The Empty Throne

‘Permission?’

‘From the king, lord, and they promised to pay him tribute.’

I laughed at that. Other kings in Britain had invited the Northmen to settle and had believed their promises to live in peace and to pay land-rent, and gradually more ships had arrived, and the settlers’ war-band had grown in strength, and suddenly instead of tenants the king discovered he has a marauding band of savage warriors, cuckoos with claws, who wanted his fields, his women, his treasury, and his throne. ‘So who leads these Norsemen?’ I asked.

‘His name is Rognvald, lord.’

I looked at Finan, who shrugged to show the name meant nothing to him. ‘He came from Ireland?’ I asked the monk.

‘Many Norsemen have fled Ireland these last few years, lord.’

‘I wonder why,’ Finan said, amused.

‘And how many men does Rognvald lead?’

‘At least a hundred, lord, but we knew he was coming! We were watching from the hills and received warning, so we had time to flee. But the treasures.’ His voice trailed away and he looked in despair around the gaunt church.

‘Treasures?’

‘We took the small reliquaries and the altar goods, but the rest? The great gold chest of Saint Dewi, the silver crucifix, they were too heavy, and we had no time to rescue them, lord. We only had moments. They came on horses.’

‘They took the saint?’

‘We rescued his bones, lord, but his coffins? There was no time to take them.’

‘When was this?’

‘Two days ago, lord. We three came back yesterday.’ He hesitated. The monk who had held the great baulk of wood like a club was speaking urgently and Brother Edwyn looked nervous. He summoned his courage and turned back to us. ‘And you, lord? May I ask where you’re from?’

‘We come from King Edward,’ I said. It was sensible to claim we had come from Wessex rather than Mercia. Wessex was further away and its warriors rarely fought against the Welsh, while Mercia was a neighbour and perpetually fighting raiders from the hills.

‘King Edward! God be praised,’ Edwyn said, ‘a good Christian.’

‘As are we all,’ I said piously.

‘And the king, lord, he sent you?’

‘To see the grave of Bishop Asser,’ I said.

‘Of course!’ Brother Edwyn exclaimed, smiling. ‘The bishop was a great friend to Wessex! And such a holy man! What a servant of God he was! A soul of such kindness and generosity.’

Such a piece of slug-shit, I thought, but managed a sickly smile. ‘He is missed in Wessex,’ I said.

‘He was bishop here,’ Brother Edwyn said, ‘and we may never see his equal again, but now he is joined to the saints in heaven where he deserves to be!’

‘He does indeed,’ I said fervently, thinking just what dull company the saints must be.

‘His tomb is here,’ he crossed to the far side of the burned altar and pointed to a great slab of stone that had been lifted and slid aside. ‘The Norsemen, dear God, would not even let the dead rest in peace!’

I crossed to the grave and stared into the stone-lined tomb where Bishop Asser’s simple wooden coffin had been splintered open. The bastard was still there, wrapped in grey cloth that was stained black. His whole body was wrapped so I could not see his pinched face, but I could smell his decay. I was tempted to spit into the tomb, but managed to resist the urge and at that moment I had an inspiration, an idea so brilliant that I wondered why I had not thought of it earlier. ‘King Edward,’ I turned back to Brother Edwyn and adopted my most earnest voice, ‘has asked us to bring back a remembrance of Asser.’

‘I understand, lord! He was so beloved in Wessex.’

‘He was indeed,’ I said, ‘and the king gave Bishop Asser a sword, a Danish sword, and asked that we might take it to place on the high altar of Wintanceaster’s new church.’

‘Ah! The sword,’ Edwyn said. He sounded nervous again.

‘We would pay for it, of course,’ I said.

Edwyn looked close to tears. ‘The bishop was very fond of that sword,’ he said, ‘and yet he was not a warlike man.’

‘He would value it,’ I said, ‘as a king’s gift.’

‘Oh, he valued it! He did indeed, but alas, we cannot give it to King Edward.’

‘Cannot?’

‘Bishop Asser’s final wishes were to be buried with the sword. It was in the grave. The Norsemen must have known, for they took it.’

‘How would they know?’

‘It was no secret,’ Brother Edwyn said, ‘and the missionaries might have mentioned it.’

‘Missionaries?’

‘Rognvald was given permission to settle, lord, on condition that he gave a home to two of our missionaries and listen to their message. It was Father Elidell who sent us warning of Rognvald’s coming.’

And the bastard missionaries, I thought, must also have boasted of the sword. ‘King Edward desired the blade,’ I said helplessly.

‘Perhaps King Edward would like another relic of the bishop?’ Edwyn suggested helpfully. ‘We have some shoes the bishop wore? At least I think we do. Oh, I know! We still have some of the cloths we used to wipe up the vomit of his final illness, the king would like one of those?’

‘A vomit cloth?’ I asked.

‘The vomit has dried, lord! It’s nothing but a crust now and somewhat delicate, but if he becomes a saint, as well he might, then the crust will surely work miracles!’

‘And the king will surely treasure it,’ I said, ‘but he had set his heart on the sword.’

‘No wonder,’ Edwyn said, ‘for he killed the pagan who carried it! We heard the story often!’

‘King Edward killed him?’ I asked.

‘Oh, indeed! Bishop Asser was quite sure of that. And Bishop Asser said he would use the blade to fight valiantly against the devil even from the grave. Such a holy man!’ Such a mean-spirited, tight-fisted, cunning piece of lying weasel-shit, I thought. ‘He was a great fighter against evil,’ Edwyn continued enthusiastically, ‘why, he even begged that the sword be wrapped in nettle leaves so it would sting the demons who taunt the Christian dead!’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘Even in death the bishop fights for Christ.’

Even in death he went on torturing me, except now the sword was in the hands of some Norseman, but I did not doubt that whatever Christian sorcery Asser had used on the blade would still be potent. But it was gone, and to find it I would have to treat with Rognvald. ‘This Norseman,’ I asked Edwyn, ‘he’s still at Abergwin?’

‘Abergwaun, lord, yes, as far as we know.’

‘And how far …’ I began to ask, but was interrupted by my son.

‘Father!’ Uhtred’s voice was urgent. He was standing at the church door, gazing into the day’s new sunlight, and as I turned to him I heard the voices. Men’s voices, and then the sound of footsteps. A lot of footsteps. I walked to the door, and there, not twenty paces away, were warriors.

A horde of warriors. Men in mail and helmets, some men in leather armour, and a few with nothing but padded jackets that will stop a sword slash, but not a lunge. Most had shields, almost all had swords, though a few were armed only with heavy, wide-bladed spears. They were bearded, dark-faced, hostile, but they had crosses hanging at their necks and some had the cross painted on their shields, which meant they were not Rognvald’s men, but Welshmen. I started to count them, but there were too many.

‘Thank Christ!’ Brother Edwyn had come to the door. ‘The king is here.’

‘King?’

‘King Hywel!’ he said reprovingly, as though I should have known what savage ruled this corner of Wales. ‘He will be pleased to meet you, lord.’

‘The honour will be mine,’ I said, and I thought of all the men who had gone into Wales and never returned. There were stories of great caves into which the souls of Saxons were trapped by Welsh magicians. ‘What we should call our land,’ Father Pyrlig had once told me with a most unchristian relish, ‘is the graveyard of the Saxons! We do love them to visit! It gives the boys sword practice.’

And the leader of the Welsh warriors, a grim beast with a red scarf wrapped about his helmet and a beard that hung to his waist and a shield on which a dragon breathed fire, drew his long-sword.

Wyrd bið ful āræd.

The grim man with the red scarf about his helmet stepped aside, and a much smaller man walked towards us. He too was in mail and wore a helmet, but he carried no shield. He had a pale green cloak of very fine linen, its edges hemmed with golden crosses. I might have thought him a priest, except for the splendour of his helmet and the richness of the scabbard fittings that hung from a belt plated with small gold panels. A chain of gold held a golden crucifix, which he touched as he stopped to stare at us. Something about him reminded me of Alfred. His face had none of the drawn lines of constant sickness and unending worry that had etched Alfred, but he did have a look of keen intelligence. This man was no fool. He took another pace towards us and I saw his calm confidence. He called out in his own language, and Brother Edwyn stepped two paces forward and bowed. ‘The king,’ he hissed at us.

‘Bow,’ I ordered my companions, then offered a bow myself.

So this was King Hywel. I guessed he was about thirty years of age, a head shorter than me, but strongly built. I had heard of him, though taken small notice because kings come and go in Wales like mice in thatch, but there was something about this man that suggested he was far more formidable than most of his kind. He seemed to be amused as he asked Brother Edwyn questions and listened to the translation of our answers. We had come as pilgrims, I said. From King Edward? I hesitated, not wanting to claim to be an official embassy because we had brought neither gifts nor letters, but then I said the king had known we were coming and had instructed us to offer Christian greetings. Hywel smiled at that. He knew a lie when he heard one. He looked along my men, recognising them for what they were. His eyes lingered appreciatively on Eadith for a moment, then came back to me. He spoke to Brother Edwyn, who turned to me. ‘The king wishes to know your name, lord,’ he said.

‘Osbert,’ I answered.

‘Osbert,’ Brother Edwyn told the king.

‘Osbert,’ Hywel repeated the name thoughtfully, then turned and listened as the brute with the red scarf about his helmet whispered in his ear. Whatever was said made Hywel smile again. He spoke to Brother Edwyn, who looked at me nervously. ‘The creed,’ the monk translated, ‘the king wishes you to recite the creed.’

‘The creed,’ I said, and for the life of me could not remember those words that had been hammered into my childhood mind by Father Beocca.

‘We believe in one god,’ my son said, ‘the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ,’ Finan and the others joined in, ‘the only-begotten Son of God,’ they all made the sign of the cross as they chanted the last three words, and I hurriedly copied the gesture, ‘begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made …’

King Hywel held up a hand to check the recitation. He spoke to Edwyn again, though keeping his shrewd eyes on me. ‘The king wants to know,’ Brother Edwyn interpreted, ‘why you don’t speak the words?’

‘Being of one substance with the Father,’ I said as the words suddenly came back to me from the mists of childhood, ‘by whom all things were made and who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the holy ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.’

Again the king held up his hand and I dutifully stopped as Hywel looked at Brother Edwyn. The monk nodded, presumably confirming I had repeated the words correctly. Hywel was still smiling as he spoke to Edwyn, who suddenly looked terrified. ‘The king says,’ he began, hesitated, then found the courage to continue, ‘the king says that he is impressed that the infamous Lord Uhtred knows the creed.’ I said nothing, but just stared at the king, who spoke again. ‘He wishes to know,’ Brother Edwyn said, ‘why you lied about your name.’

‘Tell him I have a bad memory,’ I said.

Hywel laughed, and I noted he did not wait for Brother Edwyn’s translation. He had laughed as soon as I spoke, and then he smiled at me. ‘A bad memory,’ he said, using our language.

‘It seems, lord,’ I said, ‘that your memory has just remembered that you speak the English tongue.’

‘The church,’ he said, ‘teaches us to love our enemies. My father believed you should know them too.’ I realised he had pretended to need a translator so he could listen, watch, and make up his mind about us. He seemed to like us well enough. He pointed to the man who had whispered in his ear. ‘Idwal was one of the men who followed Father Pyrlig to your battle with Cnut. He recognised you. So, Lord Uhtred with the bad memory, you’re no pilgrim, so why are you here?’

And there was no choice but to tell the truth, or as little of the truth as I wanted to reveal. We had come, I said, because Jarl Cnut’s sword had been stolen from me, that the sword belonged to the man who had cut him down, and that man was me. I had come to find Ice-Spite.

‘Which is now in Rognvald’s possession,’ Hywel said, ‘so you are fortunate.’

‘Fortunate, lord?’ I asked.

‘Because we have come to kill him. And you can join us.’

So we would go to war.

Nine

King Hywel’s chief adviser was a shrewd priest called Anwyn who spoke our tongue and who questioned me closely as we rode north. He wanted to know who ruled in Mercia and was surprised at, and even dubious of, my answer. ‘The Lady Æthelflaed?’ he asked. ‘Truly?’

‘I was there when the Witan chose her.’

‘You astonish me,’ he said, ‘you astonish me indeed.’ He frowned, thinking. He was bald as an egg with a long, bony face and thin, unfriendly lips, though his dark eyes could light with amusement or understanding. He was one of those clever priests who rise high in royal service, and I suspected Anwyn was an honest, loyal servant to the equally shrewd Hywel. ‘I understood Wessex was determined the Lady Æthelflaed should not assume her husband’s burden,’ he continued, still frowning, ‘so what happened?’

‘Mercians are proud of their country,’ I said, ‘and they’re not ready to lie back and open their legs to a foreign king quite yet.’

He smiled at my crudity. ‘I understand that, lord, but to appoint a woman! The last news we heard was that Eardwulf was to marry Æthelflaed’s daughter and then administer the country in Edward’s name!’

‘Eardwulf is an outlaw,’ I said, surprising Anwyn. It was plain that King Hywel had his sources in the Saxon kingdoms and those sources were good, but any news those spies might have sent about Eardwulf’s bid for power and Æthelflaed’s success had still not reached western Wales. I told him of Eardwulf’s attack on Æthelflaed and of its failure, though I did not mention my part in it, nor did I tell him how I had influenced the Witan.

‘I can’t say I feel any sorrow for Eardwulf,’ Father Anwyn said with evident relish, ‘he was always an enemy to the Welsh.’

‘He was a Mercian,’ I said drily, and the priest smiled.

‘So Æthelflaed will rule!’ he said, amused. ‘A woman! On the throne!’

‘A very capable woman,’ I said, ‘and she’s more of a warrior than her brother.’

He shook his head, still trying to comprehend the idea of a woman on a throne. ‘We live in strange times, lord.’

‘We do,’ I agreed. We had been given ponies to ride, while the rest of Hywel’s force were on war horses that followed a stony track which led north through small fields and rocky outcrops. The king had brought over three hundred men, and Father Anwyn believed that would be sufficient. ‘Rognvald doesn’t lead more than a hundred and thirty warriors. Scarce enough to man his palisade!’

I watched a falcon spiral high above a hill, and followed as it slid away to the east. ‘How long has Rognvald lived here?’

‘Six years.’

‘Your king,’ I said, nodding at Hywel, who rode just ahead of his two standard-bearers, ‘strikes me as a very clever man. Why did he allow Rognvald to settle?’

‘Oh, he didn’t! That was the last king, a fool called Rhodri.’

‘So Rognvald,’ I said, ‘has been here six years, and in all that time he’s never made trouble?’

‘Some cattle raids,’ Anwyn said dismissively, ‘but nothing more.’

‘You say he leads only a hundred and thirty men, and he must know how many warriors you can bring against him. So is he a fool? Why attack Tyddewi? He must know you’ll want revenge.’

‘Opportunity!’ Anwyn said brusquely. ‘Idwal,’ he paused to nod towards the big man with the red scarf, ‘usually has a score of men at Tyddewi, but the king needed him elsewhere.’

‘Elsewhere?’

Anwyn ignored that question. Whatever squabble Hywel had just settled was evidently none of my business. ‘We thought it safe to leave the shrine unguarded for a few days,’ Anwyn admitted ruefully, ‘and we were wrong, but we headed back as soon as we heard of the fleet.’

‘Fleet?’ I repeated the word dourly. With Sihtric at sea, waiting for us, fleet was not a word I wanted to hear.

‘Some days ago,’ Anwyn explained, ‘twenty or more ships appeared off the coast. At least one of them put into Abergwaun, but she didn’t stay. They all sailed northwards a day later, and we just received word that they’re coming south again.’

‘Norse ships?’

He nodded. ‘Ivar Imerson sent the fleet, led by his son. It seems they’re looking for land.’

‘Ivar Imerson?’

Anwyn seemed surprised that I had not heard of Ivar. ‘He’s a formidable man, but so are his Irish enemies.’

I knew Mercia and Wessex, Northumbria and East Anglia, but now I was in a different world, a place where warlords with strange names fought to make petty kingdoms at the sea’s edge. Hywel, I realised, had enemies on three sides. He had Saxons to his east, rival Welsh kingdoms to the north, while to his west the Norse and the Irish struggled with each other, both ever ready to raid his coasts, and, if what Anwyn had heard was true, ready to take more land from Dyfed.

The horsemen ahead of us had halted, and a group of men had gathered around Hywel and his standard-bearers. I assumed one of the Welsh scouts had brought back news, and now the king held a hasty council of war, which Anwyn hurried to join. We had climbed to a wide plateau with small, stone-walled fields interrupted by shallow valleys, which Hywel’s scouts diligently explored. Rognvald would surely be expecting trouble and must have his own scouts on the plateau, but if Anwyn was right then the Norseman was severely outnumbered. I suspected he would be cautious, preferring to retreat to some easily defended high ground rather than seek a running fight with Hywel’s warriors on this bare upland.

‘So there’s a fleet nearby,’ Finan said. He had been listening to my conversation with the priest.

‘Let’s hope it’s nowhere near Sihtric,’ I said.

‘Sihtric’s canny,’ Finan said, ‘and he’ll keep out of their way. But something’s got them worried,’ the Irishman nodded at the horsemen bunched about the king, ‘and Ivar Imerson is a man that should worry you.’

‘You know of him?’

‘Of course! He’s a big bad man. But the Irish are just as big and bad and they’re pushing on him. Pushing hard.’

‘So he’s looking for land over here?’

‘And sent his son to find it. I wonder which son.’ I was always surprised how much Finan knew of what happened in Ireland. He pretended to take no interest, insisting he had abandoned his native land for ever, but for somebody who claimed no interest he knew a lot. Someone there must send him news. ‘Now what’s happening?’ he asked, nodding towards the war council.

Two of Hywel’s scouts had come galloping from the north to push their way into the knot of horsemen around the king. They had only been there a moment before all the Welshmen began whooping and hurrying north. Whatever news the scouts had brought was being shouted back along the column, each repetition provoking more and louder cheers. Some men had drawn swords. Father Anwyn waited with the king’s two standard-bearers. ‘The pagans are fleeing!’ he called to me. ‘They’re running away!’ He kicked his horse to follow Hywel’s warriors, who were now racing towards the plateau’s northern crest where smoke was just appearing. At first I thought the smoke to be mist, but it was thickening too quickly. A village or a hall was burning.

‘Someone got there before us?’ Finan called to me, kicking his pony to ride beside me.

‘Looks that way,’ I said. I twisted in the saddle, wincing at the inevitable pain. ‘Stay together!’ I called to my men. If there was about to be a fight I did not want my men separated because it would be too easy to mistake one of them for an enemy. The Welshmen all knew each other, but if they saw a stranger they might attack without thinking. ‘And you,’ I called to Eadith, ‘stay away from the fighting!’

‘You too,’ Finan said to me. ‘You’re not well enough to fight.’

I made no answer, but felt a surge of anger. He was right, of course, but that did not make the truth any easier to accept, and then we crossed the skyline and I slowed the pony. The Welsh were still galloping, already halfway down the slope that led into a deep river valley. This, I realised, was Abergwaun.

To my right the river flowed through thick woods that filled much of the valley’s bed, while to the left it widened to meet the open ocean. Rognvald’s settlement was on the far bank, just where the river met the sea-reach, and that sea-reach, sheltered by hills, was filled with ships.

There had to be thirty or more ships, far more than Rognvald would possess if, as Anwyn said, he could only muster a little over a hundred warriors. So the mysterious fleet from Ireland must have returned to Abergwaun and was now leaving again. The ships were heading to sea, their oars biting the water and their sails filling and falling as the gusts of a light east wind rose and stilled. And behind them, on the river’s northern shore, the settlement was ablaze.

No enemy had set the fires. There was no evidence of any fighting, no corpses, and the men who were still running from hall to house, from house to barn, and hurling firebrands up onto the thatch were not dressed in mail. Rognvald was leaving and he was plainly determined to leave nothing useful behind. Fires had been set against the palisade, and the nearest gateway was already burning fiercely. Father Anwyn had been right, the Norsemen were running away, but not because King Hywel’s men were coming. Rognvald must have decided to join forces with the fleet from Ireland in its search for another place to settle.

The fleet was moving seawards, but there were still two fighting ships by the beach. Those had to be the rearguard, the boats belonging to the men who were carrying fire from house to house. Both boats were manned by half a dozen men who hauled on stern lines to keep the bows from grounding in the falling tide.

The Welsh were already in the valley bottom, hidden there by trees. We followed, plunging into the woods and hearing the shouts of Hywel’s men drawing ever further ahead of us. The track led to a ford. The river was tidal and, helped by the ebb tide, the shallow water was running fast. We splashed through and turned west on the river’s far bank, following an earthen road that led beside the hurrying river, then we were out of the trees and Rognvald’s burning settlement was ahead of us. Some of Hywel’s men were already inside the walls, their horses abandoned in the fields that surrounded the palisade. A whole section of that palisade had been pushed over, the timbers presumably weakened by fire, and more Welshmen were scrambling over the still smouldering trunks, shields on their arms and weapons in their hands. They vanished into smoke-wreathed alleys. I heard shouts, the clash of swords, and then I slid from the saddle and called to my men to stay together. The sensible thing would have been to stay outside the burning walls. We had no shields, no swords, no spears, only seaxes, and, being strangers, we could easily be mistaken for enemies, but I was as eager as Finan or any of the others to see what happened inside. ‘Stay with me,’ I told Eadith. An osprey flew through the smoke, wings fast, a pale streak of feathered glory flying north, and I wondered what omen that was. I touched the hilt of Wasp-Sting, my seax, then splashed through the shallow ditch that surrounded the settlement, climbed the bank, and followed Finan and my son over the smouldering timbers.

Two men lay dead in the first alley. Neither wore mail and both had faces deeply marked with ink. They were dead Norsemen, presumably men who had been setting the fires and had been surprised by the speed of the Welsh attack. We walked cautiously through the alley. The houses on either side were blazing, the heat hammering us until we reached an open space where Hywel’s two standard-bearers were guarded by a dozen warriors. Father Anwyn was there and he called sharply to the men who had turned towards us and hefted their weapons. One flag showed a Christian cross, the other was blazoned with a scarlet dragon. ‘The king has gone to attack the boats!’ Father Anwyn shouted at me.

A half-dozen prisoners were under guard. The open space was evidently where Hywel was sending captives, and not just captives but weapons too. There was a pile of swords, spears, and shields. ‘Help yourselves,’ I told my men.

‘God go with you!’ Father Anwyn called.

Finan pulled swords from the heap, selected two and offered one to me. My son had found a long blade, while Gerbruht picked up a double-bladed axe and an ironbound shield. ‘Drop the shield,’ I told him.

‘No shield, lord?’

‘You want the Welsh to kill you?’

He frowned, then realised there was a crude painting of an eagle on the shield’s willow boards. ‘Ah!’ he said, and threw the thing down.

‘Keep your crosses visible,’ I ordered my men before going into another alley which led between unburned houses onto a long beach, all green slippery stones, mud, and broken shells. Driftwood fires smouldered beneath empty fish-smoking frames. A single small fishing craft was stranded at the beach’s end, well above the high-water mark, while most of Hywel’s men seemed to be down at the water’s edge. I guessed they had scoured the settlement and driven the surviving Norsemen back to their two ships, which were now trapped. Welshmen were clambering aboard, outnumbering the enemy, who had retreated to the ships’ sterns where swords, axes and spears took them down in bloody slaughter. Some of the Norsemen leaped into the water, trying to wade or even swim out to the fleet that was in a chaotic tangle halfway down the sea-reach.

It was chaos because some of the ships were trying to return, hampered by their sails, which drove them away from the shore, while other vessels still headed seawards. Three ships had managed to escape the chaos. None of the three had been under sail, all were driven only by oars, and now those three headed back towards the settlement. All three were crammed with helmeted warriors who were gathered beneath the high carvings of the prows. The oarsmen drove the ships fast, heading for the wide gap between the two beached vessels, then there was the scrape of a keel on stone and the first Norsemen leaped screaming from the ship’s dragon prow.

Hywel had seen the ships coming and his men had made a shield wall on the beach that was more than strong enough to stop the Norsemen who came with anger, but no order, and the first men died in the shallow water at the river’s edge where blood swirled sudden. The Welsh on the boat nearest us had killed the last of its crew and they now scrambled back across the rowers’ benches to jump down onto the beach just as the second vessel arrived, its prow riding up the mud and its mast bending forward as the long hull shuddered to a halt. Men leaped from the bows, bellowing their war cries, joining the shorter Norse wall and driving their heavy spears hard into Welsh willow. The Norsemen had not expected a fight this day and few wore mail, though all had helmets and shields. The newly arrived boats were trying to rescue their comrades, but even after the third boat slammed into the beach there were not enough Norsemen to push back Hywel’s furious warriors. Both sides were screaming their war cries, but the Welsh shouts were louder, and Hywel’s men were wading into the small waves as they drove the Norsemen relentlessly back. Most battles of the shield walls begin slowly as men summon the nerve to go within lover’s reach of the enemy trying to kill them, but this battle had erupted in a moment.

My son started towards the left flank of the Welshmen, but I called him back. ‘You don’t have a shield,’ I snarled, ‘and you don’t have mail. We were supposed to be pilgrims, remember?’

‘We can’t do nothing,’ he snarled back at me.

‘Wait!’

The Welsh hardly needed our help. There were more than enough of them to stem the furious counter-attack of the three ships, and if that was all it was, a counter-attack that was doomed to be beaten down to bloody ruin in the shallows of the sea-reach, I would simply have sat and watched. But the rest of the Norse ships were now trying to return, and they would bring an overwhelming force that would butcher Hywel’s men, and all that was keeping the Welsh from disaster was the chaos in that larger fleet. They had turned too soon, too eager to help, and in the haste their hulls had fallen foul of each other. Long oars were clashing, sails were backing and filling, hulls blocking other hulls, and the whole tangle was being carried seawards by the tide. But the Norse were good seamen and I knew it would take but a moment for the chaos to be resolved, and then Hywel’s men would be facing a horde of angry warriors eager for revenge. In short the slaughter would go the other way.

‘Fetch me fire,’ I told my son.

He frowned at me. ‘Fire?’

‘Fetch fire, lots of fire! Kindling! Wood, fire! Now! All of you.’ The ship nearest to us had been stranded by the falling tide, but it had also been cleared of its crew. ‘Gerbruht! Folcbald!’ I called the two Frisians back.

‘Lord?’

‘Get that ship off the beach!’

They lumbered through the mud, both strong as oxen. The nearest ship was well grounded now, but it was our only chance of preventing a massacre. The closest Norsemen were twenty paces beyond, defending themselves from the Welsh shield wall, which was threatening to overlap them and drive them back into the river, but the Norse wall had found some security by anchoring the right-hand end of their line against the prow of another beached ship. Three men had climbed aboard and were using spears to stop the Welsh from clambering over the ship’s bows. The beleaguered wall was holding firm and it only had to survive a few more minutes before reinforcements poured in from the rest of their fleet.

Folcbald and Gerbruht were heaving on the prow of the nearest ship and achieving nothing. The hull seemed stuck fast in the thick mud. Finan ran down the beach with a rusty iron pan filled with embers and burning wood. I assumed the shallow pan had been used to make salt, and Finan now reached up and tipped the contents over the ship’s side. More kindling and burning wood followed. ‘Help Gerbruht,’ I shouted to my son.

Hywel was still on horseback, the only mounted man on the beach. He had been using his height to thrust a spear at the Norse line, but he saw what we were doing and understood immediately. He could see the approaching fleet. The tide had drifted them some way seawards, but the first ships were free of the tangle now and their oars were biting the small waves. I saw Hywel shouting, and then a dozen Welsh warriors came to help us, and the grounded ship began to move at last. ‘More fire!’ I shouted. Smoke was thickening from inside the hull, but I could see no flames yet. Eadith brought an armful of driftwood and threw it on board, then Finan added another pan of embers before clambering over the bows just as the ship slid off the mud and floated. Fire was showing at last, and Finan was wading through the blaze as he headed for the ship’s stern. ‘Finan!’ I shouted, fearing for him, and almost moaned aloud from the pain in my rib.

Finan was engulfed in flame and smoke. The ship, when it caught the fire, did so with sudden hunger. It was dry wood, well cured, caulked with pitch that also coated the lines that held the mast, and the flames leaped up the rigging to the furled sail that had been hoisted out of the crew’s way. Then I saw why Finan had leaped aboard. The stern of the ship was held by a line that had to be connected to an anchor stone, and the tide was swinging the boat, but the ship would not leave her makeshift mooring so long as that anchor line held. Then Finan appeared on the high steering platform and I saw his sword slash down once, twice, and the anchor line parted with a sudden jolt. Finan jumped.

‘Now that ship!’ I pointed to the next along the beach, the one defended by the three Norse spearmen. ‘Hurry!’ I shouted again, and this time the pain was so severe that I bent over, and that made the pain worse. I gasped, then fell backwards so that I was sitting on the green-slimed rocks. My borrowed sword slid onto the mud, but the pain was such that I could not reach for it.

‘What is it?’ Eadith crouched beside me.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ I said.

‘But I am here,’ she said, putting an arm around my shoulder and looking out at the river. Finan was wading ashore, sword in hand, and beyond him, turning on the current and carried by the tide, the burning boat was drifting seawards. I guessed the ebbing tide was halfway between high and low water because the current was running fast, swirling and streaming, hurrying the blazing boat and slowing the approaching ships, who saw their danger, which was made worse because the sea-reach had one narrow place that crowded the Norsemen’s ships. One boat, its high prow showing an eagle’s beak, backed water, and was immediately rammed by another, and the blazing craft, its furled sail now a fury of flames and smoke, drifted ever closer.

Finan had hauled himself onto the second boat. One of the spearmen saw him and leaped down the rowers’ benches, but a spear is no weapon to carry against a man skilled in sword-craft, and few were more skilled than Finan. It took him less time than a man needs to blink. He feinted to his right, let the spear slide past his waist, and rammed his blade into the Norseman’s belly, and then my son hurled fire into the boat and a dozen men followed him, and the two remaining spearmen leaped for safety as a pack of burly Welshmen thrust the boat back into the river. It was not yet burning like the first, but the smoke was thickening from the hull, and Finan cut the stern line and then jumped down into the shallows as the Welsh charged into the exposed flank of the Norse shield wall.

The first fire ship had reached the fleet. Two of the enemy boats had gone ashore on the river’s farther bank, the rest were desperately trying to escape, and meanwhile the second fire ship was drifting seawards. Those Norsemen left on the shore were dying, being hacked and sliced and cut by angry Welshmen who had flanked their line and now attacked from front and rear. The second ship burst into flames, the fire flickering up the rigging and the smoke churning from the benches. The Norse fleet, at least twenty ships, was fleeing. Sailors fear fire more than they fear rocks, even more than they fear the anger of Ran, that jealous bitch of a goddess. I sat panting, the pain stabbing like a blade, and watched the boats flee and listened to the shouts of those enemy who survived on the beach pleading to be spared. The battle was over.

The Norse fleet could still have returned. They could have rowed from the river, let the two fiery ships drift harmlessly out to sea, and then come back for their vengeance, but they chose to abandon Abergwaun. They knew the Welsh would retreat to high ground and taunt them, inviting them to attack up some harsh slope where they would die on Welsh blades already slick with northern blood.

My son came back along the beach. His clothes were scorched and his hands burned, but he was grinning till he saw my face. He ran then and stooped in front of me. ‘Father?’

‘It’s just the wound,’ I said. ‘Help me up.’

He hauled me to my feet. The pain was almost crippling. There were tears in my eyes, blurring my view of the exultant Welsh, who jeered the retreating enemy. Three of the Norse ships were left on the beach and Hywel’s men had invaded one of those and whatever they discovered aboard provoked more cheering. Others of Hywel’s men were guarding prisoners, at least fifty or sixty of them, who were being stripped of helmets and weapons. Rognvald himself had been captured, bellowing defiance until he had been driven so far back into the water that he had almost drowned. Now the prisoners were gathered into a pathetic huddle, and I limped towards them. I had thought the pain was going away, that my injury mended day by day, but it now felt worse than ever. I did not limp because my legs were wounded, but because the agony in my side made every move torture. Finan ran to help me, but I waved him away. There was a big boulder above the high-tide line, and I sat on its flat surface, flinching from the pain. I remember wondering if this was the end, wondering if the Norns had cut my thread at last.

‘Give me your sword,’ I said to Finan. If I died I would at least die with a sword in my hand.

‘Lord,’ Finan crouched beside me, sounding worried.

‘The pain will pass,’ I said, suspecting it would pass with death. It hurt to breathe. Father Anwyn and the king’s standard-bearers passed close to us, going to join the king. ‘He looks grim,’ I said, nodding at the priest. Not that I really cared, but I did not want Finan, Eadith, or my son to make a fuss over my weakness.

‘Grim as death,’ Finan agreed, and Father Anwyn, far from showing happiness at the victory the Welsh had just gained, looked like a man consumed by anger. He talked to Hywel for some time, then the king spurred his horse past us, going back into the burning settlement.

I tried to breathe more deeply, tried to convince myself the pain was passing. ‘We need to look for Ice-Spite,’ I said, and knew I wasted my breath. The sword was probably going out to sea, pursued by the burning boats that smeared the ocean’s sky with smoke.

Father Anwyn, still looking stern, crossed to us. ‘The king instructed me to thank you,’ he said stiffly.

I forced a smile. ‘The king is generous.’

‘He is,’ Anwyn said, then frowned. ‘And God is generous too.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘The treasures of Saint Dewi were in Rognvald’s ship.’ He nodded towards the boat where the Welsh were celebrating, then looked back to me with a frown. ‘You were wounded, lord?’

‘An old injury which still hurts,’ I explained, ‘it will pass. You recovered the treasure?’

‘The gold reliquary of the saint, the silver crucifix, both there.’

‘And the sword?’ I asked.

‘And Rognvald is a prisoner,’ Anwyn said, apparently ignoring my question. ‘It was his boats that returned to the beach. The rest,’ he stared out to sea where the Norse fleet was disappearing behind a headland, ‘are commanded by Sigtryggr Ivarson.’ He said the name as though it tasted sour on his tongue. ‘He’s the more dangerous of Ivar’s sons. Young, ambitious and able.’

‘And looking for land,’ I managed to say as another stab of pain lanced into me.

‘But not here, thank God,’ Anwyn said. ‘And Rognvald agreed to join his search.’

What choice had Rognvald had, I wondered. His settlement on the edge of Wales had hardly thrived. It had clung to its rocky shore for six years, but Rognvald had failed to attract more followers or conquer more land, and Sigtryggr had evidently persuaded Rognvald to join his larger forces. That agreement must have been reached a week or so before, when Sigtryggr’s fleet had first reached Wales, and Rognvald, knowing he would be abandoning his settlement, had tried to enrich himself at Saint Dewi’s expense before he left.

Now Rognvald and his surviving men would die, not because they had attacked the saint’s shrine, but because of what they had done to the two Welsh missionaries and their handful of converts. It was that cruelty that had provoked Welsh anger. ‘It is the work of the devil,’ Anwyn said in rage, ‘Satan’s doing!’ He stared at me with disdain, ‘Pagan atrocity!’ With that he turned back towards the settlement and we followed. The pain was still bad, but it hurt no more to hobble slowly than to be sitting and so I limped behind Anwyn along the narrow path. Ahead of us the settlement still burned furiously, though much of the western side had yet to catch fire, and it was in that part of the village that the Norsemen had killed the Christians.

We went through a gateway that pierced the palisade, and Eadith, who was walking beside me, gasped, then turned away.

‘Jesus,’ Finan murmured and crossed himself.

‘You see what they do?’ Father Anwyn shouted at me. ‘They will burn in the everlasting fires of hell. They will suffer the torments of the damned. They will be cursed for all time.’

Hywel’s warriors were arriving now, their elation turning to rage because the two missionaries and their handful of converts had been slaughtered like animals, though not before they had been tortured. All nine bodies were naked, though all were so lacerated and sliced that blood and guts disguised their nudity. The women’s heads had been shaved, a mark of shame, and their breasts had been cut off. The two priests had been gelded. All nine had been eviscerated, blinded, and had their tongues sliced out. They had been tied to posts, and I shuddered to think how long it had taken for death to release them from their pain.

‘Why?’ Anwyn demanded of me. He knew I was a pagan, just as he must have known I had no answer for him.

‘Spite,’ Finan answered for me, ‘just spite.’

‘Pagan evil,’ Anwyn retorted angrily. ‘You see the devil at work! This is Satan’s doing!’

Rognvald had attacked Tyddewi and found it empty. He had found rich plunder, but not nearly as much as he expected and there had been no young women and children to capture and enslave. He must have decided that the missionaries had betrayed him and so he had avenged himself. Now he would die.

There would be no mercy. Every prisoner would die, and Hywel made them look at the nine dead Christians so they knew why they were dying. And the Norsemen were lucky. Despite the anger of the Welsh, they died quickly, usually from a sword cut to the neck. The settlement stank of smoke and blood, so much blood. Some of the prisoners, very few, begged for their lives, but most went to their execution with resignation. None was allowed to hold a sword, and that was a punishment in itself. Rognvald was made to watch. He was a big man, big-bellied, big-bearded, with hard eyes in a lined face that was decorated with inked designs. An eagle spread its wings on one cheek, a serpent writhed across his forehead, while a raven flew on the other cheek. His hair was turning grey, but it was oiled and combed. He watched his men die and his face showed nothing, but he must have known that his death would be the last, and would not be swift.

I limped along the line of men shuffling towards their end. A boy caught my eye. I say ‘boy’, but I suppose he was sixteen or seventeen. He had fair hair, blue eyes, and a long face that betrayed the struggle in his head. He knew he was about to die and he wanted to cry, but he also wanted to show bravery, and he was trying so hard. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.

‘Berg,’ he said.

‘Berg what?’

‘Berg Skallagrimmrson, lord.’

‘You served Rognvald?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Come here,’ I beckoned him to me. One of the Welsh guards tried to stop him leaving the line of captives, but Finan growled and the man stepped back. ‘Tell me,’ I said to Berg, speaking Danish and speaking very slowly so he would understand me, ‘did you help kill the Christians?’

‘No, lord!’

‘If you lie to me,’ I said, ‘I’ll find out. I’ll ask your comrades.’

‘I did not, lord. I swear it.’

I believed him. He was shaking with fear, gazing at me with an extraordinary intensity as if he sensed that I was his salvation. ‘When you raided the monastery,’ I asked him, ‘did they find a sword?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘It was in a tomb, lord.’

‘You saw it?’

‘It has a white hilt, lord. I saw it.’

‘And what happened to it?’

‘Rognvald took it, lord.’

‘Wait,’ I said and walked back into the settlement where the bodies were being hauled to one side, to where the soil was stained black and stank of blood, where the smoke of burning houses swirled in the freshening breeze. I went to Anwyn. ‘I ask a favour,’ I said to him.

The priest was watching the Norsemen die. He was watching as they were forced to their knees and made to stare at the nine corpses still tied to the poles. Watching as the swords or axes touched their necks, watching as they flinched when the blades were taken away and they knew the killing blow was imminent. Watching as the heads were severed and the blood spurted and the bodies twitched. ‘Tell me,’ he said coldly, still watching.

‘Spare me one life,’ I pleaded.

Anwyn glanced along the line of men and saw Berg standing beside Finan. ‘You want us to spare that lad?’

‘That’s the favour I ask.’

‘Why?’

‘He reminds me of my son,’ I said, and that was true, though it was not why I had pleaded, ‘and he took no part in this slaughter.’ I nodded towards the tortured Christians.

‘He says,’ Anwyn remarked sourly.

‘He says,’ I said, ‘and I believe him.’

Anwyn stared at me for a few heartbeats, then grimaced as though the favour I asked was too extravagant. Still, he went to the king and I saw them speak. Hywel glanced at me from his saddle, then at the boy. He frowned and I supposed he was going to refuse my request. And why had I made it? At the time I was not sure. I liked the look of the boy because there was an honesty in Berg’s face and he did resemble Uhtred, but that was hardly reason enough. Years before I had spared the life of a young man called Haesten and he had seemed open and truthful too, yet he had turned out to be a cunning and deceitful enemy. I was not sure why I wanted Berg’s life, though now, so many years later, I know it was fate.

King Hywel beckoned me. I stood by his stirrup and bowed my head respectfully. ‘I am minded,’ he said, ‘to grant your request because of your assistance on the beach, but there is one condition.’

‘Lord?’ I asked, looking up at him.

‘That you promise to make the boy a Christian.’

I shrugged. ‘I can’t force him to believe in your god,’ I said, ‘but I promise that I’ll have him taught by a good priest and do nothing to stop his conversion.’

The king considered that promise for a moment, then nodded. ‘He’s yours.’

And thus Berg Skallagrimmrson entered my service.

Fate is inexorable. I was not to know it, but I had just made Alfred’s dream of Englaland come true.

‘Come with me,’ I told Berg, and walked him back to the beach. Finan, my son, Eadith, and the others all came with me.

Wyrd bið ful āræd.

I did not see Rognvald die, though I heard him. It was not quick. He was a warrior, determined to die defiantly, but before the Welsh had finished he was screaming like a child. The gulls screamed too, the sound forlorn, and over it came the cries of a man wishing he were dead.

Sigtryggr’s fleet was gone. The burning ships had sunk, leaving only two fading clouds of smoke being blown westwards by the wind. I heard the Welsh singing a dirge and guessed they were burying their dead; the nine martyrs and the half-dozen warriors who had died in the fighting on the beach. The Norse dead were still there, their bodies stranded at the low tide, while, higher up the beach, where a rill of driftwood and weed marked the limit of the last flood tide, there was a heap of clothing, helmets, swords, shields, axes, and spears. A cloak had been spread on the stones and was piled with coins and hacksilver taken from the prisoners and from the dead, while near it, and guarded by two young men, was the great golden chest that had encased Saint Dewi’s body, and the huge silver crucifix that had stood on the altar. ‘Find your helmet and sword,’ I told Berg.

He looked at me with disbelief. ‘I can carry a sword?’

‘Of course,’ I said, ‘you’re my man now. You’ll swear loyalty to me and if I die, to my son.’

‘Yes, lord.’

And while Berg hunted for his own sword I looked through the heaped weapons, and there she was. As simple as could be. The ivory hilt of Ice-Spite was unmistakable. I bent down, wincing from the sudden pain, and pulled the blade free. I shivered, though it was a warm day.

I drew her from the scabbard. I was accustomed to the weight of Serpent-Breath, but this sword was much lighter. Cnut had always claimed that the blade had been forged in a sorcerer’s fire that burned colder than ice in the frost caverns of Hel. He said she was a sword of the gods, but all I knew was that she was the sword that had pierced me, and that Bishop Asser had charmed with Christian sorcery to torment me. The sunlight reflected silver from the blade, which had no patterns, indeed no decoration except for one word at the base of the hilt:

I showed it to Finan, who made the sign of the cross. ‘It’s one of his swords,’ he said in a hushed tone. My son came to look, and drew Raven-Beak, and there was the same word inscribed on the plain blade. ‘It’s a magic sword, sure enough,’ Finan said. ‘Christ, but you were lucky to survive it!’

I turned the Vlfberht blade, seeing the light reflect from the smooth steel. She was beautiful, a tool for killing, her only extravagance the ivory hand grips of her hilt. For a moment I thought of replacing Serpent-Breath with this sleek killer, but I rejected the notion. Serpent-Breath had served me well, and to discard her would be to tempt the gods, yet I was tempted. I stroked Ice-Spite’s edge, feeling the nicks made in the fight, then I touched the point, and it was needle sharp.

‘Is that the sword?’ Eadith asked me.

‘Yes.’

‘Give it to me,’ she said.

‘Why?’

She looked at me with cold eyes as if she suddenly disliked me. ‘The sword will cure you, lord.’

‘You know that?’

‘Why did we come here?’ she demanded. I said nothing, and she held out her hand. ‘Give me the sword,’ she insisted, and when I still hesitated, ‘I know what to do, lord.’

‘What?’ I asked. ‘What do you do?’

‘I cure you.’

I looked down at Ice-Spite. I had wanted her so badly, I had travelled to the end of Britain to find her, yet I had no idea how the possession of her would help me. I had thought that the sword must be laid against the wound, but that was just imagination. I did not know what to do, and I was in pain, and I was tired of the pain, tired of feeling weak, tired of death’s close company, and so I reversed the blade and held the hilt to Eadith.

She half smiled. My men were watching us. Berg had stopped looking for his own sword and was gazing at us, wondering what strange things happened at the sea’s blood-stained edge. ‘Lean against the ship,’ Eadith ordered me and I obeyed her. I stood with my back against the bows of Rognvald’s ship and leaned on the timbers. ‘Now show me the wound, lord,’ Eadith said.

I unclasped my belt and lifted my tunic. My son grimaced when he saw the wound that was again crusted with bloody pus. I could smell it, despite the smoke and the sea and the slaughter and the freshening wind.

Eadith closed her eyes. ‘This sword almost killed you,’ she said in a slow, sing-song voice, ‘and now this blade will heal you.’

And she opened her eyes, and her face was suddenly a grimace of hate, and before Finan or any of my men could stop her, she stabbed me.

Ten

The pain was like lightning; sudden, bright, overwhelming, and jagged. I gasped, staggered against the ship’s bows, and saw Finan moving to snatch at Eadith’s arm, but she had already pulled the sword back. Now she was staring at my wound with a look of horror.

And as the blade left me so the stench came. A foul stench, and I felt liquid pouring from my rib. ‘It’s the evil,’ Eadith said, ‘coming out of him.’

Finan was holding her arm, but staring at me. ‘Christ,’ he murmured. I had bent forward when she stabbed me and saw a mixture of blood and pus pulsing from the new wound, so much blood and pus. It was bubbling, swelling, trickling away, and as I watched the filth erupt so the pain subsided. I looked up at Eadith in disbelief because the pain was flowing out of me, it was vanishing.

‘We need honey and cobwebs,’ she said. She frowned at the sword as if she did not know what to do with it.

‘Berg,’ I said, ‘take the sword.’

‘Her sword, lord?’

‘You need a sword and that’s a good one, I’m told.’ I straightened up and no pain came, so I bent down again and still there was no pain. ‘Cobwebs and honey?’

‘I should have thought to bring some,’ Eadith said.

There was a dull ache in my side, but that was all. I pressed a rib just above the wound and, miraculously, there was no agony. ‘What did you do?’

She half frowned, as if she was not quite sure of her answer. ‘There was evil inside you, lord,’ she said slowly, ‘and it had to be let out.’

‘Then why didn’t we use any sword?’

‘Because this was the sword that caused the evil, of course.’ She looked down at Ice-Spite. ‘My mother wanted to find the blade that wounded my father, but she couldn’t.’ She shuddered and handed the sword to Berg.

There was honey aboard Rognvald’s ship. He had stocked it with food, with salted fish, with bread, ale, cheeses, and barrels of horse-flesh. He had even killed his horses rather than leave them behind. There were also two jars of honey. Cobwebs were harder to find, but my son looked at the single grounded fishing craft at the beach’s end. ‘It looks abandoned,’ he said, ‘so it might be crawling with spiders.’ He wandered off to look while Gerbruht and Folcbald went to search the unburned houses. ‘Bring lots,’ Eadith called after them, ‘I want a whole handful of cobweb!’

‘I hate spiders,’ Gerbruht grumbled.

‘Don’t they taste good?’

He shook his head. ‘Crunchy and bitter, lord.’

I laughed and there was no pain. I stamped my foot and there was no pain. I stretched high and there was no pain, just the dull ache and the smell. I grinned at Finan. ‘It’s a miracle. There’s no pain.’

He was smiling. ‘I pray it stays that way, lord.’

‘It’s gone!’ I said, and I drew Serpent-Breath and swept her in a wide cut that thumped her blade hard into the ship’s hull. There was still no pain. I did it again, and again there was no rip of agony. I slid the blade into its scabbard and untied the laces that held a pouch to my belt. I gave the whole pouch to Eadith. ‘Yours,’ I said.

‘Lord!’ She was staring at the gold in the heavy pouch. ‘No, lord …’

‘Keep it,’ I said.

‘I didn’t do it because …’

‘Keep it!’

I grinned at my son who was hurrying back from the abandoned boat. ‘You found any cobwebs?’

‘No, but I found this,’ he said and held out a crucifix. It was a shabby thing, the cross and its victim both carved from beech wood and so eroded by weather and time that the body was smoothed and bleached. One arm of the cross was missing so that Christ’s arm stuck into empty air. There were two rusted nail holes through the cross’s upright, one at each end. ‘It was nailed to the mast,’ he said, ‘and the boat isn’t abandoned. Or it wasn’t. It’s been used within the last few days.’

A Christian boat on a pagan shore. I tossed the crucifix back to my son. ‘So Rognvald’s men captured a Welsh fishing boat?’

‘Called Godspellere?’ he asked, then jerked his head at the small craft. ‘It’s scratched on the bows, father. Godspellere.’

Preacher, a man who preaches the gospel. A typical name for a Christian boat. ‘Maybe the Welsh use the same word?’

‘Maybe,’ he sounded dubious.

Preacher. It seemed unlikely that the Welsh would use the same word, in which case the boat was Saxon, and I remembered that Eardwulf had stolen a fishing boat from the Sæfern. I looked at Eadith. ‘Your brother?’ I suggested.

‘It could be,’ she said uncertainly, yet the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed. Eardwulf would have sailed from the Sæfern and would surely seek refuge as soon as he could, because a small boat on a wide sea was prey to enemies. So why not go ashore in Hywel’s territory? Because Eardwulf had a reputation as a man who fought the Welsh. If he had landed on Hywel’s shore he could have ended screaming as loudly as Rognvald, but the Norsemen might welcome him because he had become an enemy of their enemies. ‘See if he’s among the dead,’ I ordered my son, and he dutifully walked among the bodies, turning a couple with his foot, but there was no sign of him. Nor was Eardwulf among the men killed in the settlement, which meant that if he had come here then he had sailed away on one of Sigtryggr’s boats. ‘Berg!’ I summoned the boy and asked him about the fishing boat, but all he knew was that it had arrived with the rest of Sigtryggr’s fleet. ‘Yet they abandoned it,’ I said.

‘It’s too slow, lord,’ Berg said, and that was true.

I stared at the fishing craft, frowning. ‘Sigtryggr,’ I said the unfamiliar name carefully, ‘first came here a week ago?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Then went away? Why?’

‘The first rumour, lord, said that Sigtryggr would stay here. That he’d help us take more land.’

‘And then he changed his mind?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘So where is his fleet going?’

‘They said north, lord,’ Berg said vaguely, though he was trying to be helpful. ‘They said we’d all be sailing north.’

Sigtryggr had been sent to find a place where his father’s forces could safely retreat if their Irish enemies became too strong. He had looked at Rognvald’s miserable settlement and thought of using his forces to carve it into a larger kingdom, but he had also explored northwards, and then suddenly returned and persuaded Rognvald to abandon Abergwaun and help him conquer some other place. Some other place to the north. A better place, a richer prize.

Ceaster.

And we later learned that the Welsh word for preacher was nothing like godspellere. ‘We might say efengylydd,’ Father Anwyn told me, ‘but certainly not godspellere. That’s your barbarous tongue.’

I gazed at the boat and wondered about Eardwulf, as his sister made a pad of honey and cobwebs and strapped it to the wound she had opened.

And there was no pain.

Next day I could bend, swing a sword, twist my body, even heave on a steering-oar, and there was no pain. I moved slowly, cautiously, always expecting the agony to return, but it was gone.

‘It was an evil trapped in your body,’ Eadith explained again.

‘A spirit,’ Finan reckoned.

‘And the sword was charmed,’ Eadith said.

‘She did a good job, lord,’ Finan said earnestly, and Eadith smiled at the compliment.

‘But if the sword had a spell on it,’ I asked, frowning, ‘why didn’t it just add to the evil when you stabbed me?’

‘I didn’t stab you, lord,’ she said, ‘I stabbed the evil spirit.’

We were aboard the Ðrines again. Sihtric had brought her back to the dragon’s mouth and Hywel had sent men to greet her. Gerbruht had ridden with them, and he gave Sihtric my orders to wait overnight while Hywel feasted us, which he did with the supplies captured from Rognvald’s ships, though the feast had been far from festive. The memory of those tortured bodies hung over the settlement like the smell of burning.

Hywel had been eager to talk, and asked a lot about Æthelflaed. Was her reputation of being a good Christian true?

‘It depends,’ I had said, ‘what Christian you ask. Many call her a sinner.’

‘We are all sinners,’ Hywel had answered.

‘But she is a good woman.’

He had wanted to know her thoughts about the Welsh. ‘If you leave her alone,’ I answered, ‘she will leave you alone.’

‘Because she hates the Danes more?’

‘She hates pagans.’

‘Except one, I hear,’ he had said drily. I ignored that. He smiled, listening to the harpist for a moment, then, ‘and Æthelstan?’

‘What of him, lord?’

‘You want him to be king, Lord Æthelhelm doesn’t.’

‘He’s a boy,’ I said dismissively.

‘But one you judge worthy to be a king. Why?’

‘He’s a good, strong lad,’ I said, ‘and I like him. And he’s legitimate.’

‘He is?’

‘The priest who married his parents is in my service.’

‘How very inconvenient for Lord Æthelhelm,’ Hywel said, amused. ‘And what about the boy’s father? You like him too?’

‘Well enough.’

‘But Æthelhelm rules in Wessex, so what Æthelhelm wants will happen.’

‘You must have good spies in the West Saxon court, lord,’ I said, amused.

Hywel had laughed at that. ‘I don’t need spies. You forget the church, Lord Uhtred. Churchmen write endless letters. They send news to each other, so much news! Gossip too.’

‘Then you know what Æthelflaed wants,’ I said, turning the conversation back to her. ‘She’ll ignore Æthelhelm and his ambitions, because all she cares about is driving the Danes from Mercia. And when she has done that, to drive them out of Northumbria.’

‘Ah,’ the king had said, ‘she wants Englaland!’ We had eaten outside, under the smoke-smeared stars. ‘Englaland,’ Hywel had said again, savouring the unfamiliar name as he stared into one of the big fires around which we sat. A bard was singing, and for a time the king listened to the words, then began to talk. He had spoken softly, ruefully, gazing into the flames. ‘I hear the name Englaland,’ he had said, ‘but our name for it is Lloegyr. The lost lands. They were once our lands. Those hills and valleys, those rivers and pastures, they were ours and they carried our names and the names were the stories of our people. Every hill had a tale, every valley a story. The Romans came and the Romans went, but the names remained, and then you came, the Saxons, and the names vanished like this smoke. And the stories went with the names, and now there are only your names. Saxon names. Listen to him!’ He had gestured towards the bard who was chanting his song, hard-striking the rhythm of his words on a small harp. ‘He sings the song of Caddwych and how he slaughtered our enemies.’

‘Our enemies?’ I asked.

‘How we slaughtered you, the Saxons,’ Hywel admitted, then laughed. ‘I told him not to sing of dead Saxons, but even a king can’t command poets, it seems.’

‘We sing songs too,’ I said.

‘And your songs,’ the king said, ‘will tell of Englaland, of slaughtered Danes, and what happens then, my friend?’

‘Then, lord?’

‘When you have your Englaland? When the pagans are gone? When Christ rules all Britain from the south to the north? What then?’

I had shrugged. ‘I doubt I’ll live to see it.’

‘Will the Saxons be content with their Englaland?’ he had asked, then shaken his head. ‘They will look at these hills, these valleys.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘So we must be strong. Tell your Æthelflaed that I will not fight her. I’ve no doubt some of my folk will steal your cattle, but young men must be kept busy. But tell her that I have a dream like her father’s dream. A dream of one country.’

I had been surprised, but why? This was a clever man, as clever as Alfred, and he knew that weakness invited war. So just as Alfred dreamed of uniting the Saxon kingdoms into one strong country, so Hywel was dreaming of uniting the Welsh kingdoms. He ruled the south, but to the north was a patchwork of little states, and little states are weak.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘your Æthelflaed will hear of war in our land, but assure her it is not her business. It is ours. Leave us alone and we will leave you alone.’

‘Until you don’t, lord,’ I said.

Again he smiled. ‘Until we don’t? Yes, one day we must fight, but you will make your Englaland and we will make our Cymru first. And we will probably both be long dead, my friend, before those shield walls meet.’

‘Cymru?’ I had asked, stumbling over the strange word.

‘You call it Wales.’

And now we left Cymru, blown by a south-westerly wind, the sea seething at the Ðrines’s bow and the wake spreading white and fretful behind us. I had liked Hywel. I knew him for such a short while and met him on only a few occasions, yet of all the kings I have met in my long life he and Alfred impressed me the most. Hywel still lives and now he rules over much of Wales and grows stronger every year, and one day, no doubt, the men of Cymru will come to take back the stories that we Saxons stole from them. Or we shall march to destroy them. One day. Not now.

And we sailed northwards to save Æthelflaed’s kingdom.

I could have been wrong. Perhaps Sigtryggr was looking for new land in Scotland, or on the rugged coast of Cumbraland, or perhaps in Gwynedd, which was the northernmost of all the Welsh kingdoms, but I somehow doubted it.

I had sailed Britain’s western shore and it is a cruel coast, rock-bound, wave-battered, and tide-swirled, yet north of the Sæfern there is one soft place, one spread of land where the rivers invite a ship to go deep inland, where the soil is not steep and rock-strewn, where cattle can graze and barley grow, and that place was Wirhealum, the land between the River Mærse and the River Dee. Ceaster was there, and it had been at Ceaster that Æthelflaed had led her men against the Norse. The capture of that city and of the rich lands around it had been because of Æthelflaed’s insistence, the achievement that had persuaded men to trust her with Mercia, but now, if my suspicions were correct, more Norsemen were going to Wirhealum. A new fleet was sailing with new warriors, hundreds of warriors, and if Æthelflaed was to begin her rule by losing Ceaster, if that great swathe of newly conquered land was to be lost, then men would say it was the Christian god’s revenge for appointing a mere woman to rule over them.

The safe thing was to return to Gleawecestre. We could have made the voyage quickly enough, helped by the wind, which blew from the south-west two days out of three, but once there we would still be a week’s hard march from Ceaster. I reckoned Æthelflaed would have stayed in Gleawecestre, where she was appointing clerks and scribes and priests to administer the lands she now ruled, but I knew she had already sent at least fifty men north to reinforce the garrison at Ceaster. Those were the men Sigtryggr would fight, if indeed he was heading for the land between the rivers.

So I set my course northwards. Ahead of us were Sigtryggr’s ships, which meant over twenty crews to make an army of at least five hundred men. Five hundred hungry men seeking land. And how many men did Æthelflaed have at Ceaster? I called my son back to the steering-oar and asked him.

‘There were just over three hundred when I was there,’ he said.

‘Including your men?’

‘Including thirty-eight of us,’ he said.

‘So you left, and Æthelflaed also took thirty-two men south. So Ceaster was garrisoned by what? Two hundred and fifty men?’

‘Maybe a few more.’

‘Or a few less. Men get sick.’ I stared at the distant shore and saw unfriendly hills beneath heaping clouds. The wind was fretting the waves, shivering them with whitecaps, but also driving our ship hard north. ‘We know she’s just sent fifty men north, so there should still be around three hundred men there. And Merewalh commands.’

My son nodded. ‘He’s a good man.’

‘He’s a good man,’ I agreed.

My son heard the hesitation in my voice. ‘But not good enough?’

‘He’ll fight like a bull,’ I said, ‘and he’s honest. But does he think like a wildcat?’ I liked Merewalh, and trusted him. I had no doubt that Æthelflaed would raise him, maybe make him an ealdorman, and I had even thought of Merewalh as a husband for Stiorra. That might still happen, I supposed, but for now Merewalh had to defend Ceaster, and his three hundred men should be more than enough for that task. The burh’s walls were made of stone, and its ditch was deep. The Romans had built well, but I assumed Sigtryggr knew of Ceaster’s strength and my fear was that the young Norseman had a wildcat’s cunning. ‘So what was the Lady Æthelflaed doing when you left Ceaster?’ I asked Uhtred.

‘Making a new burh.’

‘Where?’

‘On the bank of the Mærse.’

That made sense. Ceaster was a fortress that guarded the Dee, the southernmost river, but the Mærse was an open path. Put a burh there, and enemies could not use the river to pierce deep into the heartland. ‘So Merewalh needs men to finish the new burh,’ I said, ‘and to garrison it, and he needs more men to protect Ceaster. He can’t do all that with three hundred men.’

‘And Osferth is going there with the families,’ my son said grimly.

‘With Stiorra too,’ I said, and felt a pang of guilt. I have been a careless father. My eldest son was an outlaw to me because of his damned religion, Uhtred had turned out well, but none of that was my doing, while Stiorra was a mystery to me. I loved her, but now I had sent her into danger.

‘The families,’ my son said, ‘and your money.’

Fate is a bitch. I’d sent Osferth north because Ceaster had seemed a safer destination than Gleawecestre, but unless I was wrong about the Norsemen, then I had sent Osferth, my daughter, our families, and all our fortune straight towards a horde of enemies. And worse. Eardwulf might have joined Sigtryggr, and I was certain that Eardwulf was as sly as a spinney of wildcats.

‘Suppose Eardwulf goes to Ceaster,’ I suggested. My son looked at me in puzzlement. ‘Do they know he’s a traitor?’ I asked.

He understood my fear. ‘If they don’t know yet …’ he said slowly.

‘They’ll open the gates to him,’ I interrupted.

‘But they will know by now,’ my son insisted.

‘They’ll know about Eardwulf,’ I agreed. The reinforcements Æthelflaed had sent from Gleawecestre would have carried that news. ‘But do they know all his followers?’

‘Oh God,’ he said, thinking about what I had said and realising the danger. ‘Jesus!’

‘Much help he is,’ I snarled.

The Ðrines slammed into a steeper wave, drenching the deck with cold spray. The wind had been freshening all day and the waves were now fierce and quick, but as night fell the wind died and the sea settled. We had lost sight of the land because we were crossing the vast bay that is the west coast of Wales, though I feared the northern side of that bay, which juts like a rocky arm to trap unwary ships. We lowered the sail, took to the oars, and steered by the infrequent glimpses of the stars. I took the oar and headed the ship slightly west of north. We rowed slowly, and I watched the water sparkle from the strange glowing lights that sometimes twinkle in the sea at night. We call them Ran’s jewels, the eerie glitter of the precious stones that are draped around that jealous goddess’s neck.

‘Where are we going?’ Finan asked me some time in the jewelled darkness.

‘Wirhealum.’

‘North or south?’

It was a good question and I did not know the answer. If we used the Dee, the southern river, we could row almost to Ceaster’s gates, but if Sigtryggr had made the same choice then we would simply find ourselves facing his men. If we chose the northern river, we would beach the ship a fair way from Ceaster and in all likelihood avoid Sigtryggr’s fleet, but it would take us much longer to reach the burh. ‘I’ll guess Sigtryggr wants to capture Ceaster,’ I said.

‘If he’s gone to Wirhealum, yes.’

‘If,’ I said sourly. Instinct is a strange thing. You cannot touch it, feel it, smell it, or hear it, but you must trust it, and that night, as we listened to the slap of the waves and the creak of the oars, I was as certain as I could be that my fears were justified. Somewhere ahead of us was a fleet of Norsemen intent on capturing Æthelflaed’s city of Ceaster. But how would he do it? My instinct was not giving me an answer. ‘He’ll want to capture the city quickly,’ I suggested.

‘He will,’ Finan agreed. ‘If he delays, then the garrison only gets stronger.’

‘So he’ll take the faster route.’

‘The Dee.’

‘So we’ll go north,’ I decided, ‘to the Mærse. And in the dawn we take that damned cross off the prow.’

The cross on the Ðrines’s high bow proclaimed us to be a Christian ship and invited any Dane or Norseman to attack us. A Danish ship would have a proud figure at the bows, a dragon or a serpent or an eagle, but such carvings could always be lifted off the prow timber. The carved and painted beasts were never displayed in home waters, for those waters were friendly and did not need the threat of the beast to tame the unfriendly spirits, but the threat was always needed off enemy coasts. But the cross on the Ðrines’s bow was fixed. The upright was simply the prow timber extended a few feet above the deck which meant my men would have to use axes to cut the thing down, but once it was gone we would no longer be inviting attack. I was sure there were no Christian ships ahead of us, only enemies.

The axes did their work in the grey light of a limpid dawn. Some of the Christians flinched when the big cross finally splashed overboard, bumped hard against the hull, and was left behind. A flutter of wind rippled the sea and our sail was hoisted again, the oars shipped, and we let the small wind carry us northwards. Far off to the east I saw a scatter of dark sails, and guessed they were Welsh fishing craft. A cloud of gulls whirled about the ships, which, seeing us, hurried back towards the land, and that land showed an hour or so after dawn.

And so we sailed. But to what? I did not know. I touched the hammer hanging about my neck and prayed to Thor that my instincts were wrong, that we would reach the Mærse and find nothing but peace.

But my instincts were not wrong. We sailed towards trouble.

Next night we sheltered against the northern Welsh coast, anchored in a cove while the wind howled above us. Rain pelted down. Lightning struck ashore, each flash showing gaunt hills and sleeting rain. The storm came fast and passed quickly. Long before dawn it had gone, a sudden anger of the gods. What it meant I did not know and could only fear, yet by dawn the wind was calm again, the clouds had scattered, and the rising sun was flickering from the settling waves as we hauled the stone and thrust oars into tholes.

I took one of the oars. There was no pain, though after an hour my body ached from the exertion. We chanted the song of Beowulf, an ancient song telling how that hero swam for a whole day to reach the bottom of a great lake, there to fight Grendel’s dam, the monstrous hag. ‘Wearp ðā wunden-mæl,’ we bellowed as the oar blades bit, ‘wrættum gebunden,’ as we hauled on the looms, ‘yrre oretta, þæt hit on eorðan læg,’ as we dragged the hull through the glittering sea, ‘stið ond styl-ecg,’ as we recovered the oars and swung them back. The words told how Beowulf, realising his sword could not bite through the monster’s thick hide, had hurled the blade away, had hurled away his blade which had smoke-like curling patterns traced through its steel, just as Serpent-Breath did, and instead he had wrestled with the hag, forcing her to the floor. He took her blows and returned them, and finally snatched one of her own swords, a brutal blade from the days when giants strode the earth, a sword so heavy that only a hero could wield it, and Beowulf chopped the blade into the monster’s neck and the shrieks of her dying echoed to the roof of the sky. It is a good tale, taught to me by Ealdwulf the smith when I was a child, though he chanted the old version, not the new one that my men bellowed as the Ðrines clove the morning sea. They shouted that ‘Hālig God’ gave Beowulf the victory, but in Ealdwulf’s telling it had been Thor, not holy God, who gave the hero the strength to overcome the vile creature.

And I prayed to Thor to give me strength, which is why I hauled on that oar’s loom. A man needs strength to wield a sword, to hold a shield, to thrust at the enemy. I was going to battle and I was weak, so weak that after an hour of rowing I gave up the oar to Eadric and joined my son on the steering boards at the stern. My arms ached, but there was no pain in my side.

All day we rowed, and as the sun sank behind us we came to the great mud flats that stretch out from Wirhealum, to the place where the rivers and the land and the sea all mingle, and where the tides race across the rippled flats and the seabirds flock thick as snow. To our south was the mouth of the Dee, wider than the Mærse, and I wondered if I was making the wrong choice and that we should be rowing into the Dee to take our ship straight to Ceaster, but instead we pulled into the enclosing banks of the Mærse. I feared that Sigtryggr, if he had come at all, would already have used the Dee to storm ashore and capture Ceaster. I touched the hammer about my neck and prayed.

The mud gave way to grass and reeds, then to pastureland and heath, to low woods and gentle hills covered in the bright yellow blaze of broom. To our south, on Wirhealum, an occasional trace of smoke showed where a hall or steading stood among the trees but no great smear of fire smirched the evening sky. It looked peaceful. Cows grazed a meadow, and there were sheep on the higher land. I was looking for Æthelflaed’s new burh, but saw no sign of it. I knew she was building it to guard this river, which meant it must be close to the bank, and she was no fool, which meant it had to be on the southern bank so that men could easily reach it from Ceaster, but as our shadow grew longer on the water, I saw no wall, no palisade.

The Ðrines drifted on. We were using the oars only to keep her headed upriver, letting the strong tide carry us. We went slowly because the river was treacherous with shallows. Mudbanks showed on either side, but the swirl of the darkening water hinted where the channel lay, and so we crept inland. A small boy was digging in the mud of the northern bank and he paused to wave to us. I waved back and wondered whether he was Dane or Norse. I doubted he was Saxon. This land had been ruled by the Northmen for years, but our capture of Ceaster meant we could now take the surrounding land back and fill it with Saxons.

‘There,’ Finan said, and I looked away from the boy to gaze upriver and saw a thicket of masts showing above a copse. At first I took the masts to be trees, then saw how straight and bare they stood, stark lines against the darkening sky, and the tide was carrying us and I dared not turn for fear of grounding the Ðrines on some unseen shallow. It would have been prudent to turn because those masts showed that Sigtryggr had come here, to the Mærse, and that all his ships were beached on Wirhealum, not at Ceaster, and that an army of Norsemen waited for us, but the tide was like fate. It carried us. And just inland of the masts was smoke, not a great smear of destruction, but the mist of cooking fires sifting the twilight above the low trees, and I guessed we had found Æthelflaed’s new burh.

And so, for the first but not for the last time in my life, I came to Brunanburh.

We rounded a gentle curve and saw the Norsemen’s ships. They were mostly beached, but a few were still afloat, moored close to the muddy shore. I began counting. ‘Twenty-six,’ Finan said. Some of the beached ships had been dismasted, evidence that Sigtryggr planned a long stay.

It was almost low water. The river looked wide enough, but that was deceptive because there were shallows all around us. ‘What do we do?’ my son asked.

‘I’ll tell you when I know,’ I grunted, then leaned on the steering-oar so that we went closer to Sigtryggr’s fleet. The sun had almost gone and twilight was melding the shadows that stretched dark across the land.

‘There’s enough of the bastards,’ Finan said quietly. He was gazing ashore.

I kept glancing ashore, but mostly I watched the river, intent on keeping the Ðrines from grounding. My men were gazing southwards, forgetting their oars, and I shouted at them to row, and, when the boat was gently moving again, I gave my son the steering-oar and stared at Æthelflaed’s new burh. So far her builders had made an earthen wall on a rise of land close to the river. That wall was little more than a mound, perhaps the height of a man and over two hundred paces long. A hall had been built alongside two smaller buildings, perhaps stables, but there was no palisade yet. That wooden wall would need hundreds of stout trunks, oak or elm, and there were no large trees close to the new earthen wall to provide such massive trunks. ‘She’ll have to bring the timbers here,’ I said.

‘If she ever finishes it,’ Finan remarked.

I assumed the burh was square in shape, but from the deck of the Ðrines it was impossible to tell. The hall was not large, and its new timbers showed bright in the fading light. I guessed it was there to shelter Æthelflaed’s builders and, once the burh was finished, a larger hall would be made. Then I saw the cross on the hall’s gable and almost laughed aloud. ‘That’s a church,’ I said, ‘not a hall!’

‘She wants God on her side,’ Finan said.

‘She should have built a palisade first,’ I growled. The moored and beached ships hid most of the river’s bank, but I thought I could see the raw sides of a newly dug channel, presumably made to carry the Mærse’s water to a ditch surrounding the new work, which was now in the hands of the Norse.

‘Jesus,’ Finan breathed, ‘there are hundreds of the bastards!’ Men were coming from the church to gaze at us and, as he had said, there were hundreds of them. Other men had been sitting around campfires. There were women and children there too, all now walking to the river’s edge to watch us.

‘Keep rowing!’ I called to my men, taking the steering-oar from my son.

Sigtryggr had captured the half-built burh, that was obvious, but the presence of so many men suggested he had not yet assaulted Ceaster. There had not been time for that, but I did not doubt he would make the attack as soon as he could. The riskiest course would have been to take his ships and men up the Dee and attack Ceaster immediately, because once inside those Roman walls he would have been immovable. That is what I would have done, but he had been more prudent. He had taken the lesser fortress, and his men would be busy making a palisade from whatever timber they could cut and from thorn bushes, they would deepen the ditch and, once the burh was finished, once he was enclosed in earth and timber and thorns, he would be almost as secure inside Brunanburh as he would have been inside Ceaster.

A man scrambled over the beached ships that were huddled together as if for protection, then leaped onto one of the moored boats, always making his way towards us. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted.

‘Keep rowing!’ It was getting darker by the minute and I feared going aground, but I dared not stop.

‘Who are you?’ the man called again.

‘Sigulf Haraldson!’ I shouted the invented name.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Who is asking?’ I called in Danish, speaking slowly.

‘Sigtryggr Olafson!’

‘Tell him we live here!’ I wondered if the man shouting at us was Sigtryggr himself, but it seemed unlikely. He was most likely one of Sigtryggr’s men, sent to challenge us.

‘You’re Danish?’ he shouted, but I ignored that question. ‘My lord invites you ashore!’

‘Tell your lord we want to be home before dark!’

‘What do you know of the Saxons in the city?’

‘Nothing! We ignore them, they ignore us!’

We had passed the ship from which the man shouted and he nimbly leaped onto another to stay near us. ‘Come ashore!’ he shouted.

‘Tomorrow!’

‘Where do you live?’ he called.

‘Upriver,’ I called back, ‘an hour’s journey.’ I snarled at my men to row harder, and Thor was with us because the Ðrines stayed in the channel, though more than once the oars bumped on mud and the hull twice scraped softly over a bank before finding deeper water. The man shouted more questions through the dusk, but we were gone. We had become a shadow ship in the twilight, a ghost ship vanishing into the night.

‘Pray God they didn’t recognise your voice,’ Finan said.

‘They couldn’t hear me ashore,’ I said, hoping that was true. I had not shouted as loudly as I could, hoping that only the one man on the ship would hear me. ‘And who would have recognised it?’

‘My brother?’ Eadith put in.

‘Did you see him?’ She shook her head. I turned to look astern, but the new burh was now nothing but a shadow within a shadow, a shadow flickering with firelight, while the masts of Sigtryggr’s ships were dark streaks against the western sky. The tide had ebbed and it was slack water as the Ðrines ghosted upriver. I did not know how far Brunanburh was from Ceaster, but reckoned it must be some miles, maybe ten? Twenty? I had no idea and none of my men had visited Æthelflaed’s new burh so could not tell me. I had visited the Mærse before, I had ridden its banks close to Ceaster, but in the gathering darkness it was impossible to recognise any landmark. I watched behind us, seeing the smudge of Brunanburh’s smoke get farther and farther away, watching until the western horizon was edged with the flame red of the dying sun and the sky above was blackness pricked with stars. I did not fear any pursuit. It was too dark for a ship to follow us, and men on foot or on horseback would be stumbling through unfamiliar country.

‘What do we do?’ Finan asked.

‘Go to Ceaster,’ I said.

And keep Æthelflaed’s throne safe.

There was a glimmer of moonlight, often hidden by clouds, but just enough to betray the river. We rowed silently until at last the hull slid onto mud and the Ðrines shuddered and was still. The southern bank was only some twenty paces away and the first of my men dropped overboard and waded ashore.

‘Weapons and mail,’ I ordered.

‘What about the ship?’ Finan asked.

‘We leave her,’ I said. Sigtryggr’s men would doubtless find her. The Ðrines would float off on the rising tide and eventually drift back downstream, but I did not have time to burn her and if I moored her then she would betray where we had gone ashore. Better to let her go wherever she wanted to drift. Wyrd bið ful āræd.

And so we went ashore, forty-seven men and one woman, and we wore our mail and carried shields and weapons. We were dressed for war, and war was coming. The presence of so many men at Brunanburh had told me that Ceaster was still in Saxon hands, but Sigtryggr would surely move against the larger fortress soon.

‘Maybe he’s decided just to stay at Brunanburh,’ Finan suggested.

‘And leave us in Ceaster?’

‘If he finishes Brunanburh’s palisade? If he makes a nuisance of himself? Perhaps he hopes we’ll pay him to leave?’

‘Then he’s a fool, because we won’t.’

‘But only a fool would attack Ceaster’s stone walls.’

‘We did,’ I said, and Finan laughed. I shook my head. ‘He won’t want to be penned up in Brunanburh. His father sent him to take land, and he’ll try. Besides, he’s young. He has a reputation to make. And Berg says he’s headstrong.’

I had talked with Berg. He had been one of Rognvald’s men, so had not seen much of Sigtryggr, but what he had seen had impressed him. ‘He’s tall, lord,’ he had told me, ‘and golden-haired like your son, and with a face like an eagle, lord, and he laughs and shouts. Men like him.’

‘You liked him?’

Berg had paused, and then, with the eagerness of the young, had blurted out, ‘He’s like a god come to earth, lord!’

I had smiled at that. ‘A god?’

‘Like a god, lord,’ he had mumbled, ashamed of the words almost as soon as he had said them.

But the god come to earth still had to make his reputation, and how better to do that than by recapturing Ceaster for the Northmen? Which was why we hurried there, and in the end it was easier to find than I had feared. We followed the river eastwards until we saw the Roman road slanting across our front and then we followed that road south. It went through a Roman cemetery, which both Northmen and Saxons had left alone because it would be so full of ghosts. We walked through it in silence, and I saw the Christians make the sign of the cross and I touched my hammer amulet. It was night, the time when the dead walk, and as we passed through the sullen dwellings of the dead, the only sound was that of our feet on the stones of the road.

And there, ahead, was Ceaster.

We reached the town just before dawn. There was a grey sword’s edge to the eastern sky, a hint of light, nothing more. The first birds sang. The pale walls of the burh were night-dark, the northern gate a shadowed blackness. If any flag flew above the gate I could not see it. There was firelight inside the walls, but it did not show any men on the parapets, and so I took just Finan and my son, and the three of us walked towards the gate. I knew we could be seen.

‘You opened this gate last time,’ Finan said to my son, ‘you might have to do it again.’

‘I had a horse that time,’ Uhtred said. He had stood on his saddle and leaped over the gate, and so we had captured the burh from the Danes. I hoped we still held it.

‘Who are you?’ a man shouted from the wall.

‘Friends,’ I called, ‘is Merewahl still in command?’

‘He is,’ the reply was grudging.

‘Fetch him.’

‘He’s asleep.’

‘I said fetch him!’ I snarled the order.

‘Who are you?’ the man asked again.

‘The man who wants to speak with Merewalh! Go!’

I heard the sentry speak to his companions, then there was silence. We waited as the sword’s edge of grey in the east widened to a blade of dull light. Cockerels crowed and a dog howled somewhere inside the town, and then at last I saw shadows on the wall. ‘I’m Merewalh!’ the familiar voice called. ‘And who are you?’

‘Uhtred,’ I said.

There was a moment’s silence. ‘Who?’ he asked again.

‘Uhtred!’ I shouted. ‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg!’

‘Lord?’ He sounded disbelieving.

‘Did Osferth reach you?’

‘Yes! And your daughter.’

‘Æthelflaed?’

‘Lord Uhtred?’ He still sounded incredulous.

‘Open the damned gate, Merewalh,’ I demanded, ‘I want breakfast.’

The gate was pushed open and we passed through. There were torches in the arch and I saw the relief on Merewalh’s face as he recognised me. A dozen men waited behind him, all with spears or drawn swords. ‘Lord!’ Merewalh strode towards me. ‘You’re healed, lord!’

‘I’m healed,’ I said. It was good to see Merewalh. He was a staunch warrior, an honest man, and a friend. He was guileless, with a round open face that beamed with pleasure at our arrival. He had been one of Æthelred’s men, though he had always protected Æthelflaed, and had suffered for that loyalty. ‘Is Æthelflaed here?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘She said she’d bring more men when she could, but we’ve heard nothing for a week now.’

I glanced at his escort who were grinning as they sheathed their swords. ‘So how many men do you have?’

‘Two hundred and ninety-two fit to fight.’

‘Does that include the fifty men Æthelflaed sent?’

‘It does, lord.’

‘So Prince Æthelstan’s here?’

‘He’s here, lord, yes.’

I turned and watched as the heavy gates were pulled shut and as the massive locking bar was dropped into its brackets. ‘And you know there are five hundred Norsemen at Brunanburh?’

‘I was told six hundred,’ he said grimly.

‘You were told?’

‘Five Saxons came yesterday. Five Mercians. They watched the Norsemen come ashore and fled here.’

‘Five Mercians?’ I asked, but did not give him time to answer. ‘Tell me, did you have men at Brunanburh?’

He shook his head. ‘The Lady Æthelflaed said to abandon it till she returned. She reckoned we couldn’t defend both Ceaster and the new burh. Once she’s here we’ll start the work there again.’

‘Five Mercians?’ I asked again. ‘Did they say who they were?’

‘Oh, I know them!’ Merewalh said confidently. ‘They were Lord Æthelred’s men.’

‘So now they serve the Lady Æthelflaed?’ I asked, and Merewalh nodded. ‘So why did she send them?’

‘She wanted them to look at Brunanburh.’

‘Look at?’

‘There are Danes on Wirhealum,’ he explained. ‘There aren’t many, and they claim to be Christians,’ he shrugged as if to suggest that claim was dubious. ‘They graze sheep mostly and we don’t trouble them if they don’t trouble us, but I suppose she thought they might have done some damage?’

‘So the five came here on Æthelflaed’s orders,’ I said, ‘and they rode straight past your south gate and didn’t ask to see you? They came to Brunanburh?’ I waited for an answer, but Merewalh said nothing. ‘Five men come here to make sure some sheep farmers hadn’t damaged an earthen wall?’ Still he said nothing. ‘You must have sent your own men to look at the new burh?’

‘I did, yes.’

‘Yet Æthelflaed didn’t trust you? She had to send five men to do a job she must have known you were doing already?’

Poor Merewalh frowned, worried by the questions. ‘I know the men, lord,’ he said, though he sounded uncertain.

‘You know them well?’

‘We all served Lord Æthelred. No, I don’t know them well.’

‘And these five,’ I suggested, ‘served Eardwulf.’

‘We all served him. He was Lord Æthelred’s household commander.’

‘But these five were close to him,’ I stated flatly, and Merewalh gave a reluctant nod. ‘And Eardwulf,’ I said, ‘is probably with Sigtryggr.’

‘Sigtryggr, lord?’

‘The man who has just brought five or six hundred Norsemen to Brunanburh.’

‘Eardwulf is with …’ he began, then turned and stared down Ceaster’s main street as if expecting to see Norsemen suddenly invading the town.

‘Eardwulf is probably with Sigtryggr,’ I repeated, ‘and Eardwulf is a traitor and an outlaw. And he’s probably coming here right now. But he’s not coming alone.’

‘Dear God,’ Merewalh said, and made the sign of the cross.

‘Say thank you to your god,’ I said. Because the killing was about to start, and we had arrived in time.

Eleven

Sigtryggr came at noon.

We knew he was coming.

We knew where he would attack.

We were outnumbered, but we had the high stone walls of Ceaster and they were worth a thousand men. Sigtryggr knew that too and, like all the Northmen, he had no patience for a siege. He had no time to make ladders, no tools to dig beneath our ramparts, he had only the courage of his men and the knowledge that he had tricked us.

Except we knew what the trick was.

Welcome to Ceaster.

The sun had risen, but it was dark in the Great Hall, the gaunt Roman building at Ceaster’s centre. A fire smouldered in the central hearth, the smoke curling under the roof before finding the hole hacked through the tiles. Men slept at the hall’s edges, their snores loud in the vast space. There were tables and benches, and some men slept on the tables. Two maidservants were placing oatcakes on the stones of the hearth, while a third was bringing timber to revive the fire.

There were huge stacks of timber outside the hall. It was not firewood, but trunks of oak and elm that had been rudely trimmed. I had stopped to look at them. ‘That’s the palisade for Brunanburh?’ I asked Merewalh.

He nodded. ‘There’s no large timber left on Wirhealum,’ he explained, ‘so we had to cut it here.’

‘You’ll take it by cart?’

‘Probably by ship,’ he said. The timbers were vast, each as thick as a big man’s waist and each about twice the height of a man. A trench would be dug along the summit of Brunanburh’s earthen mound and the trunks would be sunk upside down so that the tops of the trunks would be in the earth. Timber lasted longer that way. Smaller timbers would be used to make the fighting platforms and the steps. Merewalh looked gloomily at the huge piles. ‘She wants it all finished by advent.’

‘You’ll be busy!’

Men were stirring as we entered the hall. The sky was lightening, the cocks crowing, it was time to meet the day. Osferth arrived a few minutes later, yawning and scratching, and stopped to stare at me. ‘Lord!’

‘You came here safely.’

‘I did, lord.’

‘And my daughter?’

‘All safe, lord.’ He looked me up and down. ‘You’re not flinching!’

‘The pain has gone.’

‘Praise be to God,’ he said, then embraced me. ‘Finan! Sihtric! Uhtred!’ There was no hiding his pleasure at being back with his own war-band, then he saw Eadith and his eyes widened, and he looked to me for an explanation.

‘The Lady Eadith,’ I said, ‘is to be treated with honour.’

‘Of course, lord.’ He bridled at the suggestion he would treat any woman discourteously, then Finan winked at him and he looked back to her, then to me. ‘Of course, lord,’ he said again, but stiffly this time.

‘And Æthelstan?’ I asked.

‘Oh, he’s here, lord.’

The fire blazed anew and I took my men to a shadowed corner of the hall and hid there while Merewalh summoned the five Saxons who had arrived the previous day. They came smiling. The hall was crowded by then as other men woke and came to find food and ale. Most arrived without weapons or shields, though the five men all had swords at their waists. ‘Sit!’ Merewalh told them, gesturing at a table. ‘There’s ale, and the food won’t be long.’

‘They’re my brother’s men,’ Eadith whispered to me.

‘You just killed them by saying that,’ I whispered back.

She hesitated. ‘I know.’

‘Their names?’

She told me, and I watched them. They were nervous, though all but one of the five were trying to hide it. The youngest, scarcely more than a boy, looked terrified. The others were speaking too loudly and teasing each other, and one slapped the rump of the girl who brought them ale, but despite the pretended carelessness I could see their eyes were watchful. The oldest, a man called Hanulf Eralson, looked all around the hall and stared into the dark corner where we were half hidden by shadows and tables. He probably thought we were still sleeping. ‘Are you expecting a fight today, Merewalh?’ he called.

‘It must come soon.’

‘Pray God it does,’ Hanulf said heartily, ‘because they’ll never get past these walls.’

‘Lord Uhtred did,’ Merewalh pointed out.

‘Lord Uhtred always had the luck of the devil,’ Hanulf said sourly, ‘and the devil looks after his own. You have news of him?’

‘Of the devil?’

‘Of Uhtred,’ Hanulf said.

I had told Merewalh what to say if that question was asked. He crossed himself. ‘Men tell us the Lord Uhtred is dying.’

‘One pagan less,’ Hanulf said dismissively, then paused as bread and cheese were put on his table. Hanulf fondled the girl who brought the cheese and said something to make the girl blush and pull away. His men laughed, though the youngster just looked even more scared.

‘The devil looks after his own, eh?’ Finan murmured.

‘Let’s see if he looks after those five,’ I said, then turned as Æthelstan entered the hall followed by three other boys and two girls, none older than eleven or twelve. They were laughing and chasing each other, then Æthelstan saw two hounds by the hearth and dropped beside them, stroking their long backs and grey muzzles. The other children copied him, and it was interesting, I thought, that he was the indisputable leader of the small gang. He had that gift, and I did not doubt it would follow him into manhood. I watched as he stole two oatcakes from the hearth stones and split them between himself, the dogs, and the two girls.

‘So we can help you on the walls today?’ Hanulf asked Merewalh.

‘We would expect nothing less of you,’ Merewalh said.

‘Where will they attack?’

‘I wish we knew.’

‘Probably a gate?’ Hanulf suggested.

‘I would think so.’

Men were listening to the conversation. Most of Merewalh’s men knew I was in the hall and those men had been told to keep my presence secret. Most were also convinced that Hanulf simply wanted to help defend the walls. So far as they knew he and his companions were simply five Mercians who had fortuitously arrived to help defend the burh.

‘What about the land gate?’ Hanulf asked.

‘The land gate?’

‘The one we used yesterday.’

‘Oh, the North Gate!’

‘We’ll fight there,’ Hanulf offered, ‘with your permission?’

Thus I learned that Sigtryggr was not coming by sea. I had not expected it. He would have been forced to row his fleet out of the Mærse, turn south, and row up the Dee, and it would have taken him all day, bringing him at last to the South Gate. Instead he was coming overland, and the closest gate to Brunanburh would be the North Gate, the same one by which we had just entered.

‘Can I fight at the North Gate?’ Æthelstan asked Merewalh.

‘You, lord Prince,’ Merewalh said sternly, ‘will stay a long way from any fighting!’

‘Let the boy come with us!’ Hanulf suggested cheerfully.

‘You will stay in the church,’ Merewalh ordered Æthelstan, ‘and pray for our success.’

The hall was becoming lighter as the sun climbed. ‘It’s time,’ I told Finan. ‘Take the bastards.’

I had drawn Serpent-Breath, but I still did not fully trust my strength, and so I let Finan and my son lead a dozen men towards the table. I followed with Eadith.

Hanulf sensed our approach. He could hardly not sense it because every man in the hall was suddenly still, and their voices hushed. He twisted on the bench, saw the approaching swords, and saw Eadith too. He gaped at her, astonished, then tried to stand, but the bench half trapped him as he wrenched the sword from his scabbard.

‘Do you really want to fight us?’ I asked. A score of Merewalh’s men had also drawn swords. Most of those men were still not sure what was happening, but they took their lead from Finan and that meant Hanulf was surrounded. Æthelstan had stood and was staring at me in surprise.

Hanulf kicked over the bench and looked to the door. There was no escape there. I thought for a heartbeat that he intended to attack us, to die in a sudden welter of one-sided battle, but instead he let the sword drop. It clattered on the floor. He said nothing.

‘All of you, drop your swords,’ I ordered. ‘And you,’ I pointed to Æthelstan, ‘come here.’

And then it was just the business of questioning them and their answers came easily. Did they hope to live if they told the truth? They confessed they were Eardwulf’s men, that they had fled Gleawecestre with him and sailed westwards in Godspellere until they encountered Sigtryggr’s fleet. Now they had come to Ceaster to open the North Gate to Sigtryggr’s men. ‘And that will be today?’ I asked.

‘Yes, lord.’

‘What signal does he give you?’

‘Signal, lord?’

‘To tell you to open the gate.’

‘He’ll lower his standard, lord.’

‘And then you would kill whatever men were in your way?’ I asked. ‘And open the gate to our enemies?’

Hanulf had nothing to say to that, but the youngest, the boy, blurted out a plea. ‘Lord!’ he began.

‘Silence!’ I snarled.

‘My son didn’t …’ another of the men began, then fell quiet when I glared at him. The boy was crying now. He could not have been much over fourteen, perhaps fifteen, and he knew what grisly fate now awaited him, but I was in no mood to hear pleas for mercy. The five men deserved none. If Hanulf had succeeded, then Sigtryggr would be inside Ceaster and almost all my men and all Merewalh’s men would be slaughtered. ‘Prince Æthelstan!’ I called. ‘Come here!’

Æthelstan hurried across the hall to stand beside me. ‘Lord?’

‘These men were among those sent to capture you at Alencestre, lord Prince,’ I told him, ‘and now they’ve come to give Ceaster to our enemies. You will decide their punishment. Osferth? Bring your nephew a chair.’ Osferth found a chair. ‘Not that one,’ I said and pointed to the largest chair in the hall, presumably the one that Æthelflaed used when she came to the burh. It had armrests and a high back, and was the chair that most resembled a throne, and I made Æthelstan sit on it. ‘One day,’ I told him, ‘you might be king of this realm and you must practise kingship just as you practise sword-skill. So now you will dispense justice.’

He looked at me. He was just a boy. ‘Justice,’ he said nervously.

‘Justice,’ I said, staring at the five men. ‘You award gold or silver for a deed well done, and you decree punishment for a crime. So dispense justice now.’ The boy frowned at me, as if to determine whether I was serious. ‘They’re waiting,’ I said harshly, ‘we’re all waiting!’

Æthelstan looked at the five men. He drew his breath. ‘You’re Christians?’ he finally asked.

‘Louder,’ I said.

‘You’re Christians?’ His voice had not yet broken.

Hanulf looked at me as if appealing to me to spare him this silliness. ‘Talk to the prince,’ I told him.

‘We’re Christians,’ he said defiantly.

‘Yet you would have allowed the pagans to capture this place?’ Æthelstan asked.

‘We were obeying our lord,’ Hanulf said.

‘Your lord is an outlaw,’ Æthelstan said, and Hanulf had nothing to say.

‘Your judgement, lord Prince,’ I demanded.

Æthelstan licked his lips nervously. ‘They must die,’ he said.

‘Louder!’

‘They must die!’

‘Louder still,’ I said, ‘and talk to them, not to me. Look them in the eye and tell them your judgement.’

The boy’s hands were gripping the armrests now, his knuckles white. ‘You must die,’ he said to the five men, ‘because you would have betrayed your country and your god.’

‘We …’ Hanulf began.

‘Quiet!’ I snarled at him, then looked to Æthelstan. ‘Quickly or slowly, lord Prince, and by what method?’

‘Method?’

‘We can hang them quickly, lord Prince,’ I explained, ‘or hang them slowly. Or we can give them the blade.’

The boy bit his lip, then turned back to the five. ‘You will die by the blade,’ he said firmly.

The four oldest men tried to snatch up their swords, but they were far too slow. All five were seized and dragged outside to the grey early light where Merewalh’s men stripped them of their mail and their clothes, leaving them in nothing but dirty shirts that hung to their knees. ‘Give us a priest,’ Hanulf pleaded. ‘At least a priest?’

Merewalh’s priest, a man called Wissian, prayed with them. ‘Not too long, father,’ I warned him, ‘we have work to do!’

Æthelstan watched the men, who had all been forced to their knees. ‘I made the right choice, lord?’ he asked me.

‘When you begin training with a sword,’ I asked him, ‘what do you learn first?’

‘To block.’

‘To block,’ I agreed, ‘and what else?’

‘To block, to swing and to lunge.’

‘You begin with those easy things,’ I said, ‘and it’s the same with justice. That decision was an easy one, which is why I let you make it.’

He frowned up at me. ‘It’s easy? To take a man’s life? To take five men’s lives?’

‘They’re traitors and outlaws. They were going to die whatever you decided.’ I watched the priest touch the men’s foreheads. ‘Father Wissian!’ I shouted. ‘The devil doesn’t want to be kept waiting while you waste time, hurry!’

‘You always say,’ Æthelstan spoke softly, ‘that one should be kept alive.’

‘I do?’

‘You do, lord,’ he said, then strode confidently to the kneeling men and pointed to the youngest. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Cengar, lord,’ the boy said.

‘Come,’ Æthelstan said, and when Cengar hesitated he tugged on his shoulder. ‘I said come.’ He brought Cengar to me. ‘Kneel,’ he commanded. ‘May I borrow your sword, Lord Uhtred?’

I gave him Serpent-Breath and watched as he clasped his small hands around the hilt. ‘Swear loyalty to me,’ he instructed Cengar.

‘You’re a mushroom-brained idiot, lord Prince,’ I said.

‘Swear,’ Æthelstan told Cengar, and Cengar clasped his hands around Æthelstan’s hands and swore loyalty. He stared up at Æthelstan as he said the words and I saw the tears running down his face.

‘You have the brains of a stunted toad,’ I told Æthelstan.

‘Finan!’ Æthelstan called, ignoring me.

‘Lord Prince?’

‘Give Cengar his clothes and weapons.’

Finan looked at me. I shrugged. ‘Do as the sparrow-brained idiot tells you.’

We killed the remaining four. It was quick enough. I made Æthelstan watch. I was tempted to let him kill Hanulf himself, but I was in haste and did not want to spend time watching a boy try to hack a man to death, and so my son killed Hanulf, spattering the Roman street with yet more blood. Æthelstan looked pale as he watched the slaughter, while Cengar still wept, perhaps because he had been forced to watch his father die. I took the boy aside. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘if you break that oath to the prince I will break you. I will let weasels gnaw your balls, I’ll cut your prick off slice by slice, I’ll blind you, I’ll tear your tongue out, I’ll peel the skin from your back, and I’ll break your ankles and your wrists. And after that I’ll let you live. Do you understand me, boy?’

He nodded, too scared to speak.

‘Then stop snivelling,’ I said, ‘and get busy, we have work to do.’

Then we became busy.

I did not see my own father die, though I was close by when it happened. I had been about Æthelstan’s age when the Danes invaded Northumbria and captured Eoferwic, the chief city of that country. My father took his men to join the army that attempted to recapture the city, and it had looked simple because the Danes had allowed a whole stretch of Eoferwic’s palisade to collapse, offering a path into the streets and alleys beyond. I still remember how we mocked the Danes for being so careless and stupid.

I watched our army form three wedges. Father Beocca, who had been told to look after me and keep me from trouble, said the wedge was really called a porcinum capet, or a swine-head, and for some strange reason I have never forgotten those Latin words. Beocca had been excited, certain he was about to witness a Christian victory over pagan invaders. I shared his excitement and I remember seeing the banners raised and hearing the cheers as our Northumbrian army swarmed over the low earthen mound, clambered across the wreckage of the palisade, and charged into the city.

Where they died.

The Danes had been neither careless nor stupid. They had wanted our men to enter the city because, once inside, they found the Danes had built a new wall to cordon off a killing ground, and so our army had been trapped, and Eoferwic was renamed Jorvik, and the Danes became lords of Northumbria, all except for the fortress of Bebbanburg, which was too strong even for an army of spear-Danes.

And in Ceaster, thanks to Æthelflaed, we had dozens of heavy tree trunks, all ready to be carried to Brunanburh to make the palisade.

So we used them to make a wall.

When a man enters through Ceaster’s North Gate he finds himself on a long street that runs straight southwards. There are buildings either side, Roman buildings made of stone or brick. On the right side of the street is one long building which I have always supposed to be a barracks. It had windows, but only one door, and it was easy to block those openings. On the left side were houses with alleys between, and we stopped up the alleys with tree trunks and nailed up the doors and windows of the houses. The alleys were narrow, so the trunks were laid lengthwise in them, making a fighting platform some five feet above the street, while the long street itself was blocked by more trunks, a great heap of heavy timber. Sigtryggr’s men could enter the city, but would find themselves in a street that led nowhere, a street blocked by vast timbers, a street made into a trap fashioned from wood and stone and made deadly by fire and by steel.

Fire. The weakest part of the trap was the long building on the western side of the street. We did not have time to break down the roof and make a fighting platform above the wall, and the trapped Norsemen would find it easy enough to splinter open the building’s blocked door and wide windows with their war axes, and so I had men fill the long room with kindling and straw, with baulks of wood, with anything that would burn. If they broke into the old barracks, Sigtryggr’s warriors would be greeted with an inferno.

And on the fighting platform above the gate we heaped more tree trunks. I ordered two Roman houses pulled down, and men carried their blocks of masonry to the barricades and to the gate. Throwing spears were gathered to hurl down at Sigtryggr’s men. The sun climbed, and we worked, adding timber, stone, steel, and fire to the trap. Then we closed the gate, put men on the walls, raised our bright flags, and waited.

Welcome to Ceaster.

‘Æthelflaed knew you weren’t coming straight here,’ my daughter told me. ‘She knew you were provisioning a ship.’

‘But she didn’t stop me?’

Stiorra smiled. ‘Shall I tell you what she said?’

‘You’d better.’

‘Your father, she told me, is at his best when he is disobedient.’

I grunted. Stiorra and I were standing on the fighting platform above the North Gate, from where I gazed towards the distant woods out of which I expected Sigtryggr to appear. The sun had been shining all morning, but now clouds came from the north and west. Far to the north, somewhere over the wild lands of Cumbraland, the rain was already falling in shadowy veils, but Ceaster was dry.

‘More stones?’ Gerbruht asked. There must have been two hundred blocks of masonry stacked on the high platform, none of them smaller than a man’s head.

‘More stones,’ I said. I waited till he had gone. ‘What use would I have been here,’ I asked Stiorra, ‘if I couldn’t fight?’

‘I think the Lady Æthelflaed knew that.’

‘She’s a clever bitch.’

‘Father!’ she protested.

‘So are you,’ I said.

‘And she thinks it’s high time I was married,’ Stiorra said.

I growled slightly. My daughter’s marriage was not Æthelflaed’s concern, though she was right in thinking that it was well beyond time that Stiorra found a husband. ‘Does she have a victim in mind?’ I asked.

‘A West Saxon, she says.’

‘A West Saxon! What? Just any West Saxon?’

‘She tells me that Ealdorman Æthelhelm has three sons.’

I laughed at that. ‘You don’t bring him enough advantages. No land, no great fortune. He might marry you to his steward, but not to one of his sons.’

‘Lady Æthelflaed says that any son of a West Saxon ealdorman would make a good match,’ Stiorra said.

‘She would.’

‘Why?’

I shrugged. ‘Æthelflaed wants to bind me to her brother’s kingdom,’ I explained, ‘she worries that if she dies I’ll go back to join the pagans, so she thinks your marriage to a West Saxon would help.’

‘And would it?’ she asked.

I shrugged again. ‘I can hardly see myself fighting against the father of your children. Not if you liked him. So yes, it would help.’

‘Do I have any choice?’ she asked.

‘Of course not.’

She grimaced. ‘So you and the Lady Æthelflaed choose for me?’

I saw birds flying above the distant wood. Something had disturbed them. ‘It’s not Æthelflaed’s business,’ I said. ‘I’ll choose for you.’

Stiorra had also noticed the birds rising from the trees and was gazing at them. ‘Did mother have a choice?’

‘No choice at all. She saw me and was stricken.’ I had spoken lightly, but it was true, or at least it had been true for me. ‘I saw her,’ I went on, ‘and I was stricken too.’

‘But you’ll marry me for advantage? For land or money?’

‘What other use are you?’ I asked sternly. She looked up at me and I tried to keep a straight face, but she made me laugh. ‘I won’t marry you to a bad man,’ I promised, ‘and I’ll provide you with a rich dowry, but you know and I know that we marry for advantage.’ I stared at the far woods and saw nothing untoward, but I was certain the Norsemen were there.

‘You didn’t marry for advantage,’ Stiorra said accusingly.

‘But you will,’ I said, ‘for my advantage.’ I turned as Gerbruht carried another chunk of masonry to the fighting platform. ‘There must be cess pots in the town,’ I suggested to him.

‘Shit pots, lord?’

‘Bring as many as you can.’

He grinned. ‘Yes, lord!’

A shaft of sunlight lit the Roman cemetery, glinting off the white stones. ‘Is there a man you want to marry?’ I asked Stiorra.

‘No,’ she shook her head, ‘no.’

‘But you’re thinking about marriage?’

‘I want to make you a grandfather,’ she said.

‘Maybe I’ll send you to a nunnery,’ I growled.

‘No,’ she said, ‘you won’t.’

And I remembered Gisela’s prophecy, drawn from the runesticks so long ago. One son would break my heart, one would make me proud, and Stiorra would be the mother of kings, and so far the runesticks had been proven right. One son had become a priest, the other was proving to be a warrior, and there was only Stiorra’s fate to determine. And thinking of the runesticks made me remember Ælfadell, the old woman who had prophesied a future of dead kings, and I thought of her granddaughter, the girl who could not speak, but who enraptured men with her beauty. Her grandmother had called her Erce, but afterwards, when she married Cnut Longsword, she was given the name Frigg. He had not married her for land or for advantage, but simply because she was so lovely. We had captured her before Teotanheale, her and her son, but I had been in such pain ever since that I had half forgotten her. ‘I wonder what happened to Frigg?’ I said to my daughter.

‘You don’t know?’ she asked, surprised.

Her surprise surprised me. ‘You know?’ I asked.

She half smiled. ‘Your son keeps her.’

I stared at her in shock. ‘Uhtred keeps her?’

‘In the farm close to Cirrenceastre. The farm you gave him.’

I still stared at her. I had thought my son had taken an admirable interest in farming, an interest I had encouraged. Now I knew why he was so enthusiastic about the farm. ‘Why didn’t he tell me?’

‘I assume because he doesn’t want you visiting her, father.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘I like her.’

‘He hasn’t married her, has he?’ I asked, alarmed.

‘No, father. But it’s time he was married. He’s older than I am.’ She stepped back, grimacing, because Gerbruht was carrying a vast metal pot full of shit and piss. ‘Don’t spill it!’ she called to him.

‘It’s just shit from the guardhouse, lady,’ he said, ‘it never hurt anyone. Just smells a bit. Where do you want it, lord?’

‘Is there more?’

‘Lots more, lord. Buckets of the lovely stuff.’

‘Put it where you can tip it over the Norsemen,’ I said.

Welcome to Ceaster.

Sigtryggr came at noon. The sun was behind cloud again, yet its light glinted from the blades of his men. He had only brought a dozen horses from Ireland, presumably because horses are difficult to tend aboard ship, so almost all his men were on foot. I assumed Sigtryggr himself was one of the small group of horsemen who rode beneath a great white banner on which was painted a red axe.

I had been wrong about at least one thing. Sigtryggr had brought ladders. They looked clumsy until I realised they were the masts from his beached ships on which crosspieces had been nailed or lashed. There were twelve of them, all long enough to reach across our ditch and up to the ramparts.

The army threaded the graves of the Roman cemetery and stopped a hundred paces from the walls. They were jeering at us, though I could not hear the insults, just the roar of men’s voices and the sound of blades being beaten against heavy shields. The horsemen came up the road, their own shields discarded. One man carried a leafy bough, a sign that they wished to talk. I looked for Eardwulf, but could not see him. The horsemen stopped, all except a single rider, who spurred his big stallion closer to the gate.

‘You talk to him,’ I told Merewalh, ‘he mustn’t know I’m here.’ I stepped back and closed the face-plates of my helmet.

My daughter stayed beside Merewalh and gazed down at the lone rider. ‘That has to be Sigtryggr,’ she said, stepping back to join me.

And so it was, and so I saw Sigtryggr Ivarson for the first time. He was a young man, a very young man. I doubted he had even seen twenty years, yet he led an army. He wore no helmet, so that his long bright hair hung down his back. He was clean-shaven and thin-faced, with sharp features softened by a smile. He gave the impression of being very sure of himself, very confident, and, I suspected, very vain. His mail shone, a chain of gold was looped three times around his neck, his arms glowed with rings, his scabbard and bridle were panelled with silver, while his horse was groomed like its master to impress. I thought of Berg’s awed words that Sigtryggr was a god come to earth. His grey horse pranced on the road, full of vigour as Sigtryggr curbed him just ten paces short of the ditch. ‘My name,’ he called, ‘is Sigtryggr Ivarson. I bid you all good day.’

Merewalh said nothing. One of his men was muttering a translation.

‘You are silent,’ Sigtryggr called, ‘is that from fear? Then you are right to fear us, for we shall slaughter you. We shall take your women and enslave your children. Unless, of course, you withdraw from the city.’

‘Say nothing,’ I muttered to Merewalh.

‘If you leave I shall not pursue you. Hounds don’t pursue fieldmice.’ Sigtryggr touched heels to his horse and came a couple of paces closer. He glanced down into the flooded ditch, seeing the sharpened stakes showing just above the water, then looked back to us. Now that he was closer I could understand why Berg had been so awed. Sigtryggr was undeniably handsome; golden-haired, blue-eyed, and apparently fearless. He seemed to be amused by our silence. ‘Do you have dogs and pigs in the city?’

‘Let him talk,’ I muttered.

‘You must have both,’ he went on after pausing for the answer that did not come. ‘I ask only for practical reasons. Burying your bodies will take time, and burning your corpses will take days and burning corpses do smell so bad! But dogs and pigs will eat your flesh quickly. Unless you leave now.’ He paused, staring up at Merewalh. ‘You choose to be silent?’ he asked. ‘Then I must tell you my gods have foretold victory for me this day. The runesticks have spoken, and they do not lie! I will win, you will lose, but I console you with the thought that your dogs and pigs will not go hungry.’ He turned his horse away. ‘Farewell!’ he shouted, and spurred away.

‘Arrogant bastard,’ Merewalh muttered.

We knew he planned to attack through the North Gate, but if Sigtryggr had massed his men ready for that assault we would have gathered a force to resist him and, even if Hanulf and his companions had lived to betray us by opening the gates, there would have been enough of our men to make a bloody fight in the entrance arch. So Sigtryggr set out to deceive us. He divided his forces, sending half towards the city’s north-east corner, and half to the north-west. That north-western bastion was the weakest because it had been partially undermined by floodwaters early in the spring, yet even the half collapsed bastion was a formidable obstacle. The wall had been reinforced with timbers and the ditch was deep and wide. We had good men there too, just as we did at the north-eastern ramparts, though most of our men waited where we had made the trap. They were hidden. All Sigtryggr could see at the North Gate was a group of a dozen men on the high rampart.

Sigtryggr had kept just over a hundred men on the road. They were sitting, either on the road or in the fields on either side. I assumed we were supposed to think they were a force he was holding in reserve, but of course they were waiting for the gate to open. Other men were scattered in groups along the whole northern wall, hurling spears and insults, presumably to keep our defenders looking outwards while the five men unbarred the gate. Sigtryggr, still mounted, was just sixty or seventy paces from the wall, surrounded by his other horsemen and by a score of warriors on foot. He was taking care to gaze towards the north-west bastion, pretending no interest in the gate. He drew his sword and held it high for a heartbeat, then dropped it as a signal for the attack on that corner of the city. His men there bellowed their war cries, charged towards the ditch and thrust their cumbersome great ladders up to the wall’s top. They threw axes and spears, they made a deafening noise as they clashed their swords on shields, but not one man actually attempted to clamber up the awkward ladders. Instead Sigtryggr’s standard-bearer suddenly waved the great flag from side to side, and then, in a deliberate and flamboyant gesture, lowered the banner so that the red axe lay flat on the roadway.

‘Now,’ I called down.

And the men waiting under the arch pushed open the heavy gate.

And so the Norsemen came. They were quick, so quick that the four of my men who unbarred and pushed open the heavy gates were almost caught by Sigtryggr’s horsemen who were first through the arch. Those horsemen must have thought themselves lucky, for no spears were hurled down from the gate’s top. I did not want to check the charge, I wanted as many Norsemen in the blocked street as possible, and so the horses charged through unimpeded, their hooves suddenly loud on the old stone, and behind them came a swarm of warriors on foot. The men pretending to attack the corner bastions now abandoned their feint and streamed towards the open gateway.

And Sigtryggr was now inside the city, and for a heartbeat or two he must have thought he had the great victory, but then he saw the high barrier in front of him and he saw the men waiting on the barricades to the east of the street, and he turned his horse fast, knowing his attack was already doomed, and the horsemen following collided with his stallion. ‘Now,’ I shouted, ‘now! Kill them!’ And the first spears flew.

The horses had almost reached the high barricade that barred the street, and they stood no chance. They screamed as they fell, screamed as the heavy spears came and the throwing axes whirled from three sides. There was blood on the paving stones, thrashing hooves, and riders trying to extricate themselves, and behind them a rush of Norsemen crowding through the gate, still oblivious of the trap beyond.

And this, I thought, is how my father died. How Northumbria fell. How the Danes had started their conquest of Saxon Britain, which had so nearly come to success. Like a flood they had spread south, and their victories brought the Norse in their wake, and now we had to fight back, shire by shire, village by village, taking back our land from south to north.

‘Lord?’ Gerbruht asked eagerly.

‘Yes,’ I said, and Gerbruht and his companions hurled down the thick tree trunks to make an obstacle in the gate, and then, with glee, hurled the shit pots into the milling Norsemen. More Norsemen were crowding outside the gate now, not understanding what delayed them, not comprehending the horror that we had readied for them, and four of my men began hurling down the big stones, each one capable of crushing a helmeted skull.

It was a pitiless, one-sided slaughter. Some of Sigtryggr’s men tried to climb the barricades, but our men were above them, and a climbing man cannot protect himself from a spear thrust, let alone an axe blow. I was watching from the top of the gate, content to let the young men fight this battle. The Norsemen tried to fight back, but only added dead men to the barricades. A dozen warriors tried to break into the long house, hoping to escape through its rear doors. They shattered the street door with axes, but Osferth had already ordered the flaming torches hurled into the room and the thickening smoke and sudden fiery heat drove the men back from the new opening.

Some of Sigtryggr’s men wanted to flee through the open gate, but others were still trying to enter, and Gerbruht and his four companions were hurling down the big stones. Men shouted to clear the gate, others tried to escape the masonry blocks, and then Finan struck from the big barricade that blocked the street.

He had refused to let me fight. ‘You’re not strong enough yet, lord,’ he had insisted.

‘He’s right,’ my son had added.

So I had stayed on the fighting platform above the gate and from there I watched as Finan and my son led fifty men across that high barricade. They jumped down into the street, into a space cleared by spears and stones, a space littered with the bodies of men and horses, a space where they made a shield wall, and the Norsemen, infuriated, wounded, frightened, and confused, turned on them like maniacs. But the furious Norsemen did not form their own shield wall, they just saw an enemy and attacked, and Finan’s overlapping shields and levelled spears met them. ‘Forward!’ Finan shouted. ‘Slow and calm! Forward!’

There was a clash of shield on shield, but the Norsemen, still in panic, were assailed by more missiles coming from the edge of the street, and as soon as Finan’s men had advanced a few paces so more men came from the barricade to support them. From the gate’s top all I could see was that line of overlapping shields with helmets above, and the long spears reaching forward and the whole line advancing slowly, very slowly. It had to be slow. There were too many dead or dying men in their path, and dying horses were still kicking where they lay on the street. To keep the shield wall tight Finan’s men had to step over those obstacles. They were chanting as they came. ‘Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!’ And whenever the Norsemen tried to make a wall to oppose them, so a stone would thump into them from the street’s eastern side. The heat of the burning house was driving them from the west and Finan and my son were leading a killing band from the south.

Then I saw Sigtryggr. I thought he must have died in the first moments of our ambush, or at least been wounded as his horse went down, but there he was, still without a helmet, his long hair darkened by blood. He was in the centre of the enemy, and he bellowed at men to follow him. He shouted at others to clear the gate. He knew that Finan’s grinding shield wall would turn slaughter into butchery, and so he ran, I thought to the gate, but at the last moment he swerved and leaped at the barricade, which blocked the narrow alley running between the north wall and the closest house.

He leaped like a deer. He had lost his shield, but he was still clothed in heavy mail and leather, yet he leaped to the barricade’s top. The swerve had been so sudden, so unexpected, and the leap so fast that the three men guarding that barricade were taken by surprise, and Sigtryggr’s sword took one in the throat and his speed carried him past that man to crash into another. That man went down, and now Norsemen were following Sigtryggr. I saw the third man hack at him with a sword, but his mail stopped the cut, and then that third man screamed as a Norseman chopped with an axe. There were a half-dozen Norsemen on the barricade now, and Gerbruht and his companions hurled stones to stop more men joining them, but Sigtryggr had jumped from the tree trunks onto the steps that led to the ramparts. He was grinning. He was enjoying himself. His men were being crushed, killed, burned, and beaten, but he was a warlord at war, and his eyes were bright with battle-joy as he turned and saw us at the very top of the long steps.

He saw me.

What he saw was another lord of war. He saw a man enriched by battle, a man with a fine helmet and glittering mail, a man whose arms were thick with the rings that come from victory, a man whose face was hidden behind armour plates chased with silver, a man with gold about his neck, a man who had doubtless planned this ambush, and Sigtryggr saw he could snatch one triumph from this disaster and so he came up the steps, still grinning, and Gerbruht, quick-thinking, threw a stone, but Sigtryggr was also quick, so very quick, and almost seemed to dance out of the missile’s way as he came to me. He was young, he was in love with war, he was a warrior. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted as he climbed the last steps.

‘I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I told him.

He shouted for joy. Reputation would be his.

And so he came to kill me.

Twelve

We have known peace. There are times when we sow our fields and know we will live till harvest, times when all that our children know of war is what the poets sing to them. Those times are rare, yet I have tried to explain to my grandchildren what war is. I am dutiful. I tell them it is bad, that it leads to sorrow and grief, yet they do not believe me. I tell them to walk into the village and see the crippled men, to stand by the graves and hear the widows weep, but they do not believe me. Instead they hear the poets, they hear the pounding rhythm of the songs that quickens like a heart in battle, they hear the stories of heroes, of men, and of women too, who carried blades against an enemy who would kill and enslave us, they hear of the glory of war, and in the courtyards they play at war, striking with wooden swords against wicker shields, and they do not believe that war is an abomination.

And perhaps those children are right. Some priests rant against war, but those same priests are quick to shelter behind our shields when an enemy threatens, and there are always enemies. The dragon-headed ships still come to our coasts, the Scots send their war-bands south, and the Welsh love nothing more than a dead Saxon. If we did as the priests want, if we beat our swords into ploughshares, we would all be dead or enslaved, and so the children must learn the strokes of the sword and grow into the strength needed to hold a shield of iron-rimmed willow against the fury of a savage enemy. And some will learn the joy of battle, the song of the sword, the thrill of danger.

Sigtryggr knew it. He revelled in war. I can still see him coming up those stone stairs, his face alive with joy and his long-sword reaching. Had I looked like that when I killed Ubba? Had Ubba seen my youth and eagerness, my ambition, and in those things seen his death? We leave nothing in this world but bones and reputation, and Sigtryggr, his sword already reaching for me, saw his reputation shining like a bright star in the darkness.

Then he saw Stiorra.

She was behind me, just to one side, her hands held to her mouth. How do I know that? I was not looking at her, but all that happened was told to me later, and she was there, and I was told she clasped her hands to stifle a scream. I had pushed Gerbruht back, not willing to let the Frisian fight my battle, and Stiorra was now closest to me. She uttered a small cry, more of shock than fear, though she should have been terrified, seeing how eagerly death leaped up the steps towards us. Then Sigtryggr saw my daughter and for an instant, for the blink of an eye, he kept his gaze on her. We expect to see men on a battlefield, but a woman? The sight of her distracted him.

It was only a heartbeat’s hesitation, but it was enough. He had been watching my eyes, but seeing Stiorra he kept looking at her for that instant, and in that instant I moved. I was not as fast as I had been, I was not as strong as I once was, but I had been in battle all my life, and I smashed my shield arm to the left, catching the tip of his blade to sweep his sword aside, and he looked back at me, bellowed a challenge and tried to bring the sword back over the top of my shield, but Serpent-Breath was moving, rising, and I moved too, going down a step and still lifting the shield to keep his sword high and he saw my blade coming for his belly and he twisted desperately to avoid the lunge and missed his footing on the steps, and the shout of battle-rage became a cry of alarm as he stumbled. I flicked Serpent-Breath back just as he recovered to thrust his blade beneath my shield. It was a good lunge, a fast move made by a man who had still not regained his balance, and that stroke deserved to rip the flesh from my left thigh, but my shield dropped on the blade and took the force from it as I swept Serpent-Breath, meaning to cut his throat open, and he jerked his head away.

He jerked his head an instant too late. He was still trying to find his balance and his head came back down as his foot slipped on the step, and Serpent-Breath’s sharp tip took his right eye. She took just the eye and the skin on the bridge of his nose. There was a small spurt of blood, a gush of colourless liquid, and Sigtryggr reeled away as Gerbruht pushed me aside to finish the job with his axe. That was when Sigtryggr leaped again, but this time he jumped clean off the rampart steps and down to the ditch, a long fall. Gerbruht shouted in anger at his escape, and thrust the axe at the next man, who took the blow on his shield and staggered back, and then the six Norsemen who had followed their lord fled like him. They jumped from the ramparts. One was impaled on a stake, the others, including Sigtryggr, scrambled up the ditch’s far side.

And thus I defeated Sigtryggr and took one of his eyeballs.

‘I am Odin!’ Sigtryggr roared from the ditch’s edge. He had tipped his ravaged face to look at me with his one eye, and he was smiling! ‘I am Odin,’ he called to me, ‘I have gained wisdom!’ Odin had sacrificed an eye to learn wisdom and Sigtryggr was laughing in his defeat. His men dragged him away from the spears that were being hurled down from the wall, but he turned again when he was just a dozen paces away and saluted me with his sword.

‘I could have killed him if he hadn’t jumped,’ Gerbruht said.

‘He would have gutted you,’ I said, ‘he would have gutted both of us.’ He was a god come to earth, a god of war, but the god had lost, and now he went back out of range of our spears.

Finan had reached the gate. The surviving Norse ran, going back to where they had started their charge, and where they formed a shield wall about their wounded lord. The feint attack on the north-western bastion had long been abandoned, and all the Norse were now on the road, some five hundred men.

They still outnumbered us.

‘Merewalh,’ I ordered, ‘time to release your horsemen.’ I leaned over the inner rampart. ‘Finan? Did you see Eardwulf?’

‘No, lord.’

‘Then we’re not done.’

It was time to take the battle outside the walls.

Merewalh led two hundred horsemen into the fields to the east of the Norsemen. The riders stayed a good distance away. They were a threat. If Sigtryggr tried to retreat to Brunanburh he would be harried all the way and he knew it.

Yet what choice did he have? He could throw men at the walls, but he knew he would never capture Ceaster by assault. His only chance had been treachery, and the chance was gone, leaving fifty or sixty of his men dead in the street. A dozen of Finan’s men were moving among those corpses, slitting the throats of the dying and stripping mail from the dead. ‘A good day for plunder!’ one of them called cheerfully. Another pranced down the blood-soaked stones wearing a helmet crowned with a great eagle’s wing.

‘Was he mad?’ Stiorra asked me.

‘Mad?’

‘Sigtryggr. To come up these steps?’

‘He was battle-mad,’ I said, ‘and you saved my life.’

‘I did?’

‘He looked at you and it distracted him just long enough.’ I knew I would wake in the night and shiver at the memory of his sword reaching for me, shiver with the certainty that I could never have parried the speed of his attack, shiver with the sliver of fate that had saved me from death. But he had seen Stiorra and he had hesitated.

‘Now he wants to talk,’ she said.

I turned and saw that a Norseman was waving a leaf-heavy branch. ‘Lord?’ Finan called from the gateway.

‘I’ve seen it!’

‘Let him come?’

‘Let him come,’ I said, then plucked Stiorra’s sleeve. ‘You come too.’

‘Me?’

‘You. Where’s Æthelstan?’

‘With Finan.’

‘Was the little bastard in the shield wall?’ I asked, shocked.

‘He was in the rear rank,’ Stiorra said, ‘you didn’t see him?’

‘I’ll kill him.’

She chuckled, then followed me down to the barricade. We jumped into the street and stepped over the fallen masonry and the blood-laced bodies. ‘Æthelstan!’

‘Lord?’

‘Weren’t you supposed to be in the church?’ I demanded. ‘Did I give you permission to join Finan’s shield wall?’

‘I left the church to piss, lord,’ he said earnestly, ‘and I never meant to join Finan’s men. I was just going to watch them from the top of the logs, but I tripped.’

‘You tripped?’

He nodded vigorously. ‘I tripped, lord,’ he said, ‘and fell into the street.’ I saw that Cengar, the boy he had rescued, was protectively close to him, as were two of Finan’s men.

‘You didn’t trip,’ I said, then clipped him around the ear, which, because he was wearing a helmet, hurt me a lot more than it did him. ‘You’re coming with me,’ I said. ‘And you too,’ I added to Stiorra.

The three of us walked under the arch, stepped around the bodies with their heads crushed by rocks, avoided the puddles of shit, then Finan’s ranks parted for us. ‘You two are coming with us,’ I said to Finan and my son. ‘The rest of you stay here.’

We walked thirty or forty paces up the road. I stopped and cupped my hands. ‘You can bring two men!’

Sigtryggr brought just one man, a great beast of a warrior with broad shoulders and a broad black beard into which was woven the jawbones of wolves or dogs. ‘He’s called Svart,’ Sigtryggr said cheerfully, ‘and he eats Saxons for breakfast.’ Sigtryggr had a strip of linen tied about his missing eye. He touched the bandage. ‘You ruined my good looks, Lord Uhtred.’

‘Don’t talk to me,’ I said. ‘I only talk with men. I brought you a woman and a child so you can speak to your equals.’

He laughed. It seemed no insult touched him. ‘Then I shall talk to my equals,’ he said and bowed to Stiorra. ‘Your name, my lady?’

She looked at me, wondering if I really wanted her to conduct the negotiations. ‘I’m not saying anything,’ I spoke to her in Danish, and spoke slowly so Sigtryggr would understand. ‘You deal with the boy.’

Svart growled at the word ‘boy’, but Sigtryggr put a hand on the big man’s gold-bound arm. ‘Down, Svart, they’re playing word riddles.’ He smiled at Stiorra. ‘I am the Jarl Sigtryggr Ivarson, and you are?’

‘Stiorra Uhtredsdottir,’ she said.

‘And I took you to be a goddess,’ he answered.

‘And this is the Prince Æthelstan,’ Stiorra went on. She spoke in Danish, her voice distant and controlled.

‘A prince! I am honoured to meet you, lord Prince.’ He bowed to the boy, who did not understand what was being said. Sigtryggr smiled. ‘The Lord Uhtred said I must talk to my equals and he sends me a goddess and a prince! He honours me!’

‘You wanted to talk,’ Stiorra said coldly, ‘so talk.’

‘Well, lady, I confess matters have not gone as I wished. My father sent me to make a kingdom in Britain, and instead I meet your father. He’s a cunning man, is he not?’

Stiorra said nothing, just gazed at him. She stood tall, proud, and straight-backed, looking so like her mother.

‘Eardwulf the Saxon told us your father was dying,’ Sigtryggr confessed. ‘He said your father was weak as a worm. He said Lord Uhtred is long past his best, that he would never be at Ceaster.’

‘My father still has two eyes,’ Stiorra said.

‘But not as beautiful as yours, my lady.’

‘Did you come to waste our time?’ Stiorra asked. ‘Or did you wish to surrender?’

‘To you, my lady, I would surrender all I have, but my men? You can count?’

‘I can count.’

‘We outnumber you.’

‘What he wants,’ I spoke to Finan in English, ‘is to withdraw to his ships without interference.’

‘And what do you want?’ Finan asked, knowing that our conversation was really for Stiorra’s benefit.

‘He can’t afford another fight,’ I said, ‘he’ll lose too many men. But so will we.’

Sigtryggr did not understand what we said, but he was listening closely, as if some sense might emerge from the foreign language.

‘So we just let them go?’ Finan asked.

‘He can go back to his father,’ I said, ‘but he must leave half his swords behind and give us hostages.’

‘And give us Eardwulf,’ Finan said.

‘And give us Eardwulf,’ I agreed.

Sigtryggr heard the name. ‘You want Eardwulf?’ he asked. ‘He’s yours. I give him to you! He and the rest of his Saxons.’

‘What you want,’ Stiorra said, ‘is a promise that we won’t stop you returning to your ships.’

Sigtryggr pretended to be surprised. ‘I never thought of that, my lady, but yes! What a generous thought. We could return to our ships.’

‘And to your father.’

‘He won’t be happy.’

‘I shall weep for him,’ she said scornfully. ‘And you will leave half your swords here,’ she went on, ‘and we shall take hostages for your good behaviour.’

‘Hostages,’ he said, and for the first time did not sound confident.

‘We shall choose a dozen of your men,’ Stiorra said.

‘And how will those hostages be treated?’

‘With respect, of course, unless you stay on these shores, in which case they will be killed.’

‘You will feed them?’

‘Of course.’

‘Feast them?’

‘We will feed them,’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘I cannot agree to twelve, my lady. Twelve is too many. I will offer you one hostage.’

‘You are ridiculous,’ Stiorra snapped.

‘Myself, dear lady, I offer myself.’

And I confess he surprised me. He also astonished Stiorra, who did not know what to say, but instead looked to me for an answer. I thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘His men can return to their ships,’ I spoke to her in Danish, ‘but half will leave their swords here. They have one day to ready the ships.’

‘One day,’ she said.

‘Two mornings from now,’ I said harshly, ‘we will bring Sigtryggr to his fleet. If the ships are afloat and ready to sail with their crews on board he can join them. If not, he dies. And Eardwulf and his followers must be given to us.’

‘I agree,’ Sigtryggr said. ‘May I keep my sword?’

‘No.’

He unbuckled the sword belt and gave it to Svart, then, still smiling, walked to join us. And so that night we feasted with Sigtryggr.

Æthelflaed arrived the next day. She sent no warning of her coming, but her first horsemen appeared in the mid-afternoon and, an hour later, she rode through the South Gate leading more than one hundred men, all on tired horses white with sweat. She was in her silver mail, her whitening hair ringed with a silver circlet. Her standard-bearer was holding her dead husband’s banner, the flag showing the prancing white horse. ‘What happened to the goose?’ I asked her.

She ignored the question, staring down at me from her saddle. ‘You look better!’

‘I am better.’

‘Truly?’ she asked eagerly.

‘Healed,’ I said.

‘God be thanked!’ She looked up at the clouded sky when she said that. ‘What happened?’

‘I’ll tell you soon enough,’ I answered, ‘but what happened to the goose?’

‘I’m keeping Æthelred’s banner,’ she said brusquely, ‘it’s what Mercia is used to. Folk don’t like change. It’s hard enough for them to accept a woman as their ruler without imposing more new things on them.’ She swung down from Gast’s saddle. Her mail, her boots, and her long white cloak were mud-spattered. ‘I hoped you’d be here.’

‘You ordered me here.’

‘But I did not order you to waste time finding a ship,’ she said tartly. A servant came to take her horse, while her men dismounted and stretched tired limbs. ‘There’s a rumour that Norsemen are coming here,’ she went on.

‘There are always rumours,’ I said dismissively.

‘We heard a report from Wales,’ she ignored my flippant comment, ‘that a fleet was off the coast. It might not be coming here, but there’s empty land north of the Mærse and that might tempt them.’ She frowned, sniffing the air and disliking what she smelt. ‘I did not scour Haki from that land just to make space for another pagan warlord! We have to settle folk on that land.’

‘Sigtryggr,’ I said.

She frowned. ‘Sigtryggr?’

‘Your Welsh spies were right,’ I said, ‘Sigtryggr is the warlord who leads the Norse fleet.’

‘You know about him?’

‘Of course I do! His men are occupying Brunanburh.’

‘Oh God,’ she flinched at the news. ‘Oh God, no! So they did come here! Well that won’t last! We have to get rid of them quickly.’

I shook my head. ‘I’d leave them alone.’

She stared at me in shock. ‘Leave them alone? Are you mad? The last thing we want is Norsemen controlling the Mærse.’ She began striding towards the Great Hall. Two of her priests scurried behind carrying sheaves of parchment. ‘Find a strongbox,’ she talked over her shoulder as she went, ‘and make sure those documents stay dry! I can’t stay long,’ she was evidently talking to me now. ‘Gleawecestre is calm enough, but there’s still much work to do there. Which is why I want those Norsemen gone!’

‘They outnumber us,’ I said dubiously.

She turned around fast, all energy and decision, and jabbed a finger at me. ‘And they’ll be reinforced if we give them any more time. You know that! We must get rid of them!’

‘They outnumber us,’ I said again, ‘and they’re battle-hardened. They’ve been fighting in Ireland, and men learn to be vicious there. If we’re to attack Brunanburh I’d want another three hundred men, at least!’

She frowned, worried suddenly. ‘What’s happened to you? Are you frightened of this man, Sigtryggr?’

‘He’s a lord of war.’

She looked into my eyes, evidently judging the truth of my words and whatever she saw must have convinced her. ‘Dear God,’ she said, still frowning. ‘Your wound, I suppose,’ she added half under her breath, and turned away. She believed I had lost my courage and as a consequence she now had another worry to add to her many burdens. She walked on till she noticed the swords, shields, spears, mail coats, helmets, and axes that were heaped by the Great Hall door beneath Sigtryggr’s banner of the red axe which was nailed to the wall. She stopped, puzzled. ‘What’s that?’

‘I forgot to tell you,’ I said, ‘that the battle-hardened men attacked yesterday. They killed three of our men and wounded sixteen, but we killed seventy-two of theirs, and Sigtryggr is our hostage. We’re keeping him till tomorrow when his fleet sails back to Ireland. You really didn’t need to come! It’s very good to see you, of course, but Merewalh and I are quite capable of dealing with big bad Norsemen.’

‘You bastard,’ she said, though not in anger. She looked at the trophies, then back to me and laughed. ‘And God be thanked,’ she added, touching the silver cross that hung at her breast.

That night we feasted with Sigtryggr again, though the arrival of Æthelflaed with so many warriors meant that the meat was scanty. There was ale enough, and the steward provided skins of wine and a large barrel of mead. Even so, Æthelflaed’s presence meant the mood of the hall was more subdued than the previous night. Men tended to talk more softly when she was in the hall, they were less liable to start fights or bawl their favourite songs about women at the tops of their voices. The mood was made even more sombre by the half-dozen churchmen who shared the top table, where Æthelflaed questioned Merewalh and myself about the fight at the North Gate. Sigtryggr had been given an honourable place at the table, as had my daughter. ‘It was her fault,’ Sigtryggr said, nodding towards Stiorra.

I translated for Æthelflaed. ‘Why her fault?’ she asked.

‘He saw her and was distracted,’ I explained.

‘A pity,’ my daughter said coldly, ‘that he was not distracted for longer.’

Æthelflaed smiled approvingly at that sentiment. She sat very straight, keeping a watchful eye on the hall. She ate little and drank less. ‘So she doesn’t get drunk, then?’ Sigtryggr said to me sourly, nodding at Æthelflaed. He was sitting across the table from me.

‘She doesn’t,’ I said.

‘My mother would be wrestling with my father’s warriors by now,’ he said gloomily, ‘or else out-drinking them.’

‘What is he saying?’ Æthelflaed demanded. She had seen the Norseman glance at her.

‘He complimented you on the wine,’ I said.

‘Tell him it is a gift from my youngest sister, Ælthryth.’

Ælthryth had married Baldwin of Flanders who ruled territory south of Frisia, and if this was Flanders wine I would rather have drunk horse piss, but Sigtryggr seemed to like it. He offered to pour some for Stiorra, but she refused him curtly and went back to her conversation with Father Fraomar, a young priest in Æthelflaed’s service. ‘The wine is good!’ Sigtryggr pressed her.

‘I shall help myself,’ she said distantly. Alone among my family and followers she seemed immune to the Norseman’s appeal. I certainly liked him. He reminded me of myself, or at least of the man I was when I had been young and headstrong and had taken the risks that either end in death or reputation. And Sigtryggr had charmed my men. He had given Finan an arm ring, praised my warriors’ fighting skills, admitted that he had been well beaten, and had promised that one day he would come back to take his revenge. ‘If your father ever gives you another fleet,’ I had said.

‘He will,’ he said confidently, ‘only next time I won’t fight you. I’ll look for an easier Saxon to beat.’

‘Why not stay in Ireland?’ I had asked him.

He had hesitated before answering and I suspected a jest was coming, but then he had looked at me with his one eye. ‘They’re savage fighters, lord. You attack and beat them, and then suddenly there’s another horde of them. And the deeper you go into their land the more there are, and half the time you can’t see them, but you know they’re there. It’s like fighting phantoms till they suddenly appear and attack.’ He half smiled. ‘They can keep their land.’

‘As we’ll keep ours.’

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he had grinned. ‘We’ll row down the Welsh coast now and see if we can’t capture a slave or two to take home. My father will forgive me a lot if I take him a clutch of new girls.’

Æthelflaed treated Sigtryggr with disdain. He was a pagan and she hated all pagans except for me. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t kill him,’ she said at the feast.

‘I tried.’

She watched Stiorra rebuff every effort Sigtryggr made to be friendly. ‘She’s grown well,’ she said warmly.

‘She has.’

‘Unlike my daughter,’ she sighed, her voice low now.

‘I like Ælfwynn.’

‘She has a head full of feathers,’ she said dismissively. ‘But it’s time you found Stiorra a husband.’

‘I know.’

She paused, her eyes looking around the hall that was lit by rushlights. ‘Æthelhelm’s wife is dying.’

‘So he told me.’

‘She may be dead by now. Æthelhelm told me that the priests have given her the last rites.’

‘Poor woman,’ I said dutifully.

‘I had a long conversation with him before I left Gleawecestre,’ Æthelflaed said, still looking down the hall, ‘with him and with my brother. They accept what our Witan decided. They also agreed to leave Æthelstan in my care. He will be raised in Mercia and there will be no attempt to spirit him away.’

‘You believe that?’

‘I believe we must guard the boy,’ she said tartly. She looked at Æthelstan, who was with his twin sister at one of the lower tables. His royal birth meant he should have eaten at the top table, but I had spared him the conversation of Æthelflaed’s priests. ‘I believe my brother means the boy no harm,’ she went on, ‘and he insists there must be no enmity between Wessex and Mercia.’

‘Nor will there be, unless Æthelhelm gets ambitious again.’

‘He overreached himself,’ she said, ‘and he knows it. He apologised to me, and very graciously. But yes, he is ambitious, so perhaps a new wife might distract him? The woman I have in mind will certainly keep him busy.’

It took me a moment to understand what she was saying. ‘You?’ I asked, astonished. ‘You’re thinking of marrying Æthelhelm?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘not me.’

‘Then who?’

She hesitated for a heartbeat, then looked at me challengingly. ‘Stiorra.’

‘Stiorra!’ I spoke too loudly, and my daughter turned to look at me. I shook my head and she went back to her discussion with Father Fraomar. ‘Stiorra!’ I said again, but softer this time. ‘She’s young enough to be his granddaughter!’

‘It isn’t unknown for men to marry younger women,’ Æthelflaed said waspishly. She glanced at Eadith, who was sitting on a lower table with Finan and my son. Æthelflaed had not been pleased to find Eardwulf’s sister in Ceaster, but I had defended Eadith’s presence fiercely, saying I owed her my recovery. ‘What else?’ Æthelflaed had asked sharply, a question I had ignored, just as Æthelflaed had since ignored Eadith. ‘And Æthelhelm is in good health,’ she continued now, ‘and he’s wealthy. He’s a good man.’

‘Who tried to kill you.’

‘That was Eardwulf,’ she responded, ‘who misunderstood Æthelhelm’s wishes.’

‘He would have killed you,’ I said, ‘he would have killed Æthelstan, and killed anyone else who stands in his grandson’s way.’

She sighed. ‘My brother needs Æthelhelm,’ she said. ‘He’s too powerful to be ignored and he’s too useful. And if Wessex needs Æthelhelm, so does Mercia.’

‘You’re saying Wessex is ruled by Æthelhelm?’

She shrugged, unwilling to admit it. ‘I’m saying that Æthelhelm is a good man, ambitious yes, but effective. We need his support.’

‘And you think sacrificing Stiorra to his bed will get it?’

She winced at my tone. ‘I think your daughter should be married,’ she said, ‘and Lord Æthelhelm admires her.’

‘You mean he wants to hump her,’ I growled. I looked at my daughter, whose head was bowed as she listened to Fraomar. She looked grave and beautiful. ‘So she’s to be a peace cow between Mercia and Wessex?’ I asked. A peace cow was a woman married between enemies to seal a treaty.

‘Think on it,’ Æthelflaed said urgently. ‘When she’s widowed she’ll inherit more land than you can dream of, more warriors than you could hope to raise, and more money than Edward’s whole treasury.’ She paused, but I said nothing. ‘And it will be ours,’ she added in a low voice. ‘Wessex won’t swallow Mercia, we’ll swallow Wessex.’

There is a story in the Christian scripture about someone or other being taken to the hilltop and offered the whole world. I do not remember the tale now, only that the idiot turned it down, and, at that feast, I felt like the idiot. ‘Why not marry Ælfwynn to Æthelhelm?’ I asked.

‘My daughter isn’t clever,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘Stiorra is. And it needs a clever woman to manage Æthelhelm.’

‘So what will you do with Ælfwynn?’

‘Marry her to someone. Merewalh perhaps? I don’t know. I despair of the child.’

Stiorra. I gazed at her. She was indeed clever and beautiful, and I had to find her a husband, so why not find her the richest husband in Wessex? ‘I’ll think about it,’ I promised, and I thought of the old prophecy that my daughter would be the mother of kings.

And so it proved.

Dawn. A small mist on the Mærse was broken by the dark shapes of twenty-six dragon-ships that rowed slowly to hold their place against the flooding tide. Sigtryggr’s men had kept their word. The ships were ready to sail, and Brunanburh was ours again. The only Norsemen left ashore were Svart and six others who guarded Eardwulf and his three remaining followers. I had wanted Eardwulf handed to me on the day of Sigtryggr’s defeat, but he had fled too quickly, though he had only got as far as one of the Danish halls on Wirhealum, where Sigtryggr’s men had discovered him. Now he waited for our arrival.

I brought Finan, my son, and twenty men, and Æthelflaed was escorted by a dozen more. I had insisted that Æthelstan ride with me to Brunanburh, while my daughter had also wanted to see the Norsemen leave, and so she had accompanied us, bringing her maid, Hella. ‘Why did you bring a maid?’ I asked her.

‘Why not? There’s no danger, is there?’

‘None,’ I said. I trusted Sigtryggr to keep his promise that there would be no fighting between his men and ours, nor was there. We met Svart and his few men close to the half-finished burh, where Sigtryggr dismounted from his borrowed horse. Svart brought him his sword, and Sigtryggr looked at me as if asking for permission to take it. I nodded. He pulled the blade from its scabbard and kissed the steel. ‘You want me to kill the Saxons?’ he asked, nodding towards Eardwulf.

‘I do my own work,’ I said, and I swung myself from the saddle and was amazed that there was no pain.

‘Father,’ Uhtred called. He wanted to do the killing.

‘I do my own work,’ I said again, and though there was no pain I took care to lean against the horse. I gasped as if the agony had come back, then I pushed off the stallion’s flank and limped towards Eardwulf. The limp was a pretence.

He watched me approach. He stood tall, his narrow face expressionless. His dark hair, no longer oiled as it used to be, was tied with a ribbon. There was a few days’ growth of beard on his long chin, his cloak was dirty and his boots scuffed. He looked like a man who had suffered fate’s blows. ‘You should have killed me,’ I said, ‘at Alencestre.’

‘If I had,’ he said, ‘I would rule in Mercia now.’

‘And now you’ll rule a Mercian grave,’ I answered, then drew Serpent-Breath. I grimaced, as if her weight was too much for me.

‘You’d kill an unarmed man, Lord Uhtred?’ Eardwulf asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Berg,’ I shouted without turning around, ‘give your sword to this man!’

I rested on my sword, placing the tip on a flat stone and leaning my weight on the hilt. Behind Eardwulf was the unfinished burh, its long earthen wall topped now by thorn bushes that made a temporary palisade. I thought the Norsemen might have burned the church and stables, but they stood unharmed. Svart and his men guarded Eardwulf’s followers.

Berg trotted his horse forward. He glanced at me, then drew Ice-Spite and tossed the blade onto the dew-wet grass by Eardwulf’s feet. ‘That,’ I told Eardwulf, ‘is Ice-Spite. Cnut Longsword’s blade. Your sister tells me you tried to buy it once and now I give it to you. It almost killed me, so see if you can finish the job.’

‘Father!’ Stiorra called anxiously. She must have believed Eardwulf and Ice-Spite were more than a match for me.

‘Quiet, girl. I’m busy.’

Why did I choose to fight him? He was going to die whether I fought him or not, and he was dangerous, half my age and a warrior. But it is reputation, always reputation. Pride, I suppose, is the most treacherous of virtues. The Christians call it a sin, but no poet sings of men who have no pride. Christians say the meek will inherit the earth, but the meek inspire no songs. Eardwulf had wanted to kill me, to kill Æthelflaed and Æthelstan. Eardwulf had wanted to rule, and Eardwulf was the last vestige of Æthelred’s hatred. It was fitting that I should kill him and that all Saxon Englaland should know that I had killed him.

He stooped and picked up the sword. ‘You are in mail,’ he said, and that told me he was nervous.

‘I’m old,’ I said, ‘and wounded. You’re young. And Ice-Spite has pierced my mail once, so let her do it again. She’s a magic blade.’

‘Magic?’ he asked, then looked at the sword and saw the inscription.

His eyes widened, and he hefted the sword.

I lifted Serpent-Breath and winced as if her weight was gnawing at my ribs. ‘Besides,’ I went on, ‘you’ll move faster without mail.’

‘And if I kill you?’ Eardwulf asked.

‘Then my son will kill you,’ I said, ‘but for all time men will know that Lord Eardwulf conquered Uhtred.’ I made the ‘lord’ into a sneer.

And he came for me. He came fast. I carried no shield, and he swept Ice-Spite at my unprotected left side, but it was little more than an exploration, an attempt to see if I could parry, and I did not even need to think about it. The blades clashed and Serpent-Breath stopped Ice-Spite dead. I took a pace backwards and lowered my blade. ‘You won’t kill me with a cut,’ I said, ‘even Vlfberht’s blades won’t cut mail open. You need to lunge.’

He was watching my eyes. He took a step forward, his sword rising, and I did not move, and he stepped back again. He was testing me, but he was also nervous. ‘Your sister,’ I said, ‘tells me you fought in the rear rank of the shield wall, never in the front rank.’

‘She lied.’

‘She was lying,’ I said, ‘lying in my bed when she told me. She said you let other men do your fighting.’

‘Then she’s a whore and a liar.’

I grimaced again, slightly bending at the waist as I used to do when the pain struck suddenly. Eardwulf did not know I was healed, and he saw Serpent-Breath drop even lower and he stamped his right foot forward and rammed Ice-Spite fast at my chest and I turned to one side to let the blade slide past me and then I punched him in the face with Serpent-Breath’s heavy hilt. He staggered. I heard Finan chuckle as Eardwulf brought the sword back in a swing, again to my left side, but there was no force in the cut because he was still recovering from the lunge and from my blow and I just raised my arms and let the blade hit my mail. It struck just above the wound and the mail stopped the blade and there was no pain. I smiled at Eardwulf and flicked Serpent-Breath so that her tip cut open his left cheek, already bloody from the blow I had given him.

‘If your sister whored for anyone,’ I said, ‘it was for you.’

He touched his left hand to his cheek and felt the blood. I could see the fear in him now. Yes, he was a warrior, and not a bad one. He had trapped Welshmen on the Mercian border and driven them away, but his skill had been at laying ambushes or avoiding ambushes, at out-thinking his enemies and attacking them when they thought themselves safe. He had doubtless fought in the shield wall, protected by loyal men on either side, but he had always fought in the rear rank. He was not a man who took delight in the song of the swords.

‘You whored your sister to Æthelred,’ I said, ‘and made yourself rich.’ I flicked Serpent-Breath again, aiming at his face, and he stepped back fast. I lowered the blade. ‘Jarl Sigtryggr!’ I called.

‘Lord Uhtred?’

‘You still possess Eardwulf’s money? The treasure he took from Gleawecestre?’

‘I do!’

‘It belongs to Mercia,’ I said.

‘Then Mercia must come and take it,’ he answered.

I laughed. ‘So you won’t go home empty-handed after all. Did he steal a lot?’

‘Enough,’ Sigtryggr said.

I cut Serpent-Breath at Eardwulf’s legs, not a serious blow, just enough to drive him back a pace. ‘You’re a thief,’ I told him.

‘That money was given to me.’ He took a pace forward, his blade rising, but I did not react to the threat and he stepped back again.

‘It was gold that should have been spent on men,’ I said, ‘on weapons, on palisades, and on shields.’ I stepped forward and gave him a back-handed cut that simply drove him away. I followed, sword raised, and by now he must have known that I was not hurting, that I was moving easily and quickly, though I sensed that I would tire fast. Serpent-Breath is a heavy sword. ‘You spent it on oil for your hair,’ I said, ‘and on baubles for your whores, on furs and on horses, on jewels and on silk. A man, Lord Eardwulf, dresses in leather and iron. And he fights.’ And with that I attacked him, and he parried, but he was so slow.

All my life I have practised with a sword. Almost from the time I could walk I have held a sword and learned its ways. I had been wary of Eardwulf at first, assuming that he would be faster than me and cunning in his sword-craft, but he knew little more than to cut and lunge and desperately block, and so I drove him back, pace by pace, and he watched my blade and I deliberately slowed my blows so that he could see them clearly and parry them, and I wanted him to see them because I did not want him to look behind. Nor did he, and when he reached the edge of the ditch I quickened my cuts, slapping him with the flat of Serpent-Breath’s blade so she did not wound, but just humiliated him, and I parried his feeble counter-attacks with thoughtless skill, and then I suddenly lunged and he went backwards and his feet slid on the ditch’s mud and he fell.

He landed on his back in the ditch’s water. It was not deep. I laughed at him then and stepped carefully down the slippery slope to stand at his feet. The onlookers, both Saxon and Norse, came to the ditch’s edge and looked down at us, and Eardwulf looked up and saw the warriors, the grim warriors, and such was his humiliation that I thought he would weep. ‘You are a traitor and an outlaw,’ I said, and I pointed Serpent-Breath at his belly and he raised Ice-Spite as if to strike at her, but instead I brought my sword arm back and then I cut. It was a massive cut given with all my remaining strength, and Serpent-Breath met Ice-Spite and it was Ice-Spite that broke. The famous blade broke in two just as I had wanted. A Saxon blade had broken Vlfberht’s best, and whatever evil Ice-Spite might have harboured, whatever sorcery was hidden in her steel, was gone.

Eardwulf struggled backwards, but I stopped him by thrusting Serpent-Breath at his belly. ‘You want me to cut you open?’ I asked, then raised my voice. ‘Prince Æthelstan!’ I called.

The boy scrambled down the ditch’s side and stood in the water. ‘Lord?’

‘Your verdict on this outlaw?’

‘Death, lord,’ he said in his unbroken voice.

‘Then deliver it,’ I said and gave him Serpent-Breath.

‘No!’ Eardwulf shouted.

‘Lord Uhtred!’ Æthelflaed called in a high voice.

‘My lady?’

‘He’s a boy,’ she said, frowning at Æthelstan.

‘He’s a boy who must learn to be a warrior and a king,’ I said, ‘and death is his destiny. He must learn to give it.’ I patted Æthelstan’s shoulder. ‘Make it quick, boy,’ I told him. ‘He deserves a slow death, but this is your first killing. Make it easy for yourself.’

I watched Æthelstan and saw the firmness on his young face. I watched as he moved the heavy sword to Eardwulf’s neck, and watched his small grimace as he rammed the blade down. A fierce spurt of blood landed on my mail. Æthelstan kept his eyes on Eardwulf’s face as he thrust a second time, and then he just leaned on Serpent-Breath’s hilt, keeping the blade in Eardwulf’s gullet, and the drab ditch water turned red, and Eardwulf thrashed for a time and there was a gurgling sound and more blood pulsed to swirl in the water, and still Æthelstan leaned on my sword until the thrashing stopped and the ripples subsided. I hugged the boy, then took his face between my hands to make him look at me. ‘That is justice, lord Prince,’ I said, ‘and you did well.’ I took Serpent-Breath from him. ‘Berg,’ I called, ‘you need a new sword! That one was no good.’

Sigtryggr held out a hand to pull me from the ditch. His one eye was bright with the same joy I had seen on Ceaster’s ramparts. ‘I would not want you as an enemy, Lord Uhtred,’ he said.

‘Then don’t come back, Jarl Sigtryggr,’ I said, clasping his forearm as he clasped mine.

‘I will be back,’ he said, ‘because you will want me to come back.’

‘I will?’

He turned his head to gaze at his ships. One ship was close to the shore, held there by a mooring line tied to a stake. The prow of the ship had a great dragon painted white and in the dragon’s claw was a red axe. The ship waited for Sigtryggr, but close to it, standing where the grass turned to the river bank’s mud, was Stiorra. Her maid, Hella, was already aboard the dragon-ship.

Æthelflaed had been watching Eardwulf’s death, but now saw Stiorra by the grounded ship. She frowned, not sure she understood what she saw. ‘Lord Uhtred?’

‘My lady?’

‘Your daughter,’ she began, but did not know what to say.

‘I will deal with my daughter,’ I said grimly. ‘Finan?’

My son and Finan were both staring at me, wondering what I would do. ‘Finan?’ I called.

‘Lord?’

‘Kill that scum,’ I jerked my head towards Eardwulf’s followers, then I took Sigtryggr by the elbow and walked him towards his ship. ‘Lord Uhtred!’ Æthelflaed called again, sharper this time.

I waved a dismissive hand, and otherwise ignored her. ‘I thought she disliked you,’ I said to Sigtryggr.

‘We meant you to think that.’

‘You don’t know her,’ I said.

‘You knew her mother when you met her?’

‘This is madness,’ I said.

‘And you are famous for your good sense, lord.’

Stiorra waited for us. She was tense. She stared at me defiantly and said nothing.

I felt a lump in my throat and a sting in my eyes. I told myself it was the small smoke drifting from the Norsemen’s abandoned campfires. ‘You’re a fool,’ I told her harshly.

‘I saw,’ she said simply, ‘and I was stricken.’

‘And so was he?’ I asked, and she just nodded. ‘And the last two nights,’ I asked, ‘after the feasting was over?’ I did not finish the question, but she answered it anyway by nodding again. ‘You are your mother’s daughter,’ I said, and I embraced her, holding her close. ‘But it is my choice whom you marry,’ I went on. I felt her stiffen in my arms, ‘And Lord Æthelhelm wants to marry you.’

I thought she was sobbing, but when I pulled back from the embrace I saw she was laughing. ‘Lord Æthelhelm?’ she asked.

‘You’ll be the richest widow in all Britain,’ I promised her.

She still held me, looking up into my face. She smiled, that same smile that had been her mother’s. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘I swear on my life that I will accept the man you choose to be my husband.’

She knew me. She had seen my tears and knew they were not caused by smoke. I leaned forward and kissed her forehead. ‘You will be a peace cow,’ I said, ‘between me and the Norse. And you’re a fool. So am I. And your dowry,’ I spoke louder as I stepped back, ‘is Eardwulf’s money.’ I saw I had smeared her pale linen dress with Eardwulf’s blood. I looked at Sigtryggr. ‘I give her to you,’ I said, ‘so don’t disappoint me.’

Someone wise, I forget who, said we must leave our children to fate. Æthelflaed was angry with me, but I refused to listen to her protests. Instead I listened to the chanting of the Norsemen, the song of the oars, and saw their dragon-ships go downstream into the thinning mist that covered the Mærse.

Stiorra stared back at me. I thought she would wave, but she stayed still, and then she was gone.

‘We have a burh to finish,’ I told my men.

Wyrd bið ful āræd.

Historical Note

Æthelflaed did succeed her husband as the ruler of Mercia, though she was never proclaimed queen of that country. She was known as the Lady of the Mercians, and her achievements deserve to be better remembered in the long story of England’s making. The enmity between Æthelflaed and Æthelred is entirely fictional, as are the Witan’s deliberations that led to her appointment as ruler. There is no evidence that Æthelhelm, Edward’s father-in-law, attempted to remove Æthelstan from the succession, though the doubts about Æthelstan’s legitimacy are not fictional.

King Hywel existed and is known to this day as Hywel Dda, Hywel the Good. He was an extraordinary man, clever, ambitious and able, who, in many ways, achieved for Wales what Alfred hoped to achieve for England.

Sigtryggr also existed, and did attack Chester, and did lose an eye at some point in his storied career. I have probably brought that attack forward in time. The anglicised spelling of his name is Sihtric, but I have preferred the Norse spelling to avoid confusion with Uhtred’s faithful follower, Sihtric.

I am grateful to my good friend Thomas Keane, MD, for describing Uhtred’s miraculous recovery. Doctor Tom never claimed it was likely, but it is possible, and on a dark night with the wind behind you and a whisky inside? Who knows? Uhtred is always lucky, so it worked.

Uhtred’s son is also lucky in owning a sword made by the smith who marked the blade with the name or word:

Such swords existed, and a number remain, though it seems the blades were so valued that some fakes were made in the ninth and tenth centuries. A man would have to pay a vast sum for such a sword because the steel of a genuine Vlfberht blade was of a quality that would not be matched for a thousand years. Iron is brittle, but smiths had learned that by adding carbon they turned the iron into steel that would make a hard, sharp and flexible blade that was much less likely to shatter in combat. The usual way of adding the carbon was to burn bones in the smithy fire, but that was a hit-or-miss process and left impurities in the metal, yet, some time in the ninth century, someone discovered a way of liquefying the iron-carbon mix in a crucible and so produced ingots of superior steel. We do not know who that someone was, or where the steel was made. It seems to have been imported to northern Europe from either India or, perhaps, Persia, evidence of the long reach of the trade routes that also brought silk and other luxuries to Britain.

No place in Britain is more associated with the making of England than Brunanburh. It is, truly, the birthplace of England, and I have no doubt that some readers will object to my identification of Bromborough on the Wirral as the site of Brunanburh. We know Brunanburh existed, but there is no agreement and little certainty as to the exact location. There have been many suggestions, ranging from Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland to Axminster in Devon, but I am persuaded by the arguments of Michael Livingston’s scrupulous monograph The Battle of Brunanburh, a Casebook (Exeter University Press, 2011). The battle that is the subject of the casebook is not the fight described in this book, but the much more famous and decisive affair of 937. Indeed Brunanburh is the battle that, at long last, will complete Alfred’s dream and forge a united England, but that is another story.

About the Author

Bernard Cornwell was born in London, raised in Essex and worked for the BBC for eleven years before meeting Judy, his American wife. Denied an American work permit, he wrote a novel instead and has been writing ever since. He and Judy divide their time between Cape Cod and Charleston, South Carolina.

www.bernardcornwell.net

Also by Bernard Cornwell

The WARRIOR Chronicles

The Last Kingdom

The Pale Horseman

The Lords of the North

Sword Song

The Burning Land

Death of Kings

The Pagan Lord

Azincourt

The GRAIL QUEST Series

Harlequin

Vagabond

Heretic

1356

Stonehenge

The Fort

The STARBUCK Chronicles

Rebel

Copperhead

Battle Flag

The Bloody Ground

The WARLORD Chronicles

The Winter King

The Enemy of God

Excalibur

Gallows Thief

By Bernard Cornwell and Susannah Kells

A Crowning Mercy

Fallen Angels

Non-Fiction

Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles

THE SHARPE SERIES

(IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

Sharpe’s Tiger (1799)

Sharpe’s Triumph (1803)

Sharpe’s Fortress (1803)

Sharpe’s Trafalgar (1805)

Sharpe’s Prey (1807)

Sharpe’s Rifles (1809)

Sharpe’s Havoc (1809)

Sharpe’s Eagle (1809)

Sharpe’s Gold (1810)

Sharpe’s Escape (1811)

Sharpe’s Fury (1811)

Sharpe’s Battle (1811)

Sharpe’s Company (1812)

Sharpe’s Sword (1812)

Sharpe’s Enemy (1812)

Sharpe’s Honour (1813)

Sharpe’s Regiment (1813)

Sharpe’s Siege (1814)

Sharpe’s Revenge (1814)

Sharpe’s Waterloo (1815)

Sharpe’s Devil (1820–1821)

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

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Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

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Canada

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United Kingdom

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United States

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http://www.harpercollins.com

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Place names

Map

Prologue

Part One : The Dying Lord

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Part Two : The Lady of Mercia

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part Three : The God of War

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

HISTORICAL NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY BERNARD CORNWELL

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER