Warriors of the Storm

Six

We had taken too many prisoners and too many of those prisoners were warriors who, if they lived, were likely to fight us again. Most were Ragnall’s followers, a few had been Haesten’s men, but all were dangerous. If we had just let them loose they would have rejoined Ragnall’s army that was already powerful enough, so my advice was to kill every last one of them. We could not feed almost two hundred men, let alone their families, and I had youngsters in my ranks who needed practice with sword or spear, but Æthelflaed shrank from the slaughter. She was not a weak woman, far from it, and in the past she had watched impassively as other prisoners had been killed, but she was in a merciful or perhaps a squeamish mood. ‘So what would you have me do with them?’ I asked.

‘The Christians can stay in Mercia,’ she said, frowning at the handful who had confessed to her faith.

‘And the rest?’

‘Just don’t kill them,’ she said brusquely.

So in the end I had my men hack off the prisoners’ sword hands that we collected in sacksful. There were also forty-three dead men on the hilltop, and I ordered all of their corpses beheaded and the severed heads brought to me. The prisoners were then released, along with the older captives, all of them sent east along the Roman road. I told them they would find a crossroads a half-day’s walk away and if they turned north it would take them across the river and back into Northumbria. ‘You’ll meet your master coming the other way,’ I told them, ‘and you can give him a message. If he comes back to Ceaster he’ll lose more than one hand.’ We kept the young women and children. Most would be sent to the slave markets of Lundene, but a few would probably find new husbands among my men.

We carted all the captured weapons to Ceaster where they would be given to the fyrd, replacing hoes or sharpened spades. Then we pulled down Eads Byrig’s newly-made wall. It fell easily and we used the logs to make a great funeral pyre on which we burned the headless bodies. The corpses shrivelled in the fire, curling up as they shrank and sending the stench of death east with the plume of smoke. Ragnall, I thought, would see that smoke and wonder if it was an omen. Would it deter him? I doubted it. He would surely realise that it was Eads Byrig that burned so fiercely, but his ambition would persuade him to ignore the omen. He would be coming.

And I wanted to welcome him, and so I left forty-three logs standing like pillars spaced about Eads Byrig’s perimeter and we pegged a severed head to each of those and next day I had the bloody hands nailed onto trees either side of the Roman road so that when Ragnall returned he would be greeted first by the hands and then by the raven-pecked heads ringing the slighted fort. ‘You really think he’ll come?’ Æthelflaed asked me.

‘He’s coming,’ I said firmly. Ragnall needed a victory, and to defeat Mercia, let alone Wessex, he needed to capture a burh. There were other burhs he could attack, but Ceaster had to tempt him. Control Ceaster and he would command the seaways to Ireland and dominate all of north-western Mercia. It would be an expensive victory, but Ragnall had men to spend. He would come.

It was night-time, two days after we had taken Eads Byrig, and the two of us were standing above Ceaster’s northern gate staring at a sky filled with bright stars. ‘If he wants Ceaster so badly,’ Æthelflaed asked after a moment’s quiet, ‘why didn’t he come here as soon as he landed? Why go north first?’

‘Because by taking Northumbria,’ I said, ‘he doubled the size of his army. And he doesn’t want an enemy at his back. If he had besieged us without taking Northumbria then he would have given Ingver time to assemble troops.’

‘Ingver of Eoferwic is weak,’ she said scornfully.

I resisted the temptation to ask why, if she believed that, she had resolutely refused to invade Northumbria. I knew the answer. She wanted to secure the rest of Mercia first and she would not invade the north without her brother’s support. ‘He might be weak,’ I said instead, ‘but he’s still King of Jorvik.’

‘Eoferwic,’ she corrected me.

‘And Jorvik’s walls are formidable,’ I went on, ‘and Ingver still has followers. If Ragnall gave him time then Ingver could probably gather a thousand men. By going north Ragnall panics Ingver. Men in Northumbria face a choice now, Ingver or Ragnall, and you know who they’ll choose.’

‘Ragnall,’ she said quietly.

‘Because he’s a beast and a fighter. They’re scared of him. If Ingver has any sense he’s on a ship now, going back to Denmark.’

‘And you think Ragnall will come here?’ she said.

‘Within a week,’ I guessed. ‘Maybe as soon as tomorrow?’

She stared at the glow of fire on the eastern horizon. Those campfires had been lit by our men who were still at Eads Byrig. They had to finish the fortress’s destruction, and then, I hoped, find a way to capture the handful of ships Ragnall had left on the Mærse’s northern bank. I had put young Æthelstan in command there, though I made sure he had older men to advise him, yet even so I touched the hammer that hung from my neck and prayed to the gods that he did nothing foolish.

‘I should make Eads Byrig a burh,’ Æthelflaed said.

‘You should,’ I said, ‘but you won’t have time before Ragnall gets here.’

‘I know that,’ she said impatiently.

‘But without Eads Byrig,’ I said, ‘he’ll be in trouble.’

‘What’s to stop him making new walls?’

‘We stop him,’ I said firmly. ‘Do you know how long it will take to make a proper wall around that hilltop? Not that fake thing Haesten put up, but a real wall? It will take all summer! And you have the rest of the army coming here, we have the fyrd, we’ll outnumber him within a week and we’ll give him no peace. We raid, we kill, we haunt him. He can’t build walls if his men are constantly in mail and waiting to be attacked. We slaughter his forage parties, we send big war-bands into the forest, we make his life a living hell. He’ll last two months at most.’

‘He’ll assault us here,’ she said.

‘Eventually he will,’ I said, ‘and I hope he does! He’ll fail. These walls are too strong. I’d be more worried about Brunanburh. Put extra men there and dig the ditch deeper. If he takes Brunanburh then he has his fortress and we have problems.’

‘I’m strengthening Brunanburh,’ she said.

‘Dig the ditch deeper,’ I said again, ‘deeper and wider, and put two hundred extra men into the garrison. He’ll never capture it.’

‘It will all be done,’ she said, then touched my elbow and smiled. ‘You sound very confident.’

‘By summer’s end,’ I said vengefully, ‘I’ll have Ragnall’s sword and he’ll have a grave in Mercia.’

I touched the hammer at my neck, wondering whether by saying that aloud I had tempted the three Norns who weave our fate at the foot of Yggdrasil. It was not a cold night, but I shivered.

Wyrd bið ful āræd.

On the night before Eostre’s feast there was another fight outside the Pisspot. A Frisian in Æthelflaed’s service was killed, while a second man, one of mine, lost an eye. At least a dozen other men were hurt badly before my son and Sihtric managed to end the street battle. It was my son who brought me the news, waking me in the middle of the night. ‘We’ve managed to stop the fighting,’ he said, ‘but it was damned close to being a slaughter.’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Mus happened,’ he said flatly.

‘Mus?’

‘She’s too pretty,’ my son said, ‘and men fight over her.’

‘How many is it now?’ I snarled.

‘Three nights in a row,’ my son said, ‘but this is the first death.’

‘It won’t be the last unless we stop the little bitch.’

‘What little bitch?’ Eadith asked. She had woken and now sat up, clutching the bed pelts to her breasts.

‘Mus,’ he said.

‘Mouse?’

‘She’s a whore,’ I explained, and looked back to my son, ‘so tell Byrdnoth that if there’s another fight I’ll close his damned tavern down!’

‘She doesn’t work for Byrdnoth any more,’ my son spoke from the doorway where he was just a shadow against the darkness of the courtyard behind. ‘And Lady Æthelflaed’s men are wanting to keep the fight going.’

‘Mus doesn’t work for Byrdnoth now?’ I asked. I had climbed out of bed and was groping on the floor for something to wear.

‘Not any more,’ Uhtred said, ‘she did, but I’m told the other whores don’t like her. She was too popular.’

‘So if the other girls don’t like her what’s she doing in the Pisspot?’

‘She’s not. She’s working her magic in a shed next door.’

‘Her magic?’ I sneered at that, then pulled on trews and a stinking jerkin.

‘An empty shed,’ my son ignored my question. ‘It’s one of those old hay stores that belong to Saint Peter’s church.’

A church building! That was hardly surprising. Æthelflaed had granted half the city’s property to the church, and half those buildings were unused. I assumed that Leofstan would be putting his cripples and orphans into some of them, but I planned to use most to shelter the fyrd who would garrison Ceaster. Many of the fyrd had already arrived, country men and boys bringing axes, spears, hoes, and hunting bows. ‘A whore in a church building?’ I asked as I dragged on boots. ‘The new bishop won’t like that.’

‘He might love it,’ my son said, amused, ‘she’s a very talented girl. But Byrdnoth wants her out of the shed. He says she’s ruining his business.’

‘So why doesn’t he hire her back? Why doesn’t he smack the other girls into line and hire the bitch?’

‘She won’t be hired now, she says she hates Byrdnoth, she hates the other girls, and she hates the Pisspot.’

‘And idiots like you keep her busy,’ I said savagely.

‘She’s a pretty little mouse,’ he said wistfully. Eadith giggled.

‘Expensive?’ I asked.

‘Anything but! Give her a duck egg and she’ll bounce you off the shed walls.’

‘Got bruises, have you?’ I asked him. He did not answer. ‘So they’re fighting over her now?’

He shrugged. ‘They were.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘She seems to favour our men over Æthelflaed’s and that causes the trouble. Sihtric has a dozen men keeping them apart for now, but for how long?’

I had covered my clothes with a cloak, but now hesitated. ‘Godric!’ I shouted, then shouted again until the boy came running. He was my servant, and a good one, but he was of an age when I needed to find another so Godric could stand in the shield wall. ‘Bring me my mail coat, my sword and a helmet,’ I said.

‘You’re going to fight?’ my son sounded astonished.

‘I’m going to frighten the mouse-bitch,’ I said. ‘If she’s setting our men against Lady Æthelflaed’s then she’s doing Ragnall’s work.’

There was a crowd of men outside the Pisspot, their angry faces lit by flaming torches bracketed to the tavern’s walls. They were jeering Sihtric who, with a dozen men, guarded the alley that apparently led to the mouse’s shed. The crowd fell silent as I arrived. Merewalh appeared at the same moment and looked askance at my mail, helmet, and sword. He was soberly dressed in black with a silver cross hanging at his neck. ‘Lady Æthelflaed sent me,’ he explained, ‘and she’s not happy.’

‘Nor am I.’

‘She’s at the vigil, of course. So was I.’

‘The vigil?’

‘The vigil before Easter,’ he said, frowning. ‘We pray in church all night and greet the dawn with song.’

‘What a wild life you Christians do lead,’ I said, then looked at the crowd. ‘All of you,’ I shouted, ‘go to bed! The excitement’s over!’

One man, with more ale inside him than sense, wanted to protest, but I stalked towards him with my hand on Serpent-Breath’s hilt and his companions dragged him away. I stood, malevolent and glowering, waiting until the crowd had dispersed, then turned back to Sihtric. ‘Is the wretched girl still in her shed?’

‘Yes, lord.’ He sounded relieved that I had come.

Eadith had also arrived, tall and striking in a long green dress and with her flame-red hair loosely tied on top of her head. I beckoned her into the alley and my son followed. There had been a dozen men waiting in the narrow space, but they had vanished as soon as they heard my voice. There were five or six sheds at the alley’s end, all of them low wooden buildings that were used to store hay, but only one showed a glimmer of light. There was no door, just an opening that I ducked under, and then stopped.

Because, by the gods, the mouse was beautiful.

Real beauty is rare. Most of us suffer the pox and so have faces dotted with scars, and what teeth we have left go yellow, and our skin has warts, wens, and carbuncles, and we stink like sheep dung. Any girl who survives into womanhood with teeth and a clear skin is accounted a beauty, but this girl had so much more. She had a radiance. I thought of Frigg, the mute girl who had married Cnut Ranulfson and who now lived on my son’s estate, though he thought I did not know. Frigg was glorious and beautiful, but where she was dark and lithe, this girl was fair and generous. She was stark naked, her thighs lifted, and her flawless skin seemed to glow with health. Her breasts were full, but not fallen, her blue eyes lively, her lips plump, and her face full of joy until I hauled the man out from between her thighs. ‘Go and piss it into a ditch,’ I snarled at him. He was one of my men and he pulled up his trews and scuttled out of the shed as if twenty demons were at his arse.

The mus fell backwards on the hay. She bounced there, giggling and smiling. ‘Welcome again, Lord Uhtred,’ she spoke to my son, who said nothing. There was a shielded lantern perched on a pile of hay and I saw my son blush in its dim and flickering light.

‘Talk to me,’ I growled, ‘not him.’

She stood and brushed pieces of straw from her perfect skin. Not a scar, not a blemish, though when she turned to me I saw there was a birthmark on her forehead, a small red mark shaped like an apple. It was almost a relief to see that she was not perfect, because even her hands were unscarred. Women’s hands grow old fast, burned by pots, worn out by distaffs, and rubbed raw by scrubbing clothes, yet Mus had hands like a baby, soft and flawless. She seemed utterly unworried by her nakedness. She smiled at me and half bobbed down respectfully. ‘Greetings, Lord Uhtred,’ she spoke demurely, her eyes showing amusement at my anger.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m called Mus.’

‘What did your parents name you?’

‘Trouble,’ she said, still smiling.

‘Then listen to me, Trouble,’ I snarled, ‘you have a choice. Either you work for Byrdnoth in the Plover next door, or you leave Ceaster. Do you understand?’

She frowned and bit her lower lip as she pretended to think, then gave me her bright smile again. ‘I was only celebrating Eostre’s feast,’ she said slyly, ‘as I’m told you like it celebrated.’

‘What I don’t like,’ I said, biting back my annoyance at her cleverness, ‘is that a man died fighting over you tonight.’

‘I tell them not to fight,’ she said, all wide-eyed and innocent. ‘I don’t want them to fight! I want them to …’

‘I know what you want,’ I snarled, ‘but what matters is what I want! And I’m telling you to either work for Byrdnoth or leave Ceaster.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t like Byrdnoth.’

‘You’ll like me even less.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said, and laughed, ‘oh no, lord, never!’

‘You work for Byrdnoth,’ I insisted, ‘or you leave!’

‘I won’t work for him, lord,’ she said, ‘he’s so fat and slimy!’

‘Your choice, bitch,’ I said, and I was having trouble from keeping my eyes from those beautiful plump breasts and from her small body that was both compact and generous, and she knew I was having trouble and it amused her.

‘Why Byrdnoth?’ she asked.

‘Because he won’t let you cause trouble,’ I said. ‘You’ll hump who he tells you to hump.’

‘Including him,’ she said, ‘and it’s disgusting! It’s like being bounced by a greased pig.’ She gave a shiver of horror.

‘If you won’t work at the Plover,’ I ignored her exaggerated shudder, ‘then you’re leaving Ceaster. I don’t care where you go, but you’re leaving.’

‘Yes, lord,’ she said meekly, then glanced at Eadith. ‘May I dress, lord?’ she asked me.

‘Get dressed,’ I snapped. ‘Sihtric?’

‘Lord?’

‘You’ll guard her tonight. Lock her up in one of the granaries and see her on the road south tomorrow.’

‘It’s Easter tomorrow, lord, no one will be travelling,’ he said nervously.

‘Then keep her quiet till someone does go south! Then pack her off and make certain she doesn’t come back.’

‘Yes, lord,’ he said.

‘And tomorrow,’ I turned on my son, ‘you’ll pull down these sheds.’

‘Yes, father.’

‘And if you do come back,’ I looked back to the girl, ‘I’ll whip the skin off your back till your ribs are showing, you understand?’

‘I understand, lord,’ she said in a contrite voice. She smiled at Sihtric, her jailer, then stooped into a gap between the piles of hay. Her clothes had been carelessly dropped into the gap and she went down on all fours to retrieve them. ‘I’ll just get dressed,’ she said, ‘and I won’t cause you any trouble! I promise.’ And with those words she suddenly shot forward and vanished through a hole in the shed’s back wall. A small hand snaked back and snatched a cloak or dress, and then she was gone.

‘After her!’ I said. She had wriggled through the mousehole, leaving a small pile of coins and hacksilver beside the lantern. I stooped, but saw the hole was too small for me to negotiate, so I ducked back into the alley. There was no passage to the rear of the shed and by the time we had made our way through the neighbouring house she had long disappeared. I stood at an alley’s mouth, staring down an empty side street, and swore in frustration. ‘Someone must know where the bitch lives,’ I said.

‘She’s a mouse,’ my son said, ‘so you need a cat.’

I growled. At least, I thought, I had scared the girl, so perhaps she’d stop her nonsense. And why did she favour my men over Æthelflaed’s? Mine were no cleaner or richer. I guessed she was just a trouble-maker who enjoyed having men fight over her.

‘You pull the sheds down tomorrow,’ I told my son, ‘and look for the bitch. Find her and lock her up.’

Eadith and I walked back towards our house. ‘She’s beautiful,’ Eadith said wistfully.

‘With that birthmark on her forehead?’ I asked in a hopeless attempt to pretend I did not agree.

‘She is beautiful,’ Eadith insisted.

‘And so are you,’ I said, and so she was.

She smiled at the compliment, though her smile was dutiful, even touched by sadness. ‘She’s what? Sixteen? Seventeen? When you find her you should marry her off.’

‘What man would marry a whore like her?’ I asked savagely, thinking that what I truly wanted was to take the whore to bed and plough her ripe little body.

‘Maybe a husband would tame her,’ Eadith said.

‘Maybe I should marry you,’ I said impulsively.

Eadith stopped, looked at me. We were just outside the big church where the Easter vigil was being kept, and a wash of candlelight came through the open door to shadow her face and to glint off the tears on her cheeks. She reached up with both hands and held the cheek-pieces of my helmet, then stood on tiptoe to kiss me.

God, what fools women make of us.

I always liked to make something special of Eostre’s feast, hiring jugglers, musicians, and acrobats, but Ragnall’s appearance a few days before the feast had deterred such folk from coming to Ceaster. The same fear meant that many of the guests invited to Leofstan’s enthronement had also failed to appear, though Saint Peter’s church was still full.

Enthronement? Who in the cloud-filled heavens did these people think they were? Kings sat on thrones. Lady Æthelflaed should have had a throne, and sometimes used her dead husband’s throne in Gleawecestre, and when, as a lord, I sat in judgement I used a throne, not because I was royal, but because I represented royal justice. But a bishop? Why would some weasel-brained bishop need a throne? Wulfheard had a throne larger than King Edward’s, a high-backed chair carved with gormless saints and bellowing angels. I asked the fool once why he needed so large a chair for his skinny backside, and he told me he was God’s representative in Hereford. ‘It is God’s throne, not mine,’ he had said pompously, though I noted that he screeched in anger if anyone else dared park their bum on the carved seat.

‘Does your god ever visit Hereford?’ I asked him.

‘He is omnipresent, so yes, he sits on the throne.’

‘So you sit on his lap? That’s nice.’

I somehow doubted that the Christian god would be visiting Ceaster because Leofstan had chosen a milking-stool as his throne. It was a three-legged stool that he had bought at the market, and it now stood waiting for him in front of the altar. I had wanted to sneak into the church the night before Eostre’s feast to saw a finger’s width off two of the legs, but the vigil had thwarted that plan. ‘A stool?’ I had asked Æthelflaed.

‘He’s a humble man.’

‘But Bishop Wulfheard says it’s your god’s throne.’

‘God is humble too.’

A humble god! You might as well have a toothless wolf! The gods are the gods, ruling thunder and commanding storms, they are the lords of night and day, of fire and ice, the givers of disaster and of triumph. To this day I do not understand why folk become Christians unless it’s simply that the other gods enjoy a joke. I have often suspected that Loki, the trickster god, invented Christianity because it has his wicked stench all over it. I can imagine the gods sitting in Asgard one night, all of them bored and probably drunk, and Loki amuses them with a typical piece of his nonsense, ‘Let’s invent a carpenter,’ he suggests, ‘and tell the fools that he was the son of the only god, that he died and came back to life, that he cured blindness with lumps of clay, and that he walked on water!’ Who would believe that nonsense? But the trouble with Loki is that he always takes his jests too far.

The street outside the church was piled with weapons, shields, and helmets belonging to the men who attended the enthronement. They needed to be armed, or at least to stay close to their weapons, because our scouts had come back from the upper Mærse to tell us that Ragnall’s army was approaching. They had seen his campfires in the night, and dawn had brought the sight of smoke smeared across the eastern sky. By now, I reckoned, he should be discovering the remnants of Eads Byrig. He would come to Ceaster next, but we would see him approaching, and the neat piles of weapons and shields were ready for the men inside the church. When they heard the alarm they would have to abandon the bishop’s sermon and take to the ramparts.

There had been some good news that morning. Æthelstan had succeeded in taking two ships from the hulls Ragnall had left on the Mærse’s northern bank. Both were wide-bellied, high-prowed fighting ships, one with benches for sixty oars and the other for forty. ‘The rest of the ships were beached,’ Æthelstan reported to me, ‘and we couldn’t drag them off.’

‘They weren’t guarded?’

‘Probably sixty or seventy men there, lord.’

‘How many did you have?’

‘Seven of us crossed the river, lord.’

‘Seven!’

‘None of the others could swim.’

‘You can swim?’

‘Like a herring, lord!’

Æthelstan and his six companions had stripped naked, and, in the dead of night, crossed the river at the height of the tide. They had managed to cut the lines of the two moored boats, which had then drifted down the Mærse and were now safely tied to the remnants of the pier at Brunanburh. I wanted to put Æthelstan back in charge of that fort, but Æthelflaed insisted that Osferth, her half-brother, should command there, and that decision meant that Æthelstan, poor boy, was now condemned to endure the interminable service that turned Father Leofstan into Bishop Leofstan.

I peered into the church a couple of times. There was the usual chanting, while a dozen priests wafted smoke from swinging censers. An abbot with a waist-length beard gave an impassioned sermon that must have lasted two hours and which drove me to a tavern across the street. When I next looked I saw Leofstan prostrate on the church’s floor with his arms outspread. All his cripples were there, while the moon-touched lunatics gibbered and scratched at the back of the church, and the white-robed orphans fidgeted. Most of the congregation was kneeling, and I could see Æthelflaed next to the bishop’s wife who, as usual, was swathed in layers of clothing and was now rocking backwards and forwards with her clasped hands held high above her head as though she was experiencing an ecstatic vision. It was, I thought, a sad way to celebrate Eostre’s feast.

I walked to the northern gate, climbed the ramparts, and stared at the empty countryside. My son joined me, but said nothing. He was in command of the guard this morning, which meant he was excused from attending the church service, and the two of us stood in companionable silence. There should have been a busy fair in the strip of pastureland between the city ditch and the Roman cemetery, but instead the few market stalls had been placed in the main street. Eostre would not be pleased, though perhaps she would be forgiving because she was not a vengeful goddess. I had heard stories of her when I was a small child, though the stories had been whispered because we were supposed to be Christians, but I heard how she skipped through the dawn, scattering flowers, and how the animals followed her two by two, and how the elves and sprites gathered around with pipes made from reeds and with drums made of thistle-heads, and played their wild music as Eostre sang the world into a new creation. She would look like Mus, I thought, remembering the firm body, the glow of her skin, the glint of joy in her eyes, and the mischief in her smile. Even the memory of her one flaw, the apple-shaped birthmark, seemed attractive now. ‘Did you find the girl?’ I broke the silence.

‘Not yet,’ he sounded disconsolate. ‘We searched everywhere.’

‘You’re not keeping her hidden yourself?’

‘No, father, I promise.’

‘She has to live somewhere!’

‘We’ve asked. We’ve looked. She just vanished!’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘I’m thinking she doesn’t really exist. That she’s a night-walker?’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ I scoffed. ‘Of course she exists! We saw her. And you’ve more than seen her!’

‘But no one saw her last night,’ he said, ‘and she was naked when she vanished.’

‘She took a cloak.’

‘Even so, someone would have seen her! A half-naked girl running through the streets? How could she just disappear? But she did!’ He paused, frowning. ‘She’s a night-walker! A shadow-walker!’

A shadow-walker? I had scorned the idea, but shadow-walkers did exist. They were ghosts and spirits and goblins, malevolent creatures who only appeared in the night. And Mus, I thought, was truly malevolent, she was causing trouble by setting my men against Æthelflaed’s warriors. And she was too perfect to be real. So was she an apparition sent by the gods to taunt us? To taunt me, anyway, as I remembered the lantern light on her plump breasts. ‘She has to be stopped,’ I said, ‘unless you want a nightly battle between our men and Lady Æthelflaed’s.’

‘She won’t appear again tonight,’ my son said uncertainly, ‘she won’t dare.’

‘Unless you’re right,’ I said, ‘and she is a shadow-walker,’ I touched the hammer at my neck.

And then I kept my hand on the talisman.

Because from the far woods, from the forest that shrouded the land all around distant Eads Byrig, Ragnall’s army was coming.

Ragnall’s men came in a line, and that was impressive because the line did not trail out of the forest on the Roman road in a long procession, but instead appeared altogether at the edge of the trees and so suddenly filled the land. One moment the fields were empty, then a great line of horsemen emerged from the woodlands. It must have taken time to arrange that display and it was intended to awe us.

One of my men hammered the iron bar that hung above the gate’s fighting rampart. The bar served as a makeshift alarm bell and its harsh sound was brutal and loud, summoning the defenders to the walls. ‘Keep hitting it,’ I told him. I could see men pouring out of the church, hurrying to snatch up the shields, helmets, and weapons that were stacked in the street.

‘Five hundred of them?’ my son suggested.

I turned back to stare at the enemy. I divided the far line into half, then half again and counted horses, then multiplied my answer by four. ‘Six hundred,’ I reckoned. ‘Maybe that’s all the horses he has.’

‘He’ll have more men, though.’

‘Two thousand, at least.’

Six hundred horsemen were no threat to Ceaster, but I still kept the iron bar’s clangour sounding across the town. Men were climbing the ramparts now, and Ragnall would see our spear-points thickening above the high stone walls. I wished he would attack. There is no easier way to kill an enemy than when he is trying to assault a well-defended rampart.

‘He’ll have been to Eads Byrig,’ my son suggested. He was staring eastwards to where the smoke of our corpse-burning fire still smeared the sky. He was thinking that Ragnall would be enraged by the severed heads I had left to greet him and hoping, I think, that those bloodied heads would prompt Ragnall into a foolish assault on the city.

‘He won’t attack today,’ I said. ‘He might be headstrong, but he’s no fool.’

A horn sounded from that long line of men who now advanced slowly across the pastureland. The sound of the horn was as harsh as the clangour of my iron bar. I could see men on foot behind the horsemen, but even so there were not more than seven hundred enemy in sight. That was not nearly enough to assault our walls, but I was not summoning the defenders in expectation of any attack, but rather to show Ragnall that we were ready for him. We were both making a display.

‘I wish he’d make an assault,’ my son said wistfully.

‘Not today.’

‘He’ll lose men if he does!’ He was hoping I was wrong, hoping he would have a chance to kill men trying to scale stone walls.

‘He has men to lose,’ I said drily.

‘If I was him,’ my son began, then checked.

‘Go on.’

‘I wouldn’t want to lose two hundred men on these walls. I’d raid deeper into Mercia. I’d go south. There are rich pickings down south, but here?’

I nodded. He was right, of course. To attack Ceaster was to assault one of Mercia’s strongest fortresses, and the country around Ceaster would be poor territory for plunder or slaves. Folk had gone to their nearest burh, taking their families and livestock with them. We were ready for war, even wanting battle, but a sudden march south into the heartland would find plump farms and easy plunder. ‘He will raid deeper into Mercia,’ I said, ‘but he still wants Ceaster. He won’t attack today, but he will attack.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he can’t be King of Britain without capturing the burhs,’ I said. ‘And because Ceaster is Lady Æthelflaed’s achievement. There are plenty of men who still think a woman shouldn’t rule a land, but they can’t argue with her success. She’s fortified this whole district! Her husband was scared of the place. All he did was piss into the wind, but she drove the Danes out. If she does nothing else, then Ceaster stands as her victory! So take this city from her and you make her look weak. Take Ceaster and you’ve opened up all western Mercia to invasion. If Ragnall wins here he could destroy all Mercia, and he knows it. He won’t just be King of Northumbria, but of Mercia too, and that’s worth losing two hundred men.’

‘But without Eads Byrig …’

‘Losing Eads Byrig has made life difficult for him,’ I interrupted him, ‘but he still needs Ceaster! The Irish are driving the Norse out of Ireland, and where will they go? Here! But they can’t come here if we hold the rivers.’ Indeed it was our failure to hold the rivers that had let Ragnall into Britain in the first place. ‘So, yes,’ I went on, ‘the battle we fight here isn’t just for Ceaster, but for everything! For Mercia and in the end for Wessex too.’

The great line of horsemen had stopped, and a smaller group now rode towards the city. There were perhaps a hundred horsemen in the smaller group, followed by some footmen, all of them beneath two great banners. One showed the red axe of Ragnall, the same symbol that his brother Sigtryggr flew, but the second banner was new to me. It was a flag, a big flag, and it was black. Just that, a black flag, except it was made more sinister because the flag’s trailing edge had been ripped to tattered shreds so that it blew ragged in the sea wind. ‘Whose flag is that?’ I asked.

‘Never seen it,’ my son said.

Finan, Merewalh, and Æthelflaed came to the rampart. None of them recognised the flag. What made it strange was that the flag was every bit as big as Ragnall’s axe, suggesting that whoever marched beneath the ragged black banner was his equal.

‘There’s a woman there,’ Finan said. He had eyes like a falcon.

‘Ragnall’s wife?’ Æthelflaed asked.

‘Could be,’ Merewalh said, ‘they say he has four.’

‘It’s a woman in black,’ Finan said. He was shading his eyes as he peered at the approaching enemy. ‘She’s on the small horse right in front of the flag.’

‘Unless it’s a priest?’ Merewalh suggested uncertainly.

The great line of horsemen had begun beating their swords against their shields, a rhythmic and threatening sound, harsh in the day’s warm sunlight. I could see the woman now. She was swathed in black, with a black hood over her head, and she rode a small black horse that was dwarfed by the stallions of the men who surrounded her. ‘He won’t have a priest with him,’ Finan said, ‘it’s a woman, sure enough.’

‘Or a child,’ I said. The rider of the small horse was also small.

The horsemen stopped. They were some two hundred paces away, well beyond the distance we could hurl a spear or an axe. Some members of the fyrd carried bows, but they were short hunting bows that were not powerful enough to pierce mail. Such bows forced an enemy to keep his exposed face below his shield, and they were useful at very short distances, but to loose an arrow at two hundred paces was a waste, provoking the enemy to jeer. Two archers did loose and I bellowed at them to put their weapons down. ‘They’ve come to talk,’ I shouted, ‘not to fight.’

‘Yet,’ Finan muttered.

I could see Ragnall clearly enough. He was flamboyant as ever, his long hair blowing in the wind and his inked chest bare. He kicked his stallion a few paces forward and stood in his stirrups. ‘Lord Uhtred,’ he shouted, ‘I bring you gifts!’ He turned back towards his standard as the men on foot threaded their way between the horses and came towards the ramparts.

‘Oh no,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘no!’

‘Forty-three,’ I said bitterly. I did not even need to count.

‘Play with the devil,’ Finan said, ‘and you get burned.’

Forty-three men carrying drawn swords were pushing forty-three prisoners towards us. The swordsmen spread into a rough line and stopped, then thrust the prisoners down onto their knees. The prisoners, all of whose hands were bound behind their backs, were mostly men, but there were women among them, women who stared in desperation at our banners that hung from the ramparts. I had no idea who the prisoners were, except they must be Saxon and Christian. They were revenge.

Ragnall must have been told of the forty-three heads waiting on the summit of Eads Byrig and this was his answer. There was nothing we could do. We had manned the walls of Ceaster, but I had not thought to mount men on horses to make any sally out of the gate. We could only listen as the victims wailed and only watch as the swords fell, as the bright blood splashed the morning, and as the heads rolled on the thin turf. Ragnall mocked us with his handsome smile as the swordsmen wiped their blades on the clothes of their victims.

And then there was one last gift, one last prisoner.

That prisoner could not walk. He or she was brought draped over the back of a horse and at first I could not see if it was a man or a woman, I could only see that it was a person dressed in white who was heaved off the horse onto the blood-wet grass. None of us spoke. Then I saw it was a man and I thought him dead until he slowly rolled over and I saw he was dressed in the white robes of a priest, but what was strange was that the front of his skirt was panelled in bright red.

‘Christ,’ Finan breathed.

Because the skirt was not panelled. It was coloured by blood. The man curled up as if to crush the pain in his groin, and at that moment the black-robed rider spurred her horse forward.

She came close, careless of the threat of our throwing spears, our arrows, or axes. She stopped just yards away from the ditch and pushed back the hood of her cloak and stared up at us. She was an old woman, her face lined and harsh, her hair sparse and white, her lips a thin grimace of hatred. ‘What I did to him,’ she said, pointing at the wounded man lying behind her, ‘I shall do to you! To all of you. One at a time!’ She suddenly produced a small curved knife. ‘I shall geld your boys, your women shall be whores, and your children slaves, because you are cursed. All of you!’ She shrieked those last three words and swept the gelding knife in a curve as if to point to all of us watching from the ramparts. ‘You will all die! You are cursed by day and by night, by fire and by water, by fate!’

She spoke our language, the English tongue.

She rocked backwards and forwards in her saddle as if gathering strength and then she took a deep breath and pointed the knife at me. ‘And you, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, Uhtred of Nothing, will die last and die slowest because you have betrayed the gods. You are cursed. You are all cursed!’ She cackled then, a mad sound, before pointing the blade at me again. ‘The gods hate you, Uhtred! You were their son, you were their favourite, you were loved by them, but you chose to use your gifts for the false god, for the filthy Christian god, and now the real gods hate you and curse you! I speak to the gods, they listen to me, they will give you to me and I will kill you so slowly that your death will last till Ragnarok!’ And with that she hurled the small knife at me. It fell short, clattering on the wall and dropping to the ditch. She turned away, and all the enemy went with her, back to the trees.

‘Who is she?’ Æthelflaed asked, her voice scarce above a whisper.

‘Her name,’ I said, ‘is Brida.’

And the gelded priest turned an agonised face towards me and called for help. ‘Father!’

He was my son.