The Burning Land sc-5

by Bernard Cornwell

  There were harpists and skalds. The skalds chanted verses in praise of Ragnar and his family, and Ragnar beamed with delight when his father’s exploits were described. “Say that again,” he would roar when some treasured exploit was recounted. He knew many of the words and chanted along, but then startled the skald by slapping the table again. “What did you just sing?” he demanded.

  “That your father, lord, served the great Ubba.”

  “And who killed Ubba?”

  The skald frowned. “A Saxon dog, lord.”

  “This Saxon dog,” Ragnar shouted, lifting my arm. It was while men were still laughing that the messenger arrived. He came from the dark and for a moment no one noticed the tall Dane who, it turned out, had just ridden from Eoferwic. He was clad in mail because there were brigands on the roads, and the skirts of his armor, his boots, and the richly decorated scabbard of his sword were spattered with mud. He must have been tired, but there was a broad smile on his face.

  Ragnar noticed the man first. “Grimbald!” he bellowed the name in welcome. “You should arrive before a feast, not after! But worry not, there’s food and ale!”

  Grimbald bowed to Ragnar. “I bring you news, lord.”

  “News that couldn’t wait?” Ragnar asked good-naturedly. The hall had gone quiet because men wondered what could have brought Grimbald in such haste through the cold, wet darkness.

  “News that will please you, lord,” Grimbald said, still smiling.

  “The price of virgins has dropped?”

  “Alfred of Wessex, lord,” Grimbald paused, “is dead.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then the hall burst into cheers. Men beat the table with their hands and whooped with delight. Ragnar was half drunk, but had enough sense to hold up his hands for silence. “How do you know this?”

  “The news was brought to Eoferwic yesterday,” Grimbald said.

  “By whom?” I demanded.

  “By a West Saxon priest, lord,” Grimbald said. The tall messenger was one of mad King Guthred’s household warriors and, though he did not know me, my place of honor beside Ragnar persuaded him to call me lord.

  “So his whelp is the new king?” Ragnar asked.

  “So it is said, lord.”

  “King Edmund?” Ragnar inquired, “that’ll take some getting used to.”

  “Edward,” I said.

  “Edmund or Edward, who cares? He’s not long for this life,” Ragnar said happily. “What kind of boy is he?” he asked me.

  “Nervous.”

  “Not a warrior?”

  “His father was no warrior either,” I said, “yet he defeated every Dane who came to take his throne.”

  “You did that for him,” Ragnar said cheerfully and slapped my back. The hall was suddenly full of talk as men glimpsed a new future. There was so much excitement, though I remember looking down at one of the tables and saw Osferth frowning in lonely silence. Then Ragnar leaned close to me. “You don’t look happy, Uhtred.”

  How did I feel at that moment? I was not happy. I had never liked Alfred. He was too pious, too humorless, and too stern. His delight was order. He wanted to reduce the whole world to lists, to organization, to obedience. He loved to collect books and write laws. He believed that if only every man, woman, and child were to obey the law, then we would have a heavenly kingdom on earth, but he forgot the earthly pleasures. He had known them as a young man, Osferth was proof of that, but then he had allowed the nailed Christian god to persuade him that pleasure was sin and so he tried to make laws that would outlaw sin. A man might as well try to shape water into a ball.

  So I did not like Alfred, but I had always been aware that I was in the presence of an extraordinary man. He was thoughtful, and he was no fool. His mind had been fast and open to ideas, so long as those ideas did not contradict his religious convictions. He was a king who did not believe that kingship implied omniscience and he was, in his way, a humble man. Above everything, he had been a good man, though never a comfortable one. He had also believed in fate, a thing all religions seem to share, though the difference between Alfred and me had been his conviction that fate was progress. He wanted to improve the world, while I did not believe and never have believed that we can improve the world, just merely survive as it slides into chaos.

  “I respected Alfred,” I told Ragnar. I was still not certain I believed the news. Rumors fly around like summer gossamer, and so I beckoned Grimbald closer. “What exactly did the priest tell you?”

  “That Alfred was in the church at Wintanceaster,” he said, “and that he collapsed during the rituals and was taken to his bed.”

  That sounded convincing. “And his son is king now?”

  “The priest said so.”

  “Is Harald still trapped in Wessex?” Ragnar asked.

  “No, lord,” Grimbald said, “Alfred paid him silver to depart.”

  Ragnar bellowed for silence and made Grimbald repeat his last words about Harald, and the news that the wounded jarl had been paid to leave Torneie prompted another cheer in the hall. Danes love to hear of Saxons paying silver to rid themselves of Danes. It encourages them to attack Saxon lands in hope of similar bribes.

  “Where did Harald go?” Ragnar asked, and I saw Skade listening.

  “He joined Haesten, lord.”

  “In Beamfleot?” I asked, but Grimbald did not know.

  The news of Alfred’s death and of the wounded Harald’s enrichment gave the feast an added happiness. For once there were not even any fights as the mead, ale, and wine took hold of the tables. Every man in that hall, except perhaps a handful of my Saxon followers, saw a new opportunity to capture and plunder the rich fields, villages and towns of Wessex.

  And they were right. Wessex was vulnerable, except for one thing.

  The news was a rumor after all.

  Alfred lived.

  Yet, in the dark of the year, every man in northern Britain believed the rumor, and it energized Brida. “It’s a sign from the gods,” she declared, and persuaded Ragnar to summon the northern jarls. The meeting was set for the early spring, when the winter rains would have ended and the fords made passable again. The prospect of war stirred Dunholm from its winter torpor. In town and fortress the smiths were set to forging spear-blades, and Ragnar let every shipmaster know that he would welcome crews in the spring. Word of that generosity would eventually reach Frisia and far Denmark, and hungry men would come to Northumbria, though for the moment Ragnar spread the rumor that he merely raised troops to invade the land of the Scots. Offa, the Mercian with his trained dogs, heard the rumors and came north despite the weather. He pretended he always struggled through the wet cold rains of Northumbria in the dead days of the year, but it was clear he wanted to learn what Ragnar planned. Ragnar, for once, was reticent, and refused to allow Offa into the high fortress on its river-bound rock. Brida, I think, threatened him with her displeasure, and Brida could always control Ragnar.

  I went to meet Offa in a tavern beneath the fortress. I took Finan and Osferth, and I pretended to get drunk. “I heard you were sick, lord,” Offa said, “and I’m glad you are recovered.”

  “I hear Alfred of Wessex was also sick?” Osferth put in.

  Offa, as ever, considered his answer, wondering whether he was about to give away information that was better sold, then realized that whatever news he possessed would soon be known anyway. Besides, he was here to dig information from us. “He collapsed in church,” he said, “and the physicians were sure he would die. He was very ill! He was given the last rites twice, to my certain knowledge, but God relented.”

  “God loves him,” I said, slurring my words and thumping the table for more ale.

  “Not enough to give him a full recovery,” Offa said guardedly. “He is still weak.”

  “He was always weak,” I said. That was true about Alfred’s health, if not his resolve, but I had spoken sourly, as a deliberate insult, and Offa gazed at me, doubtless wondering just how drunk I truly was.
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br />   I have often scorned Christian priests because they are forever telling us that the proof of their religion is the magic that Christ performed, but then they claim that such magic disappeared with him. If a priest could cure a cripple or make the blind see, then I would believe in their god, but at that moment, in the smoke-filled tavern beneath Dunholm’s high fortress walls, a miracle did occur. Offa paid for the ale and even ordered more.

  I have always been able to drink more than most men, yet even so I could feel the room swirling like the smoke billowing from the tavern hearth. I kept my wits, though. I dropped Offa some gossip about Skade, admitted my disappointment about Skirnir’s hoard, and then complained bitterly that I had neither money nor sufficient men. That last drunken complaint opened the door for Offa. “And why, lord, would you need men?” he asked.

  “We all need men,” I said.

  “True,” Finan put in.

  “More men,” Osferth said.

  “Always more men.” Finan was also pretending to be drunker than he was.

  “I hear the northern jarls are gathering here?” Offa asked innocently. He was desperate to know what was being planned. All Britain knew that the Northumbrian lords were invited to Dunholm, but no one was certain why, and Offa could become wealthy on that knowledge.

  “That’s why I want men!” I said to him in a very earnest voice.

  Offa poured me more ale. I noticed he was hardly touching his own horn. “The northern jarls have men enough,” he said, “and I hear Jarl Ragnar is offering silver for crews.”

  I leaned forward confidingly. “How can I talk to them as an equal if all I lead is one crew?” I paused to belch. “And a small crew at that?”

  “You have reputation, lord,” he said, somehow managing not to recoil from my ale-staled breath.

  “I need men,” I said, “men, men, men.”

  “Good men,” Osferth said.

  “Spear-Danes, sword-Danes,” Finan added dreamily.

  “The jarls will have enough men to crush the Scots,” Offa suggested, dangling the words like a baited hook.

  “The Scots!” I said scornfully. “Why waste a single crew on the Scots?” Finan touched my elbow warningly, but I pretended to be oblivious of his gesture. “What is Scotland?” I asked belligerently. “Wild men in a bare country with scarce a scrap of cloth to cover their cocks. The kingdom of Alba,” I spat the name of Scotland’s largest kingdom, “isn’t worth the produce of one decent Saxon estate. They’re nothing but hairy bastards with frozen cocks. Who wants them?”

  “Yet Jarl Ragnar would conquer them?” Offa asked.

  “He would,” Finan said firmly.

  “He would end their nuisance,” Osferth added, but Offa ignored both of them. He gazed at me, and I looked back into his eyes.

  “Bebbanburg,” I said confidingly.

  “Bebbanburg, lord?” he asked innocently.

  “I am Lord of Bebbanburg, am I not?” I demanded.

  “You are, lord,” he said.

  “The Scots!” I said derisively, then let my head fall onto my arms as if I was sleepy.

  Within a month all Britain knew why Jarl Ragnar was asking for men. Alfred, lying on his sickbed, knew, as did Æthelred, Lord of Mercia. They probably knew in Frankia, while Offa, I heard, had become wealthy enough to buy a fair house and a pasture in Liccelfeld and was contemplating taking a young girl as a wife. The money for such extravagances, of course, came from my uncle, Ælfric, to whom Offa had hurried as soon as the weather allowed. The news he carried was that Jarl Ragnar was helping his friend, the Lord Uhtred, to regain Bebbanburg and there would be a summer war in Northumbria.

  And meanwhile Ragnar sent spies to Wessex.

  It might not have been a bad idea to assemble an army to invade the Scots. They were trouble back then, they are trouble now, and I daresay they will still be trouble when the world dies. As that winter ended a party of Scots raided Ragnar’s northern lands and killed at least fifteen men. They stole cattle, women, and children. Ragnar made a retaliatory raid and I took twenty of my men with his hundred, but it was a frustrating errand. We were not even sure when we crossed into Scottish land because the frontier was an uncertain thing, forever shifting with the power of the lords on either side, but after two days’ riding we came across a poor and deserted village. The folk, warned of our approach, had fled, taking their livestock with them. Their low houses had rough stone walls topped by sod roofs that almost touched the ground, while their dunghills were taller than the hovels. We collapsed the roofs by breaking the rafters, and shoveled horse dung into the small rough-stone church, but there was little other damage we could do. We were being watched by four horsemen on a hill to the north. “Bastards,” Ragnar shouted, though they were much too far away to hear him.

  The Scots, like us, used horsemen as scouts, but their riders never wore heavy mail and usually carried no weapon except a spear. They were mounted on nimble, quick horses, and though we might chase them, we could never catch them. “I wonder who they serve?” I said.

  “Domnal, probably,” Ragnar said, “King of Alba.” He spat the last word. Domnal ruled the greater part of the land north of Northumbria. All that land is called Scotland because it had been largely conquered by the Scots, a wild tribe of Irish, though, like England, the name Scotland meant little. Domnal ruled the largest kingdom, though there were others like Dalriada and Strathclota, and then there were the stormbound islands of the western coast where savage Norse jarls made their own petty kingdoms. Dealing with the Scots, my father had always said, was like trying to geld wildcats with your teeth, but luckily the wildcats spent much of their time fighting each other.

  Once the village was ruined we withdrew to higher ground, fearing that the presence of the four scouts might mean the arrival of a larger force, but none appeared. We went west next day, seeking something alive on which we could take revenge, but four days of riding produced nothing except a sick goat and a lame bullock. The scouts never left us. Even when a thick mist draped the hills and we used its concealment to change direction, they found us as soon as the mist lifted. They never came close, just watched us.

  We turned for home, following the spine of the great hills that divide Britain. It was still cold and there was snow in the creases of the high land. We had failed to retaliate for the Scottish raid, but our spirits were high because it felt good to be riding in open country with swords by our sides. “I’ll beat the bastards bloody when we’ve finished with Wessex,” Ragnar promised me cheerfully, “I’ll give them a raid they won’t forget.”

  “You really want to fight Wessex?” I asked him. The two of us were alone, riding a hundred paces ahead of our men.

  “Fight Wessex?” He shrugged. “In truth? No. I’m happy up here.”

  “Then why do it?”

  “Because Brida’s right. If we don’t take Wessex then Wessex will take us.”

  “Not in your lifetime,” I said.

  “But I have sons,” he said. All his sons were bastards, but Ragnar did not care about their legitimacy. He loved them all and wanted one of them to hold Dunholm after him. “I don’t want my sons bowing to some West Saxon king,” he said. “I want them to be free.”

  “So you’ll become King of Wessex?”

  He gave a great neigh of a laugh. “I don’t want that! I want to be Jarl of Dunholm, my friend. Maybe you should be King of Wessex?”

  “I want to be Jarl of Bebbanburg.”

  “We’ll find someone who wants to be king,” he said carelessly. “Maybe Sigurd or Cnut?” Sigurd Thorrson and Cnut Ranulfson were, after Ragnar himself, the mightiest lords in Northumbria and, unless they joined their men to ours, we would have no chance of conquering Wessex. “We’ll take Wessex,” Ragnar said confidently, “and divide its treasures. You need men to take Bebbanburg? The silver in the Wessex churches will buy you enough to take a dozen fortresses like Bebbanburg.”

  “True.”

  “So be happy! Fate is smiling.”


  We were following the crest of a hill. Beneath us scrabbling streams glinted white in deep valleys. I could see for miles, and in all that wide view there was neither a house nor a tree. This was bare land where men scratched a living tending sheep, though our presence meant that the flocks had all been driven away. The Scottish outriders with their long spears were on the hill to our east, while to the south the crest ended suddenly in a long hill that dropped steeply into a deep-walled valley where two streams met. And there, where the streams churned about rocks in their shadowed meeting place, were fourteen horsemen. None was moving. They waited where the two streams became one, and it was obvious that they waited for us, and equally obvious that it had to be a trap. The fourteen men were bait, and that meant other men must be nearby. We stared back the way we had come, but there was no enemy in sight on the long crest, nor were any visible on the nearer hills. The four scouts who had shadowed us were kicking their horses down the heather-covered slope to join the larger group.

  Ragnar watched the fourteen men. “What do they want us to do?” he asked.

  “Go down there?”

  “Which we have to do anyway,” he said slowly, “and they must have known that, so why bother to entice us down there?” He frowned, then looked quickly about the surrounding hills, but still no enemy showed on the slopes. “Are they Scots?” he asked.

  Finan had joined us and he had eyes like a hunting hawk. “They’re Scots,” he said.

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “There’s a fellow wearing the symbol of a dove, lord,” Finan said.

  “A dove?” Ragnar asked, sounding disgusted. In his view, indeed in mine, a man’s symbol should be warlike; an eagle or a wolf.

  “It’s the sign of Colum Cille, lord,” Finan explained.

  “Who is he?”

  “Saint Columba, lord. An Irish saint. He came to the land of the Picts and drove away a great monster that lives in a lake here. The Scots revere him, lord.”