The Last Kingdom sc-1

by Bernard Cornwell

  “I wonder if her baby came out in three bits,” he said. “So what’s this god’s name?”

  “Don’t know.” I knew he had a name because Beocca had told me, but I could not remember it. “The three together are the trinity,” I went on, “but that’s not god’s name. Usually they just call him god.”

  “Like giving a dog the name dog,” Ragnar declared, then laughed. “So who’s Jesus?”

  “One of the three.”

  “The one who died, yes? And he came back to life?”

  “Yes,” I said, suddenly fearful that the Christian god was watching me, readying a dreadful punishment for my sins.

  “Gods can do that,” Ragnar said airily. “They die, come back to life. They’re gods.” He looked at me, sensing my fear, and ruffled my hair. “Don’t you worry, Uhtred, the Christian god doesn’t have power here.”

  “He doesn’t?”

  “Of course not!” He was searching a shed at the back of the monastery and found a decent sickle that he tucked into his belt. “Gods fight each other! Everyone knows that. Look at our gods! The Aesir and Vanir fought like cats before they made friends.” The Aesir and the Vanir were the two families of Danish gods who now shared Asgard, though at one time they had been the bitterest of enemies. “Gods fight,”

  Ragnar went on earnestly, “and some win, some lose. The Christian god is losing. Otherwise why would we be here? Why would we be winning? The gods reward us if we give them respect, but the Christian god doesn’t help his people, does he? They weep rivers of tears for him, they pray to him, they give him their silver, and we come along and slaughter them! Their god is pathetic. If he had any real power then we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

  It seemed an unassailable logic to me. What was the point of worshipping a god if he did not help you? And it was incontrovertible that the worshippers of Odin and Thor were winning, and I surreptitiously touched the hammer of Thor hanging from my neck as we returned to theWindViper. We left Gegnesburh ravaged, its folk weeping and its storehouses emptied, and we rowed on down the wide river, the belly of our boat piled with grain, bread, salted meat, and smoked fish. Later, much later, I learned that Ælswith, King Alfred’s wife, had come from Gegnesburh. Her father, the man who had failed to fight us, was ealdorman there and she had grown up in the town and always lamented that, after she had left, the Danes had sacked the place. God, she always declared, would have his revenge on the pagans who had ravaged her hometown, and it seemed wise not to tell her that I had been one of the ravagers.

  We ended the voyage at a town called Snotengaham, which means the Home of Snot’s people, and it was a much greater place than Gegnesburh, but its garrison had fled and those people who remained welcomed the Danes with piles of food and heaps of silver. There would have been time for a horseman to reach Snotengaham with news of Gegnesburh’s dead, and the Danes were always happy for such messengers to spread fear of their coming, and so the larger town, with its walls, fell without a fight. Some ships’ crews were ordered to man the walls, while others raided the countryside. The first thing they sought was more horses, and when the war bands were mounted they ranged farther afield, stealing, burning, and harrowing the land. “We shall stay here,” Ragnar told me.

  “All summer?”

  “Till the world ends, Uhtred. This is Danish land now.” At winter’s end Ivar and Ubba had sent three ships back to the Danish homeland to encourage more settlers, and those new ships began arriving in ones and twos, bringing men, women, and children. The newcomers were allowed to take whatever houses they wished, except for those few that belonged to the Mercian leaders who had bent the knee to Ivar and Ubba. One of those was the bishop, a young man called Æthelbrid, who preached to his congregations that God had sent the Danes. He never said why God had done this, and perhaps he did not know, but the sermons meant that his wife and children lived and his house was safe and his church was allowed to retain one silver mass cup, though Ivar insisted that the bishop’s twin sons be held as hostages in case the Christian god changed his mind about the Danes. Ragnar, like the other Danish leaders, constantly rode out into the country to bring back food and he liked me to go with him, for I could translate for him, and as the days passed we heard more and more stories of a great Mercian army gathering to the south, at Ledecestre, which Ragnar said was the greatest fortress in Mercia. It had been made by the Romans, who built better than any man could build now, and Burghred, Mercia’s king, was assembling his forces there, and that was why Ragnar was so intent on gathering food. “They’ll besiege us,” he said, “but we’ll win and then Ledecestre will be ours and so will Mercia.” He spoke very calmly, as though there could be no possibility of defeat. Rorik stayed in the town while I rode with his father. That was because Rorik was sick again, struck by cramping pains in his belly so severe that he was sometimes reduced to helpless tears. He vomited in the night, was pale, and the only relief came from a brew of herbs made for him by an old woman who was a servant of the bishop. Ragnar worried about Rorik, yet he was pleased that his son and I were such good friends. Rorik did not question his father’s fondness for me, nor was he jealous. In time, he knew, Ragnar planned to take me back to Bebbanburg and I would be given my patrimony and he assumed I would stay his friend and so Bebbanburg would become a Danish stronghold. I would be Earl Uhtred and Rorik and his older brother would hold other strongholds, and Ragnar would be a great lord, supported by his sons and by Bebbanburg, and we would all be Danes, and Odin would smile on us, and so the world would go on until the final conflagration when the great gods fought the monsters and the army of the dead would march from Valhalla and the underworld give up its beasts and fire would consume the great tree of life, Yggdrasil. In other words everything would stay the same until it was all no more. That was what Rorik thought, and doubtless Ragnar thought so, too. Destiny, Ravn said, is everything. News came in the high summer that the Mercian army was marching at last and that King Æthelred of Wessex was bringing his army to support Burghred, and so we were to be faced by two of the three remaining English kingdoms. We stopped our raids into the countryside and readied Snotengaham for the inevitable siege. The palisade on the earth wall was strengthened and the ditch outside the wall was deepened. The ships were drawn up on the town’s riverbank far from the walls so they could not be reduced to ash by fire arrows shot from outside the defenses, and the thatch of the buildings closest to the wall was pulled off the houses so that they could not be set ablaze. Ivar and Ubba had decided to endure a siege because they reckoned we were strong enough to hold what we had taken, but that if we took more territory then the Danish forces would be stretched thin and could be defeated piece by piece. It was better, they reckoned, to let the enemy come and break himself on Snotengaham’s defenses.

  That enemy came as the poppies bloomed. The Mercian scouts arrived first, small groups of horsemen who circled the town warily, and at midday Burghred’s foot soldiers appeared, band after band of men with spears, axes, swords, sickles, and hay knives. They camped well away from the walls, using branches and turf to make a township of crude shelters that sprang up across the low hills and meadows. Snotengaham lay on the north bank of the Trente, which meant the river was between the town and the rest of Mercia, but the enemy army came from the west, having crossed the Trente somewhere to the south of the town. A few of their men stayed on the southern bank to make sure our ships did not cross the river to land men for foraging expeditions, and the presence of those men meant that the enemy surrounded us, but they made no attempt to attack us. The Mercians were waiting for the West Saxons to come and in that first week the only excitement occurred when a handful of Burghred’s archers crept toward the town and loosed a few arrows at us and the missiles whacked into the palisade and stuck there, perches for birds, and that was the extent of their belligerence. After that they fortified their camp, surrounding it with a barricade of felled trees and thorn bushes. “They’re frightened that we’ll make a sally and kill them all,”
Ragnar said, “so they’re going to sit there and try to starve us out.”

  “Will they?” I asked.

  “They couldn’t starve a mouse in a pot,” Ragnar said cheerfully. He had hung his shield on the outer side of the palisade, one of over twelve hundred brightpainted shields that were displayed there. We did not have twelve hundred men, but nearly all the Danes possessed more than one shield and they hung them all on the wall to make the enemy think our garrison equaled the number of shields. The great lords among the Danes hung their banners on the wall, Ubba’s raven flag and Ragnar’s eagle wing among them. The raven banner was a triangle of white cloth, fringed with white tassels, showing a black raven with spread wings, while Ragnar’s standard was a real eagle’s wing, nailed to a pole, and it was becoming so tattered that Ragnar had offered a golden arm ring to any man who could replace it. “If they want us out of here,” he went on, “then they’d best make an assault, and they’d best do it in the next three weeks before their men go home and cut their harvest.”

  But the Mercians, instead of attacking, tried to pray us out of Snotengaham. A dozen priests, all robed and carrying crosstipped poles, and followed by a score of monks carrying sacred banners on crossstaffs, came out from behind their barricades and paraded just beyond bowshot. The flags showed saints. One of the priests scattered holy water, and the whole group stopped every few yards to pronounce curses on us. That was the day the West Saxon forces arrived to support Burghred whose wife was sister to Alfred and to King Æthelred of Wessex, and that was the first day I ever saw the dragon standard of Wessex. It was a huge banner of heavy green cloth on which a white dragon breathed fire, and the standardbearer galloped to catch up with the priests and the dragon streamed behind him. “Your turn will come,” Ragnar said quietly, talking to the rippling dragon.

  “When?”

  “The gods only know,” Ragnar said, still watching the standard. “This year we should finish off Mercia, then we’ll go to East Anglia, and after that, Wessex. To take all the land and treasure in England, Uhtred? Three years? Four? We need more ships though.” He meant we needed more ships’ crews, more shield Danes, more swords.

  “Why not go north?” I asked him.

  “To Dalriada and Pictland?” he laughed. “There’s nothing up there, Uhtred, except bare rocks, bare fields, and bare arses. The land there is no better than at home.” He nodded out toward the enemy encampment. “But this is good land. Rich and deep. You can raise children here. You can grow strong here.” He fell silent as a group of horsemen appeared from the enemy camp and followed the rider who carried the dragon standard. Even from a long way off it was possible to see that these were great men for they rode splendid horses and had mail coats glinting beneath their dark red cloaks. “The King of Wessex?” Ragnar guessed.

  “Æthelred?”

  “It’s probably him. We shall find out now.”

  “Find out what?”

  “What these West Saxons are made of. The Mercians won’t attack us, so let’s see if Æthelred’s men are any better. Dawn, Uhtred, that’s when they should come. Straight at us, ladders against the wall, lose some men, but let the rest slaughter us.” He laughed. “That’s what I’d do, but that lot?” He spat in derision.

  Ivar and Ubba must have thought the same thing, for they sent two men to spy on the Mercian and West Saxon forces to see if there was any sign that ladders were being made. The two men went out at night and were supposed to skirt the besiegers’ encampment and find a place to watch the enemy from outside their fortifications, but somehow they were both seen and caught. The two men were brought to the fields in front of the wall and made to kneel there with their hands tied behind their backs. A tall Englishman stood behind them with a drawn sword and I watched as he poked one of the Danes in the back, as the Dane lifted his head and then as the sword swung. The second Dane died in the same way, and the two bodies were left for the ravens to eat. “Bastards,” Ragnar said. Ivar and Ubba had also watched the executions. I rarely saw the brothers. Ubba stayed in his house much of the time while Ivar, so thin and wraithlike, was more evident, pacing the walls every dawn and dusk, scowling at the enemy and saying little, though now he spoke urgently to Ragnar, gesturing south to the green fields beyond the river. He never seemed to speak without a snarl, but Ragnar was not offended. “He’s angry,” he told me afterward, “because he needs to know if they plan to assault us. Now he wants some of my men to spy on their camp, but after that?” He nodded at the two headless bodies in the field. “Maybe I’d better go myself.”

  “They’ll be watching for more spies,” I said, not wanting Ragnar to end up headless before the walls.

  “A leader leads,” Ragnar said, “and you can’t ask men to risk death if you’re not willing to risk it yourself.”

  “Let me go,” I said.

  He laughed at that. “What kind of leader sends a boy to do a man’s job, eh?”

  “I’m English,” I said, “and they won’t suspect an English boy.”

  Ragnar smiled at me. “If you’re English,” he said, “then how could we trust you to tell us the truth of what you see?”

  I clutched Thor’s hammer. “I will tell the truth,” I said, “I swear it. And I’m a Dane now! You’ve told me that! You say I’m a Dane!”

  Ragnar began to take me seriously. He knelt to look into my face. “Are you really a Dane?” he asked.

  “I’m a Dane,” I said, and at that moment I meant it. At other times I was sure I was a Northumbrian, a secret sceadugengan hidden among the Danes, and in truth I was confused. I loved Ragnar as a father, was fond of Ravn, wrestled and raced and played with Rorik when he was well enough, and all of them treated me as one of them. I was just from another tribe. There were three main tribes among the Northmen—the Danes, the Norse, and the Svear—but Ragnar said there were others, like the Getes, and he was not sure where the Northmen ended and the others began, but suddenly he was worried about me. “I’m a Dane,” I repeated forcibly, “and who better than me to spy on them? I speak their language!”

  “You’re a boy,” Ragnar said, and I thought he was refusing to let me go, but instead he was getting used to the idea. “No one will suspect a boy,” he went on. He still stared at me, then stood and glanced again at the two bodies where ravens were pecking at the severed heads. “Are you sure, Uhtred?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’ll ask the brothers,” he said, and he did, and Ivar and Ubba must have agreed for they let me go. It was after dark when the gate was opened and I slipped out. Now, I thought, I am a shadowwalker at last, though in truth the journey needed no supernatural skills for there was a slew of camp fires in the Mercian and West Saxon lines to light the way. Ragnar had advised me to skirt the big encampment and see if there was an easy way in at the back, but instead I walked straight toward the nearest fires that lay behind the felled trees that served as the English protective wall, and beyond that black tangle I could see the dark shapes of sentries outlined by the camp fires. I was nervous. For months I had been treasuring the idea of the sceadugengan, and here I was, out in the dark, and not far away there were headless bodies and my imagination invented a similar fate for myself. Why? One small part of me knew I could walk into the camp and say who I was, then demand to be taken to Burghred or to Æthelred, yet I had spoken the truth to Ragnar. I would go back, and I would tell the truth. I had promised that, and to a boy promises are solemn things, buttressed by the dread of divine revenge. I would choose my own tribe in time, but that time had not yet come, and so I crept across the field feeling very small and vulnerable, my heart thumping against my ribs, and my soul consumed by the importance of what I did. And halfway to the Mercian camp I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I had the sensation I was being followed and I twisted, listened, and stared, and saw nothing but the black shapes that shudder in the night, but like a hare I sprinted to one side, dropped suddenly, and listened again, and this time I was sure I heard a footfall in the
grass. I waited, watched, saw nothing, and crept on until I reached the Mercian barricade and I waited again there, but heard nothing more behind me and decided I had been imagining things. I had also been worrying that I would not be able to pass the Mercian obstacles, but in the end it was simple enough because a big felled tree left plenty of space for a boy to wriggle through its branches, and I did it slowly, making no noise, then ran on into the camp and was almost immediately challenged by a sentry. “Who are you?” The man snarled and I could see the firelight reflecting from a glittering spear head that was being run toward me.

  “Osbert,” I said, using my old name.

  “A boy?” The man checked, surprised.

  “Needed a piss.”

  “Hell, boy, what’s wrong with pissing outside your shelter?”

  “My master doesn’t like it.”

  “Who’s your master?” The spear had been lifted and the man was peering at me in the small light from the fires.

  “Beocca,” I said. It was the first name that came to my head.

  “The priest?”

  That surprised me, and I hesitated, but then nodded and that satisfied the man. “Best get back to him then,” he said.

  “I’m lost.”

  “Shouldn’t come all this way to piss on my sentry post then, should you?” he said, then pointed. “It’s that way, boy.”

  So I walked openly through the camp, past the fires and past the small shelters where men snored. A couple of dogs barked at me. Horses whinnied. Somewhere a flute sounded and a woman sang softly. Sparks flew up from the dying fires.

  The sentry had pointed me toward the West Saxon lines. I knew that because the dragon banner was hung outside a great tent that was lit by a larger fire, and I moved toward that tent for lack of anywhere else to go. I was looking for ladders, but saw none. A child cried in a shelter, a woman moaned, and some men sang near a fire. One of the singers saw me, shouted a challenge, and then realized I was just a boy and waved me away. I was close to the big fire now, the one that lit the front of the bannered tent, and I skirted it, going toward the darkness behind the tent that was lit from within by candles or lanterns. Two men stood guard at the tent’s front and voices murmured from inside, but no one noticed me as I slipped through the shadows, still looking for ladders. Ragnar had said the ladders would be stored together, either at the heart of the camp or close to its edge, but I saw none. Instead I heard sobbing. I had reached the back of the big tent and was hiding beside a great stack of firewood and, judging by the stink, was close to a latrine. I crouched and saw a man kneeling in the open space between the woodpile and the big tent and it was that man who was sobbing. He was also praying and sometimes beating his chest with his fists. I was astonished, even alarmed by what he did, but I lay on my belly like a snake and wriggled in the shadows to get closer to see what else he might do. He groaned as if in pain, raised his hands to the sky, then bent forward as if worshipping the earth.