The Burning Land

TWO

I snatched open the tavern’s front door and saw more men waiting on the quay. They looked startled when I appeared, so startled that most took an involuntary step backward. There were at least fifty of them, a few armed with spears and swords, but most with axes, sickles, or staves, which suggested they were townsfolk roused by Guthlac for a night’s treacherous work, but, far more worryingly, a handful of them carried bows. They had made no attempt to capture Seolferwulf, which was lit at the pier’s end by the dull glow of the herring-driers’ fires that burned above the narrow beach’s high-water line. That small light reflected from the mail which Osferth and his men were wearing, and from the blades of their spears, swords, and axes. Osferth had made a shield wall across the pier, and it looked formidable.

I closed the door and dropped its locking bar into place. It seemed clear that Guthlac had no appetite for attacking Osferth’s men, which suggested he wanted to capture us first, then use us as hostages to take the ship.

“We have a fight on our hands,” I told our men. I slid Wasp-Sting from her hiding place and watched, amused, as other weapons appeared. They were mostly short-swords like Wasp-Sting, but Rorik, a Dane I had captured in one of the punitive raids on East Anglia and who had sworn an oath to me rather than go back to his old lord, had somehow managed to bring a war ax. “There are men that way,” I told them, pointing to the front door, “and that way,” I pointed toward the brewing house.

“How many, lord?” Cerdic asked.

“Too many,” I said. I had no doubt that we could fight our way to Seolferwulf because townsfolk armed with sickles and staves would prove easy foes for my trained warriors, but the archers outside the door could give my crew grievous casualties, and I was already shorthanded. The bows I had seen were short hunting bows, but their arrows were still lethal against men not wearing mail.

“If they’re too many, lord,” Finan suggested, “then best to attack them now rather than wait till there are more of them?”

“Or wait till they get tired,” I said, and just then a timid knock sounded on the tavern’s back door. I nodded to Sihtric, who unbarred the door and pulled it inward to reveal a sorry-looking creature, scrawny and frightened, dressed in a threadbare black robe over which hung a wooden cross that he clutched nervously. He bobbed his head at us. I had a glimpse of the armed men in the yard before the man edged into the tavern and Sihtric closed and barred the door behind him. “Are you a priest?” I demanded, and he nodded his head. “So Guthlac sends a priest,” I went on, “because he’s too frightened to show his face in here?”

“The reeve means you no harm, lord,” the priest said. He was a Dane, and that surprised me. I knew the Danes of East Anglia had converted to Christianity, but I had thought it a cynical conversion, done to appease the threat of Alfred’s Wessex, but some Danes, it seemed, truly had become Christians.

“What’s your name, priest?”

“Cuthbert, lord.”

I sneered. “You took a Christian name?”

“We do, lord, upon conversion,” he said nervously, “and Cuthbert, lord, was a most holy man.”

“I know who he is,” I said, “I’ve even seen his corpse. So if Guthlac means us no harm then we can go back to our ship?”

“Your men may, lord,” Father Cuthbert said very timidly, “so long as you and the woman stay, lord.”

“The woman?” I asked, pretending not to understand him, “you mean Guthlac wants me to stay with one of his whores?”

“His whores?” Cuthbert asked, confused by my question, then shook his head vigorously. “No, he means the woman, lord. Skade, lord.”

So Guthlac knew who Skade was. He had probably known ever since we had landed at Dumnoc, and I cursed the fog that had made our voyage so slow. Alfred must have guessed we would put in to an East Anglian port to resupply, and he had doubtless offered a reward to King Eohric for our capture, and Guthlac had seen a swift, if not easy, way to riches. “You want me and Skade?” I asked the priest.

“Just the two of you, lord,” Father Cuthbert said, “and if you yield yourselves, lord, then your men may leave on the morning tide.”

“Let’s start with the woman,” I said, and held Wasp-Sting out to Skade. She stood as she took the sword, and I stepped aside. “You can have her,” I told the priest.

Father Cuthbert watched as Skade ran a long slow finger up the short-sword’s blade. She smiled at the priest, who shuddered. “Lord?” he asked plaintively.

“So take her!” I told him.

Skade held the sword low, its blade pointing upward, and Father Cuthbert did not need much imagination to envisage that shining steel ripping through his belly. He frowned, embarrassed by the grins on my men’s faces, then he summoned his courage and beckoned to Skade. “Put the blade down, woman,” he said, “and come with me.”

“Lord Uhtred told you to take me, priest,” she said.

Cuthbert licked his lips. “She’ll kill me, lord,” he complained to me.

I pretended to think about that statement, then nodded. “Very likely,” I said.

“I shall consult the reeve,” he said with what little dignity he could muster, and almost ran back to the door. I nodded to Sihtric to let the priest go, then took my sword back from Skade.

“We could make a dash for the ship, lord?” Finan suggested. He was peering through a knothole in the tavern’s front door and evidently did not have a great opinion of the men waiting in ambush.

“You see they’ve got bows?” I asked.

“Ah, so they do,” he said, “and that puts a big fat turd in the ale barrel, doesn’t it?” He straightened from the peephole. “So we wait for them to get tired, lord?”

“Or for me to have a better idea,” I suggested, and just then there was another rap on the back door, louder this time, and again I nodded to Sihtric to unbar.

Guthlac now stood in the doorway. He still wore his mail, but had donned a helmet and carried a shield as added protection. “A truce while we talk?” he suggested.

“You mean we’re at war?” I asked.

“I mean you let me talk, then let me go,” he said truculently, tugging at one of his long black mustaches.

“We shall talk,” I agreed, “then you can go.”

He took a cautious step into the room, where he looked somewhat surprised to see how well armed my men were. “I’ve sent for my lord’s household troops,” he said.

“That was probably wise,” I said, “because your men can’t beat mine.”

He frowned at that. “We don’t want a fight!”

“We do,” I said enthusiastically, “we were hoping for a fight. Nothing finishes an evening in a tavern so well as a fight, don’t you agree?”

“Maybe a woman?” Finan suggested, grinning at Ethne.

“True,” I agreed. “Ale first, next a fight, then a woman. Just like Valhalla. So tell us when you’re ready, Guthlac, and we’ll have the fight.”

“Yield yourself, lord,” he said. “We were told you might be coming, and it seems Alfred of Wessex wants you. He doesn’t want your life, lord, just your body. Yours and the woman’s.”

“I don’t want Alfred to have my body,” I said.

Guthlac sighed. “We’re going to stop you leaving, lord,” he said patiently. “I’ve got fourteen hunters with bows waiting for you. You’ll doubtless kill some men, lord, and that will be another crime to add to your offenses, but my archers will kill some of your men, and we don’t want to. Your men and your ship are free to leave, but you’re not. Nor is the woman,” he looked at Skade, “Edith.”

I smiled at him. “So take me! But remember I’m the man who killed Ubba Lothbrokson beside the sea.”

Guthlac looked at my sword, tugged on his mustache again, and took a step backward. “I won’t die on that blade, lord,” he said, “I’ll wait for my lord’s troops. They’ll take you, and kill the rest of you. So I advise that you yield, lord, before they arrive.”

“You want me to yield now so you get the reward?”

“And what’s wrong with that?” he asked belligerently.

“How much is it?”

“Enough,” he said. “So do you yield?”

“Wait outside,” I told him, “and you’ll find out.”

“What of them?” he asked, nodding toward the local men who had been trapped inside the Goose with us. None held any value as a hostage and so I sent them away with Guthlac. They ran into the back yard, doubtless relieved they were not to be part of the slaughter they expected to redden the tavern’s floor.

Guthlac was a fool. What he should have done was charge into the tavern and overwhelm us, or, if he merely wanted to trap us until trained troops arrived, he should have barricaded both doors with some of the giant ale barrels from the yard. As it was he had split his troops into two bands. I estimated there were fifty waiting between us and Seolferwulf, and as many again in the back yard. I was thinking that my score of men could fight their way through those fifty on the quay, but I knew we would take casualties reaching the ship. The bows would kill a handful of men and women before we got among the enemy, and none of us wore mail. I wanted to escape without any of my people being killed or wounded.

I ordered Sihtric to keep a watch on the back yard, which was easily done through a gap in the wattle wall. Another man watched the quay. “Tell me when they leave,” I said.

“Leave?” Finan asked, grinning, “why would they leave, lord?”

“Always make the enemy do what you want them to do,” I said, and I climbed the ladder to the whore-loft where three girls clung to each other on one of the straw mattresses. I grinned at them. “How are you, ladies?” I asked. None of the three answered, but just watched as I attacked the underside of the low thatched roof with Wasp-Sting. “We’re leaving soon,” I said to them, speaking English, “and you’re welcome to come with us. A lot of my men don’t have a woman. Better to be married to a warrior than whoring for that fat Dane. Is he a good master?”

“No,” one of them said in a very low voice.

“He likes to whip you?” I guessed. I had ripped out a great bundle of reeds and the smoke from the tavern fire began to drift through the new smoke-hole I had made. Guthlac would doubtless see the fresh hole I had made in his roof, but it was unlikely he would send men to block it. He would need ladders.

“Finan!” I called down, “bring me fire!”

An arrow thumped into the roof, confirming that Guthlac had indeed seen the hole. He must have thought I was trying to lead my men out of the torn thatch and his archers now shot up at the roof, but they were in the wrong place to send their arrows through the new gap. They could only shoot across the ragged hole, which meant that any man trying to escape would have been hit as soon as he clambered through the thatch, but that was not why I had torn down the moldering reed. I looked back to the girls. “We’ll be leaving very soon,” I said. “If you want to come with us then get dressed, go down the ladder, and wait by the front door.”

After that it was simple. I hurled burning scraps of driftwood from the tavern fire as far as I could and watched them fall onto the thatched roofs of the nearby cottages. I burned my hand, but that was a small price to pay as the flames caught the reeds and flared bright. A dozen of my men were passing the fiery brands up the ladder, and I threw each flaming timber as far as I could, trying to set fire to as many houses as I could reach.

No man could watch his town burning. Fire is a huge fear, for thatch and timber burn easily, and a fire in one house will quickly spread to others, and Guthlac’s men, hearing the screams of their women and children, deserted him. They used rakes to pull the burning thatch off the rafters and they carried pails of water from the river, and all we had to do was open the tavern’s front door and go to the ship.

Most of my men and two of the whores did just that, running down the pier and reaching the safety of the ship, where Osferth’s men were armored and armed, but Finan and I dodged into the alley beside the Goose. The town was lurid with flames now. Men shouted, dogs barked, and woken gulls screamed. The fire was noisy, and panicking folk screamed contrary orders as they desperately tried to save their property. Heaps of burning thatch filled the streets while the sky was red with sparks. Guthlac, intent on saving the Goose, was shouting at men to pull down the house nearest to the tavern, but in the confusion no one was taking any notice of him. Nor did they notice Finan and me as we emerged into the street behind the tavern.

I had armed myself with a log from the tavern, one of those waiting to be put on the fire, and I just swung it hard so that it smashed into the side of Guthlac’s helmet, and he went down like an ox that had been spiked between the eyes. I took hold of his mail coat and used it to haul him back into the alley, then down the pier. He was heavy, so it took three of my men to carry him across the trading ship and throw him onto Seolferwulf, and then, satisfied that all my crew was safe, we loosed the mooring lines. The ship drifted upstream on the incoming tide, and we countered it with oar strokes, backing water as we waited for the ebb to start.

We watched Dumnoc burn. Six or seven houses were alight now, their flames roaring like a furnace and spewing sparks high into the night sky. The fires lit the scene, throwing a raw shaky light across the river. We saw men pull down houses to make a gap over which they hoped the flames would not jump and we saw a chain of folk passing water from the river, and we just watched, amused. Guthlac recovered his senses to find himself sitting on the small prow platform, stripped of his mail and bound hand and foot. I had put the wolf’s head back on the bows. “Enjoy the view, Guthlac,” I said.

He groaned, then remembered the purse at his waist into which he had put the silver I had paid him for our supplies. He felt inside, and found no coins left. He groaned again and looked up at me and this time saw the warrior who had killed Ubba Lothbrokson beside the sea. I was in full war-gear, mailed and helmeted, with Serpent-Breath hanging from my silver-studded belt.

“I was doing my duty, lord,” Guthlac said.

I could see mailed men ashore and guessed the household troops of whoever was Guthlac’s lord had arrived, but they could do nothing to hurt us unless they decided to crew one of the moored ships, but they made no attempt to do that. They just watched the town burning, and sometimes turned to gaze at us. “They could at least piss on the flames,” Finan said reprovingly, “do something useful!” He frowned down at Guthlac. “What do we do with this one, lord?

“I was thinking of giving him to Skade,” I said. Guthlac looked at her, she smiled, and he shuddered. “When I first met her,” I told Guthlac, “she’d just tortured a thegn. She killed him and it wasn’t pretty.”

“I wanted to know where his gold was,” she explained.

“It wasn’t pretty at all,” I said. Guthlac flinched.

Seolferwulf hung in the slack tide. It was high-water now and the river looked wide, but that was deceptive because beneath the shivering red-reflecting surface were shoals of mud and sand. The current would help us soon, but I wanted to wait until there was sufficient daylight to see the channel markers, and so my men stirred their oars to keep us lingering off the burning town. “What you should have done,” I told Guthlac, “is brought your men right into the tavern while we were drinking. You’d have lost a few, but you’d at least have stood a chance.”

“You’re going to put me ashore?” he asked plaintively.

“Of course I am,” I said pleasantly, “but not yet. Look at that!” A house had just collapsed into its own flames and the great beams and rafters exploded gouts of flame, smoke, and sparks toward the clouds. The roof of the Goose had caught the fire now and, as it flared bright in the sky, my men cheered.

We left unmolested, sliding down the river in the day’s first wan light. We rowed to the channel’s end where the water fretted white and wide on the long shoals, and it was there that I untied Guthlac’s bonds and pushed him to Seolferwulf ’s stern. I stood beside him on the steering platform. The tide was taking us farther out to sea, and the ship was shuddering and bucking to the wind-driven waves. “Last night,” I said to Guthlac, “you told us we were welcome in Dumnoc. You gave us leave to spend the night in peace, remember?”

He just looked at me.

“You broke your word,” I said. He still said nothing. “You broke your word,” I said again, and all he could do was shake his head in terror. “So you want to go ashore?”

“Yes, lord,” he said.

“Then make your own way,” I said, and pushed him overboard. He gave a cry, there was a splash as he fell, then Finan rapped the order for the oars to bite.

Later, many days later, Osferth asked me why I had killed Guthlac. “He was harmless, surely, lord?” he asked, “just a fool?”

“Reputation,” I answered, and saw Osferth’s puzzlement. “He challenged me,” I explained, “and if I had let him live then he would have boasted that he challenged Uhtred of Bebbanburg and lived.”

“So he had to die, lord?”

“Yes,” I said, and Guthlac did die. We rowed offshore and I watched the reeve struggle in our wake. For a moment or two he managed to keep his head above water, then he vanished. We hoisted the sail, felt the ship lean to the long wind, and headed north.

We had more fog, more days and nights in empty creeks, but then the winds swung to the east and the air cleared and Seolferwulf leaped northward. Winter had touched the air.

The last day of the voyage was bright and cold. We had spent the night offshore, and so reached our destination in the morning. The wolf’s head was on the prow, and the sight of it sent small fishing boats scurrying for shelter among the scatter of rocky islands where seals glistened and stubby puffins whirred into the sky. I had taken down the sail and, in the long gray swells, rowed Seolferwulf closer to the sandy beach. “Hold her here,” I ordered Finan. The oars rested and the ship heaved slow. I stood in the prow with Skade and gazed westward. I was dressed in my war-glory. Mail and helmet and sword and arm rings.

I was remembering a far-off day when I had been on this same beach and had watched, amazed, as three ships came southward to ride the waves as Seolferwulf now rode them. I had been a child, and that had been my first glimpse of the Danes. I had marveled at their ships, so lean and beautiful, and at the symmetry of their oar-banks that had risen and fallen like magic wings. I had watched, astonished, as the Danish leader had run the oars in full armor, stepping from shaft to shaft, risking death with every step, and I had listened to my father and my uncle curse the newcomers. Within hours my brother had been killed, and within weeks my father followed him to the grave, and my uncle had stolen Bebbanburg and I had joined the family of the oar-runner, Ragnar the Fearless. I learned Danish, fought for the Danes, forgot Christ and welcomed Odin, and it had all begun here, at Bebbanburg.

“Your home?” Skade asked.

“My home,” I said, for I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg and I was gazing at that great fortress on its rearing rock above the sea. Men lined the wooden ramparts and stared back. Above them, flying from a staff erected on the seaward gable of the great hall, was the flag of my family, the wolf’s head, and I ordered the same flag hoisted on our mast, though there was hardly enough wind to display it. “I’m letting them know that I live,” I told her, “and that so long as I live they should be frightened.” And then fate put a thought into my head and I knew I would never retake Bebbanburg, would never scale the rock and climb the walls unless I did what Ragnar had done so many years before. The prospect frightened me, but fate is inexorable. The spinners were watching me, waiting, needles poised, and unless I did their bidding then my fate would be failure. I had to run the oars.

“Hold the oars steady!” I ordered the twenty rowers on the landward flank. “Hold them level and hold them hard!”

“Lord,” Skade said warningly, but I saw the excitement in her eyes too.

I had worn my full armor to appear as a warlord to my uncle’s men in Bebbanburg, and now they might watch me die because one slip on the long shafts would send me to the sea’s bed, dragged down by the mail I wore. But the conviction was too strong on me. To gain everything a man must risk everything.

I drew Serpent-Breath. I held her high in the air so that the garrison of the stronghold would see the sun glint on the long steel, then I stepped off the ship’s side.

The trick of walking the oar-bank is to do it fast, but not so fast that it looks like a panicked run. It was twenty steps that had to be taken with a straight back to make it look easy, and I remember the ship rolling and the fear twitching in me, and each oar dipping beneath my tread, yet I made those twenty steps and leaped off the last oar to scramble onto the stern where Sihtric steadied me as my men cheered.

“You damned fool, lord,” Finan said fondly.

“I’m coming!” I shouted at the fortress, but I doubt the words carried. The waves broke white and sucked back from the beach. The rocks above the beach were white with frost. It was a gray-white fortress. It was home. “One day,” I said to my men, “we shall all live there.” Then we turned the ship, hoisted the sail again, and went south. I watched the ramparts till they vanished.

And that same day we slid into the river mouth I knew so well. I had taken the wolf’s head off the prow because this was friendly land, and I saw the beacon on the hill and the ruined monastery and the beach where the red ship had rescued me, and then, on the height of the tide, I ran Seolferwulf onto the shingle where over thirty other ships were already beached, all guarded by a small fort beside the ruined monastery on the hill. I jumped ashore, stamped my feet in the shingle, and watched the horsemen riding from the fort. They came to discover our business and one lowered a spear toward me. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Uhtred of Bebbanburg.”

The spear-point lowered and the man smiled. “We were told to expect you sooner, lord.”

“There was fog.”

“And you are welcome, lord. Whatever you need is yours. Whatever!”

And there was warmth, food, ale, welcome, and next morning horses for Finan, Skade, and myself, and we rode southwest, not far, and my crew came with me. An ox-drawn cart carried the treasure chest, our armor, and our weapons. Seolferwulf was safe in the river, guarded by the garrison there, but we went to the greater fortress, the place I had known we would be welcomed, and the lord of that greater fortress rode to greet us. He was roaring incoherently, shouting and laughing, and he leaped from his horse, as I did, and we met on the track where we embraced.

Ragnar. Jarl Ragnar, friend and brother. Ragnar of Dunholm, Dane and Viking, lord of the north, and he clasped me, then punched a fist into my shoulder. “You look older,” he said, “older and much uglier.”

“Then I get more like you,” I said.

He laughed at that. He stepped back and I saw how big his belly had grown in the years since we had last met. He was not fat, just bigger, but he seemed as happy as ever. “You’re all welcome,” he bellowed at my crew. “Why didn’t you come sooner?”

“We were slowed by fog,” I explained.

“I thought you might be dead,” he said, “then I thought that the gods don’t want your miserable company yet.” He paused, remembering suddenly, and his face straightened. He frowned, and could not look into my eyes. “I wept when I heard about Gisela.”

“Thank you.”

He nodded abruptly, then put an arm round my shoulder and walked with me. The shield hand draped round my neck was mangled from the battle at Ethandun, where Alfred had destroyed Guthrum’s great army. I had fought for Alfred that day, and Ragnar, my closest friend, had fought for Guthrum.

Ragnar looked so like his father. He had a broad generous face, bright eyes, and the fastest smile of anyone I knew. His hair was fair, like mine, and we had often been taken as brothers. His father had treated me as a son and, if I had a brother, it was Ragnar. “You heard what happened in Mercia?” he asked me. “No.”

“Alfred’s forces assaulted Harald,” he said.

“On Torneie?”

“Wherever he was. What I hear is that Harald was bedridden, his men were starving, they were trapped, they were outnumbered, so the Mercians and West Saxons decided to finish them off.”

“So Harald’s dead?”

“Of course he’s not dead!” Ragnar said happily. “Harald’s a Dane! He fought the bastards off, sent them running away.” He laughed. “Alfred, I hear, is not a happy man.”

“He never was,” I said. “He’s god-haunted.”

Ragnar turned and stole a look at Skade, who was still in her saddle. “Is that Harald’s woman?”

“Yes.”

“She looks like trouble,” he said. “So do we sell her back to Skirnir?”

“No.”

He grinned. “So she isn’t Harald’s woman now?”

“No.”

“Poor woman,” he said, and laughed.

“What do you know about Skirnir?”

“I know he’s offering gold for her return.”

“And Alfred’s offering gold for my return?”

“He is indeed!” Ragnar said cheerfully. “I was thinking I could truss you up like a goat and make myself even wealthier.” He paused because we had come within sight of Dunholm that stood atop its great rock in the loop of the river. His standard of the eagle’s wing flew above the fortress. “Welcome home,” he said warmly.

I had come north and, for the first time in years, felt free.

Brida waited in the fortress. She was an East Anglian and Ragnar’s woman, and she took me in her arms, said nothing, and I just felt her sorrow for Gisela. “Fate,” I said.

She stepped back and ran a finger down my face, looking at me as if wondering what the years had done. “Her brother is dying too,” she said.

“But he’s still king?”

“Ragnar rules here,” she said, “and lets Guthred call himself king.” Guthred, Gisela’s brother, ruled Northumbria from his capital at Eoferwic. He was a good-natured man, but weak, and he held the throne only because Ragnar and the other great northern jarls permitted it. “He’s gone mad,” Brida said bleakly, “mad and happy.”

“Better than mad and sad.”

“The priests look after him, but he won’t eat. He throws the food at the walls and claims he’s Solomon.”

“He’s still a Christian then?”

“He worships every god,” she said tartly, “as a precaution.”

“Will Ragnar call himself king?” I asked.

“He hasn’t said,” Brida spoke softly.

“Would you want that?”

“I want Ragnar to find his fate,” she said, and there was something ominous in her words.

There was a feast in the hall that night. I sat next to Brida and the roaring fire lit her strong, dark face. She looked something like Skade, only older, and the two women had recognized their similarity and had immediately bridled with hostility. A harpist played at the hall’s side, chanting a song about a raid Ragnar had made on Scotland, but the words were drowned by the sound of voices. One of Ragnar’s men staggered to the door, but threw up before he could reach the open air. Dogs ran to eat the vomit, and the man went back to his table and shouted for more ale. “We are too comfortable here,” Brida said.

“Is that bad?”

“Ragnar is happy,” she said, too softly for her lover to hear. He sat to her right, and Skade was beyond him. “He drinks too much,” Brida said, then sighed. “Who would have thought it?”

“That Ragnar likes ale?”

“That you would be so feared.” She inspected me as though she had never seen me before. “Ragnar the Elder would be proud of you,” she said. Brida, like me, had been raised in Ragnar’s house. We had been children together, then lovers, and now were friends. She was wise, unlike Ragnar the Younger, who was impulsive and hot-headed, but sensible enough to trust Brida’s wisdom. Her one great regret was that she was childless, though Ragnar himself had fathered enough bastards.

One of those bastards was helping to serve the feast, and Ragnar took hold of the girl’s elbow. “Are you mine?” he asked.

“Yours, lord?”

“Are you my daughter?”

“Oh yes, lord!” she said happily.

“I thought you were,” he said and slapped her rump. “I make pretty daughters, Uhtred!”

“You do!”

“And fine sons!” He smiled happily, then let go a huge belch.

“He doesn’t see the danger,” Brida said to me. She alone in the hall was unsmiling, but life had always been a serious business for Brida.

“What are you telling Uhtred?” Ragnar demanded.

“That our barley was diseased this year,” she said.

“Then we buy some barley in Eoferwic,” he said carelessly, and turned back to Skade.

“What danger?” I asked.

Brida lowered her voice again. “Alfred has made Wessex powerful.”

“He has.”

“And he’s ambitious.”

“He doesn’t have long to live,” I said, “so his ambition doesn’t matter.”

“Then he’s ambitious for his son,” she said impatiently. “He wants to extend Saxon rule northward.”

“True,” I said.

“And that threatens us,” she said fiercely. “What does he call himself? King of the Angelcynn?” I nodded, and she put an urgent hand on my arm. “Northumbria has more than enough English speakers. He wants his priests and scholars to rule here.”

“True,” I said again.

“So they must be stopped,” she said simply. She stared at me, her eyes flicking between mine. “He didn’t send you to spy?”

“No,” I said.

“No,” she agreed. She toyed with a lump of bread, her gaze looking down the long benches of roaring warriors. “It’s simple, Uhtred,” she said bleakly, “if we don’t destroy Wessex, then Wessex will destroy us.”

“It would take years for the West Saxons to reach Northumbria,” I said dismissively.

“Does that make the result any better?” Brida asked bitterly. “And no, it won’t take years. Mercia is divided and weak and Wessex will swallow it in the next few years. Then they’ll march on East Anglia, and after that all three kingdoms will be turned on us. And where the West Saxons go, Uhtred,” her voice was very bitter now, “they destroy our gods. They bring their own god with his rules and his anger and his fear.” Like me, Brida had been raised as a Christian, but had turned pagan. “We have to stop them before they begin, which means striking first. And striking soon.”

“Soon?”

“Haesten plans to invade Mercia,” she said, dropping her voice so it was almost a whisper. “That will draw Alfred’s forces north of the Temes. What we should do is take a fleet and land on Wessex’s south coast.” Her hand tightened on my arm. “And next year,” she said, “there’ll be no Uhtred of Bebbanburg to protect Alfred’s land.”

“Are you two still talking of barley?” Ragnar roared. “How’s my sister? Still married to that crippled old priest?”

“He makes her happy,” I said.

“Poor Thyra,” Ragnar said, and I thought how strange fate was, how weird its threads. Thyra, Ragnar’s sister, had married Beocca, a match so unlikely as to be unimaginable, yet she had found pure happiness. And my thread? That night I felt as though my whole world had been turned upside down. For so many years my oath-sworn duty had been to protect Wessex, and I had done that duty, nowhere better than at Fearnhamme. Now, suddenly, I was hearing Brida’s dreams of destroying Wessex. The Lothbroks had tried and failed to do that, Guthrum had come close before being defeated, and Harald had met disaster. Now Brida would try to persuade Ragnar to conquer Alfred’s kingdom? I looked at my friend, who was singing loudly and thumping the table with an ale horn in time to the song.

“To conquer Wessex,” I told Brida, “you’ll need five thousand men and five thousand horses, and one thing more. Discipline.”

“The Danes fight better than the Saxons,” she said dismissively.

“But Danes fight only when they want to,” I said harshly. Danish armies were coalitions of convenience, with jarls lending their crews to an ambitious man, but melting away as soon as easier plunder offered itself. They were like packs of wolves that would attack a flock, but sheer away if enough dogs defended the sheep. Danes and Norsemen were constantly listening for news of some country that offered easy plunder, and a rumor of an undefended monastery might send a score of ships on a scavenging voyage, but in my own lifetime I had seen how easily the Danes were repulsed. Kings had built burhs all across Christendom and the Danes had no appetite for long sieges. They wanted quick plunder, or else they wanted to settle rich land. Yet the days of easy conquest, of facing undefended towns and rabbles of half-trained warriors, were long gone. If Ragnar or any other northman wanted to take Wessex, then he must lead an army of disciplined men prepared to undertake siege warfare. I looked at my friend, lost in the joy of feast and ale, and could not imagine him with the patience to defeat Alfred’s organized defenses.

“But you could,” Brida said very quietly.

“Are you reading my thoughts?”

She leaned closer to me, her voice a whisper. “Christianity is a disease that spreads like a plague. We have to stop it.”

“If the gods want it stopped,” I suggested, “they’ll do it themselves.”

“Our gods prefer feasting. They live, Uhtred. They live and laugh and enjoy, and what does their god do? He broods, he’s vengeful, he scowls, he plots. He’s a dark and lonely god, Uhtred, and our gods ignore him. They’re wrong.”

I half smiled. Brida, alone of all the men or women I knew, would see nothing strange in chiding the gods for their faults, and even try to do their work for them. But she was right, I thought, the Christian god was dark and threatening. He had no appetite for feasting, for laughter in the hall, for ale and mead. He set rules and demanded discipline, but rules and discipline were just what we needed if we were to defeat him.

“Help me,” Brida said.

I watched two jugglers toss flaming brands into the smoky air. Gusts of laughter echoed in the great hall and I felt a sudden surge of hatred for Alfred’s pack of black-robed priests, for the whole tribe of life-denying churchmen whose only joy was to disapprove of joy. “I need men,” I told Brida.

“Ragnar has men.”

“I need my own,” I insisted. “I have forty-three. I need at least ten times that number.”

“If men know you’re leading an army against Wessex,” she said, “they’ll follow.”

“Not without gold,” I said, glancing at Skade who was watching me suspiciously, curious what secrets Brida whispered in my ear. “Gold,” I went on, “gold and silver. I need gold.”

I needed more. I needed to know whether Brida’s dreams of defeating Wessex were known beyond Dunholm. Brida claimed she had told no one except Ragnar, but Ragnar was famously loose-tongued. Give Ragnar a horn of ale and he would share every secret known to man, and if Ragnar had told just one man, then Alfred would learn of the ambition soon enough, which was why I was glad when Offa, his women, and his dogs arrived at Dunholm.

Offa was a Saxon, a Mercian who had once been a priest. He was tall, thin, with a lugubrious face that suggested he had seen every folly the world offered. He was old now, old and gray-haired, but he still traveled all across Britain with his two squabbling women and his troupe of performing terriers. He showed the dogs at fairs and at feasts, where the dogs walked on their hind legs, danced together, leaped through hoops, and one even rode a small pony while the others carried leather buckets to collect coins from the spectators. It was not the most spectacular entertainment, but children loved the terriers and Ragnar, of course, was entranced by them.

Offa had left the priesthood, thus incurring the enmity of the bishops, but he had the protection of every ruler in Britain because his real livelihood was not his terriers, but his extraordinary capacity for information. He talked to everyone, he drew conclusions, and he sold what he deduced. Alfred had used him for years. The dogs gave Offa an entry into almost every noble hall in Britain, and Offa listened to gossip and carried what he learned from ruler to ruler, eking out his facts coin by coin. “You must be rich,” I told Offa the day he arrived.

“You are pleased to jest, lord,” he said. He sat at a table outside Ragnar’s hall, his eight dogs sitting obediently in a semicircle behind his bench. A servant had brought him ale and bread. Ragnar had been delighted at Offa’s unexpected arrival, anticipating the laughter which always accompanied the dogs’ performance.

“Where do you keep all that money?” I asked.

“You really wish me to answer that, lord?” Offa asked. Offa would answer questions, but his answers always had to be paid for.

“It’s late for you to be traveling north,” I said.

“Yet so far the winter is surprisingly mild. And business brought me north, lord,” he said, “your business.” He groped in a large leather bag and took out a sealed and folded parchment that he pushed across the table. “That is for you, lord.”

I picked up the letter. The seal was a blob of wax which bore no imprint and seemed undisturbed. “What does the letter say?” I asked Offa.

“Are you suggesting I’ve read it?” he asked, offended.

“Of course you did,” I said, “so save me the trouble of reading it.”

He gave a hint of a smile. “I suspect you will find it of little importance, lord,” he said. “The writer is your friend, Father Beocca. He says your children are safe in the Lady Æthelflæd’s household and that Alfred is still angry with you, but will not order your death if you return south as, he reminds you, your sworn oath demands. Father Beocca finishes by saying that he prays for your soul daily, and demands that you return to your oath-given duties.”

“Demands?”

“Most sternly, lord,” Offa said with another ghost of a smile.

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing, lord.”

“So I can burn the letter?”

“A waste of parchment, lord. My women can scrape the skin clean and reuse it.”

I pushed the letter back to him. “Let them scrape,” I said. “What happened at Torneie?”

Offa considered the question for a few heartbeats, then decided that the answer would be common knowledge soon enough and so he could tell me without any payment. “King Alfred ordered an assault, lord, to end Jarl Harald’s occupation of the island. The Lord Steapa was to bring men upstream in ships while Lord Æthelred and the Ætheling Edward attacked across the shallower branch of the river. Both attacks failed.”

“Why?”

“Harald, lord, had placed sharpened stakes in the river bed, and the West Saxon ships struck those stakes and most never reached the island. Lord Æthelred’s assault simply became bogged down. They floundered in the mud and Harald’s warriors shot arrows and threw spears, and no Saxon even reached the thorn palisade. It was a massacre, lord.”

“Massacre?”

“The Danes made a sally, lord, and slaughtered many of Lord Æthelred’s men in the river.”

“Cheer me up,” I said, “and tell me that Lord Æthelred was killed.”

“He lives, lord,” Offa said.

“And Steapa?”

“He lives too, lord.”

“So what happens now?”

“Now that is a question,” Offa said distantly. He waited until I had placed a coin on the table. “There is argument among the king’s counselors, lord,” he said, slipping the silver into his pouch, “but the cautious advice of Bishop Asser will prevail, I’m sure.”

“And that advice is?”

“Oh, to pay Harald silver, of course.”

“Bribe him to leave?” I asked, shocked. Why would any man have to bribe a fugitive band of defeated Danes to leave their territory?

“Silver often achieves what steel cannot,” Offa said.

“Ten men and a boy could capture Torneie,” I said angrily.

“If you led them, maybe,” Offa said, “but you’re here, lord.”

“So I am.”

It cost me more silver to learn what Brida had already told me, that Haesten, safe in the high fort at Beamfleot, planned an assault on Mercia. “Did you tell that to Alfred?” I asked Offa.

“I did,” he said, “but his other spies contradict me, and he believes me wrong.”

“Are you wrong?”

“Rarely, lord,” he said.

“Is Haesten strong enough to take Mercia?”

“Not at present. He has been joined by many of Harald’s crews who fled your victory at Fearnhamme, but I don’t doubt he needs more men.”

“He’ll seek them from Northumbria?” I asked.

“It’s a possibility, I suppose,” Offa said, and that answer told me what I wanted to know, that even Offa, with his uncanny ability to sniff out secrets, was ignorant of Brida’s ambition for Ragnar to lead an army against Wessex. If Offa had known of that ambition he would have hinted that the Northumbrian Danes might have better things to do than assault Mercia, but he had slid past my question without sensing any opportunity to take my silver. “But ships still join the Jarl Haesten,” Offa went on, “and he may be strong enough by the spring. I’m sure he’ll seek your help too, lord.”

“I imagine so,” I said.

Offa stretched his long thin legs under the table. One of the terriers whined and he snapped his fingers and the dog went instantly still. “The Jarl Haesten,” he said cautiously, “will offer you gold to join him.”

I smiled. “You didn’t come here as a messenger, Offa. If Alfred wanted a letter sent to me he had cheaper ways of sending it than by satisfying your greed.” Offa looked offended at the word greed, but made no protest. “And it was Alfred who ordered Father Beocca to write, wasn’t it?” I asked, and Offa nodded slightly. “So,” I said, “Alfred sent you to find out what I’m going to do.”

“There is curiosity in Wessex about that,” he said distantly.

I laid two silver coins on the table. “So tell me,” I said.

“Tell you what, lord?” he asked, gazing at the coins.

“Tell me what I’m going to do,” I said.

He smiled at being paid for an answer I surely knew already. “Generous, lord,” he said as his long fingers closed round the coins. “Alfred believes you will attack your uncle.”

“I might.”

“But for that, lord, you need men, and men need silver.”

“I have silver.”

“Not enough, lord,” Offa said confidently.

“So perhaps I will join Haesten?”

“Never, lord, you despise him.”

“So where will I find the silver?” I asked.

“From Skirnir, of course,” Offa said, his eyes steady on mine.

I tried to betray nothing. “Is Skirnir one of the men who pays you?” I asked.

“I cannot bear journeying in ships, lord, so avoid them. I have never met Skirnir.”

“So Skirnir doesn’t know what I plan?”

“From what I hear, lord, Skirnir believes every man plans to rob him, so, being ready for all, he will be ready for you.”

I shook my head. “He’s ready for thieves, Offa, not for a warlord.”

The Mercian just raised an eyebrow, a signal more silver was needed. I put one coin on the table and watched it vanish into that capacious purse. “He will be ready for you, lord,” he said, “because your uncle will warn him.”

“Because you will tell my uncle?”

“If he pays me, yes.”

“I should kill you now, Offa.”

“Yes, lord,” he said, “you should. But you won’t.” He smiled.

So Skirnir would learn I was coming, and Skirnir had ships and men, but fate is inexorable. I would go to Frisia.