The Warrior Chronicles

by Bernard Cornwell

  Alfred, meanwhile, was fascinated by the enemy ships, which he had never seen so clearly before. ‘Are the beasts representations of their gods?’ he asked me, referring to the finely carved prows and sterns that flaunted their monsters, dragons and serpents.

  ‘No, lord, just beasts,’ I said. I was beside him, having relinquished the steering oar to the man who knew these waters, and I told the king how the carved heads could be lifted off their posts so that they did not terrify the spirits of the land.

  ‘Write that down,’ he ordered a priest. ‘And the wind-vanes at the mastheads?’ he asked me, looking at the nearer one which was painted with an eagle, ‘are they designed to frighten the spirits?’

  I did not answer. Instead I was staring at the seven ships across the slick hump of the mudbank and I recognised one. Wind-Viper. The light-coloured strake in the bow was clear enough, but even so I would have recognised her. Wind-Viper, lovely Wind-Viper, ship of dreams, here at Heilincigae.

  ‘Uhtred?’ Alfred prompted me.

  ‘They’re just wind-vanes, lord,’ I said. And if Wind-Viper was here, was Ragnar here too? Or had Kjartan taken the ship and leased it to a shipmaster?

  ‘It seems a deal of trouble,’ Alfred said pettishly, ‘to decorate a ship.’

  ‘Men love their ships,’ I said, ‘and fight for them. You honour what you fight for, lord. We should decorate our ships.’ I spoke harshly, thinking we would love our ships more if they had beasts on their prows, and had proper names like Blood-Spiller, Sea-Wolf or Widow-Maker. Instead the Heahengel led the Ceruphin and Cristenlic through the tangled waters, and behind us were the Apostol and the Eftwyrd, which meant Judgment Day and was probably the best named of our fleet because she sent more than one Dane to the sea’s embrace.

  The Danes were digging, trying to deepen the treacherous channel and so float their ships, but as we came nearer they realised they would never complete such a huge task and went back to their stranded boats to fetch armour, helmets, shields and weapons. I pulled on my coat of mail, its leather lining stinking of old sweat, and I pulled on the helmet, then strapped Serpent-Breath on my back and Wasp-Sting to my waist. This was not going to be a sea-fight, but a land battle, shield wall against shield wall, a maul in the mud, and the Danes had the advantage because they could mass where we must land and they could meet us as we came off the ships, and I did not like it. I could see Leofric hated it, but Alfred was calm enough as he pulled on his helmet. ‘God is with us,’ he said.

  ‘He needs to be,’ Leofric muttered, then raised his voice to shout at the steersman. ‘Hold her there!’ It was tricky to keep Heahengel still in the swirling current, but we backed oars and she slewed around as Leofric peered at the shore. I assumed he was waiting for the other ships to catch up so that we could all land together, but he had seen a spit of muddy sand projecting from the shore and had worked out that if we beached Heahengel there then our first men off the prow would not have to face a shield wall composed of seven Viking crews. The spit was narrow, only wide enough for three or four men to stand abreast and a fight there would be between equal numbers. ‘It’s a good enough place to die, Earsling,’ he told me, and led me forward. Alfred hurried behind us. ‘Wait,’ Leofric snapped at the king so savagely that Alfred actually obeyed. ‘Put her on the spit!’ Leofric yelled back to the steersman, ‘now!’

  Ragnar was there. I could see the eagle wing on its pole, and then I saw him, looking so like his father that for a moment I thought I was a boy again.

  ‘Ready, Earsling?’ Leofric said. He had assembled his half-dozen best warriors, all of us in the prow, while behind us the bowmen readied to launch their arrows at the Danes who were hurrying towards the narrow stretch of muddy sand. Then we lurched forward as Heahengel’s bow scraped aground. ‘Now!’ Leofric shouted, and we jumped overboard into water that came up to our knees, and then we instinctively touched shields, made the wall, and I was gripping Wasp-Sting as the first Danes ran at us.

  ‘Kill them!’ Leofric shouted, and I thrust the shield forward and there was the great clash of iron boss on limewood, and an axe whirled overhead, but a man behind me caught it on his shield and I was stabbing under my shield, bringing the short sword up, but she rammed into a Danish shield. I wrenched her free, stabbed again, and felt a pain in my ankle as a blade sliced through water and boot. Blood swirled in the sea, but I was still standing, and I heaved forward, smelling the Danes, gulls screaming overhead, and more of the Danes were coming, but more of our men were joining us, some up to their waists in the tide, and the front of the battle was a shoving match now because no one had room to swing a weapon. It was a grunting, cursing shield battle, and Leofric, beside me, gave a shout and we heaved up and they stepped back a half-pace and our arrows slashed over our helmets and I slammed Wasp-Sting forward, felt her break through leather or mail, twisted her in flesh, pulled her back, pushed with the shield, kept my head down under the rim, pushed again, stabbed again, brute force, stout shield and good steel, nothing else. A man was drowning, blood streaming in the ripples from his twitching body, and I suppose we were shouting, but I never remember much about that. You remember the pushing, the smell, the snarling bearded faces, the anger, and then Cristenlic rammed her bows into the flank of the Danish line, crumpling men into the water, drowning and crushing them, and her crew jumped into the small waves with spears, swords and axes. A third boat arrived, more men landed, and I heard Alfred behind me, shouting at us to break their line, to kill them. I was ramming Wasp-Sting down at a man’s ankles, jabbing again and again, pushing with the shield, and then he stumbled and our line surged forward and he tried to stab up into my groin, but Leofric slammed his axe head down, turning the man’s face into a mask of blood and broken teeth. ‘Push!’ Leofric yelled, and we heaved at the enemy, and suddenly they were breaking away and running.

  We had not beaten them. They were not running from our swords and spears, but rather because the rising tide was floating their ships and they ran to rescue them, and we stumbled after them, or rather I stumbled because my right ankle was bleeding and hurting, and we still did not have enough men ashore to overwhelm their crews and they were hurling themselves on board their ships, but one crew, brave men all, stayed on the sand to hold us back.

  ‘Are you wounded, Earsling?’ Leofric asked me.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Stay back,’ he ordered me. He was forming Heahengel’s men into a new shield wall, a wall to thump into that one brave crew, and Alfred was there now, mail armour shining bright, and the Danes must have known he was a great lord, but they did not abandon their ships for the honour of killing him. I think that if Alfred had brought the dragon banner and fought beneath it, so that the Danes could recognise him as the king, they would have stayed and fought us and might very well have killed or captured Alfred, but the Danes were always wary of taking too many casualties and they hated losing their beloved ships, and so they just wanted to be away from that place. To which end they were willing to pay the price of the one ship to save the others, and that one ship was not Wind-Viper. I could see her being pushed into the channel, could see her creeping away backwards, see her oars striking against sand rather than water, and I splashed through the small waves, skirting our shield wall and leaving the fight to my right as I bellowed at the ship. ‘Ragnar! Ragnar!’

  Arrows were flicking past me. One struck my shield, another glanced off my helmet with a click and that reminded me that he would not recognise me with the helmet on and so I dropped Wasp-Sting and bared my head. ‘Ragnar!’

  The arrows stopped. The shield walls were crashing, men were dying, most of the Danes were escaping, and Earl Ragnar stared at me across the widening gap and I could not tell from his face what he was thinking, but he had stopped his handful of bowmen from shooting at me, and then he cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Here!’ he shouted at me, ‘tomorrow’s dusk!’ Then his oars bit water, the Wind-Viper turned like a dancer, the blades dragged the sea and she wa
s gone.

  I retrieved Wasp-Sting and went to join the fight, but it was over. Our crews had massacred that one Danish crew, all except a handful of men who had been spared on Alfred’s orders. The rest were a bloody pile on the tideline and we stripped them of their armour and weapons, took off their clothes and left their white bodies to the gulls. Their ship, an old and leaking vessel, was towed back to Hamtun.

  Alfred was pleased. In truth he had let six ships escape, but it had still been a victory and news of it would encourage his troops fighting in the north. One of his priests questioned the prisoners, noting their answers on parchment. Alfred asked some questions of his own, which the priest translated, and when he had learned all that he could he came back to where I was steering and looked at the blood staining the deck by my right foot. ‘You fight well, Uhtred.’

  ‘We fought badly, lord,’ I said, and that was true. Their shield wall had held, and if they had not retreated to rescue their ships they might even have beaten us back into the sea. I had not done well. There are days when the sword and shield seem clumsy, when the enemy seems quicker, and this had been one such day. I was angry with myself.

  ‘You were talking to one of them,’ Alfred said accusingly. ‘I saw you. You were talking to one of the pagans.’

  ‘I was telling him, lord,’ I said, ‘that his mother was a whore, his father a turd of hell and that his children are pieces of weasel shit.’

  He flinched at that. He was no coward, Alfred, and he knew the anger of battle, but he never liked the insults that men shouted. I think he would have liked war to be decorous. He looked behind Heahengel where the dying sun’s light was rippling our long wake red. ‘The year you promised to give me will soon be finished,’ he said.

  ‘True, lord.’

  ‘I pray you will stay with us.’

  ‘When Guthrum comes, lord,’ I said, ‘he will come with a fleet to darken the sea and our twelve ships will be crushed.’ I thought perhaps that was what Leofric had been arguing about, about the futility of trying to stem a seaborne invasion with twelve ill-named ships. ‘If I stay,’ I asked, ‘what use will I be if the fleet dares not put to sea?’

  ‘What you say is true,’ Alfred said, suggesting that his argument with Leofric had been about something else, ‘but the crews can fight ashore. Leofric tells me you are as good a warrior as any he has seen.’

  ‘Then he has never seen himself, lord.’

  ‘Come to me when your time is up,’ he said, ‘and I will find a place for you.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ I said, but in a tone which only acknowledged that I understood what he wanted, not that I would obey him.

  ‘But you should know one thing, Uhtred,’ his voice was stern, ‘if any man commands my troops that man must know how to read and write.’

  I almost laughed at that. ‘So he can read the Psalms, lord?’ I asked sarcastically.

  ‘So he can read my orders,’ Alfred said coldly, ‘and send me news.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ I said again.

  They had lit beacons in Hamtun’s waters so we could find our way home, and the night wind stirred the liquid reflections of moon and stars as we slid to our anchorage. There were lights ashore, and fires, and ale, and food and laughter, and best of all the promise of meeting Ragnar next day.

  Ragnar took a huge risk, of course, in going back to Heilincigae, though perhaps he reckoned, truthfully as it turned out, that our ships would need a day to recover from the fight. There were injured men to tend, weapons to sharpen, and so none of our fleet put to sea that day.

  Brida and I rode horses to Hamanfunta, a village that lived off trapping eels, fishing and making salt, and a sliver of a coin found stabling for our horses and a fisherman willing to take us out to Heilincigae where no one now lived, for the Danes had slaughtered them all. The fisherman would not wait for us, too frightened of the coming night and the ghosts that would be moaning and screeching on the island, but he promised to return in the morning.

  Brida, Nihtgenga and I wandered that low place, going past the previous day’s Danish dead that had already been pecked ragged by the gulls, past burned-out huts where folk had made a poor living from the sea and the marsh before the Vikings came and then, as the sun sank, we carried charred timbers to the shore and I used flint and steel to make a fire. The flames flared up in the dusk and Brida touched my arm to show me Wind-Viper, dark against the darkening sky, coming through the sea-lake’s entrance. The last of the daylight touched the sea red and caught the gilding on Wind-Viper’s beast-head.

  I watched her, thinking of all the fear that such a sight brought on England. Wherever there was a creek, a harbour or a river mouth, men feared to see the Danish ships. They feared those beasts at the prow, feared the men behind the beasts and prayed to be spared the Northmen’s fury. I loved the sight. Loved Wind-Viper. Her oars rose and fell, I could hear the shafts creaking in their leather-lined holes, and I could see mailed men at her prow, and then the bows scrunched on the sand and the long oars went still.

  Ragnar put the ladder against the prow. All Danish ships have a short ladder to let them climb down to a beach, and he came down the rungs slowly and alone. He was in full mail coat, helmeted, with a sword at his side and once ashore he paced to the small flames of our fire like a warrior come for vengeance. He stopped a spear’s length away and then stared at me through the black eyeholes of his helmet. ‘Did you kill my father?’ he asked harshly.

  ‘On my life,’ I said, ‘on Thor,’ I pulled out the hammer amulet and clutched it, ‘on my soul,’ I went on, ‘I did not.’

  He pulled off his helmet, stepped forward and we embraced. ‘I knew you did not,’ he said.

  ‘Kjartan did it,’ I said, ‘and we watched him.’ We told him the whole story, how we had been in the high woods watching the charcoal cool, and how we had been cut off from the hall, and how it had been fired, and how the folk had been slaughtered.

  ‘If I could have killed one of them,’ I said, ‘I would, and I would have died doing it, but Ravn always said there should be at least one survivor to tell the tale.’

  ‘What did Kjartan say?’ Brida asked.

  Ragnar was sitting now, and two of his men had brought bread and dried herrings and cheese and ale. ‘Kjartan said,’ Ragnar spoke softly, ‘that the English rose against the hall, encouraged by Uhtred, and that he revenged himself on the killers.’

  ‘And you believed him?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Too many men said he did it, but he is Earl Kjartan now, he leads three times more men than I do.’

  ‘And Thyra?’ I asked, ‘what does she say?’

  ‘Thyra?’ He stared at me, puzzled.

  ‘Thyra lived,’ I told him. ‘She was taken away by Sven.’

  He just stared at me. He had not known that his sister lived and I saw the anger come on his face, and then he raised his eyes to the stars and he howled like a wolf.

  ‘It is true,’ Brida said softly, ‘your sister lived.’

  Ragnar drew his sword and laid it on the sand and touched the blade with his right hand. ‘If it is the last thing I do,’ he swore, ‘I shall kill Kjartan, kill his son, and all his followers. All of them!’

  ‘I would help,’ I said. He looked at me through the flames. ‘I loved your father,’ I said, ‘and he treated me like a son.’

  ‘I will welcome your help, Uhtred,’ Ragnar said formally. He wiped the sand from the blade and slid it back into its fleece-lined scabbard. ‘You will sail with us now?’

  I was tempted. I was even surprised at how strongly I was tempted. I wanted to go with Ragnar, I wanted the life I had lived with his father, but fate rules us. I was sworn to Alfred for a few more weeks, and I had fought alongside Leofric for all these months, and fighting next to a man in the shield wall makes a bond as tight as love. ‘I cannot come,’ I said, and wished I could have said the opposite.

  ‘I can,’ Brida said, and somehow I was not surprised by that. She had not liked being lef
t ashore in Hamtun as we sailed to fight, she felt trammelled and useless, unwanted, and I think she yearned after the Danish ways. She hated Wessex. She hated its priests, hated their disapproval and hated their denial of all that was joy.

  ‘You are a witness of my father’s death,’ Ragnar said to her, still formal.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then I would welcome you,’ he said, and looked at me again.

  I shook my head. ‘I am sworn to Alfred for the moment. By winter I shall be free of the oath.’

  ‘Then come to us in the winter,’ Ragnar said, ‘and we shall go to Dunholm.’

  ‘Dunholm?’

  ‘It is Kjartan’s fortress now. Ricsig lets him live there.’

  I thought of Dunholm’s stronghold on its soaring crag, wrapped by its river, protected by its sheer rock and its high walls and strong garrison. ‘What if Kjartan marches on Wessex?’ I asked.

  Ragnar shook his head. ‘He will not, because he does not go where I go, so I must go to him.’

  ‘He fears you then?’

  Ragnar smiled, and if Kjartan had seen that smile he would have shivered. ‘He fears me,’ Ragnar said. ‘I hear he sent men to kill me in Ireland, but their boat was driven ashore and the skraelings killed the crew. So he lives in fear. He denies my father’s death, but he still fears me.’

  ‘There is one last thing,’ I said, and nodded at Brida who brought out the leather bag with its gold, jet and silver. ‘It was your father’s,’ I said, ‘and Kjartan never found it, and we did, and we have spent some of it, but what remains is yours.’ I pushed the bag towards him and made myself instantly poor.

  Ragnar pushed it back without a thought, making me rich again. ‘My father loved you too,’ he said, ‘and I am wealthy enough.’

  We ate, we drank, we slept, and in the dawn, when a light mist shimmered over the reed beds, the Wind-Viper went. The last thing Ragnar said to me was a question. ‘Thyra lives?’