The Great Heathen Army

by H A CULLEY

  Ϯϯϯ

  The rest of the task was easy after that. The other groups had been just as successful as we had been but an aura of melancholia hung over us as we piled anything flammable we could find against the masts of the ten longships tied up alongside. Once everything was ready I gave the signal and ten of us lit two torches each from the four campfires. We threw them onto the pile of debris around each of the masts and, as soon as we were sure that fires had caught, the others cast the longships adrift.

  We watched as they drifted out into the centre of the river and then headed downstream towards where the rest of the fleet was moored. The tarred rigging was burning brightly by this stage and we could hear alarm bells ringing in Eforwic. By the time that the fireships reached the anchored boats the debris on deck and the masts themselves were well alight and then the fire spread to the rigging of the rest of the longships.

  By now warriors would be streaming out of Eforwic to investigate the fires. It was time to retreat and I gave the order. I stopped to look back before we crested the ridge between the river and our encampment. Practically the whole fleet was burning merrily. Then I saw that perhaps ten ships had managed to get away. Presumably the anchor watch had cut them free and let them drift downstream and away from the general conflagration. It didn’t matter. Eighty per cent of the fleet had been destroyed.

  Then I saw something else silhouetted in the flames. Four people were struggling with each other and one of them had hair down to their waist. Leofflæd was fighting someone off and I had a pretty good idea who it was.

  By now the others had disappeared into the darkness and so I headed back down the slope, pulling my sword from its scabbard as I ran. I was about twenty yards away when I saw one of the larger figures lunge at a smaller one. It was difficult to make out faces in the darkness against the amber and yellow of the burning ships but the silhouette was unmistakably that of Tove. The latter fell and I knew that either Ceadda or Hroðulf had stabbed the young Dane.

  The three remaining figures fell to the ground and seconds later I reached them. Hroðulf was trying to hold a struggling Leofflæd down whilst Ceadda was busy ripping her trousers down. I didn’t hesitate. I thrust my sword into Ceadda’s back with such viciousness that it nearly went all the way through his body and into Leofflæd. Thankfully the point struck a rib and stopped just in time. Hroðulf eye’s opened wide in horror at his dead friend and then ran away into the darkness. I was about to go after him but Leofflæd was convulsed by sobs and I couldn’t leave her.

  I rolled the dead Ceadda off her and took her in my arms to comfort her. She hugged me back so fiercely that I thought she was going to break my ribs. I stroked her back, not knowing what to say to comfort her. She relaxed and looked into my eyes as they glistened, reflecting the dancing flames several hundred yards away across the water.

  ‘Come on,’ I managed to croak, ‘we need to get away before the Danes find us.’

  She nodded but pulled me to her again, kissing me fiercely on the lips. Suddenly nothing else counted; not the slaughter I had taken part in, nor the death of Tove. All that mattered was the feeling of bliss as I lay there in Leofflæd’s arms as her lips made love to mine.

  It was the sound of Danish voices nearby that brought us down to earth with a bump. We lay there, hardly daring to breath, as the voices receded.

  ‘Come on,’ she hissed urgently, ‘we need to get out of here.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ I whispered, pulling Tove’s corpse upright and slinging him over my shoulder. ‘He deserves a proper burial. Ceadda can stay here as food for the carrion crows.’

  I staggered under the weight and thought inconsequentially how much the boy had grown in the time I had known him. He was the first of our little group to die and I felt his loss keenly.

  Ϯϯϯ

  It had never occurred to me to report what had happened to Edmund and so it was a profound shock to be rudely awakened the next morning by someone kicking me hard in the side. I was dragged out of the tent I shared with Alric wearing nothing but my night tunic and hauled before Ealdorman Edmund. There at his side stood a smirking Hroðulf. On his other side there was a man dressed ready for war who glowered at me. I wondered what the hell was going on. Was I having some form of hallucination? The pain in my side told me that this was all too real, however.

  ‘Let Jørren go,’ Edmund barked at the two warriors who had manhandled me to stand in front of him. The two glanced at the man at Edmund’s side who nodded. They released me but still stood either side of me. From that I gathered that they were the stranger’s warriors, not Edmund’s.

  ‘You were sent to tell him I wanted to see him, not to mistreat him. This is the boy who destroyed the Danish fleet last night. We owe him a debt of gratitude, not abuse. Get out of my sight!’

  The men looked at him resentfully, but left his tent. Edmund sighed and looked me in the eye.

  ‘I’ll keep this short because there are more important things afoot today,’ Edmund barked at me. ‘Did you or did you not kill Ceadda last night?’

  ‘I did but he …’

  I got no further before both the unknown man and Hroðulf gave a cry of triumph.

  ‘I’m sorry Jørren. We are all grateful to you for what you and your boys did, but you have admitted to killing Thegn Cynemær’s son. You must pay him the weregild due, which is six hundred shillings, or be sold into slavery.’

  It was a great deal of money but I could afford to pay it – just. However, I didn’t see why I should. Ceadda was a rapist and probably a murderer. If he wasn’t the latter, then that grinning loon, Hroðulf, was the guilty party and Ceadda was his accomplice.

  ‘Have you anything to say?’ he added, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘Yes I have, lord. This is a farce of a hearing. I demand to be heard at a proper trial and to call witnesses as to my character. Furthermore Ceadda was in the process of raping Leofflæd when I killed him and either he or Hroðulf murdered Tove.’

  ‘Tove?’

  ‘A Danish boy, lord, not worth more than a slave,’ Hroðulf sneered.

  I wished at that moment that I’d managed to kill him as well.

  ‘He was one of my men, a Christian and free, not a slave.’

  ‘Very well, does he have a family?’

  ‘No, lord but he was sworn to me.’

  ‘Then I will reduce the wergeld you must pay to four hundred shillings.’

  It was poor recompense for the death of loyal Tove but I still had no intention of paying Cynemær a single penny.

  ‘And what of the fact that he was raping one of my scouts at the time?’

  Cynemær went puce in the face and I had difficulty in suppressing a chuckle when I realised that he thought that I was accusing his dead son of sodomy.

  ‘He is not here to answer the charge,’ Edmund said.

  ‘Lord, your father-in-law asks you to take the field without delay,’ a man said urgently after bursting in on us.

  I didn’t know who he meant at the time; later I learned that Edmund’s daughter was King Ælle’s wife.

  ‘We will continue this after our victory,’ Edmund said, rising from his chair. ‘Stay here. You and your scouts have done enough.’

  Edmund went through a curtain, presumably to put on his armour. Cynemær shoulder barged me as he left, whispering in my ear ‘you are as good as dead, boy. I don’t want your money, I want your head.’

  Hroðulf followed him with a silly grin still fixed on his face. However, it disappeared when I punched him hard in the groin and he doubled over in agony. Leaving him to recover, I walked past the openly grinning sentries just inside the entrance and went back to our part of the camp.

  ‘What happened,’ someone asked as everyone crowded around me.

  ‘The ealdorman said I must pay six hundred shillings for Ceadda’s death, less two hundred for the death of Tove. However, Ceadda’s father, Cynemær, has sworn to kill me.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Redw
ald asked anxiously.

  ‘I’m leaving, but you don’t have to. None of you have done anything wrong, far from it. You’re all heroes.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ someone else said. ‘Where you go, we go.’

  To my surprise I saw that it was Sæwine, the boy who had meant to be watching Ceadda. He hadn’t been with Tove when he’d been killed and I made a mental note to tackle him about it later.

  ‘You can’t leave. You’re sworn to serve Edmund,’ I told him.

  ‘Now we’ll swear to follow you,’ he said simply. ‘He was wrong to fine you for killing that swine.’

  Wealhmær and the other Bernician scouts murmured in agreement.

  ‘Very well, get packed. We’re leaving.’

  ‘Er, and where exactly are we going, Jørren,’ my brother asked, looking perplexed.

  ‘Mercia. Hopefully it’s free of Danes and other people who want my head.’

  Chapter Eight

  Summer / Autumn 867

  As soon as I got a chance I cornered Sæwine and demanded to know why he hadn’t kept an eye on Ceadda as I’d asked.

  ‘He threatened to kill me if I didn’t disappear. He would have done it too. There was nothing I could achieve by defying him and so I ran for help. The first person I encountered was Tove so I told him what was happening and he went to confront Ceadda; the rest you know.’

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I liked Sæwine and so I was pleased that he’d acted sensibly and not dishonourably. I blamed myself for what had happened; I should have picked someone older and more capable of standing up to Ceadda for the task.

  It was over a month before we heard what had happened on that fateful day after we’d left. We had avoided settlements, only a few of us entering to buy essential provisions, until we were well inside Mercia. Even then we proceeded with caution. The next place we stopped at was Snotingaham. We thought ourselves safe, from both the Danes and the vengeance of Cynemær. We were wrong on both counts.

  The settlement was abuzz with various rumours about the fate of Northumbria. What was clear was that the two kings, Ælle and his brother Osbehrt, had lost the battle against the Great Heathen Army outside Eforwic and both had been killed. It was said that Ælle had been captured and had suffered the agonising death known as the blood eagle. If true, it was a horrible way to die, as Erik explained to me.

  ‘He would have been held face down whilst his ribs were severed from his spine, probably with a sharp axe,’ he said with rather too much relish for my liking. ‘His lungs would then have been pulled through the gaps to create what looks like a pair of wings. It’s a ritual usually reserved for a man of noble birth who has murdered the father of the man carrying out the ritual.’

  ‘Who would have done such a grisly act and who was the father that Ælle was supposed to have killed?’ I asked, appalled by the barbarous death he’d suffered.

  ‘Probably Ívarr the Boneless and his brothers. Their father was Ragnarr Loðbrók, the famed king of Norweġ and Danmǫrk, who Ælle murdered by throwing into a pit of snakes.’

  ‘I see; and this Ívarr is the leader of the Danes?’

  ‘One of them, yes. There are many jarls who have rallied to the call for revenge against Ælle and the Northumbrians, but the main leaders are three of the many sons of Ragnarr: Ívarr, Halfdan and Ubba.’

  I would have liked to have learned more about our enemy but Erik didn’t know much. He’d been the son of a bondi, what we called a ceorl or freeman, and only knew what his father had told him - which wasn’t much - and what he gleaned from listening to men talking around the campfire. He did add that revenge might have been the motive for Ívarr and his brothers, but the rest were there solely for plunder.

  I asked him about Ívarr’s curious nickname and he said that it was because he was incapable of getting an erection. He’d been given the nickname by a girl he’d tried to bed against her will but then failed to rise to the occasion, as Erik quaintly put it. Ívarr had killed her in revenge for the ridicule which followed, but the name had stuck. However, no one ever used it to Ívarr’s face.

  I was curious as to the fate of Edmund of Bebbanburg, but no one seemed to know if he’d survived. I heard later that he’d been injured and he’d died of his wounds. The new lord of Bebbanburg was Ricsige, Edmund’s sixteen year old son.

  Sæwine, Wealhmær and their friends were naturally upset when I told them of their previous lord’s death, but I thanked the Lord God that they had decided to join me. If they hadn’t, they would no doubt be dead as well.

  We had camped in a peaceful glade just to the north of Snotingaham whilst we sourced what we needed for our journey further south. I had no clear vision of the future, except to get as far away from Northumbria as possible. I had a hazy notion that we would be safe in Wessex but that was all. I was still nervous that Cynemær would have sent his men to track us and so I sent two of our group to watch the road from the north during daylight. On the day in question it was the turn of Ulf and Alric to stand watch.

  I had planned to leave the next day so when the two scouts came galloping back into camp we were just about ready to leave anyway.

  ‘Danes, Jørren,’ my brother panted.

  ‘And hundreds of them, about three miles away,’ added Ulf.

  ‘Are you…’

  I was about to ask them if they were sure, but it would have been a fatuous question. They knew only too well what Danes looked like. Instead I yelled for everyone to get everything loaded onto the horses. Ten minutes later we left the glade and, as I looked behind me, I could see the dust cloud kicked up by the Danish army. I debated whether to warn Snotingaham. It would be a risk as I feared being trapped there, but I couldn’t leave without raising the alarm.

  ‘Alric, take everyone to the south and don’t stop until you are well clear of the place. I’m going to warn Snotingaham; I’ll catch you up.’

  At first he looked as if he was going to argue but then he nodded his head and I cantered away towards the settlement on top of the cliff. I heard hoof beats behind me and glanced around to see Sæwine close behind me. I was tempted to stop and send him back, but time was of the essence and so I allowed him to join me. Later he told me that he still felt guilty about Tove’s death. I got the impression that he thought that appointing himself as my unofficial bodyguard somehow atoned for it.

  Riding through the narrow streets shouting that the Danes were coming wouldn’t have achieved anything, except to induce hysteria and panic. Instead I rode up to the ealdorman’s hall and told the sentry, urging him to tell his lord without delay.

  ‘Why should I believe you?’ the man asked belligerently, presumably thinking I was trying to make him look a fool.

  ‘I don’t care if you do or not. The Danes are only a few miles away so, unless you want to be responsible for the deaths of everyone here, I suggest you run and tell your master.’

  I rode away with Sæwine, not looking back to see if he had gone up to the hall as I’d suggested. I had no idea what the ealdorman could achieve in the way of evacuation in the short time available, but I had salved my conscience.

  Ϯϯϯ

  That night we camped well away from the road. It was the middle of September and the nights were drawing in and the temperature was cooling. When it started to rain as we sat around the campfire, I realised that the time was coming when I’d have to think about winter quarters.

  Leofflæd sat across from me that night and I watched the firelight dancing on her face and in her hair. I was mesmerised by her and, at the same time, incredibly frustrated. Our brief period of intimacy after firing the Danish fleet had convinced me that Leofflæd was as much in love with me as I was with her, but there was no repetition; indeed she seemed to avoid me whenever there was an opportunity for us to be alone. Consequently I felt hurt and confused. For my part I took refuge in treating her with coldness and indifference. I knew that it hurt her but I didn’t seem to be able to stop myself.

  My misery was compounded wh
en Erik, who was sitting next to me, dug me in the ribs and whispered something that convinced me that I had to act instead of brooding.

  ‘Jerrik and Leofflæd seem to be getting close to each other, don’t you think?’

  I looked across and the two of them were sitting alongside each other and muttering something into each other’s ears. Suddenly Leofflæd giggled and hit Jerrik’s arm, but in a playful manner. I was on the point of making a fool of myself by reacting like a jealous lover when the first spots of rain fell. A minute later the heavens opened and we all sprinted for our tents. Spending a night soaking wet was no one’s idea of fun.

  I shared a tent with Alric and decided that I would have to risk being mocked and ask for his advice. I’m glad that I did. Instead of deriding me as a callow youth besotted with a girl more than two years older than me, he went quiet whilst he thought about what I’d told him.

  ‘I’m no expert so I could be wrong, but have you talked to her about the way you feel?’

  ‘No, we haven’t talked much at all. Those few kisses outside Eforwic are all I have to go on; that and the fact that I’ve caught her watching me when she thought I wasn’t looking her way.’

  ‘You’re our leader, for better or worse, so you must avoid causing disharmony amongst us. If you try to claim the only girl as your lover, and ride roughshod over the feelings of others, you’ll do untold damage. You need to talk to her and see how she feels. If she prefers Jerrik, you’ll just have to accept it. If she really does love you, as you say she does, than she must be the one to let Jerrik down lightly.’

  I lay awake for a long time, listening to the patter of the rain on the oiled leather of our tent and the gentle snores of my brother before I came to the conclusion that he was right.