The Lords of the North (12 page)

They were all listening now, listening closely, and Jaenberht and Ida half reared as if
to protest Guthred's last proposal, but Guthred kept speaking,

'and I will not be king of a land in which I force on men the customs of other men, and it
is the custom of these men,' he gestured at Tekil and his companions, 'to die with a sword
in their hands, and so they shall. And God will have mercy on their souls.'

There was silence. Guthred turned to Eadred and spoke much lower. There are some folk,' he
said in English, 'who do not think we can beat the Danes in a fight. So let them see it done
now.'

Eadred stiffened, then forced himself to nod. 'As you command, lord King,' he said.

And so the hazel branches were fetched.

The Danes understand the rules of a fight inside an area marked by stripped branches of
hazel. It is a fight from which only one man can emerge alive, and if either man flees the
hazel-marked space then he can be killed by anyone. He has become a nothing. Guthred wanted
to fight Tekil himself, but I sensed he was only making the suggestion because it was
expected of him and he did not really want to face a seasoned warrior. Besides, I was in
no mood to be denied. 'I'll do them all,' I said, and he did not argue. I am old now. So old. I
lose count of how old sometimes, but it must be eighty years since my mother died giving birth
to me, and few men live that long, and very few who stand in the shield wall live half that many
years. I see folk watching me, expecting

me to die, and doubtless I will oblige them soon. They drop their voices when they are near
me in case they disturb me, and that is an annoyance for I do not hear as well as I did, and I
do not see as well as I did, and I piss all night and my bones are stiff and my old wounds ache
and each dusk, when I lie down, I make certain that Serpent-Breath or another of my swords
is beside the bed so that I can grip the hilt if death comes for me. And in the darkness, as I
listen to the sea beat on the sand and the wind fret at the thatch, I remember what it was
like to be young and tall and strong and fast. And arrogant.

I was all those things. I was Uhtred, killer of Ubba, and in 878, the year that Alfred
defeated Guthrum and the year in which Guthred came to the throne of Northumbria, I was just
twenty-one and my name was known wherever men sharpened swords. I was a warrior. A sword
warrior, and I was proud of it. Tekil knew it. He was good, he had fought a score of battles,
but when he stepped across the hazel branch he knew he was dead. I will not say I was not
nervous. Men have looked at me on battlefields across the island of Britain and they
wondered that I had no fear, but of course I had fear. We all have fear. It crawls inside you
like a beast, it claws at your guts, it weakens your muscles, it tries to loosen your bowels
and it wants you to cringe and weep, but fear must be thrust away and craft must be loosed, and
savagery will see you through, and though many men have tried to kill me and so earn the boast
that they killed Uhtred, so far that savagery has let me survive and now, I think, I am too old
to die in battle and so will dribble away to nothingness instead. Wyrd bid ful araed, we
say, and it is true. Fate is inexorable.

Tekil's fate was to die. He fought with sword and shield, and I had given him back his mail
and, so that no man would say I had an advantage over him, I fought without any armour at
all. No shield either. I was arrogant, and I was conscious that Gisela was watching, and in
my head I dedicated Tekil's death to her. It took scarcely a moment, despite my limp. I
have had that slight limp ever since the spear thrust into my right thigh at Ethandun, but the
limp did not slow me. Tekil came at me in a rush, hoping to beat me down with his shield and
then hack me with his sword, but I turned him neatly and then I kept moving. That is the
secret of winning a sword fight. Keep moving. Dance. In the shield wall a man cannot move,
only lunge and beat and hack and keep the shield high, but inside the hazel boughs litheness
means life. Make the other man respond and keep him off balance, and Tekil was slow because
he was in mail and I was unarmoured, but even in armour I was fast and he had no chance of
matching my speed. He came at me again, and I let him pass me by, then made his death swift. He
was turning to face me, but I moved faster and Serpent-Breath took the back of his neck, just
above the edge of his mail and, because he had no helmet, the blade broke through his spine and
he collapsed in the dust. I killed him quickly and he went to the corpse-hall where one day he
will greet me.

The crowd applauded. I think the Saxons among them might have preferred to see the
prisoners burned or drowned or trampled by horses, but enough of them appreciated sword
work and they clapped me. Gisela was grinning at me. Hild was not watching. She was at the edge
of the crowd with Father Willibald. The two spent long hours talking and I knew it was
Christian matters they discussed, but that was not my business.

The next two prisoners were terrified. Tekil had been their leader, and a man leads
other men because he is the best fighter, and in Tekil's sudden death they saw their own,
and neither put up any real fight. Instead of attacking me they tried to defend
themselves, and the second had enough skill to parry me again and again, until I lunged high,
his shield went up and I kicked his ankle out from beneath him and the crowd cheered as he
died. That left Sihtric, the boy. The monks, who had wanted to hang these Danes, but who now
took an unholy glee in their honourable deaths, pushed him into the hazel ring and I could see
that Sihtric did not know how to hold the sword and that his shield was nothing but a burden.
His death was a heartbeat away, no more trouble to me than swatting a fly. He knew that too
and was weeping. I needed eight heads. I had seven. I stared at the boy and he could not meet
my gaze, but looked away instead and he saw the bloody scrapes in the earth where the first
three bodies had been dragged away and he fell to his knees. The crowd jeered. The monks were
shouting at me to kill him. Instead I waited to see what Sihtric would do and I saw him
conquer his fear. I saw the effort he made to stop blubbing, to control his breath, to force
his shaking legs to obey him so that he managed to stand. He hefted the shield, sniffed, then
looked me in the eye. I gestured at his sword and he obediently raised it so that he would
die like a man. There were bloody scabs on his forehead where I had hit him with the slave
shackles.

'What was your mother's name?' I asked him. He stared at me and seemed incapable of
speaking. The monks were shouting for his death. 'What was your mother's name?' I asked him
again.

'Elflaed.' he stammered, but so softly I could not hear him. I frowned at him, waited, and
he repeated the name. 'Elflaed.'

'Elflaed, lord,' I corrected him.

'She was called Elflaed, lord,' he said.

'She was Saxon?'

'Yes, lord.'

'And did she try to poison your father?'

He paused, then realised that no harm could come from telling the truth now.

'Yes, lord.'

'How?' I had to raise my voice over the noise of the crowd.

'The black berries, lord.'

'Nightshade?'

'Yes, lord.'

'How old are you?'

'I don't know, lord.'

Fourteen, I guessed. 'Does your father love you?' I asked. That question puzzled him.
'Love me?'

'Kjartan. He's your father, isn't he?'

'I hardly know him, lord.' Sihtric said, and that was probably true. Kjartan must have
whelped a hundred pups in Dunholm.

'And your mother?' I asked.

'I loved her, lord,' Sihtric said, and he was close to tears again. I went a pace closer to
him and his sword arm faltered, but he tried to brace himself. 'On your knees, boy,' I
said.

He looked defiant then. 'I would die properly,' he said in a voice made squeaky by
fear.

'On your knees!' I snarled, and the tone of my voice terrified him and he dropped to his
knees and he seemed unable to move as I came towards him. He flinched when I reversed
Serpent-Breath, expecting me to hit him with the heavy pommel, but then disbelief showed
in his eyes as I held the sword's hilt to him. 'Clasp it' I said, 'and say the words.' He still
stared up at me, then managed to drop his shield and sword and put his hands on
Serpent-Breath's hilt. I put my hands over his. 'Say the words,' I told him again.

'I will be your man, lord,' he said, looking up at me, 'and I will serve you till death.'

'And beyond.' I said.

'And beyond, lord. I swear it.'

Jaenberht and Ida led the protest. The two monks stepped across the hazel branches and
shouted that the boy had to die, that it was God's will that he died, and Sihtric flinched as I
tore Serpent-Breath from his hands and whipped her around. The blade, all newly-bloodied and
nicked, swept towards the monks and then I held her motionless with her tip at Jaenberht's
neck. The fury came then, the battle-fury, the bloodlust, the joy of slaughter, and it was
all I could do not to let Serpent-Breath take another life. She wanted it, I could feel her
trembling in my hand. 'Sihtric is my man,' I said to the monk, 'and if anyone harms him then
they will be my enemy, and I would kill you, monk, if you harm him, I would kill you without a
thought.' I was shouting now, forcing him back. I was nothing but anger and red-haze,
wanting his soul. 'Does anyone here?'

I shouted, at last managing to take Serpent-Breath's tip away from Jaenberht's throat
and whirling the sword around to embrace the crowd, 'deny that Sihtric is my man?
Anyone?'

No one spoke. The wind gusted across Cair Ligualid and they could all smell death in that
breeze and no one spoke, but their silence did not satisfy my anger. 'Anyone?' I shouted,
desperately

eager for someone to meet my challenge. 'Because you can kill him now. You can kill him
there, on his knees, but first you must kill me.'

Jaenberht watched me. He had a narrow, dark face and clever eyes. His mouth was twisted,
perhaps from some boyhood accident, and it gave him a sneering look. I wanted to tear his
rotten soul out of his thin body. He wanted my soul, but he dared not move. No one moved until
Guthred stepped across the hazel branches and held his hand to Sihtric. 'Welcome,' he said to
the boy. Father Willibald, who had come running when he first heard my furious challenge,
also stepped over the hazel branches. 'You can sheathe your sword, lord,' he said gently. He
was too frightened to come close, but brave enough to stand in front of me and gently push
Serpent-Breath aside. 'You can sheathe the sword,' he repeated.

The boy lives!' I snarled at him.

'Yes, lord,' Willibald said softly, 'the boy lives.'

Gisela was watching me, eyes as bright as when she had welcomed her brother back from
slavery. Hild was watching Gisela.

And I was still lacking one severed head.

We left at dawn, an army going to war.

Ulf's men were the vanguard, then came the horde of churchmen carrying Abbot Eadred's
three precious boxes, and behind them Guthred rode a white mare. Gisela walked beside her
brother and I walked close behind while Hild led Witnere, though when she was tired I
insisted she climb into the stallion's saddle.

Hild looked like a nun. She had plaited her long golden hair and then twisted the plaits
about her skull, and over it she wore a pale grey hood. Her cloak was of the same pale grey and
around her neck hung a plain wooden cross that she fingered as she rode. 'They've been
pestering you, haven't they?' I said.

'Who?'

The priests,' I said. 'Father Willibald. They've been telling you to go back to the
nunnery.'

'God has been pestering me,' she said. I looked up at her and he smiled as if to reassure
me that she would not burden me with her dilemma. 'I prayed to Saint Cuthbert,' she said.

'Did he answer?'

She fingered her cross. 'I just prayed,' she said calmly, 'and that's a beginning.'

'Don't you like being free?' I asked her harshly.

Hild laughed at that. 'I'm a woman,' she said, 'how can I be free?' I said nothing and she
smiled at me. 'I'm like mistletoe,' she said, 'I need a branch to grow on. Without the branch,
I'm nothing.' She spoke without bitterness, as if she merely stated an obvious truth. And
it was true. She was a woman of good family and if she had not been given to the church then,
like little Æthelflaed, she would have been given to a man. That is woman's fate. In time I
knew a woman who defied it, but Hild was like the ox that missed its yoke on a feast day.

'You're free now.' I said.

'No,' she said, 'I'm dependant on you.' She looked at Gisela who was laughing at something
her brother had just said. 'And you are taking good care, Uhtred, not to shame me.' She meant I
was not humiliating her by abandoning her to pursue Gisela, and that was true, but only
just true. She saw my expression and laughed. 'In many ways,' she said, 'you're a good
Christian.'

'I am?'

'You try to do the right thing, don't you?' She laughed at my shocked expression. 'I want
you to make me a promise.' she said.

'If I can.' I said cautiously.

'Promise me you won't steal Saint Oswald's head to make up the eight.'

I laughed, relieved that the promise did not involve Gisela. 'I was thinking about it.' I
admitted.

'I know you were,' she said, 'but it won't work. It's too old. And you'll make Eadred
unhappy.'

'What's wrong with that?'

She ignored that question. 'Seven heads are enough.' she insisted.

'Eight would be better.'

'Greedy Uhtred.' she said.

The seven heads were now sewn into a sack which Sihtric had put on a donkey that he led by
a rope. Flies buzzed around the sack, which stank so that Sihtric walked alone.

We were a strange army. Not counting churchmen, we numbered three hundred and eighteen
men, and with us marched at least that many women and children and the usual scores of dogs.
There were sixty or seventy priests and monks and I would have exchanged every one of them
for more horses or more warriors. Of the three hundred and eighteen men I doubted that even
a hundred were worth putting in a shield wall. In truth we were not an army, but a rabble. The
monks chanted as they walked. I suppose they chanted in Latin, for I did not understand the
words. They had draped Saint Cuthbert's coffin with a fine green cloth embroidered with
crosses and that morning a raven had spattered the cloth with shit. At first I took this to be
a bad omen, then decided that as the raven was Odin's bird he was merely showing his
displeasure with the dead Christian and so I applauded the god's joke, thus getting a
malignant look from Brothers Ida and Jaenberht.