Sword Song

by Bernard Cornwell

  “But nothing,” I said, louder and harsher still. “For if a man does not contribute to his country’s defense then that man is a traitor. He should be dispossessed of his land, put to death, and his family reduced to slavery.”

  I thought Alfred might object to those words, but he kept silent. Indeed, he nodded agreement. I was the blade inside his scabbard and he was evidently pleased that I had shown the steel for an instant. The Mercians said nothing.

  “We also need men for ships, lord King,” I went on.

  “Ships?” Alfred asked.

  “Ships?” Erkenwald echoed.

  “We need crewmen,” I explained. We had captured twenty-one ships when we took Lundene, of which seventeen were fighting boats. The others were wider beamed, built for trading, but they could be useful too. “I have the ships,” I went on, “but they need crews, and those crews have to be good fighters.”

  “You defend the city with ships?” Erkenwald asked defiantly.

  “And where will your money come from?” I asked him. “From customs dues. But no trader dare sail here, so I have to clear the estuary of enemy ships. That means killing the pirates, and for that I need crews of fighting men. I can use my household troops, but they have to be replaced in the city’s garrison by other men.”

  “I need ships,” Æthelred suddenly intervened.

  Æthelred needed ships? I was so astonished that I said nothing. My cousin’s job was to defend southern Mercia and push the Danes northward from the rest of his country, and that would mean fighting on land. Now, suddenly, he needed ships? What did he plan? To row across pastureland?

  “I would suggest, lord King,” Æthelred was smiling as he spoke, his voice smooth and respectful, “that all the ships west of the bridge be given to me, for use in your service,” and he bowed to Alfred when he said that, “and my cousin be given the ships east of the bridge.”

  “That…” I began, but was cut off by Alfred.

  “That is fair,” the king said firmly. It was not fair, it was ridiculous. There were only two fighting ships in the stretch of river east of the bridge, and fifteen upstream of the obstruction. The presence of those fifteen ships suggested that Sigefrid had been planning a major raid on Alfred’s territory before we struck him, and I needed those ships to scour the estuary clear of enemies. But Alfred, eager to be seen supporting his son-in-law, swept my objections aside. “You will use what ships you have, Lord Uhtred,” he insisted, “and I will put seventy of my household guard under your command to crew one ship.”

  So I was to drive the Danes from the estuary with two ships? I gave up, and leaned against the wall as the discussion droned on, mostly about the level of customs to be charged, and how much the neighboring shires were to be taxed, and I wondered yet again why I was not in the north where a man’s sword was free and there was small law and much laughter.

  Bishop Erkenwald cornered me when the meeting was over. I was strapping on my sword belt when he peered up at me with his beady eyes. “You should know,” he greeted me, “that I opposed your appointment.”

  “As I would have opposed yours,” I said bitterly, still angry at Æthelred’s theft of the fifteen warships.

  “God may not look with blessing on a pagan warrior,” the newly appointed bishop explained himself, “but the king, in his wisdom, considers you a soldier of ability.”

  “And Alfred’s wisdom is famous,” I said blandly.

  “I have spoken with the Lord Æthelred,” he went on, ignoring my words, “and he has agreed that I can issue writs of assembly for Lundene’s adjacent counties. You have no objection?”

  Erkenwald meant that he now had the power to raise the fyrd. It was a power that might better have been given me, but I doubted Æthelred would have agreed to that. Nor did I think that Erkenwald, nasty man though he was, would be anything but loyal to Alfred. “I have no objection,” I said.

  “Then I shall inform Lord Æthelred of your agreement,” he said formally.

  “And when you speak with him,” I said, “tell him to stop hitting his wife.”

  Erkenwald jerked as though I had just struck him in the face. “It is his Christian duty,” he said stiffly, “to discipline his wife, and it is her duty to submit. Did you not listen to what I preached?”

  “To every word,” I said.

  “She brought it on herself,” Erkenwald snarled. “She has a fiery spirit, she defies him!”

  “She’s little more than a child,” I said, “and a pregnant child at that.”

  “And foolishness is deep in the heart of a child,” Erkenwald responded, “and those are the words of God! And what does God say should be done about the foolishness of a child? That the rod of correction shall beat it far away!” He shuddered suddenly. “That is what you do, Lord Uhtred! You beat a child into obedience! A child learns by suffering pain, by being beaten, and that pregnant child must learn her duty. God wills it! Praise God!”

  I heard only last week that they want to make Erkenwald into a saint. Priests come to my home beside the northern sea where they find an old man, and they tell me I am just a few paces from the fires of hell. I only need repent, they say, and I will go to heaven and live for evermore in the blessed company of the saints.

  And I would rather burn till time itself burns out.

  SEVEN

  Water dripped from oar-blades, the drips spreading ripples in a sea that was shining slabs of light that slowly shifted and parted, joined and slid.

  Our ship was poised on that shifting light, silent.

  The sky to the east was molten gold pouring around a bank of sun-drenched cloud, while the rest was blue. Pale blue to the east and dark blue to the west where night fled toward the unknown lands beyond the distant ocean.

  To the south I could see the low shore of Wessex. It was green and brown, treeless and not that far away, though I would go no closer for the light-sliding sea concealed mudbanks and shoals. Our oars were resting and the wind was dead, but we moved relentlessly eastward, carried by the tide and by the river’s strong flow. This was the estuary of the Temes; a wide place of water, mud, sand, and terror.

  Our ship had no name and she carried no beast-heads on her prow or stern. She was a trading ship, one of the two I had captured in Lundene, and she was wide-beamed, sluggish, big-bellied, and clumsy. She carried a sail, but the sail was furled on the yard, and the yard was in its crutches. We drifted on the tide toward the golden dawn.

  I stood with the steering-oar in my right hand. I wore mail, but no helmet. My two swords were strapped to my waist, but they, like my mail coat, were hidden beneath a dirty brown woolen cloak. There were twelve rowers on the benches, Sihtric was beside me, one man was on the bow platform and all those men, like me, showed neither armor nor weapons.

  We looked like a trading ship drifting along the Wessex shore in hope that no one on the northern side of the estuary would see us.

  But they had seen us.

  And a sea-wolf was stalking us.

  She was rowing to our north, slanting south and eastward, waiting for us to turn and try to escape upriver against the tide. She was perhaps a mile away and I could see the short black upright line of her stemhead, which ended in a beast’s head. She was in no hurry. Her shipmaster could see we were not rowing and he would take that inactivity as a sign of panic. He would think we were discussing what to do. His own oar banks were dipping slow, but every stroke surged that distant boat forward to cut off our seaward escape.

  Finan, who was manning one of the stern oars of our ship, glanced over his shoulder. “Crew of fifty?” he suggested.

  “Maybe more,” I said.

  He grinned. “How many more?”

  “Could be seventy?” I guessed.

  We numbered forty-three, and all but fifteen of us were hidden in the place where the ship would normally have carried goods. Those hidden men were covered by an old sail, making it look as though we carried salt or grain, some cargo that needed to be protected from any r
ain or spray. “Be a rare fight if it’s seventy,” Finan said with relish.

  “Won’t be any fight at all,” I said, “because they won’t be ready for us,” and that was true. We looked like an easy victim, a handful of men on a tubby ship, and the sea-wolf would come alongside and a dozen men would leap aboard while the rest of the crew just watched the slaughter. That, at least, was what I hoped. The watching crew would be armed, of course, but they would not be expecting battle, and my men were more than ready.

  “Remember,” I called loudly so the men beneath the sail would hear me, “we kill them all!”

  “Even women?” Finan asked.

  “Not women,” I said. I doubted there would be women aboard the far ship.

  Sihtric was crouching beside me and now squinted up. “Why kill them all, lord?”

  “So they learn to fear us,” I said.

  The gold in the sky was brightening and fading. The sun was above the cloud bank and the sea shimmered with its new brilliance. The reflected image of the enemy was long on the light-flickering, slow-moving water.

  “Steorbord oars!” I called, “back water. Clumsy now!”

  The oarsmen grinned as they deliberately churned the water with clumsy strokes that slowly turned our prow upriver so that it appeared as though we were trying to escape. The sensible thing for us to have done, had we been as innocent and vulnerable as we looked, would have been to row to the southern shore, ground the boat, and run for our lives, but instead we turned and started rowing against tide and current. Our oars clashed, making us look like incompetent, scared fools.

  “He’s taken the bait,” I said to our rowers, though, because our bows now pointed westward, they could see for themselves that the enemy had started rowing hard. The Viking was coming straight for us, her oar banks rising and falling like wings and the white water swelling and shrinking at her stem as each blade-beat surged the ship.

  We kept feigning panic. Our oars banged into each other so that we did little except stir the water around our clumsy hull. Two gulls circled our stubby mast, their cries sad in the limpid morning. Far to the west, where the sky was darkened by the smoke of Lundene that lay beyond the horizon, I could just see a tiny dark streak, which I knew to be the mast of another ship. She was coming toward us, and I knew the enemy ship would have seen her too and would be wondering whether she was friend or foe.

  Not that it mattered, for it would take the enemy only five minutes to capture our small, undermanned cargo ship and it would be the best part of an hour before the ebbing tide and steady rowing could bring that western ship to where we struggled. The Viking boat came on fast, her oars working in lovely unison, but the ship’s speed meant that her oarsmen would be tired as well as unprepared by the time she reached us. Her beast-head, proud on her high stem, was an eagle with an open beak painted red as if the bird had just ripped bloody flesh from a victim, while beneath the carved head a dozen armed men were crowded on the bow platform. They were the men supposed to board and kill us.

  Twenty oars a side made forty men. The boarding party added a dozen, though it was hard to count the men who were crowded so close together, and two men stood beside the steering-oar. “Between fifty and sixty,” I called aloud. The enemy rowers were not in mail. They did not expect to fight, and most would have their swords at their feet and their shields stacked in the bilge.

  “Stop oars!” I called. “Rowers, get up!”

  The eagle-prowed ship was close now. I could hear the creak of her oar tholes, the splash of her blades, and the hiss of the sea at her cutwater. I could see bright ax blades, the helmeted faces of the men who thought they would kill us, and the anxiety on the steersman’s face as he attempted to lay his bows directly on ours. My rowers were milling about, feigning panic. The Viking oarsmen gave a last heave and I heard their shipmaster order them to cease rowing and ship oars. She ran on toward us, water sliding away from her stem and she was very close now, close enough to smell, and the men on her bow platform hefted their shields as the steersman aimed her bows to slide along our flank. Her oars were drawn inboard as she swooped to her kill.

  I waited a heartbeat, waited until the enemy could no longer avoid us, then sprang our ambush. “Now!” I shouted.

  The sail was dragged away and suddenly our little ship bristled with armed men. I threw off my cloak and Sihtric brought me my helmet and shield. A man shouted a warning on the enemy ship and the steersman threw his weight on his long oar and his vessel turned slightly, but she had turned away too late, and there was a splintering sound as her bows cracked through our oar shafts. “Now!” I shouted again.

  Clapa was my man in our bows and he hurled a grapnel to haul the enemy into our embrace. The grapnel slammed over her sheer-strake, Clapa heaved, and the impetus of the enemy ship made her swing on the line to crash against our flank. My men immediately swarmed over her side. These were my household troops, trained warriors, dressed in mail and hungry for slaughter, and they leaped among unarmored oarsmen who were utterly unprepared for a fight. The enemy boarders, the only men armed and keyed for a battle, hesitated as the two ships crashed together. They could have attacked my men who were already killing, but instead their leader shouted at them to jump across onto our ship. He hoped to take my men in the rear, and it was a shrewd enough tactic, but we still had enough men left aboard to thwart them. “Kill them all!” I shouted.

  One Dane, I assume he was a Dane, tried to jump onto my platform and I simply banged my shield into him and he disappeared between the ships where his mail took him instantly to the sea’s bed. The other Viking boarders had reached the stern rowers’ benches where they hacked and cursed at my men. I was behind and above them, and only had Sihtric for company, and the two of us could have stayed safe by remaining on the steering platform, but a man does not lead by staying out of a fight. “Stay where you are,” I told Sihtric, and jumped.

  I shouted a challenge as I jumped and a tall man turned to face me. He had an eagle’s wing on his helmet, and his mail was fine, and his arms were bright with rings, and his shield was painted with an eagle, and I knew he must be the owner of the enemy ship. He was a Viking lord, fair-bearded and brown-eyed, and he carried a long-handled ax, its blade already reddened, and he swept it at me and I parried with the shield and his ax dropped at the last moment to cut at my ankles and, by the gift of Thor, the ship lurched and the ax lost its force in a rib of the trading ship. He kept my sword lunge away with his shield as he raised the ax again and I shield-charged him, throwing him back with my weight.

  He should have fallen, but he staggered back into his own men and so stayed on his feet. I cut at his ankle and Serpent-Breath rasped on metal. His boots were protected as mine were by metal strips. The ax hurtled around and thumped into my shield, and his shield crashed into my sword and I was hurled back by the double blow. I hit the edge of the steering platform with my shoulderblades and he charged me again, trying to drive me down, and I was half aware of Sihtric still standing on the small stern platform and beating a sword at my enemy, but the blade glanced off the Dane’s helmet and wasted itself on the man’s mailed shoulders. He kicked at my feet, knowing I was unbalanced, and I fell.

  “Turd,” he snarled, then took one backward step. Behind him his men were dying, but he had time to kill me before he died himself. “I am Olaf Eagleclaw,” he told me proudly, “and I will meet you in the corpse-hall.”

  “Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” I said, and I was still on the deck as he lifted his ax high.

  And Olaf Eagleclaw screamed.

  I had fallen on purpose. He was heavier than me, and he had me cornered, and I knew he would go on beating at me and I would be helpless to push him away, and so I had fallen. Sword blades were wasted on his fine mail and on his shining helmet, but now I thrust Serpent-Breath upward, under the skirt of his mail, up into his unarmored groin, and I followed her up, ripping the blade into him and through him as the blood drenched the deck between us. He was staring at me, wide-eye
d and mouth open, as the ax fell from his hand. I was standing now, still hauling on Serpent-Breath, and he fell away, twitching, and I yanked her out of his body and saw his right hand scrabbling for his ax handle, and I kicked it toward him and watched his fingers curl around the haft before I killed him with a quick thrust into the throat. More blood spilled across the ship’s timbers.

  I make that small fight sound easy. It was not. It is true I fell on purpose, but Olaf made me fall, and instead of resisting, I let myself drop. Sometimes, in my old age, I wake shivering in the night as I remember the moments I should have died and did not. That is one of those moments. Perhaps I remember it wrong? Age clouds old things. There must have been the sound of feet scraping on the deck, the grunt of men making a blow, the stench of the filthy bilge, the gasps of wounded men. I remember the fear as I fell, the gut-souring, mind-screaming panic of imminent death. It was but a moment of life, soon gone, a flurry of blows and panic, a fight hardly worth remembering, yet still Olaf Eagleclaw can wake me in the darkness and I lie, listening to the sea beat on the sand, and I know he will be waiting for me in the corpse-hall where he will want to know whether I killed him by pure luck or whether I planned that fatal thrust. He will also remember that I kicked the ax back into his grasp so that he could die with a weapon in his hand, and for that he will thank me.

  I look forward to seeing him.

  By the time Olaf was dead his ship was taken and his crew slaughtered. Finan had led the charge onto the Sea-Eagle. I knew she was called that, for her name was cut in runic letters on her stem-post. “It was no fight,” Finan reported, sounding disgusted.

  “I told you,” I said.

  “A few of the rowers found weapons,” he said, dismissing their effort with a shrug. Then he pointed down into the Sea-Eagle’s bilge that was sodden with blood. Five men crouched there, shivering, and Finan saw my questioning look. “They’re Saxons, lord,” he explained why the men still lived.