The Empty Throne (The Warrior Chronicles, Book 8)

by Bernard Cornwell

  We sheltered that first night somewhere on the north coast of Defnascir. We found a cove and dropped the anchor stone and let the night fall on our tired ship. Some time that day we had passed the mouth of the river where I had killed Ubba. That fight on the sand had made my reputation, but it had happened so long ago now, and some day, I thought, a young man would cut me down as I had cut Ubba down and he would take Serpent-Breath and he would strut his fame. Wyrd bið ful āræd.

  The next morning brought a hard day’s rowing, for the wind was still in our face and at times the tide tried to drive us back, and it was already dusk when we came to Lundi, an island I had visited many years before. It had hardly changed, though some folk must have tried settling there, which was a foolish thing to do because marauding Northmen would have seen their farmstead and rowed ashore. There were two piles of decayed ashes marking where the buildings had stood and a skeleton on the shingle where we grounded the Ðrines. Goats watched us from the heights where puffins had their burrows. We killed and butchered two goats and cooked an evening meal over a driftwood fire. The sky had cleared, the stars were a smear of light, the air cool but not cold, and we slept on the thin turf guarded by sentries.

  Next day we rowed westwards through a limpid sea that heaved slowly to ripple misted light. Puffins whirred past us on their short wings, and seals lifted their whiskered faces to watch us pass. The wind rose in mid-morning and, after swerving north and south, it settled into a steady south-westerly, and we hoisted the sail and let the Ðrines run free. I took the steering-oar for a time, not because my son could not manage the ship, but just for the joy of feeling the sea’s tremor through the long loom. Then the effort of handling the long oar began to make my rib hurt and so I gave him back the oar and just lay on the steering platform and watched the glittering sea pass. I wondered if there were ships in Valhalla. Imagine eternity with a good ship and a shining sea and the wind in your face and a crew of good men and a woman beside you.

  ‘Skidbladnir,’ I said.

  ‘Skid?’ Eadith asked.

  ‘It’s a ship of the gods,’ I explained, ‘and it fits into a warrior’s pouch, and when you need her you just throw the ship into the sea and she grows to her full size.’

  She smiled. ‘And you mock Christian miracles.’

  ‘I’ve yet to see a dead man raised or a blind man given sight.’

  ‘But you have seen a ship grow on the sea?’

  ‘I hate clever women,’ I growled.

  She laughed. She had never been on a ship before, except to row decorously up and down the Sæfern beside Gleawecestre, and she had been nervous when our hull first met the wider sea and the short waves had buffeted us. She had seen the hull bend to the steeper waves and thought the planks must break, until I told her that if the hull did not bend then the ship would surely sink. ‘The planks bend,’ I explained, ‘and the frame just stops them bending too much. It’s like a sword. Make it too brittle and it breaks, too soft and it won’t hold an edge.’

  ‘And the stones?’ She had nodded at the bilge.

  ‘They keep us upright,’ I said, and laughed because I remembered a ridiculous sermon Father Beocca had once preached in which he had likened ballast stones to a Christian’s faith, and he had kept adding more stones to his imaginary ship until my father growled that he had just sunk the damned boat, and poor Beocca just stood by the altar with his mouth open.

  ‘You’re happy,’ Eadith said, sounding happy herself.

  And I was happy too. The pain in my side was bearable, the ship was riding smoothly, and the only thing that worried me was Wales. I knew little of the Welsh except that they were Christian, spoke a barbarous tongue and, if Gerbruht was right, ate seaweed. Their country was divided into little kingdoms that seemed to change names with the weather, though Tyddewi, I knew, was part of a realm called Dyfed, though I had no idea who ruled that land. Some petty king, no doubt, all beard and bellyache. Yet the men of Wales were great warriors, and it had become a rule among Saxons that only fools went into their hills to be slaughtered, though that did not stop fools trying. And the Welsh, who claimed we had stolen their land, liked to raid into Mercia to steal livestock and slaves, and that constant warfare was useful training for young warriors. Indeed I had fought against Welshmen in my very first shield wall. I often wondered why the Welsh did not worship the gods who were enemies of the Saxons, for surely those gods would have helped them regain their land, but they insisted on being Christian, and a good thing too because it had been Welsh Christian warriors who had come to Teotanheale and helped defeat Cnut.

  Now Cnut’s sword was in Dyfed and the Ðrines ran towards it with a bellied sail and a spreading wake. I saw a few other ships, all far off. The small dark sails were probably fishermen, but two larger pale sails were cargo ships heading towards the Sæfern’s mouth. I doubted they were fighting ships because, though they sailed close together, they headed sharply away from us and were soon lost in the sea’s haze.

  By late afternoon we were off the Welsh coast, rowing now, for the wind was heading us again. In the two days we had spent filling the Ðrines’s belly with casks of ale and barrels of smoked fish and sacks of double-baked bread I had talked to a shipmaster who knew the coast. He had been a big man, full-bearded, his face darkened and lined by weather. He had assured me that finding Tyddewi would be easy. ‘Go west to the land’s end, lord,’ he had said, ‘and you pass a big inlet and come to a rocky headland with islands just off it, and you turn north there and cross a great bay, and the headland on the bay’s far side is Tyddewi. A blind man could find it on a dark night.’

  ‘Come with us,’ I invited him.

  ‘You want me to set foot in that land?’ he had asked. ‘In thirty-eight years at sea, lord, I’ve never landed in Wales and never will.’

  ‘We’ll be pilgrims.’

  ‘With swords?’ he had laughed. ‘You can’t miss it, lord. Go west till there’s no land left and then cross the bay to the north. Go east a little till you see an island with a great rock arch, and you’ll find good anchorage at the inlet there. The man who taught me the coast called it the dragon’s mouth. Sharp rocks like teeth, lord, but you can walk to Tyddewi from there.’

  ‘You anchored in the dragon’s mouth?’

  ‘Three times. One anchor stone off the bow, another off the stern, and good sentries to stay awake through the night.’

  ‘And didn’t go ashore? Not even to get water?’

  He grimaced. ‘There were hairy bastards with axes waiting. I sheltered there, lord, from gales. And I prayed that the dragon kept his mouth open. Just cross the bay, look for the arch, and God preserve you.’

  And perhaps the Christian god would preserve us. Wales was, after all, a place of Christians, but I still touched the hammer at my neck and prayed to Odin. Once upon a time he had come to this middle world, and he had made love to a girl and she had given him a mortal son, and the son had a son, and that son had another, and so it went on until I was born. I have the blood of gods, and I stroked the hammer and begged Odin to preserve me in the land of our enemies.

  And that evening, as the wind lulled and the sea settled into a long swell, we crossed the wide bay and came to the arched rock and beyond it, high in the darkening sky, a great pall of smoke hung above the rocky land. Finan stood beside me and stared at the dark smear. He knew what it marked. Our whole lives had been spent seeing such smoke of destruction. ‘Danes?’ he suggested.

  ‘More likely Norsemen,’ I said, ‘or a Welsh quarrel? They squabble enough.’

  We rowed slowly eastwards, searching for the dragon’s mouth, and there it was, a dark shadowed cleft in the coast, and I touched my hammer again as the long oars pulled us into the land’s embrace. There were sheep on the high slopes, and a huddle of thatched hovels deeper in the narrow valley, but I saw no men with or without axes. We saw no one. If folk lived in the inlet’s valley then they were hiding from whoever had smirched the sky with smoke.

  ‘Some
one will be watching us,’ Finan said, gazing up at the high slopes. ‘We can’t see them, but they’re watching us.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And they’ll send news of our coming.’

  ‘We have a cross on our bows,’ I said, meaning that we appeared to be a Christian-manned ship and, in a Christian land, that might protect us.

  ‘God help us,’ Finan said, and made the sign of the cross.

  We set sentries, then tried to sleep.

  But sleep came hard that night. We were in the dragon’s mouth.

  Seven of us slipped ashore before dawn. I took Finan, of course, my son, Gerbruht because he had been to the shrine before, and two other warriors. Eadith insisted she came too. ‘You’re safer on the ship,’ I told her, but she shook her head stubbornly and, persuading myself that the presence of a woman made the pretence of being pilgrims more convincing, I let her come. We all wore cloaks, and I had changed my hammer for a cross. The cloaks hid short-swords.

  Once ashore we scrambled up the western side of the dragon’s mouth, and, by the time we had reached the stony crest and my rib was feeling as though every devil in Christendom was stabbing it with red-hot forks, Sihtric had taken the Ðrines back to sea. If the unseen watcher of the dragon’s mouth had sent word to his lord, then warriors would come to the inlet and find it empty. They would assume we had sheltered for the night and voyaged on, or rather I hoped they would believe that, and I had told Sihtric to keep the ship offshore until twilight and then slip back into the inlet.

  And we walked.

  It was not far, not far at all.

  By the time the rising sun was slanting across the world we had found Tyddewi and, just like the hovels at the dragon’s mouth, it was empty. I had expected to hear the usual cacophony of howling dogs and crowing cocks, but there was silence beneath the sifting smoke, which still rose to besmirch the morning sky. There had been a settlement here, but now it was ashes and smouldering timbers, all except a gaunt stone church that lay in a hollow. I had seen this so often, indeed I had caused it myself. Raiders had come, they had burned and plundered, but as we went closer I saw no bodies. The attackers would have taken the young and the nubile for slaves and for pleasure, such raiders usually killed the old and the sick, but there were no bodies being ripped by crows, no blood splashed on stone, no shrunken black corpses stinking in the embers. The village smoked and lay empty.

  ‘If Cnut’s sword was ever here,’ Finan said grimly, ‘it’s gone now.’

  I said nothing, not wanting to think about what he had just said, though of course he was right. Someone, either sea-raiders or men from another Welsh kingdom, had come to Tyddewi and left it a wilderness of ash. A cat arched its back and hissed at us, but nothing else lived. We walked towards the church that was built of dark, stark stone. Beyond it was a mess of burned buildings that smoked more heavily than the rest and I guessed that had been the monastery where Asser had gone to die. At the far side of the ruins, built against the northern hill’s lower slope, were small stone cabins shaped like beehives. A couple had been pulled apart, but a dozen others looked whole. ‘Stone huts,’ Gerbruht told us, ‘where the monks live.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put a dog in one of those,’ I said.

  ‘You like dogs,’ Finan pointed out, ‘so of course you wouldn’t. But you’d put a monk in one of them. Jesus! What was that?’ He was startled because a lump of charred timber had just been hurled from the church’s western door. ‘Christ,’ Finan said, ‘someone’s here.’

  ‘Sing,’ my son said.

  ‘Sing?’ I looked at him.

  ‘We’re pilgrims,’ he said, ‘so we should be singing.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Finan growled.

  ‘A psalm,’ my son said.

  ‘Then sing,’ I snarled. And so they sang, though it was hardly impressive, and only Gerbruht knew more than a few words. My son had supposedly been educated by monks, but he just roared nonsense as we walked between the burned-out cottages. The place stank of smoke.

  A flight of stone steps led down into the hollow, and just as we reached the steps a monk appeared at the church door. He stared at us for a frightened moment, threw down more charred timber, then fled back into the shadows. The psalm faltered as we went down the slope, then I was at the church door and went inside.

  Three monks faced me. One, a brave fool, carried a baulk of half-burned wood like a club. His face was white, tense, and determined, and he did not lower the makeshift weapon even as my men came through the door. Behind him was the blackened remains of an altar, above which hung a painted wooden crucifix that had caught the flames, but not the fire. The feet of the nailed god were scorched, and the paint of his naked body smeared smoke-black, but the crucifix had survived the blaze. The monk holding the charred club spoke to us, but in his own language, which none of us understood.

  ‘We’re pilgrims,’ I said, feeling foolish.

  The monk spoke again, still hefting the length of wood, but then the youngest of the three, a pale-faced, skimpy-bearded youth, spoke to us in our own tongue. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I told you, pilgrims. Who are you?’

  ‘Have you come to harm us?’ he asked.

  ‘If I wanted to harm you,’ I said, ‘you’d be dead by now. We come in peace. So who are you?’ The young monk made the sign of the cross, then gently pushed his companion’s baulk of wood down and spoke to him in Welsh. I heard the word season, which is their name for the Saxons, and I saw the relief on all their faces when they realised we had not come to kill them. The oldest monk, a white-bearded man, fell to his knees and wept. ‘So who are you?’ I asked the young monk again.

  ‘My name is Brother Edwyn,’ the young monk said.

  ‘A Saxon?’

  ‘From Scireburnan.’

  ‘From Scireburnan, lord,’ I told him harshly.

  ‘Yes, lord, from Scireburnan.’

  ‘You came here with Bishop Asser?’ I asked. It seemed an obvious explanation for why a Saxon monk should be in this smoke-stinking corner of Wales.

  ‘I did, lord.’

  ‘Why?’

  He frowned, apparently puzzled by my question. ‘To learn from him, lord. He was a most holy man and a great teacher. He asked me to accompany him, to take down his words, lord.’

  ‘And what happened here? Who burned the place?’

  Norsemen had happened. Somewhere to the north of Tyddewi was a river mouth, Brother Edwyn called it Abergwaun, though the name meant nothing to me, and Norsemen from Ireland had settled there. ‘They had permission, lord,’ Edwyn said.

  ‘Permission?’

  ‘From the king, lord, and they promised to pay him tribute.’

  I laughed at that. Other kings in Britain had invited the Northmen to settle and had believed their promises to live in peace and to pay land-rent, and gradually more ships had arrived, and the settlers’ war-band had grown in strength, and suddenly instead of tenants the king discovered he has a marauding band of savage warriors, cuckoos with claws, who wanted his fields, his women, his treasury, and his throne. ‘So who leads these Norsemen?’ I asked.

  ‘His name is Rognvald, lord.’

  I looked at Finan, who shrugged to show the name meant nothing to him. ‘He came from Ireland?’ I asked the monk.

  ‘Many Norsemen have fled Ireland these last few years, lord.’

  ‘I wonder why,’ Finan said, amused.

  ‘And how many men does Rognvald lead?’

  ‘At least a hundred, lord, but we knew he was coming! We were watching from the hills and received warning, so we had time to flee. But the treasures.’ His voice trailed away and he looked in despair around the gaunt church.

  ‘Treasures?’

  ‘We took the small reliquaries and the altar goods, but the rest? The great gold chest of Saint Dewi, the silver crucifix, they were too heavy, and we had no time to rescue them, lord. We only had moments. They came on horses.’

  ‘They took the saint?’

&
nbsp; ‘We rescued his bones, lord, but his coffins? There was no time to take them.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Two days ago, lord. We three came back yesterday.’ He hesitated. The monk who had held the great baulk of wood like a club was speaking urgently and Brother Edwyn looked nervous. He summoned his courage and turned back to us. ‘And you, lord? May I ask where you’re from?’

  ‘We come from King Edward,’ I said. It was sensible to claim we had come from Wessex rather than Mercia. Wessex was further away and its warriors rarely fought against the Welsh, while Mercia was a neighbour and perpetually fighting raiders from the hills.

  ‘King Edward! God be praised,’ Edwyn said, ‘a good Christian.’

  ‘As are we all,’ I said piously.

  ‘And the king, lord, he sent you?’

  ‘To see the grave of Bishop Asser,’ I said.

  ‘Of course!’ Brother Edwyn exclaimed, smiling. ‘The bishop was a great friend to Wessex! And such a holy man! What a servant of God he was! A soul of such kindness and generosity.’

  Such a piece of slug-shit, I thought, but managed a sickly smile. ‘He is missed in Wessex,’ I said.

  ‘He was bishop here,’ Brother Edwyn said, ‘and we may never see his equal again, but now he is joined to the saints in heaven where he deserves to be!’

  ‘He does indeed,’ I said fervently, thinking just what dull company the saints must be.