Death of Kings

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘I heard them talking, lord,’ he said, ‘and yes, there were Saxons.’

  Æthelwold’s men? If it was Æthelwold’s followers then it was surely war, and that meant an attack from Ceaster if Offa was right. ‘Dig graves,’ I told my men. We would begin by burying our dead, but I sent Sihtric and three men back to Fagranforda. They carried orders that my whole household should retreat into Cirrenceastre, and to take the livestock with them. ‘Tell the Lady Æthelflaed she’s to go south into Wessex,’ I said, ‘and tell her to pass the news to Æthelred and to her brother. Make sure King Edward knows! Tell her I need men, and that I’ve gone north towards Ceaster. Have Finan bring every man here.’

  It took a day to assemble my men. We buried Ludda and the others in Turcandene’s churchyard and Cuthbert said prayers over the fresh mounds. I still watched the sky and saw no great plumes of smoke. It was high summer, the sky a clear blue in which lazy clouds drifted, and as we rode north I did not know whether we rode to war or not.

  I only led a hundred and forty-three men, and if the Danes were coming then I could expect thousands of them. We rode first to Wygraceaster, the northernmost burh in Saxon Mercia, and the bishop’s steward was surprised by our arrival. ‘I’ve heard no news of a Danish attack, lord,’ he told me. The street outside the bishop’s large house was busy with a market, though the bishop himself was in Wessex.

  ‘Make sure your storehouses are full,’ I told the steward, who bowed, but I could see he was unconvinced. ‘Who commands the garrison here?’ I asked.

  It was a man called Wlenca, one of Æthelred’s followers, and he bridled when I told him to assume the war had started. He looked north from the burh’s ramparts and saw no smoke. ‘We’d have heard if there was war,’ he said in a surly tone, and I noted he did not call me ‘lord’.

  ‘I don’t know if it has started or not,’ I confessed, ‘but assume it has.’

  ‘Lord Æthelred would send me notice if the Danes attacked,’ he insisted loftily.

  ‘Æthelred’s scratching his arse in Gleawecestre,’ I said angrily. ‘Is that what you did when Haesten invaded last?’ He looked at me angrily, but said nothing. ‘How do I reach Ceaster from here?’ I asked him.

  ‘Follow the Roman road,’ he said, pointing.

  ‘Follow the Roman road, lord,’ I said.

  He hesitated, plainly wanting to defy me, but good sense won. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said.

  ‘And tell me a good defensive place a day’s ride away.’

  He shrugged. ‘You can try Scrobbesburh, lord?’

  ‘Rouse the fyrd,’ I told him, ‘and make sure the walls are manned.’

  ‘I know my duty, lord,’ he said, yet it was plain from his truculence that he had no intention of reinforcing the men who lazed on the ramparts. That empty, innocent sky persuaded him that there was no danger, and doubtless the moment I left he sent a messenger to Æthelred saying I was panicking unnecessarily.

  And perhaps I was panicking. The only evidence of war was the slaughter at Turcandene and the sixth sense of a warrior. War had to come, it had been hiding away for too long, and I was convinced the raid that had killed Ludda was the first spark of a great fire.

  We rode on north, following the Roman road that led through the valley of the Sæfern. I missed Ludda and his astonishing knowledge of Britain’s pathways. We had to ask our way, and most folk we questioned could only give us guidance to the next village or town. Scrobbesburh lay to the west of what seemed the quickest way north and so I did not go there, instead we spent a night amidst towering Roman ruins at a place called Rochecestre, a village that astonished me. It had been a vast Roman town, almost as large as Lundene, but now it was a ruin of ghosts, crumbling walls, broken pavements, fallen pillars and shattered marble. A few folk lived there, their wattle and straw huts propped against the Roman stone and their sheep and goats grazing amidst the broken glory. A scrawny priest was the only man who made sense, and he nodded dumbly when I told him I feared the Danes were coming. ‘Where would you go if they came?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’d go to Scrobbesburh, lord.’

  ‘Then go there now,’ I ordered him, ‘and tell the rest of the village to go. Is there a garrison there?’

  ‘Just whoever lives there, lord. There’s no thegn. The Welsh killed the last one.’

  ‘And if I want to reach Ceaster from here? What road do I take?’

  ‘Don’t know, lord.’

  Places like Rochecestre fill me with despair. I love to build, yet I look at what the Romans did and know we cannot construct anything half so beautiful. We build sturdy halls of oak, we make stone walls, we bring masons from Frankia who raise churches or feast-halls with crude pillars of ill-dressed stone, yet the Romans built like gods. All across Britain their houses, bridges, halls and temples still stand, and they were made hundreds of years ago! Their roofs have fallen and the plaster is flaked, but still they stand, and I wonder how people who were able to make such marvels could have been defeated. The Christians tell us we move inexorably towards better times, towards their god’s kingdom on earth, but my gods only promise the chaos of the world’s ending, and a man only has to look around him to see that everything is crumbling, decaying, proof that the chaos is coming. We are not climbing Jacob’s ladder to some heavenly perfection, but stumbling downhill towards Ragnarok.

  The next day brought heavier clouds that shadowed the land as we climbed the small hills and left the Sæfern’s valley behind. If there was smoke we saw none except the tendrils from cooking fires in small villages. Off to our west the peaks of the Welsh hills vanished in the clouds. If there had been an attack, I thought, we would surely have heard by now. We would have met messengers riding away from the carnage or refugees fleeing the invaders. Instead we rode through peaceful villages, past fields where the first harvesters swung their sickles, and always following the Roman road with its mile-marked stones. The land sloped down to the north now, towards the Dee. It began to rain as the day wore on and we found shelter that evening in a hall close to the road. The hall was a poor place, its oak walls scorched by a fire that had evidently failed to burn the place down. ‘They tried,’ the owner, a widow whose husband had been killed by Haesten’s men, told us, ‘but God sent rain and they failed. Didn’t keep me from harm, though.’ The Danes, she said, were never far away. ‘And if it’s not the Danes it’s the Welsh,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘Then why stay here?’ Finan asked her.

  ‘And where do I go? I’ve lived here more than forty years, so where do I start again? You’ll buy this land from me?’

  Rain dripped through the thatch all night, but the dawn brought a chill clearing wind. We were hungry because the widow could not spare food for all my men, not unless she killed the cockerels that were crowing and the pigs that were being driven to the nearby beech wood as we threw saddles over our horses’ backs. Oswi, my servant, was tightening my stallion’s girth strap as I wandered to the ditch on the north side of the hall. I gazed ahead as I pissed. The clouds were low and dark, but was there a darker smudge there? ‘Finan,’ I called, ‘is that smoke?’

  ‘God knows, lord. Let’s hope so.’

  I laughed. ‘Hope so?’

  ‘If peace lasts much longer I’ll go mad.’

  ‘If it lasts into the autumn we’ll go to Ireland,’ I promised him, ‘and break some of your enemies’ heads.’

  ‘Not to Bebbanburg?’ he asked.

  ‘I need at least a thousand more men for that, and to get a thousand men I need the profits of a war.’

  ‘We all suffer from dreams,’ he said wistfully. He stared northwards. ‘I’m thinking that is smoke, lord.’ He frowned. ‘Or maybe just a thundercloud.’

  And then the horsemen came.

  There were three of them, riding hard from the north and when they saw us they slewed off the road and spurred their mud-spattered, tired horses towards the hall. They were Merewalh’s men, sent south to warn Æthelred that the Danes had attacked. ‘Thousan
ds of them, lord,’ one told me excitedly.

  ‘Thousands?’

  ‘Couldn’t count them, lord.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Westune, lord.’

  The name meant nothing to me. ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Not far.’

  ‘Two hours’ ride, lord,’ another man said more helpfully.

  ‘And Merewalh?’

  ‘Retreating, lord.’

  They told me the message Merewalh was sending to Æthelred, which was simply that an army of Danes had streamed out of Ceaster, far too many for Merewalh’s small force to contain or even face. The Danes were coming south, and Merewalh, remembering the tactics I had used against Sigurd, was retreating down the Welsh border in hopes that the savage tribesmen would come from the hills to attack the invaders. ‘When did they attack?’ I asked.

  ‘Last night, lord. At twilight.’

  A strange time, I thought, yet on the other hand it had probably been intended to take Merewalh’s force off-guard, and if so it had failed. Merewalh had been alert, his scouts had warned him, and so far he had escaped. ‘How many men does he have now?’ I asked.

  ‘Eighty-three, lord.’

  ‘And who’s leading the Danes? What banners did you see?’

  ‘A raven, lord, another with an axe breaking a cross, and a skull.’

  ‘There were dragons as well,’ the second man put in.

  ‘And two with wolves,’ the third man added.

  ‘And a stag with crosses on its head,’ the first man said. He struck me as intelligent and thoughtful, and he had told me what I needed to know. ‘A flying raven?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘That’s Sigurd,’ I said, ‘the axe is Cnut and the skull is Haesten.’

  ‘And the stag, lord?’ he asked.

  ‘Æthelwold,’ I said bitterly. So it seemed Offa had been right and the Danes were attacking from Ceaster, and that surely meant they were heading southwards, ostensibly led by Æthelwold. I gazed northwards, thinking that the Danes could not be far away. ‘Lord Æthelred,’ I spoke to the first man, ‘will probably send you to King Edward.’

  ‘Probably, lord.’

  ‘Because you’ve seen the Danes,’ I said. ‘So tell King Edward I need men. Tell him,’ I paused, trying to make a decision that would not be destroyed by the passage of time. ‘Tell him they should meet me at Wygraceaster. And if Wygraceaster is under siege, tell them to look for me at Cirrenceastre.’ I already knew we would have to retreat and by the time Edward responded and sent men, if he sent any at all, I could well have been pushed south of the Temes.

  The three men rode on south and we probed cautiously north, our scouts ahead and to the flanks. And I saw that the darkness in the morning sky was not a thundercloud, it was the smoke of burning thatch.

  How often I have seen the war-smoke smearing the sky, dark and roiling, rising from beyond trees or from some valley, and knowing that another steading or village or hall was being reduced to ashes. We rode slowly north and I saw for myself that Plegmund’s peace was ended and I thought how it had been the peace that passeth understanding. That is a phrase from the Christian’s holy book, and certainly Plegmund’s peace passed all understanding. The Danes had been quiet for so long and that had led Plegmund to believe his god had gelded his enemies, but now they had broken the incomprehensible peace, and the villages and farms and ricks and mills were burning.

  It was an hour before we saw the Danes. Scouts rode back to tell us where the enemy was, though the smoke in the sky was indication enough and already the road was crowded by folk trying to escape the invaders. We rode to the crest of a low wooded hill and watched the steadings burn. Immediately beneath us was a hall with barns and storehouses. It swarmed with men. A wagon stood by the hall, and I watched the newly gathered harvest being piled onto the wagon’s bed. ‘How many?’ I asked Finan.

  ‘There’s three hundred men there,’ he said, ‘at least three hundred.’

  And more men were in the wide vale beyond. Bands of Danes crossed the meadows, looking for fugitives or more places to ravage. I could see a small huddle of women and children who had been spared and who were being guarded by sword-Danes and doubtless they were on their way to the slave market across the sea. A second wagon, piled with cooking pots, spits, a loom, rakes, hoes and anything else that could be useful, was whipped northwards. The captured women and children, along with a great herd of livestock, followed, and a man tossed a burning brand up onto the hall’s thatch. A horn sounded from somewhere in the valley and gradually the Danes obeyed its insistent call and the horsemen moved towards the road. ‘Jesus,’ Finan said, ‘but there are hundreds of the bastards.’

  ‘See the skull,’ I said. I could see a human skull held aloft on a pole.

  ‘Haesten,’ Finan said.

  I looked for Haesten himself, but there were too many horsemen. I did not see any other banners, at least none that I recognised. For a few moments I was tempted to take my men to the east and gallop down the hill to cut off a few of the enemy stragglers, but I resisted the temptation. Those stragglers were not far from the larger bands, and we would be pursued immediately and overwhelmed by numbers. The Danes were not moving fast, their horses were rested and well-fed, and my task now was to stay ahead of them to watch what they did and where they went.

  We went back down the road. All day we retreated, and all day the Danes came on behind us. I watched the widow’s hall burn, saw the smoke rise to east and west, and the great plumes in the sky suggested there were three war-bands harrying the country. The Danes were not even bothering to use scouts, they knew their numbers were sufficient to crush any enemy, while my scouts were forever being pushed back. In truth I was blind. I had no real idea how many Danes we faced, I just knew there were hundreds of them and that the smoke was rising and I was angry, so angry that most of my men avoided my gaze. Finan did not care. ‘We need a prisoner,’ he said, but the Danes were being careful. They stayed in large troops, always too many for my few men. ‘They’re in no hurry,’ Finan observed in a puzzled tone, ‘and that’s strange. No hurry at all.’

  We were on another low hill, still watching. We had left the road because the Danes were following it and too many folk were using it to escape southwards, and those folk wanted to stay close to us, but their presence only made us more vulnerable. I told those fugitives to keep going south and we watched the Danes from the hills east of the road and as the day wore on I became ever more baffled. As Finan had said, the Danes were in no hurry. They were scavenging like rats in a bare granary, exploring every hovel, hall and farm, taking anything useful, yet this was country that had been harried before, part of the dangerous land between Saxon and Danish Mercia, and the pickings had to be slight. The real plunder lay southwards, so why were they not hurrying? The smoke was warning the countryside of their coming and folk had time to bury their valuables or else carry them away. It made small sense. The Danes were picking up scraps while the feast lay unguarded, so what were they doing?

  They knew we were watching them. It is impossible to hide a hundred and forty-three men in half-wooded country and they must have glimpsed us in the distance, though they could not have known who we were because I deliberately did not fly my banner. If they had known Uhtred of Bebbanburg was so close and so outnumbered they might have made a greater effort, but it was not until late in the afternoon that they tried to lure us into battle and even then it was a half-hearted effort. Seven Danish horsemen headed south on the now empty road. They were ambling, but I could see them glancing nervously towards the woods that hid us. Sihtric grinned. ‘They’re lost.’

  ‘They’re not lost,’ Finan said wryly.

  ‘Bait,’ I said. It was too obvious. They wanted us to attack and as soon as we did they would turn and gallop north to lead us into an ambush.

  ‘Ignore them,’ I ordered, and we went south again, crossing the watershed so that ahead of us in the deceptively peaceful evening s
hadows I could see a glint of the Sæfern. I was hurrying a little, wanting to find a place where we could spend the night in relative safety and far from the Danes. Then I saw another glint, a glimmer, a mere flash amidst the long shadows, and it was away to our left and I stared a long time and wondered if I had imagined it, then saw the prick of light again. ‘Bastards,’ I said, because I knew why the Danes had been so sluggish in their pursuit of us. They had sent men looping around our eastern flank, a war party to cut us off, but the low sun had reflected from a helmet or a spear-point, and now I could see them, far far off, mailed men among the trees. ‘Ride!’ I called to my men.

  Spurs and fear. A mad gallop down the long slope, hooves thudding, shield banging against my back, Serpent-Breath’s scabbard flapping against the saddle, and off to my left I saw the Danes come from the trees, far too many Danes. They were spurring their horses into a reckless gallop, hoping to cut us off. I could have swerved west away from them, but I reckoned a second Danish party might have gone that way and we could have ridden straight into their swords, so the only hope was to go south, hard and fast, riding to escape the jaws that I sensed were closing on us.

  I was riding towards the river. We could not ride faster than our slowest horses, not without sacrificing men, and the Danes were spurring hard, but if I could reach the Sæfern then there was a chance. Drive the horses straight into the water and make them swim, then defend the farther bank if we survived the mad crossing, and so I told Finan to head towards the last place we had seen a sliver of reflected sunlight from water while I rode at the back of my men, where I was pelted by clods of damp earth slung up by the heavy hooves.