The Pale Horseman (24 page)

I turned and pointed to the hill across the river. 'What is that hill called?'

He shrugged. 'The hill,' he said, 'just the hill.'

'It must become a fort,' I said, 'and it must have walls of logs and a gate of logs and a
tower so that men can see a long way down river. And then I want a bridge leading to the fort,
a bridge strong enough to stop ships.' .

'You want to stop ships?' Haswold asked. He scratched his groin and shook his head. 'Can't
build a bridge.'

'Why not?'

'Too deep.' That was probably true. It was low tide now and the Pedredan flowed sullenly
between steep and deep mud banks.

'But I can block the river,' Haswold went on, his eyes still on Iseult.

'Block the river,' I said, 'and build a fort.'

'Give her to me,' Haswold promised, 'and you will have both.'

'Do what I want,' I said, 'and you can have her, her sisters and her cousins. All twelve of
them.'

Haswold would have drained the whole swamp and built a new Jerusalem for the chance to hump
Iseult, but he had not thought beyond the end of his prick. But that was far enough for me, and
I have never seen work done so quickly. It was done in days. He blocked the river first and
did it cleverly by making a floating barrier of logs and felled trees, complete with their
tangling branches, all of them lashed together with goat hide ropes. A ship's crew could
eventually dismantle such a barrier, but not if they were being assailed by spears and
arrows from the fort on the hill that had a wooden palisade, a flooded ditch and a flimsy
tower made of alder logs bound together with leather ropes. It was all crude work, but the
wall was solid enough, and I began to fear that the small fort would be finished before
enough West Saxons arrived to garrison it, but the three priests were doing their job and
the soldiers still came, and I put a score of them in Æthelingaeg and told them to help finish
the fort.

When the work was done, or nearly done, I took Iseult back to Æthelingaeg and I dressed her
as she had been dressed before, only this time she wore a deerskin tunic beneath the
precious fur, and I stood her in the centre of the village and said Haswold could take her.
He looked at me warily, then looked at her.

'She's mine?' he asked.

'All yours,' I said, and stepped away from her.

'And her sisters?' he asked greedily, 'her cousins?

'I shall bring them tomorrow.'

He beckoned Iseult towards his hut. 'Come,' he said.

'In her country,' I said, 'it is the custom for the man to lead the woman to his bed.'

He stared at Iseult's lovely, dark-eyed face above the swathing silver cloak. I stepped
further back, abandoning her, and he darted forward, reaching for her, and she brought her
hands out from under the thick fur and she was holding Wasp-Sting and its blade sliced up
into Haswold's belly. She gave a cry of horror and surprise as she brought the blade up, and
I saw her hesitate, shocked by the effort required to pierce a man's belly and by the
reality of what she had done. Then she gritted her teeth and ripped the blade hard, opening
him up like a gutted carp, and he gave a strange mewing cry as he staggered back from her
vengeful eyes. His intestines spilled into the mud, and I was beside her then with
Serpent-Breath drawn. She was gasping, trembling. She had wanted to do it, but I doubted
she would want to do it again.

'You were asked,' I snarled at the villagers, 'to fight for your king.'

Haswold was on the ground, twitching, his blood soaking his otter skin clothes. He made a
mewing noise again and one of his filthy hands scrabbled among his own spilt guts.

'For your king!' I repeated. 'When you are asked to fight for your king it is not a
request, but a duty!

Every man here is a soldier and your enemy is the Danes and if you will not fight them then
you will fight against me!'

Iseult still stood beside Haswold who jerked like a dying fish. I edged her away and
stabbed Serpent-Breath down to slit his throat.

'Take his head,' she told me.

'His head?'

'Strong magic.'

We mounted Haswold's head on the fort wall so that it stared towards the Danes, and in time
eight more heads appeared there. They were the heads of Haswold's chief supporters, murdered
by the villagers who were glad to be rid of them. Eofer, the archer, was not one of them. He was
a simpleton, incapable of speaking sense, though he grunted and, from time to time, made
howling noises. He could be led by a child, but when asked to use his bow he proved to have a
terrible strength and uncanny accuracy. He was Æthelingaeg's hunter, capable of
dropping a full-grown boar at a hundred paces, and that was what his name meant; boar.

I left Leofric to command the garrison at Æthelingaeg and took Iseult back to Alfred's
refuge. She was silent and I thought her sunk in misery, but then she suddenly laughed.
'Look!' she pointed at the dead man's blood matted and sticky in Ælswith's fur.

She still had Wasp-Sting. That was my short sword, a sax, and it was a wicked blade in a
close fight where men are so crammed together that there is no room to swing a long sword or an
axe. She trailed the blade in the water, then used the hem of Ælswith's fur to scrub the
diluted blood from the steel.

'It is harder than I thought,' she said, 'to kill a man.'

'It takes strength.'

'But I have his soul now.'

‘Is that why you did it?'

'To give life,' she said, 'you must take it from somewhere else.' She gave me back
Wasp-Sting.

Alfred was shaving when we returned. He had been growing a beard, not for a disguise, but
because he had been too low in spirits to bother about his appearance, but when Iseult and I
reached his refuge he was standing naked to the waist beside a big wooden tub of heated
water. His chest was pathetically thin, his belly hollow, but he had washed himself,
combed his hair and was now scratching at his stubble with an ancient razor he had borrowed
from a marsh man. His daughter, Æthelflaed was holding a scrap of silver that served as a
mirror.

'I am feeling better,' he told me solemnly.

'Good, lord,' I said, 'so am I.'

'Does that mean you've killed someone?'

'She did,' I jerked my head at Iseult.

He gave her a speculative look. 'My wife,' he said, dipping the razor in the water, 'was
asking whether Iseult is truly a queen.'

'She was,' I said, 'but that means little in Cornwalum. She was queen of a dung-heap.'

'And she's a pagan?'

'It was a Christian kingdom,' I said. 'Didn't Brother Asser tell you that?'

'He said they were not good Christians.'

'I thought that was for God to judge.'

'Good, Uhtred, good!' He waved the razor at me, then stooped to the silver mirror and
scraped at his upper lip. 'Can she foretell the future?'

'She can.'

He scraped in silence for a few heartbeats. Æthelflaed watched Iseult solemnly.

'So tell me,' Alfred said, 'does she say I will be king in Wessex again?'

‘You will,' Iseult said tonelessly, surprising me.

Alfred stared at her. 'My wife,' he said, 'says that we can look for a ship now that Edward
is better. Look for a ship, go to Frankia and perhaps travel on to Rome. There is a Saxon
community in Rome.'

He scraped the blade against his jawbone. 'They will welcome us.'

'The Danes will be defeated,' Iseult said, still tonelessly, but without a quiver of
doubt in her voice.

Alfred rubbed his face. 'The example of Boethius tells me she's right,' he said.

'Boethius?' I asked, 'is he one of your warriors?'

'He was a Roman, Uhtred,' Alfred said in a tone which chided me for not knowing, 'and a
Christian and a philosopher and a man rich in book-learning. Rich indeed!' He paused,
contemplating the story of Boethius. 'When the pagan Alaric overran Rome,' he went on,
'and all civilisation and true religion seemed doomed, Boethius alone stood against the
sinners. He suffered, but he won through, and we can take heart from him, indeed we can.' He
pointed the razor at me. 'We must never forget the example of Boethius, Uhtred,
never.'

'I won't, lord,' I said, 'but do you think book-learning will get you out of here?'

'I think,' he said, 'that when the Danes are gone, I shall grow a proper beard. Thank you, my
sweet,'

this last was to Æthelflaed. 'Give the mirror back to Eanflaed, will you?'

Æthelflaed ran off and Alfred looked at me with some amusement. 'Does it surprise you that
my wife and Eanflaed have become friends?'

'I'm glad of it, lord.'

'So am I.'

'But does your wife know Eanflaed's trade?' I asked.

'Not exactly,' he said. 'She believes Eanflaed was a cook in a tavern. Which is truth
enough. So we have a fort at Æthelingaeg?'

'We do. Leofric commands there and has forty-three men.'

'And we have twenty-eight here. The very hosts of Midianl' He was evidently amused. 'So
we shall move there.'

'Maybe in a week or two.'

'Why wait?' he asked.

I shrugged. 'This place is deeper in the swamp. When we have more men, when we know we can
hold Æthelingaeg, that is the time for you to go there.'

He pulled on a grubby shirt. 'Your new fort can't stop the Danes?'

'It will slow them, lord. But they could still struggle through the marsh.' They would find
it difficult, though, for Leofric was digging ditches to defend Æthelingaeg’s western
edge.

'You're telling me Æthelingaeg is more vulnerable than this place?'

'Yes, lord.'

'Which is why I must go there,' he said. ‘Then they can't say their king skulked in an
unreachable place, can they?' He smiled at me. 'They must say he defied the Danes. That he
waited where they could reach him, that he put himself into danger.'

'And his family?' I asked.

'And his family,' he said firmly. He thought for a moment. 'If they come in force they
could take all the swamp, isn't that true?'

'Yes, lord.'

'So no place is safer than another. But how large a force does Svein have?'

'I don't know, lord.'

'Don't know?' It was a reproof, gentle enough, but still a reproof.

'I haven't gone close to them, lord,' I explained, 'because till now we've been too weak to
resist them, and so long as they leave us undisturbed then so long do we leave them
undisturbed. There's no point in kicking a wild bees' nest, not unless you're determined to
get the honey.'

He nodded acceptance of that argument. 'But we need to know how many bees there are,
don't we?'

he said. 'So tomorrow we shall take a look at our enemy. You and me, Uhtred.'

'No, lord,' I said firmly. 'I shall go. You shouldn't risk yourself.'

'That is exactly what I need to do,' he said, 'and men must know I do it for I am the king,
and why would men want a king who does not share their danger?' He waited for an answer, but I
had none. 'So let's say our prayers,' he finished, 'then we shall eat.'

It was fish stew. It was always fish stew.

And next day we went to find the enemy.

There were six of us. The man who poled the punt, Iseult and 1, two of the newly-arrived
household troops and Alfred. I tried once again to make him stay behind, but he
insisted.

'If anyone should stay,' he said, 'it is Iseult.'

‘She comes,' I said.

'Evidently.' He did not argue, and we all climbed into a large punt and went westwards,
and Alfred stared at the birds, thousands of birds. There were coot, moorhen, dabchicks, ducks,
grebes and herons, while off to the west, white against the sullen sky, was a cloud of gulls.

The marsh man slid us silent and fast through secret channels. There were times when he
seemed to be taking us directly into a bank of reeds or grass, yet the shallow craft would
slide through into another stretch of open water. The incoming tide rippled through the
gaps, bringing fish to the hidden nets and basket traps. Beneath the gulls, far off to the
west, I could see the masts of Svein's fleet, which had been dragged ashore on the coast.

Alfred saw them too. 'Why don't they join Guthrum?'

'Because Svein doesn't want to take Guthrum's orders,' I said.

'You know that?'

'He told me so.'

Alfred paused, perhaps thinking of my trial in front of the Witan. He gave me a rueful
look. 'What sort of man is he?'

'Formidable.'

'So why hasn't he attacked us here?'

I had been wondering the same thing. Svein had missed a golden chance to invade the swamp
and hunt Alfred down. So why had he not even tried? 'Because there's easier plunder
elsewhere,' I suggested, 'and because he won't do Guthrum's bidding. They're rivals. If
Svein takes Guthrum's orders then he acknowledges Guthrum as his king.'

Alfred stared at the distant masts which showed as small scratches against the sky, then I
mutely pointed towards a hill that reared steeply from the western water flats and the marsh
man obediently went that way, and when the punt grounded we clambered through thick alders
and past some sunken hovels where sullen folk in dirty otter fur watched us pass. The marsh man
knew no name for the place, except to call it Brant, which meant steep, and it was steep. Steep
and high, offering a view southwards to where the Pedredan coiled like a great snake through
the swamp's heart. And at the river's mouth, where sand and mud stretched into the Saefern
Sea, I could see the Danish ships.

They were grounded on the far bank of the Pedredan in the same place that Ubba had
grounded his ships before meeting his death in battle. From there Svein could easily row to
Æthelingaeg, for the river was wide and deep, and he would meet no challenge until he reached
the river barrier beside the fort where Leofric waited. I wanted Leofric and his
garrison to have some warning if the Danes attacked, and this high hill offered a view of
Svein's camp, but was far enough away so that it would not invite an attack from the
enemy.