Lords of the North

I watched him go and I thought he was a clever man who had misunderstood Alfred.

Which was, of course, what Alfred wanted me to think.

SEVEN

The Witan was the royal council, formed by the leading men of the kingdom, and it assembled for the dedication of Alfred’s new church and to celebrate Æthelflaed’s betrothal to my cousin. Ragnar and I had no business in their discussions so we drank in the town’s taverns while they talked. Brida had been allowed to join us and Ragnar was the happier for it. She was an East Anglian Saxon and had once been my lover, but that had been years before when we were both children. Now she was a woman and more Danish than the Danes. She and Ragnar had never formally married, but she was his friend, lover, adviser, and sorceress. He was fair and she was dark, he ate like a boar while she picked at her food, he was raucous and she was quietly wise, but together they were happiness. I spent hours telling her about Gisela, and Brida listened patiently. “You really think she’s waited for you?” she asked me.

“I hope so,” I said and touched Thor’s hammer.

“Poor girl,” Brida said, smiling. “So you’re in love?”

“Yes.”

“Again,” she said.

The three of us were in the Two Cranes on the day before Æthelflaed’s formal betrothal and Father Beocca found us there. His hands were filthy with ink. “You’ve been writing again,” I accused him.

“We are making lists of the shire fyrds,” he explained. “Every man between twelve and sixty has to take an oath to serve the king now. I’m compiling the lists, but we’ve run out of ink.”

“No wonder,” I said, “it’s all on you.”

“They’re mixing a new pot,” he said, ignoring me, “and that will take time, so I thought you’d like to see the new church.”

“I’ve been dreaming of little else,” I said.

He insisted on taking us and the church was, indeed, a thing of utter splendor. It was bigger than any hall I had ever seen. It soared to a great height, its roof held up by massive oak beams that had been carved with saints and kings. The carvings had been painted, while the crowns of the kings and the halos and wings of the saints glinted with gold leaf that Beocca said had been applied by craftsmen brought from Frankia. The floor was stone-flagged, all of it, so that no rushes were needed and dogs were confused where to piss. Alfred had made a rule that no dogs were allowed in the church, but they got in anyway, so he had appointed a warden who was given a whip and charged with driving the animals out of the big nave, but the warden had lost a leg to a Danish war ax at Ethandun and he could only move slowly, so the dogs had no trouble avoiding him. The lower part of the church’s walls were built of dressed stone, but the upper parts and the roof were of timber, and just below the roof were high windows that were filled with scraped horn so the rain could not come in. Every scrap of the walls was covered with stretched leather panels painted with pictures of heaven and hell. Heaven was populated with Saxons while hell seemed to be the abode of Danes, though I noticed, with surprise, that a couple of priests seemed to have tumbled down to the devil’s flames. “There are bad priests,” Beocca assured me earnestly. “Not many, of course.”

“And there are good priests,” I said, pleasing Beocca, “talking of which, do you hear anything of Father Pyrlig?” Pyrlig was a Briton who had fought beside me at Ethandun and I was fond of him. He spoke Danish and had been sent to be one of Guthrum’s priests in East Anglia.

“He does the Lord’s work,” Beocca said enthusiastically. “He says the Danes are being baptized in great numbers! I truly believe we are seeing the conversion of the pagans.”

“Not this pagan,” Ragnar said.

Beocca shook his head. “Christ will come to you one day, Lord Ragnar, and you will be astonished by his grace.”

Ragnar said nothing. I could see, though, that he was as impressed as I was by Alfred’s new church. The tomb of Saint Swithun was railed in silver and lay in front of the high altar that was covered with a red cloth as big as a dragon-boat’s sail. On the altar were a dozen fine wax candles in silver holders that flanked a big silver cross inlaid with gold that Ragnar muttered would be worth a month’s voyaging to capture. Either side of the cross were reliquaries; boxes and flasks of silver and gold, all studded with jewels, and some had small crystal windows through which the relics could be glimpsed. Mary Magdalene’s toe ring was there, and what remained of the feather from the dove that Noah had released from the ark. There was Saint Kenelm’s horn spoon, a flask of dust from Saint Hedda’s tomb, and a hoof from the donkey that Jesus rode into Jerusalem. The cloth with which Mary Magdalene had washed Jesus’s feet was encased in a great golden chest and next to it, and quite dwarfed by the gold’s splendor, were Saint Oswald’s teeth, the gift from Guthred. The two teeth were still encased in their silver oyster pot which looked very shabby compared to the other vessels. Beocca showed us all the holy treasures, but was most proud of a scrap of bone displayed behind a shard of milky crystal. “I found this one,” he said, “and it’s most exciting!” He lifted the lid of the box and took out the bone, which looked like something left over from a bad stew. “It’s Saint Cedd’s aestel!” Beocca said with awe in his voice. He made the sign of the cross and peered at the yellowed bone sliver with his one good eye as if the arrow-head shaped relic had just dropped from heaven.

“Saint Cedd’s what?” I asked.

“His aestel.”

“What’s an aestel?” Ragnar asked. His English, after years of being a hostage, was good, but some words still confused him.

“An aestel is a device to help reading,” Beocca said. “You use it to follow the lines. It’s a pointer.”

“What’s wrong with a finger?” Ragnar wanted to know.

“It can smear the ink. An aestel is clean.”

“And that one really belonged to Saint Cedd?” I asked, pretending to be amazed.

“It did, it did,” Beocca said, almost delirious with wonder, “the holy Cedd’s very own aestel. I discovered it! It was in a little church in Dornwaraceaster and the priest there was an ignorant fellow and had no idea what it was. It was in a horn box and Saint Cedd’s name was scratched on the box and the priest couldn’t even read the writing! A priest! Illiterate! So I confiscated it.”

“You mean you stole it?”

“I took it into safekeeping!” he said, offended.

“And when you’re a saint,” I said, “someone will put one of those smelly shoes of yours into a golden box and worship it.”

Beocca blushed. “You tease me, Uhtred, you tease me.” He laughed, but I saw from his blush that I had touched on his secret ambition. He wanted to be declared a saint, and why not? He was a good man, far better than many I have known who are now revered as saints.

Brida and I visited Hild that afternoon and I gave her nunnery thirty shillings, almost all the money I had, but Ragnar was blithely confident that Sverri’s fortune would come from Jutland and that Ragnar would share with me, and in that belief I pressed the money on Hild who was delighted by the silver cross in Serpent-Breath’s hilt. “You must use the sword wisely from now on,” she told me sternly.

“I always use it wisely.”

“You have harnessed the power of God to the blade,” she said, “and it must do nothing evil.”

I doubted I would obey that command, but it was good to see Hild. Alfred had given her a gift of some of the dust from Saint Hedda’s tomb and she told me that mixed with curds it made a miraculous medicine that had prompted at least a dozen cures among the nunnery’s sick. “If you are ever ill,” she said, “you must come here and we shall mix the dust with fresh curds and anoint you.”

I saw Hild again the next day when we were all summoned to the church for its consecration and to witness Æthelflaed’s betrothal. Hild, with all the other nuns of Wintanceaster, was in the side aisle, while Ragnar, Brida, and I, because we arrived late, had to stand at the very back of the church. I was taller than most men, but I could still see very little of the ceremony which seemed to last forever. Two bishops said prayers, priests scattered holy water, and a choir of monks chanted. Then the Archbishop of Contwaraburg preached a long sermon which, bizarrely, said nothing about the new church, nor about the betrothal, but instead berated the clergy of Wessex for wearing short tunics instead of long robes. This bestial practice, the archbishop thundered, had offended the holy father in Rome and must stop forthwith on pain of excommunication. A priest standing near us was wearing a short tunic and tried to crouch so that he looked like a dwarf in a long robe. The monks sang again and then my cousin, red-haired and cocksure, strutted to the altar and little Æthelflaed was led to his side by her father. The archbishop mumbled over them, they were sprinkled with holy water, then the newly betrothed couple were presented to the congregation and we all dutifully cheered.

Æthelflaed was hurried away as the men in the church congratulated Æthelred. He was twenty years old, eleven years older than Æthelflaed, and he was a short, red-haired, bumptious young man who was convinced of his own importance. That importance was that he was his father’s son, and his father was the chief ealdorman in southern Mercia which was the region of that country least infested by Danes, and so one day Æthelred would become the leader of the free Mercian Saxons. Æthelred, in short, could deliver a large part of Mercia to Wessex’s rule, which was why he had been promised Alfred’s daughter in marriage. He made his way down the nave, greeting the lords of Wessex, then saw me and looked surprised. “I heard you were captured in the north,” he said.

“I was.”

“And here you are. And you’re just the man I want.” He smiled, certain that I liked him, in which certainty he could not have been more mistaken, but Æthelred assumed that everyone else in the whole world was envious of him and wanted nothing more than to be his friend. “The king,” he said, “has honored me with the command of his household guard.”

“Alfred has?” I asked, surprised.

“At least until I assume my father’s duties.”

“Your father’s well, I trust?” I asked drily.

“He’s sick,” Æthelred said, sounding pleased, “so who knows how long I shall command Alfred’s guard. But you’d be of great use to me if you would serve in the household troops.”

“I’d rather shovel shit,” I said, then held a hand toward Brida. “Do you remember Brida?” I asked. “You tried to rape her ten years ago.”

He went bright red, said nothing, but just hurried away. Brida laughed as he retreated, then gave a very small bow because Ælswith, Alfred’s wife, was walking past us. Ælswith ignored us, for she had never liked Brida or me, but Eanflæd smiled. She was Ælswith’s closest companion and I kissed my hand toward her. “She was a tavern whore,” I told Brida, “and now she rules the king’s household.”

“Good for her,” Brida said.

“Does Alfred know she was a whore?” Ragnar asked.

“He pretends not to know,” I said.

Alfred came last. He looked sick, but that was nothing unusual. He half inclined his head to me, but said nothing, though Beocca scuttled over to me as we waited for the crowd at the door to thin. “You’re to see the king after midday prayers,” he told me, “and you too, Lord Ragnar. I shall summon you.”

“We’ll be in the Two Cranes,” I told him.

“I don’t know why you like that tavern.”

“Because it’s a brothel too, of course,” I said. “And if you go there, father, make sure you carve a notch in one of the beams to show you humped one of the ladies. I’d recommend Ethel. She’s only got one hand, but it’s a miracle what she can do with it.”

“Oh dear God, Uhtred, dear God. What an ugly cesspit you have for a mind. If I ever marry, and I pray God for that dear happiness, I shall go unstained to my bride.”

“I pray you do too, father,” I said, and I meant it. Poor Beocca. He was so ugly and he dreamed of a wife, but he had never found one and I doubted he ever would. There were plenty of women willing to marry him, squint and all, for he was, after all, a privileged priest high in Alfred’s estimation, but Beocca was waiting for love to strike him like a lightning bolt. He would stare at beautiful women, dream his hopeless dreams, and say his prayers. Perhaps, I thought, his heaven would reward him with a glorious bride, but nothing I had ever heard about the Christian heaven suggested that such joys were available.

Beocca fetched us from the Two Cranes that afternoon. I noted that he glanced at the beams and looked shocked at the number of notches, but he said nothing of them, leading us instead to the palace where we surrendered our swords at the gatehouse. Ragnar was commanded to wait in the courtyard while Beocca took me to Alfred who was in his study, a small room that had been part of the Roman building that was the heart of Wintanceaster’s palace. I had been in the room before, so I was not surprised by the scant furniture, nor by the piles of parchments that spilled from the wide window ledge. The walls were of stone, and whitewashed, so it was a well-lit room, though for some reason Alfred had a score of candles burning in one corner. Each candle had been scored with deep lines about a thumb’s width apart. The candles were certainly not there for illumination because an autumnal sun streamed through the big window, and I did not want to ask what purpose the candles served in case he told me. I merely assumed there was a candle for every saint he had prayed to over the last few days and each of the scored lines was a sin that had to be burned away. Alfred had a very acute conscience for sins, especially mine.

Alfred was dressed in a brown robe so that he looked like a monk. His hands, like Beocca’s, were ink-stained. He appeared pale and sick. I had heard his stomach troubles were bad again and every now and then he flinched as a pain stabbed at his belly. But he greeted me warmly enough. “Lord Uhtred. I trust you are in health?”

“I am, lord,” I said, still kneeling, “and hope the same for you.”

“God afflicts me. There is purpose in that, so I must be glad of it. Stand, please. Is Earl Ragnar with you?”

“He is outside, lord.”

“Good,” he said. I stood in the only space left in the small room. The mysterious candles took up a large area, and Beocca was standing against the wall next to Steapa who took up even more. I was surprised to see Steapa. Alfred favored clever men and Steapa was hardly clever. He had been born a slave, now he was a warrior, and in truth he was not much good for anything beyond consuming ale and slaughtering the king’s enemies, two tasks he did with a brutal efficiency. Now he stood just beyond the king’s high writing desk with an awkward expression as though he were unsure why he had been summoned.

I thought Alfred would ask about my ordeal, for he liked to hear stories of distant places and strange people, but he ignored it utterly, instead asking for my opinion of Guthred and I said I liked Guthred, which seemed to surprise the king. “You like him,” Alfred asked, “despite what he did to you?”

“He had little choice, lord,” I said. “I told him that a king must be ruthless in defense of his realm.”

“Even so,” Alfred watched me with a dubious face.

“If we mere men, lord, wanted gratitude from kings,” I said with my most earnest expression, “then we should be forever disappointed.”

He looked at me sternly then gave a rare burst of laughter. “I’ve missed you, Uhtred,” he said. “You are the only man who is impertinent with me.”

“He did not mean it, lord,” Beocca said anxiously.

“Of course he meant it,” Alfred said. He pushed some parchments aside on the window ledge and sat down. “What do you think of my candles?” he asked me.

“I find, lord,” I said thoughtfully, “that they’re more effective at night.”

“I am trying to develop a clock,” he said.

“A clock?”

“To mark the passing hours.”

“You look at the sun, lord,” I said, “and at night, the stars.”

“Not all of us can see through clouds,” he remarked tartly. “Each mark is supposed to represent one hour. I am endeavoring to find which markings are most accurate. If I can find a candle that burns twenty-four divisions between midday and midday then I shall always know the hour, won’t I?”

“Yes, lord,” I said.

“Our time must be properly spent,” he said, “and to do that we must first know how much time we have.”

“Yes, lord,” I said again, my boredom obvious.

Alfred sighed, then looked through the parchments and found one embossed with a huge seal of sickly-green wax. “This is a message from King Guthred,” he said. “He has asked for my advice and I am minded to offer it. To which end I am sending an embassy to Eoferwic. Father Beocca has agreed to speak for me.”

“You do me a privilege, lord,” Beocca said happily, “a great privilege.”

“And Father Beocca will be carrying precious gifts for King Guthred,” Alfred went on, “and those gifts must be protected, which means an escort of warriors. I thought, perhaps, you would provide that protection, Lord Uhtred? You and Steapa?”

“Yes, lord,” I said, enthusiastically this time, for all I dreamed of was Gisela and she was in Eoferwic.

“But you are to understand,” Alfred said, “that Father Beocca is in charge. He is my ambassador and you will take his orders. Is that understood?”

“Indeed, lord,” I said, though in truth I had no need to accept Alfred’s instructions. I was no longer sworn to him, I was not a West Saxon, but he was asking me to go where I wanted to go and so I did not remind him that he lacked my oath.

He did not need reminding. “You will all three return before Christmas to report on your embassy,” he said, “and if you do not swear to that,” he was looking at me now, “and swear to be my man, then I shall not let you go.”

“You want my oath?” I asked him.

“I insist on it, Lord Uhtred,” he said.

I hesitated. I did not want to be Alfred’s man again, but I sensed there was far more behind this so-called embassy than the provision of advice. If Alfred wanted to advise Guthred why not do it in a letter? Or send a half-dozen priests to weary Guthred’s ears? But Alfred was sending Steapa and myself and, in truth, the two of us were only fit for one thing, fighting. And Beocca, though undoubtedly a good man, was hardly an impressive ambassador. Alfred, I thought, wanted Steapa and me in the north, which meant he wanted violence done, and that was encouraging, but still I hesitated and that annoyed the king.

“Must I remind you,” Alfred asked with some asperity, “that I went to a deal of trouble to free you from your slavery?”

“Why did you do that, lord?” I asked.

Beocca hissed, angry that I had not yielded immediately to the king’s wishes, and Alfred looked affronted, but then he seemed to accept that my question deserved an answer. He motioned Beocca to silence, then fidgeted with the seal on Guthred’s letter, shredding scraps of green wax. “The Abbess Hildegyth convinced me,” he said at last. I waited. Alfred glanced at me and saw I thought there was more to the answer than Hild’s entreaties. He shrugged. “And it seemed to me,” he said awkwardly, “that I owed you more than I repaid you for your services at Æthelingæg.”

It was hardly an apology, but it was an acknowledgment that five hides were no reward for a kingdom. I bowed my head. “Thank you, lord,” I said, “and you shall have my oath.” I did not want to give it to him, but what choice did I have? Thus are our lives decided. For years I had swayed between love of the Danes and loyalty to the Saxons and there, beside the guttering candle-clocks, I gave my services to a king I disliked. “But might I ask, lord,” I went on, “why Guthred needs advice?”

“Because Ivarr Ivarson tires of him,” Alfred said, “and Ivarr would have another, more compliant, man on Northumbria’s throne.”

“Or take the throne for himself?” I suggested.

“Ivarr, I think, does not want a king’s heavy responsibilities,” Alfred said. “He wants power, he wants money, he wants warriors, and he wants another man to do the hard work of enforcing the laws on the Saxons and raising taxes from the Saxons. And he will choose a Saxon to do that.” That made sense. It was how the Danes usually governed their conquered Saxons. “And Ivarr,” Alfred went on, “no longer wants Guthred.”

“Why not, lord?”

“Because King Guthred,” Alfred said, “attempts to impose his law equally on Danes and Saxons alike.”

I remembered Guthred’s hope that he would be a just king. “Is that bad?” I asked.

“It is foolishness,” Alfred said, “when he decrees that every man, whether pagan or Christian, must donate his tithe to the church.”

Offa had mentioned that church tax and it was, indeed, a foolish imposition. The tithe was a tenth of everything a man grew, reared or made, and the pagan Danes would never accept such a law. “I thought you would approve, lord,” I said mischievously.

“I approve of tithing, of course,” Alfred said wearily, “but a tithe should be given with a willing heart.”

“Hilarem datorem diligit Deus,” Beocca put in unhelpfully. “It says so in the gospel book.”

“‘God approves a cheerful giver,’” Alfred provided the translation, “but when a land is half pagan and half Christian you do not encourage unity by offending the more powerful half. Guthred must be a Dane to the Danes and a Christian to the Christians. That is my advice to him.”

“If the Danes rebel,” I asked, “does Guthred have the power to defeat them?”

“He has the Saxon fyrd, what’s left of it, and some Danish Christians, but too few of those, alas. My estimate is that he can raise six hundred spears, but fewer than half of those will be reliable in battle.”

“And Ivarr?” I asked.

“Nearer a thousand. And if Kjartan joins him then he will have far more. And Kjartan is encouraging Ivarr.”

“Kjartan,” I said “doesn’t leave Dunholm.”

“He doesn’t need to leave Dunholm,” Alfred said, “he needs only to send two hundred men to assist Ivarr. And Kjartan, I am told, has a particular hatred of Guthred.”

“That’s because Guthred pissed all over his son,” I said.

“He did what?” The king stared at me.

“Washed his hair with piss,” I said. “I was there.”

“Dear God,” Alfred said, plainly thinking that every man north of the Humber was a barbarian.

“So what Guthred must do now,” I said, “is destroy Ivarr and Kjartan?”

“That is Guthred’s business,” Alfred said distantly.

“He must make peace with them,” Beocca said, frowning at me.

“Peace is always desirable,” Alfred said, though without much enthusiasm.

“If we are to send missionaries to the Northumbrian Danes, lord,” Beocca urged, “then we must have peace.”

“As I said,” Alfred retorted, “peace is desirable.” Again he spoke without fervor and that, I thought, was his real message. He knew there could not be peace.

I remembered what Offa, the dog-dancing man, had told me about marrying Gisela to my uncle. “Guthred could persuade my uncle to support him,” I suggested.

Alfred gave me a speculative look. “Would you approve of that, Lord Uhtred?”

“Ælfric is a usurper,” I said. “He swore to recognize me as heir to Bebbanburg and broke that oath. No, lord, I would not approve.”

Alfred peered at his candles that guttered away, smearing the whitewashed wall with their smoke. “This one,” he said, “burns too fast.” He licked his fingers, pinched out the flame, and put the dead candle in a basket with a dozen other rejects. “It is greatly to be wished,” he said, still examining his candles, “that a Christian king reigns in Northumbria. It is even desirable that it should be Guthred. He is a Dane, and if we are to win the Danes to a knowledge and love of Christ then we need Danish kings who are Christians. What we do not need is Kjartan and Ivarr making war on the Christians. They would destroy the church if they could.”

“Kjartan certainly would,” I said.

“And I doubt your uncle is strong enough to defeat Kjartan and Ivarr,” Alfred said, “even if he were willing to ally himself with Guthred. No,” he paused, thinking, “the only solution is for Guthred to make his peace with the pagans. That is my advice to him.” He spoke the last few words directly to Beocca.

Beocca looked pleased. “Wise advice, lord,” he said, “praise be to God.”

“And speaking of pagans,” Alfred glanced at me, “what will the Earl Ragnar do if I release him?”

“He won’t fight for Ivarr,” I said firmly.

“You can be sure of that?”

“Ragnar hates Kjartan,” I said, “and if Kjartan is allied to Ivarr then Ragnar will hate both men. Yes, lord, I can be sure of that.”

“So if I release Ragnar,” Alfred asked, “and allow him to go north with you, he will not turn against Guthred?”

“He’ll fight Kjartan,” I said, “but what he will think of Guthred I don’t know.”

Alfred considered that answer, then nodded. “If he is opposed to Kjartan,” he said, “that should be sufficient.” He turned and smiled at Beocca. “Your embassy, father, is to preach peace to Guthred. You will advise him to be a Dane among the Danes and a Christian among the Saxons.”

“Yes, of course, lord,” Beocca said, but it was plain he was thoroughly confused. Alfred talked peace, but was sending warriors, for he knew there could not be peace while Ivarr and Kjartan lived. He dared not make such a pronouncement publicly, or else the northern Danes would accuse Wessex of interfering in Northumbrian affairs. They would resent that, and their resentment would add strength to Ivarr’s cause. And Alfred wanted Guthred on Northumbria’s throne because Guthred was a Christian, and a Christian Northumbria was more likely to welcome a Saxon army when it came, if it came. Ivarr and Kjartan would make Northumbria into a pagan stronghold if they could, and Alfred wanted to prevent that. Beocca, therefore, was to preach peace and conciliation, but Steapa, Ragnar, and I would carry swords. We were his dogs of war and Alfred knew full well that Beocca could not control us.

He dreamed, Alfred did, and his dreams encompassed all the isle of Britain.

And I was once again to be his sworn man, and that was not what I had wanted, but he was sending me north, to Gisela, and that I did want and so I knelt to him, placed my hands between his, swore the oath and thus lost my freedom. Then Ragnar was summoned and he also knelt and was granted his freedom.

And next day we all rode north.

Gisela was already married.

I heard that from Wulfhere, Archbishop of Eoferwic, and he should have known because he had performed the ceremony in his big church. It seemed I had arrived five days too late and when I heard the news I felt a despair like that which had caused my tears in Haithabu. Gisela was married.

It was autumn when we reached Northumbria. Peregrine falcons patrolled the sky, stooping on the newly arrived woodcock or on the gulls that flocked in the rain-drowned furrows. It had been a fine autumn so far, but the rains arrived from the west as we traveled north through Mercia. There were ten of us; Ragnar and Brida, Steapa and myself, and Father Beocca who had charge of three servants who led the packhorses carrying our shields, armor, changes of clothing, and the gifts Alfred was sending to Guthred. Ragnar led two men who had shared his exile. All of us were mounted on fine horses that Alfred had given us and we should have made good time, but Beocca slowed us. He hated being on horseback and even though we padded his mare’s saddle with two thick fleeces he was still crippled by soreness. He had spent the journey rehearsing the speech with which he would greet Guthred, practicing and practicing the words until we were all bored by them. We had encountered no trouble in Mercia, for Ragnar’s presence ensured that we were welcome in Danish halls. There was still a Saxon king in northern Mercia, Ceolwulf was his name, but we did not meet him and it was plain that the real power lay with the great Danish lords. We crossed the border into Northumbria under a pelting rainstorm and it was still raining as we rode into Eoferwic.

And there I learned that Gisela was married. Not only married, but gone from Eoferwic with her brother. “I solemnized the marriage,” Wulfhere, the archbishop, told us. He was spooning barley soup into his mouth and long dribbles hung in glutinous loops in his white beard. “The silly girl wept all through the ceremony, and she wouldn’t take the mass, but it makes no difference. She’s still married.”

I was horrified. Five days, that was all. Fate is inexorable. “I thought she’d gone to a nunnery,” I said, as if that made any difference.

“She lived in a nunnery,” Wulfhere said, “but putting a cat into a stable doesn’t make it a horse, does it? She was hiding herself away! It was a waste of a perfectly good womb! She’s been spoiled, that’s her trouble. Allowed to live in a nunnery where she never said a prayer. She needed the strap, that one. A good thrashing, that’s what I’d have given her. Still, she’s not in the nunnery now. Guthred pulled her out and married her off.”

“To whom?” Beocca asked.

“Lord Ælfric, of course.”

“Ælfric came to Eoferwic?” I asked, astonished, for my uncle was as reluctant to leave Bebbanburg as Kjartan was to quit the safety of Dunholm.

“He didn’t come,” Wulfhere said. “He sent a score of men and one of those stood in for Lord Ælfric. It was a proxy wedding. Quite legal.”

“It is,” Beocca said.

“So where is she?” I asked.

“Gone north,” Wulfhere waved his horn spoon. “They’ve all gone. Her brother’s taken her to Bebbanburg. Abbot Eadred’s with them, and he’s taken Saint Cuthbert’s corpse, of course. And that awful man Hrothweard went as well. Can’t stand Hrothweard. He was the idiot who persuaded Guthred to impose the tithe on the Danes. I told Guthred it was foolishness, but Hrothweard claimed to have got his orders directly from Saint Cuthbert, so nothing I could say had the slightest effect. Now the Danes are probably gathering their forces, so it’s going to be war.”

“War?” I asked. “Has Guthred declared war on the Danes?” It sounded unlikely.

“Of course not! But they’ve got to stop him.” Wulfhere used the sleeve of his robe to mop up his beard.

“Stop him from doing what?” Ragnar asked.

“Reaching Bebbanburg, of course, what else? The day Guthred delivers his sister and Saint Cuthbert to Bebbanburg is the day Ælfric gives him two hundred spearmen. But the Danes aren’t going to stand for that! They more or less put up with Guthred, but only because he’s too weak to order them about, but if he gets a couple of hundred prime spearmen from Ælfric, the Danes will squash him like a louse. I should think Ivarr is already gathering troops to stop the nonsense.”

“They’ve taken the blessed Saint Cuthbert with them?” Beocca asked.

The archbishop frowned at Beocca. “You’re an odd ambassador,” he said.

“Odd, lord?”

“Can’t look straight, can you? Alfred must be hard up for men if he sends an ugly thing like you. There used to be a priest in Bebbanburg with a squint. That was years ago, back in old Lord Uhtred’s day.”

“That was me,” Beocca said eagerly.

“Don’t be a fool, of course it wasn’t. The fellow I’m talking about was young and red-haired. Take all the chairs, you brainless idiot!” he turned on a servant, “all six of them. And bring me more bread.” Wulfhere was planning to escape before war broke out between Guthred and the Danes and his courtyard was busy with wagons, oxen, and packhorses because the treasures of his big church were being packed up so they could be taken to someplace that offered safety. “King Guthred took Saint Cuthbert,” the archbishop said, “because that’s Ælfric’s price. He wants the corpse as well as the womb. I just hope he remembers which one to poke.”

My uncle, I realized, was making his bid for power. Guthred was weak, but he did possess the great treasure of Cuthbert’s corpse and if Ælfric could gain possession of the saint then he would become the guardian of all Northumbria’s Christians. He would also make a small fortune from the pennies of pilgrims. “What he’s doing,” I said, “is remaking Bernicia. He’ll call himself king before too long.”

Wulfhere looked at me as though I was not a complete fool. “You’re right,” he said, “and his two hundred spearmen will stay with Guthred for a month, that’s all. Then they’ll go home and the Danes will roast Guthred over a fire. I warned him! I told him a dead saint was worth more than two hundred spearmen, but he’s desperate. And if you want to see him, you’d best go north.” Wulfhere had received us because we were Alfred’s ambassadors, but he had offered us neither food nor shelter and he plainly wanted to see the back of us as soon as decently possible. “Go north,” he reiterated, “and you might find the silly man alive.”

We went back to the tavern where Steapa and Brida waited and I cursed the three spinners who had let me come so close, and then denied me. Gisela had been gone four days, which was more than enough time to reach Bebbanburg, and her brother’s desperate bid for Ælfric’s support had probably stirred the Danes to revolt. Not that I cared about the anger of the Danes. I was only thinking of Gisela.

“We have to go north,” Beocca said, “and find the king.”

“You step inside Bebbanburg,” I told him, “and Ælfric will kill you.” Beocca, when he fled Bebbanburg, had taken all the parchments that proved I was the rightful lord, and Ælfric knew and resented that.

“Ælfric won’t kill a priest,” Beocca said, “not if he cares for his soul. And I’m an ambassador! He can’t kill an ambassador.”

“So long as he’s safe inside Bebbanburg,” Ragnar put in, “he can do whatever he likes.”

“Maybe Guthred didn’t reach Bebbanburg,” Steapa said, and I was so surprised that he had spoken at all that I did not really pay attention. Nor, it seemed, did anyone else, for none of us responded. “If they don’t want the girl married,” Steapa went on, “they’ll stop him.”

“They?” Ragnar asked.

“The Danes, lord,” Steapa said.

“And Guthred will be traveling slowly,” Brida added.

“He will?” I asked.

“You said he’s taken Cuthbert’s corpse with him.”

Hope stirred in me. Steapa and Brida were right. Guthred might be intent on reaching Bebbanburg, but he could travel no faster than the corpse could be carried, and the Danes would want to stop him. “He could be dead by now,” I said.

“Only one way to find out,” Ragnar said.

We rode next dawn, taking the Roman road north, and we rode as fast we could. So far we had coddled Alfred’s horses, but now we drove them hard, though we were still slowed by Beocca. Then, as the morning wore on, the rains came again. Gentle at first, but soon hard enough to make the ground treacherous. The wind rose, and it was in our faces. Thunder sounded far off and the rain fell with a new intensity and we were all spattered by mud, we were all cold and all soaked. The trees thrashed, shedding their last leaves into the bitter wind. It was a day to be inside a hall, beside a vast fire.

We found the first bodies beside the road. They were two men who lay naked with their wounds washed bloodless by the rain. One of the dead men had a broken sickle beside him. Another three corpses were a half-mile to the north, and two of them had wooden crosses about their necks which meant they were Saxons. Beocca made the sign of the cross over their bodies. Lightning whipped the hills to the west, then Ragnar pointed ahead and I saw, through the hammering rain, a settlement beside the road. There were a few low houses, what might have been a church, and a high-ridged hall within a wooden palisade.

There was a score of horses tied to the hall’s palisade and, as we appeared from the storm, a dozen men ran from the gate with swords and spears. They mounted and galloped down the road toward us, but slowed when they saw the arm rings Ragnar and I wore. “Are you Danes?” Ragnar shouted.

“We’re Danes!” They lowered their swords and turned their horses to escort us. “Have you seen any Saxons?” one of them asked Ragnar.

“Only dead ones.”

We stabled the horses in one of the houses, pulling down part of the roof to enlarge the door so the horses could be taken inside. There was a Saxon family there and they shrank from us. The woman whimpered and held her hands toward us in mute prayer. “My daughter’s ill,” she said.

The girl lay in a dark corner, shivering. She did not look ill so much as terrified. “How old is she?” I asked.

“Eleven years, lord, I think,” the girl’s mother answered.

“She was raped?” I asked.

“By four men, lord,” she said.

“She’s safe now,” I said, and I gave them coins to pay for the damage to the roof and we left Alfred’s servants and Ragnar’s two men to guard the horses, then joined the Danes in the big hall where a fire burned fierce in the central hearth. The men about the flames made room for us, though they were confused that we traveled with a Christian priest. They looked at the bedraggled Beocca suspiciously, but Ragnar was so obviously a Dane that they said nothing, and his arm rings, like mine, indicated that he was a Dane of the highest rank. The men’s leader must have been impressed by Ragnar for he half bowed. “I am Hakon,” he said, “of Onhripum.”

“Ragnar Ragnarson,” Ragnar introduced himself. He introduced neither Steapa nor myself, though he did nod toward Brida. “And this is my woman.”

Hakon knew of Ragnar, which was not surprising for Ragnar’s name was famous in the hills to the west of Onhripum. “You were a hostage in Wessex, lord?” he asked.

“No longer,” Ragnar said shortly.

“Welcome home, lord,” Hakon said.

Ale was brought to us, and bread and cheese and apples. “The dead we saw on the road,” Ragnar asked, “that was your work?”

“Saxons, lord. We’re to stop them gathering.”

“You certainly stopped those men gathering,” Ragnar said, provoking a smile from Hakon. “Whose orders?” Ragnar asked.

“The Earl Ivarr, lord. He’s summoned us. And if we find Saxons with weapons we’re to kill them.”

Ragnar mischievously jerked his head at Steapa. “He’s a Saxon, he’s armed.”

Hakon and his men looked at the huge, baleful Steapa. “He’s with you, lord.”

“So why has Ivarr summoned you?” Ragnar demanded.

And so the story emerged, or as much as Hakon knew. Guthred had traveled this same road north, but Kjartan had sent men to block his path. “Guthred has no more than a hundred and fifty spearmen,” Hakon told us, “and Kjartan opposed him with two hundred or more. Guthred did not try to fight.”

“So where is Guthred?”

“He ran away, lord.”

“Where?” Ragnar asked sharply.

“We think west, lord, toward Cumbraland.”

“Kjartan didn’t follow?”

“Kjartan, lord, doesn’t go far from Dunholm. He fears Ælfric of Bebbanburg will attack Dunholm if he goes far away, so he stays close.”

“And you’re summoned where?” Ragnar demanded.

“We’re to meet the Lord Ivarr at Thresk,” Hakon said.

“Thresk?” Ragnar was puzzled. Thresk was a settlement beside a lake some miles to the east. Guthred, it appeared, had gone west, but Ivarr was raising his banner to the east. Then Ragnar understood. “Ivarr will attack Eoferwic?”

Hakon nodded. “Take Guthred’s home, lord,” he said, “and where can he go?”

“Bebbanburg?” I suggested.

“There are horsemen shadowing Guthred,” Hakon said, “and if he tries to go north Kjartan will march again.” He touched his sword’s hilt. “We shall finish the Saxons forever, lord. The Lord Ivarr will be glad of your return.”

“My family,” Ragnar said harshly, “does not fight alongside Kjartan.”

“Not even for plunder?” Hakon asked. “I hear Eoferwic is full of plunder.”

“It’s been plundered before,” I said, “how much can be left?”

“Enough,” Hakon said flatly.

Ivarr, I thought, had devised a clever strategy. Guthred, accompanied by too few spearmen and cumbered with priests, monks, and a dead saint, was wandering in the wild Northumbrian weather, and meanwhile his enemies would capture his palace and his city, and with them the city’s garrison that formed the heart of Guthred’s forces. Kjartan, meanwhile, was keeping Guthred from reaching the safety of Bebbanburg.

“Whose hall is this?” Ragnar asked.

“It belonged to a Saxon, lord,” Hakon said.

“Belonged?”

“He drew his sword,” Hakon explained, “so he and all his folk are dead. Except two daughters.” He jerked his head toward the back of the hall. “They’re in a cattle byre if you want them.”

More Danes arrived as evening fell. They were all going to Thresk and the hall was a good place to shelter from the weather that was now blowing a full storm. There was ale in the hall and inevitably men got drunk, but they were happily drunk because Guthred had made a terrible mistake. He had marched north with too few men in the belief that the Danes would not interfere with him, and now these Danes had the promise of an easy war and much plunder.

We took one of the sleeping platforms at the side of the hall for our own use. “What we have to do,” Ragnar said, “is go to Synningthwait.”

“At dawn,” I agreed.

“Why Synningthwait?” Beocca wanted to know.

“Because that’s where my men are,” Ragnar said, “and that’s what we need now. Men.”

“We need to find Guthred!” Beocca insisted.

“We need men to find him,” I said, “and we need swords.” Northumbria was falling into chaos and the best way to endure chaos was to be surrounded by swords and spears.

Three drunken Danes had watched us talking and they were intrigued, perhaps offended, that we included a Christian priest in our conversation. They crossed to the platform and demanded to know who Beocca was and why we were keeping him company.

“We’re keeping him,” I said, “in case we get hungry.” That satisfied them, and the joke was passed about the hall to more laughter.

The storm passed in the night. Thunder growled ever more faintly, and the intensity of the rain on the wind-tossed thatch slowly diminished so that by dawn there was only a light drizzle and water dripping from the moss-covered roof. We dressed in mail and helmets and, as Hakon and the other Danes went east toward Thresk, we rode west into the hills.

I was thinking of Gisela, lost somewhere in the hills and a victim of her brother’s desperation. Guthred must have thought that it was too late in the year for armies to assemble, and that he could slip past Dunholm to Bebbanburg without the Danes trying to oppose him. Now he was on the edge of losing everything. “If we find him,” Beocca asked me as we rode, “can we take him south to Alfred?”

“Take him south to Alfred?” I asked. “Why would we do that?”

“To keep him alive. If he’s a Christian then he’ll be welcome in Wessex.”

“Alfred wants him to be king here,” I said.

“It’s too late,” Beocca said gloomily.

“No,” I said, “it’s not too late.” Beocca stared at me as though I were mad, and perhaps I was, but in the chaos that darkened Northumbria there was one thing Ivarr had not thought of. He must have believed he had already won. His forces were assembling and Kjartan was driving Guthred into the wild center of the country where no army could survive for long in cold and wind and rain. But Ivarr had forgotten Ragnar. Ragnar had been away so long, yet he held a stretch of land in the hills and that land supported men, and those men were sworn to Ragnar’s service.

And so we rode to Synningthwait and I had a lump in my throat as we cantered into the valley for it had been near Synningthwait that I had lived as a child, where I had been raised by Ragnar’s father, where I had learned to fight, where I had been loved, where I had been happy, and where I had watched Kjartan burn Ragnar’s hall and murder its inhabitants. This was the first time I had returned since that foul night.

Ragnar’s men lived in the settlement or in the nearby hills, though the first person I saw was Ethne, the Scottish slave we had freed at Gyruum. She was carrying two pails of water and she did not recognize me till I called her name. Then she dropped the pails and ran toward the houses, shouting, and Finan emerged from a low doorway. He shouted with delight, and more folk appeared, and suddenly there was a crowd cheering because Ragnar had come back to his people.

Finan could not wait for me to dismount. He walked beside my horse, grinning. “You want to know how Sverri died?” he asked me.

“Slowly?” I guessed.

“And loudly.” He grinned. “And we took his money.”

“Much money?”

“More than you can dream of!” he said exultantly. “And we burned his house. Left his woman and children weeping.”

“You let them live?”

He looked embarrassed. “Ethne felt sorry for them. But killing him was pleasure enough.” He grinned up at me again. “So are we going to war?”

“We’re going to war.”

“We’re to fight that bastard Guthred, eh?” Finan said.

“You want to do that?”

“He sent a priest to say we had to pay the church money! We chased him away.”

“I thought you were a Christian,” I said.

“I am,” Finan said defensively, “but I’ll be damned before I give a priest a tenth of my money.”

The men of Synningthwait expected to fight for Ivarr. They were Danes, and they saw the imminent war as one between Danes and upstart Saxons, though none had much enthusiasm for the fight because Ivarr was not liked. Ivarr’s summons had reached Synningthwait five days before and Rollo, who commanded in Ragnar’s absence, had deliberately dallied. Now the decision belonged to Ragnar and that night, in front of his hall where a great fire burned beneath the clouds, he invited his men to speak their minds. Ragnar could have ordered them to do whatever he wanted, but he had not seen most of them in three years and he wanted to know their temper. “I’ll let them speak,” he told me, “then I’ll tell them what we’ll do.”

“What will we do?” I asked.

Ragnar grinned. “I don’t know yet.”

Rollo spoke first. He did not dislike Guthred, he said, but he wondered if Guthred was the best king for Northumbria. “A land needs a king,” he said, “and that king should be fair and just and generous and strong. Guthred is neither just nor strong. He favors the Christians.” Men murmured support.

Beocca was sitting beside me and understood enough of what was being said to become upset. “Alfred supports Guthred!” he hissed to me.

“Be quiet,” I warned him.

“Guthred,” Rollo went on, “demanded that we pay a tax to the Christian priests.”

“Did you?” Ragnar asked.

“No.”

“If Guthred is not king,” Ragnar demanded, “who should be?” No one spoke. “Ivarr?” Ragnar suggested, and a shudder went through the crowd. No one liked Ivarr, and no one spoke except Beocca and he only managed one word before I choked off his protest with a sharp dig into his bony ribs. “What about Earl Ulf?” Ragnar asked.

“Too old now,” Rollo said. “Besides he’s gone back to Cair Ligualid and wants to stay there.”

“Is there a Saxon who would leave us Danes alone?” Ragnar asked, and again no one answered. “Another Dane, then?” Ragnar suggested.

“It must be Guthred!” Beocca snapped like a dog.

Rollo took a pace forward as if what he was about to say was important. “We would follow you, lord,” he said to Ragnar, “for you are fair and just and generous and strong.” That provoked wild applause from the crowd gathered about the fire.

“This is treason!” Beocca hissed.

“Be quiet,” I told him.

“But Alfred told us…”

“Alfred is not here,” I said, “and we are, so be quiet.”

Ragnar gazed into the fire. He was such a good-looking man, so strong-faced, so open-faced and cheerful, yet at that moment he was troubled. He looked at me. “You could be king,” he said.

“I could,” I agreed.

“We are here to support Guthred!” Beocca yapped.

“Finan,” I said, “beside me is a squint-eyed, club-footed, palsied priest who is irritating me. If he speaks again, cut his throat.”

“Uhtred!” Beocca squeaked.

“I shall allow him that one utterance,” I told Finan, “but the next time he speaks you will send him to his forefathers.”

Finan grinned and drew his sword. Beocca went silent.

“You could be king,” Ragnar said to me again, and I was aware of Brida’s dark eyes resting on me.

“My ancestors were kings,” I said, “and their blood is in me. It is the blood of Odin.” My father, though a Christian, had always been proud that our family was descended from the god Odin.

“And you would be a good king,” Ragnar said. “It is better that a Saxon rules, and you are a Saxon who loves the Danes. You could be King Uhtred of Northumbria, and why not?” Brida still watched me. I knew she was remembering the night when Ragnar’s father had died, and when Kjartan and his yelling crew had cut down the men and women stumbling from the burning hall. “Well?” Ragnar prompted me.

I was tempted. I confess I was very tempted. In their day my family had been kings of Bernicia and now the throne of Northumbria was there for the taking. With Ragnar beside me I could be sure of Danish support, and the Saxons would do what they were told. Ivarr would resist, of course, as would Kjartan and my uncle, but that was nothing new and I was certain I was a better soldier than Guthred.

And yet I knew it was not my fate to be king. I have known many kings and their lives are not all silver, feasting, and women. Alfred looked worn out by his duties, though part of that was his constant sickness and another part an inability to take his duties lightly. Yet Alfred was right in that dedication to duty. A king has to rule, he has to keep a balance between the great thegns of his kingdom, he has to fend off rivals, he has to keep the treasury full, he has to maintain roads and fortresses and armies. I thought of all that while Ragnar and Brida stared at me and while Beocca held his breath beside me, and I knew I did not want the responsibility. I wanted the silver, the feasting, and the women, but those I could have without a throne. “It is not my fate,” I said.

“Maybe you don’t know your fate,” Ragnar suggested.

The smoke whirled into the cold sky that was bright with sparks. “My fate,” I said, “is to be the ruler of Bebbanburg. I know that. And I know Northumbria cannot be ruled from Bebbanburg. But perhaps it is your fate,” I said to Ragnar.

He shook his head. “My father,” he said, “and his father, and his father before him, were all Vikings. We sailed to where we could take wealth. We grew rich. We had laughter, ale, silver, and battle. If I were to be king then I would have to protect what I have from the men who would take it from me. Instead of being a Viking I would be a shepherd. I want to be free. I have been a hostage too long, and I want my freedom. I want my sails in the wind and my swords in the sun. I do not wish to be heaped with duties.” He had been thinking what I had been thinking, though he had said it far more eloquently. He grinned suddenly, as if released from a burden. “I wish to be richer than any king,” he declared to his men, “and I will make you all rich with me.”

“So who is to be king?” Rollo asked.

“Guthred,” Ragnar said.

“Praise God,” Beocca said.

“Quiet,” I hissed.

Ragnar’s men were not happy with his choice. Rollo, gaunt and bearded and loyal, spoke for them. “Guthred favors the Christians,” he said. “He is more Saxon than Dane. He would make us all worship their nailed god.”

“He will do what he’s told to do,” I said firmly, “and the first thing we tell him is that no Dane will pay a tithe to their church. He will be a king like Egbert was king, obedient to Danish wishes.” Beocca was spluttering, but I ignored him. “What matters,” I went on, “is which Dane gives him his orders. Is it to be Ivarr? Kjartan? Or Ragnar?”

“Ragnar!” men shouted.

“And my wish,” Ragnar had moved closer to the fire so that the flames illuminated him and made him look bigger and stronger, “my wish,” he said again, “is to see Kjartan defeated. If Ivarr beats Guthred then Kjartan will grow stronger, and Kjartan is my enemy. He is our enemy. There is a bloodfeud between his family and mine, and I would end that feud now. We march to help Guthred, but if Guthred does not assist us in taking Dunholm then I swear to you that I shall kill Guthred and all his folk and take the throne. But I would rather stand in Kjartan’s blood than be king of all the Danes. I would rather be the slayer of Kjartan than be king of all the earth. My quarrel is not with Guthred. It is not with the Saxons. It is not with the Christians. My quarrel is with Kjartan the Cruel.”

“And in Dunholm,” I said, “there is a hoard of silver worthy of the gods.”

“So we will find Guthred,” Ragnar announced, “and we shall fight for him!”

A moment before, the crowd had wanted Ragnar to lead them against Guthred, but now they cheered the news that they were to fight for the king. There were seventy warriors there, not many, but they were among the best in Northumbria and they thumped swords against shields and shouted Ragnar’s name.

“You can speak now,” I told Beocca.

But he had nothing to say.

And next dawn, under a clear sky, we rode to find Guthred.

And Gisela.

PART THREE

SHADOW-WALKER

EIGHT

We were seventy-six warriors, including Steapa and myself. All of us were on horseback and all had weapons, mail or good leather, and helmets. Two score of servants on smaller horses carried the shields and led our spare stallions, but those servants were not fighting men and were not counted among the seventy-six. There had been a time when Ragnar could raise over two hundred warriors, but many had died at Ethandun and others had found new lords in the long months while Ragnar was a hostage, but seventy-six was still a good number. “And they’re formidable men,” he told me proudly.

He rode under his banner of an eagle’s wing. It was a real eagle’s wing nailed to the top of a high pole, and his helmet was decorated with two more such wings. “I dreamed of this,” he told me as we rode eastward, “I dreamed of riding to war. All that time I was a hostage I wanted to be riding to war. There’s nothing in life like it, Uhtred, nothing!”

“Women?” I asked.

“Women and war!” he said, “women and war!” He whooped for joy and his stallion pricked back its ears and took a few short, high steps as if it shared its master’s happiness. We rode at the front of the column, though Ragnar had a dozen men mounted on light ponies ranging far ahead of us. The dozen men signaled to each other and back to Ragnar, and they spoke to shepherds and listened to rumor and smelt the wind. They were like hounds seeking scent, and they looked for Guthred’s trail, which we expected to find leading west toward Cumbraland, but as the morning wore on the scouts kept tending eastward. Our progress was slow, which frustrated Father Beocca, but before we could ride fast we had to know where we were going. Then, at last, the scouts seemed confident that the trail led east and spurred their ponies across the hills and we followed. “Guthred’s trying to go back to Eoferwic,” Ragnar guessed.

“He’s too late for that,” I said.

“Or else he’s panicking,” Ragnar suggested cheerfully, “and doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“That sounds more likely,” I said.

Brida and some twenty other women rode with us. Brida was in leather armor and had a black cloak held at her neck with a fine brooch of silver and jet. Her hair was twisted high and held in place with a black ribbon, and at her side was a long sword. She had grown into an elegant woman who possessed an air of authority and that, I think, offended Father Beocca who had known her since she was a child. She had been raised a Christian, but had escaped the faith and Beocca was upset by that, though I think he found her beauty more disturbing. “She’s a sorceress,” Beocca hissed at me.

“If she’s a sorceress,” I said, “then she’s a good person to have on your side.”

“God will punish us,” he warned.

“This isn’t your god’s country,” I told him. “This is Thor’s land.”

He made the sign of the cross to protect himself from the evil of my words. “And what were you doing last night?” he asked indignantly. “How could you even think of being king here?”

“Easily,” I said. “I am descended from kings. Unlike you, father. You’re descended from swineherds, aren’t you?”

He ignored that. “The king is the Lord’s anointed,” he insisted. “The king is chosen by God and by all the throng of holy saints. Saint Cuthbert led Northumbria to Guthred, so how could you even think of replacing him? How could you?”

“We can turn around and go home then,” I said.

“Turn around and go home?” Beocca was appalled. “Why?”

“Because if Cuthbert chose him,” I said, “then Cuthbert can defend him. Guthred doesn’t need us. He can go into battle with his dead saint. Or maybe he already has,” I said, “have you thought of that?”

“Thought of what?”

“That Guthred might already be defeated. He could be dead. Or he could be wearing Kjartan’s chains.”

“God preserve us,” Beocca said, making the sign of the cross again.

“It hasn’t happened,” I assured him.

“How do you know?”

“Because we’d have met his fugitives by now,” I said, though I could not be certain of that. Perhaps Guthred was fighting even as we spoke, but I had a feeling he was alive and not too far away. It is hard to describe that feeling. It is an instinct, as hard to read as a god’s message in the fall of a wren’s feather, but I had learned to trust the feeling.

And my instinct was right, for late in the morning one of the scouts came racing back across the moorland with his pony’s mane tossing in the wind. He slewed around in a burst of turf and bracken to tell Ragnar that there was a large band of men and horses in the valley of the River Swale. “They’re at Cetreht, lord,” he said.

“On our side of the river?” Ragnar asked.

“On our side, lord,” the scout said, “in the old fort. Trapped there.”

“Trapped?”

“There’s another war-band outside the fort, lord,” the scout said. He had not ridden close enough to see any banners, but two other scouts had ridden down into the valley while this first galloped back to bring us the news that Guthred was probably very near.

We quickened our pace. Clouds raced in the wind and at midday a sharp rain fell briefly, and just after it ended we met the two scouts who had ridden down to the fields outside the fort and spoken to the war-band. “Guthred’s in the fort,” one of them reported.

“So who’s outside?”

“Kjartan’s men, lord,” the man said. He grinned, knowing that if any of Kjartan’s men were close then there would be a fight. “There are sixty of them, lord. Only sixty.”

“Is Kjartan there? Or Sven?”

“No, lord. They’re led by a man called Rolf.”

“You spoke to him?”

“Spoke to him and drank his ale, lord. They’re watching Guthred. Making sure he doesn’t run away. They’re keeping him there until Ivarr comes north.”

“Till Ivarr comes?” Ragnar asked. “Not Kjartan?”

“Kjartan stays at Dunholm, lord,” the man said, “that’s what they said, and that Ivarr will come north once he’s garrisoned Eoferwic.”

“There are sixty of Kjartan’s men in the valley,” Ragnar shouted back to his warriors, and his hand instinctively went to the hilt of Heart-Breaker. That was his sword, given the same name as his father’s blade as a reminder of his duty to revenge Ragnar the Elder’s death. “There are sixty men to kill!” he added, then called for a servant to bring his shield. He looked back to the scouts. “Who did they think you were?”

“We claimed to serve Hakon, lord. We said we were looking for him.”

Ragnar gave the men silver coins. “You did well,” he said. “So how many men does Guthred have in the fort?”

“Rolf says he’s got at least a hundred, lord.”

“A hundred? And he hasn’t tried to drive off sixty men?”

“No, lord.”

“Some king,” Ragnar said scornfully.

“If he fights them,” I said, “then at the end of the day he’ll have fewer than fifty men.”

“So what’s he doing instead?” Ragnar wanted to know.

“Praying, probably.”

Guthred, as we later learned, had panicked. Thwarted in his efforts to reach Bebbanburg he had turned west toward Cumbraland, thinking that in that familiar country he would find friends, but the weather had slowed him, and there were enemy horsemen always in sight and he feared ambush in the steep hills ahead. So he had changed his mind and decided to return to Eoferwic, but had got no farther than the Roman fort that had once guarded the crossings of the Swale at Cetreht. He was desperate by then. Some of his spearmen had deserted, reckoning that only death waited for them if they stayed with the king, so Guthred had sent messengers to summon help from Northumbria’s Christian thegns, but we had already seen the corpses and knew no help would come. Now he was trapped. The sixty men would hold him in Cetreht until Ivarr came to kill him.

“If Guthred is praying,” Beocca said sternly, “then those prayers are being answered.”

“You mean the Christian god sent us?” I asked.

“Who else?” he responded indignantly as he brushed down his black robe. “When we meet Guthred,” he told me, “you will let me speak first.”

“You think this is a time for ceremony?”

“I’m an ambassador!” he protested, “you forget that.” His indignation suddenly burst like a rain-sodden stream overflowing its banks. “You have no conception of dignity! I am an ambassador! Last night, Uhtred, when you told that Irish savage to cut my throat, what were you thinking of?”

“I was thinking of keeping you quiet, father.”

“I shall tell Alfred of your insolence. You can be sure of that. I shall tell him!”

He went on complaining, but I was not listening for we had ridden across the skyline and there was Cetreht and the curving River Swale beneath us. The Roman fort was a short distance from the Swale’s southern bank and the old earth walls made a wide square which enclosed a village which had a church at its center. Beyond the fort was the stone bridge the Romans had made to carry their great road which led from Eoferwic to the wild north, and half of the old arch still stood.

As we rode closer I could see that the fort was full of horses and people. A standard flew from the church’s gable and I assumed that must be Guthred’s flag showing Saint Cuthbert. A few horsemen were north of the river, blocking Guthred’s escape across the ford, while Rolf’s sixty riders were in the fields south of the fort. They were like hounds stopping up a fox’s earth.

Ragnar had checked his horse. His men were readying for a fight. They were pushing their arms into shield loops, loosening swords in scabbards, and waiting for Ragnar’s orders. I gazed into the valley. The fort was a hopeless refuge. Its walls had long eroded into the ditch and there was no palisade, so that a man could stroll over the ramparts without even breaking stride. The sixty horsemen, if they had wished, could have ridden into the village, but they preferred to ride close to the old wall and shout insults. Guthred’s men watched from the fort’s edge. More men were clustered about the church. They had seen us on the hill and must have thought we were new enemies, for they were hurrying toward the remnants of the southern rampart. I stared at the village. Was Gisela there? I remembered the flick of her head and how her eyes had been shadowed by her black hair, and I unconsciously spurred my horse a few paces forward. I had spent over two years of hell at Sverri’s oar, but this was the moment I had dreamed of through all that time, and so I did not wait for Ragnar. I touched spurs to my horse again and rode alone into the valley of the Swale.

Beocca, of course, followed me, squawking that as Alfred’s ambassador he must lead the way into Guthred’s presence, but I ignored him and, halfway down the hill he tumbled from his horse. He gave a despairing cry and I left him limping in the grass as he tried to retrieve his mare.

The late autumn sun was bright on the land that was still wet from rain. I carried a shield with a polished boss, I was in mail and helmet, my arm rings shone, I glittered like a lord of war. I twisted in my saddle to see that Ragnar had started down the hill, but he was slanting eastward, plainly intent on cutting off the retreat of Kjartan’s men, whose best escape would lie in the eastern river meadows.

I reached the hill’s foot and spurred across the flat river plain to join the Roman road. I passed a Christian cemetery, the ground lumpy and scattered with small wooden crosses looking toward the one larger cross which would show the resurrected dead the direction of Jerusalem on the day the Christians believed their corpses would rise from the earth. The road led straight past the graves to the fort’s southern entrance, where a crowd of Guthred’s men watched me. Kjartan’s men spurred to intercept me, barring the road, but they showed no apprehension. Why should they? I appeared to be a Dane, I was one man and they were many, and my sword was still in its scabbard. “Which of you is Rolf?” I shouted as I drew near them.

“I am,” a black-bearded man urged his horse toward me. “Who are you?”

“Your death, Rolf,” I said, and I drew Serpent-Breath and touched my heels to the stallion’s flanks and he went into the full gallop and Rolf was still drawing his sword when I pounded past him and swung Serpent-Breath and the blade sliced through his neck so that his head and helmet flew back, bounced on the road and rolled under my horse’s hooves. I was laughing because the battle-joy had come. Three men were ahead of me and none had yet drawn a sword. They just stared at me, aghast, and at Rolf’s headless trunk that swayed in the saddle. I charged the center man, letting my horse barge into his and striking him hard with Serpent-Breath, and then I was through Kjartan’s horsemen and the fort was in front of me.

Fifty or sixty men were standing at the fort’s entrance. Only a handful were mounted, but nearly all had swords or spears. And I could see Guthred there, his fair curly hair bright in the sun, and next to him was Gisela. I had tried so often to summon her face in those long months at Sverri’s oar, and I had always failed, yet suddenly the wide mouth and the defiant eyes seemed so familiar. She was dressed in a white linen robe, belted at her waist with a silver chain, and she had a linen bonnet on her hair which, because she was married, was bound into a knot. She was holding her brother’s arm, and Guthred was just staring at the strange events unfolding outside his refuge.

Two of Kjartan’s men had followed me while the rest were milling around, torn between the shock of Rolf’s death and the sudden appearance of Ragnar’s war-band. I turned on the two men following me, wrenching the stallion about so sharply that his hooves scrabbled in the wet mud, but my sudden turn drove my pursuers back. I spurred after them. One was too fast, the second was on a lumbering horse and he heard my hoofbeats and swung his sword back in a desperate attempt to drive me off. I took the blade on my shield, then lunged Serpent-Breath into the man’s spine so that his back arched and he screamed. I tugged Serpent-Breath free and back-swung her into the man’s face. He fell from the saddle and I rode around him, sword red, and took off my helmet as I spurred again toward the fort.

I was showing off. Of course I was showing off. One man against sixty? But Gisela was watching. In truth I was in no real danger. The sixty men had not been ready for a fight, and if they pursued me now I could take refuge with Guthred’s men. But Kjartan’s men were not pursuing. They were too nervous of Ragnar’s approach and so I ignored them, riding close to Guthred and his men instead.

“Have you forgotten how to fight?” I shouted at them. I ignored Guthred. I even ignored Gisela, though I had taken off my helmet so she would recognize me. I knew she was watching me. I could sense those dark eyes and sense her astonishment and I hoped it was a joyful astonishment. “They’ve all got to die!” I shouted, pointing my sword at Kjartan’s men. “Every last one of the bastards has to die, so go out and kill them!”

Ragnar struck then and there was the hammer of shield on shield, the clangor of swords and the scream of men and horses. Kjartan’s men were scattering and some, despairing of making an escape eastward, were galloping to the west. I looked at the men in the gateway, “Rypere! Clapa! I want those men stopped!”

Clapa and Rypere were staring at me as though I were a ghost, which I suppose I was in a way. I was glad Clapa was still with Guthred, for Clapa was a Dane and that suggested Guthred could still command some Danish allegiance. “Clapa! You earsling!” I yelled. “Stop dawdling like a boiled egg. Get on a horse and fight!”

“Yes, lord!”

I rode closer still until I was staring down at Guthred. There was a fight going on behind me and Guthred’s men, stirred from their torpor, were hurrying to join the slaughter, but Guthred had no eyes for the battle. He just stared up at me. There were priests behind him and Gisela was beside him, but I looked only into Guthred’s eyes and saw the fear there. “Remember me?” I asked coldly.

He had no words.

“You would do well,” I said, “to set a kingly example and kill a few men right now. You have a horse?”

He nodded and still could not speak.

“Then get on your horse,” I said curtly, “and fight.”

Guthred nodded and took one backward pace, but though his servant led a horse forward Guthred did not mount. I looked at Gisela then and she looked back and I thought her eyes could light a fire. I wanted to speak, but it was my turn to have no words. A priest plucked at her shoulder as if summoning her away from the fighting, but I twitched Serpent-Breath’s bloody blade toward the man and he went very still. I looked back at Gisela and it seemed as if I had no breath, as if the world stood still. A gust of wind lifted a wisp of black hair showing beneath her bonnet. She brushed it away, then smiled. “Uhtred,” she said, as though saying the name for the very first time.

“Gisela,” I managed to speak.

“I knew you’d come back,” she said.

“I thought you were going to fight,” I snarled at Guthred and he ran off like a whipped dog.

“Do you have a horse?” I asked Gisela.

“No.”

“You!” I shouted at a boy gawping at me. “Fetch me that horse!” I pointed to the stallion of the man I had injured in the face. That man was now dead, killed by Guthred’s men as they joined the fight.

The boy brought me the stallion and Gisela scrambled into its saddle, hoisting her skirts inelegantly around her thighs. She pushed her muddy shoes into the stirrups then held out a hand to touch my cheek. “You’re thinner,” she said.

“So are you.”

“I have not been happy,” she said, “since the moment you left.” She kept her hand on my cheek for a heartbeat, then impulsively took it away and tore off the linen bonnet and unpinned her black hair so that it fell around her shoulders like the hair of an unwed girl. “I’m not married,” she said, “not properly married.”

“Not yet,” I said, and my heart was so full of joy. I could not take my eyes from her. I was with her again and the months of slavery dropped away as though they had never happened.

“Have you killed enough men yet?” she asked mischievously.

“No.”

So we rode toward the slaughter.

You cannot kill everyone in an enemy army. Or rarely. Whenever the poets sing a tale of battle they always insist that no enemy escapes unless the poet himself happens to be part of the fight when he alone escapes. It is strange that. Poets always live while everyone else dies, but what do poets know? I have never seen a poet in a shield wall. Yet, outside Cetreht, we must have killed over fifty of Kjartan’s men, and then everything became chaotic because Guthred’s men could not tell the difference between Kjartan’s followers and Ragnar’s Danes, and so some of the enemy escaped as we pulled warriors apart. Finan, attacked by two of Guthred’s household troops, had killed both of them and, when I found him, he was about to attack a third. “He’s on our side,” I shouted to Finan.

“He looks like a rat,” Finan snarled.

“His name,” I said, “is Sihtric, and he once swore me an oath of loyalty.”

“Still looks like a rat, he does.”

“Are you on our side?” I called to Sihtric, “or did you rejoin your father’s troops?”

“Lord, lord!” Sihtric came running to me and fell to his knees in the trampled mud beside my horse. “I’m still your man, lord.”

“You didn’t take an oath to Guthred?”

“He never asked me, lord.”

“But you served him? You didn’t run back to Dunholm?”

“No, lord! I stayed with the king.”

“He did,” Gisela confirmed.

I gave Serpent-Breath to Gisela, then reached down and took Sihtric’s hand. “So you’re still my man?”

“Of course, lord.” He was clutching my hand, gazing at me with disbelief.

“You’re not much use, are you,” I said, “if you can’t beat a skinny Irishman like him?”

“He’s quick, lord,” Sihtric said.

“So teach him your tricks,” I told Finan, then I patted Sihtric’s cheek. “It’s good to see you, Sihtric.”

Ragnar had two prisoners and Sihtric recognized the taller of the two. “His name is Hogga,” he told me.

“He’s a dead Hogga now,” I said. I knew Ragnar would not let any of Kjartan’s men survive while Kjartan himself lived. This was the bloodfeud. This was hatred. This was the start of Ragnar’s revenge for his father’s death, but for the moment Hogga and his shorter companion evidently believed they would live. They were talking avidly, describing how Kjartan had close to two hundred men in Dunholm. They said Kjartan had sent a large war-band to support Ivarr, while the rest of his men had followed Rolf to this bloody field by Cetreht.

“Why didn’t Kjartan bring all his men here?” Ragnar wanted to know.

“He won’t leave Dunholm, lord, in case Ælfric of Bebbanburg attacks when he’s gone.”

“Has Ælfric threatened to do that?” I asked.

“I don’t know, lord,” Hogga said.

It would be unlike my uncle to risk an attack on Dunholm, though perhaps he would lead men to rescue Guthred if he knew where Guthred was. My uncle wanted the saint’s corpse and he wanted Gisela, but my guess was that he would risk little to get those two things. He would certainly not risk Bebbanburg itself, any more than Kjartan would risk Dunholm.

“And Thyra Ragnarsdottir?” Ragnar resumed his questioning. “Does she live?”

“Yes, lord.”

“Does she live happily?” Ragnar asked harshly.

They hesitated, then Hogga grimaced. “She is mad, lord.” He spoke in a low voice. “She is quite mad.”

Ragnar stared at the two men. They became uncomfortable under his gaze, but then Ragnar looked up at the sky where a buzzard floated down from the western hills. “Tell me,” he said, and his voice was suddenly low, almost easy, “how long have you served Kjartan?”

“Eight years, lord,” Hogga said.

“Seven years, lord,” the other man said.

“So you both served him,” Ragnar said, still speaking softly, “before he fortified Dunholm?”

“Yes, lord.”

“And you both served him,” Ragnar went on, his voice harsh now, “when he took men to Synningthwait and burned my father’s hall. When he took my sister as his son’s whore. When he killed my mother and my father.”

Neither man answered. The shorter of the two was shaking. Hogga looked around as if to find a way to escape, but he was surrounded by mounted sword-Danes, then he flinched as Ragnar drew Heart-Breaker.

“No, lord,” Hogga said.

“Yes,” Ragnar said and his face twisted with anger as he chopped down. He had to dismount to finish the job. He killed both men, and he hacked at their fallen bodies in fury. I watched, then turned to see Gisela’s face. It showed nothing, then she became conscious of my gaze and turned toward me with a small look of triumph as if she knew I had half expected her to be horrified by the sight of men being disembowelled. “They deserved it?” she asked.

“They deserved it,” I said.

“Good.”

Her brother, I noted, had not watched. He was nervous of me, for which I did not blame him, and doubtless terrified of Ragnar who was bloodied like a butcher, and so Guthred had gone back to the village, leaving us with the dead. Father Beocca had managed to find some of Guthred’s priests and, after talking with them, he limped to us. “It is agreed,” he said, “that we shall present ourselves to the king in the church.” He suddenly became aware of the two severed heads and the sword-slashed bodies. “Dear God, who did that?”

“Ragnar.”

Beocca made the sign of the cross. “The church,” he said, “we’re to meet in the church. Do try to wipe that blood off your mail, Uhtred. We’re an embassy!”

I turned to see a handful of fugitives crossing the hilltops to the west. They would doubtless cross the river higher up and join the horsemen on the far bank, and those horsemen would be wary now. They would send word to Dunholm that enemies had come, and Kjartan would hear of the eagle-wing banner and know that Ragnar was returned from Wessex.

And perhaps, on his high crag, behind his high walls, he would be frightened.

I rode to the church, taking Gisela with me. Beocca hurried after on foot, but he was slow. “Wait for me!” he shouted, “wait for me!”

I did not wait. Instead I spurred the stallion faster and left Beocca far behind.

It was dark in the church. The only illumination came from a small window above the door and from some feeble rushlights burning on the altar that was a trestle table covered by a black cloth. Saint Cuthbert’s coffin, together with the other two chests of relics, stood in front of the altar where Guthred sat on a milking stool flanked by two men and a woman. The Abbot Eadred was one of the men and Father Hrothweard was the other. The woman was young, had a plumply pretty face, and a pregnant belly. I learned later she was Osburh, Guthred’s Saxon queen. She glanced from me to her husband, evidently expecting Guthred to speak, but he was silent. A score of warriors stood on the left side of the church and a larger number of priests and monks on the right. They had been arguing, but all went quiet when I entered.

Gisela held my left arm. Together we walked down the church until we faced Guthred, who seemed incapable of looking at me or speaking to me. He opened his mouth once, but no words came, and he looked past me as if hoping that someone less baleful would come through the church door. “I’m going to marry your sister,” I told him.

He opened his mouth and closed it again.

A monk moved as if to protest my words and was pulled back by a companion and I saw that the gods had been especially good to me that day, for the pair were Jænberht and Ida, the monks who had negotiated my slavery. Then, from the other side of the church, a man did protest. “The Lady Gisela,” he said, “is already married.”

I saw that the speaker was an older man, gray-haired and stout. He was dressed in a short brown tunic with a silver chain about his neck and he jerked his head up belligerently as I walked toward him. “You’re Aidan,” I said. It had been fourteen years since I had been in Bebbanburg, but I recognized Aidan. He had been one of my father’s doorkeepers, charged with keeping unwanted folk out of the great hall, but the silver chain made it clear that he had risen in rank since then. I flicked the chain with my hand. “What are you now, Aidan?” I demanded.

“Steward to the Lord of Bebbanburg,” he said gruffly. He did not recognize me. How could he? I had been nine years old when he last saw me.

“So that makes you my steward,” I said.

“Your steward?” he asked, then he realized who I was and he stepped back to join two young warriors. That step was involuntary, though Aidan was no coward. He had been a good soldier in his day, but meeting me had shocked him. He recovered though, and faced me defiantly. “The Lady Gisela,” he said, “is married.”

“Are you married?” I asked Gisela.

“No,” she said.

“She’s not married,” I told Aidan.

Guthred cleared his throat as if to speak, but then fell silent as Ragnar and his men filed into the church.

“The lady is married,” a voice called from among the priests and monks. I turned to see that it was Brother Jænberht who had spoken. “She is married to the Lord Ælfric,” Jænberht insisted.

“She’s married to Ælfric?” I asked as if I had not heard that news, “she’s married to that whore-born piece of lice-shit?”

Aidan gave one of the warriors beside him a hard nudge, and the man drew his sword. The other did the same, and I smiled at them, then very slowly drew Serpent-Breath.

“This is a house of God!” Abbot Eadred protested. “Put your swords away!”

The two young men hesitated, but when I kept Serpent-Breath drawn they kept their own blades ready, though neither moved to attack me. They knew my reputation and, besides, Serpent-Breath was still sticky with the blood of Kjartan’s men.

“Uhtred!” This time it was Beocca who interrupted me. He burst into the church and pushed past Ragnar’s men. “Uhtred!” he called again.

I turned on him. “This is my business, father,” I said, “and you will leave me to it. You remember Aidan?” Beocca looked confused, then he recognized the steward who had been at Bebbanburg during all the years that Beocca had been my father’s priest. “Aidan wants these two boys to kill me,” I said, “but before they oblige him,” I was looking at the steward again, “tell me how Gisela can be married to a man she’s never met?”

Aidan glanced across at Guthred as if expecting help from the king, but Guthred was still motionless, so Aidan had to confront me alone. “I stood beside her in Lord Ælfric’s place,” he said, “so in the eyes of the church she is married.”

“Did you hump her as well?” I demanded, and the priests and monks hissed their disapproval.

“Of course not,” Aidan said, offended.

“If no one’s ridden her,” I said, “then she’s not married. A mare isn’t broken until she’s saddled and ridden. Have you been ridden?” I asked Gisela.

“Not yet,” she said.

“She is married,” Aidan insisted.

“You stood at the altar in my uncle’s place,” I said, “and you call that a marriage?”

“It is,” Beocca said quietly.

“So if I kill you,” I suggested to Aidan, ignoring Beocca, “she’ll be a widow?”

Aidan pushed one of the warriors toward me and, like a fool, the man came, and Serpent-Breath slashed once, very hard, and his sword was knocked away and my blade was at his belly. “You want your guts strewn across the floor?” I asked him gently. “I am Uhtred,” I said, my voice hard and boastful now, “I am the Lord of Bebbanburg and the man who killed Ubba Lothbrokson beside the sea.” I prodded my blade, driving him back. “I have killed more men than I could count,” I told him, “but don’t let that stop you fighting me. You want to boast that you killed me? That piece of toad-snot, Ælfric, will be pleased if you did. He’ll reward you.” I jabbed again. “Go on,” I said, my anger rising, “try.” He did nothing of the sort. Instead he took another faltering backward step and the other warrior did the same. That was hardly surprising, for Ragnar and Steapa had joined me, and behind them was a bunch of war-Danes who were dressed in mail and carrying axes and swords. I looked at Aidan. “You can crawl back to my uncle,” I said, “and tell him he has lost his bride.”

“Uhtred!” Guthred had at last managed to speak.

I ignored him. Instead I walked across the church to where the priests and monks huddled. Gisela came with me, still holding my arm and I gave her Serpent-Breath to hold, then stopped in front of Jænberht. “You think Gisela is married?” I asked him.

“She is,” he said defiantly. “The bride-price is paid and the union solemnized.”

“Bride-price?” I looked at Gisela. “What did they pay you?”

“We paid them,” she said. “They were given one thousand shillings and Saint Oswald’s arm.”

“Saint Oswald’s arm?” I almost laughed.

“Abbot Eadred found it,” Gisela said drily.

“Dug it out of a pauper’s graveyard, more like,” I said.

Jænberht bristled. “All has been done,” he said, “according to the laws of man and of the holy church. The woman,” he looked sneeringly at Gisela, “is married.”

There was something about his narrow, supercilious face that irritated me, so I reached out and grasped his tonsured hair. He tried to resist, but he was feeble and I jerked his head forward and down, then brought my right knee up hard so that his face was smashed into the mail of my thigh.

I hauled him upright and looked into his bloody face. “Is she married?”

“She is married,” he said, his voice thickened by the blood in his mouth, and I jerked his head down again and this time I felt his teeth break against my knee.

“Is she married?” I asked. He said nothing this time, so I yanked his head down again and felt his nose being crunched on my mail-clad knee. “I asked you a question,” I said.

“She is married,” Jænberht insisted. He was shaking with anger, wincing with pain, and the priests were protesting at what I was doing, but I was lost in my own abrupt rage. This was my uncle’s tame monk, the man who had negotiated with Guthred to make me a slave. He had conspired against me. He had tried to destroy me and that realization made my fury ungovernable. It was a sudden blood-red anger, fed by the memory of the humiliations I had suffered on Sverri’s Trader, so I pulled Jænberht’s head toward me again, but this time, instead of kneeing his face, I drew Wasp-Sting, my short-sword, and cut his throat. One slash. It took a heartbeat to draw the sword, and in that instant I saw the monk’s eyes widen in disbelief, and I confess that I half disbelieved what I was doing myself. But I did it anyway. I cut his throat and Wasp-Sting’s steel scraped against tendon and gristle, then sliced through their resistance so that blood sheeted down my mail coat. Jænberht, shuddering and bubbling, collapsed onto the wet rushes.

The monks and priests shrieked like women. They had been appalled when I had hammered Jænberht’s face, but none had expected outright murder. Even I was surprised by what my anger had done, but I felt no regret, nor did I see it as murder. I saw it as revenge and there was an exquisite pleasure in it. Every pull on Sverri’s oar and every blow I had taken from Sverri’s crewmen had been in that sword-cut. I looked down at Jænberht’s dying twitches, then up at his companion, Brother Ida. “Is Gisela married?” I demanded of him.

“Under church law,” Ida began, stammering slightly, then he paused and looked at Wasp-Sting’s blade. “She is not married, lord,” he went on hurriedly, “until the marriage is consummated.”

“Are you married?” I asked Gisela.

“Of course not,” she said.

I stooped and wiped Wasp-Sting clean on the skirts of Jænberht’s robe. He was dead now, his eyes still showing the surprise of it. One priest, braver than the rest, knelt to pray over the monk’s corpse, but the other churchmen looked like sheep confronted by a wolf. They gaped at me, too horrified to protest. Beocca was opening and closing his mouth, saying nothing. I sheathed Wasp-Sting, took Serpent-Breath from Gisela and together we turned toward her brother. He was staring at Jænberht’s corpse and at the blood that had splashed across the floor and onto his sister’s skirts, and he must have thought I was about to do the same to him, for he put a hand to his own sword. But then I pointed Serpent-Breath at Ragnar. “This is the Earl Ragnar,” I said to Guthred, “and he’s here to fight for you. You don’t deserve his help. If it were up to me you’d go back to wearing slave shackles and emptying King Eochaid’s shit-pail.”

“He is the Lord’s anointed!” Father Hrothweard protested. “Show respect!”

I hefted Wasp-Sting. “I never liked you either,” I said.

Beocca, appalled at my behavior, thrust me aside and offered Guthred a bow. Beocca looked pale, and no wonder, for he had just seen a monk murdered, but not even that could put him off his glorious task of being the West Saxon ambassador. “I bring you greetings,” he said, “from Alfred of Wessex who…”

“Later, father,” I said.

“I bring you Christian greetings from…” Beocca tried again, then squealed because I dragged him backward. The priests and monks evidently thought I was going to kill him, for some of them covered their eyes.

“Later, father,” I said, letting go of him, then I looked at Guthred. “So what do you do now?” I asked him.

“Do?”

“What do you do? We’ve taken away the men guarding you, so you’re free to go. So what do you do?”

“What we do,” it was Hrothweard who answered, “is punish you!” He pointed at me and the anger came on him. He shouted that I was a murderer, a pagan, and a sinner and that God would take his vengeance on Guthred if I were allowed to remain unpunished. Queen Osburh looked terrified as Hrothweard screamed his threats. He was all energy and wild hair and spluttering passion as he shouted that I had killed a holy brother. “The only hope for Haliwerfolkland,” he ranted, “is our alliance with Ælfric of Bebbanburg. Send the Lady Gisela to Lord Ælfric and kill the pagan!” He pointed at me. Gisela was still beside me, her hand clutching mine. I said nothing.

Abbot Eadred, who now looked as old as the dead Saint Cuthbert, tried to bring calm to the church. He held his hands aloft till there was silence, then he thanked Ragnar for killing Kjartan’s men. “What we must do now, lord King,” Eadred turned to Guthred, “is carry the saint northward. To Bebbanburg.”

“We must punish the murderer!” Hrothweard intervened.

“Nothing is more precious to our country than the body of the holy Cuthbert,” Eadred said, ignoring Hrothweard’s anger, “and we must take it to a place of safety. We should ride tomorrow, ride north, ride to the sanctuary of Bebbanburg.”

Aidan, Ælfric’s steward, sought permission to speak. He had come south, he said, at some risk and in good faith, and I had insulted him, his master, and the peace of Northumbria, but he would ignore the insults if Guthred were to take Saint Cuthbert and Gisela north to Bebbanburg. “It is only in Bebbanburg,” Aidan said, “that the saint will be safe.”

“He must die,” Hrothweard insisted, thrusting a wooden cross toward me.

Guthred was nervous. “If we ride north,” he said, “Kjartan will oppose us.”

Eadred was ready for that objection. “If the Earl Ragnar will ride with us, lord, then we shall survive. The church will pay Earl Ragnar for that service.”

“But there will be no safety for any of us,” Hrothweard shouted, “if a murderer is permitted to live.” He pointed the wooden cross at me again. “He is a murderer! A murderer! Brother Jænberht is a martyr!” The monks and priests shouted their support, and Guthred only stopped their clamor by remembering that Father Beocca was an ambassador. Guthred demanded silence and then invited Beocca to speak.

Poor Beocca. He had been practicing for days, polishing his words, saying them aloud, changing them, and then changing them back. He had asked advice on his speech, rejected the advice, declaimed the words endlessly, and now he delivered his formal greeting from Alfred and I doubt Guthred heard a word of it, for he was just looking at me and at Gisela, while Hrothweard was still hissing poison in his ear. But Beocca droned on, praising Guthred and Queen Osburh, declaring that they were a godly light in the north and generally boring anyone who might have been listening. Some of Guthred’s warriors mocked his speech by making faces or pretending to squint until Steapa, tired of their cruelty, went to stand beside Beocca and put a hand on his sword hilt. Steapa was a kind man, but he looked implacably violent. He was huge, for a start, and his skin seemed to have been stretched too tight across his skull, so leaving him incapable of making any expressions other than pure hatred and wolfish hunger. He glared around the room, daring any man to belittle Beocca, and they all stayed silent and awed.

Beocca, of course, believed it was his eloquence that stilled them. He finished his speech with a low bow to Guthred, then presented the gifts Alfred had sent. There was a book which Alfred claimed to have translated from Latin into English, and maybe he had. It was full of Christian homilies, Beocca said, and he bowed as he presented the heavy volume that was enclosed in jeweled covers. Guthred turned the book this way and that, worked out how to unclasp the cover and then looked at a page upside down and declared it was the most valuable gift he had ever received. He said the same of the second gift, which was a sword. It was a Frankish blade and the hilt was of silver and the pommel was a chunk of bright crystal. The last gift was undoubtedly the most precious, for it was a reliquary of the finest gold studded with bright garnets, and inside were hairs from the beard of Saint Augustine of Contwaraburg. Even Abbot Eadred, the guardian of Northumbria’s holiest corpse, was impressed and leaned forward to touch the glittering gold. “The king means a message by these gifts,” Beocca said.

“Keep it short,” I muttered, and Gisela pressed my hand.

“I would be delighted to hear his message,” Guthred said politely.

“The book represents learning,” Beocca said, “for without learning a kingdom is a mere husk of ignorant barbarism. The sword is the instrument by which we defend learning and protect God’s earthly kingdom, and its crystal stands for the inner eye which permits us to discover our Savior’s will. And the hairs of the holy Augustine’s beard, lord King, remind us that without God we are nothing, and that without the holy church we are as chaff in the wind. And Alfred of Wessex wishes you a long and learned life, a Godly rule, and a safe kingdom.” He bowed.

Guthred made a speech of thanks, but it ended plaintively. Would Alfred of Wessex send Northumbria help?

“Help?” Beocca asked, not sure how else to respond.

“I need spears,” Guthred said, though how he thought he could last long enough for any West Saxon troops to reach him was a mystery.

“He sent me,” I said in answer.

“Murderer!” Hrothweard spat. He would not give up.

“He sent me,” I said again, and I let go of Gisela’s hand and went to join Beocca and Steapa in the nave’s center. Beocca was making small flapping motions as if to tell me to go away and keep quiet, but Guthred wanted to hear me. “Over two years ago,” I reminded Guthred, “Ælfric became your ally and my freedom was the price for that alliance. He promised you he would destroy Dunholm, yet I hear Dunholm still stands and that Kjartan still lives. So much for Ælfric’s promise. And yet you would put your faith in him again? You think that if you give him your sister and a dead saint that Ælfric will fight for you?”

“Murderer,” Hrothweard hissed.

“Bebbanburg is still two days’ march away,” I said, “and to get there you need the Earl Ragnar’s help. But the Earl Ragnar is my friend, not yours. He has never betrayed me.”

Guthred’s face jerked at the mention of betrayal.

“We don’t need pagan Danes,” Hrothweard hissed at Guthred. “We must rededicate ourselves to God, lord King, here in the River Jordan, and God will see us safe through Kjartan’s land!”

“The Jordan?” Ragnar asked behind me. “Where’s that?”

I thought the River Jordan was in the Christians’ holy land, but it seemed it was here, in Northumbria. “The River Swale,” Hrothweard was shouting as if he addressed a congregation of hundreds, “was where the blessed Saint Paulinus baptized Edwin, our country’s first Christian king. Thousands of folk were baptized here. This is our holy river! Our Jordan! If we dip our swords and spears in the Swale, then God will bless them. We cannot be defeated!”

“Without Earl Ragnar,” I told Hrothweard scornfully, “Kjartan will tear you to pieces. And Earl Ragnar,” I looked at Guthred again, “is my friend, not yours.”

Guthred took his wife’s hand, then summoned the courage to look me in the eye. “What would you do, Lord Uhtred?”

My enemies, and there were plenty of those in that church, noted that he called me Lord Uhtred and there was a shudder of distaste. I stepped forward. “It’s easy, lord,” I said, and I had not known what I was going to say, but suddenly it came to me. The three spinners were either playing a joke, or else they had given me a fate as golden as Guthred’s, for suddenly it did all seem easy.

“Easy?” Guthred asked.

“Ivarr has gone to Eoferwic, lord,” I said, “and Kjartan has sent men to stop you reaching Bebbanburg. What they are trying to do, lord, is to keep you a fugitive. They will take your fortresses, capture your palace, destroy your Saxon supporters, and when you have nowhere to hide they will take you and they will kill you.”

“So?” Guthred asked plaintively. “What do we do?”

“We place ourselves, lord, in a fortress, of course. In a place of safety.”

“Where?” he asked.

“Dunholm,” I said, “where else?”

He just stared at me. No one else spoke. Even the churchmen, who only a moment before had been howling for my death, were silent. And I was thinking of Alfred, and how, in that dreadful winter when all Wessex seemed doomed, he had not thought of mere survival, but of victory.

“If we march at dawn,” I said, “and march fast, then in two days we shall take Dunholm.”

“You can do that?” Guthred asked.

“No, lord,” I said, “we can do it.” Though how, I had not the slightest idea. All I knew was that we were few and the enemy numerous, and that so far Guthred had been like a mouse in that enemy’s paws, and it was time that we fought back. And Dunholm, because Kjartan had sent so many men to guard the Bebbanburg approaches, was as weak as it was ever likely to be.

“We can do it,” Ragnar said. He came to stand beside me.

“Then we shall,” Guthred said, and that was how it was decided.

The priests did not like the notion that I would live unpunished, and they liked it even less when Guthred brushed their complaints away and asked me to go with him to the small house that were his quarters. Gisela came too and she sat against the wall and watched the two of us. A small fire burned. It was cold that afternoon, the first cold of the coming winter.

Guthred was embarrassed to find himself with me. He half smiled. “I am sorry,” he said haltingly.

“You’re a bastard,” I said.

“Uhtred,” he began, but could find nothing more to say.

“You’re a piece of weasel-shit,” I said, “you’re an earsling.”

“I’m a king,” he said, trying to regain his dignity.

“So you’re a royal piece of weasel-shit. An earsling on a throne.”

“I,” he said and still could find nothing more to say, so instead he sat on the only chair in the room and gave a shrug.

“But you did the right thing,” I told him.

“I did?” he brightened.

“But it didn’t work, did it? You were supposed to sacrifice me to get Ælfric’s troops on your side. You were supposed to crush Kjartan like a louse, but he’s still there, and Ælfric calls himself Lord of Bernicia, and you’ve got a Danish rebellion on your hands. And for that I slaved at an oar for over two years?” He said nothing. I unbuckled my sword belt and then tugged the heavy mail coat over my head and let it collapse on the floor. Guthred was puzzled as he watched me pull the tunic off my left shoulder, then I showed him the slave scar that Hakka had carved into my upper arm. “You know what that is?” I asked. He shook his head. “A slave mark, lord King. You don’t have one?”

“No,” he said.

“I took it for you,” I said. “I took it so you could be king here, but instead you’re a priest-ridden fugitive. I told you to kill Ivarr long ago.”

“I should have done,” he admitted.

“And you let that miserable piece of hairy gristle, Hrothweard, impose a tithe on the Danes?”

“It was for the shrine,” he said. “Hrothweard had a dream. He said Saint Cuthbert spoke to him.”

“Cuthbert’s talkative for a dead man, isn’t he? Why don’t you remember that you rule this land, not Saint Cuthbert?”

He looked miserable. “The Christian magic has always worked for me,” he said.

“It hasn’t worked,” I said scornfully. “Kjartan lives, Ivarr lives, and you face a revolt of the Danes. Forget your Christian magic. You’ve got me now, and you’ve got Earl Ragnar. He’s the best man in your kingdom. Look after him.”

“And you,” he said, “I shall look after you. I promise.”

“I am,” Gisela said.

“Because you’re going to be my brother-in-law,” I told Guthred.

He nodded at that, then gave me a wan smile. “She always said you’d come back.”

“And you thought I was dead?”

“I hoped you were not,” he said. Then he stood and smiled. “Would you believe me,” he asked, “if I said I missed you?”

“Yes, lord,” I said, “because I missed you.”

“You did?” he asked in hope.

“Yes, lord,” I said, “I did.” And oddly enough, that was true. I had thought I would hate him when I saw him again, but I had forgotten his infectious charm. I liked him still. We embraced. Guthred picked up his helmet and went to the door that was a piece of cloth hooked onto nails. “I shall leave you my house tonight,” he said, smiling. “The two of you,” he added.

And he did.

Gisela. These days, when I am old, I sometimes see a girl who reminds me of Gisela and there comes a catch into my throat. I see a girl with a long stride, see the black hair, the slim waist, the grace of her movements and the defiant upward tilt of her head. And when I see such a girl I think I am seeing Gisela again, and often, because I have become a sentimental fool in my dotage, I find myself with tears in my eyes.

“I already have a wife,” I told her that night.

“You’re married?” Gisela asked me.

“Her name is Mildrith,” I said, “and I married her a long time ago because Alfred ordered it, and she hates me, and so she’s gone into a nunnery.”

“All your women do that,” Gisela said. “Mildrith, Hild, and me.”

“That’s true,” I said, amused. I had not thought of it before.

“Hild told me to go into a nunnery if I was threatened,” Gisela told me.

“Hild did?”

“She said I’d be safe there. So when Kjartan said he wanted me to marry his son, I went to the nunnery.”

“Guthred would never have married you to Sven,” I said.

“My brother thought about it,” she said. “He needed money. He needed help and I was all he had to offer.”

“The peace cow.”

“That’s me,” she said.

“Did you like the nunnery?”

“I hated it all the time you were away. Are you going to kill Kjartan?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Or perhaps Ragnar will kill him. Ragnar has more cause than me.”

“When I refused to marry Sven,” Gisela said, “Kjartan said he’d capture me and let his men rape me. He said he’d stake me on the ground and let his men use me, and when they were done he’d let his dogs have me. Did you and Mildrith have children?”

“One,” I said, “a son. He died.”

“Mine won’t die. My sons will be warriors, and my daughter will be the mother of warriors.”

I smiled, then ran my hand down her long spine so that she shivered on top of me. We were covered by three cloaks and her hair was wet because the thatch was leaking. The floor-rushes were rotted and damp beneath me, but we were happy. “Did you become a Christian in your nunnery?” I asked her.

“Of course not,” she said scornfully.

“They didn’t mind?”

“I gave them silver.”

“Then they didn’t mind,” I said.

“I don’t think any Dane is a real Christian,” she told me.

“Not even your brother?”

“We have many gods,” she said, “and the Christian god is just another one. I’m sure that’s what Guthred thinks. What’s the Christian god’s name? A nun did tell me, but I’ve forgotten.”

“Jehovah.”

“There you are, then. Odin, Thor, and Jehovah. Does he have a wife?”

“No.”

“Poor Jehovah,” she said.

Poor Jehovah, I thought, and was still thinking it when, in a persistent rain that slashed on the stony remnants of the Roman road and turned the fields to mud, we crossed the Swale and rode north to take the fortress that could not be taken. We rode to capture Dunholm.

NINE

It seemed simple when I suggested it. We should ride to Dunholm, make a surprise attack, and thus provide Guthred with a safe refuge and Ragnar with revenge, but Hrothweard had been determined to thwart us and, before we rode, there had been another bitter argument. “What happens,” Hrothweard had demanded of Guthred, “to the blessed saint? If you ride away, who guards Cuthbert?”

Hrothweard had passion. It was fed by anger, I suppose. I have known other men like him, men who could work themselves into a welter of fury over the smallest insult to the one thing they hold most dear. For Hrothweard that one thing was the church, and anyone who was not a Christian was an enemy to his church. He had become Guthred’s chief counselor, and it was his passion that gained him that position. Guthred still saw Christianity as a superior kind of sorcery, and in Hrothweard he thought he had found a man capable of working the magic. Hrothweard certainly looked like a sorcerer. His hair was wild, his beard jutted, he had vivid eyes, and boasted the loudest voice of any man I have ever met. He was unmarried, devoted only to his beloved religion, and men reckoned he would become the archbishop in Eoferwic when Wulfhere died.

Guthred had no passion. He was reasonable, gentle mostly, wanting those about him to be happy, and Hrothweard bullied him. In Eoferwic, where most of the citizens were Christians, Hrothweard had the power to summon a mob into the streets, and Guthred, to keep the city from riots, had deferred to Hrothweard. And Hrothweard had also learned to threaten Guthred with Saint Cuthbert’s displeasure, and that was the weapon he used on the eve of our ride to Dunholm. Our only chance of capturing the fortress was surprise, and that meant moving fast, and in turn that required that Cuthbert’s corpse and Oswald’s head and the precious gospel book must be left in Cetreht along with all the priests, monks, and women. Father Hrothweard insisted that our first duty was to protect Saint Cuthbert. “If the saint falls into the hands of the pagans,” he shouted at Guthred, “then he will be desecrated!” He was right, of course. Saint Cuthbert would be stripped of his pectoral cross and his fine ring, then fed to the pigs, while the precious gospel book from Lindisfarena would have its jeweled cover ripped off and its pages used to light fires or wipe Danish arses. “Your first duty is to protect the saint,” Hrothweard bellowed at Guthred.

“Our first duty,” I retorted, “is to preserve the king.”

The priests, of course, supported Hrothweard, and once I intervened he turned his passion against me. I was a murderer, a pagan, a heretic, a sinner, a defiler, and all Guthred needed to do to preserve his throne was bring me to justice. Beocca alone among the churchmen tried to calm the wild-haired priest, but Beocca was shouted down. Priests and monks declared that Guthred would be cursed by God if he abandoned Cuthbert, and Guthred looked confused and it was Ragnar who ended the silliness. “Hide the saint,” he suggested. He had to say it three times before anyone heard him.

“Hide him?” Abbot Eadred asked.

“Where?” Hrothweard demanded scornfully.

“There is a graveyard here,” Ragnar said. “Bury him. Who would ever search for a corpse in a graveyard?” The clerics just stared at him. Abbot Eadred opened his mouth to protest, but the suggestion was so sensible that the words died on his lips. “Bury him,” Ragnar went on, “then go west into the hills and wait for us.”

Hrothweard tried to protest, but Guthred supported Ragnar. He named ten warriors who would stay to protect the priests, and in the morning, as we rode, those men were digging a temporary grave in the cemetery where the saint’s corpse and the other relics would be hidden. The men from Bebbanburg also stayed at Cetreht. That was on my insistence. Aidan wanted to ride with us, but I did not trust him. He could easily cause my death by riding ahead and betraying our approach to Kjartan and so we took all his horses, which forced Aidan and his men to stay with the churchmen. Osburh, Guthred’s pregnant queen, also remained. Abbot Eadred saw her as a hostage against Guthred’s return, and though Guthred made a great fuss of the girl I sensed that he had no great regrets at leaving her. Osburh was an anxious woman, as prone to tears as my wife Mildrith and, also like Mildrith, a great lover of priests. Hrothweard was her confessor and I supposed that she preached the wild man’s message in Guthred’s bed. Guthred assured her that no roving Danes would come near Cetreht once we had left, but he could not be certain of that. There was always a chance that we would return to find them all slaughtered or taken prisoner, but if we stood any hope of taking Dunholm then we had to move fast.

Was there any hope? Dunholm was a place where a man could grow old and defy his enemies in safety. And we were fewer than two hundred men, along with a score of women who insisted on coming. Gisela was one of those, and she, like the other women, wore breeches and a leather jerkin. Father Beocca also joined us. I told him he could not ride fast enough and that, if he fell behind, we would abandon him, but he would not hear of staying in Cetreht. “As ambassador,” he announced grandly, “my place is with Guthred.”

“Your place is with the other priests,” I said.

“I shall come,” he said stubbornly and would not be dissuaded. He made us tie his legs to his saddle-girth so he could not fall off and then he endured the hard pace. He was in agony, but he never complained. I suspect he really wanted to see the excitement. He might have been a squint-eyed cripple and a club-footed priest and an ink-spattered clerk and a pedantic scholar, but Beocca had the heart of a warrior.

We left Cetreht in a misted late autumn dawn that was laced with rain, and Kjartan’s remaining riders, who had returned to the river’s northern bank, closed in behind us. There were eighteen of them now, and we let them follow us and, to confuse them, we did not stay on the Roman road which led straight across the flatter land toward Dunholm, but after a few miles turned north and west onto a smaller track which climbed into gentle hills. The sun broke through the clouds before midday, but it was low in the sky so that the shadows were long. Redwings flocked beneath the falcon-haunted clouds. This was the time of year that men culled their livestock. Cattle were being pole-axed, and pigs, fattened on the autumn’s plentiful acorns, were being slaughtered so their meat could be salted into barrels or hung to dry over smoky fires. The tanning pits stank of dung and urine. The sheep were coming down from the high pastures to be folded close to steadings, while in the valleys the trees rang with the noise of axes as men lay in their winter supply of firewood.

The few villages we passed were empty. Folk must have been warned that horsemen were coming and so they fled before we arrived. They hid in woodlands till we were past, and prayed we did not stay to plunder. We rode on, still climbing, and I had no doubt that the men following us would have sent messengers up the Roman road to tell Kjartan that we were slanting to the west in an attempt to circle Dunholm. Kjartan had to believe that Guthred was making a desperate attempt to reach Bebbanburg, and if we deceived him into that belief then I hoped he would send yet more men out of the fortress, men who would bar the crossings of the Wiire in the western hills.

We spent that night in those hills. It rained again. We had some small shelter from a wood which grew on a south-facing slope and there was a shepherd’s hut where the women could sleep, but the rest of us crouched about fires. I knew Kjartan’s scouts were watching us from across the valley, but I hoped they were now convinced we were going west. The rain hissed in the fire as Ragnar, Guthred, and I talked with Sihtric, making him remember everything about the place where he had been raised. I doubt I learned anything new. Sihtric had told me all he knew long before and I had often thought of it as I rowed Sverri’s boat, but I listened again as he explained that Dunholm’s palisade went clear around the crag’s summit and was broken only at the southern end where the rock was too steep for a man to climb. The water came from a well on the eastern side. “The well is outside the palisade,” he told us, “down the slope a bit.”

“But the well has its own wall?”

“Yes, lord.”

“How steep a slope?” Ragnar asked.

“Very steep, lord,” Sihtric said. “I remember a boy falling down there and he hit his head on a tree and became stupid. And there’s a second well to the west,” he added, “but that’s not used much. The water’s murky.”

“So he’s got food and water,” Guthred said bitterly.

“We can’t besiege him,” I said, “we don’t have the men. The eastern well,” I turned back to Sihtric, “is among trees. How many?”

“Thick trees, lord,” he said, “hornbeams and sycamore.”

“And there has to be a gate in the palisade to let men reach the well?”

“To let women go there, lord, yes.”

“Can the river be crossed?”

“Not really, lord,” Sihtric was trying to be helpful, but he sounded despondent as he described how the Wiire flowed fast as it circled Dunholm’s crag. The river was shallow enough for a man to wade, he said, but it was treacherous with sudden deep pools, swirling currents and willow-braided fish traps. “A careful man can cross it in daytime, lord,” he said, “but not at night.”

I tried to recall what I had seen when, dressed as the dead swordsman, I had stood so long outside the fortress. The ground fell steeply to the east, I remembered, and it was ragged ground, full of tree stumps and boulders, but even at night a man should be able to clamber down that slope to the river’s bank. But I also remembered a steep shoulder of rock hiding the view downriver, and I just hoped that shoulder was not so steep as the picture lingering in my head. “What we must do,” I said, “is reach Dunholm tomorrow evening. Just before dark. Then attack in the dawn.”

“If we arrive before dark,” Ragnar pointed out, “they’ll see us, and be ready for us.”

“We can’t get there after dark,” I suggested, “because we’ll never find the way. Besides, I want them to be ready for us.”

“You do?” Guthred sounded surprised.

“If they see men to their north they’ll pack their ramparts. They’ll have the whole garrison guarding the gate. But that isn’t where we’ll attack.” I looked across the fire at Steapa. “You’re frightened of the dark, aren’t you?”

The big face stared back at me across the flames. He did not want to admit that he was frightened of anything, but honesty overcame his reluctance. “Yes, lord.”

“But tomorrow night,” I said, “you’ll trust me to lead you through the darkness?”

“I’ll trust you, lord,” he said.

“You and ten other men,” I said, and I thought I knew how we could capture the impregnable Dunholm. Fate would have to be on our side, but I believed, as we sat in that wet cold darkness, that the three spinners had started weaving a new golden thread into my destiny. And I had always believed Guthred’s fate was golden.

“Just a dozen men?” Ragnar asked.

“A dozen sceadugengan,” I said, because it would be the shadow-walkers who would take Dunholm. It was time for the strange things that haunt the night, the shape-shifters and horrors of the dark, to come to our help.

And once Dunholm was taken, if it could be taken, we still had to kill Ivarr.

We knew Kjartan would have men guarding the Wiire’s upstream crossings. He would also know that the farther west we went the easier the crossing would be, and I hoped that belief would persuade him to send his troops a long way upriver. If he planned to fight and stop us he had to send his warriors now, before we reached the Wiire, and to make it seem even more likely that we were going deep into the hills we did not head directly for the river next morning, but instead rode north and west onto the moors. Ragnar and I, pausing on a long windswept crest, saw six of Kjartan’s scouts break from the pursuing group and spur hard eastward. “They’ve gone to tell him where we’re going,” Ragnar said.

“Time to go somewhere else then,” I suggested.

“Soon,” Ragnar said, “but not yet.”

Sihtric’s horse had cast a shoe and we waited while he saddled one of the spare horses, then we kept going northwest for another hour. We went slowly, following sheep tracks down into a valley where trees grew thick. Once in the valley we sent Guthred and most of the riders ahead, still following the tracks west, while twenty of us waited in the trees. Kjartan’s scouts, seeing Guthred and the others climb onto the farther moors, followed carelessly. Our pursuers were only nine men now, the rest had been sent with messages to Dunholm, and the nine who remained were mounted on light horses, ideal for scrambling away from us if we turned on them, but they came unsuspecting into the trees. They were halfway through the wood when they saw Ragnar waiting ahead and then they turned to spur away, but we had four groups of men waiting to ambush them. Ragnar was in front of them, I was moving to bar their retreat, Steapa was on their left and Rollo on their right, and the nine men suddenly realized they were surrounded. They charged at my group in an attempt to break free of the thick wood, but the five of us blocked their path and our horses were heavier and two of the scouts died quickly, one of them gutted by Serpent-Breath, and the other seven tried to scatter, but they were obstructed by brambles and trees, and our men closed on them. Steapa dismounted to pursue the last enemy into a bramble thicket. I saw his ax rise and chop down, then heard a scream that went on and on. I thought it must stop, but on it went and Steapa paused to sneeze, then his ax rose and fell again and there was sudden silence.

“Are you catching a cold?” I asked him.

“No, lord,” he said, forcing his way out of the brambles and dragging the corpse behind him. “His stink got up my nose.”

Kjartan was blind now. He did not know it, but he had lost his scouts, and as soon as the nine men were dead we sounded a horn to summon Guthred back, and, as we waited for him, we stripped the corpses of anything valuable. We took their horses, arm rings, weapons, a few coins, some damp bread, and two flasks of birch ale. One of the dead men had been wearing a fine mail coat, so fine that I suspected it had been made in Frankia, but the man had been so thin that the coat fitted none of us until Gisela took it for herself. “You don’t need mail,” her brother said scornfully.

Gisela ignored him. She seemed astonished that so fine a coat of mail could weigh so much, but she pulled it over her head, freed her hair from the links at her neck and buckled one of the dead men’s swords about her waist. She put on her black cloak and stared defiantly at Guthred. “Well?”

“You frighten me,” he said with a smile.

“Good,” she said, then pushed her horse against mine so the mare would stay still as she mounted, but she had not reckoned with the weight of the mail and had to struggle into the saddle.

“It suits you,” I said, and it did. She looked like a Valkyrie, those warrior maidens of Odin who rode the sky in shining armor.

We turned east then, going faster now. We rode through the trees, ducking continually to keep the branches from whipping our eyes, and we went downhill, following a rain-swollen stream that must lead to the Wiire. By the early afternoon we were close to Dunholm, probably no more than five or six miles away, and Sihtric now led us, for he reckoned he knew a place where we could cross the river. The Wiire, he told us, turned south once it had passed Dunholm, and it widened as it flowed through pastureland and there were fords in those gentler valleys. He knew the country well for his mother’s parents had lived there and as a child he had often driven cattle through the river. Better still those fords were on Dunholm’s eastern side, the flank Kjartan would not be guarding, but there was a risk that the rain, which started to pour again in the afternoon, would so fill the Wiire that the fords would be impassable.

At least the rain hid us as we left the hills and rode into the river valley. We were now very close to Dunholm, that lay just to the north, but we were hidden by a wooded spur of high ground at the foot of which was a huddle of cottages. “Hocchale,” Sihtric told me, nodding at the settlement, “it’s where my mother was born.”

“Your grandparents are still there?” I asked.

“Kjartan had them killed, lord, when he fed my mother to his dogs.”

“How many dogs does he have?”

“There were forty or fifty when I was there, lord. Big things. They only obeyed Kjartan and his huntsmen. And the Lady Thyra.”

“They obeyed her?” I asked.

“My father wanted to punish her once,” Sihtric said, “and he set the dogs on her. I don’t think he was going to let them eat her, I think he just wanted to frighten her, but she sang to them.”

“She sang to them?” Ragnar asked. He had hardly mentioned Thyra in the last weeks. It was as if he felt guilty that he had left her so long in Kjartan’s power. I knew he had tried to find her in the early days of her disappearance, he had even faced Kjartan once when another Dane had arranged a truce between them, but Kjartan had vehemently denied that Thyra was even at Dunholm, and after that Ragnar had joined the Great Army that had invaded Wessex and then he had become a hostage, and all that while Thyra had been in Kjartan’s power. Now Ragnar looked at Sihtric. “She sang to them?” he asked again.

“She sang to them, lord,” Sihtric confirmed, “and they just lay down. My father was angry with them.” Ragnar frowned at Sihtric as though he did not believe what he heard. Sihtric shrugged. “They say she’s a sorcerer, lord,” he explained humbly.

“Thyra’s no sorcerer,” Ragnar said angrily. “All she ever wanted was to marry and have children.”

“But she sang to the dogs, lord,” Sihtric insisted, “and they lay down.”

“They won’t lie down when they see us,” I said. “Kjartan will loose them on us as soon as he sees us.”

“He will, lord,” Sihtric said, and I could see his nervousness.

“So we’ll just have to sing to them,” I said cheerfully.

We followed a sodden track beside a flooded ditch to find the Wiire swirling fast and high. The ford looked impassable. The rain was getting harder, pounding the river that fretted at the top of its steep banks. There was a high hill on the far bank and the clouds were low enough to scrape the black, bare branches at its long summit. “We’ll never cross here,” Ragnar said. Father Beocca, tied to his saddle and with his priest’s robes sodden, shivered. The horsemen milled in the mud, watching the river that threatened to spill over its banks, but then Steapa, who was mounted on a huge black stallion, gave a grunt and simply rode down the track into the water. His horse baulked at the river’s hard current, but he forced it onward until the water was seething over his stirrups, and then he stopped and beckoned that I should follow.

His idea was that the biggest horses would make a barrier to break the river’s force. I pushed my horse up against Steapa’s, then more men came and we held onto each other, making a wall of horseflesh that slowly reached across the Wiire, that was some thirty or forty paces wide. We only needed to make our dam at the river’s center where the current was strongest, and once we had a hundred men struggling to keep their horses still, Ragnar urged the rest through the calmer water provided by our makeshift dam. Beocca was terrified, poor man, but Gisela took his reins and spurred her own mare into the water. I hardly dared watch: If her horse had been swept away then the mail coat would have dragged her under, but she and Beocca made it safe to the far bank, and two by two the others followed. One woman and one warrior were swept away, but both scrambled safely across and their horses found footing downstream and reached the bank. Once the smaller horses were across we slowly unmade our wall and inched through the rising river to safety.

It was already getting dark. It was only midafternoon, but the clouds were thick. It was a black, wet, miserable day, and now we had to climb the escarpment through the dripping trees, and in places the slope was so steep that we were forced to dismount and lead the horses. Once at the summit we turned north, and I could see Dunholm when the low cloud allowed it. The fortress showed as a dark smear on its high rock and above it I could see the smoke from the garrison fires mingling with the rain clouds. It was possible that men on the southern ramparts could see us now, except that we were riding through trees and our mail was smeared with mud, but even if they could see us they would surely not suspect we were enemies. The last they had heard of Guthred was that he and his desperate men were riding westward, looking for a place to cross the Wiire, and now we were to the east of the fortress and already across the river.

Sihtric still led us. We dropped east off the hill’s summit, hiding ourselves from the fortress, then rode into a valley where a stream foamed westward. We forded it easily enough, climbed again, and all the time we pounded past miserable hovels where frightened folk peered from low doorways. They were Kjartan’s own slaves, Sihtric told me, their job to raise pigs and cut firewood and grow crops for Dunholm.

Our horses were tiring. They had been ridden hard across soft ground and they carried men in mail with heavy shields, but our journey was almost done. It did not matter now if the garrison saw us, because we had come to the hill on which the fortress stood and no one could leave Dunholm without fighting their way past us. If Kjartan had sent warriors west to find us then he could no longer send a messenger to summon those men back because we now controlled the only road that led to his fastness.

And so we came to the neck where the ridge dropped slightly and the road turned south before climbing to the massive gatehouse, and we stopped there and our horses spread along the higher ground and, to the men on Dunholm’s wall, we must have looked like a dark army. All of us were muddy, our horses were filthy, but Kjartan’s men could see our spears and shields and swords and axes. By now they would know we were the enemy and that we had cut their only road, and they probably laughed at us. We were so few and their fortress was so high and their wall was so big and the rain still crashed on us and the drenching dark crept along the valleys on either side of us as a slither of lightning crackled wicked and sharp across the northern sky.

We picketed the horses in a waterlogged field. We did our best to rid the beasts of mud and pick their hooves clean, then we made a score of fires in the lee of a blackthorn hedge. It took forever to light the first fire. Many of our men carried dry kindling in leather pouches, but as soon as the kindling was exposed to the rain it became soggy. Eventually two men made a crude tent with their cloaks and I heard the click of steel on flint and saw the first trace of smoke. They protected that small fire as though it were made of gold, and at last the flames took hold and we could pile the wet firewood on top. The logs seethed and hissed and crackled, but the flames gave us some small warmth and the fires told Kjartan that his enemies were still on the hill. I doubt he thought Guthred had the courage to make such an attack, but he must have known Ragnar was returned from Wessex and he knew I had come back from the dead and perhaps, in that long wet night of rain and thunder, he felt a shiver of fear.

And while he shivered, the sceadugengan slithered in the dark.

As night fell I stared at the route I had to take in the darkness, and it was not good. I would have to go down to the river, then southward along the water’s edge, but just beneath the fortress wall, where the river vanished about Dunholm’s crag, a massive boulder blocked the way. It was a monstrous boulder, bigger than Alfred’s new church at Wintanceaster, and if I could not find a way around it then I would have to climb over its wide, flat top which lay less than a spear’s throw from Kjartan’s ramparts. I sheltered my eyes from the rain and stared hard, and decided there might be a way past the giant stone at the river’s edge.

“Can it be done?” Ragnar asked me.

“It has to be done,” I said.

I wanted Steapa with me, and I chose ten other men to accompany us. Both Guthred and Ragnar wanted to come, but I refused them. Ragnar was needed to lead the assault on the high gate, and Guthred was simply not warrior enough. Besides, he was one of the reasons we fought this battle and to leave him dead on Dunholm’s slopes would make a nonsense of the whole gamble. I took Beocca to one side. “Do you remember,” I asked him, “how my father made you stay by my side during the assault on Eoferwic?”

“Of course I do!” he said indignantly. “And you didn’t stay with me, did you? You kept trying to join the fight! It was all your fault that you were captured.” I had been ten years old and desperate to see a battle. “If you hadn’t run away from me,” he said, still sounding indignant, “you would never have been caught by the Danes! You’d be a Christian now. I blame myself. I should have tied your reins to mine.”

“Then you’d have been captured as well,” I said, “but I want you to do the same for Guthred tomorrow. Stay by him and don’t let him risk his life.”

Beocca looked alarmed. “He’s a king! He’s a grown man. I can’t tell him what to do.”

“Tell him Alfred wants him to live.”

“Alfred might want him to live,” he said gloomily, “but put a sword into a man’s hand and he loses his wits. I’ve seen it happen!”

“Then tell him you had a dream and Saint Cuthbert says he’s to stay out of trouble.”

“He won’t believe me!”

“He will,” I promised.

“I’ll try,” Beocca said, then looked at me with his one good eye. “Can you do this thing, Uhtred?”

“I don’t know,” I told him honestly.

“I shall pray for you.”

“Thank you, father,” I said. I would be praying to every god I could think of, and adding another could not hurt. In the end, I decided, it was all up to fate. The spinners already knew what we planned and knew how those plans would turn out and I could only hope they were not readying the shears to cut my life’s threads. Perhaps, above everything else, it was the madness of my idea that might give it wings and so let it succeed. There had been madness in Northumbria’s air ever since I had first returned. There had been a slaughterous madness in Eoferwic, a holy insanity in Cair Ligualid, and now this desperate idea.

I had chosen Steapa, for he was worth three or four other men. I took Sihtric because, if we got inside Dunholm, he would know the ground. I took Finan because the Irishman had a fury in his soul that I reckoned would turn to savagery in battle. I took Clapa because he was strong and fearless, and Rypere because he was cunning and lithe. The other six were from Ragnar’s men, all of them strong, all young, and all good with weapons, and I told them what we were going to do, and then made sure that each man had a black cloak that swathed him from head to foot. We smeared a mixture of mud and ash on our hands, faces, and helmets. “No shields,” I told them. That was a hard decision to make, for a shield is a great comfort in battle, but shields were heavy and, if they banged on stones or trees, would make a noise like a drumbeat. “I go first,” I told them, “and we’ll be going slowly. Very slowly. We have all night.”

We tied ourselves together with leather reins. I knew how easy it was for men to get lost in the dark, and on that night the darkness was absolute. If there was any moon it was hidden by thick clouds from which the rain fell steadily, but we had three things to guide us. First there was the slope itself. So long as I kept the uphill side to my right then I knew we were on the eastern side of Dunholm, and second there was the rushing hiss of the river as it curled about the crag, and last there were the fires of Dunholm itself. Kjartan feared an assault in the night and so he had his men hurl flaming logs from the high gate’s rampart. Those logs lit the track, but to produce them he had to keep a great fire burning in his courtyard and that blaze outlined the top of the ramparts and glowed red on the belly of the low rushing clouds. That raw light did not illuminate the slope, but it was there, beyond the black shadows, a livid guide in our wet darkness.

I had Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting hanging from my belt and, like the others, I carried a spear with its blade wrapped in a scrap of cloth so that no stray light could reflect from the metal. The spears would serve as staffs on the uneven ground and as probes to feel the way. We did not leave until it was utterly dark, for I dared not risk a sharp-eyed sentry seeing us scramble toward the river, but even in the dark our journey was easy enough at first, for our own fires showed us a way down the slope. We headed away from the fortress so that no one on its ramparts would see us leave the firelit camp, and then we worked our way down to the river and there turned southward. Our route now led across the base of the slope where trees had been felled and I had to feel my way between the stumps. The ground was thick with brambles and with the litter of tree-felling. There were small branches left to rot and we made a lot of noise trampling them underfoot, but the sound of the rain was louder still and the river seethed and roared to our left. My cloak kept catching on twigs or stumps and I tore its hem ragged dragging it free. Every now and then a great crack of lightning whipped earthward and we froze each time and, in the blue-white dazzle, I could see the fort outlined high above me. I could even see the spears of the sentries like thorny sparks against the sky, and I thought those sentries must be cold, soaked, and miserable. The thunder came a heartbeat later and it was always close, banging above us as if Thor were beating his war hammer against a giant iron shield. The gods were watching us. I knew that. That is what the gods do in their sky-halls. They watch us and they reward us for our daring or punish us for our insolence, and I clutched Thor’s hammer to tell him that I wanted his help, and Thor cracked the sky with his thunder and I took it as a sign of his approval.

The slope grew steeper. Rain was running off the soil which, in places, was nothing but slick mud. We all fell repeatedly as we edged southward. The tree stumps became sparser, but now there were boulders embedded in the slope and the wet stones were slick, so slick that in some places we were forced to crawl. It was getting darker too, for the slope bulged above us to hide the fire-edged ramparts and we slid and scrambled and cursed our way into a soul-scaring blackness. The river seemed very close and I feared sliding off a slab of rock and falling into the hurrying water.

Then my groping spear cracked against stone and I realized we had come to the huge boulder which, in the dark, felt like a monstrous cliff. I thought I had seen a way past on the river’s edge and I explored that way, going slowly, always thrusting the spear shaft ahead, but if I had seen a route in the twilight I could not find it now. The boulder appeared to overhang the water and there was no choice but to climb back up the slope beside the great rock and then slither over its domed top, and so we inched our way upward, clinging to saplings and kicking footholds in the sopping earth, and every foot we climbed took us closer to the ramparts. The leather ropes joining us kept catching on snags and it seemed to take forever to reach a spot where the firelight glowing above the palisade showed a way onto the rock’s summit.

That summit was a stretch of open stone, pitched like a shallow roof and about fifteen paces wide. The western end rose to the ramparts while the eastern edge ended in a sheer drop to the river, and all that I saw in a flicker of far-off lightning that ripped across the northern clouds. The center of the boulder’s top, where we would have to cross, was no more than twenty paces from Kjartan’s wall and there was a sentry there, his spear blade revealed by the lightning as a flash of white fire. We huddled beside the stone and I made every man untie the leather rope from his belt. We would retie the reins into one rope and I would crawl across first, letting the rope out behind me, and then each man must follow. “One at a time,” I said, “and wait till I tug the rope. I’ll tug it three times. That’s the signal for the next man to cross.” I had to half shout to make myself heard over the pounding rain and gusting wind. “Crawl on your bellies,” I told them. If lightning struck, then a prone man covered by a muddy cloak would be far less visible than a crouching warrior. “Rypere goes last,” I said, “and he brings the rope with him.”

It seemed to me that it took half the night just to cross that short stretch of open rock. I went first, and I crawled blind in the dark and had to grope with the spear to find a place where I could slither down the boulder’s far side. Then I tugged the rope and after an interminable wait I heard a man crawling on the stone. It was one of Ragnar’s Danes who followed the rope to join me. Then one by one the others came. I counted them in. We helped each man down, and I prayed there would be no lightning, but then, just as Steapa was halfway across, there was a crackling blue-white fork that slashed clear across the hilltop and lit us like worms trapped by the fire of the gods. In that moment of brightness I could see Steapa shaking, and then the thunder bellowed over us and the rain seemed to grow even more malevolent. “Steapa!” I called, “come on!” but he was so shaken that he could not move and I had to wriggle back onto the boulder, take his hand and coax him onward, and while doing that I somehow lost count of the number of men who had already crossed so that, when I thought the last had arrived I discovered Rypere was still on the far side. He scrambled over quickly, coiling the rope as he came, and then we untied the reins and again joined ourselves belt to belt. We were all chilled and wet, but fate had been with us and no challenging shout had come from the ramparts.

We slid and half fell back down the slope, seeking the riverbank. The hillside was much steeper here, but sycamores and hornbeams grew thick and they made the journey easier. We went on south, the ramparts high to our right and the river ominous and loud to our left. There were more boulders, none the size of the giant that had blocked us before, but all difficult to negotiate, and each one took time, so much time, and then, as we skirted the uphill side of one great rock, Clapa dropped his spear, and it clattered down the stone and banged on a tree.

It did not seem possible that the noise could have been heard up at the ramparts. The rain was seething onto the trees and the wind was loud at the palisade, but someone in the fort heard something or suspected something, for suddenly a burning log was thrown over the wall to crash through the wet branches. It was thrown twenty paces north of us, and we happened to be stopped at the time while I found a way past yet another rock, and the light of the flames was feeble. We were nothing but black shadows among the shadows of the trees. The flickering fire was swiftly extinguished by the rain and I hissed at my men to crouch. I expected more fire to be thrown, and it was, this time a big twisted brand of oil-soaked straw that burned much brighter than the log. Again it was thrown in the wrong place, but its light reached us, and I prayed to Surtur, the god of fire, that he extinguish the flames. We huddled, still as death, just above the river, and then I heard what I feared to hear.

Dogs.

Kjartan, or whoever guarded this stretch of the wall, had sent the war dogs out through the small gate which led to the well. I could hear the huntsmen calling to them with the sing-song voices that drove hounds into undergrowth, and I could hear the dogs baying and I knew there was no escape from this steep, slippery slope. We had no chance of scrambling back up the hill and across the big boulder before the dogs would be on us. I pulled the cloth off the spearhead, thinking that at least I could drive the blade into one beast before the rest trapped, mauled, and savaged us, and just then another splinter of lightning slithered across the night and the thunder cracked like the sound of the world’s ending. The noise pounded us and echoed like drumbeats in the river valley.

Hounds hate thunder, and thunder was Thor’s gift to us. A second peal boomed in the sky and the hounds were whimpering now. The rain became vicious, driving at the slope like arrows, its sound suddenly drowning the noise of the frightened dogs. “They won’t hunt,” Finan shouted into my ear.

“No?”

“Not in this rain.”

The huntsmen called again, more urgently, and as the rain slackened slightly I heard the dogs coming down the slope. They were not racing down, but slinking reluctantly. They were terrified by the thunder, dazzled by the lightning and bemused by the rain’s malevolence. They had no appetite for prey. One beast came close to us and I thought I saw the glint of its eyes, though how that was possible in that darkness, when the hound was only a shape in the sodden blackness, I do not know. The beast turned back toward the hilltop and the rain still slashed down. There was silence now from the huntsmen. None of the hounds had given tongue so the huntsmen must have assumed no quarry had been found and still we waited, crouching in the awful rain, waiting and waiting, until at last I decided the hounds were back in the fortress and we stumbled on.

Now we had to find the well, and that proved the most difficult task of all. First we remade the rope from the reins and Finan held one end while I prowled uphill. I groped through trees, slipped on the mud, and continually mistook tree trunks for the well’s palisade. The rope snagged on fallen branches, and twice I had to go back, move everyone some yards southward and start my search again. I was very close to despair when I tripped and my left hand slid down a lichen-covered timber. A splinter drove into my palm. I fell hard against the timber and discovered it was a wall, not some discarded branch, and then realized I had found the palisade protecting the well. I yanked on the rope so that the others could clamber up to join me.

Now we waited again. The thunder moved farther north and the rain subsided to a hard, steady fall. We crouched, shivering, waiting for the first gray hint of dawn, and I worried that Kjartan, in this rain, would not need to send anyone to the well, but could survive on the water collected in rain barrels. Yet everywhere, I assume in all the world, folk fetch water in the dawn. It is the way we greet the day. We need water to cook and shave and wash and brew, and in all the aching hours at Sverri’s oar I had often remembered Sihtric telling me that Dunholm’s wells were beyond its palisades, and that meant that Kjartan must open a gate every morning. And if he opened a gate then we could get into the impregnable fortress. That was my plan, the only plan I had, and if it failed we would be dead. “How many women fetch water?” I asked Sihtric softly.

“Ten, lord?” he guessed.

I peered around the palisade’s edge. I could just see the glow of fire-light above the ramparts and I guessed the well was twenty paces from the high wall. Not far, but twenty paces of steep uphill climbing. “There are guards on the gate?” I asked, knowing the answer because I had asked the question before, but in the dark and with the killing ahead, it was comforting to speak.

“There were only two or three guards when I was there, lord.”

And those guards would be dozy, I thought, yawning after a night of broken sleep. They would open the gate, watch the women go through, then lean on the wall and dream of other women. Yet only one of the guards had to be alert, and even if the gate guards were dreaming, then one alert sentinel on the wall would be sufficient to thwart us. I knew the wall on this eastern side had no fighting platform, but it did have smaller ledges where a man could stand and keep watch. And so I worried, imagining all that could go wrong, and beside me Clapa snored in a moment’s snatched sleep and I was amazed that he could sleep at all when he was so drenched and cold, and then he snored again and I nudged him awake.

It seemed as though dawn would never come, and if it did we would be so cold and wet that we would be unable to move, but at last, on the heights across the river, there was a hint of gray in the night. The gray spread like a stain. We huddled closer together so that the well’s palisade would hide us from any sentry on the wall. The gray became lighter and cocks crowed in the fortress. The rain was still steady. Beneath me I could see white flurries where the river foamed on rocks. The trees below us were visible now, though still shadowed. A badger walked ten paces from us, then turned and hurried clumsily downhill. A rent of red showed in a thinner patch of the eastern clouds and it was suddenly daylight, though a gloomy day-light that was shot through with the silver threads of rain. Ragnar would be making his shield wall now, lining men on the path to keep the defenders’ attention. If the women were to come for water, I thought, then it must be soon, and I eased my way down the slope so I could see all of my men. “When we go,” I hissed, “we go fast! Up to the gate, kill the guard, then stay close to me! And once we’re inside, we go slowly. Just walk! Look as if you belong there.”

Twelve of us could not hope to attack all Kjartan’s men. If we were to win this day we had to sneak into the fortress. Sihtric had told me that behind the well’s gate was a tangle of buildings. If we could kill the guards quickly, and if no one saw their deaths, then I hoped we could hide in that tangle and then, once we were certain that no one had discovered us, just walk toward the north wall. We were all in mail or leather, we all had helmets, and if the garrison was watching Ragnar approach then they might not notice us at all, and if they did, they would assume we were defenders. Once at the wall I wanted to capture a part of the fighting platform. If we could reach that platform and kill the men guarding it, then we could hold a stretch of the wall long enough for Ragnar to join us. His nimbler men would climb the palisade by driving axes into the timbers and using the embedded weapons as steps, and Rypere was carrying our leather rope to help them up. As more men came we could fight our way down the wall to the high gate and open it to the rest of Ragnar’s force.

It had seemed a good idea when I described it to Ragnar and Guthred, but in that cold wet dawn it seemed forlorn and desperate and I was suddenly struck by a sense of hopelessness. I touched my hammer amulet. “Pray to your gods,” I said, “pray no one sees us. Pray we can reach the wall.” It was the wrong thing to say. I should have sounded confident, but instead I had betrayed my fears and this was no time to pray to any gods. We were already in their hands and they would help us or hurt us according to how they liked what we did. I remember blind Ravn, Ragnar’s grandfather, telling me that the gods like bravery, and they love defiance, and they hate cowardice and loathe uncertainty. “We are here to amuse them,” Ravn had said, “that is all, and if we do it well then we feast with them till time ends.” Ravn had been a warrior before his sight went, and afterward he became a skald, a maker of poems, and the poems he made celebrated battle and bravery. And if we did this right, I thought, then we would keep a dozen skalds busy.

A voice sounded up the slope and I held up a hand to say we should all be silent. Then I heard women’s voices and the thump of a wooden pail against timber. The voices came closer. I could hear a woman complaining, but the words were indistinct, then another woman answered, much clearer. “They can’t get in, that’s all. They can’t.” They spoke English, so they were either slaves or the wives of Kjartan’s men. I heard a splash as a bucket fell down the well. I still held up my hand, cautioning the eleven men to stay still. It would take time to fill the buckets and the more time the better because it would allow the guards to become bored. I looked along the dirty faces, looking for any sign of uncertainty that would offend the gods, and I suddenly realized we were not twelve men, but thirteen. The thirteenth man had his head bowed so I could not see his face, so I poked his booted leg with my spear and he looked up at me.

She looked up at me. It was Gisela.

She looked defiant and pleading, and I was horrified. There is no number so unlucky as thirteen. Once, in Valhalla, there was a feast for twelve gods, but Loki, the trickster god, went uninvited and he played his evil games, persuading Hod the Blind to throw a sprig of mistletoe at his brother, Baldur. Baldur was the favorite god, the good one, but he could be killed by mistletoe and so his blind brother threw the sprig and Baldur died and Loki laughed, and ever since we have known that thirteen is the evil number. Thirteen birds in the sky are an omen of disaster, thirteen pebbles in a cooking pot will poison any food placed in the pot, while thirteen at a meal is an invitation to death. Thirteen spears against a fortress could only mean defeat. Even the Christians know thirteen is unlucky. Father Beocca told me that was because there were thirteen men at Christ’s last meal, and the thirteenth was Judas. So I just stared in horror at Gisela and, to show what she had done, I put down my spear and held up ten fingers, then two, then pointed at her and held up one more. She gave a shake of her head as if to deny what I was telling her, but I pointed at her a second time and then at the ground, telling her she must stay where she was. Twelve would go to Dunholm, not thirteen.

“If the babe won’t suck,” a woman was saying beyond the wall, “then rub its lips with cowslip juice. It always works.”

“Rub your tits with it, too,” another voice said.

“And put a mix of soot and honey on its back,” a third woman advised.

“Two more buckets,” the first voice said, “then we can get out of this rain.”

It was time to go. I pointed at Gisela again, gesturing angrily that she must stay where she was, then I picked up the spear in my left hand and drew Serpent-Breath. I kissed her blade and stood. It felt unnatural to stand and move again, to be in the daylight, to start walking around the well’s palisade. I felt naked under the ramparts and I waited for a shout from a watchful sentinel, but none came. Ahead, not far ahead, I could see the gate and there was no guard standing in the open doorway. Sihtric was on my left, hurrying. The path was made of rough stone, slick and wet. I heard a woman gasp behind us, but still no one shouted the alarm from the ramparts, then I was through the gate and I saw a man to my right and I swept Serpent-Breath and she bit into his throat and I sawed her backward so that the blood was bright in that gray morning. He fell back against the palisade and I drove the spear into his ruined throat. A second gate guard watched the killing from a dozen yards away. His armor was a blacksmith’s long leather apron and his weapon a woodcutter’s ax which he seemed unable to raise. He was standing with astonishment on his face and did not move as Finan approached him. His eyes grew wider, then he understood the danger and turned to run and Finan’s spear tangled his legs and then the Irishman was standing over him and the sword stabbed down into his spine. I held up my hand to keep everyone still and silent. We waited. No enemy shouted. Rain dripped from the thatch of the buildings. I counted my men and saw ten, then Steapa came through the gate, closing it behind him. We were twelve, not thirteen.

“The women will stay at the well,” Steapa told me.

“You’re sure?”

“They’ll stay at the well,” he growled. I had told Steapa to talk to the women drawing water, and doubtless his size alone had quelled any ideas they might have of sounding an alarm.

“And Gisela?”

“She’ll stay at the well too,” he said.

And thus we were inside Dunholm. We had come to a dark corner of the fortress, a place where two big dung-heaps lay beside a long, low building. “Stables,” Sihtric told me in a whisper, though no one alive was in sight to hear us. The rain fell hard and steady. I edged about the end of the stables and could see nothing except for more wooden walls, great heaps of firewood, and thatched roofs thick with moss. A woman drove a goat between two of the huts, beating the animal to make it hurry through the rain.

I wiped Serpent-Breath clean on the threadbare cloak of the man I had killed, then gave Clapa my spear and picked up the dead man’s shield. “Sheathe swords,” I told everyone. If we walked through the fortress with drawn swords we would attract attention. We must look like men newly woken who were reluctantly going to a wet, cold duty. “Which way?” I asked Sihtric.

He led us alongside the palisade. Once past the stables I could see three large halls that blocked our view of the northern ramparts. “Kjartan’s hall,” Sihtric whispered, pointing to the right-hand building.

“Talk naturally,” I told him.

He had pointed to the largest hall, the only one with smoke coming from the roof-hole. It was built with its long sides east and west, and one gable end was hard up against the ramparts so we would be forced to go deep into the fortress center to skirt the big hall. I could see folk now, and they could see us, but no one thought us strange. We were just armed men walking through the mud, and they were wet and cold and hurrying between the buildings, much too intent on reaching warmth and dryness to worry about a dozen bedraggled warriors. An ash tree grew in front of Kjartan’s hall and a lone sentry guarding the hall door crouched under the ash’s leafless branches in a vain effort to shelter from the wind and rain. I could hear shouting now. It was faint, but as we neared the gap between the halls I could see men on the ramparts. They were gazing north, some of them brandishing defiant spears. So Ragnar was coming. He would be visible even in the half-light for his men were carrying flaming torches. Ragnar had ordered his attackers to carry the fire so that the defenders would watch him instead of guarding Dunholm’s rear. So fire and steel were coming to Dunholm, but the defenders were jeering Ragnar’s men as they struggled up the slippery track. They jeered because they knew their walls were high and the attackers few, but the sceadugengan were already behind them and none of them had noticed us, and my fears of the cold dawn began to ebb away. I touched the hammer amulet and said a silent thank-you to Thor.

We were just yards from the ash tree that grew a few paces from the door to Kjartan’s hall. The sapling had been planted as a symbol of Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life about which fate writhes, though this tree looked sickly, scarce more than a sapling that struggled to find space for its roots in Dunholm’s thin soil. The sentry glanced at us once, noticed nothing odd about our appearance, then turned and looked across Dunholm’s flat summit toward the gatehouse. Men were crowded on the gatehouse rampart, while other warriors stood on the wall’s fighting platforms built to left and right. A large group of mounted men waited behind the gate, doubtless ready to pursue the beaten attackers when they were repulsed from the palisade. I tried to count the defenders, but they were too many, so I looked to the right and saw a stout ladder climbing to the fighting platform on the western stretch of ramparts. That, I thought, is where we should go. Climb that ladder, capture the western wall and we could let Ragnar inside and so revenge his father and free Thyra and astonish all Northumbria.

I grinned, suddenly elated at the realization that we were inside Dunholm. I thought of Hild and imagined her praying in her simple chapel with the beggars already huddled outside her nunnery’s gate. Alfred would be working, ruining his eyes by reading manuscripts in the dawn’s thin light. Men would be stirring on every fortification in Britain, yawning and stretching. Oxen were being harnessed. Hounds would be excited, knowing a day’s hunting was ahead, and here we were, inside Kjartan’s stronghold and no one suspected our presence. We were wet, we were cold, we were stiff, and we were outnumbered by at least twenty to one, but the gods were with us and I knew we were going to win and I felt a sudden exultation. The battle-joy was coming and I knew the skalds would have a great feat to celebrate.

Or perhaps the skalds would be making a lament. For then, quite suddenly, everything went disastrously wrong.

TEN

The sentry beneath the ash tree turned and spoke to us. “They’re wasting their time,” he said, obviously referring to Ragnar’s forces. The sentry had no suspicions, he even yawned as we approached him, but then something alarmed him. Perhaps it was Steapa, for there could surely be no man in Dunholm who was as tall as the West Saxon. Whatever, the man suddenly realized we were strangers and he reacted quickly by backing away and drawing his sword. He was about to yell a warning when Steapa hurled his spear that struck hard in the sentry’s right shoulder, pitching him backward and Rypere followed fast, running his spear into the man’s belly with such force that he pinned the man to the feeble ash tree. Rypere silenced him with his sword, and just as that blood flowed, two men appeared around the corner of the smaller hall to our left and they immediately began shouting that enemies were in the compound. One turned and ran, the other drew his sword, and that was a mistake for Finan feinted low with his spear and the man lowered his blade to parry and the spear flashed up to take him in the soft flesh beneath his jaw. The man’s mouth bubbled blood onto his beard as Finan stepped close and brought his short-sword up into the man’s belly.

Two more corpses. It was raining harder again, the drops hammering onto the mud to dilute the fresh blood and I wondered if we had time to dash across the wide open space to reach the rampart ladder, and just then, to make things worse, the door to Kjartan’s hall opened and three men jostled in the doorway and I shouted at Steapa to drive them back. He used his ax, killing the first with an upward blow of ghastly efficiency and thrusting the gutted man back into the second who took the ax-head straight in the face, then Steapa kicked the two men aside to pursue the third who was now inside the hall. I sent Clapa to help Steapa. “And get him out of there fast,” I told Clapa because the horsemen by the gate had heard the commotion now and they could see the dead men and see our drawn swords and they were already turning their horses.

And I knew then that we had lost. Everything had depended on surprise, and now that we had been discovered we had no chance of reaching the northern wall. The men on the fighting platforms had turned to watch us and some had been ordered off the ramparts and they were making a shield wall just behind the gate. The horsemen, there were about thirty riders, were spurring toward us. Not only had we failed, but I knew we would be lucky to survive. “Back,” I shouted, “back!” All we could hope now was to retreat into the narrow alleys and somehow hold the horsemen off and reach the well gate. Gisela must be rescued and then there would be a frantic retreat downhill in front of a vengeful pursuit. Maybe, I thought, we could cross the river. If we could just wade through the swollen Wiire we might be safe from pursuit, but it was a tremulous hope at best. “Steapa!” I shouted, “Steapa! Clapa!” and the two came from the hall, Steapa with a blood-soaked ax. “Stay together,” I shouted. The horsemen were coming fast, but we ran back toward the stables and the horsemen seemed wary of the dark, shadowed spaces between the buildings for they reined in beside the ash tree with its dead man still pinned to the trunk and I thought their caution would let us survive just long enough to get outside the fortress. Hope revived, not of victory, but of life, and then I heard the noise.

It was the sound of hounds baying. The horsemen had not stopped for fear of attacking us, but because Kjartan had released his dogs and I stared, appalled, as the hounds poured around the side of the smaller hall and came toward us. How many? Fifty? At least fifty. They were impossible to count. A huntsman drove them on with yelping shouts and they were more like wolves than hounds. They were rough-pelted, huge, howling, and I involuntarily stepped backward. This was the hellish pack of the wild hunt, the ghost-hounds that harry the darkness and pursue their prey across the shadow world when night falls. There was no time now to reach the gate. The hounds would surround us, they would drag us down, they would savage us, and I thought this must be my punishment for killing the defenseless Brother Jænberht in Cetreht, and I felt the cold, unmanning shudder of abject fear. Die well, I told myself, die well, but how could one die well beneath the teeth of hounds? Our mail coats would slow their savagery for a moment, but not for long. And the hounds could smell our fear. They wanted blood and they came in a howling scrabble of mud and fangs, and I lowered Serpent-Breath to take the first snarling bitch in the face and just then a new voice called to them.

It was the voice of a huntress. It called clear and loud, saying no words, just chanting a weird, shrieking call that pierced the morning like a sounding horn, and the hounds stopped abruptly, twisted about and whined in distress. The closest was just three or four paces from me, a bitch with a mud-clotted pelt, and she writhed and howled as the unseen huntress called again. There was something sad in that wordless call that was a wavering, dying shriek, and the bitch whined in sympathy. The huntsman who had released the hounds tried to whip them back toward us, but again the weird, ululating voice came clear through the rain, but sharper this time, as if the huntress were yelping in sudden anger, and three of the hounds leaped at the huntsman. He screamed, then was overwhelmed by a mass of pelts and teeth. The riders spurred at the dogs to drive them off the dying man, but the huntress was making a wild screeching now that drove the whole pack toward the horses, and the morning was filled with the seethe of rain and the unearthly cries and the howl of hounds, and the horsemen turned in panic and spurred back toward the gatehouse. The huntress called again, gentler now, and the hounds obediently milled around the feeble ash tree, letting the riders go.

I had just stared. I still stared. The hounds were crouching, teeth bared, watching the door of Kjartan’s hall and it was there that the huntress appeared. She stepped over the gutted corpse Steapa had left in the doorway and she crooned at the hounds and they flattened themselves as she stared at us.

It was Thyra.

I did not recognize her at first. It had been years since I saw Ragnar’s sister, and I only remembered her as a fair child, happy and healthy, with her sensible mind set on marrying her Danish warrior. Then her father’s hall had been burned, her Danish warrior was killed, and she had been taken by Kjartan and given to Sven. Now I saw her again and she had become a thing from nightmare.

She wore a long cloak of deerskin, held by a bone brooch at her throat, but beneath the cloak she was naked. As she walked among the hounds the cloak kept being dragged away from her body that was painfully thin and foully dirty. Her legs and arms were covered with scars as though someone had slashed her repeatedly with a knife, and where there were no scars there were sores. Her golden hair was lank, matted, and greasy, and she had woven strands of dead ivy into the tangle. The ivy hung about her shoulders. Finan, seeing her, made the sign of the cross. Steapa did the same and I clutched at my hammer amulet. Thyra’s curled fingernails were as long as a gelder’s knives, and she waved those sorceress’s hands in the air and suddenly screamed at the hounds who whined and writhed as if in pain. She glanced toward us and I saw her mad eyes and I felt a pulse of fear because she was suddenly crouching and pointing directly at me, and those eyes were bright as lightning and filled with hate. “Ragnar!” she shouted, “Ragnar!” The name sounded like a curse and the hounds twisted to stare where she pointed and I knew they would leap at me as soon as Thyra spoke again.

“I’m Uhtred!” I called to her, “Uhtred!” I took off my helmet so she could see my face. “I’m Uhtred!”

“Uhtred?” she asked, still looking at me, and in that brief moment she looked sane, even confused. “Uhtred,” she said again, this time as if she were trying to remember the name, but the tone turned the hounds away from us and then Thyra screamed. It was not a scream at the hounds, but a wailing, howling screech aimed at the clouds, and suddenly she turned her fury on the dogs. She stooped and clutched handfuls of mud that she hurled at them. She still used no words, but spoke some tongue that the hounds understood and they obeyed her, streaming across Dunholm’s rocky summit to attack the newly made shield wall behind the gate. Thyra followed them, calling to them, spitting and shuddering, filling the hell pack with frenzy, and the fear that had rooted me to the cold ground passed and I shouted at my men to go with her.

They were terrible things, those hounds. They were beasts from the world’s chaos, trained only to kill, and Thyra drove them on with her high, wailing cries, and the shield wall broke long before the dogs arrived. The men ran, scattering across Dunholm’s wide summit and the dogs followed them. A handful, braver than the rest, stayed at the gate and that was where I now wanted to go. “The gate!” I shouted at Thyra, “Thyra! Take them to the gate!” She began to make a barking sound, shrill and quick, and the hounds obeyed her by running toward the gatehouse. I have seen other hunters direct hounds as deftly as a horseman guides a stallion with knees and reins, but it is not a skill I have ever learned. Thyra had it.

Kjartan’s men guarding the gate died hard. The dogs swarmed over them, teeth ripping, and I heard screams. I had still not seen Kjartan or Sven, but nor did I look for them. I only wanted to reach the big gate and open it for Ragnar, and so we followed the hounds, but then one of the horsemen recovered his wits and shouted at the frightened men to circle behind us. The horseman was a big man, his mail half covered by a dirty white cloak. His helmet had gilt-bronze eyeholes that hid his face, but I was certain it was Kjartan. He spurred his stallion and a score of men followed him, but Thyra howled some short, falling cadences, and a score of hounds turned to head the horsemen off. One rider, desperate to avoid the beasts, turned his horse too quickly and it fell, sprawling and kicking in the mud and a half-dozen hounds attacked the fallen beast’s belly while others leaped across to savage the unsaddled rider. I heard the man wail and saw a dog stagger away with a leg broken by a flailing hoof. The horse was screaming. I kept running through the streaming rain and saw a spear come flashing down from the ramparts. The men on the gatehouse roof were trying to stop us with their spears. They hurled them at the pack which still tore at the fallen shield wall remnant, but there were too many hounds. We were close to the gate now, only twenty or thirty paces away. Thyra and her hounds had brought us safe across Dunholm’s summit, and the enemy was in utter confusion, but then the white-cloaked horseman, beard thick beneath his armored eyes, dismounted and shouted at his men to slaughter the dogs.

They made a shield wall and charged. They held their shields low to fend off the dogs and used spears and swords to kill them. “Steapa!” I shouted, and he understood what was wanted and bellowed at the other men to go with him. He and Clapa were first among the dogs and I saw Steapa’s ax thud down into a helmeted face as Thyra hurled the dogs at the new shield wall. Men were clambering down from the fighting platforms to join the wild fight and I knew we had to move fast before Kjartan’s men slaughtered the pack and then came to slaughter us. I saw a hound leap high and sink its teeth into a man’s face, and the man screamed and the dog howled with a sword in its belly, and Thyra was screeching at the hounds and Steapa was holding the center of the enemy shield wall, but it was lengthening as men joined its flanks and in a heartbeat or two the wings of the wall would fold about men and dogs and cut them down. So I ran for the gatehouse archway. That archway was undefended on the ground, but the warriors on the rampart above still had spears. All I had was the dead man’s shield and I prayed it was a good one. I hoisted it over my helmet, sheathed Serpent-Breath, and ran.

The heavy spears crashed down. They banged into the shield and splashed into the mud, and at least two pierced through the shield’s limewood boards. I felt a blow on my left forearm, and the shield became heavier and heavier as the spears weighed it down, but then I was under the arch, and safe. The dogs were howling and fighting. Steapa was bellowing at the enemy to come and fight him, but men avoided him. I could see the wings of Kjartan’s wall closing and knew we would die if I could not open the gate. I saw I would need two hands to lift the huge locking bar, but one of the spears hanging from the shield had penetrated the mail of my left forearm and I could not pull it free, so I had to use Wasp-Sting to cut the leather shield-handles away. Then I could wrench the spear-point out of my mail and arm. There was blood on the mail-sleeve, but the arm was not broken and I lifted the huge locking bar and dragged it away from the gates.

Then I pulled the gates inward and Ragnar and his men were fifty paces away and they shouted when they saw me and ran with raised shields to protect themselves from the spears and axes thrown from the ramparts, and they joined the shield wall, lengthening it and carrying their blades and fury against Kjartan’s astonished men.

And that was how Dunholm, the rocky fortress in its river-loop, was taken. Years later I was flattered by a lord in Mercia whose skald chanted a song of how Uhtred of Bebbanburg scaled the fortress crag alone and fought his way through two hundred men to open the dragon-guarded high gate. It was a fine song, full of sword-work and courage, but it was all nonsense. There were twelve of us, not one, and the dogs did most of the fighting, and Steapa did much of the rest, and if Thyra had not come from the hall then Dunholm might be ruled by Kjartan’s descendants to this day. Nor was the fight over when the gate was opened, for we were still outnumbered, but we had the remaining dogs and Kjartan did not, and Ragnar brought his shield wall into the compound and there we fought the defenders.

It was shield wall against shield wall. It was the horror of two shield walls fighting. It was the thunder of shields crashing together and the grunts of men stabbing with short-swords or twisting spears into enemy bellies. It was blood and shit and guts spilled in the mud. The shield wall is where men die and where men earn the praise of skalds. I joined Ragnar’s wall and Steapa, who had taken a shield from a hound-ripped horseman, bulled in beside me with his great war ax. We stepped over dead and dying dogs as we drove forward. The shield becomes a weapon, its great iron boss a club to drive men back, and when the enemy falters you close up fast and ram the blade forward, then step over the wounded and let the men behind you kill them. It rarely lasts long before one wall breaks, and Kjartan’s line broke first. He had tried to outflank us and send men around our rear, but the surviving hounds guarded our flanks, and Steapa was flailing with his ax like a madman, and he was so huge and strong that he hacked into the enemy line and made it look easy. “Wessex!” he kept shouting, “Wessex!” as though he fought for Alfred, and I was on his right and Ragnar on his left and the rain crashed on us as we followed Steapa through Kjartan’s shield wall. We went clean through so that there was no enemy in front of us, and the broken wall collapsed as men ran back toward the buildings.

Kjartan was the man in the dirty white cloak. He was a big man, almost as tall as Steapa, and he was strong, but he saw his fortress fall and he shouted at his men to make a new shield wall, but some of his warriors were already surrendering. Danes did not give up readily, but they had discovered they were fighting fellow Danes, and there was no shame in yielding to such an enemy. Others were fleeing, going through the well gate, and I had a terror that Gisela would be discovered there and taken, but the women who had gone to draw water protected her. They all huddled inside the well’s small palisade and the panicked men fled past them toward the river.

Not all panicked or surrendered. A few gathered about Kjartan and locked their shields and waited for death. Kjartan might have been cruel, but he was brave. His son, Sven, was not brave. He had commanded the men on the gatehouse ramparts, and almost all those men fled northward, leaving Sven with just two companions. Guthred, Finan, and Rollo climbed to deal with them, but only Finan was needed. The Irishman hated fighting in the shield wall. He was too light, he reckoned, to be part of such weight-driven killing, but in the open he was a fiend. Finan the Agile, he had been called, and I watched, astonished, as he leaped ahead of both Guthred and Rollo and took on the three men alone, and his two swords were as fast as a viper’s strike. He carried no shield. He dazzled Sven’s defenders with feints, twisted past their attacks, and killed them both with a grin on his face, and then turned on Sven, but Sven was a coward. He had backed into a corner of the rampart and was holding his sword and shield wide apart as if to show he meant no mischief. Finan crouched, still grinning, ready to drive his long sword into Sven’s exposed belly.

“He’s mine!” Thyra wailed. “He’s mine!”

Finan glanced at her and Sven twitched his sword arm, as if to strike, but Finan’s blade whipped toward him and he froze. He was whimpering for mercy.

“He’s mine!” Thyra shrieked. She was writhing her ghastly fingernails towards Sven and was sobbing with hatred. “He’s mine!” she cried.

“You belong to her,” Finan said, “so you do,” and he feinted at Sven’s stomach and when Sven brought his shield down to protect himself, Finan just rammed his body into the shield, using his light weight to tip Sven backward over the rampart. Sven screamed as he fell. It was not a long drop, no more than the height of two tall men, but he thumped into the mud like a sack of grain. He scrabbled on his back, trying to get up, but Thyra was standing over him and she had given a long, wailing call, and the surviving hounds had come to her. Even the crippled hounds hauled themselves through muck and blood to reach her side.

“No,” Sven said. He stared up at her with his one eye. “No!”

“Yes,” she hissed, and she bent down and took the sword from his unresisting hand, and then she gave one yelp and the hounds closed on him. He twitched and screamed as the fangs took him. Some, trained to kill quickly, went for his throat, but Thyra used Sven’s sword to fend them off, and so the hounds killed Sven by chewing him from the groin upward. His screams pierced the rain like blades. His father heard it all and Thyra watched it and just laughed.

And still Kjartan lived. Thirty-four men stood with him and they knew they were dead men and they were ready to die as Danes, but then Ragnar walked toward them, the eagle wings on his helmet broken and wet, and he mutely pointed his sword at Kjartan and Kjartan nodded and stepped out of the shield wall. His son’s guts were being eaten by hounds and Thyra was dancing in Sven’s blood and crooning a victory song.

“I killed your father,” Kjartan sneered at Ragnar, “and I’ll kill you.”

Ragnar said nothing. The two men were six paces apart, judging each other.

“Your sister was a good whore,” Kjartan said, “before she went mad.” He darted forward, shield up, and Ragnar stepped right to let Kjartan go past him and Kjartan anticipated the move and swept his sword low to slice Ragnar’s ankles, but Ragnar had stepped back. The two men watched each other again.

“She was a good whore even after she went mad,” Kjartan said, “except we had to tie her down to stop her struggling. Made it easier, see?”

Ragnar attacked. Shield high, sword low, and the two shields cracked together and Kjartan’s sword parried the low strike, and both men heaved, trying to topple the other, and then Ragnar stepped back again. He had learned that Kjartan was fast and skillful.

“She’s not a good whore now, though,” Kjartan said. “She’s too raddled. Too filthy. Even a beggar won’t hump her now. I know. I offered her to one last week and he wouldn’t have her. Reckoned she was too dirty for him.” And suddenly he came forward fast and hacked at Ragnar. There was no great skill in his attack, just sheer strength and speed, and Ragnar retreated, letting his shield take the fury, and I feared for him and took a pace forward, but Steapa held me back.

“It’s his fight,” Steapa said.

“I killed your father,” Kjartan said, and his sword drove a splinter of wood from Ragnar’s shield. “I burned your mother,” he boasted, and another blow rang on the shield boss, “and I whored your sister,” he said, and the next sword blow drove Ragnar back two paces. “And I shall piss on your gutted body,” Kjartan shouted and he reversed a swing, took his blade low and swept it at Ragnar’s ankles again. This time he struck and Ragnar staggered. His crippled hand had instinctively dropped his shield low and Kjartan brought his own shield over the top to drive his enemy down, and Ragnar, who had said nothing throughout the fight, suddenly screamed. For a heartbeat I thought it was a doomed man’s scream, but instead it was rage. He drove his body under Kjartan’s shield, pushing the bigger man back by sheer strength, and then he stepped nimbly aside. I thought he had been lamed by the blow to his ankle, but he had iron strips on his boot and, though one strip was almost cut in two, and though he was bruised, he had not been injured and suddenly he was all anger and movement. It was as though he had woken up. He began to dance around Kjartan, and that was the secret of a duel. Keep moving. Ragnar moved, and he was filled with rage, and his speed almost matched Finan’s swiftness, and Kjartan, who thought he had found his enemy’s measure, was suddenly desperate. He had no more breath for insults, only enough to defend himself, and Ragnar was all ferocity and quickness. He hacked at Kjartan, turned him, hacked again, lunged, twisted away, feinted low, used his shield to knock away a parry and swept his sword, Heart-Breaker, to strike Kjartan’s helmet. He dented the iron, but did not pierce it, and Kjartan shook his head and Ragnar banged shield on shield to drive the big man back. His next blow shattered one of the limewood boards of Kjartan’s shield, the next took the shield’s edge, splitting the iron rim, and Kjartan stepped back and Ragnar was keening, a sound so horrible that the hounds around Thyra began yelping in sympathy.

Over two hundred men watched. We all knew what would happen now for the battle-fever had come to Ragnar. It was the rage of a sword-Dane. No man could resist such anger, and Kjartan did well to survive as long as he did, but at last he was driven back and he tripped on a hound’s corpse and fell on his back and Ragnar stepped over the frantic sweep of his enemy’s heavy sword and thrust down hard with Heart-Breaker. The blow broke through the mail-sleeve of Kjartan’s coat and severed the tendons of his sword arm. Kjartan tried to get up, but Ragnar kicked him in the face, then brought his heel hard down on Kjartan’s throat. Kjartan choked. Ragnar stepped back and let his battered shield slide off his left arm. Then he used his crippled left hand to take away Kjartan’s sword. He used his two good fingers to pull it from Kjartan’s nerveless hand and he threw it into the mud and then he killed his enemy.

It was a slow death, but Kjartan did not scream once. He tried to resist at first, using his shield to fend off Ragnar’s sword, but Ragnar bled him to death cut by cut. Kjartan said one thing as he died, a plea to be given back his sword so he could go to the corpse-hall with honor, but Ragnar shook his head. “No,” he said, and never spoke another word until the last blow. That blow was a two-handed downward thrust into Kjartan’s belly, a thrust that burst through the mail links and pierced Kjartan’s body, and went through the mail beneath Kjartan’s spine to stab the ground beneath, and Ragnar left Heart-Breaker there and stepped back as Kjartan writhed in his death pain. It was then that Ragnar looked up into the rain, his abandoned sword swaying where it pinned his enemy to the ground, and he shouted at the clouds. “Father!” he shouted, “Father!” He was telling Ragnar the Elder that his murder was avenged.

Thyra wanted vengeance as well. She had been crouching with her hounds to watch Kjartan’s death, but now she stood and called to the hounds who ran toward Ragnar. My first thought was that she was sending the beasts to eat Kjartan’s corpse, but instead they surrounded Ragnar. There were still twenty or more of the wolf-like beasts and they snarled at Ragnar, ringing him, and Thyra screamed at him. “You should have come before! Why didn’t you come before?”

He stared at her, astonished at her anger. “I came as soon…” he began.

“You went viking!” she screamed at him. “You left me here!” The dogs were anguished by her grief and they writhed around Ragnar, their hides blood-matted and their tongues lolling over blood-streaked fangs, just waiting for the word that would let them tear him to red ruin. “You left me here!” Thyra wailed, and she walked into the dogs to face her brother. Then she dropped to her knees and began to weep. I tried to reach her, but the dogs turned on me, teeth bared and eyes wild, and I stepped hurriedly away. Thyra wept on, her grief as great as the storm which raged over Dunholm. “I shall kill you!” she screamed at Ragnar.

“Thyra,” he said.

“You left me here!” she accused him. “You left me here!” She stood again, and suddenly her face looked sane once more, and I could see she was still a beauty beneath the filth and the scars. “The price of my life,” she said to her brother in a calm voice, “is your death.”

“No,” a new voice said, “no, it is not.”

It was Father Beocca who had spoken. He had been waiting under the high gate’s arch and now he limped through the carnage and spoke with a stern authority. Thyra snarled at him. “You’re dead, priest!” she said, and she gave one of her wordless yelps and the dogs turned on Beocca as Thyra began to twitch like a madwoman again. “Kill the priest!” she screamed at the dogs. “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”

I ran forward, then saw I had nothing to do.

The Christians often talk of miracles and I have always wanted to witness one such piece of magic. They claim the blind can be given their sight, the cripple made to walk, and the leper healed. I have heard them tell stories of men walking on water, and even of dead men raised alive from their graves, but I have never seen such things. If I had seen that great magic then I would be a Christian today, but the priests tell me we must have faith instead. But that day, in the relentless rain, I saw a thing which was as close to a miracle as ever I witnessed.

Father Beocca, the skirts of his priest’s robes filthy with mud, limped into the press of vicious hounds. They had been sent to attack him, and Thyra was screaming at them to kill, but he ignored the beasts and they simply shrank away from him. They whimpered as though they feared this squint-eyed cripple and he hobbled calmly through their fangs and did not take his eyes off Thyra whose screeching voice faded to a whimper and then to great sobs. Her cloak was open, showing her scarred nakedness, and Beocca took off his own rain-sodden cloak and draped it about her shoulders. She had her hands at her face. She was still weeping, and the hounds bayed in sympathy, and Ragnar just watched. I thought Beocca would lead Thyra away, but instead he took her head in his two hands and he suddenly shook her. He shook her hard, and as he did he cried to the clouds. “Lord,” he shouted, “take this demon from her! Take the evil one away! Spare her from Abaddon’s grip!” She screamed then and the hounds put their heads back and howled at the rain. Ragnar was motionless. Beocca shook Thyra’s head again, shook it so hard that I thought he might break her neck. “Take the fiend from her, Lord!” he called. “Release her to your love and to your great mercy!” He stared upward. His crippled hand was gripping Thyra’s hair with its dead ivy strands, and he pushed her head backward and forward as he chanted in a voice as loud as a warrior lord on a field of slaughter. “In the name of the Father,” he shouted, “and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I command you, foul demons, to come from this girl. I cast you into the pit! I banish you! I send you to hell for evermore and a day, and I do it in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost! Be gone!”

And Thyra suddenly began to cry. Not to scream and sob and gasp and struggle for breath, but just a gentle weeping, and she laid her head on Beocca’s shoulder and he put his arms about her and cradled her and looked at us with resentment as if we, blood-stained and armed and fierce, were the allies of the demons he had banished. “She’s all right now,” he said awkwardly, “she’s all right now. Oh, go away!” This peevish command was to the hounds and, astonishingly, they obeyed him, slinking away and leaving Ragnar unthreatened. “We must get her warm,” Beocca said, “and we must get her dressed properly.”

“Yes,” I said, “we must.”

“Well, if you won’t do it,” Beocca said indignantly, because I had not moved, “then I shall.” And he led Thyra toward Kjartan’s hall where the smoke still sifted from the roof-hole. Ragnar made to go after them, but I shook my head and he stopped. I put my right foot on Kjartan’s dead belly and yanked Heart-Breaker free. I gave the sword to Ragnar and he embraced me, but there was little elation in either of us. We had done the impossible, we had taken Dunholm, but Ivarr still lived and Ivarr was the greater enemy.