Warriors of the Storm (2015)

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘With a strange name,’ I said, staring at my son, who moaned on the bed, still curled around his agony.

  The bishop smiled. ‘She was named Sunngifu by her mother, but when the dear sisters are born again into Christ Jesus they are given a new name, a baptismal name, and so my dear Sunngifu is now known as Sister Gomer. And with her new name God granted her the power of healing.’

  ‘He did indeed,’ Sister Ymma said grimly.

  ‘And she will tend him,’ the bishop assured me, ‘and we shall pray for him!’

  ‘As will I,’ I said, and touched the hammer hanging at my neck.

  I left. I turned at the gate and saw the cloaked, hooded sisters scurry out of their hiding places. Two went into my son’s room and I fingered the hammer again. I had thought I hated my eldest son, but I did not. And so I left him there, lying tight about his cruel wound, and he shivered and he sweated and he moaned strange things in his fever, but he did not die that day, nor the next.

  And I took revenge.

  The gods loved me because that evening they sent grim clouds rolling from the west. They were sky-darkening clouds, heavy and black, and they came suddenly, building higher, looming in the evening sky to shroud the sunset, and with the clouds came rain and wind. Those grim clouds also brought opportunity, and with the opportunity came argument.

  The argument raged inside Ceaster’s Great Hall, while the paved Roman street outside was loud with the noise of horses. It was the noise of great war stallions crashing their hooves on stone paving, horses whinnying and snorting as men struggled to saddle the beasts in the seething rain. I was assembling horsemen, warriors of the storm.

  ‘It will leave Ceaster undefended!’ Merewalh protested.

  ‘The fyrd will defend the city,’ I said.

  ‘The fyrd needs household warriors!’ Merewalh insisted. He rarely disagreed with me, indeed he had always been one of my strongest supporters even when he had served Æthelred who had hated me, but my proposal that stormy night alarmed Merewalh. ‘The fyrd can fight,’ he allowed, ‘but they need trained men to help them!’

  ‘The city won’t be attacked,’ I snarled. Thunder crashed across the night sky to send the dogs that lived in the Great Hall slinking off to the dark corners. The rain was beating on the roof and leaking through a score of places in the old Roman tiles.

  ‘Why else has Ragnall returned,’ Æthelflaed asked, ‘if not to attack us?’

  ‘He won’t attack tonight and he won’t attack tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Which gives us a chance to claw the bastard.’

  I was dressed for battle. I wore a knee-length leather jerkin beneath my finest mail coat that was cinched by a thick sword belt from which hung Serpent-Breath. My leather trews were tucked into tall boots reinforced by iron strips. My forearms were thick with warrior rings. Godric, my servant, held my wolf-crested helmet, a thick-hafted spear, and my shield with the snarling wolf’s head of Bebbanburg painted on the iron-bound willow-boards. I was dressed for a killing and most in the hall were shrinking from the prospect.

  Cynlæf Haraldson, Æthelflaed’s young favourite, who was rumoured to be marrying her daughter, sided with Merewalh. So far he had taken care to avoid antagonising me, using flattery and agreement to avoid any confrontation, but what I was now suggesting drove him to disagreement. ‘What has changed, lord?’ he asked respectfully.

  ‘Changed?’

  ‘When Ragnall was here before you were reluctant to lead men into the forest.’

  ‘You feared ambush,’ Merewalh put in.

  ‘His men were in Eads Byrig,’ I said. ‘It was his refuge, his fortress. What was the point of leading men through ambush to die on its walls?’

  ‘He still has …’ Cynlæf began.

  ‘No, he doesn’t!’ I snapped. ‘We didn’t know the walls were false! We thought it a fortress! Now it’s just a hilltop.’

  ‘He outnumbers us,’ Merewalh said unhappily.

  ‘And he always will outnumber us,’ I said, ‘until we kill enough of his men, and then we’ll outnumber him.’

  ‘The safe thing,’ Æthelflaed began, then faltered. She sat in the great chair, a throne really, lit by the flickering fire in the central hearth. She had been listening carefully, her eyes looking from speaker to speaker, her face worried. Priests were gathered behind her and they too thought my plans rash.

  ‘The safe thing?’ I prompted her, but she just shook her head as if to suggest she had thought better of whatever she had been about to say.

  ‘The safe thing,’ Father Ceolnoth said firmly, ‘is to make certain Ceaster does not fall!’ Men murmured agreement and Father Ceolnoth, emboldened by the support, stepped forward to stand in the firelight beside Æthelflaed’s chair. ‘Ceaster is our newest diocese! It controls great areas of farmland! It protects the seaway. It is a bulwark against the Welsh! It protects Mercia from the pagan north! It must not be lost!’ He stopped abruptly, maybe remembering the savagery with which I usually greeted military advice from priests.

  ‘Take note of the bulwarks!’ his brother lisped through his missing teeth, ‘that you can tell it to the next generation!’

  I stared at him, wondering if he had lost his brains along with his teeth, but the other priests all muttered and nodded approval. ‘The words of the psalmist,’ blind Father Cuthbert explained to me. Cuthbert was the one priest who supported me, but then he had always been eccentric.

  ‘We cannot tell the next generation,’ Father Ceolberht hissed, ‘if the bulwarks are lost! We must protect the bulwarks! We cannot abandon Ceaster’s walls.’

  ‘It is the word of the Lord, praise be the Lord,’ Ceolnoth said.

  Cynlæf smiled at me. ‘Only a fool ignores your advice,’ he said with patronising flattery, ‘and the defeat of Ragnall is our aim, of course, but the protection of Ceaster is just as important!’

  ‘And to leave the walls undefended …’ Merewalh said unhappily, but did not finish the thought.

  Another rumble of thunder sounded. Rain was pouring through the hole in the roof and hissing in the hearth. ‘God speaks!’ Father Ceolnoth said.

  Which god? Thor was the god of thunder. I was tempted to remind them of that, but saying as much would only antagonise them.

  ‘We must shelter from the storm,’ Ceolberht said, ‘and the thunder is the sign that we must stay within these walls.’

  ‘We should stay …’ Æthelflaed began, but then was interrupted.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Bishop Leofstan said, ‘dear lady, please, forgive me!’

  Æthelflaed looked indignant at the interruption, but managed a gracious smile. ‘Bishop?’

  ‘What did our Lord say?’ the bishop asked as he limped to the open space by the hearth where rain spattered on his robe. ‘Did our Lord say that we should stay at home? Did he encourage us to crouch by the cottage fire? Did he tell his disciples to close the door and huddle by the hearth? No! He sent his followers forth! Two by two! And why? Because he gave them power over the overpowering enemy!’ he spoke passionately, and, with astonishment, I realised he was supporting me. ‘The kingdom of heaven is not spread by staying at home,’ the bishop said fervently, ‘but by going forth as our Lord commanded!’

  ‘Saint Mark,’ a very young priest ventured.

  ‘Well spoken, Father Olbert!’ the bishop said. ‘The commandment is indeed found in the gospel of Mark!’ Another peal of thunder crashed in the night. The wind was rising, howling in the dark as the hall dogs whined. The rain was falling harder now, glinting in the firelight where it slanted down to hiss in the bright flames. ‘We are commanded to go forth!’ the bishop said. ‘To go forth and conquer!’

  ‘Bishop,’ Cynlæf began.

  ‘The ways of the Lord are strange,’ Leofstan ignored Cynlæf. ‘I cannot explain why our God has blessed us with the Lord Uhtred’s presence, but one thing I do know. The Lord Uhtred wins battles! He is a mighty warrior for the Lord!’ He paused suddenly, flinching, and I remembered the sudden pains that assailed him. For
a moment he looked in agony, one hand clutched to the robe above his heart, then the pain vanished from his face. ‘Is anyone here a greater warrior than the Lord Uhtred?’ he asked. ‘If so, let them stand up!’ Most of the men were already standing, but they seemed to know what Leofstan meant. ‘Does anyone here know more of war than Lord Uhtred? Is there anyone here who strikes more fear into the enemy?’ He paused, waiting, but no one spoke or stirred. ‘I do not deny that he is grievously mistaken about our faith, that he is in need of God’s grace and of Christ’s forgiveness, but God has sent him to us and we must not reject the gift.’ He bowed to Æthelflaed. ‘My lady, forgive my humble opinions, but I urge you to listen to the Lord Uhtred.’

  I could have kissed him.

  Æthelflaed looked about the hall. A spike of lightning lit the roof-hole, followed by a monstrous clap of thunder that shook the sky. Men shuffled their feet, but no one spoke to contradict the bishop. ‘Merewalh,’ Æthelflaed stood to show that the discussion was finished, ‘you will stay in the city with one hundred men. All the rest,’ she hesitated a moment, glancing at me, then made her decision, ‘will ride with Lord Uhtred.’

  ‘We leave two hours before dawn,’ I said.

  ‘Vengeance is mine!’ the bishop said happily.

  He was wrong. It was mine.

  We were leaving Ceaster to attack Ragnall.

  I led almost eight hundred men into the darkness. We rode out through the north gate into a storm as wild as any I remembered. Thunder filled the sky, lightning splintered across the clouds, the rain seethed and the wind howled like the shrieks of the damned. I led my men and Æthelflaed’s men, the warriors of Mercia, soldiers of the storm, all mounted on good stallions, all in mail and armed with swords, spears, and axes. Bishop Leofstan had stood on the gate’s rampart shouting blessings down on us, his voice snatched away by the gale. ‘You do the Lord’s work!’ he had called. ‘The Lord is with you, His blessing is upon you!’

  The Lord’s work was to break Ragnall. And of course it was a risk. Maybe even now Ragnall’s warriors were filing through the wet darkness towards Ceaster, carrying ladders and readying themselves to fight and die on a Roman wall. But probably not. I needed neither omens nor scouts to tell me that Ragnall was not ready to assault Ceaster yet.

  Ragnall had moved fast. He had taken his large army and lunged towards Eoferwic, and that city, key to the north, had fallen without a fight, and so Ragnall had turned back to make his assault on Ceaster. His men had marched unceasingly. They were tired. They had reached Eads Byrig to find it blood-soaked and ruined, and now they faced a Roman fort packed with defenders. They needed a day or two, more even, to ready themselves, to make the ladders and to find forage and to allow the laggards to catch up with the army.

  Merewalh and the others were right, of course. The easiest and safest way to preserve Ceaster was to stay inside the high walls and let Ragnall’s men die against the stones. And they would die. Much of the fyrd had arrived, bringing their axes, hoes, and spears. They had brought their families and livestock too, so the streets were filled with cattle, pigs, and sheep. The walls of Ceaster would be well defended, though that would not stop Ragnall making an attempt to cross the ramparts. But if we just stayed inside the walls and waited for that attempt we would yield all the surrounding countryside to his mercy. He would make an assault, and the assault would probably fail, but such was the size of his army that he could afford that failure and attack again. And all the time his troops would be raiding deep into Mercia, burning and killing, taking slaves and capturing livestock, and Æthelflaed’s army would be locked into Ceaster, helpless to defend the land it was sworn to protect.

  So I wanted to drive him away from Ceaster. I wanted to hit him hard now.

  I wanted to hit him in the dark of the night’s ending, hit him in the thunder of Thor’s providential storm, hit him under the lash of Thor’s lightning, strike him in the wind and the rain of the gods. I would bring him chaos. He had hoped to have Eads Byrig as a refuge, but he had no refuge now except for the shields of his men, and those men would be cowering in the storm, chilled and tired, and we rode to kill them.

  And to kill Brida. I thought of my son, my gelded son, lying curled on his bed of pain, and I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt and promised myself her blade would taste blood before the sun was risen. I wanted to find Brida, the sorceress who had cut my son, and I swore I would make that vile creature scream till her voice drowned out even Thor’s loud thunder.

  Cynlæf led Æthelflaed’s men. I would have preferred Merewalh, but Æthelflaed wanted someone reliable to guard Ceaster’s walls and she had insisted Merewalh stayed, and sent Cynlæf in his place. She had told her favourite that he was to obey me. Æthelflaed, of course, had wanted to come herself and for once I had won that argument, telling her that the chaos of a fight in the half-light of a storm-ridden dawn was no place for her. ‘It will be a killing, my lady,’ I had told her, ‘nothing but killing. And if you’re there I’ll have to give you a bodyguard, and those men can’t join the slaughter. I need them all and I don’t need to be worrying whether you’re safe or not.’ She had reluctantly accepted the argument, sending Cynlæf in her place, and he now rode close to me, saying nothing. We went slowly, we could not hurry. The only light came from the intermittent flashes of lightning that streaked to earth and silvered the sky, but I did not need light. What we did was simple. We would make chaos, and to make it we only needed to reach the forest’s edge and wait there until the first faint wolf-light of dawn revealed the trees among the night’s shadows and so let us ride safely to a slaughter.

  A bolt of lightning showed when we reached the end of the pastureland. In front of us all was black, trees and bushes and ghosts. We stopped and the rain pounded about us. Finan moved his horse next to mine. I could hear his saddle creaking and the thump as his stallion pawed the wet ground. ‘Make sure they’re well spread out,’ I said.

  ‘They are,’ Finan responded.

  I had ordered the horsemen to form eight groups. Each would advance on its own, careless of what the others did. We were a rake with eight tines, a rake to claw through the forest. The only rules of the morning were that the groups were to kill, they were to avoid the inevitable shield wall that would eventually form, and they were to obey the sound of the horn when it called for withdrawal. I planned to be back in Ceaster for breakfast.

  Unless the enemy knew we were coming. Unless their sentries had seen us approach, had seen us silvered in the wet darkness by the bright streaks of Thor’s lightning. Unless they were already touching iron-rimmed shields together to make the wall that would be our death. It is during the time of waiting that the mind crawls into a coward’s cave and whines to be spared. I thought of all that could go wrong and felt the temptation to be safe, to take the troops back to Ceaster and man the walls and let the enemy die in a furious assault. No one would blame me, and if Ragnall died beneath Ceaster’s stones then his death would provide another song of Uhtred that would be chanted in mead halls across all Mercia. I touched the hammer hanging at my neck. All along the forest’s edge men were touching their talismans, saying prayers to their god or gods, feeling the creep of fear chill their bones more thoroughly than the soaking rain and gusting wind.

  ‘Almost,’ Finan said in a low voice.

  ‘Almost,’ I answered. The wolf-light is the light between dark and light, between the night and the dawn. There are no colours, just the grey of a sword blade, of mist, the grey that swallows the ghosts and elves and goblins. Foxes seek their dens, badgers go to earth, and the owl flies home. Another bellow of thunder shook the sky and I looked up, the rain pelting on my face, and I prayed to Thor and to Odin. I do this for you, I said, for your amusement. The gods watch us, they reward us, and sometimes they punish us. At the foot of Yggdrasil the three hags were watching and smiling, and were they sharpening the shears? I thought of Æthelflaed, sometimes so cold and sometimes so desperate for warmth. She hated Eadith, who was so loyal to
me and so loving and so fearful of Æthelflaed, and I thought of Mus, that creature of the dark who drove men wild, and I wondered if she feared anyone, and was instead a messenger from the gods.

  I looked back to the woods and could see the shape of trees now, dark in the darkness, see the slash of rain. ‘Almost,’ I said again.

  ‘In the name of God,’ Finan muttered. I saw him make the sign of the cross. ‘If you see my brother,’ he said louder, ‘he’s mine.’

  ‘If I see your brother,’ I promised, ‘he’s yours.’ Godric had offered me the heavy spear, but I preferred a sword, and so I pulled Serpent-Breath from her scabbard and held her straight out, and I could see the sheen of her blade like a shimmer of misted light in the dark. A horse whinnied. I raised the blade and kissed the steel. ‘For Eostre,’ I said, ‘for Eostre and for Mercia!’

  And the shadows beneath the trees dissolved into shapes, into bushes and trunks, of leaves thrashing in the wind. It was still night, but the wolf-light had come.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said to Finan, then raised my voice to a shout. ‘Let’s go!’

  The time for hiding was over. Now it was speed and noise. I crouched in the saddle, wary of low branches, letting Tintreg pick his own way, but urging him on. The small light grew. The rain was beating on the leaves, the woods were full of the noise of horses, the wind was tossing high branches like mad things in torment. I waited to hear a horn calling to summon our enemies, but none sounded. Lightning flickered to the north, casting stark black shadows among the trees, then the thunder sounded and just then I saw the first pale light of a fire ahead. Campfires! Ragnall’s men were in the clearings, and if he had set sentries they had not seen us, or we had passed them, and the flicker of fires fighting the drenching rain became brighter. I saw shadows among the fires. Some men were awake, presumably feeding the flames and oblivious that we were riding to their deaths. Then far off to my right, where the Roman road led into the forest, I heard shouts and knew our killing had begun.