The Last Kingdom

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Buckets,” I said.

  “Buckets?” He looked at me with disapproval, suspecting I was mocking him.

  “Buckets to bail the ship, lord,” I said, nodding down into Heahengel’s belly where four men scooped out seawater and chucked it over the side, though a good deal landed on the rowers. “What we need, lord, is a better way of caulking ships.”

  “Write that down,” Alfred instructed the priests, then stood on tiptoe to look across the intervening low land into the sea lake where the enemy ships had been sighted.

  “They’ll be long gone,” Leofric growled.

  “I pray not,” Alfred said.

  “The Danes don’t wait for us,” Leofric said. He was in a terrible mood, so terrible that he was willing to snarl at his king. “They aren’t fools,” he went on. “They land, they raid, and they go. They’ll have sailed on the ebb.” The tide had just turned and was flooding against us now, though I never did quite understand the tides in the long waters from the sea to Hamtun for there were twice as many high tides there as anywhere else. Hamtun’s tides had a mind of their own, or else were confused by the channels.

  “The pagans were there at dawn,” Alfred said.

  “And they’ll be miles away by now,” Leofric said. He spoke to Alfred as if he was another crewman, using no respect, but Alfred was always patient with such insolence. He knew Leofric’s worth.

  But Leofric was wrong that day about the enemy. The Viking ships were not gone, but still off Heilincigae, all seven of them, having been trapped there by the falling tide. They were waiting for the rising water to float them free, but we arrived first, coming into the sea lake through the narrow entrance that leads from the northern bank of the Solente. Once through the entrance a ship is in a world of marshes, sandbanks, islands, and fish traps, not unlike the waters of the Gewæsc. We had a man aboard who had grown up on those waters, and he guided us, but the Danes had lacked any such expertise and they had been misled by a line of withies, stuck into the sand at low tide to mark a channel, which had been deliberately moved to entice them onto a mudbank on which they were now firmly stuck.

  Which was splendid. We had them trapped like foxes in a one-hole earth and all we had to do was anchor in the sea-lake entrance, hope our anchors held against the strong currents, wait for them to float off, and then slaughter them, but Alfred was in a hurry. He wanted to get back to his land forces and insisted we return him to Hamtun before nightfall, and so, against Leofric’s advice, we were ordered to an immediate attack.

  That, too, was splendid, except that we could not approach the mudbank directly for the channel was narrow and it would mean going in single file and the lead ship would face seven Danish ships on its own, and so we had to row a long way to approach them from the south, which meant that they could escape to the sea lake’s entrance if the tide floated them off, which it might very well do, and Leofric muttered into his beard that we were going about the battle all wrong. He was furious with Alfred.

  Alfred, meanwhile, was fascinated by the enemy ships, that he had never seen so clearly before. “Are the beasts representations of their gods?” he asked me, referring to the finely carved prows and sterns that flaunted their monsters, dragons, and serpents.

  “No, lord, just beasts,” I said. I was beside him, having relinquished the steering oar to the man who knew these waters, and I told the king how the carved heads could be lifted off their posts so that they did not terrify the spirits of the land.

  “Write that down,” he ordered a priest. “And the wind vanes at the mastheads?” he asked me, looking at the nearer one that was painted with an eagle. “Are they designed to frighten the spirits?”

  I did not answer. Instead I was staring at the seven ships across the slick hump of the mudbank and I recognized one. Wind-Viper. The light-colored strake in the bow was clear enough, but even so I would have recognized her. Wind-Viper, lovely Wind-Viper, ship of dreams, here at Heilincigae.

  “Uhtred?” Alfred prompted me.

  “They’re just wind vanes, lord,” I said. And if Wind-Viper was here, was Ragnar here too? Or had Kjartan taken the ship and leased it to a shipmaster?

  “It seems a deal of trouble,” Alfred said pettishly, “to decorate a ship.”

  “Men love their ships,” I said, “and fight for them. You honor what you fight for, lord. We should decorate our ships.” I spoke harshly, thinking we would love our ships more if they had beasts on their prows and had proper names like Blood-Spiller, Sea-Wolf, or Widow-Maker. Instead the Heahengel led the Ceruphin and Cristenlic through the tangled waters, and behind us were the Apostol and the Eftwyrd, which meant Judgment Day and was probably the best named of our fleet because she sent more than one Dane to the sea’s embrace.

  The Danes were digging, trying to deepen the treacherous channel and so float their ships, but as we came nearer they realized they would never complete such a huge task and went back to their stranded boats to fetch armor, helmets, shields, and weapons. I pulled on my coat of mail, its leather lining stinking of old sweat, and I pulled on the helmet, then strapped Serpent-Breath on my back and Wasp-Sting to my waist. This was not going to be a sea fight, but a land battle, shield wall against shield wall, a maul in the mud, and the Danes had the advantage because they could mass where we must land and they could meet us as we came off the ships, and I did not like it. I could see Leofric hated it, but Alfred was calm enough as he pulled on his helmet. “God is with us,” he said.

  “He needs to be,” Leofric muttered, then raised his voice to shout at the steersman. “Hold her there!” It was tricky to keep Heahengel still in the swirling current, but we backed oars and she slewed around as Leofric peered at the shore. I assumed he was waiting for the other ships to catch up so that we could all land together, but he had seen a spit of muddy sand projecting from the shore and had worked out that if we beached Heahengel there then our first men off the prow would not have to face a shield wall composed of seven Viking crews. The spit was narrow, only wide enough for three or four men to stand abreast, and a fight there would be between equal numbers. “It’s a good enough place to die, earsling,” he told me, and led me forward. Alfred hurried behind us. “Wait,” Leofric snapped at the king so savagely that Alfred actually obeyed. “Put her on the spit!” Leofric yelled back to the steersman, “Now!”

  Ragnar was there. I could see the eagle wing on its pole, and then I saw him, looking so like his father that for a moment I thought I was a boy again.

  “Ready, earsling?” Leofric said. He had assembled his half dozen best warriors, all of us in the prow, while behind us the bowmen readied to launch their arrows at the Danes who were hurrying toward the narrow stretch of muddy sand. Then we lurched forward as Heahengel’s bow scraped aground. “Now!” Leofric shouted, and we jumped overboard into water that came up to our knees, and then we instinctively touched shields, made the wall, and I was gripping Wasp-Sting as the first Danes ran at us.

  “Kill them!” Leofric shouted, and I thrust the shield forward and there was the great clash of iron boss on limewood, and an ax whirled overhead, but a man behind me caught it on his shield and I was stabbing under my shield, bringing the short sword up, but she rammed into a Danish shield. I wrenched her free, stabbed again, and felt a pain in my ankle as a blade sliced through water and boot. Blood swirled in the sea, but I was still standing, and I heaved forward, smelling the Danes, gulls screaming overhead, and more of the Danes were coming, but more of our men were joining us, some up to their waists in the tide, and the front of the battle was a shoving match now because no one had room to swing a weapon. It was a grunting, cursing shield battle, and Leofric, beside me, gave a shout and we heaved up and they stepped back a half pace and our arrows slashed over our helmets and I slammed Wasp-Sting forward, felt her break through leather or mail, twisted her in flesh, pulled her back, pushed with the shield, kept my head down under the rim, pushed again, stabbed again, brute force, stout shield, and good steel, nothing else.
A man was drowning, blood streaming in the ripples from his twitching body, and I suppose we were shouting, but I never remember much about that. You remember the pushing, the smell, the snarling bearded faces, the anger, and then Cristenlic rammed her bows into the flank of the Danish line, crumpling men into the water, drowning and crushing them, and her crew jumped into the small waves with spears, swords, and axes. A third boat arrived, more men landed, and I heard Alfred behind me, shouting at us to break their line, to kill them. I was ramming Wasp-Sting down at a man’s ankles, jabbing again and again, pushing with the shield, and then he stumbled and our line surged forward and he tried to stab up into my groin, but Leofric slammed his ax head down, turning the man’s face into a mask of blood and broken teeth. “Push!” Leofric yelled, and we heaved at the enemy, and suddenly they were breaking away and running.

  We had not beaten them. They were not running from our swords and spears, but rather because the rising tide was floating their ships and they ran to rescue them, and we stumbled after them, or rather I stumbled because my right ankle was bleeding and hurting, and we still did not have enough men ashore to overwhelm their crews and they were hurling themselves on board their ships, but one crew, brave men all, stayed on the sand to hold us back.

  “Are you wounded, earsling?” Leofric asked me.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Stay back,” he ordered me. He was forming Heahengel’s men into a new shield wall, a wall to thump into that one brave crew, and Alfred was there now, mail armor shining bright, and the Danes must have known he was a great lord, but they did not abandon their ships for the honor of killing him. I think that if Alfred had brought the dragon banner and fought beneath it, so that the Danes could recognize him as the king, they would have stayed and fought us and might very well have killed or captured Alfred, but the Danes were always wary of taking too many casualties and they hated losing their beloved ships, and so they just wanted to be away from that place. To which end they were willing to pay the price of the one ship to save the others, and that one ship was not Wind-Viper. I could see her being pushed into the channel, could see her creeping away backward, see her oars striking against sand rather than water, and I splashed through the small waves, skirting our shield wall and leaving the fight to my right as I bellowed at the ship. “Ragnar! Ragnar!”

  Arrows were flicking past me. One struck my shield and another glanced off my helmet with a click. That reminded me that he would not recognize me with the helmet on and so I dropped Wasp-Sting and bared my head. “Ragnar!”

  The arrows stopped. The shield walls were crashing, men were dying, most of the Danes were escaping, and Earl Ragnar stared at me across the widening gap and I could not tell from his face what he was thinking, but he had stopped his handful of bowmen from shooting at me, and then he cupped his hands to his mouth. “Here!” he shouted at me. “Tomorrow’s dusk!” Then his oars bit water, the Wind-Viper turned like a dancer, the blades dragged the sea, and she was gone.

  I retrieved Wasp-Sting and went to join the fight, but it was over. Our crews had massacred that one Danish crew, all except a handful of men who had been spared on Alfred’s orders. The rest were a bloody pile on the tide line and we stripped them of their armor and weapons, took off their clothes, and left their white bodies to the gulls. Their ship, an old and leaking vessel, was towed back to Hamtun.

  Alfred was pleased. In truth he had let six ships escape, but it had still been a victory and news of it would encourage his troops fighting in the north. One of his priests questioned the prisoners, noting their answers on parchment. Alfred asked some questions of his own, which the priest translated, and when he had learned all that he could he came back to where I was steering and looked at the blood staining the deck by my right foot. “You fight well, Uhtred.”

  “We fought badly, lord,” I said, and that was true. Their shield wall had held, and if they had not retreated to rescue their ships they might even have beaten us back into the sea. I had not done well. There are days when the sword and shield seem clumsy, when the enemy seems quicker, and this had been one such day. I was angry with myself.

  “You were talking to one of them,” Alfred said accusingly. “I saw you. You were talking to one of the pagans.”

  “I was telling him, lord,” I said, “that his mother was a whore, his father a turd of hell, and that his children are pieces of weasel shit.”

  He flinched at that. He was no coward, Alfred, and he knew the anger of battle, but he never liked the insults that men shouted. I think he would have liked war to be decorous. He looked behind Heahengel where the dying sun’s light was rippling our long wake red. “The year you promised to give me will soon be finished,” he said.

  “True, lord.”

  “I pray you will stay with us.”

  “When Guthrum comes, lord,” I said, “he will come with a fleet to darken the sea and our twelve ships will be crushed.” I thought perhaps that was what Leofric had been arguing about, about the futility of trying to stem a seaborne invasion with twelve ill-named ships. “If I stay,” I asked, “what use will I be if the fleet dares not put to sea?”

  “What you say is true,” Alfred said, suggesting that his argument with Leofric had been about something else, “but the crews can fight ashore. Leofric tells me you are as good a warrior as any he has seen.”

  “Then he has never seen himself, lord.”

  “Come to me when your time is up,” he said, “and I will find a place for you.”

  “Yes, lord,” I said, but in a tone that only acknowledged that I understood what he wanted, not that I would obey him.

  “But you should know one thing, Uhtred.” His voice was stern. “If any man commands my troops, that man must know how to read and write.”

  I almost laughed at that. “So he can read the Psalms, lord?” I asked sarcastically.

  “So he can read my orders,” Alfred said coldly, “and send me news.”

  “Yes, lord,” I said again.

  They had lit beacons in Hamtun’s waters so we could find our way home, and the night wind stirred the liquid reflections of moon and stars as we slid to our anchorage. There were lights ashore, and fires, and ale, and food and laughter, and best of all the promise of meeting Ragnar the next day.

  Ragnar took a huge risk, of course, in going back to Heilincigae, though perhaps he reckoned, truthfully as it turned out, that our ships would need a day to recover from the fight. There were injured men to tend, weapons to sharpen, and so none of our fleet put to sea that day.

  Brida and I rode horses to Hamanfunta, a village that lived off trapping eels, fishing, and making salt, and a sliver of a coin found stabling for our horses and a fisherman willing to take us out to Heilincigae where no one now lived, for the Danes had slaughtered them all. The fisherman would not wait for us, too frightened of the coming night and the ghosts that would be moaning and screeching on the island, but he promised to return in the morning.

  Brida, Nihtgenga, and I wandered that low place, going past the previous day’s Danish dead who had already been pecked ragged by the gulls, past burned-out huts where folk had made a poor living from the sea and the marsh before the Vikings came and then, as the sun sank, we carried charred timbers to the shore and I used flint and steel to make a fire. The flames flared up in the dusk and Brida touched my arm to show me Wind-Viper, dark against the darkening sky, coming through the sea lake’s entrance. The last of the daylight touched the sea red and caught the gilding on Wind-Viper’s beast head.

  I watched her, thinking of all the fear that such a sight brought on England. Wherever there was a creek, a harbor, or a river mouth, men feared to see the Danish ships. They feared those beasts at the prow, feared the men behind the beasts, and prayed to be spared the Northmen’s fury. I loved the sight. Loved Wind-Viper. Her oars rose and fell, I could hear the shafts creaking in their leather-lined holes, and I could see mailed men at her prow, and then the bows scrunched on the sand and the long
oars went still.

  Ragnar put the ladder against the prow. All Danish ships have a short ladder to let them climb down to a beach, and he came down the rungs slowly and alone. He was in full mail coat, helmeted, with a sword at his side, and once ashore he paced to the small flames of our fire like a warrior come for vengeance. He stopped a spear’s length away and then stared at me through the black eyeholes of his helmet. “Did you kill my father?” he asked harshly.

  “On my life,” I said, “on Thor,” I pulled out the hammer amulet and clutched it, “on my soul,” I went on, “I did not.”

  He pulled off his helmet, stepped forward, and we embraced. “I knew you did not,” he said.

  “Kjartan did it,” I said, “and we watched him.” We told him the whole story, how we had been in the high woods watching the charcoal cool, and how we had been cut off from the hall, and how it had been fired, and how the folk had been slaughtered.

  “If I could have killed one of them,” I said, “I would, and I would have died doing it, but Ravn always said there should be at least one survivor to tell the tale.”

  “What did Kjartan say?” Brida asked.

  Ragnar was sitting now, and two of his men had brought bread and dried herrings and cheese and ale. “Kjartan said,” Ragnar spoke softly, “that the English rose against the hall, encouraged by Uhtred, and that he revenged himself on the killers.”

  “And you believed him?” I asked.

  “No,” he admitted. “Too many men said he did it, but he is Earl Kjartan now. He leads three times more men than I do.”

  “And Thyra?” I asked. “What does she say?”

  “Thyra?” He stared at me, puzzled.

  “Thyra lived,” I told him. “She was taken away by Sven.”

  He just stared at me. He had not known that his sister lived and I saw the anger come on his face, and then he raised his eyes to the stars and he howled like a wolf.

  “It is true,” Brida said softly. “Your sister lived.”