The Burning Land (16 page)

“I didn’t,” I said.

“It is one of the mysteries of God,” Beocca said, then grunted as
he stood. He shrugged off the borrowed fur cloak and leaned heavily on his stick. “What shall I tell the king?”

“Is your god responsible for hell?” I asked.

He frowned, thinking. “A good question,” he finally said, though he did not answer it. “As is mine. What shall I tell the king?”

“That he will have my answer at dawn.”

Beocca half smiled. “And what will that answer be, Lord Uhtred?”

“He will discover that at dawn.”

Beocca nodded. “You are to come to the palace alone, without weapons, without mail, and dressed simply. We shall send men to take the witch. Your children will be returned on payment of one hundred shillings, the remainder of the wergild is to be paid within six months.” He limped toward the courtyard door, then turned and stared at me. “Let me die in peace, Lord Uhtred.”

“By watching my humiliation?”

“By knowing that your sword will be at King Edward’s command. That Wessex will be safe. That Alfred’s work will not die with him.”

That was the first time I heard Edward called king.

“You’ll have my answer at sunrise,” I said.

“God be with you,” Beocca responded, and hobbled into the night.

I listened to the heavy outer door bang shut and the locking bar drop into place, and I remembered Ravn, the blind skald who had been Ragnar the Elder’s father, telling me that our lives are like a voyage across an unknown sea, and sometimes, he said, we get tired of calm waters and gentle winds, and we have no choice but to slam the steering oar’s loom hard over and head for the gray clouds and the whitecaps and the tumult of danger. “That is our tribute to the gods,” he had told me, and I still do not know quite what he meant, but in that sound of the door closing I heard the echo of the steering oar slamming hard to one side.

“What do we do?” Finan asked me.

“I tell you what I won’t do,” I snarled. “I will not give that damned child my oath.”

“Edward’s no child,” Finan said mildly.

“He’s a milksop little bastard,” I said angrily. “He’s addled by his
god, just like his father. He was weaned on that bitch wife’s vinegar tits, and I will not give him an oath.”

“He’ll be King of Wessex soon,” Finan observed.

“And why? Because you and I kept their kingdom safe, you and I! If Wessex lives, my friend, it’s because an Irish runt and a Northumbrian pagan kept it alive! And they forget that!”

“Runt?” Finan asked, smiling.

“Look at the size of you,” I said. I liked teasing him because of his small stature, though that was deceptive because he had a speed with the sword that was astonishing. “I hope their god damns their damn kingdom,” I spat, then went to a chest in the corner of the room. I opened it and felt inside, finding a bundle that I carried to Skade. I felt a pang as I touched the leather wrapping, for these things had belonged to Gisela. “Read those,” I said, tossing her the package.

She unwrapped the alder sticks. There were two dozen, none longer than a man’s forearm, and all polished with beeswax to a fine gleam. Finan made the sign of the cross as he saw this pagan magic, but I had learned to trust the runesticks. Skade held them in one hand, raised them slightly, closed her eyes, and let them fall. The sticks clattered on the floor and she leaned forward to deduce their message.

“She won’t see her own death there,” Finan warned me softly, implying I could not trust her interpretation.

“We all die,” Skade said, “and the sticks don’t talk of me.”

“What do they say?” I asked.

She stared at the pattern. “I see a stronghold,” she finally said, “and I see water. Gray water.”

“Gray?” I asked.

“Gray, lord,” she said, and that was the first time she called me “lord.” “Gray like the frost giants,” she added, and I knew she meant northward toward the ice-world where the frost giants stalk the world.

“And the fortress?” I asked.

“It burns, lord. It burns and it burns and it burns. The sand of the shore is black with its ashes.”

I motioned her to sweep up the runesticks, then walked onto the
terrace. It was still the middle of the night and the sky was black with cloud and spiteful with small rain. I listened to the rush of water squeezing through the piles of the old bridge and I thought of Stiorra, my daughter.

“Gray?” Finan asked, joining me.

“It means north,” I said, “and Bebbanburg is in the north and a south wind will carry its ashes to the sands of Lindisfarena.”

“North,” Finan said quietly.

“Tell the men they have a choice,” I said. “They can stay and serve Alfred, or they can come with me. You have the same choice.”

“You know what I’ll do.”

“And I want
Seolferwulf
ready by dawn.”

Forty-three men came with me, the rest stayed in Lundene. Forty-three warriors, twenty-six wives, five whores, a huddle of children, and sixteen hounds. I wanted to take my horses, especially Smoka, but the boat was not equipped with the wooden frames that hold stallions safe during a voyage, and so I patted his nose and felt sad to abandon him. Skade came aboard, because to stay in Lundene would mean her death. I had put my mail and weapons and helmets and shields and treasure chest into the small space beneath the steering platform, and I saw her place her own small bundle of clothes in the same place.

We did not have a full crew, but sufficient men took their places on the rowing benches. The dawn was breaking as I ordered the wolf’s head mounted on the prow. That carving, with its snarling mouth, was stored beneath the platform in the bows and was only displayed when we were away from our home waters. It risks bad fortune to threaten the spirits of home with a defiant dragon or a snarling wolf or a carved raven, but now I had no home and so I let the wolf defy the spirits of Lundene. Alfred had sent men to guard my house, and though those mailed warriors could see us in the dock beside the terrace, none interfered as we cast off the lines and pushed
Seolferwulf
into the Temes’s strong current. I turned and watched the city beneath its smear of smoke. “Raise!” Finan called, and twenty oar-blades were poised above the river’s filth.

“And strike!” Finan called and the boat surged toward the dawn. I was without a lord. I was outcast. I was free. I was going Viking.

There is a joy at being afloat. I was still under the thrall of Gisela’s death, but going to sea brought hope again. Not much, but some. To drive a boat into the gray waves, to watch the wolf’s head dip into the crests and rear in an explosion of white water, to feel the wind hard and cold, to see the sail taut as a pregnant woman’s belly, to hear the hiss of the sea against the hull, and to feel the steering oar tremble in the hand like the very heartbeat of the boat, all that brings joy.

For five years I had not taken a ship beyond the wide waters of the Temes estuary, but once we had cleared the treacherous shoals at the point of Fughelness we could turn north and there I had hoisted the sail, shipped the long oars, and let
Seolferwulf
run free. Now we went northward into the wider ocean, into the angry wind-whipped ship-killing sea, and the coast of East Anglia lay low and dull on our left and the gray sea ran into the gray sky to our right, while ahead of me was the unknown.

Cerdic was with me, and Sihtric, and Rypere, as were most of my best men. What surprised me was that Osferth, Alfred’s bastard, came too. He had stepped silently aboard, almost the last man to make the choice, and I had raised an eyebrow and he had just given a half-smile and taken his place on a rower’s bench. He had been beside me as we lashed the oars to the cradles that usually held the sail on its long yard and I had asked if he was certain about his decision.

“Why should I not be with you, lord?” he asked.

“You’re Alfred’s son,” I said, “a West Saxon.”

“Half these men are West Saxons, lord,” he said, glancing at the crew, “probably more than half.”

“Your father won’t be pleased you’ve stayed with me.”

“And what has he done for me?” Osferth asked bitterly. “Tried to make me a monk or priest so he could forget I existed? And if I stayed in Wessex what could I expect? Favor?” he laughed bitterly.

“You may never see Wessex again,” I said.

“Then I’ll thank God for that,” he said and then, unexpectedly, he smiled. “There’s no stench, lord,” he added.

“Stench?”

“The stink of Lundene,” he explained, “it’s gone.”

And so it had, because we were at sea and the sewage-soured streets were far behind us. We ran under sail all that day and saw no other ships except a handful of small craft that were fishing and those vessels, seeing our rampant wolf’s head, scattered from our path, their men pulling desperately on oars to escape
Seolferwulf
’s threat. That evening we ran the ship close inshore, lowered the sail, and felt our way under oars into a shallow channel to make a camp. It was late in the year to be voyaging and so the cold dark came early. We had no horses so it was impossible to explore the country about our landing place, but I had no fears because I could see no settlements except for one reed-thatched hovel a long way north, and whoever lived there would fear us far more than we feared them. This was a place of mud and reed and grass and creeks beneath a vast wind-driven sky. I say camp, but all we did was carry cloaks above the thick tideline of weed and driftwood. I left sentries on the boat, and placed others at the small island’s extremities, and then we lit fires and sang songs beneath the night clouds.

“We need men,” Finan said, sitting next to me.

“We do,” I agreed.

“Where do we find them?”

“In the north,” I said. I was going to Northumbria, going far from Wessex and its priests, going to where my friend had a fortress in the bend of a river and my uncle had a fortress by the sea. I was going home.

“If we’re attacked,” Finan said, and did not finish the thought.

“We won’t be,” I said confidently. Any ship at sea was prey to pirates, but
Seolferwulf
was a warship, not a trader. She was longer than most merchant ships and, though her belly was wide, she had a sleekness that only fighting ships possessed. And from a distance she would appear fully manned because of the number of women aboard. A pair of ships might dare to attack us, but even that was
unlikely while there was easier prey afloat. “But we do need men,” I agreed, “and silver.”

“Silver?” He grinned. “What’s in that big treasure chest?” He jerked his head toward the grounded ship.

“Silver,” I said, “but I need more. Much more.” I saw the quizzical look on his face. “I am Lord of Bebbanburg,” I explained, “and to take that stronghold I need men, Finan. Three crews at least. And even that might not be enough.”

He nodded. “And where do we find silver?”

“We steal it, of course.”

He watched the brilliant heart of the fire where the driftwood burned brightest. Some folk say that the future can be read from the shifting shapes inside that glowing inferno, and perhaps he was trying to scry what fate held for us, but then he frowned. “Folk have learned to guard their silver,” he said softly. “There are too many wolves and the sheep have become canny.”

“That’s true,” I said. In my childhood, when the northmen returned to Britain, the plundering was easy. Viking men landed, killed, and stole, but now almost anything of value was behind a palisade guarded by spears, though there were still a few monasteries and churches that trusted their defense to the nailed god.

“And you can’t steal from the church,” Finan said, thinking the same thoughts.

“I can’t?”

“Most of your men are Christians,” he said, “and they’ll follow you, lord, but not into the gates of hell.”

“Then we’ll steal from the pagans,” I said.

“The pagans, lord, are the thieves.”

“Then they have the silver I want.”

“And what of her?” Finan asked softly, looking at Skade, who crouched close to me, but slightly behind the ring of folk around the fire.

“What of her?”

“The women don’t like her, lord. They fear her.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Because she’s a sorceress?” I twisted to look at her. “Skade,” I asked, “do you see the future?”

She looked at me in silence for a while. A night-bird called in the marsh and perhaps its harsh voice prompted her because she gave a curt nod. “I glimpse it, lord,” she said, “sometimes.”

“Then say what you see,” I ordered her, “stand up and tell us. Tell us what you see.”

She hesitated, then stood. She was wearing a black woolen cloak and it shrouded her body so that, with her black hair that she wore unbound like an unmarried girl, she appeared a tall slim night-dark figure in which her pale face shone white. The singing faltered, then died away, and I saw some of my people make the sign of the cross. “Tell us what you see,” I commanded her again.

She raised her pale face to the clouds, but said nothing for a long while. No one else spoke. Then she shuddered and I was irresistibly reminded of Godwin, the man I had murdered. Some men and women do hear the whisper of the gods, and other folk fear them, and I was convinced Skade saw and heard things hidden from the rest of us. Then, just as it seemed as though she would never speak, she laughed aloud.

“Tell us,” I said irritably.

“You will lead armies,” she said, “armies to shadow the land, lord, and behind you the crops will grow tall, fed by the blood of your enemies.”

“And these people?” I asked, waving at the men and women who listened to her.

“You are their gold-giver, their lord. You will make them rich.”

There were murmurs round the fire. They liked what they heard. Men follow a lord because the lord is a gift-giver.

“And how do we know you do not lie?” I asked her.

She spread her arms. “If I lie, lord,” she said, “then I will die now.” She waited, as if inviting a blow from Thor’s hammer, but the only sounds were the sighing of wind in the reeds, the crackle of burning driftwood, and the slur of water creeping into the marsh on the night’s tide.