Sword of Kings

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Pity?’

  ‘I wanted to slaughter that bastard for calling me grandpa. Now he’s gone.’ The men had indeed been ordered away from the barricade. The horsemen accompanied them westwards and we watched till they disappeared up a side street. ‘Nothing to stop us now,’ Finan said, and I knew he sensed my reluctance. My ribs hurt, my shoulders hurt. I gazed at the smoke-smeared sky, but saw no omen, good or bad. ‘If we meet Waormund,’ Finan said quietly, ‘I’ll fight him.’ And I knew from those words that he did not just sense my reluctance, he sensed my fear.

  ‘We must go,’ I said harshly.

  Most of Rumwald’s troops carried shields that bore Æthelstan’s badge of the dragon with its lightning bolt. It was horribly dangerous to show that shield inside the city, but I could not ask men to fight without shields. It was a risk we must take, though I also took care to make sure some men wore the red cloaks we had captured, and for others to carry the shields we had taken from Hyglac’s garrison, which showed a fish and a cross, evidently the badge of the Abbot of Basengas. I was fearful that when men in the city saw us crossing the bridge they would realise we were the enemy and would send a force to oppose us, but perhaps the red cloaks and the sight of Æthelhelm’s banner still flying above Suðgeweork’s fort would deceive them. I had known when I first decided to cross to the southern bank that returning over the river would be a dangerous moment, but I had wanted the men besieging the fort to join us. The easy capture of the fort had swollen our numbers, but we were still a pitifully small force. We needed to reach a gate, and if Æthelhelm’s men suspected that the three hundred soldiers crossing the bridge were a threat then we would end up being slaughtered in Lundene’s streets. I told the men to straggle, to take their time. Attackers would have hurried, but we walked slowly, and all the while I watched the street beyond the abandoned barricade and watched the men on the wharves. They saw us, but none showed alarm. Rumwald’s men had vanished from between the houses across the river, so did those red-cloaked troops think the Mercians had withdrawn? And that we were coming to reinforce Æthelhelm?

  And so three hundred men, at least a third of whom displayed Æthelstan’s badge, filed through the barricade, which I had ordered left intact in case we needed to retreat. The sun was high and hot, and the city still and silent. Æthelhelm’s men, I knew, would be on the northern walls, watching Æthelstan’s army, while the citizens of London, if they had any sense, would be behind barred doors.

  It was time to leave the bridge and to climb up into the city. ‘Keep your men closed up now!’ I told Brihtwulf and Rumwald.

  ‘Should we tear up the bridge roadway, lord?’ Rumwald asked eagerly.

  ‘And trap ourselves on this side of it? Leave it alone.’ I started climbing the hill, Rumwald keeping pace with me. ‘Besides,’ I went on, ‘if any of Æthelhelm’s men try to escape across the bridge they’ll have to fight through that closed gate.’

  ‘We only left ten men there, lord,’ Rumwald, for the first time, sounded anxious.

  ‘Six men could hold that gate for ever,’ I said dismissively. And how likely was it that we would have a victory that forced Æthelhelm’s great force to flee in panic? I said nothing of that.

  ‘You think six men are enough, lord?’ Rumwald asked.

  ‘I know so.’

  ‘Then he’ll be king!’ Rumwald had regained his optimism. ‘By sundown, lord, Æthelstan will be King of Englaland!’

  ‘Not of Northumbria,’ I growled.

  ‘No, not Northumbria,’ Rumwald agreed, then looked up at me. ‘I’ve always wanted to fight alongside you, lord! It’ll be something to tell my grandchildren! That I fought with the great Lord Uhtred!’

  The great Lord Uhtred! I felt a vast weight on my heart when I heard those words. Reputation! We seek it, we prize it, and then it turns on us like a cornered wolf. What did Rumwald expect? A miracle? We were three hundred in a city of three thousand, and the great Lord Uhtred had a battered body and a fearful heart. Yes, we might open a gate, and we might even hold it long enough to let Æthelstan’s men into the city, but what then? We would still be outnumbered. ‘It’s an honour to fight beside you,’ I told Rumwald, merely saying what he would like to hear, ‘and we need a horse.’

  ‘A horse?’

  ‘If we capture a gate,’ I said, ‘we have to send word to King Æthelstan.’

  ‘Of course!’

  And at that moment a horseman appeared. He came from the top of the hill, his grey stallion stepping carefully on the old paving slabs. He turned towards us and I held up a hand to check our progress close beside the empty benches outside the Red Pig. ‘Who are you?’ the horseman called as he approached.

  ‘Lord Ealhstan!’ Brihtwulf came to stand on my right. Finan, who had been walking behind me, stood on my left.

  The horseman could see red cloaks, he could see the fish symbol on Rumwald’s borrowed shield, but he could not see Æthelstan’s dragon shields because we had placed those men at the back.

  ‘East Anglians?’ The horseman curbed the stallion just in front of us. He was young, his mail was finely made, his horse’s trappings were polished leather studded with silver, and his sword was in a silver-coated scabbard. A thin gold chain circled his neck. His horse, a fine stallion, was nervous and stepped sideways, and the rider patted it with a gloved hand on which two rings glittered.

  ‘We’re East Anglians and West Saxons,’ Brihtwulf said arrogantly, ‘and you are?’

  ‘Edor Hæddeson, lord,’ the horseman said, then glanced at me, and for a heartbeat there was a startled look on his face, but it vanished as he looked back to Brihtwulf. ‘I serve in Lord Æthelhelm’s household,’ he explained. ‘Where’s Hyglac?’ He had evidently recognised the fish shields.

  ‘He stayed at the fort,’ Brihtwulf said. ‘The pretty boy’s troops gave up and walked back westwards, but Hyglac kept enough men there in case they come back.’

  ‘They went westwards?’ Edor asked. ‘Then that’s where we need you, all of you!’ He patted his skittish horse’s neck again and looked back to me. If he served in Æthelhelm’s household then it was likely he had seen me at one of the meetings between King Edward and my son-in-law, Sigtryggr, but I had always been in my war-glory, my arms thick with the rings of silver and gold. Now I wore ragged mail, carried a shield scarred with the cross, and my face, still lacerated from Waormund’s treatment, was half hidden by the leather cheek-pieces of my rust-touched helmet. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

  ‘Osbert Osbertson,’ I said, then nodded at Brihtwulf. ‘I’m his grandfather.’

  ‘Where do you need us?’ Brihtwulf asked hurriedly.

  ‘You’re to go west.’ Edor pointed to a side street. ‘Follow that street. You’ll find men at the far end, join them.’

  ‘Æthelstan’s going to attack there?’ Brihtwulf asked.

  ‘Pretty boy? Christ no! We’re going to attack him from there.’

  So Æthelhelm planned to attack Æthelstan’s army, maybe not in hope of crushing the enemy, but at least to drive him away from Lundene and inflict casualties in the process. I felt in my pouch, took a step closer to Edor’s horse and bent down, grunting from the pain in my ribs. I touched the stone of the road, then straightened, holding a silver shilling. ‘Did you drop this?’ I asked Edor, holding the bright coin towards him.

  For a heartbeat he was tempted to lie, then greed conquered honesty. ‘I must have,’ he lied, then reached down for the coin. I dropped the silver, seized his left wrist, and pulled hard, sending an agonising lance of pain through my shoulder. Finan’s sword, Soul-Stealer, was already sliding from its scabbard. The horse, alarmed, stepped away, but that only helped me pull Edor out of the saddle. He shouted in rage or alarm. He was falling, but his left foot was trapped in the stirrup and he was being pulled away. My shoulder, torn from being dragged behind Waormund’s horse, felt as if a red-hot poker was being thrust into the joint. Then Wihtgar seized the stallion’s reins, Soul-Stealer sliced down with the sun
reflecting bright from her blade, and suddenly there was blood on the road. Edor was on the ground, coughing blood, moaning, and then Soul-Stealer struck again, point first, to pierce mail, leather, and ribs. Edor gave a high pitched gasp, his left hand seemed to reach towards me, made a clutching motion, then fell. He lay still, his eyes gazing sightless at the cloudless sky. Finan crouched, snapped the gold chain and tugged it free, unbuckled the rich sword belt with its weapon, then worked the rings off Edor’s gloved fingers.

  ‘Jesus,’ Rumwald breathed.

  ‘The horse is yours,’ I told Brihtwulf, ‘you’re Lord Ealhstan, so mount up. Gerbruht!’

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Drag that thing into an alley.’ I nudged Edor’s corpse with my foot.

  ‘No one saw a thing!’ Rumwald said in amazement.

  ‘Of course they did,’ I said, ‘they just don’t want us to know they saw us.’ I looked along the windows of the street and could see no one, but I was certain folk were watching us. ‘Just pray they don’t send word to Æthelhelm.’ I turned. ‘Oswi!’

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Take us to the nearest gate to the north, and I want to avoid the palace.’

  ‘The Crepelgate, lord,’ Oswi said, then led us confidently, taking us through a maze of small streets and alleys. The Roman buildings gave way to newer houses, all made of timber with thatched roofs, then those houses ended and we were at the top of the city’s low eastern hill, and in front of us was a wasteland of ruins, hazel saplings, and weeds. I could see the palace a long way to the west, close to it were the remnants of the amphitheatre and, beyond that ruin, the fort at the city’s north-western corner.

  And in front of us were the walls.

  They are extraordinary, those walls. They ring the whole city, are built of dressed stone, and are three times the height of a tall man. Towers are built every two or three hundred paces, and the seven gates are flanked by great stone bastions. The walls have stood for three or four hundred years, perhaps longer, and for most of their length the ramparts still stand as the Romans built them. Some gaps have appeared across the years, and many of the towers have lost their roofs, but the gaps have been plugged with great timbers and the roofs replaced with thatch. There are stone stairs leading up to the ramparts and, where the wall has fallen into the ditch and been repaired in timber, there are wooden fighting platforms. Lundene’s wall is a marvel, making me wonder, as so often, how the Romans had ever lost Britain.

  And in front of us, too, were men. Hundreds of men. Most were on the ramparts, from where they gazed northwards, but some, too many, were behind the gate. From where we stood we could only see one gate, the Crepelgate, with its two massive bastions looming over the roadway and Æthelhelm’s banner flying from the nearest tower, while beneath it, amidst tall weeds and the rubble of old walls, were troops. I could not see how many, they were sitting on crumbling walls or resting, but I could see enough to know they were too many. ‘They expect Æthelstan to attack here?’ Brihtwulf asked.

  ‘They probably have forces waiting inside each gate,’ I said. ‘How many can you see?’ Brihtwulf, high in his saddle, could see more than us.

  ‘Two hundred?’

  ‘We outnumber them!’ Rumwald said excitedly.

  ‘And how many on the gate ramparts?’ I asked, ignoring Rumwald.

  ‘Thirty?’ again Brihtwulf sounded uncertain.

  ‘And how far away are Æthelstan’s men?’ I asked, though I did not ask it of Brihtwulf or of anyone else because the question was unanswerable until we had climbed the ramparts and could see the country to the north.

  ‘So what do we do?’ Brihtwulf asked.

  I touched my mail where it covered the silver hammer. I looked westwards, but knew that the next city gate was built into the walls of the fort, and that would mean first capturing an entrance to the fort. It was this nearest gate, I thought, or else abandon the whole madness. ‘What we do,’ I answered Brihtwulf, ‘is what we came to do. Wihtgar! Take forty men. You’ll climb the stairs to the right of the gate.’ I looked up at Brihtwulf. ‘I need thirty of your men for the steps to the left. I’ll lead them.’ He nodded, and I turned to Rumwald. ‘And I’ll need your banner. You take every man that’s left and follow Brihtwulf to the gate. You tell the bastards you’ve been ordered to make a sally northwards. They probably won’t believe you so you can start killing them, but open the damned gates first. And once the gate is open,’ I looked up at Brihtwulf again, ‘you will ride like the wind to find Æthelstan.’

  ‘And if the king doesn’t come in time?’ Father Oda asked.

  ‘We die,’ I said brutally.

  Oda made the sign of the cross. ‘The Lord of Hosts is with us,’ he said.

  ‘He damned well better be,’ I said grimly. ‘So let’s move.’

  We moved.

  The city had seemed deserted as we came up from the river, but now we could see men all along the walls, others waiting just inside the gate, and small groups of men, women, and children watching from the edge of the wasteland. Many of those city folk were accompanied by priests, presumably hoping that the clergymen could protect them if the Mercians invaded the city. They might be right, I thought. Æthelstan was famously as pious as his grandfather Alfred, and would doubtless have given his troops dire warnings against offending his god.

  We followed a track eastwards until we reached a fine new church, the lower walls of stone, the upper of bright timber, which stood at the edge of the houses. We turned north at the church to follow a road of beaten earth that led to the gate. Two goats cropped weeds on the verge where Roman stonework was half buried. A woman watched us, made the sign of the cross, and said nothing. The men resting inside the gate stood as we came nearer. Many of their shields were unpainted, just bare wood, while others were decorated with a cross. None showed the leaping stag. ‘East Anglians?’ Finan muttered to me.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘They look like the fyrd to me,’ Finan said, meaning they were not household warriors, but ploughmen and carpenters, foresters and masons, dragged from their fields or workshops to fight for their lord. Some had spears or swords, but many carried only an axe or a reaping hook.

  Brihtwulf rode ahead, tall on his stolen horse, pointedly ignoring the first men who stood to question his coming. I trudged behind, sweat trickling down my face, sometimes glancing up at the men on the ramparts. They were watching us too, but not with any alarm because most of them would have no idea what was happening. They knew Æthelstan’s forces were near, they had heard the commotion of the city bells, but ever since that first excitement they would have been told little and understood less. They were hot, they were thirsty, they were bored, and we were just more troops coming to wait in the hot sun for something to happen.

  ‘This way!’ I called to the men who would follow me. ‘Up the steps!’ I slanted off the road and headed for the stairs leading up to the rampart on the left of the gate. Immar was behind me, carrying Æthelstan’s banner that was tightly furled on its pole. ‘You can’t fight holding that thing,’ I told him, ‘so stay out of trouble.’ Hulbert, one of Brihtwulf’s men, would turn left at the rampart’s top and, with ten men, defend our backs as we captured the gate itself.

  Brihtwulf had reached the great archway where he was challenged by an older man who leaned over the arch’s rampart. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  ‘I’m Ealdorman Ealhstan,’ Brihtwulf curbed his horse and stared up at the man. ‘And I want the gates opened.’

  ‘For God’s sake why?’

  ‘Because Lord Æthelhelm wants it,’ Brihtwulf called. He was keeping both hands on his saddle’s pommel. His shield, fire-scarred with the cross, hung at his back. His sword hung low to his left.

  ‘I was told not to open the gates to the Lord God Almighty Himself!’ the man answered.

  ‘He can’t come,’ Brihtwulf said, ‘so Lord Æthelhelm sent me instead.’

  ‘Why?’ The older man had seen me and my men start up the st
airs. ‘Stop!’ he shouted at me, holding out a warning hand. I stopped halfway up the timeworn stairs, the shield heavy on my back. The troops on the gate’s rampart were not from any fyrd, they were in good mail and carried spears and swords.

  ‘The pretty boy,’ Brihtwulf shouted, ‘is over there.’ He pointed vaguely north-west. ‘We’re sending men out of the western gates to give him a spanking, but we need to keep him in place. If he sees another force coming from this gate he won’t know which one to defend against. Of course you can always go and ask Lord Æthelhelm himself.’

  The man had been looking down at Brihtwulf, but now glanced at us to see that I had only paused for a heartbeat and then kept climbing and had now reached the ramparts. He frowned, but I gave him a friendly nod. His shield, showing Æthelhelm’s leaping stag, was propped against the inner parapet. The men below, I thought, might be from the East Anglian fyrd, but the shield betrayed that the spearmen on the ramparts were West Saxons and probably fiercely loyal to Æthelhelm. ‘Hot day!’ I said to the older man, my voice muffled by the laced cheek-pieces, then walked to the outer parapet. I leaned on the sun-warmed stone and for a moment everything to the north appeared as I remembered it. Beneath the walls was a scum-covered ditch crossed by a stone bridge. A small crowd had gathered beyond the bridge. There were merchants come from the north with packhorses, folk from the villages with eggs or vegetables to sell, all of them barred from entering the city, but unwilling to leave. Small hovels lined the road, and a graveyard had spread into parched pastureland, beyond which were woods thick with summer leaves. A village lay a mile or so to the north where smoke rose into the west wind. Then more woods before the land climbed to a bare hilltop. Other villages, betrayed by smoke, lay hidden in the woods to the west. A small child drove a flock of geese across the pasture and I fancied I could hear her singing, but perhaps that was my imagination. A man, seeing me appear on the wall, shouted that he wanted to bring his packhorses into the city, but I ignored him, gazing instead into the heat-hazed distance. And then I saw them. I saw horsemen shadowed by trees, scores of horsemen.