The Pale Horseman

by Bernard Cornwell

  “I am sworn to Alfred.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “So be it. Enemies.” He went back to Odda’s benches.

  “You would see your father before we talk?” Harald asked Odda, gesturing toward the door at the hall’s end.

  “I shall see him,” Odda said, “when our friendship is repaired. And you and I must be friends.” He said the last words loudly and they prompted men to sit on the benches. “You summoned the fyrd,” he spoke to Harald, “because Uhtred brought you orders from Alfred?”

  “He did.”

  “Then you did the right thing,” Odda said, “and that is to be praised.” Svein, listening to the translation that was provided by one of his own men, stared flatly at us. “And now you will do the right thing again,” Odda continued, “and send the fyrd home.”

  “The king has ordered otherwise,” Harald said.

  “What king?” Odda asked.

  “Alfred, who else?”

  “But there are other kings in Wessex,” Odda said. “Guthrum is King of East Anglia, and he is in Wessex, and some say Æthelwold will be crowned king before the summer.”

  “Æthelwold?” Harald asked.

  “You’d not heard?” Odda asked. “Wulfhere of Wiltunscir has sided with Guthrum, and both Guthrum and Wulfhere have said Æthelwold will be King of Wessex. And why not? Is not Æthelwold the son of our last king? Should he not be king?”

  Harald, uncertain, looked at me. He had not heard of Wulfhere’s defection, and it was hard news for him. I nodded. “Wulfhere is with Guthrum,” I said.

  “So Æthelwold, son of Æthelred, will be king in Wessex,” Odda said, “and Æthelwold has thousands of swords at his command. Ælfrig of Kent is with the Danes. There are Danes in Lundene, on Sceapig, and on the walls of Contwaraburg. All northern Wessex is in Danish hands. There are Danes here, in Defnascir. What, tell me, is Alfred king of?”

  “Of Wessex,” I said.

  Odda ignored me, looking at Harald. “Alfred has our oaths,” Harald said stubbornly.

  “And I have your oath,” Odda reminded him. He sighed. “God knows, Harald, no one was more loyal to Alfred than I. Yet he failed us! The Danes came and the Danes are here, and where is Alfred? Hiding! In a few weeks their armies will march! They will come from Mercia, from Lundene, from Kent! Their fleets will be off our coast. Armies of Danes and fleets of vikings! What will you do then?”

  Harald shifted uneasily. “What will you do?” he retorted.

  Odda gestured at Svein who, the question translated, spoke for the first time. I interpreted for Harald. Wessex is doomed, Svein said in his grating voice. By summer it will be swarming with Danes, with men newly come from the north, and the only Saxons who will live will be those men who aid the Danes now. Those who fight against the Danes, Svein said, will be dead, and their women will be whores and their children will be slaves and their homes will be lost and their names shall be forgotten like the smoke of an extinguished fire.

  “And Æthelwold will be king?” I asked scornfully. “You think we will all bow to a whoring drunkard?”

  Odda shook his head. “The Danes are generous,” he said, and he drew back his cloak and I saw that he wore six golden arm rings. “To those who help them,” he said, “there will be the reward of land, wealth, and honor.”

  “And Æthelwold will be king?” I asked again.

  Odda again gestured at Svein. The big Dane seemed bored, but he stirred himself. “It is right,” he said, “that Saxons should be ruled by a Saxon. We shall make a king here.”

  I scorned that. They had made Saxon kings in Northumbria and in Mercia and those kings were feeble, leashed to the Danes, and then I understood what Svein meant and I laughed aloud. “He’s promised you the throne!” I accused Odda.

  “I’ve heard more sense from a pig’s fart,” Odda retorted, but I knew I was right. Æthelwold was Guthrum’s candidate for the throne of Wessex, but Svein was no friend of Guthrum and would want his own Saxon as king. Odda.

  “King Odda,” I said jeeringly, then spat into the fire.

  Odda would have killed me for that, but we met under the terms of a truce and so he forced himself to ignore the insult. He looked at Harald. “You have a choice, Harald,” he said, “You can die or you can live.”

  Harald was silent. He had not known about Wulfhere, and the news had appalled him. Wulfhere was the most powerful ealdorman in Wessex, and if he thought Alfred was doomed, then what was Harald to think? I could see the shire reeve’s uncertainty. His decency wanted him to declare loyalty to Alfred, but Odda had suggested that nothing but death would follow such a choice. “I…” Harald began, then fell silent, unable to say what he thought for he did not know his own mind.

  “The fyrd is raised,” I spoke for him, “at the king’s orders, and the king’s orders are to drive the Danes from Defnascir.”

  Odda spat into the fire for answer.

  “Svein has been defeated,” I said. “His ships are burned. He is like a whipped dog and you give him comfort.” Svein, when that was translated, gave me a look like the stroke of a whip. “Svein,” I went on as though he was not present, “must be driven back to Guthrum.”

  “You have no authority here,” Odda said.

  “I have Alfred’s authority,” I said, “and a written order telling you to drive Svein from your shire.”

  “Alfred’s orders mean nothing,” Odda said, “and you croak like a swamp frog.” He turned to Steapa. “You have unfinished business with Uhtred.”

  Steapa looked uncertain for a heartbeat, then understood what his master meant. “Yes, lord,” he said.

  “Then finish it now.”

  “Finish what now?” Harald asked.

  “Your king”—Odda said the last word sarcastically—“ordered Steapa and Uhtred to fight to the death. Yet both live! So your king’s orders have not been obeyed.”

  “There is a truce!” Harald protested.

  “Either Uhtred stops interfering in the affairs of Defnascir,” Odda said forcefully, “or I shall have Steapa kill Uhtred. You want to know who is right? Alfred or me? You want to know who will be king in Wessex, Æthelwold or Alfred? Then put it to the test, Harald. Let Steapa and Uhtred finish their fight and see which man God favors. If Uhtred wins then I shall support you, and if he loses?” He smiled. He had no doubt who would win.

  Harald stayed silent. I looked at Steapa and, as on the first time I met him, saw nothing on his face. He had promised to protect me, but that was before he had been reunited with his master. The Danes looked happy. Why should they mind two Saxons fighting? Harald, though, still hesitated, and then the weary, feeble voice sounded from the doorway at the back of the hall. “Let them fight, Harald, let them fight.” Odda the Elder, swathed in a wolf-skin blanket, stood at the door. He held a crucifix. “Let them fight,” he said again, “and God will guide the victor’s arm.”

  Harald looked at me. I nodded. I did not want to fight, but a man cannot back down from combat. What was I to do? Say that to expect God to indicate a course of action through a duel was nonsense? To appeal to Harald? To claim that everything Odda had said was wrong and that Alfred would win? If I had refused to fight I was granting the argument to Odda, and in truth he had half convinced me that Alfred was doomed, and Harald, I am sure, was wholly convinced. Yet there was more than mere pride making me fight in the hall that day. There was a belief, deep in my soul, that somehow Alfred would survive. I did not like him, I did not like his god, but I believed fate was on his side. So I nodded again, this time to Steapa. “I do not want to fight you,” I said to him, “but I have given an oath to Alfred, and my sword says he will win and that Danish blood will dung our fields.”

  Steapa said nothing. He just flexed his huge arms, then waited as one of Odda’s men went outside and returned with two swords. No shields, just swords. He had taken a pair of blades at random from the pile and he offered them to Steapa first, who shook his head, indicating that I should have the choice. I closed my ey
es, groped, and took the first hilt that I touched. It was a heavy sword, weighted toward its tip. A slashing weapon, not a piercing blade, and I knew I had chosen wrong.

  Steapa took the other and scythed it through the air so that the blade sang. Svein, who had betrayed little emotion so far, looked impressed, while Odda the Younger smiled. “You can put the sword down,” he told me, “and thus yield the argument to me.”

  Instead I walked to the clear space beside the hearth. I had no intention of attacking Steapa, but would let him come to me. I felt weary and resigned. Fate is inexorable.

  “For my sake,” Odda the Elder spoke behind me, “make it fast.”

  “Yes, lord,” Steapa said, and he took a step toward me and then turned as fast as a striking snake and his blade whipped in a slash that took Odda the Younger’s throat. The sword was not as sharp as it could have been, so that the blow drove Odda down, but it also ripped his gullet open so that blood spurted a blade’s length into the air, then splashed into the fire where it hissed and bubbled. Odda was on the floor rushes now, his legs twitching, his hands clutching at his throat that still pumped blood. He made a gargling noise, turned on his back, and went into a spasm so that his heels drummed against the floor and then, just as Steapa stepped forward to finish him, he gave a last jerk and was dead.

  Steapa drove the sword into the floor, leaving it quivering there. “Alfred rescued me,” he announced to the hall. “Alfred took me from the Danes. Alfred is my king.”

  “And he has our oaths,” Odda the Elder added, “and my son had no business making peace with the pagans.”

  The Danes stepped back. Svein glanced at me, for I was still holding a sword. Then he looked at the boar spears leaning against the wall, judging whether he could snatch one before I attacked him. I lowered the blade. “We have a truce,” Harald said loudly.

  “We have a truce,” I told Svein in Danish.

  Svein spat on the bloody rushes. Then he and his standard-bearer took another cautious backward pace.

  “But tomorrow,” Harald said, “there will be no truce, and we shall come to kill you.”

  The Danes rode from Ocmundtun. And next day they also went from Cridianton. They could have stayed if they wished. There were more than enough of them to defend Cridianton and make trouble in the shire, but Svein knew he would be besieged and, man by man, worn down until he had no force at all, and so he went north, going to join Guthrum, and I rode to Oxton. The land had never looked more beautiful, the trees were hazed with green, and bullfinches were feasting on the first tight fruit buds, while anemones, stitchwort, and white violets glowed in sheltered spots. Lambs ran from the buck hares in the pastures. The sun shimmered the wide sea-reach of the Uisc and the sky was full of lark song beneath which the foxes took lambs, magpies and jays feasted on other birds’ eggs, and plowmen impaled crows at the edges of the fields to ensure a good harvest.

  “There’ll be butter soon,” a woman told me. She really wanted to know if I was returning to the estate, but I was not. I was saying farewell. There were slaves living there, doing their jobs, and I assured them Mildrith would appoint a steward sooner or later. Then I went to the hall and I dug beside the post and found my hoard untouched. The Danes had not come to Oxton. Wirken, the sly priest of Exanmynster, heard I was at the hall and rode a donkey up to the estate. He assured me he had kept a watchful eye on the place, and doubtless he wanted a reward. “It belongs to Mildrith now,” I told him.

  “The Lady Mildrith? She lives?”

  “She lives,” I said curtly, “but her son is dead.”

  “God rest his poor soul,” Wirken said, making the sign of the cross. I was eating a scrap of ham and he looked at it hungrily, knowing I broke the rules of Lent. He said nothing, but I knew he was cursing me for being a pagan.

  “And the Lady Mildrith,” I went on, “would live a chaste life now. She says she will join the sisters in Cridianton.”

  “There are no sisters in Cridianton,” Wirken said. “They’re all dead. The Danes saw to that before they left.”

  “Other nuns will settle there,” I said. Not that I cared, for the fate of a small nunnery was none of my business. Oxton was no longer my business. The Danes were my business, and the Danes had gone north and I would follow them.

  For that was my life. That spring I was twenty-one years old and for half my life I had been with armies. I was not a farmer. I watched the slaves tearing the couch grass from the home fields and knew the tasks of farming bored me. I was a warrior, and I had been driven from my home of Bebbanburg to the southern edge of England and I think I knew, as Wirken babbled on about how he had guarded the storehouses through the winter, that I was now going north again. Ever north. Back home.

  “You lived off these storehouses all winter,” I accused the priest.

  “I watched them all winter, lord.”

  “And you got fat as you watched,” I said. I climbed into my saddle. Behind me were two bags, ripe with money, and they stayed there as I rode to Exanceaster and found Steapa in The Swan. Next morning, with six other warriors from Ealdorman Odda’s guard, we rode north. Our way was marked by pillars of smoke, for Svein was burning and plundering as he went, but we had done what Alfred had wanted us to do. We had driven Svein back to Guthrum, so that now the two largest Danish armies were united. If Alfred had been stronger he might have left them separate and marched against each in turn, but Alfred knew he had only one chance to take back his kingdom, and that was to win one battle. He had to overwhelm all the Danes and destroy them in one blow, and his weapon was an army that existed only in his head. He had sent demands that the fyrd of Wessex would be summoned after Easter and before Pentecost, but no one knew whether it would actually appear. Perhaps we would ride from the swamp and find no one at the meeting place. Or perhaps the fyrd would come, and there would be too few men. The truth was that Alfred was too weak to fight, but to wait longer would only make him weaker. So he had to fight or lose his kingdom.

  So we would fight.

  ELEVEN

  You will have many sons,” Iseult told me. It was dark, though a half-moon was hazed by a mist. Somewhere to the northeast a dozen fires burned in the hills, evidence that a strong Danish patrol was watching the swamp. “But I am sorry about Uhtred,” she said.

  I wept for him then. I do not know why the tears had taken so long to come, but suddenly I was overwhelmed by the thought of his helplessness, his sudden smile, and the pity of it all. Both my half brothers and my half sister had died when they were babies and I do not remember my father crying, though perhaps he did. I do remember my stepmother shrieking in grief, and how my father, disgusted by the sound, had gone hunting with his hawks and hounds.

  “I saw three kingfishers yesterday,” Iseult said.

  Tears were running down my cheeks, blurring the misted moon. I said nothing.

  “Hild says the blue of the kingfisher’s feathers is for the virgin and the red is for Christ’s blood.”

  “And what do you say?”

  “That your son’s death is my doing.”

  “Wyrd biD ful āraed,” I said. Fate is fate. It cannot be changed or cheated. Alfred had insisted I marry Mildrith so I would be tied to Wessex and would put roots deep into its rich soil, but I already had roots in Northumbria, roots twisted into the rock of Bebbanburg, and perhaps my son’s death was a sign from the gods that I could not make a new home. Fate wanted me to go to my northern stronghold and until I reached Bebbanburg I would be a wanderer. Men fear wanderers for they have no rules. The Danes came as strangers, rootless and violent, and that, I thought, was why I was always happier in their company. Alfred could spend hours worrying about the righteousness of a law, whether it concerned the fate of orphans or the sanctity of boundary markers, and he was right to worry because folk cannot live together without law, or else every straying cow would lead to bloodshed, but the Danes hacked through the law with swords. It was easier that way, though once they had settled a land they started
to make their own laws. “It was not your fault,” I said. “You don’t command fate.”

  “Hild says there is no such thing as fate,” Iseult said.

  “Then Hild is wrong.”

  “There is only the will of God,” Iseult said, “and if we obey that we go to heaven.”

  “And if we choose not to,” I said, “isn’t that fate?”

  “That’s the devil,” she said. “We are sheep, Uhtred, and we choose our shepherd, a good one or a bad one.”

  I thought Hild must have soured Iseult with Christianity, but I was wrong. It was a priest who had come to Æthelingæg while I had been in Defnascir who had filled her head with his religion. He was a British priest from Dyfed, a priest who spoke Iseult’s native tongue and also knew both English and Danish. I was ready to hate him as I hated Brother Asser, but Father Pyrlig stumbled into our hut next morning booming that he had found five goose eggs and was dying of hunger. “Dying! That’s what I am, dying of starvation!” He looked pleased to see me. “You’re the famous Uhtred, eh? And Iseult tells me you hate Brother Asser? Then you’re a friend of mine. Why Abraham doesn’t take Asser to his bosom I do not know, except maybe Abraham doesn’t want the little bastard clinging to his bosom. I wouldn’t. It would be like suckling a serpent, it would. Did I say I was hungry?”

  He was twice my age and a big man, big bellied and big-hearted. His hair stuck out in ungovernable clumps, he had a broken nose, only four teeth, and a broad smile. “When I was a child,” he told me, “ever such a little child, I used to eat mud. Can you believe that? Do Saxons eat mud? Of course they do, and I thought I don’t want to eat mud. Mud is for toads, it is. So eventually I became a priest. And you know why? Because I never saw a hungry priest! Never! Did you ever see a hungry priest? Nor me!” All this tumbled out without any introduction. Then he spoke earnestly to Iseult in her own tongue and I was sure he was pouring Christianity into her, but then he translated for me. “I’m telling her that you can make a marvelous dish with goose eggs. Break them up, stir them well, and add just a little crumbled cheese. So Defnascir is safe?”