Except Æthelhelm did not want to wait.
I could not blame him for that. Before my son-in-law became king in Eoferwic, I had urged the same thing on Æthelflaed, telling her time after time that the northern Danes were disorganised, vulnerable, and ripe for conquest. But she, like Edward, wanted more time, and she wanted the security of larger armies, and so we had been patient. Now I was the vulnerable one. Constantin was stealing much of the north, and Æthelhelm, the most powerful ealdorman in Wessex, wanted an excuse to invade the south. In one way he was right; Northumbria was ripe for conquest, but Æthelhelm wanted a victory over Sigtryggr for one reason only; to make certain that his grandson would be king of a united Englaland.
Edward, King of Wessex and Æthelhelm’s son-in-law, had secretly married a Centish girl long before he became king. They had a son, Æthelstan, whose mother had died at birth. Edward then married Æthelhelm’s daughter, Ælflæd the feather-giver, and had more children, one of whom, Ælfweard, was widely regarded as the ætheling, the crown prince, of Wessex. Except, in my view, he was not. Æthelstan was older, he was a legitimate son despite the rumours of bastardy, and he was a stalwart, brave, and impressive young man. Edward’s sister Æthelflaed, like me, supported Æthelstan’s claim to be the heir, but we were opposed by the richest, most influential ealdorman in Wessex. And I had no doubt that Brunulf and his men were in Northumbria to provoke the war that Æthelhelm wanted. Which meant that the peace party in Wessex would be proved wrong and Æthelhelm right, and he would gain the renown of being the man who united the Saxons into one nation, and that renown would make him unassailable. His grandson would be the next king, and Æthelstan, like Northumbria, would be doomed.
So I had to stop Brunulf and defeat Æthelhelm.
With fifty men.
Hidden in a wood.
At dawn.
We were among the lower trees long before the first light leaked in the east. Birds flapped among the leaves in panic when we arrived and I feared the West Saxon scouts would realise we had caused the disturbance, but if Brunulf had scouts in the wood they raised no alarm. He had sent horsemen to explore the trees before nightfall, a task they had done in a desultory way, and, because I had withdrawn my scouts, they found nothing, but I worried he might have left sentries to watch the woods all night. It seemed he had not, and, as far as I could tell, only the panicked birds and the beasts of the dark were aware of our arrival. We dismounted, forced our way through the thick undergrowth, and, once we were close to the southern edge of the trees, we waited as the wood settled.
I knew it would be a long wait because Brunulf would not leave the fort till full daylight, but I had not wanted to reach the wood after the dawn in case the sight of birds fleeing the trees alerted the West Saxons. Finan, still puzzled as to what I planned, had given up pressing me and now sat with his back against the moss-covered trunk of a fallen oak and stroked a stone down a sword already as sharp as the shears wielded by the three fates. My son played dice with two of his men, and I took Berg aside. ‘I need to talk,’ I told him.
‘I’ve done something bad?’ he asked anxiously.
‘No! I have a job for you.’
I led him to a place where we would not be overheard. I liked Berg Skallagrimmrson and trusted him totally. He was a young Norseman, strong, loyal, and skilled. I had saved his life, which gave him reason to be grateful to me, but his loyalty went far beyond gratitude. He was proud to be one of my men, so proud that he had tried to ink my wolf’s head badge on his cheek, and was always offended when folk asked him why he was wearing pig heads on his face and that had given me pause before speaking to him, but he was thorough, dependable, and, despite his slow manner, clever. ‘When we’ve finished today,’ I told him, ‘I’ll have to go south.’
‘South, lord?’
‘If it all goes well, yes. But if it goes badly?’ I shrugged and touched my hammer. Ever since we had left the steading I had been watching and listening for omens, but nothing had suggested the will of the gods yet. Except this was Woden’s day, and that was surely a good sign.
‘We will fight, yes?’ He looked anxious, as if he feared he might not have a chance to use his sword.
‘We will,’ I said, hoping that was true, ‘but I’m only expecting around thirty enemies.’
‘Only thirty?’ Berg sounded disappointed.
‘Maybe a few more,’ I said. Eadric had returned the previous evening bringing the news I had expected. A party of horsemen, Eadric reckoned there were twenty-five to thirty of them, had left the fort and ridden south. Eadric had been concealed in a ditch not far from the West Saxons, so had been unable to follow the horsemen and thus discover whether they turned east or west once they were out of sight of the ramparts. My guess was east, but only daylight would reveal that truth. ‘But those thirty,’ I went on, ‘will fight like bastards.’
‘Is good,’ Berg said happily.
‘And I want prisoners!’
‘Yes, lord,’ he said dutifully.
‘Prisoners,’ I repeated. ‘I don’t want you happily slaughtering every man you see.’
‘I will not, I promise,’ he touched the hammer hanging about his neck.
‘And when it’s over,’ I said, ‘I will go south and you will go north, and I will give you gold. A lot of gold!’
He said nothing, but just stared at me with wide, solemn eyes.
‘I’ll send eight men with you,’ I said, ‘all Norse or Danes, and you are to find your way back to Eoferwic.’
‘Eoferwic,’ he repeated the name uncertainly.
‘Jorvik!’ I used the Norse name, and he brightened. ‘And in Jorvik,’ I went on, ‘you will buy three ships.’
‘Ships!’ He sounded surprised.
‘You know, big wooden things that float.’
‘I know what a ship is, lord,’ he assured me earnestly.
‘Good! Then you buy three of them, each for a crew of about thirty to forty men.’
‘Fighting ships, lord?’ he asked. ‘Or trading vessels?’
‘Fighting ships,’ I said, ‘and I need them soon. Maybe in two weeks? I don’t know. Maybe longer. And when you are in Eoferwic,’ I went on, ‘you’re not to go into the city. Buy your food at the Duck tavern. You remember where that is?’
He nodded, ‘I remember, lord. It is just outside the city, yes? But we’re not to go into Eoferwic?’
‘You might be recognised. Wait at the Duck. You’ll have plenty of work to do, patching up the ships you bought, but if you go into the city someone will recognise you and will know you serve me.’ Plenty of folk in that city had seen my men passing through, and someone could easily remember the tall, good-looking and long-haired Norseman with the smudged wolf-heads on his cheeks, indeed I hoped they would remember him.
Berg was a splendid young man, but a young man who had no guile. None. He could no more tell a convincing lie than jump over the moon, and if he did lie he blushed, shuffled his feet, and looked pained. His honesty was blazingly apparent, as plain as the pigs on his face; he was, in a word, trustworthy. If I told Berg to keep his mission secret then he would, but he would still be recognised, and that was what I wanted. ‘Can you keep a secret?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, lord!’ He touched the hammer at his neck. ‘On my honour!’
I lowered my voice, forcing him to lean closer. ‘We can’t capture Bebbanburg,’ I said.
‘No, lord?’ he sounded disappointed.
‘The Scots are there,’ I said, ‘and though I’m willing to fight battles, I can’t fight a whole nation. And the Scots are vicious bastards.’
‘I have heard that,’ he said.
I lowered my voice even more. ‘So we are going to Frisia.’
‘Frisia!’ he sounded surprised.
‘Shhh!’ I hushed him, though no one could have overheard us.
‘The Saxons will invade Northumbria,’ I told him, ‘and the Scots will hold the north, and there’s nowhere left for us to live. So we must cross th
e sea. We’ll find new land. We’ll make a new home in Frisia, but no one must know!’
He touched the hammer again. ‘I will say nothing, lord! I promise.’
‘The only people you can tell,’ I said, ‘are the men who sell you the ships because they have to know we need ships sound enough to cross the sea. And you can tell Olla who owns the Duck, but no one else!’
‘No one, lord, I swear it!’
By telling those few people I was certain the rumour would reach all of Eoferwic and half of Northumbria before the sun went down, and within a week or so my cousin would hear the story that I was abandoning Britain and sailing to Frisia.
My cousin might be under siege, but he would somehow be smuggling messengers in and out of the fortress. There was a sallyport on the seaward ramparts, a small hole in the wooden wall that led to the cliff-top. It was no use as a way of attacking Bebbanburg because it was impossible to approach the hole unseen; to reach it a man must walk along the bare beach and clamber up a precipitous slope immediately beneath the high ramparts. A man might reach it unseen at night-time, but my father had always insisted that at night the sallyport was firmly blocked from the inside, and my cousin, I was sure, would do the same. I suspected he had managed to get men away through the sallyport, perhaps picked up from the beach beneath by a fishing vessel in the fog, and I did not doubt that the news that I had purchased ships would eventually reach him. He might not believe the Frisian story, but Berg did, and Berg was so transparently honest that his tale would be utterly convincing. At worst the news would cause my cousin to doubt what I intended.
‘Remember,’ I said, ‘only tell the men who sell you the ships, and you can tell Olla.’ Olla, I knew, would not be able to resist spreading the rumour. ‘You can trust Olla.’
‘Olla,’ Berg repeated the name.
‘And his tavern has everything you need,’ I said, ‘decent ale, good food, and pretty whores.’
‘Whores, lord?’
‘Girls who …’
‘Yes, lord, I also know what a whore is,’ he said, sounding disapproving.
‘And Olla has a daughter,’ I told him, ‘looking for a husband.’
He brightened at that. ‘She is pretty, lord?’
‘Her name is Hanna,’ I said, ‘and she is as gentle as a dove, soft as butter, obedient like a dog and pretty as the dawn.’ At least the last claim was true. I looked eastwards and saw that the sky was touched with the first faint light of day. ‘Now,’ I went on, ‘most important. Olla knows you’re my man, but no one else must know, no one! If anyone asks, say you’ve come from southern Northumbria, that you’re leaving your land before the Saxons invade. You’re going home across the sea. You are leaving Britain, running away.’
He frowned, ‘I do understand, lord, but …’ he paused, plainly unhappy at the thought of running from enemies. He was a brave young man.
‘You’ll like it in Frisia!’ I said earnestly.
Before I could say any more Rorik, my servant, came running through the trees, dodging thorns, ‘Lord, lord!’
‘Quietly!’ I told him. ‘Quietly!’
‘Lord!’ he crouched beside me, ‘Cenwulf sent me. There are horsemen coming from the fort!’
‘How many?’
‘Three, lord.’
Scouts, I thought. Rorik had been posted with Cenwulf and two other sentries further up the slope in a place from where they could see the fort to the south. ‘We’ll talk later,’ I told Berg, then returned to where my fifty men waited, and cautioned them to silence.
The three scouts followed the path into the wood, but they made no effort to explore east or west. They seemed to linger a long time. Cenwulf, who was watching them, told me they went to the wood’s northern edge from where they could see a dozen of my men with their riderless horses clustered about the distant stone, and that sight seemed to reassure them because they turned and rode back south. They went slowly, evidently satisfied that no danger lurked among the trees. By now the sun was well up, dazzling in the east and touching a few wispy clouds with bright edges of glowing gold. It promised to be a fine day, at least for us. If I was right. If.
I sent Rorik back to join the hidden sentries, and then nothing happened. A deer wandered onto the pasture from the upper wood to sniff the air, then she heard something that turned her back into the trees. I was tempted to join the sentries to see the fort myself, but resisted the urge. My watching the ramparts would not make anything happen any sooner, and the less movement we made, the better. The gold at the cloud edges faded to a vaporous white. I was sweating beneath my war gear. I wore a leather jerkin under a mail coat, and woollen trews tucked into boots that were made heavy by iron strips sewn into the leather. My forearms were ringed with silver and gold, the marks of a warlord. I wore a gold chain at my neck with a common bone hammer suspended from a link. Serpent-Breath was belted at my waist, while my shield, helmet, and spear were lodged against a tree.
‘Maybe he’s not coming,’ Finan grumbled at mid morning.
‘Brunulf will come.’
‘He’s not going to pay us anything, so why should he?’
‘Because if he doesn’t come,’ I said, ‘there can’t be a war.’
Finan looked at me as though I was moon-touched mad. He was about to speak when Rorik appeared again, breathless. ‘Lord …’ he began.
‘They’ve left the fort?’ I interrupted him.
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Told you,’ I said to Finan, then to Rorik. ‘How many?’
‘Twelve, lord.’
‘Are they carrying a banner?’
‘Yes, lord, with a worm on it.’
He meant the dragon banner of Wessex, which is what I had expected. I patted Rorik on the head, told him to stay with me, then called for my men to ready themselves. Like them I pulled on my helmet with its greasy, stinking leather liner. It was my finest helmet, the one with a silver wolf crouching on its crest. I dragged it down over my ears, then closed the cheek-pieces and let Rorik fasten the laces over my chin. He gave me a dark cloak that he tied at my neck, handed me my gloves, then held my horse while I used a fallen log as a mounting block. I settled into Tintreg’s saddle, then took the heavy ironbound shield from Rorik. I pushed my left arm through the loop and gripped the handle. ‘Spear,’ I said, ‘and Rorik?’
‘Lord?’
‘Stay at the back. Stay out of trouble.’
‘Yes, lord,’ he said too quickly.
‘I mean it, you horrible boy. You’re my standard-bearer, not a warrior. Not yet.’
I had dressed in war finery. Most days I did not trouble with a cloak, I left the arm rings behind, and wore a plain helmet, but in the next few minutes I would be deciding the fate of three nations, and that surely deserved some show. I gave Tintreg a friendly slap on the neck and nodded to Finan, who, like me, was glittering with silver and gold. I glanced behind and saw my fifty men were all mounted. ‘Quietly now,’ I told them, ‘walk out slow! There’s no need for haste!’
We walked the horses out of the wood onto the pastureland. Two hares raced away towards the river. We were still on the lower ground, invisible to both the fort and to Brunulf, who was leading his unsuspecting men north along the cattle path that led to the stone beyond the woodland. I was relying on Cenwulf, an experienced and older man, to give me a signal. ‘We just wait now,’ I called, ‘we just wait.’
‘Why don’t you wait till they’re out of sight of the fort?’ Finan asked sourly.
‘Because I’m not the man who picked this place for a fight,’ I said, mystifying him still further, and then I raised my voice so that all my men could hear the explanation. ‘When we move,’ I said, confident that my voice would not carry beyond the grassy bowl that hid us, ‘you’ll see a dozen horsemen riding under the banner of Wessex. Our job is to protect them! Those twelve must live. They’re going to be attacked by between twenty-five and thirty men! I want those men taken prisoner! Kill some if you must, but I must have some pris
oners! Especially their leaders! Look for the richest mail and helmets and make sure you capture those bastards!’
‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’ Finan said, ‘now I understand.’
‘I want prisoners!’ I stressed.
Rorik climbed into his saddle and hoisted the flag of the wolf’s head, and just then Cenwulf appeared at the wood’s margin and waved both arms above his head. I touched the hammer hanging from the gold chain. ‘Let’s go!’ I called. ‘Let’s go!’
Tintreg must have been bored by waiting, because one touch of the spurs sent him leaping ahead. I clung to him, then all of us were climbing the short slope and our spear-points were lowered as we neared the crest. ‘When did you realise?’ Finan shouted at me.
‘Two nights ago!’
‘You could have told me!’
‘I thought it was obvious!’
‘You tricksy bastard!’ he said admiringly.
Then we were over the crest and I saw that the gods were with me.
The Flame Bearer Page 9