Sword of Kings

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Scum!’ Waormund snarled at the room. ‘Little Danish bastard thought to use my woman. Told me to hurry! Anyone else in a hurry to use her?’ He waited, but no one made a sound. He was terrifying; the width of that muscled chest, the sneer on his face, and the size of the heavy sword had cowed the room into submission. Benedetta was clutching my hand beneath the table now, her grip tight.

  Waormund came down the last steps. He paused again, looking down at the youngster who had offended him. Then, very deliberately, he kicked him. Kicked him again and again. There was a yelp from the boy, then no sound except for Waormund’s massive boot crashing into the prone body. ‘East Anglian pussies!’ Waormund snarled. He looked around the tavern again, plainly hoping someone would defy him, but still no one spoke or moved. He looked at our corner, but just saw two hooded people and a priest. The rushlight was weak, the room shadowed, and he ignored us. ‘Danish god-damned pussies!’ He was still trying to provoke a fight, but when no one responded he picked an ale pot from the closest table, drained it, and stalked into the night.

  Benedetta was crying softly. ‘I hate him,’ she whispered, ‘I hate him.’

  I held onto her hand beneath the table. Men were helping the fallen youth and conversation was starting again, but subdued now. Jorund, who had stood when the boy was thrown down the stairs, had gone to see what damage had been done and came back a moment later. ‘Poor boy. Broken ribs, crushed balls, lost half his teeth, and he’ll be lucky to keep an eye.’ He sat and drank some ale. ‘I hate that man,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘Who is he?’ I asked.

  ‘Bastard called Waormund. Lord Æthelhelm’s mastiff.’

  ‘And it seems he doesn’t like Danes,’ I said mildly.

  ‘Danes!’ Jorund said wryly. ‘He doesn’t like anyone! Saxon or Dane.’

  ‘And you?’ Father Oda asked. ‘You fought against the Saxons, yet now you fight alongside them?’

  Jorund chuckled. ‘Saxon and Dane! It’s a forced marriage, father. Most of my lads are Saxons, but maybe a third are Danes, and I’m always having to stop the silly bastards from hammering each other senseless. But that’s young men, isn’t it?’

  ‘You lead men?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘A Dane leading Saxons?’ I explained my surprise.

  ‘The world changes, doesn’t it?’ Jorund sounded amused. ‘Coenwald could have taken my land, but he didn’t, and he knows I’m the most experienced of all his warriors.’ He turned to look at the room. ‘And most of those lads need experience. They’ve never seen a proper fight. God help them, they think it’s a tavern brawl with spears. Still, I hope to lead every last one of them home, and soon!’

  Jorund was a good man, I thought, yet fate, that most capricious bitch, might demand that I face him in a shield wall one day. ‘I hope you lead them home very soon,’ I said, ‘and that you gather your harvest in safely.’

  ‘I pray the same,’ Jorund said. ‘And I pray never to see another shield wall as long as I live. But if it is to be a real war then it won’t take long.’

  ‘It won’t?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s us and the West Saxons against the Mercians. Two against one, see?’

  ‘Maybe the Northumbrians will fight alongside the Mercians,’ I suggested mischievously.

  ‘They’ll not come south,’ Jorund said scornfully.

  ‘Yet you say there’s a rumour that Uhtred of Bebbanburg is already here,’ I said.

  ‘If he was here,’ Jorund said flatly, ‘he’d have his army of northern savages with him. Besides, there’s plague up north.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘We hear tales,’ he went on, ‘and they say Jorvik is a city of corpses.’

  ‘Jorvik!’ I asked, unable to keep the alarm from my voice.

  ‘So they say,’ Jorund said.

  I felt a cold shiver. My hand went to touch my hammer amulet and again found Gerbruht’s wooden cross. Father Oda saw the gesture. ‘I pray God that’s just another rumour,’ the priest said too hurriedly. ‘You leave the city soon?’ he asked Jorund, evidently trying to move the conversation beyond the fear of plague.

  ‘God knows, father,’ Jorund said, ‘and God isn’t telling me. We stay here, or maybe we don’t stay here. Maybe the Mercian lad will make trouble, and maybe he won’t. He won’t if he has any sense.’ He poured the last of the jug’s ale into our beakers. ‘But I didn’t come to bore you with talk of war, father,’ he said, ‘but wondered if you’d be kind enough to give us a blessing?’

  ‘With pleasure, my son,’ Father Oda said.

  ‘I hope you recover, mistress,’ Jorund said to Benedetta. She had not understood the conversation in Danish, but smiled her thanks to Jorund, who now called the room to silence.

  Father Oda gave the blessing, enjoining his god to bring peace and to spare the lives of all the men in the tavern. Jorund thanked him and we left, walking the riverside street in silence for a while. ‘So they’re searching all the ships that leave,’ Oda said.

  ‘But they don’t have men in Gunnald’s yard,’ I said. ‘Once we get the new ship we’ll leave at dawn, hope for an ebbing tide and row hard.’ I made it sound easy, but I knew better and again went to touch my hammer and found the cross.

  We walked a few paces more, then Father Oda chuckled. ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Northern savages,’ he said, amused.

  Was that our reputation? If so, it pleased me. But the northern savages, or a handful of them, were trapped, and our savagery would win us nothing unless we managed to escape. We needed a ship.

  And next morning she came.

  PART THREE

  The Field of Barley

  Eight

  It was late morning and Immar was standing as sentry on the western wharf, or rather he was sitting in the summer sunlight on the western wharf with a pot of sour ale and with two small boys, both from Aldwyn’s tribe of orphans, sitting at his feet and listening awestruck to whatever tall tales he told them. Immar was a young Mercian whom I had saved from being hanged the previous year, though he had been forced to watch his father dancing the rope-death on my orders. Despite that experience he had sworn loyalty to me and now wore mail and carried a sword. He had learned his sword-skill remarkably quickly and had proved to be a ferocious fighter on two cattle raids, but he had yet to be tested in a shield wall. Still, the two small boys were captivated by his stories, as was Alaina who had wandered to join them and now listened just as keenly.

  ‘Nice little girl,’ Finan said.

  ‘She is,’ I agreed. Finan and I were sharing a bench on the landward wharf, watching Immar and idly discussing the chances of having a west wind instead of the persistent but gentle south-easterly that had blown all night and morning.

  ‘You think her mother is alive?’ Finan asked, nodding towards Alaina.

  ‘Mother’s more likely to be alive than her father.’

  ‘True,’ he allowed, ‘poor woman.’ He took a bite of an oatcake. ‘Be nice for Alaina if we could find her.’

  ‘It would,’ I agreed. ‘But she’s a tough little girl. She’ll survive.’

  ‘She made these oatcakes?’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘They’re horrible,’ Finan said, throwing the rest of his oatcake into the river.

  ‘It’s the mouse shit in the oats,’ I pointed out.

  ‘We need better food,’ Finan grumbled.

  ‘What about those two horses in the stable?’ I suggested.

  ‘They don’t mind eating mouse crap. It’s probably the best food they’ve had in years! Poor beasts. They need a month or two on good pasture.’

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ I said, ‘I mean why don’t we kill the two beasts, skin them, butcher them, and stew them?’

  Finan looked at me aghast. ‘Eat them?’

  ‘Must be enough meat on those two horses to last us a week?’

  ‘You’re a barbarian,’ Finan said. ‘I’ll let you persuade Father Oda.’

  Father Oda
would disapprove of eating horse meat. The church had forbidden its followers to eat the flesh of horses because, the clerics insisted, that flesh only came from pagan sacrifices. In truth we pagans are reluctant to offer Odin a sacrificial horse, the beasts are too valuable, though when times are desperate the gift of a prized stallion might placate the gods. I had made just such sacrifices, though always with regret. ‘Father Oda doesn’t have to eat the stew,’ I pointed out, ‘he can live on mouse shit.’

  ‘But I can’t,’ Finan said firmly, ‘I want something decent. There must be fish for sale?’

  ‘Horse meat tastes good,’ I insisted. ‘Especially an older horse. My father always swore that an older horse’s liver was a meal fit for the gods. He once made me kill a foal just so he could taste the liver, and he hated it, and after that he always insisted on an older horse. But you mustn’t overcook it, it’s best while it’s still a bit bloody.’

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ Finan said, ‘and I thought your father was a Christian.’

  ‘He was, so every time he ate horse liver he added it to the other sins he confessed, and there were enough of those.’

  ‘And you’ll find your Benedetta won’t eat horse meat,’ Finan said slyly, ‘she’s a good Christian.’

  ‘My Benedetta?’ I asked.

  He just chuckled and I thought of Eadith in far-off Bebbanburg. Was there really plague in the north? And if there was, had it reached my fortress? Jorund had heard a rumour that it was ravaging Eoferwic where two of my grandchildren lived with their father, and I touched my hammer amulet and sent a wordless prayer to the gods. Finan saw the gesture. ‘Worried?’ he asked.

  ‘I should never have left Bebbanburg,’ I said.

  I knew Finan agreed with me, but he had the decency to say nothing of that. He just stared at the glitter of sunlight on the river, then stiffened and put a hand on my arm. ‘What’s happening?’

  I came out of my reverie and saw Immar was standing and staring downriver. Then Immar turned and, looking at me, pointed eastwards, and I saw a mast, crossed with a yard on which a sail was furled, showing above the eastern palisade. ‘Come back!’ I shouted at Immar. ‘And bring the boys! Alaina! Come!’

  We had planned to present Gunnald’s son with a small mystery when he arrived. Usually, the captive guards had told us, there would be at least one man on the wharf to take the arriving ship’s lines. ‘Lyfing Gunnaldson needs help, lord,’ Deogol the one-handed captive had told me. ‘He can’t handle a ship like his father. And if there’s no one on the wharf he sounds a horn and we’ll run to help him.’

  ‘And if no one helps him?’ I had asked.

  Deogol had shrugged. ‘He’ll get ashore somehow, lord.’

  I was insisting that the arriving ship must find the wharf deserted and that no one should help Lyfing Gunnaldson tie up. If he saw strangers on the wharf he would be suspicious, and he would likely draw off until he saw a familiar face, and I dared not risk it. Better to let him think the guards were lazy and let him moor the ship himself.

  I was not even sure that the approaching ship was the one we wanted, but she did have a mast, and no ship with a mast could get under the bridge, so any that did come this far upriver were trying to reach one of the very few wharves that lay this close to where the Temes foamed and fell between the bridge piers.

  Finan and I went back into the warehouse where Benedetta was playing with the smaller children. Their laughter, I thought, was a rare sound in this grim place and it was a pity to interrupt it. I clapped my hands. ‘Everyone be quiet now! Not a sound! Beornoth! If any of those bastards makes a noise you can kill them.’ I meant the four captured guards who were shackled inside the smallest cage. Beornoth would keep the captives quiet, while Father Oda and Benedetta would make sure that none of the children or freed slaves made any noise.

  Finan and I stood just behind the half-open door that led to the wharf. Five men, all in mail and all with swords, waited behind us. I took a pace forward, still in shadow, and saw the mast coming closer and then the ship’s bows came into sight. A small wooden cross was mounted on her prow. The ship was making painfully slow headway against the tide and the fierce current. ‘They’re tired,’ Finan said of the oarsmen.

  ‘They’ve come a long way.’

  ‘Poor bastards,’ he said, remembering our own time chained to the benches when we had hauled on oar looms with calloused hands and tried not to catch the eyes of the men carrying whips. ‘But that’s our ship,’ Finan added grimly.

  It was plainly a slave-driven ship because two men with whips were stalking between the benches. Three more men stood at the stern, where one, a fair-haired man wearing high boots and a white jerkin, handled the steering-oar. The other two crewmen were standing at the prow. One was holding a horn, the other had a looped berthing line. ‘Seven men,’ Finan said.

  I grunted, watching as the ship turned towards the empty wharf. The river was flowing through the bridge arches with violent speed, heaping up on the far side, then churning white as it seethed through the gaps. The speed of the current caught the steersman by surprise and the ship was being swept back downriver. ‘Pull, you bastards!’ the steersman shouted, and the two men with whips lashed the rowers’ backs. They were too late. The ship drifted out of sight behind the wall and it was a minute or two before it came back into view. The slaves were pulling harder now, encouraged by the whips, and the steersman had the sense to aim his prow well upriver of the wharf. ‘Pull!’ he shouted. ‘Pull!’ The horn sounded, demanding help, but we stayed in the doorway’s deep shadow.

  The whips cracked, the rowers heaved on their long oars, and the ship surged towards the wharf, but even so it was being driven downstream. ‘Pull!’ the steersman screamed. The oar-blades dipped, they hauled, and the ship came into the gap between the wreck and the empty wharf, but again the steersman had misjudged, and he was now too far from the empty wharf and the current was driving him back towards the wrecked ship. ‘Bring in the oars!’ he bellowed, not wanting his precious blades splintered against the wreck.

  Finan chuckled. The Irishman was no seaman, but he recognised a clumsy display of ship handling when he saw it. The slaving ship drifted and struck, pinned against the wreck, and with no one on the wharf to take the lines. ‘Ælfrin!’ the steersman shouted towards us. ‘Ælfrin, you lazy bastard! Come here!’ Ælfrin, we had learned, had commanded the guards left at the yard and was the first man I had killed. By now his body was somewhere downriver, presumably stranded on a mudbank where the gulls would be feasting on his bloated corpse.

  One man had to struggle across the half sunken wreck, taking the bitter end of a line, then walk around to the empty wharf where he hauled the ship’s bow into the western wharf. He tied off the line, then caught a second line hurled from the stern and so pulled the ship into its berth. The oarsmen were slumped on their benches. I could see blood on some backs. My own back still carried the scars.

  ‘Ælfrin!’ the steersman bellowed towards us, and again there was no answer. I heard a muttered curse, then the clattering sound of heavy oars being stowed amidships. One of the crewmen was unshackling the rowers on the two benches nearest the prow and I remembered my days on the Trader, the slave-driven ship where Finan and I had been chained to a bench, and how cautious the crew was when it came time to unshackle us. We were released two at a time and escorted by men with whips and swords to whatever hovel would be our home. It seemed Gunnald’s son was just as cautious. Another crewman made sure the two berthing lines were well secured, then added a third.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  I had deliberately waited until the ship was firmly tied to the wharf so it could not back out into the current when the crew saw us. Now, with three lines lashed down, it was too late for them to escape. Nor did they even try. The fair-haired man who had made such a mess of docking the ship just stood at the stern and stared at us. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted.

  ‘Lord Varin’s men,’ I called back, strolling down the wharf
.

  ‘Who in God’s name is Lord Varin?’

  ‘The man who captured the city,’ I said, ‘welcome to East Anglia.’

  That confused him and he still just gazed at us as we came closer. Our swords were sheathed and we seemed to be in no hurry. ‘Where’s my father?’ he asked, finding his voice again.

  ‘Is he the fat fellow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s somewhere,’ I said vaguely. ‘What are you carrying?’

  ‘Carrying?’

  ‘What cargo?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘We were told you sold slaves in Frankia. Did you give them away?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘So you got paid?’ I asked, standing by the ship’s stern.

  Lyfing Gunnaldson saw where the questions were leading and looked uncomfortable. ‘We were paid,’ he muttered.

  ‘Then your cargo is money!’ I said cheerfully. ‘Bring it ashore.’

  He hesitated, looking at his crewmen, but those men were not wearing mail and we were, they had either short-swords or a mariner’s knife, and we all carried long blades. Lyfing still hesitated, then he saw me put a hand on Serpent-Breath’s hilt and he stepped off the steering platform, reached beneath it, and pulled out a small wooden chest, which, from the effort he needed to lift it, was plainly heavy.

  ‘It’s just customs dues,’ I said reassuringly. ‘Bring it ashore!’

  ‘Customs dues,’ he said bitterly, but still obeyed. He clambered up from the ship and dropped the box on the wharf. There was a happy sound of coins. His face, reddened by wind and sun, was soured by resentment. ‘How much do you want?’

  ‘Open it,’ I ordered.

  He bent to unclasp the iron latch and I kicked him hard in the ribs, drawing Serpent-Breath as I did. I stooped and pulled his seax from her scabbard and tossed the sword into the boat where she fell at the feet of an oarsman who looked scared. One of the men with whips drew his arm back. ‘Use that whip,’ I shouted at him, ‘and I’ll strangle you with it!’ The man glared at me and bared his teeth. He only had two that I could see, while his scarred face was framed by black greasy ringlets and a beard that fell to his waist. ‘Drop the whip!’ I snarled at him. He hesitated, then reluctantly obeyed.