by H A CULLEY
‘Is it him?’ Lagertha asked as she joined him.
‘That’s his device and, if he was at sea, it explains why no-one from the fortress over there has come to attack us.’
‘Man the ships!’ he roared at the men who’d come to gawp. ‘He mustn’t get away.’
Ricsige watched with his mother and sister as the Vikings abandoned their camp and rushed back to the bay where their ships were beached.
‘I knew you’d come, my love,’ Burwena said, almost to herself.
‘But father doesn’t have as many ships,’ Ricsige pointed out.
‘And the Vikings are more adept at fighting at sea,’ Osgearn added.
Burwena looked at her two children in alarm.
‘Yes, you’re right. We must pray for him. God will bring him victory over the pagans,’ she said piously.
‘Perhaps,’ Ricsige muttered sceptically under his breath.
He was convinced that God always remained impartial when it came to earthly conflicts. Look how many times Lindisfarne had been raided by the pagans with no divine intervention to stop them, no matter how hard the monks prayed.
However, it seemed that his father had no intention of fighting the Vikings at sea. As soon as the last drekar had been launched, the Northumbrian fleet went about and headed on a south by south easterly course back down the coast.
When the last ship disappeared over the horizon it appeared that the distance between the two fleets was about the same as it had been when the pursuit had started. At least Ricsige hoped that was the case. He watched the empty horizon until his mother called for him to come down and get ready for the journey back to Bebbanburg.
Thankfully the Vikings hadn’t killed the horses; presumably keeping them in case they needed them for a foray inland. A quarter of the livestock on the island had been slaughtered for food though; and once more the monastery would have to be rebuilt. Ricsige did wonder about the wisdom of keeping it in such a vulnerable place. If it was up to him he thought that he’d probably relocate it well away from the coast.
He mounted his pony and joined his mother and sister for the sixteen mile ride across the sands and back home around Budle Bay.
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Edmund stood beside the steersman looking aft at the Viking fleet just over two miles behind them. He could just make out the red and white striped sails with the black raven emblem on several of the drakar that confirmed his suspicion that he was facing his old adversary, Ragnar Lodbrok.
He turned and studied the land, trying to calculate where exactly they were. The coast was featureless at this point; just miles of golden sand with the odd streak of black coal dust and occasional outcrops of limestone. Behind that were low sand dunes with marram grass growing on the uneven ridgeline above the beach.
He was just beginning to worry because his rearmost ship was slowly being caught up by the two leading drekar, when the lookout called down that Coquet Island lay just ahead, fine on the larboard bow. He knew then where he was. His goal, the mouth of the River Tyne, lay some twenty five miles further on. If the wind held he estimated that they should reach Jarrow just as darkness fell. That was where his two birlinns would join him, giving him another seventy men.
It was a close run thing. The last of Edmund’s longships tied up alongside the jetty at Jarrow just as the sun sank behind the hills to the west. The Vikings followed them, rowing into the mouth of the Tyne and up towards the monastery on the south bank, but then turned and beached their ships two miles downriver and on the opposite bank.
Edmund strode along the jetty towards Siferth, the Ealdorman of Jarrow. He was a young man he was acquainted with, but who he didn’t know that well. He knew his father rather better, but the old man had died a year ago and Siferth had succeeded him. After the usual greetings he asked him how many men he’d managed to muster.
‘In the short time available I’ve gathered three hundred of my fyrd in addition to my own warband of nearly fifty. How many do you have?’
‘Four hundred and twenty. Ragnar has some five hundred but they are all hardened warriors. Against them your farm boys and townsmen won’t stand much of a chance. I suggest we leave them as a reserve. They outnumber our warriors so I’m certain that we will need many more men before we dare to face them in battle. Have you heard anything from King Ælle?’
‘No, nothing. Why?’
‘When I left Whitby he was about to return to Eoforwīc and gather his men before riding here.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘Three days.’
‘Then I doubt he will get here much before the day after tomorrow, even if his men are all mounted. It’ll take him a day to get back to Eoforwīc and probably the best part of four days to travel north.’
Edmund nodded his agreement before pacing up and down, lost in thought.
‘As I see it we have two alternatives,’ he said eventually. ‘We can retreat into the hinterland and hope that we can avoid being forced to fight until the king can get here, or we can attack the Viking camp tonight and hope that we can kill enough of them to even up the numbers.’
‘If we abandon Jarrow they will plunder the monastery and the settlement,’ Siferth pointed out, chewing at his lip in agitation.
‘I’m sure that they won’t do that until daylight. That gives you time to cart everything to safety.’
‘No. It doesn’t. We only have a few carts. The library here is nearly as extensive as that at Whitby. It is full of priceless and irreplaceable books. We lost many of those at Whitby the last time it was raided and I won’t let Jarrow suffer the same fate. There are just too many of them to move in a few hours.’
‘If the Vikings have camped on the north bank, then we might have time to ferry the library by ship down the coast to your associated monastery at Wearmouth. Of course, that will only work if we can slip past their camp in the dark.’
‘But Wearmouth is only six miles south of here. What’s to stop them pillaging both monasteries?’
‘They will if we lose, but Ragnar is waging a blood feud against me because my men killed one of his sons years ago. I’m sure that he’ll want me dead before he does anything else.’
‘Very well, but what about the people and their possessions?’
‘They will have to make their own way to Wearmouth. We don’t have the ships or the time to move everyone with their valuables by sea. At least they can now make use of the carts. Then we’ll see what Ragnar does tomorrow.’
‘He’ll use his own ships to cross over but, with any luck, we’ll be in position to oppose his landing. That might give us a chance.’
‘You’ve just given me an idea; whilst you supervise the evacuation here I’ll take a few of my men and see what I can do to upset the Vikings’ plans.’
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Lagertha was with Ragnar and her fellow jarls discussing how to defeat the Northumbrians without losing too many men when the alarm was sounded. They had camped above the beach in an area of grassland and scrub. The rain from the recent storm had quickly disappeared into the dry soil and the area remained dry and parched. Because of the danger that the area could be set alight, the Vikings had dug a series of fire pits in which to cook their evening meal. The one problem they had was a lack of fresh water so they had to make do with what they had on board.
They had imagined that their campsite was secure with the river as a barrier between them and Edmund’s forces. In any case no one thought that he would dare attack them. It was a serious miscalculation.
What had caused the sentries to sound the alarm was the crackle of flames to the west – the direction from which a stiff breeze was blowing. Then a crescent of fire sprang up and smoke began to blow towards the camp. There would have been enough men to douse the flames but for two things – the lack of water nearby and the volley of arrows that came out of the darkness behind the flames.
Edmund had split the ninety men he’d taken with him into three groups: one led by him, one by Cynefrith
and one by Uxfrea. Whilst Cynefrith had been given command of the fire setters, Uxfrea had taken his group down to the beach to kill those left to guard the longships and set them adrift. That left Edmund with the archers.
As the smoke grew thicker the Norsemen illuminated by the flames disappeared, but Edmund kept his men sending volley after volley blindly into where the camp was. Eventually a few brave Vikings ran through the flames to get to grips with their tormentors. The first few were killed, but as more and more burst through, Edmund decided that the time had come to withdraw a little.
He moved back two hundred paces and joined up with Cynefrith’s men. The sixty warriors now waited for the enemy to appear. They did so in dribs and drabs and were so intent on pursuing the Northumbrians that they were easy to pick off one by one. In time one of the Vikings realised what was happening and they formed a shield wall before advancing again; by that time Edmund and his men had melted away into the darkness.
Meanwhile Uxfrea and his group had caught the warriors and the ship’s boys left to guard the Viking fleet by surprise. They were so intent on watching the fire a few hundred yards to the north of them, and trying to puzzle out what the screams and shouting was about, that they forget that they too might be a target.
Many of them stood, craning their necks, by the cooking fires on the beach. Illuminated as they were, nearly twenty of them died or were wounded by the first volley of arrows. A second volley followed but that caused fewer casualties. Nevertheless many of the thirty six ship’s boys were casualties and even the wilier warriors lost nearly half their number.
They were still scrambling for their shields and weapons when Uxfrea led his men into their midst. The remaining men and boys gave a creditable account of themselves, but they were unprepared and demoralised by the unexpected attack. Although numbers on both sides were equal, ship’s boys were no match for the Northumbrian warriors and many died in the first ten minutes, leaving Uxfrea’s men with an advantage in terms of numbers.
Before long the remaining Vikings were surrounded and, though a few tried to surrender, no prisoners were taken. The sounds of the skirmish on the beach must have reached the main camp, but they had their own problems and no one came down to investigate until it was too late.
By then Uxfrea’s men had cut the anchor ropes and pushed the longships, one at a time, out into the river. It carried the ships along with the ebbing tide until they disappeared into the darkness. Two of them ran aground on the far shore near the entrance to the estuary but the others were carried out to sea. The Vikings might be able to recover some of them, given time, but Edmund only needed them out of action for two or three days at most. His aim was to maroon the Vikings on the north bank of the river.
A little later Uxfrea met up again with the other two groups and they crossed back to the south bank in one of Edmund’s longships.
The next morning a furious Ragnar strode along the river bank until he was opposite Jarrow Monastery. Edmund had drawn up his men in front of the buildings to taunt Ragnar. His ships were moored alongside the jetty but he was certain that they were safe there. Ragnar might try sending swimmers across to try and cut them out but, after Paris, Edmund was well aware of that danger and had placed a strong guard on each of them.
The Vikings took their revenge out on the nearby settlement and a few farmsteads, much to Siferth’s dismay, though it was hardly unexpected. Edmund and Siferth had succeeded in buying a little time, but at a cost. However, buildings could be replaced. The nearest crossing place was at Wylam and so, whilst messengers headed off to find Ælle and appraise him of the situation, the small army led by the two ealdormen set off westwards along the south bank of the Tyne.
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The ford upstream at Wylam was a good day’s march from the mouth of the river for men on foot. It took until the middle of the afternoon for Ragnar’s men to finish pillaging what they could find and consequently they didn’t get far upstream before nightfall forced them to camp. This time they set more sentries and patrolled further out from the camp, but they were left in peace.
The Northumbrians had arrived opposite the vill of Wylam on the north bank several hours before the Vikings were expected. That gave them time to construct a concave earth rampart topped by wicker breastworks to give their archers protection. It was designed to block off the exit from the ford and make it into a killing area. To hinder their passage through the water, Edmund’s men sank sharpened stakes into the bed of the ford.
When the Vikings hadn’t put in an appearance by mid-afternoon Edmund began to worry.
‘We should send scouts out to find them,’ Cynewise suggested.
Edmund looked at Siferth, who nodded his agreement.
‘Did you find them?’ Siferth asked the scouts when they returned, just as dark was falling.
‘No, lord. We found their trail though; it wasn’t difficult to see the marks left by so many men. They by-passed the ford a mile north of Wylam and carried on to the west.’
Edmund and Siferth looked at each other in consternation. Their plan had been to hold them at the ford until the king came up to support them. Now they had no idea where they were, and Ælle was heading for the wrong place.
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Ragnar was still furious about the surprise attack on his camp but that didn’t affect his cunning and tactical ability. He’d guessed that his enemy would plan to hold the ford at Wylam against him, so he’d pressed on to the west making for the next ford some eight miles further on. By the time that Edmund had realised that he’d been tricked he would have crossed to the south bank. With any luck he’d catch the Northumbrians by surprise.
‘The men aren’t happy,’ Lagertha told him that night as they camped, ready to cross the ford at dawn.
Ragnar had been so focused on his vengeance against Edmund that he hadn’t noticed how disgruntled his followers were. He supposed that it wasn’t surprising, given the fact that they’d lost their ships, also losing the little plunder they’d taken from Lindisfarne. Moreover they were hungry. They’d moved at such a fast pace that there had been little time to hunt animals and the fruit, berries and the like that they had managed to gather weren’t food fit for warriors.
‘I suppose I’d better talk to them then,’ he muttered.
He wandered from camp fire to camp fire for the next four hours, sitting and talking to individual groups. He reassured them that, once they’d defeated the Northumbrians they would take their ships and, not only collect the plunder they’d taken from Jarrow, but carry on down the coast raiding and killing.
It was what his men needed to hear and, by the time he dropped off into a dreamless sleep, Ragnar was confident that he’d restored his warriors’ morale.
The next day it took little more than an hour for the five hundred Vikings to cross over to the south bank of the Tyne. They were now eager to get to grips with Edmund’s army, slaughter them and seize Edmund’s longships. A Viking without a ship was like a fish out of water.
They reached the defensive works opposite Wylam in the early afternoon but found them abandoned. They lost time crossing back over to pillage the settlement but it didn’t yield much in the way of plunder, and what they did find they had to carry, so all it did was to slow them down. As they left, heading east on the south bank, two scouts watched them leave from a low rise a few hundred yards to the north of the river. As the dust cloud which marked the passing of the Norsemen disappeared in the distance, they mounted their horses and splashed across the Tyne heading south.
That night Ragnar and his men camped halfway between the ford at Wylam and Jarrow. They were tired and hungry, but they looked forward to plundering the rich monastery the next day and that made up for much.
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Ælle halted at the old Roman fort at Concangis for the night. It was situated on a high bluff, overlooking the valleys of the River Wear to the east and the Cong Burn to the north. From there it was only fifteen miles to Wylam, a distance he and the two h
undred horsemen he had with him could cover in a few hours. However, he didn’t know whether to delay his advance until the rest of his men on foot could catch up, or press on to the River Tyne at dawn the next day.
It was dark by the time that Edmund’s two scouts found him. They had taken something of a gamble that he would be there, but it seemed the logical place to stop overnight. The hall of Heremond, the Ealdorman of Weardale, was located there and the old ramparts and palisade, much repaired, would provide protection for the king’s forces.
‘Where does Lord Edmund propose to make his stand against the Norsemen?’ Ælle asked, once he had been told the latest situation.
‘At the mouth of the River Derventio, where it runs into the Tyne, Cyning,’ the elder of the two scouts replied. ‘There is a stretch on the east bank about seven hundred yards long between the Tyne in the north and extensive marshy ground to the south.’
‘And how wide is this Derventio?’
‘Not wide, Cyning, perhaps fifty yards?’
‘Ummm. Is it deep then?’
‘It varies, as it’s tidal at that point. At the moment with no rain to feed it for a while it’s probably knee deep at its shallowest and chest deep at high tide.’
‘Thank you, you’ve been helpful; you may both go.’
‘It doesn’t sound much of a defensive line,’ Wulfnoth, the Ealdorman of Eoforwīc, said disdainfully.
He had accompanied the king north with twenty horsemen of his own, as had two other ealdorman who he’d collected on the way.
‘You don’t know the ground, Wulfnoth,’ Heremond put in quickly. ‘The ground is fairly flat at that point and, as a place to take up a defensive position, it’s as good as any and better than most.’