Sword Song

We rode next day. I led my six men while Haesten had twenty-one companions, and we followed Wæclingastræt south through a persistent rain that turned the road’s verges to thick mud. The horses were miserable, we were miserable. As we rode I tried to remember every word that Bjorn the Dead had said to me, knowing that Gisela would want the conversation recounted in every detail.

‘So?’ Finan challenged me soon after midday. Haesten had ridden ahead and Finan now spurred his horse to keep pace with mine.

‘So?’ I asked.

‘So are you going to be king in Mercia?’

‘The Fates say so,’ I said, not looking at him. Finan and I had been slaves together on a trader’s ship. We had suffered, frozen, endured and learned to love each other like brothers, and I cared about his opinion.

‘The Fates,’ Finan said, ‘are tricksters.’

‘Is that a Christian view?’ I asked.

He smiled. He wore his cloak’s hood over his helmet, so I could see little of his thin, feral face, but I saw the flash of teeth when he smiled. ‘I was a great man in Ireland,’ he said, ‘I had horses to outrun the wind, women to dim the sun, and weapons that could outfight the world, yet the Fates doomed me.’

‘You live,’ I said, ‘and you’re a free man.’

‘I’m your oath-man,’ he said, ‘and I gave you my oath freely. And you, lord, are Alfred’s oath-man.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Were you forced to make your oath to Alfred?’ Finan asked.

‘No,’ I confessed.

The rain was stinging in my face. The sky was low, the land dark. ‘If fate is unavoidable,’ Finan asked, ‘why do we make oaths?’

I ignored the question. ‘If I break my oath to Alfred,’ I said instead, ‘will you break yours to me?’

‘No, lord,’ he said, smiling again. ‘I would miss your company,’ he went on, ‘but you would not miss Alfred’s.’

‘No,’ I admitted, and we let the conversation drift away with the wind-blown rain, though Finan’s words lingered in my mind and they troubled me.

We spent that night close to the great shrine of Saint Alban. The Romans had made a town there, though that town had now decayed, and so we stayed at a Danish hall just to the east. Our host was welcoming enough, but he was cautious in conversation. He did admit to hearing that Sigefrid had moved men into Lundene’s old town, but he neither condemned nor praised the act. He wore the hammer amulet, as did I, but he also kept a Saxon priest who prayed over the meal of bread, bacon and beans. The priest was a reminder that this hall was in East Anglia, and that East Anglia was officially Christian and at peace with its Christian neighbours, but our host made certain that his palisade gate was barred and that he had armed men keeping watch through the damp night. There was a shiftless air to this land, a feeling that a storm might break at any time.

The rainstorm ended in the darkness. We left at dawn, riding into a world of frost and stillness, though Wæclingastræt became busier as we encountered men driving cattle to Lundene. The beasts were scrawny, but they had been spared the autumn slaughter so they could feed the city through its winter. We rode past them and the herdsmen dropped to their knees as so many armed men clattered by. The clouds cleared to the east so that, when we came to Lundene in the middle of the day, the sun was bright behind the thick pall of dark smoke that always hangs above the city.

I have always liked Lundene. It is a place of ruins, trade and wickedness that sprawls along the northern bank of the Temes. The ruins were the buildings the Romans left when they abandoned Britain, and their old city crowned the hills at the city’s eastern end and were surrounded by a wall made of brick and stone. The Saxons had never liked the Roman buildings, fearing their ghosts, and so had made their own town to the west, a place of thatch and wood and wattle and narrow alleys and stinking ditches that were supposed to carry sewage to the river, but usually lay glistening and filthy until a downpour of rain flooded them. That new Saxon town was a busy place, stinking with the smoke from smithy fires and raucous with the shouts of tradesmen, too busy, indeed, to bother making a defensive wall. Why did they need a wall, the Saxons argued, for the Danes were content to live in the old city and had showed no desire to slaughter the inhabitants of the new. There were palisades in a few places, evidence that some men had tried to protect the rapidly growing new town, but enthusiasm for the project always died and the palisades rotted, or else their timbers were stolen to make new buildings along the sewage-stinking streets.

Lundene’s trade came from the river and from the roads that led to every part of Britain. The roads, of course, were Roman, and down them flowed wool and pottery, ingots and pelts, while the river brought luxuries from abroad and slaves from Frankia and hungry men seeking trouble. There was plenty of that, because the city, which was built where three kingdoms met, was virtually ungoverned in those years.

To the east of Lundene the land was East Anglia, and so ruled by Guthrum. To the south, on the far bank of the Temes, was Wessex, while to the west was Mercia to which the city really belonged, but Mercia was a crippled country without a king and so there was no reeve to keep order in Lundene, and no great lord to impose laws. Men went armed in the alleyways, wives had bodyguards and great dogs were chained in gateways. Bodies were found every morning, unless the tide carried them downriver towards the sea and past the coast where the Danes had their great camp at Beamfleot from where the Northmen’s ships sailed to demand customs payments from the traders working their way up the wide mouth of the Temes. The Northmen had no authority to impose such dues, but they had ships and men and swords and axes, and that was authority enough.

Haesten had exacted enough of those illegal dues, indeed he had become rich by piracy, rich and powerful, but he was still nervous as we rode into the city. He had talked incessantly as we neared Lundene, mostly about nothing, and he laughed too easily when I made sour comments about his inane words. But then, as we passed between the half-fallen towers either side of a wide gateway, he fell silent. There were sentries on the gate, but they must have recognised Haesten for they did not challenge us, but simply pulled aside the hurdles that blocked the ruined arch. Inside the arch I could see a stack of timbers that meant the gate was being rebuilt.

We had come to the Roman town, the old town, and our horses picked a slow path up the street that was paved with wide flagstones between which weeds grew thick. It was cold. Frost still lay in the dark corners where the sun had not reached the stone all day. The buildings had shuttered windows through which woodsmoke sifted to be whirled down the street. ‘You’ve been here before?’ Haesten broke his silence with the abrupt question.

‘Many times,’ I said. Haesten and I rode ahead now.

‘Sigefrid,’ Haesten said, then found he had nothing to say.

‘Is a Norseman, I hear,’ I said.

‘He is unpredictable,’ Haesten said, and the tone of his voice told me that it was Sigefrid who had made him nervous. Haesten had faced a living corpse without flinching, but the thought of Sigefrid made him apprehensive.

‘I can be unpredictable,’ I said, ‘and so can you.’

Haesten said nothing to that. Instead he touched the hammer hanging at his neck, then turned his horse into a gateway where servants ran forward to greet us. ‘The king’s palace,’ Haesten said.

I knew the palace. It had been made by the Romans and was a great vaulted building of pillars and carved stone, though it had been patched by the kings of Mercia so that thatch, wattle and timber filled the gaps in the half-ruined walls. The great hall was lined with Roman pillars and its walls were of brick, but here and there patches of marble facing had somehow survived. I stared at the high masonry and marvelled that men had ever been able to make such walls. We built in wood and thatch, and both rotted away, which meant we would leave nothing behind. The Romans had left marble and stone, brick and glory.

A steward told us that Sigefrid and his younger brother were in the old Roman arena that lay to the north of the palace. ‘What is he doing there?’ Haesten asked.

‘Making a sacrifice, lord,’ the steward said.

‘Then we’ll join him,’ Haesten said, looking at me for confirmation.

‘We will,’ I said.

We rode the short distance. Beggars shrank from us. We had money, and they knew it, but they dared not ask for it because we were armed strangers. Swords, shields, axes and spears hung beside our horses’ muddy flanks. Shopkeepers bowed to us, while women hid their children in their skirts. Most of the folk who lived in the Roman part of Lundene were Danes, yet even these Danes were nervous. Their city had been occupied by Sigefrid’s crewmen who would be hungry for money and women.

I knew the Roman arena. When I was a child I was taught the fundamental strokes of the sword by Toki the Shipmaster, and he had given me those lessons in the great oval arena that was surrounded by decayed layers of stone where wooden benches had once been placed. The tiered stone layers were almost empty, except for a few idle folk who were watching the men in the centre of the weed-choked arena. There must have been forty or fifty men there, and a score of saddled horses were tethered at the far end, but what surprised me most as I rode through the high walls of the entrance, was a Christian cross planted in the middle of the small crowd.

‘Sigefrid’s a Christian?’ I asked Haesten in astonishment.

‘No!’ Haesten said forcefully.

The men heard our hoofbeats and turned towards us. They were all dressed for war, grim in mail or leather and armed with swords or axes, but they were cheerful. Then, from the centre of that crowd, from a place close to the cross, stalked Sigefrid.

I knew him without having to be told who he was. He was a big man, and made to look even bigger for he wore a great cloak of black bear’s fur that swathed him from neck to ankles. He had tall black leather boots, a shining mail coat, a sword belt studded with silver rivets, and a bushy black beard that sprang from beneath his iron helmet that was chased with silver patterns. He pulled the helmet off as he strode towards us and his hair was as black and bushy as his beard. He had dark eyes in a broad face, a nose that had been broken and squashed, and a wide slash of a mouth that gave him a grim appearance. He stopped, facing us, and set his feet wide apart as though he waited for an attack.

‘Lord Sigefrid!’ Haesten greeted him with forced cheerfulness.

‘Lord Haesten! Welcome back! Welcome indeed.’ Sigefrid’s voice was curiously high-pitched, not feminine, but it sounded odd coming from such a huge and malevolent-looking man. ‘And you!’ he pointed a black-gloved hand towards me, ‘must be the Lord Uhtred!’

‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I named myself.

‘And you are welcome, welcome indeed!’ He stepped forward and took my reins himself, which was an honour, and then he smiled up at me and his face, that had been so fearsome, was suddenly mischievous, almost friendly. ‘They say you are tall, Lord Uhtred!’

‘So I am told,’ I said.

‘Then let us see who is taller,’ he suggested genially, ‘you or I?’ I slid from the saddle and eased the stiffness from my legs. Sigefrid, vast in his fur cloak, still held my reins and still smiled. ‘Well?’ he demanded of the men nearest to him.

‘You are taller, lord,’ one of them said hastily.

‘If I asked you who was the prettiest,’ Sigefrid said, ‘what would you say?’

The man looked from Sigefrid to me and from me to Sigefrid and did not know what to say. He just looked terrified.

‘He fears that if he gives the wrong answer,’ Sigefrid confided to me in an amused voice, ‘that I would kill him.’

‘And would you?’ I asked.

‘I would think about it. Here!’ he called to the man, who came nervously forward. ‘Take the reins,’ Sigefrid said, ‘and walk the horse. So who’s taller?’ This last question was to Haesten.

‘You are the same height,’ Haesten said.

‘And just as pretty as each other,’ Sigefrid said, then laughed. He put his arms around me and I smelt the rank stench of his fur cloak. He hugged me. ‘Welcome, Lord Uhtred, welcome!’ He stepped back and grinned. I liked him at that moment because his smile was truly welcoming. ‘I have heard much of you!’ he declared.

‘And I of you, lord.’

‘And doubtless we were both told many lies! But good lies. I also have a quarrel with you.’ He grinned, waiting, but I offered him no response. ‘Jarrel!’ he explained, ‘you killed him.’

‘I did,’ I said. Jarrel had been the man leading the Viking crew I had slaughtered on the Temes.

‘I liked Jarrel,’ Sigefrid said.

‘Then you should have advised him to avoid Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said.

‘That is true,’ Sigefrid said, ‘and is it also true that you killed Ubba?’

‘I did.’

‘He must have been a hard man to kill! And Ivarr?’

‘I killed Ivarr too,’ I confirmed.

‘But he was old and it was time he went. His son hates you, you know that?’

‘I know that.’

Sigefrid snorted in derision. ‘The son is a nothing. A piece of gristle. He hates you, but why should the falcon care about the sparrow’s hate?’ He grinned at me, then looked at Smoca, my stallion, who was being walked about the arena so he could cool slowly after his long journey. ‘That,’ Sigefrid said admiringly, ‘is a horse!’

‘It is,’ I agreed.

‘Maybe I should take him from you?’

‘Many have tried,’ I said.

He liked that. He laughed again and put a heavy hand on my shoulder to lead me towards the cross. ‘You’re a Saxon, they tell me?’

‘I am.’

‘But no Christian?’

‘I worship the true gods,’ I said.

‘May they love and reward you for that,’ he said, and he squeezed my shoulder and, even through the mail and leather, I could feel his strength. He turned then. ‘Erik! Are you shy?’

His brother stepped out of the crowd. He had the same black bushy hair, though Erik’s was tied severely back with a length of cord. His beard was trimmed. He was young, maybe only twenty or twenty-one, and he had a broad face with bright eyes that were at once full of curiosity and welcome. I had been surprised to discover I liked Sigefrid, but it was no surprise to like Erik. His smile was instant, his face open and guileless. He was, like Gisela’s brother, a man you liked from the moment you met him.

‘I am Erik,’ he greeted me.

‘He is my adviser,’ Sigefrid said, ‘my conscience and my brother.’

‘Conscience?’

‘Erik would not kill a man for telling a lie, would you, brother?’

‘No,’ Erik said.

‘So he is a fool, but a fool I love.’ Sigefrid laughed. ‘But don’t think the fool is a weakling, Lord Uhtred. He fights like a demon from Niflheim.’ He slapped his brother on the shoulder, then took my elbow and led me on towards the incongruous cross. ‘I have prisoners,’ he explained as we neared the cross, and I saw that five men were kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs. They had been stripped of cloaks, weapons and tunics so that they wore only their trews. They shivered in the cold air.

The cross had been newly made from two beams of wood that had been crudely nailed together and then sunk into a hastily dug hole. The cross leaned slightly. At its foot were some heavy nails and a big hammer. ‘You see death by the cross on their statues and carvings,’ Sigefrid explained to me, ‘and you see it on the amulets they wear, but I’ve never seen the real thing. Have you?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘And I can’t understand why it would kill a man,’ he said with genuine puzzlement in his voice. ‘It’s only three nails! I’ve suffered much worse than that in battle.’

‘Me too,’ I said.

‘So I thought I’d find out!’ he finished cheerfully, then jerked his big beard towards the prisoner nearest to the foot of the cross. ‘The two bastards at the end there are Christian priests. We’ll nail one of them up and see if he dies. I have ten pieces of silver that say it won’t kill him.’

I could see almost nothing of the two priests except that one had a big belly. His head was bowed, not in prayer, but because he had been beaten hard. His naked back and chest were bruised and bloody, and there was more blood in the tangle of his brown curly hair. ‘Who are they?’ I asked Sigefrid.

‘Who are you?’ he snarled at the prisoners and, when none answered, he gave the nearest man a brutal kick in the ribs. ‘Who are you?’ he asked again.

The man lifted his head. He was elderly, at least forty years old, and had a deep lined face on which was etched the resignation of those who knew they were about to die. ‘I am Earl Sihtric,’ he said, ‘counsellor to King Æthelstan.’

‘Guthrum!’ Sigefrid screamed, and it was a scream. A scream of pure rage that erupted from nowhere. One moment he had been affable, but suddenly he was a demon. Spittle flew from his mouth as he shrieked the name a second time. ‘Guthrum! His name is Guthrum, you bastard!’ He kicked Sihtric in the chest, and I reckoned that kick was hard enough to break a rib. ‘What is his name?’ Sigefrid demanded.

‘Guthrum,’ Sihtric said.

‘Guthrum!’ Sigefrid shouted, and kicked the old man again. Guthrum, when he made peace with Alfred, had become a Christian and taken the Christian name Æthelstan as his own. I still thought of him as Guthrum, as did Sigefrid, who now appeared to be trying to stamp Sihtric to death. The old man attempted to evade the blows, but Sigefrid had driven him to the ground from where he could not escape. Erik seemed unmoved by his brother’s savage anger, yet after a while he stepped forward and took Sigefrid’s arm and the bigger man allowed himself to be pulled away. ‘Bastard!’ Sigefrid spat back at the moaning man. ‘Calling Guthrum by a Christian name!’ he explained to me. Sigefrid was still shaking from his sudden anger. His eyes had narrowed and his face was contorted, but he seemed to control himself as he draped a heavy arm around my shoulder. ‘Guthrum sent them,’ he said, ‘to tell me to leave Lundene. But it’s none of Guthrum’s business! Lundene doesn’t belong to East Anglia! It belongs to Mercia! To King Uhtred of Mercia!’ That was the first time anyone had used that title so formally, and I liked the sound of it. King Uhtred. Sigefrid turned back to Sihtric who now had blood at his lips. ‘What was Guthrum’s message?’

‘That the city belongs to Mercia, and you must leave,’ Sihtric managed to say.

‘Then Mercia can throw me out,’ Sigefrid sneered.

‘Unless King Uhtred allows us to stay?’ Erik suggested with a smile.

I said nothing. The title sounded good, but strange, as if it defied the strands coming from the three spinners.

‘Alfred will not permit you to stay.’ One of the other prisoners dared to speak.

‘Who gives a turd about Alfred?’ Sigefrid snarled. ‘Let the bastard send his army to die here.’

‘That is your reply, lord?’ the prisoner asked humbly.

‘My reply will be your severed heads,’ Sigefrid said.

I glanced at Erik then. He was the younger brother, but clearly the one who did the thinking. He shrugged. ‘If we negotiate,’ he explained, ‘then we give time for our enemies to gather their forces. Better to be defiant.’

‘You’ll pick war with both Guthrum and Alfred?’ I asked.

‘Guthrum won’t fight,’ Erik said, sounding very certain. ‘He threatens, but he won’t fight. He’s getting old, Lord Uhtred, and he would prefer to enjoy what life is left to him. And if we send him severed heads? I think he will understand the message that his own head is in danger if he disturbs us.’

‘What of Alfred?’ I asked.

‘He’s cautious,’ Erik said, ‘isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’ll offer us money to leave the city?’

‘Probably.’

‘And maybe we’ll take it,’ Sigefrid said, ‘and stay anyway.’

‘Alfred won’t attack us till the summer,’ Erik said, ignoring his brother, ‘and by then, Lord Uhtred, we hope you will have led Earl Ragnar south into East Anglia. Alfred can’t ignore that threat. He will march against our combined armies, not against the garrison in Lundene, and our job is to kill Alfred and put his nephew on the throne.’

‘Æthelwold?’ I asked dubiously. ‘He’s a drunk.’

‘Drunk or not,’ Erik said, ‘a Saxon king will make our conquest of Wessex more palatable.’

‘Until you need him no longer,’ I said.

‘Until we need him no longer,’ Erik agreed.

The big-bellied priest at the end of the line of kneeling prisoners had been listening. He stared at me, then at Sigefrid, who saw his gaze. ‘What are you looking at, turd?’ Sigefrid demanded. The priest did not answer, but just looked at me again, then dropped his head. ‘We’ll start with him,’ Sigefrid said, ‘we’ll nail the fat bastard to a cross and see if he dies.’

‘Why not let him fight?’ I suggested.

Sigefrid stared at me, unsure he had heard me correctly. ‘Let him fight?’ he asked.

‘The other priest is skinny,’ I said, ‘so much easier to nail to the cross. That fat one should be given a sword and made to fight.’

Sigefrid sneered. ‘You think a priest can fight?’

I shrugged as though I did not care one way or the other. ‘It’s just that I like seeing those fat-bellied ones lose a fight,’ I explained. ‘I like seeing their bellies slit open. I like watching their guts spill out.’ I was staring at the priest as I spoke and he looked up again to gaze into my eyes. ‘I want to see yards of gut spilled out,’ I said wolfishly, ‘and then watch as your dogs eat his intestines while he’s still alive.’

‘Or make him eat them himself,’ Sigefrid said thoughtfully. He suddenly grinned at me. ‘I like you, Lord Uhtred!’

‘He’ll die too easily,’ Erik said.

‘Then give him something to fight for,’ I said.

‘What can that fat pig of a priest fight for?’ Sigefrid demanded scornfully.

I said nothing, and it was Erik who supplied the answer. ‘His freedom?’ he suggested. ‘If he wins then all prisoners go free, but if he loses then we crucify them all. That should make him fight.’

‘He’ll still lose,’ I said.

‘Yes, but he’ll make an effort,’ Erik said.

Sigefrid laughed, amused by the incongruity of the suggestion. The priest, half naked, big-bellied and terrified, looked at each of us in turn but saw nothing but amusement and ferocity. ‘Ever held a sword, priest?’ Sigefrid demanded of the fat man. The priest said nothing.

I mocked his silence with laughter. ‘He’ll only flail around like a pig,’ I said.

‘You want to fight him?’ Sigefrid asked.

‘He wasn’t sent as an envoy to me, lord,’ I said respectfully. ‘Besides, I’ve heard there is no one to match your skill with a blade. I challenge you to make a cut straight across his belly button.’

Sigefrid liked that challenge. He turned to the priest. ‘Holy man! You want to fight for your freedom?’

The priest was shaking with fear. He glanced at his companions, but found no help there. He managed to nod his head. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said,

‘Then you can fight me,’ Sigefrid said happily, ‘and if I win? You all die. And if you win? You can ride away from here. Can you fight?’

‘No, lord,’ the priest said.

‘Ever held a sword, priest?’

‘No, lord.’

‘So are you ready to die?’ Sigefrid asked.

The priest looked at the Norseman and, despite his bruises and cuts, there was a hint of anger in his eyes that was belied by the humility in his voice. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said, ‘I’m ready to die and meet my Saviour.’

‘Cut him free,’ Sigefrid ordered one of his followers. ‘Cut the turd free and give him a sword.’ He drew his own sword that was a long two-edged blade. ‘Fear-Giver,’ he named the blade with fondness in his voice, ‘and she needs exercise.’

‘Here,’ I said, and I drew Serpent-Breath, my own beautiful blade, and I turned her so that I held her by the blade and I tossed the sword to the priest whose hands had just been cut free. He fumbled the catch, letting Serpent-Breath fall among the pale winter weeds. He stared at the sword for a moment as though he had never seen such a thing before, then stooped to pick her up. He was unsure whether to hold her in his right hand or left. He settled for the left and gave her a clumsy experimental stroke that caused the watching men to laugh.