The Burning Land Read online

  I came as a supplicant because two Danish fleets had landed in Cent, the easternmost part of Wessex. Haesten’s was the smaller fleet, and so far he had been content to build his fortress and let his men raid only enough to provide themselves with sufficient food and a few slaves. He had even let the shipping in the Temes go unmolested. He did not want a fight with Wessex, not yet, because he was waiting to see what happened to the south, where another and much greater Viking fleet had come ashore.

  Jarl Harald Bloodhair had brought more than two hundred ships filled with hungry men, and his army had stormed a half- built burh and slaughtered the men inside, and now his warriors were spreading across Cent, burning and killing, enslaving and robbing. It was Harald’s men who had smeared the sky with smoke. Alfred had marched against both invaders. The king was old now, old and ever more sick, so his troops were supposedly commanded by his son- in- law, Lord AEthelred of Mercia, and by the AEtheling Edward, Alfred’s eldest son.

  And they had done nothing. They had put their men on the great wooded ridge at the center of Cent from where they could strike north against Haesten or south against Harald, and then they had stayed motionless, presumably frightened that if they attacked one Danish army the other would assault their rear. So Alfred, convinced that his enemies were too powerful, had sent me to persuade Haesten to leave Wessex. Alfred should have ordered me to lead my garrison against Haesten, allowed me to soak the marshes with Danish blood, but instead I was instructed to bribe Haesten. With Haesten gone, the king thought, his army might deal with Harald’s wild warriors.

  Haesten used a thorn to pick at his teeth. He finally scraped out a scrap of fish. “Why doesn’t your king attack Harald?” he asked.

  “You’d like that,” I said.

  He grinned. “With Harald gone,” he admitted, “and that rancid whore of his gone as well, a lot of crews would join me.”

  “Rancid whore?”

  He grinned, pleased that he knew something I did not. “Skade,” he said flatly.

  “Harald’s wife?”

  “His woman, his bitch, his lover, his sorceress.”

  “Never heard of her,” I said.

  “You will,” he promised, “and if you see her, my friend, you’ll want her. But she’ll nail your skull to her hall gable if she can.”

  “You’ve seen her?” I asked, and he nodded. “You wanted her?”

  “Harald’s impulsive,” he said, ignoring my question. “And Skade will goad him to stupidity. And when that happens a lot of his men will look for another lord.” He smiled slyly. “Give me another hundred ships, and I could be King of Wessex inside a year.”

  “I’ll tell Alfred,” I said, “and maybe that will persuade him to attack you first.”

  “He won’t,” Haesten said confidently. “If he turns on me then he releases Harald’s men to spread across all Wessex.”

  That was true. “So why doesn’t he attack Harald?” I asked.

  “You know why.”

  “Tell me.”

  He paused, wondering whether to reveal all he knew, but he could not resist showing off his knowledge. He used the thorn to scratch a line in the wood of the table, then made a circle that was bisected by the line. “The Temes,” he said, tapping the line, “Lundene,” he indicated the circle. “You’re in Lundene with a thousand men, and behind you,” he tapped higher up the Temes, “Lord Aldhelm has five hundred Mercians. If Alfred attacks Harald, he’s going to want Aldhelm’s men and your men to go south, and that will leave Mercia wide open to attack.”

  “Who would attack Mercia?” I asked innocently.

  “The Danes of East Anglia?” Haesten suggested just as innocently. “All they need is a leader with courage.”

  “And our agreement,” I said, “insists you will not invade Mercia.”

  “So it does,” Haesten said with a smile, “except we have no agreement yet.”

  But we did. I had to yield Dragon- Voyager to Haesten, and in her belly lay four iron- bound chests filled with silver. That was the price. In return for the ship and the silver, Haesten promised to leave Wessex and ignore Mercia. He also agreed to accept missionaries and gave me two boys as hostages. He claimed one was his nephew, and that might have been true. The other boy was younger and dressed in fine linen with a lavish gold brooch. He was a good- looking lad with bright blond hair and anxious blue eyes. Haesten stood behind the boy and placed his hands on the small shoulders. “This, lord,” he said reverently, “is my eldest son, Horic. I yield him as a hostage.” Haesten paused, and seemed to sniff away a tear. “I yield him as a hostage, lord, to show goodwill, but I beg you to look after the boy. I love him dearly.”

  I looked at Horic. “How old are you?” I asked.

  “He is seven,” Haesten said, patting Horic’s shoulder.

  “Let him answer for himself,” I insisted. “How old are you?”

  The boy made a guttural sound and Haesten crouched to embrace him. “He is a deaf- mute, Lord Uhtred,” Haesten said. “The gods decreed my son should be deaf and mute.”

  “The gods decreed that you should be a lying bastard,” I said to Haesten, but too softly for his followers to hear and take offense.

  “And if I am?” he asked, amused. “What of it? And if I say this boy is my son, who is to prove otherwise?”

  “You’ll leave Wessex?” I asked.

  “I’ll keep this treaty,” he promised.

  I pretended to believe him. I had told Alfred that Haesten could not be trusted, but Alfred was desperate. He was old, he saw his grave not far ahead, and he wanted Wessex rid of the hated pagans. And so I paid the silver, took the hostages, and, under a darkening sky, rowed back to Lundene.

  Lundene is built in a place where the ground rises in giant steps away from the river. There is terrace after terrace, rising to the topmost level where the Romans built their grandest buildings, some of which still stood, though they were sadly decayed, patched with wattle and scabbed by the thatched huts we Saxons made.

  In those days Lundene was part of Mercia, though Mercia was like the grand Roman buildings; half fallen, and Mercia was also scabbed with Danish jarls who had settled its fertile lands. My cousin AEthelred was the chief Ealdorman of Mercia, its supposed ruler, but he was kept on a tight lead by Alfred of Wessex, who had made certain his own men controlled Lundene. I commanded that garrison, while Bishop Erkenwald ruled everything else.

  These days, of course, he is known as Saint Erkenwald, but I remember him as a sour weasel of a man. He was efficient, I grant him that, and the city was well governed in his time, but his unadulterated hatred of all pagans made him my enemy. I worshiped Thor, so to him I was evil, but I was also necessary. I was the warrior who protected his city, the pagan who had kept the heathen Danes at bay for over five years now, the man who kept the lands around Lundene safe so that Erkenwald could levy his taxes.

  Now I stood on the topmost step of a Roman house built on the topmost of Lundene’s terraces. Bishop Erkenwald was on my right. He was much shorter than I, but most men are, yet my height irked him. A straggle of priests, ink- stained, pale- faced, and nervous, were gathered on the steps beneath, while Finan, my Irish fighter, stood on my left. We all stared southward.

  We saw the mix of thatch and tile that roof Lundene, all studded with the stubby towers of the churches Erkenwald had built. Red kites wheeled above them, riding the warm air, though higher still I could see the first geese flying southward above the wide Temes. The river was slashed by the remnants of the Roman bridge, a marvelous thing which was crudely broken in its center. I had made a roadway of timbers that spanned the gap, but even I was nervous every time I needed to cross that makeshift repair which led to Suthriganaweorc, the earth and timber fortress that protected the bridge’s southern end. There were wide marshes there and a huddle of huts where a village had grown around the fort. Beyond the marshes the land rose to the hills of Wessex, low and green, and above those hills, far off, like ghostly pillars in the still, lat
e- summer sky, were plumes of smoke. I counted fifteen, but the clouds hazed the horizon and there could have been more.

  “They’re raiding!” Bishop Erkenwald said, sounding both surprised and outraged. Wessex had been spared any large Viking raid for years now, protected by the burhs, which were the towns Alfred had walled and garrisoned, but Harald’s men were spreading fire, rape, and theft in all the eastern parts of Wessex. They avoided the burhs, attacking only the smaller settlements. “They’re well beyond Cent!” the bishop observed.

  “And going deeper into Wessex,” I said.

  “How many of them?” Erkenwald demanded.

  “We hear two hundred ships landed,” I said, “so they must have at least five thousand fighting men. Maybe two thousand of those are with Harald.”

  “Only two thousand?” the bishop asked sharply.

  “It depends how many horses they have,” I explained. “Only mounted warriors will be raiding, the rest will be guarding his ships.”

  “It’s still a pagan horde,” the bishop said angrily. He touched the cross hanging about his neck. “Our lord king,” he went on, “has decided to defeat them at AEscengum.”

  “AEscengum!”

  “And why not?” the bishop bridled at my tone, then shuddered when I laughed. “There is nothing amusing in that,” he said tartly. But there was. Alfred, or perhaps it had been AEthelred, had advanced the army of Wessex into Cent, placing it on high wooded ground between the forces of Haesten and Harald, and then they had done nothing. Now it seemed that Alfred, or perhaps his son- in- law, had decided to retreat to AEscengum, a burh in the center of Wessex, presumably hoping that Harald would attack them and be defeated by the burh’s walls. It was a pathetic idea. Harald was a wolf, Wessex was a flock of sheep, and Alfred’s army was the wolfhound that should protect the sheep, but Alfred was tethering the wolfhound in hope that the wolf would come and be bitten. Meanwhile the wolf was running free among the flock. “And our lord king,” Erkenwald continued loftily, “has requested that you and some of your troops join him, but only if I am satisfied that Haesten will not attack Lundene in your absence.”

  “He won’t,” I said, and felt a surge of elation. Alfred, at last, had called for my help, which meant the wolfhound was being given sharp teeth.

  “Haesten fears we’ll kill the hostages?” the bishop asked.

  “Haesten doesn’t care a cabbage- smelling fart for the hostages,” I said. “The one he calls his son is some peasant boy tricked out in rich clothes.”

  “Then why did you accept him?” the bishop demanded indignantly.

  “What was I supposed to do? Attack Haesten’s main camp to find his pups?”

  “So Haesten is cheating us?”

  “Of course he’s cheating us, but he won’t attack Lundene unless Harald defeats Alfred.”

  “I wish we could be certain of that.”

  “Haesten is cautious,” I said. “He fights when he’s certain he can win, otherwise he waits.”

  Erkenwald nodded. “So take men south tomorrow,” he ordered, then walked away, followed by his scurrying priests.

  I look back now across the long years and realize Bishop Erkenwald and I ruled Lundene well. I did not like him, and he hated me, and we begrudged the time we needed to spend in each other’s company, but he never interfered with my garrison and I did not intervene in his governance. Another man might have asked how many men I planned to take south, or how many would be left to guard the city, but Erkenwald trusted me to make the right decisions. I still think he was a weasel.

  “How many men ride with you?” Gisela asked me that night.

  We were in our house, a Roman merchant’s house built on the northern bank of the Temes. The river stank often, but we were used to it and the house was happy. We had slaves, servants and guards, nurses and cooks, and our three children. There was Uhtred, our oldest, who must have been around ten that year, and Stiorra his sister, and Osbert, the youngest, just two and indomitably curious. Uhtred was named after me, as I had been named after my father and he after his, but this newest Uhtred irritated me because he was a pale and nervous child who clung to his mother’s skirts.

  “Three hundred men,” I answered.

  “Only?”

  “Alfred has sufficient,” I said, “and I must leave a garrison here.”

  Gisela flinched. She was pregnant again, and the birth could not be far off. She saw my worried expression and smiled. “I spit babies like pips,” she said reassuringly. “How long to kill Harald’s men?”

  “A month?” I guessed.

  “I shall have given birth by then,” she said, and I touched the carving of Thor’s hammer which hung at my neck. Gisela smiled reassurance again. “I have been lucky with childbirth,” she went on, which was true. Her births had been easy enough and all three children had lived. “You’ll come back to find a new baby crying,” she said, “and you’ll get annoyed.”

  I answered that truth with a swift smile, then pushed through the leather curtain onto the terrace. It was dark. There were a few lights on the river’s far bank where the fort guarded the bridge, and their flames shimmered on the water. In the west there was a streak of purple showing in a cloud rift. The river seethed through the bridge’s narrow arches, but otherwise the city was quiet. Dogs barked occasionally, and there was sporadic laughter from the kitchens. Seolferwulf, moored in the dock beside the house, creaked in the small wind. I glanced downstream to where, at the city’s edge, I had built a small tower of oak at the riverside. Men watched from that tower night and day, watching for the beaked ships that might come to attack Lundene’s wharves, but no warning fire blazed from the tower’s top. All was quiet. There were Danes in Wessex, but Lundene was resting.

  “When this is over,” Gisela said from the doorway, “maybe we should go north.”

  “Yes,” I said, then turned to look at the beauty of her long face and dark eyes. She was a Dane and, like me, she was weary of Wessex’s Christianity. A man should have gods, and perhaps there is some sense in acknowledging only one god, but why choose one who loves the whip and spur so much? The Christian god was not ours, yet we were forced to live among folk who feared him and who condemned us because we worshiped a different god. Yet I was sworn to Alfred’s service and so I remained where he demanded that I remain. “He can’t live much longer,” I said.

  “And when he dies you’re free?”

  “I gave no oath to anyone else,” I said, and I spoke honestly. In truth I had given another oath, and that oath would come back to find me, but it was so far from my mind that night that I believed I answered Gisela truthfully.

  “And when he’s dead?”

  “We go north,” I said. North, back to my ancestral home beside the Northumbrian sea, a home usurped by my uncle. North to Bebbanburg, north to the lands where pagans could live without the incessant nagging of the Christians’ nailed god. We would go home. I had served Alfred long enough, and I had served him well, but I wanted to go home. “I promise,” I told Gisela, “on my oath, we will go home.”

  The gods laughed.

  We crossed the bridge at dawn, three hundred warriors with half as many boys who came to tend the horses and carry the spare weapons. The hooves clattered loud on the makeshift bridge as we rode toward the pyres of smoke that told of Wessex being ravaged. We crossed the wide marsh where, at high tide, the river puddles dark among lank grasses, and climbed the gentle hills beyond. I left most of the garrison to guard Lundene, taking only my own household troops, my warriors and oath- men, the fighters I trusted with my own life. I left just six of those men in Lundene to guard my house under the command of Cerdic, who had been my battle- companion for many years and who had almost wept as he had pleaded with me to take him. “You must guard Gisela and my family,” I had told him, and so Cerdic stayed as we rode west, follow ing tracks trampled by the sheep and cattle that were driven to slaughter in Lundene. We saw little panic. Folk were keeping their eyes on the distant smoke, a
nd thegns had placed lookouts on rooftops and high among the trees. We were mistaken for Danes more than once, and there would be a flurry as people ran toward the woods, but once our identity was discovered they would come back. They were supposed to drive their livestock to the nearest burh if danger threatened, but folk are ever reluctant to leave their homes. I ordered whole villages to take their cattle, sheep, and goats to Suthriganaweorc, but I doubt they did. They would rather stay until the Danes were breathing down their throats.

  Yet the Danes were staying well to the south, so perhaps those villagers had judged well. We swerved southward ourselves, climbing higher and expecting to see the raiders at any moment. I had scouts riding well ahead, and it was midmorning before one of them waved a red cloth to signal he had seen something to alarm him. I spurred to the hill crest, but saw nothing in the valley beneath.

  “There were folk running, lord,” the scout told me. “They saw me and hid in the trees.”

  “Maybe they were running from you?”

  He shook his head. “They were already panicked, lord, when I saw them.”

  We were gazing out across a wide valley, green and lush beneath the summer sun. At its far side were wooded hills and the nearest smoke pyre was beyond that skyline. The valley looked peaceful. I could see small fields, the thatched roofs of a village, a track going west, and the glimmer of a stream twisting between meadows. I saw no enemy, but the heavy- leafed trees could have hidden Harald’s whole horde. “What did you see exactly?” I asked.

  “Women, lord. Women and children. Some goats. They were running that way.” He pointed westward.

  So the fugitives were fleeing the village. The scout had glimpsed them between the trees, but there was no sign of them now, nor of whatever had made them run. No smoke showed in this long wide valley, but that did not mean Harald’s men were not there. I plucked the scout’s reins, leading him beneath the skyline, and remembered the day, so many years before, when I had first gone to war. I had been with my father, who had been leading the fyrd, the host of men plucked from their farmlands who were mostly armed with hoes or scythes or axes. We had marched on foot and, as a result, we had been a slow, lumbering army. The Danes, our enemy, had ridden. Their ships landed and the first thing they did was find horses, and then they danced about us. We had learned from that. We had learned to fight like the Danes, except that Alfred was now trusting to his fortified towns to stop Harald’s invasion, and that meant Harald was being given the freedom of the Wessex countryside. His men, I knew, would be mounted, except he led too many warriors, and so his raiding parties were doubtless still scouring the land for yet more horses. Our first job was to kill those raiders and take back any captured horses, and I suspected just such a band was at the eastern end of the valley. I found a man in my ranks who knew this part of the country. “Edwulf has an estate here, lord,” he said.