The Lords of the North

by Bernard Cornwell

  That summit was a stretch of open stone, pitched like a shallow roof and about fifteen paces wide. The western end rose to the ramparts while the eastern edge ended in a sheer drop to the river, and all that, I saw in a flicker of far-off lightning that ripped across the northern clouds. The centre of the boulder’s top, where we would have to cross, was no more than twenty paces from Kjartan’s wall and there was a sentry there, his spear blade revealed by the lightning as a flash of white fire. We huddled beside the stone and I made every man untie the leather rope from his belt. We would retie the reins into one rope and I would crawl across first, letting the rope out behind me, and then each man must follow. ‘One at a time,’ I said, ‘and wait till I tug the rope. I’ll tug it three times. That’s the signal for the next man to cross.’ I had to half shout to make myself heard over the pounding rain and gusting wind. ‘Crawl on your bellies,’ I told them. If lightning struck, then a prone man covered by a muddy cloak would be far less visible than a crouching warrior. ‘Rypere goes last,’ I said, ‘and he brings the rope with him.’

  It seemed to me that it took half the night just to cross that short stretch of open rock. I went first, and I crawled blind in the dark and had to grope with the spear to find a place where I could slither down the boulder’s far side. Then I tugged the rope and after an interminable wait I heard a man crawling on the stone. It was one of Ragnar’s Danes who followed the rope to join me. Then one by one the others came. I counted them in. We helped each man down, and I prayed there would be no lightning, but then, just as Steapa was halfway across, there was a crackling blue-white fork that slashed clear across the hilltop and lit us like worms trapped by the fire of the gods. In that moment of brightness I could see Steapa shaking, and then the thunder bellowed over us and the rain seemed to grow even more malevolent. ‘Steapa!’ I called, ‘come on!’ but he was so shaken that he could not move and I had to wriggle back onto the boulder, take his hand and coax him onwards, and while doing that I somehow lost count of the number of men who had already crossed so that, when I thought the last had arrived I discovered Rypere was still on the far side. He scrambled over quickly, coiling the rope as he came, and then we untied the reins and again joined ourselves belt to belt. We were all chilled and wet, but fate had been with us and no challenging shout had come from the ramparts.

  We slid and half fell back down the slope, seeking the river bank. The hillside was much steeper here, but sycamores and hornbeams grew thick and they made the journey easier. We went on south, the ramparts high to our right and the river ominous and loud to our left. There were more boulders, none the size of the giant that had blocked us before, but all difficult to negotiate, and each one took time, so much time, and then, as we skirted the uphill side of one great rock, Clapa dropped his spear, and it clattered down the stone and banged on a tree.

  It did not seem possible that the noise could have been heard up at the ramparts. The rain was seething onto the trees and the wind was loud at the palisade, but someone in the fort heard something or suspected something, for suddenly a burning log was thrown over the wall to crash through the wet branches. It was thrown twenty paces north of us, and we happened to be stopped at the time while I found a way past yet another rock, and the light of the flames was feeble. We were nothing but black shadows among the shadows of the trees. The flickering fire was swiftly extinguished by the rain and I hissed at my men to crouch. I expected more fire to be thrown, and it was, this time a big twisted brand of oil-soaked straw that burned much brighter than the log. Again it was thrown in the wrong place, but its light reached us, and I prayed to Surtur, the god of fire, that he extinguish the flames. We huddled, still as death, just above the river, and then I heard what I feared to hear.

  Dogs.

  Kjartan, or whoever guarded this stretch of the wall, had sent the war dogs out through the small gate which led to the well. I could hear the huntsmen calling to them with the sing-song voices that drove hounds into undergrowth, and I could hear the dogs baying and I knew there was no escape from this steep, slippery slope. We had no chance of scrambling back up the hill and across the big boulder before the dogs would be on us. I pulled the cloth off the spearhead, thinking that at least I could drive the blade into one beast before the rest trapped, mauled and savaged us, and just then another splinter of lightning slithered across the night and the thunder cracked like the sound of the world’s ending. The noise pounded us and echoed like drumbeats in the river valley.

  Hounds hate thunder, and thunder was Thor’s gift to us. A second peal boomed in the sky and the hounds were whimpering now. The rain became vicious, driving at the slope like arrows, its sound suddenly drowning the noise of the frightened dogs. ‘They won’t hunt,’ Finan shouted into my ear.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Not in this rain.’

  The huntsmen called again, more urgently, and as the rain slackened slightly I heard the dogs coming down the slope. They were not racing down, but slinking reluctantly. They were terrified by the thunder, dazzled by the lightning and bemused by the rain’s malevolence. They had no appetite for prey. One beast came close to us and I thought I saw the glint of its eyes, though how that was possible in that darkness, when the hound was only a shape in the sodden blackness, I do not know. The beast turned back towards the hilltop and the rain still slashed down. There was silence now from the huntsmen. None of the hounds had given tongue so the huntsmen must have assumed no quarry had been found and still we waited, crouching in the awful rain, waiting and waiting, until at last I decided the hounds were back in the fortress and we stumbled on.

  Now we had to find the well, and that proved the most difficult task of all. First we remade the rope from the reins and Finan held one end while I prowled uphill. I groped through trees, slipped on the mud, and continually mistook tree trunks for the well’s palisade. The rope snagged on fallen branches, and twice I had to go back, move everyone some yards southwards and start my search again. I was very close to despair when I tripped and my left hand slid down a lichen-covered timber. A splinter drove into my palm. I fell hard against the timber and discovered it was a wall, not some discarded branch, and then realised I had found the palisade protecting the well. I yanked on the rope so that the others could clamber up to join me.

  Now we waited again. The thunder moved farther north and the rain subsided to a hard, steady fall. We crouched, shivering, waiting for the first grey hint of dawn, and I worried that Kjartan, in this rain, would not need to send anyone to the well, but could survive on the water collected in rain barrels. Yet everywhere, I assume in all the world, folk fetch water in the dawn. It is the way we greet the day. We need water to cook and shave and wash and brew, and in all the aching hours at Sverri’s oar I had often remembered Sihtric telling me that Dunholm’s wells were beyond its palisades, and that meant that Kjartan must open a gate every morning. And if he opened a gate then we could get into the impregnable fortress. That was my plan, the only plan I had, and if it failed we would be dead. ‘How many women fetch water?’ I asked Sihtric softly.

  ‘Ten, lord?’ he guessed.

  I peered around the palisade’s edge. I could just see the glow of firelight above the ramparts and I guessed the well was twenty paces from the high wall. Not far, but twenty paces of steep uphill climbing. ‘There are guards on the gate?’ I asked, knowing the answer because I had asked the question before, but in the dark and with the killing ahead, it was comforting to speak.

  ‘There were only two or three guards when I was there, lord.’

  And those guards would be dozy, I thought, yawning after a night of broken sleep. They would open the gate, watch the women go through, then lean on the wall and dream of other women. Yet only one of the guards had to be alert, and even if the gate guards were dreaming, then one alert sentinel on the wall would be sufficient to thwart us. I knew the wall on this eastern side had no fighting platform, but it did have smaller ledges where a man could stand and keep watch. And so I w
orried, imagining all that could go wrong, and beside me Clapa snored in a moment’s snatched sleep and I was amazed that he could sleep at all when he was so drenched and cold, and then he snored again and I nudged him awake.

  It seemed as though dawn would never come, and if it did we would be so cold and wet that we would be unable to move, but at last, on the heights across the river, there was a hint of grey in the night. The grey spread like a stain. We huddled closer together so that the well’s palisade would hide us from any sentry on the wall. The grey became lighter and cocks crowed in the fortress. The rain was still steady. Beneath me I could see white flurries where the river foamed on rocks. The trees below us were visible now, though still shadowed. A badger walked ten paces from us, then turned and hurried clumsily downhill. A rent of red showed in a thinner patch of the eastern clouds and it was suddenly daylight, though a gloomy daylight that was shot through with the silver threads of rain. Ragnar would be making his shield wall now, lining men on the path to keep the defenders’ attention. If the women were to come for water, I thought, then it must be soon, and I eased my way down the slope so I could see all of my men. ‘When we go,’ I hissed, ‘we go fast! Up to the gate, kill the guard, then stay close to me! And once we’re inside, we go slowly. Just walk! Look as if you belong there.’

  Twelve of us could not hope to attack all Kjartan’s men. If we were to win this day we had to sneak into the fortress. Sihtric had told me that behind the well’s gate was a tangle of buildings. If we could kill the guards quickly, and if no one saw their deaths, then I hoped we could hide in that tangle and then, once we were certain that no one had discovered us, just walk towards the north wall. We were all in mail or leather, we all had helmets, and if the garrison was watching Ragnar approach then they might not notice us at all, and if they did, they would assume we were defenders. Once at the wall I wanted to capture a part of the fighting platform. If we could reach that platform and kill the men guarding it, then we could hold a stretch of the wall long enough for Ragnar to join us. His nimbler men would climb the palisade by driving axes into the timbers and using the embedded weapons as steps, and Rypere was carrying our leather rope to help them up. As more men came we could fight our way down the wall to the high gate and open it to the rest of Ragnar’s force.

  It had seemed a good idea when I described it to Ragnar and Guthred, but in that cold wet dawn it seemed forlorn and desperate and I was suddenly struck by a sense of hopelessness. I touched my hammer amulet. ‘Pray to your gods,’ I said, ‘pray no one sees us. Pray we can reach the wall.’ It was the wrong thing to say. I should have sounded confident, but instead I had betrayed my fears and this was no time to pray to any gods. We were already in their hands and they would help us or hurt us according to how they liked what we did. I remember blind Ravn, Ragnar’s grandfather, telling me that the gods like bravery, and they love defiance, and they hate cowardice and loathe uncertainty. ‘We are here to amuse them,’ Ravn had said, ‘that is all, and if we do it well then we feast with them till time ends.’ Ravn had been a warrior before his sight went, and afterwards he became a skald, a maker of poems, and the poems he made celebrated battle and bravery. And if we did this right, I thought, then we would keep a dozen skalds busy.

  A voice sounded up the slope and I held up a hand to say we should all be silent. Then I heard women’s voices and the thump of a wooden pail against timber. The voices came closer. I could hear a woman complaining, but the words were indistinct, then another woman answered, much clearer. ‘They can’t get in, that’s all. They can’t.’ They spoke English, so they were either slaves or the wives of Kjartan’s men. I heard a splash as a bucket fell down the well. I still held up my hand, cautioning the eleven men to stay still. It would take time to fill the buckets and the more time the better because it would allow the guards to become bored. I looked along the dirty faces, looking for any sign of uncertainty that would offend the gods, and I suddenly realised we were not twelve men, but thirteen. The thirteenth man had his head bowed so I could not see his face, so I poked his booted leg with my spear and he looked up at me.

  She looked up at me. It was Gisela.

  She looked defiant and pleading, and I was horrified. There is no number so unlucky as thirteen. Once, in Valhalla, there was a feast for twelve gods, but Loki, the trickster god, went uninvited and he played his evil games, persuading Hod the Blind to throw a sprig of mistletoe at his brother, Baldur. Baldur was the favourite god, the good one, but he could be killed by mistletoe and so his blind brother threw the sprig and Baldur died and Loki laughed, and ever since we have known that thirteen is the evil number. Thirteen birds in the sky are an omen of disaster, thirteen pebbles in a cooking pot will poison any food placed in the pot, while thirteen at a meal is an invitation to death. Thirteen spears against a fortress could only mean defeat. Even the Christians know thirteen is unlucky. Father Beocca told me that was because there were thirteen men at Christ’s last meal, and the thirteenth was Judas. So I just stared in horror at Gisela and, to show what she had done, I put down my spear and held up ten fingers, then two, then pointed at her and held up one more. She gave a shake of her head as if to deny what I was telling her, but I pointed at her a second time and then at the ground, telling her she must stay where she was. Twelve would go to Dunholm, not thirteen.

  ‘If the babe won’t suck,’ a woman was saying beyond the wall, ‘then rub its lips with cowslip juice. It always works.’

  ‘Rub your tits with it, too,’ another voice said.

  ‘And put a mix of soot and honey on its back,’ a third woman advised.

  ‘Two more buckets,’ the first voice said, ‘then we can get out of this rain.’

  It was time to go. I pointed at Gisela again, gesturing angrily that she must stay where she was, then I picked up the spear in my left hand and drew Serpent-Breath. I kissed her blade and stood. It felt unnatural to stand and move again, to be in the daylight, to start walking around the well’s palisade. I felt naked under the ramparts and I waited for a shout from a watchful sentinel, but none came. Ahead, not far ahead, I could see the gate and there was no guard standing in the open doorway. Sihtric was on my left, hurrying. The path was made of rough stone, slick and wet. I heard a woman gasp behind us, but still no one shouted the alarm from the ramparts, then I was through the gate and I saw a man to my right and I swept Serpent-Breath and she bit into his throat and I sawed her backwards so that the blood was bright in that grey morning. He fell back against the palisade and I drove the spear into his ruined throat. A second gate guard watched the killing from a dozen yards away. His armour was a blacksmith’s long leather apron and his weapon a woodcutter’s axe which he seemed unable to raise. He was standing with astonishment on his face and did not move as Finan approached him. His eyes grew wider, then he understood the danger and turned to run and Finan’s spear tangled his legs and then the Irishman was standing over him and the sword stabbed down into his spine. I held up my hand to keep everyone still and silent. We waited. No enemy shouted. Rain dripped from the thatch of the buildings. I counted my men and saw ten, then Steapa came through the gate, closing it behind him. We were twelve, not thirteen.

  ‘The women will stay at the well,’ Steapa told me.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘They’ll stay at the well,’ he growled. I had told Steapa to talk to the women drawing water, and doubtless his size alone had quelled any ideas they might have of sounding an alarm.

  ‘And Gisela?’

  ‘She’ll stay at the well too,’ he said.

  And thus we were inside Dunholm. We had come to a dark corner of the fortress, a place where two big dung-heaps lay beside a long, low building. ‘Stables,’ Sihtric told me in a whisper, though no one alive was in sight to hear us. The rain fell hard and steady. I edged about the end of the stables and could see nothing except for more wooden walls, great heaps of firewood and thatched roofs thick with moss. A woman drove a goat between two of the huts, beating th
e animal to make it hurry through the rain.

  I wiped Serpent-Breath clean on the threadbare cloak of the man I had killed, then gave Clapa my spear and picked up the dead man’s shield. ‘Sheathe swords,’ I told everyone. If we walked through the fortress with drawn swords we would attract attention. We must look like men newly woken who were reluctantly going to a wet, cold duty. ‘Which way?’ I asked Sihtric.

  He led us alongside the palisade. Once past the stables I could see three large halls that blocked our view of the northern ramparts. ‘Kjartan’s hall,’ Sihtric whispered, pointing to the right-hand building.

  ‘Talk naturally,’ I told him.

  He had pointed to the largest hall, the only one with smoke coming from the roof-hole. It was built with its long sides east and west, and one gable end was hard up against the ramparts so we would be forced to go deep into the fortress centre to skirt the big hall. I could see folk now, and they could see us, but no one thought us strange. We were just armed men walking through the mud, and they were wet and cold and hurrying between the buildings, much too intent on reaching warmth and dryness to worry about a dozen bedraggled warriors. An ash tree grew in front of Kjartan’s hall and a lone sentry guarding the hall door crouched under the ash’s leafless branches in a vain effort to shelter from the wind and rain. I could hear shouting now. It was faint, but as we neared the gap between the halls I could see men on the ramparts. They were gazing north, some of them brandishing defiant spears. So Ragnar was coming. He would be visible even in the half-light for his men were carrying flaming torches. Ragnar had ordered his attackers to carry the fire so that the defenders would watch him instead of guarding Dunholm’s rear. So fire and steel were coming to Dunholm, but the defenders were jeering Ragnar’s men as they struggled up the slippery track. They jeered because they knew their walls were high and the attackers few, but the sceadugengan were already behind them and none of them had noticed us, and my fears of the cold dawn began to ebb away. I touched the hammer amulet and said a silent thank-you to Thor.