Warriors of the Storm (12 page)

She urged Gast forward a pace. ‘You will swear loyalty to me now?’

‘With joy, my lady,’ Haesten said, ‘with joy!’

I spat towards the treacherous bastard, walked away, slammed Serpent-Breath back into her scabbard and hauled myself into Tintreg’s saddle. ‘Lord Uhtred!’ Lady Æthelflaed called sharply. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to the river,’ I said curtly. ‘Finan! Sihtric! All of you! With me!’

We rode away from whatever farce was about to happen outside Eads Byrig.

One hundred and twenty-three of us rode. We rode our horses through the ranks of Æthelflaed’s followers, then turned north and rode towards the river.

But once among the trees and well hidden from the fools who surrounded Æthelflaed I turned my men eastwards.

Because I was determined to do the Christian god’s work.

And strike Haesten dead.

We rode fast, our horses twisting through trees. Finan spurred alongside me. ‘What are we doing?’

‘Taking Eads Byrig,’ I said, ‘of course.’

‘Sweet Jesus.’

I said nothing as Tintreg dropped into a gully of thick ferns, then pounded up the short slope beyond. How many men did Haesten lead? He had claimed five hundred and eighty, but I did not believe him. He had lost his army along with his reputation at Beamfleot. He had not been present at that battle, but if he had as many as one hundred followers I would be surprised, though doubtless Ragnall would have left some men inside the fortress too. ‘How big is the fortress?’ I asked Finan.

‘Eads Byrig? It’s big.’

‘If you walked around the walls, how many paces?’

He thought about his answer. I had turned slightly northwards, setting Tintreg to a long slope that climbed through the oaks and sycamores. ‘Nine hundred?’ Finan guessed. ‘Maybe a thousand?’

‘That’s what I reckon.’

‘It’s a big place, sure enough.’

King Alfred had tried to reduce life to rules. Most of those rules, of course, came from his Christian scriptures, but there had been others. The towns he built were measured, and each plot of land carefully surveyed. The walls of the town were also measured to discover their height, depth, and extent, and it had been that last figure, the length of the wall, which determined how many men were needed to defend the town. That number had been worked out by clever priests rattling wooden balls along wire strings, and their conclusion was that each burh needed four defenders for every five paces of wall. Wessex had become a garrison under Alfred, its borders studded with the newly built burhs and the walls manned by the fyrd. Every large town had been walled so that the Danes, piercing deep into Wessex, would be frustrated by ramparts, and those ramparts would be defended by an exact number of men corresponding to the wall’s total length. It had worked, and Mercia was now the same. As Æthelflaed reconquered Mercia’s ancestral lands she secured them with burhs like Ceaster and Brunanburh, and ensured that the garrison could supply four men for every five paces of rampart. At the first sign of trouble, folk could retreat into the nearest burh, taking their livestock with them. A whole army was needed to capture a burh, and the Danes had never succeeded. Their way of war was to raid deep, to capture slaves and cattle, and an army that stayed still, that remained camped outside the walls of a burh, was soon struck by disease. Besides, no enemy army had ever proved big enough to surround a burh and starve it into submission. The strategy of the burhs had worked.

But it worked because there were men to defend them. Every man over the age of twelve was expected to fight. They might not be trained warriors like the men I now led through the rising woodland, but they could hold a spear or throw a rock or swing an axe. That was the fyrd, the army of farmers and butchers and craftsmen. The fyrd might not be armoured with mail or carry linden-wood shields, but its men could line the walls of a burh and hack enemies to death if they tried to climb the ramparts. A woodsman’s axe in the hands of a strong farmer is a fearsome weapon, as is a sharpened hoe if swung fiercely enough. Four men to every five paces, and Eads Byrig was a thousand paces, and that meant Haesten would need at least seven hundred men to defend the whole length of its ramparts. ‘I’d be surprised,’ I told Finan, ‘if he had two hundred men.’

‘Then why is he staying there?’

And that was a good question. Why had Ragnall left a garrison in Eads Byrig? I did not believe for a moment that Haesten had decided to stay south of the Mærse in order to seek Æthelflaed’s protection, he was only there because Ragnall wanted him there. We had slowed now, the horses walking uphill, their hooves loud in the leaf mould. So why had Ragnall left Haesten behind? Haesten was not the best fighter in Ragnall’s army, he might well have been the worst, but he was certainly the best liar, and suddenly I understood. I had thought Eads Byrig was a deception aimed at the weak king in Eoferwic, but it was not. It was aimed at us. At me. ‘He’s staying,’ I told Finan, ‘because Ragnall’s coming back.’

‘He has to take Eoferwic first,’ Finan said drily.

I curbed Tintreg and held up my hand to stop my men. ‘Stay mounted,’ I told them, then slid out of the saddle and threw the reins to Godric. ‘Keep Tintreg here,’ I told him.

Finan and I walked slowly uphill. ‘Ingver’s support will crumble,’ I told Finan. ‘He’s a weakling. Ragnall will find himself King of Eoferwic without a struggle. Jarls will already be flocking to him, bringing men, swearing allegiance. He doesn’t even need to go to Eoferwic! He can send three hundred men to take the city from Ingver, turn around and come back here. He just wants us to think that he’s going there.’

The trees were thinning and I caught a glimpse of the raw new timbers of Eads Byrig’s eastern wall. We stooped and crept forward, wary of any sentry on the high timber ramparts.

‘And Ragnall has to reward his followers,’ I went on, ‘what better than land in northern Mercia?’

‘But Eads Byrig?’ Finan sounded dubious.

‘It’s a foothold in Mercia,’ I said, ‘and a base to attack Ceaster. He needs a big victory, something to send the signal that he’s a winner. He wants even more men to come across the sea, and to bring them he has to strike a heavy blow. Capturing Eoferwic doesn’t count. It’s had half a dozen kings in as many years, but if he takes Ceaster?’

‘If,’ Finan said, still dubious.

‘If he captures Ceaster,’ I went on, ‘he destroys Æthelflaed’s reputation. He gains territory. He controls the Mærse and the Dee, he has burhs to frustrate us. He’ll lose men in the assault, but he has men to lose. But to do that he needs Eads Byrig. That’s his base. Once inside Eads Byrig we’ll never get him out. But if we hold Eads Byrig then he’ll find it damned hard to besiege Ceaster.’

By now we were at the edge of the trees where we crouched in the undergrowth and stared at the newly-made walls above us. They were taller than a man and protected by the outer ditch. ‘How many men do you see there?’ I asked.

‘Not one.’

It was true. There was not a single man or spear-point visible above Eads Byrig’s eastern wall. ‘There’s no fighting platform,’ I said.

Finan frowned. He was thinking. There, just a hundred paces from us, was a wall, but no visible defenders. There had to be sentries there, but if there was no fighting platform then those men were looking through the chinks between the newly-felled logs, and those logs were uneven, their tops not yet aligned. The wall had been built in a hurry. ‘It’s a bluff,’ he said.

‘It’s all a bluff! Haesten’s conversion is a bluff. He’s just buying time until Ragnall can get back here. Four days? Five?’

‘That quickly?’

‘He’s probably already on his way back,’ I said. It seemed obvious now. He had burned his bridge of boats to make us think he had abandoned Mercia, but to return, all he needed to do was march a few miles eastwards and follow the Roman road south to where it bridged the Mærse. He was coming, I was sure of it.

‘But how many bastards are inside those walls?’ Finan asked.

‘Only one way to find out.’

He chuckled. ‘And you are always telling young Æthelstan to be cautious before starting a fight?’

‘There’s a time for caution,’ I said, ‘and a time to just kill the bastards.’

He nodded. ‘But how do we cross that wall? We don’t have ladders.’

So I told him.

Twelve of my youngest men led the assault. My son was among them.

The trick was to reach the wall fast and to cross it fast. We had no ladders, and the wall was some nine or ten feet high, but we did have horses.

That was how we had captured Ceaster. My son had stood on his horse’s saddle and climbed over the gate, and that is what I told the twelve young men to do. Ride fast to the wall and use the height of the horse to reach the wall’s top. The rest of us would follow hard behind. I would have liked to have led the twelve, but I was not as agile as I had been. This was a job for young men.

‘And if there are two hundred bastards waiting for them on the other side?’ Finan asked.

‘Then they don’t cross the wall,’ I said.

‘And if Lady Æthelflaed has just agreed a truce?’

I ignored that question. I suspected that the happy Christians were agreeing to let Haesten stay on the hilltop till Easter, but I was not part of that agreement because Haesten was my man. He had sworn loyalty to me. That oath might have been made a long time ago, and Haesten had broken it repeatedly, but an oath was still an oath and he owed me obedience. Christians might declare that an oath sworn to a pagan had no force, but I was under no compulsion to believe that. Haesten was my man, like it or not, and he had no right to make a truce with Æthelflaed unless I agreed, and I wanted the bastard dead. ‘Go,’ I told my son, ‘go!’

The twelve men spurred their horses, crashing through undergrowth and out onto the cleared land. I let them get twenty or thirty paces ahead, then kicked Tintreg. ‘All of you,’ I called, ‘with me!’

My son was ahead of the rest, his horse pounding up the slope. I saw his stallion drop into the ditch and struggle up the far side where Uhtred reached with both hands for the wall’s top. He scrabbled with his feet, swung a leg over and now the rest of the dozen were pulling themselves up onto the logs. One man fell back, rolling into the ditch. The abandoned horses just stood there, in our way.

And then the wall fell.

I had just reached the ditch. It was shallow because Haesten’s men had not had time to deepen it again. There were no stakes, no obstacles, just a steep short bank climbing to the earth wall’s crest where the logs had been sunk, but they had not been buried deep enough, and the weight of the men on their tops was throwing them down. Tintreg shied away from the noise, and I wrenched him back. Horsemen went past me, not bothering to dismount, just spurring the stallions up the bank and onto the fallen logs. ‘Dismount!’ Finan shouted. A horse slipped and fell on the logs. The beast was thrashing and screaming, driving other men to the edges of the gap that was not wide enough for the mass of frightened horses and hurrying men. ‘Dismount!’ Finan bellowed again. ‘Come on foot! Shields! Shields! I want shields!’

That was the order to make a shield wall. Men were flinging themselves out of their saddles and flooding over the fallen wall. I led Tintreg by his reins. ‘Keep your horse with you!’ I called to Berg. In front of me were the fallen logs that had tilted down into the inner ditch, beyond which was the second earth wall. Neither was a formidable obstacle. My men were clambering over the fallen wall, drawing their swords, while ahead of us were three large huts, newly built with rough timber walls and bright thatch, and beyond the huts were men, but those men were a long way off at the fort’s further end. As far as I could see there had been no sentries at this end of the fort.

‘Shield wall!’ I shouted.

‘On me!’ Finan was standing just beyond the three huts, arms spread to show where he wanted the shield wall to form.

‘Berg! Help me!’ I called, and Berg cupped his hands and heaved me back into Tintreg’s saddle. I drew Serpent-Breath. ‘Mount up and follow me,’ I snarled at Berg.

I spurred around the end of our hastily forming wall. Now I could see the rest of the fort. Two hundred men? I doubted there were more than two hundred. Those men had been gathered at the fort’s far end, doubtless waiting to hear what agreement had been reached with Æthelflaed, and now we were behind them. But closer to us, and even more numerous, was a crowd of women and children. They were running. A handful of men were with them, all of them fleeing our sudden invasion of the fort’s eastern end. ‘We have to stop those fugitives,’ I told Berg. ‘Come on!’ I spurred Tintreg forward.

I was Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg, in my war-glory. The arm rings of fallen enemies glinted on my forearms, my shield was newly painted with the snarling wolf’s head of my house, while another wolf, this one of silver, crouched on the crest of my polished helmet. My mail was tight, polished with sand, my sword belt and scabbard and bridle and saddle were studded with silver, there was a gold chain at my neck, my boots were panelled with silver, my drawn sword was grey with the whorls of its making running from the hilt to its hungry tip. I was the lord of war mounted on a great black horse, and together we would make panic.

I charged through the fleeing people, cutting Tintreg in front of a woman running with a child in her arms. A man heard the hooves and turned to swing an axe. Too late. Serpent-Breath drank her first blood of the day and the woman screamed. Berg was threading the crowd, sword low, and my son had remounted his horse and was leading three other riders into the chaos. ‘Cut them off!’ I yelled at him, and steered Tintreg towards the leading fugitives. I wanted to keep them between my shield wall and the larger number of enemy who were hurrying into their own shield wall at the fortress’s further end. ‘Drive them back!’ I called to my son. ‘Back towards Finan!’ Then I galloped Tintreg in front of the crowd, my sword low and threatening. I was causing panic, but panic with a purpose. We were herding the women and children back towards our own shield wall. Dogs howled and children screamed, but back they went, desperate to escape the thumping hooves and the light-glinting swords as our horses crossed and re-crossed in front of them. ‘Now come forward!’ I shouted at Finan. ‘But come slowly!’