Warriors of the Storm

Twelve

Only the guards remained standing.

The drumbeat went on. The drum itself was in a room beyond the hall, but from its sound I knew it to be one of the great goatskin-covered tubs that were so massive that they needed to be carried to war on carts, which was why they were so rarely heard on a battlefield, though if they were present then their deep, heart-pounding sound could strike fear into an enemy. The beat was slow, each ominous blow fading to silence before another sounded, and the beat became slower so that I continually thought the drummer had stopped altogether, then there would be another pounding and we all watched the dais, waiting for Brida to appear.

Then the drumbeat did stop and the silence that followed was even more ominous. No one spoke. We were kneeling, and I sensed the terror in the room. No one even moved, but just waited.

Then there was a suppressed gasp as an ungreased hinge squealed. The door that led onto the dais was pushed open and I watched, expecting to see Brida, but instead two small children came into the hall, both girls and both in black dresses with long skirts that brushed the floor. They were perhaps five or six years old, each with black hair that fell to their waists. They could have been twins, maybe they were, and their appearance made Stiorra gasp.

Because both girls had been blinded.

It took me a moment to see that their eyes were nothing but scarred, gouged pits; wrinkled holes of dark horror in faces that had once been lovely. The two girls walked onto the dais and then hesitated, unsure which way to turn, but the thin man hurried behind them and used his black staff to guide them. He placed one on each side of the throne, then stood behind it, his dark eyes watching us, despising us.

Then Brida entered.

She shuffled in, muttering under her breath and hurrying as though she were late. She wore a great swathing black cloak pinned at her neck with a golden brooch. She stopped beside the black-draped throne and darted glances into the hall where we knelt. She looked indignant, as if our presence was a nuisance.

I stared at her under the rim of my helmet and I could not see the girl I had loved in the crone who had entered the hall. She had saved my life once, she had conspired with me and laughed with me and she had watched Ragnar die with me, and I had thought her beautiful, fascinating and so full of life, but her beauty had soured into rancor, and her love into hatred. Now she gazed at us and I sensed a shiver of apprehension in the hall. The guards stood straighter and avoided looking at her. I ducked down, fearing she would recognise me even with the helmet’s cheek-pieces closed.

She sat on the throne, which dwarfed her. Her face was malignant, her eyes bright, and her sparse hair white. The thin man moved a footstool, the scrape of its wooden legs unexpectedly loud in the hall. She rested her feet on the stool and placed a black bag on her lap. The two blind girls did not move. The thin man bent to the throne and whispered in Brida’s ear and she nodded impatiently. ‘Onarr Gormson,’ she called in a husky voice, ‘is Onarr Gormson here?’

‘My lady,’ a man answered from the body of the hall.

‘Approach, Onarr Gormson,’ she said.

The man stood and walked to the dais. He climbed the steps and knelt in front of Brida. He was a big man with a brutally scarred face on which ravens had been inked. He looked like a warrior who had carved his way through shield walls, yet his nervousness was apparent as he bowed his head in front of Brida.

The thin man had been whispering again and Brida nodded. ‘Onarr Gormson brought us twenty-nine Christians yesterday,’ she announced, ‘twenty-nine! Where did you find them, Onarr?’

‘A convent, my lady, in the hills to the north.’

‘They were hiding?’ Her voice was a croak, harsh as a raven’s call.

‘They were hiding, my lady.’

‘You have done well, Onarr Gormson,’ she said. ‘You have served the gods and they will reward you. As will I.’ She fumbled in the bag and brought out a pouch clinking with coins that she handed to the kneeling man. ‘We will cleanse this country,’ she said, ‘cleanse it of the false god!’ She waved Onarr away, then suddenly stopped him by holding up a claw-like hand. ‘A convent?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘Are they all women?’

‘All of them, my lady,’ he said. I saw he had not raised his face once to meet Brida’s gaze, but had kept his eyes on her small feet.

‘If your men want the young ones,’ she said, ‘they are yours. The rest will die.’ She waved him away again. ‘Is Skopti Alsvartson here?’

‘My lady!’ another man answered, and he too had found Christians, three priests who he had brought to Eoferwic. He too received a purse and he too did not raise his eyes as he knelt at Brida’s feet. It seemed that this gathering in the hall was a daily occurrence, a chance for Brida to reward the men who were doing her bidding and to encourage the ones who were laggards.

One of the two blind girls suddenly gasped, then made a pathetic mewing noise. I thought Brida would be angry with the child’s interruption, but instead she leaned down and the girl whispered into Brida’s ear. Brida, straightening, offered us a grimace that was intended to be a smile. ‘The gods have spoken!’ she announced, ‘and tell us that the Jarl Ragnall has burned three more towns in Mercia!’ The second child now whispered, and again Brida listened. ‘He has taken captives by the score,’ she seemed to be repeating what the child had told her, ‘and he is sending the treasure of ten churches north to our keeping.’ A murmur of appreciation sounded in the hall, but I was puzzled. What towns? Any town of size in Mercia was a burh and it defied the imagination to believe that Ragnall had captured three. ‘The foul Æthelflaed still cowers in Ceaster,’ Brida went on, ‘protected by the traitor Uhtred! They will not last long.’ I almost smiled when she mentioned my name. So she was inventing the stories and pretending they came from the two blinded children. ‘The man who calls himself king in Wessex has retreated to Lundene,’ Brida declared, ‘and soon Jarl Ragnall will scour him from that city. Soon all Britain will be ours!’

The thin man welcomed that claim by thumping his staff on the wooden dais, and the men in the hall, those who were accustomed to this ritual, responded by slapping the floor. Brida smiled, or at least she bared her yellow teeth in another grimace. ‘And I am told that Orvar Freyrson has returned from Ireland!’

‘I have!’ Orvar said. He sounded nervous.

‘Come here, Orvar Freyrson,’ Brida ordered.

Orvar stood and went to the dais. The two men who had received purses had gone back to the crowd, and Orvar knelt alone in front of the black-draped throne with its malevolent occupant.

‘You bring the girl from Ireland?’ Brida asked, knowing the answer because she was staring at Stiorra.

‘Yes, lady,’ Orvar spoke in a whisper.

‘And her husband?’

‘Is dead, lady.’

‘Dead?’

‘Cut down by our swords, lady.’

‘Did you bring me his head?’ Brida asked.

‘I didn’t think, lady. No.’

‘A pity,’ she said, still gazing at Stiorra. ‘But you have done well, Orvar Freyrson. You have brought us Stiorra Uhtredsdottir and her spawn. You have fulfilled the Jarl’s bidding, your name will be told in Asgard, you will be beloved of the gods! You are blessed!’ She gave him a purse, much heavier than the two she had already presented, then peered into the body of the hall again. For a moment I thought her old eyes looked straight into mine and I felt a shiver of fear, but her gaze moved on. ‘You bring men, Orvar!’ she said. ‘Many men!’

‘Five crews,’ he muttered. He, like the men who had knelt to her before, stared down at her footstool.

‘You will take them to Jarl Ragnall,’ Brida ordered. ‘You will leave tomorrow and march to help his conquest. Go now,’ she waved him away, ‘back to your place.’ Orvar seemed relieved to be off the dais. He came back to the stone floor and knelt beside Stiorra.

Brida turned in the throne. ‘Fritjof!’ The thin man hurried to offer his mistress an arm to help her out of the throne. ‘Take me to the girl,’ she ordered.

There was not a sound in the Great Hall as she shuffled down from the dais and across the rush-covered stones. Fritjof, smiling, held her arm until she shook him off when she was five paces from Stiorra. ‘Stand, girl,’ she ordered.

Stiorra stood.

‘And your whelp,’ Brida snarled, and Stiorra tugged Gisela to her feet. ‘You will go south with Orvar,’ Brida told Stiorra, ‘to your new life as a wife to Jarl Ragnall. You are fortunate, girl, that he chose you. If your fate was mine?’ She paused and shuddered. ‘Fritjof!’

‘My lady,’ the thin man murmured.

‘She must go arrayed as a bride. That grubby smock won’t do. You will find suitable clothes.’

‘Something beautiful, my lady,’ Fritjof said. He looked Stiorra up and down. ‘As beautiful as the lady herself.’

‘How would you know?’ Brida asked nastily. ‘But find her something fit for a queen of all Britain,’ Brida almost spat the last four words. ‘Something fit for the Jarl. But if you disappoint the Jarl,’ she was talking to Stiorra again, ‘you will be mine, girl, do you understand?’

‘No,’ Stiorra said, not because that was true, but because she wanted to annoy Brida.

She succeeded. ‘You’re not queen yet!’ Brida screeched. ‘Not yet, girl! And if Jarl Ragnall tires of you then you’ll wish you were a slave girl in the lowest brothel of Britain.’ She shuddered. ‘And that will happen, girl, it will happen! You are your father’s daughter and his rotten blood will show in you.’ She cackled suddenly. ‘Go to your queendom, girl, but know you will end as my slave and then you will wish your mother had never opened her thighs. Now give me your daughter.’

Stiorra did not move. She just clutched Gisela’s hand tighter. There was not a sound in the Great Hall. It seemed to me that every man there held his breath.

‘Give me your daughter!’ Brida hissed each word separately, distinctly.

‘No,’ Stiorra said.

I was slowly, carefully, moving Wasp-Sting’s scabbard so my right hand could reach her hilt. I grasped it and went still again.

‘Your daughter is fortunate,’ Brida said, crooning now as if she wanted to seduce Stiorra into obedience. ‘Your new husband doesn’t want your spawn! And you can’t keep her! But I will give her a new life of great wisdom, I will make her an enchantress! She will be given the power of the gods!’ She held out her hand, but Stiorra stubbornly held onto her daughter. ‘Odin,’ Brida said, ‘sacrificed an eye so he could learn wisdom. Your child will have the same wisdom! She will see the future!’

‘You’d blind her?’ Stiorra asked, horrified.

I slowly, so slowly, eased the short blade from its scabbard. Stiorra’s dark cloak hid me from Brida.

‘I won’t blind her, fool,’ Brida snarled, ‘but open her eyes to the gods. Give her to me!’

‘No!’ Stiorra said. I held Wasp-Sting by the blade.

‘Fritjof,’ Brida said, ‘take the child.’

‘Blind her now?’ Fritjof asked.

‘Blind her now,’ Brida said.

Fritjof laid down his staff and took an awl from a pouch at his belt. The awl had a bulbous wooden handle that held a short and stout metal spike, the kind used by leather-workers to punch holes. ‘Come child,’ he said, and stepped forward, reaching, and Stiorra took a pace backwards. She thrust Gisela behind her and I took the child’s hand and, at the same moment, pushed Wasp-Sting’s hilt into Stiorra’s grasp. Fritjof, not yet understanding what was happening, leaned forward to snatch the child from behind Stiorra’s back, and she stabbed Wasp-Sting up and forward.

The first Brida knew of any trouble was when Fritjof gave a shriek. He recoiled, the awl clattering on the stones, and then he clutched at his groin and moaned as blood spilled down his legs. I thrust Gisela back into the crowd and stood myself. All around me men were producing seaxes or knives, Sigtryggr was pushing through the throng, and Sihtric came with him, carrying Serpent-Breath. ‘We killed the two outside, lord,’ he said, giving me the sword.

Fritjof collapsed. Stiorra’s thrust had glanced off his ribs, scored down his belly and cut him to the groin, and he was now mewing pathetically, his legs kicking beneath his long robe. My men were all standing now, swords or seaxes in hand. One guard was foolish enough to level his spear and he went down under a welter of sword-blows. I thrust Sigtryggr forward. ‘Get to the dais,’ I told him, ‘the throne is yours!’

‘No!’ the shriek was Brida’s. It had taken her a shocked moment to understand what was happening, to understand that her Great Hall had been invaded by an outnumbering enemy. She stared at Fritjof for a heartbeat then launched herself at Stiorra, only to be caught by Sigtryggr, who thrust her backwards so violently that she tripped on the stones and sprawled on her back.

‘The dais!’ I called to Sigtryggr. ‘Leave her!’

My men, I counted Orvar’s crews among my men now, far outnumbered the rest. I saw my son striding down one side of the hall, using his sword to knock the guards’ spears to the floor. Sihtric had his sword at Brida’s throat, keeping her down. He looked at me quizzically, but I shook my head. It would not be his privilege to kill her. Sigtryggr had reached the dais where the two blind girls were crying hysterically, and the guards, still with spears in their hands, stared in shock at the chaos beneath them. Sigtryggr stood beside the throne and looked at the guards one by one, and one by one their spears were lowered. He plucked the black cloth from the throne, tossed it aside, then kicked the footstool away and sat. He reached out and gathered the two girls, holding them close to his knees and soothing them. ‘Keep the bitch there,’ I told Sihtric, then joined Sigtryggr on the dais. ‘You,’ I snarled at the eight spearmen who had guarded the throne, ‘leave your spears here and join the others,’ I pointed to the body of the hall, then waited as they obeyed me. Only one of Brida’s men had put up any kind of fight and even he, I reckoned, had raised his weapon from panic rather than out of loyalty. Brida, like Ragnall, ruled by terror, and her support had vanished like mist under a burning sun.

‘My name,’ I stood at the front of the dais, ‘is Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’

‘No!’ Brida screeched.

‘Keep her quiet,’ I told Sihtric. I waited as he shifted the tip of his sword, and Brida went utterly still. I looked at the men in the hall, those I did not know, and I saw no defiance among them. ‘I present to you,’ I said, ‘your new king, Sigtryggr Ivarson.’

There was silence. I sensed that many of Brida’s supporters were relieved, but naming Sigtryggr as king did not make him the ruler, not while his brother lived. Every one of Brida’s followers was thinking the same thing, wondering which brother they should support.

‘I present to you,’ I said again, making my voice threatening, ‘your new king, Sigtryggr Ivarson.’

My men cheered, and, slowly, hesitantly, the others joined the clamour. Sigtryggr had taken off his helmet and was smiling. He listened to the acclaim for a moment, then held up his hand for silence. When the hall was quiet he said something to one of the blind girls, but spoke too low for me to catch his words. He stooped to hear the child’s answer and I looked back to the nervous hall. ‘Oaths will be sworn,’ I said.

‘But first!’ Sigtryggr stood. ‘That thing,’ he pointed to the wounded Fritjof, ‘blinded these girls and would have blinded my daughter.’ He strode to the edge of the dais and drew his long-sword. He still smiled. He was tall, striking, confident, a man who looked as if he should be king. ‘A man who blinds children,’ he said as he descended the stone steps, ‘is not a man.’ He walked to Fritjof, who gazed up in terror. ‘Did the girls scream?’ Sigtryggr asked him. Fritjof, who was in pain rather than grievously wounded, did not answer. ‘I asked you a question,’ Sigtryggr said, ‘did the girls scream when you blinded them?’

‘Yes,’ Fritjof’s answer was a whisper.

‘Then listen, girls!’ Sigtryggr called. ‘Listen well! Because this is your revenge.’ He placed the tip of his sword on Fritjof’s face, and the man did scream in pure terror.

Sigtryggr paused, letting the scream echo in the hall, then his sword struck three times. One piercing stab for each eye, a third for the throat, and Fritjof’s blood pooled on the floor to be diluted by his piss. Sigtryggr watched the man die. ‘Quicker than he deserved,’ he said bitterly. He stooped and cleaned the tip of his sword on Fritjof’s cloak, then sheathed the long blade. He drew his seax instead and nodded to Sihtric who still guarded Brida. ‘Let her stand.’

Sihtric stepped away. Brida hesitated, then suddenly scrambled to her feet and lunged at Sigtryggr as if trying to snatch the seax from his hand, but he held her at arm’s length with contemptuous ease. ‘You would have blinded my daughter,’ he said bitterly.

‘I would have given her wisdom!’

Sigtryggr held her with his left hand and raised the seax with his right, but Stiorra intervened. She touched his right arm. ‘She’s mine,’ she said.

Sigtryggr hesitated, then nodded. ‘She’s yours,’ he agreed.

‘Give her the sword,’ Stiorra said. She still held Wasp-Sting.

‘Give her the sword?’ Sigtryggr asked, frowning.

‘Give it to her,’ Stiorra commanded. ‘Let’s discover who the gods love. Uhtredsdottir or her.’

Sigtryggr held the seax hilt first to Brida. ‘Let’s see who the gods love,’ he agreed.

Brida was darting her eyes around the hall, looking for support that was not there. For a heartbeat she ignored the proffered seax, then suddenly snatched it from Sigtryggr’s hand and immediately lunged it at his belly, but he just knocked it contemptuously aside with his right hand. A seax rarely has a sharpened edge, it is a weapon made to pierce, not to slash, and the blade left no mark on Sigtryggr’s wrist. ‘She’s yours,’ he said to Stiorra again.

And so died my first lover. She did not die well because there was an anger in my daughter. Stiorra had inherited her mother’s beauty, she looked so calm, so graceful, but under that loveliness was a soul of steel. I had watched her kill a priest once and seen the joy on her face, and now I saw the joy again as she hacked Brida to death. She could have killed the old woman quickly, but she chose to kill her slowly, reducing her to a whimpering, piss-soaked, blood-spattered mess, before finishing her with a hard lunge to the gullet.

And thus did Sigtryggr Ivarson, Sigtryggr One-Eye, become King of Jorvik.

Most of the men in Eoferwic had sworn oaths to Ragnall, but almost all now knelt to his brother, clasped his hands, and once again I felt their relief. The Christians who had been captured and held ready for Brida’s next mass slaughter were released. ‘There will be no rape,’ I told Onarr Gormson. He, like almost all the men in the city, had knelt to Sigtryggr, though a handful of warriors refused to abandon their oath to his brother. Skopti Alsvartson, the man who had found three priests and brought them to Eoferwic for Brida’s amusement, was one. He was a stubborn Norseman, wolf-faced, experienced in battle, his long hair plaited to his waist. He led thirty-eight men, his crew, and Ragnall had given him land south of the city. ‘I made an oath,’ he told me defiantly.

‘To Ragnall’s father, Olaf.’

‘And to his son.’

‘You were commanded to make that oath,’ I said, ‘by Olaf.’

‘I gave it willingly,’ he insisted.

I would not kill a man for refusing to abandon an oath. Brida’s followers had been freed of their obligation by her death, and most of those followers were confused by the fate that had changed their lives so suddenly. Some had fled, doubtless going to the grim fort at Dunholm where one day they would need to be scoured out by steel, but most knelt to Sigtryggr. A few, no more than a dozen, cursed us for killing her and those few died. Brynkætil, who had tried to strike my daughter and then insulted me, was among those few. He offered his oath, but he had made an enemy of me and so he died. Skopti Alsvartson did not curse us, he did not challenge us, but simply said he would keep his oath to Ragnall. ‘So do what you wish with me,’ he growled, ‘just let me die like a man.’

‘Have I taken your sword away?’ I asked him, and he shook his head. ‘So keep your sword,’ I told him, ‘but make me one promise.’

He looked at me cautiously. ‘A promise?’

‘That you will not leave the city till I give you permission.’

‘And when will that be?’

‘Soon,’ I said, ‘very soon.’

He nodded. ‘And I can join Jarl Ragnall?’

‘You can do whatever you like,’ I said, ‘but not till I give you leave.’

He thought for a heartbeat, then nodded again. ‘I promise.’

I spat on my hand and held it to him. He spat on his and we shook.

Orvar had found his wife. We found all the hostages kept prisoner in what had been a convent, and all said they had been well-treated, though that did not stop some of them sighing with obvious relief when Sigtryggr told them of Brida’s death. ‘How many of you,’ he asked, ‘have husbands serving with my brother?’ Eight women raised their hands. Their men were far to the south, riding in Ragnall’s service, raiding and raping, stealing and burning. ‘We shall be going south,’ Sigtryggr told those women, ‘and you will come with us.’

‘But your children must stay here,’ I insisted. ‘They will be safe.’

‘They will be safe,’ Sigtryggr echoed. The eight women protested, but Sigtryggr cut their indignation short. ‘You will come with us,’ he decreed, ‘and your children will not.’

We now had over seven hundred men, though despite their oaths we could not be certain that all would prove loyal. Many, I knew, had sworn to follow Sigtryggr simply to avoid trouble, and maybe those men would return to their steadings at the first opportunity. The city was still frightened, scared of Ragnall’s revenge or perhaps fearful that Brida, an enchantress, was not really dead, which was why we paraded her corpse through the streets. We laid her body on a handcart with her black banner dragging behind, and we took it to the river bank south of the city where we burned her corpse. We gave a feast that night, roasting three whole oxen on great fires made from Brida’s crosses. Four men died in fighting started by the ale, but that was a small price. Most were content to listen to the songs, drink, and look for Eoferwic’s whores.

And while they sang, drank, and whored, I wrote a letter.

Alfred had insisted that I learn to read and write. I had never wanted to. As a boy I had wanted to learn horsemanship, sword-craft and shield-skill, but my tutors had beaten me until I could read their tedious tales of dull men who preached sermons to seals, puffins, and salmon. I could write too, though my letters were crabbed. I did not have the patience to make them neat that night, instead I scratched them across the page with a blunt quill, but reckoned the words were readable.

I wrote to Æthelflaed. I told her I was in Eoferwic, which had a new king who had forsworn Northumbria’s ambitions against Mercia and was ready to sign a truce with her. First, though, Ragnall must be destroyed, to which end we would be marching south within a week. ‘I will bring five hundred warriors,’ I wrote, though I hoped it would be more. Ragnall, I insisted, would outnumber us, which he would, though I did not tell her that I doubted the loyalty of many of his men. He commanded jarls whose wives had been held hostage in Eoferwic and those women would travel with us. Ragnall ruled by terror and I would turn the terror against him by showing his men that we now held their families, but I told Æthelflaed none of that. ‘What I would wish,’ I wrote laboriously, ‘is that you follow Ragnall’s horde as they march towards us, which they most surely will, and that you help us to destroy him even if that destruction takes place in Northumbria.’ I knew she would be reluctant to lead an army across the Northumbrian border because of her brother’s insistence that she not invade the northern kingdom without him, so I suggested she would simply be leading a large raid in retaliation for the damage being done to Mercia by Ragnall’s army.

I sent my son to carry the letter, telling him that we would follow him south in three or four days. ‘We’ll march to Lindcolne,’ I told him. From that city there was a choice of roads, one going on south towards Lundene, the other slanting south-west into Mercia’s centre. ‘We’ll probably take the road to Ledecestre,’ I told him, meaning the route that headed into the heart of Mercia.

‘And Ragnall will march to meet you,’ my son said.

‘So tell Æthelflaed that! Or tell whoever commands her army. Tell them they’re to follow hard on his heels!’

‘If they’ve even left Ceaster,’ my son said dubiously.

‘We’re all in trouble if they haven’t,’ I said, touching the hammer.

I gave my son an escort of thirty men and one of the priests we had saved from Brida’s mad challenge to the Christian god. The priest was called Father Wilfa, an earnest young man whose sincerity and apparent piety I thought would impress Æthelflaed. ‘Tell her your story,’ I ordered him, ‘and tell her what happened here!’ I had shown him the bodies we had taken down from Brida’s crosses and I had seen the horror on his face and made sure he knew that it was a pagan army of Norse and Danes that had stopped the massacres. ‘And tell her,’ I said, ‘that Uhtred of Bebbanburg has done all this in her service.’

‘I will tell her, lord,’ Father Wilfa said. I liked him. He was respectful, but not subservient. ‘Do you know, lord, what happened to Archbishop Æthelbald?’

‘He was burned alive,’ I told Wilfa.

‘God help us,’ he said, wincing. ‘And the cathedral was desecrated?’

‘Tell the Lady Æthelflaed that his death is revenged, that the churches are open again, and the cathedral is being cleansed.’ Brida had stabled horses in the cavernous church. She had hacked the altars apart, torn down the sacred banners, and pulled the dead from their graves. ‘And tell her that King Sigtryggr has promised his protection to Christians.’

It seemed strange to call him King Sigtryggr. A circlet of gilt bronze had been discovered in the palace treasury, and I made him wear it as a crown. On the morning after the feast, the Great Hall was filled with petitioners, many of them men whose land had been taken away by Ragnall to be given to his supporters. They brought charters to prove their ownership, and Stiorra, because she could read, sat at a table by her husband’s throne and deciphered the ancient documents. One had even been signed by my father, ceding land I never knew he owned. Many men had no charter, just the indignant claim that their fields had been owned by their father, grandfather and great-grandfather back to the dawn of time. ‘What do I do?’ Sigtryggr asked me, ‘I don’t know who’s telling the truth!’

‘Tell them nothing will be done till Ragnall is dead. Then find a priest who can read and have him make a list of all the claims.’

‘What good will that do?’

‘It delays,’ I said. ‘It gives you time. And when your brother’s dead you can assemble a Witan.’

‘Witan?’

‘A council. Have all the men who claim land gather in the hall, have them present their claims one by one, and let the council vote. They know who really owns the land. They know their neighbours. They’ll also know what land belongs to the men who support your brother, and that land is now yours to give away. But wait till your brother’s dead.’

To kill him we needed horses. Finan had searched the city and sent men into the wide valley of the Use and had collected four hundred and sixty-two horses. Many had belonged to Brida’s men, but others we purchased using coin and hacksilver from Brida’s treasury. They were not good horses, there was not one I would want to ride into battle, but they would carry us south faster than our own legs, and that was all we needed. I took a dozen of the poorest animals and gave them to Skopti Alsvartson who had kept his promise to stay in the city till I gave him permission to leave. ‘You can go,’ I told him two days after my son had ridden south.

Skopti was no fool. He knew I was using him. He would ride into Mercia and give Ragnall news of what had happened to Brida and to Ragnall’s own supporters in Eoferwic, and he would warn Ragnall that we were coming. That was what I wanted. I deliberately let Skopti see the horses we had collected and even gave him time to count them so he could tell Ragnall that our army was small, fewer than five hundred men. I had told Æthelflaed I would march with more than five hundred, but that hope was fading and I knew our army would be perilously small, but the army of Mercia would make up the numbers. ‘Tell him,’ I said, ‘that we will meet him and kill him. And we’ll kill you too if you stay loyal to him.’

‘He has my oath,’ Skopti said stubbornly.

He rode south. Most of his crew had to walk, and they would follow Skopti, who, I reckoned, should reach Ragnall within three or four days. It was possible Ragnall already knew what had happened in Eoferwic, already knew of his brother’s return and the death of Brida. A steady trickle of slaves had made their way northwards, always escorted by Ragnall’s warriors, and it was more than possible that fugitives from the city had met one such group, who would then have turned to carry word back to Ragnall. One way or another he either knew or would know soon, and what would he do about Sigtryggr’s return? He knew Æthelflaed’s army was seeking him, or at least I hoped it was, and now he had a new enemy coming from the north. ‘If he has any sense,’ Finan told me, ‘he’ll go east. Find ships and sail away.’

‘If he has any sense,’ I said, ‘he’d turn on Æthelflaed and destroy her, then come to defeat us. But he won’t.’

‘No?’

I shook my head. ‘He hates his brother too much. He’ll look for us first.’

And two days after Skopti left to warn Ragnall, we also rode south.

We were a small army. In the end only three hundred and eighty-four men rode, the rest we left in Eoferwic under Orvar’s command. I had wanted to take more, far more, but we had too few horses and some of those horses were needed to carry supplies. Sigtryggr was also concerned that Brida’s followers, too many of whom had escaped north immediately after their mistress’s death, could summon enough help to assault Eoferwic. I thought it more likely that those fugitives would barricade themselves behind Dunholm’s high walls, but I yielded to Sigtryggr’s wishes to leave a substantial garrison in Eoferwic. He was, after all, the king.

Three hundred and eighty-four men rode, but also nine women. Stiorra was one. Like Æthelflaed, she would not be denied, and I think she was also wary of being left behind with Orvar who, so recently, had been Ragnall’s man. I trusted Orvar, as did Sigtryggr who had insisted that his daughter, my granddaughter, stay in the city under Orvar’s protection. Stiorra was unhappy, but agreed. The remaining eight women had all been Ragnall’s hostages, the wives of men who were the Sea King’s jarls, and they were now my weapon.

We followed the Roman road south. Ragnall, if he had learned anything of the Roman network of roads that laced Britain, would guess we were riding from Eoferwic to Lindcolne, because that route offered us the quickest journey, but I doubted he would have had the time to move his army to block our path. The last I had seen of him, admittedly many days before, he had been moving further south into Mercia, and so I did not expect to see the smoke of his fires until we had passed Lindcolne and were well on the road to Ledecestre, a Mercian town that had been in Danish hands for all my lifetime. Ledecestre lay in that great swathe of northern Mercia that remained unconquered by the Saxons, land that Æthelflaed had sworn to retake. Once south of Ledecestre we would approach country that neither Dane nor Saxon ruled, a place of raids and ruin, the land that lay between two tribes and two religions.

We had scouts ahead. We might be in Northumbria still and flying Ragnall’s own banner of the red axe, but I still treated the country as enemy land. We lit no campfires at night, but instead sought a place well away from the road to sleep, eat, and rest the horses. We stayed to the west of Lindcolne, though Sigtryggr and I crossed the Roman bridge with a dozen men and climbed the steep hill into the town where we were met by a steward wearing a silver chain of office. He was elderly, grey-bearded, and had lost one arm. ‘Lost it fighting the West Saxons,’ he told us cheerfully, ‘but the bastard who took it lost both of his!’

The steward was a Dane called Asmund whose master was a jarl named Steen Stigson. ‘He joined Ragnall a month ago,’ Asmund told us, ‘and you’re on your way to join him too?’

‘We are,’ Sigtryggr answered.

‘But where is he?’ I asked.

‘Who knows?’ Asmund said, still cheerful. ‘Last we heard they were way down south. What I can tell you is that Jarl Steen sent us fifty head of cattle a week ago and the drovers said it took them four days’ journey.’

‘And the Mercians?’ I asked.

‘Haven’t seen any! Haven’t heard anything.’ We were talking by one of the gates that led through the Roman walls, and from their ramparts a man could look far across the countryside, but no plume of smoke smeared the sky. The land looked peaceful, lush, green. It was hard to imagine that armies sought each other in that tangle of woods, pasture, and arable.

‘Ragnall was sending slaves to Eoferwic,’ I said. We had been hoping to meet some of Ragnall’s men bringing those slaves out of Mercia and discover from them where Ragnall might be, but we had seen none.

‘Haven’t seen anyone pass for a week now! Maybe he’s collecting the poor bastards at Ledecestre? Bring it here!’ The last three words were called to a maidservant who had brought a tray heaped with pots of ale. Asmund took two of the pots and handed them up to us, then beckoned the girl to carry the rest to our men. ‘Best thing you can do, lords, is keep riding south!’ Asmund urged us a little too enthusiastically. ‘You’ll find someone!’

The enthusiasm intrigued me. ‘Did you see Skopti Alsvartson?’ I asked.

‘Skopti Alsvartson?’ There was a slight hesitation. ‘Don’t know him, lord.’

I put the ale into my left hand and used my right to touch Serpent-Breath’s hilt, and Asmund took a hurried step backwards. I pretended I was just shifting the sword for comfort, then finished the ale and gave the pot to the maid. ‘We’ll keep riding south,’ I said to Asmund’s relief.

Asmund had been telling us lies. He had done it well, convincingly, but Skopti Alsvartson must have come through Lindcolne. Skopti, like us, would have taken the swiftest route south, and that would explain why we had met none of Ragnall’s men coming the other way, because they had been warned by Skopti. It was possible, of course, that Skopti and his men had ridden straight past the city, but not likely. They would have wanted food and they had probably demanded fresh horses to replace the tired nags I had given them. I looked into Asmund’s eyes and thought I saw nervousness. I smiled. ‘Thank you for the ale.’

‘You’re welcome, lord.’

‘How many men do you have here?’ I asked.

‘Not enough, lord.’ He meant not enough to defend the walls. Lindcolne was a burh, but I suspected that most of the garrison had marched south with Jarl Steen, and one day, I thought, men would have to die on these Roman walls to make Englaland.

I took a last look southwards from the vantage point offered by Lindcolne’s hill. Ragnall was out there, I could feel it. And by now he knew Brida was dead and Eoferwic was taken and he would want revenge.

He was coming to kill us. And I gazed at that great spread of rich land where cloud shadows slid over copse and pasture, over the bright green of new crops, over orchards and fields, and knew that death was hidden there. Ragnall was coming north.

We rode on south.

‘Two days,’ I said when we had left Lindcolne behind.

‘Two days?’ Sigtryggr asked.

‘Ragnall will find us in two days,’ I said.

‘With seven hundred men.’

‘More, probably.’

We had seen no sign of Ragnall’s marauding army, nor of any Mercian forces. There had been no far smear of smoke to show where an army lit campfires. There was smoke, of course, there is always smoke in the sky. Villagers kept their cooking fires burning and there were charcoal burners in the woods, but there was no massive haze of smoke betraying an army’s existence. The campfires of the Mercian army, if it even existed, would be far to the west, and that afternoon we left the Roman road and turned west. I was no longer marching to bring Ragnall to battle, but rather looking for help. I needed Æthelflaed’s warriors.

Late that afternoon we came to a woodland clearing where an abandoned hovel decayed. It might have been a forester’s home once, but now it was little more than a great heap of thatch covering a hole scraped into the clearing’s thin soil. We spent an hour chopping branches and heaping them over the thatch, then rode on westwards leaving two scouts behind. We followed no road, just cattle tracks that led forever towards the setting sun. We stopped at dusk and, looking back into the night-encroaching east, I saw the fire blaze sudden among the trees. The scouts had lit the thatch, and the blaze was a beacon to our enemies. My hope was that Ragnall would see the smoke besmirching the dawn sky and would ride eastwards in search of us while we rode on westwards.

The smoke was still there next morning, grey against a blue sky. We left it far behind as we travelled away from the rising sun. Our scouts rode well to the south of our path, but saw no enemy. They saw no friends either, and I remembered the argument in Ceaster’s Great Hall when I had wanted to ride out against the enemy, and every man there, except for Bishop Leofstan, had argued to remain in Ceaster. Was that what Æthelflaed had done? My son, if he had survived, must have reached Æthelflaed by now even if she was still sheltering in Ceaster, and was she so angry with me that she would leave us to die in these low hills?

‘What are we doing, father?’ Stiorra asked me.

The truthful answer? We were running away. The truthful answer was that I was heading west towards distant Ceaster in hopes of finding Mercian forces. ‘I want to draw Ragnall north,’ I said instead, ‘to where he’s caught between us and the Mercian army.’ That was also true. That was why I had led these men south from Eoferwic, but ever since Lindcolne I had been assailed by the fear that we were alone, that no Mercians stalked Ragnall, and we would have to face him alone. I tried to sound cheerful. ‘We just have to avoid Ragnall till we know the Mercians are close enough to help!’

‘And the Mercians know that?’

That was the proper question, of course, a question to which I had no proper answer. ‘If your brother reached them,’ I said, ‘yes.’

‘And if he didn’t?’

‘And if he didn’t,’ I said, no longer cheerful, ‘then you and Sigtryggr go north as fast as you can. Go and rescue your daughter, then find somewhere safe. Go across the sea! Just go!’ My last few words were spoken in anger, but I was not angry with my daughter, but at myself.

‘My husband doesn’t run away,’ Stiorra said.

‘Then he’s a fool,’ I said.

But I was the bigger fool. I had hammered young Æthelstan with advice, telling him not to be headstrong, to use his brain before he used his sword, and now I had led a small army into disaster by not thinking. I had thought to join a Mercian army, thought we could trap Ragnall between two forces, but I was the one who would be trapped. I knew Ragnall was coming. I could not see him or smell him, but I knew it. Every hour the suspicion grew that we were not alone in this innocent-looking countryside. Instinct was shrieking at me, and I had learned to trust instinct. I was being stalked, and there was no help at hand. There was no smoke from an army’s campfires in the sky, but nor would there be. Ragnall would rather freeze to death than betray his presence. He knew where we were, and we did not know where his army marched. That morning we saw his scouts for the first time. We had glimpses of far distant horsemen, and Eadger, who was the best of my scouts, led half a dozen men in pursuit of two such riders, but he was headed off by a score of mounted men. All he could report to me was that the larger group had been to the south. ‘We couldn’t get past the bastards, lord,’ he told me. He had tried, wanting to catch a glimpse of Ragnall’s army, but the enemy had baulked him. ‘But they can’t be far off, lord,’ Eadger said, and he was right. I thought of turning north, of going back to Eoferwic and hoping to outpace Ragnall’s pursuit, but even if we reached Eoferwic we would merely be trapped inside that city. Æthelflaed’s forces would never march that far into Northumbria to help us, there would be no rescue, just an assault on Eoferwic’s walls and a merciless slaughter in its narrow streets.

What had I thought? I had assumed that Æthelflaed would have sent men to harass Ragnall, that somewhere close to his army was a Mercian force of at least four or five hundred men who would join us. I had thought to astonish Æthelflaed with the capture of Eoferwic, to give her a new King of Northumbria sworn to keep peace with her and to offer her Ragnall’s blood-red banner as a trophy. I had thought to give Mercia a new song of Uhtred, but instead I was giving Ragnall’s poets a new song.

So I did not tell Stiorra the truth, which was that I had led her into disaster, but at midday it was surely obvious to all my men. We were riding a crest above a wide river valley. The river curled in great loops, running quietly to the sea between meadows thick with grass where sheep grazed. This was what we fought for, for this rich land. We were still heading west, following the ridge line above the river, though I had no idea of where we were. We asked a shepherd, but all he could say was ‘home’, as if that explained everything. Then, moments later as we paused at the top of a small rise, I saw horsemen far ahead. There were three of them. ‘Not ours,’ Finan grunted.

So Ragnall’s scouts were ahead of us. They were to our west, to our south, and doubtless behind us too. I glanced at the river. We were south of it. I supposed we could cross it somewhere and head north, but our horses were poor beasts, and if Ragnall was as close as I now suspected then he would easily overtake us and fight us on ground of his own choosing. It was time to go to earth and so I sent Finan and a score of men to find a place we could defend. Like a hunted beast I would turn on our pursuers and choose a place where we could maul the enemy before he overwhelmed us. A place, I thought, where we would die unless the Mercians came. ‘Look for a hilltop,’ I told Finan, who hardly needed the advice.

He found something better. ‘You remember that place where Eardwulf had us trapped?’ he asked me on his return.

‘I remember.’

‘It’s like that, only better.’

Eardwulf had led a rebellion against Æthelflaed, and he had trapped us in the remains of an old Roman fort built where two rivers met. We had survived that trap, saved by Æthelflaed’s arrival, but I was abandoning any hopes of rescue now.

‘The river bends ahead,’ Finan told me. ‘We have to cross it, but there’s a ford. And on the other bank there’s a fort.’ He was right. The place he had found was as good as I could have hoped for, a place made for defence, a place made, once again, by the Romans and, like Alencestre where Eardwulf had trapped us, a place where two rivers met. Both rivers were too deep for men to cross on foot, and between them was a square Roman earthwork that stood atop higher ground. The only approach was from the ford to the north, from the direction we had come, which meant Ragnall would be forced to march around the fort and cross the ford, and that would take time, time for a Mercian army to come and save us. And if no Mercian army came then we had a fort to defend and a wall on which to kill our enemies.

It was almost dusk when we filed our horses through the fort’s northern entrance. That entrance had no gate, it was just a track through the remains of the earthwork which, like the old walls around Eads Byrig, had decayed under the assault of rain and time. There was no trace of any Roman buildings inside the fort, just a steading with a thickly thatched hall of dark timber and next to it a barn and a cattle shed, but there was no sign of any cattle, nor of any people except for an old man who lived in one of the hovels outside the fort wall. Berg brought him to me. ‘He says the place belongs to a Dane called Egill,’ he said.

‘Used to belong to a Saxon,’ the old man said. He was a Saxon himself, ‘Hrothwulf! I remember Hrothwulf! He was a good man.’

‘What’s this place called?’ I asked him.

He frowned. ‘Hrothwulf’s farm, of course!’

‘Where is Hrothwulf?’

‘Dead and buried, lord, under the soil. Gone to heaven, I hope. Sent there by a Dane,’ he spat. ‘I was just a lad! Nothing more than a lad. It was Egill’s grandfather that killed him. I saw it! Spitted him like a lark.’

‘And Egill?’

‘He left, lord, took everything with him.’

‘Left today,’ Finan said. He pointed to some cattle dung just outside the barn. ‘A cow shat that this morning,’ he said.

I dismounted and drew Serpent-Breath. Finan joined me, sword in hand, and we pushed open the hall door. The hall was empty except for two crude tables, some benches, a straw-filled mattress, a rusted cooking pot, a broken scythe, and a pile of threadbare, stinking pelts. There was a stone hearth in the hall’s centre and I crouched beside it and felt the grey ash. ‘Still warm,’ I said. I stirred the ash with Serpent-Breath’s tip and saw embers glowing. So Egill the Dane had been in the house not long before, but he had left, taking his livestock. ‘He was warned,’ I told Sigtryggr when I joined him on the earthen rampart. ‘Egill knew we were coming.’

And Egill, I thought, had been given time to take his cattle and possessions, which meant he must have been given at least a half-day’s warning, and that, in turn, meant Ragnall’s scouts must have been watching us since early that morning. I gazed north along the gentle ridge between the rivers. ‘You should take Stiorra north,’ I told Sigtryggr.

‘And leave you and your men here?’

‘You should go,’ I said.

‘I’m king here,’ he said, ‘no one chases me from my own land.’

The ridge to the north was flat-topped and ran between the two rivers, which joined just south of the fort. The ridge was mostly pastureland that dropped very gently away from us before rising, just as gently, to a band of thick woods where horsemen suddenly appeared. ‘They’re our scouts,’ Finan said as men put their hands on sword hilts.

There were six of them and they rode across the pasture together, and as they drew nearer I saw that two were injured. One slumped in his saddle, the other had a bloody head. The six men rode their tired horses to the fort’s entrance. ‘They’re coming, lord,’ Eadger said from his saddle. He jerked his head to the south.

I turned, but the land beyond the rivers was silent, still, sun-warmed, empty.

‘What did you see?’ Sigtryggr asked.

‘There’s a farmstead beyond those woods,’ Eadger pointed towards trees across the river. ‘At least a hundred men are there and more are coming. Coming from all over.’ He paused as Folcbald lifted the injured man down from his saddle. ‘A half-dozen of them chased us,’ Eadger went on, ‘and Ceadda took a spear in the belly.’

‘We emptied two saddles though,’ the man with the bleeding scalp said.

‘They’re well scattered, lord,’ Eadger said, ‘like they’re coming from east, west, and south, coming from all over, but they’re coming.’

For a wild moment I thought of taking our men and attacking the vanguard of Ragnall’s forces. We would cross the river, find the newly arrived men beyond the far wood, then slash havoc among them before the rest of their army arrived, but just then Finan grunted and I turned back to see that a single horseman had appeared at the northern tree line. The man rode a grey horse that he stood motionless. He was watching us. Two more men appeared, then a half-dozen.

‘They’re across the river,’ Finan said.

And still more men showed at the distant tree line. They just stood watching us. I turned and looked south, and this time I saw horsemen, streams of horsemen, following the road that led to the ford. ‘They’re all here,’ I said.

Ragnall had found us.