The Empty Throne (The Warrior Chronicles, Book 8)

by Bernard Cornwell

  Then I saw Sigtryggr. I thought he must have died in the first moments of our ambush, or at least been wounded as his horse went down, but there he was, still without a helmet, his long hair darkened by blood. He was in the centre of the enemy, and he bellowed at men to follow him. He shouted at others to clear the gate. He knew that Finan’s grinding shield wall would turn slaughter into butchery, and so he ran, I thought to the gate, but at the last moment he swerved and leaped at the barricade, which blocked the narrow alley running between the north wall and the closest house.

  He leaped like a deer. He had lost his shield, but he was still clothed in heavy mail and leather, yet he leaped to the barricade’s top. The swerve had been so sudden, so unexpected, and the leap so fast that the three men guarding that barricade were taken by surprise, and Sigtryggr’s sword took one in the throat and his speed carried him past that man to crash into another. That man went down, and now Norsemen were following Sigtryggr. I saw the third man hack at him with a sword, but his mail stopped the cut, and then that third man screamed as a Norseman chopped with an axe. There were a half-dozen Norsemen on the barricade now, and Gerbruht and his companions hurled stones to stop more men joining them, but Sigtryggr had jumped from the tree trunks onto the steps that led to the ramparts. He was grinning. He was enjoying himself. His men were being crushed, killed, burned, and beaten, but he was a warlord at war, and his eyes were bright with battle-joy as he turned and saw us at the very top of the long steps.

  He saw me.

  What he saw was another lord of war. He saw a man enriched by battle, a man with a fine helmet and glittering mail, a man whose arms were thick with the rings that come from victory, a man whose face was hidden behind armour plates chased with silver, a man with gold about his neck, a man who had doubtless planned this ambush, and Sigtryggr saw he could snatch one triumph from this disaster and so he came up the steps, still grinning, and Gerbruht, quick-thinking, threw a stone, but Sigtryggr was also quick, so very quick, and almost seemed to dance out of the missile’s way as he came to me. He was young, he was in love with war, he was a warrior. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted as he climbed the last steps.

  ‘I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I told him.

  He shouted for joy. Reputation would be his.

  And so he came to kill me.

  Twelve

  We have known peace. There are times when we sow our fields and know we will live till harvest, times when all that our children know of war is what the poets sing to them. Those times are rare, yet I have tried to explain to my grandchildren what war is. I am dutiful. I tell them it is bad, that it leads to sorrow and grief, yet they do not believe me. I tell them to walk into the village and see the crippled men, to stand by the graves and hear the widows weep, but they do not believe me. Instead they hear the poets, they hear the pounding rhythm of the songs that quickens like a heart in battle, they hear the stories of heroes, of men, and of women too, who carried blades against an enemy who would kill and enslave us, they hear of the glory of war, and in the courtyards they play at war, striking with wooden swords against wicker shields, and they do not believe that war is an abomination.

  And perhaps those children are right. Some priests rant against war, but those same priests are quick to shelter behind our shields when an enemy threatens, and there are always enemies. The dragon-headed ships still come to our coasts, the Scots send their war-bands south, and the Welsh love nothing more than a dead Saxon. If we did as the priests want, if we beat our swords into ploughshares, we would all be dead or enslaved, and so the children must learn the strokes of the sword and grow into the strength needed to hold a shield of iron-rimmed willow against the fury of a savage enemy. And some will learn the joy of battle, the song of the sword, the thrill of danger.

  Sigtryggr knew it. He revelled in war. I can still see him coming up those stone stairs, his face alive with joy and his long-sword reaching. Had I looked like that when I killed Ubba? Had Ubba seen my youth and eagerness, my ambition, and in those things seen his death? We leave nothing in this world but bones and reputation, and Sigtryggr, his sword already reaching for me, saw his reputation shining like a bright star in the darkness.

  Then he saw Stiorra.

  She was behind me, just to one side, her hands held to her mouth. How do I know that? I was not looking at her, but all that happened was told to me later, and she was there, and I was told she clasped her hands to stifle a scream. I had pushed Gerbruht back, not willing to let the Frisian fight my battle, and Stiorra was now closest to me. She uttered a small cry, more of shock than fear, though she should have been terrified, seeing how eagerly death leaped up the steps towards us. Then Sigtryggr saw my daughter and for an instant, for the blink of an eye, he kept his gaze on her. We expect to see men on a battlefield, but a woman? The sight of her distracted him.

  It was only a heartbeat’s hesitation, but it was enough. He had been watching my eyes, but seeing Stiorra he kept looking at her for that instant, and in that instant I moved. I was not as fast as I had been, I was not as strong as I once was, but I had been in battle all my life, and I smashed my shield arm to the left, catching the tip of his blade to sweep his sword aside, and he looked back at me, bellowed a challenge and tried to bring the sword back over the top of my shield, but Serpent-Breath was moving, rising, and I moved too, going down a step and still lifting the shield to keep his sword high and he saw my blade coming for his belly and he twisted desperately to avoid the lunge and missed his footing on the steps, and the shout of battle-rage became a cry of alarm as he stumbled. I flicked Serpent-Breath back just as he recovered to thrust his blade beneath my shield. It was a good lunge, a fast move made by a man who had still not regained his balance, and that stroke deserved to rip the flesh from my left thigh, but my shield dropped on the blade and took the force from it as I swept Serpent-Breath, meaning to cut his throat open, and he jerked his head away.

  He jerked his head an instant too late. He was still trying to find his balance and his head came back down as his foot slipped on the step, and Serpent-Breath’s sharp tip took his right eye. She took just the eye and the skin on the bridge of his nose. There was a small spurt of blood, a gush of colourless liquid, and Sigtryggr reeled away as Gerbruht pushed me aside to finish the job with his axe. That was when Sigtryggr leaped again, but this time he jumped clean off the rampart steps and down to the ditch, a long fall. Gerbruht shouted in anger at his escape, and thrust the axe at the next man, who took the blow on his shield and staggered back, and then the six Norsemen who had followed their lord fled like him. They jumped from the ramparts. One was impaled on a stake, the others, including Sigtryggr, scrambled up the ditch’s far side.

  And thus I defeated Sigtryggr and took one of his eyeballs.

  ‘I am Odin!’ Sigtryggr roared from the ditch’s edge. He had tipped his ravaged face to look at me with his one eye, and he was smiling! ‘I am Odin,’ he called to me, ‘I have gained wisdom!’ Odin had sacrificed an eye to learn wisdom and Sigtryggr was laughing in his defeat. His men dragged him away from the spears that were being hurled down from the wall, but he turned again when he was just a dozen paces away and saluted me with his sword.

  ‘I could have killed him if he hadn’t jumped,’ Gerbruht said.

  ‘He would have gutted you,’ I said, ‘he would have gutted both of us.’ He was a god come to earth, a god of war, but the god had lost, and now he went back out of range of our spears.

  Finan had reached the gate. The surviving Norse ran, going back to where they had started their charge, and where they formed a shield wall about their wounded lord. The feint attack on the north-western bastion had long been abandoned, and all the Norse were now on the road, some five hundred men.

  They still outnumbered us.

  ‘Merewalh,’ I ordered, ‘time to release your horsemen.’ I leaned over the inner rampart. ‘Finan? Did you see Eardwulf?’

  ‘No, lord.’

  ‘Then we’re not done.’ />
  It was time to take the battle outside the walls.

  Merewalh led two hundred horsemen into the fields to the east of the Norsemen. The riders stayed a good distance away. They were a threat. If Sigtryggr tried to retreat to Brunanburh he would be harried all the way and he knew it.

  Yet what choice did he have? He could throw men at the walls, but he knew he would never capture Ceaster by assault. His only chance had been treachery, and the chance was gone, leaving fifty or sixty of his men dead in the street. A dozen of Finan’s men were moving among those corpses, slitting the throats of the dying and stripping mail from the dead. ‘A good day for plunder!’ one of them called cheerfully. Another pranced down the blood-soaked stones wearing a helmet crowned with a great eagle’s wing.

  ‘Was he mad?’ Stiorra asked me.

  ‘Mad?’

  ‘Sigtryggr. To come up these steps?’

  ‘He was battle-mad,’ I said, ‘and you saved my life.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘He looked at you and it distracted him just long enough.’ I knew I would wake in the night and shiver at the memory of his sword reaching for me, shiver with the certainty that I could never have parried the speed of his attack, shiver with the sliver of fate that had saved me from death. But he had seen Stiorra and he had hesitated.

  ‘Now he wants to talk,’ she said.

  I turned and saw that a Norseman was waving a leaf-heavy branch. ‘Lord?’ Finan called from the gateway.

  ‘I’ve seen it!’

  ‘Let him come?’

  ‘Let him come,’ I said, then plucked Stiorra’s sleeve. ‘You come too.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You. Where’s Æthelstan?’

  ‘With Finan.’

  ‘Was the little bastard in the shield wall?’ I asked, shocked.

  ‘He was in the rear rank,’ Stiorra said, ‘you didn’t see him?’

  ‘I’ll kill him.’

  She chuckled, then followed me down to the barricade. We jumped into the street and stepped over the fallen masonry and the blood-laced bodies. ‘Æthelstan!’

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Weren’t you supposed to be in the church?’ I demanded. ‘Did I give you permission to join Finan’s shield wall?’

  ‘I left the church to piss, lord,’ he said earnestly, ‘and I never meant to join Finan’s men. I was just going to watch them from the top of the logs, but I tripped.’

  ‘You tripped?’

  He nodded vigorously. ‘I tripped, lord,’ he said, ‘and fell into the street.’ I saw that Cengar, the boy he had rescued, was protectively close to him, as were two of Finan’s men.

  ‘You didn’t trip,’ I said, then clipped him around the ear, which, because he was wearing a helmet, hurt me a lot more than it did him. ‘You’re coming with me,’ I said. ‘And you too,’ I added to Stiorra.

  The three of us walked under the arch, stepped around the bodies with their heads crushed by rocks, avoided the puddles of shit, then Finan’s ranks parted for us. ‘You two are coming with us,’ I said to Finan and my son. ‘The rest of you stay here.’

  We walked thirty or forty paces up the road. I stopped and cupped my hands. ‘You can bring two men!’

  Sigtryggr brought just one man, a great beast of a warrior with broad shoulders and a broad black beard into which was woven the jawbones of wolves or dogs. ‘He’s called Svart,’ Sigtryggr said cheerfully, ‘and he eats Saxons for breakfast.’ Sigtryggr had a strip of linen tied about his missing eye. He touched the bandage. ‘You ruined my good looks, Lord Uhtred.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me,’ I said. ‘I only talk with men. I brought you a woman and a child so you can speak to your equals.’

  He laughed. It seemed no insult touched him. ‘Then I shall talk to my equals,’ he said and bowed to Stiorra. ‘Your name, my lady?’

  She looked at me, wondering if I really wanted her to conduct the negotiations. ‘I’m not saying anything,’ I spoke to her in Danish, and spoke slowly so Sigtryggr would understand. ‘You deal with the boy.’

  Svart growled at the word ‘boy’, but Sigtryggr put a hand on the big man’s gold-bound arm. ‘Down, Svart, they’re playing word riddles.’ He smiled at Stiorra. ‘I am the Jarl Sigtryggr Ivarson, and you are?’

  ‘Stiorra Uhtredsdottir,’ she said.

  ‘And I took you to be a goddess,’ he answered.

  ‘And this is the Prince Æthelstan,’ Stiorra went on. She spoke in Danish, her voice distant and controlled.

  ‘A prince! I am honoured to meet you, lord Prince.’ He bowed to the boy, who did not understand what was being said. Sigtryggr smiled. ‘The Lord Uhtred said I must talk to my equals and he sends me a goddess and a prince! He honours me!’

  ‘You wanted to talk,’ Stiorra said coldly, ‘so talk.’

  ‘Well, lady, I confess matters have not gone as I wished. My father sent me to make a kingdom in Britain, and instead I meet your father. He’s a cunning man, is he not?’

  Stiorra said nothing, just gazed at him. She stood tall, proud, and straight-backed, looking so like her mother.

  ‘Eardwulf the Saxon told us your father was dying,’ Sigtryggr confessed. ‘He said your father was weak as a worm. He said Lord Uhtred is long past his best, that he would never be at Ceaster.’

  ‘My father still has two eyes,’ Stiorra said.

  ‘But not as beautiful as yours, my lady.’

  ‘Did you come to waste our time?’ Stiorra asked. ‘Or did you wish to surrender?’

  ‘To you, my lady, I would surrender all I have, but my men? You can count?’

  ‘I can count.’

  ‘We outnumber you.’

  ‘What he wants,’ I spoke to Finan in English, ‘is to withdraw to his ships without interference.’

  ‘And what do you want?’ Finan asked, knowing that our conversation was really for Stiorra’s benefit.

  ‘He can’t afford another fight,’ I said, ‘he’ll lose too many men. But so will we.’

  Sigtryggr did not understand what we said, but he was listening closely, as if some sense might emerge from the foreign language.

  ‘So we just let them go?’ Finan asked.

  ‘He can go back to his father,’ I said, ‘but he must leave half his swords behind and give us hostages.’

  ‘And give us Eardwulf,’ Finan said.

  ‘And give us Eardwulf,’ I agreed.

  Sigtryggr heard the name. ‘You want Eardwulf?’ he asked. ‘He’s yours. I give him to you! He and the rest of his Saxons.’

  ‘What you want,’ Stiorra said, ‘is a promise that we won’t stop you returning to your ships.’

  Sigtryggr pretended to be surprised. ‘I never thought of that, my lady, but yes! What a generous thought. We could return to our ships.’

  ‘And to your father.’

  ‘He won’t be happy.’

  ‘I shall weep for him,’ she said scornfully. ‘And you will leave half your swords here,’ she went on, ‘and we shall take hostages for your good behaviour.’

  ‘Hostages,’ he said, and for the first time did not sound confident.

  ‘We shall choose a dozen of your men,’ Stiorra said.

  ‘And how will those hostages be treated?’

  ‘With respect, of course, unless you stay on these shores, in which case they will be killed.’

  ‘You will feed them?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Feast them?’

  ‘We will feed them,’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘I cannot agree to twelve, my lady. Twelve is too many. I will offer you one hostage.’

  ‘You are ridiculous,’ Stiorra snapped.

  ‘Myself, dear lady, I offer myself.’

  And I confess he surprised me. He also astonished Stiorra, who did not know what to say, but instead looked to me for an answer. I thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘His men can return to their ships,’ I spoke to her in Danish, ‘but half will leave their swords here. They have one day to ready
the ships.’

  ‘One day,’ she said.

  ‘Two mornings from now,’ I said harshly, ‘we will bring Sigtryggr to his fleet. If the ships are afloat and ready to sail with their crews on board he can join them. If not, he dies. And Eardwulf and his followers must be given to us.’

  ‘I agree,’ Sigtryggr said. ‘May I keep my sword?’

  ‘No.’

  He unbuckled the sword belt and gave it to Svart, then, still smiling, walked to join us. And so that night we feasted with Sigtryggr.

  Æthelflaed arrived the next day. She sent no warning of her coming, but her first horsemen appeared in the mid-afternoon and, an hour later, she rode through the South Gate leading more than one hundred men, all on tired horses white with sweat. She was in her silver mail, her whitening hair ringed with a silver circlet. Her standard-bearer was holding her dead husband’s banner, the flag showing the prancing white horse. ‘What happened to the goose?’ I asked her.

  She ignored the question, staring down at me from her saddle. ‘You look better!’

  ‘I am better.’

  ‘Truly?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘Healed,’ I said.

  ‘God be thanked!’ She looked up at the clouded sky when she said that. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’ll tell you soon enough,’ I answered, ‘but what happened to the goose?’

  ‘I’m keeping Æthelred’s banner,’ she said brusquely, ‘it’s what Mercia is used to. Folk don’t like change. It’s hard enough for them to accept a woman as their ruler without imposing more new things on them.’ She swung down from Gast’s saddle. Her mail, her boots, and her long white cloak were mud-spattered. ‘I hoped you’d be here.’