War Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Are you going to give me Bebbanburg?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You would rather fight?’

  ‘Bebbanburg is mine,’ I said stubbornly. ‘I only ask one favour of you.’

  ‘Ask!’

  ‘Look after my people. Benedetta, the women.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘My ambition is to die in Bebbanburg.’

  ‘I pray that happens,’ Æthelstan said. He smiled again, a smile that was beginning to annoy me. He was toying with me as a cat played with its prey.

  ‘Is there anything more to say, lord King?’ I asked sourly.

  ‘Oh, a lot!’

  ‘Then say it.’ I stood. ‘I have work to do.’

  ‘Sit down, lord.’ He spoke with sudden anger and waited for me to obey him. ‘Did you kill Ealdred?’ he demanded, still angry.

  ‘No,’ I lied. He stared at me and I stared back.

  I heard waves break on the nearby beach and neither of us spoke, just stared, and it was Æthelstan who broke the silence. ‘Constantine denies it.’

  ‘And so do I. You must decide which of us to believe.’

  ‘Have you asked Owain, lord King?’ Finan intervened.

  ‘Owain? No.’

  ‘I was there,’ Finan said, ‘I watched what happened, and the men who killed Ealdred carried black shields.’

  ‘Owain is Constantine’s puppy,’ Æthelstan said savagely, ‘and Constantine denies sending any men south.’

  Finan shrugged. ‘As Lord Uhtred said, you can’t trust the Scots.’

  ‘And who can I trust in the north?’ He was still angry.

  ‘Maybe you can trust the man who swore to protect you,’ I said calmly. ‘And who has kept that oath.’

  He looked into my eyes and I saw the anger fade from his. He smiled again. ‘You saw,’ he said, ‘that I burned some of your trees?’

  ‘Better trees than houses.’

  ‘And every pillar of fire you have seen, lord, came from trees. None from your people’s settlements.’ He paused, as if expecting me to react, but I just looked at him. ‘You thought I burned your steadings?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And that is what the Scots are thinking.’ He paused again. ‘The Scots will be watching us. They expected me to march, and I’ve no doubt they’ve sent scouts into your land to spy on our progress.’ He waved a hand westwards. ‘They’ll be lurking in those hills?’

  I nodded cautiously. ‘Probably, lord King.’

  ‘They’re good at that,’ Finan said dourly.

  ‘And after a week or two I’ve no doubt Constantine will realise that I have not come to battle him, but to crush the defiant Lord Uhtred. To capture his fortress. To show all Britain that there is no lord too powerful to resist me.’ He paused, then turned to Bishop Oda who had not said a word since we had come to the tent. ‘Why am I here, bishop?’

  ‘To show that there is no lord in Britain capable of resisting you, lord King.’

  ‘And which lord will learn that lesson?’

  Oda paused, looked at me and gave a sly smile. ‘Constantine, of course.’

  ‘Constantine, indeed,’ Æthelstan said.

  Finan was quicker than me. I was still gaping at Æthelstan as the Irishman chuckled. ‘You’re invading Constantine’s land!’ Finan said.

  ‘Only two people know that,’ Æthelstan said, pleased at my astonished expression. ‘Bishop Oda and myself. Every man in my army believes we’re here to punish Bebbanburg. Many aren’t happy! They regard you as a friend, Lord Uhtred, but they believe you have defied me. And what do you think Constantine’s spies have heard?’

  ‘What every man in your army believes.’

  ‘And every man in my army, every man in my court, believes I’m here to starve you out. I said I was unwilling to lose men on your ramparts so we would let hunger do our work. And that would take me how long? Three months?’

  ‘Longer,’ I said sharply.

  ‘And Constantine will believe that, because now only four men know what I plan. We four. I have to stay here for a week, maybe two, so that Constantine hears what he wants to hear. He’ll have troops watching the frontier, no doubt, but once he’s sure I’m intent on capturing Bebbanburg he’ll send more men to make trouble in Cumbria.’

  I was still trying to comprehend the deception he had planned, then wondered who was being deceived. The Scots? Who would think Æthelstan was besieging Bebbanburg. Or me? I just stared at him, and my silence seemed to amuse him. ‘Let the Scots think I’m here to teach you a lesson, lord,’ he said. ‘And then?’

  ‘And then?’ I prompted him.

  ‘And then, lord, I shall march north and lay Scotland to waste.’ He spoke viciously.

  ‘With just eighteen hundred men?’ I asked dubiously.

  ‘There are more coming. And there’s the fleet.’

  ‘Constantine wants Northumbria,’ Bishop Oda spoke again, sounding almost bored. ‘His lords have construed his presence at Burgham as a humiliation. To salvage his authority he needs to give them land, conquest, and victory. To which end he is stirring up trouble here, he denies it, and he needs to be reminded that Northumbria is a part of Englaland.’

  ‘And I,’ Æthelstan said, ‘am the King of Englaland.’ He stood and took a small leather bag from a pouch and filled it with the almonds. ‘Take this as a present to your lady. Assure her she is in no danger.’ He gave me the bag. ‘Nor, lord, are you. Do you believe me?’

  I hesitated a heartbeat too long, then nodded. ‘Yes, lord King.’

  He grimaced at my hesitation, then shrugged it off. ‘For a week or two we must pretend. Then I shall strike north, and when I do, I shall expect your help. I want the Scots to see the banner of Bebbanburg among my forces.’

  ‘Yes, lord King,’ I said again.

  We talked for a few more minutes, then were dismissed. Finan and I walked slowly back to the Skull Gate where Guthfrith’s head still had lank hair and scraps of raven-torn flesh. Our feet crunched in the sand as a wind from the sea stirred the thin dune grass. ‘Do you believe him?’ Finan asked.

  ‘Who can you trust in the north?’ I asked.

  And all I knew was that Æthelstan was going to war.

  But against whom?

  ‘It makes no sense,’ Benedetta insisted that night.

  ‘No?’

  ‘He says Constantine was humiliated, yes? So Constantine makes trouble because he is humbled. But now Æthelstan will humiliate Constantine again? So there will just be more trouble!’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Not maybe. I am right! The dragon did not lie. The evil comes from the north. Æthelstan is waking the dragon! You see if I am not right.’

  ‘You’re always right, amore,’ I said, ‘you’re from Italy.’

  She gave me a surprisingly sharp jab on the arm, then laughed. And, as I lay sleepless, I thought she was right. Did Æthelstan really hope to conquer Scotland? And how could he ever subdue their savage tribes? Or had he lied to me? Was he telling me that he would attack Scotland so that I was not ready for a sudden assault on Bebbanburg?

  So we waited. By night the sky around Bebbanburg glowed with the fires of Æthelstan’s army, and by day the smoke smeared into the gathering clouds. Where the gaudy tent had stood there was now a wooden fence, higher than a man and with a fighting step, ostensibly to stop us making a sally into the great encampment where, every day, more men arrived. Æthelstan’s ships patrolled offshore, and six more warships joined them. It might not be a true siege, but it looked like one.

  Then, some two weeks after Æthelstan had arrived, he went north. It took a whole day for his army to leave. Hundreds of men and horses, hundreds of packhorses, all filing north on the road that led to Scotland. He had not lied to me. The ships went too, spreading their dragon sails to a summer wind, and behind them came Spearhafoc.

  I had promised Æthelstan that I would help, but I had no intention of stripping Bebbanburg of its garrison. I had pleaded age. ‘A mon
th or more on horseback, lord King? I’m too old for that. I’ll send my son with a hundred horsemen, but with your permission I’ll join your fleet instead.’

  He gazed at me for a few heartbeats. ‘I want the Scots to see your banner,’ he said. ‘Your son will carry it?’

  ‘Of course, and the wolf’s head is on my sail.’

  He had nodded almost absently. ‘Bring your ships then, and welcome.’

  There would have been a time, I thought, when he would have pleaded for me to ride with him, to lead my men alongside his, but he was confident of his own strength now and, it was a bitter thought, he believed I was too old to be useful. He wanted me to go north, but only to show that he could command my loyalty.

  And so, with a crew of forty-six, I took Spearhafoc out of the harbour to join his fleet that ghosted north in front of a small and fitful wind. Æthelstan might have told me to take my ships, but I took just Spearhafoc, leaving most of my men to garrison Bebbanburg under Finan’s command He hated the sea. I loved it.

  It was a strange sea that day. It was calm. The southerly wind threw up no waves, but sighed across a long shining swell. Æthelstan’s fleet was in no hurry, content to keep pace with his army that followed the northern road. Some of his ships even shortened sail so as not to outpace the plumper cargo ships that carried food for the army. It was a warm day for late summer, and we headed into a pearly haze, and Spearhafoc, good ship that she was, gradually slid through the fleet. She alone had a beast on her prow, the arrogant sparrowhawk, while the ships we overtook had crosses. The largest of them, a big pale-timbered ship called Apostol, was commanded by Ealdorman Coenwulf, the leader of Æthelstan’s fleet, and as we drew near a man beckoned to us from the Apostol’s steering platform. Coenwulf stood beside the man, pointedly ignoring us. I steered Spearhafoc close enough to alarm the man who had beckoned. ‘You’re not to get ahead of the fleet!’ he shouted.

  ‘I can’t hear you!’

  Coenwulf, a pompous, red-faced man, very conscious of his noble birth, turned and frowned. ‘Your place is in the rearguard!’ he called abruptly.

  ‘We’re praying for more wind too!’ I shouted back, waved cheerily and pushed the steering-oar over. ‘Arrogant bastard,’ I said to Gerbruht, who just grinned. Coenwulf shouted again, but that time I really did not hear him and I let Spearhafoc run until she was leading the fleet.

  Coenwulf’s ships sheltered in the Tuede that night and I went ashore to see Egil who I found on the fighting platform of his palisade and gazing upstream to where the sky was reddened by the fires of Æthelstan’s camp. It was far off at the first ford crossing the Tuede. ‘So he’s really doing it?’ Egil asked.

  ‘Invading Constantine’s land? Yes.’

  ‘Poking the dragon, eh?’

  ‘That’s what Benedetta said.’

  ‘She’s a smart one,’ Egil said.

  ‘And I’m what?’

  ‘The lucky one.’ He grinned. ‘So you’re sailing north?’

  ‘As a show of loyalty.’

  ‘Then I’ll come too. You might need me.’

  ‘Me? Need you?’

  He grinned again. ‘There’s a storm coming.’

  ‘I’ve never seen the weather so settled!’

  ‘But it’s coming! Two days? Three?’ Egil was bored, he loved the sea, and so he came to Spearhafoc, bringing his mail, helmet, weapons and enthusiasm, and leaving his brother Thorolf to guard his land. ‘See if I’m not right,’ he greeted me as he clambered aboard, ‘there’ll be a big blow soon!’

  He was right. The storm came from the west and it came when the fleet was moored in the wide mouth of the Foirthe, which Egil called the Black River. Coenwulf had ordered his ships to anchor close to the southern shore. He would have preferred to beach the ships, but Æthelstan’s army was still miles inland and would not return to the coast until they had crossed the Foirthe, and Coenwulf feared that his beached ships might be attacked by Constantine’s men and so the anchor stones were hurled overboard. I doubted Constantine’s army was anywhere close, but the ground beyond the southern shore rose gently to steep hills and I knew there was a settlement protected by a formidable fort on those heights.

  ‘Dun Eidyn,’ I said, pointing to the smoke showing over the hills. ‘There was a time when my family ruled all the land up to Dun Eidyn.’

  ‘Done what?’ Egil asked.

  ‘It’s a fortress,’ I said, ‘and a sizeable settlement too.’

  ‘And they’ll be praying for a northern gale,’ Egil said grimly, ‘so they can plunder the wrecks. And they’ll get it!’

  I shook my head. The fleet was anchoring in a wide bay and the wind was blowing from the south-west, coming off the land. ‘They’re sheltered there.’

  ‘Sheltered now,’ Egil said, ‘but this wind will turn. It’ll blow from the north.’ He looked up at the darkening clouds that raced towards the sea. ‘And by dawn it will be a killer. And where are the fishing boats?’

  ‘Hiding from us.’

  ‘No, they’ve taken shelter. Fishermen know!’

  I looked at his hawk-nosed, weather-beaten face. I reckoned myself a good seaman, but I knew Egil was better. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You can never be sure. It’s the weather. But I wouldn’t anchor there. Get yourself under the northern shore.’ He saw my doubt. ‘Lord,’ he said earnestly, ‘take shelter to the north!’

  I trusted him and so we rowed Spearhafoc close to Coenwulf’s ship, the Apostol, and hailed him to suggest that the fleet should cross the wide river mouth to shelter under the northern bank, but Coenwulf took the advice churlishly. He talked for a moment with another man, presumably the Apostol’s helmsman, then turned back to us and cupped his hands. ‘The wind will stay in the south-west,’ he bellowed, ‘and you’re to stay with us! And stay with the rearguard tomorrow!’

  ‘Is he a good seaman?’ Egil asked me.

  ‘Wouldn’t know a ship if it sailed up his arsehole,’ I said. ‘He only got the fleet because he’s a rich friend of Æthelstan’s.’

  ‘And he’s ordering you to stay here?’

  ‘He’s not my commander,’ I growled, ‘so we go there,’ I nodded towards the distant coast, ‘and we hope you’re right.’ We hoisted the sail and let Spearhafoc run north. We ran inshore of a rocky island and anchored close to the beach, a lone ship fretting in the freshening south-west breeze. The night fell and the wind rose, tugging at Spearhafoc. Waves broke on her cutwater, slinging spray down the deck. ‘Still blowing south-west,’ I said warningly. If the anchor rope broke we would be lucky to escape being driven ashore.

  ‘It will turn,’ Egil soothed me.

  The wind did turn. It went to the west, blowing harder and bringing a stinging rain, and then it went north, just as Egil had predicted, and now it howled through our rigging and, though I could see nothing in the night’s darkness, I knew the wide river was being whipped into a welter of foam. We were in the lee of the land, but still Spearhafoc reared and shuddered, and I feared the anchor would drag. Lightning slashed the western sky. ‘The gods are angry!’ Egil called to me. He was sitting next to me on the steps of the steering platform, but had to shout to make himself heard.

  ‘With Æthelstan?’

  ‘Who knows? But Coenwulf is lucky.’

  ‘Lucky!’

  ‘It’s almost low tide. If they’re driven ashore they’ll float off on the flood.’

  It was a long, wet night, though blessedly the wind was not cold. There was shelter in the prow, but Egil and I stayed in the stern, facing the wind and rain, sometimes taking our turn to bail the ship of the rainwater that flooded from the bilge. And in the night the rain slowly stopped and the wind slowly dropped. Sometimes a gust would lurch Spearhafoc as she turned in the strong tidal current, but as the dawn edged the sea with grey the wind became mild and the clouds raggedly cleared as the last stars faded.

  And as we sailed Spearhafoc south we saw there was chaos on the Foirthe’s southern shore. Ships had been driven
aground, including all the cargo ships. Most had been fortunate and were beached, but five had struck rocks and were now half sunk. Men struggled to remove the cargoes, while others dug under the hulls of the beached ships to help the flooding tide, and all of that work was being hampered by the Scots. There might have been a hundred men, some on horseback, who must have come from Dun Eidyn and who now jeered the stranded Saxons. They did more than jeer. Archers rained arrows on men struggling to free the ships, which made those men crouch behind shields or shelter behind the stranded vessels. Other men would try to drive the Scottish archers away and the bowmen, unencumbered by mail, simply retreated, only to reappear further down the beach to start loosing arrows again. There were also some thirty horsemen and they threatened to charge the working parties, which forced Coenwulf to make shield walls. ‘Do we help?’ Egil asked.

  ‘He’s got close to a thousand men,’ I said, ‘what difference would we make?’

  We lowered Spearhafoc’s wolf-head sail as we neared the ships that were still anchored offshore. Apostol, Coenwulf’s ship, was one of them. We rowed close and I saw that most of his crewmen had been ordered ashore, leaving only a handful of men on board. ‘We’re going north!’ I shouted to them. ‘Tell Coenwulf we’re looking to see if the bastards have a fleet coming!’

  One of the men nodded, but did not answer, and we hauled the yard up the mast again, sheeted in the sail, brought the oars inboard and I heard the welcome sound of water running fast along Spearhafoc’s sleek flanks. ‘You’re really going north?’ Egil asked.

  ‘You have a better idea?’

  He smiled. ‘I’m a Norseman. When in doubt? Go north.’

  ‘Constantine keeps ships on this coast,’ I said, ‘and someone should look for them.’

  ‘We’ve nothing better to do,’ Egil said, smiling. I suspect he knew that searching for Constantine’s fleet was just an excuse to escape from Coenwulf and to let Spearhafoc have her head in the open sea.

  The wind was south-west again, the perfect wind. The sun had risen and showed between the scattered clouds to reflect a myriad flashes of light from the sea. All across Spearhafoc men had laid cloaks and clothes to dry in the new sunlight. It was warm. ‘A couple of women aboard,’ Egil said, ‘and life would be perfect.’