Sword Song

He went to his palace. Æthelflaed, of course, was with him for Æthelred refused to allow her out of his sight, though I do not think that was love. It was jealousy. I half expected to receive a summons to his presence, but none came and, next morning, when Gisela walked to the palace, she was turned away. The Lady Æthelflaed, she was informed, was unwell. “They weren’t rude to me,” she said, “just insistent.”

“Maybe she is unwell?” I suggested.

“Even more reason to see a friend,” Gisela said, staring through the open shutters to where the summer sun splattered the Temes with glinting silver. “He has put her in a cage, hasn’t he?”

We were interrupted by Bishop Erkenwald, or rather by one of his priests, who announced the bishop’s imminent arrival. Gisela, knowing that Erkenwald would never speak openly in front of her, went to the kitchens while I greeted him at my door.

I never liked that man. In time we were to hate each other, but he was loyal to Alfred and he was efficient and he was conscientious. He did not waste time with small talk, but told me he had issued a writ for raising the local fyrd. “The king,” he said, “has ordered the men of his bodyguard to join your cousin’s ships.”

“And me?”

“You will stay here,” he said brusquely, “as will I.”

“And the fyrd?”

“Is for the city’s defense. They replace the royal troops.”

“Because of Hrofeceastre?”

“The king is determined to punish the pagans,” Erkenwald said, “but while he is doing God’s work at Hrofeceastre there is a chance that other pagans will attack Lundene. We will prevent any such attack succeeding.”

No pagans did attack Lundene, and so I sat in the city while the events at Hrofeceastre unfolded and, strangely, those events have become famous. Men often come to me these days and they ask me about Alfred for I am one of the few men alive who remember him. They are all churchmen, of course, and they want to hear of his piety, of which I pretend to know nothing, and some, a few, ask about his wars. They know of his exile in the marshes and the victory at Ethandun, but they also want to hear of Hrofeceastre. That is strange. Alfred was to gain many victories over his enemies and Hrofeceastre was undoubtedly one of them, but it was not the great triumph that men now believe it to have been.

It was, of course, a victory, but it should have been a great victory. There was a chance to destroy a whole fleet of Vikings and to turn the Medwæg dark with their blood, but the chance was lost. Alfred trusted the defenses at Hrofeceastre to hold the invaders in place, and those walls and the garrison did their job while he assembled an army of horsemen. He had the troops of his own royal household, and to that he added the household warriors of every ealdorman between Wintanceaster and Hrofeceastre, and they all rode eastward, the army getting larger as they traveled, and they gathered at the Mæides Stana, just south of the old Roman fort that was now the town of Hrofeceastre.

Alfred had moved fast and well. The town had defeated two Danish attacks, and now Gunnkel’s men found themselves threatened not just by Hrofeceastre’s garrison, but by over a thousand of Wessex’s finest warriors. Gunnkel, knowing he had lost his gamble, sent an envoy to Alfred, who agreed to talk. What Alfred was waiting for was the arrival of Æthelred’s ships at the mouth of the Medwæg, for then Gunnkel would be trapped, and so Alfred talked and talked, and still the ships did not come. And when Gunnkel realized that Alfred would not pay him to leave, and that the talking was a ruse and that the West Saxon king planned to fight, he ran away. At midnight, after two days of evasive negotiations, the invaders left their campfires burning bright to suggest they were still on land, then boarded their ships and rode the ebb tide to the Temes. And so the siege of Hrofeceastre ended, and it was a great victory in that a Viking army had been ignominiously expelled from Wessex, but the waters of the Medwæg were not thickened by blood. Gunnkel lived, and the ships that had come from Beamfleot returned there, and some other ships went with them so that Sigefrid’s camp was strengthened with new crews of hungry fighters. The rest of Gunnkel’s fleet either went to look for easier prey in Frankia or found refuge on the East Anglian coast.

And, while all this happened, Æthelred was still in Lundene.

He complained that the ale on his ships was sour. He told Bishop Erkenwald that his men could not fight if their bellies were churning and their bowels spewing, and so he insisted that the barrels were emptied and refilled with freshly brewed ale. That took two days, and on the next he insisted on giving judgment in court, a job that properly belonged to Erkenwald, but which Æthelred, as Ealdorman of Mercia, had every right to do. He might not have wished to see me, and Gisela might have been turned away from the palace when she had tried to visit Æthelflaed, but no free citizen could be barred from witnessing judgments and so we joined the crowd in the big pillared hall.

Æthelred sprawled in a chair that could well have been a throne. It had a high back, ornately carved arms, and was cushioned with fur. I do not know if he saw us, and if he did he took no notice of us, but Æthelflaed, who was sitting in a lower chair beside him, certainly saw us. She stared at us with an apparent lack of recognition, then turned her face away as if she was bored. The cases occupying Æthelred were trivial, but he insisted on listening to every oath-taker. The first complaint was about a miller who was accused of using false weights, and Æthelred questioned the oath-takers relentlessly. His friend, Aldhelm, sat just behind him and kept whispering advice into Æthelred’s ear. Aldhelm’s once handsome face was scarred from the beating I had given him, his nose crooked and one cheekbone flattened. It seemed to me, who had often judged such matters, that the miller was plainly guilty, but it took Æthelred and Aldhelm a long time to reach the same conclusion. The man was sentenced to the loss of one ear and a brand-mark on one cheek, then a young priest read aloud an indictment against a prostitute accused of stealing from the poor box in the church of Saint Alban. It was while the priest was still speaking that Æthelflaed suddenly griped. She jerked forward with one hand clutching at her belly. I thought she was going to vomit, but nothing came from her open mouth except a low moan of pain. She stayed bent forward, mouth open and with the one hand clasped to her stomach that still showed no sign of any pregnancy.

The hall had gone silent. Æthelred stared at his young wife, apparently helpless in the face of her distress, then two women came from an open archway and, after going on one knee to Æthelred and evidently receiving his permission, helped Æthelflaed away. My cousin, his face pale, gestured at the priest. “Start again at the beginning of the indictment, father,” Æthelred said, “my attention wandered.”

“I had almost finished, lord,” the priest said helpfully, “and have oath-takers who can describe the crime.”

“No, no, no!” Æthelred held up a hand. “I wish to hear the indictment. We must be seen to be thorough in our judgment.”

So the priest began again. Folk shuffled their feet in boredom as he droned on, and it was then that Gisela touched my elbow.

A woman had just spoken to Gisela who, twitching my tunic, turned and followed the woman through the door at the back of the hall. I went too, hoping that Æthelred was too involved in his pretense of being the perfect judge to see our departure.

We followed the woman down a corridor that had once been the cloistered side of a courtyard, but at some time the pillars of the open arcade had been filled with screens of wattle and mud. At the corridor’s end a crude wooden door had been hung in a stone frame. Carved vines writhed up the masonry. On the far side was a room with a floor of small tiles that showed some Roman god casting a thunderbolt and beyond that was a sunlit garden where three pear trees cast shade on a patch of grass bright with daisies and buttercups. Æthelflaed waited for us beneath the trees.

She showed no sign of the distress that had sent her crouching and dry-retching from the hall. Instead she was standing tall, her back straight and with a solemn expression, though that solemnity brightened into a smile when she saw Gisela. They hugged, and I saw Æthelflaed’s eyes close as if she was fighting back tears.

“You’re not ill, lady?” I asked.

“Just pregnant,” she said, her eyes still shut, “not ill.”

“You looked ill just now,” I said.

“I wanted to talk with you,” she said, pulling away from Gisela, “and pretending to be ill was the only way to have privacy. He can’t stand it when I’m sick. He leaves me alone when I vomit.”

“Are you often sick?” Gisela asked.

“Every morning,” Æthelflaed said, “sick like a hound, but isn’t everyone?”

“Not this time,” Gisela said, and touched her amulet. She wore a small image of Frigg, wife of Odin and Queen of Asgard where the gods live. Frigg is the goddess of pregnancy and childbirth, and the amulet was supposed to give Gisela a safe delivery of the child she carried. The little image had worked well with our first two children and I prayed daily that it would work again with the third.

“I vomit every morning,” Æthelflaed said, “then feel fine for the rest of the day.” She touched her belly, then stroked Gisela’s stomach that was now distended with her child. “You must tell me about childbirth,” Æthelflaed said anxiously. “It’s painful, isn’t it?”

“You forget the pain,” Gisela said, “because it’s swamped by joy.”

“I hate pain.”

“There are herbs,” Gisela said, trying to sound convincing, “and there is so much joy when the child comes.”

They talked of childbirth and I leaned on the brick wall and stared at the patch of blue sky beyond the pear tree leaves. The woman who had brought us had gone away and we were alone. Somewhere beyond the brick wall a man was shouting at recruits to keep their shields up and I could hear the bang of staves on wood as they practiced. I thought of the new city, the Lundene outside the walls where the Saxons had made their town. They wanted me to make a new palisade there, and defend it with my garrison, but I was refusing because Alfred had ordered me to refuse and because, with the new town enclosed by a wall, there would be too many ramparts to protect. I wanted those Saxons to move into the old city. A few had come, wanting the protection of the old Roman wall and my garrison, but most stubbornly stayed in the new town. “What are you thinking?” Æthelflaed suddenly interrupted my thoughts.

“He’s thanking Thor that he’s a man,” Gisela said, “and that he doesn’t have to give birth.”

“True,” I said, “and I was thinking that if people prefer to die in the new town rather than live in the old, then we should let them die.”

Æthelflaed smiled at that callous statement. She crossed to me. She was barefoot and looked very small. “You don’t hit Gisela, do you?” she asked, gazing up at me.

I glanced at Gisela and smiled. “No, lady,” I said gently.

Æthelflaed went on staring at me. She had blue eyes with brown flecks, a slightly snub nose, and her lower lip was larger than her top lip. Her bruises had gone, though a faint dark blush on one cheek showed where she had last been struck. She looked very serious. Wisps of golden hair showed around her bonnet. “Why didn’t you warn me, Uhtred?” she asked.

“Because you didn’t want to be warned,” I said.

She thought about that, then nodded abruptly. “No, I didn’t, you’re right. I put myself in the cage, didn’t I? Then I locked it.”

“Then unlock it,” I said brutally.

“Can’t,” she said curtly.

“No?” Gisela asked.

“God has the key.”

I smiled at that. “I never did like your god,” I said.

“No wonder my husband says you’re a bad man,” Æthelflaed retorted with a smile.

“Does he say that?”

“He says you are wicked, untrustworthy, and treacherous.”

I smiled, said nothing.

“Pig-headed,” Gisela kept the litany going, “simple-minded and brutal.”

“That’s me,” I said.

“And very kind,” Gisela finished.

Æthelflaed still looked up at me. “He fears you,” she said, “and Aldhelm hates you,” she went on. “He’ll kill you if he can.”

“He can try,” I said.

“Aldhelm wants my husband to be king,” Æthelflaed said.

“And what does your husband think?” I asked.

“He would like it,” Æthelflaed said and that did not surprise me. Mercia lacked a king, and Æthelred had a claim, but my cousin was nothing without Alfred’s support and Alfred wanted no man to be called king in Mercia.

“Why doesn’t your father just declare himself King of Mercia?” I asked Æthelflaed.

“I think he will,” she said, “one day.”

“But not yet?”

“Mercia is a proud country,” she said, “and not every Mercian loves Wessex.”

“And you’re there to make them love Wessex?”

She touched her belly. “Perhaps my father wants his first grandchild to be king in Mercia,” she suggested. “A king with West Saxon blood?”

“And Æthelred’s blood,” I said sourly.

She sighed. “He’s not a bad man,” she said wistfully, almost as if she were trying to persuade herself.

“He beats you,” Gisela said drily.

“He wants to be a good man,” Æthelflaed said. She touched my arm. “He wants to be like you, Uhtred.”

“Like me!” I said, almost laughing.

“Feared,” Æthelflaed explained.

“Then why,” I asked, “is he wasting time here? Why isn’t he taking his ships to fight the Danes?”

Æthelflaed sighed. “Because Aldhelm tells him not to,” she said. “Aldhelm says that if Gunnkel stays in Cent or East Anglia,” she went on, “then my father has to keep more forces here. He has to keep looking eastward.”

“He has to do that anyway,” I said.

“But Aldhelm says that if my father has to worry all the time about a horde of pagans in the Temes estuary, then he might not notice what happens in Mercia.”

“Where my cousin will declare himself king?” I guessed.

“It will be the price he demands,” Æthelflaed said, “for defending the northern frontier of Wessex.”

“And you’ll be queen,” I said.

She grimaced at that. “You think I want that?”

“No,” I admitted.

“No,” she agreed. “What I want is the Danes gone from Mercia. I want the Danes gone from East Anglia. I want the Danes gone from Northumbria.” She was little more than a child, a thin child with a snub nose and bright eyes, but she had steel in her. She was talking to me, who loved the Danes because I had been raised by them, and to Gisela, who was a Dane, but Æthelflaed did not try to soften her words. There was a hatred of the Danes in her, a hatred she had inherited from her father. Then, suddenly, she shuddered and the steel vanished. “And I want to live,” she said.

I did not know what to say. Women died giving birth. So many died. I had sacrificed to Odin and Thor both times that Gisela had given birth and I had still been scared, and I was frightened now because she was pregnant again.

“You use the wisest women,” Gisela said, “and you trust the herbs and charms they use.”

“No,” Æthelflaed said firmly, “not that.”

“Then what?”

“Tonight,” Æthelflaed said, “at midnight. In Saint Alban’s church.”

“Tonight?” I asked, utterly confused, “in the church?”

She stared up at me with huge blue eyes. “They might kill me,” she said.

“No!” Gisela protested, not believing what she heard.

“He wants to be sure the child is his!” Æthelflaed interrupted her, “and of course it is! But they want to be sure and I’m frightened!”

Gisela gathered Æthelflaed into her arms and stroked her hair. “No one will kill you,” she said softly, looking at me.

“Be at the church, please,” Æthelflaed said in a voice made small because her head was crushed against Gisela’s breasts.

“We’ll be with you,” Gisela said.

“Go to the big church, the one dedicated to Alban,” Æthelflaed said. She was crying softly. “So how bad is the pain?” she asked. “Is it like being torn in two? That’s what my mother says!”

“It is bad,” Gisela admitted, “but it leads to a joy like no other.” She stroked Æthelflaed and stared at me as though I could explain what was to happen at midnight, but I had no idea what was in my cousin’s suspicious mind.

Then the woman who had led us to the pear tree garden appeared at the door. “Your husband, mistress,” she said urgently, “he wants you in the hall.”

“I must go,” Æthelflaed said. She cuffed her eyes with her sleeve, smiled at us without joy, and fled.

“What are they going to do to her?” Gisela asked angrily.

“I don’t know.”

“Sorcery?” she demanded. “Some Christian sorcery?”

“I don’t know,” I said again, nor did I, except that the summons was for midnight, the darkest hour, when evil appears and shape-shifters stalk the land and the Shadow-Walkers come. At midnight.

EIGHT

The church of Saint Alban was ancient. The lower walls were of stone, which meant the Romans had built it, though at some time the roof had fallen in and the upper masonry had crumbled, so that now almost everything above head height was made of timber, wattle, and thatch. The church lay on the main street of Lundene, which ran north and south from what was now called the Bishop’s Gate down to the broken bridge. Beocca once told me that the church had been a royal chapel for the Mercian kings, and perhaps he was right. “And Alban was a soldier!” Beocca had added. He always got enthusiastic when he talked about the saints whose stories he knew and loved. “So you should like him!”

“I should like him simply because he was a soldier?” I had asked skeptically.

“Because he was a brave soldier!” Beocca told me, “and,” he paused, snuffling excitedly because he had important information to impart, “and when he was martyred the eyes of his executioner fell out!” He beamed at me with his own one good eye. “They fell out, Uhtred! Just popped out of his head! That was God’s punishment, you see? You kill a holy man and God pulls out your eyes!”

“So Brother Jænberht wasn’t holy?” I had suggested. Jænberht was a monk I had killed in a church, much to the horror of Father Beocca and a crowd of other watching churchmen. “I’ve still got my eyes, father,” I pointed out.

“You deserve to be blinded!” Beocca had said, “but God is merciful. Strangely merciful at times, I must say.”

I had thought about Alban for a while. “Why,” I had then asked, “if your god can pull out a man’s eyes, didn’t he just save Alban’s life?”

“Because God chose not to, of course!” Beocca had answered sniffily, which is just the kind of answer you always get when you ask a Christian priest to explain another inexplicable act of their god.

“Alban was a Roman soldier?” I had asked, choosing not to query his god’s capriciously cruel nature.

“He was a Briton,” Beocca told me, “a very brave and very holy Briton.”

“Does that mean he was Welsh?”

“Of course it does!”

“Maybe that’s why your god let him die,” I said, and Beocca had made the sign of the cross and rolled his good eye to heaven.

So, though Alban was a Welshman, and we Saxons have no love for the Welsh, there was a church named for him in Lundene, and that church appeared as dead as the dead saint’s corpse when Gisela, Finan, and I arrived. The street was night black. Some small firelight escaped past the window shutters of a few houses, and a tavern was loud with singing in a nearby street, but the church was black and silent. “I don’t like it,” Gisela whispered, and I knew she had touched the amulet around her neck. Before we left the house she had cast her runesticks, hoping to see some pattern to this night, but the random fall of the sticks had mystified her.

Something moved in a nearby alleyway. It might have been nothing more than a rat, but both Finan and I turned, swords hissing out of our scabbards, and the noise in the alleyway immediately stopped. I let Serpent-Breath slide back into her fleece-lined scabbard.

The three of us were wearing dark cloaks with hoods so, if anyone was watching, they must have thought we were priests or monks as we stood outside Saint Alban’s dark and silent door. No light showed past that door’s edges. I tried to open it, pulling on the short rope that lifted the latch inside, but the door was apparently barred. I pushed hard, rattling the locked door, then beat on its timbers with a fist, but there was no response. Then Finan touched my arm and I heard the footsteps. “Over the street,” I whispered, and we crossed to the alleyway where we had heard the noise. The small, tight passage stank of sewage.

“They’re priests,” Finan whispered to me.

Two men were walking down the street. They were momentarily visible in the small light cast by a loosely shuttered window and I saw their black robes and the glint from the silver crosses they wore on their breasts. They stopped at the church and one knocked hard on the barred door. He gave three knocks, paused, gave a single rap, paused again, then knocked three times more.

We heard the bar lifted and the creak of hinges as the door was swung open, then light flooded into the street as a curtain inside the doorway was pulled aside. A priest or monk let the two men step into the candlelit church, then peered up and down the roadway and I knew he was searching for whoever had rattled the door a few moments earlier. A question must have been called to him, for he turned and gave an answer. “No one here, lord,” he said, then pulled the door shut. I heard the locking bar drop and, for an instant, light showed about the doorframe until the curtain inside was pulled closed and the church was dark again.

“Wait,” I said.

We waited, listening to the wind rustle across the thatched roofs and moan in the ruined houses. I waited a long time, letting the memory of the rattled door subside.

“It must be close to midnight,” Gisela whispered.

“Whoever opens the door,” I said softly, “has to be silenced.” I did not know what was happening inside the church, but I did know it was so secret that the church was locked and a coded knock was needed to enter, and I also knew that we were uninvited, and that if the man who opened the door made a protest at our arrival then we might never discover Æthelflaed’s danger.

“Leave him to me,” Finan said happily.

“He’s a churchman,” I whispered, “does that worry you?”

“In the dark, lord, all cats are black.”

“Meaning?”

“Leave him to me,” the Irishman said again.

“Then let’s go to church,” I said, and the three of us crossed the street and I knocked hard on the door. I knocked three times, gave a single rap, then knocked three times again.

It took a long time for the door to be opened, but at last the bar was lifted and the door was pushed outward. “They’ve started,” a robed figure whispered, then gasped as I seized his collar and pulled him into the street where Finan hit him in the belly. The Irishman was a small man, but had extraordinary strength in his lithe arms, and the robed figure bent double with a sudden gasp. The door’s inner curtain had fallen across the opening and no one inside the church could see what happened outside. Finan punched the man again, felling him, then knelt on the fallen figure. “You go away,” Finan whispered, “if you want to live. You just go a very long way from the church and you forget you ever saw us. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the man said.

Finan tapped the man on the head to reinforce the order, then stood up and we saw the dark figure scrabble to his feet and stumble away downhill. I waited a brief while to make sure he had really gone, then the three of us stepped inside and Finan pulled the door shut and dropped the bar into its brackets.

And I pushed the curtain aside.

We were in the darkest part of the church, but I still felt exposed because the far end, where the altar stood, was ablaze with rushlights and wax candles. A line of robed men stood facing the altar and their shadows shrouded us. One of those priests turned toward us, but he just saw three cloaked and hooded figures and must have assumed we were more priests because he turned back to the altar.

It took me a moment to see who was on the altar’s wide shallow dais because they were hidden by the priests and monks, but then the churchmen all bowed to the silver crucifix and I saw Æthelred and Aldhelm standing on the left-hand side of the altar while Bishop Erkenwald was on the right. Between them was Æthelflaed. She wore a white linen shift belted just beneath her small breasts and her fair hair was hanging loose, as if she were a girl again. She looked frightened. An older woman stood behind Æthelred. She had hard eyes and her gray hair was rolled into a tight scroll on the crown of her skull.

Bishop Erkenwald was praying in Latin and every few minutes the watching priests and monks, there were nine of them altogether, echoed his words. Erkenwald was dressed in red and white robes on which jeweled crosses had been sewn. His voice, always harsh, echoed from the stone walls, while the responses of the churchmen were a dull murmur. Æthelred looked bored, while Aldhelm seemed to be taking a quiet delight in whatever mysteries unfolded in that flame-lit sanctuary.

The bishop finished his prayers, the watching men all said amen, and then there was a slight pause before Erkenwald took a book from the altar. He unwrapped the leather covers, then turned the stiff pages to a place he had marked with a seagull’s feather. “This,” he spoke in English now, “is the word of the Lord.”

“Hear the word of the Lord,” the priests and monks muttered.

“If a man fears his wife has been unfaithful,” the bishop spoke louder, his grating voice repeated by the echo, “he shall bring her before the priest! And he shall bring an offering!” He stared pointedly at Æthelred who was dressed in a pale green cloak over a full coat of mail. He even wore his swords, something most priests would never allow in a church. “An offering!” the bishop repeated.

Æthelred started as if he had been woken from a half-sleep. He fumbled in a pouch hanging from his sword belt and produced a small bag that he held toward the bishop. “Barley,” he said.

“As the Lord God commanded it,” Erkenwald responded, but did not take the offered barley.

“And silver,” Æthelred added, hurriedly taking a second bag from his pouch.

Erkenwald took the two offerings and laid them in front of the crucifix. He bowed to the bright-gleaming image of his nailed god, then picked up the big book again. “This is the word of the Lord,” he said fiercely, “that we take holy water in an earthen vessel, and of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle the priest shall take, and he shall put that dust in the water.”

The book was put back on the altar as a priest offered the bishop a crude pottery cup that evidently held holy water, for Erkenwald bowed to it, then stooped to the floor and scraped up a handful of dirt and dust. He poured the dirt into the water, then placed the cup on the altar before taking up the book again.

“I charge thee, woman,” he said savagely, looking from the book to Æthelflaed, “if no man hath lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness with another man instead of thy husband, then be thou free of the curse of this bitter water!”

“Amen,” one of the priests said.

“The word of the Lord!” another said.

“But if thou hast gone aside to another man,” Erkenwald spat the words as he read them, “and be defiled, then the Lord shall make thy thigh to rot and thy belly to swell.” He put the book back on the altar. “Speak, woman.”

Æthelflaed just stared at the bishop. She said nothing. Her eyes were wide with fear.

“Speak, woman!” the bishop snarled. “You know what words you must say! So say them!”

Æthelflaed seemed too frightened to speak. Aldhelm whispered something to Æthelred who nodded, but did nothing. Aldhelm whispered again, and again Æthelred nodded, and this time Aldhelm took a pace forward and hit Æthelfaed. It was not a hard blow, just a slap around the head, but it was enough to force me to take an involuntary step forward. Gisela snatched my arm, checking me. “Speak, woman,” Aldhelm ordered Æthelflaed.

“Amen,” Æthelflaed managed to whisper, “amen.”

Gisela’s hand was still on my arm. I patted her fingers as a signal that I was calm. I was angry, I was astonished, but I was calm. I stroked Gisela’s hand, then dropped my fingers to Serpent-Breath’s hilt.

Æthelflaed had evidently spoken the right words because Bishop Erkenwald took the earthen cup from the altar. He raised it high in front of the crucifix, as if showing it to his god, then he carefully poured a little of its dust-fouled water into a silver chalice. He held the pottery cup high again, then ceremoniously offered it to Æthelflaed. “Drink the bitter water,” he ordered her.

Æthelflaed hesitated, then saw Aldhelm’s mailed arm ready to strike her again and so she obediently reached for the cup. She took it, held it poised by her mouth for a brief moment, then closed her eyes, screwed up her face and drank the contents. The men watched intently, making certain she drained the cup. The candle flames flickered in a draft from the smoke-hole in the roof and somewhere in the city a dog suddenly howled. Gisela was clutching my arm now, her fingers tight as claws.

Erkenwald took the cup and, when he was satisfied that it was empty, nodded to Æthelred. “She drank it,” the bishop confirmed. Æthelflaed’s face glistened where her tears reflected the wavering light from the altar on which, I now saw, was a quill pen, a pot of ink, and a piece of parchment. “What I do now,” Erkenwald said solemnly, “is in accordance with the word of God.”

“Amen,” the priests said. Æthelred was watching his wife as if he expected her flesh to start rotting before his eyes, while Æthelflaed herself was trembling so much that I thought she might collapse.

“God commands me to write the curses down,” the bishop announced, then bent to the altar. The quill scratched for a long time. Æthelred was still staring intently at Æthelflaed. The priests also watched her as the bishop scratched on. “And having written the curses,” Erkenwald said, capping the ink pot, “I wipe them out according to the commands of Almighty God, our Father in heaven.”

“Hear the word of the Lord,” a priest said.

“Praise his name,” another said.

Erkenwald picked up the silver chalice into which he had poured a small amount of the dirty water and dribbled the contents onto the newly written words. He scrubbed at the ink with a finger, then held up the parchment to show that the writing had been smeared into oblivion. “It is done,” he said pompously, then nodded at the gray-haired woman. “Do your duty!” he commanded her.

The old, bitter-faced woman stepped to Æthelflaed’s side. The girl shrank away, but Aldhelm seized her by the shoulders. Æthelflaed shrieked in terror, and Aldhelm’s response was to cuff her hard around the head. I thought Æthelred must respond to that assault on his wife by another man, but he evidently approved for he did nothing except watch as Aldhelm took Æthelflaed by her shoulders again. He held her motionless as the old woman stooped to seize the hem of Æthelflaed’s linen shift. “No!” Æthelflaed protested in a wailing, despairing voice.

“Show her to us!” Erkenwald snapped. “Show us her thighs and her belly!”

The woman obediently lifted the shift to reveal Æthelflaed’s thighs.

“Enough!” I shouted that word.

The woman froze. The priests were stooping to gaze at Æthelflaed’s bare legs and waiting for the dress to be lifted to reveal her belly. Aldhelm still held her by the shoulders, while the bishop was gaping toward the shadows at the church door from where I had spoken. “Who is that?” Erkenwald demanded.

“You evil bastards,” I said as I walked forward, my steps echoing from the stone walls, “you filthy earslings.” I remember my anger from that night, a cold and savage fury that had driven me to intervene without thinking of the consequences. My wife’s priests all preach that anger is a sin, but a warrior who does not have anger is no true warrior. Anger is a spur, it is a goad, it overcomes fear to make a man fight, and I would fight for Æthelflaed that night. “She is a king’s daughter,” I snarled, “so drop the dress!”

“You will do as God tells you,” Erkenwald snarled at the woman, but she dared neither drop the hem nor raise it further.

I pushed my way through the stooping priests, kicking one in the arse so hard that he pitched forward onto the dais at the bishop’s feet. Erkenwald had seized his staff, its silver finial curved like a shepherd’s crook, and he swung it toward me, but checked his swing when he saw my eyes. I drew Serpent-Breath, her long steel scraping and hissing on the scabbard’s throat. “You want to die?” I asked Erkenwald, and he heard the menace in my voice and his shepherd’s staff slowly went down. “Drop the dress,” I told the woman. She hesitated. “Drop it, you filthy bitch-hag,” I snarled, then sensed the bishop had moved and whipped Serpent-Breath around so that her blade shimmered just beneath his throat. “One word, bishop,” I said, “just one word, and you meet your god here and now. Gisela!” I called, and Gisela came to the altar. “Take the hag,” I told her, “and take Æthelflaed, and see whether her belly has swollen or whether her thighs have rotted. Do it in decent privacy. And you!” I turned the blade so that it pointed at Aldhelm’s scarred face, “take your hands off King Alfred’s daughter, or I will hang you from Lundene’s bridge and the birds will peck out your eyes and eat your tongue.” He let go of Æthelflaed.

“You have no right…” Æthelred said, finding his tongue.

“I come here,” I interrupted him, “with a message from Alfred. He wishes to know where your ships are. He wishes you to set sail. He wishes you to do your duty. He wants to know why you are skulking here when there are Danes to kill.” I put the tip of Serpent-Breath’s blade into the scabbard and let her fall home. “And,” I went on when the sound of the sword had finished echoing in the church, “he wishes you to know that his daughter is precious to him, and he dislikes things that are precious to him being maltreated.” I invented that message, of course.

Æthelred just stared at me. He said nothing, though there was a look of indignation on his jaw-jutting face. Did he believe I came with a message from Alfred? I could not tell, but he must have feared such a message for he knew he had been shirking his duty.

Bishop Erkenwald was just as indignant. “You dare to carry a sword in God’s house?” he demanded angrily.

“I dare do more than that, bishop,” I said. “You’ve heard of Brother Jænberht? One of your precious martyrs? I killed him in a church and your god neither saved him nor stopped my blade.” I smiled, remembering my own astonishment as I had cut Jænberht’s throat. I had hated that monk. “Your king,” I said to Erkenwald, “wants his god’s work done, and that work is killing Danes, not amusing yourself by looking at a young girl’s nakedness.”

“This is God’s work!” Æthelred shouted at me.

I wanted to kill him then. I felt the twitch as my hand went to Serpent-Breath’s hilt, but just then the hag came back. “She’s…” the woman started, then fell silent as she saw the look of hatred I was giving Æthelred.

“Speak, woman!” Erkenwald commanded.

“She shows no signs, lord,” the woman said grudgingly. “Her skin is unmarked.”

“Belly and thighs?” Erkenwald pressed the woman.

“She is pure,” Gisela spoke from a recess at the side of the church. She had an arm around Æthelflaed and her voice was bitter.

Erkenwald seemed discomfited by the report, but drew himself up and grudgingly acknowledged that Æthelflaed was indeed pure. “She is evidently undefiled, lord,” he said to Æthelred, pointedly ignoring me. Finan was standing behind the watching priests, his presence a threat to them. The Irishman was smiling and watching Aldhelm who, like Æthelred, wore a sword. Either man could have tried to cut me down, but neither touched their weapon.

“Your wife,” I said to Æthelred, “is not undefiled. She’s defiled by you.”

His face jerked up as though I had slapped him. “You are…” he began.

I unleashed the anger then. I was much taller and broader than my cousin, and I bullied him back from the altar to the side wall of the church, and there I spoke to him in a hiss of fury. Only he could hear what I said. Aldhelm might have been tempted to rescue Æthelred, but Finan was watching him, and the Irishman’s reputation was enough to ensure that Aldhelm did not move. “I have known Æthelflaed since she was a small child,” I told Æthelred, “and I love her as if she was my own child. Do you understand that, earsling? She is like a daughter to me, and she is a good wife to you. And if you touch her again, cousin, if I see one more bruise on Æthelflaed’s face, I shall find you and I shall kill you.” I paused, and he was silent.

I turned and looked at Erkenwald. “And what would you have done, bishop,” I sneered, “if the Lady Æthelflaed’s thighs had rotted? Would you have dared kill Alfred’s daughter?”

Erkenwald muttered something about condemning her to a nunnery, not that I cared. I had stopped close beside Aldhelm and looked at him. “And you,” I said, “struck a king’s daughter.” I hit him so hard that he spun into the altar and staggered for balance. I waited, giving him a chance to fight back, but he had no courage left so I hit him again and then stepped away and raised my voice so that everyone in the church could hear. “And the King of Wessex orders the Lord Æthelred to set sail.”

Alfred had sent no such orders, but Æthelred would hardly dare ask his father-in-law whether he had or not. As for Erkenwald, I was sure he would tell Alfred that I had carried a sword and made threats inside a church, and Alfred would be angry at that. He would be more angry with me for defiling a church than he would be with the priests for humiliating his daughter, but I wanted Alfred to be angry. I wanted him to punish me by dismissing me from my oath and thus releasing me from his service. I wanted Alfred to make me a free man again, a man with a sword, a shield, and enemies. I wanted to be rid of Alfred, but Alfred was far too clever to allow that. He knew just how to punish me.

He would make me keep my oath.

It was two days later, long after Gunnkel had fled from Hrofeceastre, that Æthelred at last sailed. His fleet of fifteen warships, the most powerful fleet Wessex had ever assembled, slid downriver on the ebb tide, propelled by an angry message that was delivered to Æthelred by Steapa. The big man had ridden from Hrofeceastre, and the message he carried from Alfred demanded to know why the fleet lingered while the defeated Vikings fled. Steapa stayed that night at our house. “The king is unhappy,” he told me over supper, “I’ve never seen him so angry!” Gisela was fascinated by the sight of Steapa eating. He was using one hand to hold pork ribs that he flensed with his teeth, while the other fed bread into a spare corner of his mouth. “Very angry,” he said, pausing to drink ale. “The Sture,” he added mysteriously, picking up a new slab of ribs.

“The Sture?”

“Gunnkel made a camp there, and Alfred thinks he’s probably gone back to it.”

The Sture was a river in East Anglia, north of the Temes. I had been there once and remembered a wide mouth protected from easterly gales by a long spit of sandy land. “He’s safe there,” I said.

“Safe?” Steapa asked.

“Guthrum’s territory.”

Steapa paused to pull a scrap of meat from between his teeth. “Guthrum sheltered him there. Alfred doesn’t like it. Thinks Guthrum has to be smacked.”

“Alfred’s going to war with East Anglia?” Gisela asked, surprised.

“No, lady. Just smacking him,” Steapa said, crunching his jaws on some crackling. I reckoned he had eaten half a pig and showed no signs of slowing down. “Guthrum doesn’t want war, lady. But he has to be taught not to shelter pagans. So he’s sending the Lord Æthelred to attack Gunnkel’s camp on the Sture, and while he’s at it to steal some of Guthrum’s cattle. Just smack him.” Steapa gave me a solemn look. “Pity you can’t come.”

“It is,” I agreed.

And why, I wondered, had Alfred chosen Æthelred to lead an expedition to punish Guthrum? Æthelred was not even a West Saxon, though he had sworn an oath to Alfred of Wessex. My cousin was a Mercian, and the Mercians have never been famous for their ships. So why choose Æthelred? The only explanation I could find was that Alfred’s eldest son, Edward, was still a child with an unbroken voice and Alfred himself was a sick man. He feared his own death, and he feared the chaos that could descend on Wessex if Edward took the throne as a child. So Alfred was offering Æthelred a chance to redeem himself for his failure to trap Gunnkel’s ships in the Medwæg, and an opportunity to make himself a reputation large enough to persuade the thegns and ealdormen of Wessex that Æthelred, Lord of Mercia, could rule them if Alfred died before Edward was old enough to succeed.

Æthelred’s fleet carried a message to the Danes of East Anglia. If you raid Wessex, Alfred was saying, then we shall raid you. We shall harry your coast, burn your houses, sink your ships, and leave your beaches stinking of death. Alfred had made Æthelred into a Viking, and I was jealous. I wanted to take my ships, but I had been ordered to stay in Lundene, and I obeyed. Instead I watched the great fleet leave Lundene. It was impressive. The largest of the captured warships had thirty oars a side, and there were six of those, while the smallest had banks of twenty. Æthelred was leading almost a thousand men on his raid, and they were all good men; warriors from Alfred’s household and from his own trained troops. Æthelred sailed in one of the large ships that had once carried a great raven’s head, scorched black, on her stem, but that beaked image was gone and now the ship was named Rodbora, which meant “carrier of the cross,” and her stem-post was now decorated with a massive cross and she sailed with warriors aboard, and with priests, and, of course, with Æthelflaed, for Æthelred would go nowhere without her.

It was summer. Folk who have never lived in a town during the summer cannot imagine the stench of it, nor the flies. Red kites flocked in the streets, living off carrion. When the wind was north the smell of the urine and animal dung in the tanners’ pits mixed with the city’s own stench of human sewage. Gisela’s belly grew, and my fear for her grew with it.

I went to sea as often as I could. We took Sea-Eagle and Sword of the Lord down the river on the ebb tide and came back with the flood. We hunted ships from Beamfleot, but Sigefrid’s men had learned their lesson and they never left their creek with fewer than three ships in company. Yet, though those groups of ships hunted prey, trade was at last reaching Lundene, for the merchants had learned to sail in large convoys. A dozen ships would keep each other company, all with armed men aboard and so Sigefrid’s pickings were scanty, but so were mine.

I waited two weeks for news of my cousin’s expedition, and learned its fate on a day when I made my usual excursion down the Temes. There was always a blessed moment as we left the smoke and smells of Lundene and felt the clean sea winds. The river looped about wide marshes where herons stalked. I remember being happy that day because there were blue butterflies everywhere. They settled on the Sea-Eagle and on the Sword of the Lord that followed in our wake. One insect perched on my outstretched finger where it opened and closed its wings.

“That means good luck, lord,” Sihtric said.

“It does?”

“The longer it stays there, the longer your luck lasts,” Sihtric said, and held out his own hand, but no blue butterfly settled there.

“Looks like you’ve no luck,” I said lightly. I watched the butterfly on my finger and thought of Gisela and of childbirth. Stay there, I silently ordered the insect, and it did.

“I’m lucky, lord,” Sihtric said, grinning.

“You are?”

“Ealhswith’s in Lundene,” he said. Ealhswith was the whore whom Sihtric loved.

“There’s more trade for her in Lundene than in Coccham,” I said.

“She stopped doing that,” Sihtric said fiercely.

I looked at him, surprised. “She has?”

“Yes, lord. She wants to marry me, lord.”

He was a good-looking young man, hawk-faced, black-haired and well built. I had known him since he was almost a child, and I supposed that altered my impression of him, for I still saw the frightened boy whose life I had spared in Cair Ligualid. Ealhswith, perhaps, saw the young man he had become. I looked away, watching a tiny trickle of smoke rising from the southern marshes and I wondered whose fire it was and how they lived in that mosquito-haunted swamp. “You’ve been with her a long time,” I said.

“Yes, lord.”

“Send her to me,” I said. Sihtric was sworn to me and he needed my permission to marry because his wife would become a part of my household and thus my responsibility. “I’ll talk to her,” I added.

“You’ll like her, lord.”

I smiled at that. “I hope so,” I said.

A flight of swans beat between our boats, their wings loud in the summer air. I was feeling content, all but for my fears about Gisela, and the butterfly was allaying that worry, though after a while it launched itself from my finger and fluttered clumsily in the southward wake of the swans. I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt, then my amulet, and sent a prayer to Frigg that Gisela would be safe.

It was midday before we were abreast of Caninga. The tide was low and the mudflats stretched into the calm estuary where we were the only ships. I took Sea-Eagle close to Caninga’s southern shore and stared toward Beamfleot’s creek, but I could see nothing useful through the heat haze that shimmered above the island. “Looks like they’ve gone,” Finan commented. Like me he was staring northward.

“No,” I said, “there are ships there.” I thought I could see the masts of Sigefrid’s ships through the wavering air.

“Not as many as there should be,” Finan said.

“We’ll take a look,” I said, and so we rowed around the island’s eastern tip, and discovered that Finan was right. Over half of Sigefrid’s ships had left the little River Hothlege.

Only three days before there had been thirty-six masts in the creek and now there were just fourteen. I knew the missing ships had not gone upriver toward Lundene, for we would have seen them, and that left only two choices. Either they had gone east and north about the East Anglian coast, or else they had rowed south to make another raid into Cent. The sun, so hot and high and bright, winked reflected dazzling light from the spear-points on the ramparts of the high camp. Men watched us from that high wall, and they saw us turn and hoist our sails and use a small northeast wind that had stirred since dawn to carry us south across the estuary. I was looking for a great smear of smoke that would tell me a raiding party had landed to attack, plunder, and burn some town, but the sky over Cent was clear. We dropped the sail and rowed east toward the Medwæg’s mouth, and still saw no smoke, and then Finan, sharp-eyed and posted in our bows, saw the ships.

Six ships.

I was looking for a fleet of at least twenty boats, not some small group of ships, and at first I took no notice, assuming the six were merchant ships keeping company as they rowed toward Lundene, but then Finan came hurrying back between the rowers’ benches. “They’re warships,” he said.

I peered eastward. I could see the dark flecks of the hulls, but my eyes were not so keen as Finan’s and I could not make out their shapes. The six hulls flickered in the heat haze. “Are they moving?” I asked.

“No, lord.”

“Why anchor there?” I wondered. The ships were on the far side of the Medwæg’s mouth, just off the point called Scerhnesse, which means “bright headland,” and it was a strange place to anchor for the currents swirled strong off the low point.

“I think they’re grounded, lord,” Finan said. If the ships had been anchored I would have assumed they were waiting for the flood tide to carry them upriver, but grounded boats usually meant men had gone ashore, and the only reason to go ashore was to find plunder.

“But there’s nothing left to steal on Scaepege,” I said, puzzled. Scerhnesse lay at the western end of Scaepege, which was an island on the southern side of the Temes’s estuary, and Scaepege had been harried and harrowed and harried again by Viking raids. Few folk lived there, and those that did hid in the creeks. The channel between Scaepege and the mainland was known as the Swealwe, and whole Viking fleets had sheltered there in bad weather. Scaepege and the Swealwe were dangerous places, but not places to find silver or slaves.

“We’ll go closer,” I said. Finan went back to the prow as Ralla, in Sword of the Lord, pulled abreast of the Sea-Eagle. I pointed at the distant ships. “We’re taking a look at those six boats!” I called across the gap. Ralla nodded, shouted an order, and his oars bit into the water.

I saw Finan was right as we crossed the Medwæg’s wide mouth; the six were warships, all of them longer and leaner than any cargo-carrying vessel, and all six had been beached. A trickle of smoke drifted south and west, suggesting the crews had lit a fire ashore. I could see no beast-heads on the prows, but that meant nothing. Viking crews might well regard the whole of Scaepege as Danish territory and so take down their dragons, eagles, ravens, and serpents to prevent frightening the spirits of the island.

I called Clapa to the steering-oar. “Take her straight toward the ships,” I ordered him, then went forward to join Finan in the prow. Osferth was on one of the oars, sweating and glowering. “Nothing like rowing to put on muscle,” I told him cheerfully, and was rewarded with a scowl.

I clambered up beside the Irishman. “They look like Danes,” he greeted me.

“We can’t fight six crews,” I said.

Finan scratched his groin. “They making a camp there, you think?” That was a nasty thought. It was bad enough that Sigefrid’s ships sailed from the northern side of the estuary, without another vipers’ nest being built on the southern bank.

“No,” I said, because for once my eyes had proved sharper than the Irishman’s. “No,” I said, “they’re not making a camp.” I touched my amulet.

Finan saw the gesture and heard the anger in my voice. “What?” he asked.

“The ship on the left,” I said, pointing, “that’s Rodbora.” I had seen the cross mounted on the stem-post.

Finan’s mouth opened, but he said nothing for a moment. He just stared. Six ships, just six ships, and fifteen had left Lundene. “Sweet Jesus Christ,” Finan finally spoke. He made the sign of the cross. “Perhaps the others have gone upriver?”

“We’d have seen them.”

“Then they’re coming behind?”

“You’d better be right,” I said grimly, “or else it’s nine ships gone.”

“God, no.”

We were close now. The men ashore saw the eagle’s head on my boat and took me for a Viking and some ran into the shallows between two of the stranded ships and made a shield wall there, daring me to attack. “That’s Steapa,” I said, seeing the huge figure at the center of the shield wall. I ordered the eagle taken down, then stood with my arms outstretched, empty-handed, to show I came in peace. Steapa recognized me, and the shields went down and the weapons were sheathed. A moment later Sea-Eagle’s bows slid soft onto the sandy mud. The tide was rising, so she was safe.

I dropped over the side into water that came to my waist and waded ashore. I reckoned there were at least four hundred men on the beach, far too many for just six ships and, as I neared the shore, I could see that many of those men were wounded. They lay with blood-soaked bandages and pale faces. Priests knelt among them while, at the top of the beach, where pale grass topped the low dunes, I could see that crude driftwood crosses had been driven into newly dug graves.

Steapa waited for me, his face grimmer than ever. “What happened?” I asked him.

“Ask him,” Steapa said, sounding bitter. He jerked his head along the beach and I saw Æthelred sitting close to the fire on which a cooking pot bubbled gently. His usual entourage was with him, including Aldhelm, who watched me with a resentful face. None of them spoke as I walked toward them. The fire crackled. Æthelred was toying with a piece of bladderwrack and, though he must have been aware of my approach, he did not look up.

I stopped beside the fire. “Where are the other nine ships?” I asked.

Æthelred’s face jerked up, as though he were surprised to see me. He smiled. “Good news,” he said. He expected me to ask what that news was, but I just watched him and said nothing. “We have won,” he said expansively, “a great victory!”

“A magnificent victory,” Aldhelm interjected.

I saw that Æthelred’s smile was forced. His next words were halting, as if it took a great effort to string them together. “Gunnkel,” he said, “has been taught the power of our swords.”

“We burned their ships!” Aldhelm boasted.

“And made great slaughter,” Æthelred said, and I saw that his eyes were glistening.

I looked up and down the beach where the wounded lay and where the uninjured sat with bowed heads. “You left with fifteen ships,” I said.

“We burned their ships,” Æthelred said, and I thought he was going to cry.

“Where are the other nine ships?” I demanded.

“We stopped here,” Aldhelm said, and he must have thought I was being critical of their decision to beach the boats, “because we could not row against the falling tide.”

“The other nine ships?” I asked again, but received no answer. I was still searching the beach and what I sought I could not find. I looked back at Æthelred, whose head had dropped again, and I feared to ask the next question, but it had to be asked. “Where is your wife?” I demanded.

Silence.

“Where,” I spoke louder, “is Æthelflaed?”

A gull sounded its harsh, forlorn cry. “She is taken,” Æthelred said at last in a voice so small that I could barely hear him.

“Taken?”

“A captive,” Æthelred said, his voice still low.

“Sweet Jesus Christ,” I said, using Finan’s favorite expletive. The wind stirred the bitter smoke into my face. For a moment I did not believe what I had heard, but all around me was evidence that Æthelred’s magnificent victory had really been a catastrophic defeat. Nine ships were gone, but ships could be replaced, and half of Æthelred’s troops were missing, yet new men could be found to replace those dead, but what could replace a king’s daughter? “Who has her?” I asked.

“Sigefrid,” Aldhelm muttered.

Which explained where the missing ships from Beamfleot had gone.

And Æthelflaed, sweet Æthelflaed, to whom I had made an oath, was a captive.

Our eight ships rode the flooding tide back up the Temes to Lundene. It was a summer’s evening, limpid and calm, in which the sun seemed to linger like a giant red globe suspended in the veil of smoke that clouded the air above the city. Æthelred made the voyage in Rodbora and, when I let Sea-Eagle drop back to row alongside that ship, I saw the black streaks where blood had stained her timbers. I quickened the oar strokes and pulled ahead again.

Steapa traveled with me in the Sea-Eagle and the big man told me what had happened in the River Sture.

It had, indeed, been a magnificent victory. Æthelred’s fleet had surprised the Vikings as they made their encampment on the river’s southern bank. “We came at dawn,” Steapa said.

“You stayed all night at sea?”

“Lord Æthelred ordered it,” Steapa said.

“Brave,” I commented.

“It was a calm night,” Steapa said dismissively, “and at first light we found their ships. Sixteen ships.” He stopped abruptly. He was a taciturn man and found it difficult to speak more than a few words together.

“Beached?” I asked.

“They were anchored,” he said.

That suggested the Danes had wanted their vessels to be ready at any state of the tide, but it also meant the ships could not be defended because their crews had been mostly ashore where they were throwing up earth walls to make a camp. Æthelred’s fleet had made short work of the few men aboard the enemy vessels, and then the great rope-wrapped stones that served as anchors had been hauled up and the sixteen ships were towed to the northern bank and beached there. “He was going to keep them there,” Steapa explained, “till he was finished, then bring them back.”

“Finished?” I asked.

“He wanted to kill all the pagans before we left,” Steapa said, and explained how Æthelred’s fleet had marauded up the Sture and its adjacent river, the Arwan, landing men along the banks to burn Danish halls, slaughter Danish cattle and, when they could, to kill Danes. The Saxon raiders had caused panic. Folk had fled inland, but Gunnkel, left shipless in his encampment at the mouth of the Sture, had not panicked.

“You didn’t attack the camp?” I asked Steapa.

“Lord Æthelred said it was too well protected.”

“I thought you said it was unfinished?”

Steapa shrugged. “They hadn’t built the palisade,” he said, “at least on one side, so we could have got in and killed them, but we’d have lost a lot of our own men too.”

“True,” I admitted.

“So we attacked farms instead,” Steapa went on, and while Æthelred’s men raided the Danish settlements, Gunnkel had sent messengers southward to the other rivers of the East Anglian coast. There, on those riverbanks, were other Viking encampments. Gunnkel was summoning reinforcements.

“I told Lord Æthelred to leave,” Steapa said gloomily, “I told him on the second day. I said we’d stayed long enough.”

“He wouldn’t listen to you?”

“He called me a fool,” Steapa said with a shrug. Æthelred had wanted plunder, and so he had stayed in the Sture and his men brought him anything they could find of value, from cooking pots to reaping knives. “He found some silver,” Steapa said, “but not much.”

And while Æthelred stayed to enrich himself, the sea-wolves gathered.

Danish ships came from the south. Sigefrid’s ships had sailed from Beamfleot, joining other boats that rowed from the mouths of the Colaun, the Hwealf, and the Pant. I had passed those rivers often enough and imagined the lean fast boats sliding out through the mudbanks on the ebbing tides, with their high prows fiercely decorated with beasts and their hulls filled with vengeful men, shields, and weapons.

The Danish ships gathered off the island of Horseg, south of the Sture in the wide bay that is haunted by wildfowl. Then, on a gray morning, under a summer rainstorm that blew in from the sea, and on a flooding tide made stronger by a full moon, thirty-eight ships came from the ocean to enter the Sture.

“It was a Sunday,” Steapa said, “and the Lord Æthelred insisted we listen to a sermon.”

“Alfred will be pleased to hear that,” I said sarcastically.

“It was on the beach,” Steapa said, “where the Danish boats were grounded.”

“Why there?”

“Because the priests wanted to drive the evil spirits from the boats,” he said, and told me how the beast-heads from the captured ships had been stacked in a great pile on the sand. Driftwood had been packed around them, along with straw from a nearby thatch, and then, to loud prayers from the priests, the heap had been set alight. Dragons and eagles, ravens and wolves had burned, their flames leaping high, and the smoke of the great fire must have blown inland as the rain spat and hissed on the burning wood. The priests had prayed and chanted, crowing their victory over the pagans, and no one had noticed the dark shapes coming through the seaward drizzle.

I can only imagine the fear, the flight, and the slaughter. Danes leaping ashore. Sword-Danes, spear-Danes, ax-Danes. The only reason so many men had escaped was that so many were dying. The Danes had started their killing, and found so many men to kill that they could not reach those who fled to the ships. Other Danish boats were attacking the Saxon fleet, but Rodbora had held them off. “I’d left men aboard,” Steapa said.

“Why?”

“Don’t know,” he said bleakly. “I just had a feeling.”

“I know that feeling,” I said. It was the prickle at the back of the neck, the vague unformed suspicion that danger was close, and it was a feeling that should never be ignored. I have seen my hounds suddenly raise their heads from sleep and growl softly, or whine piteously with their eyes staring at me in mute appeal. I know when that happens that thunder is coming, and it always does, but how the dogs sense it I cannot tell. But it must be the same feeling, the discomfort of hidden danger.

“It was a rare fight,” Steapa said dully.

We were rounding the last bend in the Temes before the river reached Lundene. I could see the city’s repaired wall, the new timber raw against the older Roman stone. Banners were hung from those ramparts, most of the flags showing saints or crosses; bright symbols to defy the enemy who came every day to inspect the city from the east. An enemy, I thought, who had just won a victory that would stun Alfred.

Steapa was sparing with details of the fight and I had to prise what little I learned out of him. The enemy boats, he said, had mostly landed on the eastern end of the beach, drawn there by the great fire, and Rodbora and seven other Saxon boats had been farther west. The beach was a place of screaming chaos as pagans howled and killed. The Saxons tried to reach the western ships and Steapa had made a shield wall to protect those boats as the fugitives scrambled aboard.

“Æthelred reached you,” I commented sourly.

“He can run fast,” Steapa said.

“And Æthelflaed?”

“We couldn’t go back for her,” he said.

“No, I’m sure,” I said, and knew he spoke the truth. He told me how Æthelflaed had been trapped and surrounded by the enemy. She had been with her maids close to the great fire, while Æthelred had been accompanying the priests who sprinkled holy water on the prows of the captured Danish ships.

“He did want to go back for her,” Steapa admitted.

“So he should,” I said.

“But it couldn’t be done,” he said, “so we rowed away.”

“They didn’t try and stop you?”

“They tried,” he said.

“And?” I prompted him.

“Some got on board,” he said, and shrugged. I imagined Steapa, ax in hand, cutting down the boarders. “We managed to row past them,” he said, as if it had been easy. The Danes, I thought, should have stopped every boat escaping, but the six ships had managed to escape to sea. “But eight boats left altogether,” Steapa added.

So two Saxon boats had been successfully boarded, and I flinched at the thought of the ax-work and sword strokes, of the bottom timbers sloppy with blood. “Did you see Sigefrid?” I asked.

Steapa nodded. “He was in a chair. Strapped in.”

“And do you know if Æthelflaed lives?” I asked.

“She lives,” Steapa said. “As we left, we saw her. She was on that ship that was in Lundene? The ship you let go?”

“The Wave-Tamer,” I said.

“Sigefrid’s ship,” Steapa said, “and he showed her to us. He made her stand on the steering platform.”

“Clothed?”

“Clothed?” he asked, frowning as though my question was somehow improper. “Yes,” he said, “she was clothed.”

“With any luck,” I said, hoping I spoke the truth, “they won’t rape her. She’s more valuable unharmed.”

“Valuable?”

“Brace yourself for the ransom,” I said as we smelled Lundene’s filthy stench.

Sea-Eagle slid into her dock. Gisela was waiting and I gave her the news, and she gave a small cry as though she were in pain, and then she waited for Æthelred to come ashore, but he ignored her just as he ignored me. He walked uphill toward his palace and his face was pale. His men, those that survived, closed protectively around him.

And I found the stale ink, sharpened a quill, and wrote another letter to Alfred.

PART THREE

THE SCOURING

NINE

We were forbidden to sail down the Temes.

Bishop Erkenwald gave me the order and my instinctive response was to snarl at him, saying that we should have every Saxon ship in the wide estuary harrying the Danes mercilessly. He listened to me without comment and, when I had finished, he appeared to ignore everything I had said. He was writing, copying some book that was propped on his upright desk. “And what would your violence achieve?” he finally asked in an acid voice.

“It would teach them to fear us,” I said.

“To fear us,” he echoed, saying each word very distinctly and imbuing them with mockery. His quill scratched on the parchment. He had summoned me to his house, which was next to Æthelred’s palace and was a surprisingly comfortless place, with nothing in the main large room except an empty hearth, a bench, and the upright desk on which the bishop was writing. A young priest sat on the bench, saying nothing, but watching the two of us anxiously. The priest, I was certain, was simply there to be a witness so that, should an argument arise over what was said in this meeting, the bishop would have someone to back his version. Not that much was being said, for Erkenwald ignored me again for another long period, bending low over the desk with his eyes fixed on the words he laboriously scratched. “If I am right,” he suddenly spoke, though he continued to peer at his work, “the Danes have just destroyed the largest fleet ever to be deployed from Wessex. I hardly think they will take fright if you stir the water with your few oars.”

“So we leave the water calm?” I asked angrily.

“I dare say,” he said, then paused as he made another letter, “that the king will want us to do nothing that might aggravate,” another pause as still another letter was formed, “an unfortunate situation.”

“The unfortunate situation,” I said, “being that his daughter is being raped daily by the Danes? And you expect us to do nothing?”

“Precisely. You have seized upon the essence of my orders. You are to do nothing to make a bad situation worse.” He still did not look at me. He dipped the quill in his pot and carefully drained the excess ink from the tip. “How do you prevent a wasp from stinging you?” he asked.

“By killing it first,” I said.

“By remaining motionless,” the bishop said, “and that is how we shall behave now, by doing nothing to aggravate the situation. Do you have any evidence that the lady is being raped?”

“No.”

“She is valuable to them,” the bishop said, repeating the argument I had myself used to Steapa, “and I surmise they will do nothing to lessen that value. No doubt you are more informed than I of pagan ways, but if our enemies possess even a scrap of good sense they will treat her with the proper respect due to her rank.” He at last looked at me, offering a sideways glance of pure loathing. “I will need soldiers,” he said, “when the time comes to raise the ransom.”

Meaning my men were to threaten every other man who might possess a battered coin. “And how much will that be?” I asked sourly, wondering what contribution would be expected of me.

“Thirty years ago in Frankia,” the bishop was writing again, “the Abbot Louis of the monastery of Saint Denis was captured. A pious and good man. The ransom for the abbot and his brother amounted to six hundred and eighty-six pounds of gold and three thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds of silver. The Lady Æthelflaed might be a mere woman, but I cannot imagine our enemies will settle for a dissimilar sum.” I said nothing. The ransom the bishop had quoted was unimaginable, yet he was surely right in thinking that Sigefrid would want the same or, more likely, a greater amount. “So you see,” the bishop went on coldly, “the lady’s value is of considerable significance to the pagans, and they will not wish to devalue her. I have assured the Lord Æthelred on this point, and I would be grateful if you do not disabuse him of that hope?”

“Have you heard from Sigefrid?” I asked, thinking that Erkenwald seemed very certain that Æthelflaed was being well treated.

“No, have you?” The question was a challenge, implying that I might be in secret negotiations with Sigefrid. I did not answer and the bishop did not expect me to. “I foresee,” he continued, “that the king will wish to supervise the negotiations himself. So until he arrives here, or until he offers me contrary orders, you are to stay in Lundene. Your ships will not sail!”

Nor did they. But the Northmen’s ships were sailing. Trade, which had increased through the summer, died to nothing as swarms of beast-headed boats rowed out from Beamfleot to scour the estuary. My best sources of information died with the traders, though a few men did find their way upriver. They were usually fishermen bringing their catch to Lundene’s fish market, and they claimed that over fifty ships now grounded their keels in the drying creek beneath Beamfleot’s high fort. Vikings were flocking to the estuary.

“They know Sigefrid and his brother will be rich,” I told Gisela the night after the bishop had ordered me to do nothing provocative.

“Very rich,” she said drily.

“Rich enough to assemble an army,” I went on bitterly because, once the ransom was paid, the Thurgilson brothers would be gold-givers and ships would come from every sea, swelling into a horde that could drive into Wessex. The brothers’ dream of conquering all the Saxon lands, which had once depended on Ragnar’s help, now looked as though it might come true without any northern help, and all thanks to Æthelflaed’s capture.

“Will they attack Lundene?” Gisela asked.

“If I were Sigefrid,” I said, “I would cross the Temes and slash into Wessex through Cent. He’ll have enough ships to carry an army across the river and we have nowhere near enough to stop him.”

Stiorra was playing with a wooden doll I had carved out of beech-wood and which Gisela had clothed with scraps of linen. My daughter looked so intent on her play and so happy, and I tried to imagine losing her. I tried to imagine Alfred’s distress, and found my heart could not even endure the mere thought. “The baby’s kicking,” Gisela said, stroking her belly.

I felt the panic I always experienced when I thought of the approaching childbirth. “We must find a name for him,” I said, hiding my thoughts.

“Or her?”

“Him,” I said firmly, though without joy because the future, that night, seemed so bleak.

Alfred came, as the bishop had foreseen, and once again I was summoned to the palace, though this time we were spared any sermon. The king came with his bodyguard, what was left of it after the disaster on the Sture, and I greeted Steapa in the outer courtyard where a steward collected our swords. The priests had come in force, a flock of cawing crows, but among them were the friendly faces of Father Pyrlig, Father Beocca and, to my surprise, Father Willibald. Willibald, all bounce and cheerfulness, scurried across the courtyard to embrace me. “You’re taller than ever, lord!” he said.

“And how are you, father?”

“The Lord sees fit to bless me!” he said happily. “I minister to souls in Exanceaster these days!”

“I like that town,” I said.

“You had a house nearby, didn’t you? With your…” Willibald paused, embarrassed.

“With that pious misery I married before Gisela,” I said. Mildrith still lived, though these days she was in a nunnery and I had long forgotten most of the pain of that unhappy union. “And you?” I asked. “You’re married?”

“To a lovely woman,” Willibald said brightly. He had been my tutor once, though he had taught me little, yet he was a good man, kind and dutiful.

“Does the Bishop of Exanceaster still keep the whores busy?” I asked.

“Uhtred, Uhtred!” Willibald chided me, “I know you only say these things to shock me!”

“I also tell the truth,” I said, which I did. “There was a redheaded one,” I went on, “who he really liked. The story was that he liked her to dress in his robes and then…”

“We have all sinned,” Willibald interrupted me hurriedly, “and fallen short of God’s expectations.”

“You too? Was she redheaded?” I asked, then laughed at his discomfort. “It’s good to see you, father. So what brings you from Exanceaster to Lundene?”

“The king, God bless him, wanted the company of old friends,” Willibald said, then shook his head. “He is in a bad way, Uhtred, a bad way. Do not, I pray you, say anything to upset him. He needs prayers!”

“He needs a new son-in-law,” I said sourly.

“The Lord Æthelred is a faithful servant of God,” Willibald said, “and a noble warrior! Perhaps he does not have your reputation yet, but his name inspires fear among our enemies.”

“It does?” I asked. “What are they frightened of? That they might die laughing if he attacks them again?”

“Lord Uhtred!” he chided me again.

I laughed, then followed Willibald into the pillared hall where thegns, priests, and ealdormen gathered. This was not an official witanegemot, that royal council of great men that met twice a year to advise the king, but almost every man present was in the Witan. They had traveled from all across Wessex, while others had come from southern Mercia, all summoned to Lundene so that whatever Alfred decided would have the support of both kingdoms. Æthelred was already inside, meeting no one’s eye and slumped in a chair below the dais where Alfred would preside. Men avoided Æthelred, all except Aldhelm who crouched beside his chair and whispered in his ear.

Alfred arrived, accompanied by Erkenwald and Brother Asser. I had never seen the king look so haggard. He had one hand clutched to his belly, suggesting that his sickness was bad, but I do not think that was what gave his face the deep lines and the wan, almost hopeless look. His hair was thinning and, for the first time, I saw him as an old man. He was thirty-six years old that year. He took his chair on the dais, waved a hand to show that men might be seated, but said nothing. It was left to Bishop Erkenwald to say a brief prayer, then ask for any man who had a suggestion to speak up.

They talked, and they talked and then they talked some more. The mystery that gripped them was why no message had come from the camp at Beamfleot. A spy had reported to Alfred that his daughter lived, even that she was being treated with respect as Erkenwald had surmised, but no messenger had come from Sigefrid. “He wants us to be the supplicant,” Bishop Erkenwald suggested, and no one had a better idea. It was pointed out that Æthelflaed was being held prisoner on territory that belonged to King Æthelstan of East Anglia, and surely that Christianized Dane would help? Bishop Erkenwald said a delegation had already traveled to meet the king.

“Guthrum won’t fight,” I said, making my first contribution.

“King Æthelstan,” Bishop Erkenwald said, stressing Guthrum’s Christian name, “is proving a constant ally. He will, I am sure, offer us succor.”

“He won’t fight,” I said again.

Alfred waved a weary hand toward me, indicating he wanted to hear what I had to say.

“Guthrum is old,” I said, “and he doesn’t want war. Nor can he take on the men near Beamfleot. They get stronger every day. If Guthrum fights them, then he might well lose, and if he loses then Sigefrid will be king in East Anglia.” No one liked that thought, but nor could they argue with it. Sigefrid, despite the wound that Osferth had given him, was becoming ever more powerful and already had enough followers to challenge Guthrum’s forces.

“I would not want King Æthelstan to fight,” Alfred said unhappily, “for any war will risk my daughter’s life. We must, instead, contemplate the necessity of a ransom.”

There was silence as the men in the room imagined the vast sum that would be needed. Some, the wealthiest, avoided Alfred’s gaze, while all, I am sure, were wondering where they could hide their wealth before Alfred’s tax-collectors and troops came to visit. Bishop Erkenwald broke the silence by observing, with regret, that the church was impoverished or else he would have been happy to contribute. “What small sums we have,” he said, “are dedicated to the work of God.”

“They are, indeed,” a fat abbot whose chest gleamed with three silver crosses agreed.

“And the Lady Æthelflaed is now a Mercian,” a thegn from Wiltunscir growled, “so the Mercians must carry the greater burden.”

“She is my daughter,” Alfred said quietly, “and I will, of course, contribute all I can afford.”

“But how much will we need?” Father Pyrlig inquired energetically. “We need to know that first, lord King, and that means someone must travel to meet the pagans. If they will not talk to us, then we must talk to them. As the good bishop says,” and here Pyrlig bowed gravely in Erkenwald’s direction, “they want us to be the supplicants.”

“They wish to humiliate us,” a man growled.

“They do indeed!” Father Pyrlig agreed. “So we must send a delegation to suffer that humiliation.”

“You would go to Beamfleot?” Alfred asked Pyrlig hopefully.

The Welshman shook his head. “Lord King,” he said, “those pagans have cause to hate me. I am not the man to send. The Lord Uhtred, though,” Pyrlig indicated me, “did Erik Thurgilson a favor.”

“What favor?” Brother Asser demanded quickly.

“I warned him about the treachery of Welsh monks,” I said, and there was a rustle of laughter as Alfred shot me a disapproving look. “I let him take his own ship from Lundene,” I explained.

“A favor,” Asser retorted, “that has enabled this unhappy situation to occur. If you had killed the Thurgilsons as you should have, then we would not be here.”

“What brought us here,” I said, “was the stupidity of lingering in the Sture. If you collect a fat flock you don’t leave it grazing beside a wolf’s den.”

“Enough!” Alfred said harshly. Æthelred was shuddering with anger. He had not spoken a word so far, but now he turned in his chair and pointed at me. He opened his mouth and I waited for his angry retort, but instead he twisted away and vomited. It was sudden and violent, his stomach voiding itself in a thick, stinking rush. He was jerking as his vomit splashed noisily on the dais. Alfred, appalled, just watched. Aldhelm stepped hastily away. Some of the priests made the sign of the cross. No one spoke or moved to help him. The vomiting appeared to have ceased, but then he twitched again and another spate poured from his mouth. Æthelred spat the last remnants out, wiped his lips on his sleeve, and leaned back in his chair with closed eyes and a pale face.

Alfred had watched his son-in-law’s sudden attack, but now turned back to the room and said nothing of what had happened. A servant hovered at the edge of the room, plainly tempted to go to Æthelred’s assistance, but was frightened of trespassing on the dais. Æthelred was groaning slightly, one hand held across his belly. Aldhelm was staring at the pool of vomit as though he had never seen such a thing.

“Lord Uhtred,” the king broke the embarrassed silence.

“Lord King,” I answered, bowing.

Alfred frowned at me. “There are those, Lord Uhtred, who say you are too friendly with the Northmen?”

“I gave you an oath, lord King,” I said harshly, “and I renewed that oath to Father Pyrlig and then again to your daughter. If the men who say I am too friendly with the Northmen wish to accuse me of breaking that triple oath then I will meet them at sword’s length in any place they wish. And they will face a sword that has killed more Northmen than I can count.”

That brought silence. Pyrlig smiled slyly. Not one man there wanted to fight me, and the only one who might have beaten me, Steapa, was grinning, though Steapa’s grin was a deathly rictus that could have frightened a demon back into its lair.

The king sighed as if my display of anger had been tiresome. “Will Sigefrid talk to you?” he asked.

“The Earl Sigefrid hates me, lord King.”

“But will he talk to you?” Alfred insisted.

“Either that or kill me,” I said, “but his brother likes me, and Haesten is in debt to me so, yes, I think they’ll talk.”

“You must also send a skilled negotiator, lord King,” Erkenwald said unctuously, “a man who will not be tempted to do further favors to pagans. I would suggest my treasurer? He is a most subtle man.”

“He’s also a priest,” I said, “and Sigefrid hates priests. He also has a burning ambition to watch a priest being crucified.” I smiled at Erkenwald. “Maybe you should send your treasurer. Or maybe come yourself?”

Erkenwald stared at me blankly. I assumed he was praying that his god send a thunderbolt to punish me, but his god failed to oblige. The king sighed again. “You can negotiate yourself?” he asked me patiently.

“I’ve purchased horses, lord,” I said, “so yes, I can negotiate.”

“Bargaining for a horse is not the same as…” Erkenwald began angrily, then subsided as the king waved a weary hand toward him.

“The Lord Uhtred sought to annoy you, bishop,” the king said, “and it is best not to give him the satisfaction of showing that he has succeeded.”

“I can negotiate, lord King,” I said, “but in this case I’m bargaining for a mare of very great value. She will not be cheap.”

Alfred nodded. “Perhaps you should take the bishop’s treasurer?” he suggested hesitantly.

“I want only one companion, lord,” I said, “Steapa.”

“Steapa?” Alfred sounded surprised.

“When you face an enemy, lord,” I explained, “then it is well to take a man whose very presence is a threat.”

“You will take two companions,” the king corrected me. “Despite Sigefrid’s hatred I want my daughter to receive the blessings of the sacraments. You must take a priest, Lord Uhtred.”

“If you insist, lord,” I said, not bothering to hide my scorn.

“I do insist,” Alfred’s voice regained some of its force. “And be back here quickly,” he went on, “for I would have news of her.” He stood, and everyone else scrambled to their feet and bowed.

Æthelred had not spoken a word.

And I was going to Beamfleot.

One hundred of us rode. Only three of us would go to Sigefrid’s camp, but three men could not ride through the countryside between Lundene and Beamfleot unprotected. This was frontier land, the wild flat land of East Anglia’s border, and we rode in mail, with shields and weapons, letting folk know we were ready to fight. It would have been faster to go by ship, but I had persuaded Alfred that there was an advantage in taking horses. “I’ve seen Beamfleot from the sea,” I had told him the previous evening, “and it’s impregnable. A steep hill, lord, and a fort on its summit. I haven’t seen that fort from inland, lord, and I need to.”

“You need to?” It had been Brother Asser who answered. He was standing close by Alfred’s chair as though he protected the king.

“If it comes to a fight,” I had said, “we might have to attack from the landward side.”

The king had looked at me wearily. “You want there to be a fight?” he had asked.

“The Lady Æthelflaed will die if there’s a fight,” Asser had said.

“I want to return your daughter to you,” I had said to Alfred, ignoring the Welsh monk, “but only a fool, lord, would assume we will not have to fight them before the summer is over. Sigefrid is becoming too powerful. If we let his power grow we will have an enemy that can threaten all Wessex, and we have to break him before he becomes too strong.”

“No fighting now,” Alfred had insisted. “Go there by land if you must, speak to them and bring me news quickly.”

He had insisted on sending a priest, but to my relief it was Father Willibald who was chosen. “I’m an old friend of the Lady Æthelflaed,” Willibald explained as we rode from Lundene. “She’s always been fond of me,” he went on, “and I of her.”

I rode Smoca. Finan and my household warriors were with me, as were fifty of Alfred’s picked men who were commanded by Steapa. We carried no banners, instead Sihtric held a leafy alder branch as a signal that we came seeking a truce.

It was an awful country to the east of Lundene, a flat and desolate place of creeks, ditches, reeds, bog grass, and wildfowl. To our right, where sometimes the Temes was visible as a gray sheet, the marshland looked dark even under the summer sun. Few folk lived in this wet wasteland, though we did pass some low hovels thatched with reed. No people were apparent. The eel fishermen who lived in the hovels would have seen us coming and hurried their families to safe hiding places.

The track, it was hardly a road, followed slightly higher ground at the edge of the marsh and led across small, thorn-hedged fields that were heavy with clay. The few trees were stunted and wind bent. The further east we went, the more houses we saw, and gradually those buildings became larger. At midday we stopped at a hall to water and rest the horses. The hall had a palisade, and a servant came cautiously from the gate to ask our business. “Where are we?” I demanded of him before answering his question.

“Wocca’s Dun, lord,” he answered. He spoke English.

I laughed grimly at that for dun meant hill and there was no hill that I could see, though the hall did stand on a very slight mound. “Is Wocca here?” I asked.

“His grandson owns the land now, lord. He is not here.”

I slid out of Smoca’s saddle and tossed the reins to Sihtric. “Walk him before you let him drink,” I told Sihtric, then turned back to the servant. “So this grandson,” I asked, “to whom does he owe oath-duty?”

“He serves Hakon, lord.”

“And Hakon?” I asked, noting that a Saxon owned the hall, but had sworn an oath to a Dane.

“Is sworn to King Æthelstan, lord.”

“To Guthrum?”

“Yes, lord.”

“Has Guthrum summoned men?”

“No, lord,” the servant said.

“And if Guthrum did,” I asked, “would Hakon and your master obey?”

The servant looked cautious. “They have gone to Beamfleot,” he said, and that was a truly interesting answer. Hakon, the servant told me, held a wide swath of this clay-heavy land, which he had been granted by Guthrum, but Hakon was now torn between his oath-sworn allegiance to Guthrum and his fear of Sigefrid.

“So Hakon will follow the Earl Sigefrid?” I asked.

“I think so, lord. A summons came from Beamfleot, lord, I know that much, and my master went there with Hakon.”

“Did they take their warriors?”

“Only a few, lord.”

“The warriors weren’t summoned?”

“No, lord.”

So Sigefrid was not gathering an army yet, but rather assembling the richer men of East Anglia to tell them what was expected of them. He would want their warriors when the time came, and doubtless he was now enticing them with visions of the riches that would be theirs when Æthelflaed’s ransom was paid. And Guthrum? Guthrum, I supposed, was simply staying silent, while his oath-men were seduced by Sigefrid. He was certainly making no attempt to stop that process and had probably reckoned he was powerless to prevent it in the face of the Norseman’s lavish promises. Better, in that case, to let Sigefrid lead his forces against Wessex than to tempt him to usurp the throne of East Anglia. “And Wocca’s grandson,” I asked even though I knew the answer, “your master, he is a Saxon?”

“Yes, lord. Though his daughter is married to a Dane.”

So it seemed that the Saxons of this dull land would fight for the Danes, perhaps because they had no choice or perhaps because, with marriages, their allegiance was changing.

The servant gave us ale, smoked eel, and hard bread and, when we had eaten, we rode on as the sun slid into the west to shine on a great line of hills that rose abruptly out of the flat country. The sun-facing slopes were steep so that the hills looked like a green rampart. “That’s Beamfleot,” Finan said.

“It’s up there,” I agreed. Beamfleot would lie at the southern end of the hills though, at this distance, it was impossible to discern the fort. I felt my spirits sinking. If we had to attack Sigefrid then the clear course would have been to lead troops from Lundene, but I had no wish to fight my way up those steep slopes. I could see Steapa eyeing the escarpment with the same foreboding. “If it comes to a fight, Steapa!” I called cheerfully, “I’ll send you and your troops up there first!”

I got a sour look as the only reply.

“They’ll have seen us,” I said to Finan.

“They’ve been watching us for an hour, lord,” he said.

“They have?”

“I’ve been watching the glint from their spear-points,” the Irishman said. “They aren’t trying to hide from us.”

It was the beginning of a long summer’s evening as we climbed the hill. The air was warm and the slanting light was beautiful among the leaves that shrouded the slope. A road zig-zagged its way to the heights and, as we slowly climbed, I saw the splinters of light from high above and knew they were reflections from spear-points or helmets. Our enemies had been watching us and were ready for us.

There were just three horsemen waiting. All three were in mail, all wore helmets and the helmets had long horsehair plumes that made their wearers look savage. They had seen Sihtric’s alder branch and, as we neared the summit, the three men spurred toward us. I held up my hand to stop my troops and, accompanied only by Finan, rode to greet the three plumed riders.

“You come at last,” one of them called in heavily accented English.

“We come in peace,” I said in Danish.

The man laughed. I could not see his face because his helmet had cheek-pieces and all I could make out was his bearded mouth and the glint of his shadowed eyes. “You come in peace,” he said, “because you daren’t come any other way. Or do you want us to disembowel your king’s daughter after we’ve all rutted between her thighs?”

“I would speak with the Earl Sigefrid,” I said, ignoring his provocation.

“But does he want to speak with you?” the man asked. He touched a spur to his horse and the stallion turned prettily, not to any purpose, but merely to show off his rider’s skill in horsemanship. “And who are you?” he asked.

“Uhtred of Bebbanburg.”

“I’ve heard the name,” the man allowed.

“Then tell it to the Earl Sigefrid,” I said, “and say I bring him greetings from King Alfred.”

“I’ve heard that name too,” the man said. He paused, playing with our patience. “You may follow the road,” he finally said, pointing to where the track disappeared over the brow of the hill, “and you will come to a great stone. Beside the stone is a hall and that is where you and all your men will wait. Earl Sigefrid will inform you tomorrow if he wishes to speak with you, or whether he wishes you to leave, or whether he desires the amusement of your deaths.” He touched the spur to his horse’s flank again and all three men rode swiftly away, their hoofbeats loud in the still summer air.

And we rode on to find the hall beside the great stone.

The hall, very ancient, was made from oak that had turned almost black over the years. Its thatched roof was steep, and the building wasc surrounded by tall oaks that shielded it from the sun. In front of the hall, standing in a patch of rank grass, was a pillar of uncut stone taller than a man. The stone had a hole through it, and in the hole were pebbles and scraps of bone, tokens from the folk who believed that the boulder had magical properties. Finan made the sign of the cross. “The old people must have put it there,” he said.

“What old people?”

“The ones who lived here when the world was young,” he said, “the ones who came before us. They put such stones all across Ireland.” He eyed the stone warily and made his horse pass as far away from it as possible.

A single lame servant waited outside the hall. He was a Saxon and he said the place was named Thunresleam, and that name was old too. It meant Thor’s Grove and it told me that the hall must have been built in a place where the old Saxons, the Saxons who did not acknowledge the Christians’ nailed god, had worshipped their more ancient god, my god, Thor. I bent from Smoca’s saddle to touch the stone, and I sent a prayer to Thor that Gisela would survive childbirth and that Æthelflaed would be rescued. “There is food for you, lord,” the lame servant said, taking Smoca’s reins.

There was not just food and ale, there was a feast, and there were Saxon women slaves to prepare the feast and pour the ale, mead and birch wine. There was pork, beef, duck, dried cod and dried haddock, eels, crabs, and goose. There was bread, cheese, honey, and butter. Father Willibald feared the food might be poisoned and watched fearfully as I ate a leg of goose. “There,” I said, wiping the grease from my lips onto the back of my hand, “I’m still alive.”

“Praise God,” Willibald said, still watching me anxiously.

“Praise Thor,” I said, “this is his hill.”

Willibald made the sign of the cross, then gingerly speared his knife into a piece of duck. “I am told,” he said nervously, “that Sigefrid hates Christians.”

“He does. Especially priests.”

“Then why does he feed us so well?”

“To show that he despises us,” I said.

“Not to poison us?” Willibald asked, still worried.

“Eat,” I said, “enjoy.” I doubted the Northmen would poison us. They might want us dead, but not before they had humiliated us, yet even so I set a careful guard on the paths leading to the hall. I half feared that Sigefrid’s chosen humiliation would be to burn the hall at dead of night, with us sleeping inside. I had watched a hall-burning once, and it is a terrible thing. Warriors wait outside to drive the panicked occupants back into the inferno of falling, burning thatch in which folk scream before they die. Next morning, after the hall-burning, the victims had been small as little children, their corpses shrunken and blackened, their hands curled, and their burned lips drawn back from their teeth in a terrible and eternal scream of pain.

But no one tried to kill us in that short summer night. I stood guard for a time, listening to the owls, then watching as the sun rose through the thick tangle of trees. Some time later I heard a horn blowing. It made a mournful wail that was repeated three times, then sounded three times again, and I knew Sigefrid must be summoning his men. He would send for us soon, I thought, and I dressed carefully. I chose to wear my best mail, and my fine war helmet and, though the day promised to be warm, my black cloak with its lightning bolt streaking down the long back. I pulled on my boots and strapped on my swords. Steapa also wore mail, though his armor was dirty and tarnished, while his boots were scuffed and his scabbard-covering torn, yet somehow he looked much more fearsome than I did. Father Willibald was dressed in his black gown and carried a small bag, which contained a gospel book and the sacraments. “You will translate for me, won’t you?” he asked earnestly.

“Why didn’t Alfred send a priest who spoke Danish?” I asked.

“I do speak some!” Willibald said, “but not as much as I’d like. No, the king sent me because he thought I might be a comfort to the Lady Æthelflaed.”

“Make sure you are,” I said, then turned because Cerdic had come running down the track that led through the trees from the south.

“They’re coming, lord,” he said.

“How many?”

“Six, lord. Six horsemen.”

The six men rode into the clearing about the hall. They stopped and looked around them. Their helmet masks restricted their vision, forcing them to move their heads extravagantly in order to see our picketed horses. They were counting heads, making sure I had not sent a scouting party to explore the country. Finally, satisfied that no such party existed, their leader deigned to look at me. I thought he was the same man who had greeted us on the hilltop the previous day. “You alone must come,” he said, pointing at me.

“Three of us are coming,” I said.

“You alone,” he insisted.

“Then we leave for Lundene now,” I said, and turned. “Pack up! Saddles! Hurry! We’re going!”

The man made no fight of it. “Three, then,” he said carelessly, “but you do not ride to Earl Sigefrid’s presence. You walk.”

I made no fight of that. I knew it was part of Sigefrid’s purpose to humiliate us, and how better than to make us walk to his camp? Lords rode while common men walked, but Steapa, Father Willibald, and I meekly walked behind the six horsemen as they followed a track through the trees and out onto a wide grassy down that overlooked the sun-shimmering Temes. The down was covered by crude shelters, places built by the new crews who had come to support Sigefrid in anticipation of the treasure he would soon possess and distribute.

I was sweating fiercely by the time we climbed the slope to Sigefrid’s encampment. I could see Caninga now, and the eastern part of the creek, both places I knew intimately from their seaward side, but which I had never seen from this eagle’s height. I could see, too, that there were now many more ships crammed into the drying Hothlege. The Vikings roamed the world in search of a weak spot into which they could pour with ax, sword, and spear, and Æthelflaed’s capture had revealed just such an opportunity and so the Northmen gathered.

Hundreds of men waited inside the gate. They made a passageway toward the fort’s great hall and the three of us had to walk between those twin grim lines of bearded, armed men toward two big farm wagons that had been placed together to make a long platform. In the center of that makeshift stage was a chair in which Sigefrid slouched. He was in his black bear robe despite the heat. His brother Erik stood to one side of the big chair while Haesten, grinning slyly, stood on the other. A row of helmeted guards was behind the trio, while in front of them, hanging from the wagons’ beds, were banners of ravens, eagles, and wolves. On the ground in front of Sigefrid were the standards captured from Æthelred’s fleet. The Lord of Mercia’s own great banner of a prancing horse was there, and beside it were flags showing crosses and saints. The standards were soiled, and I guessed the Danes had taken it in turns to piss on the captured flags. There was no sign of Æthelflaed. I had half expected that we should see her paraded in public, but she must have been under guard in one of the dozen buildings on the hilltop.

“Alfred has sent his puppies to yelp at us!” Sigefrid announced as we reached the fouled banners.

I took off my helmet. “Alfred sends you greetings,” I said. I had half expected to be met by Sigefrid inside his hall, then realized he had wanted to greet me in the open air so that as many of his followers as possible could see my humiliation.

“You whine like a puppy,” Sigefrid said.

“And he wishes you joy of the Lady Æthelflaed’s company,” I went on.

He scowled in puzzlement. His broad face looked fatter, indeed his body looked fatter because the wound Osferth had given him had taken away the use of his legs but not his appetite, and so he sat, a cripple, slumped and gross, staring indignantly at me. “Joy of her, puppy?” he growled. “What are you yapping about?”

“The King of Wessex,” I said loudly, letting the audience hear me, “has other daughters! There is the lovely Æthelgifu, and her sister, Æfthryth, so what need does he have of Æthelflaed? And what use are daughters anyway? He is a king and he has sons, Edward and Æthelweard, and sons are a man’s glory, while daughters are his burden. So he wishes you joy of her, and sent me to bid her farewell.”

“The puppy tries to amuse us,” Sigefrid said scornfully. He did not believe me, of course, but I hoped I had sown a small seed of doubt, just enough to justify the low ransom I was going to offer. I knew, and Sigefrid knew, that the final price would be huge, but maybe, if I repeated it often enough, I could persuade him that Alfred did not care deeply about Æthelflaed. “Perhaps I shall take her for my lover?” Sigefrid suggested.

I noticed Erik, beside his brother, shifting uncomfortably.

“She would be fortunate in that,” I said carelessly.

“You lie, puppy,” Sigefrid said, but there was just the smallest note of uncertainty in his voice. “But the Saxon bitch is pregnant. Perhaps her father will buy her child?”

“If it’s a boy,” I said dubiously, “perhaps.”

“Then you must make an offer,” Sigefrid said.

“Alfred might pay a small sum for a grandchild,” I began.

“Not to me,” Sigefrid interrupted me. “You must persuade Weland of your good faith.”

“Wayland?” I asked, thinking he meant the blacksmith to the gods.

“Weland the Giant,” Sigefrid said and, smiling, nodded past me. “He’s a Dane,” Sigefrid went on, “and no man has ever out-wrestled Weland.”

I turned and facing me was the biggest man I have ever seen. A huge man. A warrior, doubtless, though he wore neither weapons nor mail. He wore leather trews and boots, but above the waist he was naked to reveal muscles like twisted cord under a skin that had been scored and colored with ink so that his wide chest and massive arms writhed with black dragons. His forearms were thick with rings larger than any I had seen, for no normal ring would have fitted Weland. His beard, black as the dragons on his body, was tied with small amulets, while his skull was bald. His face was malevolent, scarred, brutish, though he smiled when I caught his eye.

“You must persuade Weland,” Sigefrid said, “that you do not lie, puppy, or else I will not talk with you.”

I had expected something of this sort. In Alfred’s mind we would have come to Beamfleot, conducted a civilized discussion, and reached a moderate compromise that I would duly report back to him, but I was more used to the Northmen. They needed amusement. If I were to negotiate then I must first show my strength. I must needs prove myself, but as I stared at Weland I knew I would fail. He was a head taller than me, and I was a head taller than most men, but the same instinct that had warned me of an ordeal had also persuaded me to bring Steapa.

Who smiled his death’s-head smile. He had not understood anything I had said to Sigefrid, or Sigefrid to me, but he understood Weland’s stance. “He has to be beaten?” he asked me.

“Let me do it,” I said.

“Not while I live,” Steapa answered. He unbuckled his sword belt and gave the weapons to Father Willibald, then hauled the heavy mail coat over his head. The watching men, anticipating the fight, gave a raucous cheer.

“You had best hope your man wins, puppy,” Sigefrid said behind me.

“He will,” I said, with a confidence I did not feel.

“In the spring, puppy,” Sigefrid growled, “you stopped me from crucifying a priest. I am still curious, so if your man loses I shall crucify that piece of priestly piss beside you.”

“What’s he saying?” Willibald had seen the malevolent glance Sigefrid had shot in his direction and, unsurprisingly, sounded nervous.

“He says you’re not to use your Christian magic to influence the fight,” I lied.

“I shall pray anyway,” Father Willibald said bravely.

Weland was stretching his huge arms and flexing his thick fingers. He stamped his feet, then settled into a wrestler’s stance, though I doubted this fight would keep to the grappling rules of wrestling. I had been watching him carefully. “He’s favoring his right leg,” I said quietly to Steapa, “which could mean his left leg was wounded once.”

I might have saved my breath because Steapa was not listening to me. His eyes were narrow and furious, while his face, always stark, was now a taut mask of concentrated anger. He looked like a madman. I remembered the one time I had fought him. It had been on a day just before Yule, the same day that Guthrum’s Danes had descended unexpectedly on Cippanhamm, and Steapa had been calm before that fight. He had seemed to me, on that far-off winter’s day, like a workman going about his trade, confident in his tools and skill, but that was not how he looked now. Now he was in a private fury, and whether it was because he fought a hated pagan, or whether because, in Cippanhamm, he had underestimated me, I did not know. Nor did I care. “Remember,” I tried again, “Wayland the Smith was lame.”

“Start!” Sigefrid called behind me.

“God and Jesus,” Steapa bellowed, “hell and Christ!” He was not reacting to Sigefrid’s command, indeed I doubt he even heard it. Instead he was summoning his last tension, like a bowman drawing the cord of a hunting bow an extra inch to give the arrow deadly force, then Steapa howled like an animal and charged.

Weland charged too and they met like stags in the rutting season.

The Danes and Norsemen had crowded around, making a circle that was limited by the spears of Sigefrid’s bodyguard, and the watching warriors gave a gasp as those two men-animals crashed together. Steapa had lowered his head, hoping to drive his skull into Weland’s face, but Weland had moved at the last instant and instead their bodies slammed together and there was a flurry as they sought holds on each other. Steapa had a handful of Weland’s trews, Weland was pulling on Steapa’s hair, and both were using their free hands to flail at each other with clenched fists. Steapa tried to bite Weland, Weland butted him, then Steapa reached down in an attempt to crush Weland’s groin, and there was another desperate flurry as Weland brought a massive knee hard up between Steapa’s thighs.

“Dear Jesus,” Willibald murmured beside me.

Weland broke away from Steapa’s grip and punched hard at Steapa’s face and the sound of the fist landing was like the splintering wet noise of a butcher’s ax striking meat. There was blood pouring from Steapa’s nose now, but he seemed oblivious to it. He traded blows, driving his fists at Weland’s ribs and head, then straightened his fingers and jabbed hard at the Dane’s eyes. Weland managed to avoid the gouging thrust and landed a knuckle-crunching blow on Steapa’s throat so that the Saxon staggered back, suddenly unable to breathe.

“Oh, my God, my God,” Willibald whispered, making the sign of the cross.

Weland followed fast, punching, then using his heavy arm rings to clout Steapa’s skull so that the metal ornaments raked across the Saxon’s scalp. More blood showed. Steapa was reeling, staggering, gasping, choking, and suddenly he dropped to his knees and the watching crowd gave a great jeer at his weakness. Weland drew back a mighty fist, but, before the blow was even launched, Steapa threw himself forward and seized the Dane’s left ankle. He pulled and twisted, and Weland went down like a felled oak. He crashed onto the turf and Steapa, snarling and bleeding, threw himself on top of his enemy and started punching again.

“They’ll kill each other,” Father Willibald said in a frightened voice.

“Sigefrid won’t allow his champion to die,” I said, though having said it I wondered if that was true. I turned to look at Sigefrid and found that he was watching me. He gave me a sly smile, then looked back to the fighters. This was his game, I thought. The outcome of the battle would make no difference to the discussions. Nothing, except perhaps Father Willibald’s life, depended on the savage display. It was just a game.

Weland managed to turn Steapa so they lay side by side on the grass. They exchanged ineffective blows and then, as if by mutual consent, rolled away from each other and stood again. There was a pause as both men drew breath, then they crashed together a second time. Steapa’s face was a pulp of blood, Weland’s bottom lip and left ear were bleeding, one eye was almost closed and his ribs had taken a pounding. For a moment the two men grappled, seeking holds, feet shifting, grunting, then Weland managed to grasp Steapa’s trews and threw him so that the big Saxon turned on the Dane’s left hip and thumped down to the turf. Weland raised his foot to stamp Steapa’s groin, and Steapa seized the foot and twisted.

Weland yelped. It was an odd, small sound from such a big man, and the damage being done to him seemed trivial after the hammering he had already taken, but Steapa had at last remembered that Wayland the Smith had been lamed by Nidung, and his twisting of the Dane’s foot was aggravating an ancient injury. Weland tried to pull away, but lost his balance and fell again, and Steapa, breathing thick and spitting blood, crawled toward him and began hitting again. He was hitting blindly, his hammer fists thumping on arms, chest, and head. Weland responded by trying to gouge out Steapa’s eyes, but the Saxon snapped at the groping hand with his teeth and I distinctly heard the crunch as he bit off Weland’s small finger. Weland twitched away, Steapa spat the finger out and dropped his huge hands onto the Dane’s neck. He started to squeeze and Weland, choking for breath, began to jerk and flap like a banked trout.

“Enough!” Erik called.

No one moved. Weland’s eyes were widening while Steapa, blood blinded and teeth bared, had his hands around the Dane’s neck. Steapa was making mewing noises, then grunting as he tried to drive his fingers into the Dane’s gullet.

“Enough!” Sigefrid roared.

Steapa’s blood dripped onto Weland’s face as the Saxon throttled the Dane. I could hear Steapa growling and knew he would never stop until the huge man was dead and so I pushed past one of the horizontal spears that held the spectators back. “Stop!” I shouted at Steapa, and when he ignored me I drew Wasp-Sting and slapped the flat of her short blade hard across his bloodied skull. “Stop!” I shouted again.

He snarled at me and I thought, for an instant, he was going to attack me, but then sense came to his half-closed eyes and he let go of Weland’s neck and stared up at me. “I won,” he said angrily. “Tell me I won!”

“Oh, you won,” I said.

Steapa got to his feet. He stood unsteadily, then he braced himself on spread legs and punched both arms into the summer air. “I won!” he shouted.

Weland was still gasping for breath. He tried to stand, but fell back again.

I turned to Sigefrid. “The Saxon won,” I said, “and the priest lives.”

“The priest lives,” it was Erik who answered. Haesten was grinning, Sigefrid looked amused, and Weland was making a grating noise as he tried to breathe.

“Then make your offer,” Sigefrid said to me, “for Alfred’s bitch.”

And the haggling could begin.

TEN

Sigefrid was carried from the wagon platform by four men who struggled to lift his chair and lower it safely to the ground. He shot me a resentful scowl, as if I were to blame for his crippled condition, which, I suppose, I was. The four men carried the chair to his hall and Haesten, who had neither greeted me nor even acknowledged my presence other than by smiling slyly, gestured that we should follow.

“Steapa needs help,” I said.

“A woman will mop his blood,” Haesten said carelessly, then laughed suddenly. “So you discovered Bjorn was an illusion?”

“A good one,” I acknowledged grudgingly.

“He’s dead now,” Haesten said, with as much feeling as if he spoke of a hound that had died. “He caught a fever about two weeks after you saw him. And now he can’t come from his grave anymore, the bastard!” Haesten wore a gold chain now, a rope of thick links that hung heavy on his broad chest. I remembered him as a young man, he had been scarce more than a boy when I had rescued him, but now I saw the adult in Haesten and I did not like what I saw. His eyes were friendly enough, but they had a guarded quality as if, behind them, was a soul ready to strike like a snake. He punched my arm familiarly. “You know this royal Saxon bitch is going to cost you a lot of silver?”

“If Alfred decides he wants her back,” I said airily, “then I suppose he might pay something.”

Haesten laughed at that. “And if he doesn’t want her back? We’ll take her around Britain, around Frankia and back to our homeland, and we’ll strip her naked and strap her to a frame with her legs open, and let everyone come and see the King of Wessex’s daughter. You want that for her, Lord Uhtred?”

“You want me for an enemy, Earl Haesten?” I asked.

“I think we’re enemies already,” Haesten said, for once allowing the truth to show, but he immediately smiled as if to prove he was not serious. “Folk will pay good silver to see the daughter of the King of Wessex, don’t you think? And men will pay gold to enjoy her.” He laughed. “I think your Alfred will want to prevent that humiliation.”

He was right, of course, though I dared not acknowledge it. “Has she been harmed?” I asked.

“Erik won’t let us near her!” Haesten said, evidently amused. “No, she’s unscratched. If you’re selling a sow you don’t beat her with a holly stick, do you?”

“True,” I said. Beating a pig with a stick made from a branch of holly left bruises so deep that the beast’s compacted flesh could never be properly salt-cured. Haesten’s entourage waited nearby and among them I recognized Eilaf the Red, the man whose hall had been used to show me Bjorn, and he gave me a small bow. I ignored the courtesy.

“We’d best go in,” Haesten said, gesturing toward Sigefrid’s hall, “and see how much gold we can squeeze out of Wessex.”

“I must see Steapa first,” I said, though by the time I found Steapa he was surrounded by Saxon women slaves, who were using a lanolin salve on his cuts and bruises. He did not need me and so I followed Haesten into the hall.

A ring of stools and benches had been placed around the hall’s central hearth. Willibald and I were given two of the lowest stools, while Sigefrid glared at us from his chair on the far side of the empty hearth. Haesten and Erik took their places on either side of the cripple, then other men, all of them with lavish arm rings, filled the circle. These, I knew, were the more important Northmen, the ones who had brought two or more ships, and the men who, if Sigefrid succeeded in conquering Wessex, would be rewarded with rich grants of land. Their followers crowded at the hall’s edges where women distributed horns of ale. “Make your offer,” Sigefrid commanded me abruptly.

“She is a daughter, not a son,” I said, “so Alfred is not minded to pay a great sum. Three hundred pounds of silver would seem adequate.”

Sigefrid stared at me for a long while, then stared around the hall where the men watched and listened. “Did I hear a Saxon fart?” he demanded, and was rewarded with laughter. He sniffed ostentatiously, then wrinkled his nose, while the spectators erupted into a chorus of farting noises. Then Sigefrid slammed a huge fist onto the arm of his chair and the hall went immediately silent. “You insult me,” he said, and I saw the anger in his eyes. “If Alfred is minded to offer so little, then I am minded to bring the girl here now and make you watch while we tup her. Why shouldn’t I!” He struggled in the chair as if he wanted to get to his feet, then slumped back. “Is that what you want, you Saxon fart? You want to see her raped?”

The anger, I thought, had been feigned. Just as I had to try and diminish Æthelflaed’s value, so Sigefrid had to exaggerate the threat to her, but I had noticed a flicker of disgust on Erik’s face when Sigefrid suggested rape, and that disgust had been aimed at his brother, not at me. I kept my voice calm. “The king,” I said, “gave me some discretion to increase his offer.”

“Oh, what a surprise!” Sigefrid said sarcastically, “so let me discover the limits of your discretion. We wish to be given ten thousand pounds of silver and five thousand pounds of gold.” He paused, wanting a response from me, but I kept silent. “And the money,” Sigefrid finally went on, “is to be brought here by Alfred himself. He is to pay it in person.”

That was a long day, a very long day, lubricated by ale, mead, and birch wine, and the negotiations were punctuated by threats, anger, and insults. I drank little, just some ale, but Sigefrid and his captains drank heavily and that, perhaps, is why they yielded more than I expected. The truth is they wanted money; they wanted a boatload of silver and gold so they could hire more men and more weapons and so begin their conquest of Wessex. I had made a rough estimate of the numbers in that high fort and reckoned Sigefrid could assemble an army of about three thousand men, and that was nowhere near sufficient to invade Wessex. He needed five or six thousand men, and even that many might not be sufficient, but if he could raise eight thousand warriors then he would win. With such an army he could conquer Wessex and become the crippled king of her fertile fields, and to get those extra warriors he needed silver, and if he did not receive the ransom then even the men he now possessed would quickly melt away in search of other lords who could give them bright gold and shining silver.

By midafternoon they had settled for three thousand pounds of silver and five hundred pounds of gold. They still insisted Alfred deliver the money in person, but I resolutely refused that demand, even going so far as to stand and pluck Father Willibald’s arm, telling him we were leaving because we could reach no agreement. Many of the spectators were bored, and more than a few were drunk, and they growled with anger when they saw me stand so that, for a moment, I thought we would be attacked, but then Haesten intervened.

“What about the bitch’s husband?” he asked.

“What about him?” I asked, turning back as the hall slowly quietened.

“Doesn’t her husband call himself the Lord of Mercia?” Haesten inquired, mocking the title with laughter. “So let the Lord of Mercia bring the money.”

“And let him beg me for his wife,” Sigefrid added, “on his knees.”

“Agreed,” I said, surprising them by the ease of my surrender to their suggestion.

Sigefrid frowned, suspecting I had given in much too easily. “Agreed?” he asked, not sure he had heard me correctly.

“Agreed,” I said, sitting again. “The Lord of Mercia will deliver the ransom and he will go on his knees to you.” Sigefrid was still suspicious. “The Lord of Mercia is my cousin,” I explained, “and I hate the little bastard,” and at that even Sigefrid laughed.

“The money is to be here before the full moon,” he said, then pointed a blunt finger at me, “and you come the day before to tell me the silver and gold is on its way. You will fly a green branch at your masthead as a signal you come in peace.”

He wanted the full day’s warning of the ransom’s arrival so he could assemble as many men as possible to witness his triumph, and so I agreed to come the day before the treasure ship sailed, but explained that he could not expect that to happen soon because such a vast sum would take time to collect. Sigefrid growled at that, but I hurried on, assuring him that Alfred was a man who kept his word and that, by the next full moon, as large a down payment as could be assembled would be brought to Beamfleot. Æthelflaed was to be released then, I insisted, and the rest of the silver and gold would arrive before the following full moon. They haggled over those demands, but by now the bored men in the hall were getting restless and angry, so Sigefrid yielded the point that the ransom could be paid in two parts, and I yielded that Æthelflaed would not be freed until the second part had been delivered. “And I wish to see the Lady Æthelflaed now,” I said, making my last demand.

Sigefrid waved a careless hand. “Why not? Erik will take you.” Erik had hardly spoken all day. Like me he had stayed sober, and had neither joined in the insults nor the laughter. Instead he had sat, serious and withdrawn, his watchful eyes going from his brother to me. “You will eat with us tonight,” Sigefrid said. He smiled suddenly, showing some of the charm I had felt when I had first met him in Lundene. “We shall celebrate our agreement with a feast,” he went on, “and your men at Thunresleam will also be fed. You can talk to the girl now! Go with my brother.”

Erik led Father Willibald and me toward a smaller hall that was guarded by a dozen men in long mail coats, all of them carrying shields and weapons. It was plainly the place where Æthelflaed was being held captive and it lay close to the seaward rampart of the camp. Erik did not speak as we walked, indeed he seemed almost oblivious of my company, keeping his eyes fixed so firmly on the ground at his feet that I had to steer him around some trestles on which men were shaping new oars. The long curling wood-shavings peeled off and smelled oddly sweet in the late afternoon warmth. Erik stopped just beyond the trestles and turned on me with a frown. “Did you mean what you said today?” he demanded angrily.

“I said a lot today,” I answered cautiously.

“About King Alfred not wanting to pay much for the Lady Æthelflaed? Because she’s a girl?”

“Sons are worth more than daughters,” I said truthfully enough.

“Or were you just bargaining?” he asked fiercely.

I hesitated. It struck me as a strange question because Erik was surely clever enough to have seen through that feeble attempt to lower Æthelflaed’s value, but there was real passion in his voice and I sensed he needed to hear the truth. Besides, nothing I said now could change the arrangements I had made with Sigefrid. The two of us had drunk the scot-ale to show that we had reached agreement, we had spat on our hands and touched palms, then sworn on a hammer amulet to keep faith with each other. That agreement was made, and that meant I could now tell the truth to Erik. “Of course I was bargaining,” I said. “Æthelflaed is dear to her father, very dear. He’s suffering because of all this.”

“I thought you had to be bargaining,” Erik said, sounding wistful. He turned and stared across the wide estuary of the Temes. A dragon ship was sliding on the flooding tide toward the creek, her oar-blades rising and falling to catch and reflect the settling sun with every lazy stroke. “How much would the king have paid for his daughter?” he asked.

“Whatever was necessary,” I said.

“Truly?” He sounded eager now. “He set no limit?”

“He told me,” I answered truthfully, “to pay whatever was necessary to take Æthelflaed home.”

“To her husband,” he said flatly.

“To her husband,” I agreed.

“Who should die,” Erik said, and he shuddered uncontrollably, a swift shudder, but something that told me he had a touch of his brother’s anger in his soul.

“When the Lord Æthelred comes with the gold and silver,” I warned Erik, “then you cannot touch him. He will come under a banner of truce.”

“He hits her! Is that true?” The question was abrupt.

“Yes,” I said.

Erik stared at me for a heartbeat and I could see him struggling to control that sudden burst of anger. He nodded and turned. “This way,” he said, leading me toward the smaller hall. The hall’s guards, I noticed, were all older men, and I guessed they were trusted not just to guard Æthelflaed, but not to molest her either. “She has not been harmed,” Erik said, perhaps reading my thoughts.

“So I’ve been assured.”

“She has three of her own maids here,” Erik went on, “and I gave her two Danish girls, both nice girls. And I put these guards on the house.”

“Men you trust,” I said.

“My men,” he said warmly, “and yes, trustworthy.” He held out a hand to check me. “I’ll bring her out here to meet you,” he explained, “because she likes being in the open air.”

I waited while Father Willibald looked nervously back at the Northmen who watched us from outside Sigefrid’s hall. “Why are we meeting her out here?” he asked.

“Because Erik says she likes being in the fresh air,” I explained.

“But will they kill me if I give her the sacrament here?”

“Because they think you’re doing Christian magic?” I asked. “I doubt it, father.” I watched as Erik pulled aside the leather curtain that served as the hall’s door. He had said something to the guards first, and those warriors now moved to each side, leaving an open space between the building’s facade and the fort’s walls. Those ramparts were a thick bank of earth, only some three feet high, but I knew their farther side would fall a much greater depth. The bank was topped by a palisade of stout oak logs that had been sharpened into points. I could not imagine climbing the hill from the creek and then trying to cross that formidable wall. But nor could I envisage attacking from the fort’s landward side, climbing in the open down to the ditch, wall, and palisade that protected this place. It was a good camp, not impregnable, but its capture would be unimaginably expensive in men’s lives.

“She lives,” Father Willibald breathed, and I looked back to the hall to see Æthelflaed ducking under the leather curtain that was being held aside by an unseen hand. She looked smaller and younger than ever and, though her pregnancy had at last begun to show, she still looked lissom. Lissom and vulnerable, I thought, and then she saw me, and a smile came to her face. Father Willibald started toward her, but I held him back by gripping his shoulder. Something in Æthelflaed’s demeanor made me detain him. I had half expected Æthelflaed to run to me in relief, but instead she hesitated by the door and the smile she had offered me was merely dutiful. She was pleased to see me, that was certain, but there was a wariness in her eyes until she turned to watch Erik follow her through the curtain. He gestured that she should greet me, and only then, when she had received his encouragement, did she come toward me.

And now her face was radiant.

And I remembered her face on the day she had been married in her father’s new church in Wintanceaster. She looked the same today as she had then. She looked happy. She glowed. She walked as lightly as a dancer, and she smiled so beautifully, and I recalled how I had thought, in that church, that she had been in love with love, and that, I suddenly realized, was the difference between that day and this.

Because the radiant smile was not for me. She looked behind once more and caught Erik’s eye, and I just stared. I should have known from everything Erik had said. I should have known, for it was as plain as new-shed blood on virgin snow.

Æthelflaed and Erik were in love.

Love is a dangerous thing.

It comes in disguise to change our life. I had thought I loved Mildrith, but that was lust, though for a time I had believed it was love. Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination.

Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss. I loved Gisela, and we were fortunate because our threads had come together and stayed together and were twined about each other, and the three Norns, for a time at least, were kind to us. Love even works when the threads do not lie comfortingly side by side. I had come to see that Alfred loved his Ælswith, though she was like a streak of vinegar in his milk. Perhaps he just got used to her, and perhaps love is friendship more than it is lust, though the gods know the lust is always there. Gisela and I had gained that contentment, as Alfred did with Ælswith, though I think our voyage was happier because our boat danced on sunlit seas and was driven by a brisk warm wind.

And Æthelflaed? I saw it in her face. I saw in her radiance all her sudden love and all the unhappiness that was to come, and all the tears, and all the heartbreak. She was on a voyage, and it was a journey of love, but it was sailing into a storm so bleak and dark that my own heart almost broke for her.

“Lord Uhtred,” she said as she came close.

“My lady,” I said, and bowed to her, and then we said nothing.

Willibald chattered, but I do not think either of us heard him. I looked at her and she smiled at me and the sun shone on that springy high turf beneath the singing skylarks, but all I could hear was thunder wrecking the sky and all I could see were waves shattering in white-whipping fury and a ship swamping and her crew drowning in despair. Æthelflaed was in love.

“Your father sends his affection,” I said, finding my voice.

“Poor Father,” she said. “Is he angry with me?”

“He shows no anger to anybody,” I said, “but he should be furious with your husband.”

“Yes,” she agreed calmly, “he should.”

“And I am here to arrange your release,” I told her, ignoring my certainty that release was the very last thing she now desired, “and you will be pleased to know, my lady, that all is agreed and you will be home soon.”

She showed no pleasure at that news. Father Willibald, blind to her true feelings, beamed at her, and Æthelflaed rewarded him with a wry smile. “I am here to give you the sacraments,” Willibald said.

“I would like that,” Æthelflaed answered gravely, then looked up at me and, for an instant, there was despair on her face. “Will you wait for me?” she asked.

“Wait for you?” I asked, puzzled by the question.

“Out here,” she explained, “and dear Father Willibald can pray with me inside.”

“Of course,” I said.

She smiled her thanks and led Willibald back to the hall while I went to the ramparts and climbed the brief bank so that I could lean on the sun-warmed palisade and stare down into the creek so far below. The dragon ship, her carved head dismounted, was rowing into the channel and I watched as men unchained the moored guard-ship that blocked the Hothlege. The blocking ship was tethered at bow and stern by heavy chains connected to massive posts sunk into the muddy banks and the crew slipped the ship’s stern chain and then paid it out with a long rope. The chain sank to the creek bed as the ship swung on her bow chain to open like a gate on the incoming tide to clear the passage. The newly-arrived boat was rowed past, then the blocking ship’s crew hauled on the rope to retrieve the chain and so dragged the ship back to bar the creek again. There were at least forty men on that blocking ship, and they were not just there to haul on lines and chains. The flanks of the ship had been built up with extra strakes, all of heavy timber, so that her sheerline was well above the height of any vessel that might attack her. To assault that blocking ship would be like tackling the palisade of a fortress. The dragon ship glided up the Hothlege, passing the boats hauled high on the muddy creek bank where men were caulking the planks with hair and tar. Smoke from the fires under the tar pots drifted up the slope where gulls circled, their cries raucous in the afternoon’s warmth.

“Sixty-four ships,” Erik said. He had climbed up beside me.

“I know,” I said, “I counted them.”

“And by next week,” Erik said, “we will have a hundred crews here.”

“And you’ll run out of food with so many mouths to feed.”

“There’s plenty of food here,” Erik said dismissively. “We have fish traps and eel traps, we net wildfowl and eat well. And the prospect of silver and gold buys a lot of wheat, barley, oats, meat, fish, and ale.”

“It will buy men too,” I said.

“It will,” he agreed.

“And thus,” I said, “Alfred of Wessex pays for his own destruction.”

“So it would seem,” Erik said quietly. He stared southward to where great clouds piled over Cent, their tops silver white and their bases dark above the distant green land.

I turned to look at the encampment inside its ring of ramparts and saw Steapa, walking with a slight limp and with his head bandaged, appear from a hut. He looked slightly drunk. He saw me, waved, and sat in the shade of Sigefrid’s hall where he appeared to fall asleep. “Do you think,” I said, my back still turned on Erik, “that Alfred has not thought of what you’ll buy with the ransom money?”

“But what can he do about it?”

“That’s not for me to tell you,” I said, trying to imply that there was an answer. In truth, if seven or eight thousand Northmen appeared in Wessex then we would have no choice but to fight, and the battle, I thought, would be horrendous. It would be a bloodletting even greater than Ethandun, and at its end there would most likely be a new king in Wessex and a new name for the kingdom. Norseland, perhaps.

“Tell me about Guthred,” Erik asked abruptly.

“Guthred!” I turned back to him, surprised by the question. Guthred was Gisela’s brother and King of Northumbria, and what he had to do with Alfred, Æthelflaed, or Erik I could not imagine.

“He’s a Christian, isn’t he?” Erik asked.

“So he says.”

“Is he?”

“How would I know?” I asked. “He claims to be a Christian, but I doubt he’s given up his worship of the true gods.”

“You like him?” Erik asked anxiously.

“Everyone likes Guthred,” I said, and that was true, yet it constantly astonished me that a man so affable and indecisive had held on to his throne for so long. Mainly, I knew, that was because my brother-in-law had the support of Ragnar, my soul brother, and no man would want to fight Ragnar’s wild forces.

“I was thinking,” Erik said, and then fell silent, and in his silence I suddenly understood what he was dreaming.

“You were thinking,” I told him the brutal truth, “that you and Æthelflaed can take a ship, maybe your brother’s ship, and go to Northumbria and live under Guthred’s protection?”

Erik stared at me as though I were a magician. “She told you?” he asked.

“Your faces told me,” I said.

“Guthred would protect us,” Erik said.

“How?” I asked. “You think he’ll summon his army if your brother comes after you?”

“My brother?” Erik asked, as if Sigefrid would forgive him anything.

“Your brother,” I said harshly, “who is expecting a payment of three thousand pounds of silver and five hundred pounds of gold, and if you take Æthelflaed away, then he loses that money. You think he won’t want her back?”

“Your friend, Ragnar,” Erik suggested hesitantly.

“You want Ragnar to fight for you?” I asked. “Why should he?”

“Because you ask him to,” Erik said firmly. “Æthelflaed says you love each other like brothers.”

“We do.”

“Then ask him,” he demanded.

I sighed and stared at those distant clouds and thought how love wrenches our lives and drives us to such sweet insanity. “And what will you do,” I asked, “against the murderers who come in the night? Against the vengeful men who will burn your hall?”

“Guard against them,” he said stubbornly.

I watched the clouds pile higher and thought that Thor would be sending his thunderbolts down to the fields of Cent before the summer evening was over. “Æthelflaed is married,” I said gently.

“To a vicious bastard,” Erik said angrily.

“And her father,” I went on, “regards marriage as sacred.”

“Alfred won’t fetch her back from Northumbria,” Erik said confidently, “no West Saxon army could reach that far.”

“He will send priests to gnaw her conscience, though,” I said, “and how do you know he won’t send men to fetch her? It doesn’t have to be an army. One crew of determined men might be enough.”

“All I ask,” Erik said, “is a chance! A hall in some valley, fields to till, beasts to raise, a place to be at peace!”

I said nothing for a while. Erik, I thought, was building a ship in his dreams, a beautiful ship, a swift-hulled ship of elegance, but it was all a dream! I closed my eyes, trying to frame my words. “Æthelflaed,” I finally said, “is a prize. She has value. She is a king’s daughter and her marriage portion was land. She’s rich, she’s beautiful, she’s valuable. Any man who wants to be rich will know where she is. Any scavenger wanting a fast ransom will know where to find her. You will never have peace.” I turned and looked at him. “Every night when you bar your door you will fear the enemies in the dark and every day you will look for enemies. There will be no peace for you, none.”

“Dunholm,” he said flatly.

I half smiled. “I know the place,” I said.

“Then you know that it is a fortress that cannot be captured,” Erik said stubbornly.

“I captured it,” I said.

“And no one else will do what you did,” Erik said, “not till the world falls. We can live in Dunholm.”

“Ragnar holds Dunholm.”

“Then I will swear oaths to him,” Erik said fervently, “I will become his man, I will swear my life to him.”

I thought about that for a moment, testing Erik’s wild dream against the harsh realities of this life. Dunholm, cradled in its loop of the river and poised on its high crag, was indeed almost unassailable. A man might think of dying in his bed if he held Dunholm, because even a handful of troops was sufficient to defend the steep rocky path that was its only approach. And Ragnar, I knew, would be amused by Erik and Æthelflaed, and so I felt myself being seduced by Erik’s passion. Maybe his dream was not as crazy as I thought? “But how,” I asked, “do you take Æthelflaed from here without your brother knowing?”

“With your help,” he said.

And with that answer I could hear the three Norns laughing. A horn blew in the camp, a summons, I supposed, to the feast that Sigefrid had promised. “I am sworn to Alfred,” I said flatly.

“I don’t ask you to break that oath,” Erik said.

“Yes, you do!” I said sharply. “Alfred gave me a mission. I have fulfilled half of it. The other half is to retrieve his daughter!”

Erik’s big fists curled and uncurled on the palisade’s top. “Three thousand pounds of silver,” he said, “and five hundred pounds of gold. Think how many men that will buy.”

“I have thought of it.”

“A crew of seasoned warriors can be purchased for a pound of gold,” Erik said.

“True.”

“And we have enough men now to challenge Wessex.”

“You can challenge Wessex, but not defeat it.”

“But we will, when we have the gold and the men.”

“True,” I allowed again.

“And the gold will bring more men,” Erik went on relentlessly, “and more ships, and either this autumn or next spring we will lead a horde into Wessex. We will make the army you defeated at Ethandun look small. We shall blacken the land. We shall bring spears and axes and swords to Wessex. We will burn your towns, enslave your children, use your women, take your land, and kill your men. Is that what serving Alfred means to you?”

“That is what your brother plans?”

“And to do it,” Erik said, ignoring my question for he knew I already knew its answer, “he must sell Æthelflaed back to her father.”

“Yes,” I acknowledged. If no ransom was paid then the men already encamped in and around Beamfleot would vanish like dew on a hot morning. No more ships would come and Wessex would not be threatened.

“Your oath, as I understand it,” Erik said respectfully, “is to serve Alfred of Wessex. Do you serve him, Lord Uhtred, by allowing my brother to become rich enough to destroy him?”

So love, I thought, had turned Erik against his brother. Love would make him slash a blade through every oath he had ever sworn. Love has power over power itself. The horn blew again, more urgently. Men were hurrying toward the great hall. “Your brother,” I said, “knows you love Æthelflaed?”

“He believes I love her for now, but will lose her for silver. He thinks I use her for my pleasure and he is amused by that.”

“And do you use her?” I asked harshly, looking into his honest eyes.

“Is that your business?” he asked defiantly.

“No,” I said, “but you do want my help.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “I would not call it that,” he said, sounding defensive, “but we love each other.”

So Æthelflaed had drunk the bitter water before the sin and that, I thought, was very clever of her. I smiled for her, then went to Sigefrid’s feast.

Æthelflaed was seated in the place of honor to Sigefrid’s right, and I was next to her. Erik was on the farther side of Sigefrid, with Haesten beside him. Æthelflaed, I noticed, never looked at Erik. No one watching, and plenty of men in the hall were curious about the King of Wessex’s daughter, could surely have guessed that she had become his lover.

The Northmen know how to give a feast. The food was plentiful, the ale was generous and the entertainment diverting. There were jugglers and stilt walkers, musicians and acrobats, and lunatics who dissolved the lower tables into gusts of laughter. “We should not laugh at the mad,” Æthelflaed told me. She had hardly eaten, except to nibble at a bowl of seethed cockles.

“They get treated well,” I said, “and it’s surely better to be fed and housed than left to the beasts.” I was watching a naked madman convulsively search his groin. He kept peering around at the laughing tables, unable to understand the noise. A tangle-haired woman, egged on by raucous shouts, took off her clothes one by one, not knowing why she did it.

Æthelflaed stared at the table. “There are monasteries that will look after the insane,” she said.

“Not where the Danes rule,” I said.

She was silent for a while. Two dwarves were dragging the now naked woman to the naked man and the watching men were collapsing with laughter. Æthelflaed looked up briefly, shuddered, and stared down at the table again. “You talked to Erik?” she asked. We could talk English safely for no one could overhear us, and even if they could they would not have understood most of what we said.

“As you meant me to,” I observed, realizing that was why she had insisted on taking Father Willibald into the hall. “Did you make a proper confession?”

“Is that any business of yours?”

“No,” I said, then laughed.

She looked at me and offered a very shy grin. She blushed. “So will you help us?”

“To do what?”

She frowned. “Erik didn’t tell you?”

“He said you wanted my help, but what sort of help?”

“Help us to leave here,” she said.

“And what will your father do to me if I help you?” I asked, and got no answer. “I thought you hated the Danes.”

“Erik is Norse,” she said.

“Danes, Norse, Northmen, Vikings, pagans,” I said, “they’re all your father’s enemies.”

She glanced down at the open space beside the hearth where the two naked lunatics were now wrestling instead of making love as the audience had doubtless anticipated. The man was much bigger, but more stupid, and the woman, to huge cheers, was beating him on the head with a handful of floor rushes. “Why do they let them do that?” Æthelflaed asked.

“Because it amuses them,” I said, “and because they don’t have a pack of black-robed clergy telling them what’s right and what’s wrong, and that, my lady, is why I like them.”

She looked down again. “I didn’t want to like Erik,” she said in a very small voice.

“But you did.”

There were tears in her eyes. “I couldn’t help it,” she said. “I prayed that it wouldn’t happen, but the more I prayed the more I thought about him.”

“And so you love him,” I said.

“Yes.”

“He’s a good man,” I assured her.

“You think so?” she asked eagerly.

“I do, truly.”

“And he’s going to become a Christian,” she went on enthusiastically. “He’s promised me that. He wants to. Really!”

That did not surprise me. Erik had long shown a fascination with Christianity, and I doubted it had taken much persuasion on Æthelflaed’s part. “And what of Æthelred?” I asked her.

“I hate him,” she hissed those words so vehemently that Sigefrid turned to stare at her. He shrugged, unable to comprehend her, then looked back at the naked fight.

“You will lose your family,” I warned her.

“I will make a family,” she said firmly. “Erik and I will make a family.”

“And you’ll live among the Danes whom you told me you hate.”

“You live among the Christians, Lord Uhtred,” she said with a flash of her old mischief.

I smiled at that. “You’re sure about this?” I asked her, “about Erik?”

“Yes,” she said intensely, and that was love speaking, of course.

I sighed. “If I can,” I said, “I will help you.”

She laid a small hand on mine. “Thank you.”

Two dogs had begun to fight now and the guests were cheering the beasts on. Rushlights were lit and candles brought to the top table as the summer evening dimmed outside. More ale came, and birch wine too, and the first drunks were singing raucously. “They’ll start fighting soon,” I told Æthelflaed, and they did. Four men suffered broken bones before the feast was over, while another had an eye gouged out before his angry drunken assailant was pulled away from him. Steapa was seated next to Weland, and the two men, though they spoke different languages, were sharing a silver-rimmed drinking horn and appeared to be making disparaging comments about the brawlers who spilled across the floor in drunken rage. Weland was obviously drunk himself, for he draped a huge arm around Steapa’s shoulders and began to sing.

“You sound like a calf being gelded!” Sigefrid roared at Weland, then demanded that a real singer be fetched, and so a blind skald was given a chair by the hearth and he struck his harp and chanted a song of Sigefrid’s prowess. He told of the Franks whom Sigefrid had killed, of the Saxons cut down by Sigefrid’s sword, Fear-Giver, and of the Frisian women who had been widowed by the bear-cloaked Norseman. The poem mentioned many of Sigefrid’s men by name, recounting their heroism in battle, and as each new name was chanted the man would stand and his friends would cheer him. If the named hero was dead then the listening men beat three times on the tables so that the dead man would hear the solemn ovation in Odin’s hall. But the biggest cheers were for Sigefrid, who hoisted an ale-horn every time his name was mentioned.

I stayed sober. That was hard, for I was tempted to match Sigefrid horn for horn, but I knew I had to return to Lundene next morning and that meant Erik had to finish his talk with me that same night, though in truth the eastern sky was already lightening by the time I left the hall. Æthelflaed, escorted by sober and older guards, had left for her bed hours before. Drunken men were sprawled in noisy sleep beneath the benches as I walked out, while Sigefrid was slumped on the table. He had opened one eye and frowned as I left. “We have agreement?” he asked sleepily.

“We have an agreement,” I confirmed.

“Bring the money, Saxon,” he growled, and fell back to sleep.

Erik was waiting for me outside Æthelflaed’s quarters. I had expected him to be there, and we took our old places on the rampart from where I watched the gray light spread like a stain across the calm waters of the estuary.

“That’s Wave-Tamer,” Erik said, nodding down at the ships drawn up on the muddy beach. He might have been able to discern the beautiful boat he had made, but to me the whole fleet was nothing but black shapes in the gray. “I have scraped her hull clean,” he told me, “caulked her, and made her swift again.”

“Your crew can be trusted?”

“They are my oath-men. They can be trusted.” Erik paused. A small wind lifted his dark hair. “But what they will not do,” he went on in a low voice, “is fight my brother’s men.”

“They might have to.”

“They will defend themselves,” he said, “but not attack. There are kinsmen on both sides.”

I stretched, yawned, and thought of the long ride home to Lundene. “So your problem,” I said, “is the ship that blocks the channel?”

“Which is manned by my brother’s men.”

“Not Haesten’s?”

“I would kill his men,” he said bitterly, “there’s no kinship there.”

Nor affection either, I noted. “So you want me to destroy the ship?” I asked him.

“I want you to open the channel,” he corrected me.

I stared at that dark blocking ship with her reinforced sheerline. “Why don’t you just demand that they get out of your way?” I asked. That seemed to me to be the least complicated and safest way for Erik to escape. The chained ship’s crew was accustomed to moving the heavy hull to allow vessels to enter or leave the creek, so why would they stop Erik?

“No ships are to sail before the ransom arrives,” Erik explained.

“None?”

“None,” he said flatly.

And that made some sense, because what was to stop some enterprising man taking three or four ships upriver to wait in a reed-shrouded creek for Alfred’s treasure fleet to pass, then slide out, oars beating, swords drawn and men howling? Sigefrid had pinned his monstrous ambition on the arrival of the ransom and he would not risk losing it to some Viking even more scoundrelly than himself, and that thought suggested the person who probably embodied Sigefrid’s fear. “Haesten?” I asked Erik.

He nodded. “A sly man.”

“Sly,” I agreed, “and untrustworthy. An oath-breaker.”

“He will share the ransom, of course,” Erik said, ignoring the fact that if he got his wish then no ransom would ever be paid, “but I’m certain he would rather have it all.”

“So no ships sail,” I said, “until you sail. But can you take Æthelflaed to your ship without your brother knowing?”

“Yes,” he said. He drew a knife from its sheath on his belt. “It’s a fortnight till the next full moon,” he went on, then scored a deep mark in the sharpened top of an oak log. “That’s today,” he said, tapping the fresh cut, then carved another deep mark with the blade’s sharp edge. “Tomorrow’s dawn,” he continued, indicating the new cut, then went on slashing the palisade’s top until he had made seven raw scars in the timbers. “Will you come at dawn one week from now?”

I nodded cautiously. “But the moment I attack,” I pointed out, “someone blows a horn and wakes the camp.”

“We’ll be afloat,” he said, “ready to go. No one can reach you from the camp before you’re back out at sea.” He looked worried at my doubts. “I’ll pay you!”

I smiled at those words. Dawn was bleaching the world, coloring the low long wisps of cloud with streaks of pale gold and edges of shining silver. “Æthelflaed’s happiness is my pay,” I said. “And one week from today,” I went on, “I’ll open your channel for you. You can sail away together, make landfall at Gyruum, ride hard to Dunholm and give Ragnar my greetings.”

“You’ll send him a message?” Erik asked anxiously, “to warn him of our coming?”

I shook my head. “Carry the message for me,” I said, and some instinct made me turn to see that Haesten was watching us. He was standing with two companions outside the big hall where he was strapping on his swords, brought by Sigefrid’s steward from the place where we had all surrendered our weapons before the feast. There was nothing strange in what Haesten did, except my senses prickled because he seemed so watchful. I had a horrid suspicion that he knew what Erik and I talked about. He went on looking at me. He was very still, but at last he gave me a low, mocking bow and walked away. Eilaf the Red, I saw, was one of his two companions. “Does Haesten know about you and Æthelflaed?” I asked Erik.

“Of course not. He just thinks I’m responsible for guarding her.”

“He knows you like her?”

“That’s all he knows,” Erik insisted.

Sly, untrustworthy Haesten, who owed me his life. Who had broken his oath. Whose ambitions probably outstretched even Sigefrid’s dreams. I watched him until he went through the doorway of what I assumed was his own hall. “Be careful with Haesten,” I warned Erik, “I think he is easily underestimated.”

“He’s a weasel,” Erik said, dismissing my fears. “What message do I take to Ragnar?” he asked.

“Tell Ragnar,” I said, “that his sister is happy and let Æthelflaed give him news of her.” There was no point in writing anything, even if I had possessed parchment or ink, because Ragnar could not read, but Æthelflaed knew Thyra and her news of Beocca’s wife would convince Ragnar that the runaway lovers told the truth. “And one week from now,” I said, “as the upper edge of the sun touches the world’s rim, be ready.”

Erik thought for a heartbeat, making a fast computation in his head. “It will be low tide,” he said, “slack water. We’ll be ready.”

For madness, I thought, or for love. Madness. Love. Madness.

And how the three sisters at the world’s root must have been laughing.

I spoke little as we rode home. Finan chattered happily, saying how generous Sigefrid had been with his food, ale, and female slaves. I half listened until the Irishman finally sensed my mood and fell into a companionable silence. It was not till we were in sight of the banners on Lundene’s eastern ramparts that I gestured he should ride ahead with me, leaving my other men out of earshot. “Six days from now,” I said, “you must have the Sea-Eagle ready for a voyage. We’ll need ale and food for three days.” I did not expect to be away that long, but it was good to be prepared. “Clean her hull between tides,” I went on, “and make sure every man is sober when we leave. Sober, with weapons sharpened, and battle-ready.”

Finan half smiled, but said nothing. We were riding through hovels that had sprung up on the edges of the marshlands beside the Temes. Many of the folk who lived here were slaves who had escaped their Danish masters in East Anglia, and they made a living by scratching through the refuse of the city, though a few had planted tiny fields of rye, barley, or oats. The meager harvest was being gathered and I listened to the scrape of blades cutting through the handfuls of stalks.

“No one in Lundene is to know we’re sailing,” I told Finan.

“They won’t,” the Irishman said grimly.

“Battle-ready,” I told him again.

“They’ll be that, so they will.”

I rode in silence for a while. People saw my mail and scuttled out of our way. They touched their foreheads or knelt in the mud, then scrambled when I threw pennies to them. It was evening and the sun was already behind the great cloud of smoke rising from Lundene’s cooking fires, and the stench of the city drifted sour and thick in the air. “Did you see that ship blocking the channel at Beamfleot?” I asked Finan.

“I took a squint at her, lord.”

“If we attacked her,” I said, “they’d see us coming. They’d be behind that raised sheerline.”

“Almost a man’s height above us,” Finan agreed, revealing that he had done more than just take a squint.

“So think how we might get that ship out of the channel.”

“Not that we’re thinking of doing that, lord, are we?” he asked slyly.

“Of course not,” I said, “but think on it anyway.”

Then a squeal of ungreased hinges announced the opening of the nearest gate and we rode into the city’s gloom.

Alfred had been waiting for us, and messengers had already informed him of our return so that, even before I could greet Gisela, I was summoned to the high palace. I went with Father Willibald, Steapa, and Finan. The king waited for us in the great hall that was lit with the high candles by which he reckoned the passing time. Wax ran thick down the banded shafts and a servant was trimming the wicks so that the light stayed steady. Alfred had been writing, but he stopped as we entered. Æthelred was also there, as were Brother Asser, Father Beocca, and Bishop Erkenwald.

“Well,” Alfred snapped. It was not anger, but worry that made his voice so sharp.

“She lives,” I said, “she is unharmed, she is treated with the respect due to her rank, she is properly and well guarded, and they will sell her back to us.”

“Thank God,” Alfred said, and made the sign of the cross. “Thank God,” he repeated, and I thought he was going to drop to his knees. Æthelred said nothing, but just stared at me with serpent eyes.

“How much?” Bishop Erkenwald demanded.

“Three thousand pounds of silver and five hundred of gold,” I said, and explained that the first metal had to be delivered by the next full moon and the balance was to be taken downriver one month later. “And the Lady Æthelflaed will not be released until the last coin is paid,” I finished.

Bishop Erkenwald and Brother Asser both winced at the amount of the ransom, though Alfred showed no such reaction. “We will be paying for our own destruction,” Bishop Erkenwald growled.

“My daughter is dear to me,” Alfred said mildly.

“With that money,” the bishop warned, “they will raise thousands of men!”

“And without that money?” Alfred turned to me, “what will happen to her?”

“Humiliation,” I said. In truth Æthelflaed might have found happiness with Erik if the ransom was not paid, but I could hardly say as much. Instead I described the fate that Haesten had suggested so wolfishly. “She’ll be taken to every place where Northmen live,” I said, “and she will be shown naked to mocking crowds.” Alfred winced. “Then,” I went on remorselessly, “she’ll be whored to the highest bidders.”

Æthelred gazed at the floor, the churchmen were silent. “It is the dignity of Wessex that is at stake,” Alfred said quietly.

“So men must die for the dignity of Wessex?” Bishop Erkenwald asked.

“Yes!” Alfred was suddenly angry. “A country is its history, bishop, the sum of all its stories. We are what our fathers made us, their victories gave us what we have, and you would make me leave my descendants a tale of humiliation? You want men to tell how Wessex was made a laughing stock to howling heathens? That is a story, bishop, that would never die, and if that tale is told then whenever men think of Wessex they will think of a princess of Wessex paraded naked to pagans. Whenever they think of England, they will think of that!” And that, I thought, was interesting. We rarely used that name in those days; England. That was a dream, but Alfred, in his anger, had lifted a curtain on his dream and I knew then he wanted his army to continue north, ever north, until there was no more Wessex, no more East Anglia, no more Mercia, and no more Northumbria, only England.

“Lord King,” Erkenwald said with unnatural humility, “I do not know if there will be a Wessex if we pay the pagans to raise an army.”

“Raising an army takes time,” Alfred said firmly, “and no pagan army can attack until after the harvest. And once the harvest is gathered we can raise the fyrd. We will have the men to oppose them.” That was true, but most of our men would be untrained farmers, while Sigefrid would bring howling, hungry Northmen who had been bred to the sword. Alfred turned on his son-in-law. “And I will expect the fyrd of southern Mercia to be at our side.”

“It will be, lord,” Æthelred said enthusiastically. There was no sign on his face of the sickness that had assailed him the last time I had seen him in this hall. His color was back, and his jaunty confidence seemed undiminished.

“Maybe this is God’s doing,” Alfred said, speaking again to Erkenwald. “In His mercy He has offered our enemies a chance to gather in their thousands so that we can defeat them in one great battle.” His voice strengthened with that thought. “The Lord is on my side,” he said firmly, “I will not fear!”

“The word of the Lord,” Brother Asser said piously, making the sign of the cross.

“Amen,” Æthelred said, “and amen. We shall defeat them, lord!”

“But before you win that great victory,” I said to Æthelred, taking a malicious pleasure in what I was about to say, “you have a duty to perform. You are to deliver the ransom in person.”

“By God, I will not!” Æthelred said indignantly, then caught Alfred’s eye and subsided back into his chair.

“And you are to kneel to Sigefrid,” I said, twisting the knife.

Even Alfred looked appalled at that. “Sigefrid insists on that condition?” he asked.

“He does, lord,” I said, “even though I argued with him! I appealed, lord, and I argued and I pleaded, but he would not yield.”

Æthelred was just staring at me with horror on his face.

“Then so be it,” Alfred said. “Sometimes the Lord God asks more than we can bear, but for His glorious sake we must endure it.”

“Amen,” I said fervently, deserving and receiving a skeptical look from the king.

They talked for as long as it took one of Alfred’s banded candles to burn through two hours’ worth of wax, and it was all wasted talk; talk of how the money was to be raised, and how it was to be transported to Lundene and how it was to be delivered to Beamfleot. I made suggestions while Alfred wrote notes on the margin of his parchment, and it was all useless effort because if I was successful then no ransom would be paid and Æthelflaed would not return and Alfred’s throne would be safe.

And I was to make it all possible.

In one week’s time.

ELEVEN

Darkness. The last light of day was just gone, and a new darkness now shrouded us.

There was moonlight, but the moon was hidden so that the cloud edges were silvered, and beneath that vast sky of silver, black, and starlight, the Sea-Eagle slid down the Temes.

Ralla was at the steering-oar. He was a far better seaman than I could ever hope to be, and I trusted him to take us around the river’s sweeping bends in the blackness. Most of the time it was impossible to tell where the water ended and the marshes began, but Ralla seemed unconcerned. He stood with legs spread and one foot tapping the deck in time to the slow beat of the oars. He said little, but now and then made tiny course corrections with the oar’s long loom and never once did a blade touch the shelving mud at the river’s margins. Occasionally the moon would slither out from behind a cloud and the water would suddenly gleam a glittering silver before us. There were red sparks on the banks that came and went, small fires in the marsh hovels.

We were using the last of the ebb to take us downriver. The intermittent sheen of moon on water showed the banks going ever farther apart as the river widened imperceptibly into the sea. I kept glancing northward, waiting to see the glow in the sky that would betray the fires in and around the high camp at Beamfleot.

“How many pagan ships at Beamfleot?” Ralla suddenly asked me.

“Sixty-four a week ago,” I said, “but probably nearer eighty by now. Maybe a hundred or more?”

“And just us, eh?” he asked, amused.

“Just us,” I agreed.

“And there’ll be more ships up the coast,” Ralla said. “I heard they were making a camp at Sceobyrig?”

“They’ve been there a month now,” I said, “and there’s at least fifteen crews there. Probably thirty by now.” Sceobyrig was a desolate spit of mud and muddy land a few miles east of Beamfleot and the fifteen Danish ships had landed there and made a fort of earth walls and wooden posts. I suspected they had chosen Sceobyrig because there was scarcely any room left in Beamfleot’s creek anymore, and because their proximity to Sigefrid’s fleet offered them his protection. Doubtless they paid him silver, and doubtless they hoped to follow him into Wessex to snap up what plunder they could. On the banks of every sea, and in camps upriver, and all across the Northmen’s world, the news was spreading that the kingdom of Wessex was vulnerable and so the warriors were gathering.

“But we’re not going to fight today?” Ralla asked.

“I hope not,” I said, “fighting’s very dangerous.”

Ralla chuckled, but said nothing.

“There shouldn’t be any fighting,” I said, after a pause.

“Because if there is,” Ralla pointed out, “we have no priest aboard.”

“We never do have a priest aboard,” I said defensively.

“But we should, lord,” he remonstrated.

“Why?” I asked belligerently.

“Because you want to die with a sword in your hand,” Ralla said reprovingly, “and we like to die shriven.”

His words chided me. My duty was to these men, and if they died without the benefit of whatever a priest did to the dying, then I had failed them. For a moment I did not know what to say, then an idea sprang unbidden into my head. “Brother Osferth can be our priest today,” I said.

“I will,” Osferth said from a rower’s bench, and I was pleased with that reply because at last he was willing to do something I knew he did not wish to do. I later discovered that, as a man who had only ever been a failed novice monk, he had no power to administer the Christian sacraments, but my men believed he was closer to their god than they were and that, as it turned out, was good enough.

“But I don’t expect to fight,” I said firmly.

A dozen men, those closest to the steering platform, were listening. Finan was with me, of course, and Cerdic and Sihtric and Rypere and Clapa. They were my household troops, my house carls, my companions, my blood brothers, my oath-men, and they had followed me to sea this night and they trusted me, even though they did not know where we sailed or what we did.

“So what are we doing?” Ralla asked.

I paused, knowing the answer would excite them. “We’re rescuing the Lady Æthelflaed,” I finally said.

I heard gasps from the listening men, then the murmur of voices as that news was passed up the benches to the Sea-Eagle’s bows. My men knew this voyage meant trouble, and they had been intrigued by my savage imposition of secrecy, and they must have guessed that we sailed in connection with Æthelflaed’s plight, but now I had confirmed it.

The steering-oar creaked as Ralla made a slight correction. “How?” he asked.

“Any day now,” I said, ignoring his question and speaking loudly enough for every man in the boat to hear me, “the king starts to collect the ransom for his daughter. If you have ten arm rings, he will want four of them! If you have silver hoarded, the king’s men will find it and take their share! But what we do today could stop that!”

Another murmur. There was already a deep unhappiness in Wessex at the thought of the money that would be forced from landowners and merchants. Alfred had pledged his own wealth, but he would need more, much more, and the only reason the collection had not already begun was the arguments that raged among his advisers. Some wanted the church to contribute because, despite the clergy’s insistence that they had no treasure, every man knew that the monasteries were stuffed with wealth. The church’s response had been to threaten excommunication on anyone who dared touch so much as one silver penny that belonged to God or, more particularly, to God’s bishops and abbots. I, even though I secretly hoped that no ransom would be necessary, had recommended raising the whole amount from the church, but that wise advice, of course, had been ignored.

“And if the ransom is paid,” I went on, “then our enemies will be rich enough to hire ten thousand swords! We will have war all across Wessex! Your houses will be burned, your women raped, your children stolen, and your wealth confiscated. But what we do today could stop that!”

I exaggerated a little, but not by much. The ransom could certainly raise five thousand more spears, axes, and swords and that was why the Vikings were gathering in the estuary of the Temes. They smelled weakness, and weakness meant blood, and blood meant wealth. The longships were coming south, their keels plowing the sea as they headed for Beamfleot and then for Wessex.

“But the Northmen are greedy!” I continued. “They know that in Æthelflaed they have a girl of high value, and they are snarling at each other like hungry dogs! Well, one of them is ready to betray the others! At dawn today he will bring Æthelflaed out of the camp! He will give her to us and he will accept a much lower ransom! He would rather keep that smaller ransom all to himself than take a share of the larger! He will become wealthy! But he will not be wealthy enough to buy an army!”

That was the story I had decided to tell. I could not return to Lundene and say I had helped Æthelflaed run away with her lover, so instead I would pretend that Erik had offered to betray his brother and that I had sailed to assist that treachery, and that Erik had then betrayed me by breaking the agreement we had made. Instead of giving me Æthelflaed, I would claim he had just sailed away with her. Alfred would still be furious with me, but he could not accuse me of betraying Wessex. I had even brought a big wooden chest aboard. It was filled with sand, and locked with two great hasps secured with iron pins that had been hammered into circles so that the lid could not be opened. Every man had seen the chest brought onto the Sea-Eagle and there stowed under her steering platform, and they would surely think that big box carried Erik’s price.

“Before dawn,” I went on, “the Lady Æthelflaed will be taken to a ship! As the sun touches the sky’s edge, that ship will bring her out! But in their way is a blocking ship, a ship chained so she lies from shore to shore across the creek’s mouth. Our job is to clear that ship out of the way! That is all! We just have to move that one ship and the Lady Æthelflaed will be free, and we shall take her back to Lundene and we’ll be celebrated as heroes! The king will be grateful!”

They liked that. They liked the thought that they would be rewarded by the king, and I felt a pang because I knew we would only provoke Alfred’s anger, though we would also save him the necessity of raising the ransom.

“I did not tell you this before,” I said, “nor did I tell Alfred, because if I had told you then one of you or one of the king’s men would have got drunk and blabbered the news in a tavern and Sigefrid’s spies would have told Sigefrid and we would reach Beamfleot to find an army waiting to greet us! Instead they’re asleep! And we shall rescue Æthelflaed!”

They cheered that. Only Ralla was silent and, when the clamor ended, he asked a soft question. “And how do we move that ship?” he asked. “She’s bigger than us, her sides have been raised, she carries a fighting crew, and they won’t be asleep.”

“We don’t do it,” I said. “I do it. Clapa? Rypere? You two will help me. The three of us will move the ship.”

And Æthelflaed would be free, and love would win, and the wind would always blow warm, and there would be food all winter, and none of us would ever grow old, and silver would grow on trees, and gold would appear like dew on grass, and the lovers’ bright stars would dazzle forever.

It was all so simple.

As we rowed on eastward.

Before leaving Lundene we had taken down the Sea-Eagle’s mast that now lay in crutches along the ship’s centerline. I had not put her beast-heads on her stem or stern because I wanted her to lie low in the water. I wanted her to be a black shape against blackness, and with no rearing eagle’s head or high mast to show above the horizon. We came in stealth before the dawn. We were the Shadow-Walkers of the sea.

And I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt and felt no tingle there, no singing, no hunger for blood and I took comfort from that. I thought we would open the creek and watch Æthelflaed sail to freedom and that Serpent-Breath would sleep silently in her fleece-lined scabbard.

Then, at last, I saw the higher glow in the sky, the dull red glow that marked where fires burned in Sigefrid’s hilltop encampment. The glow grew brighter as we rowed through the slack water of high tide, and beyond it, on the hills that slowly fell away to the east, were more reflections of fire on clouds. Those red glows marked the sites of the new encampments that stretched from high Beamfleot to low Sceobyrig. “Even without the ransom,” Ralla remarked to me, “they might be tempted to attack.”

“They might,” I agreed, though I doubted Sigefrid had enough men yet to feel sure of success. Wessex, with its newly built burhs, was a hard place to attack, and I guessed Sigefrid would want at least three thousand more men before he rolled the dice of war, and to get those men he needed the ransom. “You know what to do?” I asked Ralla.

“I know,” he said patiently, also knowing that my question had been provoked by nervousness rather than by necessity. “I’ll go seaward of Caninga,” he said, “and collect you at the eastern end.”

“And if the channel isn’t open?” I asked.

I sensed that he grinned in the darkness. “Then I’ll collect you,” he said, “and you make that decision.”

Because if I failed to move the ship that blocked the channel then Æthelflaed would be trapped in the creek and I would have to decide whether to commit Sea-Eagle to a fight against a ship with higher sides and an angry crew. It was not a fight I wanted and I doubted we could win it, which meant I had to open the channel before such a fight became necessary.

“Slow!” Ralla called to the oarsmen. He had turned the ship northward and now we rowed slow and cautious toward Caninga’s black shore. “You’ll get wet,” he told me.

“How long till dawn?”

“Five hours? Six?” he guessed.

“Long enough,” I said, and just then the Sea-Eagle’s bows touched the shelving mud and her long hull shivered.

“Back oars!” Ralla shouted, and the oar banks churned the shallow water to pull the bows away from that treacherous shore. “Go quickly,” he told me, “tide falls fast here. Don’t want to be stranded.”

I led Clapa and Rypere to the bows. I had debated whether to wear mail, hoping that I would need to do no fighting in the approaching summer dawn, but in the end caution had prevailed and I wore a mail coat, two swords but had no helmet. I feared my helmet, with its bright wolf-symbol, would reflect the night’s small light, and so I wore a dark leather helmet liner instead. I also wore the black cloak that Gisela had woven for me, that dark night-hiding cloak with its savage stab of lightning running down the back from nape to hem. Rypere and Clapa also wore dark cloaks that covered their mail and each of them had swords, while Clapa carried a huge, beard-bladed war ax strapped to his back.

“You should let me come,” Finan said to me.

“You’re in charge here,” I told him. “And if we get into trouble you might have to abandon us. That will be your decision.”

“Back oars!” Ralla shouted again, and the Sea-Eagle retreated another few feet from the threat of being grounded on the falling tide.

“We won’t abandon you,” Finan said, and held out a hand. I clasped it, then let him lower me over the ship’s side where I splashed into a soggy mess of mud and water.

“See you at dawn,” I called up to Finan’s dark shape, then led Clapa and Rypere across the wide mudflats. I heard the creak and splashing of Sea-Eagle’s oars as Ralla backed her offshore, but when I turned she had already vanished.

We had landed at the western end of Caninga, the island that bordered Beamfleot’s creek, and we had come ashore a long way from where Sigefrid’s ships were moored or beached. We were far enough away so that the sentries on the fort’s high walls would not have seen our dark dismasted ship come to the dark land, or so I prayed, and now we had a long walk. We crossed the wide, glistening, moon-rippled stretch of mud that widened as the tide receded, and in places we could not walk, but only struggle. We waded and tripped, fought the sucking mud, we cursed and splashed. That foreshore was neither land nor water, but a sticky, clinging morass, and so I hurried on until, at last, there was more land than water and the shrieks of woken birds surrounded us. The night air was filled with the beat of their wings and the shrillness of their protests. That noise, I thought, would surely alert the enemy, but all I could do was strike inland, praying for higher ground, and at last the going became easier, though still the land smelled of salt. At the highest tides, Ralla had told me, Caninga could vanish entirely beneath the waves and I thought of the Danes I had drowned on the western sea-marshes when I had lured them into just such a rising tide. That had been before Ethandun when Wessex had seemed doomed, but Wessex still lived and the Danes had died.

We found a path. Sheep were sleeping among the tussocks and this was a sheep track, though it was a crude and treacherous path for it was constantly interrupted by ditches through which the tendrils of the falling tide gurgled. I wondered if a shepherd was close by. Perhaps these sheep, being on an island, did not need guarding from wolves, which would mean no shepherd and, better, no dogs to wake and bark. But if there were dogs, they slept as we moved eastward. I looked for the Sea-Eagle, but though there was moonshine glittering wide on the estuary, I could not see her.

After a while we rested, first kicking three sleeping sheep awake so we could occupy their patches of warm dry earth. Clapa was soon asleep and snoring, while I gazed out to the Temes trying once more to see the Sea-Eagle, but she was a shadow among shadows. I was thinking of Ragnar, my friend, and how he would react when Erik and Alfred’s daughter turned up at Dunholm. He would be amused, I knew, but how long would that amusement last? Alfred would send envoys to Guthred, King of Northumbria, demanding his daughter’s return, and every Northman with a sword would eye Dunholm’s crag hungrily. Madness, I thought, as the wind rustled across the stiff marsh grasses.

“What’s happening there, lord?” Rypere asked, startling me. He had sounded alarmed and I turned from searching the water to see a huge blaze springing from Beamfleot’s hilltop. Flames were leaping into the dark sky, outlining the ramparts of the fort, and above those tortuous flames bright sparks whirled in the thick pillar of fire-lit smoke that churned above Sigefrid’s hall.

I swore, kicked Clapa awake and stood.

Sigefrid’s hall was ablaze, and that meant the whole encampment was awake, but whether the fire was an accident or deliberate, I could not tell. Perhaps this was the diversion that Erik had planned so he could smuggle Æthelflaed from her smaller hall, but somehow I did not think Erik would risk burning his brother to death. “Whatever caused that fire,” I said grimly, “is bad news.”

The fire had only just taken hold, but the thatch must have been dry because the flames were spreading with extraordinary swiftness. The blaze grew larger, lighting the hilltop and throwing garish shadows across Caninga’s low, marshy land. “They’ll see us, lord,” Clapa said nervously.

“We have to risk that,” I said, and hoped that the men on the ship that blocked the channel would be watching the fire instead of looking for enemies on Caninga.

I planned to reach the creek’s southern bank where the great chain that held the ship against the currents was looped about its huge post. Cut or release that chain and the ship must drift with the outgoing tide and so swing open like a great gate as her bow chain held her fast to the post on the northern bank.

“Let’s go,” I said, and we followed the sheep track, our journey now made easy by the light thrown by the great fire. I kept glancing eastward where the sky was turning pale. Dawn was close, but the sun would not show for a long time. I thought I saw Sea-Eagle once, her low shape stark against the shimmer of gray and black, but I could not be certain of what I saw.

As we drew closer to the moored guard-ship we moved off the sheep track to push our way through reed beds that grew high enough to conceal us. Birds screamed again. We stopped every few paces and I would look over the reeds and see the crew of the blocking ship staring up at the high burning hill. The fire was vast now, an inferno in the sky, scorching the high clouds red. We reached the edge of the reeds, and crouched there, a hundred paces from the huge post that tethered the ship’s stern.

“We might not need your ax,” I told Clapa. We had brought the ax to try to chop through the heavy iron links.

“You’re going to bite the chain, lord?” Rypere asked, amused.

I gave him a friendly cuff around the head. “If you stand on Clapa’s shoulders,” I said, “you should be able to lift that chain clean off the post. It’ll be quicker.”

“We should do it before it gets light,” Clapa said.

“Mustn’t give them time to re-moor the ship,” I said, and wondered if I should have brought more men ashore, and then knew I should.

Because we were not alone on Caninga.

I saw the other men and laid a hand on Clapa’s arm to silence him. And everything that had seemed easy became difficult.

I saw men running down the southern bank of the creek. There were six men armed with swords and axes, six men who ran toward the post that was our goal. And I understood what happened then, or I hoped I did, but it was a moment when all the future hung in the balance. I had an instant to make a decision, and I thought of the three Norns sitting at Yggdrasil’s roots and I knew that if I made the wrong choice, the choice they already knew I would make, then I could ruin all that I wanted of that morning.

Perhaps, I thought, Erik had decided to open the channel himself.

Perhaps he believed I would not come. Or perhaps he had realized that he could open the channel without attacking his brother’s men. Perhaps the six men were Erik’s warriors.

Or perhaps they were not.

“Kill them,” I said, hardly aware that I spoke, hardly aware of the decision I had made.

“Lord?” Clapa asked.

“Now!” I was already moving. “Fast, come on!”

The guard-ship’s crew were hurling spears at the six men, but none struck home as the three of us raced toward the post. Rypere, lithe and quick, ran ahead of me and I hauled him back with my left hand before drawing Serpent-Breath.

And so death came in the wolf-light before dawn. Death on a muddy bank. The six men reached the post before we did and one of them, a tall man, swung a war ax at the looped chain, but a spear flung from the ship thudded into his thigh and he staggered back, cursing, as his five companions turned in astonishment to face us. We had surprised them.

I screamed a huge challenge, an incoherent challenge, and leaped at the five men. It was a mad attack. A sword could have pierced my belly and left me writhing in blood, but the gods were with me. Serpent-Breath struck a shield plumb center and the man went backward, knocked off his feet and I followed him, trusting that Rypere and Clapa would keep his four comrades busy. Clapa was swinging his huge ax, while Rypere danced the sword-dance Finan had taught him. I slashed Serpent-Breath at the fallen man and her blade crashed on his helmet so that he fell back again and then I twisted to lunge Serpent-Breath at the tall man who had been trying to sever the chain.

He turned, his ax swinging, and there was enough light in the sky to let me see the bright red hair under his helmet’s rim and the bright red beard jutting beneath the helmet’s cheek-plates. He was Eilaf the Red, Haesten’s oath-man, and I knew then what must have happened in this treacherous morning.

Haesten had set the fire.

And Haesten must have taken Æthelflaed.

And now he wanted the channel opened so that his ships could escape.

So now we had to keep the channel closed. We had come to open it, and now we would fight on Sigefrid’s side to keep it shut up, and I rammed the sword at Eilaf who somehow sidestepped the blade, and his ax struck me at the waist, but there was no power in his blow and I scarce felt the blade’s impact through my cloak and mail. A spear hissed past me, thrown from the ship, then another thudded hard into the post and stayed there, quivering. I had stumbled past Eilaf, my footing uncertain in the marshy ground.

He was quick and I had no shield. The ax swung and I ducked as I turned back to him, then thrust Serpent-Breath two-handed at his belly, but his shield took the lunge. I heard splashing behind me and I guessed the guard-ship’s crew were coming to our aid. A man screamed where Clapa and Rypere fought, but I had no time to discover what happened there. I thrust again, and a sword is a faster weapon than an ax and Eilaf the Red was still drawing his right arm back and had to move the shield to deflect my blade and I flicked it up and slid it scraping and ringing across his shield’s iron rim and banged her tip into his skull beneath his helmet’s edge.

I felt bone break. The ax was coming, but slowly, and I caught the haft with my left hand and hauled on it as Eilaf staggered, his eyes glazed from the wound I had given him. I kicked his spear-pierced leg, wrenched Serpent-Breath free, then stabbed her down. She punctured his mail to make him jerk like an eel on a spear, then he thumped into the mud and tried to pull his ax free of my grasp. He was snarling at me, his forehead a mass of blood. I swore at him, kicked his hand free of the ax’s handle, slashed Serpent-Breath down on his neck and watched him quiver. Men from the guard-ship’s crew ran past me to kill Eilaf’s men and I snatched Eilaf’s helmet off his bloody head. It dripped with gore, but I rammed it over my leather headgear and hoped the cheek-plates would conceal my face.

The men who had come from the ship might well have seen me at Sigefrid’s feast, and if they recognized me they would turn their swords on me. There were ten or eleven of the crewmen and they had killed Eilaf the Red’s five companions, but not before Clapa had been given his last wound. Poor Clapa, so slow in thought, so gentle in manner, so strong in war, and now he lay, mouth open, blood spilling down his beard, and I saw a tremor in his body and jumped to him and found a fallen sword that I put into his empty right hand and closed his fingers about the hilt. His chest had been mangled by an ax blow so that ribs and lung and mail were tangled in a bloody, bubbling mess.

“Who are you?” a man shouted.

“Ragnar Olafson,” I invented a name.

“Why are you here?”

“Our ship stranded on the coast,” I said, “we were coming to find help.”

Rypere was in tears. He was holding Clapa’s left hand, saying his friend’s name over and over.

We make friends in battle. We tease each other, jeer at each other and insult each other, yet we also love each other. In battle you become closer than brothers, and Clapa and Rypere were friends who had known that closeness, and now Clapa, who was Danish, was dying and Rypere, who was Saxon, was weeping. Yet his tears were not from weakness, but from rage, and as I held Clapa’s dying hand tight on the sword hilt I watched Rypere turn and lift his own sword. “Lord,” he said, and I swiveled to see still more men coming down the bank.