The Warrior Chronicles

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘I know where you can find all the gold in the world,’ she said.

  I looked into her eyes. ‘All the gold?’

  She half smiled. ‘Enough gold, lord,’ she whispered, ‘more than enough, a dragon-haunted hoard, lord, gold.’

  Wyrd bið ful ãræd

  I took a golden chain from my treasure chest and I hung it about Skade’s neck, which was announcement enough, if any announcement were needed, of her new status. I thought that my people would resent her more, but the opposite happened. They seemed relieved. They had seen her as a threat, but now she was one of us, and so we sailed north.

  North along East Anglia’s low coast beneath grey skies and driven by a southerly wind that brought thick and constant fogs. We sheltered in marshy creeks when the fog blew dense above the sea or, if a fog took us by surprise and gave us no time to discover a safe inlet, we steered the ship offshore where there were no mudbanks to wreck us.

  The fog slowed us, so that it took six long days to reach Dumnoc. We arrived at that port on a misted afternoon, rowing Seolferwulf into the river’s mouth between glistening mounds of mud thick with waterfowl. The channel was well marked with withies, though I still had a man in the bows probing with an oar in case the withies betrayed us onto some shipwrecker’s shoal. I had taken down the wolf’s head to show that we came peacefully, but sentries keeping watch from a rickety wooden tower still sent a boy racing to the town to warn of our coming.

  Dumnoc was a good and wealthy port. It was built on the river’s southern bank and a palisade surrounded the town to deter a land attack, though the port was wide open from the water that was studded with piers and thick with fishing and trading boats. The tide was almost at the flood when we arrived and I saw how the sea spread from the muddy banks to drown the lower part of the palisade. Some of the houses nearest the sea were built on short stilts, and all the town’s timbers had been weather-beaten to a silvery grey. It was an attractive place, smelling richly of salt and shellfish. A church tower crowned with a wooden cross was the highest building, a reminder that Guthrum, the Dane who had become King of East Anglia, had converted his realm to Christianity.

  My father had never loved the East Anglians because, years in the past, their kingdom had combined with Mercia to attack Northumbria. Later, much later, during my own childhood, the East Anglians had provided food, horses and shelter to the Danish army that had conquered Northumbria, though that treachery had rebounded on them when the Danes returned to take East Anglia that still remained a Danish kingdom, though now it was supposedly a Christian kingdom as the church tower attested. Mist blew past the high cross as I steered Seolferwulf to the river’s centre, just upstream of the piers. We turned her there, slewing her about by backing one bank of oars, and only when her wolfless bows faced the sea did I take her alongside a fat-bellied merchant ship that was tied to the largest of the piers. Finan grinned. ‘Ready to make a quick escape to sea, lord?’ he asked.

  ‘Always,’ I said. ‘Remember the Sea-Raven?’

  He laughed. Shortly after we had captured Lundene, the Sea-Raven, a Danish ship, had come to the city and innocently tied to a wharf only to discover that a West Saxon army now occupied the place and was not friendly to Danes. The crew had fled back to their ship, but needed to turn her before they could escape downriver, and panic muddled them so that their oars clashed and she had drifted back to the wharf, where we captured her. She was a horrible boat, leaky and with a stinking bilge, and eventually I broke her up and used her ribs as roofbeams for some cottages we built at Lundene’s eastern side.

  A big-bellied, fat-bearded man in rusty mail clambered from the pier onto the trading boat, then, after receiving permission, hauled himself up and over Seolferwulf’s flank. ‘Guthlac,’ he introduced himself, ‘Reeve of Dumnoc. Who are you?’ The question was peremptory, backed by a dozen men who waited on the pier with swords and axes. They looked nervous, and no wonder, for my crew outnumbered them.

  ‘My name is Uhtred,’ I said.

  ‘Uhtred of where?’ Guthlac asked. He spoke Danish and was belligerent, pretending to be unworried by my crew’s formidable appearance. He had long moustaches bound with black-tarred twine that hung well below his clean-shaven chin. He kept tugging on one moustache, a sign, I deduced, of nervousness.

  ‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said.

  ‘And where’s Bebbanburg?’

  ‘Northumbria.’

  ‘You’re a long way from home, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ Guthlac said. He was peering into our bilge to see what cargo we carried. ‘A long way from home,’ he repeated. ‘Are you trading?’

  ‘Do we look like traders?’ I asked. Other men were gathering on the low shore in front of the closest houses. They were mostly unarmed, so their presence was probably explained by curiosity.

  ‘You look like vagabonds,’ Guthlac said. ‘Two weeks ago there was an attack a few miles south. A steading was burned, men killed, women taken. How do I know that wasn’t you?’

  ‘You don’t know it,’ I said, returning a mild answer to his hostility.

  ‘Maybe I should hold you here until we can prove it one way or the other?’

  ‘And maybe you should clean your mail?’ I suggested.

  He challenged me with a glare, held my gaze a few heartbeats, then nodded abruptly. ‘So what’s your business here?’ he demanded.

  ‘We need food, ale.’

  ‘That we have,’ he said, then waited as some gulls screamed above us, ‘but first you have to pay the king’s wharfage fee.’ He held out a hand. ‘Two shillings.’

  ‘Two pence, perhaps.’

  We settled on four pence, of which no doubt two went into Guthlac’s pouch, and after that we were free to go ashore, though Guthlac sensibly insisted we were to carry no weapons other than short knives. ‘The Goose is a good tavern,’ he said, pointing to a large building hung with the sign of a painted goose, ‘and it can sell you dried herring, dried oysters, flour, ale and Saxon whores.’

  ‘The tavern is yours?’ I asked.

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘I just hope its ale is better than its owner’s welcome,’ I said.

  He laughed at that. ‘Welcome to Dumnoc,’ he said, climbing back onto the trading ship, ‘and I give you leave to spend a night here in peace. But if any of you commit a crime I’ll hold you all in custody!’ He paused and looked towards Seolferwulf’s stern. ‘Who’s that?’

  He was staring at Skade, though he must have noticed her earlier. She was again cloaked in black so that her pale face seemed bright in the misted late afternoon. There was gold at her neck. ‘Her name is Edith,’ I said, ‘and she’s a Saxon whore.’

  ‘Edith,’ he repeated, ‘maybe I’ll buy her from you?’

  ‘Maybe you will,’ I said, and we looked at each other and neither trusted the other, and then Guthlac gave a careless wave and turned away.

  We drew lots to decide who could go ashore that evening. I needed men to stay and guard the boat, and Osferth volunteered to command that group. We put twenty-three dried peas in a bowl with twenty silver coins, then Finan took the bowl and stood with his back to me as I faced the assembled crew. One by one Finan drew either a coin or a pea from the bowl and held it aloft. ‘Who’ll have this one?’ he would ask and I would pick a man from the crew without knowing whether Finan held a pea or a coin. Those who drew peas had to stay with Osferth, the rest were allowed ashore. I could have just chosen which men should stay aboard, but a crew work better when they believe their lord is fair. The children all stayed, but the wives of the shore party accompanied their men. ‘You stay in the tavern,’ I told them. ‘This town isn’t friendly! We stay together!’

  The town might have been unfriendly, but the Goose was a good tavern. The ale was pungent, freshly brewed in the great vats in the inn’s yard. The large main room was beamed with keels from broken-up ships, and warmed by a driftwood fire burning in a central hearth. There were tables and benches, but before I let my men loose on the
ale I negotiated for smoked herring, flitches of bacon, barrels of ale, bread and smoked eels, and had all those supplies carried to the Seolferwulf. Guthlac had placed guards on the landward end of the pier, and those men were supposed to make certain none of us carried weapons, but I had Wasp-Sting hanging in a scabbard at my back where she was hidden by a cloak, and I did not doubt that most of my crew were similarly armed. I went from table to table and told them they were to start no fights. ‘Not unless you want to fight me,’ I warned them, and they grinned.

  The tavern was peaceable enough. A dozen local men drank there, all Saxons and none showing any interest in the Seolferwulf’s crew. Sihtric had drawn a silver shilling in the lottery and I ordered him to make frequent visits to the yard. ‘Look for men with weapons,’ I told him.

  ‘What do you fear, lord?’ he asked me.

  ‘Treachery,’ I said. The Seolferwulf was worth a thegn’s annual income from a substantial estate and Guthlac must have realised we carried coin on board. His men would find it hard to capture the ship while Osferth and his band defended the pier’s end, but drunken men in a tavern were easier prey. I feared he could hold us hostage and demand a huge ransom, and so Sihtric slipped constantly through the back door, returning each time with a shake of his head. ‘Your bladder’s too small,’ one of my men mocked him.

  I sat with Skade, Finan and his Scottish wife, Ethne, in a corner of the room where I ignored the laughter and songs that were loud at the other tables. I wondered how many men lived in Dumnoc, and why so few were in the Goose. I wondered if weapons were being sharpened. I wondered where all the gold in the world was hidden. ‘So,’ I asked Skade, ‘where is all the gold in the world?’

  ‘Frisia,’ she said.

  ‘A large place.’

  ‘My husband,’ she said, ‘has a stronghold on the sea.’

  ‘So tell us of your husband.’

  ‘Skirnir Thorson,’ she said.

  ‘I know his name.’

  ‘He calls himself the Sea-Wolf,’ she said, looking at me, but aware that Finan and Ethne were listening.

  ‘He can call himself what he likes,’ I said, ‘but that doesn’t make it true.’

  ‘He has a reputation,’ she said, and she told us of Skirnir and what she said made sense. There were nests of pirates on the Frisian coast, where they were protected by treacherous shoal waters and shifting dunes. Finan and I, when we had been enslaved by Sverri, had rowed through those waters, sometimes feeling our oar-blades strike the sand or mud. Sverri, a clever shipmaster, had escaped the pursuing red ship because he knew the channels, and I did not doubt that Skirnir knew the waters intimately. He called himself a jarl, the equivalent of a lord, but in truth he was a savage pirate who preyed on ships. The Frisian Islands had always produced wreckers and pirates, most of them desperate men who died soon enough, but Skade insisted that Skirnir had flourished. He captured ships or else took payment for safe passage and by so doing he had made himself rich and notorious.

  ‘How many crews does he have?’ I asked Skade.

  ‘When last I was there,’ she said, ‘sixteen small ships and two large.’

  ‘When were you last there?’

  ‘Two summers ago.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’ Ethne asked.

  Skade gave the Scottish woman a speculative look, but Ethne held the gaze. She was a small, red-haired and fiery woman whom we had freed from slavery, and she was fiercely loyal to Finan, by whom she now had a son and a daughter. She could see where this conversation was going, and before her husband went into battle she wanted to know all she could discover.

  ‘I left,’ Skade said, ‘because Skirnir is a pig.’

  ‘He’s a man,’ Ethne said, and got a reproving dig in her ribs from Finan.

  I watched a servant girl carry logs to the tavern’s hearth. The fire brightened and I wondered again why so few men were drinking in the Goose.

  ‘Skirnir ruts like a pig,’ Skade said, ‘and he snorts like a pig, and he hits women.’

  ‘So how did you escape the pig?’ Ethne persisted.

  ‘Skirnir captured a ship which had a chest of gold coins,’ Skade said, ‘and he took some of the gold to Haithabu to buy new weapons, and he took me with him.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  She looked at me levelly. ‘Because he could not bear to be without me,’ she said.

  I smiled at that. ‘But Skirnir must have had men to guard you in Haithabu?’

  ‘Three crews.’

  ‘And he let you meet Harald?’

  She shook her head. ‘I never met him,’ she said, ‘I just took one look at him and he looked at me.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘That night Skirnir was drunk,’ she said, ‘snoring, and his men were drunk, so I walked away. I walked to Harald’s ship and we sailed. I had never even spoken to him.’

  ‘Stop that!’ I shouted at two of my men who were squabbling over one of the Goose’s whores. The whores earned their living in a loft that was reached by a ladder, and one of the men was trying to pull the other off the rungs. ‘You first,’ I pointed at the more drunken of the two, ‘and you after. Or both of you together, I don’t care! But don’t start a fight over her!’ I watched till they subsided, then turned back to Skade. ‘Skirnir,’ I said simply.

  ‘He has an island, Zegge, and lives on a terpen.’

  ‘Terpen?’

  ‘A hill made by hand,’ she explained, ‘it is the only way men can live on most of the islands. They make a hill with timber and clay, build the houses and wait for the tide to wash it away. Skirnir has a stronghold on Zegge.’

  ‘And a fleet of ships,’ I said.

  ‘Some are very small,’ Skade said. Even so I reckoned Skirnir had at least three hundred fighting men, and maybe as many as five hundred. I had forty-three. ‘They don’t all live on Zegge,’ Skade went on, ‘it is too small. Most have homes on nearby islands.’

  ‘He has a stronghold?’

  ‘A hall,’ she said, ‘built on a terpen, and ringed with a palisade.’

  ‘But to reach the hall,’ I said, ‘we have to get past the other islands.’ Any ship going through what would doubtless be a shallow and tide-torn channel would find Skirnir’s men following, and I could imagine landing on Zegge with two crews of enemies close behind me.

  ‘But in the hall,’ Skade said, lowering her voice, ‘is a hole in the floor, and beneath the floor is a chamber lined with elm, and inside the chamber is gold.’

  ‘There was gold,’ Finan corrected her.

  She shook her head. ‘He cannot bear parting with it. He is generous with his men. He buys weapons, mail, ships, oars, food. He buys slaves. But he keeps what he can. He loves to open the trapdoor and stare at his hoard. He shudders when he watches it. He loves it. He once made a bed of gold coins.’

  ‘They dug into your back?’ Ethne asked, amused.

  Skade ignored that, looking at me. ‘There’s gold and silver in that chamber, lord, enough to light your dreams.’

  ‘Other men must have tried to take it,’ I said.

  ‘They have,’ she said, ‘but water, sand and tide are as good a defence as stone walls, lord, and his guard is loyal. He has three brothers, six cousins, and they all serve him.’

  ‘Sons?’ Ethne asked.

  ‘No children by me. Many by his slaves.’

  ‘Why did you marry him?’ Ethne asked.

  ‘I was sold to him. I was twelve, my mother had no money, and Skirnir wanted me.’

  ‘He still does,’ I said speculatively, remembering that his offer of a reward for Skade’s return had reached Alfred’s ears.

  ‘The bastard has a lot of men,’ Finan said dubiously.

  ‘I can find men,’ I said softly, and then turned because Sihtric had come running from the tavern’s back door.

  ‘Men,’ he told me, ‘there’s at least thirty out there, lord, and all with weapons.’

  So my suspicions were right. Guthlac wanted me, my treasure, my ship and my
woman.

  And I wanted Skirnir’s gold.

  I snatched open the tavern’s front door and saw more men waiting on the quay. They looked startled when I appeared, so startled that most took an involuntary step backwards. There were at least fifty of them, a few armed with spears and swords, but most with axes, sickles or staves, which suggested they were townsfolk roused by Guthlac for a night’s treacherous work, but, far more worryingly, a handful of them carried bows. They had made no attempt to capture Seolferwulf, which was lit at the pier’s end by the dull glow of the herring-driers’ fires that burned above the narrow beach’s high-water line. That small light reflected from the mail which Osferth and his men were wearing, and from the blades of their spears, swords and axes. Osferth had made a shield wall across the pier, and it looked formidable.

  I closed the door and dropped its locking bar into place. It seemed clear that Guthlac had no appetite for attacking Osferth’s men, which suggested he wanted to capture us first, then use us as hostages to take the ship.

  ‘We have a fight on our hands,’ I told our men. I slid Wasp-Sting from her hiding place and watched, amused, as other weapons appeared. They were mostly short-swords like Wasp-Sting, but Rorik, a Dane I had captured in one of the punitive raids on East Anglia and who had sworn an oath to me rather than go back to his old lord, had somehow managed to bring a war axe. ‘There are men that way,’ I told them, pointing to the front door, ‘and that way,’ I pointed towards the brewing house.

  ‘How many, lord?’ Cerdic asked.

  ‘Too many,’ I said. I had no doubt that we could fight our way to Seolferwulf because townsfolk armed with sickles and staves would prove easy foes for my trained warriors, but the archers outside the door could give my crew grievous casualties, and I was already short-handed. The bows I had seen were short hunting bows, but their arrows were still lethal against men not wearing mail.