The Empty Throne (The Warrior Chronicles, Book 8)

by Bernard Cornwell

  Fire. The weakest part of the trap was the long building on the western side of the street. We did not have time to break down the roof and make a fighting platform above the wall, and the trapped Norsemen would find it easy enough to splinter open the building’s blocked door and wide windows with their war axes, and so I had men fill the long room with kindling and straw, with baulks of wood, with anything that would burn. If they broke into the old barracks, Sigtryggr’s warriors would be greeted with an inferno.

  And on the fighting platform above the gate we heaped more tree trunks. I ordered two Roman houses pulled down, and men carried their blocks of masonry to the barricades and to the gate. Throwing spears were gathered to hurl down at Sigtryggr’s men. The sun climbed, and we worked, adding timber, stone, steel, and fire to the trap. Then we closed the gate, put men on the walls, raised our bright flags, and waited.

  Welcome to Ceaster.

  ‘Æthelflaed knew you weren’t coming straight here,’ my daughter told me. ‘She knew you were provisioning a ship.’

  ‘But she didn’t stop me?’

  Stiorra smiled. ‘Shall I tell you what she said?’

  ‘You’d better.’

  ‘Your father, she told me, is at his best when he is disobedient.’

  I grunted. Stiorra and I were standing on the fighting platform above the North Gate, from where I gazed towards the distant woods out of which I expected Sigtryggr to appear. The sun had been shining all morning, but now clouds came from the north and west. Far to the north, somewhere over the wild lands of Cumbraland, the rain was already falling in shadowy veils, but Ceaster was dry.

  ‘More stones?’ Gerbruht asked. There must have been two hundred blocks of masonry stacked on the high platform, none of them smaller than a man’s head.

  ‘More stones,’ I said. I waited till he had gone. ‘What use would I have been here,’ I asked Stiorra, ‘if I couldn’t fight?’

  ‘I think the Lady Æthelflaed knew that.’

  ‘She’s a clever bitch.’

  ‘Father!’ she protested.

  ‘So are you,’ I said.

  ‘And she thinks it’s high time I was married,’ Stiorra said.

  I growled slightly. My daughter’s marriage was not Æthelflaed’s concern, though she was right in thinking that it was well beyond time that Stiorra found a husband. ‘Does she have a victim in mind?’ I asked.

  ‘A West Saxon, she says.’

  ‘A West Saxon! What? Just any West Saxon?’

  ‘She tells me that Ealdorman Æthelhelm has three sons.’

  I laughed at that. ‘You don’t bring him enough advantages. No land, no great fortune. He might marry you to his steward, but not to one of his sons.’

  ‘Lady Æthelflaed says that any son of a West Saxon ealdorman would make a good match,’ Stiorra said.

  ‘She would.’

  ‘Why?’

  I shrugged. ‘Æthelflaed wants to bind me to her brother’s kingdom,’ I explained, ‘she worries that if she dies I’ll go back to join the pagans, so she thinks your marriage to a West Saxon would help.’

  ‘And would it?’ she asked.

  I shrugged again. ‘I can hardly see myself fighting against the father of your children. Not if you liked him. So yes, it would help.’

  ‘Do I have any choice?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course not.’

  She grimaced. ‘So you and the Lady Æthelflaed choose for me?’

  I saw birds flying above the distant wood. Something had disturbed them. ‘It’s not Æthelflaed’s business,’ I said. ‘I’ll choose for you.’

  Stiorra had also noticed the birds rising from the trees and was gazing at them. ‘Did mother have a choice?’

  ‘No choice at all. She saw me and was stricken.’ I had spoken lightly, but it was true, or at least it had been true for me. ‘I saw her,’ I went on, ‘and I was stricken too.’

  ‘But you’ll marry me for advantage? For land or money?’

  ‘What other use are you?’ I asked sternly. She looked up at me and I tried to keep a straight face, but she made me laugh. ‘I won’t marry you to a bad man,’ I promised, ‘and I’ll provide you with a rich dowry, but you know and I know that we marry for advantage.’ I stared at the far woods and saw nothing untoward, but I was certain the Norsemen were there.

  ‘You didn’t marry for advantage,’ Stiorra said accusingly.

  ‘But you will,’ I said, ‘for my advantage.’ I turned as Gerbruht carried another chunk of masonry to the fighting platform. ‘There must be cess pots in the town,’ I suggested to him.

  ‘Shit pots, lord?’

  ‘Bring as many as you can.’

  He grinned. ‘Yes, lord!’

  A shaft of sunlight lit the Roman cemetery, glinting off the white stones. ‘Is there a man you want to marry?’ I asked Stiorra.

  ‘No,’ she shook her head, ‘no.’

  ‘But you’re thinking about marriage?’

  ‘I want to make you a grandfather,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe I’ll send you to a nunnery,’ I growled.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘you won’t.’

  And I remembered Gisela’s prophecy, drawn from the runesticks so long ago. One son would break my heart, one would make me proud, and Stiorra would be the mother of kings, and so far the runesticks had been proven right. One son had become a priest, the other was proving to be a warrior, and there was only Stiorra’s fate to determine. And thinking of the runesticks made me remember Ælfadell, the old woman who had prophesied a future of dead kings, and I thought of her granddaughter, the girl who could not speak, but who enraptured men with her beauty. Her grandmother had called her Erce, but afterwards, when she married Cnut Longsword, she was given the name Frigg. He had not married her for land or for advantage, but simply because she was so lovely. We had captured her before Teotanheale, her and her son, but I had been in such pain ever since that I had half forgotten her. ‘I wonder what happened to Frigg?’ I said to my daughter.

  ‘You don’t know?’ she asked, surprised.

  Her surprise surprised me. ‘You know?’ I asked.

  She half smiled. ‘Your son keeps her.’

  I stared at her in shock. ‘Uhtred keeps her?’

  ‘In the farm close to Cirrenceastre. The farm you gave him.’

  I still stared at her. I had thought my son had taken an admirable interest in farming, an interest I had encouraged. Now I knew why he was so enthusiastic about the farm. ‘Why didn’t he tell me?’

  ‘I assume because he doesn’t want you visiting her, father.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘I like her.’

  ‘He hasn’t married her, has he?’ I asked, alarmed.

  ‘No, father. But it’s time he was married. He’s older than I am.’ She stepped back, grimacing, because Gerbruht was carrying a vast metal pot full of shit and piss. ‘Don’t spill it!’ she called to him.

  ‘It’s just shit from the guardhouse, lady,’ he said, ‘it never hurt anyone. Just smells a bit. Where do you want it, lord?’

  ‘Is there more?’

  ‘Lots more, lord. Buckets of the lovely stuff.’

  ‘Put it where you can tip it over the Norsemen,’ I said.

  Welcome to Ceaster.

  Sigtryggr came at noon. The sun was behind cloud again, yet its light glinted from the blades of his men. He had only brought a dozen horses from Ireland, presumably because horses are difficult to tend aboard ship, so almost all his men were on foot. I assumed Sigtryggr himself was one of the small group of horsemen who rode beneath a great white banner on which was painted a red axe.

  I had been wrong about at least one thing. Sigtryggr had brought ladders. They looked clumsy until I realised they were the masts from his beached ships on which crosspieces had been nailed or lashed. There were twelve of them, all long enough to reach across our ditch and up to the ramparts.

  The army threaded the graves of the Roman cemetery and stopped a hundred paces from the walls. They were jeering at us,
though I could not hear the insults, just the roar of men’s voices and the sound of blades being beaten against heavy shields. The horsemen came up the road, their own shields discarded. One man carried a leafy bough, a sign that they wished to talk. I looked for Eardwulf, but could not see him. The horsemen stopped, all except a single rider, who spurred his big stallion closer to the gate.

  ‘You talk to him,’ I told Merewalh, ‘he mustn’t know I’m here.’ I stepped back and closed the face-plates of my helmet.

  My daughter stayed beside Merewalh and gazed down at the lone rider. ‘That has to be Sigtryggr,’ she said, stepping back to join me.

  And so it was, and so I saw Sigtryggr Ivarson for the first time. He was a young man, a very young man. I doubted he had even seen twenty years, yet he led an army. He wore no helmet, so that his long bright hair hung down his back. He was clean-shaven and thin-faced, with sharp features softened by a smile. He gave the impression of being very sure of himself, very confident, and, I suspected, very vain. His mail shone, a chain of gold was looped three times around his neck, his arms glowed with rings, his scabbard and bridle were panelled with silver, while his horse was groomed like its master to impress. I thought of Berg’s awed words that Sigtryggr was a god come to earth. His grey horse pranced on the road, full of vigour as Sigtryggr curbed him just ten paces short of the ditch. ‘My name,’ he called, ‘is Sigtryggr Ivarson. I bid you all good day.’

  Merewalh said nothing. One of his men was muttering a translation.

  ‘You are silent,’ Sigtryggr called, ‘is that from fear? Then you are right to fear us, for we shall slaughter you. We shall take your women and enslave your children. Unless, of course, you withdraw from the city.’

  ‘Say nothing,’ I muttered to Merewalh.

  ‘If you leave I shall not pursue you. Hounds don’t pursue fieldmice.’ Sigtryggr touched heels to his horse and came a couple of paces closer. He glanced down into the flooded ditch, seeing the sharpened stakes showing just above the water, then looked back to us. Now that he was closer I could understand why Berg had been so awed. Sigtryggr was undeniably handsome; golden-haired, blue-eyed, and apparently fearless. He seemed to be amused by our silence. ‘Do you have dogs and pigs in the city?’

  ‘Let him talk,’ I muttered.

  ‘You must have both,’ he went on after pausing for the answer that did not come. ‘I ask only for practical reasons. Burying your bodies will take time, and burning your corpses will take days and burning corpses do smell so bad! But dogs and pigs will eat your flesh quickly. Unless you leave now.’ He paused, staring up at Merewalh. ‘You choose to be silent?’ he asked. ‘Then I must tell you my gods have foretold victory for me this day. The runesticks have spoken, and they do not lie! I will win, you will lose, but I console you with the thought that your dogs and pigs will not go hungry.’ He turned his horse away. ‘Farewell!’ he shouted, and spurred away.

  ‘Arrogant bastard,’ Merewalh muttered.

  We knew he planned to attack through the North Gate, but if Sigtryggr had massed his men ready for that assault we would have gathered a force to resist him and, even if Hanulf and his companions had lived to betray us by opening the gates, there would have been enough of our men to make a bloody fight in the entrance arch. So Sigtryggr set out to deceive us. He divided his forces, sending half towards the city’s north-east corner, and half to the north-west. That north-western bastion was the weakest because it had been partially undermined by floodwaters early in the spring, yet even the half collapsed bastion was a formidable obstacle. The wall had been reinforced with timbers and the ditch was deep and wide. We had good men there too, just as we did at the north-eastern ramparts, though most of our men waited where we had made the trap. They were hidden. All Sigtryggr could see at the North Gate was a group of a dozen men on the high rampart.

  Sigtryggr had kept just over a hundred men on the road. They were sitting, either on the road or in the fields on either side. I assumed we were supposed to think they were a force he was holding in reserve, but of course they were waiting for the gate to open. Other men were scattered in groups along the whole northern wall, hurling spears and insults, presumably to keep our defenders looking outwards while the five men unbarred the gate. Sigtryggr, still mounted, was just sixty or seventy paces from the wall, surrounded by his other horsemen and by a score of warriors on foot. He was taking care to gaze towards the north-west bastion, pretending no interest in the gate. He drew his sword and held it high for a heartbeat, then dropped it as a signal for the attack on that corner of the city. His men there bellowed their war cries, charged towards the ditch and thrust their cumbersome great ladders up to the wall’s top. They threw axes and spears, they made a deafening noise as they clashed their swords on shields, but not one man actually attempted to clamber up the awkward ladders. Instead Sigtryggr’s standard-bearer suddenly waved the great flag from side to side, and then, in a deliberate and flamboyant gesture, lowered the banner so that the red axe lay flat on the roadway.

  ‘Now,’ I called down.

  And the men waiting under the arch pushed open the heavy gate.

  And so the Norsemen came. They were quick, so quick that the four of my men who unbarred and pushed open the heavy gates were almost caught by Sigtryggr’s horsemen who were first through the arch. Those horsemen must have thought themselves lucky, for no spears were hurled down from the gate’s top. I did not want to check the charge, I wanted as many Norsemen in the blocked street as possible, and so the horses charged through unimpeded, their hooves suddenly loud on the old stone, and behind them came a swarm of warriors on foot. The men pretending to attack the corner bastions now abandoned their feint and streamed towards the open gateway.

  And Sigtryggr was now inside the city, and for a heartbeat or two he must have thought he had the great victory, but then he saw the high barrier in front of him and he saw the men waiting on the barricades to the east of the street, and he turned his horse fast, knowing his attack was already doomed, and the horsemen following collided with his stallion. ‘Now,’ I shouted, ‘now! Kill them!’ And the first spears flew.

  The horses had almost reached the high barricade that barred the street, and they stood no chance. They screamed as they fell, screamed as the heavy spears came and the throwing axes whirled from three sides. There was blood on the paving stones, thrashing hooves, and riders trying to extricate themselves, and behind them a rush of Norsemen crowding through the gate, still oblivious of the trap beyond.

  And this, I thought, is how my father died. How Northumbria fell. How the Danes had started their conquest of Saxon Britain, which had so nearly come to success. Like a flood they had spread south, and their victories brought the Norse in their wake, and now we had to fight back, shire by shire, village by village, taking back our land from south to north.

  ‘Lord?’ Gerbruht asked eagerly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and Gerbruht and his companions hurled down the thick tree trunks to make an obstacle in the gate, and then, with glee, hurled the shit pots into the milling Norsemen. More Norsemen were crowding outside the gate now, not understanding what delayed them, not comprehending the horror that we had readied for them, and four of my men began hurling down the big stones, each one capable of crushing a helmeted skull.

  It was a pitiless, one-sided slaughter. Some of Sigtryggr’s men tried to climb the barricades, but our men were above them, and a climbing man cannot protect himself from a spear thrust, let alone an axe blow. I was watching from the top of the gate, content to let the young men fight this battle. The Norsemen tried to fight back, but only added dead men to the barricades. A dozen warriors tried to break into the long house, hoping to escape through its rear doors. They shattered the street door with axes, but Osferth had already ordered the flaming torches hurled into the room and the thickening smoke and sudden fiery heat drove the men back from the new opening.

  Some of Sigtryggr’s men wanted to flee through the open gate, but others were still t
rying to enter, and Gerbruht and his four companions were hurling down the big stones. Men shouted to clear the gate, others tried to escape the masonry blocks, and then Finan struck from the big barricade that blocked the street.

  He had refused to let me fight. ‘You’re not strong enough yet, lord,’ he had insisted.

  ‘He’s right,’ my son had added.

  So I had stayed on the fighting platform above the gate and from there I watched as Finan and my son led fifty men across that high barricade. They jumped down into the street, into a space cleared by spears and stones, a space littered with the bodies of men and horses, a space where they made a shield wall, and the Norsemen, infuriated, wounded, frightened, and confused, turned on them like maniacs. But the furious Norsemen did not form their own shield wall, they just saw an enemy and attacked, and Finan’s overlapping shields and levelled spears met them. ‘Forward!’ Finan shouted. ‘Slow and calm! Forward!’

  There was a clash of shield on shield, but the Norsemen, still in panic, were assailed by more missiles coming from the edge of the street, and as soon as Finan’s men had advanced a few paces so more men came from the barricade to support them. From the gate’s top all I could see was that line of overlapping shields with helmets above, and the long spears reaching forward and the whole line advancing slowly, very slowly. It had to be slow. There were too many dead or dying men in their path, and dying horses were still kicking where they lay on the street. To keep the shield wall tight Finan’s men had to step over those obstacles. They were chanting as they came. ‘Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!’ And whenever the Norsemen tried to make a wall to oppose them, so a stone would thump into them from the street’s eastern side. The heat of the burning house was driving them from the west and Finan and my son were leading a killing band from the south.