. Why did I cry? I do not know, unless it was the confirmation that Bebbanburg was gone, that my beloved refuge was occupied by an enemy, and an enemy who, by now, might have a son.

Brida received an arm ring, and Ragnar let it be known that if any man touched her he, Ragnar, would personally geld that man with a mallet and a plank-splitter. She rode home on Weland’s horse.

And next day the enemy came.

Ravn had sailed with us, blind though he was, and I was required to be his eyes so I described how the East Anglian army was forming on a low ridge of dry land to the south of our camp. ‘How many banners?’ he asked me.

‘Twenty-three,’ I said, after a pause to count them.

‘Showing?’

‘Mostly crosses,’ I said, ‘and some saints.’

‘He’s a very pious man, King Edmund,’ Ravn said, ‘he even tried to persuade me to become a Christian.’ He chuckled at the memory. We were sitting on the prow of one of the beached ships, Ravn in a chair, Brida and I at his feet, and the Mercian twins, Ceolnoth and Ceolberht on his far side. They were the sons of Bishop Æthelbrid of Snotengaham and they were hostages even though their father had welcomed the Danish army, but, as Ravn said, taking the bishop’s sons hostage would keep the man honest. There were dozens of other such hostages from Mercia and Northumbria, all sons of prominent men, and all under sentence of death if their fathers caused trouble. There were other Englishmen in the army, serving as soldiers and, if it were not for the language they spoke, they would have been indistinguishable from the Danes. Most of them were either outlaws or masterless men, but all were savage fighters, exactly the kind of men the English needed to face their enemy, but now those men were fighting for the Danes against King Edmund. ‘And he’s a fool,’ Ravn said scornfully.

‘A fool?’ I asked.

‘He gave us shelter during the winter before we attacked Eoferwic,’ Ravn explained, ‘and we had to promise not to kill any of his churchmen.’ He laughed softly. ‘What a very silly condition. If their god was any use then we couldn’t have killed them anyway.’

‘Why did he give you shelter?’

‘Because it was easier than fighting us,’ Ravn said. He was using English because the other three children did not understand Danish, though Brida was learning quickly. She had a mind like a fox, quick and sly. Ravn smiled. ‘The silly King Edmund believed we would go away in the springtime and not come back, yet here we are.’

‘He shouldn’t have done it,’ one of the twins put in. I could not tell them apart, but was annoyed by them for they were fierce Mercian patriots, despite their father’s change of allegiance. They were ten years old and forever upbraiding me for loving the Danes.

‘Of course he shouldn’t have done it,’ Ravn agreed mildly.

‘He should have attacked you!’ Ceolnoth or Ceolberht said.

‘He would have lost if he had,’ Ravn said, ‘we made a camp, protected it with walls, and stayed there. And he paid us money to make no trouble.’

‘I saw King Edmund once,’ Brida put in.

‘Where was that, child?’ Ravn asked.

‘He came to the monastery to pray,’ she said, ‘and he farted when he knelt down.’

‘No doubt their god appreciated the tribute,’ Ravn said loftily, frowning because the twins were now making farting noises.

‘Were the Romans Christians?’ I asked him, remembering my curiosity at the Roman farm.

‘Not always,’ Ravn said. ‘They had their own gods once, but they gave them up to become Christians and after that they knew nothing but defeat. Where are our men?’

‘Still in the marsh,’ I said.

Ubba had hoped to stay in the camp and so force Edmund’s army to attack along the narrow neck of land and die on our short earthen wall, but instead the English had remained south of the treacherous lowland and were inviting us to attack them. Ubba was tempted. He had made Storri cast the runesticks and rumour said that the result was uncertain, and that fed Ubba’s caution. He was a fearsome fighter, but always wary when it came to picking a fight, but the runesticks had not predicted disaster and so he had taken the army out into the marsh where it now stood on whatever patches of drier land it could find, and from where two tracks led up to the low ridge. Ubba’s banner, the famous raven on its three-sided cloth, was midway between the two paths, both of which were strongly guarded by East Anglian shield walls, and any attack up either path would mean that a few of our men would have to attack a lot of theirs, and Ubba must have been having second thoughts for he was hesitating. I described all that to Ravn.

‘It doesn’t do,’ he told me, ‘to lose men, even if we win.’

‘But if we kill lots of theirs?’ I asked.

‘They have more men, we have few. If we kill a thousand of theirs then they will have another thousand tomorrow, but if we lose a hundred men then we must wait for more ships to replace them.’

‘More ships are coming,’ Brida said.

‘I doubt there will be any more this year,’ Ravn said.

‘No,’ she insisted, ‘now,’ and she pointed and I saw four ships nosing their way through the tangle of low islands and shallow creeks.

‘Tell me,’ Ravn said urgently.

‘Four ships,’ I said, ‘coming from the west.’

‘From the west? Not the east?’

‘From the west,’ I insisted, which meant they were not coming from the sea, but from one of the four rivers which flowed into the Gewæsc.

‘Prows?’ Ravn demanded.

‘No beasts on the prows,’ I said, ‘just plain wooden posts.’

‘Oars?’

‘Ten a side, I think, maybe eleven. But there are far more men than rowers.’

‘English ships!’ Ravn sounded amazed, for other than small fishing craft and some tubby cargo vessels the English had few ships, yet these four were warships, built long and sleek like the Danish ships, and they were creeping through the mazy waterways to attack Ubba’s beached fleet. I could see smoke trickling from the foremost ship and knew they must have a brazier on board and so were planning to burn the Danish boats and thus trap Ubba.

But Ubba had also seen them, and already the Danish army was streaming back towards the camp. The leading English ship began to shoot fire-arrows at the closest Danish boat and, though there was a guard on the boats, that guard was composed of the sick and the lame, and they were not strong enough to defend the ships against a seaborne attack. ‘Boys!’ one of the guards bellowed.

‘Go,’ Ravn told us, ‘go,’ and Brida, who considered herself as good as any boy, came with the twins and me. We jumped down to the beach and ran along the water’s edge to where smoke was thickening above the beached Danish boat. Two English ships were shooting fire-arrows now, while the last two attackers were trying to edge past their companions to reach more of our craft.

Our job was to extinguish the fire while the guards hurled spears at the English crews. I used a shield to scoop up sand that I dumped onto the fire. The English ships were close and I could see they were made of new raw wood. A spear thumped close to me and I picked it up and threw it back, though feebly because it clattered against an oar and fell into the sea. The twins were not trying to put out the fire and I hit one of them and threatened to hit him harder if they did not make an effort, but we were too late to save the first Danish ship which was well ablaze, so we abandoned it and tried to rescue the next one, but a score of fire-arrows slammed into the rowers’ benches, another landed on the furled sail, and two of the boys were dead at the water’s edge. The leading English ship turned to the beach then, its prow thick with men bristling with spears, axes and swords. ‘Edmund!’ they shouted, ‘Edmund!’ The bow grated on the beach and the warriors jumped off to begin slaughtering the Danish ships’ guard. The big axes slammed down and blood spattered up the beach or was sluiced away by the tiny waves which washed the sand. I grabbed Brida’s hand and pulled her away, splashing through a shallow creek where tiny silver fish scattered in alarm. ‘We have to save Ravn!’ I told her.

She was laughing. Brida always enjoyed chaos.

Three of the English ships had beached themselves and their crews were ashore, finishing off the Danish guards. The last ship glided on the falling tide, shooting fire-arrows, but then Ubba’s men were back in the camp and they advanced on the English with a roar. Some men had stayed with the raven banner at the earthen wall to make sure King Edmund’s forces could not swarm over the neck of land to take the camp, but the rest came screaming and vengeful. The Danes love their ships. A ship, they say, is like a woman or a sword, sharp and beautiful, worth dying for, and certainly worth fighting for, and the East Anglians, who had done so well, had now made a mistake for the tide was ebbing and they could not shove their boats off into the small waves. Some of the Danes protected their own unharmed boats by raining throwing axes, spears and arrows at the crew of the single enemy boat afloat, while the rest attacked the Englishmen ashore.

That was a slaughter. That was Danish work. That was a fit fight for the skalds to celebrate. Blood was thick on the tideline, blood slurping with the rise and fall of the small waves, men screaming and falling, and all about them the smoke of the burning boats was whirling so that the hazed sun was red above a sand turned red, and in that smoke the rage of the Danes was terrible. It was then I first saw Ubba fight and marvelled at him, for he was a bringer of death, a grim warrior, a sword-lover. He did not fight in a shield wall, but ran into his enemies, shield slamming one way as his war axe gave death in the other, and it seemed he was indestructible for, at one moment, he was surrounded by East Anglian fighters, but there was a scream of hate, a clash of blade on blade, and Ubba came out of the tangle of men, his blade red, blood in his beard, trampling his enemies into the blood-rich tide, and looking for more men to kill. Ragnar joined him, and Ragnar’s men followed, harvesting an enemy beside the sea, screaming hate at men who had burned their ships, and when the screaming and killing were done we counted sixty-eight English bodies, and some we could not count for they had run into the sea and drowned there, dragged down by the weight of weapons and armour. The sole East Anglian ship to escape was a ship of the dying, its new wooden flanks running with blood. The victorious Danes danced over the corpses they had made, then made a heap of captured weapons. There were thirty Danish dead, and those men were burned on a half-burned ship, another six Danish craft had been destroyed, but Ubba captured the three beached English boats which Ragnar declared to be pieces of shit. ‘It’s astonishing they even floated,’ he said, kicking at a badly caulked strake.

Yet the East Anglians had done well, I thought. They had made mistakes, but they had hurt Danish pride by burning dragon ships, and if King Edmund had attacked the wall protecting the camp he might have turned the slaughter into a massacre of Danes, but King Edmund had not attacked. Instead, as his shipmen died beneath the smoke, he had marched away.

He thought he was facing the Danish army by the sea, only to find that the real attack had come by land. He had just learned that Ivar the Boneless was invading his land.

And Ubba was enraged. The few English prisoners were sacrificed to Odin, their screams a call to the god that we needed his help. And next morning, leaving the burned boats like smoking black skeletons on the beach, we rowed the dragon fleet west.