The Last Kingdom

by Bernard Cornwell

  “They must all die,” Guthrum insisted. The other hostages were dead or dying, their hands bloodied from their hopeless attempts to ward off the blades, and a dozen war Danes, swords red, now edged toward me to finish the job.

  “Kill this one,” Ragnar shouted, “and you must kill me first.” His men came out of the crowd to stand beside their lord. They were outnumbered by at least five to one, but they were Danes and they showed no fear.

  Guthrum stared at Ragnar. Hacca was still not dead and he twitched in his agony and Guthrum, irritated that the man lived, drew his sword and rammed it into Hacca’s throat. Guthrum’s men were stripping the arm rings from the dead, rings that had been gifts from their master just hours before. “They all must die,” Guthrum said when Hacca was still. “Alfred will kill our hostages now, so it must be man for man.”

  “Uhtred is my brother,” Ragnar said, “and you are welcome to kill him, lord, but you must first kill me.”

  Guthrum stepped back. “This is no time for Dane to fight Dane,” he said grudgingly, and sheathed his sword to show that I could live. I stepped across the street to find the man who had stolen Serpent-Breath, Wasp-Sting, and my armor, and he gave them to me without protest.

  Guthrum’s men were mounting their horses. “What’s happening?” I asked Ragnar.

  “What do you think?” he asked truculently.

  “I think you’re breaking the truce.”

  “We did not come this far,” he said, “to march away like beaten dogs.” He watched as I buckled Serpent-Breath’s belt. “Come with us,” he said.

  “Come with you where?”

  “To take Wessex, of course.”

  I do not deny that there was a tug on my heart strings, a temptation to join the wild Danes in their romp across Wessex, but the tug was easily resisted. “I have a wife,” I told him, “and a child.”

  He grimaced. “Alfred has trapped you, Uhtred.”

  “No,” I said, “the spinners did that.” Urr, Verandi, and Skuld, the three women who spin our threads at the foot of Yggdrasil, had decided my fate. Destiny is all. “I shall go to my woman,” I said.

  “But not yet,” Ragnar said with a half smile, and he took me to the river where a small boat carried us to where the newly launched Wind-Viper was anchored. A half crew was already aboard, as was Brida, who gave me a breakfast of bread and ale. At first light, when there was just enough gray in the sky to reveal the glistening mud of the river’s banks, Ragnar ordered the anchor raised and we drifted downstream on current and tide, gliding past the dark shapes of other Danish ships until we came to a reach wide enough to turn Wind-Viper and there the oars were fitted, men tugged, and she swiveled gracefully, both oar banks began to pull, and she shot out into the Poole where most of the Danish fleet rode at anchor. We did not go far, just to the barren shore of a big island that sits in the center of the Poole, a place of squirrels, seabirds, and foxes. Ragnar let the ship glide toward the shore and, when her prow touched the beach, he embraced me. “You are free,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said fervently, remembering those bloodied corpses by Werham’s nunnery.

  He held on to my shoulders. “You and I,” he said, “are tied as brothers. Don’t forget that. Now go.”

  I splashed through the shallows as the Wind-Viper, a ghostly gray in the dawn, backed away. Brida called a farewell, I heard the oars bite, and the ship was gone.

  That island was a forbidding place. Fishermen and fowlers had lived there once, and an anchorite, a monk who lives by himself, had occupied a hollow tree in the island’s center, but the coming of the Danes had driven them all away and the remnants of the fishermen’s houses were nothing but charred timbers on blackened ground. I had the island to myself, and it was from its shore that I watched the vast Danish fleet row toward the Poole’s entrance, though they stopped there rather than go to sea because the wind, already brisk, had freshened even more and now it was a half gale blowing from the south and the breakers were shattering wild and white above the spit of sand that protected their new anchorage. The Danish fleet had moved there, I surmised, because to stay in the river would have exposed their crews to the West Saxon bowmen who would be among the troops reoccupying Werham.

  Guthrum had led his horsemen out of Werham, that much was obvious, and all the Danes who had remained in the town were now crammed onto the ships where they waited for the weather to calm so they could sail away, but to where, I had no idea.

  All day that south wind blew, getting harder and bringing a slashing rain, and I became bored of watching the Danish fleet fret at its anchors and so I explored the island’s shore and found the remnants of a small boat half hidden in a thicket and I hauled the wreck down to the water and discovered it floated well enough, and the wind would take me away from the Danes and so I waited for the tide to turn and then, half swamped in the broken craft, I floated free. I used a piece of wood as a crude paddle, but the wind was howling now and it drove me wet and cold across that wide water until, as night fell, I came to the Poole’s northern shore and there I became one of the sceadugengan again, picking my way through reeds and marshes until I found higher ground where bushes gave me shelter for a broken sleep. In the morning I walked eastward, still buffeted by wind and rain, and so came to Hamtun that evening.

  Where I found that Mildrith and my son were gone.

  Taken by Odda the Younger.

  Father Willibald told me the tale. Odda had come that morning, while Leofric was down at the shore securing the boats against the bruising wind, and Odda had said that the Danes had broken out, that they would have killed their hostages, that they might come to Hamtun at any moment, and that Mildrith should flee. “She did not want to go, lord,” Willibald said, and I could hear the timidity in his voice. My anger was frightening him. “They had horses, lord,” he said, as if that explained it.

  “You didn’t send for Leofric?”

  “They wouldn’t let me, lord.” He paused. “But we were scared, lord. The Danes had broken the truce and we thought you were dead.”

  Leofric had set off in pursuit, but by the time he learned Mildrith was gone Odda had at least a half morning’s start and Leofric did not even know where he would have gone. “West,” I said, “back to Defnascir.”

  “And the Danes?” Leofric asked. “Where are they going?”

  “Back to Mercia?” I guessed.

  Leofric shrugged. “Across Wessex? With Alfred waiting? And you say they went on horseback? How fit were the horses?”

  “They weren’t fit. They were half starved.”

  “Then they haven’t gone to Mercia,” he said firmly.

  “Perhaps they’ve gone to meet Ubba,” Willibald suggested.

  “Ubba!” I had not heard that name in a long time.

  “There were stories, lord,” Willibald said nervously, “that he was among the Britons in Wales. That he had a fleet on the Sæfern.”

  That made sense. Ubba was replacing his dead brother, Halfdan, and evidently leading another force of Danes against Wessex, but where? If he crossed the Sæfern’s wide sea then he would be in Defnascir, or perhaps he was marching around the river, heading into Alfred’s heartland from the north, but for the moment I did not care. I only wanted to find my wife and child. There was pride in that desire, of course, but more than pride. Mildrith and I were suited to each other, I had missed her, I wanted to see my child. That ceremony in the rain-dripping cathedral had worked its magic and I wanted her back and I wanted to punish Odda the Younger for taking her away. “Defnascir,” I said again, “that’s where the bastard’s gone. And that’s where we go tomorrow.” Odda, I was certain, would head for the safety of home. Not that he feared my revenge, for he surely assumed I was dead, but he would be worried about the Danes, and I was worried that they might have found him on his westward flight.

  “You and me?” Leofric asked.

  I shook my head. “We take Heahengel and a full fighting crew.”

  Leofric looked
skeptical. “In this weather?”

  “The wind’s dropping,” I said, and it was, though it still tugged at the thatch and rattled the shutters, but it was calmer the next morning, but not by much for Hamtun’s water was still flecked white as the small waves ran angrily ashore, suggesting that the seas beyond the Solente would be huge and furious. But there were breaks in the clouds, the wind had gone into the east, and I was in no mood to wait. Two of the crew, both seamen all their lives, tried to dissuade me from the voyage. They had seen this weather before, they said, and the storm would come back, but I refused to believe them and they, to their credit, came willingly, as did Father Willibald, which was brave of him for he hated the sea and was facing rougher water than any he had seen before.

  We rowed up Hamtun’s water, hoisted the sail in the Solente, brought the oars inboard, and ran before that east wind as though the serpent Corpse-Ripper was at our stern. Heahengel hammered through the short seas, threw the white water high, and raced, and that was while we were still in sheltered waters. Then we passed the white stacks at Wiht’s end, the rocks that are called the Nædles, and the first tumultuous seas hit us and the Heahengel bent to them. Yet still we flew, and the wind was dropping and the sun shone through rents in the dark clouds to glitter on the churning sea, and Leofric suddenly roared a warning and pointed ahead.

  He was pointing to the Danish fleet. Like me they believed the weather was improving, and they must have been in a hurry to join Guthrum, for the whole fleet was coming out of the Poole and was now sailing south to round the rocky headland, which meant, like us, they were going west. Which could mean they were going to Defnascir or perhaps planning to sail clear about Cornwalum to join Ubba in Wales.

  “You want to tangle with them?” Leofric asked me grimly.

  I heaved on the steering oar, driving us south. “We’ll go outside them,” I said, meaning we would head out to sea and I doubted any of their ships would bother with us. They were in a hurry to get wherever they were going and with luck, I thought, Heahengel would outrun them for she was a fast ship and they were still well short of the headland.

  We flew downwind and there was joy in it, the joy of steering a boat through angry seas, though I doubt there was much joy for the men who had to bail Heahengel, chucking the water over the side, and it was one of those men who looked astern and called a sudden warning to me. I turned to see a black squall seething across the broken seas. It was an angry patch of darkness and rain, coming fast, so fast that Willibald, who had been clutching the ship’s side as he vomited overboard, fell to his knees, made the sign of the cross, and began to pray. “Get the sail down!” I shouted at Leofric, and he staggered forward, but too late, much too late, for the squall struck.

  One moment the sun had shone, then we were abruptly thrust into the devil’s playground as the squall hit us like a shield wall. The ship shuddered, water and wind and gloom smashing us in sudden turmoil, and Heahengel swung to the blow, going broadside to the sea and nothing I could do would hold her straight, and I saw Leofric stagger across the deck as the steorbord side went under water. “Bail!” I shouted desperately. “Bail!” And then, with a noise like thunder, the great sail split into tatters that whipped off the yard, and the ship came slowly upright, but she was low in the water, and I was using all my strength to keep her coming around, creeping around, reversing our course so that I could put her bows into that turmoil of sea and wind, and the men were praying, making the sign of the cross, bailing water, and the remnants of the sail and the broken lines were mad things, ragged demons, and the sudden gale was howling like the furies in the rigging and I thought how futile it would be to die at sea so soon after Ragnar had saved my life.

  Somehow we got six oars into the water and then, with two men to an oar, we pulled into that seething chaos. Twelve men pulled six oars, three men tried to cut the rigging’s wreckage away, and the others threw water over the side. No orders were given, for no voice could be heard above that shrieking wind that was flensing the skin from the sea and whipping it in white spindrift. Huge swells rolled, but they were no danger for the Heahengel rode them, but their broken tops threatened to swamp us, and then I saw the mast sway, its shrouds parting, and I shouted uselessly, for no one could hear me, and the great spruce spar broke and fell. It fell across the ship’s side and the water flowed in again, but Leofric and a dozen men somehow managed to heave the mast overboard and it banged down our flank, then jerked because it was still held to the ship by a tangle of seal-hide ropes. I saw Leofric pluck an ax from the swamped bilge and start to slash at that tangle of lines, but I screamed at him with all my breath to put the ax down.

  Because the mast, tied to us and floating behind us, seemed to steady the ship. It held Heahengel into the waves and wind, and let the great seas go rolling beneath us, and we could catch our breath at last. Men looked at each other as if amazed to find themselves alive, and I could even let go of the steering oar because the mast, with the big yard and the remnants of its sail still attached, was holding us steady. I found my body aching. I was soaked through, must have been cold, but did not notice.

  Leofric came to stand beside me. Heahengel’s prow was facing eastward, but we were traveling westward, driven backward by the tide and wind, and I turned to make certain we had sea room, and then touched Leofric’s shoulder and pointed toward the shore.

  Where we saw a fleet dying.

  The Danes had been sailing south, following the shore from the Poole’s entrance to the rearing headland, and that meant they were on a lee shore, and in that sudden resurgence of the storm they stood no chance. Ship after ship was being driven ashore. A few had made it past the headland, and another handful were trying to row clear of the cliffs, but most were doomed. We could not see their deaths, but I could imagine them. The crash of hulls against rocks, the churning water breaking through the planks, the pounding of sea and wind and timber on drowning men, dragon prows splintering and the halls of the sea god filling with the souls of warriors and, though they were the enemy, I doubt any of us felt anything but pity. The sea gives a cold and lonely death.

  Ragnar and Brida. I just gazed, but could not distinguish one ship from another through the rain and broken sea. We did watch one ship, which seemed to have escaped, suddenly sink. One moment she was on a wave, spray flying from her hull, oars pulling her free, and next she was just gone. She vanished. Other ships were banging one another, oars tangling and splintering. Some tried to turn and run back to the Poole and many of those were driven ashore, some on the sands and some on the cliffs. A few ships, pitifully few, beat their way clear, men hauling on the oars in a frenzy, but all the Danish ships were overloaded, carrying men whose horses had died, carrying an army we knew not where, and that army now died.

  We were south of the headland now, being driven fast to the west, and a Danish ship, smaller than ours, came close and the steersman looked across and gave a grim smile as if to acknowledge there was only one enemy now, the sea. The Dane drifted ahead of us, not slowed by trailing wreckage as we were. The rain hissed down, a malevolent rain, stinging on the wind, and the sea was full of planks, broken spars, dragon prows, long oars, shields, and corpses. I saw a dog swimming frantically, eyes white, and for a moment I thought it was Nihtgenga, then saw this dog had black ears while Nihtgenga had white. The clouds were the color of iron, ragged and low, and the water was being shredded into streams of white and green-black, and the Heahengel reared to each sea, crashed down into the troughs, and shook like a live thing with every blow, but she lived. She was well built, she kept us alive, and all the while we watched the Danish ships die and Father Willibald prayed.

  Oddly his sickness had passed. He looked pale, and doubtless felt wretched, but as the storm pummeled us his vomiting ended and he even came to stand beside me, steadying himself by holding on to the steering oar. “Who is the Danish god of the sea?” he asked me over the wind’s noise.

  “Njor!” I shouted back.

  He g
rinned. “You pray to him and I’ll pray to God.”

  I laughed. “If Alfred knew you’d said that you’d never become a bishop!”

  “I won’t become a bishop unless we survive this! So pray!”

  I did pray, and slowly, reluctantly, the storm eased. Low clouds raced over the angry water, but the wind died and we could cut away the wreckage of mast and yard and unship the oars and turn Heahengel to the west and row through the flotsam of a shattered war fleet. A score of Danish ships were in front of us, and there were others behind us, but I guessed that at least half their fleet had sunk, perhaps more, and I felt an immense fear for Ragnar and Brida. We caught up with the smaller Danish ships and I steered close to as many as I could and shouted across the broken seas. “Did you see Wind-Viper?”

  “No,” they called back. No, came the answer, again and again. They knew we were an enemy ship, but did not care for there was no enemy out in that water except the water itself, and so we rowed on, a mastless ship, and left the Danes behind us, and as night fell, and as a streak of sunlight leaked like seeping blood into a rift of the western clouds, I steered Heahengel into the crooked reach of the river Uisc, and once we were behind the headland the sea calmed and we rowed, suddenly safe, past the long spit of sand and turned into the river and I could look up into the darkening hills to where Oxton stood, and I saw no light there.