The Flame Bearer

‘We outnumber them,’ my son said. I had close to two hundred men camped in the hills to the west, so yes, if it came to a fight, we would outnumber the newcomers, but not if my cousin added his garrison troops to their ranks. He now commanded over four hundred spears, and life had indeed become more difficult.

‘We’re going down to meet them,’ I said.

‘Down?’ Berg asked, surprised. There were only sixty of us that day, fewer than half the enemy’s number.

‘We should know who they are,’ I said, ‘before we kill them. That’s just being polite.’ I pointed towards a wind-bent tree. ‘Rorik!’ I called to my servant, ‘cut a branch off that hornbeam and hold it like a banner.’ I raised my voice so all my men could hear, ‘turn your shields upside down!’

I waited till Rorik was brandishing a ragged branch as a symbol of truce, and until my men had clumsily turned their shields so that their symbols of the wolf’s head were upside down, and then I walked Tintreg, my dark stallion, down the slope. We did not go fast. I wanted the newcomers to feel sure that we came in peace.

Those newcomers came to meet us. A dozen men escorted by a score of my cousin’s horsemen straggled onto the patch of pastureland where the villagers’ goats grazed on thistles. The horsemen were led by Waldhere, who commanded Bebbanburg’s household troops and whom I had met just two weeks before. He had come to my encampment in the western hills with a handful of troops, a branch of truce, and an impudent demand that we left my cousin’s land before we were killed. I had scorned the offer and belittled Waldhere, but I knew him to be a dangerous and experienced warrior, blooded many times in fights against marauding Scots. Like me he wore a bearskin cloak and had a heavy sword hanging at his left side. His flat face was framed by an iron helmet that was crested by an eagle’s claw. His short beard was grey, his grey eyes grim, and his mouth a wide slash that looked as if it had never smiled. The symbol painted on his shield was the same as mine, the grey wolf’s head. That was the badge of Bebbanburg and I had never abandoned it. Waldhere held up a gloved hand to halt the men who followed him and spurred his horse a few paces closer to me. ‘You’ve come to surrender?’ he demanded.

‘I forget your name,’ I said.

‘Most people spew shit from their arse,’ he retorted, ‘you manage it with your mouth.’

‘Your mother gave birth through her arse,’ I said, ‘and you still reek of her shit.’

The insults were routine. One cannot meet an enemy without reviling him. We insult each other, then we fight, though I doubted we would need to draw swords today. Still, we had to pretend. ‘Two minutes,’ Waldhere threatened, ‘then we attack you.’

‘But I come in peace,’ I indicated the branch.

‘I will count to two hundred,’ Waldhere said.

‘But you only have ten fingers,’ my son put in, making my men laugh.

‘Two hundred,’ Waldhere snarled, ‘and then I’ll ram your branch of truce up your arsehole.’

‘And who are you,’ I directed that question to a man who had walked up the slope to join Waldhere. I assumed he was the leader of the newcomers. He was a tall, pale man with a shock of yellow hair that swept back from a high forehead and fell down his back. He was dressed richly with a golden collar about his neck and golden arm rings. The buckle of his belt was gold, and the crosspiece of his sword’s hilt shone with more gold. I guessed he was about thirty years old. He was broad-shouldered, with a long face, very pale eyes, and ink-marks of dragon heads on his cheeks. ‘Tell me your name,’ I demanded.

‘Don’t answer!’ Waldhere snarled. He spoke English, even though my question had been in Danish.

‘Berg,’ I said, still looking at the newcomer, ‘if that shit-mouthed bastard interrupts me one more time I will assume he has broken the truce and you may kill him.’

‘Yes, lord.’

Waldhere scowled, but did not speak. He was outnumbered, but every moment we lingered on the pasture brought more of the newcomers, and they came with shields and weapons. It would not be long before they outnumbered us.

‘So who are you?’ I asked again.

‘I am named Einar Egilson,’ he answered proudly, ‘men call me Einar the White.’

‘You are Norse?’

‘I am.’

‘And I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I told him, ‘and men call me by many names. The one I am most proud of is Uhtredærwe. It means Uhtred the Wicked.’

‘I have heard men tell of you,’ he said.

‘You have heard of me,’ I said, ‘but I have not heard of you! Is that why you have come? Do you suppose your name will become famous if you kill me?’

‘It will,’ he said.

‘And if I kill you, Einar Egilson, will it add to my renown?’ I shook my head as an answer to my own question. ‘Who will mourn you? Who will remember you?’ I spat towards Waldhere. ‘These men have paid you gold to kill me. You know why?’

‘Tell me,’ Einar said.

‘Because since I was a little child they have tried to kill me and they have failed. Always failed. Do you know why they failed?’

‘Tell me,’ he said again.

‘Because they are cursed,’ I said. ‘Because they worship the nailed god of the Christians and he will not protect them. They despise our gods.’ I could see a hammer carved from white bone at Einar’s throat. ‘But years ago, Einar Egilson, I put the curse of Odin on them, I called Thor’s anger on them. And you would take their soiled gold?’

‘Gold is gold,’ Einar said.

‘And I threw the same curse at your ship,’ I said.

He nodded, touched the white hammer, but said nothing.

‘I will either kill you,’ I told Einar, ‘or you will come to join us. I will not offer you gold to join me, I will offer you something better. Your life. Fight for that man,’ I spat towards Waldhere, ‘and you will die. Fight for me and you will live.’

Einar said nothing, but just stared at me solemnly. I was not certain that Waldhere understood the conversation, but he hardly needed to understand it. He knew our words were hostile to his master. ‘Enough!’ he snarled.

‘All of Northumbria hates these men,’ I ignored Waldhere and still spoke to Einar, ‘and you would die with them? And if you choose to die with them we shall take the gold that is gold that will not be your gold. It will be my gold.’ I looked at Waldhere. ‘Have you finished counting?’

He did not answer. He had hoped more men would join him, enough men to overwhelm us, but our numbers were about equal, and he had no wish to start a fight he was not sure of winning. ‘Say your prayers,’ I told him,’ because your death is near.’ I bit my finger and flicked it at him. He made the sign of the cross, while Einar just looked worried. ‘If you have the courage,’ I told Waldhere, ‘I’ll wait for you tomorrow at Ætgefrin.’ I flicked the finger again, the sign of a curse being cast, and then we rode westwards.

When a man cannot fight he should curse. The gods like to feel needed.

We rode westwards in the dusk. The sky was dark with cloud and the ground sodden from days of rain. We did not hurry. Waldhere would not follow us, and I doubted my cousin would accept the offer of battle at Ætgefrin. He would fight, I thought, now that he had Einar’s hardened warriors to add to his own, but he would fight on ground of his choosing, not of mine.

We followed a valley that climbed slowly to the higher hills. This was sheep country, rich country, but the pastures were empty. The few steadings that we passed were dark with no smoke coming from their roof-holes. We had ravaged this land. I had brought a small army north, and for a month we had savaged my cousin’s tenants. We had driven off their flocks, stolen their cattle, burned their storehouses, and torched the fishing craft in the small harbours north and south of the fortress. We had killed no folk except those who wore my cousin’s badge and the few who had offered resistance, and we had taken no slaves. We had been merciful because these people would one day be my people, so instead we had sent them to seek food from Bebbanburg where my cousin would have to feed them even as we took away the food that his land provided.

‘Einar the White?’ my son asked.

‘Never heard of him,’ I said dismissively.

‘I have heard of Einar,’ Berg put in. ‘He is a Norseman who followed Grimdahl when he rowed into the rivers of the white land.’ The white land was the vast expanse that lay somewhere beyond the home of the Danes and the Norse, a land of long winters, of white trees, white plains, and dark skies. Giants were said to live there, and folk who had fur instead of clothes, and claws that could rip a man open from the bellybutton to the spine.

‘The white land,’ my son said, ‘is that why he’s called the White?’

‘It is because he bleeds his enemies white,’ Berg said.

I scoffed at that, but still touched the hammer at my neck. ‘Is he good?’ my son asked.

‘He’s a Norseman,’ Berg said proudly, ‘so of course he is a great fighter!’ He paused. ‘But I have also heard him called something else.’

‘Something else?’

‘Einar the Unfortunate.’

‘Why unfortunate?’ I asked.

Berg shrugged. ‘His ships go aground, his wives die.’ He touched the hammer hanging at his neck so that the misfortunes he described would not touch him. ‘But he is known to win battles too!’

Unfortunate or not, I thought, Einar’s one hundred and fifty hardened Norse warriors were a formidable addition to Bebbanburg’s strength, so formidable that my cousin was evidently refusing to let them into his fortress for fear that they would turn on him and become the new owners of Bebbanburg. He was quartering them in the village instead, and I did not doubt that he would soon give them horses and send them to harry my forces. Einar’s men were not there to defend Bebbanburg’s walls, but to drive my men far away from those ramparts. ‘They’ll come soon,’ I said.

‘They’ll come?’

‘Waldhere and Einar,’ I said. ‘I doubt they’ll come tomorrow, but they’ll come soon.’ My cousin would want to end this quickly. He wanted me dead. The gold at Einar’s neck and around his wrists was evidence of the money my cousin had paid to bring warriors to kill me, and the longer they stayed the more gold they would cost him. If not tomorrow, I thought, then within the week.

‘There, lord!’ Berg called, pointing northwards.

A horseman was on the northern hill.

The man was motionless. He carried a spear, its blade slanting downwards. He watched us for a moment, then turned and rode beyond the distant crest. ‘That’s the third today,’ my son said.

‘Two yesterday, lord,’ Rorik said.

‘We should kill one or two of them,’ Berg said vengefully.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘I want my cousin to know where we are. I want him to come to our spears.’ The horsemen were scouts and I assumed they had been sent by my cousin to watch us. They were good at their business. For days now they had formed a wide loose cordon around us, a cordon that was invisible for much of the time, but I knew it was always there. I caught a last glimpse of another horseman just as the sun sank behind the western hills. The dying sun reflected blood-red off his spear-point, then he was gone into the shadows as he rode towards Bebbanburg.

‘Twenty-six head of cattle today,’ Finan told me, ‘and four horses.’ While I had been taunting my cousin by taking men close to his fort, Finan had been hunting for plunder south of Ætgefrin. He had sent the captured cattle on a drove road that would take them eventually to Dunholm. ‘Erlig and four men took them,’ he told me, ‘and there were scouts down south, just a couple.’

‘We saw them north and east,’ I said, ‘and they’re good,’ I added grudgingly.

‘And now he has a hundred and fifty new warriors?’ Finan asked dubiously.

I nodded. ‘Norsemen, all of them hired spears under a man called Einar the White.’

‘Another one to kill then,’ Finan said. He was an Irishman and my oldest friend, my second-in-command and my companion of uncounted shield walls. He had grey hair now, and a deeply lined face, but so, I guessed, did I. I was getting old, and I wanted to die peacefully in the fortress that was mine by right.

I had reckoned it would take me a year to capture Bebbanburg. First, through the summer, autumn, and winter, I would destroy the fortress’s food supply by killing or capturing the cattle and sheep that lived on the wide lands and green hills. I would break the granaries, burn the haystacks, and send ships to destroy my cousin’s fishing boats. I would drive his frightened tenants to seek shelter behind his high walls so that he would have many mouths and little food. By spring they would be starving, and starving men are weak, and by the time they were eating rats we would attack.

Or so I hoped.

We make plans, but the gods and the three Norns at the foot of Yggdrasil decide our fate. My plan was to weaken, starve, and eventually kill my cousin and his men, but wyrd bið ful ãræd.

I should have known.

Fate is inexorable. I had hoped to tempt my cousin into the valley east of Ætgefrin where we could make the two streams run red with their blood. There was little shelter at Ætgefrin. It was a hilltop fort, one built by the ancient people who lived in Britain before even the Romans came. The old fort’s earthen walls had long decayed, but the shallow remnant of the ditch still ringed the high summit. There was no settlement there, no buildings, no trees, just the great hump of the high hill under the incessant wind. It was an uncomfortable place to camp. There was no firewood, and the nearest water was a half-mile away, but it did have a view. No one could approach unseen, and if my cousin did dare send men then we would see them approaching and we would have the high ground.

He did not come. Instead, three days after I had confronted Waldhere, we saw a single rider approach from the south. He was a small man riding a small horse, and he was wearing a black robe that flapped in the wind, which still blew strong and cold from the distant sea. The man gazed up at us, then kicked his diminutive beast towards the steep slope. ‘It’s a priest,’ Finan said sourly, ‘which means they want to talk instead of fight.’

‘You think my cousin sent him?’ I asked.

‘Who else?’

‘Then why’s he coming from the south?’

‘He’s a priest. He couldn’t find his own arse if you turned him around and kicked it for him.’

I looked for any sight of a scout watching us, but saw none. We had seen none for two days. That absence of scouts persuaded me that my cousin was brewing mischief, and so we had ridden to Bebbanburg that day and gazed at the fortress where we saw the mischief for ourselves. Einar’s men were making a new palisade across the isthmus of sand that led to Bebbanburg’s rock. That, it seemed, was the Norsemen’s defence, a new outer wall. My cousin did not trust them inside his stronghold, so they were making a new refuge that would have to be overcome before we could assault first the Low Gate and then the High. ‘The bastard’s gone to ground,’ Finan had growled at me, ‘he’s not going to fight us in the country. He wants us to die on his walls.’

‘His three walls now,’ I said. We would have to cross the new palisade, then the formidable ramparts of the Low Gate, and there would still be the big wall pierced by the High Gate.

But that new wall was not the worst news. The two new ships in Bebbanburg’s harbour were what made my heart sink. One was a fighting ship, smaller than the four we had watched arrive but, like them, flying Einar’s banner of the dragon’s head, and alongside her was a fat-bellied trading ship. Men were carrying barrels ashore, wading through the shallow water to dump the supplies on the beach just outside the Low Gate.

‘Einar’s bringing him food,’ I said bleakly. Finan said nothing. He knew what I was feeling; despair. My cousin now had more men, and a fleet to bring his garrison food. ‘I can’t starve them now,’ I said, ‘not while those bastards are there.’

Now, late in the afternoon and under a glowering sky, a priest came to Ætgefrin, and I assumed he had been sent by my cousin with a gloating message. He was close enough now for me to see that he had long black hair that hung greasily either side of a pale, anxious face that stared up at our earthen wall. He waved, probably wanting a return wave that would reassure him that he would be welcome, but none of my men responded. We just watched as his weary gelding finished the climb and carried him over the turf rampart. The priest staggered slightly when he dismounted. He looked around him and shuddered at what he saw. My men. Men in mail and leather, hard men, men with swords. None spoke to him, we all just waited for him to explain his arrival. He finally caught sight of me, saw the gold at my throat and on my forearms, and he walked to me and dropped to his knees. ‘You’re Lord Uhtred?’

‘I’m Lord Uhtred.’

‘My name is Eadig, Father Eadig. I’ve been looking for you, lord.’

‘I told Waldhere where he could find me,’ I said harshly.

Eadig looked up at me, puzzled. ‘Waldhere, lord?’

‘You’re from Bebbanburg?’

‘Bebbanburg?’ He shook his head. ‘No, lord, we come from Eoferwic.’

‘Eoferwic!’ I could not hide my surprise. ‘And “we”? How many of you are there?’ I looked southwards but saw no more riders.

‘Five of us left Eoferwic, lord, but we were attacked.’

‘And you alone lived?’ Finan said accusingly.

‘The others drew the attackers away, lord.’ Father Eadig spoke to me rather than to Finan, ‘they wanted me to reach you. They knew it was important.’

‘Who sent you?’ I demanded.

‘King Sigtryggr, lord.’

I felt a cold pulse shiver around my heart. For a moment I dared not speak, frightened of what this young priest would say. ‘Sigtryggr,’ I finally said, and wondered what crisis would provoke my son-in-law to send a messenger. I feared for my daughter. ‘Is Stiorra ill?’ I asked urgently. ‘The children?’

‘No, lord, the queen and her children are well.’

‘Then …’

‘The king requests your return, lord,’ Eadig blurted out, and took a rolled parchment from inside his robe. He held it out to me.

I took the crushed parchment, but did not unroll it. ‘Why?’

‘The Saxons have attacked, lord. Northumbria is at war.’ He was still on his knees, gazing up at me. ‘The king wants your troops, lord. And he wants you.’

I cursed. So Bebbanburg must wait. We would ride south.

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