Sword of Kings

by Bernard Cornwell

  I had said we had no choice, but of course we did. A lifetime of war had taught me that fighting a battle without forethought was usually to invite defeat. Some battles start by accident, but most are planned. It can still go horribly wrong, even the best plans can be ripped apart by the enemy’s plan, but a good leader does his best to scout the enemy, to learn all he can about that enemy, and all I had was the report of two boys. They had seen a ship that they thought had oars and they had seen three guards. Beornoth was right, three guards were nothing, but the noise we made in breaking into the slaver’s yard and defeating his men could bring the bridge garrison running. Then there was Varin’s order that no one was to be in the streets at night. So first we must reach the slaver’s yard without being seen and then we must break into the yard silently before stealing a ship. So yes, there was a choice, and a sensible man would wait until the city fell back into its daily routine, would wait until folk could walk the streets at night, and wait until the guards on the wharves were bored and careless.

  But could we wait? The stench of the cesspit alone was reason to leave. Varin had captured the city, but he had yet to search it thoroughly, and there was the ever looming danger that he would send men to rake though Lundene’s ruins and cellars in search of the enemies he must know had survived the city’s capture. And soon he would have more men as reinforcements arrived from East Anglia and from Wessex. ‘The guards patrolling the streets,’ I asked, ‘do they carry shields?’

  ‘The men on the wharves had shields,’ Aldwyn said, ‘but they weren’t carrying them.’

  ‘The shields were stacked?’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘And the men we saw patrolling the streets didn’t have shields,’ Father Oda said.

  ‘The guards at the city gate did,’ Benedetta added.

  That made sense. Iron-rimmed willow-board shields are heavy. The sentinels on Bebbanburg’s walls did not carry shields, though they were always close at hand. A shield is the last thing a warrior picks up before battle and the first to be discarded after. Men patrolling streets only faced townsfolk, not screaming mail-clad warriors, so a shield was merely an encumbrance. ‘And we don’t have shields,’ Finan said with a crooked grin.

  ‘So we won’t look strange walking the streets without shields,’ I said, ‘but we do have children.’

  For a heartbeat Aldwyn looked as though he would protest that he was no child, then curiosity defeated his indignation. ‘Children, lord?’

  ‘Children,’ I said grimly, ‘because I’m going to sell the lot of you. Tonight.’

  We waited until the night was almost gone, until the first hint of wolf-grey light edged the east; we waited until the time when men who have stayed awake all night are tired and when they yearn for their replacements to come on duty.

  Then we marched. We did not sneak through the city, edging from shadow to shadow, but instead walked boldly down the main street towards the bridge. We carried drawn swords and wore our helmets and mail. We were eight warriors who surrounded the children. Those youngsters were excited, knowing they were going on an adventure, but I had told them to look miserable. ‘You’re captives!’ I snarled at them. ‘You’re going to be sold!’

  Benedetta walked with them, her head covered by a dark hood, while Father Oda was beside me wearing his long black robe and with a silver cross gleaming in the feeble light of the guttering torches. Ahead of us a fire burned in a brazier at the bridge’s northern end and, as we went nearer, two men strolled towards us. ‘Who are you?’ one of them asked.

  ‘Lord Varin’s men,’ Father Oda answered, and his Danish accent only made the lie more believable.

  ‘Crossing the bridge, father?’ the man asked.

  ‘Going that way,’ Father Oda pointed to the street that led eastwards along the back of the wharves and warehouses.

  ‘We’re taking these little bastards to be sold,’ I explained.

  ‘They’re vermin!’ Father Oda added, cuffing Aldwyn’s head. ‘We found them stealing in the palace storerooms.’

  ‘Selling them are you?’ the man seemed amused. ‘Best thing for them!’

  We wished him a good day and turned down the street. ‘Not this gate,’ Aldwyn muttered, ‘but the next.’

  Gunnald’s slave-yard was perilously close to the bridge where a dozen men stood guard beside the brazier. Whatever we did would have to be done quietly, though it began noisily enough when I hammered on the gate with Serpent-Breath’s hilt. No one answered. I hammered again and kept beating the gate until a small hatch was pushed open and a face appeared in the shadow. ‘What is it?’ the man growled.

  ‘Lord Varin sending you merchandise.’

  ‘Who’s Lord Varin?’

  ‘He commands the city. Now open the gate.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ the man grumbled. I could see a slight gleam of one eye as he stared into the street, seeing children and warriors. ‘Couldn’t it wait?’

  ‘You want the little bastards or not?’

  ‘Any girls?’

  ‘Three ripe ones.’

  ‘Wait.’ The hatch closed and we waited. I assumed the man had gone to wake his master, or perhaps an overseer. The grey wolf-light seeped into the east, turning the sky brighter and touching the edges of the high-flying clouds with a silvery gleam. A door opened further down the street and a woman appeared with a pail, presumably to fetch water. She looked nervously at my warriors and went back into her house.

  The hatch opened again and there was just enough light to see a bearded face. The man stared and said nothing. ‘Lord Varin,’ I said, ‘does not like being kept waiting.’

  There was a grunt, the hatch closed, and I heard locking bars being lifted, then one of the two heavy gates was dragged open, scraping on the paving stones, which, I suspected, had been there since the Romans first laid the yard. ‘Bring them in,’ the bearded man said.

  ‘Inside!’ I snarled at the children.

  There were three men in the yard, none wearing mail, but with thick leather jerkins over which they wore short swords in plain wooden scabbards. One man, tall and lank-haired, had a coiled whip hanging at his waist. He was the man who had opened the gate and now watched the children file in, then spat on the stones. ‘Miserable-looking bunch,’ he said.

  ‘They were caught in the palace storerooms,’ I said.

  ‘Thieving little bastards. Not worth much.’

  ‘And you need Lord Varin’s goodwill,’ I said.

  The man grunted at that. ‘Shut the gate!’ he ordered his companions. The gate scraped shut and two locking bars dropped into place. ‘Make a line!’ he snapped at the children, and they obediently shuffled into a rough line. They looked terrified. They might have known this was all pretence, but the lank-haired man with his coiled whip was frightening. He began inspecting them, lifting Aldwyn’s face to look closer.

  ‘I know none of these men,’ Benedetta whispered close to me.

  ‘They need feeding,’ the man said, and stopped to look at Alaina. He tilted up her face and grinned. ‘Pretty little thing.’ I felt Benedetta stiffen beside me, but she said nothing. ‘Very pretty,’ the man said and put his hand to the neck of Alaina’s dress as if he was about to rip it down.

  ‘She’s not yours yet,’ I growled.

  The man looked at me, surprised to be challenged. ‘Something wrong with the bitch?’ he asked. ‘Got pox rash, has she?’

  ‘Leave her alone!’ Father Oda and I said at the same time.

  The man snatched his hand away, but scowled. ‘If she’s clean,’ he said grudgingly, ‘she might be worth something, but not this little bastard.’ He had moved on to the Ræt.

  I was looking around the yard. The entrance gates faced a high building as large as any mead hall. The lowest floor was made of big blocks of dressed stone, while above that the higher floors were constructed of tarred timber. There was only one door, and a single window that was a small shuttered opening set very high on the forbidding black gable. To the r
ight was a smaller shed, which, from the horse-droppings in the yard, I suspected was a stable. That too had a closed door. ‘How many men are usually here?’ I asked Benedetta in a low voice.

  ‘Ten? Twelve?’ she whispered, but her memory was from twenty years before and she sounded uncertain. I wondered how Gunnald Gunnaldson, if he still lived, manned his ship, which, if Aldwyn was right, must have benches for at least twenty rowers. Presumably he hired men for each voyage or, more likely, used slaves. Finan and I had been slaves aboard just such a ship, chained to the benches and scarred by the whips.

  The other two guards now stood beside the door of the larger building, lounging there with bored expressions. One yawned. I strolled along the line of children with Serpent-Breath still in my hand. ‘This one should be valuable,’ I said, stopping beside a tall, thin girl who had straggly brown hair framing a freckled face. ‘She’ll be pretty if you clean her up.’

  ‘Let me look.’ The lank-haired man walked towards me and I brought Serpent-Breath up and lunged her into his throat and I kept pushing her as his blood brightened the dawn, and one small boy screamed in fright before Aldwyn silenced him with a hand, then the boy just watched wide-eyed as the dying man went backwards, hands fumbling at the blade in his torn gullet, and his bowels opening to foul the morning with his stench. He went down hard onto the red-slicked stones and I wrenched the blade left and right, opening the savage cut, and pressed again until the blade jarred against his spine. Blood was still pulsing, spurting, but each spurt was smaller, the gurgling noise of his dying fading with each gasping breath, and by the time his twitching stopped my men had crossed the yard and had butchered one guard and captured the other. We had killed two and seized the third without making too much noise, but then some of the smaller children started wailing.

  ‘Quiet!’ I snarled at them. They went silent in terror. I glanced up as a movement caught my eye and wondered if it had been the shutter on the small window, which appeared to be open a crack. Had it been like that before? Then a kite launched itself from the high gable and flew westwards. Maybe that bird was all I had seen moving. An omen? Alaina ran and buried herself in Benedetta’s skirt. I pulled Serpent-Breath free and wiped her tip on the dead man’s jerkin. Aldwyn was grinning at me, excited by the death, but the grin vanished when he saw my glowering face that was spattered by the dead man’s blood. ‘Finan,’ I said, and pointed to the shed.

  He took two men, dragged the door open, and went inside. ‘A stable,’ he reported a moment later. ‘Two horses, nothing else.’

  ‘Take the children in there,’ I told Benedetta. ‘Shut the door, wait till I send for you.’

  ‘Remember your promise,’ she said.

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘To let me kill Gunnald!’

  I walked her to the stable. ‘I have not forgotten,’ I said.

  ‘Make sure he is alive,’ she said bitterly, ‘when you send for me.’

  I looked up. Night was fading and the sky was a dark blue, not a cloud in sight.

  Then the dogs started howling.

  Seven

  So we had been heard. The crying of frightened children had alerted Gunnald’s men inside the warehouse and they had loosed dogs that now barked frantically. I heard footsteps, a shouted command, and a woman’s yelp of protest. I was standing at the door where the man we had taken captive was pinned against the wall with Vidarr’s sword at his throat. ‘How many men inside?’ I snarled at him.

  ‘Nine inside!’ he managed to say despite the blade’s pressure.

  He had already been disarmed. I now kicked him hard between the legs and he crumpled, yelping as Vidarr’s blade sliced a shallow cut on his chin as he fell. ‘Stay there,’ I snarled. ‘Finan?’

  ‘Lord?’ he called from the stable door.

  ‘Nine men left,’ I called as I beckoned him.

  ‘And dogs,’ he said drily. I heard paws scrabbling furiously on the door’s far side.

  The door was barred. I lifted the heavy latch and tried pulling and pushing, but it would not budge. And now, I thought, the men inside would be sending for help from the East Anglians on the bridge. I cursed.

  And then the door opened. It seemed that the men inside wanted to loose the dogs on us.

  Two dogs came, both big dogs, both black and tan with slavering mouths, both with yellow teeth and matted hair. They leaped at us. The first one tried to take a bite from my belly and got a mouthful of mail instead. Serpent-Breath sliced once, Vidarr cut from my left, then I stepped over the poor dying beast, saw Finan despatch the other, and both of us charged into the huge warehouse. It was dark inside. A spear flashed by my left side and thumped into the doorpost. There were screams.

  The men defending the warehouse had loosed the dogs, and fighting dogs are formidable beasts. They attack savagely, apparently without fear, and though they are easily enough despatched their attack will force men to break ranks, so the skill of using war dogs is to attack at the same time. Let the dogs distract the enemy and, while that enemy is fighting off tooth and claw, hit him with spears and swords.

  But the warehouse defenders thought the dogs could do all the work and, instead of attacking us, they just waited in a line that stretched between two cages. Women were screaming to my right, but I had no time to look because the defenders faced me, men with small shields and long-swords. I could not count them, it was too dim, so I just charged them and bellowed a war cry. ‘Bebbanburg!’

  I teach my young warriors that caution is a virtue in warfare. There is always the temptation to attack blindly, to go screaming at the enemy’s shield wall and hope that sheer anger and savagery will break it. That temptation comes from fear and sometimes the best way to overcome fear is to shriek a war cry, charge and kill, but the enemy is likely to have the same impulse and the same fear. He will kill too. Given a choice I would rather be attacked by men maddened by fear than make the attack myself. Men in a rage, men acting on mindless impulse, will fight like wolves, yet sword-skill and discipline will almost always beat them.

  Yet here I was, screaming a war cry and charging straight at a group of men who blocked the whole width of the passage between the cages. They had not made a shield wall, their shields were too small and merely meant to parry a blow, but they were a wall of swords. But they were also a slaver’s guards, which meant they were paid to keep order, paid to frighten, and paid to use their whips on helpless victims. They were not paid to face Northumbrian warriors. Some, I was sure, had seen service in the shield wall. They had learned their skills, they had beaten down an enemy’s shield, they had killed and they had survived, but since then I doubted they had practised as my men practised. They no longer spent hours with heavy swords and shields because their enemies were unarmed slaves, many of them women and children. The worst they expected was a truculent man who could easily be cudgelled senseless. Now they faced warriors; my warriors.

  Finan was beside me, shouting in his own language, while Beornoth was to my left. ‘Bebbanburg!’ I bellowed again, and doubtless it meant nothing to them, but they saw warriors in mail and helmets, warriors who seemed fearless in the fight, warriors who screamed for their deaths, warriors who killed.

  I was running towards a man in a leather jerkin, a man as tall as I was with a stubby black beard and a sword held like a spear. He took a pace backwards as we came near, but still held the sword straight in front of him. Did he hope I would impale myself? Instead I cuffed his blade aside with my mail-clad left arm and sank Serpent-Breath in his belly as I smelled the stink of his breath. He was big, but I threw him backwards into the man behind, and to my right a man was screaming because Finan’s quick sword had taken his eyes and Beornoth was beside me, blade red, and I twisted to my right, dragged my blade free of the falling man and stepped into the next man, who carried a seax. My mail stopped his blade. He pushed, but he was already stepping back in terror and his thrust had no power. He began to whimper, tried to shake his head, and perhaps he was trying to surrender, b
ut I slammed my helmeted head into his face, the whimper turned to a grunt, then his eyes opened wide as Beornoth’s blade took him in the ribs. They were the eyes of a man about to sink into the torments of hell. He fell, I took one more step and I was behind the makeshift line of enemies, ahead of me was an open door beyond which sunlight glittered on water and on the ship we needed. I turned back, still shouting, and dragged Serpent-Breath’s hungry edge across a man’s neck and suddenly there were no enemies, just men shouting for mercy, men twitching in agony, men dying, blood on the stone floor, and one heavy man fleeing in panic up a stairway that was built beside the women’s cage.

  We are warriors.

  ‘Gerbruht!’

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Fetch Benedetta and the children.’

  We had faced nine men, I counted them. Five were dead or dying, three were on their knees, and one had fled upstairs. Women were crying with fear behind the bars on one side, there were men cowering in the gloom on the other. ‘Beornoth!’ I pointed to the three men on their knees. ‘Bring the bugger we captured in the yard to join those three, strip them all of their mail, lock them up and see if any of the slaves want to be rowers!’

  I had been given a mere glimpse of the man who had fled up the stairway. A big man, not big like Beornoth or Folcbald who were tall and muscled, but fat. I had glimpsed him panicking, scrambling up the stairs, his footsteps thumping loudly, and now I followed with Serpent-Breath naked in my hand.

  The stairs must have been built by the Romans because the first few steps were stone, though above those neat masonry steps was a more recent wooden flight that led to a small landing where dust motes danced. I climbed slowly. There was no noise from the upper floors. I assumed the fat man, whoever he was, would be waiting for me. Finan joined me and the two of us crept up the wooden flight, flinching when the timber creaked. ‘One man,’ I whispered.

  An open doorway hung with a thick woollen curtain opened to the right of the small landing. I suspected that as soon as I stepped onto that landing a spear would be thrust through the wool, so I reached up with Serpent-Breath and edged it aside. There was no spear thrust. I edged the curtain further aside and heard a stifled whimper. There were more heavy footsteps, suggesting that the fat man was climbing yet more stairs.