Warriors of the Storm (30 page)

‘He has my oath,’ Skopti said stubbornly.

He rode south. Most of his crew had to walk, and they would follow Skopti, who, I reckoned, should reach Ragnall within three or four days. It was possible Ragnall already knew what had happened in Eoferwic, already knew of his brother’s return and the death of Brida. A steady trickle of slaves had made their way northwards, always escorted by Ragnall’s warriors, and it was more than possible that fugitives from the city had met one such group, who would then have turned to carry word back to Ragnall. One way or another he either knew or would know soon, and what would he do about Sigtryggr’s return? He knew Æthelflaed’s army was seeking him, or at least I hoped it was, and now he had a new enemy coming from the north. ‘If he has any sense,’ Finan told me, ‘he’ll go east. Find ships and sail away.’

‘If he has any sense,’ I said, ‘he’d turn on Æthelflaed and destroy her, then come to defeat us. But he won’t.’

‘No?’

I shook my head. ‘He hates his brother too much. He’ll look for us first.’

And two days after Skopti left to warn Ragnall, we also rode south.

We were a small army. In the end only three hundred and eighty-four men rode, the rest we left in Eoferwic under Orvar’s command. I had wanted to take more, far more, but we had too few horses and some of those horses were needed to carry supplies. Sigtryggr was also concerned that Brida’s followers, too many of whom had escaped north immediately after their mistress’s death, could summon enough help to assault Eoferwic. I thought it more likely that those fugitives would barricade themselves behind Dunholm’s high walls, but I yielded to Sigtryggr’s wishes to leave a substantial garrison in Eoferwic. He was, after all, the king.

Three hundred and eighty-four men rode, but also nine women. Stiorra was one. Like Æthelflaed, she would not be denied, and I think she was also wary of being left behind with Orvar who, so recently, had been Ragnall’s man. I trusted Orvar, as did Sigtryggr who had insisted that his daughter, my granddaughter, stay in the city under Orvar’s protection. Stiorra was unhappy, but agreed. The remaining eight women had all been Ragnall’s hostages, the wives of men who were the Sea King’s jarls, and they were now my weapon.

We followed the Roman road south. Ragnall, if he had learned anything of the Roman network of roads that laced Britain, would guess we were riding from Eoferwic to Lindcolne, because that route offered us the quickest journey, but I doubted he would have had the time to move his army to block our path. The last I had seen of him, admittedly many days before, he had been moving further south into Mercia, and so I did not expect to see the smoke of his fires until we had passed Lindcolne and were well on the road to Ledecestre, a Mercian town that had been in Danish hands for all my lifetime. Ledecestre lay in that great swathe of northern Mercia that remained unconquered by the Saxons, land that Æthelflaed had sworn to retake. Once south of Ledecestre we would approach country that neither Dane nor Saxon ruled, a place of raids and ruin, the land that lay between two tribes and two religions.

We had scouts ahead. We might be in Northumbria still and flying Ragnall’s own banner of the red axe, but I still treated the country as enemy land. We lit no campfires at night, but instead sought a place well away from the road to sleep, eat, and rest the horses. We stayed to the west of Lindcolne, though Sigtryggr and I crossed the Roman bridge with a dozen men and climbed the steep hill into the town where we were met by a steward wearing a silver chain of office. He was elderly, grey-bearded, and had lost one arm. ‘Lost it fighting the West Saxons,’ he told us cheerfully, ‘but the bastard who took it lost both of his!’

The steward was a Dane called Asmund whose master was a jarl named Steen Stigson. ‘He joined Ragnall a month ago,’ Asmund told us, ‘and you’re on your way to join him too?’

‘We are,’ Sigtryggr answered.

‘But where is he?’ I asked.

‘Who knows?’ Asmund said, still cheerful. ‘Last we heard they were way down south. What I can tell you is that Jarl Steen sent us fifty head of cattle a week ago and the drovers said it took them four days’ journey.’

‘And the Mercians?’ I asked.

‘Haven’t seen any! Haven’t heard anything.’ We were talking by one of the gates that led through the Roman walls, and from their ramparts a man could look far across the countryside, but no plume of smoke smeared the sky. The land looked peaceful, lush, green. It was hard to imagine that armies sought each other in that tangle of woods, pasture, and arable.

‘Ragnall was sending slaves to Eoferwic,’ I said. We had been hoping to meet some of Ragnall’s men bringing those slaves out of Mercia and discover from them where Ragnall might be, but we had seen none.

‘Haven’t seen anyone pass for a week now! Maybe he’s collecting the poor bastards at Ledecestre? Bring it here!’ The last three words were called to a maidservant who had brought a tray heaped with pots of ale. Asmund took two of the pots and handed them up to us, then beckoned the girl to carry the rest to our men. ‘Best thing you can do, lords, is keep riding south!’ Asmund urged us a little too enthusiastically. ‘You’ll find someone!’

The enthusiasm intrigued me. ‘Did you see Skopti Alsvartson?’ I asked.

‘Skopti Alsvartson?’ There was a slight hesitation. ‘Don’t know him, lord.’

I put the ale into my left hand and used my right to touch Serpent-Breath’s hilt, and Asmund took a hurried step backwards. I pretended I was just shifting the sword for comfort, then finished the ale and gave the pot to the maid. ‘We’ll keep riding south,’ I said to Asmund’s relief.

Asmund had been telling us lies. He had done it well, convincingly, but Skopti Alsvartson must have come through Lindcolne. Skopti, like us, would have taken the swiftest route south, and that would explain why we had met none of Ragnall’s men coming the other way, because they had been warned by Skopti. It was possible, of course, that Skopti and his men had ridden straight past the city, but not likely. They would have wanted food and they had probably demanded fresh horses to replace the tired nags I had given them. I looked into Asmund’s eyes and thought I saw nervousness. I smiled. ‘Thank you for the ale.’

‘You’re welcome, lord.’

‘How many men do you have here?’ I asked.

‘Not enough, lord.’ He meant not enough to defend the walls. Lindcolne was a burh, but I suspected that most of the garrison had marched south with Jarl Steen, and one day, I thought, men would have to die on these Roman walls to make Englaland.

I took a last look southwards from the vantage point offered by Lindcolne’s hill. Ragnall was out there, I could feel it. And by now he knew Brida was dead and Eoferwic was taken and he would want revenge.

He was coming to kill us. And I gazed at that great spread of rich land where cloud shadows slid over copse and pasture, over the bright green of new crops, over orchards and fields, and knew that death was hidden there. Ragnall was coming north.

We rode on south.

‘Two days,’ I said when we had left Lindcolne behind.

‘Two days?’ Sigtryggr asked.

‘Ragnall will find us in two days,’ I said.

‘With seven hundred men.’

‘More, probably.’

We had seen no sign of Ragnall’s marauding army, nor of any Mercian forces. There had been no far smear of smoke to show where an army lit campfires. There was smoke, of course, there is always smoke in the sky. Villagers kept their cooking fires burning and there were charcoal burners in the woods, but there was no massive haze of smoke betraying an army’s existence. The campfires of the Mercian army, if it even existed, would be far to the west, and that afternoon we left the Roman road and turned west. I was no longer marching to bring Ragnall to battle, but rather looking for help. I needed Æthelflaed’s warriors.

Late that afternoon we came to a woodland clearing where an abandoned hovel decayed. It might have been a forester’s home once, but now it was little more than a great heap of thatch covering a hole scraped into the clearing’s thin soil. We spent an hour chopping branches and heaping them over the thatch, then rode on westwards leaving two scouts behind. We followed no road, just cattle tracks that led forever towards the setting sun. We stopped at dusk and, looking back into the night-encroaching east, I saw the fire blaze sudden among the trees. The scouts had lit the thatch, and the blaze was a beacon to our enemies. My hope was that Ragnall would see the smoke besmirching the dawn sky and would ride eastwards in search of us while we rode on westwards.

The smoke was still there next morning, grey against a blue sky. We left it far behind as we travelled away from the rising sun. Our scouts rode well to the south of our path, but saw no enemy. They saw no friends either, and I remembered the argument in Ceaster’s Great Hall when I had wanted to ride out against the enemy, and every man there, except for Bishop Leofstan, had argued to remain in Ceaster. Was that what Æthelflaed had done? My son, if he had survived, must have reached Æthelflaed by now even if she was still sheltering in Ceaster, and was she so angry with me that she would leave us to die in these low hills?

‘What are we doing, father?’ Stiorra asked me.

The truthful answer? We were running away. The truthful answer was that I was heading west towards distant Ceaster in hopes of finding Mercian forces. ‘I want to draw Ragnall north,’ I said instead, ‘to where he’s caught between us and the Mercian army.’ That was also true. That was why I had led these men south from Eoferwic, but ever since Lindcolne I had been assailed by the fear that we were alone, that no Mercians stalked Ragnall, and we would have to face him alone. I tried to sound cheerful. ‘We just have to avoid Ragnall till we know the Mercians are close enough to help!’

‘And the Mercians know that?’

That was the proper question, of course, a question to which I had no proper answer. ‘If your brother reached them,’ I said, ‘yes.’

‘And if he didn’t?’

‘And if he didn’t,’ I said, no longer cheerful, ‘then you and Sigtryggr go north as fast as you can. Go and rescue your daughter, then find somewhere safe. Go across the sea! Just go!’ My last few words were spoken in anger, but I was not angry with my daughter, but at myself.

‘My husband doesn’t run away,’ Stiorra said.

‘Then he’s a fool,’ I said.

But I was the bigger fool. I had hammered young Æthelstan with advice, telling him not to be headstrong, to use his brain before he used his sword, and now I had led a small army into disaster by not thinking. I had thought to join a Mercian army, thought we could trap Ragnall between two forces, but I was the one who would be trapped. I knew Ragnall was coming. I could not see him or smell him, but I knew it. Every hour the suspicion grew that we were not alone in this innocent-looking countryside. Instinct was shrieking at me, and I had learned to trust instinct. I was being stalked, and there was no help at hand. There was no smoke from an army’s campfires in the sky, but nor would there be. Ragnall would rather freeze to death than betray his presence. He knew where we were, and we did not know where his army marched. That morning we saw his scouts for the first time. We had glimpses of far distant horsemen, and Eadger, who was the best of my scouts, led half a dozen men in pursuit of two such riders, but he was headed off by a score of mounted men. All he could report to me was that the larger group had been to the south. ‘We couldn’t get past the bastards, lord,’ he told me. He had tried, wanting to catch a glimpse of Ragnall’s army, but the enemy had baulked him. ‘But they can’t be far off, lord,’ Eadger said, and he was right. I thought of turning north, of going back to Eoferwic and hoping to outpace Ragnall’s pursuit, but even if we reached Eoferwic we would merely be trapped inside that city. Æthelflaed’s forces would never march that far into Northumbria to help us, there would be no rescue, just an assault on Eoferwic’s walls and a merciless slaughter in its narrow streets.

What had I thought? I had assumed that Æthelflaed would have sent men to harass Ragnall, that somewhere close to his army was a Mercian force of at least four or five hundred men who would join us. I had thought to astonish Æthelflaed with the capture of Eoferwic, to give her a new King of Northumbria sworn to keep peace with her and to offer her Ragnall’s blood-red banner as a trophy. I had thought to give Mercia a new song of Uhtred, but instead I was giving Ragnall’s poets a new song.

So I did not tell Stiorra the truth, which was that I had led her into disaster, but at midday it was surely obvious to all my men. We were riding a crest above a wide river valley. The river curled in great loops, running quietly to the sea between meadows thick with grass where sheep grazed. This was what we fought for, for this rich land. We were still heading west, following the ridge line above the river, though I had no idea of where we were. We asked a shepherd, but all he could say was ‘home’, as if that explained everything. Then, moments later as we paused at the top of a small rise, I saw horsemen far ahead. There were three of them. ‘Not ours,’ Finan grunted.

So Ragnall’s scouts were ahead of us. They were to our west, to our south, and doubtless behind us too. I glanced at the river. We were south of it. I supposed we could cross it somewhere and head north, but our horses were poor beasts, and if Ragnall was as close as I now suspected then he would easily overtake us and fight us on ground of his own choosing. It was time to go to earth and so I sent Finan and a score of men to find a place we could defend. Like a hunted beast I would turn on our pursuers and choose a place where we could maul the enemy before he overwhelmed us. A place, I thought, where we would die unless the Mercians came. ‘Look for a hilltop,’ I told Finan, who hardly needed the advice.

He found something better. ‘You remember that place where Eardwulf had us trapped?’ he asked me on his return.

‘I remember.’

‘It’s like that, only better.’

Eardwulf had led a rebellion against Æthelflaed, and he had trapped us in the remains of an old Roman fort built where two rivers met. We had survived that trap, saved by Æthelflaed’s arrival, but I was abandoning any hopes of rescue now.