The Burning Land sc-5 Page 3

  “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, and 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.

  “Edwulf?”

  “A thegn, lord.” He grinned and used a hand to sketch a bulge in front of his stomach. “He’s a big fat man.”

  “So he’s rich?”

  “Very, lord.”

  All of which suggested some Danes had found a plump nest to plunder, and we had found an easy prey to slaughter. The only difficulty was getting three hundred men across the skyline without being seen from the valley’s eastern end, but we discovered a route that was shrouded by trees, and by midday I had my men hidden in the woods to the west of Edwulf’s estate. Then I baited the trap.

  I sent Osferth and twenty men to follow a track that led south toward the smoke pyres. They led a half-dozen riderless horses and went slowly, as if they were tired and lost. I ordered them never to look directly at Edwulf’s hall where, by now, I knew the Danes were busy. Finan, who could move among trees like a ghost, had crept close to the hall and brought back news of a village with a score of houses, a church, and two fine barns. “They’re pulling down the thatch,” Finan told me, meaning the Danes were searching the roofs of all the buildings, because some folk hid their treasures in the thatch before they fled. “And they’re taking turns on some women.”

  “Horses?”

  “Just women,” Finan said, then caught my glance and stopped grinning. “They’ve a whole herd of horses in a paddock, lord.”

  So Osferth rode, and the Danes took the bait like a trout rising to a fly. They saw him, he pretended not to see them, and suddenly forty or more Danes were galloping to intercept Osferth, who pretended to wake to the danger, turned westward and galloped across the front of my hidden men.

  And then it was as simple as stealing silver from a church. A hundred of my men crashed from the trees onto the flank of the Danes, who had no chance to escape. Two of the enemy turned their horses too fast and the beasts went down in a screaming chaos of hooves and turf. Others tried to turn back and were caught by spears in their spines. The experienced Danes swerved toward us, hoping to ride straight through our charge, but we were too many, and my men curled around the enemy horsemen so that a dozen were trapped in a circle. I was not there. I was leading the rest of my men to Edwulf’s hall, where the remainder of the Danes were running to mount their horses. One man, bare below the waist, scrambled away from a screaming woman and twisted as he saw me coming. Smoka, my horse, slowed, the man dodged again, but Smoka needed no guidance from me, and Serpent-Breath, my sword, took the man in the skull. The blade lodged there, so that the dying Dane was dragged along as I rode. Blood sprayed up my arm, then at last his twitching body fell away.

  I spurred on, taking most of the men east of the settlement, and so cutting off the retreat of the surviving Danes. Finan had already sent scouts to the southern hill crest. Why, I wondered, had the Danes not posted sentinels on the hilltop from which we had first seen the f
ugitives?

  There were so many skirmishes in those days. The Danes of East Anglia would raid the farmlands about Lundene, and we would retaliate, taking men deep into Danish territory to burn, kill, and plunder. There was officially a peace treaty between Alfred’s Wessex and East Anglia, but a hungry Dane took no notice of words on parchment. A man who wanted slaves, livestock, or simply wanted an adventure, would cross into Mercia and take what he wanted, and we would then ride east and do the same. I liked such raids. They gave me a chance to train my youngest men, to let them see the enemy and cross swords. You can drill a man for a year, practice sword craft and spear skills forever, but he will learn more in just five minutes of battle.

  There were so many skirmishes that I have forgotten most, yet I recall that skirmish at Edwulf’s hall. In reality it was nothing. The Danes had been careless and we took no casualties, yet I remember because, when it was over, and the swords were still, one of my men called me to the church.

  It was a small church, hardly big enough for the fifty or sixty souls who lived or had lived around the hall. The building was made of oak and had a thatched roof on which a wooden cross stood tall. A crude bell hung at the western gable above the only door, while each side wall had two large timber-barred windows through which light streamed to illuminate a fat man who had been stripped naked and tied to a table that I assumed was the church’s altar. He was moaning. “Untie him,” I snarled, and Rypere, who had led the men who captured the Danes inside the church, started forward as if I had just woken him from a trance.

  Rypere had seen much horror in his few years, but he, like the men he led, seemed numbed by the cruelty inflicted on the fat man. His eye sockets were a mess of blood and jelly, his cheeks laced red, his ears sliced off, his manhood cut, his fingers first broken and then chiseled from his palms. Two Danes stood beyond the table, guarded by my men, their reddened hands betraying they had been the torturers. Yet it was the leader of the Danish band who was chiefly responsible for the cruelty, and that is why I remember the skirmish.

  Because that was how I met Skade, and if ever any woman ate the apples of Asgard that gave the gods their eternal beauty, it was Skade. She was tall, almost as tall as I was, with a wiry body disguised by the mail coat she wore. She was maybe twenty years old, her face was narrow, high-nosed, haughty, with eyes as blue as any I have ever seen. Her hair, dark as the feathers of Odin’s ravens, hung long and straight to her slender waist, where a sword belt held an empty scabbard. I stared at her.

  And she stared at me. And what did she see?

  She saw Alfred’s warlord. She saw Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the pagan in service to a Christian king. I was tall, and in those days I had broad shoulders. I was a sword-warrior, spear-warrior, and fighting had made me rich so that my mail shone and my helmet was inlaid with silver and my arm rings glittered above the mail sleeves. My sword belt was decorated with silver wolf-heads, Serpent-Breath’s scabbard was cased with jet slivers, while my belt buckle and cloak clasp were made of heavy gold. Only the small image of Thor’s hammer, hanging around my neck, was cheap, but I had owned that talisman since I was a child. I have it still. The glory of my youth has gone, eroded by time, but that was what Skade saw. She saw a warlord.

  And so she spat at me. The spittle landed on my cheek and I left it there. “Who is the bitch?” I asked.

  “Skade,” Rypere gave me her name, then nodded at the two torturers, “they say she’s their leader.”

  The fat man moaned. He had been cut free and now curled his body into a ball. “Find someone to tend him,” I said irritably, and Skade spat again, this time striking my mouth. “Who is he?” I demanded, ignoring her.

  “We think he’s Edwulf,” Rypere said.

  “Get him out of here,” I said, then turned to look at the beauty who spat at me. “And who,” I asked, “is Skade?”

  She was a Dane, born to a steading in the northern part of their bleak country, daughter to a man who had no great riches and so left his widow poor. But the widow had Skade, and her beauty was astonishing, and so she had been married to a man willing to pay for that long, lithe body in his bed. The husband was a Frisian chieftain, a pirate, but then Skade had met Harald Bloodhair, and Jarl Harald offered her more excitement than living behind a rotting palisade on some tide-besieged sandbank, and so she had run away with him. All that I was to learn, but for now I just knew she was Harald’s woman, and that Haesten had spoken the truth; to see her was to want her. “You will release me,” she said with an astonishing confidence.

  “I’ll do what I choose,” I told her, “and I don’t take orders from a fool.” She bridled at that, and I saw she was about to spit again, and so raised a hand as if to strike her and she went very still. “No lookouts,” I said to her. “What leader doesn’t post sentries? Only a fool.” She hated that. She hated it because it was true.

  “Jarl Harald will give you money for my freedom,” she said.

  “My price for your freedom,” I said, “is Harald’s liver.”

  “You are Uhtred?” she asked.

  “I am the Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg.”

  She gave a ghost of a smile. “Then Bebbanburg will need a new lord if you don’t release me. I shall curse you. You will know agony, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, even greater agony than him.” She nodded at Edwulf, who was being carried out of the church by four of my men.

  “He’s a fool too,” I said, “because he set no sentries.” Skade’s raiding party had descended on the village in the morning sunlight and no one saw them coming. Some villagers, those we had seen from the skyline, escaped, but most had been captured, and of those only the young women and the children who might have been sold as slaves still lived.

  We let one Dane live, one Dane and Skade. The rest we killed. We took their horses, their mail, and their weapons. I ordered the surviving villagers to drive their livestock north to Suthriganaweorc because Harald’s men had to be denied food, though as the harvest was already in the barns and the orchards were heavy, that would be hard. We were still slaughtering the last of the Danes when Finan’s scouts reported that horsemen were approaching the hill crest to the south.

  I went to meet them, taking seventy men, the one Dane I would spare, Skade, and also the long piece of hemp rope that had been attached to the church’s small bell. I joined Finan and we rode to where the hill’s crest was gentle grassland and from where we could look far to the south. New smoke pyres thickened in the distant sky, but nearer, much nearer, was a band of horsemen who rode on the banks of a willow-shadowed stream. I estimated they numbered about the same as my men, who were now lined on the crest either side of my wolf’s-head banner. “Get off the horse,” I ordered Skade.

  “Those men are searching for me,” she said defiantly, nodding at the horsemen who had paused at the sight of my battle line.

  “Then they’ve found you,” I said, “so dismount.”

  She just stared at me proudly. She was a woman who hated being given orders.

  “You can dismount,” I said patiently, “or I can pull you out of the saddle. The choice is yours.”

  She dismounted and I gestured for Finan to dismount. He drew his sword and stood close to the girl. “Now undress,” I told her.

  A look of utter fury darkened her face. She did nothing, but I sensed an anger like a tensed adder inside her. She wanted to kill me, she wanted to scream, she wanted to call the gods down from the smoke-patterned sky, but there was nothing she could do. “Undress,” I said, “or have my men strip you.”

  She turned as if looking for a way to escape, but there was none. There was a glint of tears in her eyes, but she had no choice but to obey me. Finan looked at me quizzically, because I was not known for being cruel to women, but I did not explain to him. I was remembering what Haesten had told me, how Harald was impulsive, and I wanted to provoke Harald Bloodhair. I would insult his woman and so hope to force Harald to anger instead of sober judgment.

  Skade’s face was an expressionl
ess mask as she stripped herself of her mail coat, a leather jerkin, and linen breeches. One or two of my men cheered when her jerkin came off to reveal high, firm breasts, but they went silent when I snarled at them. I tossed the rope to Finan. “Tie it round her neck,” I said.

  She was beautiful. Even now I can close my eyes and see that long body standing in the buttercup-bright grass. The Danes in the valley were staring up, my men were gazing, and Skade stood there like a creature from Asgard come to the middle-earth. I did not doubt Harald would pay for her. Any man might have impoverished himself to possess Skade.

  Finan gave me the rope’s end and I kicked my stallion forward and led her a third of the way down the slope. “Is Harald there?” I asked her, nodding at the Danes who were two hundred paces away.

  “No,” she said. Her voice was bitter and tight. She was ashamed and angry. “He’ll kill you for this,” she said.

  I smiled. “Harald Bloodhair,” I said, “is a puking, shit-filled rat.” I twisted in the saddle and waved to Osferth, who brought the surviving Danish prisoner down the slope. He was a young man and he looked up at me with fear in his pale blue eyes. “This is your chieftain’s woman,” I said to him, “look at her.”

  He hardly dared look at Skade’s nakedness. He just gave her a glance then gazed back at me.

  “Go,” I told him, “and tell Harald Bloodhair that Uhtred of Bebbanburg has his whore. Tell Harald I have her naked, and that I’ll use her for my amusement. Go, tell him. Go!”

  The man ran down the slope. The Danes in the valley were not going to attack us. Our numbers were evenly matched, and we had the high ground, and the Danes are ever reluctant to take too many casualties. So they just watched us and, though one or two rode close enough to see Skade clearly, none tried to rescue her.

  I had carried Skade’s jerkin, breeches, and boots. I threw them at her feet, then leaned down and took the rope from her neck. “Dress,” I said.