I looked back to the woods and could see the shape of trees now, dark in the darkness, see the slash of rain. ‘Almost,’ I said again.
‘In the name of God,’ Finan muttered. I saw him make the sign of the cross. ‘If you see my brother,’ he said louder, ‘he’s mine.’
‘If I see your brother,’ I promised, ‘he’s yours.’ Godric had offered me the heavy spear, but I preferred a sword, and so I pulled Serpent-Breath from her scabbard and held her straight out, and I could see the sheen of her blade like a shimmer of misted light in the dark. A horse whinnied. I raised the blade and kissed the steel. ‘For Eostre,’ I said, ‘for Eostre and for Mercia!’
And the shadows beneath the trees dissolved into shapes, into bushes and trunks, of leaves thrashing in the wind. It was still night, but the wolf-light had come.
‘Let’s go,’ I said to Finan, then raised my voice to a shout. ‘Let’s go!’
The time for hiding was over. Now it was speed and noise. I crouched in the saddle, wary of low branches, letting Tintreg pick his own way, but urging him on. The small light grew. The rain was beating on the leaves, the woods were full of the noise of horses, the wind was tossing high branches like mad things in torment. I waited to hear a horn calling to summon our enemies, but none sounded. Lightning flickered to the north, casting stark black shadows among the trees, then the thunder sounded and just then I saw the first pale light of a fire ahead. Campfires! Ragnall’s men were in the clearings, and if he had set sentries they had not seen us, or we had passed them, and the flicker of fires fighting the drenching rain became brighter. I saw shadows among the fires. Some men were awake, presumably feeding the flames and oblivious that we were riding to their deaths. Then far off to my right, where the Roman road led into the forest, I heard shouts and knew our killing had begun.
That dawn was savage. Ragnall had thought we were sheltering behind Ceaster’s walls, cowed there by his killings on Eostre’s feast, but instead we burst on his men, coming with the thunder, and they were not ready. I crashed out of the trees into a wide clearing and saw miserable shelters hastily made from branches, and a man crawled from one, looked up and took Serpent-Breath in his face. The blade struck bone, jarred up my arm, and another man was running and I speared him in the back with the sword’s tip. All around me horsemen were wounding and killing. ‘Keep going,’ I bellowed, ‘keep going!’ This was just one encampment in a clearing, the main camp was still ahead. A glow above the dark trees showed where fires were lit on the summit of Eads Byrig and I rode that way.
Back into the trees. The light was growing, shrouded by storm clouds, but ahead I could see the wide swathe of land cleared of trees that surrounded the slopes of Eads Byrig and it was there, among the stumps, that most of Ragnall’s men were camped, and it was there we killed them. We burst from the woods with bloodied swords and we rode among the panicked men and we cut them down. Women screamed, children cried. My son led men from my right, slicing into fugitives fleeing from our swords. Tintreg thumped into a man, throwing him down into a fire that erupted sparks. His hair caught the flames. He shrieked and I back-handed Serpent-Breath to chop down another man running with wide eyes, his mail coat in his arms, and ahead of me a warrior bellowed defiance and waited with a spear for my charge and then turned, hearing hooves behind him, and died under a Frisian axe that clove his skull. Newly woken men were scrambling through the first ditch and over the earth wall and a horn was now sounding from the old fort’s summit. I spurred into a group of men, slashing Serpent-Breath down savagely as Godric rode in with his levelled spear to slice a man’s belly open. Tintreg snapped at a man, biting his face, then plunged on as thunder ripped the sky above us. Berg galloped past me, whooping, with a length of entrails dragging from his sword. He chopped the weapon down, turned his horse, and chopped again. The man Tintreg had bitten reeled away, hands clutched to his ruined face and blood seeping through his fingers. The brightest thing in that wolf-light was not the fires, but the blood of enemies reflecting the sudden glare of lightning.
I spurred towards the entrance of the ruined fort and saw a shield wall had formed across the track there. Men were running to join it, pushing their way into the ranks and lining their round shields to make the wall wider. Banners flew above them, but the flags were so soaked by rain that even that dawn’s strong wind could not lift them. My son spurred past me, riding for the track, and I called him back. ‘Leave them!’ There were at least a hundred men guarding the entrance path. Horses could not break them. I was certain Ragnall was there, as was Brida, both beneath their waterlogged banners, but their deaths must wait for another day. We had come to kill, not to fight against a shield wall.
I had told my men that each had only to kill one man and that killing would almost halve Ragnall’s army. We were wounding more than we were killing, but a wounded man is more trouble to an enemy than a dead man. A corpse can be buried or burned, he can be mourned and abandoned, but the wounded need care. The sight of men with missing eyes or with bellies welling blood or with splintered bones showing through flesh will give fear to an enemy. A wounded army is a slow army, full of terror, and we slowed Ragnall even more by driving his horses back into the forest. We drove women and children too, encouraging them by killing any that defied us. Ragnall’s men would know their womenfolk were in our hands and their children were destined for our slave markets. War is not kind, but Ragnall had brought war to Mercia in expectation that a land ruled by a woman would be easy to conquer. Now he was discovering just how easy.
I watched Cynlæf hunt down three men, all armed with spears and all trying to gut his horse before killing him. He dealt with them easily, using his skills as a horseman as well as his sword-craft to wound two and kill the third. ‘Impressive,’ Finan said grudgingly as we watched the young West Saxon turn his stallion, cut fast with his blade to open a man’s arm from elbow to shoulder, then use the horse’s weight to drive the last enemy down to the turf where he casually finished him off by leaning from the saddle and stabbing. Cynlæf saw we had watched him and grinned at us. ‘Good hunting this morning, lord!’ he called.
‘Sound the horn,’ I told Godric, who was grinning because he had killed and survived.
It was time to leave. We had ripped Ragnall’s encampments apart, soaked the wolf-light in blood, and hurt the enemy grievously. Bodies lay among the campfires that now died under the lash of rain. A good part of Ragnall’s army had survived, and those men were on the summit of Eads Byrig where they could only watch as our rampaging horsemen hunted down the last few survivors from the lower encampments. I gazed through the pelting downpour and thought I saw Ragnall standing next to a diminutive figure cloaked in black, and that could have been Brida. ‘My brother’s there,’ Finan said bitterly.
‘You can see him?’
‘See him and smell him.’ He rammed his sword back into its scabbard. ‘Another day. I’ll kill him yet.’
We turned away. We had come, we had killed, and now we left, driving horses, women and children ahead of us through the storm-drenched forest. No one pursued us. Ragnall’s men, imbued with confidence because of their leader’s arrogance, had been sheltering from the storm, and we had come with the thunder and now left with the dawn.
We lost eleven men. Just eleven. Two, I know, drove their horses across the ditches and up into the shield wall on Eads Byrig’s summit, but the rest? I never discovered what happened to those nine men, but it was a small price to pay for the havoc we had inflicted on Ragnall’s army. We had killed or wounded three or four hundred men and, once back in Ceaster, we discovered we had captured one hundred and seventeen horses, sixty-eight women, and ninety-four children. Even Ceolberht and Ceolnoth, the priests whose hatred for me was so fierce, stood applauding as the captives were driven through the gate. ‘Praise God!’ Father Ceolnoth exclaimed.
‘Praise Him in the highest!’ his brother hissed through missing teeth. A captive woman screamed at him and he stepped forward to slap her hard ab
out the head. ‘You’re fortunate, woman,’ he told her, ‘you are in God’s hands! You will be a Christian now!’
‘All the little ones brought to Christ!’ Bishop Leofstan exclaimed, looking eagerly at the crying children.
‘Brought to Frankish slave markets,’ Finan muttered.
I dropped from Tintreg’s saddle, unbuckled the sword belt, and gave Serpent-Breath to Godric. ‘Clean it well,’ I told him, ‘and grease it. Then find Father Glædwine and send him to me.’
Godric stared at me. ‘You want a priest?’ he asked in disbelief.
‘I want Father Glædwine,’ I said, ‘so fetch him.’
Then I went to find breakfast.
Father Glædwine was one of Æthelflaed’s priests, a young man with a high pale forehead and a perpetual frown. He was said to be learned, the product of one of King Alfred’s schools in Wessex, and Æthelflaed used him as a clerk. He wrote her letters, copied her laws, and drew up land-charters, but his reputation went far beyond such menial duties. He was a poet, famed for the hymns he composed. Those hymns were chanted by monks in church and by harpists in halls, and I had been forced to listen to some, mainly when harpists sang in Æthelflaed’s palace. I had expected them to be dull, but Father Glædwine liked his songs to tell stories and, despite my distaste, I had enjoyed listening. One of his better songs told of the woman blacksmith who had forged the nails used to crucify the nailed god. There had been three nails and three curses, the first of which resulted in one of her children being eaten by a wolf, the second doomed her husband to drowning in a Galilean cesspit, and the third gave her the shaking disease and turned her brain to pottage, all of which evidently proved the power of the Christian god.
It was a good story and that was why I summoned Glædwine, who looked as if his own brain had been turned to pottage when he came to the courtyard of my house where Godwin was plunging my mail coat into a barrel. The water had turned pink. ‘That’s blood,’ I told a nervous Glædwine.
‘Yes, lord,’ he stammered.
‘Pagan blood.’
‘God be praised,’ he began, then remembered I was a pagan, ‘that you lived, lord,’ he added hastily and cleverly.
I struggled out of the leather jerkin that I wore beneath the mail coat. It stank. The courtyard was full of petitioners, but it always was. Men came for justice, for favours, or simply to remind me that they existed. Now they waited in the shelter of the roofed walkway that edged the courtyard. It still rained, though much of the storm’s malevolence had faded. I saw Gerbruht, the big Frisian, among the petitioners. He was forcing a prisoner to his knees. I did not recognise the man, but assumed he was one of Æthelflaed’s men who had been caught stealing. Gerbruht caught my eye and began to speak.
‘Later,’ I told him, and looked back to the pale priest. ‘You will write a song, Glædwine.’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘A song of Eads Byrig.’
‘Of course, lord.’
‘This song will tell how Ragnall the Sea King, Ragnall the Cruel, came to Ceaster and was defeated there.’
‘He was defeated, lord,’ Glædwine repeated. He blinked as the rain fell into his eyes.
‘You will tell how his men were cut down, how his women were captured, and his children enslaved.’
‘Enslaved, lord,’ he nodded.
‘And how the men of Mercia carried their blades to an enemy and made them crawl in the mud.’
‘The mud, lord.’
‘It will be a song of triumph, Glædwine!’
‘Of course, lord,’ he said, frowning, then looked nervously around the courtyard. ‘But don’t you have your own poets, lord? Your harpists?’
‘And what will my poets chant of Eads Byrig?’
He fluttered his ink-stained hands, wondering what answer I wanted. ‘They will tell of your victory, lord, of course—’
‘And that’s what I don’t want!’ I interrupted him. ‘This will be a song of Lady Æthelflaed’s victory, you understand? Leave me out of it! Say the Lady Æthelflaed led the men of Mercia to their slaughter of the pagans, say your god led her and inspired her and gave her the triumph.’
‘My God?’ he asked astonished.
‘I want a Christian poem, you idiot.’
‘You want a …’ the idiot began, then bit off the rest of his question. ‘The Lady Æthelflaed’s triumph, yes, lord.’
‘And Prince Æthelstan,’ I said, ‘mention him too.’ Æthelstan had ridden with my son and acquitted himself well.
‘Yes, lord, Prince Æthelstan too.’
‘He killed scores! Say that! That Æthelstan made corpses of the pagans. This is a song of Æthelflaed and Æthelstan, you don’t even need to mention my name. You can say I stayed in Ceaster with a sore toe.’
‘A sore toe, lord,’ Glædwine repeated, frowning. ‘You want this victory ascribed to Almighty God?’
‘And to Æthelflaed,’ I insisted.
‘And it’s Eastertide,’ Glædwine said, almost to himself.
‘Eostre’s feast,’ I corrected him.
‘I can say it is the Easter victory, lord!’ he sounded excited.
‘It can be whatever you like,’ I snarled, ‘but I want that song chanted in every hall. I want it shouted in Wessex, heard in East Anglia, told to the Welsh, and sung in Frankia. Make it good, priest, make it bloody, make it exciting!’
‘Of course, lord!’
‘The song of Ragnall’s defeat,’ I said, though of course Ragnall was not defeated, not yet. More than half his army remained, and that half probably still outnumbered us, but he had been shown to be vulnerable. He had come across the sea and he had taken most of Northumbria with speed and daring, and the stories of those exploits would spread until men believed that Ragnall was fated to be a conqueror, so now was the time to tell folk that Ragnall could be beaten and that he would be beaten. And it was better that it was Æthelflaed who was shown to be Ragnall’s doom because many men would not allow songs of Uhtred to be sung in their halls. I was a pagan, they were Christian. They would hear Glædwine’s song, though, which would give the nailed god all the credit and take away some of the fear of Ragnall. And there were still fools who thought a woman should not rule, so let the fools hear a song about a woman’s triumph.
I gave Glædwine gold. Like most poets he claimed he invented his songs because he had no choice, ‘I never asked to be a poet,’ he had told me once, ‘but the words just come to me, lord. They come from the Holy Ghost! He is my inspiration!’ That might have been true, though I noticed the Holy Ghost was a lot more inspiring when it smelt gold or silver. ‘Write well,’ I told him, then waved him away.
The moment that Glædwine scuttled to the gate all the petitioners surged forward to be checked by my spearmen. I nodded to Gerbruht. ‘You’re next.’
Gerbruht kicked his prisoner towards me. ‘He’s a Norseman, lord,’ he said, ‘one of Ragnall’s scum.’
‘Then why does he have both hands?’ I asked. We had taken some men prisoner along with the women and children and I had ordered their sword hands chopped off before we let them go. ‘He should be back at Eads Byrig,’ I said, ‘with a bloody stump for a wrist.’ I took a pot of ale from one of the maids and drank it all. When I looked back I saw that the prisoner was crying. He was a good-looking man, maybe in his middle twenties, with a battle-scarred face and cheeks marked with inked axes. I was used to boys crying, but the prisoner was a hard-looking man and he was sobbing. That intrigued me. Most men face mutilation bravely or with defiance, but this man was weeping like a child. ‘Wait,’ I told Gerbruht, who had drawn a knife.
‘I wasn’t going to chop him here!’ Gerbruht protested, ‘Not here. Your lady Eadith doesn’t like blood all over the courtyard. Remember that sow we butchered at Yule? She wasn’t happy at all!’ He kicked the sobbing prisoner. ‘And we didn’t capture this one in the dawn fight, lord, he only just arrived.’
‘He only just arrived?’
‘He rode his horse to the gate, lo
rd. There were bastards chasing him, but he got here first.’
‘Then we won’t chop him or kill him,’ I said, ‘yet.’ I used my boot to raise the prisoner’s chin. ‘Tell me your name?’
‘Vidarr, lord,’ he said, trying to control his sobs.
‘Norse? Dane?’
‘Norse, lord.’
‘Why are you here, Vidarr?’
He took a huge breath. Gerbruht evidently thought he would not answer and slapped him around the head. ‘My wife!’ Vidarr said hurriedly.
‘Your wife.’
‘My wife!’ he said again, and his face crumpled into grief. ‘My wife, lord.’ He seemed incapable of saying anything else.
‘Leave him alone,’ I told Gerbruht, who was about to hit the prisoner again. ‘Tell me about your wife,’ I ordered Vidarr.
‘She’s your prisoner, lord.’
‘So?’
His voice was little more than a whisper. ‘She’s my wife, lord.’
‘And you love her?’ I asked harshly.
‘Yes, lord.’
‘God in His heaven,’ Gerbruht mocked. ‘He loves her! She’s probably been …’
‘Quiet,’ I snarled. I looked at Vidarr. ‘Who has your oath?’
‘Jarl Ragnall, lord.’
‘So what do you expect me to do? Give you back your wife and let you go?’
He shook his head. ‘No, lord.’
‘A man who breaks his oath,’ I said, ‘can’t be trusted.’