Sword of Kings (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 12)

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘With Serpent-Breath.’

  ‘Aye, with Serpent-Breath, but we’ll fetch her back.’

  I said nothing to that. The knowledge of my failure was too harsh, too strong. What had I thought when I sailed from Bebbanburg? That I could pierce the West Saxon kingdom and cut out the rot that lay at its heart? Yet my enemies were strong. Æthelhelm led an army, he had allies, his nephew was King of Wessex, and I was lucky to be alive, but the shame of my failure galled me. ‘How many dead?’ I asked Finan.

  ‘We killed sixteen of the bastards,’ he said happily, ‘and we have nineteen prisoners. Two of the Mercians died, and a couple have nasty injuries.’

  ‘Waormund,’ I said, ‘he has Serpent-Breath.’

  ‘We’ll fetch her back,’ Finan said again.

  ‘Serpent-Breath,’ I said quietly. ‘Her blade was beaten out on Odin’s anvil, tempered by Thor’s fire, and quenched in the blood of her enemies.’

  Finan looked at Benedetta, who shrugged as if to suggest my mind was wandering. Perhaps it was. ‘He must sleep,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ Finan answered. ‘He must fight. He’s Uhtred of Bebbanburg. He doesn’t lie in a bed feeling sorry for himself. Uhtred of Bebbanburg puts on his mail, straps on a sword, and takes death to his enemies.’ He stood in the room’s doorway, the sun bright behind him. ‘Merewalh has five hundred men here, and they’re doing nothing. They’re sitting around like turds in a bucket. It’s time to fight.’

  I said nothing. My body ached. My head hurt. I closed my eyes.

  ‘We fight,’ Finan said, ‘and then we go home.’

  ‘Perhaps I should have died,’ I said, ‘maybe it was time.’

  ‘Don’t be such a pathetic fool,’ he snarled. ‘The gods didn’t want your rotten carcass in Valhalla, not yet. They haven’t done with you. What is it you like to tell us all the time? Wyrd bið ful ãræd?’ His Irish accent mangled the words. ‘Well fate hasn’t finished with you, and the gods didn’t leave you alive for no reason, and you’re a lord, so get on your damned feet, strap on a sword, and take us south.’

  ‘South?’

  ‘Because that’s where your enemies are. In Lundene.’

  ‘Waormund,’ I said, and flinched inwardly as I remembered what had happened beside the hedge in the field of barley. Remembered Waormund and his men laughing as they pissed on my bruised, naked body.

  ‘Aye, he’ll be in Lundene,’ Finan said grimly. ‘He’ll have run home to his master with his tail between his legs.’

  ‘Æthelhelm,’ I said, naming my enemies.

  ‘We’re told he’s there too. With his nephew.’

  ‘Ælfweard.’

  ‘That’s three men you have to kill, and you’ll not do that while your arse is in bed.’

  I opened my eyes again. ‘What news from the north?’

  ‘None,’ Finan said curtly. ‘King Æthelstan blocked the great road at Lindcolne to keep the plague from spreading south. Every other road too.’

  ‘The plague,’ I repeated.

  ‘Aye, the plague, and the sooner we’re home to find out who’s dead and who lives the better, but I’ll not let you slink home like a beaten man. You fetch Serpent-Breath, lord, you kill your enemies, and then you lead us home.’

  ‘Serpent-Breath,’ I said, and the thought of that great blade in my enemy’s hands made me sit up. It hurt. Every muscle and bone hurt, but I sat up. Benedetta put out a hand to help me, but I refused it. I swung my legs onto the floor rushes and, with an agonising lurch, stood. ‘Help me dress,’ I said, ‘and find me a sword.’

  Because we were going to Lundene.

  ‘No!’ Merewalh said the next day. ‘No! We are not going to Lundene.’

  There were a dozen of us, sitting just outside Werlameceaster’s great hall, which looked much the same as Ceaster’s hall, which was no surprise because both had been built by the Romans. Merewalh’s men had dragged benches into the sunlight where the twelve of us sat, though around us, sitting in the dust of the big square that lay in front of the hall, were close to a hundred men who listened. Servants brought us ale. Some chickens scratched by the hall door, watched by a lazy dog. Finan sat to my right while Father Oda was to my left. Two priests and the leaders of Merewalh’s troops made up the rest of the company. I hurt still. I knew my body would hurt for days. My left eye was still half closed and my left ear clogged with scabbed blood.

  ‘How many men garrison Lundene?’ Father Oda asked.

  ‘At least a thousand,’ Merewalh said.

  ‘They need two thousand,’ I said.

  ‘And I have only five hundred men,’ Merewalh said, ‘and some of those are ill.’

  I liked Merewalh. He was a sober, sensible man. I had known him since he was a youngster, but his beard and hair had turned grey now and his shrewd eyes were surrounded by deep wrinkles. He looked anxious, but even as a young man he had always appeared worried. He was a good and loyal warrior who had commanded Æthelflaed’s household troops and had led them with unshakeable loyalty and an admirable caution. He was no risk-taker, and perhaps that was good in a man who saw defence as his deepest responsibility. Æthelstan plainly trusted him, which was why Merewalh had been given command of the fine troops who had captured Lundene, but then Merewalh had lost the city, tricked by a false report that an army was advancing through Werlameceaster.

  Now he held these walls instead of Lundene’s massive ramparts. ‘What are your orders now?’ I asked him.

  ‘To stop reinforcements reaching Lundene from East Anglia.’

  ‘Those reinforcements don’t go by road,’ I said, ‘they go by ship, and we saw them arrive. Ship after ship loaded with men.’

  Merewalh frowned at that, but it was surely no surprise to him that Æthelhelm was using ships to strengthen Lundene’s garrison. ‘Mercia has no ships,’ he said as if that excused his failure to stop the reinforcements.

  ‘So you just guard the roads coming from East Anglia?’ I asked.

  ‘Without shipping? That’s all we can do. And we send patrols to watch Lundene.’

  ‘And to watch Toteham?’ I pressed him. I was not sure where Toteham was, but from what I had overheard it must have been between Lundene and Werlameceaster.

  My assumption proved to be right because the question provoked an awkward silence. ‘Toteham has only a small garrison,’ a man called Heorstan finally said. He was a middle-aged man who served as Merewalh’s deputy. ‘They’re too few to cause us trouble.’

  ‘Small?’

  ‘Maybe seventy-five men?’

  ‘So the seventy-five men at Toteham don’t cause you trouble,’ I said caustically, ‘so what do they do?’

  ‘They just watch us,’ one of Merewalh’s warriors answered. He sounded surly.

  ‘And you just ignore them?’ I was looking at Merewalh.

  There was another awkward silence and some of the men sitting in the sunlight shuffled and stared at the dusty ground, suggesting to me that they had already proposed attacking Toteham and that Merewalh had rejected the idea.

  ‘If Æthelhelm sends an army out of Lundene to attack King Æthelstan,’ one of the priests spoke up, evidently trying to save Merewalh from embarrassment, ‘we are to follow them. Those are also our orders. We are to fall on their rear as the king assaults their vanguard.’

  ‘And where is King Æthelstan?’ I asked.

  ‘He guards the Temes,’ Merewalh said, ‘with twelve hundred warriors.’

  ‘Guards!’ the priest stressed the word, still attempting to defend Merewalh’s inactivity. ‘The king watches the Temes as we watch the roads to Lundene. King Æthelstan insists that we do not provoke a war.’

  ‘There’s already a war,’ I put in harshly. ‘Men died two days ago.’

  The priest, a plump man with a circlet of brown hair, waved as if those deaths were trivial. ‘There is skirmishing, lord, yes, but King Æthelstan will not invade Wessex, and thus far the armies of Lord Æthelhelm have not invaded Mercia.’

  ‘L
undene is Mercian,’ I insisted.

  ‘Arguably, yes,’ the priest said irritably, ‘but since the days of King Alfred it has been garrisoned by West Saxons.’

  ‘Is that why you left?’ I asked Merewalh. It was a brutally unkind question, reminding him of his foolishness in abandoning the city.

  He flinched, conscious of all the men who sat listening to our discussion. ‘You’ve never made a bad decision, Lord Uhtred?’

  ‘You know I have. You just rescued me from one of my worst.’

  He smiled at that. ‘Brihtwulf did,’ he said, nodding at a young man sitting to his left.

  ‘And he did it well,’ I spoke fervently, earning a smile from Brihtwulf, who, on Merewalh’s orders, had led the men who had rescued me. He was the youngest of Merewalh’s commanders and had brought the largest number of troops, well over a hundred men, which should have qualified him to be Merewalh’s deputy, but his youth and inexperience had counted against him. He was tall, dark-haired, strongly built, and newly wealthy, having inherited his father’s estates just two months before. Finan approved of him. ‘He’s got more silver than sense,’ the Irishman had told me, ‘but he’s a belligerent bastard. Keen to fight.’

  ‘Brihtwulf rescued you,’ Merewalh went on, ‘and are you now trying to rescue me from my bad judgement?’

  ‘It was not bad judgement,’ Heorstan said firmly. It was plain that Merewalh’s deputy supported his commander’s cautious approach. ‘We had no choice.’

  ‘Except the invading army didn’t exist!’ Brihtwulf commented savagely.

  ‘My scouts were certain of what they saw,’ Heorstan responded angrily. ‘There were men on the road from—’

  ‘Enough!’ I interrupted him with a snarl. It was not really my place to command this assembly, but if they started arguing over past mistakes we would never agree on the future. ‘Tell me,’ I said, turning to Merewalh, ‘if there’s no war, what is there?’

  ‘Talking,’ Merewalh said.

  ‘At Elentone,’ the plump priest added.

  Elentone was a town on the Temes, the river that was the border between Wessex and Mercia. ‘Is Æthelstan at Elentone?’ I asked.

  ‘No, lord,’ the priest answered. ‘The king thought it unwise to go himself, so he sent envoys to speak for him. He is at Wicumun.’

  ‘Which is close by,’ I said. Wicumun was a settlement among the hills north of the Temes, while Elentone was on the river’s southern bank, both towns an easy march west of Lundene. Was Æthelstan truly seeking a treaty with his half-brother, Ælfweard? It was possible, I supposed, but at least he had shown sense in not risking capture by crossing into his half-brother’s country. ‘So what are these envoys talking about?’ I asked.

  ‘Peace, of course,’ the priest said.

  ‘Father Edwyn just came from Elentone,’ Merewalh explained, nodding towards the priest.

  ‘Where we were searching for agreement,’ Father Edwyn said, ‘and praying there will be no war.’

  ‘King Edward,’ I said harshly, ‘did something stupid. He left Wessex to Ælfweard and Mercia to Æthelstan and both want the other one’s country. How can there be peace without war?’ I waited for an answer, but no one spoke. ‘Will Ælfweard give up Wessex?’ Again there was silence. ‘Or will Æthelstan agree to let Ælfweard rule Mercia?’ I knew no one would answer that. ‘So there can’t be peace,’ I said flatly, ‘and they can talk as much as they like, but undoing Edward’s stupidity will be decided with swords.’

  ‘Men of goodwill are trying to forge an agreement,’ Father Edwyn said weakly.

  I let those words fall flat. These men did not need me to tell them that Æthelhelm’s goodwill extended no further than his family. The warriors around Merewalh still stared at the ground, apparently unwilling to revive an old argument about what Merewalh should be doing with his troops. Yet it was plain to me, and it was probably plain to Merewalh too, that he was being too cautious.

  ‘Who has the most troops?’ I asked. ‘Æthelhelm or Æthelstan?’

  For a moment no one responded, even though they all knew the answer. ‘Æthelhelm,’ Merewalh finally admitted.

  ‘So why is Æthelhelm talking?’ I asked. ‘If he has more men, why isn’t he attacking?’ No one answered again. ‘He’s talking,’ I went on, ‘because that gives him time. Time to assemble a great army in Lundene, time to bring all his followers from East Anglia. And he’ll go on talking until his army is so large that Æthelstan will have no chance to defeat it. You say King Æthelstan is guarding the Temes?’

  ‘He is,’ Merewalh said.

  ‘With twelve hundred men? Who are all scattered along the river?’

  ‘They must guard all the bridges and fords,’ Merewalh admitted.

  ‘And how many West Saxons guard the southern bank of the Temes?’

  ‘Two thousand? Three?’ Merewalh suggested uncertainly, then challenged me. ‘So what do you think King Æthelstan should do?’

  ‘Stop talking and start fighting,’ I said, and there were murmurs of agreement from the men on the benches. I noticed it was the younger men who nodded first, though a couple of older warriors also muttered approval. ‘You say he’s at Wicumun? Then he should attack Lundene before Æthelhelm attacks him.’

  ‘Lord Uhtred is right,’ Brihtwulf spoke. His flat statement had prompted no response and, emboldened by that silence, he continued. ‘We’re doing nothing here! The enemy isn’t sending men by road so we’re just getting fat. We need to fight!’

  ‘But how?’ Merewalh asked. ‘And where? Wessex has twice as many men as Mercia!’

  ‘And if you wait much longer,’ I retorted, ‘they’ll have three times as many.’

  ‘So what would you do?’ Heorstan asked. He had not liked the way I had peremptorily cut him off earlier, and the question was almost a sneer, certainly a challenge.

  ‘I would cut off the heads of Wessex,’ I answered. ‘You say Æthelhelm and his earsling nephew are in Lundene?’

  ‘We were told so,’ Merewalh answered.

  ‘And I was in Lundene not long ago,’ I went on, ‘and the men from East Anglia don’t want to fight. They don’t want to die for Wessex. They want to get home for the harvest. If we cut off Wessex’s two heads they’ll thank us.’

  ‘Two heads?’ Father Edwyn asked.

  ‘Æthelhelm and Ælfweard,’ I said harshly. ‘We find them, we kill them.’

  ‘Amen,’ Brihtwulf said.

  ‘And how,’ Heorstan asked, still with challenge in his voice, ‘would we do that?’

  So I told him.

  ‘I was a big baby,’ Finan told me later that day.

  I stared at him. ‘Big?’

  ‘So my ma said! She said it was like giving birth to a pig. Poor woman. They said she squealed horribly when she squeezed me out.’

  ‘I’m fascinated,’ I said.

  ‘And I’m not really a big fellow at all. Not tall like you!’

  ‘More like a weasel than a pig,’ I said.

  ‘But there was a wise woman at my birth,’ Finan ignored my sarcasm, ‘and she read the blood.’

  ‘She read the blood?’

  ‘To see the future, of course! She looked at the blood on my wee body before they washed it away.’

  ‘Your wee body,’ I said, and laughed. The laughter made my cracked ribs hurt. ‘But that’s sorcery,’ I went on, ‘and I thought you Irish were all Christians?’

  ‘So we are. We just like to improve it with a touch of harmless sorcery.’ He grinned. ‘And she said I’d live a long life and die in my bed.’

  ‘That’s all she said?’

  ‘That’s all,’ Finan said, ‘and that wise woman was never wrong! And I’m not likely to go to bed in Lundene, am I?’

  ‘Stay out of bed,’ I said, ‘and you’ll live for ever.’ And I should have avoided barley, I thought.

  I knew why Finan was telling me of the wise woman’s prophecy. He was trying to encourage me. He knew I was reluctant to return to Lundene, that I
had pressed Merewalh to attack simply because men expected me to lead them into battle. Yet the truth was that I only wanted to go home, to ride the great road to Northumbria and so gain the safety of Bebbanburg’s walls.

  Yet much as I wanted the comfort and safety of home, I wanted to salvage my reputation too. My pride had been hurt and my sword stolen. Finan, who had wanted to go home for so long, was now pressing me to take up the fight again. Was it his reputation too? ‘It’s a huge risk,’ I told him.

  ‘Of course it’s a risk! Life is a risk! But are you going to let that bastard Waormund boast of defeating you?’

  I did not answer, but I was thinking that we must all die, and when we die all that remains of us is reputation. So I must go to Lundene whether I liked it or not.

  Which was why one hundred and eighty of Merewalh’s men were scraping their shields that afternoon. We had no lime and not nearly enough pitch, so instead of trying to repaint the shields men were using knives and adzes to scratch off Æthelstan’s symbol of the dragon and lightning strike. Then, once the willow boards were scraped clean, they used red hot-irons to burn a dark cross into the pale wood. It was a crude symbol, nothing like the triple-crown badge that many East Anglians carried, nor like Æthelhelm’s symbol of the leaping stag, but the best I could devise. Even I would carry a shield with the Christian cross.

  Because we would go to Lundene under a false badge, pretending to be East Anglians come to reinforce the swelling garrison. Merewalh and Heorstan had opposed the plan, but their protests had become weaker as other men urged that we should attack instead of just waiting in Werlameceaster for other men to decide the conflict. Two arguments had persuaded them, and I made both of them, though in my heart I did not really trust either. I wanted to go home, yet the oath bound me, and Serpent-Breath drew me.