Читать книгу The Burning Land - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 11

Morning, and I was young, and the sea was a shimmer of silver and pink beneath wisps of mist that obscured the coasts. To my south was Cent, to my north lay East Anglia and behind me was Lundene, while ahead the sun was rising to gild the few small clouds that stretched across the dawn’s bright sky.

We were in the estuary of the Temes. My ship, the Seolferwulf, was newly built and she leaked, as new ships will. Frisian craftsmen had made her from oak timbers that were unusually pale, and thus her name, the Silverwolf. Behind me were the Kenelm, named by King Alfred for some murdered saint, and the Dragon-Voyager, a ship we had taken from the Danes. Dragon-Voyager was a beauty, built as only the Danes could build. A sleek killer of a ship, docile to handle yet lethal in battle.

Seolferwulf was also a beauty; long-keeled, wide-beamed and high-prowed. I had paid for her myself, giving gold to Frisian shipwrights, and watching as her ribs grew and as her planking made a skin and as her proud bow reared above the slipway. On that prow was a wolf’s head, carved from oak and painted white with a red lolling tongue and red eyes and yellow fangs. Bishop Erkenwald, who ruled Lundene, had chided me, saying I should have named the ship for some Christian milksop saint, and he had presented me with a crucifix that he wanted me to nail to Seolferwulf’s mast, but instead I burned the wooden god and his wooden cross and mixed their ashes with crushed apples, that I fed to my two sows. I worship Thor.

Now, on that distant morning when I was still young, we rowed eastwards on that pink and silver sea. My wolf’s-head prow was decorated with a thick-leaved bough of oak to show we intended no harm to our enemies, though my men were still dressed in mail and had shields and weapons close to their oars. Finan, my second in command, crouched near me on the steering platform and listened with amusement to Father Willibald, who was talking too much. ‘Other Danes have received Christ’s mercy, Lord Uhtred,’ he said. He had been spouting this nonsense ever since we had left Lundene, but I endured it because I liked Willibald. He was an eager, hard-working and cheerful man. ‘With God’s good help,’ he went on, ‘we shall spread the light of Christ among these heathen!’

‘Why don’t the Danes send us missionaries?’ I asked.

‘God prevents it, lord.’ Willibald said. His companion, a priest whose name I have long forgotten, nodded earnest agreement.

‘Maybe they’ve got better things to do?’ I suggested.

‘If the Danes have ears to hear, lord,’ Willibald assured me, ‘then they will receive Christ’s message with joy and gladness!’

‘You’re a fool, father,’ I said fondly. ‘You know how many of Alfred’s missionaries have been slaughtered?’

‘We must all be prepared for martyrdom, lord,’ Willibald said, though anxiously.

‘They have their priestly guts slit open,’ I said ruminatively, ‘they have their eyes gouged out, their balls sliced off, and their tongues ripped out. Remember that monk we found at Yppe?’ I asked Finan. Finan was a fugitive from Ireland, where he had been raised a Christian, though his religion was so tangled with native myths that it was scarcely recognisable as the same faith that Willibald preached. ‘How did that poor man die?’ I asked.

‘They skinned the poor soul alive,’ Finan said.

‘Started at his toes?’

‘Just peeled it off slowly,’ Finan said, ‘and it must have taken hours.’

‘They didn’t peel it,’ I said, ‘you can’t skin a man like a lamb.’

‘True,’ Finan said. ‘You have to tug it off. Takes a lot of strength!’

‘He was a missionary,’ I told Willibald.

‘And a blessed martyr too,’ Finan added cheerfully. ‘But they must have got bored because they finished him off in the end. They used a tree-saw on his belly.’

‘It was probably an axe,’ I said.

‘No, it was a saw, lord,’ Finan insisted, grinning, ‘and one with savage big teeth. Ripped him into two, it did.’ Father Willibald, who had always been a martyr to seasickness, staggered to the ship’s side.

We turned the ship southwards. The estuary of the Temes is a treacherous place of mudbanks and strong tides, but I had been patrolling these waters for five years now and I scarcely needed to look for my landmarks as we rowed towards the shore of Scaepege. And there, ahead of me, waiting between two beached ships, was the enemy. The Danes. There must have been a hundred or more men, all in chain mail, all helmeted, and all with bright weapons. ‘We could slaughter the whole crew,’ I suggested to Finan. ‘We’ve got enough men.’

‘We agreed to come in peace!’ Father Willibald protested, wiping his mouth with a sleeve.

And so we had, and so we did.

I ordered Kenelm and Dragon-Voyager to stay close to the muddy shore, while we drove Seolferwulf onto the gently shelving mud between the two Danish boats. Seolferwulf’s bows made a hissing sound as she slowed and stopped. She was firmly grounded now, but the tide was rising, so she was safe for a while. I jumped off the prow, splashing into deep wet mud, then waded to firmer ground where our enemies waited.

‘My Lord Uhtred,’ the leader of the Danes greeted me. He grinned and spread his arms wide. He was a stocky man, golden-haired and square-jawed. His beard was plaited into five thick ropes fastened with silver clasps. His forearms glittered with rings of gold and silver, and more gold studded the belt from which hung a thick-bladed sword. He looked prosperous, which he was, and something about the openness of his face made him appear trustworthy, which he was not. ‘I am so overjoyed to see you,’ he said, still smiling, ‘my old valued friend!’

‘Jarl Haesten,’ I responded, giving him the title he liked to use, though in my mind Haesten was nothing but a pirate. I had known him for years. I had saved his life once, which was a bad day’s work, and ever since that day I had been trying to kill him, yet he always managed to slither away. He had escaped me five years before and, since then, I had heard how he had been raiding deep inside Frankia. He had amassed silver there, had whelped another son on his wife, and had attracted followers. Now he had brought eighty ships to Wessex.

‘I hoped Alfred would send you,’ Haesten said, holding out a hand.

‘If Alfred hadn’t ordered me to come in peace,’ I said, taking the hand, ‘I’d have cut that head off your shoulders by now.’

‘You bark a lot,’ he said, amused, ‘but the louder a cur barks, lord, the weaker its bite.’

I let that pass. I had not come to fight, but to do Alfred’s bidding, and the king had ordered me to bring missionaries to Haesten. Willibald and his companion were helped ashore by my men, then came to stand beside me, where they smiled nervously. Both priests spoke Danish, which is why they had been chosen. I had also brought Haesten a message gilded with treasure, but he feigned indifference, insisting I accompany him to his encampment before Alfred’s gift was delivered.

Scaepege was not Haesten’s main encampment, that was some distance to the east where his eighty ships were drawn up on a beach protected by a newly-made fort. He had not wanted to invite me into that fastness, and so he had insisted Alfred’s envoys meet him among the wastes of Scaepege which, even in summer, is a place of dank pools, sour grass and dark marshes. He had arrived there two days before, and had made a crude fort by surrounding a patch of higher ground with a tangled wall of thorn bushes, inside which he had raised two sailcloth tents. ‘We shall eat, lord,’ he invited me grandly, gesturing to a trestle table surrounded by a dozen stools. Finan, two other warriors and the pair of priests accompanied me, though Haesten insisted the priests should not sit at the table. ‘I don’t trust Christian wizards,’ he explained, ‘so they can squat on the ground.’ The food was a fish stew and rock-hard bread, served by half-naked slave women, none more than fourteen or fifteen years old, and all of them Saxons.

Haesten was humiliating the girls as a provocation and he watched for my reaction. ‘Are they from Wessex?’ I asked.

‘Of course not,’ he said, pretending to be offended by the question. ‘I took them from East Anglia. You want one of them, lord? There, that little one has breasts firm as apples!’

I asked the apple-breasted girl where she had been captured, and she just shook her head dumbly, too frightened to answer me. She poured me ale that had been sweetened with berries. ‘Where are you from?’ I asked her again.

Haesten looked at the girl, letting his eyes linger on her breasts. ‘Answer the lord,’ he said in English.

‘I don’t know, lord,’ she said.

‘Wessex?’ I demanded. ‘East Anglia? Where?’

‘A village, lord,’ she said, and that was all she knew, and I waved her away.

‘Your wife is well?’ Haesten asked, watching the girl walk away.

‘She is.’

‘I am glad,’ he said convincingly enough, then his shrewd eyes looked amused. ‘So what is your master’s message to me?’ he asked, spooning fish broth into his mouth and dripping it down his beard.

‘You’re to leave Wessex,’ I said.

‘I’m to leave Wessex!’ He pretended to be shocked and waved a hand at the desolate marshes, ‘why would a man want to leave all this, lord?’

‘You’re to leave Wessex,’ I said doggedly, ‘agree not to invade Mercia, give my king two hostages, and accept his missionaries.’

‘Missionaries!’ Haesten said, pointing his horn spoon at me. ‘Now you can’t approve of that, Lord Uhtred! You, at least, worship the real gods.’ He twisted on the stool and stared at the two priests. ‘Maybe I’ll kill them.’

‘Do that,’ I said, ‘and I’ll suck your eyeballs out of their sockets.’

He heard the venom in my voice and was surprised by it. I saw a flicker of resentment in his eyes, but he kept his voice calm. ‘You’ve become a Christian, lord?’

‘Father Willibald is my friend,’ I said.

‘You should have said,’ he reproved me, ‘and I would not have jested. Of course they will live and they can even preach to us, but they’ll achieve nothing. So, Alfred instructs me to take my ships away?’

‘Far away,’ I said.

‘But where?’ he asked in feigned innocence.

‘Frankia?’ I suggested.

‘The Franks have paid me to leave them alone,’ Haesten said, ‘they even built us ships to hasten our departure! Will Alfred build us ships?’

‘You’re to leave Wessex,’ I said stubbornly, ‘you’re to leave Mercia untroubled, you’re to accept missionaries, and you are to give Alfred hostages.’

‘Ah,’ Haesten smiled, ‘the hostages.’ He stared at me for a few heartbeats, then appeared to forget the matter of hostages, waving seawards instead. ‘And where are we to go?’

‘Alfred is paying you to leave Wessex,’ I said, ‘and where you go is not my concern, but make it very far from the reach of my sword.’

Haesten laughed. ‘Your sword, lord,’ he said, ‘rusts in its scabbard.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the south. ‘Wessex burns,’ he said with relish, ‘and Alfred lets you sleep.’ He was right. Far to the south, hazed in the summer sky, were pyres of smoke from a dozen or more burning villages, and those plumes were only the ones I could see. I knew there were more. Eastern Wessex was being ravaged, and, rather than summon my help to repel the invaders, Alfred had ordered me to stay in Lundene to protect that city from attack. Haesten grinned. ‘Maybe Alfred thinks you’re too old to fight, lord?’

I did not respond to the taunt. Looking back down the years I think of myself as young back then, though I must have been all of thirty-five or thirty-six years old that year. Most men never live that long, but I was fortunate. I had lost none of my sword-skill or strength, I had a slight limp from an old battle-wound, but I also had the most golden of all a warrior’s attributes; reputation. But Haesten felt free to goad me, knowing that I came to him as a supplicant.

I came as a supplicant because two Danish fleets had landed in Cent, the easternmost part of Wessex. Haesten’s was the smaller fleet, and so far he had been content to build his fortress and let his men raid only enough to provide themselves with sufficient food and a few slaves. He had even let the shipping in the Temes go unmolested. He did not want a fight with Wessex, not yet, because he was waiting to see what happened to the south, where another and much greater Viking fleet had come ashore.

Jarl Harald Bloodhair had brought more than two hundred ships filled with hungry men, and his army had stormed a half-built burh and slaughtered the men inside, and now his warriors were spreading across Cent, burning and killing, enslaving and robbing. It was Harald’s men who had smeared the sky with smoke. Alfred had marched against both invaders. The king was old now, old and ever more sick, so his troops were supposedly commanded by his son-in-law, Lord Æthelred of Mercia, and by the Ætheling Edward, Alfred’s eldest son.

And they had done nothing. They had put their men on the great wooded ridge at the centre of Cent from where they could strike north against Haesten or south against Harald, and then they had stayed motionless, presumably frightened that if they attacked one Danish army the other would assault their rear. So Alfred, convinced that his enemies were too powerful, had sent me to persuade Haesten to leave Wessex. Alfred should have ordered me to lead my garrison against Haesten, allowed me to soak the marshes with Danish blood, but instead I was instructed to bribe Haesten. With Haesten gone, the king thought, his army might deal with Harald’s wild warriors.

Haesten used a thorn to pick at his teeth. He finally scraped out a scrap of fish. ‘Why doesn’t your king attack Harald?’ he asked.

‘You’d like that,’ I said.

He grinned. ‘With Harald gone,’ he admitted, ‘and that rancid whore of his gone as well, a lot of crews would join me.’

‘Rancid whore?’

He grinned, pleased that he knew something I did not. ‘Skade,’ he said flatly.

‘Harald’s wife?’

‘His woman, his bitch, his lover, his sorceress.’

‘Never heard of her,’ I said.

‘You will,’ he promised, ‘and if you see her, my friend, you’ll want her. But she’ll nail your skull to her hall gable if she can.’

‘You’ve seen her?’ I asked, and he nodded. ‘You wanted her?’

‘Harald’s impulsive,’ he said, ignoring my question. ‘And Skade will goad him to stupidity. And when that happens a lot of his men will look for another lord.’ He smiled slyly. ‘Give me another hundred ships, and I could be King of Wessex inside a year.’

‘I’ll tell Alfred,’ I said, ‘and maybe that will persuade him to attack you first.’

‘He won’t,’ Haesten said confidently. ‘If he turns on me then he releases Harald’s men to spread across all Wessex.’

That was true. ‘So why doesn’t he attack Harald?’ I asked.

‘You know why.’

‘Tell me.’

He paused, wondering whether to reveal all he knew, but he could not resist showing off his knowledge. He used the thorn to scratch a line in the wood of the table, then made a circle that was bisected by the line. ‘The Temes,’ he said, tapping the line, ‘Lundene,’ he indicated the circle. ‘You’re in Lundene with a thousand men, and behind you,’ he tapped higher up the Temes, ‘Lord Aldhelm has five hundred Mercians. If Alfred attacks Harald, he’s going to want Aldhelm’s men and your men to go south, and that will leave Mercia wide open to attack.’

‘Who would attack Mercia?’ I asked innocently.

‘The Danes of East Anglia?’ Haesten suggested just as innocently. ‘All they need is a leader with courage.’

‘And our agreement,’ I said, ‘insists you will not invade Mercia.’

‘So it does,’ Haesten said with a smile,’ ‘except we have no agreement yet.’

But we did. I had to yield the Dragon-Voyager to Haesten, and in her belly lay four iron-bound chests filled with silver. That was the price. In return for the ship and the silver, Haesten promised to leave Wessex and ignore Mercia. He also agreed to accept missionaries and gave me two boys as hostages. He claimed one was his nephew, and that might have been true. The other boy was younger and dressed in fine linen with a lavish gold brooch. He was a good-looking lad with bright blond hair and anxious blue eyes. Haesten stood behind the boy and placed his hands on the small shoulders. ‘This, lord,’ he said reverently, ‘is my eldest son, Horic. I yield him as a hostage,’ Haesten paused, and seemed to sniff away a tear, ‘I yield him as a hostage, lord, to show goodwill, but I beg you to look after the boy. I love him dearly.’

I looked at Horic. ‘How old are you?’ I asked.

‘He is seven,’ Haesten said, patting Horic’s shoulder.

‘Let him answer for himself,’ I insisted. ‘How old are you?’

The boy made a guttural sound and Haesten crouched to embrace him. ‘He is a deaf-mute, Lord Uhtred,’ Haesten said. ‘The gods decreed my son should be deaf and mute.’

‘The gods decreed that you should be a lying bastard,’ I said to Haesten, but too softly for his followers to hear and take offence.

‘And if I am?’ he asked, amused. ‘What of it? And if I say this boy is my son, who is to prove otherwise?’

‘You’ll leave Wessex?’ I asked.

‘I’ll keep this treaty,’ he promised.

I pretended to believe him. I had told Alfred that Haesten could not be trusted, but Alfred was desperate. He was old, he saw his grave not far ahead, and he wanted Wessex rid of the hated pagans. And so I paid the silver, took the hostages, and, under a darkening sky, rowed back to Lundene.

Lundene is built in a place where the ground rises in giant steps away from the river. There is terrace after terrace, rising to the topmost level where the Romans built their grandest buildings, some of which still stood, though they were sadly decayed, patched with wattle and scabbed by the thatched huts we Saxons made.

In those days Lundene was part of Mercia, though Mercia was like the grand Roman buildings; half fallen, and Mercia was also scabbed with Danish jarls who had settled its fertile lands. My cousin Æthelred was the chief Ealdorman of Mercia, its supposed ruler, but he was kept on a tight lead by Alfred of Wessex, who had made certain his own men controlled Lundene. I commanded that garrison, while Bishop Erkenwald ruled everything else.

These days, of course, he is known as Saint Erkenwald, but I remember him as a sour weasel of a man. He was efficient, I grant him that, and the city was well-governed in his time, but his unadulterated hatred of all pagans made him my enemy. I worshipped Thor, so to him I was evil, but I was also necessary. I was the warrior who protected his city, the pagan who had kept the heathen Danes at bay for over five years now, the man who kept the lands around Lundene safe so that Erkenwald could levy his taxes.

Now I stood on the topmost step of a Roman house built on the topmost of Lundene’s terraces. Bishop Erkenwald was on my right. He was much shorter than I, but most men are, yet my height irked him. A straggle of priests, ink-stained, pale-faced and nervous, were gathered on the steps beneath, while Finan, my Irish fighter, stood on my left. We all stared southwards.

We saw the mix of thatch and tile that roof Lundene, all studded with the stubby towers of the churches Erkenwald had built. Red kites wheeled above them, riding the warm air, though higher still I could see the first geese flying southwards above the wide Temes. The river was slashed by the remnants of the Roman bridge, a marvellous thing which was crudely broken in its centre. I had made a roadway of timbers that spanned the gap, but even I was nervous every time I needed to cross that makeshift repair which led to Suthriganaweorc, the earth and timber fortress that protected the bridge’s southern end. There were wide marshes there and a huddle of huts where a village had grown around the fort. Beyond the marshes the land rose to the hills of Wessex, low and green, and above those hills, far off, like ghostly pillars in the still, late-summer sky, were plumes of smoke. I counted fifteen, but the clouds hazed the horizon and there could have been more.

‘They’re raiding!’ Bishop Erkenwald said, sounding both surprised and outraged. Wessex had been spared any large Viking raid for years now, protected by the burhs, which were the towns Alfred had walled and garrisoned, but Harald’s men were spreading fire, rape and theft in all the eastern parts of Wessex. They avoided the burhs, attacking only the smaller settlements. ‘They’re well beyond Cent!’ the bishop observed.

‘And going deeper into Wessex,’ I said.

‘How many of them?’ Erkenwald demanded.

‘We hear two hundred ships landed,’ I said, ‘so they must have at least five thousand fighting men. Maybe two thousand of those are with Harald.’

‘Only two thousand?’ the bishop asked sharply.

‘It depends how many horses they have,’ I explained. ‘Only mounted warriors will be raiding, the rest will be guarding his ships.’

‘It’s still a pagan horde,’ the bishop said angrily. He touched the cross hanging about his neck. ‘Our lord king,’ he went on, ‘has decided to defeat them at Æscengum.’

‘Æscengum!’

‘And why not?’ the bishop bridled at my tone, then shuddered when I laughed. ‘There is nothing amusing in that,’ he said tartly. But there was. Alfred, or perhaps it had been Æthelred, had advanced the army of Wessex into Cent, placing it on high wooded ground between the forces of Haesten and Harald, and then they had done nothing. Now it seemed that Alfred, or perhaps his son-in-law, had decided to retreat to Æscengum, a burh in the centre of Wessex, presumably hoping that Harald would attack them and be defeated by the burh’s walls. It was a pathetic idea. Harald was a wolf, Wessex was a flock of sheep, and Alfred’s army was the wolfhound that should protect the sheep, but Alfred was tethering the wolfhound in hope that the wolf would come and be bitten. Meanwhile the wolf was running free among the flock. ‘And our lord king,’ Erkenwald continued loftily, ‘has requested that you and some of your troops join him, but only if I am satisfied that Haesten will not attack Lundene in your absence.’

‘He won’t,’ I said, and felt a surge of elation. Alfred, at last, had called for my help, which meant the wolfhound was being given sharp teeth.

‘Haesten fears we’ll kill the hostages?’ the bishop asked.

‘Haesten doesn’t care a cabbage-smelling fart for the hostages,’ I said. ‘The one he calls his son is some peasant boy tricked out in rich clothes.’

‘Then why did you accept him?’ the bishop demanded indignantly.

‘What was I supposed to do? Attack Haesten’s main camp to find his pups?’

‘So Haesten is cheating us?’

‘Of course he’s cheating us, but he won’t attack Lundene unless Harald defeats Alfred.’

‘I wish we could be certain of that.’

‘Haesten is cautious,’ I said. ‘He fights when he’s certain he can win, otherwise he waits.’

Erkenwald nodded. ‘So take men south tomorrow,’ he ordered, then walked away, followed by his scurrying priests.

I look back now across the long years and realise Bishop Erkenwald and I ruled Lundene well. I did not like him, and he hated me, and we begrudged the time we needed to spend in each other’s company, but he never interfered with my garrison and I did not intervene in his governance. Another man might have asked how many men I planned to take south, or how many would be left to guard the city, but Erkenwald trusted me to make the right decisions. I still think he was a weasel.

‘How many men ride with you?’ Gisela asked me that night.

We were in our house, a Roman merchant’s house built on the northern bank of the Temes. The river stank often, but we were used to it and the house was happy. We had slaves, servants and guards, nurses and cooks, and our three children. There was Uhtred, our oldest, who must have been around ten that year, and Stiorra his sister, and Osbert, the youngest, just two and indomitably curious. Uhtred was named after me, as I had been named after my father and he after his, but this newest Uhtred irritated me because he was a pale and nervous child who clung to his mother’s skirts.

‘Three hundred men,’ I answered.

‘Only?’

‘Alfred has sufficient,’ I said, ‘and I must leave a garrison here.’

Gisela flinched. She was pregnant again, and the birth could not be far off. She saw my worried expression and smiled. ‘I spit babies like pips,’ she said reassuringly. ‘How long to kill Harald’s men?’

‘A month?’ I guessed.

‘I shall have given birth by then,’ she said, and I touched the carving of Thor’s hammer which hung at my neck. Gisela smiled reassurance again. ‘I have been lucky with childbirth,’ she went on, which was true. Her births had been easy enough and all three children had lived. ‘You’ll come back to find a new baby crying,’ she said, ‘and you’ll get annoyed.’

I answered that truth with a swift smile, then pushed through the leather curtain onto the terrace. It was dark. There were a few lights on the river’s far bank where the fort guarded the bridge, and their flames shimmered on the water. In the west there was a streak of purple showing in a cloud rift. The river seethed through the bridge’s narrow arches, but otherwise the city was quiet. Dogs barked occasionally, and there was sporadic laughter from the kitchens. Seolferwulf, moored in the dock beside the house, creaked in the small wind. I glanced downstream to where, at the city’s edge, I had built a small tower of oak at the riverside. Men watched from that tower night and day, watching for the beaked ships that might come to attack Lundene’s wharves, but no warning fire blazed from the tower’s top. All was quiet. There were Danes in Wessex, but Lundene was resting.

‘When this is over,’ Gisela said from the doorway, ‘maybe we should go north.’

‘Yes,’ I said, then turned to look at the beauty of her long face and dark eyes. She was a Dane and, like me, she was weary of Wessex’s Christianity. A man should have gods, and perhaps there is some sense in acknowledging only one god, but why choose one who loves the whip and spur so much? The Christian god was not ours, yet we were forced to live among folk who feared him and who condemned us because we worshipped a different god. Yet I was sworn to Alfred’s service and so I remained where he demanded that I remain. ‘He can’t live much longer,’ I said.

‘And when he dies you’re free?’

‘I gave no oath to anyone else,’ I said, and I spoke honestly. In truth I had given another oath, and that oath would come back to find me, but it was so far from my mind that night that I believed I answered Gisela truthfully.

‘And when he’s dead?’

‘We go north,’ I said. North, back to my ancestral home beside the Northumbrian sea, a home usurped by my uncle. North to Bebbanburg, north to the lands where pagans could live without the incessant nagging of the Christians’ nailed god. We would go home. I had served Alfred long enough, and I had served him well, but I wanted to go home. ‘I promise,’ I told Gisela, ‘on my oath, we will go home.’

The gods laughed.

We crossed the bridge at dawn, three hundred warriors with half as many boys who came to tend the horses and carry the spare weapons. The hooves clattered loud on the makeshift bridge as we rode towards the pyres of smoke that told of Wessex being ravaged. We crossed the wide marsh where, at high tide, the river puddles dark among lank grasses, and climbed the gentle hills beyond. I left most of the garrison to guard Lundene, taking only my own household troops, my warriors and oath-men, the fighters I trusted with my own life. I left just six of those men in Lundene to guard my house under the command of Cerdic, who had been my battle-companion for many years and who had almost wept as he had pleaded with me to take him. ‘You must guard Gisela and my family,’ I had told him, and so Cerdic stayed as we rode west, following tracks trampled by the sheep and cattle that were driven to slaughter in Lundene. We saw little panic. Folk were keeping their eyes on the distant smoke, and thegns had placed lookouts on rooftops and high among the trees. We were mistaken for Danes more than once, and there would be a flurry as people ran towards the woods, but once our identity was discovered they would come back. They were supposed to drive their livestock to the nearest burh if danger threatened, but folk are ever reluctant to leave their homes. I ordered whole villages to take their cattle, sheep and goats to Suthriganaweorc, but I doubt they did. They would rather stay until the Danes were breathing down their throats.

Yet the Danes were staying well to the south, so perhaps those villagers had judged well. We swerved southwards ourselves, climbing higher and expecting to see the raiders at any moment. I had scouts riding well ahead, and it was mid-morning before one of them waved a red cloth to signal he had seen something to alarm him. I spurred to the hill crest, but saw nothing in the valley beneath.

‘There were folk running, lord,’ the scout told me. ‘They saw me and hid in the trees.’

‘Maybe they were running from you?’

He shook his head. ‘They were already panicked, lord, when I saw them.’

We were gazing out across a wide valley, green and lush beneath the summer sun. At its far side were wooded hills and the nearest smoke pyre was beyond that skyline. The valley looked peaceful. I could see small fields, the thatched roofs of a village, a track going west, and the glimmer of a stream twisting between meadows. I saw no enemy, but the heavy-leafed trees could have hidden Harald’s whole horde. ‘What did you see exactly?’ I asked.

‘Women, lord. Women and children. Some goats. They were running that way.’ He pointed westwards.

So the fugitives were fleeing the village. The scout had glimpsed them between the trees, but there was no sign of them now, nor of whatever had made them run. No smoke showed in this long wide valley, but that did not mean Harald’s men were not there. I plucked the scout’s reins, leading him beneath the skyline, and remembered the day, so many years before, when I had first gone to war. I had been with my father, who had been leading the fyrd, the host of men plucked from their farmlands who were mostly armed with hoes or scythes or axes. We had marched on foot and, as a result, we had been a slow, lumbering army. The Danes, our enemy, had ridden. Their ships landed and the first thing they did was find horses, and then they danced about us. We had learned from that. We had learned to fight like the Danes, except that Alfred was now trusting to his fortified towns to stop Harald’s invasion, and that meant Harald was being given the freedom of the Wessex countryside. His men, I knew, would be mounted, except he led too many warriors, and so his raiding parties were doubtless still scouring the land for yet more horses. Our first job was to kill those raiders and take back any captured horses, and I suspected just such a band was at the eastern end of the valley. I found a man in my ranks who knew this part of the country. ‘Edwulf has an estate here, lord,’ he said.

‘Edwulf?’

‘A thegn, lord.’ He grinned and used a hand to sketch a bulge in front of his stomach. ‘He’s a big fat man.’

‘So he’s rich?’

‘Very, lord.’

All of which suggested some Danes had found a plump nest to plunder, and we had found an easy prey to slaughter. The only difficulty was getting three hundred men across the skyline without being seen from the valley’s eastern end, but we discovered a route that was shrouded by trees, and by midday I had my men hidden in the woods to the west of Edwulf’s estate. Then I baited the trap.

I sent Osferth and twenty men to follow a track that led south towards the smoke pyres. They led a half-dozen riderless horses and went slowly, as if they were tired and lost. I ordered them never to look directly at Edwulf’s hall where, by now, I knew the Danes were busy. Finan, who could move among trees like a ghost, had crept close to the hall and brought back news of a village with a score of houses, a church and two fine barns. ‘They’re pulling down the thatch,’ Finan told me, meaning the Danes were searching the roofs of all the buildings, because some folk hid their treasures in the thatch before they fled. ‘And they’re taking turns on some women.’

‘Horses?’

‘Just women,’ Finan said, then caught my glance and stopped grinning. ‘They’ve a whole herd of horses in a paddock, lord.’

So Osferth rode, and the Danes took the bait like a trout rising to a fly. They saw him, he pretended not to see them, and suddenly forty or more Danes were galloping to intercept Osferth, who pretended to wake to the danger, turned westwards and galloped across the front of my hidden men.

And then it was as simple as stealing silver from a church. A hundred of my men crashed from the trees onto the flank of the Danes, who had no chance to escape. Two of the enemy turned their horses too fast and the beasts went down in a screaming chaos of hooves and turf. Others tried to turn back and were caught by spears in their spines. The experienced Danes swerved towards us, hoping to ride straight through our charge, but we were too many, and my men curled around the enemy horsemen so that a dozen were trapped in a circle. I was not there. I was leading the rest of my men to Edwulf’s hall, where the remainder of the Danes were running to mount their horses. One man, bare below the waist, scrambled away from a screaming woman and twisted as he saw me coming. Smoka, my horse, slowed, the man dodged again, but Smoka needed no guidance from me, and Serpent-Breath, my sword, took the man in the skull. The blade lodged there, so that the dying Dane was dragged along as I rode. Blood sprayed up my arm, then at last his twitching body fell away.

I spurred on, taking most of the men east of the settlement, and so cutting off the retreat of the surviving Danes. Finan had already sent scouts to the southern hill crest. Why, I wondered, had the Danes not posted sentinels on the hilltop from which we had first seen the fugitives?

There were so many skirmishes in those days. The Danes of East Anglia would raid the farmlands about Lundene, and we would retaliate, taking men deep into Danish territory to burn, kill and plunder. There was officially a peace treaty between Alfred’s Wessex and East Anglia, but a hungry Dane took no notice of words on parchment. A man who wanted slaves, livestock, or simply wanted an adventure, would cross into Mercia and take what he wanted, and we would then ride east and do the same. I liked such raids. They gave me a chance to train my youngest men, to let them see the enemy and cross swords. You can drill a man for a year, practise sword craft and spear skills forever, but he will learn more in just five minutes of battle.

There were so many skirmishes that I have forgotten most, yet I recall that skirmish at Edwulf’s hall. In reality it was nothing. The Danes had been careless and we took no casualties, yet I remember because, when it was over, and the swords were still, one of my men called me to the church.

It was a small church, hardly big enough for the fifty or sixty souls who lived or had lived around the hall. The building was made of oak and had a thatched roof on which a wooden cross stood tall. A crude bell hung at the western gable above the only door, while each side wall had two large timber-barred windows through which light streamed to illuminate a fat man who had been stripped naked and tied to a table that I assumed was the church’s altar. He was moaning. ‘Untie him,’ I snarled, and Rypere, who had led the men who captured the Danes inside the church, started forward as if I had just woken him from a trance.

Rypere had seen much horror in his few years, but he, like the men he led, seemed numbed by the cruelty inflicted on the fat man. His eye sockets were a mess of blood and jelly, his cheeks laced red, his ears sliced off, his manhood cut, his fingers first broken and then chiseled from his palms. Two Danes stood beyond the table, guarded by my men, their reddened hands betraying they had been the torturers. Yet it was the leader of the Danish band who was chiefly responsible for the cruelty, and that is why I remember the skirmish.

Because that was how I met Skade, and if ever any woman ate the apples of Asgard that gave the gods their eternal beauty, it was Skade. She was tall, almost as tall as I was, with a wiry body disguised by the mail coat she wore. She was maybe twenty years old, her face was narrow, high-nosed, haughty, with eyes as blue as any I have ever seen. Her hair, dark as the feathers of Odin’s ravens, hung long and straight to her slender waist, where a sword belt held an empty scabbard. I stared at her.

And she stared at me. And what did she see?

She saw Alfred’s warlord. She saw Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the pagan in service to a Christian king. I was tall, and in those days I had broad shoulders. I was a sword-warrior, spear-warrior, and fighting had made me rich so that my mail shone and my helmet was inlaid with silver and my arm rings glittered above the mail sleeves. My sword belt was decorated with silver wolf-heads, Serpent-Breath’s scabbard was cased with jet slivers, while my belt buckle and cloak clasp were made of heavy gold. Only the small image of Thor’s hammer, hanging around my neck, was cheap, but I had owned that talisman since I was a child. I have it still. The glory of my youth has gone, eroded by time, but that was what Skade saw. She saw a warlord.

And so she spat at me. The spittle landed on my cheek and I left it there. ‘Who is the bitch?’ I asked.

‘Skade,’ Rypere gave me her name, then nodded at the two torturers, ‘they say she’s their leader.’

The fat man moaned. He had been cut free and now curled his body into a ball. ‘Find someone to tend him,’ I said irritably, and Skade spat again, this time striking my mouth. ‘Who is he?’ I demanded, ignoring her.

‘We think he’s Edwulf,’ Rypere said.

‘Get him out of here,’ I said, then turned to look at the beauty who spat at me. ‘And who,’ I asked, ‘is Skade?’

She was a Dane, born to a steading in the northern part of their bleak country, daughter to a man who had no great riches and so left his widow poor. But the widow had Skade, and her beauty was astonishing, and so she had been married to a man willing to pay for that long, lithe body in his bed. The husband was a Frisian chieftain, a pirate, but then Skade had met Harald Bloodhair, and Jarl Harald offered her more excitement than living behind a rotting palisade on some tide-besieged sandbank, and so she had run away with him. All that I was to learn, but for now I just knew she was Harald’s woman, and that Haesten had spoken the truth; to see her was to want her. ‘You will release me,’ she said with an astonishing confidence.

‘I’ll do what I choose,’ I told her, ‘and I don’t take orders from a fool.’ She bridled at that, and I saw she was about to spit again, and so raised a hand as if to strike her and she went very still. ‘No lookouts,’ I said to her, ‘what leader doesn’t post sentries? Only a fool.’ She hated that. She hated it because it was true.

‘Jarl Harald will give you money for my freedom,’ she said.

‘My price for your freedom,’ I said, ‘is Harald’s liver.’

‘You are Uhtred?’ she asked.

‘I am the Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’

She gave a ghost of a smile. ‘Then Bebbanburg will need a new lord if you don’t release me. I shall curse you. You will know agony, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, even greater agony than him.’ She nodded at Edwulf, who was being carried out of the church by four of my men.

‘He’s a fool too,’ I said, ‘because he set no sentries.’ Skade’s raiding party had descended on the village in the morning sunlight and no one saw them coming. Some villagers, those we had seen from the skyline, escaped, but most had been captured, and of those only the young women and the children who might have been sold as slaves still lived.

We let one Dane live, one Dane and Skade. The rest we killed. We took their horses, their mail and their weapons. I ordered the surviving villagers to drive their livestock north to Suthriganaweorc because Harald’s men had to be denied food, though as the harvest was already in the barns and the orchards were heavy, that would be hard. We were still slaughtering the last of the Danes when Finan’s scouts reported that horsemen were approaching the hill crest to the south.

I went to meet them, taking seventy men, the one Dane I would spare, Skade and also the long piece of hemp rope that had been attached to the church’s small bell. I joined Finan and we rode to where the hill’s crest was gentle grassland and from where we could look far to the south. New smoke pyres thickened in the distant sky, but nearer, much nearer, was a band of horsemen who rode on the banks of a willow-shadowed stream. I estimated they numbered about the same as my men, who were now lined on the crest either side of my wolf’s-head banner. ‘Get off the horse,’ I ordered Skade.

‘Those men are searching for me,’ she said defiantly, nodding at the horsemen who had paused at the sight of my battle line.

‘Then they’ve found you,’ I said, ‘so dismount.’

She just stared at me proudly. She was a woman who hated being given orders.

‘You can dismount,’ I said patiently, ‘or I can pull you out of the saddle. The choice is yours.’

She dismounted and I gestured for Finan to dismount. He drew his sword and stood close to the girl. ‘Now undress,’ I told her.

A look of utter fury darkened her face. She did nothing, but I sensed an anger like a tensed adder inside her. She wanted to kill me, she wanted to scream, she wanted to call the gods down from the smoke-patterned sky, but there was nothing she could do. ‘Undress,’ I said, ‘or have my men strip you.’

She turned as if looking for a way to escape, but there was none. There was a glint of tears in her eyes, but she had no choice but to obey me. Finan looked at me quizzically, because I was not known for being cruel to women, but I did not explain to him. I was remembering what Haesten had told me, how Harald was impulsive, and I wanted to provoke Harald Bloodhair. I would insult his woman and so hope to force Harald to anger instead of sober judgement.

Skade’s face was an expressionless mask as she stripped herself of her mail coat, a leather jerkin and linen breeches. One or two of my men cheered when her jerkin came off to reveal high, firm breasts, but they went silent when I snarled at them. I tossed the rope to Finan. ‘Tie it round her neck,’ I said.

She was beautiful. Even now I can close my eyes and see that long body standing in the buttercup-bright grass. The Danes in the valley were staring up, my men were gazing, and Skade stood there like a creature from Asgard come to the middle-earth. I did not doubt Harald would pay for her. Any man might have impoverished himself to possess Skade.

Finan gave me the rope’s end and I kicked my stallion forward and led her a third of the way down the slope. ‘Is Harald there?’ I asked her, nodding at the Danes who were two hundred paces away.

‘No,’ she said. Her voice was bitter and tight. She was ashamed and angry. ‘He’ll kill you for this,’ she said.

I smiled. ‘Harald Bloodhair,’ I said, ‘is a puking, shit-filled rat.’ I twisted in the saddle and waved to Osferth, who brought the surviving Danish prisoner down the slope. He was a young man and he looked up at me with fear in his pale blue eyes. ‘This is your chieftain’s woman,’ I said to him, ‘look at her.’

He hardly dared look at Skade’s nakedness. He just gave her a glance then gazed back at me.

‘Go,’ I told him, ‘and tell Harald Bloodhair that Uhtred of Bebbanburg has his whore. Tell Harald I have her naked, and that I’ll use her for my amusement. Go, tell him. Go!’

The man ran down the slope. The Danes in the valley were not going to attack us. Our numbers were evenly matched, and we had the high ground, and the Danes are ever reluctant to take too many casualties. So they just watched us and, though one or two rode close enough to see Skade clearly, none tried to rescue her.

I had carried Skade’s jerkin, breeches and boots. I threw them at her feet, then leaned down and took the rope from her neck. ‘Dress,’ I said.

I saw her consider escape. She was thinking of running long-legged down the slope, hoping to reach the watching horsemen before I caught her, but I touched Smoka’s flank and he moved in front of her. ‘You’d die with a sword in your skull,’ I told her, ‘long before you could reach them.’

‘And you’ll die,’ she said, stooping for her clothes, ‘without a sword in your hand.’

I touched the talisman about my neck. ‘Alfred,’ I said, ‘hangs captured pagans. You had better hope that I can keep you alive when we meet him.’

‘I shall curse you,’ she said, ‘and those you love.’

‘And you had better hope,’ I went on, ‘that my patience lasts, or else I’ll give you to my men before Alfred hangs you.’

‘A curse and death,’ she said, and there was almost triumph in her voice.

‘Hit her if she speaks again,’ I told Osferth.

Then we rode west to find Alfred.