Warriors of the Storm (27 page)

I had noticed few trees close to the town, and those few were stunted and wind-bent, no good for filling the gaps in the ancient ramparts. ‘No timber?’ I asked. ‘So what’s your monastery built from?’

He stared at me for a moment. ‘Timber,’ he finally whispered.

‘There!’ I said cheerfully. ‘You have an answer for all our problems!’

I could not take the wives and children to Eoferwic. The women could march as well as the men, but children would slow us down. Besides, we carried no food, so everything we ate on our journey would have to be bought, stolen, or scrounged, so the fewer mouths we had to feed the better. We were liable to end up in Eoferwic hungry, but I was certain that once there we would find storehouses filled with grain, smoked meat, and fish.

Yet before we could march we needed to protect the families we would leave behind. Men will fight willingly enough, but need to know their women and children are safe, and so we spent a day filling the gaps in Cair Ligualid’s wall with heavy timbers pulled down from the monastery. There were only seven monks and two small boys who lived in buildings that could have sheltered seventy, and the rafters and pillars made stout palisades. To man the wall we left thirty-six warriors, mostly the older men or the wounded. They had no hope of resisting a full-scale assault by a horde of shrieking warriors from Strath Clota, but such an attack was unlikely. The Scottish war-bands were rarely more than forty or fifty strong, all of them vicious fighters mounted on small horses, but they did not cross the river to die on Roman walls. They came to snatch slaves from the fields and cattle from the hill pastures, and the few men we left, along with the townspeople, should be more than enough to deter an attack on the town. Just to make sure, we lifted a slab in the church to find an ancient crypt stacked with bones from which we took sixty-three skulls that we placed around the town’s ramparts with their empty eyes staring outwards. Abbot Hengist objected. ‘They are monks, lord,’ he said nervously.

‘You want an enemy raping your two novices?’ I asked.

‘God help us, no!’

‘It’s a ghost fence,’ I said. ‘The dead will protect the living.’

Stiorra, swathed in black, chanted strange incantations to each of the sixty-three guardians, then daubed their foreheads with a symbol that meant nothing to me. It was just a swirl of dampened soot, but Hengist saw the swirl and heard the chant and feared a pagan magic that was too powerful for his feeble faith. I almost felt sorry for him because he was trying to keep his religion alive in a place of paganism. The nearest farmlands were owned by Norsemen who worshipped Thor and Odin, who sacrificed beasts to the old gods and had no love for Hengist’s nailed redeemer. ‘I’m surprised they didn’t kill you,’ I told him.

‘The pagans?’ he shrugged. ‘Some wanted to, but the strongest jarl here is Geir,’ he jerked his head towards the south, indicating where Geir’s land lay, ‘and his wife was sick unto death, lord, and he brought her to us and instructed us to use our God to save her. Which, in His great mercy, He did.’ He made the sign of the cross.

‘What did you do?’ I asked. ‘Pray?’

‘Of course, lord, but we also pricked her buttocks with one of Saint Bega’s arrows.’

‘You pricked her arse?’ I asked, astonished.

He nodded. ‘Saint Bega defended her convent’s land with a bow, lord, but didn’t aim to kill. Just to frighten away the wrongdoers. She always said God aimed her arrows, and we’re lucky to own just one of them.’

‘God shot the bastards in the arse?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘And now you live under Geir’s protection?’ I asked.

‘We do, lord, thanks to the blessed Saint Bega and her holy arrows.’

‘So where is Geir?’

‘He joined Ragnall, lord.’

‘And what news do you have of Ragnall or Geir?’

‘None, lord.’

Nor did I expect any news. Cumbraland was too remote, but it was significant that Geir had thought it worth his while to cross the hills and join Ragnall’s forces. ‘Why did he go to Jarl Ragnall?’ I asked the monk.

Abbot Hengist shivered and his hand twitched as if he was about to cross himself. ‘He was frightened, lord!’ He looked at me nervously. ‘Jarl Ragnall sent word that he’d slaughter every man here if they didn’t march to join him.’ He made the sign of the cross and momentarily closed his eyes. ‘They all went, lord! All the landowners who had weapons. They fear him. And I hear the Jarl Ragnall hates Christians!’

‘He does.’

‘God preserve us,’ he whispered.

So Ragnall was ruling purely by fear, and that would work so long as he was successful, and I had a moment’s pang of guilt as I thought what his forces would be doing in Mercia. They would be slaughtering and burning and destroying anything and anyone not protected by a burh, but Æthelflaed should have attacked northwards. She was defending Mercia when she should have been attacking Northumbria. A man does not rid his home of a plague of wasps by swatting them one by one, but by finding the nest and burning it. I was Ida the Flamebearer’s descendant and, just as he had brought fire across the sea, I would carry flames across the hills.

We set out next morning.

It was a hard journey across hard country. We had found three ponies and a mule close to Cair Ligualid, but no horses. Stiorra, with her daughter, rode one of the ponies, but the rest of us travelled on foot and carried our own mail, weapons, food, and shields. We drank from mountain streams, slaughtered sheep for supper, and roasted their ribs over paltry fires of bracken and furze. We were all either used to riding to war or else rowing, and our boots were not fit for the journey. By the second day the stony tracks threatened to rip the boots apart and I ordered men to walk barefoot and save the boots for battle. That slowed us as men limped and stumbled. There were no convenient Roman roads showing the way, just goat paths and sheep tracks and high hills and wind from the north bringing rain in vicious gusts. There was no shelter the first two nights and little food, but on the third day we descended into a fertile valley where a rich steading offered warmth. A woman and two elderly servants watched us arrive. There were over three hundred and fifty of us, all carrying weapons, and the woman left the gate of her palisade wide open to show that she could offer no resistance. She was grey-haired, straight-backed, and blue-eyed, the mistress of a hall, two barns, and a rotting cattle shed. ‘My husband,’ she greeted us icily, ‘is not here.’

‘He went to Ragnall?’ I asked.

‘To Jarl Ragnall, yes,’ she sounded disapproving.

‘With how many men?’

‘Sixteen,’ she said, ‘and who are you?’

‘Men summoned by Jarl Ragnall,’ I said evasively.

‘I hear he needs more men,’ she said scornfully.

‘Mistress,’ I asked, intrigued by her tone, ‘what have you heard?’

‘Njall will tell you,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’re about to rob me?’

‘I’ll pay for whatever we take.’

‘Which will still leave us hungry. I can’t feed my people on your hacksilver.’

Njall proved to be one of the sixteen warriors who had gone south to join Ragnall’s army. He had lost his right hand at Eads Byrig and had returned to this lonely valley where he farmed a few thin fields. He came to the hall that night, a morose man with a red beard and a bandaged stump and a thin, resentful wife. Most of my men were eating in the largest barn, dining on three slaughtered pigs and two goats, but Lifa, who was the mistress of the steading during her husband’s absence, insisted that some of us join her in the hall where she served us a meal of beef, barley, bread, and ale. ‘We have a harpist,’ she told me, ‘but he went south with my husband.’

‘And won’t return,’ Njall said.

‘He was killed,’ Lifa explained. ‘What kind of enemy kills harpists?’

‘I was there,’ Njall said gloomily, ‘I saw him take a spear in the back.’

‘So tell your story, Njall,’ our hostess commanded imperiously, ‘tell these men what enemy they will face.’

‘Uhtred,’ Njall snarled.

‘I’ve heard of him,’ I said.

Njall looked at me resentfully. ‘But you haven’t fought him,’ he said.

‘True.’ I poured him ale. ‘So what happened?’

‘He has a witch to help him,’ Njall said, touching the hammer at his neck, ‘a sorceress.’

‘I’d not heard that.’

‘The witch of Mercia. She’s called Æthelflaed.’

‘Æthelflaed is a witch?’ Finan put in.

‘How else can she rule Mercia?’ Njall asked resentfully. ‘You think a woman can rule unless she uses witchcraft?’

‘So what happened?’ Sigtryggr asked.

We coaxed the tale from him. He claimed that Ragnall had us all trapped in Ceaster, though he could not remember the name of that town, only that it was a place that had stone walls, which he assumed had been built by spirits working for Æthelflaed. ‘Even so, they were trapped in the city,’ he said, ‘and the Jarl said he would keep them there while he captured the rest of Mercia. But the witch sent a storm and Uhtred rode the morning wind.’

‘Rode the wind?’

‘He came with the storm. A horde of them came, but he led. He has a sword of fire and a shield of ice. He came with the thunder.’

‘And Jarl Ragnall?’ I asked.

Njall shrugged. ‘He lives. He still has an army, but so does Uhtred.’ He knew little more because, captured at Eads Byrig, he had been one of the men we had released after severing his hand. He had walked home, he said, but then added one more scrap of news. ‘The Jarl could be dead for all I know. But he planned to raid Mercia till his own witch worked her magic.’

‘His own witch?’ I asked.

He touched the hammer again. ‘How do you fight a sorceress? With another sorceress, of course. The Jarl has found a powerful one! An old hag, and she’s making the dead.’

I just stared at him for a moment. ‘She’s making the dead?’

‘I journeyed north with her,’ he said, clutching the hammer now, ‘and she explained.’

‘Explained what?’ Sigtryggr asked.

‘The Christians worship the dead,’ Njall said. ‘All their churches have an idol of a dead man and they keep bits of dead people in silver boxes.’

‘I’ve seen those,’ I said.

‘Relics,’ Finan put in.

‘And they talk to the pieces of dead people,’ Njall said, ‘and the dead people talk to their god.’ He looked around the table, fearing that no one believed him. ‘It’s how they do it!’ he insisted. ‘It’s how they talk to their god!’

‘It makes sense,’ Sigtryggr said cautiously, looking at me.

I nodded. ‘It’s hard for the living to talk to the gods,’ I said.

‘But not for Christians,’ Njall said. ‘That’s why they win! That’s why their witch is so powerful! Their god listens to the dead.’

Finan, the only Christian at the table, smiled wryly. ‘Maybe the Christians win because they have Uhtred?’

‘And why do they have Uhtred?’ Njall asked forcefully. ‘Men say he worships our gods, yet he fights for the Christian god. The witch has charmed him!’

‘That’s true,’ Finan said rather too enthusiastically, and I almost kicked him beneath the table.

‘He must be a lonely god,’ Lifa, our hostess, said thoughtfully. ‘Our gods have company. They feast together, fight together, but their god? He has no one.’

‘So he listens to the dead,’ Sigtryggr said.

‘But only to the Christian dead,’ Njall insisted.

‘But what can Jarl Ragnall’s witch,’ I almost named Brida, but avoided it at the last moment, ‘do to change that?’

‘She’s sending a message to their god,’ Njall said.

‘A message?’

‘She says she’ll send him a host of dead people. They’ll tell him to take away the Mercian witch’s power or else she’ll kill every Christian in Britain.’

I almost laughed aloud. Only Brida, I thought, would be mad enough to threaten a god! And then I shuddered. She wanted to send a cloud of messengers? And where would she find those messengers? They had to be Christians or else their nailed god would not listen to them, and in many parts of Northumbria the monasteries and convents had been burned down and their monks and nuns either killed or driven to exile. But there was one place the church still flourished. One place where she could find enough Christians to send screaming into the afterlife with a defiant message to the nailed god.

She had gone to Eoferwic.

And there we went too.

I had told Sigtryggr that Eoferwic lay in flat land and that was true, though that flat land was raised slightly above the rest of the plain where the city lay. It also lay between the junction of two rivers, and that alone made it a difficult city to attack. The walls made it almost impossible because they were twice the height of the walls at Ceaster. There had been great gaps in the wall when my father had led an assault on the city, but those gaps had been baits for a trap, and he had died in the trap’s jaw. Those gaps were filled now, the new masonry looking much lighter than the old. Jarl Ragnall’s flag of the blood-red axe hung from the walls and stirred idly on a tall pole above the southernmost gate.

We were a ragged band, still mostly on foot though we had stolen or bought a dozen horses as we journeyed from Lifa’s steading in the hills. Most of us were barefoot, weary, and dusty. Some thirty men had fallen behind, but the rest still carried their mail, their weapons, and shields. Now, as we approached the city, we flew Sigtryggr’s banner, which was identical to his brother’s flag, and we mounted Orvar and his men on the stallions. Stiorra, dressed in a white gown, rode a small black mare with her daughter perched in front of her. She appeared to be guarded by Finan and by two of Orvar’s Norsemen, who rode either side of her. Sigtryggr and I walked among the mass of men who followed the horsemen towards the city’s gate.

The wall was high, and built atop a bank of earth. ‘This is where your grandfather died,’ I told my son, ‘and where I was captured by the Danes.’ I pointed to one of the paler stretches of new masonry. ‘Your grandfather led an attack right there. I thought we’d won! There was a gap in the wall there and he stormed the mound and went into the city.’

‘What happened?’

‘They’d built a new wall behind it. It was a trap, and once our army was inside they attacked and slew them all.’