The Burning Land sc-5 Read online

  “But Fearnhamme?” Alfred asked.

  “Is where we shall destroy Harald,” I said unhelpfully. I looked at Æthelred. “Order your men to Fearnhamme, cousin, and we’ll trap Harald there.”

  There was a time when Alfred would have questioned and tested my ideas, but that day he looked too tired and too sick to argue, and he plainly did not have the patience to listen to other men challenging my plans. Besides, he had learned to trust me when it came to warfare, and I expected his assent to my vague proposal, but then he surprised me. He turned to the churchmen and gestured that one of them should join him, and Bishop Asser took the elbow of a young, stocky monk and guided him to the king’s chair. The monk had a hard, bony face and black tonsured hair as bristly and stiff as a badger’s pelt. He might have been handsome except his eyes were milky, and I guessed he had been blind from birth. He groped for the king’s chair, found it and knelt beside Alfred, who laid a fatherly hand on the monk’s bowed head. “So, Brother Godwin?” he asked gently.

  “I am here, lord, I am here,” Godwin said in a voice scarce above a hoarse whisper.

  “And you heard the Lord Uhtred?”

  “I heard, lord, I heard.” Brother Godwin raised his blind eyes to the king. He said nothing for a while, but his face was twisting all that time, twisting and grimacing like a man possessed by an evil spirit. He started to utter a choking noise, and what astonished me was that none of this alarmed Alfred, who waited patiently until, at last, the young monk regained a normal expression. “It will be well, lord King,” Godwin said, “it will be well.”

  Alfred patted Brother Godwin’s head again and smiled at me. “We shall do as you suggest, Lord Uhtred,” he said decisively. “You will direct your men to Fearnhamme,” he spoke to Æthelred, then looked back to me, “and my son,” he went on, “will command the West Saxon forces.”

  “Yes, lord,” I said dutifully. Edward, the youngest man in the church, looked embarrassed, and his eyes flicked nervously from me to his father.

  “And you,” Alfred turned to look at his son, “will obey the Lord Uhtred.”

  Æthelred could contain himself no longer. “What guarantees do we have,” he asked petulantly, “that the heathens will go to Fearnhamme?”

  “Mine,” I said harshly.

  “But you cannot be certain!” Æthelred protested.

  “He will go to Fearnhamme,” I said, “and he will die there.”

  I was wrong about that.

  Messengers rode to Æthelred’s men at Silcestre, ordering them to march on Fearnhamme at first light next morning. Once there they were to occupy the hill that stands just north of the river. Those five hundred men were the anvil, while the men at Æscengum were my hammer, but to lure Harald onto the anvil would mean dividing our forces, and it is a rule of war not to do that. We had, at my best estimate, about five hundred men fewer than the Danes, and by keeping our army in two parts I was inviting Harald to destroy them separately. “But I’m relying on Harald being an impulsive fool, lord,” I told Alfred that night.

  The king had joined me on Æscengum’s eastern rampart. He had arrived with his usual entourage of priests, but had waved them away so he could talk with me privately. He stood for a moment just staring at the distant dull glow of fires where Harald’s men had sacked villages and I knew he was lamenting all the burned churches. “Is he an impulsive fool?” he inquired mildly.

  “You tell me, lord,” I said.

  “He’s savage, unpredictable, and given to sudden rages,” the king said. Alfred paid well for information about the northmen and kept meticulous notes on every leader. Harald had been pillaging in Frankia before its people bribed him to leave, and I did not doubt that Alfred’s spies had told him everything they could discover about Harald Bloodhair. “You know why he’s called Bloodhair?” Alfred asked.

  “Because before every battle, lord, he sacrifices a horse to Thor and soaks his hair in the animal’s blood.”

  “Yes,” Alfred said. He leaned on the palisade. “How can you be sure he’ll go to Fearnhamme?” he asked.

  “Because I’ll draw him there, lord. I’ll make a snare and pull him onto our spears.”

  “The woman?” Alfred asked with a slight shudder.

  “She is said to be special to him, lord.”

  “So I hear,” he said. “But he will have other whores.”

  “She’s not the only reason he’ll go to Fearnhamme, lord,” I said, “but she’s reason enough.”

  “Women brought sin into this world,” he said so quietly I almost did not hear him. He rested against the oak trunks of the parapet and gazed toward the small town of Godelmingum that lay just a few miles eastward. The people who lived there had been ordered to flee, and now the only inhabitants were fifty of my men who stood sentinel to warn us of the Danish approach. “I had hoped the Danes had ceased wanting this kingdom,” he broke the silence plaintively.

  “They’ll always want Wessex,” I said.

  “All I ask of God,” he went on, ignoring my truism, “is that Wessex should be safe and ruled by my son.” I answered nothing to that. There was no law that decreed a son should succeed his father as king, and if there had been then Alfred would not be Wessex’s ruler. He had succeeded his brother, and that brother had a son, Æthelwold, who wanted desperately to be king in Wessex. Æthelwold had been too young to assume the throne when his father died, but he was in his thirties now, a man in his ale-sozzled prime. Alfred sighed, then straightened. “Edward will need you as an adviser,” he said.

  “I should be honored, lord,” I said.

  Alfred heard the dutiful tone in my voice and did not like it. He stiffened, and I expected one of his customary reproofs, but instead he looked pained. “God has blessed me,” he said quietly. “When I came to the throne, Lord Uhtred, it seemed impossible that we should resist the Danes. Yet by God’s grace Wessex lives. We have churches, monasteries, schools, laws. We have made a country where God dwells, and I cannot believe it is God’s will that it should vanish when I am called to judgment.”

  “May that be many years yet, lord,” I said as dutifully as I had spoken before.

  “Oh, don’t be a fool,” he snarled with sudden anger. He shuddered, closed his eyes momentarily, and when he spoke again his voice was low and wan. “I can feel death coming, Lord Uhtred. It’s like an ambush. I know it’s there and I can do nothing to avoid it. It will take me and it will destroy me, but I do not want it to destroy Wessex with me.”

  “If it’s your God’s will,” I said harshly, “then nothing I can do nor anything Edward can do will stop it.”

  “We’re not puppets in God’s hands,” he said testily. “We are his instruments. We earn our fate.” He looked at me with some bitterness for he had never forgiven me for abandoning Christianity in favor of the older religion. “Don’t your gods reward you for good behavior?”

  “My gods are capricious, lord.” I had learned that word from Bishop Erkenwald who had intended it as an insult, but once I had learned its meaning I liked it. My gods are capricious.

  “How can you serve a capricious god?” Alfred asked.

  “I don’t.”

  “But you said…”

  “They are capricious,” I interrupted him, “but that’s their pleasure. My task is not to serve them, but to amuse them, and if I do then they will reward me in the life to come.”

  “Amuse them?” He sounded shocked.

  “Why not?” I demanded. “We have cats, dogs, and falcons for our pleasure, the gods made us for the same reason. Why did your god make you?”

  “To be His servant,” he said firmly. “If I’m God’s cat then I must catch the devil’s mice. That is duty, Lord Uhtred, duty.”

  “While my duty,” I said, “is to catch Harald and slice his head off. That, I think, will amuse my gods.”

  “Your gods are cruel,” he said, then shuddered.

  “Men are cruel,” I said, “and the gods made us like themselves, and some of the g
ods are kind, some are cruel. So are we. If it amuses the gods then Harald will slice my head off.” I touched the hammer amulet.

  Alfred grimaced. “God made you his instrument, and I do not know why he chose you, a pagan, but so he did and you have served me well.”

  He had spoken fervently, surprising me, and I bowed my head in acknowledgment. “Thank you, lord.”

  “And now I wish you to serve my son,” he added.

  I should have known that was coming, but somehow the request took me by surprise. I was silent a moment as I tried to think what to say. “I agreed to serve you, lord,” I said finally, “and so I have, but I have my own battles to fight.”

  “Bebbanburg,” he said sourly.

  “Is mine,” I said firmly, “and before I die I wish to see my banner flying over its gate and my son strong enough to defend it.”

  He gazed at the glow of the enemy fires. I was noticing how scattered those fires were, which told me Harald had not yet concentrated his army. It would take time to pull those men together from across the ravaged countryside, which meant, I thought, that the battle would not be fought tomorrow, but the next day. “Bebbanburg,” Alfred said, “is an island of the English in a sea of Danes.”

  “True, lord,” I said, noting how he used the word “English.” It embraced all the tribes who had come across the sea, whether they were Saxon, Angle, or Jute, and it spoke of Alfred’s ambition, that he now made explicit.

  “The best way to keep Bebbanburg safe,” he said, “is to surround it with more English land.”

  “Drive the Danes from Northumbria?” I asked.

  “If it is God’s will,” he said, “then I will wish my son to do that great deed.” He turned to me, and for a moment he was not a king, but a father. “Help him, Lord Uhtred,” he said pleadingly. “You are my dux bellorum, my lord of battles, and men know they will win when you lead them. Scour the enemy from England, and so take your fortress back and make my son safe on his God-given throne.”

  He had not flattered me, he had spoken the truth. I was the warlord of Wessex and I was proud of that reputation. I went into battle glittering with gold, silver, and pride, and I should have known that the gods would resent that.

  “I want you,” Alfred spoke softly but firmly, “to give my son your oath.”

  I cursed inwardly, but spoke respectfully. “What oath, lord?”

  “I wish you to serve Edward as you have served me.”

  And thus Alfred would tie me to Wessex, to Christian Wessex that lay so far from my northern home. I had spent my first ten years in Bebbanburg, that great rock-fastness on the northern sea, and when I had first ridden to war the fortress had been left in the care of my uncle, who had stolen it from me.

  “I will swear an oath to you, lord,” I said, “and to no one else.”

  “I already have your oath,” he said harshly.

  “And I will keep it,” I said.

  “And when I’m dead,” he asked bitterly, “what then?”

  “Then, lord, I shall go to Bebbanburg and take it, and keep it, and spend my days beside the sea.”

  “And if my son is threatened?”

  “Then Wessex must defend him,” I said, “as I defend you now.”

  “And what makes you think you can defend me?” He was angry now. “You would take my army to Fearnhamme? You have no certainty that Harald will go there!”

  “He will,” I said.

  “You can’t know that!”

  “I shall force it on him,” I said.

  “How?” he demanded.

  “The gods will do that for me,” I said.

  “You’re a fool,” he snapped.

  “If you don’t trust me,” I spoke just as forcibly, “then your son-in-law wants to be your lord of battles. Or you can command the army yourself? Or give Edward his chance?”

  He shuddered, I thought with anger, but when he spoke again his voice was patient. “I just wish to know,” he said, “why you are so sure that the enemy will do what you want.”

  “Because the gods are capricious,” I said arrogantly, “and I am about to amuse them.”

  “Tell me,” he said tiredly.

  “Harald is a fool,” I said, “and he is a fool in love. We have his woman. I shall take her to Fearnhamme, and he will follow because he is besotted with her. And even if I did not have his woman,” I went on, “he would still follow me.”

  I had thought he would scoff at that, but he considered my words quietly, then joined his hands prayerfully. “I am tempted to doubt you, but Brother Godwin assures me you will bring us victory.”

  “Brother Godwin?” I had wanted to ask about the strange blind monk.

  “God speaks to him,” Alfred said with a quiet assurance.

  I almost laughed, but then thought that the gods do speak to us, though usually by signs and portents. “Does he take all your decisions, lord?” I asked sourly.

  “God assists me in all things,” Alfred said sharply, then turned away because the bell was summoning the Christians to prayer in Æscengum’s new church.

  The gods are capricious, and I was about to amuse them. And Alfred was right. I was a fool.

  What did Harald want? Or, for that matter, Haesten? It was simpler to answer for Haesten, because he was the cleverer and more ambitious man, and he wanted land. He wanted to be a king.

  The northmen had come to Britain in search of kingdoms, and the lucky ones had found their thrones. A northman reigned in Northumbria, and another in East Anglia, and Haesten wanted to be their equal. He wanted the crown, the treasures, the women, and the status, and there were two places those things could be found. One was Mercia and the other Wessex.

  Mercia was the better prospect. It had no king and was riven by warfare. The north and east of the country was ruled by jarls, powerful Danes who kept strong troops of household warriors and barred their gates each night, while the south and east was Saxon land. The Saxons looked to my cousin, Æthelred, for protection and he gave it to them, but only because he had inherited great wealth and enjoyed the firm support of his father-in-law, Alfred. Mercia was not part of Wessex, but it did Wessex’s bidding, and Alfred was the true power behind Æthelred. Haesten might attack Mercia and he would find allies in the north and east, but eventu ally he would find himself facing the armies of Saxon Mercia and Alfred’s Wessex. And Haesten was cautious. He had made his camp on a desolate shore of Wessex, but he did nothing provocative. He waited, certain that Alfred would pay him to leave, which Alfred had done. He also waited to see what damage Harald might achieve.

  Harald probably wanted a throne, but above all he wanted everything that glittered. He wanted silver, gold, and women. He was like a child that sees something pretty and screams until he possesses it. The throne of Wessex might fall into his hands as he greedily scooped up his baubles, but he did not aim for it. He had come to Wessex because it was full of treasures, and now he was ravaging the land, taking plunder, while Haesten just watched. Haesten hoped, I think, that Harald’s wild troops would so weaken Alfred that he could come behind and take the whole land. If Wessex was a bull, then Harald’s men were blood-maddened terriers who would attack in a pack and most would die in the attacking, but they would weaken the bull, and then Haesten, the mastiff, would come and finish the job. So to deter Haesten I needed to crush Harald’s stronger forces. The bull could not be weakened, but the terriers had to be killed, and they were dangerous, they were vicious, but they were also ill-disciplined, and I would now tempt them with treasure. I would tempt them with Skade’s sleek beauty.

  The fifty men I had posted in Godelmingum fled from that town next morning, retreating from a larger group of Danes. My men splashed their horses through the river and streamed into Æscengum as the Danes lined the farther bank to stare at the banners hanging bright on the burh’s eastern palisade. Those banners showed crosses and saints, the panoply of Alfred’s state, and to make certain the enemy knew the king was in the burh I made Osferth walk slow
ly along the wall dressed in a bright cloak and with a circlet of shining bronze on his head.

  Osferth, my man, was Alfred’s bastard. Few people knew, even though Osferth’s resemblance to his father was striking. He had been born to a servant girl whom Alfred had taken to his bed in the days before Christianity had captured his soul. Once, in an unguarded moment, Alfred had confided to me that Osferth was a continual reproof. “A reminder,” he had told me, “of the sinner I once was.”

  “A sweet sin, lord,” I had replied lightly.

  “Most sins are sweet,” the king said, “the devil makes them so.”

  What kind of perverted religion makes pleasures into sins? The old gods, even though they never deny us pleasure, fade these days. Folk abandon them, preferring the whip and bridle of the Christians’ nailed god.

  So Osferth, a reminder of Alfred’s sweet sin, played the king that morning. I doubt he enjoyed it, for he resented Alfred, who had tried to turn him into a priest. Osferth had rebelled against that destiny, becoming one of my house-warriors instead. He was not a natural fighter, not like Finan, but he brought a keen intelligence to the business of war, and intelligence is a weapon that has a sharp edge and a long reach.

  All war ends with the shield wall, where men hack in drink-sodden rage with axes and swords, but the art is to manipulate the enemy so that when that moment of screaming rage arrives it comes to your advantage. By parading Osferth on Æscengum’s wall I was trying to tempt Harald. Where the king is, I was suggesting to our enemies, there is treasure. Come to Æscengum, I was saying, and to increase the temptation I displayed Skade to the Danish warriors who gathered on the river’s far bank.

  A few arrows had been shot at us, but those ended when the enemy recognized Skade. She unwittingly helped me by screaming at the men across the water. “Come and kill them all!” she shouted.

  “I’ll shut her mouth,” Steapa volunteered.

  “Let the bitch shout,” I said.

  She pretended to speak no English, yet she gave me a withering glance before looking back across the river. “They’re cowards,” she shouted at the Danes, “Saxon cowards! Tell Harald they will die like sheep.” She stepped close to the palisade. She could not cross the wall because I had ordered her tied by a rope that was looped about her neck and held by one of Steapa’s men.