Sword Song

by Bernard Cornwell

  I waited two weeks for news of my cousin’s expedition, and learned its fate on a day when I made my usual excursion down the Temes. There was always a blessed moment as we left the smoke and smells of Lundene and felt the clean sea winds. The river looped about wide marshes where herons stalked. I remember being happy that day because there were blue butterflies everywhere. They settled on the Sea-Eagle and on the Sword of the Lord that followed in our wake. One insect perched on my outstretched finger where it opened and closed its wings.

  “That means good luck, lord,” Sihtric said.

  “It does?”

  “The longer it stays there, the longer your luck lasts,” Sihtric said, and held out his own hand, but no blue butterfly settled there.

  “Looks like you’ve no luck,” I said lightly. I watched the butterfly on my finger and thought of Gisela and of childbirth. Stay there, I silently ordered the insect, and it did.

  “I’m lucky, lord,” Sihtric said, grinning.

  “You are?”

  “Ealhswith’s in Lundene,” he said. Ealhswith was the whore whom Sihtric loved.

  “There’s more trade for her in Lundene than in Coccham,” I said.

  “She stopped doing that,” Sihtric said fiercely.

  I looked at him, surprised. “She has?”

  “Yes, lord. She wants to marry me, lord.”

  He was a good-looking young man, hawk-faced, black-haired and well built. I had known him since he was almost a child, and I supposed that altered my impression of him, for I still saw the frightened boy whose life I had spared in Cair Ligualid. Ealhswith, perhaps, saw the young man he had become. I looked away, watching a tiny trickle of smoke rising from the southern marshes and I wondered whose fire it was and how they lived in that mosquito-haunted swamp. “You’ve been with her a long time,” I said.

  “Yes, lord.”

  “Send her to me,” I said. Sihtric was sworn to me and he needed my permission to marry because his wife would become a part of my household and thus my responsibility. “I’ll talk to her,” I added.

  “You’ll like her, lord.”

  I smiled at that. “I hope so,” I said.

  A flight of swans beat between our boats, their wings loud in the summer air. I was feeling content, all but for my fears about Gisela, and the butterfly was allaying that worry, though after a while it launched itself from my finger and fluttered clumsily in the southward wake of the swans. I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt, then my amulet, and sent a prayer to Frigg that Gisela would be safe.

  It was midday before we were abreast of Caninga. The tide was low and the mudflats stretched into the calm estuary where we were the only ships. I took Sea-Eagle close to Caninga’s southern shore and stared toward Beamfleot’s creek, but I could see nothing useful through the heat haze that shimmered above the island. “Looks like they’ve gone,” Finan commented. Like me he was staring northward.

  “No,” I said, “there are ships there.” I thought I could see the masts of Sigefrid’s ships through the wavering air.

  “Not as many as there should be,” Finan said.

  “We’ll take a look,” I said, and so we rowed around the island’s eastern tip, and discovered that Finan was right. Over half of Sigefrid’s ships had left the little River Hothlege.

  Only three days before there had been thirty-six masts in the creek and now there were just fourteen. I knew the missing ships had not gone upriver toward Lundene, for we would have seen them, and that left only two choices. Either they had gone east and north about the East Anglian coast, or else they had rowed south to make another raid into Cent. The sun, so hot and high and bright, winked reflected dazzling light from the spear-points on the ramparts of the high camp. Men watched us from that high wall, and they saw us turn and hoist our sails and use a small northeast wind that had stirred since dawn to carry us south across the estuary. I was looking for a great smear of smoke that would tell me a raiding party had landed to attack, plunder, and burn some town, but the sky over Cent was clear. We dropped the sail and rowed east toward the Medwæg’s mouth, and still saw no smoke, and then Finan, sharp-eyed and posted in our bows, saw the ships.

  Six ships.

  I was looking for a fleet of at least twenty boats, not some small group of ships, and at first I took no notice, assuming the six were merchant ships keeping company as they rowed toward Lundene, but then Finan came hurrying back between the rowers’ benches. “They’re warships,” he said.

  I peered eastward. I could see the dark flecks of the hulls, but my eyes were not so keen as Finan’s and I could not make out their shapes. The six hulls flickered in the heat haze. “Are they moving?” I asked.

  “No, lord.”

  “Why anchor there?” I wondered. The ships were on the far side of the Medwæg’s mouth, just off the point called Scerhnesse, which means “bright headland,” and it was a strange place to anchor for the currents swirled strong off the low point.

  “I think they’re grounded, lord,” Finan said. If the ships had been anchored I would have assumed they were waiting for the flood tide to carry them upriver, but grounded boats usually meant men had gone ashore, and the only reason to go ashore was to find plunder.

  “But there’s nothing left to steal on Scaepege,” I said, puzzled. Scerhnesse lay at the western end of Scaepege, which was an island on the southern side of the Temes’s estuary, and Scaepege had been harried and harrowed and harried again by Viking raids. Few folk lived there, and those that did hid in the creeks. The channel between Scaepege and the mainland was known as the Swealwe, and whole Viking fleets had sheltered there in bad weather. Scaepege and the Swealwe were dangerous places, but not places to find silver or slaves.

  “We’ll go closer,” I said. Finan went back to the prow as Ralla, in Sword of the Lord, pulled abreast of the Sea-Eagle. I pointed at the distant ships. “We’re taking a look at those six boats!” I called across the gap. Ralla nodded, shouted an order, and his oars bit into the water.

  I saw Finan was right as we crossed the Medwæg’s wide mouth; the six were warships, all of them longer and leaner than any cargo-carrying vessel, and all six had been beached. A trickle of smoke drifted south and west, suggesting the crews had lit a fire ashore. I could see no beast-heads on the prows, but that meant nothing. Viking crews might well regard the whole of Scaepege as Danish territory and so take down their dragons, eagles, ravens, and serpents to prevent frightening the spirits of the island.

  I called Clapa to the steering-oar. “Take her straight toward the ships,” I ordered him, then went forward to join Finan in the prow. Osferth was on one of the oars, sweating and glowering. “Nothing like rowing to put on muscle,” I told him cheerfully, and was rewarded with a scowl.

  I clambered up beside the Irishman. “They look like Danes,” he greeted me.

  “We can’t fight six crews,” I said.

  Finan scratched his groin. “They making a camp there, you think?” That was a nasty thought. It was bad enough that Sigefrid’s ships sailed from the northern side of the estuary, without another vipers’ nest being built on the southern bank.

  “No,” I said, because for once my eyes had proved sharper than the Irishman’s. “No,” I said, “they’re not making a camp.” I touched my amulet.

  Finan saw the gesture and heard the anger in my voice. “What?” he asked.

  “The ship on the left,” I said, pointing, “that’s Rodbora.” I had seen the cross mounted on the stem-post.

  Finan’s mouth opened, but he said nothing for a moment. He just stared. Six ships, just six ships, and fifteen had left Lundene. “Sweet Jesus Christ,” Finan finally spoke. He made the sign of the cross. “Perhaps the others have gone upriver?”

  “We’d have seen them.”

  “Then they’re coming behind?”

  “You’d better be right,” I said grimly, “or else it’s nine ships gone.”

  “God, no.”

  We were close now. The men ashore saw the e
agle’s head on my boat and took me for a Viking and some ran into the shallows between two of the stranded ships and made a shield wall there, daring me to attack. “That’s Steapa,” I said, seeing the huge figure at the center of the shield wall. I ordered the eagle taken down, then stood with my arms outstretched, empty-handed, to show I came in peace. Steapa recognized me, and the shields went down and the weapons were sheathed. A moment later Sea-Eagle’s bows slid soft onto the sandy mud. The tide was rising, so she was safe.

  I dropped over the side into water that came to my waist and waded ashore. I reckoned there were at least four hundred men on the beach, far too many for just six ships and, as I neared the shore, I could see that many of those men were wounded. They lay with blood-soaked bandages and pale faces. Priests knelt among them while, at the top of the beach, where pale grass topped the low dunes, I could see that crude driftwood crosses had been driven into newly dug graves.

  Steapa waited for me, his face grimmer than ever. “What happened?” I asked him.

  “Ask him,” Steapa said, sounding bitter. He jerked his head along the beach and I saw Æthelred sitting close to the fire on which a cooking pot bubbled gently. His usual entourage was with him, including Aldhelm, who watched me with a resentful face. None of them spoke as I walked toward them. The fire crackled. Æthelred was toying with a piece of bladderwrack and, though he must have been aware of my approach, he did not look up.

  I stopped beside the fire. “Where are the other nine ships?” I asked.

  Æthelred’s face jerked up, as though he were surprised to see me. He smiled. “Good news,” he said. He expected me to ask what that news was, but I just watched him and said nothing. “We have won,” he said expansively, “a great victory!”

  “A magnificent victory,” Aldhelm interjected.

  I saw that Æthelred’s smile was forced. His next words were halting, as if it took a great effort to string them together. “Gunnkel,” he said, “has been taught the power of our swords.”

  “We burned their ships!” Aldhelm boasted.

  “And made great slaughter,” Æthelred said, and I saw that his eyes were glistening.

  I looked up and down the beach where the wounded lay and where the uninjured sat with bowed heads. “You left with fifteen ships,” I said.

  “We burned their ships,” Æthelred said, and I thought he was going to cry.

  “Where are the other nine ships?” I demanded.

  “We stopped here,” Aldhelm said, and he must have thought I was being critical of their decision to beach the boats, “because we could not row against the falling tide.”

  “The other nine ships?” I asked again, but received no answer. I was still searching the beach and what I sought I could not find. I looked back at Æthelred, whose head had dropped again, and I feared to ask the next question, but it had to be asked. “Where is your wife?” I demanded.

  Silence.

  “Where,” I spoke louder, “is Æthelflaed?”

  A gull sounded its harsh, forlorn cry. “She is taken,” Æthelred said at last in a voice so small that I could barely hear him.

  “Taken?”

  “A captive,” Æthelred said, his voice still low.

  “Sweet Jesus Christ,” I said, using Finan’s favorite expletive. The wind stirred the bitter smoke into my face. For a moment I did not believe what I had heard, but all around me was evidence that Æthelred’s magnificent victory had really been a catastrophic defeat. Nine ships were gone, but ships could be replaced, and half of Æthelred’s troops were missing, yet new men could be found to replace those dead, but what could replace a king’s daughter? “Who has her?” I asked.

  “Sigefrid,” Aldhelm muttered.

  Which explained where the missing ships from Beamfleot had gone.

  And Æthelflaed, sweet Æthelflaed, to whom I had made an oath, was a captive.

  Our eight ships rode the flooding tide back up the Temes to Lundene. It was a summer’s evening, limpid and calm, in which the sun seemed to linger like a giant red globe suspended in the veil of smoke that clouded the air above the city. Æthelred made the voyage in Rodbora and, when I let Sea-Eagle drop back to row alongside that ship, I saw the black streaks where blood had stained her timbers. I quickened the oar strokes and pulled ahead again.

  Steapa traveled with me in the Sea-Eagle and the big man told me what had happened in the River Sture.

  It had, indeed, been a magnificent victory. Æthelred’s fleet had surprised the Vikings as they made their encampment on the river’s southern bank. “We came at dawn,” Steapa said.

  “You stayed all night at sea?”

  “Lord Æthelred ordered it,” Steapa said.

  “Brave,” I commented.

  “It was a calm night,” Steapa said dismissively, “and at first light we found their ships. Sixteen ships.” He stopped abruptly. He was a taciturn man and found it difficult to speak more than a few words together.

  “Beached?” I asked.

  “They were anchored,” he said.

  That suggested the Danes had wanted their vessels to be ready at any state of the tide, but it also meant the ships could not be defended because their crews had been mostly ashore where they were throwing up earth walls to make a camp. Æthelred’s fleet had made short work of the few men aboard the enemy vessels, and then the great rope-wrapped stones that served as anchors had been hauled up and the sixteen ships were towed to the northern bank and beached there. “He was going to keep them there,” Steapa explained, “till he was finished, then bring them back.”

  “Finished?” I asked.

  “He wanted to kill all the pagans before we left,” Steapa said, and explained how Æthelred’s fleet had marauded up the Sture and its adjacent river, the Arwan, landing men along the banks to burn Danish halls, slaughter Danish cattle and, when they could, to kill Danes. The Saxon raiders had caused panic. Folk had fled inland, but Gunnkel, left shipless in his encampment at the mouth of the Sture, had not panicked.

  “You didn’t attack the camp?” I asked Steapa.

  “Lord Æthelred said it was too well protected.”

  “I thought you said it was unfinished?”

  Steapa shrugged. “They hadn’t built the palisade,” he said, “at least on one side, so we could have got in and killed them, but we’d have lost a lot of our own men too.”

  “True,” I admitted.

  “So we attacked farms instead,” Steapa went on, and while Æthelred’s men raided the Danish settlements, Gunnkel had sent messengers southward to the other rivers of the East Anglian coast. There, on those riverbanks, were other Viking encampments. Gunnkel was summoning reinforcements.

  “I told Lord Æthelred to leave,” Steapa said gloomily, “I told him on the second day. I said we’d stayed long enough.”

  “He wouldn’t listen to you?”

  “He called me a fool,” Steapa said with a shrug. Æthelred had wanted plunder, and so he had stayed in the Sture and his men brought him anything they could find of value, from cooking pots to reaping knives. “He found some silver,” Steapa said, “but not much.”

  And while Æthelred stayed to enrich himself, the sea-wolves gathered.

  Danish ships came from the south. Sigefrid’s ships had sailed from Beamfleot, joining other boats that rowed from the mouths of the Colaun, the Hwealf, and the Pant. I had passed those rivers often enough and imagined the lean fast boats sliding out through the mudbanks on the ebbing tides, with their high prows fiercely decorated with beasts and their hulls filled with vengeful men, shields, and weapons.

  The Danish ships gathered off the island of Horseg, south of the Sture in the wide bay that is haunted by wildfowl. Then, on a gray morning, under a summer rainstorm that blew in from the sea, and on a flooding tide made stronger by a full moon, thirty-eight ships came from the ocean to enter the Sture.

  “It was a Sunday,” Steapa said, “and the Lord Æthelred insisted we listen to a sermon.”

  “Alfr
ed will be pleased to hear that,” I said sarcastically.

  “It was on the beach,” Steapa said, “where the Danish boats were grounded.”

  “Why there?”

  “Because the priests wanted to drive the evil spirits from the boats,” he said, and told me how the beast-heads from the captured ships had been stacked in a great pile on the sand. Driftwood had been packed around them, along with straw from a nearby thatch, and then, to loud prayers from the priests, the heap had been set alight. Dragons and eagles, ravens and wolves had burned, their flames leaping high, and the smoke of the great fire must have blown inland as the rain spat and hissed on the burning wood. The priests had prayed and chanted, crowing their victory over the pagans, and no one had noticed the dark shapes coming through the seaward drizzle.

  I can only imagine the fear, the flight, and the slaughter. Danes leaping ashore. Sword-Danes, spear-Danes, ax-Danes. The only reason so many men had escaped was that so many were dying. The Danes had started their killing, and found so many men to kill that they could not reach those who fled to the ships. Other Danish boats were attacking the Saxon fleet, but Rodbora had held them off. “I’d left men aboard,” Steapa said.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know,” he said bleakly. “I just had a feeling.”

  “I know that feeling,” I said. It was the prickle at the back of the neck, the vague unformed suspicion that danger was close, and it was a feeling that should never be ignored. I have seen my hounds suddenly raise their heads from sleep and growl softly, or whine piteously with their eyes staring at me in mute appeal. I know when that happens that thunder is coming, and it always does, but how the dogs sense it I cannot tell. But it must be the same feeling, the discomfort of hidden danger.

  “It was a rare fight,” Steapa said dully.

  We were rounding the last bend in the Temes before the river reached Lundene. I could see the city’s repaired wall, the new timber raw against the older Roman stone. Banners were hung from those ramparts, most of the flags showing saints or crosses; bright symbols to defy the enemy who came every day to inspect the city from the east. An enemy, I thought, who had just won a victory that would stun Alfred.