The Lords of the North (2 page)

There was nothing to see other than a low muddy shore half glimpsed through rain, and
withies in the shallows marking hidden creeks, and great mats of oarweed and
bladderwrack heaving on the grey water, but this was the river that led into Northumbria
and I knew, at that moment, that I had made the right decision. This was home. Not Wessex
with its richer fields and gentler hills. Wessex was tamed, harnessed by king and church,
but up here there were wilder skeins in the colder air.

'Is this where you live?' Hild asked as the banks closed on either side.

'My land is far to the north.' I told her. 'That's Mercia,' I pointed to the river's
southern shore, 'and that's Northumbria,' I pointed the other way,

'and Northumbria stretches up into the barbarous lands.'

'Barbarous?'

'Scots.' I said, and spat over the side. 'Before the Danes came the Scots had been our
chief enemies, ever raiding south into our land, but they, like us, had been assaulted by
the Northmen and that had lessened their threat, though it had not ended it.

We rowed up the Ouse and our songs accompanied the oar strokes as we glided beneath
willow and alder, past meadows and woods, and Thorkild, now that we had entered
Northumbria, took the carved dog's head from his boat's prow so that the snarling beast would
not scare the spirits of the land. And that evening, under a washed sky, we came to
Eoferwic, the chief city of Northumbria and the place where my father had been slaughtered
and where I had been orphaned and where I had met Ragnar the Elder who had raised me and
given me my love of the Danes.

I was not rowing as we approached the city for I had pulled an oar all day and Thorkild
had relieved me, and so I was standing in the bow, staring at the smoke sifting up from the
city's roofs, and then I glanced down at the river and saw the first corpse. It was a boy,
perhaps ten or eleven years old, and he was naked except for a rag about his waist. His
throat had been cut, though the great wound was bloodless now because it had been washed
clean by the Ouse. His long fair hair drifted like weed under water. We saw two more
floating bodies, then we were close enough to see men on the city's ramparts and there were
too many men there, men with spears and shields, and there were more men by the river quays,
men in mail, men watching us warily, men with drawn swords and Thorkild called an order and
our oars lifted and water dripped from the motionless blades. The boat slewed in the
current and I heard the screams from inside the city. I had come home.

Thorkild let the boat drift downstream a hundred paces, then rammed her bows into the bank
close to a willow. He jumped ashore, tied a sealhide line to tether the boat to the willow's
trunk, and then, with a fearful glance at the armed men watching from higher up the bank,
scrambled hurriedly back on board.

'You,' he pointed at me, 'find out what's happening.'

'Trouble's happening.' I said. 'You need to know more?'

'I need to know what's happened to my storehouse,' he said, then nodded towards the armed
men, 'and I don't want to ask them. So you can instead.'

He chose me because I was a warrior and because, if I died, he would not grieve. Most of
his oarsmen were capable of fighting, but he avoided combat whenever he could because
bloodshed and trading were bad partners. The armed men were advancing down the bank now.
There were six of them, but they approached very hesitantly, for Thorkild had twice their
number in his ship's bows and all those seamen were armed with axes and spears. I pulled my
mail over my head, unwrapped the glorious wolf-crested helmet I had captured from a
Danish boat off the Welsh coast, buckled on Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting and, thus dressed
for war, jumped clumsily ashore. I slipped on the steep bank, clutched at nettles for support
and then, cursing because of the stings, clambered up to the path. I had been here before,
for this was the wide riverside pasture where my father had led the attack on Eoferwic. I
pulled on the helmet and shouted at Thorkild to throw me my shield. He did and, just as I was
about to start walking towards the six men who were now standing and watching me with swords
in their hands, Hild jumped after me.

'You should have stayed on the boat.' I told her.

'Not without you.' she said. She was carrying our one leather bag in which was little more
than a change of clothes, a knife and a whetstone. 'Who are they?'

she asked, meaning the six men who were still fifty paces away and in no hurry to close the
distance.

'Let's find out.' I said, and drew Serpent-Breath.

The shadows were long and the smoke of the city's cooking fires was purple and gold in the
twilight. Rooks flew towards their nests and in the distance I could see cows going to their
evening milking. I walked towards the six men. I was in mail, I had a shield and two swords, I
wore arm rings and a helmet that was worth the value of three fine mail coats and my
appearance checked the six men, who huddled together and waited for me. They all had drawn
swords, but I saw that two of them had crucifixes about their necks and that made me suppose
they were Saxons. 'When a man comes home,' I called to them in English, 'he does not expect to
be met by swords.'

Two of them were older men, perhaps in their thirties, both of them thick-bearded and
wearing mail. The other four were in leather coats and were younger, just seventeen or
eighteen, and the blades in their hands looked as unfamiliar to them as a plough handle
would to me. They must have assumed I was a Dane because I had come from a Danish ship and
they must have known that six of them could kill one Dane, but they also knew that one
war-Dane, dressed in battle-splendour, was likely to kill at least two of them before he
died and so they were relieved when I spoke to them in English. They were also puzzled. 'Who
are you?' one of the older men called. I did not answer, but just kept walking towards them.
If they had decided to attack me then I would have been forced to flee ignominiously or
else die, but I walked confidently, my shield held low and with Serpent-Breath's tip
brushing the long grass. They took my reluctance to answer for arrogance, when in truth it
was

confusion. I had thought to call myself by any name other than my own, for I did not want
Kjartan or my traitorous uncle to know I had returned to Northumbria, but my name was also
one to be reckoned with and I was foolishly tempted to use it to awe them, but inspiration
came just in time. 'I am Steapa of Defnascir,' I announced, and just in case Steapa's name
was unknown in Northumbria, I added a boast. 'I am the man who put Svein of the White Horse
into his long home in the earth.'

The man who had demanded my name stepped a pace backwards. 'You are Steapa? The one who
serves Alfred?'

'I am.'

'Lord,' he said, and lowered his blade. One of the younger men touched his crucifix and
dropped to a knee. A third man sheathed his sword and the others, deciding that was prudent,
did the same.

'Who are you?' I demanded.

'We serve King Egbert,' one of the older men said.

'And the dead?' I asked, gesturing towards the river where another naked corpse circled
slow in the current, 'who are they?'

'Danes, lord.'

'You're killing Danes?'

'It's God's will, lord,' he said.

I gestured towards Thorkild's ship. That man is a Dane and he is also a friend. Will you
kill him?'

'We know Thorkild, lord,' the man said, 'and if he comes in peace he will live.'

'And me?' I demanded, 'what would you do with me?'

The king would see you, lord. He would honour you for the great slaughter of the Danes.'

This slaughter?' I asked scornfully, pointing Serpent-Breath towards a corpse floating
downriver.

'He would honour the victory over Guthrum, lord. Is it true?'

'It is true,' I said, 'I was there.' I turned then, sheathed Serpent-Breath, and beckoned
to Thorkild who untied his ship and rowed it upstream. I shouted to him across the water,
telling him that Egbert's Saxons had risen against the Danes, but that these men promised they
would leave him in peace if he came in friendship.

'What would you do in my place?' Thorkild called back. His men gave their oars small tugs to
hold the ship against the river's flow.

'Go downstream,' I shouted in Danish, 'find sword-Danes and wait till you know what is
happening.'

'And you?' he asked.

'I stay here,' I said.

He groped in a pouch and threw something towards me. It glittered in the fading light,
then vanished among the buttercups that made the darkening pasture yellow. That's for your
advice,' he called, 'and may you live long, whoever you are.'

He turned his ship which was a clumsy manoeuvre for the hull was almost as long as the
Ouse was wide, but he managed it skilfully enough and the oars took him downstream and out of
my life. I discovered later that his storehouse had been ransacked and the one-armed Dane
who guarded it had been slaughtered and his daughter raped, so my advice was worth the
silver coin Thorkild had thrown to me.

'You sent him away?' one of the bearded men asked me resentfully.

'I told you, he was a friend.' I stooped and found the shilling in the long grass. 'So how do
you know of Alfred's victory?' I asked.

'A priest came, lord,' he said, 'and he told us.'

'A priest?'

'From Wessex, lord. All the way from Wessex. He carried a message from King Alfred.'

I should have known Alfred would want the news of his victory over Guthrum to spread
throughout Saxon England, and it turned out that he had sent priests to wherever Saxons
lived and those priests carried the message that Wessex was victorious and that God and his
saints had given them the triumph. One such priest had been sent to King Egbert in Eoferwic,
and that priest had reached the city just one day before me, and that was when the stupidity
began. The priest had travelled on horseback, his clerical frock wrapped in a bundle on the
back of his saddle, and he had ridden from Saxon house to Saxon house through Danish-held
Mercia. The Mercian Saxons had helped him on his way, providing fresh horses each day and
escorting him past the larger Danish garrisons until he had come to Northumbria's capital
to give King Egbert the good news that the West Saxons had defeated the Great Army of the
Danes. Yet what appealed even more to the Northumbrian Saxons was the outrageous claim that
Saint Cuthbert had appeared to Alfred in a dream and shown him how to gain the victory. The
dream was supposed to have come to Alfred during the winter of defeat in Æthelingaeg where
a handful of fugitive Saxons hid from the conquering Danes, and the story of the dream was
aimed at Egbert's Saxons like a huntsman's arrow, for there was no saint more revered north
of the Humber than Cuthbert. Cuthbert was Northumbria's idol, the holiest Christian ever
to live in the land, and there was not one pious Saxon household that did not pray to him
daily. The idea that the north's own glorious saint had helped Wessex defeat the Danes drove
the wits from King Egbert's skull like partridges fleeing the reapers. He had every right to
be pleased at Alfred's victory, and he doubtless resented ruling on a Danish leash, but
what he should have done was thank the priest who brought the news and then, to keep him quiet,
shut him up like a dog in a kennel. Instead he had ordered Wulfhere, the city's archbishop,
to hold a service of thanks in the city's largest church. Wulfhere, who was no fool, had
immediately developed an ague and ridden into the country to recover, but a fool
called Father Hrothweard took his place and Eoferwic's big church had resounded to a fiery
sermon which claimed Saint Cuthbert had come from heaven to lead the West Saxons to
victory, and that idiotic tale had persuaded Eoferwic's Saxons that God and Saint
Cuthbert were about to deliver their own country from the Danes. And so the killing had
started.

All this I learned as we went into the city. I learned too that there had been less than a
hundred Danish warriors in Eoferwic because the rest had marched north under Earl Ivarr to
confront a Scottish army that had crossed the border. There had been no such invasion in
living memory, but the southern Scots had a new king who had sworn to make Eoferwic his new
capital, and so Ivarr had taken his army north to teach the fellow a lesson. Ivarr was the
true ruler of southern Northumbria. If he had wanted to call himself the king then there was
no one to stop him but it was convenient to have a pliable Saxon on the throne to collect
the taxes and to keep his fellow-Saxons quiet. Ivarr, meanwhile, could do what his family
did best; make war. He was a Lothbrok and it was their boast that no male Lothbrok had ever
died in bed. They died fighting with their swords in their hands. Ivarr's father and one uncle
had died in Ireland, while Ubba, the third Lothbrok brother, had fallen to my sword at
Cynuit. Now Ivarr, the latest sword-Dane from a war-besotted family, was marching
against the Scots and had sworn to bring their king to Eoferwic in slave manacles.

I thought no Saxon in his right mind would rebel against Ivarr, who was reputed to be as
ruthless as his father, but Alfred's victory and the claim that it was inspired by Saint
Cuthbert had ignited the madness in Eoferwic. The flames were fed by Father Hrothweard's
preaching. He bellowed that God, Saint Cuthbert and an army of angels were coming to drive
the Danes from Northumbria and my arrival only encouraged the insanity. 'God has sent
you.'

the men who had accosted me kept saying, and they shouted to folk that I was Svein's
killer and by the time we reached the palace there was a small crowd following Hild and me as
we pushed through narrow streets still stained with Danish blood.

I had been to Eoferwic's palace before. It was a Roman building of fine pale stone with
vast pillars holding up a tiled roof that was now patched with blackened straw. The floor was
also tiled, and those tiles had once formed pictures of the Roman gods, but they were all torn
up now and those that were left were mostly covered by rushes that were stained by the
previous day's blood. The big hall stank like a butcher's yard and was wreathed with smoke
from the blazing torches that lit the cavernous space. The new King Egbert turned out to be
the old King Egbert's nephew and he had his uncle's shifty face and petulant mouth.