Lords of the North

by Bernard Cornwell

  We knelt in obeisance to the newcomer. “We must test the coins,” the newcomer said and I recognized the voice and looked up and saw Sven the One-Eyed.

  And he looked at me.

  I dropped my gaze and bit into the apple.

  “Frankish deniers,” Sverri said proudly, offering some of the silver coins to Sven.

  Sven did not take them. He was staring at me. “Who is that?” he demanded.

  Sverri looked at me. “Osbert,” he said. He selected some more coins. “These are Alfred’s pennies,” he said, holding them out to Sven.

  “Osbert?” Sven said. He still gazed at me. I did not look like Uhtred of Bebbanburg. My face had new scars, my nose was broken, my uncombed hair was a great tangled thatch, my beard was ragged, and my skin was as dark as pickled wood, but still he stared at me. “Come here, Osbert,” he said.

  I could not go far, because the neck chain held me close to the other oarsmen, but I stood and shuffled towards him and knelt again because I was a slave and he was a lord.

  “Look at me,” he snarled.

  I obeyed, staring into his one eye, and I saw he was dressed in fine mail and had a fine cloak and was mounted on a fine horse. I made my right cheek quiver and I dribbled as if I were halfway mad and I grinned as though I were pleased to see him and I bobbed my head compulsively and he must have decided I was just another ruined half-mad slave and he waved me away and took the coins from Sverri. They haggled, but at last enough coins were accepted as good silver, and we oarsmen were ordered to carry the barrels and tubs down to the ship.

  Sverri clouted me over the shoulders as we walked. “What were you doing?”

  “Doing, master?”

  “Shaking like an idiot. Dribbling.”

  “I think I’m falling ill, master.”

  “Did you know that man?”

  “No, lord.”

  Sverri was suspicious of me, but he could learn nothing, and he left me alone as we heaved the barrels onto Trader that was still half stranded on the beach. But I did not shake or dribble as we stowed the provisions, and Sverri knew something was amiss and he thought about it further and then hit me again as the answer came to him. “You came from here, didn’t you?”

  “Did I, lord?”

  He hit me again, harder, and the other slaves watched. They knew a wounded animal when they saw one and only Finan had any sympathy for me, but he was helpless. “You came from here,” Sverri said. “How could I have forgotten that? This is where you were given to me.” He pointed toward Sven who was across the marsh on the ruin-crowned hill. “What’s Sven the One-Eyed to you?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “You lying turd,” he said. He had a merchant’s instinct for profit and so he ordered me released from the other oarsmen though he made sure my ankles were still shackled and that I still wore the neck chain. Sverri took its end, meaning to lead me back to the monastery, but we got no farther than the shingle bank because Sven had also been having second thoughts. My face haunted his bad dreams and, in the twitching idiot visage of Osbert, he had seen his nightmares and now he was galloping toward us, followed by six horsemen.

  “Kneel,” Sverri ordered me.

  I knelt.

  Sven’s horse skidded to a halt on the shingle bank. “Look at me,” he ordered a second time, and I looked up and spittle hung from my mouth into my beard. I twitched, and Sverri struck me hard. “Who is he?” Sven demanded.

  “He told me his name was Osbert, lord,” Sverri said.

  “He told you?”

  “I was given him here, lord, in this place,” Sverri said, “and he told me he was called Osbert.”

  Sven smiled then. He dismounted and walked to me, tipping my chin up so he could stare into my face. “You got him here?” he asked Sverri.

  “King Guthred gave him to me, lord.”

  Sven knew me then and his one-eyed face was contorted with a strange mix of triumph and hatred. He hit me across the skull, hit me so hard that my mind went dark for an instant and I fell to one side. “Uhtred!” he proclaimed triumphantly, “you’re Uhtred!”

  “Lord!” Sverri was standing over me, protecting me. Not because he liked me, but because I represented a windfall profit.

  “He’s mine,” Sven said, and his long sword whispered out of its fleece-lined scabbard.

  “He’s mine to sell, lord, and yours to buy,” Sverri said humbly, but firmly.

  “To take him,” Sven said, “I will kill you, Sverri, and all your men. So the price for this man is your life.”

  Sverri knew he was beaten then. He bowed, released my neck chain and stepped back, and I seized the neck chain and whipped its loose end at Sven and it whistled close to him, driving him back, and then I ran. The leg shackles hobbled me and I had no choice but to run into the river. I stumbled through the small waves and turned, ready to use the chain as a weapon and I knew I was dead because Sven’s horsemen were coming for me and I backed deeper into the water. It was better to drown, I thought, than to suffer Sven’s tortures.

  Then the horsemen stopped. Sven pushed past them and then he too checked and I was up to my chest in the river and the chain was awkward in my hand and I was readying to throw myself backward to black death in the river when Sven himself stepped away. Then he went back another pace, turned, and ran for his horse. There had been fear on his face and I risked turning to see what had frightened him.

  And there, coming from the sea, driven by twin oar-banks and by the swiftly flooding tide, was the red ship.

  SIX

  The red ship was close and was coming fast. Her bows were crowned with a black-toothed dragon’s head and filled with armed men in mail and helmets. She came in a gale of noise; the splash of oar-blades, the shouts of her warriors and the seethe of white water around the great red breast of her high prow. I had to stagger to one side to avoid her, for she did not slow as she neared the beach, but kept coming, and the oars gave one last heave and the bows grated on the shore and the dragon’s head reared up and the great ship’s keel crashed up the beach in a thunder of scattering shingle. The dark hull loomed above me, then an oar-shaft struck me in the back, throwing me under the waves and when I managed to stagger upright I saw the ship had shuddered to a halt and a dozen mail-clad men had jumped from the prow with spears, swords, axes and shields. The first men onto the beach bellowed defiance as the rowers dropped their oars, plucked up weapons, and followed. This was no trading ship, but a Viking come to her kill.

  Sven fled. He scrambled into his saddle and spurred across the marsh while his six men, much braver, rode their horses at the invading Vikings, but the beasts were axed down screaming and the unsaddled riders were butchered on the strand, their blood trickling to the small waves where I stood, mouth open, hardly believing what I saw. Sverri was on his knees with his hands spread wide to show he had no weapons.

  The red ship’s master, glorious in a helmet crested with eagle wings, took his men to the marsh path and led them toward the monastery buildings. He left a half-dozen warriors on the beach and one of those was a huge man, tall as a tree and broad as a barrel, who carried a great war ax that was stained with blood. He dragged off his helmet and grinned at me. He said something, but I did not hear him. I was just staring in disbelief and he grinned wider.

  It was Steapa.

  Steapa Snotor. Steapa the Clever, that meant, which was a joke because he was not the brightest of men, but he was a great warrior who had once been my sworn enemy and had since become my friend. Now he grinned at me from the water’s edge and I did not understand why a West Saxon warrior was traveling in a Viking ship, and then I began to cry. I cried because I was free and because Steapa’s broad, scarred, baleful face was the most beautiful thing I had seen since I had last been on this beach.

  I waded out of the water and I embraced him, and he patted my back awkwardly and he could not stop grinning because he was happy. “They did that to you?” he said, pointing
at my leg shackles.

  “I’ve worn them for more than two years,” I said.

  “Put your legs apart, lord,” he said.

  “Lord?” Sverri had heard Steapa and he understood that one Saxon word. He got up from his knees and took a faltering step toward us. “Is that what he called you?” he asked me, “lord?”

  I just stared at Sverri and he went on his knees again. “Who are you?” he asked, frightened.

  “You want me to kill him?” Steapa growled.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “I kept you alive,” Sverri said, “I fed you.”

  I pointed at him. “Be silent,” I said and he was.

  “Put your legs apart, lord,” Steapa said again. “Stretch that chain for me.”

  I did as he ordered. “Be careful,” I said.

  “Be careful!” he mocked, then he swung the ax and the big blade whistled past my groin and crashed into the chain and my ankles were twitched inward by the massive blow so that I staggered. “Be still,” Steapa ordered me, and he swung again and this time the chain snapped. “You can walk now, lord,” Steapa said, and I could, though the links of broken chain dragged behind my ankles.

  I walked to the dead men and selected two swords. “Free that man,” I told Steapa, pointing at Finan, and Steapa chopped through more chains and Finan ran to me, grinning, and we stared at each other, eyes bright with tears of joy, and then I held a sword to him. He looked at the blade for a moment as though he did not believe what he was seeing, then he gripped the hilt and bayed like a wolf at the darkening sky. Then he threw his arms around my neck. He was weeping. “You’re free,” I told him.

  “And I am a warrior again,” he said. “I am Finan the Agile!”

  “And I am Uhtred,” I said, using that name for the first time since I had last been on this beach. “My name is Uhtred,” I said again, but louder this time, “and I am the lord of Bebbanburg.” I turned on Sverri, my anger welling up. “I am Lord Uhtred,” I told him, “the man who killed Ubba Lothbrokson beside the sea and sent Svein of the White Horse to the corpse-hall. I am Uhtred.” I was in a red rage now. I stalked to Sverri and tipped his face up with the sword-blade. “I am Uhtred,” I said, “and you call me lord.”

  “Yes, lord,” he said.

  “And he is Finan of Ireland,” I said, “and you call him lord.”

  Sverri looked at Finan, could not meet his gaze and lowered his eyes. “Lord,” he said to Finan.

  I wanted to kill him, but I had a notion that Sverri’s usefulness on this earth was not quite finished and so I contented myself with taking Steapa’s knife and slitting open Sverri’s tunic to bare his arm. He was shaking, expecting his throat to be cut, but instead I carved the letter S into his flesh, then rubbed sand into the wound. “So tell me, slave,” I said, “how you undo these rivets?” I tapped my ankle chains with the knife.

  “I need a blacksmith’s tools, lord,” Sverri said.

  “If you want to live, Sverri, pray that we find them.”

  There had to be tools up at the ruined monastery, for that was where Kjartan’s men manacled their slaves, and so Steapa sent two men to search for the means to strike off our chains and Finan amused himself by butchering Hakka because I would not let him slaughter Sverri. The Scottish slaves watched in awe as the blood swilled into the sea beside the stranded Trader. Finan danced with joy afterward and chanted one of his wild songs, then he killed the rest of Sverri’s crew.

  “Why are you here?” I asked Steapa.

  “I was sent, lord,” he said proudly.

  “Sent? Who sent you?”

  “The king, of course,” he said.

  “Guthred sent you?”

  “Guthred?” Steapa asked, puzzled by the name, then shook his head. “No, lord. It was King Alfred, of course.”

  “Alfred sent you?” I asked, then gaped at him. “Alfred?”

  “Alfred sent us,” he confirmed.

  “But these are Danes,” I gestured at the crewmen who had been left on the beach with Steapa.

  “Some are Danes,” Steapa said, “but we’re mostly West Saxons. Alfred sent us.”

  “Alfred sent you?” I asked again, knowing I sounded like an incoherent fool, but I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. “Alfred sent Danes?”

  “A dozen of them, lord,” Steapa said, “and they’re only here because they follow him.” He pointed to the shipmaster in his winged helmet who was striding back to the beach. “He’s the hostage,” Steapa said as though that explained everything, “and Alfred sent me to keep him honest. I guard him.”

  The hostage? Then I remembered whose badge was the eagle wing and I stumbled toward the red ship’s master, inhibited by the ragged chains dragging from my ankles, and the approaching warrior took off his winged helmet and I could scarcely see his face because of my tears. But I still shouted his name. “Ragnar!” I shouted. “Ragnar!”

  He was laughing when we met. He embraced me, whirled me about, embraced me a second time, and then pushed me away. “You stink,” he said, “you’re the ugliest, hairiest, smelliest bastard I’ve ever laid eyes on. I should throw you to the crabs, except why would a good crab want anything as revolting as you?”

  I was laughing and I was crying. “Alfred sent you?”

  “He did, but I wouldn’t have come if I’d known what a filthy turd you’ve become,” he said. He smiled broadly and that smile reminded me of his father, all good humor and strength. He embraced me again. “It is good to see you, Uhtred Ragnarson,” he said.

  Ragnar’s men had driven Sven’s remaining troops away. Sven himself had escaped on horseback, fleeing toward Dunholm. We burned the slave pens, freed the slaves, and that night, by the light of the burning wattle hurdles, my shackles were struck off and for the next few days I raised my feet ludicrously high when I walked for I had grown so accustomed to the weight of the iron bonds.

  I washed. The red-haired Scottish slave cut my hair, watched by Finan. “Her name’s Ethne,” he told me. He spoke her language, or at least they could understand one another, though I guessed, from the way they looked at each other, that different languages would not have been a barrier. Ethne had found two of the men who had raped her among Sven’s dead and she had borrowed Finan’s sword to mutilate their corpses and Finan had watched her proudly. Now she used shears to cut my hair and trim my beard, and afterward I dressed in a leather jerkin and in clean hose and proper shoes. And then we ate in the ruined monastery church and I sat with Ragnar, my friend, and heard the tale of my rescue.

  “We’ve been following you all summer,” he said.

  “We saw you.”

  “Couldn’t miss us, could you, not with that hull? Isn’t she a horror? I hate pine-built hulls. She’s called Dragon-Fire, but I call her Worm-Breath. It took me a month to get her ready for sea. She belonged to a man who was killed at Ethandun and she was just rotting away on the Temes when Alfred gave her to us.”

  “Why would Alfred do that?”

  “Because he said you won him his throne at Ethandun,” Ragnar said and grinned. “Alfred was exaggerating,” he went on, “I’m sure he was. I imagine you just stumbled about the battlefield and made a bit of noise, but you did enough to fool Alfred.”

  “I did enough,” I said softly, remembering the long green hill. “But I thought Alfred didn’t notice.”

  “He noticed,” Ragnar said, “but he didn’t do this just for you. He gained a nunnery as well.”

  “He did what?”

  “Got himself a nunnery. God knows why he’d want one. Me, I might have exchanged you for a whorehouse, but Alfred got a nunnery and he seemed well enough pleased with that bargain.”

  And that was when the story emerged. I did not hear the whole tale that night, but later I pieced it all together and I shall tell it here. It had all started with Hild.

  Guthred kept his last promise to me and treated her honorably. He gave her my sword and my helmet, he let her keep my mail and my arm rings, and he as
ked her to be the companion of his new wife, Queen Osburh, the Saxon niece of the dethroned king in Eoferwic. But Hild blamed herself for my betrayal. She decided that she had offended her god by resisting her calling as a nun and so she begged Guthred to give her leave to go back to Wessex and rejoin her order. He had wanted her to stay in Northumbria, but she pleaded with him to let her go and she told him that God and Saint Cuthbert demanded it of her, and Guthred was ever open to Cuthbert’s persuasion. And so he allowed her to accompany messengers he was sending to Alfred and thus Hild returned to Wessex and once there she found Steapa, who had always been fond of her.

  “She took me to Fifhaden,” Steapa told me that night when the hurdles burned beneath the ruined walls of Gyruum’s monastery.

  “To Fifhaden?”

  “And we dug up your hoard,” Steapa said. “Hild showed me where it was and I dug it up. Then we carried it to Alfred. All of it. We poured it on the floor and he just stared at it.”

  That hoard was Hild’s weapon. She told Alfred the story of Guthred and how he had betrayed me, and she promised Alfred that if he sent men to find me then she would use all that gold and silver on his hall’s floor to build a house of God and that she would repent of her sins and live the rest of her life as a bride of Christ. She would wear the church’s manacles so that my iron chains could be struck off.

  “She became a nun again?” I asked.

  “She said she wanted that,” Steapa said. “She said God wanted it. And Alfred did. He said yes to her.”

  “So Alfred released you?” I asked Ragnar.

  “I hope he will,” Ragnar said, “when I take you back home. I’m still a hostage, but Alfred said I could search for you if I promised to return to him. And we’ll all be released soon enough. Guthrum’s making no trouble. King Æthelstan, he’s called now.”