The Empty Throne (The Warrior Chronicles, Book 8) (16 page)

I spurred on. I would have laughed if it had not hurt so much. Eardwulf called again, but then we were out of earshot and cantering through the fort’s entrance. ‘Let them pick the bones out of that,’ I said. He would be confused. He had been hoping to test my resolve, perhaps even hoping that I would obey a summons from the West Saxon king, but my refusal to even talk to him suggested he would have to fight, and I knew Eardwulf would be reluctant to attack. He might outnumber me by at least three to one, but he would take grievous casualties in any fight, and no man wanted to face warriors like Finan in battle. Eardwulf could not even be sure that all his men would fight; plenty of them had served under me over the years and they would be reluctant to attack my shields. I remembered the black-bearded man in Gleawecestre’s gateway; he was a Mercian, sworn to Æthelred and Eardwulf, but he had grinned at me, been pleased to see me, and it would be difficult to persuade such men to fight me. And though Eardwulf was a warrior, and had a reputation, he did not inspire loyalty in his men. No one spoke of Eardwulf’s conquests, of the men he had cut down in single combat. He was a clever enough leader of men, but he let others do the grim work of slaughter, and that was why he did not inspire loyalty. Æthelflaed did, and I dare say that I did too.

Eardwulf was still watching us when I dismounted. He stared for a while longer, then turned his horse and rode back to the dry ground. That ground was spreading as the waters fell, and there was further bad news as the afternoon wore on. More men came to join Eardwulf. They came from the north, and I guessed they were patrols that had been searching for us, but had been recalled so that by dusk there were over two hundred men on the low hill, and the floods were almost gone. ‘They’ll come at dawn,’ Finan said.

‘Probably,’ I agreed. Some of Eardwulf’s men might be reluctant, but the more warriors he gathered, the more likely they were to attack. The reluctant fighters would be in the second rank, hoping others would bear the brunt of the fight, and meanwhile the priests would be whipping them into a holy fervour, and Eardwulf would be promising them plunder. And Eardwulf had to attack. It was plain to me that Edward and Æthelhelm had wanted no part in this fighting. They could take Mercia whenever they wanted, but Eardwulf stood to lose his inheritance from Æthelred. If he failed, then the West Saxons would cut him adrift, and so he had to win. He would come in the dawn.

‘Suppose he attacks at night?’ my son asked.

‘He won’t,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be black as pitch, they’ll be floundering in water, they’ll get lost. He might send men to harass us, but we’ll put sentries on the road.’

We also lit fires on the rampart, pulling down the last two cattle byres to find the fuel. Eardwulf could see my sentries coming and going in the light of those fires, though I doubted he knew I had men posted closer to him, but none of them was disturbed. He did not need to make a risky attack in the dark of night, not when he had the men to overwhelm me in the dawn.

A star showed in the sky just before dawn. The clouds were clearing at last, blown away by a cold east wind. I had thought to send Osferth and forty horsemen across the bridge because there were fewer enemy on the south bank of the river. I planned to send Æthelstan, his sister and Ælfwynn with them, and let them hurry eastwards to Lundene while I stayed behind to defy Eardwulf, but he had anticipated me and, as the first light spilled over the world’s edge, I saw forty horsemen waiting just beyond the bridge. The flooding there was almost gone. The sun rose to show a damp world. The fields were half green and half shallow pools. Gulls had come from the faraway sea and flocked across the watery land.

‘That’s a pity,’ I said to Finan, pointing to the horsemen who blocked the bridge. The two of us were on horseback in the entrance gate of the old fort.

‘That’s a pity,’ he agreed.

It was fate, I thought. Just fate. We think we control our own lives, but the gods play with us like children playing with straw dolls. I thought how often I had manoeuvred enemies into traps, of the joy of imposing my will on a foeman. The enemy believes he has choices, then discovers he has none, and now I was the one in the trap. Eardwulf had surrounded me, he outnumbered me, and he had foreseen my one desperate move, to escape across the bridge.

‘There’s still time to marry Ælfwynn to your son,’ Finan said.

‘And as you said that just invites Eardwulf to kill him,’ I said, ‘so he can marry the widow.’

The sun was casting long shadows across the wet fields. I could see Eardwulf’s men mounting their horses on the northern crest. They carried shields now, shields and weapons.

‘It’s Æthelstan I care for,’ I said. I turned to look at the boy, who looked back at me with a brave face. He was doomed, I thought. Æthelhelm would have his throat cut in an eyeblink. I beckoned to him.

‘Lord?’ He looked up at me.

‘I’ve failed you,’ I said.

‘No, lord, never.’

‘Quiet, boy,’ I told him, ‘and listen to me. You are the son of a king. You are the eldest son. Nothing in our laws says the eldest son must be the next king, but the ætheling has more claim on the throne than anyone else. You should be the King of Wessex after your father, but Æthelhelm wants your half-brother on the throne. Do you understand?’

‘Of course, lord.’

‘I swore an oath to protect you,’ I said, ‘and I’ve failed. For that, lord prince, I am sorry.’

He blinked when I called him ‘prince’. I had never addressed him as royalty before. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then found nothing to say.

‘I have a choice now,’ I told him. ‘I can fight, but we’re outnumbered and this is a battle we can’t win. By mid-morning there’ll be a hundred dead men here and you’ll be a captive. They plan to send you across the sea to a monastery, and in two or three years, when you’ve been forgotten in Wessex, they’ll kill you.’

‘Yes, lord,’ he said in a whisper.

‘My other choice is to surrender,’ I said, and the word was like gall in my mouth. ‘If I do that,’ I went on, ‘then I live to fight another day. I live to take ship to Neustria. I will find you and rescue you.’ And that, I thought, was a promise with about as much substance as breath on a winter’s morning, but what else could I say? The truth, I thought sadly, was that Eardwulf would probably slit the boy’s throat and blame me. That would be his gift to Æthelhelm.

Æthelstan looked past me. He was watching the horsemen on the far hill. ‘Will they let you live, lord?’ he asked.

‘If you were Eardwulf,’ I asked him, ‘would you?’

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said seriously.

‘You’ll make a good king,’ I said. ‘They’ll want to kill me, but they don’t really want to fight me either. Eardwulf doesn’t want to lose half his men, so he’ll probably let me live. He’ll humiliate me, but I’ll live.’

Yet I would not surrender too easily. At the least I could persuade him that to fight me was to lose men, and maybe that would make his surrender terms easier. Just outside the fort, to the south, the river made a bend, and I sent all our women and children to wait in the water meadow encircled by the river’s loop. The warriors made a shield wall in front of them, a shield wall that just stretched from river bank to river bank. That way, at least, Eardwulf could only attack from the front. It would even the fight somewhat, but he had such a predominance in numbers that I could not imagine winning. I just needed to delay him. I had sent those three young men to find help and maybe it was coming? Or maybe Thor would come from Asgard and use his hammer on my enemies?

Finan and I waited on horseback in front of the shield wall. The men behind us, like their families, were ankle deep in floodwater. Our horses and our baggage were still in the fort. All I brought to the river bend was my hoard, the leather bags of silver and gold. Almost all I possessed and almost everyone I loved was now trapped in the noose made by the river’s loop.

The fates were laughing at me, those three hags at the foot of the tree who decide our lives. I touched the hammer at my neck. A small mist was drifting off the soaked fields as the sun rose higher. Somewhere beyond the river a lamb bleated.

And Eardwulf led his forces off the hill.

Eardwulf came in the full panoply of war, armed and armoured, the snake-wreathed helmet bright-polished, his horse dressed with a scarlet saddle-cloth tasselled with gold that skimmed the remaining floodwaters. His shield showed Æthelred’s prancing horse, and I wondered how long that symbol would stay painted on the willow boards. Once he had married Ælfwynn and was confirmed as the heir to Æthelred’s lands and fortune he would doubtless find his own badge. What would that be? If I were him I would take my banner of the wolf’s head, daub it with blood, and put a cross above it to show he had beaten me. He would be Eardwulf the Conqueror, and I had a sudden vision of his rise, not just to dominate Mercia, but perhaps all Britain. Did Edward and Æthelhelm know what a viper they suckled?

Wyrd bið ful
ā
ræd. Fate is inexorable. We are given power and we lose it. I was wounded and growing old, and my strength was slipping away, and I was seeing the new man, the new lord, and he looked formidable as his men advanced across the half-flooded fields to scatter the gulls. He had formed his warriors into a battle line, spread wide across the waterlogged meadows, over two hundred horsemen on big horses. They were all in their war gear, helmeted, carrying shields, their bright-bladed spear-points stark against the faint mist that was fading as the sun rose higher. The priests followed Eardwulf, clustering around the two standard-bearers who carried Æthelred’s prancing horse banner and a flag of Saint Oswald, which showed a one-armed skeleton holding up a bright red cross.

‘There’s a woman there,’ Finan said.

‘It must be his sister,’ I said.

Eadith had been Æthelred’s mistress. I had been told she was as ambitious and as cunning as her brother, and doubtless she was here to enjoy his victory which would be all the sweeter for being at my expense. I was hated, and I knew it. Part of it was my fault, I am arrogant. Just as Eardwulf was about to relish his victory, so I had relished victories all my life. We live in a world where the strongest win, and the strongest must expect to be disliked. Then I am a pagan, and though Christians teach that they must love their enemies, few do.

‘If you had your life over again,’ I asked Finan, ‘what would you do differently?’

He gave me a curious look. ‘That’s a strange question.’

‘But what would you do?’

He shrugged. ‘Kill my younger brother,’ he growled.

‘In Ireland?’

‘Where else?’

He never spoke of what had driven him from Ireland, but there was a bitterness to his words. ‘Why?’ I asked, but he said nothing. ‘Maybe we should go there,’ I said.

He gave me a swift unamused smile. ‘You have a death wish now, do you?’ he asked, then looked back towards the approaching horsemen. ‘It looks as if you’ll get your wish. Will you fight them?’

‘It’s the only threat I have.’

‘Aye, but will you?’

‘You can’t make an empty threat,’ I said, ‘you know that.’

He nodded. ‘True.’ He watched Eardwulf’s men, his right hand caressing the hilt of his sword. ‘And what would you do differently?’ he asked after a while.

‘Take better care of my children.’

He smiled at that. ‘You have good children. And you’d better stay alive to look after them now, which means you don’t fight in the front rank.’

‘I will not …’ I began.

‘You’re not strong enough!’ he insisted. ‘You stand in the second rank and I’ll kill that whore-begotten bastard before they kill me.’

‘Unless I kill him first,’ my son said. I did not realise he had joined us, and I felt embarrassed for what I had just said. ‘But there’s one thing I know about Eardwulf,’ Uhtred said, ‘he never fights in the front rank.’ He loosened Raven-Beak in its scabbard, then touched the cross hanging about his neck to his lips. ‘We’ll have to hack our way through to him.’

‘You and me,’ Finan said.

‘We’ll do it too,’ Uhtred said wolfishly. He looked happy. He was outnumbered, facing death or disgrace, and looked happy.

We watched Eardwulf, his sister, and the priests leave the road and slant across the soaking fields towards the loop of the river where we waited. Eardwulf raised a hand to stop his men a hundred paces away, but he and his companions walked their horses through the shallow floods, finally stopping just ten paces away.

‘Lord Uhtred,’ Eardwulf greeted me. His voice was muffled by the wide cheek-pieces of his silver helmet that almost closed over his mouth. I said nothing.

‘You will give …’ Father Ceolnoth began.

‘Quiet!’ Eardwulf snapped with a surprising authority. The priest looked at him with astonishment, but went silent.

Eardwulf pushed the cheek-pieces away from his face. ‘We’ve come to take the boy Æthelstan and the Lady Ælfwynn back to Gleawecestre,’ he said. He spoke quietly and reasonably.

‘Prince Æthelstan,’ I said, ‘was placed under the Lady Æthelflaed’s care. I am taking him to her, and taking her daughter too.’

‘Lady Æthelflaed’s husband has decided otherwise,’ Eardwulf said.

‘Lady Æthelflaed has no husband.’

He looked startled at that, but recovered swiftly enough. ‘You listen to rumour, Lord Uhtred.’

‘Lord Æthelred is dead,’ I said.

‘He lives,’ Eardwulf said harshly, but I was looking at his sister and I could see the truth of my words on her face.

She was lovely. I was prepared to hate her, but who could hate a woman so beautiful? No wonder she had found wealth and power. I knew she was the daughter of a thegn from southern Mercia, a man of no great wealth or position, but she had become Æthelred’s lover and so she and her brother had risen in status and influence. I had expected someone harsh to match the rumours of her cunning ambition, but Eadith’s pale-skinned face was intelligent, and her green eyes were glistening with tears. She had very red hair, mostly hidden beneath a cap of ermine that matched the white cape she wore over a dress of pale green linen. ‘Shouldn’t you be dressed in mourning, lady?’ I asked her.