It made no sense to me. The place was undistinguished, except for the remnants of the fort. There were hills, fields, a couple of farms and a small river, altogether a pleasant enough spot, though why it was the right place for the saint’s shrine was quite beyond my understanding. ‘Our job, lord,’ I said, ‘is to capture Dunholm. We don’t do that by building a church here.’
‘But Eadred’s dreams have always been right,’ Guthred said earnestly, ‘and Saint Cuthbert has never failed me.’
I argued and I lost. Even Ivarr supported me, telling Guthred that we had to take the army closer to Dunholm, but Abbot Eadred’s dream meant that we camped at Cuncacester and the monks immediately began working on their church. The hilltop was levelled, trees were felled, and Abbot Eadred planted stakes to show where the walls should go. He wanted stone for its foundations, and that meant searching for a quarry, or better still an old Roman building that could be pulled down, but it would have to be a large building because the church he planned was bigger than the halls of most kings.
And next day, a late summer’s day, under high scattered clouds, we rode south to Dunholm. We rode to confront Kjartan and to explore the fortress’s strength.
One hundred and fifty men made the short journey. Ivarr and his son flanked Guthred, Ulf and I followed, and only the churchmen stayed at Cuncacester. We were Danes and Saxons, sword-warriors and spearmen, and we rode under Guthred’s new banner that showed Saint Cuthbert with one hand raised in blessing and the other hand holding the jewelled gospel book of Lindisfarena. It was not an inspiring banner, at least not to me, and I wished I had thought to ask Hild to make me a banner, one showing the wolf’s head of Bebbanburg. Earl Ulf had his banner of the eagle’s head, Guthred had his flag, and Ivarr rode under a ragged banner showing two ravens that he had somehow rescued from his defeat in Scotland, but I rode without any standard.
Earl Ulf cursed when we came in sight of Dunholm for it was the first time he had ever seen the strength of that high rock girdled by a loop of the River Wiire. The rock was not sheer, for hornbeams and sycamore grew thick on its steep slopes, but the summit had been cleared and we could see a stout wooden palisade protecting the height where three or four halls had been built. The entrance to the fort was a high gatehouse, surmounted by a rampart where a triangular banner flew. The flag showed a serpent-headed ship, a reminder that Kjartan had once been a shipmaster, and beneath the banner were men with spears, and hanging on the palisade were rows of shields.
Ulf stared at the fortress. Guthred and Ivarr joined him and none of us spoke, for there was nothing to say. It looked impregnable. It looked terrible. There was a path up to the fortress, but it was steep and it was narrow, and very few men would be needed to hold that track as it twisted up through tree stumps and past boulders to the high gate. We could throw all our army up that path, but in places the way was so constricted that twenty men could hold off that army, and all the while spears and rocks would rain down on our heads. Guthred, who plainly believed Dunholm could not be taken, threw me a mute look of pleading.
‘Sihtric!’ I called, and the boy hurried to my side. ‘That wall,’ I said, ‘does it go all the way around the summit?’
‘Yes, lord,’ he said, then hesitated, ‘except…’
‘Except where?’
‘There’s a small place on the southern side, lord, where there’s a crag. No wall there. It’s where they throw the shit.’
‘A crag?’ I asked, and he made a gesture with his right hand to show that it was a sheer slab of rock. ‘Can the crag be climbed?’ I asked him.
‘No, lord.’
‘What about water?’ I asked him. ‘Is there a well?’
‘Two wells, lord, both outside the palisade. There’s one to the west which they don’t often use, and the other’s on the eastern side. But that one’s high up the slope where the trees grow.’
‘It’s outside the wall?’
‘It’s outside, lord, but it has its own wall.’
I tossed him a coin as reward, though his answers had not cheered me. I had thought that if Kjartan’s men took their water from the river then we might post archers to stop them, but no archer could pierce trees and a wall to stop them reaching the well.
‘So what do we do?’ Guthred asked me, and a flicker of annoyance tempted me to ask him why he didn’t consult his priests who had insisted on making the army’s camp so inconveniently far away. I managed to stifle that response. ‘You can offer him terms, lord,’ I said, ‘and when he refuses you’ll have to starve him out.’
‘The harvest is in,’ Guthred pointed out.
‘So it will take a year,’ I retorted. ‘Build a wall across the neck of land. Trap him. Let him see we won’t go away. Let him see starvation coming for him. If you build the wall,’ I said, warming to the idea, ‘you won’t have to leave an army here. Even sixty men should be enough.’
‘Sixty?’ Guthred asked.
‘Sixty men could defend a wall here,’ I said. The great mass of rock on which Dunholm stood was shaped like a pear, its lower narrow end forming the neck of land from where we stared at the high walls. The river ran to our right, swept about the great bulge of stone, then reappeared to our left, and just here the distance between the river banks was a little less than three hundred paces. It would take us a week to clear those three hundred paces of trees, and another week to dig a ditch and throw up a palisade, and a third week to strengthen that palisade so that sixty men would be sufficient to defend it. The neck was not a flat strip of land, but an uneven hump of rock, so the palisade would have to climb across the hump. Sixty men could never defend three hundred paces of wall, but much of the neck was impassable because of stone bluffs where no attack could ever come, so in truth the sixty would only have to defend the palisade in three or four places.
‘Sixty,’ Ivarr had been silent, but now spat that word like a curse. ‘You’ll need more than sixty. The men will have to be relieved at night. Other men have to fetch water, herd cattle and patrol the river’s bank. Sixty men might hold the wall, but you’ll need two hundred more to hold those sixty men in place.’ He gave me a scathing look. He was right, of course. And if two to three hundred men were occupied at Dunholm, then that was two to three hundred men who could not guard Eoferwic or patrol the frontiers or grow crops.
‘But a wall here,’ Guthred said, ‘would defeat Dunholm.’
‘It would,’ Ivarr agreed, though he sounded dubious.
‘So I just need men,’ Guthred said. ‘I need more men.’
I walked Witnere to the east as if I were exploring where the wall might be made. I could see men on Dunholm’s high gate watching us. ‘Maybe it won’t take a year,’ I called back to Guthred. ‘Come and look at this.’
He urged his horse towards me and I thought I had never seen him so out of spirits. Till now everything had come easily to Guthred, the throne, Eoferwic and Ivarr’s homage, but Dunholm was a great raw block of brute power that defied his optimism. ‘What are you showing me?’ he asked, puzzled that I had brought him away from the path.
I glanced back, making sure that Ivarr and his son were out of earshot, then I pointed to the river as if I were discussing the lie of the land. ‘We can capture Dunholm,’ I told Guthred quietly, ‘but I won’t help you if you give it as a reward to Ivarr.’ He bridled at that, then I saw a flicker of guile on his face and knew he was tempted to deny he had ever considered giving Dunholm to Ivarr. ‘Ivarr is weak,’ I told him, ‘and so long as Ivarr is weak he will be your friend. Strengthen him and you make an enemy.’
‘ What use is a weak friend?’ he asked.
‘More use than a strong enemy, lord.’
‘Ivarr doesn’t want to be king,’ he said, ‘so why should he be my enemy?’
‘What Ivarr wants,’ I said, ‘is to control the king like a puppy on his leash. Is that what you want? To be Ivarr’s puppy?’
He stared up at the high gate. ‘Someone has to hold Dunholm,’ he said weakly.
‘Then give it to me,’ I said, ‘because I’m your friend. Do you doubt that?’
‘No, Uhtred,’ he said, ‘I do not doubt it.’ He reached over and touched my elbow. Ivarr was watching us with his snake-like eyes. ‘I have made no promises,’ Guthred went on, but he looked troubled as he said it. Then he forced a smile. ‘Can you capture the place?’
‘I think we can get Kjartan out of there, lord.’
‘How?’ he asked.
‘I work sorcery tonight, lord,’ I told him, ‘and tomorrow you talk with him. Tell him that if he stays here then you will destroy him. Tell him you’ll start by firing his steadings and burning his slave pens at Gyruum. Promise that you’ll impoverish him. Let Kjartan understand that nothing but death, fire and misery wait for him so long as he stays here. Then you offer him a way out. Let him go across the seas.’ That was not what I wanted, I wanted Kjartan the Cruel writing under Serpent-Breath, but my revenge was not so important as getting Kjartan out of Dunholm.
‘So work your sorcery,’ Guthred told me.
‘And if it works, lord, you promise you won’t give the place to Ivarr?’
He hesitated, then held his hand to me. ‘If it works, my friend,’ he said, ‘then I promise I will give it to you.’
‘Thank you, lord,’ I said, and Guthred rewarded me with his infectious smile.
Kjartan’s watching men must have been puzzled when we rode away late in the afternoon. We did not go far, but made a camp on a hillside north of the fortress and we lit fires to let Kjartan know that we were still close. Then, in the darkness, I rode back to Dunholm with Sihtric. I went to work my sorcery, to scare Kjartan, and to do that I needed to be a sceadugengan, a shadow-walker. The sceadugengan walk at night, when honest men fear to leave their houses. The night is when strange things stalk the earth, when shape-shifters, ghosts, wild men, elves and beasts roam the land.
But I had ever been comfortable with the night. From a child I had practised shadow-walking until I had become one of the creatures men fear, and that night I took Sihtric up the path towards Dunholm’s high gate. Sihtric led our horses and they, like him, were scared. I had trouble keeping to the path for the moon was hidden by newly arrived clouds, so I felt my way, using Serpent-Breath as a stick to find bushes and rocks. We went slowly with Sihtric holding onto my cloak so that he did not lose me. It became easier as we went higher, for there were fires inside the fortress and the glow of their flames above the palisade acted as a beacon. I could see the shadowed outlines of sentries on the high gate, but they could not see us as we reached a shelf of land where the path dropped a few feet before climbing the last long stretch to the gate. The whole slope between the brief shelf and the palisade had been cleared of trees so that no enemy could creep unseen to the defences and attempt a sudden assault.
‘Stay here,’ I told Sihtric. I needed him to guard the horses and to carry my shield, helmet and the bag of severed heads which I now took from him. I told him to hide behind the trees and wait there.
I placed the heads on the path, the closest less than fifty paces from the gate, the last very near to the trees which grew at the lip of the shelf. I could feel maggots squirming under my hands as I lifted the heads from the sack. I made the dead eyes look towards the fortress, positioning the rotting skulls by feel so that my hands were slimy when at last I was finished. No one heard me, no one saw me. The dark wrapped about me and the wind sighed across the hill and the river ran noisily over the rocks below. I found Sihtric, who was shivering, and he gave me the black scarf that I wrapped about my face, knotting it at the nape of my neck, and then I forced my helmet over the linen and took my shield. Then I waited.
The light comes slowly in a clouded dawn. First there is just a shiver of greyness that touches the sky’s eastern rim, and for a time there is neither light nor dark, nor any shadows, just the cold grey filling the world as the bats, the shadow-fliers, skitter home. The trees turn black as the sky pales the horizon, and then the first sunlight skims the world with colour. Birds sang. Not as many as sing in spring and early summer, but I could hear wrens, chiff-chaffs and robins greeting the day’s coming, and below me in the trees a woodpecker rattled at a trunk. The black trees were dark green now and I could see the bright red berries of a rowan bush not far away. And it was then that the guards saw the heads. I heard them shout, saw more men come to the rampart, and I waited. The banner was raised over the high gate, and still more men came to the wall and then the gate opened and two men crept out. The gate closed behind them and I heard a dull thud as its great locking bar was dropped into place. The two men looked hesitant. I was hidden in the trees, Serpent-Breath drawn, my cheek-pieces open so that the black linen filled the space between the helmet’s edges. I wore a black cloak over my mail that Hild had brightened by scrubbing it with river-sand. I wore high black boots. I was the dead swordsman again and I watched as the two men came cautiously down the path towards the line of heads. They reached the first blood-matted head and one of them shouted up to the fortress that it was one of Tekil’s men. Then he asked what he should do.
Kjartan answered. I was sure it was him, though I could not see his face, but his voice was a roar. ‘Kick them away!’ he shouted, and the two men obeyed, kicking the heads off the path so that they rolled down into the long grass where the trees had been felled.
They came closer until there was only one of the seven heads left and, just as they reached it, I stepped from the trees.
They saw a shadow-faced warrior, gleaming and tall, with sword and shield in hand. They saw the dead swordsman, and I just stood there, ten paces from them, and I did not move and I did not speak, and they gazed at me and one made a sound like a kitten mewing and then, without another word, they fled.
I stood there as the sun rose. Kjartan and his men stared at me and in that early light I was dark-faced death in shining armour, death in a bright helmet, and then, before they decided to send the dogs to discover I was not a spectre, but flesh and blood, I turned back into the shadows and rejoined Sihtric.
I had done my best to terrify Kjartan. Now Guthred had to talk him into surrender, and then, I dared hope, the great fort on its rock would become mine, and Gisela with it, and I dared hope those things because Guthred was my friend. I saw my future as golden as Guthred’s. I saw the bloodfeud won, I saw my men raiding Bebbanburg’s land to weaken my uncle and I saw Ragnar returning to Northumbria to fight at my side. In short I forgot the gods and spun my own bright fate, while at the root of life the three spinners laughed.
Thirty horsemen rode back to Dunholm in mid morning. Clapa went ahead of us with a leafy branch to show we came in peace. We were all in mail, though I had left my good helmet with Sihtric. I had thought of dressing as the dead swordsman, but he had done his sorcery and now we would discover if it had worked.
We came to the place where I had stood and watched the two men kick the seven heads off the path and there we waited. Clapa waved the branch energetically and Guthred fidgeted as he watched the gate. ‘How long will it take us to reach Gyruum tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘Gyruum?’ I asked.
‘I thought we’d ride there tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and burn the slave pens. We can take hawks. Go hunting.’
‘If we leave at dawn,’ Ivarr answered, ‘we’ll be there by noon.’
I looked to the west where there were ominous dark clouds. ‘There’s bad weather coming,’ I said.
Ivarr slapped at a horsefly on his stallion’s neck, then frowned at the high gate. ‘Bastard doesn’t want to speak to us.’
‘I’d like to go tomorrow,’ Guthred said mildly.
‘There’s nothing there,’ I said.
‘Kjartan’s slave pens are there,’ Guthred said, ‘and you told me we have to destroy them. Besides, I have a mind to see the old monastery. I hear it was a great building.’
‘Then go when the bad weather’s passed,’ I suggested.
Guthred said nothing because, in response to Clapa’s waving b
ranch, a horn had suddenly sounded from the high gate. We fell silent as the gates were pushed open and a score of men rode towards us.
Kjartan led them, mounted on a tall, brindled horse. He was a big man, wide-faced, with a huge beard and small suspicious eyes, and he carried a great war axe as though it weighed nothing. He wore a helmet on which a pair of raven wings had been fixed and had a dirty white cloak hanging from his broad shoulders. He stopped a few paces away and for a time he said nothing, but just stared at us, and I tried to find some fear in his eyes, but he just looked belligerent, though when he broke the silence his voice was subdued. ‘Lord Ivarr,’ he said, ‘I am sorry you did not kill Aed.’
‘I lived,’ Ivarr said drily.
‘I am glad of it,’ Kjartan said, then he gave me a long look. I was standing apart from the others, off to one side of the path and slightly above them where the track rose to the tree-covered knob before dropping to the neck. Kjartan must have recognised me, known I was Ragnar’s adopted son who had cost his own son an eye, but he decided to ignore me, looking back to Ivarr. ‘What you needed to defeat Aed,’ he said, ‘was a sorcerer.’
‘A sorcerer?’ Ivarr sounded amused.
‘Aed fears the old magic,’ Kjartan said. ‘He would never fight against a man who could take heads by sorcery.’
Ivarr said nothing. Instead he just turned and stared at me, and thus he betrayed the dead swordsman and reassured Kjartan that he did not face sorcery, but an old enemy, and I saw the relief on Kjartan’s face. He laughed suddenly, a brief bark of scorn, but he still ignored me. He turned on Guthred instead. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
‘I am your king,’ Guthred said.
Kjartan laughed again. He was relaxed now, certain that he faced no dark magic. ‘This is Dunholm, pup,’ he said, ‘and we have no king.’
‘Yet here I am,’ Guthred said, unmoved by the insult, ‘and here I stay until your bones have bleached in Dunholm’s sun.’
Kjartan was amused at that. ‘You think you can starve me out? You and your priests? You think I’ll die of hunger because you’re here? Listen, pup. There are fish in the river and birds in the sky and Dunholm will not starve. You can wait here till chaos shrouds the world and I’ll be better fed than you. Why didn’t you tell him that, Lord Ivarr?’ Ivarr just shrugged as though Guthred’s ambitions were no concern of his. ‘So,’ Kjartan rested the axe on his shoulder as if to suggest it would not be needed, ‘what are you here to offer me, pup?’
The Lords of the North Page 13