Lords of the North

“What do I say to Thyra?” Ragnar asked me.

“You tell her the truth,” I said, because I did not know what else to say, and then I went to find Gisela.

Gisela and Brida washed Thyra. They washed her body and her hair, and they took the dead ivy away and they combed her golden hair, and then they dried it before the great fire in Kjartan’s hall, and afterward they dressed her in a simple woolen robe and a cloak of otter fur. Ragnar then talked with her beside the fire. They talked alone and I walked with Father Beocca outside the hall. It had stopped raining. “Who is Abaddon?” I asked him.

“I was responsible for your education,” he said, “and I am ashamed of myself. How could you not know that?”

“Well I don’t,” I said, “so who is he?”

“The dark angel of the bottomless pit, of course. I’m sure I told you that. He’s the first demon who will torment you if you don’t repent and become a Christian.”

“You’re a brave man, father,” I told him.

“Nonsense.”

“I tried to reach her,” I said, “but I was scared of the hounds. They killed thirty or more men today and you just walked into them.”

“They’re only dogs,” he said dismissively. “If God and Saint Cuthbert can’t protect me from dogs, what can they do?”

I stopped him, put both my hands on his shoulders and squeezed. “You were very brave, father,” I insisted, “and I salute you.”

Beocca was enormously pleased with the compliment, but tried to look modest. “I just prayed,” he said, “and God did the rest.” I let him go and he walked on, kicking at a fallen spear with his club foot. “I didn’t think the dogs would hurt me,” he said, “because I’ve always liked dogs. I had one as a child.”

“You should get yourself another one,” I said. “A dog would be company for you.”

“I couldn’t work as a small boy,” he went on as though I had not spoken. “Well, I could pick stones and scare birds off newly scattered seed, but I couldn’t do proper work. The dog was my friend, but he died. Some other boys killed it.” He blinked a few times. “Thyra’s a pretty woman, isn’t she?” he said, sounding wistful.

“She is now,” I agreed.

“Those scars on her arms and legs,” he said, “I thought Kjartan or Sven had cut her. But it wasn’t them. She did it to herself.”

“She cut herself?” I asked.

“Slashed herself with knives, she told me. Why would she do that?”

“To make herself ugly?” I suggested.

“But she isn’t,” Beocca said, puzzled. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yes,” I said, “she is,” and again I felt sorry for Beocca. He was getting old and he had always been crippled and ugly, and he had always wanted to marry, and no woman had ever come to him. He should have been a monk and thus forbidden to marry. Instead he was a priest, and he had a priest’s mind for he looked at me sternly.

“Alfred sent me to preach peace,” he said, “and I have watched you murder a holy brother, and now this.” He grimaced at the dead.

“Alfred sent us to make Guthred safe,” I reminded him.

“And we have to make certain Saint Cuthbert is safe,” he insisted.

“We will.”

“We can’t stay here, Uhtred, we have to go back to Cetreht.” He looked up at me with alarm in his one good eye. “We have to defeat Ivarr!”

“We will, father,” I said.

“He has the biggest army in Northumbria!”

“But he will die alone, father,” I said, and I was not sure why I said that. The words just came from my tongue, and I thought a god must have spoken through me. “He will die alone,” I said again, “I promise it.”

But there were things to do first. There was Kjartan’s hoard to uncover from the hall where the dogs were kenneled, and we put Kjartan’s slaves to work, digging into the shit-stinking floor, and beneath it were barrels of silver and vats of gold and crosses from churches and arm rings and leather bags of amber, jet, and garnets, and even bolts of precious imported silk that had half rotted away in the damp earth. Kjartan’s defeated warriors made a pyre for their dead, though Ragnar insisted that neither Kjartan nor what was left of Sven should be given such a funeral. Instead they were stripped of their armor and their clothes and then their naked corpses were given to those pigs which had been spared the autumn slaughter and lived in the northwest corner of the compound.

Rollo was given charge of the fortress. Guthred, in the excitement of victory, had announced that the fort was now his property and that it would become a royal fortress of Northumbria, but I took him aside and told him to give it to Ragnar. “Ragnar will be your friend,” I told him, “and you can trust him to hold Dunholm.” I could trust Ragnar, too, to raid Bebbanburg’s lands and to keep my treacherous uncle in fear.

So Guthred gave Dunholm to Ragnar, and Ragnar entrusted its keeping to Rollo and he left him just thirty men to hold the walls while we went south. Over fifty of Kjartan’s defeated men swore their loyalty to Ragnar, but only after he had determined that none of them had taken part in the hall-burning that had killed his parents. Any man who had helped with that murder was killed. The rest would ride with us, first to Cetreht, and then to confront Ivarr.

So half our job was done. Kjartan the Cruel and Sven the One-Eyed were dead, but Ivarr lived and Alfred of Wessex, though he had never said as much, wanted him dead too.

So we rode south.

ELEVEN

We left next morning. The rain had gone southward, leaving a rinsed sky ragged with small hurrying clouds beneath which we rode from Dunholm’s high gate. We left the treasure in Rollo’s keeping. We were all wealthy men for we had taken Kjartan’s fortune, and if we survived our meeting with Ivarr then we would share those riches. I had more than replaced the hoard I had left at Fifhaden and I would go back to Alfred as a rich man, one of the richest in his kingdom, and that was a cheering thought as we followed Ragnar’s eagle-wing standard toward the nearest ford across the Wiire.

Brida rode with Ragnar, Gisela was beside me, and Thyra would not leave Beocca’s side. I never did discover what Ragnar had said to her in Kjartan’s hall, but she was calm with him now. The madness was gone. Her fingernails were trimmed, her hair was tidy beneath a white bonnet and that morning she had greeted her brother with a kiss. She still looked unhappy, but Beocca had the words to comfort her and she drew on those words as if they were water and she were dying of thirst. They both rode mares and Beocca, for once, had forgotten his discomfort in the saddle as he talked with Thyra. I could see his good hand gesturing as he spoke. Behind him a servant led a packhorse which carried four big altar crosses taken from Kjartan’s hoard. Beocca had demanded they be returned to the church, and none of us could deny him for he had proved himself as great a hero as any of us, and now he leaned toward Thyra, spoke urgently, and she listened.

“She’ll be a Christian within a week,” Gisela said to me.

“Sooner,” I said.

“So what happens to her?” she asked.

I shrugged. “He’ll talk her into a nunnery, I suppose.”

“Poor woman.”

“At least she’ll learn obedience there,” I said. “She won’t make twelve into thirteen.”

Gisela punched my arm, thus hurting herself instead of me. “I swore,” she said, rubbing her knuckles where they had scraped against my mail, “that once I found you again I would not leave you. Not ever.”

“But thirteen?” I asked her. “How could you do that?”

“Because I knew the gods were with us,” she said simply. “I cast the runesticks.”

“And what do the runesticks say of Ivarr?” I asked.

“That he will die like a snake under a hoe,” she said grimly, then flinched as a gobbet of mud, thrown up by a hoof of Steapa’s horse, spattered onto her face. She wiped it off, then frowned at me. “Must we go to Wessex?”

“I swore as much to Alfred.”

“You swore?”

“I gave him my oath.”

“Then we must go to Wessex,” she said without enthusiasm. “Do you like Wessex?”

“No.”

“Alfred?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He’s too pious,” I said, “and he’s too earnest. And he stinks.”

“All Saxons stink,” she said.

“He stinks worse than most. It’s his illness. It makes him shit all the time.”

She grimaced. “Doesn’t he wash?”

“At least once a month,” I said, “and probably more often. He’s very fastidious about washing, but he still stinks. Do I stink?”

“Like a boar,” she said, grinning. “Will I like Alfred?”

“No. He won’t approve of you because you’re not a Christian.”

She laughed at that. “What will he do with you?”

“He’ll give me land,” I said, “and expect me to fight for him.”

“Which means you’ll fight the Danes?”

“The Danes are Alfred’s enemies,” I said, “so yes. I’ll fight the Danes.”

“But they’re my people,” she said.

“And I’ve given Alfred my oath,” I said, “so I must do what he wants.” I leaned back as the stallion picked its way down a steep hill. “I love the Danes,” I said, “love them far more than I do the West Saxons, but it’s my fate to fight for Wessex. Wyrd biful aræd.”

“Which means?”

“That fate is fate. That it rules us.”

She thought about that. She was dressed in her mail again, but around her neck was a golden torc taken from Kjartan’s treasures. It was made from seven strands twisted into one and I had seen similar things dug from the graves of ancient British chieftains. It gave her a wild look, which suited her. Her black hair was pinned under a woolen cap and she had a faraway look on her long face, and I thought I could look at that face forever. “So how long must you be Alfred’s man?”

“Until he releases me,” I said, “or until either he or I die.”

“But you say he’s sick. So how long can he live?”

“Probably not very long.”

“So who becomes king then?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and I wished I did. Alfred’s son, Edward, was a mewling child, much too young to rule, and his nephew, Æthelwold, from whom Alfred had usurped the throne, was a drunken fool. The drunken fool had the better claim to the throne, and I suddenly found myself hoping that Alfred would live long. That did surprise me. I had told Gisela the truth, that I did not like Alfred, but I recognized that he was the true power in the island of Britain. No one else had his vision, no one else had his determination, and Kjartan’s death was not so much our doing, but Alfred’s. He had sent us north, knowing we would do what he wanted even though he had not explicitly told us what that was, and I was struck by the thought that life as his oath-man might not be as dull as I had feared. But if he died soon, I thought, then that would be the end of Wessex. The thegns would fight for his crown and the Danes would scent the weakness and come like ravens to pluck the corpse-meat.

“If you’re Alfred’s sworn man,” Gisela asked carefully, and her question revealed that she must have been thinking the same thoughts, “why did he let you come here?”

“Because he wants your brother to rule in Northumbria.”

She thought about that. “Because Guthred is a Christian of sorts?”

“That’s important to Alfred,” I said.

“Or because Guthred’s weak?” she suggested.

“Is he weak?”

“You know he is,” she said scornfully. “He’s a kind man, and folk have always liked him, but he doesn’t know how to be ruthless. He should have killed Ivarr when he first met him, and he should have banished Hrothweard a long time ago, but he didn’t dare. He’s too frightened of Saint Cuthbert.”

“And why would Alfred want a weak king on Northumbria’s throne?” I asked blandly.

“So Northumbria will be weak,” she said, “when the Saxons try to take back their land.”

“Is that what your runesticks say will happen?” I asked.

“They say,” she said, “that we will have two sons and a daughter, and that one son will break your heart, the other will make you proud, and that your daughter will be the mother of kings.”

I laughed at that prophecy, not with scorn, but because of the certainty in Gisela’s voice. “And does that mean,” I asked, “that you will come to Wessex, even though I fight the Danes?”

“It means,” she said, “that I’m not leaving your side. That’s my oath.”

Ragnar had sent scouts ahead and as the long day passed some of those men came back on tired horses. Ivarr, they had heard, had taken Eoferwic. It had been easy for him. Guthred’s diminished garrison had surrendered the city rather than be slaughtered in its streets. Ivarr had taken what plunder he could find, placed a new garrison on the walls, and was already marching back north. He would not have heard of the fall of Dunholm yet, so he was plainly hoping to catch Guthred who, he must assume, either lingered at Cetreht or was wandering disconsolately toward the wastes of Cumbraland. Ivarr’s army, the scouts had heard, was a horde. Some men said Ivarr led two thousand spears, a figure that Ragnar and I dismissed. It was certain, though, that Ivarr’s men far outnumbered ours and probable that he was marching north on the same Roman road down which we traveled south. “Can we fight him?” Guthred asked me.

“We can fight him,” Ragnar answered for me, “but we can’t beat his army.”

“So why are we marching south?”

“To rescue Cuthbert,” I said, “and to kill Ivarr.”

“But if we can’t beat him?” Guthred was puzzled.

“We fight him,” I said, adding to his confusion, “and if we can’t beat him then we retreat to Dunholm. That’s why we captured it, as a refuge.”

“We’re letting the gods decide what happens,” Ragnar explained and, because we were confident, Guthred pressed us no further.

We reached Cetreht that evening. Our journey had been fast because we had no need to leave the Roman road, and we splashed through the Swale’s ford as the sun reddened the western hills. The churchmen, rather than take refuge in those hills, had preferred to stay with Cetreht’s meager comforts and no one had disturbed them while we had gone to Dunholm. They had seen mounted Danes on the southern hills, but none of those riders had approached the fort. The horsemen had watched, counted heads, and ridden away, and I assumed those men were Ivarr’s scouts.

Father Hrothweard and Abbot Eadred seemed unimpressed that we had captured Dunholm. All they cared about was the corpse of the saint and the other precious relics which they dug up from the graveyard that same evening and carried in solemn procession to the church. It was there that I confronted Aidan, the steward of Bebbanburg, and his score of men who had stayed in the village. “It’s safe for you to ride home now,” I told them, “because Kjartan is dead.”

I do not think Aidan believed me at first. Then he understood what we had achieved and he must have feared that the men who had captured Dunholm would march on Bebbanburg next. I wanted to do that, but I was sworn to return to Alfred before Christmas and that left me no time to confront my uncle.

“We shall leave in the morning,” Aidan said.

“You will,” I agreed, “and when you reach Bebbanburg you will tell my uncle that he is never far from my thoughts. You will tell him I have taken his bride. You will promise him that one day I shall slit his belly, and if he dies before I can fulfill that oath then promise him I shall slice the guts out of his sons instead, and if his sons have sons I shall kill them too. Tell him those things, and tell him that folk thought Dunholm was like Bebbanburg, impregnable, and that Dunholm fell to my sword.”

“Ivarr will kill you,” Aidan said defiantly.

“You had better pray as much,” I said.

All the Christians prayed that night. They gathered in the church and I thought they might be asking their god to give us victory over the approaching forces of Ivarr, but instead they were giving thanks that the precious relics had survived. They placed Saint Cuthbert’s body before the altar on which they put Saint Oswald’s head, the gospel book, and the reliquary with the hairs of Saint Augustine’s beard and they chanted, they prayed, they chanted again, and I thought they would never stop praying, but at last, in the night’s dark heart, they fell silent.

I walked the fort’s low wall, watching the Roman road stretch south through the fields beneath the waning moon. It was from there that Ivarr would come and I could not be sure he would not send a band of picked horsemen to attack in the night and so I had a hundred men waiting in the village street. But no attack came, and in the darkness a small mist rose to blur the fields as Ragnar came to relieve me. “There’ll be a frost by morning,” he greeted me.

“There will,” I agreed.

He stamped his feet to make them warm. “My sister,” he said, “tells me she’s going to Wessex. She says she’ll be baptized.”

“Are you surprised?”

“No,” he said. He gazed down the long straight road. “It’s for the best,” he spoke bleakly, “and she likes your Father Beocca. So what will happen to her?”

“I suppose she’ll become a nun,” I said, for I could not think what other fate would wait for her in Alfred’s Wessex.

“I let her down,” he said, and I said nothing because it was true. “Must you go back to Wessex?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m sworn.”

“Oaths can be broken,” he said quietly, and that was true, but in a world where different gods ruled and fate is known only to the three spinners, oaths are our one certainty. If I broke an oath then I could not expect men to keep their oaths to me. That I had learned.

“I won’t break my oath to Alfred,” I said, “but I will make another oath to you. That I will never fight you, that what I have is yours to share, and that if you need help I will do all I can to bring it.”

Ragnar said nothing for a while. He kicked at the turf on the wall’s top and looked into the mist. “I swear the same,” he said quietly and he, like me, was embarrassed and so he kicked at the turf again. “How many men will Ivarr bring?”

“Eight hundred?”

He nodded. “And we have fewer than three hundred.”

“There won’t be a fight,” I said.

“No?”

“Ivarr will die,” I said, “and that will be the end of it.” I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt for luck and felt the slightly raised edges of Hild’s cross. “He will die,” I said, still touching the cross, “and Guthred will rule, and he will do what you tell him to do.”

“You want me to tell him to attack Ælfric?” he asked.

I thought about it. “No,” I said.

“No?”

“Bebbanburg’s too strong,” I said, “and there’s no back gate as there was at Dunholm. Besides, I want to kill Ælfric myself.”

“Will Alfred let you do that?”

“He will,” I said, though in truth I doubted Alfred ever would allow me such a luxury, but I was certain that my fate was to go back to Bebbanburg and I had faith in that destiny. I turned and stared at the village. “All quiet there?”

“All quiet,” he said. “They’ve given up praying and are sleeping instead. You should sleep too.”

I walked back up the street, but before joining Gisela I quietly opened the church door and saw priests and monks sleeping in the small light of the few candles guttering on the altar. One of them snored and I closed the door as silently as I had opened it.

I was woken in the dawn by Sihtric who banged on the door lintel. “They’re here, lord!” he shouted. “They’re here!”

“Who’s here?”

“Ivarr’s men, lord.”

“Where?”

“Horsemen, lord, across the river!”

There were only a hundred or so riders, and they made no attempt to cross the ford and I guessed they had only been sent to the Swale’s northern bank to cut off our escape. Ivarr’s main force would appear to the south, though that prospect was not the chief excitement in that misted dawn. Men were shouting in the village. “What is it?” I asked Sihtric.

“Christians are upset, lord,” he said.

I walked to the church to discover that the golden reliquary of Saint Augustine’s beard, the precious gift from Alfred to Guthred, had been stolen. It had been on the altar with the other relics, but during the night it had vanished, and Father Hrothweard was wailing beside a hole scratched and torn into the wall of wattle and daub behind the altar. Guthred was there, listening to Abbot Eadred who was declaring the theft a sign of God’s disapproval.

“Disapproval of what?” Guthred asked.

“The pagans, of course,” Eadred spat.

Father Hrothweard was rocking back and forth, wringing his hands and shouting at his god to bring vengeance on the heathens who had desecrated the church and stolen the holy treasure. “Reveal the culprits, lord!” he shouted, then he saw me and evidently decided the revelation had come, for he pointed at me. “It was him!” he spat.

“Was it you?” Guthred asked.

“No, lord,” I said.

“It was him!” Hrothweard said again.

“You must search all the pagans,” Eadred told Guthred, “for if the relic isn’t found, lord, then our defeat is certain. Ivarr will crush us for this sin. It will be God’s chastisement on us.”

It seemed a strange punishment, to allow a pagan Dane to defeat a Christian king because a relic had been stolen, but as a prophecy it seemed safe enough, for in the mid-morning, while the church was still being searched in a vain attempt to find the reliquary, one of Ragnar’s men brought word that Ivarr’s army had appeared. They were marching from the south and already forming their shield wall a half-mile from Ragnar’s small force.

It was time, then, for us to go. Guthred and I were already in mail, our horses were saddled, and all we needed to do was ride south to join Ragnar’s shield wall, but Guthred had been unnerved by the loss of the relic. As we left the church he took me aside. “Will you ask Ragnar if he took it?” he begged me. “Or ask if perhaps one of his men did?”

“Ragnar didn’t take it,” I said scornfully. “If you want to find the culprit,” I went on, “search them.” I pointed to Aidan and his horsemen who, now that Ivarr was close, were eager to start on their journey north, though they dared not leave so long as Ivarr’s men barred the ford across the Swale. Guthred had asked them to join our shield wall, but they had refused, and now they waited for a chance to escape.

“No Christian would steal the relic!” Hrothweard shouted. “It’s a pagan crime!”

Guthred was terrified. He still believed in Christian magic and he saw the theft as an omen of disaster. He plainly did not suspect Aidan, but then he did not know who to suspect and so I made it easy for him.

I summoned Finan and Sihtric who were waiting to accompany me to the shield wall. “This man,” I told Guthred, pointing at Finan, “is a Christian. Aren’t you a Christian, Finan?”

“I am, lord.”

“And he’s Irish,” I said, “and everyone knows the Irish have the power of scrying.” Finan, who had no more powers of scrying than I did, tried to look mysterious. “He will find your relic,” I promised.

“You will?” Guthred asked Finan eagerly.

“Yes, lord,” Finan said confidently.

“Do it, Finan,” I said, “while I kill Ivarr. And bring the culprit to us as soon as you find him.”

“I will, lord,” he said.

A servant brought my horse. “Can your Irishman really find it?” Guthred asked me.

“I will give the church all my silver, lord,” I said loudly enough for a dozen men to hear, “and I will give it my mail, my helmet, my arm rings and my swords, if Finan does not bring you both the relic and the thief. He’s Irish and the Irish have strange powers.” I looked at Hrothweard. “You hear that, priest? I promise all my wealth to your church if Finan does not find the thief!”

Hrothweard had nothing to say to that. He glared at me, but my promise had been made publicly and it was testimony to my innocence, so he contented himself by spitting at my horse’s feet. Gisela, who had come to take the stallion’s reins, had to skip aside to avoid the spittle. She touched my arm as I straightened the stirrup. “Can Finan find it?” she asked in a low voice.

“He can find it,” I promised her.

“Because he has strange powers?”

“Because he stole it, my love,” I said quietly, “on my orders. It’s probably hidden in a dung-heap.” I grinned at her, and she laughed softly.

I put my foot in the stirrup and readied to heave myself up, but again Gisela checked me. “Be careful,” she said. “Men fear to fight Ivarr,” she warned me.

“He’s a Lothbrok,” I said, “and all Lothbroks fight well. They love it. But they fight like mad dogs, all fury and savagery, and in the end they die like mad dogs.” I mounted the stallion, settled my right foot in its stirrup, then took my helmet and shield from Gisela. I touched her hand for farewell, then pulled the reins and followed Guthred south.

We rode to join the shield wall. It was a short wall, easily out-flanked by the much larger wall that Ivarr was forming to the south. His wall was over twice as long as ours which meant his men could wrap themselves about our line and kill us from the edges inward. If it came to battle we would be slaughtered, and Ivarr’s men knew it. Their shield wall was bright with spears and ax-heads, and noisy with anticipation of victory. They were beating their weapons against their shields, making a dull drumbeat that filled the Swale’s wide valley, and the drumbeat rose to a great clattering thunder when Ivarr’s standard of the two ravens was lifted in the center of their line. Beneath the banner was a knot of horsemen who now broke free of the shield wall to ride toward us. Ivarr was among them, as was his rat-like son.

Guthred, Steapa, Ragnar, and I rode a few paces toward Ivarr and then waited. Ten men were in the approaching party, but it was Ivarr I watched. He was mounted on Witnere, which I had hoped he would be, for that gave me cause to quarrel with him, but I hung back, letting Guthred take his horse a few steps forward. Ivarr was staring at us one by one. He looked momentarily surprised to see me, but said nothing, and he seemed irritated when he saw Ragnar and he was duly impressed by Steapa’s huge size, but he ignored the three of us, nodding instead at Guthred. “Worm-shit,” he greeted the king.

“Lord Ivarr,” Guthred replied.

“I am in a strangely merciful mood,” Ivarr said. “If you ride away, then I shall spare your men’s lives.”

“We have no quarrel,” Guthred said, “that cannot be settled by words.”

“Words!” Ivarr spat, then shook his head. “Go beyond Northumbria,” he said, “go far away, worm-shit. Run to your friend in Wessex, but leave your sister here as a hostage. If you do that I shall be merciful.” He was not being merciful, but practical. The Danes were ferocious warriors, but far more cautious than their reputation suggested. Ivarr was willing to fight, but he was more willing to arrange a surrender, for then he would lose no men. He would win this fight, he knew that, but in gaining the victory he would lose sixty or seventy warriors and that was a whole ship’s crew and a high price to pay. It was better to let Guthred live and pay nothing. Ivarr moved Witnere sideways so he could look past Guthred at Ragnar. “You keep strange company, Lord Ragnar.”

“Two days ago,” Ragnar said, “I killed Kjartan the Cruel. Dunholm is mine now. I think, perhaps, I should kill you, Lord Ivarr, so that you cannot try to take it from me.”

Ivarr looked startled, as well he might. He glanced at Guthred, then at me, as if seeking confirmation of Kjartan’s death, but our faces betrayed nothing. Ivarr shrugged. “You had a quarrel with Kjartan,” he told Ragnar, “and that was your affair, not mine. I would welcome you as a friend. Our fathers were friends, were they not?”

“They were,” Ragnar said.

“Then we should remake their friendship,” Ivarr said.

“Why should he befriend a thief?” I asked.

Ivarr looked at me, his serpent eyes unreadable. “I watched a goat vomit yesterday,” he said, “and what it threw up reminded me of you.”

“I watched a goat shit yesterday,” I retorted, “and what it dropped reminded me of you.”

Ivarr sneered at that, but decided not to go on trading insults. His son, though, drew his sword and Ivarr held out a warning hand to tell the youngster that the killing time had not yet come. “Go away,” he said to Guthred, “go far away and I will forget I ever knew you.”

“The goat-turd reminded me of you,” I said, “but its smell reminded me of your mother. It was a rancid smell, but what would you expect of a whore who gives birth to a thief?”

One of the warriors held Ivarr’s son back. Ivarr himself just looked at me in silence for a while. “I can make your death stretch through three sunsets,” he said at last.

“But if you return the stolen goods, thief,” I said, “and then accept good King Guthred’s judgment on your crime, then perhaps we will show mercy.”

Ivarr looked amused rather than offended. “What have I stolen?” he asked.

“You’re riding my horse,” I said, “and I want it back now.”

He patted Witnere’s neck. “When you are dead,” he said to me, “I shall have your skin tanned and made into a saddle so I can spend the rest of my life farting on you.” He looked at Guthred. “Go away,” he said, “go far away. Leave your sister as hostage. I shall give you a few moments to find your senses, and if you don’t, then we shall kill you.” He turned his horse away.

“Coward,” I called to him. He ignored me, pushing Witnere through his men to lead them back to their shield wall. “All the Lothbroks are cowards,” I said. “They run away. What have you done, Ivarr? Pissed your breeches for fear of my sword? You ran away from the Scots and now you run away from me!”

I think it was the mention of the Scots that did it. That huge defeat was still raw in Ivarr’s memory, and I had scraped scorn on the rawness and suddenly the Lothbrok temper, that so far he had managed to control, took over. He hurt Witnere with the savage pull he gave on the bit, but Witnere turned obediently as Ivarr drew his long sword. He spurred toward me, but I angled past him, going toward the wide space in front of his army. That was where I wanted Ivarr to die, in sight of all his men, and there I turned my stallion back. Ivarr had followed me, but had checked Witnere, who was thumping the soft turf with his front right hoof.

I think Ivarr wished he had not lost his temper, but it was too late. Every man in both shield walls could see that he had drawn his sword and pursued me into the open meadow and he could not just ride away from that challenge. He had to kill me now, and he was not sure he could do it. He was good, but he had suffered injury, his joints were aching, and he knew my reputation.

His advantage was Witnere. I knew that horse, and knew it fought as well as most warriors. Witnere would savage my horse if he could, and he would savage me too, and my first aim was to get Ivarr out of the saddle. Ivarr watched me. I think he had decided to let me attack, for he did not release Witnere to the charge, but instead of riding at him, I turned my stallion toward Ivarr’s shield wall. “Ivarr is a thief!” I shouted at his army. I let Serpent-Breath hang by my side. “He is a common thief,” I shouted, “who ran from the Scots! He ran like a whipped puppy! He was weeping like a child when we found him!” I laughed and kept my eyes on Ivarr’s shield wall. “He was crying because he was hurt,” I said, “and in Scotland they call him Ivarr the Feeble.” I saw, at the edge of my vision, that the goading had worked and that Ivarr was wheeling Witnere toward me. “He is a thief,” I shouted, “and a coward!” And as I screamed the last derisive insult I touched my knee to my horse so he turned and I raised my shield. Witnere was all white eyes and white teeth, big hooves flailing up sodden turf, and as he closed I shouted his name. “Witnere! Witnere!” I knew that was probably not the name Ivarr had given the stallion, but perhaps Witnere remembered the name, or remembered me, for his ears pricked and his head came up and his pace faltered as I spurred my own horse straight at him.

I used the shield as a weapon. I just thrust it hard at Ivarr and, at the same moment, pushed up on my right stirrup, and Ivarr was trying to turn Witnere away, but the big stallion was confused and off balance. My shield slammed into Ivarr’s and I threw myself at him, using my weight to force him backward. The risk was that I would fall and he would stay saddled, but I dared not let go of shield or sword to grip him. I just had to hope that my weight would drive him to the ground. “Witnere!” I shouted again, and the stallion half turned toward me and that small motion, along with my weight, was enough to topple Ivarr. He fell to his right and I collapsed between the two horses. I fell hard, and my own stallion gave me an inadvertent kick that pushed me against Witnere’s hind legs. I scrambled up, slapped Witnere’s rump with Serpent-Breath to drive him away and immediately ducked beneath my shield as Ivarr attacked. He had recovered faster than me, and his sword slammed against my shield, and he must have expected me to recoil from that blow, but I stopped it dead. My left arm, wounded by the thrown spear at Dunholm, throbbed from the force of his sword, but I was taller, heavier, and stronger than Ivarr and I shoved the shield hard to push him back.

He knew he was going to lose. He was old enough to be my father and he was slowed by old wounds, but he was still a Lothbrok and they learn fighting from the moment they are whelped. He came at me snarling, sword feinting high then thrusting low, and I kept moving, parrying him, taking his blows on my shield, and not even trying to fight back. I mocked him instead. I told him he was a pathetic old man. “I killed your uncle,” I taunted him, “and he was not much better than you. And when you’re dead, old man, I’ll gut the rat you call a son. I’ll feed his corpse to the ravens. Is that the best you can do?”

He had tried to turn me, but tried too hard and his foot had slipped on the wet grass and he had gone down onto one knee. He was open to death then, off balance and with his sword hand in the grass, but I walked away from him, letting him rise, and every Dane saw that I did that, and then they saw me throw away my shield. “I’ll give him a chance,” I called to them. “He’s a miserable little thief, but I’ll give him a chance!”

“You whore-born Saxon bastard,” Ivarr snarled, and rushed me again. That was how he liked to fight. Attack, attack, attack, and he tried to use his shield to hurl me back, but I stepped away and clouted him over the back of his helmet with the flat of Serpent-Breath’s blade. The blow made him stumble a second time, and again I walked away. I wanted to humiliate him.

That second stumble gave him caution, so that he circled me warily. “You made me a slave,” I said, “and you couldn’t even do that properly. You want to give me your sword?”

“Goat-turd,” he said. He came in fast, lunging at my throat, dropping the sword to rake my left leg at the last moment, and I just moved aside and slapped Serpent-Breath across his rump to drive him away.

“Give me your sword,” I said, “and I’ll let you live. We’ll put you in a cage and I’ll take you around Wessex. Here is Ivarr Ivarson, a Lothbrok, I’ll tell folk. A thief who ran away from the Scots.”

“Bastard,” he rushed again, this time trying to disembowel me with a savage sweep of the sword, but I stepped back and his long blade hissed past me and he grunted as he brought the blade back, all fury and desperation now, and I rammed Serpent-Breath forward so that she went past his shield and struck his breast and the force of the lunge drove him back. He staggered as my next stroke came, a fast one that rang on the side of his helmet and again he staggered, dizzied by the blow, and my third blow cracked into his blade with such force that his sword arm flew back and Serpent-Breath’s tip was at his throat.

“Coward,” I said, “thief.”

He screamed in fury and brought his sword around in a savage stroke, but I stepped backward and let it pass. Then I slashed Serpent-Breath down hard to strike his right wrist. He gasped then, for the wrist bones were broken.

“It’s hard to fight without a sword,” I told him, and I struck again, this time hitting the sword so that the blade flew from his hand. There was terror in his eyes now. Not the terror of a man facing death, but of a warrior dying without a blade in his hand.

“You made me a slave,” I said, and I rammed Serpent-Breath forward, striking him on one knee and he tried to back away, tried to reach his sword, and I slashed the knee again, much harder, sawing through leather to cut to the bone and he went down on one knee. I slapped his helmet with Serpent-Breath, then stood behind him. “He made me a slave,” I shouted at his men, “and he stole my horse. But he is still a Lothbrok.” I bent, picked up his sword by the blade, and held it to him. He took it.

“Thank you,” he said.

Then I killed him. I took his head half off his shoulders. He made a gurgling noise, shuddered, and went down onto the grass, but he had kept hold of the sword. If I had let him die without the sword then many of the watching Danes would have thought me wantonly cruel. They understood he was my enemy, and understood I had cause to kill him, but none would think he deserved to be denied the corpse-hall. And one day, I thought, Ivarr and his uncle would welcome me there, for in the corpse-hall we feast with our enemies and remember our fights and fight them all over again.

Then there was a scream and I turned to see Ivar, his son, galloping toward me. He came as his father had come, all fury and mindless violence, and he leaned from the saddle to cut me in half with his blade and I met the blade with Serpent-Breath and she was by far the better sword. The blow jarred up my arm, but Ivar’s blade broke. He galloped past me, holding a hand’s breadth of sword, and two of his father’s men caught up with him and forced him away before he could be killed. I called to Witnere.

He came to me. I patted his nose, took hold of the saddle and hauled myself onto his back. Then I turned him toward Ivarr’s leaderless shield wall and gestured that Guthred and Ragnar should join me. We stopped twenty paces from the painted Danish shields. “Ivarr Ivarson has gone to Valhalla,” I shouted, “and there was no disgrace in his death! I am Uhtred Ragnarson! I am the man who killed Ubba Lothbrokson and this is my friend, Earl Ragnar, who killed Kjartan the Cruel! We serve King Guthred.”

“Are you a Christian?” a man shouted.

I showed him my hammer amulet. Men were passing the news of Kjartan’s death down the long line of shields, axes, and swords. “I am no Christian!” I shouted when they were quiet again. “But I have seen Christian sorcery! And the Christians worked their magic on King Guthred! Have none of you been victims of sorcerers? Have none of you known your cattle to die or your wives to be sick? You all know sorcery, and the Christian sorcerers can work great magic! They have corpses and severed heads, and they use them to make magic, and they wove their spells about our king! But the sorcerer made a mistake. He became greedy, and last night he stole a treasure from King Guthred! But Odin has swept the spells away!” I twisted in the saddle and saw that Finan was at last coming from the fort.

He had been delayed by a scuffle at the fort’s entrance. Some churchmen had tried to prevent Finan and Sihtric from leaving, but a score of Ragnar’s Danes intervened and now the Irishman came riding across the pastureland. He was leading Father Hrothweard. Or rather Finan had a handful of Hrothweard’s hair and so the priest had no choice but to stumble along beside the Irishman’s horse.

“That is the Christian sorcerer, Hrothweard!” I shouted. “He attacked King Guthred with spells, with the magic of corpses, but we have found him out and we have taken the spells away from King Guthred! So now I ask you what we should do with the sorcerer!”

There was only one answer to that. The Danes, who knew well enough that Hrothweard had been Guthred’s adviser, wanted him dead. Hrothweard, meanwhile, was kneeling on the grass, his hands clasped, staring up at Guthred. “No, lord!” He pleaded.

“You’re the thief?” Guthred asked. He sounded disbelieving.

“I found the relic in his baggage, lord,” Finan said, and held the golden pot toward Guthred. “It was wrapped in one of his shirts, lord.”

“He lies!” Hrothweard protested.

“He’s your thief, lord,” Finan said respectfully, then made the sign of the cross, “I swear it on Christ’s holy body.”

“He’s a sorcerer!” I shouted at Ivarr’s Danes. “He will give your cattle the staggers, he will put a blight on your crops, he will make your women barren and your children sickly! Do you want him?”

They roared their need of Hrothweard, who was weeping uncontrollably.

“You may have him,” I said, “if you acknowledge Guthred as your king.”

They shouted their allegiance. They were beating swords and spears against their shields again, but this time in acclamation of Guthred, and so I leaned over and took his reins. “Time to greet them, lord,” I told him. “Time to be generous with them.”

“But,” he looked down at Hrothweard.

“He is a thief, lord,” I said, “and thieves must die. It is the law. It is what Alfred would do.”

“Yes,” Guthred said, and we left Father Hrothweard to the pagan Danes and we listened to his dying for a long time. I do not know what they did to him, for there was little left of his corpse, though his blood darkened the grass for yards around the place he died.

That night there was a poor feast. Poor because we had little enough food, though there was plenty of ale. The Danish thegns swore their allegiance to Guthred while the priests and monks huddled in the church, expecting murder. Hrothweard was dead and Jænberht had been murdered, and they all expected to become martyrs themselves, but a dozen sober men from Guthred’s household troops were enough to keep them safe. “I shall let them build their shrine for Saint Cuthbert,” Guthred told me.

“Alfred would approve of that,” I said.

He stared across the fire that burned in Cetreht’s street. Ragnar, despite his crippled hand, was wrestling with a huge Dane who had served Ivarr. Both men were drunk and more and drunk men cheered them on and made wagers on who would win. Guthred stared, but did not see the contest. He was thinking. “I would never have believed,” he said at last, puzzled, “that Father Hrothweard was a thief.”

Gisela, sheltering under my cloak and leaning on my shoulder, giggled. “No man would ever believe that you and I were slaves, lord,” I answered, “but so we were.”

“Yes,” he said in wonderment, “we were.”

It is the three spinners who make our lives. They sit at the foot of Yggdrasil and there they have their jests. It pleased them to make Guthred the slave into King Guthred, just as it pleased them to send me south again to Wessex.

While at Bebbanburg, where the gray sea never ceases to beat upon the long pale sands and the cold wind frets the wolf’s head flag above the hall, they dreaded my return.

Because fate cannot be cheated, it governs us, and we are all its slaves.

HISTORICAL NOTE

Lords of the North opens a month or so after Alfred’s astonishing victory over the Danes at Ethandun, a tale told in The Pale Horseman. Guthrum, the leader of the defeated army, retreated to Chippenham where Alfred laid siege to him, but hostilities came to a swift end when Alfred and Guthrum agreed to a peace. The Danes withdrew from Wessex and Guthrum and his leading earls all became Christians. Alfred, in turn, recognized Guthrum as the king of East Anglia.

Readers of the two previous novels in this series will know that Guthrum hardly had a sterling record for keeping peace agreements. He had broken the truce made at Wareham, and the subsequent truce negotiated at Exeter, but this last peace treaty held. Guthrum accepted Alfred as his godfather and took the baptismal name of Æthelstan. One tradition says he was baptized in the font still to be seen in the church at Aller, Somerset, and it seems that his conversion was genuine for, once back in East Anglia, he ruled as a Christian monarch. Negotiations between Guthrum and Alfred continued, for in 886 they signed the Treaty of Wedmore which divided England into two spheres of influence. Wessex and southern Mercia were to be Saxon, while East Anglia, northern Mercia, and Northumbria were to fall under Danish law. Thus the Danelaw was established, that north-eastern half of England which, for a time, was to be ruled by Danish kings and which still bears, in place-names and dialects, the imprint of that era.

The treaty was a recognition by Alfred that he lacked the forces to drive the Danes out of England altogether, and it bought him time in which he could fortify his heartland of Wessex. The problem was that Guthrum was not the king of all the Danes, let alone the Norsemen, and he could not prevent further attacks on Wessex. Those would come in time, and will be described in future novels, but in large part the victory at Ethandun and the subsequent settlement with Guthrum secured the independence of Wessex and enabled Alfred and his successors to reconquer the Danelaw. One of Alfred’s first steps in that long process was to marry his eldest daughter, Æthelflaed, to Æthelred of Mercia, an alliance intended to bind the Saxons of Mercia to those of Wessex. Æthelflaed, in time, was to prove a great heroine in the struggle against the Danes.

To move from the history of Wessex in the late ninth century to that of Northumbria is to pass from light into confusing darkness. Even the northern regnal lists, which provide the names of kings and the dates they ruled, do not agree, but soon after Ethandun a king named Guthred (some sources name him as Guthfrith) did take the throne at York (Eoferwic). He replaced a Saxon king, who was doubtless a puppet ruler, and he ruled into the 890s. Guthred is remarkable for two things; first, though Danish, he was a Christian, and second, there is a persistent story that he was once a slave, and on those slender foundations I have concocted this story. He was certainly associated with Abbot Eadred who was the guardian of Cuthbert’s corpse (and of both the head of Saint Oswald and the Lindisfarne Gospels), and Eadred was eventually to build his great shrine for Cuthbert at Cuncacester, now Chester-le-Street in County Durham. In 995 the saint’s body was finally laid to rest at Durham (Dunholm) where it remains.

Kjartan, Ragnar, and Gisela are fictional characters. There was an Ivarr, but I have taken vast liberties with his life. He is chiefly notable for his successors who will cause much trouble in the north. There is no record of a ninth-century fortress at Durham, though it seems to me unlikely that such an easily defensible site would have been ignored, and more than possible that any remnants of such a fort would have been destroyed during the construction of the cathedral and castle which have now occupied the summit for almost a thousand years. There was a fortress at Bebbanburg, transmuted over time into the present glories of Bamburgh Castle, and in the eleventh century it was ruled by a family with the name Uhtred, who are my ancestors, but we know almost nothing of the family’s activities in the late ninth century.

The story of England in the late ninth and early tenth centuries is a tale which moves from Wessex northward. Uhtred’s fate, which he is just beginning to recognize, is to be at the heart of that West Saxon reconquest of the land that will become known as England and so his wars are far from over. He will need Serpent-Breath again.