The Pagan Lord (35 page)

‘We’ve come a long way since that slave ship,’ Finan said wistfully.

I wondered what had made him remember those far-off days, then realised he was thinking that all his days would end soon, and a man facing death does well to look back on life. ‘You make it sound like the end,’ I chided him.

He smiled. ‘What is it you like to say? Wyrd bið ful
ā
ræd?’

‘Wyrd bið ful
ā
ræd,’ I repeated.

Fate is inexorable. And right at that moment, as we gazed forlornly towards the darkness where we hoped to see the light, the three Norns were weaving my life’s threads at the foot of the great tree. And one held a pair of shears. Finan still gazed south, hoping against hope that there was a glow in the sky that would announce the presence of another army, but that southern horizon was dark beneath the stars. ‘The West Saxons have always been cautious,’ Finan said ruefully, ‘unless you were leading them.’

‘And Cnut isn’t cautious.’

‘And he’s coming for us,’ Finan said. He looked back to the east. ‘They’ll be an hour behind us?’

‘Their scouts will be, yes,’ I said, ‘but it will take Cnut the best part of the night to get his army across the river.’

‘But once he’s across …’ Finan began and did not finish.

‘We can’t run for ever,’ I said, ‘but we’ll slow them down.’

‘We’ll still have two or three hundred men biting our arses by dawn,’ Finan said.

‘We will,’ I agreed, ‘and whatever happens, it happens tomorrow.’

‘So we have to find somewhere to fight.’

‘That, and slow them down tonight.’ I gave the south one last look, but decided the glow had been in my dreams.

‘If I remember right,’ Finan turned his horse towards the west, ‘there’s an old fort on this road.’

‘There is,’ I said, ‘but it’s too big for us.’ The fort was Roman, four earth walls enclosing a great square space where two roads met. I could remember no settlement at the crossroads, just the remnants of the mighty fortress. Why had they built it? Had their roads been haunted by thieves?

‘It’s too big for us to defend,’ Finan agreed, ‘but we can slow the bastards there.’

We followed the column west. I twisted constantly in my saddle, looking for pursuers, but seeing none. Cnut must have known we would try to escape and he would have sent men on light horses across the river with orders to find us. Their job was to track us so that Cnut could follow and crush us. He was in a hurry, and he would also be angry, not with me, but with himself. He had abandoned his hunting of Æthelred and by now he must know that had been a bad decision. His army had been rampaging in Mercia for days, but it had yet to defeat any Saxon army, and those armies were getting stronger, perhaps even marching, and time was running out for him. But I had distracted him. I had taken his family, burned his ships and destroyed his halls, and he had turned on me in rage, only to discover he had been tricked and that his wife and children lived. If he had any sense he would abandon me because I was not the enemy he needed to defeat. He needed to massacre Æthelred’s army and then go south to slaughter Edward’s West Saxons, but I suspected he would still pursue me. I was too close, too tempting, and killing me would give Cnut even more reputation, and he knew our small war-band was easy prey. Kill us, rescue his son, then turn south to fight the real war. It would take him one day to crush us, then he could deal with the larger enemy.

And my only hope of living was if that larger enemy was not being cautious, but marching to help me.

The great fort was black with mooncast shadow. It was an immense place, an earthwork built on low land where the two roads crossed. I supposed it had once held wooden buildings where the Roman soldiers were quartered, but now the grass-grown walls enclosed nothing but a wide pasture inhabited by a herd of cows. I spurred through the shallow ditch and over the low rampart to be met by two howling dogs that were instantly silenced by the cowherd. He dropped to his knees when he saw my helmet and mail. He bowed his head, put his hands on the necks of his growling hounds and shivered with fear. ‘What do you call this place?’ I asked him.

‘The old fort, master,’ he said, not raising his head.

‘There’s a village?’

‘Up yonder.’ He jerked his head northwards.

‘Its name?

‘We calls it Pencric, master.’

I remembered the name when he said it. ‘And there’s a river here?’ I asked, recalling the last time I had been on this road.

‘Over yonder,’ he said, jerking his bowed head westwards.

I tossed him a scrap of hacksilver. ‘Keep your hounds quiet,’ I said.

‘Not a sound, master.’ He gazed at the silver in the moonlit grass, then lifted his face to look at me. ‘God bless you, master,’ he said, then saw my hammer. ‘The gods protect you, master.’

‘Are you a Christian?’ I asked him.

He frowned. ‘I think so, master.’

‘Then your god hates me,’ I said, ‘and you will too if your dogs make any noise.’

‘Quiet as mouses they’ll be, master, like little mouses. No noises, I swear.’

I sent most of my men on westwards, but with orders to turn south when they reached the nearby river, which, if I remembered rightly, was neither deep nor wide. ‘Just follow the river south,’ I told them, ‘and we’ll find you.’

I wanted Cnut to think we were fleeing westwards, aiming for the dubious sanctuary of the Welsh hills, but in truth the hoofmarks would betray our southerly turn. Still, if it gave him even a short pause that would help because I needed all the time I could gain, and so my horsemen vanished west towards the river while I stayed with fifty of my men behind the grassy ramparts of the ancient fort. We were lightly armed, carrying spears or swords, though Wibrund, the Frisian, carried an axe on my orders. ‘Hard to fight on horseback with an axe, lord,’ he had grumbled.

‘You’ll need it,’ I said, ‘so keep it.’

We did not wait long. Perhaps less than an hour passed before horsemen appeared on the eastern road. They were hurrying. ‘Sixteen,’ Finan said.

‘Seventeen,’ my son corrected.

‘They should have sent more,’ I told them, and watched the distant road in case more men appeared from the far woods. There would be more men coming, and soon, but these sixteen or seventeen had raced ahead, eager to find us and to report back to Cnut. We let them get close, then spurred the horses over the earthen rampart. Finan led twenty men hard to the east to cut off their retreat while I led the rest straight at the approaching men.

We killed most of them. It was not hard. They were fools, they rode rashly, they were not expecting trouble, they were outnumbered and they died. A few escaped southwards, then turned east in panic. I called to Finan to let them go. ‘Now, Wibrund,’ I said, ‘cut off their heads. Do it quickly.’

The axe fell eleven times. We threw the headless corpses into the fort’s old ditch, but arranged the heads across the Roman road with their dead eyes staring eastwards. Those dead eyes would greet Cnut’s men and, I suspected, suggest that something dire and sorcerous had been done. They would smell magic and they would hesitate.

Just give me time, I prayed to Thor, just give me time.

And we rode on south.

We caught up with the rest of my men and rode through the dawn. Birds were singing everywhere, that joyful song of a new day, and I hated the sound because it greeted the day on which I thought I must die. Still we rode on south towards distant Wessex and hoped against hope that the West Saxons were riding towards us.

And then we just stopped.

We stopped because the horses were tired, we were tired. We had ridden through low hills and placid farmland and I had found nowhere I wanted to fight. What had I expected? A Roman fort small enough to be garrisoned by my two hundred and sixty-nine men? A fort on a convenient hill? An outcrop of steep rock where a man could die of old age while his enemies raged about the rock’s base? There were just fields of stubble, pastures where sheep grazed, woods of ash and oak, shallow streams and gentle slopes. The sun rose higher. The day was warm and our horses wanted water.

And we had come to the river and so we just stopped.

It was not much of a river, more of a stream trying to be a river, and succeeding only in looking like a deep ditch, but it would cause problems for anyone trying to cross it. The ditch’s banks were steep and muddy, though those banks became shallow and gentle where the road crossed the water. The ford was not deep. The river or stream spread there and at its centre the slow-moving water scarcely reached a man’s thighs. The western bank was lined with pollarded willows, and still farther west was a low ridge where a few poor houses stood and I sent Finan to explore that higher ground while I roamed up and down the river’s bank. I could find no fort, no steep hill, but there was this sluggish ditch that was just wide and deep enough to slow an attack.

And so we stopped there. We put the horses into a stone-walled paddock on the western bank and we waited.

We could have pressed on southwards, but Cnut would catch us sooner or later, and at least the river would slow him. Or so I told myself. In truth I had little hope, and even less when Finan came down from the low ridge. ‘Horsemen,’ he said bluntly, ‘to the west.’

‘To the west?’ I asked, thinking he must have been mistaken.

‘To the west,’ he insisted. Cnut’s men were north and east of us and I expected no enemies from the west. Or, rather, I hoped no enemies would come from the west.

‘How many?’

‘Scout parties. Not many.’

‘Cnut’s men?’

He shrugged. ‘Can’t say.’

‘The bastard can’t have crossed this ditch,’ I said, though of course Cnut could have done just that.

‘That’s no ditch,’ Finan said, ‘it’s the River Tame.’

I looked at the muddy water. ‘That’s the Tame?’

‘So the villagers told me.’

I laughed sourly. We had ridden all the way from Tameworþig to find ourselves back on the headwaters of the same river? There was something futile about that, something that seemed fitting to this day on which I supposed I would die. ‘So what do they call this place?’ I asked Finan.

‘Bastards don’t seem to know,’ he said, amused. ‘One man called it Teotanheale and his wife said it was Wodnesfeld.’

So it was either Teotta’s dell or Odin’s field, but whatever it was called it was still the end of our road, the place where I would wait for a vengeful enemy. And he was coming. The scouts were visible across the ford now, which meant horsemen were north, east and west of us. At least fifty men were on the Tame’s far bank, but still a long way from the river, and Finan had seen more horsemen to the west and I supposed Cnut had divided his army, sending some men down the west bank and some down the east.

‘We could ride south still,’ I said.

‘He’ll catch us,’ Finan said bleakly, ‘and we’ll be fighting in open country. At least here we can retreat to that ridge.’ He nodded to where the few hovels crowned the low hill.

‘Burn them,’ I said.

‘Burn them?’

‘Burn the houses. Tell the men it’s a signal to Edward.’

The belief that Edward was close enough to see the smoke would give my few men hope, and men with hope fight better, and then I looked at the paddock where the horses were gathered. I was wondering whether we should ride west, beat our way through the few scouts who lurked in that direction and hope to reach still higher ground. It was probably a futile hope, and then I thought how strange it was that the paddock had a stone wall. This was a country of hedges, yet someone had gone to the immense trouble of piling heavy stones into a low wall. ‘Uhtred!’ I bellowed at my son.

He ran to me. ‘Father?’

‘Take that wall apart. Get every man to help, and fetch me stones about the size of a man’s head.’

He gaped at me. ‘A man’s head?’

‘Just do it! Bring the stones here, and hurry! Rolla!’

The big Dane ambled over. ‘Lord?’

‘I’m going up to the ridge, and you’re putting stones into the river.’

‘I am?’

I told him what I wanted, watched him grin. ‘And make sure those bastards,’ I pointed to Cnut’s scouts who were waiting well to the east, ‘don’t see what you’re doing. If they come close just stop work. Sihtric!’

‘Lord?’

‘Banners, here.’ I pointed to where the road led west from the ford. I would plant our standards there to show Cnut where we wanted to fight. To show Cnut where I would die. ‘My lady!’ I called to Æthelflaed.

‘I’m not leaving,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Did I ask you to?’

‘You will.’

We walked to the low ridge where Finan and a dozen men were shouting at the villagers to empty their cottages. ‘Take everything you want!’ Finan told them. ‘Dogs, cats, children even. Your pots, your spits, everything. We’re burning the houses!’ Eldgrim was carrying an old woman from a house as her daughter screamed in protest.

‘Must we burn the houses?’ Æthelflaed asked.

‘If Edward’s marching,’ I said bleakly, ‘he has to know where we are.’

‘I suppose so, yes,’ she said simply. Then she turned to gaze eastwards. The scouts were still watching us from a safe distance, but there was no sign yet of Cnut’s horde. ‘What do we do with the boy?’

She meant Cnut’s son. I shrugged. ‘We threaten to kill him.’

‘But you won’t. And Cnut knows you won’t.’

‘I might.’

She laughed at that, a grim laugh. ‘You won’t kill him.’

‘If I live,’ I said, ‘he’ll be fatherless.’

She frowned in puzzlement, then saw what I meant. She laughed. ‘You think you can beat Cnut?’

‘We’ve stopped,’ I said, ‘we’ll fight. Perhaps your brother will come? We’re not dead yet.’

‘So you’ll raise him?’

‘Cnut’s son?’ I shook my head. ‘Sell him, probably. Once he’s a slave there’ll be no one to tell him who his father was. He won’t know that he’s a wolf, he’ll think he’s a puppy.’ If I lived, I thought, and, truly, I did not expect to survive that day. ‘And you,’ I touched Æthelflaed’s arm, ‘should ride away.’

‘I …’

‘You’re Mercia!’ I snapped at her. ‘Men love you, they follow you! If you die here then Mercia loses its heart.’