Warriors of the Storm

Seven

Brida.

She was a Saxon who was raised a Christian; a wild-child, my first lover, a girl of passion and fire, and Brida, like me, had found the older gods, but where I have always accepted that the god of the Christians has power like all the other gods, Brida had convinced herself that the Christian god was a demon and that Christianity was an evil that must be eradicated if the world was ever to be good again. She had married my dear friend, Ragnar, she had become more Danish than the Danes, and she had tried to suborn me, to tempt me, to persuade me to fight for the Danes against the Saxons, and she had hated me ever since I had refused. She was a widow now, but she still ruled Ragnar’s great fortress of Dunholm, which, after Bebbanburg, was the most formidable stronghold in Northumbria. She had now sided with Ragnall and, as I was later to learn, her declaration of support was enough to drive poor King Ingver into exile. Brida had brought Ragnar’s army south, she had added her men to Ragnall’s, and the Northmen now had the strength to attack Ceaster and to accept the deaths that would soak the Roman walls with northern blood.

Beware the hatred of a woman.

Love curdles into hate. I had loved Brida, but she possessed an anger I could never match, an anger she believed came directly from the rage of the gods. It had been Brida who gave Serpent-Breath her name, who had cast a spell on the sword because, even as a child, she had believed the gods spoke directly to her. She had been a black-haired girl, thin as a twig, with a fierceness that burned like the fire that had killed the elder Ragnar and which we had watched together from the high trees. The only child Brida ever bore was mine, but the boy was born dead and she had never had another, so now her offspring were the songs she made and the curses she uttered. Ragnar’s father, the blind Ravn, had prophesied that Brida would grow to be a skald and a sorceress, and so she had, but of the bitterest kind. She was an enchantress, white-haired and wizened now, chanting her skald’s songs about dead Christians and of Odin triumphant. Songs of hate.

‘What she wants,’ I told Æthelflaed, ‘is to take your god and nail him back to his tree.’

‘He came back to life once,’ she said piously, ‘and he would rise again.’

I ignored that. ‘And she wants all Britain worshipping the old gods.’

‘A stale old dream,’ Æthelflaed said scornfully.

‘Just because it’s been dreamed before,’ I said, ‘doesn’t mean it can’t come true.’

The old dream was the Northmen’s vision of ruling all Britain. Again and again their armies had marched, they had invaded Mercia and Wessex, they had slaughtered the Saxons in battle, yet they had never succeeded in taking the whole island. Æthelflaed’s father, King Alfred, had defeated them, he had saved Wessex, and ever since we Saxons had been fighting back, thrusting the Northmen ever further northwards. Now a new leader, stronger than any who had come before, threatened us with the old dream.

For me the war was about land. Perhaps that was because my uncle had stolen my land, had stolen the wild country around Bebbanburg, and to take back that land I first needed to defeat the Danes who surrounded it. My whole life has been about that windswept fortress beside the sea, about the land that is mine and was taken from me.

For King Alfred, for his son Edward, and his daughter Æthelflaed, the war was also about land, about the kingdoms of the Saxons. Alfred had saved Wessex, and his daughter was now thrusting the Northmen from Mercia while her brother, Edward of Wessex, took back the lands of East Anglia. But for both of them there was another cause worthy of death, their god. They fought for the Christian god, and in their minds the land belonged to their god and they would only reclaim it by doing his will. ‘Englaland,’ King Alfred had once said, ‘will be God’s land. If it exists it will exist because of Him, because He wishes it.’ For a time he had even called it Godland, but the name had not stuck.

For Brida there was only one cause, her hatred of that Christian god. For her the war was a battle between the gods, between truth and falsehood, and she would happily have allowed the Saxons to kill every Northman if only they would abandon their religion and turn back to the old gods of Asgard. And now, at last, she had found a champion who would use sword and spear and axe to fight for her gods. And Ragnall? I doubt he cared about the gods. He wanted land, all of it, and he had wanted Brida’s hardened warriors to come from their stronghold at Dunholm to add their blades to his army.

And my son?

My son.

I had disowned him, disinherited him, and spurned him, and now he had been returned to me by an enemy and he was no longer a man. He was gelded. The blood on his gown was crusted. ‘He’s dying,’ Bishop Leofstan said sadly and made the sign of the cross over Uhtred’s pale face.

His name had been Uhtred, the name always given to the eldest son of our family, but I had taken the name from him when he became a Christian priest. I had named him Judas instead, though he called himself Oswald. Father Oswald, famous for his honesty and piety, and famous too for being my son. My prodigal son. Now I knelt beside him and called him by his old name. ‘Uhtred? Uhtred!’

But he could not answer. There was sweat on his forehead and he was shivering. After that one despairing cry of ‘Father!’ he seemed unable to speak. He tried, but no words came, just a whimper of excruciating pain. ‘He’s dying,’ Bishop Leofstan said again, ‘he has the death fever, lord.’

‘Then save him,’ I snarled.

‘Save him?’

‘That’s what you do, isn’t it? Heal the god-damned sick? So heal him.’

He stared at me, suddenly frightened. ‘My wife …’ he began, then faltered.

‘What of her?’

‘She heals the sick, lord,’ he said, ‘she has the touch of God in her hands. It is her calling, lord.’

‘Then take him to her.’

Folcbald, one of my Frisian warriors and a man of prodigious strength, lifted Uhtred in his arms like a baby and so we took him into the city, following the bishop, who scurried ahead. He led us to one of the more substantial Roman houses on the main street, a house with a deep-arched gateway leading into a pillared courtyard from which a dozen doors led into large rooms. It was not unlike my own house in Ceaster and I was about to make some scornful remark about the bishop’s taste for luxury when I saw that the arcade around the courtyard was filled with sick folk lying on straw pallets. ‘There’s not room for them all inside,’ the bishop explained, then watched as the crippled gatekeeper picked up a short metal bar and struck a second bar that was hanging from the gateway’s ceiling. Like my alarm bell it made a harsh sound and the gatekeeper went on striking it and I saw robed and hooded women scurrying away into the shadowed doorways. ‘The sisters have abjured the company of men,’ the bishop explained, ‘unless the men are sick, dying, or wounded.’

‘They’re nuns?’ I asked.

‘They are a lay sisterhood,’ he said, ‘and one close to my heart! Most are poor women who wish to dedicate their lives to God’s service, while others among them are sinners.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘Fallen women,’ he paused as though unable to bring himself to say the next words, ‘women of the streets, lord! Of the alleyways! But all of them dear creatures we have brought back to God’s grace.’

‘Whores, you mean.’

‘Fallen women, lord, yes.’

‘And you live here with them?’ I asked sarcastically.

‘Oh no, lord!’ He was amused rather than offended by the question. ‘That would not be seemly! Dear me, no! My dear wife and I have a small dwelling in the alley behind the smithy. Praise God I am not sick, dying or wounded.’ The gatekeeper finally put the small iron bar down and the last echo of the clangour died away as a tall, gaunt woman stalked across the courtyard. She had broad shoulders, a grim face, and hands like shovels. Leofstan was a tall man, but this woman towered over him.

‘Bishop?’ she demanded harshly. She faced Leofstan squarely, arms crossed, glaring down at him.

‘Sister Ymma,’ Leofstan said humbly as he pointed to the blood-drenched figure in Folcbald’s arms, ‘here is a grievously wounded priest. He needs my wife’s care.’

Sister Ymma, who looked as if she might be useful in a shield wall, looked around and finally pointed to a corner of the arcade. ‘There’s space over …’

‘He will be given his own room,’ I interrupted her, ‘and a bed.’

‘He will …’

‘Have his own room and a bed,’ I repeated harshly, ‘unless you want my men to scour this damned place clear of Christians? I command in this town, woman, not you!’

Sister Ymma bridled and wanted to protest, but the bishop placated her. ‘We shall find room, sister!’

‘You’ll need room,’ I said. ‘In the next week you’ll have at least a hundred more wounded.’ I turned and poked a finger at Sihtric. ‘Find space for the bishop. Two houses, three! Space for the wounded!’

‘Wounded?’ Leofstan asked, concerned.

‘There’s going to be a fight, bishop,’ I told him angrily, ‘and it won’t be pretty.’

A room was cleared and my son was carried across the courtyard and through a narrow door into a small chamber where he was placed gently on a bed. He muttered something and I stooped to listen, but his words made no sense and then he curled himself by drawing up his legs and whimpered.

‘Heal him,’ I snarled at Sister Ymma.

‘If it is God’s will.’

‘It’s my will!’

‘Sister Gomer will tend him,’ the bishop told Sister Ymma who, it seemed, was the one sister allowed to confront men, a task she evidently undertook with relish.

‘Sister Gomer is your wife?’ I asked, remembering the strange name.

‘Praise God, she is,’ Leofstan said, ‘and a dear darling creature she is too.’

‘With a strange name,’ I said, staring at my son, who moaned on the bed, still curled around his agony.

The bishop smiled. ‘She was named Sunngifu by her mother, but when the dear sisters are born again into Christ Jesus they are given a new name, a baptismal name, and so my dear Sunngifu is now known as Sister Gomer. And with her new name God granted her the power of healing.’

‘He did indeed,’ Sister Ymma said grimly.

‘And she will tend him,’ the bishop assured me, ‘and we shall pray for him!’

‘As will I,’ I said, and touched the hammer hanging at my neck.

I left. I turned at the gate and saw the cloaked, hooded sisters scurry out of their hiding places. Two went into my son’s room and I fingered the hammer again. I had thought I hated my eldest son, but I did not. And so I left him there, lying tight about his cruel wound, and he shivered and he sweated and he moaned strange things in his fever, but he did not die that day, nor the next.

And I took revenge.

The gods loved me because that evening they sent grim clouds rolling from the west. They were sky-darkening clouds, heavy and black, and they came suddenly, building higher, looming in the evening sky to shroud the sunset, and with the clouds came rain and wind. Those grim clouds also brought opportunity, and with the opportunity came argument.

The argument raged inside Ceaster’s Great Hall, while the paved Roman street outside was loud with the noise of horses. It was the noise of great war stallions crashing their hooves on stone paving, horses whinnying and snorting as men struggled to saddle the beasts in the seething rain. I was assembling horsemen, warriors of the storm.

‘It will leave Ceaster undefended!’ Merewalh protested.

‘The fyrd will defend the city,’ I said.

‘The fyrd needs household warriors!’ Merewalh insisted. He rarely disagreed with me, indeed he had always been one of my strongest supporters even when he had served Æthelred who had hated me, but my proposal that stormy night alarmed Merewalh. ‘The fyrd can fight,’ he allowed, ‘but they need trained men to help them!’

‘The city won’t be attacked,’ I snarled. Thunder crashed across the night sky to send the dogs that lived in the Great Hall slinking off to the dark corners. The rain was beating on the roof and leaking through a score of places in the old Roman tiles.

‘Why else has Ragnall returned,’ Æthelflaed asked, ‘if not to attack us?’

‘He won’t attack tonight and he won’t attack tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Which gives us a chance to claw the bastard.’

I was dressed for battle. I wore a knee-length leather jerkin beneath my finest mail coat that was cinched by a thick sword belt from which hung Serpent-Breath. My leather trews were tucked into tall boots reinforced by iron strips. My forearms were thick with warrior rings. Godric, my servant, held my wolf-crested helmet, a thick-hafted spear, and my shield with the snarling wolf’s head of Bebbanburg painted on the iron-bound willow-boards. I was dressed for a killing and most in the hall were shrinking from the prospect.

Cynlæf Haraldson, Æthelflaed’s young favourite, who was rumoured to be marrying her daughter, sided with Merewalh. So far he had taken care to avoid antagonising me, using flattery and agreement to avoid any confrontation, but what I was now suggesting drove him to disagreement. ‘What has changed, lord?’ he asked respectfully.

‘Changed?’

‘When Ragnall was here before you were reluctant to lead men into the forest.’

‘You feared ambush,’ Merewalh put in.

‘His men were in Eads Byrig,’ I said. ‘It was his refuge, his fortress. What was the point of leading men through ambush to die on its walls?’

‘He still has …’ Cynlæf began.

‘No, he doesn’t!’ I snapped. ‘We didn’t know the walls were false! We thought it a fortress! Now it’s just a hilltop.’

‘He outnumbers us,’ Merewalh said unhappily.

‘And he always will outnumber us,’ I said, ‘until we kill enough of his men, and then we’ll outnumber him.’

‘The safe thing,’ Æthelflaed began, then faltered. She sat in the great chair, a throne really, lit by the flickering fire in the central hearth. She had been listening carefully, her eyes looking from speaker to speaker, her face worried. Priests were gathered behind her and they too thought my plans rash.

‘The safe thing?’ I prompted her, but she just shook her head as if to suggest she had thought better of whatever she had been about to say.

‘The safe thing,’ Father Ceolnoth said firmly, ‘is to make certain Ceaster does not fall!’ Men murmured agreement and Father Ceolnoth, emboldened by the support, stepped forward to stand in the firelight beside Æthelflaed’s chair. ‘Ceaster is our newest diocese! It controls great areas of farmland! It protects the seaway. It is a bulwark against the Welsh! It protects Mercia from the pagan north! It must not be lost!’ He stopped abruptly, maybe remembering the savagery with which I usually greeted military advice from priests.

‘Take note of the bulwarks!’ his brother lisped through his missing teeth, ‘that you can tell it to the next generation!’

I stared at him, wondering if he had lost his brains along with his teeth, but the other priests all muttered and nodded approval. ‘The words of the psalmist,’ blind Father Cuthbert explained to me. Cuthbert was the one priest who supported me, but then he had always been eccentric.

‘We cannot tell the next generation,’ Father Ceolberht hissed, ‘if the bulwarks are lost! We must protect the bulwarks! We cannot abandon Ceaster’s walls.’

‘It is the word of the Lord, praise be the Lord,’ Ceolnoth said.

Cynlæf smiled at me. ‘Only a fool ignores your advice,’ he said with patronising flattery, ‘and the defeat of Ragnall is our aim, of course, but the protection of Ceaster is just as important!’

‘And to leave the walls undefended …’ Merewalh said unhappily, but did not finish the thought.

Another rumble of thunder sounded. Rain was pouring through the hole in the roof and hissing in the hearth. ‘God speaks!’ Father Ceolnoth said.

Which god? Thor was the god of thunder. I was tempted to remind them of that, but saying as much would only antagonise them.

‘We must shelter from the storm,’ Ceolberht said, ‘and the thunder is the sign that we must stay within these walls.’

‘We should stay …’ Æthelflaed began, but then was interrupted.

‘Forgive me,’ Bishop Leofstan said, ‘dear lady, please, forgive me!’

Æthelflaed looked indignant at the interruption, but managed a gracious smile. ‘Bishop?’

‘What did our Lord say?’ the bishop asked as he limped to the open space by the hearth where rain spattered on his robe. ‘Did our Lord say that we should stay at home? Did he encourage us to crouch by the cottage fire? Did he tell his disciples to close the door and huddle by the hearth? No! He sent his followers forth! Two by two! And why? Because he gave them power over the overpowering enemy!’ he spoke passionately, and, with astonishment, I realised he was supporting me. ‘The kingdom of heaven is not spread by staying at home,’ the bishop said fervently, ‘but by going forth as our Lord commanded!’

‘Saint Mark,’ a very young priest ventured.

‘Well spoken, Father Olbert!’ the bishop said. ‘The commandment is indeed found in the gospel of Mark!’ Another peal of thunder crashed in the night. The wind was rising, howling in the dark as the hall dogs whined. The rain was falling harder now, glinting in the firelight where it slanted down to hiss in the bright flames. ‘We are commanded to go forth!’ the bishop said. ‘To go forth and conquer!’

‘Bishop,’ Cynlæf began.

‘The ways of the Lord are strange,’ Leofstan ignored Cynlæf. ‘I cannot explain why our God has blessed us with the Lord Uhtred’s presence, but one thing I do know. The Lord Uhtred wins battles! He is a mighty warrior for the Lord!’ He paused suddenly, flinching, and I remembered the sudden pains that assailed him. For a moment he looked in agony, one hand clutched to the robe above his heart, then the pain vanished from his face. ‘Is anyone here a greater warrior than the Lord Uhtred?’ he asked. ‘If so, let them stand up!’ Most of the men were already standing, but they seemed to know what Leofstan meant. ‘Does anyone here know more of war than Lord Uhtred? Is there anyone here who strikes more fear into the enemy?’ He paused, waiting, but no one spoke or stirred. ‘I do not deny that he is grievously mistaken about our faith, that he is in need of God’s grace and of Christ’s forgiveness, but God has sent him to us and we must not reject the gift.’ He bowed to Æthelflaed. ‘My lady, forgive my humble opinions, but I urge you to listen to the Lord Uhtred.’

I could have kissed him.

Æthelflaed looked about the hall. A spike of lightning lit the roof-hole, followed by a monstrous clap of thunder that shook the sky. Men shuffled their feet, but no one spoke to contradict the bishop. ‘Merewalh,’ Æthelflaed stood to show that the discussion was finished, ‘you will stay in the city with one hundred men. All the rest,’ she hesitated a moment, glancing at me, then made her decision, ‘will ride with Lord Uhtred.’

‘We leave two hours before dawn,’ I said.

‘Vengeance is mine!’ the bishop said happily.

He was wrong. It was mine.

We were leaving Ceaster to attack Ragnall.

I led almost eight hundred men into the darkness. We rode out through the north gate into a storm as wild as any I remembered. Thunder filled the sky, lightning splintered across the clouds, the rain seethed and the wind howled like the shrieks of the damned. I led my men and Æthelflaed’s men, the warriors of Mercia, soldiers of the storm, all mounted on good stallions, all in mail and armed with swords, spears, and axes. Bishop Leofstan had stood on the gate’s rampart shouting blessings down on us, his voice snatched away by the gale. ‘You do the Lord’s work!’ he had called. ‘The Lord is with you, His blessing is upon you!’

The Lord’s work was to break Ragnall. And of course it was a risk. Maybe even now Ragnall’s warriors were filing through the wet darkness towards Ceaster, carrying ladders and readying themselves to fight and die on a Roman wall. But probably not. I needed neither omens nor scouts to tell me that Ragnall was not ready to assault Ceaster yet.

Ragnall had moved fast. He had taken his large army and lunged towards Eoferwic, and that city, key to the north, had fallen without a fight, and so Ragnall had turned back to make his assault on Ceaster. His men had marched unceasingly. They were tired. They had reached Eads Byrig to find it blood-soaked and ruined, and now they faced a Roman fort packed with defenders. They needed a day or two, more even, to ready themselves, to make the ladders and to find forage and to allow the laggards to catch up with the army.

Merewalh and the others were right, of course. The easiest and safest way to preserve Ceaster was to stay inside the high walls and let Ragnall’s men die against the stones. And they would die. Much of the fyrd had arrived, bringing their axes, hoes, and spears. They had brought their families and livestock too, so the streets were filled with cattle, pigs, and sheep. The walls of Ceaster would be well defended, though that would not stop Ragnall making an attempt to cross the ramparts. But if we just stayed inside the walls and waited for that attempt we would yield all the surrounding countryside to his mercy. He would make an assault, and the assault would probably fail, but such was the size of his army that he could afford that failure and attack again. And all the time his troops would be raiding deep into Mercia, burning and killing, taking slaves and capturing livestock, and Æthelflaed’s army would be locked into Ceaster, helpless to defend the land it was sworn to protect.

So I wanted to drive him away from Ceaster. I wanted to hit him hard now.

I wanted to hit him in the dark of the night’s ending, hit him in the thunder of Thor’s providential storm, hit him under the lash of Thor’s lightning, strike him in the wind and the rain of the gods. I would bring him chaos. He had hoped to have Eads Byrig as a refuge, but he had no refuge now except for the shields of his men, and those men would be cowering in the storm, chilled and tired, and we rode to kill them.

And to kill Brida. I thought of my son, my gelded son, lying curled on his bed of pain, and I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt and promised myself her blade would taste blood before the sun was risen. I wanted to find Brida, the sorceress who had cut my son, and I swore I would make that vile creature scream till her voice drowned out even Thor’s loud thunder.

Cynlæf led Æthelflaed’s men. I would have preferred Merewalh, but Æthelflaed wanted someone reliable to guard Ceaster’s walls and she had insisted Merewalh stayed, and sent Cynlæf in his place. She had told her favourite that he was to obey me. Æthelflaed, of course, had wanted to come herself and for once I had won that argument, telling her that the chaos of a fight in the half-light of a storm-ridden dawn was no place for her. ‘It will be a killing, my lady,’ I had told her, ‘nothing but killing. And if you’re there I’ll have to give you a bodyguard, and those men can’t join the slaughter. I need them all and I don’t need to be worrying whether you’re safe or not.’ She had reluctantly accepted the argument, sending Cynlæf in her place, and he now rode close to me, saying nothing. We went slowly, we could not hurry. The only light came from the intermittent flashes of lightning that streaked to earth and silvered the sky, but I did not need light. What we did was simple. We would make chaos, and to make it we only needed to reach the forest’s edge and wait there until the first faint wolf-light of dawn revealed the trees among the night’s shadows and so let us ride safely to a slaughter.

A bolt of lightning showed when we reached the end of the pastureland. In front of us all was black, trees and bushes and ghosts. We stopped and the rain pounded about us. Finan moved his horse next to mine. I could hear his saddle creaking and the thump as his stallion pawed the wet ground. ‘Make sure they’re well spread out,’ I said.

‘They are,’ Finan responded.

I had ordered the horsemen to form eight groups. Each would advance on its own, careless of what the others did. We were a rake with eight tines, a rake to claw through the forest. The only rules of the morning were that the groups were to kill, they were to avoid the inevitable shield wall that would eventually form, and they were to obey the sound of the horn when it called for withdrawal. I planned to be back in Ceaster for breakfast.

Unless the enemy knew we were coming. Unless their sentries had seen us approach, had seen us silvered in the wet darkness by the bright streaks of Thor’s lightning. Unless they were already touching iron-rimmed shields together to make the wall that would be our death. It is during the time of waiting that the mind crawls into a coward’s cave and whines to be spared. I thought of all that could go wrong and felt the temptation to be safe, to take the troops back to Ceaster and man the walls and let the enemy die in a furious assault. No one would blame me, and if Ragnall died beneath Ceaster’s stones then his death would provide another song of Uhtred that would be chanted in mead halls across all Mercia. I touched the hammer hanging at my neck. All along the forest’s edge men were touching their talismans, saying prayers to their god or gods, feeling the creep of fear chill their bones more thoroughly than the soaking rain and gusting wind.

‘Almost,’ Finan said in a low voice.

‘Almost,’ I answered. The wolf-light is the light between dark and light, between the night and the dawn. There are no colours, just the grey of a sword blade, of mist, the grey that swallows the ghosts and elves and goblins. Foxes seek their dens, badgers go to earth, and the owl flies home. Another bellow of thunder shook the sky and I looked up, the rain pelting on my face, and I prayed to Thor and to Odin. I do this for you, I said, for your amusement. The gods watch us, they reward us, and sometimes they punish us. At the foot of Yggdrasil the three hags were watching and smiling, and were they sharpening the shears? I thought of Æthelflaed, sometimes so cold and sometimes so desperate for warmth. She hated Eadith, who was so loyal to me and so loving and so fearful of Æthelflaed, and I thought of Mus, that creature of the dark who drove men wild, and I wondered if she feared anyone, and was instead a messenger from the gods.

I looked back to the woods and could see the shape of trees now, dark in the darkness, see the slash of rain. ‘Almost,’ I said again.

‘In the name of God,’ Finan muttered. I saw him make the sign of the cross. ‘If you see my brother,’ he said louder, ‘he’s mine.’

‘If I see your brother,’ I promised, ‘he’s yours.’ Godric had offered me the heavy spear, but I preferred a sword, and so I pulled Serpent-Breath from her scabbard and held her straight out, and I could see the sheen of her blade like a shimmer of misted light in the dark. A horse whinnied. I raised the blade and kissed the steel. ‘For Eostre,’ I said, ‘for Eostre and for Mercia!’

And the shadows beneath the trees dissolved into shapes, into bushes and trunks, of leaves thrashing in the wind. It was still night, but the wolf-light had come.

‘Let’s go,’ I said to Finan, then raised my voice to a shout. ‘Let’s go!’

The time for hiding was over. Now it was speed and noise. I crouched in the saddle, wary of low branches, letting Tintreg pick his own way, but urging him on. The small light grew. The rain was beating on the leaves, the woods were full of the noise of horses, the wind was tossing high branches like mad things in torment. I waited to hear a horn calling to summon our enemies, but none sounded. Lightning flickered to the north, casting stark black shadows among the trees, then the thunder sounded and just then I saw the first pale light of a fire ahead. Campfires! Ragnall’s men were in the clearings, and if he had set sentries they had not seen us, or we had passed them, and the flicker of fires fighting the drenching rain became brighter. I saw shadows among the fires. Some men were awake, presumably feeding the flames and oblivious that we were riding to their deaths. Then far off to my right, where the Roman road led into the forest, I heard shouts and knew our killing had begun.

That dawn was savage. Ragnall had thought we were sheltering behind Ceaster’s walls, cowed there by his killings on Eostre’s feast, but instead we burst on his men, coming with the thunder, and they were not ready. I crashed out of the trees into a wide clearing and saw miserable shelters hastily made from branches, and a man crawled from one, looked up and took Serpent-Breath in his face. The blade struck bone, jarred up my arm, and another man was running and I speared him in the back with the sword’s tip. All around me horsemen were wounding and killing. ‘Keep going,’ I bellowed, ‘keep going!’ This was just one encampment in a clearing, the main camp was still ahead. A glow above the dark trees showed where fires were lit on the summit of Eads Byrig and I rode that way.

Back into the trees. The light was growing, shrouded by storm clouds, but ahead I could see the wide swathe of land cleared of trees that surrounded the slopes of Eads Byrig and it was there, among the stumps, that most of Ragnall’s men were camped, and it was there we killed them. We burst from the woods with bloodied swords and we rode among the panicked men and we cut them down. Women screamed, children cried. My son led men from my right, slicing into fugitives fleeing from our swords. Tintreg thumped into a man, throwing him down into a fire that erupted sparks. His hair caught the flames. He shrieked and I back-handed Serpent-Breath to chop down another man running with wide eyes, his mail coat in his arms, and ahead of me a warrior bellowed defiance and waited with a spear for my charge and then turned, hearing hooves behind him, and died under a Frisian axe that clove his skull. Newly woken men were scrambling through the first ditch and over the earth wall and a horn was now sounding from the old fort’s summit. I spurred into a group of men, slashing Serpent-Breath down savagely as Godric rode in with his levelled spear to slice a man’s belly open. Tintreg snapped at a man, biting his face, then plunged on as thunder ripped the sky above us. Berg galloped past me, whooping, with a length of entrails dragging from his sword. He chopped the weapon down, turned his horse, and chopped again. The man Tintreg had bitten reeled away, hands clutched to his ruined face and blood seeping through his fingers. The brightest thing in that wolf-light was not the fires, but the blood of enemies reflecting the sudden glare of lightning.

I spurred towards the entrance of the ruined fort and saw a shield wall had formed across the track there. Men were running to join it, pushing their way into the ranks and lining their round shields to make the wall wider. Banners flew above them, but the flags were so soaked by rain that even that dawn’s strong wind could not lift them. My son spurred past me, riding for the track, and I called him back. ‘Leave them!’ There were at least a hundred men guarding the entrance path. Horses could not break them. I was certain Ragnall was there, as was Brida, both beneath their waterlogged banners, but their deaths must wait for another day. We had come to kill, not to fight against a shield wall.

I had told my men that each had only to kill one man and that killing would almost halve Ragnall’s army. We were wounding more than we were killing, but a wounded man is more trouble to an enemy than a dead man. A corpse can be buried or burned, he can be mourned and abandoned, but the wounded need care. The sight of men with missing eyes or with bellies welling blood or with splintered bones showing through flesh will give fear to an enemy. A wounded army is a slow army, full of terror, and we slowed Ragnall even more by driving his horses back into the forest. We drove women and children too, encouraging them by killing any that defied us. Ragnall’s men would know their womenfolk were in our hands and their children were destined for our slave markets. War is not kind, but Ragnall had brought war to Mercia in expectation that a land ruled by a woman would be easy to conquer. Now he was discovering just how easy.

I watched Cynlæf hunt down three men, all armed with spears and all trying to gut his horse before killing him. He dealt with them easily, using his skills as a horseman as well as his sword-craft to wound two and kill the third. ‘Impressive,’ Finan said grudgingly as we watched the young West Saxon turn his stallion, cut fast with his blade to open a man’s arm from elbow to shoulder, then use the horse’s weight to drive the last enemy down to the turf where he casually finished him off by leaning from the saddle and stabbing. Cynlæf saw we had watched him and grinned at us. ‘Good hunting this morning, lord!’ he called.

‘Sound the horn,’ I told Godric, who was grinning because he had killed and survived.

It was time to leave. We had ripped Ragnall’s encampments apart, soaked the wolf-light in blood, and hurt the enemy grievously. Bodies lay among the campfires that now died under the lash of rain. A good part of Ragnall’s army had survived, and those men were on the summit of Eads Byrig where they could only watch as our rampaging horsemen hunted down the last few survivors from the lower encampments. I gazed through the pelting downpour and thought I saw Ragnall standing next to a diminutive figure cloaked in black, and that could have been Brida. ‘My brother’s there,’ Finan said bitterly.

‘You can see him?’

‘See him and smell him.’ He rammed his sword back into its scabbard. ‘Another day. I’ll kill him yet.’

We turned away. We had come, we had killed, and now we left, driving horses, women and children ahead of us through the storm-drenched forest. No one pursued us. Ragnall’s men, imbued with confidence because of their leader’s arrogance, had been sheltering from the storm, and we had come with the thunder and now left with the dawn.

We lost eleven men. Just eleven. Two, I know, drove their horses across the ditches and up into the shield wall on Eads Byrig’s summit, but the rest? I never discovered what happened to those nine men, but it was a small price to pay for the havoc we had inflicted on Ragnall’s army. We had killed or wounded three or four hundred men and, once back in Ceaster, we discovered we had captured one hundred and seventeen horses, sixty-eight women, and ninety-four children. Even Ceolberht and Ceolnoth, the priests whose hatred for me was so fierce, stood applauding as the captives were driven through the gate. ‘Praise God!’ Father Ceolnoth exclaimed.

‘Praise Him in the highest!’ his brother hissed through missing teeth. A captive woman screamed at him and he stepped forward to slap her hard about the head. ‘You’re fortunate, woman,’ he told her, ‘you are in God’s hands! You will be a Christian now!’

‘All the little ones brought to Christ!’ Bishop Leofstan exclaimed, looking eagerly at the crying children.

‘Brought to Frankish slave markets,’ Finan muttered.

I dropped from Tintreg’s saddle, unbuckled the sword belt, and gave Serpent-Breath to Godric. ‘Clean it well,’ I told him, ‘and grease it. Then find Father Glædwine and send him to me.’

Godric stared at me. ‘You want a priest?’ he asked in disbelief.

‘I want Father Glædwine,’ I said, ‘so fetch him.’

Then I went to find breakfast.

Father Glædwine was one of Æthelflaed’s priests, a young man with a high pale forehead and a perpetual frown. He was said to be learned, the product of one of King Alfred’s schools in Wessex, and Æthelflaed used him as a clerk. He wrote her letters, copied her laws, and drew up land-charters, but his reputation went far beyond such menial duties. He was a poet, famed for the hymns he composed. Those hymns were chanted by monks in church and by harpists in halls, and I had been forced to listen to some, mainly when harpists sang in Æthelflaed’s palace. I had expected them to be dull, but Father Glædwine liked his songs to tell stories and, despite my distaste, I had enjoyed listening. One of his better songs told of the woman blacksmith who had forged the nails used to crucify the nailed god. There had been three nails and three curses, the first of which resulted in one of her children being eaten by a wolf, the second doomed her husband to drowning in a Galilean cesspit, and the third gave her the shaking disease and turned her brain to pottage, all of which evidently proved the power of the Christian god.

It was a good story and that was why I summoned Glædwine, who looked as if his own brain had been turned to pottage when he came to the courtyard of my house where Godwin was plunging my mail coat into a barrel. The water had turned pink. ‘That’s blood,’ I told a nervous Glædwine.

‘Yes, lord,’ he stammered.

‘Pagan blood.’

‘God be praised,’ he began, then remembered I was a pagan, ‘that you lived, lord,’ he added hastily and cleverly.

I struggled out of the leather jerkin that I wore beneath the mail coat. It stank. The courtyard was full of petitioners, but it always was. Men came for justice, for favours, or simply to remind me that they existed. Now they waited in the shelter of the roofed walkway that edged the courtyard. It still rained, though much of the storm’s malevolence had faded. I saw Gerbruht, the big Frisian, among the petitioners. He was forcing a prisoner to his knees. I did not recognise the man, but assumed he was one of Æthelflaed’s men who had been caught stealing. Gerbruht caught my eye and began to speak.

‘Later,’ I told him, and looked back to the pale priest. ‘You will write a song, Glædwine.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘A song of Eads Byrig.’

‘Of course, lord.’

‘This song will tell how Ragnall the Sea King, Ragnall the Cruel, came to Ceaster and was defeated there.’

‘He was defeated, lord,’ Glædwine repeated. He blinked as the rain fell into his eyes.

‘You will tell how his men were cut down, how his women were captured, and his children enslaved.’

‘Enslaved, lord,’ he nodded.

‘And how the men of Mercia carried their blades to an enemy and made them crawl in the mud.’

‘The mud, lord.’

‘It will be a song of triumph, Glædwine!’

‘Of course, lord,’ he said, frowning, then looked nervously around the courtyard. ‘But don’t you have your own poets, lord? Your harpists?’

‘And what will my poets chant of Eads Byrig?’

He fluttered his ink-stained hands, wondering what answer I wanted. ‘They will tell of your victory, lord, of course—’

‘And that’s what I don’t want!’ I interrupted him. ‘This will be a song of Lady Æthelflaed’s victory, you understand? Leave me out of it! Say the Lady Æthelflaed led the men of Mercia to their slaughter of the pagans, say your god led her and inspired her and gave her the triumph.’

‘My God?’ he asked astonished.

‘I want a Christian poem, you idiot.’

‘You want a …’ the idiot began, then bit off the rest of his question. ‘The Lady Æthelflaed’s triumph, yes, lord.’

‘And Prince Æthelstan,’ I said, ‘mention him too.’ Æthelstan had ridden with my son and acquitted himself well.

‘Yes, lord, Prince Æthelstan too.’

‘He killed scores! Say that! That Æthelstan made corpses of the pagans. This is a song of Æthelflaed and Æthelstan, you don’t even need to mention my name. You can say I stayed in Ceaster with a sore toe.’

‘A sore toe, lord,’ Glædwine repeated, frowning. ‘You want this victory ascribed to Almighty God?’

‘And to Æthelflaed,’ I insisted.

‘And it’s Eastertide,’ Glædwine said, almost to himself.

‘Eostre’s feast,’ I corrected him.

‘I can say it is the Easter victory, lord!’ he sounded excited.

‘It can be whatever you like,’ I snarled, ‘but I want that song chanted in every hall. I want it shouted in Wessex, heard in East Anglia, told to the Welsh, and sung in Frankia. Make it good, priest, make it bloody, make it exciting!’

‘Of course, lord!’

‘The song of Ragnall’s defeat,’ I said, though of course Ragnall was not defeated, not yet. More than half his army remained, and that half probably still outnumbered us, but he had been shown to be vulnerable. He had come across the sea and he had taken most of Northumbria with speed and daring, and the stories of those exploits would spread until men believed that Ragnall was fated to be a conqueror, so now was the time to tell folk that Ragnall could be beaten and that he would be beaten. And it was better that it was Æthelflaed who was shown to be Ragnall’s doom because many men would not allow songs of Uhtred to be sung in their halls. I was a pagan, they were Christian. They would hear Glædwine’s song, though, which would give the nailed god all the credit and take away some of the fear of Ragnall. And there were still fools who thought a woman should not rule, so let the fools hear a song about a woman’s triumph.

I gave Glædwine gold. Like most poets he claimed he invented his songs because he had no choice, ‘I never asked to be a poet,’ he had told me once, ‘but the words just come to me, lord. They come from the Holy Ghost! He is my inspiration!’ That might have been true, though I noticed the Holy Ghost was a lot more inspiring when it smelt gold or silver. ‘Write well,’ I told him, then waved him away.

The moment that Glædwine scuttled to the gate all the petitioners surged forward to be checked by my spearmen. I nodded to Gerbruht. ‘You’re next.’

Gerbruht kicked his prisoner towards me. ‘He’s a Norseman, lord,’ he said, ‘one of Ragnall’s scum.’

‘Then why does he have both hands?’ I asked. We had taken some men prisoner along with the women and children and I had ordered their sword hands chopped off before we let them go. ‘He should be back at Eads Byrig,’ I said, ‘with a bloody stump for a wrist.’ I took a pot of ale from one of the maids and drank it all. When I looked back I saw that the prisoner was crying. He was a good-looking man, maybe in his middle twenties, with a battle-scarred face and cheeks marked with inked axes. I was used to boys crying, but the prisoner was a hard-looking man and he was sobbing. That intrigued me. Most men face mutilation bravely or with defiance, but this man was weeping like a child. ‘Wait,’ I told Gerbruht, who had drawn a knife.

‘I wasn’t going to chop him here!’ Gerbruht protested, ‘Not here. Your lady Eadith doesn’t like blood all over the courtyard. Remember that sow we butchered at Yule? She wasn’t happy at all!’ He kicked the sobbing prisoner. ‘And we didn’t capture this one in the dawn fight, lord, he only just arrived.’

‘He only just arrived?’

‘He rode his horse to the gate, lord. There were bastards chasing him, but he got here first.’

‘Then we won’t chop him or kill him,’ I said, ‘yet.’ I used my boot to raise the prisoner’s chin. ‘Tell me your name?’

‘Vidarr, lord,’ he said, trying to control his sobs.

‘Norse? Dane?’

‘Norse, lord.’

‘Why are you here, Vidarr?’

He took a huge breath. Gerbruht evidently thought he would not answer and slapped him around the head. ‘My wife!’ Vidarr said hurriedly.

‘Your wife.’

‘My wife!’ he said again, and his face crumpled into grief. ‘My wife, lord.’ He seemed incapable of saying anything else.

‘Leave him alone,’ I told Gerbruht, who was about to hit the prisoner again. ‘Tell me about your wife,’ I ordered Vidarr.

‘She’s your prisoner, lord.’

‘So?’

His voice was little more than a whisper. ‘She’s my wife, lord.’

‘And you love her?’ I asked harshly.

‘Yes, lord.’

‘God in His heaven,’ Gerbruht mocked. ‘He loves her! She’s probably been …’

‘Quiet,’ I snarled. I looked at Vidarr. ‘Who has your oath?’

‘Jarl Ragnall, lord.’

‘So what do you expect me to do? Give you back your wife and let you go?’

He shook his head. ‘No, lord.’

‘A man who breaks his oath,’ I said, ‘can’t be trusted.’

‘I swore an oath to Askatla too, lord.’

‘Askatla? She’s your wife?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘And that oath is greater than the one to Jarl Ragnall?’

He knew the answer to that and did not want to say it aloud, so instead he raised his head to look at me. ‘I love her, lord,’ he pleaded. He sounded pathetic and he knew it, but he had been driven to this humiliation by love. A woman can do that. They have power. We might all say that the oath to our lord is the strong oath that guides our lives, the oath that binds us and rules all the other oaths, but few men would not abandon every oath under the sun for a woman. I have broken oaths. I am not proud of that, but almost every oath I broke was for a woman.

‘Give me one reason I should not have you taken to the ditch and killed,’ I said to Vidarr. He said nothing. ‘Or have you sent back to Jarl Ragnall,’ I added. We dare not admit that women have such power, and so I was harsh with him.

He just shook his head, not knowing how to answer me. Gerbruht leered happily, but then Vidarr tried one last desperate appeal. ‘I know why your son came to Ragnall!’

‘My son?’

‘The priest, lord.’ He gazed up at me, despair on his face. I said nothing, and he mistook that silence for anger. ‘The priest the sorceress cut, lord,’ he added in a low voice.

‘I know what she did to him,’ I said.

His face dropped. ‘Spare me, lord,’ he almost whispered the words, ‘and I will serve you.’

He had intrigued me. I lifted his head with my right hand. ‘Why did my son go to Ragnall?’ I asked.

‘He was an emissary of peace, lord.’

‘An emissary?’ I asked. That made little sense. ‘From whom?’

‘From Ireland, lord!’ he said in a tone suggesting he thought I already knew. ‘From your daughter.’

For a moment I was too astonished to speak. I just stared at him. The rain fell on his face, but I was oblivious of the weather. ‘Stiorra?’ I finally asked. ‘Why would she send an emissary for peace?’

‘Because they’re at war, lord!’

‘They?’

‘Ragnall and his brother!’

I still just stared at him. Vidarr opened his mouth to say more, but I silenced him by shaking my head. So Sigtryggr was Ragnall’s enemy too? My son-in-law was an ally?

I shouted to Godric. ‘Bring me Serpent-Breath! Now!’

He gave me the sword. I looked into Vidarr’s eyes, raised the blade and saw him flinch, then I brought the weapon down hard so that her tip struck into the soft earth between two of the paving stones. I clasped my hands around the hilt. ‘Swear loyalty to me,’ I ordered him.

He put his hands around mine and swore to be my man, to be loyal to me, to serve me, to die for me. ‘Find him a sword,’ I commanded Gerbruht, ‘and a coat of mail, a shield, and his wife.’

Then I went to find my son. My eldest son.

Wyrd bið ful āræd.