Sword Song (17 page)

He grimaced then, all rotten teeth and angry eyes and bushy beard. “I want you alive,” he said. He swung the ax sideways and I managed to pull the shield inward just enough so that the blade crashed against the boss. “Alive,” he said again, “and you will die a death fit for a man who breaks his oath.”

“I made no oath to you,” I said.

“But you will die as though you had,” he said, “with your hands and feet nailed to a cross, and your screams won’t stop until I tire of them.” He grimaced again as he drew the ax back for a last shield-splintering stroke. “And I’ll flay your corpse, Uhtred the Betrayer,” he said, “and cover my shield with your tanned skin. I’ll piss in your dead throat and dance on your bones.” He swung the ax, and the sky fell.

A whole length of heavy masonry had been toppled from the rampart and slammed into Sigefrid’s ranks. There was dust and screaming and broken men. Six warriors were either on the ground or
clutching shattered bones. All were behind Sigefrid, and he turned, astonished, and just then Osferth, Alfred’s bastard son, jumped from the gate’s top.

He should have broken his ankles in that desperate leap, but somehow he survived. He landed amid the broken stones and shattered bodies that had been Sigefrid’s second rank and he screamed like a girl as he swung his sword at the huge Norseman’s head. The blade thumped into Sigefrid’s helmet. It did not break the metal, but it must have stunned Sigefrid for an instant. I had broken my shield wall by taking two paces forward and I rammed my broken shield at the dazed man and stabbed Wasp-Sting into his left thigh. This time she broke through the links of his mail and I twisted her, ripping muscle. Sigefrid staggered and it was then that Osferth, whose face was a picture of pure terror, stabbed his sword into the small of the Norseman’s back. I do not think Osferth was aware of what he was doing. He had pissed himself with fear, he was dazed, he was confused, the enemy was recovering their sense and coming to kill him, and Osferth just stabbed his sword with enough desperate force to pierce the bear-fur cloak, Sigefrid’s mail, and then Sigefrid himself.

The big man screamed with agony. Finan was beside me, dancing as he always danced in battle, and he fooled the man next to Sigefrid with a lunge that was a feint, flicked his sword sideways across the man’s face, then shouted at Osferth to come to us.

But Alfred’s son was frozen by terror. He would have lived no longer than one more heartbeat if I had not shaken off the remnants of my shattered shield and reached past the screaming Sigefrid to haul Osferth toward me. I shoved him back into the second rank and, with no shield to protect myself, waited for the next attack.

“My God, thank you, thank you, Lord God,” Osferth was saying. He sounded pathetic.

Sigefrid was on his knees, whimpering. Two men dragged him away, and I saw Erik staring appalled at his wounded brother. “Come and die!” I shouted at him, and Erik answered my anger with a sad look. He nodded to me, as if to acknowledge that custom forced me to
threaten him, but that the threat in no way diminished his regard for me. “Come on!” I goaded him, “come and meet Serpent-Breath!”

“In my own time, Lord Uhtred,” Erik called back, his courtesy a reproof to my snarl. He stooped beside his wounded brother, and Sigefrid’s plight had persuaded the enemy to hesitate before attacking us again. They hesitated long enough for me to turn and see that Steapa had beaten off the attack from the inside of the city.

“What’s happening on the bastion?” I asked Osferth.

He stared at me with pure terror on his face. “Thank you, Lord Jesus,” he stammered.

I rammed my left fist into his belly. “What’s happening up there!” I shouted at him.

He gaped at me, stammered again, then managed to speak coherently. “Nothing, lord. The pagans can’t get up the stairs.”

I turned back to face the enemy. Pyrlig was holding the bastion’s top, Steapa was holding the inner side of the gate, so I had to hold here. I touched my hammer amulet, brushed my left hand over Serpent-Breath’s hilt, and thanked the gods I was still alive. “Give me your shield,” I said to Osferth. I snatched it from him, put my bruised arm through the leather loops, and saw the enemy was forming a new line.

“Did you see Æthelred’s men?” I asked Osferth.

“Æthelred?” he responded as though he had never heard the name.

“My cousin!” I snarled. “Did you see him?”

“Oh yes, lord, he’s coming,” Osferth said, giving the news as though it were utterly unimportant, as if he were telling me that he had seen rain in the distance.

I risked turning to face him. “He is coming?”

“Yes, lord,” Osferth said.

And so Æthelred was, and so he did. Our fight more or less ended there, because Æthelred had not abandoned his plan to assault the city, and now brought his men across the Fleot to attack the rear of the enemy, and that enemy fled north toward the next gate. We pursued for a while. I drew Serpent-Breath because she was a better weapon for
an open fight, and I caught a Dane who was too fat to run hard. He turned, lunged at me with a spear, and I slid the lunge away with my borrowed shield and sent him to the corpse-hall with a lunge of my own. Æthelred’s men were howling as they fought up the slope, and I reckoned they might easily mistake my men for the enemy and so I called for my troops to return to Ludd’s Gate. The arch was empty now, though on either side were bloodied corpses and broken shields. The sun was higher, but the clouds still made it look a dirty yellow behind their veil.

Some of Sigefrid’s men died outside the walls and such was their panic that some were even hacked to death with sharpened hoes. Most managed to get through the next gate and into the old city, and there we hunted them down.

It was a wild and howling hunt. Sigefrid’s troops, those who had not sallied beyond the walls, were slow to learn of their defeat. They stayed on their ramparts until they saw death coming, and then they fled into streets and alleys already choked with men, women, and children fleeing the Saxon assault. They ran down the terraced hills of the city, going for the boats that were tied to the wharves downstream of the bridge. Some, the fools, tried to save their belongings, and that was fatal for they were burdened by their possessions, caught in the streets and cut down. A young girl screamed as she was dragged into a house by a Mercian spearman. Dead men lay in gutters, sniffed by dogs. Some houses showed a cross, denoting that Christians lived there, but the protection meant nothing if a girl in the house was pretty. A priest held a wooden crucifix aloft outside a low doorway, and shouted that there were Christian women sheltering in his small church, but the priest was cut down by an ax and the screaming began. A score of Northmen were caught in the palace where they guarded the treasury amassed by Sigefrid and Erik and they all died there, their blood trickling between the small tiles of the mosaic floor of the Roman hall.

It was the fyrd that did most destruction. The household troops had discipline and stayed together, and it was those trained troops who
chased the Northmen out of Lundene. I stayed on the street next to the river wall, the street that we had followed from our half-swamped ships, and we drove the fugitives as though they were sheep running from wolves. Father Pyrlig had attached his cross banner to a Danish spear and he waved it over our heads to show Æthelred’s men that we were friends. Screams and howling sounded from the higher streets. I stepped over a dead child, her golden curls thick with the blood of her father who had died beside her. His last act had been to seize his child’s arm and his dead hand was still curled about her elbow. I thought of my daughter, Stiorra. “Lord!” Sihtric shouted, “lord!” He was pointing with his sword.

He had seen that one large group of Northmen, presumably cut off as they retreated toward their ships, had taken refuge on the broken bridge. The bridge’s northern end was guarded by a Roman bastion through which an arch led, though the arch had long lost its gateway. Instead the passage to the bridge’s broken timber roadway was blocked by a shield wall. They were in the same position I had been in Ludd’s Gate with their flanks protected by high stonework. Their shields filled the arch, and I could see at least six ranks of men behind the front line of round overlapping shields.

Steapa made a low growling noise and hefted his ax. “No,” I said, laying a hand on his massive shield arm.

“Make a boar’s tusk,” he said vengefully, “kill the bastards. Kill them all.”

“No,” I said again. A boar’s tusk was a wedge of men that would drive into a shield wall like a human spear-point, but no boar’s tusk would pierce this Northmen’s wall. They were too tightly packed in the archway, and they were desperate, and desperate men will fight fanatically for the chance to live. They would die in the end, that was true, but many of my men would die with them.

“Stay here,” I told my men. I handed my borrowed shield to Sihtric, then gave him my helmet. I sheathed Serpent-Breath. Pyrlig copied me, taking off his helmet. “You don’t have to come,” I told him.

“And why shouldn’t I?” he asked, smiling. He handed his makeshift
standard to Rypere, laid his shield down, and, because I was glad of the Welshman’s company, the two of us walked to the bridge’s gate.

“I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” I announced to the hard-faced men staring over their shield rims, “and if you wish to feast in Odin’s corpse-hall this night then I am willing to send you there.”

Behind me the city screamed and smoke drifted dense across the sky. The nine men in the enemy’s front rank stared at me, but none spoke.

“But if you want to taste the joys of this world longer,” I went on, “then speak to me.”

“We serve our earl,” one of the men finally said.

“And he is?”

“Sigefrid Thurgilson,” the man said.

“Who fought well,” I said. I had been screaming insults at Sigefrid not two hours before, but now was the time for softer speech. A time to arrange for an enemy to yield and thus save my men’s lives. “Does the Earl Sigefrid live?” I asked.

“He lives,” the man said curtly, jerking his head to indicate that Sigefrid was somewhere behind him on the bridge.

“Then tell him Uhtred of Bebbanburg would speak with him, to decide whether he lives or dies.”

That was not my choice to make. The Fates had already made the decision, and I was but their instrument. The man who had spoken to me called the message to the men behind on the bridge and I waited. Pyrlig was praying, though whether he beseeched mercy for the folk who screamed behind us or death for the men in front of us, I never asked.

Then the tight-packed shield wall in the arch shuffled aside as men made a passage down the roadway’s center. “The Earl Erik will speak with you,” the man told me.

And Pyrlig and I went to meet the enemy.

M
y brother says I should kill you,” Erik greeted me. The younger of the Thurgilson brothers had been waiting for me on the bridge and, though his words held menace, there was none in his face. He was placid, calm and apparently unworried by his predicament. His black hair was crammed beneath a plain helmet and his fine mail was spattered with blood. There was a rent at the mail’s hem, and I guessed that marked where a spear had come beneath his shield, but he was evidently unwounded. Sigefrid, though, was horribly injured. I could see him on the roadway, lying on his bear-fur cloak, twisting and jerking in pain, and being tended by two men.

“Your brother,” I said, still watching Sigefrid, “thinks that death is the answer to everything.”

“Then he’s like you in that regard,” Erik said with a wan smile, “if you are what men say you are.”

“What do men say of me?” I asked, curious.

“That you kill like a Northman,” Erik said. He turned to stare downriver. A small fleet of Danish and Norse ships had managed to escape the wharves, but some now rowed back upstream in an attempt to save the fugitives who crowded the river’s edge, but the Saxons were already among that doomed crowd. A furious fight was raging on the wharves where men hacked at each other. Some, to escape the fury,
were leaping into the river. “I sometimes think,” Erik said sadly, “that death is the real meaning of life. We worship death, we give it, we believe it leads to joy.”

“I don’t worship death,” I said.

“Christians do,” Erik remarked, glancing at Pyrlig, whose mailed chest displayed his wooden cross.

“No,” Pyrlig said.

“Then why the image of a dead man?” Erik asked.

“Our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead,” Pyrlig said energetically, “he conquered death! He died to give us life and regained his own life in his dying. Death, lord, is just a gate to more life.”

“Then why do we fear death?” Erik asked in a voice that suggested he expected no answer. He turned to look at the downstream chaos. The two ships we had used to shoot the bridge’s gap had been commandeered by fleeing men, and one of those ships had foundered just yards from the wharf where it now lay on its side, half sunken. Men had been spilled into the water where many must have drowned, but others had managed to reach the muddy foreshore where they were being hacked to death by gleeful men with spears, swords, axes, and hoes. The survivors clung to the wreck, trying to shelter from a handful of Saxon bowmen whose long hunting arrows thudded into the ship’s timbers. There was so much death that morning. The streets of the broken city reeked of blood and were filled with the wailing of women beneath the smoke-smeared yellow sky. “We trusted you, Lord Uhtred,” Erik said bleakly, still staring downriver. “You were going to bring us Ragnar, you were to be king in Mercia, and you were to give us the whole island of Britain.”

“The dead man lied,” I said. “Bjorn lied.”

Erik turned back to me, his face grave. “I said we should not try and trick you,” he said, “but Earl Haesten insisted.” Erik shrugged, then looked at Father Pyrlig, noting his mail coat and the well-worn hilts of his swords. “But you also tricked us, Lord Uhtred,” Erik went on, “because I think you knew this man was no priest, but a warrior.”

“He is both,” I said.

Erik grimaced, perhaps remembering the skill with which Pyrlig had defeated his brother in the arena. “You lied,” he said sadly, “and we lied, but we still could have taken Wessex together. And now?” he turned and looked along the bridge’s roadway, “now I don’t know whether my brother will live or die.” He grimaced. Sigefrid was motionless now and for a moment I thought he might have gone to the corpse-hall already, but then he slowly turned his head to give me a baleful stare.

“I shall pray for him,” Pyrlig said.

“Yes,” Erik said simply, “please.”

“And what shall I do?” I asked.

“You?” Erik frowned, puzzled by my question.

“Do I let you live, Erik Thurgilson?” I asked. “Or kill you?”

“You will find us difficult to kill,” he said.

“But kill you I will,” I responded, “if I must.” That was the real negotiation in those two sentences. The truth was that Erik and his men were trapped and doomed, but to kill them we would need to hack our way through a fearsome shield wall, and then batter down desperate men whose only thought would be to take many of us with them to the next world. I would lose twenty or more men here, and others of my household troops would be crippled for life. That was a price I did not want to pay, and Erik knew it, but he also knew that the price would be paid if he was not reasonable. “Is Haesten here?” I asked him, looking down the broken bridge.

Erik shook his head. “I saw him leave,” he said, nodding downriver.

“A pity,” I said, “because he broke an oath to me. If he had been here I would have let you all go in exchange for his life.”

Erik stared at me for a few heartbeats, judging whether I had spoken the truth. “Then kill me instead of Haesten,” he said at last, “and let all these others leave.”

“You broke no oath to me,” I said, “so you owe me no life.”

“I want these men to live,” Erik said with a sudden passion, “and my life is a small price for theirs. I will pay it, Lord Uhtred, and in return you give my men their lives, and give them
Wave-Tamer
,” he
pointed to his brother’s ship that was still tied in the small dock where we had landed.

“Is it a fair price, father?” I asked Pyrlig.

“Who can set a value on life?” Pyrlig asked in return.

“I can,” I said harshly, and turned back to Erik. “The price is this,” I told him. “You will leave every weapon you carry on this bridge. You will leave your shields. You will leave your mail coats, and you will leave your helmets. You will leave your arm rings, your chains, your brooches, your coins, and your belt buckles. You will leave everything of value, Erik Thurgilson, and then you may take a ship that I choose to give you, and you may go.”

“A ship that you choose,” Erik said.

“Yes.”

He smiled wanly. “I made
Wave-Tamer
for my brother,” he said. “I first found her keel in the forest. It was an oak with a trunk straight as an oar shaft and I cut that myself. We used eleven other oaks, Lord Uhtred, for her ribs and her cross-pieces, for her stem and her planking. Her caulking was hair from seven bears I killed with my own spear, and I made her nails on my own forge. My mother made her sail, I wove her lines, and I gave her to Thor by killing a horse I loved and sprinkling his blood on her stem. She has carried my brother and me through storms and fog and ice. She is,” he turned to look at
Wave-Tamer
, “she is beautiful. I love that ship.”

“You love her more than your life?”

He thought for an instant, then shook his head. “No.”

“Then it will be a ship of my choice,” I said stubbornly, and that might have ended the negotiation except there was a commotion under the archway where the Northmen’s shield wall still faced my troops.

Æthelred had come to the bridge, and was demanding to be allowed through the gate. Erik offered me a quizzical look when the news was brought to us and I shrugged. “He commands here,” I said.

“So I will need his permission to leave?”

“You will,” I said.

Erik sent word that the shield wall was to let Æthelred onto the roadway and my cousin strutted onto the bridge with his customary cockiness. Aldhelm, the commander of his guard, was his only companion. Æthelred ignored Erik, instead facing me with a belligerent expression. “You presume to negotiate on my behalf?” he accused me.

“No,” I said.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Negotiating on my own behalf,” I said. “This is the Earl Erik Thurgilson,” I introduced the Norseman in English, but now changed to Danish. “And this,” I said to Erik, “is the Ealdorman of Mercia, the Lord Æthelred.”

Erik responded to the introduction by offering Æthelred a small bow, but the courtesy was wasted. Æthelred looked around the bridge, counting the men who had taken refuge there. “Not so many,” he said brusquely. “They must all die.”

“I have already offered them their lives,” I said.

Æthelred rounded on me. “We had orders,” he said bitingly, “to capture Sigefrid, Erik, and Haesten, and deliver them as captives to King Æthelstan.” I saw Erik’s eyes widen slightly. I had assumed he spoke no English, but now realized he must have learned enough of the language to understand Æthelred’s words. “Are you disobeying my father-in-law?” Æthelred challenged me when I made no response.

I kept my temper. “You can fight them here,” I explained patiently, “and you’ll lose many good men. Too many. You can trap them here, but at slack water a ship will row to the bridge and rescue them.” That would be a hard thing to do, but I had learned never to underestimate the seamanship of the Northmen. “Or you can rid Lundene of their presence,” I said, “and that is what I chose to do.” Aldhelm sniggered at that, implying that I had chosen the coward’s option. I looked at him and he challenged my gaze, refusing to look away.

“Kill them, lord,” Aldhelm said to Æthelred, though he continued staring at me.

“If you wish to fight them,” I said, “then that is your privilege, but I’ll have none of it.”

For a moment both Æthelred and Aldhelm were tempted to accuse me of cowardice. I could see the thought on their faces, but they could also see something in my face and they let the thought go unsaid. “You always loved pagans,” Æthelred sneered instead.

“I loved them so well,” I said angrily, “that I took two ships through that gap in the black of night,” I pointed to where the jagged stumps of the bridge’s planking ended. “I brought men into the city, cousin, and I captured Ludd’s Gate, and I fought a battle in that gate such as I would never wish to fight again, and in that fight I killed pagans for you. And yes, I love them.”

Æthelred looked at the gap. Spray showed continually there, thrown up by the seethe of water falling through the break with such force that the ancient wooden roadway quivered and the air was filled with the river’s noise. “You had no orders to come by ship,” Æthelred said indignantly, and I knew he resented my actions because they might detract from the glory he expected to garner from his capture of Lundene.

“I had orders to give you the city,” I retorted, “so here it is!” I gestured at the smoke drifting over the scream-filled hill. “Your wedding present,” I said, mocking him with a bow.

“And not just the city, lord,” Aldhelm said to Æthelred, “but everything in it.”

“Everything?” Æthelred asked, as if he could not believe his good fortune.

“Everything,” Aldhelm said wolfishly.

“And if you’re grateful for that,” I interjected sourly, “then thank your wife.”

Æthelred jerked around to stare wide-eyed at me. Something in my words had astonished him for he looked as though I had struck him. There was disbelief on his broad face, and anger, and for a moment he was incapable of speaking. “My wife?” he finally asked.

“If it had not been for Æthelflaed,” I explained, “we could not have taken the city. Last night she gave me men.”

“You saw her last night?” he asked incredulously.

I looked at him, wondering if he was mad. “Of course I saw her last night!” I said. “We went back to the island to board the ships! She was there! She shamed your men into coming with me.”

“And she made Lord Uhtred give her an oath,” Pyrlig added, “an oath to defend your Mercia, Lord Æthelred.”

Æthelred ignored the Welshman. He was still staring at me, but now with an expression of hatred. “You boarded my ship?” he could barely speak for loathing and anger, “and saw my wife?”

“She came ashore,” I said, “with Father Pyrlig.”

I meant nothing by saying that. I had merely reported what had happened and hoped that Æthelred would admire his wife for her initiative, but the moment I spoke I saw I had made a mistake. I thought for a heartbeat that Æthelred was going to hit me, so fierce was the sudden fury on his broad face, but then he controled himself and turned and walked away. Aldhelm hurried after him and managed to check my cousin’s haste long enough to speak with him. I saw Æthelred make a furious, careless gesture, then Aldhelm turned back to me. “You must do what you think best,” he called, then followed his master through the arch where the Northmen’s shield wall made a passage for them.

“I always do,” I said to no one in particular.

“Do what?” Father Pyrlig asked, staring at the arch where my cousin had so abruptly vanished.

“What I think is best,” I said, then frowned. “What happened there?” I asked Pyrlig.

“He doesn’t like other men speaking to his wife,” the Welshman said. “I noticed that when I was on the ship with them, coming down the Temes. He’s jealous.”

“But I’ve known Æthelflaed forever!” I exclaimed.

“He fears you know her only too well,” Pyrlig said, “and it drives him to madness.”

“But that’s stupid!” I spoke angrily.

“It’s jealousy,” Pyrlig said, “and all jealousy is stupid.”

Erik had also watched Æthelred walk away and was as confused as I was. “He is your commander?” the Norseman asked.

“He’s my cousin,” I said bitterly.

“And he’s your commander?” Erik asked again.

“The Lord Æthelred commands,” Pyrlig explained, “and the Lord Uhtred disobeys.”

Erik smiled at that. “So, Lord Uhtred, do we have an agreement?” He asked that question in English, hesitating slightly over the words.

“Your English is good,” I said, sounding surprised.

He smiled. “A Saxon slave taught me.”

“I hope she was beautiful,” I said, “and yes, we do have an agreement, but with one change.”

Erik bridled, but stayed courteous. “One change?” he asked cautiously.

“You may take
Wave-Tamer
,” I said.

I thought Erik would kiss me. For a heartbeat he did not believe my words, then he saw that I was sincere and he smiled broadly. “Lord Uhtred,” he began.

“Take her,” I interrupted him, not wanting his gratitude, “just take her and go!”

It had been Aldhelm’s words that had changed my mind. He had been right; everything in the city now belonged to Mercia, and Æthelred was Mercia’s ruler, and my cousin had a lust for anything beautiful and, if he discovered I wanted
Wave-Tamer
for myself, which I did, he would be sure to take it from me, and so I kept the ship from his grasp by giving it back to the Thurgilson brothers.