Uhtred the Bold

by H A CULLEY

  ‘Greetings, Jarl Sigurd, I come in peace seeking to discuss something to our mutual advantage.’

  ‘Have you brought me a gift, you Saxon turd?’

  It was not the most auspicious of beginnings. I refrained from pointing out that I was an Angle, not a Saxon.

  ‘I have, lord. It is on my ship. May I send for my men to bring it here?’

  ‘No, my men will fetch it. It had better be enough to make it worth my while to listen to your bleating.’

  He nodded and half a dozen men left the hall. Meanwhile I was biting my tongue, trying hard not to respond to the man’s insults. We withdrew to the side of the hall to wait for the return of his men whilst Sigurd heard petitions and issued judgements. It rapidly became apparent that Sigurd ruled through fear and the punishments he meted out were harsh. It shouldn’t have surprised me. He had started as Jarl of Orkney but he now held sway over the Shetland Islands, the northern Hebrides off the west coast as well as Caithness and Sutherland on the mainland. He paid homage to Sweyn Forkbeard but, in reality, he was left alone to rule his petty realm as he saw fit.

  Sigurd held up his hand to halt a man who was claiming that another had stolen his wife when his men returned with the gift I’d brought him. He got up from his throne with difficulty and waddled down the steps to where the chest had been put down. One of his men opened it to reveal a quantity of hack silver and silver coins. His eyes lit up at the sight of it, as well they might. It represented the best part of my income for a year. I prayed that it would be worth it.

  ‘Very good,’ he said, giving me a grotesque smile. ‘I accept your gift. Now all you have to do is to defeat my champion and I will listen to your proposal.

  ~~~

  Sigurd’s champion proved to be a warrior who made the Scottish giant, Drest, look like a midget. He stood head and shoulders above me and his arms were as thick as my legs. He held a two handed battle axe in his right hand and a sword a foot longer than mine in his left. Neither of us wore a byrnie or a helmet. I had been offered an axe but it wasn’t a weapon I was familiar with and, to Sigurd’s amazement, I opted for a dagger as my second weapon.

  My adversary had a wolfish grin on his face and seemed to be relishing the prospect of cutting me into little pieces. I regarded that as a good sign; it meant that he was overconfident.

  ‘Is this to the death?’ I asked Sigurd as I my opponent and I circled each other warily; at least it was warily on my part.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Sigurd replied, giving me a chilling smiles. ‘You can make him submit or you can kill him. Then I will hear you. On the other hand, if you lose I have no further interest in you and it is up to him whether he lets you live or not.’

  The Norse giant whose name I hadn’t caught lumbered forward and swung his axe at my head, I turned and moved sideways, straight into the path of his sword as he aimed a blow at my side. I parried it with my own sword but his blow had such force behind it that I nearly lost my grip on the hilt.

  As we squared up to one another again I moved as soon as I saw him tense for another attack. This time I rolled on my right shoulder and both his axe and sword swung at a body that was no longer there. As I came up into the kneeling position I slashed my dagger at his hamstring and dug the point of my sword into his thigh.

  He roared in pain and his right leg collapsed under him. He must have been in agony but he still tried to swing his axe at my legs. I jumped up with both feet and, as I landed, I swung my sword, cutting into his right forearm. His hand opened and the axe fell from his grasp.

  I backed away and invited him to yield but the man wouldn’t give up. Instead he tried to spit me on his sword. I was taken by surprise as I had relaxed, expecting him to surrender. I took a step back but the tip of his sword still struck my shin. Blood ran down my leg and I suspected that he had chipped the bone.

  I was furious, more at myself for letting my guard down than at him. I had intended to spare him but I realised that a defeated champion was a nithing - a man with no honour or worth - and I suspected that he would rather be dead. I decided to oblige him.

  I dropped my sword and dagger and picked up his discarded axe with two hands. It was even heavier that I had expected and I wondered how anyone, even a giant like him, could wield it one handed. He tried to stab me with his sword again but I moved out of the way with ease and then darted in, swinging the axe as I moved. The sharp edge struck his bull-like neck cleanly and, such was the weight of the head, that it cut straight through, muscle, sinew, blood vessels and bone. The head flew from the body and bounced once, coming to rest at the feet of Sigurd the Stout.

  The jarl looked astounded for a second then clapped his hands together.

  ‘Very well, Saxon, I will listen to what you have to say.’

  ‘I’m not a Saxon any more than you are a Dane,’ I replied calmly. ‘My ancestors came from Angeln in the south of the Jutland peninsula, not Saxony.’

  Sigurd looked at me, and for a moment I thought that I had gone too far in standing up for myself, but then he roared with laughter.

  ‘I can see why they call you Uhtred the Bold. Very well, Angle, let’s drink a horn of two of ale together and you can tell you what you are doing here.’

  ~~~

  I was in York when news began to filter through about a series of raids by Danes throughout eastern Deira. I had taken Ecgfrida and Aldred to visit Bishop Aldhun at Durham on the way and then continued south on the pretext of visiting Earl Ælfhelm as Bretwalda of Northumbria to discuss mutual defence arrangements.

  I wasn’t surprised when Ælfhelm refused to see me, saying that he did not recognise my appointment as Bretwalda; as far as he was concerned he was the war leader of Deira.

  My next visit was to see the archbishop. Ealdwulf, who had officiated at my marriage to Ecgfrida, had died in the spring and the new appointee was Wulfstan Lupus. Originally a Benedictine monk, he was also Bishop of Worcester and a favourite of the king. He was no soldier, but he was a noted scholar and a drafter of laws. Thankfully he shared my low opinion of Ælfhelm.

  He had a horror of Vikings, and of anything else which disturbed the tranquillity of his life of prayer, his work to reform the Church and to make England a more law-abiding kingdom. The current strife between the Danes and the Anglo-Saxons of Deira was therefore abhorrent to him. He promised me his support, and that of the clergy, in restoring order to the earldom.

  The next day tidings reached the city of several raids on the lands of the Danish jarls. At first these were thought be the work of Vikings from Denmark. However, instead of pillaging the coastal settlements, as was usual, they rowed up various rivers to strike at villages and towns several miles inland. Unlike the coastal villages, who were used to such raids and had long practiced procedures for fleeing inland with their valuables and livestock, the targets of these raids were taken unawares.

  Ælfhelm’s reaction was to barricade himself in York until the danger had passed. This reduced his standing amongst his nobles even further, if that were possible. In contrast, my men and the archbishop’s messengers rode to every ealdorman, jarl and thane in Deira with a letter signed by both Wulfstan and me calling a muster at Selby.

  This place was no more than a large village but it was a good site for a muster with lush grazing for the horses and flat land for the camp. Moreover it lay on the River Ouse, which was central to the plans I had made with Sigurd the Stout.

  Less than three weeks after the summons had gone out the majority of Deira’s warriors and the fyrd had arrived outside Selby. I had the Danes camp separately from the rest to avoid any outbreaks of trouble and, thankfully, there weren’t more than a few incidents.

  Five shires now made up Deira: based on Catterick in the north-west, Whitby on the coast, York itself, Beverley in the south, and one centred on Leeds which had been the Kingdom of Elmet centuries ago. The ealdormen of York, Beverley and Leeds were of Danish descent and the other two were Angles, like me.

  That said, it wa
s true that most of my ancestors had been Angles, but there was the odd Saxon amongst them, and the founder of our family, Catinus, had been a Briton who had come from Mercia as a slave. However, he had married an Angle and most of my ancestors since then had been Angles. In fact much of England had been settled by the Angles – Northumbria, East Anglia and most of Mercia, for example.

  The Jutes had conquered Kent and parts of the south coast whilst the Saxons had taken the south west, Essex and the land immediately to the north of London. It was only the eventual dominance of Wessex that led to foreigners lumping us all together as Saxons. It was a small comfort that the name of the kingdom – England - and our common tongue – English – was derived from the name of my race.

  Once all five Ealdormen and most of the jarls and thanes had arrived with their warriors and the fyrd the archbishop called a war council. In all there were nearly sixty of us and somehow we all crammed into the small timber church at Selby. It would have been better to have met in the open, but it had started raining.

  I pushed my way to the front, clearing a path for Wulfstan as I went. Some objected to being shoved out of the way, but they bit back their protests when they saw the archbishop. The place stank of wet wool and unwashed bodies. Since I was a small boy I had bathed in the sea at Bebbanburg and I liked to wash as often as I could. However, few Anglo-Saxons were so fastidious, bathing only occasionally. In contrast the Scandinavian races were much more particular about cleanliness and their appearance.

  When we reached the altar we turned to face the others. I had prevailed upon Wulfstan to accompany me because I needed his authority to bolster my own. After Saint Brice’s Day Æthelred wasn’t popular in the north and I didn’t want to rely on his appointment of me as Bretwalda alone. However, Wulfstan seemed tongue tied and the silence grew until it became embarrassing.

  ‘Pretend you are delivering a homily,’ I whispered to him and he nodded.

  ‘Brothers in Christ,’ he began. ‘We have come here to defeat the pagan Norsemen and throw them back into the sea before they can wreak any more havoc.’

  I didn’t like to point out that they were Norsemen, but ones who had had been converted to Christianity, and were therefore not pagans. After all, I wasn’t meant to know anything about them.

  My part of the deal was to provide Sigurd with information about where plunder could be found in places where the inhabitants wouldn’t have a chance to bury or carry off their valuables. It remained to be seen if he would adhere to his part of the plan. Naturally, I was a little apprehensive that my involvement might be uncovered. I had no illusions that the men of Deira would kill me, and probably quite painfully, if they ever found out. However, only Cædmon knew the details of what had been agreed.

  Of course my warband had crewed the birlinn to the Orkneys and might put two and two together. However, I trusted the latter implicitly; after all they had sworn an oath of loyalty to me that was binding unto death. My body servant was a different matter and when Leland reported that he had seen him deep in conversation with a servant of one of the Danish jarls my suspicions were aroused.

  ‘Take him somewhere quiet and find out what they were talking about,’ I said, not without a great deal of regret.

  I had liked Cædmon and he was a good servant; however, I couldn’t afford to take any risks. I didn’t need to tell Leland that he would have to kill my servant and dispose of the body once he’d questioned him. Even if innocent of trying to betray me, I could hardly expect Cædmon to remain loyal once he’d suffered interrogation.

  When Leland came back that evening to say that Cædmon had been bribing the jarl’s servant to let him have some apples for me to eat I felt a great deal of remorse, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about the man’s loyalty any more.

  That left me without a servant and I decided that I would clean my own armour and weapons and groom my horses myself as penance for having had an innocent man killed. That didn’t last long, however; the following day Ulfric returned from patrol and came to see me. He found me using sand to burnish my helmet and asked where Cædmon was.

  ‘I don’t know. He seems to have vanished.’

  Ulfric had been out of camp when Leland had questioned my servant and, although I trusted Ulfric above almost anyone else, there was no point in more people than necessary knowing about Cædmon.

  ‘How strange,’ Ulfric mused. ‘I would never have expected him to run.’

  ‘Perhaps he fell in the river and drowned. He never did learn to swim,’

  ‘Maybe, anyway I came to tell you that the Viking host is about three hours away, coming upstream in some twenty longships.’

  Longships varied in size, the largest carrying seventy warriors or more and the smallest about thirty. Assuming an average fighting crew of fifty men, that meant that Sigurd the Stout had brought around a thousand warriors with him. Our force numbered two and a half thousand, but only about eight hundred were trained warriors; the rest were members of the fyrd. Those accompanying the Danish jarls were better trained and equipped than the Anglo-Saxon freemen, but they wouldn’t be a match for the Norsemen. Not that I intended to fight.

  ‘From previous reports it would appear that that’s the whole Norse fleet.’

  ‘Yes, it seems so. However, the ships are crammed full. It seems that they had taken a lot of our people as slaves.’

  I was immediately alarmed. I had made an agreement with Sigurd but I didn’t altogether trust him. When our armies faced each other he was to negotiate and then withdraw, taking his loot with him. That was to be his payment in return for the information I’d given him on where to raid and what the defences were. He’d promised not to enslave Deirans, or to kill any more than he had to. If he had decided to ignore that part of our pact, would he abide by anything else he’d agreed to?

  We formed up for battle south of Selby between the river and a large wood. It was a good defensive position as we lined up on the north bank of a tributary of the Ouse, called the River Aire. It was relatively narrow but the muddy banks would make it into something of an obstacle for attackers.

  The plan was for Sigurd to disembark his men on the left bank of the Ouse and then march forward to face us; I would then negotiate with him.

  At least I could see that Sigurd had stuck to the first part of our agreement. His men advanced until they were a few hundred yards from the banks of the Aire. The land hereabouts was flat and the nearest trees were the best part of a mile away. I was therefore confident that I was looking at the sum total of his warriors and there was none hidden away to surprise us if things didn’t go as planned.

  I had sent scouts out on our side of the river at dawn and so I was as certain as I could be that none had crossed the Aire further upstream and were now waiting to take us in the left flank.

  I rode forward with the archbishop, the ealdormen of Deira, together with Leland and Ulfric, halting a few yards back from the river. Sigurd did the same, bringing half a dozen of his chieftains with him and a boy of about eleven. Unlike us they were all on foot.

  ‘I’m Uhtred, son of Waltheof, Earl of Bernicia. I represent the people of Deira, many of whom you have pillaged and made captive. Who are you?’

  ‘Sigurd, Jarl of the Orkneys, the Shetlands, Caithness, Sutherland and the Scottish Isles. I go where I like and take plunder from those weaker than me. How are you going to stop me? With that rabble? Most scratch in the dirt for a living and have no more idea of how to fight than my son here has about how to read Latin.’

  I looked at the boy dubiously. Those of Sigurd’s sons I had seen at Thurso were grown men. This lad was wearing a fine blue woollen tunic with silver embroidery at the hems and the neck but it was too large for him, his face was filthy and his hair was lank and matted. Norsemen and Danes were much more diligent about personal hygiene than this boy. Their hair, in particular, was kept clean and well groomed. I guessed that this boy was a thrall – a slave – who had been dressed up to look the part.


  I stared at him and the lad refused to meet my eye, looking down as if ashamed at the deception he had been forced to take part in. Any Norse boy, especially the son of a man as powerful as Sigurd the Stout, would have stared back at me with defiance, and like as not hatred.

  I decided to let the matter be. I had agreed with Sigurd that he would hand over his youngest son as a hostage to ensure he kept his word about leaving Northumbria alone in future. At least giving me this thrall had the appearance of leaving a hostage.

  Ulfric edged his horse close to mine and said loudly in English, a language that luckily Sigurd didn’t understand.

  ‘That boy is no more Sigurd’s child than I am a sheep’s dropping.’

  ‘I know; but if I challenge him that he’ll have no option but to fight. I want to end this without bloodshed, if I can.’

  I had said this for the benefit of the ealdormen. Ulfric didn’t know the details but he knew enough to guess that this was all a charade. I dismounted and walked forward to the edge of the river where we wouldn’t have to shout at each other. Sigurd did the same, waving his men back but bringing the boy with him.

  ‘If you let us depart in peace with our plunder then I swear not to harm your lands further. I’ll leave my son with you as hostage. Reject my terms and you’ll all die.’

  ‘You’ll swear by your gods to keep faith?’

  ‘I’m a Christian, not a pagan,’ Sigurd replied, affronted. ‘I’ll swear on the Holy Bible.’

  I knew that, of course, but I had to pretend that I knew nothing about the man.

  ‘Very well. One of my men will ride across and collect your son, then the Archbishop of York will come over to administer the oath. But first you have to release all the captives you’ve taken.’