I had sent my son ahead with fifty men, all mounted on light fast horses. They had left the day before and their job was to pursue the enemy, attack their forage parties and ambush their scouts. Beadwulf was already following Ragnall’s men, but his task was simply to report back to me where the army went ashore, and that must happen soon because the river became unnavigable after a few miles. Once ashore, Ragnall’s army would spread out to find horses, food, and slaves, and my son had been sent to slow them, annoy them, and, if he was sensible, avoid a major fight with them.
‘What if Ragnall goes north?’ Finan asked me.
‘I told Uhtred not to leave Saxon land,’ I said. I knew what Finan was asking. If Ragnall chose to take his men north he would be entering Northumbria, a land ruled by the Danes, and if my son and his war-band followed they would find themselves in enemy land, outnumbered and surrounded.
‘And you think he’ll obey you?’ Finan asked.
‘He’s no fool.’
Finan half smiled. ‘He’s like you.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning he’s like you, so as like or not he’ll chase Ragnall halfway to Scotland before he comes to his senses.’ He stooped to tighten his saddle’s girth. ‘Besides, how can you tell where Mercia ends and Northumbria begins?’
‘He’ll be careful,’ I said.
‘He’d better be, lord.’ He put his foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle where he settled himself, collected the reins, and turned to look at the four priests. They were talking to each other, heads bowed, hands gesticulating. ‘What did they want?’
‘For me to leave an army here to protect their damned bishops.’
Finan sneered at that, then turned and stared northwards. ‘Life’s a crock of shit, isn’t it?’ he said bitterly. I said nothing, just watched as Finan loosened his sword, Soul-Stealer, in its scabbard. He had buried his son or nephew beside the river, digging the grave himself and marking it with a stone. ‘Families,’ he said bitterly, ‘now let’s go and kill more of the bastards.’
I pulled myself up into the saddle. The sun was up now, but still low in the east where it was shrouded by grey clouds. A chill wind blew from the Irish Sea. Men were mounting and the last spears were being tied to packhorses when a horn sounded from the northern gate. That horn only sounded if the sentries had seen something worth my attention and so I kicked my horse up the main street and my men, thinking we were leaving, followed. The horn sounded again as I cantered past Ceaster’s great hall, then a third time as I slid from the saddle and climbed the stone steps that led to the rampart above the gate arch.
A dozen horsemen were approaching, spurring their stallions across the Roman cemetery, coming as fast as they could ride. I recognised my son’s grey horse, then saw Beadwulf was with him. They slewed to a stop just beyond the ditch and my son looked up. ‘They’re at Eads Byrig,’ he called.
‘A thousand of the bastards,’ Beadwulf added.
I instinctively looked eastwards, even though I knew Eads Byrig was not visible from the gateway. But it was close. It lay no further to the east than Brunanburh did to the west. ‘They’re digging in!’ my son shouted.
‘What is it?’ Finan had joined me on the rampart.
‘Ragnall’s not going north,’ I said, ‘and he’s not going south.’
‘Then where?’
‘He’s here,’ I said, still staring east. ‘He’s coming here.’
To Ceaster.
Eads Byrig lay on a low ridge that ran north and south. The hill was simply a higher part of the ridge, a grassy hump rising like an island above the oaks and sycamores that grew thick about its base. The slopes were mostly shallow, an easy stroll, except that the ancient people who had lived in Britain long before my ancestors had crossed the sea, indeed before even the Romans came, had ringed the hill with walls and ditches. They were not stone walls, as the Romans had made at Lundene and Ceaster, nor wooden palisades as we build, but walls made of earth. They had dug a deep ditch all around the hill’s long crest and thrown the soil up to make a steep embankment inside the ditch, then made a second ditch and wall inside the first, and though the long years and the hard rain had eroded the double walls and half filled the two ditches, the defences were still formidable. The hill’s name meant Ead’s stronghold, and doubtless some Saxon called Ead had once lived there and used the walls to defend his herds and home, but the stronghold was much older than its name suggested. There were such grassy forts on high hills throughout Britain, proof that men have fought for this land as long as men have lived here, and I sometimes wonder whether a thousand years from now folk will still be making walls in Britain and setting sentries in the night to watch for enemies in the dawn.
It was difficult to approach Ead’s stronghold. The woods were dense and an ambush among the trees was all too easy. My son’s men had managed to get close to the ridge before Ragnall’s numbers forced them away. They had retreated to the open pastureland to the west of the forest, where I found them watching the thick woods. ‘They’re deepening the ditches,’ one of Beadwulf’s men greeted my arrival, ‘we could see the bastards shovelling away, lord.’
‘Cutting trees too, lord,’ Beadwulf added.
I could hear the axes working. They sounded far off, muffled by the spring foliage. ‘He’s making a burh,’ I said. Ragnall’s troops would be deepening the old ditches and raising the earth walls, on top of which they would build a wooden palisade. ‘Where did the ships land?’ I asked Beadwulf.
‘By the fish traps, lord.’ He nodded to the north, showing where he meant, then turned as a distant crash announced a tree’s fall. ‘They went aground before that. They took a fair time to get their ships off the mud.’
‘The ships are still there?’
He shrugged. ‘They were at dawn.’
‘They’ll be guarded,’ Finan warned me. He suspected I was thinking of attacking Ragnall’s ships and burning them, but that was the last thing I had in mind.
‘I’d rather he went back to Ireland,’ I said. ‘So leave his ships alone. I don’t want to trap the bastard here.’ I grimaced. ‘It looks as if the priests will get what they want.’
‘Which is?’ my son asked.
‘If Ragnall stays here,’ I said, ‘then so must we.’ I had thought to take my three hundred men eastwards to Liccelfeld where I could meet the forces Æthelflaed would send from Gleawecestre, but if Ragnall was staying at Eads Byrig then I must stay to protect Ceaster. I sent all the packhorses back to the city, and sent more messengers south to tell the reinforcements to abandon their march on Liccelfeld and to come to Ceaster instead. And then I waited.
I was waiting for Æthelflaed and her army of Mercia. I had three hundred men, and Ragnall had over a thousand, and more were joining him every day. It was frustrating. It was maddening. The garrison at Brunanburh could only watch as the beast-prowed ships rowed up the Mærse. There were two ships the first day and three the second, and still more every following day, ships heavy with men who had come from Ragnall’s furthest islands. Other men came by land, travelling from the Danish steadings in Northumbria, lured to Eads Byrig by the promise of Saxon silver, Saxon land, and Saxon slaves. Ragnall’s army grew larger and I could do nothing.
He outnumbered me by at least three to one, and to attack him I needed to take men through the forest that surrounded Eads Byrig, and that forest was a death-trap. An old Roman road ran just south of the hill, but the trees had invaded the road, and once among their thick foliage we would not be able to see more than thirty or forty paces. I sent a party of scouts into the trees and only three of those four men returned. The fourth was beheaded, and his naked body thrown out onto the pastureland. My son wanted to take all our men and crash through the woodland in search of a fight. ‘What good will that do?’ I asked him.
‘They must have men guarding their ships,’ he said, ‘and others building their new wall.’
‘So?’
‘So we won’t have to fight
all his men. Maybe just half of them?’
‘You’re an idiot,’ I said, ‘because that’s exactly what he wants us to do.’
‘He wants to attack Ceaster,’ my son insisted.
‘No, that’s what I want him to do.’
And that was the mutual trap Ragnall and I had set each other. He might outnumber me, but even so he would be reluctant to assault Ceaster. His younger brother had attempted to take the city and had lost his right eye and the best part of his army in the attempt. Ceaster’s walls were formidable. Ragnall’s men needed to cross a deep, flooded ditch spiked with elm stakes, then climb a wall twice the height of a man while we rained spears, axes, boulders and buckets of shit on them. He would lose. His men would die under our ramparts. I wanted him to come to the city, I wanted him to attack our walls, I wanted to kill his men at Ceaster’s defences, and he knew I wanted that, which is why he did not come.
But we could not assault him either. Even if I could lead every fit man through the forest unscathed I would still have to climb Eads Byrig and cross the high ditch and clamber up the earthen bank where a new wall was being made, and Ragnall’s Northmen and Irishmen would outnumber us and have a great killing that their poets would turn into a triumphant battle song. What would they call it? The Song of Ragnall the Mighty? It would tell of blades falling, foemen dying, of a ditch filled with blood, and of Uhtred, great Uhtred, cut down in his battle glory. Ragnall wanted that song, he wanted me to attack him, and I knew he wanted it, which is why I did not oblige him. I waited.
We were not idle. I had men driving new sharpened stakes into the ditch around Ceaster, and other men riding south and east to raise the fyrd, that army of farmers and free men who could man a burh wall even if they could not fight a Norse shield wall in open battle. And each day I sent a hundred horsemen to circle Eads Byrig, riding well south of the great forest and then curling northwards. I led that patrol on the third day, the same day that four more ships rowed up the Mærse, each holding at least forty warriors.
We wore mail and carried weapons, though we left our heavy shields behind. I wore a rusted coat of mail and an old undecorated helmet. I carried Serpent-Breath, but left my standard-bearer behind in Ceaster. I did not ride in my full war-glory because I did not seek a fight. We were scouting, looking for Ragnall’s forage parties and for his patrolling scouts. He had sent no men towards Ceaster, which was puzzling, so what was he doing?
We crossed the ridge four or five miles south of Ragnall’s hill. Once on the low crest I spurred my horse to the top of a knoll and stared northwards, though I could see almost nothing of what happened on that distant hilltop. I knew the palisade was being built there, that men were pounding oak trunks into the summit of the earthen bank, and just as surely Ragnall knew I would not waste my men’s lives by attacking that wall. So what was he hoping for? That I would be a fool, lose patience and attack anyway?
‘Lord,’ Sihtric interrupted my thoughts. He was pointing north-east, and I saw, perhaps a mile away, a dozen horsemen. More riders were further off, perhaps a score of them, all of them heading eastwards.
‘So they’ve found horses,’ I said. From what we had seen, and from our questioning of the prisoners we had taken, the enemy had brought very few horses on their ships, but the forage parties, I assumed that was what the horsemen were, proved that they had managed to capture a few, and those few, in turn, could ride further afield to find more, though by now the countryside was alerted to their presence. There were few steadings here because this was border country, land that belonged neither to the Danes of Northumbria nor to the Saxons of Mercia, and what folk lived here would already have left their homes and driven their livestock south to the nearest burh. Fear ruled this land now.
We rode on eastwards, dropping from the ridge into wooded country where we followed an overgrown drover’s path. I sent no scouts ahead, reckoning that Ragnall’s men did not have enough horses to send a war-band large enough to confront us, nor did we see the enemy, not even when we turned north and rode into the pastureland where we had glimpsed the horsemen earlier. ‘They’re staying out of our way,’ Sihtric said, sounding disappointed.
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘The more he kills of us, lord, the fewer to fight on Ceaster’s walls.’
I ignored that foolish answer. Ragnall had no intention of killing his men beneath Ceaster’s ramparts, not yet anyway. So what did he plan? I looked back in puzzlement. It was a dry morning, or at least it was not raining, though the air felt damp and the wind was chill, but it had rained hard in the night and the ground was sopping wet, yet I had seen no hoofmarks crossing the drover’s path. If Ragnall wanted horses and food then he would find the richer steadings to our south, deeper inside Mercia, yet it seemed he had sent no men that way. Perhaps I had missed the tracks, but I doubted I could have overlooked something so obvious. And Ragnall was no fool. He knew reinforcements must join us from the south, yet it seemed he had no patrols searching for those new enemies.
Why?
Because, I thought, he did not care about our reinforcements. I was staring northwards, seeing nothing there except thick woods and damp fields, and I was thinking what Ragnall had achieved. He had taken away our small fleet, which meant we could not cross the Mærse easily, not unless we rode even further eastwards to find an unguarded crossing. He was making a fortress on Eads Byrig, a stronghold that was virtually impregnable until we had sufficient men to overwhelm his army. And there was only one reason to fortify Eads Byrig, and that was to threaten Ceaster, yet he was sending no patrols towards the city, nor was he trying to stop any reinforcements reaching the garrison. ‘Is there water on Eads Byrig?’ I asked Sihtric.
‘There’s a spring to the south-east of the hill,’ he said, sounding dubious, ‘but it’s just a trickle, lord. Not enough for a whole army.’
‘He’s not strong enough to attack Ceaster,’ I said, thinking aloud, ‘and he knows we’re not going to waste men against Eads Byrig’s walls.’
‘He just wants a fight!’ Sihtric said dismissively.
‘No,’ I said, ‘he doesn’t. Not with us.’ There was an idea in my head. I could not say it aloud because I did not understand it yet, but I sensed what Ragnall was doing. Eads Byrig was a deception, I thought, and we were not the enemy, not yet. We would be in time, but not yet. I turned on Sihtric. ‘Take the men back to Ceaster,’ I told him. ‘Go back by the same path we came on. Let the bastards see you. And tell Finan to patrol to the edge of the forest tomorrow.’
‘Lord?’ he asked again.
‘Tell Finan it should be a big patrol! A hundred and fifty men at least! Let Ragnall see them! Tell him to patrol from the road to the river, make him think we’re planning an attack from the west.’
‘An attack from the …’ he began.
‘Just do it,’ I snarled. ‘Berg! You come with me!’
Ragnall had stopped us from crossing the river and he was making us concentrate all our attention on Eads Byrig. He seemed to be behaving cautiously, making a great fortress and deliberately not provoking us by sending war-bands to the south, yet everything I knew about Ragnall suggested he was anything but a cautious man. He was a warrior. He moved fast, struck hard, and called himself a king. He was a gold-giver, a lord, a patron of warriors. Men would follow him so long as his swords and spears took captives and captured farmland, and no man became rich by building a fortress in a forest and inviting attack. ‘Tell FinanI’ll be back tomorrow or the day after,’ I told Sihtric, then beckoned to Berg and rode eastwards. ‘Tomorrow or the day after!’ I shouted back to Sihtric.
Berg Skallagrimmrson was a Norseman who had sworn loyalty to me, a loyalty he had proven in the three years since I had saved his life on a beach in Wales. He could have ridden north any time to the kingdom of Northumbria and there found a Dane or a fellow Norseman who would welcome a young, strong warrior, but Berg had stayed true. He was a thin-faced, blue-eyed young man, serious and thoughtful. He wore his hair long in
Norse fashion, and had persuaded Sihtric’s daughter to make a scribble on his left cheek with oak-gall ink and a needle. ‘What is it?’ I had asked him as the scars were still healing.
‘It’s a wolf’s head, lord!’ he had said, sounding indignant. The wolf’s head was my symbol and the inked device was his way of showing loyalty, but even when it healed it looked more like a smeared pig’s head.
Now the two of us rode eastwards. I still did not fear any enemy war-band because I had a suspicion of what Ragnall really wanted, and it was that suspicion that kept us riding into the afternoon, by which time we had turned north and were following a Roman road that led to Northumbria. We were still well to the east of Eads Byrig, but as the afternoon waned we climbed a low hill and I saw where a bridge carried the road across the river, and there, clustered close to two cottages that had been built on the Mærse’s north bank, were men in mail. Men with spears. ‘How many?’ I asked Berg, whose eyes were younger than mine.
‘At least forty, lord.’
‘He doesn’t want us to cross the river, does he?’ I suggested. ‘Which means we need to get across.’
We rode east for an hour, keeping a cautious eye for enemies, and at dusk we turned north and came to where the Mærse slid slow between pastureland. ‘Can your horse swim?’ I asked Berg.
‘We’ll find out, lord.’