Lords of the North

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Yes,” she said, as if she knew what I had been about to say.

  I made myself turn away from her. “I cannot make Hild unhappy.”

  “She told me,” Gisela said, “that she would have gone back to Wessex with Father Willibald, but she wants to see if you capture Dunholm. She says she’s prayed for that and it will be a sign from her god if you succeed.”

  “She said that?”

  “She said it would be a sign that she must go back to her convent. She told me that tonight.”

  I suspected that was true. I stroked Gisela’s face. “Then we should wait till after Dunholm is taken,” I said, and it was not what I wanted to say.

  “My brother says I have to be a peace cow,” she said bitterly. A peace cow was a woman married to a rival family in an attempt to bring friendship, and doubtless Guthred had in mind Ivarr’s son or else a Scottish husband. “But I won’t be a peace cow,” she said harshly. “I cast the runesticks and learned my fate.”

  “What did you learn?”

  “I am to have two sons and a daughter.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “They will be your sons,” she said defiantly, “and your daughter.”

  For a moment I did not speak. The night suddenly seemed fragile. “The runesticks told you that?” I managed to say after a few heartbeats.

  “They have never lied,” she said calmly. “When Guthred was taken captive the runesticks told me he would come back, and they told me my husband would arrive with him. And you came.”

  “But he wants you to be a peace cow,” I said.

  “Then you must carry me off,” she said, “in the old way.” The old Danish way of taking a bride was to kidnap her, to raid her household and snatch her from her family and carry her off to marriage. It is still done occasionally, but in these softer days the raid usually follows formal negotiations and the bride has time to pack her belongings before the horsemen come.

  “I will carry you off,” I promised her, and I knew I was making trouble, and that Hild had done nothing to deserve the trouble, and that Guthred would feel betrayed, but even so I tipped Gisela’s face up and kissed her.

  She clung to me and then the shouting started. I held Gisela tight and listened. The shouts were from the camp and I could see, through the trees, folk running past fires toward the road. “Trouble,” I said, and I seized her hand and ran with her to the monastery where Clapa and the guards had drawn swords. I pushed Gisela toward the door and drew Serpent-Breath.

  But there was no trouble. Not for us. The newcomers, attracted by the light of our campfires, were three men, one of them badly wounded, and they brought news. Within an hour the monastery’s small church blazed with fire and the priests and monks were singing God’s praises, and the message the three men had brought from the north went all through our camp so that newly-woken folk came to the monastery to hear the news again and to be assured that it was true.

  “God works miracles!” Hrothweard shouted at the crowd. He had used a ladder to climb onto the monastery roof. It was dark, but some people had brought flaming torches and in their light Hrothweard looked huge. He raised his arms so that the crowd fell silent. He let them wait as he stared down at their upturned faces, and from behind him came the solemn chanting of the monks, and somewhere in the night an owl called, and Hrothweard clenched his fists and reached higher still as though he could touch heaven in the moonlight. “Ivarr is defeated!” he finally shouted. “Praise God and the saints, the tyrant Ivarr Ivarson is defeated! He has lost his army!”

  And the people of Haliwerfolkland, who had feared to fight the mighty Ivarr, cheered themselves hoarse because the biggest obstacle to Guthred’s rule in Northumbria had been swept away. He could truly call himself king at last and so he was. King Guthred.

  FOUR

  There had been a battle, we heard, a slaughter battle, a fight of horror in which a dale had reeked of blood, and Ivarr Ivarson, the most powerful Dane of Northumbria, had been defeated by Aed of Scotland.

  The killing on both sides had been awesome. We heard more about the fight next morning when nearly sixty new survivors arrived. They had traveled in a band large enough to be spared Kjartan’s attention, and they were still reeling from the butcher’s work they had endured. Ivarr, we learned, had been lured across a river and into a valley where he believed Aed had taken refuge, but it was a trap. The hills on either side of the valley were thick with tribesmen who came howling through the mist and heather to hack into the Danish shield walls. “There were thousands of them,” one man said and he was still shaking as he spoke.

  Ivarr’s shield wall held, but I could imagine the ferocity of that battle. My father had fought the Scots many times and he had always described them as devils. Mad devils, he said, sword devils, howling devils, and Ivarr’s Danes told us how they had rallied from that first assault, and used sword and spear to cut the devils down, and still the shrieking hordes came, climbing over their own dead, their wild hair red with blood, their swords hissing, and Ivarr tried to climb north out of the dale to reach the high ground. That meant cutting and slashing a path through flesh, and he failed. Aed had then led his household troops against Ivarr’s best men and the shields clashed and the blades rang and one by one the warriors died. Ivarr, the survivors said, fought like a fiend, but he took a sword thrust to the chest and a spear cut in his leg and his household troops dragged him back from the shield wall. He raved at them, demanding to die in the face of his enemies, but his men held him back and fought off the devils and by then night was falling.

  The rearmost part of the Danish column still held, and the survivors, almost all of them bleeding, dragged their leader south toward the river. Ivarr’s son, Ivar, just sixteen years old, assembled the least wounded warriors and they made a charge and broke through the encircling Scots, but scores more died as they tried to cross the river in the dark. Some, weighed down by their mail, drowned. Others were butchered in the shallows, but perhaps a sixth of Ivarr’s army made it through the water and they huddled on the southern bank where they listened to the cries of the dying and the howling of the Scots. In the dawn they made a shield wall, expecting the Scots to cross the river and complete the slaughter, but Aed’s men were almost as bloodied and wearied as the defeated Danes. “We killed hundreds,” a man said bleakly, and later we heard that was true and that Aed had limped back north to lick his wounds.

  Earl Ivarr lived. He was wounded, but he lived. He was said to be hiding in the hills, fearful of being captured by Kjartan, and Guthred sent a hundred horsemen north to find him and they discovered that Kjartan’s troops were also scouring the hills. Ivarr must have known he would be found, and he preferred being Guthred’s captive to being Kjartan’s prisoner, and so he surrendered to a troop of Ulf’s men who brought the injured earl back to our camp just after midday. Ivarr could not ride a horse so he was being carried on a shield. He was accompanied by his son, Ivar, and by thirty other survivors, some of them as badly wounded as their leader, but when Ivarr realized he must confront the man who had usurped Northumbria’s throne he insisted that he did so on his own two feet. He walked. I do not know how he did it for he must have been in agony, but he forced himself to limp and every few steps he paused to lean on the spear he used as a crutch. I could see the pain, but I could also see the pride that would not let him be carried into Guthred’s presence.

  So he walked to us. He flinched with every step, but he was defiant and angry. I had never met him before because he had been raised in Ireland, but he looked just like his father. He had Ivar the Boneless’s skeletal appearance. He had the same skull-like face with its sunken eyes, the same yellow hair drawn back to the nape of his neck and the same sullen malevolence. He had the same power.

  Guthred waited at the monastery entrance and his household troops made two lines through which Ivarr had to walk. Guthred was flanked by his chief men and attended by Abbot Eadred, Father Hrothweard and all the other churchmen. When Ivarr was a dozen
paces away he stopped, leaned on the spear and gave us all a scathing look. He mistook me for the king, perhaps because my mail and helmet were so much finer than Guthred’s. “Are you the boy who calls himself king?” he demanded.

  “I’m the boy who killed Ubba Lothbrokson,” I answered. Ubba had been Ivarr’s uncle, and the taunt made Ivarr jerk up his face and I saw a strange green glint in his eyes. They were serpent’s eyes in a skull face. He might have been wounded and he might have had his power broken, but all he wanted at that moment was to kill me.

  “And you are?” he demanded of me.

  “You know who I am,” I said scornfully. Arrogance is all in a young warrior.

  Guthred gripped my arm as if to tell me to be quiet, then stepped forward. “Lord Ivarr,” he said, “I am sorry to see you wounded.”

  Ivarr sneered at that. “You should be glad,” he said, “and only sorry I am not dead. You’re Guthred?”

  “I grieve you are wounded, lord,” Guthred said, “and I grieve for the men you have lost and I rejoice in the enemies you have killed. We owe you thanks.” He stepped back and looked past Ivarr to where our army had gathered about the road. “We owe Ivarr Ivarson thanks!” Guthred shouted. “He has removed a threat to our north! King Aed has limped home to weep over his losses and to console the widows of Scotland!”

  The truth, of course, was that Ivarr was limping and Aed was victorious, but Guthred’s words prompted cheers, and those cheers astonished Ivarr. He must have expected that Guthred would kill him, which is exactly what Guthred should have done, but instead Ivarr was being treated with honor.

  “Kill the bastard,” I muttered to Guthred.

  He gave me a look of utter astonishment, as if such a thing had never occurred to him. “Why?” he asked quietly.

  “Just kill him now,” I said urgently, “and that rat of a son.”

  “You’re obsessed with killing,” Guthred said, amused, and I saw Ivarr watching and he must have known what I had been saying. “You are truly welcome, Lord Ivarr,” Guthred turned away from me and smiled at Ivarr. “Northumbria has need of great warriors,” he went on, “and you, lord, are in need of rest.”

  I was watching those serpent eyes and I saw Ivarr’s amazement, but I also saw that he thought Guthred a fool, but it was at that moment I understood Guthred’s fate was golden. Wyrd bi∂ful aræd. When I had rescued Guthred from Sven and he had claimed to be a king I had thought him a joke, and when he was made a king in Cair Ligualid I still thought the jest was rich, and even in Eoferwic I could not see the laughter lasting more than a few weeks for Ivarr was the great brutal overlord of Northumbria, but now Aed had done our work for us. Ivarr had lost most of his men, he had been wounded, and there were now just three great lords in Northumbria. There was Ælfric, clinging to his stolen land at Bebbanburg, Kjartan, who was the dark spider lord in his fastness by the river, and there was King Guthred, lord of the north, and the only Dane in Britain who led willing Saxons as well as Danes.

  We stayed at Onhripum. We had not planned to do that, but Guthred insisted that we wait while Ivarr was treated for his wounds. The monks tended him and Guthred waited on the wounded earl, taking him food and ale. Most of Ivarr’s survivors were wounded, and Hild washed wounds and found clean cloths for bandages. “They need food,” she told me, but we had little enough food already and every day I had to lead forage parties farther away to find grain or livestock. I urged Guthred to march again, to take us into country where supplies might be more plentiful, but he was entranced by Ivarr. “I like him!” he told me, “and we can’t leave him here.”

  “We can bury him here,” I suggested.

  “He’s our ally!” Guthred insisted, and he believed it. Ivarr was heaping praises on him and Guthred trusted every treacherous word.

  The monks did their work well, for Ivarr recovered swiftly. I had hoped he would die of his wounds, but within three days he was riding a horse. He still hurt. That was obvious. The pain must have been terrible, but he forced himself to walk and to mount a horse, just as he forced himself to offer fealty to Guthred.

  He had little choice in that. Ivarr now led fewer than a hundred men, many of whom were injured, and he was no longer the great warlord he had been, so he and his son knelt to Guthred and clasped his hands and swore their loyalty. The son, sixteen-year old Ivar, looked like his father and grandfather, lean and dangerous. I distrusted them both, but Guthred would not listen to me. It was right, he said, that a king should be generous, and in showing mercy to Ivarr he believed he was binding the man to him for ever. “It’s what Alfred would have done,” he told me.

  “Alfred would have taken the son hostage and sent the father away,” I said.

  “He has taken an oath,” Guthred insisted.

  “He’ll raise new men,” I warned him.

  “Good!” He offered me his infectious grin. “We need men who can fight.”

  “He’ll want his son to be king.”

  “He didn’t want to be king himself, so why should he want it for his son? You see enemies everywhere, Uhtred. Young Ivar’s a good-looking fellow, don’t you think?”

  “He looks like a half-starved rat.”

  “He’s the right age for Gisela! Horseface and the rat, eh?” he said, grinning at me and I wanted to strike the grin off his face with my fist. “It’s an idea, isn’t it?” he went on. “It’s time she married and it would bind Ivarr to me.”

  “Why not bind me to you?” I asked.

  “You and I are friends already,” he said, still grinning, “and I thank God for that.”

  We marched northward when Ivarr was sufficiently recovered. Ivarr was certain others of his men had survived the Scottish slaughter and so Brothers Jænberht and Ida rode ahead with an escort of fifty men. The two monks, Guthred assured me, knew the country about the River Tuede and could guide the searchers who looked for Ivarr’s missing men.

  Guthred rode with Ivarr for much of the journey. He had been flattered by Ivarr’s oath which he ascribed to Christian magic and when Ivarr dropped behind to ride with his own men Guthred summoned Father Hrothweard and questioned the wild-bearded priest about Cuthbert, Oswald, and the Trinity. Guthred wanted to know how to work the magic for himself and was frustrated by Hrothweard’s explanations. “The son is not the father,” Hrothweard tried again, “and the father is not the spirit, and the spirit is not the son, but father, son and spirit are one, indivisible, and eternal.”

  “So they’re three gods?” Guthred asked.

  “One god!” Hrothweard said angrily.

  “Do you understand it, Uhtred?” Guthred called back to me.

  “I never have, lord,” I said. “To me it’s all nonsense.”

  “It is not nonsense!” Hrothweard hissed at me. “Think of it as the clover leaf, lord,” he said to Guthred, “three leaves, separate, but one plant.”

  “It is a mystery, lord,” Hild put in.

  “Mystery?”

  “God is mysterious, lord,” she said, ignoring Hrothweard’s malevolent glance, “and in his mystery we can discover wonder. You don’t need to understand it, just be astonished by it.”

  Guthred twisted in his saddle to look at Hild. “So will you be my wife’s companion?” he asked her cheerfully.

  “Marry her first, lord,” Hild said, “and then I’ll decide.”

  He grinned and turned away.

  “I thought you’d decided to go back to a nunnery,” I said quietly.

  “Gisela told you that?”

  “She did.”

  “I’m looking for a sign from God,” Hild said.

  “The fall of Dunholm?”

  She frowned. “Maybe. It’s an evil place. If Guthred takes it under the banner of Saint Cuthbert then it will show God’s power. Perhaps that’s the sign I want.”

  “It sounds to me,” I said, “as though you have your sign already.”

  She moved her mare away from Witnere who was giving it the evil eye. “Father Willibald wanted me to g
o back to Wessex with him,” she said, “but I said no. I told him that if I retire from the world again then first I want to know what the world is.” She rode in silence for a few paces, then spoke very softly. “I would have liked children.”

  “You can have children,” I said.

  She shook her head dismissively. “No,” she said, “it is not my fate.” She glanced at me. “You know Guthred wants to marry Gisela to Ivarr’s son?” she asked.

  I was startled by her sudden question. “I know he’s thinking about it,” I said cautiously.

  “Ivarr said yes. Last night.”

  My heart sank, but I tried to show nothing. “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Gisela told me. But there is a bride-price.”

  “There’s always a bride-price,” I said harshly.

  “Ivarr wants Dunholm,” she said.

  It took me a moment to understand, then I saw the whole monstrous bargain. Ivarr had lost most of his power when his army was massacred by Aed, but if he were to be given Dunholm and Dunholm’s lands, then he would be strong again. The men who now fol lowed Kjartan would become his men and in a stroke Ivarr would regain his strength. “And has Guthred accepted?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “He can’t be that stupid,” I said angrily.

  “Of the stupidity of men,” Hild said tartly, “there seems no end. But do you remember, before we left Wessex, how you told me Northumbria was full of enemies?”

  “I remember.”

  “More full, I think, than you realize,” she said, “so I will stay till I know that you will survive.” She reached out and touched my arm. “I think, sometimes, I am the only friend you have here. So let me stay till I know you’re safe.”

  I smiled at her and touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt. “I’m safe,” I said.

  “Your arrogance,” she said, “blinds folk to your kindness.” She said it reprovingly, then looked at the road ahead. “So what will you do?” she asked.