The Warrior Chronicles

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Well, of course, Grageld wanted us to go to Skirnir,’ Finan said, ‘but we said no. He asked what we wanted, and we said we’d come for the reward because we wanted to make Osferth king and needed silver to do that.’

  ‘He believed that?’

  ‘Do you need a reason to want silver?’ Finan asked, then shrugged, ‘he believed us, lord, and Osferth was persuasive.’

  ‘When I told the story,’ Osferth put in wryly, ‘I found myself believing it.’

  I laughed at that. ‘You want to be king, Osferth?’

  He smiled, and when he smiled he resembled his father so much that it was uncanny. ‘No, lord,’ he said gently.

  ‘And I’m not really sure Grageld knew who Alfred was,’ Finan went on. ‘He knew the name well enough, and he knew his coins, of course, but he seemed to think Wessex was a way off. So I said it was a country where the silver grew on the ash trees, and that its king was old and tired, and that Osferth would be the new king and he would be a friend to Skirnir.’

  ‘He believed all this?’

  ‘He must have done! The brother wanted us to go to Zegge, but I said no. I was not taking Seolferwulf through those channels, lord, for her to be trapped inside, and so we waited outside and Skirnir came out with the second ship and they put the boats either side of us and I could see they were thinking of capturing us.’

  Which is what I had feared. I imagined Seolferwulf with her shrunken crew flanked by Skirnir’s two long ships packed with men.

  ‘But we’d thought about that,’ Finan said happily, ‘and we’d hoisted the anchor stone on the sail yard.’ Our anchor stones are huge round wheels, the size of millstones, with a hole carved in their centre, and Finan had hoisted Seolferwulf’s anchor by using the sail yard as a crane, and the message of that poised boulder was plain enough. If either of Skirnir’s ships attacked, then the stone would be swung over that ship, the line holding it would be cut by an axe, and the stone would fall to crash through the attacking ship’s bilge. Skirnir would gain one ship and lose another, and so, sensibly, he had pulled his ships away and pretended he had never even thought about capturing Seolferwulf.

  ‘The anchor stone was a good idea,’ I said.

  ‘Oh it was Osferth who thought of it, lord,’ Finan admitted, ‘and we had the thing ready before they even came out to us.’

  ‘And Skirnir believed your tale?’

  ‘He wanted to believe it, lord, so he did! He wanted Skade, lord. He saw nothing but Skade, sir, you could see it in his eyes.’

  ‘And so you sailed to capture her.’

  ‘And so we did, lord,’ Finan said with a smile.

  The three ships reached the creek as both the day and the tide ebbed. I knew Skirnir would not come till the morning flood had deepened the water in the creek, but I still posted sentries. Nothing disturbed them. We slept, though it seemed we did not. I remember lying awake, thinking I would never sleep, but dreams came all the same. I saw Gisela smiling, then had a waking dream of men with shields and of spears flying from their hands. I lay for a moment in the sand, watching the stars, then I stood, stretching the stiffness from my arms and legs. ‘How many men does he have, lord?’ Cerdic asked me. He was reviving the fire, and the driftwood flamed bright. Cerdic did not lack bravery, but in the night he had been haunted by the memory of those large ships coming to the coast.

  ‘He has two crews,’ I said. I saw that I had been the last to wake and men now drew towards the fire to listen to me. ‘Two crews,’ I said, ‘so he has at least one hundred men, maybe a hundred and fifty?’

  ‘Jesus,’ Cerdic said quietly, touching the cross he wore.

  ‘But they’re pirates,’ Rollo said loudly.

  ‘Tell them,’ I ordered, pleased that Ragnar’s man understood what we faced.

  Rollo stood in the flamelight. ‘Skirnir’s men are like wild dogs,’ he said, ‘and they hunt what is weak, never what is strong. They don’t fight on land and they don’t know the shield wall. We do.’

  ‘He calls himself the Sea-Wolf,’ I said, ‘but Rollo is right. He’s a dog, not a wolf. We’re the wolves! We’ve faced the best warriors of Denmark and Britain and we’ve sent them to their graves! We are men of the shield wall, and before the sun climbs to its highest Skirnir will be in his grave!’

  Not that we saw any sun because the day clouded over with the grey dawn. The clouds ran swift and low towards the sea, shrouding the marshes. The water rose with the tide, flooding the margins of the land where we had our refuge. I climbed to the top of the dune from where I watched the three ships come slowly up the creek. Skirnir was riding the flooding tide, rowing till his beast-headed ship grounded, then waiting for more water to carry him a few oar strokes farther. His two ships led and Seolferwulf followed, and I laughed at that. Skirnir, confident in his numbers and blinded by the prospect of regaining Skade, did not think for a moment that he had enemies behind him.

  And what did Skirnir see? He was in the prow of the leading ship and he saw only five men standing on the dune, and none of the five was in mail. He thought he came to capture a bedraggled band of fugitives and so he was confident, and, as he drew closer, I called for Skade to stand beside me. ‘If he captured you,’ I asked her, ‘what would he do?’

  ‘Humiliate me,’ she said, ‘shame me, then kill me.’

  ‘And that’s worth silver to him?’ I asked, thinking of the reward he had offered for Skade’s return.

  ‘Pride is expensive,’ she said.

  ‘Why wouldn’t he just keep you as a slave?’

  ‘Because of that pride,’ she said. ‘He once had a slave girl killed because she betrayed him. He gave her to his men first, let them enjoy her, then he tied her to a stake and skinned her alive. He made her mother listen to her screams as she died.’

  I remembered Edwulf, skinned alive in his church, but I said nothing of that as I watched Skirnir’s ship come still closer. The creek became too narrow to allow his oar-banks to dip in the water, so now his ship was being poled forward. The tide was rising slowly. As it neared its height it would rise more swiftly, and then Skirnir would know he had run out of water, but the creek, though narrow, was proving to have more than enough depth for his ships. ‘It’s time to dress,’ I said.

  I went down the dune’s far side, hidden now from Skirnir, and Oswi, my servant, helped me into my mail. The leather lining stank in my nostrils as I pulled it over my head, but it felt good to have that familiar weight on my shoulders. Oswi put the sword belt around my waist and buckled it. ‘You stand behind me,’ I told him.

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘If it all goes wrong, boy,’ I said, ‘you run like a hare. You go inland, find the monastery and ask for shelter.’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘But it won’t go wrong,’ I told him.

  ‘I know it won’t, lord,’ he said stoutly. He was eleven years old, an orphan who had been found scavenging in the mud beneath the terrace of my Lundene house. One of my men had accused him of theft and brought him to me so I could order a whipping, but I had liked the fire in the boy’s eyes and so I had made him my servant and was now teaching him sword-craft. One day, like my previous servant, Sihtric, Oswi would become a warrior.

  I went to the dune’s edge and saw that Skirnir’s ship was passing our beached and abandoned fishing craft. He was near enough to shout insults and he was bellowing at Skade, who now stood alone at the dune’s summit. He was calling her a whore, a turd of the devil, and promising that she would scream her way into hell.

  ‘Time to show ourselves,’ I said to Rollo, and picked up my linden shield, which had Bebbanburg’s wolf’s head painted around its iron boss.

  Rollo carried a war axe and he kissed the wide blade. ‘I’ll feed you soon, my darling,’ he promised the axe.

  ‘They’re close!’ Skade called from the dune.

  The island we had chosen was shaped like a crescent moon with the dune making the moon’s high belly. The horns of the crescent touched the
creek, and cradled in its belly was marshland. So the dune could be approached from either horn, while the marsh, about a hundred paces wide and fifty paces at its deepest, was an obstacle. Men could cross that marshland, but it would have been slow work. The horn nearest to the sea was the wider of the two, a natural causeway leading to the sandy island, but ten men could bar that causeway easily, and I led twenty, leaving the remainder under Rollo’s command. Their task was to protect the farther horn, but they were not to show themselves until Skirnir sent men to use that second causeway.

  And what did Skirnir see? He saw a shield wall. He saw men in helmets and mail, men with bright weapons, men who were not the desperate fugitives he expected, but warriors dressed for battle, and he must have known that Finan and Osferth had lied to him, but he must have thought it was a small lie, a lie about weapons and mail, and his desperate hopes to regain Skade still persuaded him to believe the larger lie. Maybe he thought they had simply been mistaken? And still he was confident, because we were so few and he had so many, though the sight of a shield wall gave him pause.

  Skirnir’s helmsman was nosing the foremost ship into the bank when we appeared, and Skirnir immediately held up his hand to stop the men poling with the long oars. Skirnir had thought he would have little to do on that overcast morning, merely storm ashore and capture a small band of dispirited men, but our shields, weapons and close-linked wall made him reconsider. I saw him turn and shout at the men poling his ship. He pointed up the creek and it was obvious he wanted the ship taken to the farther horn so that he could surround us. But then, to my surprise, he leaped off the bows. He and fifteen men splashed into the creek and waded ashore as the ship poled on. Skirnir and his small band was now about fifty paces away, but they would be swiftly reinforced by the crew of his second ship that was approaching fast. I stayed where I was.

  Skirnir did not look back to see Seolferwulf, and would he have been alarmed if he had? She was the last of the three ships and her bows were filled with mailed and helmeted men. I could see Finan’s black shield.

  ‘Uhtred?’ Skirnir shouted.

  ‘I am Uhtred!’

  ‘Give me the whore!’ he bellowed. He was a heavy man with a face as flat as a flounder, small eyes and a long black beard that half covered his mail. ‘Give her to me and I’ll go away! You can live out your miserable life. Just give me the whore!’

  ‘I haven’t finished with her!’ I called. I glanced left and saw that Skirnir’s own ship had almost reached the second causeway. That crew would start landing in a moment. Meanwhile his second ship had grounded just behind Skirnir and the crew were tumbling over the side. There was not sufficient room on the small beach for more than thirty of them, so the rest, maybe another thirty men, waited on the ship. Seolferwulf crept closer.

  ‘Oswi?’ I said softly.

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Fetch Rollo now.’

  I felt the exultation of victory. I had seventy men, including those on Seolferwulf, and Skirnir had done what I wanted, he had divided his forces. Sixty or seventy of his men were facing us at the first causeway, some still aboard their ship, while the rest had gone to the other landing place and though, once they were ashore, they would be able to attack us from behind, I expected to be master of the island by then. I heard Seolferwulf thump her bows on the grounded boat, then I gave the command. ‘Forward!’

  We went as warriors, confident and disciplined. We could have charged as we had at Fearnhamme, but I wanted fear to work its wicked decay on Skirnir’s men, and so we went slowly, the shields of our front rank overlapping, while the men behind beat blades against their shields in time to our steps. ‘Kill the scum!’ I shouted and my men took up the shout. ‘Kill the scum, kill the scum!’ We went step by step, slow and inexorable, and the blades between our shields promised death.

  We were just eight men broad, but, as the causeway widened, Rollo brought his men onto our right. Most of the front rank carried spears, while I had Serpent-Breath. She was not the best blade for the close work of shield wall fighting, but I reckoned Skirnir’s men would not stand long because they were not used to this kind of warfare. Their skill was the sudden rush onto a half-defended boat, the wild killing of frightened men, but now they faced sword-warriors and spearmen and behind them was Finan. And Finan now attacked.

  He left just two boys on Seolferwulf. The tide was still flooding, so the current was holding Seolferwulf against the second of Skirnir’s skull-prowed ships and Finan led his men over her bows and up between the rowing benches, and they were yelling a high-pitched scream of killing, and maybe for a moment, just for a moment, Skirnir believed they had come to help him. But then Finan began the slaughter.

  And we struck at the same moment. ‘Now!’ I shouted, and my shield wall lunged forward, spears seeking foemen, blades driving into flesh, and I slammed Serpent-Breath under a Frisian shield and twisted her long blade in the man’s soft belly. ‘Kill them!’ I bellowed, and Finan echoed the cry.

  Spear-blades buried themselves in Frisian flesh. Men then dropped the spears’ long ash shafts and drew swords or took axes from the men behind. Skirnir’s men had not broken because they could not break. They were confined in a small space and my attack pushed them back against their dark ship’s bows, while Finan’s assault on the ship drove the remaining crew towards the prow platform. We pushed forward, giving them no room to fight, and we did the grim work of shield fighting. Cerdic was on my right and he used the blade of his axe like a hook to pull down the rim of the man to his front and, as soon as the shield was down, I lunged Serpent-Breath into the enemy’s throat, and Cerdic drove the axe blade against the man’s face, crushing it, then reached to hook down another shield. Rollo was screaming in Danish. He had dropped his shield and wielded his axe two-handed as he chanted a hymn to Thor. Rorik, one of the Danes who served me, was on his knees behind me, using a spear to rip open the legs of the Frisian pirates, and when they fell we killed them.

  It was slaughter in a small space. We had given hours, days, weeks and months to practising this kind of fight. It does not matter how often a man stands in a shield wall, he will only live if he has rehearsed it, drilled it and practised it, and Skirnir’s men had never trained as we did. They were seamen, and some did not even have shields because a great round slab of iron-bossed wood is a cumbersome thing to carry in a fight aboard a ship where the footing is uncertain and the rowing benches are obstacles. They were untrained and ill-equipped and so we killed them. They were in terror. They did not see our faces. Most of our helmets have cheek-pieces and so the enemy saw men of metal, metal-masked, metal-clad, and the steel of our weapons lanced at them, and we went relentlessly forward, metal-clad warriors behind overlapping shields, our blades remorseless until, on that grey morning, blood spread bright in the salt tide creek.

  Finan had the harder job, but Finan was a warrior of renown who took joy in hard fighting, and he led his men up the dark boat and screamed as he killed. He sang the song of the sword, keening as he fed his blade, and Rollo, standing thigh-deep in the creek, axe swinging in murderous blows, blocked the enemy’s escape. The Frisians, transported from confidence to bowel-loosening fear, began to drop their weapons. They knelt, they shouted for mercy, and I shouted at my rear rank to turn and be ready to face the men who had taken Skirnir’s own ship higher up the creek to come around our rear.

  Those men appeared about the dune just in time to see that the fighting was over. A few had sensibly jumped over the ship’s farther side and struggled into the swamp beyond, but most of Skirnir’s force were dead or prisoners. One of those prisoners was Skirnir himself, who was backed against the grounded strakes of his second ship with a spear-blade held at his beard. Cerdic was pressing the blade just enough to keep the big man still. ‘Shall I kill him, lord?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I said, distracted. I was watching the newly arrived enemy. ‘Rollo? Keep them at a distance.’

  Rollo formed his men into a shield wall. He shouted at the uncer
tain Frisians, inviting them to come and taste the blood already on his blades, but they did not move.

  A man screamed. He was a Frisian lying at the sand’s edge and his legs were thrashing in the shallow, blood-tinged water. He had been wounded, and Skade now knelt beside him and was driving a dagger slowly into one eye and so through to his brain. ‘Stop that!’ I shouted. The man was mewing in a high, pitiable voice, the ooze of his punctured eye spilling down his blood-laced cheek.

  She turned to look at me and there was a wildness in her face like the savagery of a cornered beast. ‘I hate them,’ she said, and edged the dagger in again so that the man screamed and lost control of his bowels.

  ‘Sihtric!’ I snarled, and Sihtric stepped to the man and drove his sword hard into his throat to end his misery.

  ‘I want to kill them all,’ Skade hissed at me. She was shuddering. ‘And him!’ she pointed to Skirnir, ‘especially him!’

  ‘She’s crazed,’ Finan said softly. He had jumped down to the beach beside me and now dipped his blade in the water to wash the blood away. ‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘she’s as crazy as a bitch in heat.’

  My men were staring at Skade in horror. It is one thing to kill in battle, but an enemy is a warrior too, and in defeat he deserves respect. I have killed often, and the killing can go on long after the fighting has finished, but that is the blood lust and battle fear that frenzies men who endure the shield wall, and when the lust dies then mercy takes its place. ‘You’re not going to let them live!’ Skade spat at me.