Warriors of the Storm

Ten

A smear of red discoloured the water. It drifted away, turned pink and slowly vanished. The deck of Hræsvelgr was thick with blood, while the air stank of blood and shit. There were sixteen dead men, eight prisoners, and the rest of Orvar’s crew were in the bloodied water clinging to oars that floated close by the hull. We hauled those men aboard, then searched both them and the dead for coins, hacksilver, or anything else of value. We piled the plunder and the captured weapons by Sæbroga’s mast, close to which Orvar sat watching as the first of his dead crewmen were thrown overboard from Hræsvelgr, which was still lashed to our larger ship. ‘Who are you?’ he asked me.

‘I’m the bitch’s father,’ I said.

He flinched, then closed his eyes for a second. ‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg?’

‘I’m Uhtred.’

He laughed, which surprised me, though it was a bitter laugh, bereft of any amusement. ‘Jarl Ragnall sacrificed a black stallion to Thor as a pledge of your death.’

‘Did it die well?’

He shook his head. ‘They bodged it. It took three blows of the hammer.’

‘I was given a black stallion not long ago,’ I said.

He flinched again, recognising that the gods had favoured me and that Ragnall’s sacrifice had been rejected. ‘The gods love you then,’ he said, ‘lucky you.’ He was about my age, which meant he was old. He looked grizzled, lined and hard. His beard, grey with dark streaks, had ivory rings woven into the hair, he wore golden rings in his ears, and had worn a thick golden chain with a golden hammer until my son took it from him. ‘Did you have to kill them?’ he asked, looking at the corpses of his men floating naked in the reddened water.

‘You have my daughter under siege,’ I said angrily, ‘she and my granddaughter. What was I supposed to do? Kiss you?’

He nodded reluctant acceptance of my anger. ‘But they were good boys,’ he said, grimacing as another corpse was tossed over Hræsvelgr’s side. ‘How did you capture the Øxtívar?’ he asked.

‘Øxtívar?’

‘His ship!’ He rapped the mast. ‘This ship!’

So that had been Sæbroga’s name, Øxtívar. It meant axe of the gods and it was a good name, but Sæbroga was better. ‘The same way I sent Ragnall running away from Ceaster,’ I said, ‘by beating him in battle.’

He frowned at me as if assessing whether I told the truth, then gave another of his mirthless laughs. ‘We’ve heard nothing from the Jarl,’ he said, ‘not since he left. Does he live?’

‘Not for long.’

He grimaced. ‘Nor me, I suppose?’ He waited for a response, but I said nothing, so he just patted the mast. ‘He loves this ship.’

‘Loved,’ I corrected him. ‘But he kept too much weight forward.’

He nodded. ‘He always did. But he likes to see his oarsmen get soaked because it amuses him. He says it toughens them. His father was the same.’

‘And Sigtryggr?’ I asked.

‘What of him?’

‘Does he like toughening his crew?’

‘No,’ Orvar said, ‘he’s the good brother.’

That answer surprised me, not because I thought Sigtryggr bad, but because Orvar served Ragnall and loyalty alone would have suggested a different response. ‘The good brother?’ I asked.

‘People like him,’ Orvar said, ‘they’ve always liked him. He’s generous. Ragnall’s cruel and Sigtryggr’s generous. You should know that, he married your daughter!’

‘I like him,’ I said, ‘and it sounds as if you do too.’

‘I do,’ he said simply, ‘but Ragnall has my oath.’

‘You had a choice?’

He shook his head. ‘Their father ordered it. Some of us were sworn to Ragnall, some to Sigtryggr. I think Jarl Olaf thought they’d divide his lands peaceably, but once he died they fell out with each other instead.’ He looked at the floating bodies. ‘And here I am.’ He watched as I sorted through the captured weapons, weighing the swords one by one. ‘So now you’ll kill me?’ he asked.

‘You have a better idea?’ I asked sarcastically.

‘Either you kill me or the Irish will,’ Orvar said gloomily.

‘I thought they were your allies?’

‘Some allies!’ he said scornfully. ‘They agreed to attack the land side of the fort while we assaulted the beach, but the bastards never came. I lost twenty-three men! The damned Irish said the omens were bad.’ He spat. ‘I don’t believe they ever did intend to attack! They just lied.’

‘And they won’t attack,’ I suggested, ‘because of my daughter’s sorcery?’

‘She’s got them scared, right enough, but I also think they want us to do all the fighting for them so they can move in and kill the survivors. Then take your daughter to …’ he did not finish that sentence. ‘We fight,’ he said wryly, ‘and they win. They’re not fools.’

I looked up, seeing small white clouds sailing serene in a perfect blue. The sun lit the land almost a luminous green. I could see why men lusted after this land, but I had known Finan long enough to learn that it was no easy place to settle. ‘I don’t understand,’ I told Orvar. ‘You like Sigtryggr, you mistrust your allies, so why didn’t you just make a truce with him? Why not join Sigtryggr?’

Orvar had been gazing at the water, but now raised his eyes to look into mine. ‘Because Ragnall has my wife as a hostage.’

I winced at that.

‘My children too,’ Orvar went on. ‘He took my wife and he took Bjarke’s woman too.’

‘Bjarke?’

‘Bjarke Neilson,’ he said, ‘shipmaster on the Nidhogg,’ he jerked his head northwards and I realised the Nidhogg must be the second ship that was blockading Sigtryggr’s fastness, and the jerk of Orvar’s head told me she was somewhere to the north of the loch. If Hræsvelgr was the eagle perched at the top of the life tree then Nidhogg was the serpent coiled at its roots, a vile creature that gnawed at the corpses of dishonoured men. It was a strange name for a ship, but one, I supposed, that would strike fear into enemies. Orvar frowned. ‘I suppose you’ll want to capture her too?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you can’t risk any of us warning Nidhogg by shouting,’ he said, ‘but at least let us die with swords in our hands?’ He looked at me pleadingly. ‘I beg you, lord, let us die like warriors.’

I found the best sword from among the captured weapons. It was long-bladed with a fine hilt of carved ivory and crosspieces shaped like hammers. I weighed it in my hand, liking its heft. ‘Was this yours?’

‘And my father’s before me,’ he said, staring at the blade.

‘So tell me,’ I said, ‘what must you do to get your family back?’

‘Give Ragnall your daughter, of course. What else?’

I turned the sword around, holding it by the blade to offer him the hilt. ‘Then why don’t we do just that?’ I asked.

He stared at me.

So I explained.

I needed men. I needed an army. For years Æthelflaed had refused to cross the frontier into Northumbria except to punish the Norse or Danes who had stolen cattle or slaves from Mercia. Such revenge raids could be brutal, but they were just raids, never an invasion. She wanted to secure Mercia first, to build a chain of burhs along its northern border, but by refusing to capture Northumbrian land she was also doing her brother’s bidding.

Edward of Wessex had proved to be a good enough king. He was not the equal of his father, of course. He lacked Alfred’s intense cleverness and Alfred’s single-minded determination to rescue the Saxons and Christianity from the pagan Northmen, but Edward had continued his father’s work. He had led the West Saxon army into East Anglia where he was winning back land and building burhs. The land ruled by Wessex was being pushed slowly northwards, and Saxons were settling estates that had belonged to Danish jarls. Alfred had dreamed of one kingdom, a kingdom of Saxon Christians, ruled by a Saxon Christian king and speaking the language of the Saxons. Alfred had called himself the King of the English-Speaking people, which was not quite the same thing as being King of Englaland, but that dream, the dream of a united country, was slowly coming true.

But to make it wholly true meant subduing the Norse and the Danes in Northumbria, and that Æthelflaed was reluctant to do. She did not fear the risks, but rather feared the displeasure of her brother and of the church. Wessex was far richer than war-torn Mercia. West Saxon silver supported Æthelflaed’s troops and West Saxon gold was poured into Mercian churches, and Edward did not want his sister to be reckoned a greater ruler than himself. If Northumbria was to be invaded, then Edward would lead the army and Edward would gain the reputation, and so he forbade his sister from invading Northumbria without him, and Æthelflaed, knowing how reliant she was on her brother’s gold and, besides, reluctant to offend him, was content to reclaim Mercia’s northern lands. The time would come, she liked to tell me, when the combined armies of Mercia and Wessex would march triumphantly to the Scottish border and when that happened there would be a new country, not Wessex, not Mercia, not East Anglia, not Northumbria, but Englaland.

All of which might have been true, but it was too slow for me. I was growing old. There were aches in my bones, grey hairs in my beard, and an old dream in my heart. I wanted Bebbanburg. Bebbanburg was mine. I was and am the Lord of Bebbanburg. Bebbanburg belonged to my father and to his father, and it will belong to my son and to his son. And Bebbanburg lay deep inside Northumbria. To besiege it, to capture it from my cousin whose father had stolen it from me, I needed to be in Northumbria. I needed to lay siege and I could not hope to do that with a horde of bitter Norsemen and vengeful Danes surrounding me. I had already tried to capture Bebbanburg once by approaching the fortress from the sea, and that attempt had failed. Next time, I vowed, I would take an army to Bebbanburg, and to do that I first had to capture the land around the fortress, and that meant defeating the Northmen who ruled that territory. I needed to invade Northumbria.

Which meant I needed an army.

The idea had come to me when I had light-heartedly told Finan that my forgiveness gift to Æthelflaed would be Eoferwic, by which I had meant that one way or the other I would rid that city of Ragnall’s forces.

But now, suddenly, I saw the idea clearly.

I needed Bebbanburg. To gain Bebbanburg I needed to defeat the Northmen of Northumbria, and to defeat the Northmen of Northumbria I needed an army.

And if Æthelflaed would not let me use the Mercian army then I would use Ragnall’s.

Sigtryggr’s fortress was almost an island. It was a steep hump of rock-strewn land rearing from the lough’s water and protected from a sea approach by ledges, islets, and rocks. The land approach was even worse. The only path to the hump of rock was a low and narrow neck, scarce wide enough for six men to walk abreast. Even if men could cross the neck they faced a steep climb to the summit of Sigtryggr’s fort, the same climb that any attackers from the sea would find beyond the thin beach. To reach that beach a ship first had to negotiate a twisting channel that dog-legged from the south, but once the troops had leaped off the boat’s prow they would be confronted by high bluffs and precipitous slopes above which the defenders waited. The headland was like Bebbanburg, a place made to frustrate an attacker, though, unlike Bebbanburg, there was no palisade because none was needed, just the rocky heights above which cooking fires smoked on the hill’s wide green summit.

Sæbroga approached the fort from the south, picking a delicate path between the hidden ledges and rocks. Gerbruht stood in the prow, probing the water with an oar and shouting when its blade struck rock. I had just twelve men rowing, there was no need for more because we dared not travel fast. We could only creep through the dangers.

Sigtryggr’s garrison saw a boat crammed with men, glinting with weapons and displaying Ragnall’s big red axe at its prow. They would recognise Sæbroga and think that either Ragnall himself had come to finish them or else sent one of his more trusted war chiefs. I watched as the garrison formed a shield wall on the slope and I listened to the harsh clash of war-blades striking willow-boards. Sigtryggr’s banner, a red axe just like his brother’s symbol, was unfurled higher on the hill and I thought I saw Stiorra standing beside the banner. Her husband, blond hair bright in the sunlight, pushed through his shield wall and strode halfway down to the beach. ‘Come and die!’ he bellowed from the summit of one of the headland’s many rock bluffs. ‘Come join your friends!’ He gestured with his drawn sword and I saw human heads had been placed on rocks along the shore. Just as I had welcomed Ragnall with the severed heads at Eads Byrig, so Sigtryggr was welcoming visitors to his refuge.

‘It’s a corpse fence,’ Finan said.

‘A what?’

‘The heads! You think twice before crossing a corpse fence.’ He made the sign of the cross.

‘I need more heads!’ Sigtryggr shouted. ‘So bring me yours! I beg you!’ Behind him the swords clattered on shields. No attacker could hope to survive an assault on that rock, not unless he could bring an army to the shore and so overwhelm the few defenders, and that would be impossible. There was only room for three or perhaps four ships on the beach, and those ships would be forced to approach single file between the hazards. We inched our way, and more than once the Sæbroga’s bows touched rock and we had to back water and try again as Gerbruht bellowed instructions.

‘To make it easy for you,’ Sigtryggr shouted, ‘we’ll let you land!’ He stood on the bluff beside one of the heads. His long golden hair hung below his shoulders around which a chain of gold was looped three times. He was in mail, but wore no helmet nor carried a shield. He had his long-sword in his right hand, the blade naked. He was grinning, looking forward to a battle he knew he would win. I remembered young Berg describing him as a lord of war, and even though he was trapped and besieged, he looked magnificent.

I went forward and told Gerbruht to make way for me, then climbed onto the small platform just beneath the axe-head prow. I wore a plain helmet with closed cheek-pieces and Sigtryggr mistook me for Orvar. ‘Welcome back, Orvar! You brought me more men to be killed? You didn’t lose enough last time?’

‘Do I look like Orvar?’ I bellowed back. ‘You half-blind idiot! You spawn of a goat! Do you want me to take your other eye?’

He stared.

‘Can’t a father visit his daughter without being insulted by some shit-brained, one-eyed arse-dropping Norseman?’ I called.

He held up his free hand, indicating that his men should stop beating their shields. And still he stared. Behind him the clatter of blades on willow slowly faded.

I took the helmet off and tossed it back to Gerbruht. ‘Is this the welcome a loving father-in-law gets?’ I demanded. ‘I come all this way to rescue your worthless arse and you threaten me with your feeble insults? Why aren’t you showering me with gold and gifts, you wall-eyed piece of ungrateful toad shit?’

He began to laugh, then he danced. He capered for a few heartbeats, then stopped and spread his arms wide. ‘It’s amazing!’ he shouted.

‘What’s amazing, you goat dropping?’

‘That a mere Saxon should bring a boat safe from Britain! Was the voyage very frightening?’

‘About as scary as facing you in battle,’ I said.

‘So you pissed yourself then?’ he asked, grinning.

I laughed. ‘We borrowed your brother’s boat!’

‘So I see!’ He sheathed his sword. ‘You’re safe now! You’ve got deep water all the way to the beach!’

‘Pull!’ I called to the rowers, and they tugged on the looms and Sæbroga surged across the last few yards to grind her bow on the shingle. I stepped back off the platform and clambered over the steerboard bow strake. I dropped into water that came up to my thighs and almost lost my balance, but Sigtryggr had come down from his boulder, stretched out a hand, and pulled me ashore. He embraced me.

Even without an eye he was still a handsome man, hawk-faced and fair-haired, quick to smile, and I understood so well why Stiorra had sailed with him from Britain. I had been seeking a husband for her, looking among the warriors of Mercia and Wessex for a man who could match her intelligence and fierce passion, but she had taken the choice from me. She had married my enemy and now he was my ally. I was pleased to see him, even surprised by the surge of pleasure I felt.

‘You took your time coming, lord,’ he said happily.

‘I knew you weren’t in real trouble,’ I said, ‘so why should I hurry?’

‘Because we were running out of ale, of course.’ He turned and shouted up the rocky slope. ‘You can put your swords away! These ugly bastards are friends!’ He plucked my elbow. ‘Come and meet your granddaughter, lord.’

Stiorra came to me instead, leading a small child by the hand, and I confess the breath caught in my throat. It was not the child that misted my eyes. I have never liked small children, not even my own, but I loved my daughter and I could see why Ragnall would go to war for her. Stiorra had become a woman, graceful and confident, and so like her mother that it hurt just to look at her. She smiled as she approached, then offered me a dutiful curtsey. ‘Father,’ she said.

‘I’m not crying,’ I said, ‘dust got in my eye.’

‘Yes, father,’ she said.

I embraced her, then held her at arm’s length. She wore a dark dress of finely woven linen beneath a woollen cloak dyed black. An ivory hammer hung at her neck and a golden torque circled it. She wore her hair high, pinned by combs of gold and ivory. She took a step back, but only so she could draw her daughter forward. ‘This is your granddaughter,’ she said, ‘Gisela Sigtryggdottir.’

‘That’s a mouthful.’

‘She’s a handful.’

I glanced at the girl who looked like her mother and grandmother. She was dark, with large eyes and long black hair. She looked back at me very solemnly, but neither of us had anything to say and so said nothing. Stiorra laughed at our tongue-tied silence, then turned away to greet Finan. My men were securing the Sæbroga to the shore, using long lines that they lashed around boulders.

‘You might want to leave men aboard,’ Sigtryggr warned me, ‘because two of my brother’s ships are patrolling the loch. Hræsvelgr and Nidhogg.’

‘Hræsvelgr is already ours,’ I told him, ‘and Nidhogg soon will be. We’ll capture the other two as well.’

‘You captured Hræsvelgr?’ he asked, evidently astonished at the news.

‘You didn’t see it?’ I asked, and looked south and saw that islands would have hidden the Sæbroga’s meeting with the Hræsvelgr. ‘We should have five ships by tomorrow,’ I said brusquely, ‘but with their crews, my crew, and your people? They’ll be crowded! But if the weather stays calm like this, we should be safe enough. Unless you want to stay here?’

He was still trying to comprehend what I was saying. ‘Their crews?’

‘Your crews, really,’ I said, deliberately confusing him with a flood of good news. He looked over my shoulder and I turned to see that the Hræsvelgr had just appeared around the headland. Orvar was back in command of her. I watched and, sure enough, a second ship was following in her wake, ‘That must be the Nidhogg,’ I said to Sigtryggr.

‘It is.’

‘Orvar Freyrson,’ I told him, ‘is going to swear loyalty to you. I assume Bjarke is too, and every man of their crews as well. If any of them refuse, I suggest we strand them on an island here, unless you’d rather kill them.’

‘Orvar will swear loyalty?’ he asked.

‘And Bjarke too, I suspect.’

‘If Orvar and Bjarke swear,’ he said, frowning as he tried to comprehend the significance of all I was telling him, ‘their crews will too. All of them.’

‘And Orvar is confident he can persuade the other two ships to do the same,’ I said.

‘How did you persuade …’ he began, then just stopped, still trying to understand how fate had turned that morning. He had woken trapped and besieged, now he was commanding a small fleet.

‘How?’ I asked. ‘Because I offered him land, a lot of land. Your land, as it happens, but I didn’t think you’d mind.’

‘My land?’ he asked, now totally confused.

‘I’m making you King of Eoferwic,’ I explained, as if that was something I did every day, ‘and of Northumbria too. Don’t thank me!’ He had made no sign of thanking me, he was just staring at me in astonishment. ‘Because there will be conditions! But for now we should get the ships ready for a voyage. I’m reckoning we must empty some of their ballast because they’re going to be loaded to the upper strake. I’m told the weather on this coast can change in an eyeblink, but this looks settled enough and we should leave as soon as we can. And Dudda tells me we should leave the lough at slack water, so perhaps tomorrow morning?’

‘Dudda?’

‘My shipmaster,’ I explained, ‘and usually drunk, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference to him. So tomorrow morning?’

‘Where are we going?’ Sigtryggr asked.

‘To Cair Ligualid.’

He stared at me vacantly. It was plain he had never heard of the place. ‘And Cair whatever it is,’ he asked, ‘is where?’

‘Over there,’ I said, pointing east, ‘a day’s voyage.’

‘King of Northumbria?’ he asked, still trying to understand what I was telling him.

‘If you agree,’ I said, ‘then I’m making you King of Northumbria. King of Jorvik, really, but whoever holds that throne usually calls himself King of Northumbria too. Your brother reckons he’s the king there now, but you and I should be able to give him a grave instead.’ Hræsvelgr had just beached, and Orvar leaped off the prow to stumble awkwardly on the rocky shore. ‘He’s either going to kill you,’ I said, watching Orvar, ‘or else kneel to you.’

Orvar, his golden chain restored, just as all his men had been given back their weapons, coins, hacksilver, and talismans, crossed the short stretch of beach. He gave Stiorra a respectful and embarrassed nod, then looked Sigtryggr in the eye. ‘Lord?’ he said.

‘You gave my brother your oath,’ Sigtryggr said harshly.

‘And your brother took my family hostage,’ Orvar said, ‘which no oath-lord should ever do.’

‘True,’ Sigtryggr said. He looked away as the Nidhogg grounded, her prow scraping on the shingle. Her master, Bjarke, leaped off the bow and stood watching Sigtryggr, who drew his long-sword. The blade hissed as it scraped through the scabbard’s throat. For a heartbeat Sigtryggr seemed to threaten Orvar with the long blade, then he let the sword fall so that its tip was planted in the shingle. ‘You know what to do,’ he told Orvar.

The crews of Hræsvelgr and Nidhogg watched as Orvar knelt and clasped his hands around Sigtryggr’s hands, which, in turn, held the sword. Orvar took a breath, but before speaking the oath he looked up at me. ‘You promise my family will live, lord?’

‘What I promise,’ I said carefully, ‘is that I will do everything I can to make certain that they live and are unharmed.’ I touched the hammer at my neck, ‘and I swear that by Thor and by the lives of my own family.’

‘And how do you keep that oath?’ Sigtryggr asked me.

‘By giving Ragnall your wife, of course. Now let Jarl Orvar swear you loyalty.’

And on a beach, beside a placid lough, under a sky of blue and white, the oaths were made.

It is not difficult to be a lord, a jarl, or even a king, but it is difficult to be a leader.

Most men want to follow, and what they demand of their leader is prosperity. We are the ring-givers, the gold-givers. We give land, we give silver, we give slaves, but that alone is not enough. They must be led. Leave men standing or sitting for days at a time and they get bored, and bored men make trouble. They must be surprised and challenged, given tasks they think beyond their abilities. And they must fear. A leader who is not feared will cease to rule, but fear is not enough. They must love too. When a man has been led into the shield wall, when an enemy is roaring defiance, when the blades are clashing on shields, when the soil is about to be soaked in blood, when the ravens circle in wait for the offal of men, then a man who loves his leader will fight better than a man who merely fears him. At that moment we are brothers, we fight for each other, and a man must know that his leader will sacrifice his own life to save any one of his men.

I learned all that from Ragnar, a man who led with joy in his soul, though he was feared too. His great enemy, Kjartan, knew only how to lead by fear, and Ragnall was the same. Men who lead by fear might become great kings and might rule lands so great that no man knows their boundaries, but they can be beaten too, beaten by men who fight as brothers.

‘What my brother offered,’ Sigtryggr told me that night, ‘was that I should be king of the islands and he would be king of Britain.’

‘The islands?’

‘All the sea islands,’ he explained, ‘everything along the coast.’ He waved northwards. I had sailed those waters and knew that everything north of the Irish Sea is a tangle of islands, rocks and wild waves.

‘The Scots might not have liked that,’ I said, amused. ‘And the Scots are nothing but trouble.’

He grinned. ‘That, I think, was in Ragnall’s mind. I would keep the Scots off his back while he conquered the Saxon lands.’ He paused, watching the sparks whirl up into the darkness. ‘I’d get the rocks, the seaweed, the gulls, and the goats, and he’d get the gold, the wheat, and the women.’

‘You said no?’

‘I said yes.’

‘Why?’

He looked at me with his one eye. The other was a pucker of sunken scar tissue. ‘It’s family,’ he said, ‘it’s what our father wanted. Life has become hard here in Ireland and it’s time to find new lands.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, if I was Lord of the Islands I could turn their rocks into gold.’

‘Rocks, seaweed, gulls, and goats?’ I asked.

‘And ships,’ he said wolfishly. He was thinking piracy. ‘And they say there are lands beyond the sea.’

‘I’ve heard those stories,’ I said dubiously.

‘But think of it! New lands! Waiting to be settled.’

‘There’s nothing but fire and ice out there,’ I said. ‘I sailed it once, out to where the ice glitters and the mountains spill fire.’

‘Then we use the fire to melt the ice.’

‘And beyond that?’ I asked. ‘Men say there are other lands, but haunted by monsters.’

‘Then we slaughter the monsters,’ he said happily.

I smiled at his enthusiasm. ‘So you said yes to your brother?’

‘I did! I would be the Sea King and he would be King of Britain,’ he paused, ‘but then he demanded Stiorra.’

There was silence around the fire. Stiorra had been listening, her long face grave, and now she caught my eye and smiled slightly, a secret smile. Men leaned in beyond the inner circle, trying to hear what was being said and relaying the words to those who were out of earshot.

‘He wanted Stiorra,’ I said flatly.

‘He always wants hostages,’ Orvar said.

I grimaced. ‘You hold your enemies’ families hostage, not your friends.’

‘We’re all enemies to Ragnall,’ Bjarke put in. He was Nidhogg’s shipmaster, a tall and lean Norseman with a long plaited beard and a face marked with an inked ship on either cheek.

‘He holds your wife too?’ I asked.

‘My wife, two daughters, and my son.’

So Ragnall ruled by fear, and only by fear. Men were scared of him and so they should be because he was a frightening man, but a leader who rules by fear must also be successful. He must lead his men from victory to victory because the moment he shows himself weak then he is vulnerable, and Ragnall had been beaten. I had thrashed him in the woods about Eads Byrig, I had driven him from the lands around Ceaster, and it was no wonder, I thought, that the men he had left in Ireland were so ready to betray the oaths they had sworn to him.

And that was another question. If a man swears an oath of loyalty and afterwards the lord takes hostages for the fulfilment of that oath, is the oath valid? When a man clasped hands with me, when he said the words that bound his fate to mine, then he became like a brother. Ragnall trusted no one, it seemed. He took oaths and he took hostages. Every man was his enemy, and a man owes no loyalty to an enemy.

Svart, a huge man who was Sigtryggr’s second-in-command, growled, ‘He didn’t want the Lady Stiorra as a hostage,’ he said.

‘No,’ Sigtryggr agreed.

‘I was to be his wife,’ Stiorra said, ‘his fifth wife.’

‘He told you that?’ I asked.

‘Fulla told me,’ she said. ‘Fulla is his first wife. She showed me her scars too.’ She spoke very calmly. ‘Did you ever beat your wives, father?’

I smiled at her through the flames. ‘I’m weak that way, no.’

She smiled back. ‘I remember you telling us that a man does not beat a woman. You said it often.’

‘Only a weak man beats a woman,’ I said. Some of the listening men looked uncomfortable, but none of them argued. ‘But it might take a strong man to have more than one wife?’ I went on, looking at Sigtryggr, who laughed.

‘I wouldn’t dare,’ he said, ‘she’d beat me to a pulp.’

‘So Ragnall demanded Stiorra?’ I prompted him.

‘He brought his whole fleet to take her! Hundreds of men! It was his right, he said. And so we came here.’

‘Fled here,’ Stiorra said drily.

‘We had six ships,’ Sigtryggr explained, ‘and he had thirty-six.’

‘What happened to the six ships?’

‘We bribed the Irish with them, exchanged them for grain and ale.’

‘The same Irish who were paid to kill you?’ I asked. Sigtryggr nodded. ‘So why haven’t they killed you?’

‘Because they don’t want to die on these rocks,’ Sigtryggr said, ‘and because of your daughter.’

I looked at her. ‘Because of your sorcery?’

Stiorra nodded, then stood, her face cast into stern shadows by the flames. ‘Come with me, father,’ she said and I saw that Sigtryggr’s men were grinning, enjoying some secret jest. ‘Father?’ Stiorra beckoned westwards. ‘It’s time, anyway.’

‘Time?’

‘You’ll see.’

I followed her westwards. She gave me her hand to guide me down the slope because the night was dark and the path off the hilltop was steep. We went slowly, our eyes adjusting to the night’s blackness. ‘It’s me,’ she called softly as we reached the foot of the hill.

‘Mistress,’ a voice acknowledged from the dark. There were evidently sentries beside the crude stone wall that had been built to bar the narrow neck of land that led away from the fort. I could see fires now, campfires, a long way off on the mainland.

‘How many men around those fires?’ I asked.

‘Hundreds,’ Stiorra said calmly. ‘Enough to overwhelm us, so we needed to use other methods to keep them away.’ She climbed onto the wall’s top and let go of my hand. I could hardly see her now. She wore a cloak as black as the night, as black as her hair, but I was aware of her standing straight and tall, facing the distant enemy.

And then she began to sing.

Or rather she crooned and she moaned, her voice sliding up and down eerily, crying in the darkness, and sometimes pausing to yelp like a vixen. Then she would stop and there would be silence in the night except for the sigh of wind across the land. She started again, yelping again, short sharp barks that she spat westwards before letting her voice slide up into a desperate scream that slowly, slowly faded into a whimper and then to nothing.

And then, as if in answer, the western horizon was lit by lightning. Not the sharp stabs of Thor’s thunderbolts, not the jagged streaks of anger that split the sky, but flickering sheets of silent summer lightning. They showed, distant and bright, then went, leaving darkness again and a stillness that felt full of menace. There was one last burst of far light and I saw the white skulls of the death fence arrayed along the wall where Stiorra stood.

‘There, father,’ she held out a hand, ‘they’re cursed again.’

I took her hand and helped her down from the wall. ‘Cursed?’

‘They think I’m a sorceress.’

‘And are you?’

‘They fear me,’ she said. ‘I call the spirits of the dead to haunt them and they know I speak to the gods.’

‘I thought they were Christians?’

‘They are, but they fear the older gods, and I keep them frightened.’ She paused, staring up into the dark. ‘There’s something different here in Ireland,’ she said, sounding puzzled, ‘as if the old magic still clings to the earth. You can feel it.’

‘I can’t.’

She smiled. I saw the white of her teeth. ‘I learned the runesticks. Fulla taught me.’

I had given her the runesticks that her mother had used, the slender polished shafts that, when cast, made intricate patterns that were said to tell the future. ‘Do they speak to you?’ I asked.

‘They said you’d come, and they said Ragnall will die. They said a third thing …’ she stopped abruptly.

‘A third thing?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘Sometimes they’re hard to read,’ she said dismissively, taking my arm and leading me back towards the fire on the hilltop. ‘In the morning the Christian sorcerers will try to undo my magic. They’ll fail.’

‘Christian sorcerers?’

‘Priests,’ she said dismissively.

‘And did the runesticks tell you that your eldest brother would be gelded?’

She stopped and looked up at me in the darkness. ‘Gelded?’

‘He almost died.’

‘No!’ she said. ‘No!’

‘Brida did it.’

‘Brida?’

‘A hell-bitch,’ I said bitterly, ‘who has joined Ragnall.’

‘No!’ she protested again. ‘But Uhtred was here! He went to Ragnall in peace!’

‘He’s called Father Oswald now,’ I said, ‘and that’s what he’ll never be, a father.’

‘This Brida,’ she asked fiercely, ‘is she an enchantress?’

‘She thinks so, she says so.’

She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘And that was the third thing the runesticks said, father, that an enchantress must die.’

‘The runesticks said that?’

‘It must be her,’ she said vengefully. She had plainly feared the sticks had foretold her own death. ‘It will be her,’ she said.

And I followed her back to the fire.

In the morning three Irish priests approached the narrow neck of land where the skulls stood on the low stone wall. They stopped at least fifty paces from the skulls, where they held their hands in the air and chanted prayers. One of them, a wild-haired man, danced in circles as he chanted. ‘What do they hope to do?’ I asked.

‘They’re praying that God will destroy the skulls,’ Finan said. He made the sign of the cross.

‘They really fear them,’ I said in wonder.

‘You wouldn’t?’

‘They’re just skulls.’

‘They’re the dead!’ he said fiercely. ‘Didn’t you know that when you put the heads around Eads Byrig?’

‘I just wanted to horrify Ragnall,’ I said.

‘You gave him a ghost fence,’ Finan said, ‘and it’s no wonder he left the place. And this one?’ He nodded downhill to where Stiorra had arranged the skulls to face the mainland. ‘This ghost fence has power!’

‘Power?’

‘Let me show you.’ He led me across the hilltop to a stone-lined pit. It was not large, perhaps six feet square, but every inch of space had been crammed with bones. ‘God knows how long they’ve been there,’ Finan said, ‘they were covered with that slab.’ He pointed to a stone slab that had been shoved away from the pit. The surface of the slab had a cross scratched into it, the cross now filled with lichen. The bones had been sorted so that the long yellowed leg bones were all stacked together and the ribs carefully piled. There were pelvises, knucklebones, arm bones, but no skulls. ‘I reckon the skulls were the top layer,’ Finan said.

‘Who were they?’ I stooped to look into the pit.

‘Monks probably. Maybe slaughtered when the first Norsemen came?’ He turned and stared westwards. ‘And those poor bastards are terrified of them. It’s an army of the dead, their own dead! They’ll be wanting more gold before they cross this ghost fence.’

‘More gold?’

Finan half smiled. ‘Ragnall paid the Uí Néill gold to capture Stiorra. But if they have to fight the dead as well as the living they’ll want a lot more than the gold he’s given them so far.’

‘The dead don’t fight,’ I said.

Finan scorned that. ‘You Saxons! I sometimes think you know nothing! No, the dead don’t fight, but they take revenge! You want your milk sour from the udder? You want your crops to shrivel? Your cattle to have the staggers? Your children sick?’

I could hear the Irish priests making yelping noises and I wondered if the air was filled with unseen spirits fighting a battle of magic. The thought made me touch the hammer about my neck, then I forgot the phantoms as my son shouted from down the hill. ‘Father!’ he called. ‘The ships!’

I saw that the last two ships were coming from the south, which meant Orvar had talked their crews into betraying Ragnall. I had my fleet now and the beginnings of an army. ‘We have to rescue Orvar’s family,’ I said.

‘We made that promise,’ Finan agreed.

‘Ragnall won’t have them with his horsemen,’ I guessed. ‘You don’t want women and children slowing you down when you’re raiding deep in hostile country.’

‘But he’ll have them kept safe,’ Finan said.

Which meant, I thought, that they were in Eoferwic. That city was Ragnall’s base, his stronghold. We knew he had sent part of his army back there, presumably to hold the Roman walls while the rest of his men ravaged Mercia. ‘Let’s just hope they’re not in Dunholm,’ I said. Brida’s fortress was formidable, perched on its crag above the river.

‘That place would be a bitch to capture again,’ Finan said.

‘They’ll be in Eoferwic,’ I said, praying I was right.

And Eoferwic, I thought, was where my story had all begun. Where my father had died. Where I had become the Lord of Bebbanburg. Where I had met Ragnar and learned of the ancient gods.

And it was time to go back.