by H A CULLEY
As far as Cynefrith could see, there were no sentries posted. He glanced back into the hollow behind the dune he was perched on. His thirty men stood with their hands over their horses noses to make sure they didn’t make a noise and alert the Vikings. Half of his men were skilled bowmen and all were seasoned warriors wearing mail byrnies and helmets. However, he wasn’t contemplating attacking the men and boys left to guard the longships; at least not yet. He needed to know where the rest of the crews were first.
He looked inland and saw a thin plume of grey smoke rising vertically in the still air. As he watched the plume grew thicker and darker. He tried to gauge the distance but it was difficult to tell. However, there was only one sizeable settlement in that direction, although there were a number of individual farmsteads as well.
The plume of smoke seemed to broaden out and Cynefrith grunted. Several buildings must have been fired to make that pattern of smoke and so he was fairly certain that it came from the settlement. It was five miles inland so he calculated that he had at least two hours before the raiders returned with their loot and captives, more if they were driving livestock as well.
He called two of his best warriors to his side and pointed to the two ships that were closest to a dune.
‘I want you to fire those two longships. Get into position as close as you can then crawl along the sand until you can climb aboard. Have you both got a flint, striker and tinder? Good. Good luck.’
It seemed like an age but it was probably less than a quarter of an hour before he saw his two men slithering like snakes towards the two longships. Both had discarded their byrnies, helmets and weapons, apart from a seax each had strapped to his back. A short while later they disappeared from view behind the bulk of the two hulls and Cynefrith breathed a sigh of relief. Evidently they hadn’t been spotted by the Vikings further along the beach, who were now busy slicing meat from the charred sheep’s carcase on the spit and filling their bowls with the vegetable gruel.
Some time later he saw his two men running back towards the cover of the dunes as a spiral of thin smoke climbed heavenwards from each of the two ships. Then Cynefrith saw a bloom of orange erupt from the base of the mast of one, and then the other. By this time his two men had reached the dunes, but they’d been spotted by one of the ship’s boys who’d looked up at the wrong moment. No doubt he’d caught the movement out of the corner of his eye.
He called out something in a strange language which caused the rest of the Vikings to look up from their meal and a split second later bowls and haunches of meat were thrown aside as they started running towards the two ships. Cynefrith smiled in satisfaction as he saw them pick up cauldrons and buckets but leave their armour and weapons where they were, stacked near the campfires. A few wore swords at their waists but most only had daggers.
Cynefrith waited until the Vikings were fully engaged in trying the douse the two fires with sea water, using any container that came to hand, then he led his men quietly through the dunes and down onto the beach. The sand had been hard packed by the outgoing tide and, although the going was still on the soft side for the horses, they managed to increase the pace to a slow canter before one of the ship’s boys spotted them.
His cry of alarm didn’t produce the panic that Cynefrith was expecting. Instead several of the boys climbed aboard the ship nearest the two which were now blazing merrily and started to throw down spears and shields to the others. By the time that the Bebbanburg warband reached them, the Vikings had formed a hurried shield wall and the boys still on board started to send a few arrows towards the oncoming Anglo-Saxons.
Horses didn’t like to charge a shield wall and, true to form, they baulked at doing so now. Cynefrith thought quickly and sent a dozen of his men around the flanks of the short shield wall whilst he and the other eighteen dismounted and advanced towards the enemy line.
After a brief exchange of spear thrusts he withdrew just as the rest of his men began hacking at the rear of the Vikings. These were mostly ship’s boys who had little military training. It didn’t take long before they broke and, leaving a dozen of their number dead, they made for one of the other longships hoping to get away. Cynefrith let them go and surrounded the remaining Vikings.
By the time that the last warrior was dead the boys had managed to get the smallest snekkja afloat and were gamely trying to use the long oars to back her away from the beach. They weren’t used to rowing, nor did most of them have the strength to do so. Most of Cynefrith’s men, on the other hand, were as adept at crewing a ship as they were at fighting on land. It didn’t take them long to get one of the other snekkja manned and they gave chase.
It took them less than half an hour to overhaul the other snekkja and the dejected boys surrendered without a fight. Once back on the beach Cynefrith set a guard on the twenty captured Vikings and fired the rest of the ships. He had lost four men killed and as many again wounded. Against that all twelve enemy warriors and ten boys had been killed. He felt satisfied with what they’d achieved and he made preparations to leave, roping the captured boys together by the neck, tying their hands and hobbling their feet so that they could only shuffle along.
The column had just set off through the dunes when one of the two scouts Cynefrith had sent out to ride point came galloping back, pulling his horse to a halt in a flurry of sand.
‘There are twenty mounted Vikings coming this way,’ he said, his eyes wide with fear. ‘They’re no more than half a mile away. They must have seen the smoke.’
-℣-
Ragnar grunted in frustration when his men failed to find much of value in the settlement they’d just pillaged. It consisted of twenty huts, a small hall and a timber church. There was a silver crucifix on the altar of the latter but the candlesticks were made of wood and even the vestments and altar cloth were of poor quality.
The thegn’s hall had yielded a small coffer half full of silver hastily buried but, apart from a handful of weapons and a few chickens, there was nothing else worth taking. The people had obviously taken all their items of value and the livestock with them when they’d fled into the hills that rose from the coastal plain a few miles further inland.
He was tempted to follow their trail, but then one of his men called out in alarm and pointed towards the coast. Ragnar could just make out a thin plume of smoke which grew thicker and darker as he watched.
‘They’re burning the ships,’ he called out in alarm. ‘Leave everything. We need to get back to the beach.’
Reluctantly his men dumped what they’d found in the settlement and in the various farmsteads they’d raided on their way there and started to run at a steady pace towards the smoke. In all they’d managed to round up a total of nineteen horses during the raid and these now enabled Ragnar and some of his men to travel the five miles back to their ships at three times the pace set by the men on foot.
As he cantered out of the trees that lined the coast at that point he saw a group of Viking boys roped together and standing in the open. He saw with relief that one of them was his son, Fridlief. He had a cut to his shoulder but otherwise seemed unharmed.
Behind them lay the sand dunes and around them grew clumps of gorse and other shrubs. He pulled his snorting horse to a halt, sensing a trap. Now he could see seven individual clouds of smoke making their way lazily into the still air ahead of him. He suspected that his ships would soon be little more than charred hulks, if they weren’t already, and he seethed with anger.
Those behind him went to free the boys, but he called them back to the edge of the trees.
‘It’s a trap. Whoever has fired our ships wants us out in the open. Our boys aren’t going anywhere. Let me think.’
Cynefrith swore under his breath when the Vikings halted at the tree line. He had hoped to catch them in the open where his archers could reduce their numbers before he charged them. He and the majority of his men sat on their horses in dead ground whilst his archers had taken up positions in the gorse bushes on either side o
f the boys. The latter would have fled but Cynefrith had the sense to tie them together and then secure the end of the rope to a stake driven deep into the ground.
After a few minutes the Vikings split into two groups and circled around the captured boys, obviously looking for the men that they guessed were in the undergrowth. Cynefrith was in a quandary. He daren’t wait too much longer because he knew that the rest of the Vikings on foot would be arriving soon. On the other hand he didn’t want to lose any more men than he had to dealing with the riders.
He waited until the nine men circling his way had found the first of his archers. As soon as he was spotted, the man sent arrow after arrow towards the nine Vikings, killing one, wounding another and bringing a horse to its knees with an arrow in its chest. Cynefrith led his men out of the hollow and, before the other group could react, he charged into the remainder of the group, taking advantage of their disarray.
‘Kill the boys,’ he yelled as he fended off a sword thrust with his heavy round shield. He thrust his own sword into the man’s leg and his assailant howled in rage and pain. The Viking raised his sword to cut at Cynefrith’s head, but he was too slow. As the sword descended Cynefrith thrust his blade into his throat. With a gurgle the Viking fell sideways off his horse.
Ragnar’s instinct had been to charge to the rescue of the other group, but the Northumbrians had nearly twice the number of men he had with him. In any case, most of them were dead or badly wounded. He roared in rage, willing the rest of his men to arrive before it was too late.
Instead he headed for the boys, intent on rescuing his son. Suddenly several arrows slammed into the captives and he saw several drop to the ground, including Fridlief. He couldn’t believe that the boy was dead – he was barely twelve years old. However, the arrow in his throat and another in the centre of his chest left little doubt. He was so consumed by grief that for a moment he couldn’t think.
‘Ragnar, we have to get out of here before we’re all killed,’ Olaf said, grabbing the reins of his horse.
Dumbly the king nodded and looked up. The Anglo-Saxon swine were now reforming to charge his group, so he turned his horse’s head away from them and led his remaining men back into the trees.
Cynefrith saw them go and held up his hand to halt his men.
‘Let’s get out of here before the rest arrive. Make sure none of the heathen devils are left alive though.’
The archers emerged from the gorse and swiftly checked that the fallen Viking warriors and the ships’ boys were dead, cutting the throats of those still alive, before retrieving their horses from the hollow. Cynefrith led his men back onto the track that led to Bebbanburg. Five minutes after they had disappeared the first of the panting Vikings on foot appeared and found their king cradling his son’s corpse in his arms.
-℣-
It had seemed a good idea to split his fleet into three and attack different parts of the Northumbrian coast; now Ragnar bitterly regretted his decision. His scouts, who had followed Cynefrith’s trail, told him that the Northumbrians had fled towards Bebbanburg, but he knew he had too few men to do anything against such a formidable stronghold. He could still remember how impregnable it was from the year he’d spent living in its shadow when he was a boy.
Lagertha had been even more devastated than Ragnar. The boy had been her only son and she blamed her former husband for his death. Now the love she still felt for Ragnar turned to hatred. He was used to the close relationship they had enjoyed, even after their break, so he, in turn, bitterly resented her animosity. Not only had he lost a confidante and a friend, but her change in attitude galled his pride.
He had burned the dead on the beach using the charred wood from the destroyed longships. That was another thing she held against him. He hadn’t waited for her to re-join him before conducting Fridlief’s funeral. When he pointed out to her that the corpse would have rotted and been a stinking pile of putrefying flesh and bone had he delayed, she flew at him in a rage and tried to gouge his eyes out. Only Olaf’s quick thinking saved the astounded Ragnar. He smashed his fist into the side of Lagertha’s head and she dropped like a stone.
‘I should take my ships and leave you here to rot with the ashes of our son,’ she hissed at him when she regained consciousness.
‘You forget that you are one of my jarls. You have sworn an oath to be loyal to me. Desert me now and I’ll hunt you down and kill you. Besides, don’t you want revenge on our son’s killer?’
She said nothing for a while, merely gazing at him with malice. Eventually she dropped her eyes and nodded.
Until they saw it for themselves, those who didn’t know Bebbanburg wouldn’t believe that it was as impregnable as Ragnar said it was. When they reached it they realised that, even with hundreds of men, a direct assault wasn’t going to work. They could probably starve the garrison out, given time, but that was one thing Ragnar didn’t have. Vikings were successful raiders because they struck hard and swiftly. He had no intention of fighting a pitched battle against a Northumbrian army.
‘The men are getting disgruntled,’ Olaf warned him after they’d been camped outside Bebbanburg for two days. ‘They’ve scoured the land around here and there’s nothing left worth taking. They’ve gained barely enough silver to make a Thor’s hammer each and they want to go home.’
A Thor’s hammer was the talisman that most Scandinavians wore on a leather thong or a silver chain around their necks. Traditionally they kissed it before going into battle to bring them luck.
‘At least there are two drekar, a couple of birlinns and two knarrs down on the jetty. They’ll do to replace the longships we lost,’ he went on.
‘I know. We helped build the drekar if you remember,’ Ragnar reminded him.
‘Was that here? I’d thought the place was familiar.’ He grinned. ‘It’s only fair that we take them back then, seeing as how we built them.’
Ragnar nodded. It all seemed a long time ago now. Then he was a ship’s boy, now he was a king twice over. It made his son’s death all the more poignant. He didn’t like to admit it, but Fridlief had been his favourite, possibly because he was Lagertha’s son.
‘Send a couple of ships over to the monastery,’ he told Olaf. ‘It’s deserted, no doubt, but they may have left a few things of value behind; then burn it to the ground. We’re going home.’
He didn’t tell anyone at the time, but he vowed that someday he would return and kill the Lord of Bebbanburg if it was the last thing he ever did.
-℣-
‘What do you want here?’ Eystein Beli asked, glaring down at Agnar and Eirik Ragnarson from his throne high on a dais in the hall at Uppsala.
‘We want to know the whereabouts of Queen Aslaug,’ Agnar replied calmly. ‘She has disappeared from Arendal with our baby sister and we are concerned for her safety.’
‘You are concerned for her safety? Are you sure you don’t mean that she should be concerned about her safety from you two?’
‘Why should you say that, King Eystein? Agnar asked him. ‘She is our father’s wife and he left her in my care when he went raiding this summer’.
‘Raiding? Raiding where? Not Sweden?’
‘No, England. Why?’
‘Because he swore an oath to me not to raid anywhere in Sweden when he married my daughter.’
‘Well, I’d say that oath is null and void if she has deserted him, wouldn’t you?’ Eirik asked nastily.
It was obvious that Eystein wasn’t about to tell them anything, so they sent the crew of the two drekar in which they’d travelled to Uppsala into the taverns to find out what they could. It didn’t take them long to discover what had happened.
‘She arrived here on a knarr with a baby girl and two thralls,’ one of the men reported. ‘Her father told her to return to Ragnar, but she refused so he banished her. A Norseman from Orkneyjar – a man named Ingólfr Arnarson - was visiting and the rumour is that she seduced him and he took her back with him. I’m sorry, Agnar.’
The two brothers were stunned. They wouldn’t want to be Ingólfr when Ragnar caught up with him.
‘What do we do now?’ Eirik asked when they were alone again.
‘Leave Aslaug to our father; at least we’ve found out where she’s gone,’ his brother replied.
After a few minutes Eirik broke the silence again.
‘We can’t go back empty handed. Our four hundred men will expect to get something out of this voyage.’
Not only had they brought a drekar each, but there were five more longships beached a few miles away. They hadn’t wanted to venture into Swedish waters without a fleet to protect them, but it would have looked somewhat belligerent to have arrived at Uppsala with so many warriors.
Agnar smiled slyly.
‘Do you remember Gotland, Finnulf’s island? I gather that his cousin rules there now. We could plunder it on our way home.’
‘Finnulf? The jarl that Lagertha killed with an arrow into his eye from a hundred yards?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Why not?’
-℣-
Edmund stood on the parapet at Bebbanburg and thought about Joscelin. It had been two years since he had last seen her but scarcely a day went by when he didn’t think of her. His greatest desire was to sail back to marry her but, after the death of his brother, he’d been too busy to embark on such a journey.
He sighed and his eyes swivelled from the far horizon, beyond which his love lay, to the other side of the bay where the smoke rose into the sky from the burning monastery on Lindisfarne. He hit the wood beneath his hand in frustration. Against the strength of the Vikings he could do nothing with the numbers inside the fortress. He hadn’t even been able to stop them taking his ships. It would take a long time and a lot of money to replace them he thought bitterly.
The only good news was that the Norse fleet had sailed away after venting their frustration on the island. Fortunately he had had enough warning and the inhabitants of both Lindisfarne and the vill of Bebbanburg had time to take refuge inside his stronghold with their livestock before the Vikings had arrived to besiege it.
