Sword of Kings

by Bernard Cornwell

  And it was then that I planned to lead the smaller force into the city and give the enemy a gut-stroke like that which had killed Heorstan. But just as flesh closes around a sword, sometimes making it almost impossible to drag the trapped blade free, so Æthelhelm’s men would close on us and outnumber us. It was Father Oda’s conviction that the East Anglians would change sides, but I reckoned that would only happen if we had first killed or captured Æthelhelm and his nephew King Ælfweard. That was why I was going, not just to retrieve Serpent-Breath, but to kill my enemies.

  ‘The enemy knows you’re coming!’ Benedetta protested.

  I smiled at her. ‘The enemy knows what I want them to know. That’s why we let Heorstan’s men ride south yesterday, to mislead the enemy.’

  ‘And that will be enough?’ she asked. ‘To mislead them? You will win because of that?’ She was scornful. I said nothing. ‘You lie to me because you are not well! Your ribs! You are hurting. You think you can fight? Tell me what you believe!’

  And still I said nothing, because lurking in my heart was the temptation to break my oath to Æthelstan. Why kill his enemies even if they were mine? If a great war broke out between Wessex and Mercia then my country would be safer. For all my adult life I had watched Wessex grow stronger, defeating the Danes, subduing Mercia, and conquering East Anglia, and all in pursuit of King Alfred’s dream that there should be one country for all the folk who spoke Ænglisc, the language of the Saxons. But Northumbria also spoke that language, and Northumbria was my land, and Northumbria was ruled by the last pagan king in Britain. Did I want to see Northumbria swallowed into a greater land, a Christian land? Better, I thought, to let Æthelstan and Ælfweard fight it out, to let them weaken each other. And all that was true, except I had given my oath and I had lost my sword. Sometimes we do not know why we do the things we do, we are driven to it by fate, by impulse, or by mere stupidity.

  ‘You’re not speaking,’ Benedetta said accusingly, ‘you’re not answering me.’

  I stood and picked up the sword that I would carry to the fight and felt the sharp loss of the sword I wished I was carrying. I pushed the blade into its scabbard. ‘It’s time to go.’

  ‘But you—’ she began.

  ‘I swore an oath,’ I interrupted her harshly, ‘and I lost a sword.’

  ‘And what of me?’ she asked, almost crying. ‘What of Alaina?’

  I stooped and looked into her beautiful face. ‘I will come for you,’ I said, ‘and for the children. When it’s over we’ll all go north.’

  I thought of Eadith in Bebbanburg and thrust that uncomfortable thought away. For a heartbeat I was tempted to touch Benedetta’s cheek, to assure her I would come back, but instead I turned away.

  Because it was time to fight.

  Or it was time, rather, to ride the pilgrim road again, to cross the great road, and so to the River Ligan, and that meant passing the hilltop where Waormund had humiliated me. I could barely bring myself to look up the slope to the hedgerow, nor look at the dry ruts in the road that had lacerated me. I hurt. Finan rode to my right with his battered helmet hanging from his saddle pommel and a broad-brimmed rye straw hat shading his eyes from the rising sun. Wihtgar, with whom Finan seemed to have struck up a friendship, rode beyond Finan, and the two were arguing about horses, Wihtgar maintaining that a gelding could outrun a stallion any day, to which Finan, of course, retorted that the horses of Ireland were so swift, so brave, that no horse in the world could outrun them, though he allowed that Sleipnir might. Wihtgar had never heard of Sleipnir, so Finan had to explain that Sleipnir was Thor’s horse and ran on eight legs, to which Wihtgar retorted that Sleipnir’s dam must have been a spider, which made them both laugh.

  In truth I knew Finan was talking to distract me. He had deliberately said Sleipnir was Thor’s horse when he knew full well he was Odin’s stallion, and he was thus inviting me to correct him. I kept silent.

  Merewalh had ridden first, but he and his two hundred men had turned south on the great road and were long out of sight when we crossed and kept riding eastwards. We numbered one hundred and eighty men, of whom sixty were Brihtwulf’s troops, led by Brihtwulf himself, and by Wihtgar, who was his most experienced warrior. A dozen servants, brought to take the horses back to Werlameceaster, accompanied us with packhorses on which we had loaded barrels of ale and boxes of oatcakes. My few men, all on captured West Saxon horses, rode behind me, but the rest of the troops were Mercians who had wanted to come with us, inspired or convinced by Father Oda’s sermon. The priest was also with us, though I had not wanted his company. ‘You’re a priest,’ I had told him, ‘and we need warriors.’

  ‘You need the living Christ at your side,’ he had responded fiercely, ‘and you need more.’

  ‘More gods?’ I had needled him.

  ‘You need an East Anglian,’ he had ignored my taunt. ‘You’re pretending to be Æthelhelm’s men and you know nothing of his eastern estates, nothing of his tenants. I do.’

  He had been right, and so he rode with us though he refused both a mail coat and a weapon. I carried a long plain sword with an ash handle. The blade, which Merewalh had given me, had no name. ‘But it’s a fine sword, lord,’ he had assured me, and so it was, but it was no Serpent-Breath.

  Once at the Ligan we turned south. Wihtgar had sent scouts ahead who came back to say there were no red-cloaked troops at the village where the ford crossed the Ligan. ‘No ship either,’ one of the scouts reported. I had supposed that the ship in which Waormund had been pursuing us would be grounded at the ford, and so it probably had been, but she was evidently gone. ‘Did you cross the ford?’ I asked.

  ‘No, lord. We did what we were told to do. Look for the enemy in the village. We were told they left two days ago.’

  That, if true, was a relief. I did not mind if Merewalh’s two hundred men were discovered by Æthelhelm’s forces, indeed we wanted them to be discovered. We wanted the troops garrisoning Lundene to be watching northwards, watching Merewalh, while my smaller force went southwards. But to go southwards we needed ships and we needed to stay unseen.

  We splashed across the ford to the Ligan’s East Anglian bank, then turned south again, riding to the big timber yard where, on our voyage upriver in Brimwisa, I had seen four barges being loaded with split timbers.

  Three of the barges were still there. They were flat-bottomed, made for river work, with a wide beam, a blunt prow, and a steering-oar with a blade the size of a small barn door. All three possessed masts, but the masts were stepped, lying lengthwise in the wide flat bellies of the craft along with their shrouds, a sail yard each, and three neatly furled sails. There were no benches for oarsmen, instead the rowers stood and used the dozen tholes on each side for their long, heavy oars. They were horrible, clumsy looking boats, but they would get us to Lundene. I dismounted, flinching because of the pain in my ribs, and walked towards the barges.

  ‘You can’t take them!’ An irate elderly man stormed out of a house built next to a vast open shed where timbers were seasoning. He spoke Danish. ‘You can’t take them!’ he repeated.

  ‘Are you going to stop us?’ It was Wihtgar who snarled that response, and in Danish too, which surprised me.

  The man took one look into Wihtgar’s scarred face and all defiance fled. ‘How do I get them back?’ he pleaded.

  I ignored the question. ‘Lord Æthelhelm needs them,’ I said, ‘and doubtless he’ll return them.’

  ‘Lord Æthelhelm?’ The elderly man was confused now.

  ‘I’m his cousin, Æthelwulf,’ I said, using the name of Æthelhelm’s younger brother who I hoped was still a prisoner in Bebbanburg, then had an impulse to touch my hammer to ward off the thoughts of plague in the north. I had no hammer, but I did have my pouch of money that Finan had returned, and so I gave the man hacksilver. ‘We’re joining my cousin in Lundene,’ I told him, ‘so look for your ships there.’ I saw a thin silver chain under his jerkin, reached out to free it, and found he was wearing a
silver hammer. He edged back, alarmed. Our shields were burned with crosses and he plainly feared Christian vengeance. ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘Much, lord?’

  ‘For the hammer?’

  ‘Two shillings, lord.’

  I gave him three, then hung the hammer around my neck and touched it with a forefinger. It was a consolation.

  One of the barges was half loaded with stacks of split timber and we unloaded it, then waited for the tide to turn. I sat on a thick oak trunk, gazing across the river, which swirled slow and sluggish. Two swans drifted upstream on the flood tide. I was thinking of Eadith and of Benedetta when a voice interrupted my thoughts. ‘You said we were Lord Æthelhelm’s men, lord?’ Wihtgar was standing over me.

  ‘I didn’t want him complaining to Æthelhelm,’ I explained. Not that the elderly man was likely to send a messenger to Lundene, but nor did I want news spreading through the neighbourhood of a Mercian force taking boats. ‘Besides,’ I went on, ‘we are Æthelhelm’s men now, or we are until we start killing them.’ We had plenty of captured red cloaks, and we had the charred crosses on our shields. I looked up at Wihtgar. ‘So you speak Danish?’ That was unusual for a Saxon.

  He gave me a lopsided grin. ‘Married to one, lord.’ He touched the wrinkled scar where his left ear had been. ‘Her husband did this. He got my ear, I got his woman. A fair exchange.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘Did he live?’

  ‘Not long, lord.’ He patted the hilt of his sword. ‘Flæscmangere saw to that.’

  I half smiled. Flæscmangere was a good name for a sword, and the butcher’s blade, I thought, would soon be busy in Lundene.

  It was midday before the ebb started, but even before the tide turned, when it was slack water, we untied the ships, poled them off the wharf, and started downriver. It was another bright summer’s day, too hot to wear mail. The sun dazzled from the river’s ripples, a lazy west wind stirred the willow leaves, and slowly, slowly, we lumbered downstream. We used the oars, but clumsily, because the Mercians were not used to rowing. I had put Gerbruht on the second barge and Beornoth on the third because they were both Frisian seamen and both knew boats. Their barges lumbered behind ours, the oars splashing and clashing, and mostly it was the river’s current and the fall of the quickening tide that took us southwards.

  We reached the Temes in the late afternoon and it was there that I discovered the purpose of the four great posts buried in the river bed where the Ligan’s channels joined the greater river. A hay barge was moored to one of the posts. The crew, just three men, were waiting for the tide to turn and, rather than run aground, they were floating, tethered to the post, which meant they did not have to wait for the flood tide to lift them from the mud, but could take advantage of the first strong tidal surge to carry them towards Lundene. We moored with them, then waited again.

  The sun blazed. There was hardly a breath of wind now. No clouds. Yet to the west there was a great dark smear in the sky, ominous as any thunderhead. That was the smoke of Lundene. It was a city, I thought, of darkness. I wondered if the smoke lingered above Bebbanburg, or whether a sea breeze was blowing it inland, and then I touched my new hammer to avert the curse of plague. I closed my eyes and gripped the hammer so tightly that it hurt my fingers. I prayed to Thor. I prayed that my lacerations would heal, that my ribs would stop hurting with every breath, and that my torn shoulder would let me wield a sword. I prayed for Bebbanburg, for Northumbria, for my son, for all the folk at home. I thought of Berg, with his strange cargo of a fugitive queen and her children. I prayed there was no plague.

  ‘You’re praying,’ Finan accused me.

  ‘That the sky stays cloudless,’ I said, opening my eyes.

  ‘You’re worrying about rain?’

  ‘I want moonlight,’ I said. ‘We’ll be going upriver after sundown.’

  It was still full daylight when the tethered boats swung ponderously to the new tide. We unmoored from the massive posts and used the big oars to take us into the Temes, then let the tide carry us. The sinking sun was hazed by the great smear of smoke as slowly the western sky turned into a furnace.

  There was little river traffic, just two more hay barges and some fishing craft. Our long sweeps creaked in their tholes, giving us just enough speed for the steering-oar to bite. The sky slowly darkened, pricked with the first stars, and a half-moon was bright overhead as the sun died in scarlet glory. By now, I thought, Merewalh’s men had swept the enemy out of Toteham and had harried them south. The fires would soon be lit on the heaths, telling Æthelhelm that an enemy had come. Let him stare north, I prayed, let him stare north as we crept westwards through the night.

  Towards the city of darkness.

  We reached the city without going aground, the flooding tide carrying us safely in the deepest channels. We were not alone. Two ships passed us, close together, their oar-blades flashing in the moonlight, and both ships were crammed with men. The leading ship hailed us as she passed, wanting to know where we were from, and Father Oda called back that we were Ealhstan’s men from Herutceaster. ‘Where’s Herutceaster?’ I muttered to him.

  ‘I made it up,’ he said loftily. ‘They won’t know.’

  ‘Let’s hope we’re not too late!’ a man from the second ship shouted. ‘All those Mercian girls just waiting for us!’ He jerked his hips and his tired oarsmen managed a cheer, then the two ships were past us and became mere shadows on the moon-glossed river.

  We could smell the city from miles away. I gazed north, hoping to see the glow of fires from Merewalh’s men, but saw nothing. Nor, truly, did I expect to. The heaths were far off, but Lundene was coming ever closer. The flood was nearing its end and we quickened the big oars as we rowed past the city’s eastern bastion. A torch burned there and I saw a dull red cloak and the red reflection of flame from a spear-point. The wharves, as ever, were dense with shipping, while a long ship with a high prow on which a cross was mounted was moored to the stone wall where Gisela and I had lived. It was Waormund’s ship, I was certain, but no one watched from the stone terrace. A light flickered behind a shutter of the house, then we were past and I could hear men singing in the Dead Dane tavern. Once past the tavern I searched the wharves for a place to berth. There was no empty space, so we moored the three barges outboard of other ships, men jumping from our decks to lash our clumsy craft to the landward hulls. A man crawled from beneath the steering platform of the ship I had chosen. ‘Who are you?’ he asked irritably.

  ‘Troops from Herutceaster,’ I said.

  ‘Where’s Herutceaster?’

  ‘North of Earsling,’ I said.

  ‘Funny man,’ he growled, saw that Vidarr was doing no damage to his ship, but merely tying off our lines, and so went back to his bed.

  There were sentries on the wharves, but none near us, nor did those who had seen us arrive take much notice. One sauntered down the long landward wharf where torches burned feebly in brackets mounted on the river wall. He stared across the intervening ships and saw that our barges were filled with troops, some wearing the distinctive red cloak, and so wandered back to his post. It was evident no one saw anything remarkable in our arrival, we were just the latest of Æthelhelm’s levies to come from his estates in East Anglia. ‘I wonder how many troops are here?’ Father Oda said to me.

  ‘Too many.’

  ‘Full of comfort, aren’t you?’ he said, making the sign of the cross. ‘We need to know what’s happening.’

  ‘What’s happening,’ I said, ‘is that Æthelhelm is gathering the biggest army he can possibly muster. Two, three thousand men? Maybe more.’

  ‘He’ll find it hard to feed that many,’ Oda said.

  That was true. Feeding an army was a much harder task than assembling one. ‘So perhaps he plans to march soon,’ I guessed, ‘then overwhelm Æthelstan by sheer numbers and so be done with it.’

  ‘It would be good to know if that’s true,’ the priest said and, without another word, he climbed up onto the
next ship.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I called after him.

  ‘To find news, of course.’ He crossed the two ships that lay between our barge and the wharf and I saw him walk towards the nearest group of sentries. He talked to them for a long time, then made the sign of the cross, presumably giving them a blessing, before walking back. I helped him down onto our deck.

  ‘The sentries,’ he said, ‘are East Anglians. And they’re not happy. Lord Varin is dead.’

  ‘You sound sorry too.’

  ‘I did not dislike Varin,’ Father Oda said carefully. He brushed his black robe, then sat on the barge’s low rail. ‘He was not a bad man, but he was killed for allowing you to escape. He hardly deserved that fate.’

  ‘For allowing me to escape! He was put to death?’

  ‘You sound surprised.’

  ‘I am!’

  Oda shrugged. ‘Æthelhelm knows you swore an oath to kill him. He fears that oath.’

  ‘He fears a pagan’s oath?’

  ‘A pagan’s oath,’ Oda said sharply, ‘has the devil’s force, and a man is wise to fear Satan.’

  I looked across the river at the few flickering lights showing in the settlement on the southern bank. ‘If letting me escape deserves death,’ I said, ‘then surely Æthelhelm should kill Waormund too?’

  Oda shook his head. ‘Waormund is beloved of Lord Æthelhelm and Varin was not. Waormund is a West Saxon and Varin was not.’ He paused and I listened to the water rippling past the hull. We were well downstream of the bridge, but I could still hear the river pouring ceaselessly through the narrow arches. ‘The boy was allowed to kill him,’ Oda went on bleakly.