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He shrugged. ‘They were at dawn.’
‘They’ll be guarded,’ Finan warned me. He suspected I was thinking of attacking Ragnall’s ships and burning them, but that was the last thing I had in mind.
‘I’d rather he went back to Ireland,’ I said. ‘So leave his ships alone. I don’t want to trap the bastard here.’ I grimaced. ‘It looks as if the priests will get what they want.’
‘Which is?’ my son asked.
‘If Ragnall stays here,’ I said, ‘then so must we.’ I had thought to take my three hundred men eastwards to Liccelfeld where I could meet the forces Æthelflaed would send from Gleawecestre, but if Ragnall was staying at Eads Byrig then I must stay to protect Ceaster. I sent all the packhorses back to the city, and sent more messengers south to tell the reinforcements to abandon their march on Liccelfeld and to come to Ceaster instead. And then I waited.
I was waiting for Æthelflaed and her army of Mercia. I had three hundred men, and Ragnall had over a thousand, and more were joining him every day. It was frustrating. It was maddening. The garrison at Brunanburh could only watch as the beast-prowed ships rowed up the Mærse. There were two ships the first day and three the second, and still more every following day, ships heavy with men who had come from Ragnall’s furthest islands. Other men came by land, travelling from the Danish steadings in Northumbria, lured to Eads Byrig by the promise of Saxon silver, Saxon land, and Saxon slaves. Ragnall’s army grew larger and I could do nothing.
He outnumbered me by at least three to one, and to attack him I needed to take men through the forest that surrounded Eads Byrig, and that forest was a death-trap. An old Roman road ran just south of the hill, but the trees had invaded the road, and once among their thick foliage we would not be able to see more than thirty or forty paces. I sent a party of scouts into the trees and only three of those four men returned. The fourth was beheaded, and his naked body thrown out onto the pastureland. My son wanted to take all our men and crash through the woodland in search of a fight. ‘What good will that do?’ I asked him.
‘They must have men guarding their ships,’ he said, ‘and others building their new wall.’
‘So?’
‘So we won’t have to fight all his men. Maybe just half of them?’
‘You’re an idiot,’ I said, ‘because that’s exactly what he wants us to do.’
‘He wants to attack Ceaster,’ my son insisted.
‘No, that’s what I want him to do.’
And that was the mutual trap Ragnall and I had set each other. He might outnumber me, but even so he would be reluctant to assault Ceaster. His younger brother had attempted to take the city and had lost his right eye and the best part of his army in the attempt. Ceaster’s walls were formidable. Ragnall’s men needed to cross a deep, flooded ditch spiked with elm stakes, then climb a wall twice the height of a man while we rained spears, axes, boulders and buckets of shit on them. He would lose. His men would die under our ramparts. I wanted him to come to the city, I wanted him to attack our walls, I wanted to kill his men at Ceaster’s defences, and he knew I wanted that, which is why he did not come.
But we could not assault him either. Even if I could lead every fit man through the forest unscathed I would still have to climb Eads Byrig and cross the high ditch and clamber up the earthen bank where a new wall was being made, and Ragnall’s Northmen and Irishmen would outnumber us and have a great killing that their poets would turn into a triumphant battle song. What would they call it? The Song of Ragnall the Mighty? It would tell of blades falling, foemen dying, of a ditch filled with blood, and of Uhtred, great Uhtred, cut down in his battle glory. Ragnall wanted that song, he wanted me to attack him, and I knew he wanted it, which is why I did not oblige him. I waited.
We were not idle. I had men driving new sharpened stakes into the ditch around Ceaster, and other men riding south and east to raise the fyrd, that army of farmers and free men who could man a burh wall even if they could not fight a Norse shield wall in open battle. And each day I sent a hundred horsemen to circle Eads Byrig, riding well south of the great forest and then curling northwards. I led that patrol on the third day, the same day that four more ships rowed up the Mærse, each holding at least forty warriors.
We wore mail and carried weapons, though we left our heavy shields behind. I wore a rusted coat of mail and an old undecorated helmet. I carried Serpent-Breath, but left my standard-bearer behind in Ceaster. I did not ride in my full war-glory because I did not seek a fight. We were scouting, looking for Ragnall’s forage parties and for his patrolling scouts. He had sent no men towards Ceaster, which was puzzling, so what was he doing?
We crossed the ridge four or five miles south of Ragnall’s hill. Once on the low crest I spurred my horse to the top of a knoll and stared northwards, though I could see almost nothing of what happened on that distant hilltop. I knew the palisade was being built there, that men were pounding oak trunks into the summit of the earthen bank, and just as surely Ragnall knew I would not waste my men’s lives by attacking that wall. So what was he hoping for? That I would be a fool, lose patience and attack anyway?
‘Lord,’ Sihtric interrupted my thoughts. He was pointing north-east, and I saw, perhaps a mile away, a dozen horsemen. More riders were further off, perhaps a score of them, all of them heading eastwards.
‘So they’ve found horses,’ I said. From what we had seen, and from our questioning of the prisoners we had taken, the enemy had brought very few horses on their ships, but the forage parties, I assumed that was what the horsemen were, proved that they had managed to capture a few, and those few, in turn, could ride further afield to find more, though by now the countryside was alerted to their presence. There were few steadings here because this was border country, land that belonged neither to the Danes of Northumbria nor to the Saxons of Mercia, and what folk lived here would already have left their homes and driven their livestock south to the nearest burh. Fear ruled this land now.
We rode on eastwards, dropping from the ridge into wooded country where we followed an overgrown drover’s path. I sent no scouts ahead, reckoning that Ragnall’s men did not have enough horses to send a war-band large enough to confront us, nor did we see the enemy, not even when we turned north and rode into the pastureland where we had glimpsed the horsemen earlier. ‘They’re staying out of our way,’ Sihtric said, sounding disappointed.
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘The more he kills of us, lord, the fewer to fight on Ceaster’s walls.’
I ignored that foolish answer. Ragnall had no intention of killing his men beneath Ceaster’s ramparts, not yet anyway. So what did he plan? I looked back in puzzlement. It was a dry morning, or at least it was not raining, though the air felt damp and the wind was chill, but it had rained hard in the night and the ground was sopping wet, yet I had seen no hoofmarks crossing the drover’s path. If Ragnall wanted horses and food then he would find the richer steadings to our south, deeper inside Mercia, yet it seemed he had sent no men that way. Perhaps I had missed the tracks, but I doubted I could have overlooked something so obvious. And Ragnall was no fool. He knew reinforcements must join us from the south, yet it seemed he had no patrols searching for those new enemies.
Why?
Because, I thought, he did not care about our reinforcements. I was staring northwards, seeing nothing there except thick woods and damp fields, and I was thinking what Ragnall had achieved. He had taken away our small fleet, which meant we could not cross the Mærse easily, not unless we rode even further eastwards to find an unguarded crossing. He was making a fortress on Eads Byrig, a stronghold that was virtually impregnable until we had sufficient men to overwhelm his army. And there was only one reason to fortify Eads Byrig, and that was to threaten Ceaster, yet he was sending no patrols towards the city, nor was he trying to stop any reinforcements reaching the garrison. ‘Is there water on Eads Byrig?’ I asked Sihtric.
‘There’s a spring to the south-east of the hill,’ he said, sounding dubious, ‘but it’s just a trickle, lord. Not enough for a whole army.’
‘He’s not strong enough to attack Ceaster,’ I said, thinking aloud, ‘and he knows we’re not going to waste men against Eads Byrig’s walls.’
‘He just wants a fight!’ Sihtric said dismissively.
‘No,’ I said, ‘he doesn’t. Not with us.’ There was an idea in my head. I could not say it aloud because I did not understand it yet, but I sensed what Ragnall was doing. Eads Byrig was a deception, I thought, and we were not the enemy, not yet. We would be in time, but not yet. I turned on Sihtric. ‘Take the men back to Ceaster,’ I told him. ‘Go back by the same path we came on. Let the bastards see you. And tell Finan to patrol to the edge of the forest tomorrow.’
‘Lord?’ he asked again.
‘Tell Finan it should be a big patrol! A hundred and fifty men at least! Let Ragnall see them! Tell him to patrol from the road to the river, make him think we’re planning an attack from the west.’
‘An attack from the …’ he began.
‘Just do it,’ I snarled. ‘Berg! You come with me!’
Ragnall had stopped us from crossing the river and he was making us concentrate all our attention on Eads Byrig. He seemed to be behaving cautiously, making a great fortress and deliberately not provoking us by sending war-bands to the south, yet everything I knew about Ragnall suggested he was anything but a cautious man. He was a warrior. He moved fast, struck hard, and called himself a king. He was a gold-giver, a lord, a patron of warriors. Men would follow him so long as his swords and spears took captives and captured farmland, and no man became rich by building a fortress in a forest and inviting attack. ‘Tell Finan I’ll be back tomorrow or the day after,’ I told Sihtric, then beckoned to Berg and rode eastwards. ‘Tomorrow or the day after!’ I shouted back to Sihtric.
Berg Skallagrimmrson was a Norseman who had sworn loyalty to me, a loyalty he had proven in the three years since I had saved his life on a beach in Wales. He could have ridden north any time to the kingdom of Northumbria and there found a Dane or a fellow Norseman who would welcome a young, strong warrior, but Berg had stayed true. He was a thin-faced, blue-eyed young man, serious and thoughtful. He wore his hair long in Norse fashion, and had persuaded Sihtric’s daughter to make a scribble on his left cheek with oak-gall ink and a needle. ‘What is it?’ I had asked him as the scars were still healing.
‘It’s a wolf’s head, lord!’ he had said, sounding indignant. The wolf’s head was my symbol and the inked device was his way of showing loyalty, but even when it healed it looked more like a smeared pig’s head.
Now the two of us rode eastwards. I still did not fear any enemy war-band because I had a suspicion of what Ragnall really wanted, and it was that suspicion that kept us riding into the afternoon, by which time we had turned north and were following a Roman road that led to Northumbria. We were still well to the east of Eads Byrig, but as the afternoon waned we climbed a low hill and I saw where a bridge carried the road across the river, and there, clustered close to two cottages that had been built on the Mærse’s north bank, were men in mail. Men with spears. ‘How many?’ I asked Berg, whose eyes were younger than mine.
‘At least forty, lord.’
‘He doesn’t want us to cross the river, does he?’ I suggested. ‘Which means we need to get across.’
We rode east for an hour, keeping a cautious eye for enemies, and at dusk we turned north and came to where the Mærse slid slow between pastureland. ‘Can your horse swim?’ I asked Berg.
‘We’ll find out, lord.’
The river was wide here, at least fifty paces, and its banks were earthen bluffs. The water was murky, but I sensed it was deep and so, rather than risk swimming the beasts over, we turned back upstream until we discovered a place where a muddy track led into the river from the south and another climbed the northern bank, suggesting this was a ford. It was certainly no major crossing place, but rather a spot where some farmer had discovered he could cross with his cattle, but I suspected the river was usually lower. Rain had swollen it.
‘We have to cross,’ I said, and spurred my horse into the water. The river came up to my boots, then above them, and I could feel the horse struggling against the current. He slipped once, and I lurched sideways, thought I must be thrown into the water, but somehow the stallion found his footing and surged ahead, driven more by fear than by my urging. Berg came behind and kicked his horse faster so that he passed me and left the river before I did, his horse flailing up the far bank in a flurry of water and mud.
‘I hate crossing rivers,’ I growled as I joined him.
We found a spinney of ash trees a mile beyond the river and we spent the night there, the horses tethered while we tried to sleep. Berg, being young, slept like the dead, but I was awake much of the night, listening to the wind in the leaves. I had not dared light a fire. This land, like the country south of the Mærse, appeared deserted, but that did not mean no enemy was near, and so I shivered through the darkness. I slept fitfully as the dawn approached, waking to see Berg carefully cutting a lump of bread into two pieces. ‘For you, lord,’ he said, holding out the larger piece.
I took the smaller, then stood, aching in every bone. I walked to the edge of the trees and gazed out at greyness. Grey sky, grey land, grey mist. It was the wolf-light of dawn. I heard Berg moving behind me. ‘Shall I saddle the horses, lord?’ he asked.
‘Not yet.’
He came and stood beside me. ‘Where are we, lord?’
‘Northumbria,’ I said. ‘Everything north of the Mærse is Northumbria.’
‘Your country, lord.’
‘My country,’ I agreed. I was born in Northumbria and I hope to die in Northumbria, though my birth had been on the eastern coast, far from these mist-shrouded fields by the Mærse. My land is Bebbanburg, the fortress by the sea, which had been treacherously stolen by my uncle and, though he was long dead, the great stronghold was still held by his son. One day, I promised myself, I would slaughter my cousin and take back my birthright. It was a promise I made every day of my life.
Berg gazed into the grey dampness. ‘Who rules here?’ he asked.
I half smiled at the question. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘have you heard of Sygfrothyr?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Knut Onehand?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Halfdan Othirson?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Eowels the Strong?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Eowels wasn’t that strong,’ I said wryly, ‘because he was killed by Ingver Brightsword. Have you heard of Ingver?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Sygfrothyr, Knut, Halfdan, Eowels, and Ingver,’ I repeated the names, ‘and in the last ten years each of those men has called himself King of Jorvik. And only one of them, Ingver, is alive today. You know where Jorvik is?’
‘To the north, lord. A city.’
‘It was a great city once,’ I said bleakly. ‘The Romans made it.’
‘Like Ceaster, lord?’ he asked earnestly. Berg knew little of Britain. He had served Rognvald, a Norseman who had died in a welter of bloodshed on a Welsh beach. Since then Berg had served me, living in Ceaster and fighting the cattle-raiders who came from Northumbria or the Welsh kingdoms. He was eager to learn though.
‘Jorvik is like Ceaster,’ I said, ‘and like Ceaster its strength lies in its walls. It guards a river, but the man who rules in Jorvik can claim to rule Northumbria. Ingver Brightsword is King of Jorvik, but he calls himself King of Northumbria.’
‘And is he?’
‘He pretends he is,’ I said, ‘but in truth he’s just a chieftain in Jorvik. But no one else can call himself King of Northumbria unless he holds Jorvik.’
‘But it’s not strong?’ Berg asked.
‘Eoferwic’s walls are strong,’ I said, using the Saxon name for Jorvik, ‘they’re very strong! They’re formidable! My father died attacking those walls. And the city lies in rich country. The man who rules Eoferwic can be a gold-giver, he can buy men, he can give estates, he can breed horses, he can command an army.’
‘And this is what King Ingver does?’
‘Ingver couldn’t command a dog to piss,’ I sneered. ‘He has maybe two hundred warriors. And outside the walls? He has nothing. Other men rule beyond the walls, and one day one of those men will kill Ingver as Ingver killed Eowels, and the new man will call himself king. Sygfrothyr, Knut, Halfdan, and Eowels, they all called themselves King of Northumbria and they were all killed by a rival. Northumbria isn’t a kingdom, it’s a pit of rats and terriers.’
‘Like Ireland,’ Berg said.
‘Like Ireland?’
‘A country of little kings,’ he said. He frowned for a moment. ‘Sometimes one calls himself the High King? And maybe he is, but there are still many little kings, and they squabble like dogs, and you think such dogs will be easy to kill, but when you attack them? They come together.’
‘There’s no high king in Northumbria,’ I said, ‘not yet.’
‘There will be?’
‘Ragnall,’ I said.
‘Ah!’ he said, understanding. ‘And one day we must take this land?’
‘One day,’ I said, and I wanted that day to be soon, but Æthelflaed, who ruled Mercia, insisted that first we drive the Danes from her country. She wanted to restore the ancient frontier of Mercia, and only then lead an army into Northumbria, and even then she would not invade unless she had her brother’s blessing, but now Ragnall had come and threatened to make the conquest of the north even more difficult.
We saddled the horses and rode slowly westwards. The Mærse made great lazy loops to our left, twisting through overgrown water meadows. No one farmed these lands. There had been Danes and Norsemen settled here once, their steadings fat in a fat land, but we had driven them northwards away from Ceaster, and thistles now grew tall where cattle had grazed. Two heron flew downriver. A light rain blew from the distant sea.
‘The Lady Æthelflaed is coming, lord?’ Berg asked me as we pushed the horses through a gap in a ragged hedge, then across a flooded ditch. The mist had lifted, though there were still patches above the river’s wide bends.
‘She’s coming!’ I said, and surprised myself by feeling a distinct pang of pleasure at the thought of seeing Æthelflaed again. ‘She was coming anyway for this nonsense with the new bishop.’ The enthronement was the sort of ceremony she enjoyed, though how anyone could endure three or four hours of chanting monks and ranting priests was beyond my understanding, just as it was beyond my understanding to know why bishops needed thrones. They would be demanding crowns next. ‘Now she’ll be bringing her whole army as well,’ I said.
‘And we’ll fight Ragnall?’
‘She’ll want to drive him out of Mercia,’ I said, ‘and if he stays behind his new walls that will be a bloody business.’ I had turned north towards a low hill that I remembered from raids we had made across the river. The hill was crowned with a stand of pine trees, and from its summit we could see Ceaster on a clear day. There was no chance of seeing the city on this grey day, but I could see Eads Byrig rising green from the trees on the river’s far side, and I could see the raw timber of the new wall atop the fort’s embankment, and, much closer, I could see Ragnall’s fleet clustered at a great bend of the Mærse.
And I saw a bridge.
At first I was not sure what I was seeing, but I asked Berg, whose eyes were so much younger than mine. He gazed for a while, frowned, and finally nodded. ‘They make a bridge with their boats, lord.’
It was a crude bridge made by mooring ships hull to hull so that they stretched across the river and carried a crude plank roadway on their decks. So many horses and men had already used the makeshift bridge that they had worn a new road in the fields on this side of the river, a muddy streak that showed dark against the pale pasture and then fanned out into lesser streaks that all led northwards. There were men riding the tracks now, three small groups spurring away from the Mærse and going deeper into Northumbria, and one large band of horsemen travelling south towards the river.
And on the river’s southern bank where the trees grew dense there was smoke. At first I took it for a thickening of the river mist, but the longer I looked the more I became convinced that there were campfires in the woodland. A lot of fires, sifting their smoke above the leaves, and that smoke told me that Ragnall was keeping many of his men beside the Mærse. There was a garrison at Eads Byrig, a garrison busy making a palisade, but not enough water there for the whole army. And that army, instead of making tracks south into Mercia, was trampling new paths northwards. ‘We can go home now,’ I said.
‘Already?’ Berg sounded surprised.
‘Already,’ I said. Because I knew what Ragnall was doing.
We went back the way we had come. We rode slowly, sparing the horses. A small rain blew from behind us, carried by a cold morning wind from the Irish Sea, and that made me remember Finan’s words that Ragnall had made a pact with the Uí Néill. The Irish rarely crossed the sea except to trade and, once in a while, to look for slaves along Britain’s western coast. I knew there were Irish settlements in Scotland, and even some on the wild western shore of Northumbria, but I had never seen Irish warriors in Mercia or Wessex. We had enough trouble with the Danes and the Norse, let alone dealing with the Irish. It was true that Ragnall only had one crew of Irishmen, but Finan boasted that one crew of his countrymen was worth three from any other tribe. ‘We fight like mad dogs,’ he had told me proudly. ‘If it comes to a battle then Ragnall will have his Irish at the front. He’ll let them loose on us.’ I had seen Finan fight often enough and I believed him.
‘Lord!’ Berg startled me. ‘Behind us, lord!’
I turned to see three riders following us. We were in open country with nowhere to hide, but I cursed myself for carelessness. I had been daydreaming, trying to decide what Ragnall would do, and I had not looked behind. If we had seen the three men earlier we might have turned away into a copse or thicket, but now there was no avoiding the horsemen, who were coming fast.
‘I’ll talk to them,’ I told Berg, then turned my horse and waited.
The three were young, none more than twenty years old. Their horses were good, spirited and brisk. All three wore mail, though none had a shield or helmet. They spread out as they approached, and then curbed their horses some ten paces away. They wore their hair long and had the inked patterns on their faces that told me they were Northmen, but what else did I expect on this side of the river? ‘I wish you good morning,’ I said politely.
The young man in the centre of the three kicked his horse forward. His mail was good, his sword scabbard was decorated with silver panels, while the hammer about his neck glinted with gold. He had long black hair, oiled and smoothed, then gathered with a black ribbon at the nape of his neck. He looked at my horse, then up at me, then gazed at Serpent-Breath. ‘That’s a good sword, Grandad.’
‘It’s a good sword,’ I said mildly.
