The Flame Bearer (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 10) (24 page)

It was simple to parry the lunge. Renwald’s sword was old, rusty, and probably blunt, but she was heavy too, and my parry threw his lunge wide to my left, and before he could recover the blade I punched him in the face with the sword’s pommel. It struck the edge of his helmet, but with enough force to stagger him backwards. He was still trying to bring his sword back to face me when I plunged Renwald’s blade deep into his guts. The sword was blunt, but still the point pierced his mail, ripped through the leather jerkin beneath, and gouged into his bladder. He gave a strangled cry and threw himself at me, his free hand flailing to claw my face and pry out my eyes, but I snatched his beard with my free hand and pulled him hard towards me, using his lunge against him, and I stepped aside, kept pulling, and he stumbled past me, his momentum pulling the sword from his belly, and then his legs struck the
Rensnægl
’s upper strake and he went overboard. There was a splash, a yelp, then he was gone, dragged down by his mail.

The second man had been content to watch his companion slaughter a crew of miserable Saxons, but the death of his companion had been so swift that he had been given no chance to help. Now he wanted revenge, but he did not think to attack Swithun, Oswi, or Cerdic, who stood unarmed at the bows of
Rensnægl
, instead he leaped, snarling, onto the pile of cargo and faced me. He saw a shabby, grey-haired man with an ancient rusty sword, and he must have thought I had merely been lucky to survive the first attack, and he leaped again, this time aiming to sever my head with a sweeping cut of his sword. He was young, angry, fair-haired, and had ravens inked onto his cheeks. He was also a fool, a hot-headed young fool. There were ten of us aboard the
Rensnægl
, and he had watched me kill his companion with the skill of a trained warrior, but he only saw a crew of Saxons, while he was a Norse warrior, a wolf from the north, and he would teach us how Norsemen treated impudent Saxons. He swung his sword as he leaped at me. The sword cut was massive, wild, a killing blow that should have sliced through my neck, but it was also as obvious as the first man’s opening lunge. I saw it coming from the corner of my eye as I turned towards him, and I felt the battle-joy surge, the knowledge that the enemy has made a mistake, and the certainty that another brave man was about to join the benches I had crowded in Valhalla’s mead hall. Time seemed to slow as the sword flashed towards me. I saw the youngster grimace with the effort of putting all his strength into that blade, and then I just ducked.

I ducked straight down, the sword whipped above my head, and I stood again with my rusty blade pointing skywards, and the Norseman, still coming forward, impaled himself on Renwald’s old sword. The point slid into his chin, through his mouth, up behind his nose, into his brain, and then jarred against the top of his skull. He seemed frozen suddenly, head-pierced, and his hand suddenly lost its force and his sword clattered onto the
Rensnægl
’s deck. I let go of my blade, pushed him away from me, and snatched up his good weapon. I slashed at the stern mooring line, cutting it with three blows, then tossed the sharp blade to Cerdic. ‘Cut the bow line!’ I shouted. ‘Then the spring! Quick!’

Cerdic picked up the sword and used his huge strength to cut the two lines with two strokes, thus freeing
Rensnægl
, and the tide immediately drifted us away from the pier. A third Norseman had seen what had happened, he could see one of his comrades lying on our cargo, his body in spasms and the sword still jammed in his skull. The man jumped onto the boat we had been lashed against and he shouted angrily at us, but the flooding tide was running strong and we were already out of his reach.

We were also in danger of running aground. Swithun had seen that the dying Norseman was wearing a fine scabbard plated with silver, and was now trying to unbuckle the belt. ‘Leave it!’ I snarled. ‘Get an oar! Cerdic, an oar! Hurry!’

Cerdic, usually so slow, was quick to seize an oar and used it to thrust the
Rensnægl
off the glistening mudbank that loomed to our left. I dragged the rusty sword free of the dying man’s head and used it to cut at the lines holding the awning that was suspended above the ship’s stern and which obstructed the helmsman’s platform. ‘Get a steering-oar!’ I called to Renwald. ‘And put your men at the oars! And get the sail up!’

I put the rusty sword onto the dying man’s hand. He was making choking noises, his eyes flicking left and right, but he seemed incapable of moving his arms or legs. I retrieved the good sword from the
Rensnægl
’s bows, checked that the poor youngster still had the old sword lying on his palm, then put him out of his misery. Blood welled and spilled across the cargo of hides, and just then a flare of light erupted to my right. One of Æthelhelm’s ships had caught fire and the flames leaped up the tarred shrouds and spread along the yard. Renwald’s crew, who had seemed too stunned to move when the Norsemen attacked us, now scrambled to push oars through the holes in the
Rensnægl
’s side-strakes. ‘Row!’ Renwald shouted. He may have been confused by the dawn’s panic and slaughter, but he was seaman enough to grasp the danger of running aground. I dropped the sword and unhanked the halliard that was secured to the mast base, then dropped the yard until it was just above the deck where Oswi, standing on the dead man’s belly, used a knife to cut the lashings that were holding the furled sail tight. The dark brown canvas dropped and I hauled the yard back up as one of Renwald’s crewmen seized the steerboard sheet and pulled it taut. Another man tightened the bæcbord sheet, and I felt the boat steady herself. The wind was behind us, coming from the south-west, but the tide was running strongly against us, and we needed both oars and sail to make headway. Renwald had managed to slide the steering-oar into place and pulled its loom so that the
Rensnægl
slowly turned and slowly gathered way and slowly drew away from the gleaming mud towards the river’s centre.

And in Dumnoc’s harbour there was slaughter.

Nine

The
Rensnægl
lived up to her name by creeping with painful slowness across the river, her bluff bows slapping irritably against the incoming tide. That flood tide would end soon and there would be slack water, and then the river’s current would help carry us to sea, but till then it was hard work to make even small progress. On shore there was killing, while on the two piers ships were burning. Some of those ships had been cut loose and were drifting upstream. The sun was above the horizon now and I could see men forming a shield wall in the open space in front of the Goose. They would soon charge the smaller Norse walls barring the piers, but it was already too late to save most of the ships. Only the few tethered to the wharf built along the river bank had been spared, among them Æthelhelm’s own craft, the
Ælfswon
. I could see men crowded aboard her, some holding long oars ready to fend off any burning ship that threatened to drift onto the white ship’s flank.

‘We’d do better by sailing upstream,’ Renwald called to me, ‘we’d be well away from those bastards then.’

He meant that by riding the tide inland to the shallower river reach we would be safe from any pursuit by the raiding vessels, all of which had to draw twice as much water as the
Rensnægl
. He was right, of course, but I shook my head. ‘We’re going to sea,’ I told him, ‘and then you’re taking us north to Grimesbi.’

‘We’re sailing to Lundene,’ Renwald said.

I picked up the young Norseman’s good sword and pointed the blade’s reddened tip towards Renwald. ‘You will take us,’ I said slowly and clearly, ‘to Grimesbi.’

He stared at me. Till now he had thought me a decrepit old man who had sailed to East Anglia to find a family grave, but I was stooped no longer. I stood straight, I spoke harshly instead of mumbling, and he had just watched me kill two men in the time it would have taken him to gut a herring. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘My name,’ I told him, ‘is Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’

For a moment he seemed unable to speak, then he looked at his crewmen, who had checked their rowing and were gazing open-mouthed at me. ‘Lads,’ Renwald said, then needed to clear his throat before he could speak again, ‘we’re going to Grimesbi. Now row!’

‘You’ll be paid,’ I promised him, ‘and generously. You can keep this sword for a start.’ I cleaned the blade’s tongue on the cargo of hides, then pushed the sword under the low steering platform.

The
Rensnægl
had managed to cross the river to the northern bank where the tidal current was weaker, but still the heavy ship made pitiful progress despite her six oars and the big sail. We were inching our way towards the sea, while on the other bank Einar the White was demonstrating why he was also called the Unfortunate.

It must have seemed a good idea to put men ashore to bar the way onto the two piers while the rest of his force destroyed Æthelhelm’s fleet, but those two outnumbered shield walls were under savage attack from enraged West Saxons, who had poured out of the town’s alleys and streets to make their own shield walls. The Norsemen, I thought, had to be tired. They had arrived at dawn, and must be wearied by a night of rowing against the wind. The eastern shield wall seemed to be holding, but I watched as the other gave way and its surviving men fled across moored boats to regain the safety of the nearest of Einar’s ships. But that ship was not safe at all. The tide was pinning it against the pier, and furious Saxons followed the fugitives and leaped onto the trapped ship’s bows. I could see blades rising and falling, see men leaping overboard into the shallows, see men dying. That ship was lost.

But so was much of Æthelhelm’s fleet. At the end of the piers the smoke was thickening to darken the dawn sky as ships caught fire. Some of the smaller trading craft had been manned by Norsemen and were being sailed out of the turmoil, following us downriver, while behind them at least three of Æthelhelm’s warships were ablaze. His own vessel, the
Ælfswon
, appeared to have survived, as had two other big West Saxon war craft that shared the long wharf, but much of the rest of his fleet was burning, sinking, or captured. The crew of Einar’s largest ship, the dark-hulled boat with the cross at its prow, was still hurling flaming torches into Æthelhelm’s smaller boats, but she began to pull away as the surviving shield wall retreated. Another of Einar’s ships went close to that eastern pier, and I saw Norsemen leaping aboard her, then she backed her oars to carry them safely away from Saxon vengeance. The big ship, the one with the cross, was the last to leave the burning chaos, and as she came from a roiling bank of smoke I saw a flag unfurled at her masthead. For a moment the flag seemed reluctant to fly, then the wind caught the fabric and it streamed out to show a red hand holding a cross. ‘Whose badge is that?’ I asked.

‘She’s a Scottish ship,’ Renwald answered, ‘and that’s Domnall’s flag.’

‘Constantin’s man?’

‘And a happy man too,’ Renwald said, looking back at the chaos of broken ships and burning hulls.

Five ships had come to Dumnoc in the dawn, but only four left, though they were accompanied by a dozen captured cargo vessels. Einar, if he lived, must have assumed that the
Rensnægl
was one of those captured vessels because, as the larger warships overtook us at the river’s mouth, not one made an attempt to stop us. Instead a man waved from the steersman’s platform of Domnall’s dark ship, and we waved back, and then the
Rensnægl
’s bows met the larger seas of the open water and we shipped the oars and let the big sail carry us north along the coast.

‘She’s called the
Trianaid
,’ Renwald said, nodding at the Scottish ship.

‘
Trianaid
?’ I asked.

‘Means the trinity,’ he said. ‘I usually see her in the Forth, I’ve never seen her this far south before.’

‘I thought Constantin’s ships were all fighting Norsemen up in the islands?’

‘Most are, but he keeps the
Trianaid
closer to home.’

‘He keeps her at Bebbanburg now,’ I said bitterly.

‘He does, lord, so he does.’

The only consolation was knowing that the
Trianaid
, like Einar’s fleet, would be having an uncomfortable time at Bebbanburg. They could not use the fort’s own harbour, which could only be reached by the narrow channel that ran directly beneath the northern ramparts and past the heavily defended Sea Gate. Any ship using that channel would be assailed by spears and rocks, which meant that Einar’s ships must shelter in the shallow anchorage between Lindisfarena and the mainland. It was a difficult and cramped refuge, and in a gale it was downright dangerous. When I was a child a Scottish trader had taken refuge there, and during the night the storm worsened and we woke to discover that the ship had been driven ashore, and I remember my father’s delight when he realised that the vessel and its cargo were now his property. He had let me ride with the warriors who galloped over the sands at low tide to surround the stranded ship. The five crewmen had promptly surrendered, of course, but my older brother had ordered them killed anyway. ‘They’re Scots!’ he told me. ‘Vermin! And you know what you do with vermin.’

‘They’re Christians,’ I had protested. In those days, when I was about seven or eight years old, I was still trying to be a good little Christian and so avoid Father Beocca’s feeble beatings.

‘They’re Scots, you fool,’ my brother had said. ‘You get rid of the bastards! Do you want to kill one of them?’

‘No!’

‘You’re a pathetic weakling,’ he had said scornfully, then had drawn his sword to rid the world of vermin.

In the end the stranded ship proved to hold nothing more valuable than sheepskins, one of which became my bed cover for the next two years. I was remembering that tale as Renwald gave the steering-oar to one of his crew, then pulled the young Norseman’s sword from beneath the stern platform. He turned the hilt, admiring the silver wire twisted around the crosspiece. ‘It’s a valuable weapon, lord,’ he said.