The Empty Throne (The Warrior Chronicles, Book 8) (15 page)

‘I will look for it, my friend,’ I told him. ‘Now come, you don’t need to stand in the rain.’

I took him back to the hall.

And the rain did not stop.

Nor did the enemy.

The floods trapped us. The wagons that Osferth had brought from Fagranforda could not go farther, at least not till the waters receded, nor did I want to abandon them. Everything we possessed of any value was on those wagons. Besides, even if we struggled through the floodwaters to the higher ground we could be caught in open country by the horsemen I knew were searching for us. It was better to stay in the Roman fort where, for the moment, we were safe. The flood meant that we could only be approached from the north. We could not be outflanked.

Yet to stay was to invite an enemy to find us, and once the floodwaters drained away we could be assaulted from east, west, and north, and so I sent three of my younger men eastwards. They had to ride north first, following the Roman road that was raised on a slight embankment, but even so the water rose well above their stirrups before they reached the low hills and could turn east. They were riding to find men who supported Æthelflaed. ‘Tell them Æthelred is dead,’ I told them, ‘and that Eardwulf is trying to become Lord of Mercia. And ask them to send men here.’

‘You’re starting a rebellion,’ Osferth accused me.

‘Against who?’ I challenged him.

He hesitated. ‘Æthelred?’ he finally suggested.

‘He’s dead.’

‘We don’t know that.’

‘So what would you have me do?’ I asked, posing the same question with which I had challenged him in Cirrenceastre and, once again, he had no answer. He was not opposed to me, but rather, like his father, Osferth was a man who cared about the law. God, he believed, would support the right cause and Osferth suffered agonies of conscience as he tried to discover what was right and what was wrong, and in his mind the right was usually whatever cause the church supported. ‘Supposing Æthelred still lives,’ I pressed him, ‘does that give him the right to help Æthelhelm destroy Æthelstan?’

‘No,’ he admitted.

‘Or marry Ælfwynn to Eardwulf?’

‘She’s his daughter. He can dispose of her as he wishes.’

‘And her mother has no say?’

‘Æthelred is the Lord of Mercia,’ he said, ‘and even if he wasn’t, then the husband is the head of the family.’

‘Then why are you tupping another man’s wife?’ I asked him. He looked desperately unhappy, poor man, and I wondered at the struggle he had to feel between his love for Ingulfrid and the nailed god’s disapproval. ‘And if Æthelred’s dead,’ I asked another question so he would not have to answer the first, ‘where does that leave Æthelflaed?’

He still looked miserable. Æthelflaed was his half-sister, and he was fond of her, but he was also hounded by his god’s ridiculous demands. ‘The custom,’ he said quietly, ‘is for the ruler’s widow to enter a nunnery.’

‘And you want that for her?’ I asked angrily.

He flinched at the question. ‘What else can she do?’ he demanded.

‘She could take her husband’s place,’ I said.

He stared at me. ‘She could rule Mercia?’

‘Can you think of anyone better?’

‘But women don’t rule!’

‘Æthelflaed can,’ I said.

‘But …’ he began and fell silent.

‘Who better?’ I demanded.

‘Her brother?’

‘Edward! And what if Mercia doesn’t want to be ruled by Wessex?’

‘They already are,’ he said, which was true enough though everyone pretended it was not.

‘And who’d be the better ruler?’ I demanded. ‘Your half-brother or your half-sister?’

He said nothing for a while, but Osferth was always truthful. ‘Æthelflaed,’ he finally admitted.

‘She should rule Mercia,’ I said firmly, though that would only happen if I could keep her daughter from Eardwulf’s marriage-bed and so prevent Wessex from swallowing Mercia.

And that looked unlikely because in the middle of the morning as the rain at last showed signs of lessening, the horsemen came from the west. Just one man at first, riding a small horse that he checked on a hilltop across the flooded valley. He gazed at us, then spurred out of sight, but a few moments later there were six riders on the skyline. More men came, perhaps ten or eleven, but it was hard to tell because they scattered from the crest to explore the river valley, looking for a place to cross. ‘What happens now?’ my daughter asked.

‘They can’t hurt us so long as the floods stay,’ I said. The floods meant there was only one narrow way to approach the old fort, and I had more than enough men to hold that path.

‘And when the floods go?’

I grimaced. ‘Then it becomes difficult.’

Stiorra was holding a lambskin pouch that she now held towards me. I looked at the pouch, but did not take it. ‘Where did you find that?’ I asked her.

‘In Fagranforda.’

‘I thought it burned with everything else.’ I had lost so much when the Christians burned my buildings.

‘I found it years ago,’ she said, ‘before Wulfheard burned the hall. And I want to learn how to use them.’

‘I don’t know how,’ I said. I took the pouch and untied the drawstring. Inside were two dozen alder sticks, slender and polished, none longer than a man’s forearm. They were runesticks, and they had belonged to Stiorra’s mother. Runesticks could tell the future, and Gisela had known how to read them, but I had never learned the secret. ‘Does Hella know?’

‘She never learned,’ Stiorra said.

I turned the slender sticks, remembering Gisela casting them. ‘Sigunn will teach you,’ I said. Sigunn was my woman and, like Stiorra’s maid, she had been captured at Beamfleot. She had been among the women and children who had been brought this far by Osferth.

‘Sigunn can read the sticks?’ Stiorra asked, sounding dubious.

‘A little. She says you have to practise. Practise and dream.’ I slid the runesticks back into their pouch and smiled ruefully. ‘The sticks once said you would be the mother of kings.’

‘Was that mother’s prophecy?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the sticks don’t lie?’

‘They never did for your mother.’

‘Then those people can’t hurt us,’ Stiorra said, nodding across the valley at the horsemen.

But they could and they would as soon as the floods subsided, and there was little I could do to stop them. I had sent men to find ale in the flooded village, and others had pulled down another cattle byre so our fires would have fuel, but I sensed the enemy tightening a ring about us. By afternoon the rain was slight, gusting now on a cold east wind, and I watched from the ramparts and saw horsemen on every side, and then, as dusk darkened the floodwaters, I saw a line of horses and riders on the high ground to the north. One carried a banner, but the cloth was so waterlogged that it hung limp by the staff and was impossible to decipher.

That night the glow of campfires lit the northern sky. The rain had stopped though every now and then a bitter shower swept spitefully through the darkness. I had sentries watching the lone path to the north, but no one tried to approach us in the darkness. They were content to wait, knowing that the floods would drain and we would be vulnerable. Folk stared at me in the hall’s firelight. They expected a miracle.

Sigunn, my woman, was showing Stiorra the runesticks, but Sigunn, I knew, did not wholly understand them. She had dropped the sticks, and she and Stiorra were staring at their pattern, but what it meant neither could tell. Nothing good, I suspected, but I did not need the sticks to see the future. In the morning the enemy would demand two things: Æthelstan and Ælfwynn. Hand them over and we would be left in peace, but if I refused?

Finan knew it too. He squatted beside me. ‘So?’

‘I wish I knew.’

‘They’ll not want to fight us.’

‘But they will if they must.’

He nodded. ‘And there’ll be plenty of them.’

‘What I’ll do,’ I said, ‘is marry Uhtred to Ælfwynn. Father Cuthbert can do that.’

‘You can do that,’ Finan said, ‘and that just invites Eardwulf to kill him and make Ælfwynn a widow. Eardwulf won’t mind marrying a widow if she brings him Mercia.’

He was right. ‘So you’ll take six men,’ I said, ‘and carry Æthelstan away.’

‘They’re all around us,’ he said.

‘Tomorrow night,’ I said, ‘in the dark.’

He nodded again, but he knew as well as I did that we were pissing into a gale. I had tried and I had failed. I had led my men, their women, their families, and everything we possessed to this waterlogged fort in the middle of Mercia, and my enemies were all around me. If I had been well, if I had been the Uhtred who had led men to battle against Cnut, then those enemies would be nervous, but they knew I was weakened. I had frightened men once, now I was the one who was frightened. ‘If we live through this,’ I told Finan, ‘I want to find Ice-Spite.’

‘Because she’ll cure you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And so she will,’ he said.

‘But how?’ I asked gloomily. ‘Some bastard Dane will have her, and who knows where?’

He stared at me, then shook his head. ‘A Dane?’

‘Who else?’

‘It can’t be a Dane,’ he said, frowning. ‘You went down the hill to meet Cnut and he came up the slope.’

‘I remember that much.’

‘The two of you fought in the open. There were no Danes near you. And once you’d killed him the Danes ran. I was the first to reach you.’

I did not remember that, but then I remembered little of that fight except for the sudden surprise of Cnut’s blade in my side and the scream I gave as I cut his throat.

‘And the Danes can’t have taken his sword,’ Finan went on, ‘because they never went near his body.’

‘Then who did?’

‘We did,’ Finan was frowning. ‘Cnut was on the ground and you were on top of him with his blade in you. I pulled you off and tugged the sword free, but I didn’t keep it. I was more worried about you. I looked for it later, but it was gone. Then I forgot about it.’

‘So it’s here,’ I said softly, meaning the sword was somewhere in Saxon Britain. ‘Who else was with you?’

‘Christ! They all came down the hill. Our men, the Welsh, Father Pyrlig, Father …’ he stopped abruptly.

‘Father Judas,’ I finished for him.

‘Of course he came!’ Finan said robustly. ‘He was worried for you.’ Father Judas. The man who had been my son. He called himself something else these days. ‘He wouldn’t hurt you, lord,’ Finan added earnestly.

‘He already has,’ I said savagely.

‘It’s not him,’ Finan said firmly.

But whoever it was, they had won. Because I was trapped, and the dawn showed that the floods were already shrinking. Water foamed at the Roman bridge where trees and branches were trapped against the arches, while the roadways on either bank were still flooded, and those waters were keeping the men on the southern and western hills away from the fort. But the largest number of men were to our north. Those were the warriors who could attack straight down the Roman road and there were at least a hundred and fifty of them on the low rise of ground swelling from the water meadows. A few had spurred their horses into the floods, but abandoned their attempts to reach us when the water rose above their stirrups. Now they were content to wait, walking up and down on the skyline or just sitting on the nearer slope and staring towards us. I could see black-robed priests there, but most of the men were warriors, their mail and helmets grey in the clouded day.

By mid-afternoon the water had drained from much of the road, which was raised a few hand breadths above the fields. A dozen riders spurred from the hill. There were two priests, two standard-bearers, and the rest were warriors. The larger flag showed Æthelred’s white horse, while the smaller depicted a saint holding a cross. ‘Mercia and the church,’ Finan said.

‘No West Saxons,’ I noted.

‘They sent Eardwulf to do their dirty work?’

‘He has the most to gain,’ I said, ‘and the most to lose.’ I took a breath, bracing myself for the pain, and hauled myself into the saddle. Osferth, Finan, and my son were already mounted. The four of us were dressed for war, though, like the men who approached from the north, we carried no shields.

‘Do we take a banner?’ my son asked.

‘Don’t flatter them,’ I growled, and kicked my horse forward.

The fort’s gateway was above water, but after a few yards the horses were splashing fetlock deep. I rode some eighty or ninety paces from the fort and there reined in and waited.

Eardwulf led the Mercians. His dark face was grim, framed by a helmet decorated with silver serpents that writhed about the metal skull. He wore a white cloak over his polished mail, the linen edged with ermine, while his sword scabbard was bleached leather trimmed with silver strips. There was a heavy gold chain about his neck from which hung a golden cross studded with amethysts. There was a priest either side of him, both men riding smaller horses. Their black robes had dragged in the floods and hung dripping by their stirrups. They were the twins Ceolnoth and Ceolberht who, some thirty years before, had been captured with me by the Danes, a fate I had embraced, while the twins had become vehement haters of all pagans. They hated me too, especially Ceolberht, whose teeth I had kicked out, but at least that meant I could now tell them apart. Most of the horsemen stopped fifty paces away, but Eardwulf and the twins rode on until their horses confronted ours on the flooded road. ‘I bring a message from King Edward,’ Ceolnoth spoke without any greeting, ‘he says you are …’

‘Brought your puppies to do your yapping?’ I asked Eardwulf.

‘He says you are to return to Gleawecestre,’ Ceolnoth raised his voice, ‘with the boy Æthelstan and the king’s niece, Ælfwynn.’

I stared at the three of them for a few heartbeats. A gust of wind brought a few drops of rain, sharp and fast, but the rain was gone almost as soon as it started. I looked up at the sky, hoping the rain would start again because the longer the floods lasted the more time I had, but if anything the clouds were lightening. Finan, Osferth, and my son were gazing at me, waiting for my response to Ceolnoth, but I just turned my horse. ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

‘Lord Uhtred!’ Eardwulf called.