‘What, father?’ I asked.
‘He knew the creed,’ he spoke hesitantly.
‘I know the creed, father, does that make me a Christian?’
Leofstan looked heartbroken. ‘He’s not?’
‘He’s not,’ I said, ‘and I’ll prove it to you. Watch.’ I threw Haesten off the horse, then dismounted. I threw the reins to Godric, then nodded at Haesten. ‘You have your sword, draw it.’
‘No, lord,’ he said.
‘You won’t fight?’
The bastard turned to Æthelflaed. ‘Doesn’t our Lord command us to love our enemies? To turn the other cheek? If I am to die, my lady, I die a Christian. I die as Christ died, willingly. I die as a witness to …’
Whatever he was a witness to he never managed to say because I hit him over the back of his helmet with the flat of Serpent-Breath. The blow knocked him flat on the ground. ‘Get up,’ I said.
‘My lady,’ he said, looking up at Æthelflaed.
‘Get up!’ I shouted.
‘Stand,’ Æthelflaed commanded him. She was watching very closely.
Haesten stood. ‘Now fight, you slime turd,’ I told him.
‘I will not fight,’ he said. ‘I forgive you.’ He made the sign of the cross, then had the gall to drop to his knees and clasp the silver cross in both his hands, which he held up in front of his face as though he was praying. ‘Saint Werburgh,’ he called, ‘pray for me now and at the hour of my death!’
I swung Serpent-Breath so hard that Æthelflaed gasped. The blade whistled in the air, aiming for Haesten’s neck. It was a wild swing, lavish and fast, and I checked it at the very last instant so that the bloodied blade stopped just short of Haesten’s skin. And he did what I knew he would do. His right hand, that had been clutching the cross, dropped to the hilt of his sword. He gripped it, though he made no attempt to draw it.
I touched Serpent-Breath’s blade to his neck. ‘Are you frightened,’ I asked him, ‘that you won’t go to Valhalla? Is that why you gripped the sword?’
‘Let me live,’ he begged, ‘and I’ll tell you what Ragnall plans.’
‘I know what Ragnall plans.’ I pressed Serpent-Breath against the side of his neck and he shuddered. ‘You’re not worth fighting,’ I said, and I looked past Æthelflaed to her nephew. ‘Prince Æthelstan! Come here!’
Æthelstan looked at his aunt, but she just nodded, and he slid from his saddle. ‘You’ll fight Haesten,’ I told Æthelstan, ‘because it’s time you killed a jarl, even a pathetic jarl like this one.’ I took my sword from Haesten’s neck. ‘Get up,’ I ordered him.
Haesten stood. He glanced at Æthelstan. ‘You’d make me fight a boy?’
‘Beat the boy and you live,’ I promised him.
And Æthelstan was little more than a boy, slender and young, while Haesten was experienced in war, yet Haesten must have known I would not risk Æthelstan’s life unless I was confident that the youngster would win and, knowing that, Haesten tried to cheat. He drew his sword and ran at Æthelstan, who had been waiting for my command to start the fight. Haesten roared as he charged, then swung his blade, but Æthelstan was fast, sidestepping the charge and ripping his own long blade free of its scabbard. He parried the backswing and I heard the clangour of swords and watched as Haesten turned to deliver an overhead blow designed to split Æthelstan’s skull in two, but the young man just swayed back, let the blade pass him, then mocked his older enemy with laughter. He lowered his own sword, inviting another attack, but Haesten was cautious now. He was content to circle Æthelstan, who kept turning to keep his sword facing his foe.
I had reason to let Æthelstan fight and win. He might have been King Edward’s oldest son and therefore the ætheling of Wessex, but he had a younger half-brother, and there were powerful men in Wessex who favoured the younger boy as their next king. That was not because the younger boy was better, stronger, or wiser, but simply because he was the grandson of Wessex’s most powerful ealdorman, and to fight the influence of those wealthy men I would pay a poet bright gold to make a song of this fight, and it would not matter that the song bore no resemblance to the fight, only that it made Æthelstan into a hero who had fought a Danish chieftain to the death in the woods of northern Mercia. Then I would send the poet south into Wessex to sing the song in firelit mead halls so that men and women would know that Æthelstan was worthy.
My men were jeering Haesten now, shouting that he was frightened of a lad, goading him to attack, but Haesten stayed cautious. Then Æthelstan advanced a step and cut at the Dane, his stroke almost casual, but he was judging the swiftness of the older man’s responses and what he discovered he liked because he began attacking with short, sharp strokes, forcing Haesten back, not trying to wound him yet, but simply to force Haesten onto his back foot and give him no time to make his own assault. Then suddenly he stepped back, flinching as though he had pulled a muscle and Haesten lunged at him and Æthelstan stepped aside and chopped down hard, viciously hard, the stroke fast as a swift’s wingbeat, and the blade struck Haesten’s right knee with savage force and the older man stumbled and Æthelstan hacked down hard to cut through the mail of Haesten’s shoulder and so drove the Dane to the turf. I saw the battle-joy on Æthelstan’s face and heard Haesten cry out in despair as the young man stepped over him with his sword raised for the killing blow.
‘Hold!’ I shouted. ‘Hold! Step back!’
My watching men fell silent. Æthelstan looked puzzled, but nevertheless obeyed me and stepped back from his defeated enemy. Haesten was flinching with pain, but managed to struggle to his feet. He staggered unsteadily on his wounded right leg. ‘You will spare my life, lord?’ he asked me. ‘I will be your man!’
‘You are my man,’ I said and I took hold of his right arm.
He understood then what I was about to do and his face was distorted with despair. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘I beg you, no!’
I gripped his wrist, then twisted the sword out of his hand. ‘No!’ he wailed. ‘No! No!’
I tossed the sword away and stepped back. ‘Finish your work,’ I told Æthelstan curtly.
‘Give me my sword!’ Haesten cried and limped a painful step towards the fallen blade, but I stood in his path.
‘So you can go to Valhalla?’ I sneered. ‘You think you can share ale with those good men who wait for me in the bone hall? Those brave men? And why does a Christian believe in Valhalla?’
He said nothing. I looked at Æthelflaed, then at Ceolnoth. ‘Did you hear?’ I demanded. ‘This good Christian wants to go to Valhalla. You still think he’s a Christian?’ Æthelflaed nodded to me, accepting the proof, but Ceolnoth would not meet my gaze.
‘My sword!’ Haesten said, tears on his cheeks, but I just beckoned Æthelstan forward and stepped aside. ‘No!’ Haesten wailed. ‘My sword! I beg you!’ He gazed at Æthelflaed. ‘My lady, give me my sword!’
‘Why?’ she asked coldly, and Haesten had no answer.
Æthelflaed nodded to her nephew, and Æthelstan skewered Haesten with his blade, lunging the steel straight into Haesten’s belly, straight through mail and skin and sinew and flesh and he ripped the sword up, grunting with the effort as he looked his enemy in the eye, and the blood was gushing with the man’s guts as they spilled on Eads Byrig’s thin turf.
So died Haesten the Dane.
And Ragnall was coming.
He would be harder to kill.
Six
We had taken too many prisoners and too many of those prisoners were warriors who, if they lived, were likely to fight us again. Most were Ragnall’s followers, a few had been Haesten’s men, but all were dangerous. If we had just let them loose they would have rejoined Ragnall’s army that was already powerful enough, so my advice was to kill every last one of them. We could not feed almost two hundred men, let alone their families, and I had youngsters in my ranks who needed practice with sword or spear, but Æthelflaed shrank from the slaughter. She was not a weak woman, far from it, and in the past she had watched
impassively as other prisoners had been killed, but she was in a merciful or perhaps a squeamish mood. ‘So what would you have me do with them?’ I asked.
‘The Christians can stay in Mercia,’ she said, frowning at the handful who had confessed to her faith.
‘And the rest?’
‘Just don’t kill them,’ she said brusquely.
So in the end I had my men hack off the prisoners’ sword hands that we collected in sacksful. There were also forty-three dead men on the hilltop, and I ordered all of their corpses beheaded and the severed heads brought to me. The prisoners were then released, along with the older captives, all of them sent east along the Roman road. I told them they would find a crossroads a half-day’s walk away and if they turned north it would take them across the river and back into Northumbria. ‘You’ll meet your master coming the other way,’ I told them, ‘and you can give him a message. If he comes back to Ceaster he’ll lose more than one hand.’ We kept the young women and children. Most would be sent to the slave markets of Lundene, but a few would probably find new husbands among my men.
We carted all the captured weapons to Ceaster where they would be given to the fyrd, replacing hoes or sharpened spades. Then we pulled down Eads Byrig’s newly-made wall. It fell easily and we used the logs to make a great funeral pyre on which we burned the headless bodies. The corpses shrivelled in the fire, curling up as they shrank and sending the stench of death east with the plume of smoke. Ragnall, I thought, would see that smoke and wonder if it was an omen. Would it deter him? I doubted it. He would surely realise that it was Eads Byrig that burned so fiercely, but his ambition would persuade him to ignore the omen. He would be coming.
And I wanted to welcome him, and so I left forty-three logs standing like pillars spaced about Eads Byrig’s perimeter and we pegged a severed head to each of those and next day I had the bloody hands nailed onto trees either side of the Roman road so that when Ragnall returned he would be greeted first by the hands and then by the raven-pecked heads ringing the slighted fort. ‘You really think he’ll come?’ Æthelflaed asked me.
‘He’s coming,’ I said firmly. Ragnall needed a victory, and to defeat Mercia, let alone Wessex, he needed to capture a burh. There were other burhs he could attack, but Ceaster had to tempt him. Control Ceaster and he would command the seaways to Ireland and dominate all of north-western Mercia. It would be an expensive victory, but Ragnall had men to spend. He would come.
It was night-time, two days after we had taken Eads Byrig, and the two of us were standing above Ceaster’s northern gate staring at a sky filled with bright stars. ‘If he wants Ceaster so badly,’ Æthelflaed asked after a moment’s quiet, ‘why didn’t he come here as soon as he landed? Why go north first?’
‘Because by taking Northumbria,’ I said, ‘he doubled the size of his army. And he doesn’t want an enemy at his back. If he had besieged us without taking Northumbria then he would have given Ingver time to assemble troops.’
‘Ingver of Eoferwic is weak,’ she said scornfully.
I resisted the temptation to ask why, if she believed that, she had resolutely refused to invade Northumbria. I knew the answer. She wanted to secure the rest of Mercia first and she would not invade the north without her brother’s support. ‘He might be weak,’ I said instead, ‘but he’s still King of Jorvik.’
‘Eoferwic,’ she corrected me.
‘And Jorvik’s walls are formidable,’ I went on, ‘and Ingver still has followers. If Ragnall gave him time then Ingver could probably gather a thousand men. By going north Ragnall panics Ingver. Men in Northumbria face a choice now, Ingver or Ragnall, and you know who they’ll choose.’
‘Ragnall,’ she said quietly.
‘Because he’s a beast and a fighter. They’re scared of him. If Ingver has any sense he’s on a ship now, going back to Denmark.’
‘And you think Ragnall will come here?’ she said.
‘Within a week,’ I guessed. ‘Maybe as soon as tomorrow?’
She stared at the glow of fire on the eastern horizon. Those campfires had been lit by our men who were still at Eads Byrig. They had to finish the fortress’s destruction, and then, I hoped, find a way to capture the handful of ships Ragnall had left on the Mærse’s northern bank. I had put young Æthelstan in command there, though I made sure he had older men to advise him, yet even so I touched the hammer that hung from my neck and prayed to the gods that he did nothing foolish.
‘I should make Eads Byrig a burh,’ Æthelflaed said.
‘You should,’ I said, ‘but you won’t have time before Ragnall gets here.’
‘I know that,’ she said impatiently.
‘But without Eads Byrig,’ I said, ‘he’ll be in trouble.’
‘What’s to stop him making new walls?’
‘We stop him,’ I said firmly. ‘Do you know how long it will take to make a proper wall around that hilltop? Not that fake thing Haesten put up, but a real wall? It will take all summer! And you have the rest of the army coming here, we have the fyrd, we’ll outnumber him within a week and we’ll give him no peace. We raid, we kill, we haunt him. He can’t build walls if his men are constantly in mail and waiting to be attacked. We slaughter his forage parties, we send big war-bands into the forest, we make his life a living hell. He’ll last two months at most.’
‘He’ll assault us here,’ she said.
‘Eventually he will,’ I said, ‘and I hope he does! He’ll fail. These walls are too strong. I’d be more worried about Brunanburh. Put extra men there and dig the ditch deeper. If he takes Brunanburh then he has his fortress and we have problems.’
‘I’m strengthening Brunanburh,’ she said.
‘Dig the ditch deeper,’ I said again, ‘deeper and wider, and put two hundred extra men into the garrison. He’ll never capture it.’
‘It will all be done,’ she said, then touched my elbow and smiled. ‘You sound very confident.’
‘By summer’s end,’ I said vengefully, ‘I’ll have Ragnall’s sword and he’ll have a grave in Mercia.’
I touched the hammer at my neck, wondering whether by saying that aloud I had tempted the three Norns who weave our fate at the foot of Yggdrasil. It was not a cold night, but I shivered.
Wyrd bið ful āræd.
On the night before Eostre’s feast there was another fight outside the Pisspot. A Frisian in Æthelflaed’s service was killed, while a second man, one of mine, lost an eye. At least a dozen other men were hurt badly before my son and Sihtric managed to end the street battle. It was my son who brought me the news, waking me in the middle of the night. ‘We’ve managed to stop the fighting,’ he said, ‘but it was damned close to being a slaughter.’
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Mus happened,’ he said flatly.
‘Mus?’
‘She’s too pretty,’ my son said, ‘and men fight over her.’
‘How many is it now?’ I snarled.
‘Three nights in a row,’ my son said, ‘but this is the first death.’
‘It won’t be the last unless we stop the little bitch.’
‘What little bitch?’ Eadith asked. She had woken and now sat up, clutching the bed pelts to her breasts.
‘Mus,’ he said.
‘Mouse?’
‘She’s a whore,’ I explained, and looked back to my son, ‘so tell Byrdnoth that if there’s another fight I’ll close his damned tavern down!’
‘She doesn’t work for Byrdnoth any more,’ my son spoke from the doorway where he was just a shadow against the darkness of the courtyard behind. ‘And Lady Æthelflaed’s men are wanting to keep the fight going.’
‘Mus doesn’t work for Byrdnoth now?’ I asked. I had climbed out of bed and was groping on the floor for something to wear.
‘Not any more,’ Uhtred said, ‘she did, but I’m told the other whores don’t like her. She was too popular.’
‘So if the other girls don’t like her what’s she doing in the Pisspot?’
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‘She’s not. She’s working her magic in a shed next door.’
‘Her magic?’ I sneered at that, then pulled on trews and a stinking jerkin.
‘An empty shed,’ my son ignored my question. ‘It’s one of those old hay stores that belong to Saint Peter’s church.’
A church building! That was hardly surprising. Æthelflaed had granted half the city’s property to the church, and half those buildings were unused. I assumed that Leofstan would be putting his cripples and orphans into some of them, but I planned to use most to shelter the fyrd who would garrison Ceaster. Many of the fyrd had already arrived, country men and boys bringing axes, spears, hoes, and hunting bows. ‘A whore in a church building?’ I asked as I dragged on boots. ‘The new bishop won’t like that.’
‘He might love it,’ my son said, amused, ‘she’s a very talented girl. But Byrdnoth wants her out of the shed. He says she’s ruining his business.’
‘So why doesn’t he hire her back? Why doesn’t he smack the other girls into line and hire the bitch?’
‘She won’t be hired now, she says she hates Byrdnoth, she hates the other girls, and she hates the Pisspot.’
‘And idiots like you keep her busy,’ I said savagely.
‘She’s a pretty little mouse,’ he said wistfully. Eadith giggled.
‘Expensive?’ I asked.
‘Anything but! Give her a duck egg and she’ll bounce you off the shed walls.’
‘Got bruises, have you?’ I asked him. He did not answer. ‘So they’re fighting over her now?’
He shrugged. ‘They were.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘She seems to favour our men over Æthelflaed’s and that causes the trouble. Sihtric has a dozen men keeping them apart for now, but for how long?’
I had covered my clothes with a cloak, but now hesitated. ‘Godric!’ I shouted, then shouted again until the boy came running. He was my servant, and a good one, but he was of an age when I needed to find another so Godric could stand in the shield wall. ‘Bring me my mail coat, my sword and a helmet,’ I said.