The Pagan Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Jorund, lord.’

  ‘Make it quick, Jorund. I take no joy in pain.’

  He nodded and dismounted. My men moved their horses aside, making a crude ring about a patch of grass as Leiknir slid from his saddle. He looked defeated already.

  We tossed two swords onto the grass. Leiknir let Jorund choose his weapon first, then picked up the other, but he made small effort to defend himself. He raised the blade, but without any enthusiasm. He just stared at Jorund and I saw how Leiknir was gripping the hilt with all his strength, intent on holding onto the weapon as he died.

  ‘Fight!’ Jorund goaded him, but Leiknir was resigned to death. He made a feeble lunge at the younger man and Jorund swept it aside, knocking Leiknir’s blade wide, and Leiknir left it there, his arms spread, and Jorund drove his borrowed sword deep into the exposed belly. Leiknir bent over, mewing, his fist white as it gripped the sword. Jorund tugged his blade loose, releasing a spurt of thick blood, and stabbed again, this time into Leiknir’s throat. He held the sword there as Leiknir dropped to his knees, then fell forward. The older man jerked on the grass for a few heartbeats, then was still. And the sword, I noted, was still in his grip.

  ‘The swords,’ I said.

  ‘I need his head, lord,’ Jorund pleaded.

  ‘Then take it.’

  He needed the head because Cnut would want proof that Leiknir was dead, that the older man had been punished for his failure to protect Frigg. If Jorund went to Cnut without such proof then he too could face punishment. The head of the dead man was Jorund’s surety, a token that he had administered punishment and so might escape it himself.

  There was a quarry close to the road. No one had worked it for years because the floor was thick with weeds and dotted with straggling saplings. I guessed it was the place where the Romans had cut the limestone to build Ceaster, and now we threw Leiknir’s headless body down among the stones. Jorund had returned the two swords and had wrapped the bloody head in a cloak. ‘We shall meet again, lord,’ he said.

  ‘Give the Jarl Cnut my greetings,’ I said, ‘and tell him his wife and children won’t be harmed if he goes back home.’

  ‘And if he does, lord, you’ll return them?’

  ‘He must buy them from me, tell him that. Now go.’

  The Danes rode eastwards. Brunna was complaining as she went with them. She had demanded that two of the maidservants accompany her, but I kept them all to look after Frigg and her children. Cnut’s wife was mounted on a grey mare and was wearing her feathered cloak, and she was a vision in that summer morning. She had watched Leiknir die and the slight smile on her face had not flickered as he choked and bubbled blood and twitched and went still.

  And so we rode south.

  Ten

  ‘Will Cnut go home?’ my son asked as we rode south through beech woods and beside a small, fast-flowing stream.

  ‘Not till he’s finished in Mercia,’ I said, ‘and maybe not then. He’d like to capture Wessex too.’

  My son twisted in his saddle to look at Frigg. ‘But you’ll return her to him if he does go home? So he might?’

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ I said. ‘We know he’s fond of her, but he wouldn’t walk ten paces to save her life.’

  My son laughed in disbelief. ‘I’d walk halfway round the world for her,’ he said.

  ‘That’s because you’re an idiot. Cnut isn’t. He wants Mercia, he wants East Anglia, he wants Wessex, and those places are full of women, some of them almost as pretty as Frigg.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘I’ve touched his pride,’ I interrupted him. ‘She’s not really a hostage because Cnut won’t give a rat’s turd to save her. He might lift a finger to rescue his son, but his woman? That’s not why he’ll hunt me. He’ll hunt me because his pride is hurt. I’ve made him look like a fool and he won’t abide that. He’ll come.’

  ‘With four thousand men?’

  ‘With four thousand men,’ I said flatly.

  ‘Or he might ignore you,’ my son suggested. ‘You said yourself that Mercia is a bigger prize.’

  ‘He’ll come,’ I said again.

  ‘How can you be so certain?’

  ‘Because,’ I said, ‘Cnut is like me. He’s just like me. He’s proud.’

  My son rode in silence for a few paces, then gave me a stern look. ‘Pride is a sin, Father,’ he said in an unctuous voice, imitating a priest.

  I had to laugh. ‘You earsling!’ I said.

  ‘They do tell us that,’ he said, serious now.

  ‘The priests?’ I asked. ‘Do you remember Offa?’

  ‘The dog man?’

  ‘That one.’

  ‘I liked his dogs,’ Uhtred said. Offa had been a failed priest who travelled throughout Britain with a pack of trained dogs that performed tricks, though the dogs were merely his way of gaining acceptance in any lord’s hall, and once in the hall he listened carefully. He was a clever man and he learned things. Offa had always known what was being plotted, who hated whom and who pretended otherwise, and he sold that information. He had betrayed me in the end, but I missed his knowledge.

  ‘The priests are like Offa,’ I said. ‘They want us to be their dogs, well schooled, grateful and obedient, and why? So they can get rich. They tell you pride is a sin? You’re a man! It’s like telling you breathing is a sin, and once they’ve made you feel guilty for daring to breathe they’ll give you absolution in return for a handful of silver.’ I ducked my head under a low branch. We were following a wooded track that led south beside the fast-running stream. It was raining again, but not hard. ‘The priests never minded my pride when the Danes were burning their churches,’ I went on, ‘but the moment they thought there was peace, that no more churches would be destroyed, then they turned against me. You watch. A week from now the priests will be licking my backside and begging me to save them.’

  ‘And you will,’ Uhtred said.

  ‘Fool that I am,’ I said gloomily, ‘I will.’

  We were in familiar ground because for years we had sent large bands of men to watch the Danes in Ceaster. All of northern Mercia was under Danish rule, but here, in the western part where we rode, the land was constantly threatened by the wild Welsh tribesmen and it was hard to say who truly controlled the land. Jarl Cnut claimed the lordship, but he was too sensible to make enemies of the Welsh, who fought like fiends and could always retreat into their mountains if they were outnumbered. Æthelred claimed the land too, and he had offered silver to any Mercian willing to build a homestead in this contested place, but he had done nothing to protect those settlers. He had never built a burh this far north, and he had been reluctant to capture Ceaster because both the Danes and the Welsh would see such a capture as a threat. The last thing Æthelred had wanted was to provoke a war against Mercia’s two most fearsome enemies, and so he had been content just to watch Ceaster. Now he had his war against the Danes, and I just prayed the Welsh would stay out of it. They claimed this land too, but in the long years that my men had ridden to keep a guard on Ceaster they had never interfered, but they had to be tempted now. Except the Welsh were Christians and most of their priests reluctantly sided with the Saxons because they all worshipped the same nailed god. But if the Danes and Saxons were killing each other then even the Welsh priests might see a god-given opportunity to plunder a swathe of rich land along Mercia’s western boundary. Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I had scouts riding ahead just in case a war-band of Welsh warriors came from the hills.

  And I thought we had found such a band when one of the scouts rode back to say there was smoke in the sky. I did not expect smoke this far north. Cnut’s men would be ravaging southern Mercia, not the north, and a thick pillar of smoke suggested a hall was burning. The smoke was to our left, the east, and far enough away to be ignored, but I needed to know whether the Welsh had joined the chaos and so we crossed the stream and rode through thick oak woods towards the distant smear.

  It was a farmstead that burned. There was no hall and
no palisade, just a group of timber buildings in a clearing of the forest. Someone had settled here, had built a house and a barn, had cleared trees and raised cattle and grown barley, and now their small home was ablaze. We watched from the oaks. I could see eight or nine armed men, a couple of boys and two corpses. Some women and children were crouched under guard.

  ‘They’re not Welsh,’ Finan said.

  ‘You can tell?’

  ‘Not enough of them. They’re Danes.’

  The men who carried spears and swords had long hair. That did not make them Danish, but most Danes wore their hair long and most Saxons preferred to keep it short and so I suspected Finan was right. ‘Take twenty men to the eastern side,’ I told him, ‘then show yourselves.’

  ‘Just show?’

  ‘Just show.’

  I waited till the men at the burning farm saw Finan. The two boys immediately ran to fetch horses, and the prisoners, the women and children, were goaded to their feet. The Danes, if they were Danes, began rounding up seven cows, and they were still herding the animals as I led my men out of the trees and down the long slope of stubble. The nine men saw us, seemed to panic as they realised they were trapped between two forces, but then calmed as they saw no threat. We did not charge, we just rode slowly and they would see that many of us had long hair. They held onto their weapons and stayed close together, but decided against flight. That was a mistake.

  I checked most of my men in the stubble and took just three across a small stream and so into the heat of the burning buildings. I beckoned for Finan’s men to join us, then stared into the flames of the burning granary. ‘A good day for a fire,’ I said in Danish.

  ‘It’s been a long time coming,’ one of the men answered in the same language.

  ‘Why’s that?’ I asked. I slid from the saddle, amazed at how stiff and sore I felt.

  ‘They don’t belong here,’ the man said, indicating the two corpses, both men, both gutted like deer, and both lying in pools of blood that the small rain slowly diluted.

  ‘You call me “lord”,’ I said mildly.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ the man said. He had only one eye, the other socket was scarred and weeping a trickle of pus.

  ‘And who are you?’ I asked.

  They were indeed Danes, all of them older men and, reassured by the hammer hanging over my mail coat, they willingly explained that they came from settlements to the east and had resented the incursion of Saxons into their country. ‘They’re all Saxons,’ the man told me, indicating the women and children who crouched beside the stream. Those women and children had been crying, but now watched me in terrified silence.

  ‘They’re slaves now?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘Two more bodies over here,’ Finan called. ‘Old women.’

  ‘What use are old women?’ the man asked. One of his companions said something that I did not hear and the others all laughed.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked the one-eyed man.

  ‘Geitnir Kolfinnson.’

  ‘And you serve the Jarl Cnut?’

  ‘We do, lord.’

  ‘I’m on my way to join him,’ I explained, which was true, in a way. ‘Did he tell you to attack these folk?’

  ‘He wants the Saxon scum scoured away, lord.’

  I looked at Geitnir Kolfinnson’s men, seeing grey beards and lined faces and missing teeth. ‘Your young men sailed with the jarl?’

  ‘They did, lord.’

  ‘And you’re to clean the Saxon scum out of the district?’

  ‘That’s what the jarl wants,’ Geitnir said.

  ‘You’ve done a thorough job,’ I said admiringly.

  ‘It’s a pleasure,’ Geitnir said. ‘I’ve been wanting to burn this place down for six years now.’

  ‘So why didn’t you do it before?’

  He shrugged. ‘Jarl Cnut said we should let Æthelred of Mercia go to sleep.’

  ‘He didn’t want to provoke a war?’

  ‘Not then,’ Geitnir said, ‘but now?’

  ‘Now you can treat the Saxon scum as they should be treated.’

  ‘Not before time, lord, either.’

  ‘I’m Saxon scum,’ I said. There was silence. They were not sure they had heard me correctly. After all, they saw a man with long hair, wearing Thor’s hammer, his arms rich with the rings that Danes wear as battle trophies. I smiled at them. ‘I’m Saxon scum,’ I said again.

  ‘Lord?’ Geitnir asked, puzzled.

  I turned to the two boys. ‘Who are you?’ I asked them. They were Geitnir’s grandsons, brought along to learn how to deal with Saxons. ‘I’m not going to kill either of you,’ I told the boys, ‘so now you’ll ride home and tell your mother that Uhtred of Bebbanburg is here. Say that name to me.’ They dutifully repeated my name. ‘And tell your mother I’m riding to Snotengaham to burn down Jarl Cnut’s hall. Where am I going?’

  ‘Snotengaham,’ one of them muttered. I doubted they had heard of the place, and I had no intention of going anywhere near the town, but I wanted to spread rumours to keep Cnut off balance.

  ‘Good boys,’ I said. ‘Now go.’ They hesitated, uncertain about the fate of their grandfather and his men. ‘Go!’ I shouted. ‘Before I decide to kill you too.’

  They went, and then we killed the nine men. We took all their horses, except the two the boys had ridden in their panicked flight. I wanted rumours to start spreading in Danish Mercia, rumours that Uhtred had returned and was in a killing mood. Cnut believed that he had a free hand to do as he wished in Saxon Mercia, but within a day or two, once Brunna reached him and the rumours became louder, he would begin looking over his shoulder. He might even send men to Snotengaham where he kept one of his richer halls.

  We left the Saxon women and children to fend for themselves and rode on south. We saw no more Danish bands and no Welsh warriors, and two days later we were in Saxon Mercia and the sky to the east and to the south was smirched with smoke, which meant that the Jarl Cnut was burning and plundering and killing.

  And we rode on to Gleawecestre.

  Gleawecestre was Æthelred’s stronghold. It was a burh and it lay in the western part of Mercia on the River Sæfern where it defended Æthelred’s territory from the marauding Welsh. That had been the burh’s original purpose, but it was large enough to provide a refuge for folk in the surrounding country whatever enemy came. Like Ceaster and like so many other places in Mercia and Wessex, its defences had been made by the Romans. And the Romans had built well.

  The city lay on flat land, which is not the easiest to defend, but like Ceaster the wall at Gleawecestre was surrounded by a ditch fed by the nearby river, only this ditch was much deeper and wider. Inside the ditch was an earthen bank studded with pointed stakes on top of which was the Roman wall, built with stone, and twice the height of a man. That wall was strengthened by over thirty fighting towers. Æthelred had kept those defences in good repair, spending money on masons to rebuild the walls wherever time had crumbled them. Gleawecestre was his capital and home, and when he left to invade East Anglia, he had made sure that his possessions were well guarded.

  It was the fyrd who had the task of defending Gleawecestre. The fyrd was the citizen army, men who normally worked the land or beat iron in smithies or sawed timber. They were not the professional warriors, but place the fyrd behind a flooded ditch and on top of a stout stone wall and they became a formidable foe. I had been fearful when I first heard that Cnut had sailed to the Sæfern, but as I rode south I decided that Gleawecestre and its inhabitants were probably safe. Æthelred had too much treasure in the city to leave it lightly defended, and he might have left as many as two thousand men inside the city’s walls. True, most of those men were the fyrd, but if they stayed behind the ramparts they would be hard to conquer.

  Cnut must have been tempted to assault the city, but the Danes have never loved sieges. Men die on stone walls and drown in city ditches, and Cnut would want to keep his army strong for the battle he antici
pated against Æthelred’s forces as they returned from East Anglia. Win that battle and only then might he set his men to attack a Roman city-fort. Yet by leaving Gleawecestre alone he ran the risk that the garrison might sally from the city to attack his rear, but Cnut knew the Saxon fyrd. They could defend, but were fragile in attack. I suspected he would have left two or three hundred men to watch the walls and keep the garrison quiet. Three hundred would be more than enough because one trained warrior was worth six or seven men of the fyrd, and besides, to preserve their supplies the men inside the city would have few horses and, if they were to attack Cnut, they would need horses. They were not there to attack Cnut, but to defend Æthelred’s lavish palace and treasury. Cnut’s bigger fear, I was sure, was that Edward of Wessex would march to relieve the city, but by now I suspected Cnut’s men were watching the Temes and ready to confront any West Saxon army that did appear. And that would not happen quickly. It would take days for Edward to summon his own fyrd to defend the West Saxon burhs and then assemble his army and decide what to do about the chaos to his north.

  Or so I reckoned.

  We rode through a waste land.

  This was a rich land of good soil and fat sheep and heavy orchards, a land of plenty. Just days before there had been plump villages and noble halls and capacious granaries, but now there was smoke, ash and death. Cattle lay dead in the fields, their rotting flesh ripped by wolves, wild dogs and ravens. There were no people, except for the dead. The Danes who had caused this misery had ridden on to find more steadings to plunder, and the survivors, if there were any, would have fled to a burh. We rode in silence.

  We followed a Roman road that ran straight across the desolation, the surviving marker stones counting down the miles to Gleawecestre. It was near a stone cut with the letters VII that the first Danes saw us. There were thirty of forty of them and they must have assumed we were also Danes because they rode towards us without fear. ‘Who are you?’ one of them called as they came nearer.