The Pale Horseman (34 page)

'How far to Ocmundtun?' I asked Steapa.

'We can make it by nightfall.'

I hesitated. If Odda the Younger was at Ocmundtun then why go there? He was my enemy and
sworn to my death. Alfred had given me a scrap of parchment on which he had written words
commanding Odda to greet me peaceably, but what force did writing have against hatred?

'He won't kill you,' Steapa said, surprising me again. He had evidently guessed my
thoughts. 'He won't kill you,' he said again.

'Why not?'

'Because I won't abide him killing you,' Steapa said and turned his horse west.

We reached Ocmundtun at dusk. It was a small town built along a river and guarded by a
high spur of limestone on which a stout palisade offered a refuge if attackers came. No one
was on the limestone spur now and the town, which had no walls, looked placid. There might be
war in Wessex, but Ocmundtun, like Cridianton, was evidently at peace. Harald's hall was
close to the fort on its hill and no one challenged us as we rode into the forecourt where
servants recognised Steapa. They greeted him warily, but then a steward came from the hall
door and, seeing the huge man, clapped his hands twice in a sign of delight.

'We heard you were taken by the pagans,' the steward said.

'I was.'

'They let you go?'

'My king freed me,' Steapa growled as though he resented the question. He slid from his
horse and stretched. 'Alfred freed me.'

'Is Harald here?' I asked the steward.

'My lord is inside,' the steward was offended that I had not called the reeve “lord”.

'Then so are we,' I said, and led Steapa into the hall. The steward flapped at us because
custom and courtesy demanded that he seek his lord's permission for us to enter the hall,
but I ignored him.

A fire burned in the central hearth and dozens of rushlights stood on the platforms at the
hall's edges. Boar spears were stacked against the wall on which hung a dozen deerskins and a
bundle of valuable pine-marten pelts. A score of men were in the hall, evidently waiting
for supper, and a harpist played at the far end. A pack of hounds rushed to investigate us
and Steapa beat them off as we walked to the fire to warm ourselves.

'Ale,' Steapa said to the steward.

Harald must have heard the noise of the hounds for he appeared at a door leading from the
private chamber at the back of the hall. He blinked when he saw its. He had thought the two of
us were enemies, then he had heard that Steapa was captured, yet here we were, side by side.
The hall fell silent as he limped towards us. It was only a slight limp, the result of a spear
wound in some battle that had also taken two fingers of his sword hand.

'You once chided me,' he said, 'for carrying weapons into your hall. Yet you bring weapons
into mine.'

'There was no gatekeeper,' I said.

'He was having a piss, lord,' the steward explained.

'There are to be no weapons in my hall,' Harald insisted.

That was customary. Men get drunk in hall and can do enough damage to each other with the
knives we use to cut meat, and drunken men with swords and axes can turn a supper table into
a butcher's yard. We gave the steward our weapons, then I hauled off my mail coat and told the
steward to hang it on a frame to dry, then have a servant clean its links.

Harald formally welcomed us when our weapons were gone. He said the hall was ours and that
we should eat with him as honoured guests. 'I would hear your news,' he said, beckoning a
servant who brought us pots of ale.

'Is Odda here?' I demanded.

'The father is, yes. Not the son.'

I swore. We had come here with a message for Ealdorman Odda, Odda the Younger, only to
discover that it was the wounded father, Odda the Elder, who was in Ocmundtun.

'So where is the son?' I asked.

Harald was offended by my brusqueness, but he remained courteous. 'The ealdorman is
in Exanceaster.'

'Is he besieged there?'

'No.'

'And the Danes are in Cridianton?'

'They are.'

'And are they besieged?' l knew the answer to that, but wanted to hear Harald admit
it.

'No,' he said.

I let the ale pot drop.

‘We come from the king,' I said. I was supposedly speaking to Harald, but I strode down
the hall so that the men on the platforms could hear me.

‘We come from Alfred,' I said, 'and Alfred wishes to know why there are Danes in
Defnascir. We burned their ships, we slaughtered their ship-guards and we drove them from
Cynuit, yet you allow them to live here? Why?'

No one answered. There were no women in the hall, for Harald was a widower who had not
remarried, and so the supper guests were all his warriors or else thegns who led men of
their own. Some looked at me with loathing, for my words imputed cowardice to them, while
others looked down at the floor. Harald glanced at Steapa as if seeking the big man's
support, but Steapa just stood by the fire, his savage face showing nothing. I turned back
to stare at Harald.

'Why are there Danes in Defnascir?' I demanded.

'Because they are welcome here,' a voice said behind me.

I turned to see an old man standing in the door. White hair showed beneath the bandage that
swathed his head, and he was so thin and so weak that he had to lean on the door frame for
support. At first I did not recognise him, for when I had last spoken to him he had been a big
man, well-built and vigorous, but Odda the Elder had taken an axe blow to the skull at
Cynuit and he should have died from such a wound, yet somehow he had lived, and here he was,
though now he was skeletal, pale, haggard and feeble.

'They are here,' Odda said, 'because they are welcome. As are you, Lord Uhtred, and you,
Steapa.'

A woman was tending Odda the Elder. She had tried to pull him away from the door and take
him back to his bed, but now she edged past him into the hall and stared at me. Then, seeing
me, she did what she had done the very first time she saw me. She did what she had done when she
came to marry me. She burst into tears.

It was Mildrith.

Mildrith was robed like a nun in a pale grey dress, belted with rope, over which she wore a
large wooden cross. She had a close fitting grey bonnet from which strands of her fair hair
escaped. She stared at me, burst into tears, made the sign of the cross and vanished. A
moment later Odda the Elder followed her, too frail to stand any longer, and the door
closed.

'You are indeed welcome here,' Harald said, echoing Odda's words.

'But why are the Danes welcome here?' I asked.

Because Odda the Younger had made a truce. Harald explained it as we ate. No one in this
part of Defnascir had heard how Svein's ships had been burned at Cynuit, they only knew that
Svein's men, and their women and children, had marched south, burning and plundering, and
Odda the Younger had taken his troops to Exanceaster and he had prepared for a siege, but
instead Svein had offered to talk. The Danes, quite suddenly, had stopped raiding. Instead
they had settled in Cridianton and sent an embassy to Exanceaster, and Svein and Odda had
made their private peace.

'We sell them horses,' Harald said, 'and they pay well for them. Twenty shillings a
stallion, fifteen a mare.'

'You sell them horses,' I said flatly.

'So they will go away,' Harald explained.

Servants threw a-big birch log onto the fire. Sparks exploded outwards, scattering the
hounds who lay just beyond the ring of hearth stones.

'How many men does Svein lead?' I asked.

'Many,' Harald said.

'Eight hundred?' I asked, 'nine?' Harald shrugged. 'They came in twenty-four ships,' I
went on, 'only twenty-four. So how many men can he have? No more than a thousand, and we
killed a few, and others must have died in the winter.'

'We think he has eight hundred,' Harald said reluctantly.

'And how many men in the fyrd? Two thousand?'

'Of which only four hundred are seasoned warriors,' Harald said.

That was probably true. Most men of the fyrd are farmers, while every Dane is a
sword-warrior, but Svein would never have pitted his eight hundred men against two
thousand. Not because he feared losing, but because he feared that in gaining victory he
would lose a hundred men. That was why he had stopped plundering and made his truce with
Odda, because in southern Defnascir he could recover from his defeat at Cynuit. His men
could rest, feed, make weapons and get horses. Svein was husbanding his men and making them
stronger.

‘It was not my choice,' Harald said defensively. 'The Ealdorman ordered it.'

'And the king,' I retorted, 'ordered Odda to drive Svein out of Defnascir.'

'What do we know of the king's orders?' Harald asked bitterly, and it was my turn to give
him news, to tell how Alfred had escaped Guthrum and was in the great swamp.

'And some time after Easter,' I said, 'we shall gather the shire fyrds and we shall cut
Guthrum into pieces.'

I stood. 'There will be no more horses sold to Svein,' I said it loudly so that every man
in the big hall could hear me.

'Uthr …' Harald began, then shook his head. He had doubtless been about to say that Odda
the Younger, Ealdorman of Defnascir, had ordered the horses to be sold, but his voice
trailed away.

'What are the king's orders?' I demanded of Steapa.

‘No more horses,' he thundered.

There was silence until Harald irritably gestured at the harpist who struck a chord and
began playing a melancholy tune. Someone began singing, but no one joined in and his voice
trailed away.

'I must look to the sentinels,' Harald said, and he threw me an inquisitive look which I
took as an invitation to join him, and so I buckled on my swords and then walked with him
down Ocmundtun's long street to where three spearmen stood guard beside a wooden hut.
Harald talked to them for a moment, then led me further east, away from the light of the
sentinels' fire. A moon silvered the valley, lighting the empty road until the track
vanished among trees.

'I have thirty fighting men,' Harald said suddenly.

He was telling me he was too weak to fight.

'How many men does Odda have in Exanceaster?' I asked.

'A hundred? Hundred and twenty?'

'The fyrd should have been raised.'

'I had no orders,' Harald said,

'Did you seek any?'

'Of course I did.' He was angry with me now. "I told Odda we should drive Svein away, but he
wouldn't listen.'

'Did he tell you the king ordered the fyrd raised?'

'No.' Harald paused, staring down the moonlit road. 'We heard nothing of Alfred, except
that he'd been defeated and was hiding. And we heard the Danes were all across Wessex, and
that more were gathering in Mercia.'

'Odda didn't think to attack Svein when he landed?'

‘He thought to protect himself,' Harald said, 'and sent me to the Tamur.'

The Tamur was the river which divided Wessex from Cornwalum.

'The Britons are quiet?' I asked.

'Their priests are telling them not to fight us.'

'But priests or no priests,' I said, 'they'll cross the river if the Danes look like
winning.'

'Aren't they winning already?' Harald asked bitterly.

'We're still free men,' I said.

He nodded at that. Behind us, in the town, a dog began howling and he turned as if the
noise indicated trouble, but the howling stopped with a sharp yelp. He kicked a stone in the
road.

'Svein frightens me,' he admitted suddenly.

'He's a frightening man,' I agreed.

'He's clever,' Harald said, 'clever, strong and savage.'

'A Dane,' I said dryly.

'A ruthless man,' Harald went on.

'He is,' I agreed, 'and do you think that after you have fed him, supplied him with horses
and given him shelter, he will leave you alone?'

'No,' he said, 'but Odda believes that.'

Then Odda was a fool. He was nursing a wolf cub that would tear him to shreds when it was
strong enough.

'Why didn't Svein march north to join Guthrum?' I asked.

'I wouldn't know.'

But I knew. Guthrum had been in England for years now. He had tried to take Wessex before,
and he had failed, but now, on the very brink of success, he had paused. Guthrum the Unlucky,
he was called, and I suspected he had not changed. He was wealthy, led many men, but he was
cautious. Svein, though, came from the Norsemen's settlements in Ireland and was a very
different creature. He was younger than Guthrum, less wealthy than Guthrum, and led fewer
men, but he was undoubtedly the better warrior. Now, bereft of his ships, he was weakened,
but he had persuaded Odda the Younger to give him refuge and he gathered his strength so that
when he did meet Guthrum he would not he a defeated leader in need of help, but a Spear-Dane
of power. Svein, I thought, was a far more dangerous man than Guthrum, and Odda the Younger
was only making him more dangerous.

'Tomorrow,' I said, 'we must start raising the fyrd. Those are the king's orders.'

Harald nodded. I could not see his face in the darkness, but I sensed he was not happy,
yet he was a sensible man and must have known that Svein had to be driven out of the
shire.

'I shall send the messages,' he said, 'but Odda might stop the fyrd assembling. He's made
his truce with Svein and he won't want me breaking it. Folk will obey him before they obey
me.'

‘And what of his father?' I asked. 'Will they obey him?'

'They will,' he said, 'but he's a sick man. You saw that. It's a miracle he lives at
all.'

'Maybe because my wife nurses him?'

'Yes,' he said, and fell silent. There was something odd in the air now, something
unexpressed, a discomfort. 'Your wife nurses him well,' he finished awkwardly.

'He's her godfather,' I said.

'So he is.'

'It is good to see her,' I said, not because I meant it, but because it was the proper
thing to say and I could think of nothing else. 'And it will be good to see my son,' I added
with more warmth.