Lords of the North

by Bernard Cornwell

  “No he did not,” I said as patiently as I could.

  “But it’s true!” he insisted, “Alfred told me himself! It’s God’s doing, Uhtred, and wonderful to behold.”

  I took him by the shoulders, pressing him against the passage wall. “You’ve got a choice, father,” I said. “You can get out of Eoferwic before the Danes come back, or you can tip your head to one side.”

  “I can do what?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Tip your head,” I said, “and I’ll thump you on one ear so all the nonsense falls out of the other.”

  He would not be persuaded. God’s glory, ignited by the bloodshed at Ethandun and fanned by the lie about Saint Cuthbert, was glowing on Northumbria and poor Willibald was convinced he was present at the beginning of great things.

  There was a feast that night, a sorry business of salted herrings, cheese, hard bread, and stale ale, and Father Hrothweard made another impassioned speech in which he claimed that Alfred of Wessex had sent me, his greatest warrior, to lead the city’s defense, and that the fyrd of heaven would come to Eoferwic’s protection. Willibald kept shouting hallelujah, believing all the rubbish, and it was only the next day when a gray rain and a sullen mist enveloped the city that he began to doubt the imminent arrival of sword-angels.

  Folk were leaving the city. There were rumors of Danish war-bands gathering to the north. Hrothweard was still shrieking his nonsense, and he led a procession of priests and monks about the city streets, holding aloft relics and banners, but anyone with sense now understood that Ivarr was likely to return long before Saint Cuthbert turned up with a heavenly host. King Egbert sent a messenger to find me, and the man said the king would talk with me, but I reckoned Egbert was doomed so I ignored the summons. Egbert would have to shift for himself.

  Just as I had to shift for myself, and what I wanted was to get far from the city before Ivarr’s wrath descended on it, and in the Crossed Swords tavern, hard by the city’s northern gate, I found my escape. He was a Dane called Bolti and he had survived the massacre because he was married to a Saxon and his wife’s family had sheltered him. He saw me in the tavern and asked if I was Uhtred of Bebbanburg.

  “I am.”

  He sat opposite me, bowed his head respectfully to Hild, then snapped his fingers to summon a girl with ale. He was a plump man, bald, with a pocked face, a broken nose and frightened eyes. His two sons, both half Saxon, loitered behind him. I guessed one was about twenty and the other five years younger, and both wore swords though neither looked comfortable with the weapons. “I knew Earl Ragnar the Elder,” Bolti said.

  “I knew him too,” I said, “and I don’t remember you.”

  “The last time he sailed in Wind-Viper,” he said, “I sold him ropes and oar-looms.”

  “Did you cheat him?” I asked sarcastically.

  “I liked him,” he said fiercely.

  “And I loved him,” I said, “because he became my father.”

  “I know he did,” he said, “and I remember you.” He fell silent and glanced at Hild. “You were very young,” he went on, looking back to me, “and you were with a small dark girl.”

  “You do remember me then,” I said, and fell silent as the ale was brought. I noticed that Bolti, despite being a Dane, wore a cross about his neck and he saw me looking at it.

  “In Eoferwic,” he said, touching the cross, “a man must live.” He pulled aside his coat and I saw Thor’s hammer amulet had been hidden beneath it. “They mostly killed pagans,” he explained.

  I pulled my own hammer amulet out from beneath my jerkin. “Are many Danes Christians now?” I asked.

  “A few,” he said grudingly, “you want food to go with that ale?”

  “I want to know why you’re talking with me,” I said.

  He wanted to leave the city. He wanted to take his Saxon wife, two sons and two daughters a long way from the vengeful massacre he suspected was coming, and he wanted swords to escort him, and he stared at me with pathetic, despairing eyes and did not know that what he wanted was just what I wanted. “So where will you go?” I asked.

  “Not west,” he said with a shudder. “There’s killing in Cumbraland.”

  “There’s always killing in Cumbraland,” I said. Cumbraland was the part of Northumbria that lay across the hills and next to the Irish Sea, and it was raided by Scots from Strath Clota, by Norsemen from Ireland, and by Britons from north Wales. Some Danes had settled in Cumbraland, but not enough to keep the wild raids from ravaging the place.

  “I’d go to Denmark,” Bolti said, “but there are no warships.” The only ships left at Eoferwic’s quays were Saxon traders, and if any dared sail they would be snapped up by Danish ships that were doubtless gathering in the Humber.

  “So?” I asked.

  “So I want to go north,” he said, “and meet Ivarr. I can pay you.”

  “And you think I can escort you through Kjartan’s land?”

  “I think I will do better with Ragnar’s son beside me than on my own,” he admitted, “and if men know you travel with me then they will join us.”

  So I let him pay me, and my price was sixteen shillings, two mares and a black stallion, and the price of the last made Bolti go pale. A man had been leading the stallion about the streets, offering it for sale, and Bolti bought the animal because his fear of being trapped in Eoferwic was worth forty shillings. The black horse was battle trained, which meant he was not startled at loud noises and he moved obediently to the pressure of a knee, which left a man free to hold shield and sword and still maneuver. The stallion had been plundered from one of the Danes massacred in the last few days for no one knew his name. I called him Witnere, which means Tormentor, and it was apt for he took a dislike to the two mares and kept snapping at them.

  The mares were for Willibald and Hild. I told Father Willibald he should go south, but he was scared now and insisted on staying with me and so, the day after I had met Bolti, we all rode north along the Roman road. A dozen men came with us. Among them were three Danes and two Norsemen who had managed to hide from Hrothweard’s massacre, and the rest were Saxons who wanted to escape Ivarr’s revenge. All had weapons and Bolti gave me money to pay them. They did not get much in wages, just enough to buy food and ale, but their presence deterred any outlaws on the long road.

  I was tempted to ride to Synningthwait which was where Ragnar and his followers had their land, but I knew there would be very few men there, for most had gone south with Ragnar. Some of those warriors had died at Ethandun and the rest were still with Guthrum, whose defeated army had stayed in Mercia. Guthrum and Alfred had made peace, and Guthrum had even been baptized, which Willibald said was a miracle. So there would be few warriors at Synningthwait. No place to find refuge against my uncle’s murderous ambitions or Kjartan’s hate. So, with no real plan for my future and content to let fate work its will, I kept faith with Bolti and escorted him north toward Kjartan’s land which lay athwart our path like a dark cloud. To pass through that land meant paying a toll, and that toll would be steep, and only powerful men like Ivarr, whose warriors outnumbered Kjartan’s followers, could cross the River Wiire without payment. “You can afford it,” I teased Bolti. His two sons each led packhorses that I suspected were loaded with coins wrapped in cloth or fleece to stop them clinking.

  “I can’t afford it if he takes my daughters,” Bolti said. He had twin daughters who were twelve or thirteen, ripe for marriage. They were short, plump, fair-haired, snub-nosed, and impossible to tell apart.

  “Is that what Kjartan does?” I asked.

  “He takes what he wants,” Bolti said sourly, “and he likes young girls, though I suspect he’d prefer to take you.”

  “And why do you suspect that?” I asked him tonelessly.

  “I know the tales,” he said. “His son lost his eye because of you.”

  “His son lost his eye,” I said, “because he stripped Earl Ragnar’s daughter half naked.”

  “But he blames you.”
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  “He does,” I agreed. We had all been children then, but childhood injuries can fester and I did not doubt that Sven the One-Eyed would love to take both my eyes as revenge for his one.

  So as we neared Dunholm we turned west into the hills to avoid Kjartan’s men. It was summer, but a chill wind brought low clouds and a thin rain so that I was glad of my leather-lined mail coat. Hild had smeared the metal rings with lanolin squeezed out of newly-shorn fleeces, and it protected most of the metal from rust. She had put the grease on my helmet and sword-blades too.

  We climbed, following the well-worn track, and a couple of miles behind us another group followed, and there were fresh hoofprints in the damp earth betraying that others had passed this way not long before. Such heavy use of the path should have made me think. Kjartan the Cruel and Sven the One-Eyed lived off the dues that travelers paid them, and if a traveler did not pay then they were robbed, taken as slaves or killed. Kjartan and his son had to be aware that folk were trying to avoid them by using the hill paths, and I should have been more wary. Bolti was unafraid, for he simply trusted me. He told me tales of how Kjartan and Sven had become rich from slaves. “They take anyone, Dane or Saxon,” he said, “and sell them over the water. If you’re lucky you can sometimes ransom a slave back, but the price will be high.” He glanced at Father Willibald. “He kills all priests.”

  “He does?”

  “He hates all Christian priests. He reckons they’re sorcerers, so he half buries them and lets his dogs eat them.”

  “What did he say?” Willibald asked me, pulling his mare aside before Witnere could savage her.

  “He said Kjartan will kill you if he captures you, father.”

  “Kill me?”

  “He’ll feed you to his hounds.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Willibald said. He was unhappy, lost, far from home, and nervous of the strange northern landscape. Hild, on the other hand, seemed happier. She was nineteen years old, and filled with patience for life’s hardships. She had been born into a wealthy West Saxon family, not noble, but possessed of enough land to live well, but she had been the last of eight children and her father had promised her to the church’s service because her mother had nearly died when Hild was born, and he ascribed his wife’s survival to God’s benevolence. So, at eleven years old, Hild, whose proper name was Sister Hildegyth, had been sent to the nuns in Cippanhamm and there she had lived, shut away from the world, praying and spinning yarn, spinning and praying, until the Danes had come and she had been whored.

  She still whimpered in her sleep and I knew she was remembering her humiliations, but she was happy to be away from Wessex and away from the folk who constantly told her she should return to God’s service. Willibald had chided her for abandoning her holy life, but I had warned him that one more such comment would earn him a new and larger belly button and ever since he had kept quiet. Now Hild drank in every new sight with a child’s sense of wonder. Her pale face had taken on a golden glow to match her hair. She was a clever woman, not the cleverest I have known, but full of a shrewd wisdom. I have lived long now and have learned that some women are trouble, and some are easy companions, and Hild was among the easiest I ever knew. Perhaps that was because we were friends. We were lovers too, but never in love and she was assailed by guilt. She kept that to herself and to her prayers, but in the daylight she had begun to laugh again and to take pleasure from simple things, yet at times the darkness wrapped her and she would whimper and I would see her long fingers fidget with her crucifix and I knew she was feeling God’s claws raking across her soul.

  So we rode into the hills and I had been careless, and it was Hild who saw the horsemen first. There were nineteen of them, most in leather coats, but three in mail, and they were circling behind us, and I knew then that we were being shepherded. Our track followed the side of a hill and to our right was a steep drop to a rushing stream, and though we could escape into the dale we would inevitably be slower than the men who now joined the track behind us. They did not try to approach. They could see we were armed and they did not want a fight, they just wanted to make sure we kept plodding north to whatever fate awaited us. “Can’t you fight them off?” Bolti demanded.

  “Thirteen against nineteen?” I suggested. “Yes,” I said, “if the thirteen will fight, but they won’t.” I gestured at the swordsmen Bolti was paying to accompany us. “They’re good enough to scare off bandits,” I went on, “but they’re not stupid enough to fight Kjartan’s men. If I ask them to fight they’ll most likely join the enemy and share your daughters.”

  “But…” he began, then fell silent for we could at last see what did await us. A slave fair was being held where the stream tumbled into a deeper dale and in that larger valley was a sizable village built where a bridge, nothing more than a giant stone slab, crossed a wider stream that I took to be the Wiire. There was a crowd in the village and I saw those folk were being guarded by more men. The riders who were following us came a little closer, but stopped when I stopped. I gazed down the hill. The village was too far away to tell whether Kjartan or Sven were there, but it seemed safe to assume the men in the valley had come from Dunholm and that one or other of Dunholm’s two lords led them. Bolti was squeaking in alarm, but I ignored him.

  Two other tracks led into the village from the south and I guessed that horsemen were guarding all such paths and had been intercepting travelers all day. They had been driving their prey toward the village and those who could not pay the toll were being taken captive. “What are you going to do?” Bolti asked, close to panic.

  “I’m going to save your life,” I said, and I turned to one of his twin daughters and demanded that she give me a black linen scarf that she wore as a belt. She unwound it and, with a trembling hand, gave it to me and I wrapped it around my head, covering my mouth, nose and forehead, then asked Hild to pin it into place. “What are you doing?” Bolti squawked again.

  I did not bother to reply. Instead I crammed my helmet over the scarf. The cheek-pieces were fitted so that my face was now a mask of polished metal over a black skull. Only my eyes could be seen. I half drew Serpent-Breath to make sure she slid easily in her scabbard, then I urged Witnere a few paces forward. “I am now Thorkild the Leper,” I told Bolti. The scarf made my voice thick and indistinct.

  “You’re who?” he asked, gaping at me.

  “I am Thorkild the Leper,” I said, “and you and I will now go and deal with them.”

  “Me?” he said faintly.

  I waved everyone forward. The band that had circled to follow us had gone south again, presumably to find the next group trying to evade Kjartan’s war-band.

  “I hired you to protect me,” Bolti said in desperation.

  “And I am going to protect you,” I said. His Saxon wife was wailing as though she were at someone’s funeral and I snarled at her to be silent. Then, a couple of hundred paces from the village, I stopped and told everyone except Bolti to wait. “Just you and I now,” I told Bolti.

  “I think you should deal with them alone,” he said, then squealed.

  He squealed because I had slapped the rump of his horse so that it leaped forward. I caught up with him. “Remember,” I said, “I’m Thorkild the Leper, and if you betray who I really am then I shall kill you, your wife, your sons and then I’ll sell your daughters into whoredom. Who am I?”

  “Thorkild,” he stammered.

  “Thorkild the Leper,” I said. We were in the village now, a miserable place of low stone cottages roofed with turf, and there were at least thirty or forty folk being guarded at the village’s center, but off to one side, close to the stone-slab bridge, a table and benches had been placed on a patch of grass. Two men sat behind the table with a jug of ale in front of them, and all that I saw, but in truth I really only noticed one thing.

  My father’s helmet.

  It was on the table. The helmet had a closed face-piece which, like the crown, was inlaid with silver. A snarling mouth was carved into the m
etal, and I had seen that helmet so many times. I had even played with it as a small child, though if my father discovered me with it he would clout me hard about the skull. My father had worn that helmet on the day he died at Eoferwic, and Ragnar the Elder had bought it from the man who cut my father down, and now it belonged to one of the men who had murdered Ragnar.

  It was Sven the One-Eyed. He stood as Bolti and I approached and I felt a savage shock of recognition. I had known Sven since he was a child, and now he was a man, but I instantly knew the flat, wide face with its one feral eye. The other eye was a wrinkled hole. He was tall and broad-shouldered, long-haired and full-bearded, a swaggering young man in a suit of richest mail and with two swords, a long and a short, hanging at his waist. “More guests,” he announced our arrival, and he gestured to the bench on the far side of the table. “Sit,” he ordered, “and we shall do business together.”

  “Sit with him,” I growled softly to Bolti.

  Bolti gave me a despairing glance, then dismounted and went to the table. The second man was dark-skinned, black-haired and much older than Sven. He wore a black gown so that he looked like a monk except that he had a silver hammer of Thor hanging at his neck. He also had a wooden tray in front of him and the tray was cunningly divided into separate compartments to hold the different coins that gleamed silver in the sunlight. Sven, sitting again beside the black-robed man, poured a beaker of ale and pushed it toward Bolti who glanced back at me, then sat as he had been commanded.

  “And you are?” Sven asked him.

  “Bolti Ericson,” Bolti said. He had to say it twice because the first time he could not raise his voice enough to be heard.

  “Bolti Ericson,” Sven repeated, “and I am Sven Kjartanson and my father is lord of this land. You have heard of Kjartan?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  Sven smiled. “I think you have been trying to evade our tolls, Bolti! Have you been trying to evade our tolls?”