The Last Kingdom Page 11

  “You are fortunate to have started your studies early,” Alfred said to me, recovering his seriousness. “I was not given a chance to read until I was twelve years old!” His tone suggested I should be shocked and surprised by this news so I dutifully looked appalled. “That was grievously wrong of my father and stepmother,” Alfred went on sternly. “They should have started me much earlier.”

  “Yet now you read as well as any scholar, my lord,” Beocca said.

  “I do try,” Alfred said modestly, but he was plainly delighted with the compliment.

  “And in Latin, too!” Beocca said. “And his Latin is much better than mine!”

  “I think that’s true,” Alfred said, giving the priest a smile.

  “And he writes a clear hand,” Beocca told me, “such a clear, fine hand!”

  “As must you,” Alfred told me firmly, “to which end, young Uhtred, we shall indeed offer to ransom you, and if God helps us in that endeavor then you shall serve in my household and the first thing you will do is become a master of reading and writing. You’ll like that!”

  “I will, lord,” I said, meaning it to sound as a question, though it came out as dull agreement.

  “You will learn to read well,” Alfred promised me, “and learn to pray well, and learn to be a good honest Christian, and when you are of age you can decide what to be!”

  “I will want to serve you, lord,” I lied, thinking that he was a pale, boring, priest-ridden weakling.

  “That is commendable,” he said, “and how will you serve me, do you think?”

  “As a soldier, lord, to fight the Danes.”

  “If God wishes it,” he said, evidently disappointed in my answer, “and God knows we shall need soldiers, though I pray daily that the Danes will come to a knowledge of Christ and so discover their sins and be led to end their wicked ways. Prayer is the answer,” he said vehemently, “prayer and fasting and obedience, and if God answers our prayers, Uhtred, then we shall need no soldiers, but a kingdom always has need of good priests. I wanted that office for myself, but God disposed otherwise. There is no higher calling than the priestly service. I might be a prince, but in God’s eyes I am a worm while Beocca is a jewel beyond price!”

  “Yes, lord,” I said, for want of anything else to say. Beocca tried to look modest.

  Alfred leaned forward, hid Thor’s hammer behind my shirt, then laid a hand on my head. “God’s blessing on you, child,” he said, “and may his face shine upon you and release you from your thralldom and bring you into the blessed light of freedom.”

  “Amen,” I said.

  They let me go then and I went back to Ragnar. “Hit me,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Thump me round the head.”

  He glanced up and saw that Alfred was still watching me, so he cuffed me harder than I expected. I fell down, grinning. “So why did I just do that?” Ragnar asked.

  “Because I said you were cruel to me,” I said, “and beat me constantly.” I knew that would amuse Ragnar and it did. He hit me again, just for luck. “So what did the bastards want?” he asked.

  “They want to ransom me,” I said, “so they can teach me to read and write, and then make me into a priest.”

  “A priest? Like the squinty little bastard with the red hair?”

  “Just like him.”

  Ragnar laughed. “Maybe I should ransom you. It would be a punishment for telling lies about me.”

  “Please don’t,” I said fervently, and at that moment I wondered why I had ever wanted to go back to the English side. To exchange Ragnar’s freedom for Alfred’s earnest piety seemed a miserable fate to me. Besides, I was learning to despise the English. They would not fight, they prayed instead of sharpening their swords, and it was no wonder the Danes were taking their land.

  Alfred did offer to ransom me, but balked at Ragnar’s price that was ludicrously high, though not nearly so steep as the price Ivar and Ubba extracted from Burghred.

  Mercia was to be swallowed. Burghred had no fire in his big belly, no desire to go on fighting the Danes who got stronger as he grew weaker. Perhaps he was fooled by all those shields on Snotengaham’s walls, but he must have decided he could not beat the Danes and instead he surrendered. It was not just our forces in Snotengaham that persuaded him to do this. Other Danes were raiding across the Northumbrian border, ravaging Mercian lands, burning churches, slaughtering monks and nuns, and those horsemen were now close to Burghred’s army and were forever harassing his forage parties, and so Burghred, weary of unending defeat, weakly agreed to every outrageous demand, and in return he was allowed to stay as King of Mercia, but that was all. The Danes were to take his fortresses and garrison them, and they were free to take Mercian estates as they wished, and Burghred’s fyrd was to fight for the Danes if they demanded it, and Burghred, moreover, was to pay a vast price in silver for this privilege of losing his kingdom while keeping his throne. Æthelred and Alfred, having no part to play in the discussions, and seeing that their ally had collapsed like a pricked bladder, left on the second day, riding south with what remained of their army, and thus Mercia fell.

  First Northumbria, then Mercia. In just two years half of England was gone and the Danes were only just beginning.

  We ravaged the land again. Bands of Danes rode into every part of Mercia and slaughtered whoever resisted, took whatever they wished, then garrisoned the principal fortresses before sending messages to Denmark for more ships to come: more ships, more men, more families, and more Danes to fill the great land that had fallen into their laps.

  I had begun to think I would never fight for England because by the time I was old enough to fight there would be no England. So I decided I would be a Dane. Of course I was confused, but I did not spend much time worrying about my confusion. Instead, as I approached twelve years old, I began my proper education. I was made to stand for hours holding a sword and shield stretched out in front of me until my arms ached, I was taught the strokes of the blade, made to practice with throwing spears, and given a pig to slaughter with a war spear. I learned to fend with a shield, how to drop it to stop the lunge beneath the rim, and how to shove the heavy shield boss into an enemy’s face to smash his nose and blind him with tears. I learned to pull an oar. I grew, put on muscle, began to speak in a man’s voice, and was slapped by my first girl. I looked like a Dane. Strangers still mistook me for Ragnar’s son for I had the same fair hair that I wore long and tied with a strip of leather at the nape of my neck, and Ragnar was pleased when that happened though he made it plain that I would not replace Ragnar the Younger or Rorik. “If Rorik lives,” he said sadly, for Rorik was still sickly, “you will have to fight for your inheritance,” and so I learned to fight and, that winter, to kill.

  We returned to Northumbria. Ragnar liked it there and, though he could have taken better land in Mercia, he liked the northern hills and the deep vales and the dark hanging woods where, as the first frosts crisped the morning, he took me hunting. A score of men and twice as many dogs beat through the woods, trying to trap boar. I stayed with Ragnar, both of us armed with heavy boar spears. “A boar can kill you, Uhtred,” he warned me. “He can rip you from the crotch to the neck unless you place the spear just right.”

  The spear, I knew, must be placed in the beast’s chest or, if you were lucky, down its throat. I knew I could not kill a boar, but if one came, I would have to try. A full-grown boar can be twice the weight of a man and I did not have the strength to drive one back, but Ragnar was determined to give me first strike and he would be close behind to help. And so it happened. I have killed hundreds of boar since, but I will always remember that first beast, the small eyes, the sheer anger, the determination, the stench, the bristling hairs flecked with mud, and the sweet thud of the spear going deep into the chest, and I was hurled back as if I had been kicked by Odin’s eight-legged horse, and Ragnar drove his own spear through the thick hide and the beast squealed and roared, legs scrabbling, and the pursuing dog
s howled, and I found my feet, gritted my teeth, and put my weight on the spear and felt the boar’s life pulsing up the ash shaft. Ragnar gave me a tusk from that carcass and I hung it next to Thor’s hammer and in the days that followed I wanted to do nothing except hunt, though I was not allowed to pursue boar unless Ragnar was with me, but when Rorik was well enough he and I would take our bows into the woods to look for deer.

  It was on one of those expeditions, high up at the edge of the woods, just beneath the moors that were dappled by melting snow, that the arrow almost took my life. Rorik and I were creeping through undergrowth and the arrow missed me by inches, sizzling past my head to thump into an ash tree. I turned, putting an arrow on my own string, but saw no one, then we heard feet racing away downhill through the trees and we followed, but whoever had shot the arrow ran too fast for us.

  “An accident,” Ragnar said. “He saw movement, thought you were a deer, and loosed. It happens.” He looked at the arrow we had retrieved, but it had no marks of ownership. It was just a goose-fledged shaft of hornbeam tipped with an iron head. “An accident,” he decreed.

  Later that winter we moved back to Eoferwic and spent days repairing the boats. I learned to split oak trunks with wedge and mallet, cleaving out the long pale planks that patched the rotted hulls. Spring brought more ships, more men, and with them was Halfdan, youngest brother of Ivar and Ubba. He came ashore roaring with energy, a tall man with a big beard and scowling eyes. He embraced Ragnar, thumped me on the shoulder, punched Rorik in the head, swore he would kill every Christian in England, then went to see his brothers. The three of them planned the new war, which, they promised, would strip East Anglia of its treasures and, as the days warmed, we readied for it.

  Half the army would march by land, while the other half, which included Ragnar’s men, would go by sea and so I anticipated my first proper voyage, but before we left Kjartan came to see Ragnar, and trailing him was his son Sven, his missing eye a red hole in his angry face. Kjartan knelt to Ragnar and bowed his head. “I would come with you, lord,” he said.

  Kjartan had made a mistake by letting Sven follow him, for Ragnar, usually so generous, gave the boy a sour look. I call him a boy, but in truth Sven was almost a man now and promised to be a big one, broad in the chest, tall, and strong. “You would come with me,” Ragnar echoed flatly.

  “I beg you, lord,” Kjartan said, and it must have taken a great effort to say those words, for Kjartan was a proud man, but in Eoferwic he had found no plunder, earned no arm rings, and made no reputation for himself.

  “My ships are full,” Ragnar said coldly, and turned away. I saw the look of hatred on Kjartan’s face.

  “Why doesn’t he sail with someone else?” I asked Ravn.

  “Because everyone knows he offended Ragnar, so to give him a place at the oars is to risk my son’s dislike.” Ravn shrugged. “Kjartan should go back to Denmark. If a man loses his lord’s trust then he has lost everything.”

  But Kjartan and his one-eyed son stayed in Eoferwic instead of going back to Denmark, and we sailed, first flowing with the current back down the Ouse and so into the Humber where we spent the night. Next morning we took the shields off the ships’ sides, then waited till the tide lifted their hulls and we could row eastward into the first great seas.

  I had been offshore at Bebbanburg, going with fishermen to cast nets about the Farne Islands, but this was a different sensation. The Wind-Viper rode those waves like a bird instead of thrashing through like a swimmer. We rowed out of the river, then took advantage of a northwest wind to hoist the great sail, and the oars were fiddled out of their holes, the holes were covered with wooden plugs, and the great sweeps stored inboard as the sail cracked, bellied, trapped the wind, and drove us southward. There were eighty-nine ships altogether, a fleet of dragon-headed killers, and they raced one another, calling insults whenever they traveled faster than some other boat. Ragnar leaned on the steering oar, his hair flying in the wind and a smile as broad as the ocean on his face. Seal-hide ropes creaked; the boat seemed to leap up the seas, seethe through their tops, and slide in flying spray down their faces. I was frightened at first, for the Wind-Viper bent to that wind, almost dropping her leeward side beneath the great green sea, but then I saw no fear on the other men’s faces and I learned to enjoy the wild ride, whooping with delight when the bow smashed into a heavy sea and the green water flew like an arrow shower down the deck.

  “I love this!” Ragnar called to me. “In Valhalla I hope to find a ship, a sea, and a wind!”

  The shore was ever in sight, a low green line to our right, sometimes broken by dunes, but never by trees or hills, and as the sun sank we turned toward that land and Ragnar ordered the sail furled and the oars out.

  We rowed into a water land, a place of marsh and reed, of bird cries and long-legged herons, of eel traps and ditches, of shallow channels and long meres, and I remembered my father saying the East Anglians were frogs. We were on the edge of their country now, at the place where Mercia ended and East Anglia began in a tangle of water, mud, and salt flats. “They call it the Gewæsc,” Ragnar said.

  “You’ve been here?”

  “Three years ago,” he said. “Good country to raid, Uhtred, but treacherous water. Too shallow.”

  The Gewæsc was very shallow and Weland was in the Wind-Viper’s bow, weighing the depth with a lump of iron tied to a rope. The oars only dipped if Weland said there was sufficient water and so we crept westward into the dying light followed by the rest of the fleet. The shadows were long now, the red sun slicing into the open jaws of the dragon, serpents and eagle heads on the ships’ prows. The oars worked slowly, their blades dripping water as they swept forward for the next stroke, and our wake spread in long slow ripples touched red by dying sun fire.

  We anchored that night and slept aboard the ships and in the dawn Ragnar made Rorik and me climb his mast. Ubba’s ship was nearby and he, too, had men clambering up toward the painted wind vane at the masthead.

  “What can you see?” Ragnar called up to us.

  “Three men on horseback,” Rorik answered, pointing south, “watching us.”

  “And a village,” I added, also pointing south.

  To the men on shore we were something from their darkest fears. All they could see was a thicket of masts and the savage carved beasts at the high prows and sterns of our ships. We were an army, brought here by our dragon boats, and they knew what would follow and, as I watched, the three horsemen turned and galloped south.

  We went on. Ubba’s ship led the way now, following a twisting shallow channel, and I could see Ubba’s sorcerer, Storri, standing in the bows and I guessed he had cast the runes and predicted success. “Today,” Ragnar told me wolfishly, “you will learn the Viking way.”

  To be a Viking was to be a raider, and Ragnar had not conducted a shipborne raid in many years. He had become an invader instead, a settler, but Ubba’s fleet had come to ravage the coastline and draw the East Anglian army toward the sea while his brother, Ivar, led the land army south from Mercia, and so that early summer I learned the Viking ways. We took the ships to the mainland where Ubba found a stretch of land with a thin neck that could easily be defended and, once our ships were safely drawn onto the beach, we dug an earthwork across the neck as a rampart. Then large parties of men disappeared into the countryside, returning next morning with captured horses, and the horses were used to mount another warband that rode inland as Ragnar led his men on foot along the tangled shoreline.

  We came to a village, I never did learn its name, and we burned it to the ground. There was no one there. We burned farmsteads and a church and marched on, following a road that angled away from the shore, and at dusk we saw a larger village and we hid in a wood, lit no fires, and attacked at dawn.

  We came shrieking from the half-light. We were a nightmare in the dawn: men in leather with iron helmets, men with round painted shields, men with axes, swords, and spears. The folk in that place had no weapons and
no armor, and perhaps they had not even known there were Danes in their countryside for they were not ready for us. They died. A few brave men tried to make a stand by their church, but Ragnar led a charge against them and they were slaughtered where they stood, and Ragnar pushed open the church door to find the small building filled with women and children. The priest was in front of the altar and he cursed Ragnar in Latin as the Dane stalked up the small nave, and the priest was still cursing when Ragnar disemboweled him.

  We took a bronze crucifix, a dented silver plate, and some coins from the church. We found a dozen good cooking pots in the houses and some shears, sickles, and iron spits. We captured cattle, goats, sheep, oxen, eight horses, and sixteen young women. One woman screamed that she could not leave her child and I watched Weland spit the small boy on a spear, then thrust the bloodied corpse into the woman’s arms. Ragnar sent her away, not because he pitied her, but because one person was always spared to carry news of the horror to other places. Folk must fear the Danes, Ragnar said, and then they would be ready to surrender. He gave me a piece of burning wood he had taken from a fire. “Burn the thatch, Uhtred,” he ordered, so I went from house to house, putting fire to the reed thatch. I burned the church and then, just as I approached the last house, a man burst from the door with a three-pronged eel spear that he lunged at me. I twisted aside, avoiding his thrust by luck rather than judgment, and I hurled the burning wood at the man’s face and the flames made him duck as I backed away, and Ragnar threw me a spear, a heavy war spear made for thrusting rather than throwing, and it skidded in the dust in front of me and I understood he was letting me fight as I plucked it up. He would not have let me die, for he had two of his bowmen standing ready with arrows on their strings, but he did not interfere as the man ran at me and lunged again.

  I parried, knocking the rusted eel spear aside and stepping back again to give myself room. The man was twice my size and more than twice my weight. He was cursing me, calling me a devil’s bastard, a worm of hell, and he rushed me again and I did what I had learned hunting the boar. I stepped to my left, waited till he leveled the spear, stepped back to the right, and thrust.