‘Go!’ I called. ‘Go!’
I spurred my horse, driving Uhtred’s riderless stallion ahead of me. We had planned what we would do if we got inside the town and those plans needed to be changed. The Romans built their towns to a pattern, with the four gates in the four walls and two streets running between the pairs of gates to make a crossroads at the town centre. My idea had been to go fast to that centre and make a shield wall there, inviting men to come and be killed. I would have then sent twenty men to the southern gate, to make sure it was closed and barred, but now I suspected most of the defending garrison would be concentrated at that southern gate, so that was where we would go to make our shield wall. ‘Merewalh!’
‘Lord?’
‘Twenty men to guard this gate. Shut it, bar it, hold it! Finan! South gate!’
My son ran alongside his horse, reached for the pommel and leaped up into the saddle. He drew his sword.
And I drew mine.
Our hooves sounded loud on the paved street. Dogs barked and a woman screamed.
Because the Saxons had come to Ceaster.
Nine
A street was ahead of me. A long, straight street, while behind me horsemen were bursting through the gates. They began whooping as they spurred into the town.
Ceaster suddenly seemed vast. I remember thinking that this was stupidity, that I needed three times the number of men to take this place, but we were committed now. ‘You’re a fool!’ I shouted at my son. He turned in his saddle and grinned. ‘And well done!’ I called to him.
The long street was edged with stone buildings. Ducks fled the leading horsemen and one bird was trampled by a heavy hoof. There was a squawk and white feathers flying. I kicked my heels to quicken my stallion as two armed men came from an alley. They stopped, astonished, and one had the sense to dart back into the shadows while the other was ridden down by Rolla, his sword slicing once, hard, and the pale stone of the nearest house was suddenly splattered with red. Blood and feathers. A woman screamed. Over a hundred of us were charging down the street. It had been paved once, but in places the stone slabs had gone and the hooves thumped in mud, then clattered on stone again. I had expected to see the southern gate at the street’s far end, but a big pillared building blocked the view, and as I drew closer I saw there were four spearmen behind the pillars, running. One turned to face us. Eldgrim and Kettil, riding stirrup to stirrup, pushed their horses up the two stone steps leading onto the arcade that surrounded the huge building. I swerved left, heard a wail as one man was cut down, then wrenched my horse to the right and saw more men, maybe half a dozen, standing at a vast door that led into the pillared building. ‘Rolla! Twelve men. Keep those bastards here!’
I slewed right again, then left, and we crossed a wide square and galloped into another long street that ran spear-straight towards the southern gate. Five men were running ahead of us and lacked the sense to turn into an alleyway. I spurred behind one, saw his frightened face as he turned in panic, then Serpent-Breath slashed into the nape of his neck and I kicked my heels again and saw my son chop another of the men down. Three cows were at the street’s edge. A red-faced woman was milking one and she stared at us with indignation, but kept on tugging at the udders as we crashed past. I could see spears and blades on the rampart above the southern gate. Cnut’s banner of the axe and broken cross was flying there. The gate’s arch was flanked by a pair of stone towers, but the rampart above was wooden. There were at least a score of men on the platform, and more were joining them. I could see no way up to the rampart and guessed the stairway was inside one of the towers. The big gates inside the arch were closed and the locking bar was in place. I was close to the gate now, still galloping, and saw an arrow whip from the gate’s high platform to skid along the road’s paving. I saw a second archer taking aim, and wrenched the reins and kicked my feet from the stirrups. ‘Cenwalh!’ I shouted at one of my younger Saxons. ‘Look after the horses!’
I dismounted. A stone was hurled from the fighting platform to crash and break a paving slab. There was a doorway in the right-hand tower and I ran to it as a second stone narrowly missed me. A horse screamed as an arrow struck. There were stone stairs curving upwards into shadow, but they stopped after a few steps because much of the tower’s inward face had collapsed. The masonry had been replaced by heavy oak timbers and the tower steps by a stout timber ladder. I climbed a few of the old Roman stairs, then peered upwards and had to jump back as a heavy stone crashed down. The stone hit the ladder’s lowest rung, bounced off without breaking it, and rolled down beside me. An arrow followed, only a hunter’s arrow, but as I was not wearing mail it could easily have pierced my chest.
‘Finan!’ I bellowed as I went back to the tower’s doorway. ‘We need shields!’
‘They’re coming!’ he shouted back. He had led my dismounted men into an alleyway because more arrows were flicking down from the high rampart. We were not carrying shields because I had not wanted to arouse the suspicions of the guards on the northern gate, which meant our best protection against the arrows was still heaped on the packhorses.
‘Where are the packhorses?’ I called.
‘They’re coming!’ Finan shouted again.
I hesitated a few heartbeats then ran from the tower, dodging left and right as I hurried across the open space. I had limped slightly ever since the fight at Ethandun and could not run like a young man. An arrow slapped on the roadway to my right, I swerved that way and another slashed past my left shoulder, and then I was safe in the alleyway. ‘There are two bastard archers,’ Finan said.
‘Where are the shields?’
‘I told you, they’re coming. Einar has an arrow in his leg.’
Einar was a Dane, a good man. He was sitting in the alley with the arrow sticking from his thigh. He drew a knife to cut the head out. ‘Wait for Father Wissian,’ I told him. Merewalh had told me the priest had a talent for healing.
‘What can he do that I can’t?’ Einar asked. He gritted his teeth and plunged the knife into his leg.
‘Jesus!’ Finan said.
I peered out of the alley and immediately ducked back as an arrow flew. If I had been wearing mail and carrying a shield I would have been safe enough, but even a hunter’s arrow can kill a man unprotected by mail. ‘I want firewood,’ I told Finan, ‘a lot of firewood. Kindling as well.’
I looked for Merewalh and found him with the packhorses. The town’s streets made a grid and the men leading the horses had possessed the sense to bring them by a parallel street and so out of sight of the two bowmen on the gate platform. ‘We killed the men at the north gate,’ Merewalh told me. He was pulling on a mail coat and his voice was muffled. ‘And I left twelve men to hold it.’
‘I want two more groups,’ I told him, ‘and they’re to find their way onto the walls either side of this gate.’ I meant the eastern and western walls. ‘Twelve men in each group,’ I told him. He grunted acceptance of the orders. ‘And tell them to check the two other gates,’ I ordered. ‘I think they’re blocked, but make certain of it!’
I was not sure how many men were on the southern gate’s fighting platform, but there were at least twenty, and by sending Merewalh’s men up onto the ramparts I should be able to trap those defenders. ‘Warn them about the archers,’ I told Merewalh, then unbuckled my sword belt and shrugged off the cloak. I pulled my mail coat over my head. The leather lining stank like a polecat’s fart. I donned the helmet, then strapped my sword belt around my waist again. Other men were finding their mail. Finan handed me my shield. ‘Get the firewood!’ I told him.
‘They’re fetching it,’ he said patiently.
Men had broken into a house and were smashing benches and a table. There was a pigsty in the back yard and we hauled down its thatch and ripped the beams apart. A fire, nothing but smoking embers contained in a ring of stones, smouldered in the yard. An old cauldron stood to one side of the fire and a dozen clay pots were on a small shelf propped against the wall. I picked
up one of the pots, emptied it of dry beans and looked for a shovel. I found a ladle instead and used it to fill the pot with glowing embers, then put the pot inside the cauldron.
It was all taking time. I still had no idea how many of the enemy were inside the town, and I was dividing my own force into ever smaller groups, which meant that we could be overwhelmed one group at a time. We had taken the garrison by surprise, but they would be recovering fast and, if they outnumbered us, they could squash us like bedbugs. We needed to defeat them fast. I knew that the men on the northern gate were already dead, and I assumed Rolla had bottled up the Danes in the big pillared building, but there could have been three or four hundred more angry Northmen in the parts of the town we had not seen. The enemies on this southern gate were certainly confident, which suggested they thought they would be rescued by reinforcements. They were shouting insults at us, inviting us to step out of the alley and be killed. ‘Or you can wait there!’ a man shouted. ‘You’re going to die anyway! Welcome to Ceaster!’
I needed to capture the walls. I suspected there were men outside the town, and we had to stop them from entering. I watched as men brought armfuls of thatch and broken timbers into the alley. ‘I need four men,’ I said. Any more than four would be too many for the ground floor of the tower. ‘And six men in mail and with shields!’
I sent the six men first. They ran towards the tower and, sure enough, the archers released their arrows that thumped harmlessly into shields, and as soon as the bows were loosed I led the four men towards the tower. Stones rained down. I had my shield over my head and it shook as rocks hit the willow boards. I was carrying the cauldron in my sword hand.
I ducked into the tower. If the defenders had been thinking properly they would have sent men down the ladder to keep us away from the old Roman stairway, but they felt safer on the high platform and so they stayed there. But they knew we were inside the tower, and hurled stones down. I used my shield to cover my head as I climbed the few stone steps. The willow boards shook as the stones hit, but the shield protected me as I crouched at the ladder’s foot and as men thrust handfuls of thatch and shattered timber up to me. I used my free hand to pile the firewood roughly around the ladder, then I took the scalding hot clay pot from the cauldron and spilt the embers into the straw and kindling. ‘More timber!’ I called. ‘More!’
Yet I hardly needed more timber because the fire caught immediately, driving me fast down the few stone steps. The kindling flared, the wood caught fire and the tower seemed to suck the flames and smoke upwards, choking the men immediately above us so that the rain of stones stopped. The ladder would catch fire fast and that fire should spread to the oak timbers on the tower’s face, and then to the platform itself and so drive the men down onto the flanking walls where Merewalh’s men should be waiting. I ran back into the open air to see smoke churning from the tower’s broken top and men abandoning the platform like rats fleeing a flooding bilge. They hesitated when they reached the wall’s top, but must have seen Merewalh’s men approaching because they simply abandoned the ramparts, jumping down into the ditch and so into the country beyond.
‘Uhtred!’ I called my son and pointed at the gates. ‘The fire could spread to the gates, so find something to block the arch when they’ve burned out. Choose a dozen men. You’re to hold the gateway.’
‘You think they …’
‘I don’t know what they’ll do,’ I interrupted him, ‘and I don’t know how many there are. What I do know is that you’re to stop any of them getting back into the town.’
‘We can’t hold for long,’ he said.
‘Of course we can’t. There aren’t enough of us. But they don’t know that.’ The fire caught Cnut’s standard, which burst into sudden bright flame. One moment it was flying, the next it was a flare of fire and ash in the wind. ‘Merewalh!’ I looked for the Mercian. ‘Put half your men on the ramparts!’ I wanted any Danes outside the town to see spears and swords and axes on the walls. I wanted them to think we outnumbered them. ‘Use the other half to clear the town.’
I sent most of my men up to the walls and took Finan and seven others back to the town’s centre, to the big pillared building where I had left Rolla. He was still there. ‘There’s only the one entrance,’ he told me, ‘and there’s a few of them inside. Shields and spears.’
‘How many?’
‘I’ve seen eight, could be more.’ He jerked his head upwards. ‘There are windows up there, but they’re high and barred.’
‘Barred?’
‘Iron bars. Reckon the only way in and out is through these doors.’
The men inside had closed the doors, which were made of heavy timber studded with iron bolts. There was a latch on one door, but when I tugged it was evident that both doors were barred or bolted inside. I beckoned to Folcbald who was carrying a lead-weighted war axe. ‘Break it down,’ I told him.
Folcbald was the Frisian with the strength of an ox. He was slow, but give him a simple job and he could be remorseless. He nodded, took a breath, and swung the weapon.
The steel blade bit deep. Splinters flew. He jerked the axe free and struck again and both big doors shivered under the enormous blow. He gouged the blade loose and drew the weapon back for a third blow when I heard the locking bar grate in its brackets. ‘Enough,’ I told him, ‘step back.’
The seven men I had brought were all in mail and all had shields, so we made a wall between the two pillars closest to the door. Rolla and his men were behind us. The locking bar scraped again, then I heard it thump as it fell on the floor inside. There was a pause, then the right-hand door was pushed open very slowly. It stopped when the opening was a mere hand’s breadth wide and a sword was held out through the gap. The sword dropped onto the pavement. ‘We’ll give you a fight if that’s what you want,’ a man called from inside, ‘but we’d rather live.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘Leiknir Olafson,’ the man said.
‘And you serve?’
‘The Jarl Cnut. Who are you?’
‘The man who’ll slaughter you if you don’t surrender. Open both doors now.’
I closed my helmet’s cheek-pieces and waited. I could hear low urgent voices inside the building, but the argument was brief and then both doors were pushed wide open. Maybe a dozen men stood in a shadowed corridor that led deep into the great building’s darkness. The men were in mail, they had helmets and carried shields, but as soon as the doors were open they dropped their spears and swords onto the flagstones. A tall, grey-bearded man stepped towards us. ‘I am Leiknir,’ he announced.
‘Tell your men to drop their shields,’ I said, ‘shields and helmets. You too.’
‘You will let us live?’
‘I haven’t decided,’ I said. ‘Give me a reason why I should.’
‘My wife is here,’ Leiknir said, ‘and my daughter and her babes. My family.’
‘Your wife could find another husband,’ I said.
Leiknir bridled at that. ‘You have family?’ he asked.
I did not answer that. ‘Maybe I’ll let you live,’ I told him, ‘and just sell your family. The Norse in Ireland pay well for slaves.’
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I snarled at him, and the reaction was strange. It was also gratifying because a look of pure fear came to Leiknir’s face. He stepped a pace backwards and put a hand to Thor’s hammer about his neck.
‘Uhtred is dead,’ he said, and that was the second time I heard that rumour. Leiknir had plainly believed it because he was staring at me in horror.
‘Shall I tell you what happened?’ I asked. ‘I died, and died without a sword in my hand, so I was sent to Hel and heard her dark cockerels crowing! They announced my coming, Leiknir, and the Corpse-Ripper came for me.’ I took a pace towards him and he stepped back. ‘The Corpse-Ripper, Leiknir, all rotted flesh peeling from his yellow bones and his eyes like fire and his teeth like horns and his claws like gelding knives
. And there was a bone on the floor, a thigh bone, and I picked it up and I ripped it to a point with my own teeth and then I slew him.’ I hefted Serpent-Breath. ‘I am the dead, Leiknir, come to collect the living. Now kick your swords, spears, shields and helmets towards the door.’
‘I beg for the life of my family,’ Leiknir said.
‘Have you heard of me?’ I demanded, knowing well what the answer was.
‘Of course.’
‘And have you ever heard that I kill women and children?’
He shook his head. ‘No, lord.’
‘Then kick your weapons towards me and kneel down.’
They obeyed, kneeling against the corridor’s wall. ‘Guard them,’ I told Rolla, then walked past the kneeling men. ‘Leiknir,’ I called, ‘you come with me.’ The passage walls were made from rough wood planks, so they were not Roman work. Doors opened on each side, leading into small chambers where straw mattresses lay. Another room held barrels. All the rooms were empty. At the corridor’s end was a larger door that led into the western half of the great building. I went to that end door and pushed it open. A woman screamed.
And I stared. Six women were in the room. Four were apparently servants for they knelt in terror behind the other two, and those two I knew. One was Brunna, Haesten’s wife. She was grey-haired, plump, round-faced and had a heavy cross hanging at her neck. She was clinging to the cross and mouthing a prayer. She had been baptised on King Alfred’s orders and I had always thought that her acceptance of Christianity had been a cynical ploy arranged by her husband, but it seemed I was wrong. ‘That’s your wife?’ I asked Leiknir who had followed me into the room.
‘Yes, lord,’ he said.
‘I kill liars, Leiknir,’ I said.
‘She’s my wife,’ he said again, though defensively, as if the lie must be maintained even though it had failed.