Sword of Kings

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘What’s this place called?’ I called back in the same language.

  He shrugged. ‘A timber yard!’

  Finan chuckled, I scowled, then looked behind, but still saw no pursuing horsemen. At best, I thought, Waormund would return to Lundene and set out in the morning with sufficient men to slaughter us. He would search the river till he found Brimwisa and, if she was deserted, scour the nearby countryside. For a moment I even thought of turning the ship and rowing downstream, hoping to reach the Temes and then the open sea, but it would be a night-time journey against the tide with an exhausted crew in a shoaling river, and if Waormund had a shred of sense he would leave his ship with sufficient men to block the Ligan and so trap us.

  We crossed the ford north of the timber yard without scraping the shingle, though some of the oars faltered as they struck the river bed. ‘We must stop soon,’ Benedetta insisted, ‘look at the men!’

  ‘We keep going while there’s light,’ I said.

  ‘But they are tired!’ she said. I was tired too, tired of trying to escape a predicament all of my own making and anxious because of the horsemen we had seen. I wanted to stop and I feared to stop. The river was wide here, wide and shallow, and Benedetta was right, the oarsmen were near the end of their strength and we were barely making progress against the sluggish current. The sun was low now, touching the crests of distant hills, but outlined against that burning sun I could just see a high thatched roof above a stand of elms. A hall, I thought, and a chance to rest. I pulled the steering-oar towards me and ran Brimwisa aground, her bows just nudging the bank.

  Finan glanced at me. ‘Stopping?’

  ‘It’ll be dark soon. I want a place to shelter.’

  ‘We could stay on the boat?’

  ‘We’ve come about as far we can,’ I said. The river was increasingly shallow and for the last few minutes we had been rowing through sinuous water weed and our oars and keel had been constantly scraping the river bed. I decided it was time to abandon the Brimwisa. ‘We could wait for the flood tide,’ I told Finan, ‘and make a few more miles, but we’ll be waiting for hours. Better to walk now.’

  ‘And rest first?’

  ‘And rest first,’ I assured him.

  We went ashore, taking with us the captured weapons, clothes, food, mail, and money. I distributed the food, letting everyone take what they could carry. The last things I took were the two long chains that had linked the shackles of the rowers. ‘Why these, lord?’ Immar asked me after I draped one of the heavy coiled chains around his neck.

  ‘Chain is valuable,’ I said.

  Before we left the river I had Gerbruht and Beornoth, the only two of my men who could swim, take off their boots and mail, then take Brimwisa’s bow line across the river. Once there they hauled the ship to the East Anglian bank, tied her to a willow, then half waded and half swam back. It was a small and probably useless precaution, but if Waormund did follow us then he would discover the ship on the eastern bank and might perhaps lead his men across the river and so away from us.

  It was twilight as we walked across a lush river meadow that was thick with buttercups, through the elms and so to a large steading, which, like the villages we had passed, had no palisade. Two tethered dogs greeted us with frantic barking. There was a large hall from which smoke rose into the evening, a newly-thatched barn, and some smaller buildings which I took to be granaries and stables. The three dogs barked more urgently, straining at the thick ropes that held them to the hall, and only stopped when the door was thrown open and four men were outlined against the glow of the fire inside. Three of the men carried hunting bows that had arrows notched on their cords, the fourth held a sword. It was that man who bellowed at the dogs to stop their damned noise, then looked at us. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted.

  ‘Travellers,’ I called back.

  ‘Jesus, enough of you!’

  I gave my sword belt to Finan and, accompanied only by Benedetta and Father Oda, walked towards the hall. As I got closer I saw that the man holding the sword was elderly, but still hale. ‘I seek shelter for a night,’ I explained, ‘and have silver to pay you.’

  ‘Silver is always welcome,’ he said guardedly. ‘But who are you and where are you going?’

  ‘I am a friend of King Æthelstan,’ I answered.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said cautiously, ‘but you’re not Mercian.’

  My accent had told him that. ‘I am from Northumbria.’

  ‘A Northumbrian is a friend of the king?’ he asked scornfully.

  ‘As I was also a friend to the Lady Æthelflaed.’

  That name gave him pause. He stared at us in the fast fading light and I saw him look down at the hammer amulet hanging from my neck. ‘A Northumbrian pagan,’ he said slowly, ‘who was a friend to the Lady Æthelflaed.’ He looked back to my face as he lowered the sword. ‘You’re Uhtred of Bebbanburg!’ He spoke in a tone of amazement.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then you are welcome, lord.’ He sheathed his sword, gestured for his companions to lower their bows, then took a few paces towards us, stopping just a sword’s length away. ‘My name is Rædwalh Rædwalhson.’

  ‘You’re well met,’ I said fervently.

  ‘I fought at Fearnhamme, lord.’

  ‘A bad fight that,’ I responded.

  ‘We won, lord! You won!’ He smiled. ‘You are indeed welcome!’

  ‘I might not be so welcome if you know that we’re being pursued.’

  ‘By those bastards who captured Lundene?’

  ‘They will come,’ I said, ‘and if they find us here they’ll punish you.’

  ‘East Anglians!’ Rædwalh said angrily. ‘They’ve already sent men to raid our storehouses and steal cattle.’

  ‘We have food,’ I said, ‘but we need ale and a place to rest. Not in your hall, I can’t endanger your household.’

  He thought for a moment. An elderly woman, I assumed she was his wife, came to the door and watched us. The first bats were leaving the barn, dark against the sky in which the first stars were showing. ‘There’s a place a short mile south of here,’ Rædwalh said, ‘and you can rest there safe enough.’ He looked past me at the motley collection of slaves, children, and warriors. ‘But you lead a mighty strange army, lord,’ he went on, amused, ‘so what in God’s name are you doing?’

  ‘You have time for a story?’

  ‘Don’t we always, lord?

  It had been the mention of Æthelflaed that had unlocked Rædwalh’s generosity. The Mercians had loved her, admired her, and now mourned her. It was Æthelflaed who had driven the Danes from Mercia, who had endowed churches, monasteries and convents, and who had built the burhs that defended the northern frontier. She was the Lady of Mercia, a ruler who had fiercely defended Mercia’s pride and Mercia’s wealth, and all Mercians knew I had been her friend and a few even suspected I had been her lover. Rædwalh talked of her as he led us south around the flank of a wooded hill, then listened as I told him of our escape from Lundene. ‘If the bastards come looking for you,’ he assured me, ‘I won’t say a word. Nor will any of my people. We’ve no love for East Anglians.’

  ‘The man leading the search,’ I said, ‘is a West Saxon.’

  ‘We haven’t much love for them either! Don’t worry, lord, none of us have seen you.’

  The night was bright with moonlight. We were walking the river meadows, and I worried that Waormund might have sent men north on foot to find Brimwisa. I saw her mast above the shadowed willows as we went south, but saw no sign of any enemy. ‘If you want that ship,’ I said to Rædwalh, ‘she’s yours.’

  ‘Never did like ships, lord.’

  ‘Her timbers might be useful?’

  ‘That’s true! A good ship’s timbers will build a couple of cottages. Careful here.’ We had come to a reed-fringed ditch and, once across, Rædwalh led us west towards low wooded hills. We followed a track that wound through ash and elm to a clearing where an old decaying barn stood gaunt in the moonlight.
‘This was part of my father’s steading,’ Rædwalh explained, ‘and part of mine too, but the old fellow who owned the river meadows died ten years back and I bought the land from his widow. She died four years after her old fellow, so we moved into their hall.’ He pushed open a half-collapsed door. ‘It’s dry enough in there, lord. I’ll send ale to you and whatever food the wife can spare. There’s cheese, I know.’

  ‘You mustn’t go hungry because of us,’ I said, ‘we just need ale.’

  ‘There’s a spring back and beyond,’ Rædwalh nodded towards the higher ground to the west, ‘and the water’s safe.’

  ‘Then all I need is shelter.’ I felt in my pouch.

  Rædwalh heard the chink of coins. ‘It don’t seem right taking money from you, lord, not for a night’s shelter in an old barn.’

  ‘I stole the money from a slave-trader.’

  ‘In that case,’ he grinned and held out a hand. ‘And where are you going, lord? If you don’t mind me asking.’

  ‘Further north,’ I said, deliberately vague. ‘We’re looking for King Æthelstan’s forces.’

  ‘North!’ Rædwalh sounded surprised. ‘You don’t need to go north, lord, there’s a fair few hundred of King Æthelstan’s men in Werlameceaster! Both my sons are there, serving Lord Merewalh.’

  It was my turn to sound surprised. ‘Werlameceaster?’ I asked. ‘Is that close by?’

  ‘The good Lord love you, lord,’ Rædwalh said, amused, ‘no more than two dozen miles from here!’

  So Merewalh, my friend, was close, and with him were the hundreds of men he had so foolishly marched out of Lundene. ‘Merewalh’s still there?’

  ‘He was a week ago,’ Rædwalh said. ‘I rode there to give the boys some bacon.’

  I felt a sudden surge of hope, of relief. I touched the hammer. ‘So where are we?’ I asked.

  ‘God love you, lord, this is Cestrehunt!’

  I had never heard of the place, though plainly Rædwalh considered it notable. I felt in my pouch again and brought out a piece of gold. ‘Do you have a reliable servant?’

  ‘I have six, lord.’

  ‘And a good horse?’

  ‘Six of those too.’

  ‘Then can one of your servants ride to Werlameceaster tonight,’ I said, holding out the coin, ‘and tell Merewalh I’m here and that I need help?’

  Rædwalh hesitated, then took the coin. ‘I’ll send two men, lord.’ He hesitated again. ‘Is there going to be a war?’

  ‘There already is,’ I said bleakly, ‘there was fighting in Lundene, and once a war starts it’s hard to stop.’

  ‘Because we have two kings instead of one?’

  ‘Because we have one king,’ I said, ‘and a vile boy who thinks he’s a king.’

  Rædwalh heard the bitterness in my voice. ‘Ælfweard?’

  ‘Him and his uncle.’

  ‘Who won’t stop till they’ve swallowed Mercia,’ Rædwalh said sourly.

  ‘But what if Mercia swallows Wessex and East Anglia?’ I asked.

  He thought about that, then crossed himself. ‘I’d rather there was no war, lord. There’s been too much. I don’t want my sons in a shield wall, but if there has to be war than I pray young Æthelstan wins it. Is that why you’re here, lord? To help him?’

  ‘I’m here,’ I said, ‘because I’m a fool.’

  And I was. I was an impetuous fool, but the gods had brought me close to Æthelstan’s forces, so maybe the gods were on my side.

  The morning would tell.

  I would not allow a fire. If Waormund had sent men to follow us through the night then a fire, even inside the old barn, would betray us. We ate stale oatcakes and dried fish, drank the water from the spring that Rædwalh had said was pure, and then I ordered the oarsmen to sleep at one end of the old barn, the women and children at the other, while I and my men would stay between them. I put our plunder, the spare clothes, mail coats, money, and spears with the women. Then I made all my men draw their swords. A small moonlight leaked through the barn’s splintered roof, just enough light so that the oarsmen could see the glint of swords. ‘I’m chaining you,’ I told them. There was silence for a couple of heartbeats, then a growl. ‘I’m freeing you too!’ I quietened them. ‘I promised it and I keep my promises. But this night you wear the chains, maybe for the last time. Immar, Oswi! Do it.’

  That was why I had brought the chains. The oarsmen were bone-tired, and that might be enough to keep them sleeping all night, but Benedetta’s warning had stayed with me. Men whose ankles were linked by chain would find it impossible to move silently, and any attempt to remove the chain would surely alert us. Benedetta and the women watched as Oswi and Immar threaded the links. There was no way of stapling the chains, so they just tied clumsy knots in their ends.

  ‘Now sleep,’ I told them, then watched as they sullenly settled on the rancid straw before I took Finan out into the moonlight. ‘We’re going to need sentries,’ I said. We were gazing across the meadows to where the moon-touched river slid silver between the willows.

  ‘You think the bastards are following us?’

  ‘They might be, but even if they’re not—

  ‘We need sentries,’ he interrupted me.

  ‘I’ll take the first part of the night,’ I said, ‘and you the second. We each need three men with us.’

  ‘Out here?’ he asked. We were standing just outside the barn.

  ‘One man out here,’ I said, ‘and you or me inside with the other two.’

  ‘Inside?’

  ‘Do you trust the slaves?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re chained,’ he said.

  ‘And desperate. They know we’re being pursued. Maybe they think it’s better to run now than wait for Waormund’s troops to capture us. And they know we have money, women, and weapons.’

  He thought for a heartbeat, then, ‘Jesus,’ he said quietly, ‘you really think they’ll dare attack us?’

  ‘I think we should be ready if they do.’

  ‘And there’s near thirty of them. If they all attack us …’ his voice trailed away.

  ‘Even if only half,’ I said, ‘or maybe I’m imagining it.’

  ‘And if they do attack?’

  ‘Put them down hard and fast,’ I said grimly.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said again.

  ‘And warn all our men,’ I added.

  We went back inside. Moonlight came through the ragged holes in the shattered roof. Men were snoring. I could hear a child crying, and Benedetta singing softly to her. After a while the crying ended. An owl hooted in the woods beyond the barn.

  I put Oswi outside the barn and sat inside with Beornoth and Gerbruht, the three of us leaning against the wall in dark shadow. None of us spoke and my thoughts drifted as I fought against sleep. I remembered the Lundene house where I had lived with Gisela and I tried to conjure her face in my memory, but it would not come. It never did. Stiorra, my daughter, had resembled her mother, but Stiorra was dead too, and her face was just as elusive. What I could remember was Ravn, the blind skald, who was father to Ragnar the Fearless. It had been Ragnar who had captured me when I was a child, who had enslaved me and then made me his son.

  Ravn had been a great warrior till a Saxon sword took his eyes, and so he had become a skald. He had laughed when I said I did not know what a skald was. ‘You would call a skald a scop,’ he had explained.

  ‘A shaper?’

  ‘A poet, boy. A weaver of dreams, a man who makes glory from nothing and dazzles you with its making.’

  ‘What use is a poet?’ I had asked.

  ‘None at all, boy, none at all! Poets are quite useless! But when the world ends folk will remember our songs, and in Valhalla they will sing those songs and so the middle-earth’s glory will not die.’

  Ravn had taught me about his gods and, now that I was as old as Ravn had been when I knew him, I wished I had asked him more, but I did remember him saying that he believed there was a place in the afterworld for families. ‘I w
ill see my wife again,’ he had told me wistfully, and I had been too young to know what to say and too foolish to ask him more. All I had wanted to hear was his tales of battle, but now, in the moonlit barn, I clung to those few words spoken so long ago and dreamed of Gisela waiting in some sunlit hall to welcome me. I tried again to summon her face, her smile. I saw her in my dreams sometimes, but never when I was awake.

  ‘Lord,’ Beornoth hissed, elbowing me.

  I must have fallen half asleep, but woke abruptly. Serpent-Breath was drawn, lying hidden in the straw beside me and I instinctively took her hilt. I looked to my right where the rowers had bedded down. I could see none moving and could hear nothing but snoring, but after a moment I also heard low muttering and assumed that sound had alerted Beornoth. I could make out no words. The muttering stopped then started again. I heard the filthy straw rustling and the clink of the chains. That sound had not stopped all night, but sleeping men move their feet and I had dismissed it. The moon was low in the sky, so little light leaked through the barn’s broken roof, but all the rowers appeared to be sleeping. I listened, trying to distinguish the noise a chain might make if it were being slowly drawn through the ring of an ankle fetter, but all I heard were snores. An owl called. One of the children at the other end of the barn cried in her sleep and was hushed. A chain clinked again, stopped, and then sounded louder. The straw rustled, then went quiet. I waited, tense, my hand tight on Serpent-Breath’s hilt.

  Then it happened. A big man, little more than a shadow in the darkness, stood and charged towards me. He bellowed a challenge as he lunged at me. The chain clattered behind him. I shouted too, a wordless shout of rage, and I lifted Serpent-Breath and let the big man run onto the blade. I was trying to stand, but the weight of the man pushed me against Beornoth and we both fell back. Serpent-Breath had gone deep, I had felt her punch through layers of muscle, but the man, still roaring, swung at me with a seax, which must have been the blade I had given to Irenmund, and I felt my mail rip and a sharp pain score across my left shoulder. I had been driven down to the barn’s floor. I was still gripping Serpent-Breath and was suddenly aware of warm blood soaking my right hand. Beornoth was shouting, children were screaming, I heard Finan curse, but I could see nothing because I was still trapped beneath the big man who was breathing gutturally, gasping into my face. I heaved him off me, managed to get to my knees, and ripped Serpent-Breath up. I should have been using Wasp-Sting because there was no room to wield the long blade, but before I could free the sword, two more men came at me, their faces distorted by fear and rage. The big man was dying, but had my left leg in his grip. I twisted Serpent-Breath in his guts just as one of the two men lunged at my belly and in the moonlight I saw a small knife in his hand. I twisted away and the dying man’s grip tripped me so I fell again and the man with the knife followed me down, snarling, the knife aimed at my right eye. I held his wrist with my left hand, the right still holding Serpent-Breath, and the knife-man snarled again and used his strength to drive his blade down. He had been pulling an oar and his strength was prodigious. I wanted to slash his neck with Serpent-Breath, but the second man was trying to tug the sword away from me, and I remember thinking that this was a futile way to die. The first man was inching the knife closer. In the dim moonlit barn I could see it was not really a knife, but a ship’s nail, a spike, and he was grunting with the effort of trying to push it into my eye while I was trying to thrust his hand away and still keep hold of Serpent-Breath.