The Pale Horseman (29 page)

'We go,' he insisted. 'We go there, look at the town and ride away.'

So we rode north, our hooves crunching the newly fallen snow, riding through a world made
new and clean. Snow clung to every twig and branch while ice skimmed the ditches and ponds. I
saw a fox's trail crossing a field and thought that the spring would bring a plague of the
beasts for there would have been no one to hunt them, and the lambs would die bloodily and the
ewes would bleat pitifully.

We came in sight of Cippanhamm before midday, though the great pall of smoke, made by
hundreds of cooking fires, had shown in the sky all morning. We stopped south of the town,
just where the road emerged from a stand of oaks, and the Danes must have noticed us, but none
came from the gates to see who we were. It was too cold for men to stir themselves. I could see
guards on the walls, though none stayed there long, retreating to whatever warmth they could
find between their short forays along the wooden ramparts. Those ramparts were bright with
round shields painted blue and white and blood-red and, because Guthrum's men were there,
black.

'We should count the shields,' Alfred said.

'It won't help,' I said. 'They carry two or three shields each and hang them on the walls to
make it look as if they have more men.'

Alfred was shivering and I insisted we find some shelter. We turned back into the
trees, following a path which led to the river and a mile or so upstream we came across a
mill. The millstone had been taken away, but the building itself was whole and it was well
made, with stone walls and a turf roof held up by stout rafters. There was a hearth in a room
where the miller's family had lived, but I would not let Egwine light a fire in case the
trickle of smoke brought curious Danes from the town.

'Wait till dark,' I said.

'We'll freeze by then,' he grumbled.

'Then you shouldn't have come,' I snapped.

'We have to get closer to the town,' Alfred said.

'You don't,' I said, 'I do.'

I had seen horses paddocked to the west of the walls and I reckoned I could take our best
horse and ride about the town's western edge and count every horse I saw. That would give a
rough estimate of the Danish numbers, for almost every man would have a horse. Alfred
wanted to come, but I shook my head. It was pointless for more than one man to go, and
sensible that the one man who did go should speak Danish, so I told him I would see him back
in the mill before nightfall and then I rode north.

Cippanhamm was built on a hill that was almost encircled by the river, so I could not
ride clear around the town, but I went as close to the walls as I dared and stared across the
river and saw no horses on its farther bank which suggested that the Danes were keeping all
of their beasts on the western side of the town. I went there, keeping in the snowy woods, and
though the Danes must have seen me they could not be bothered to ride into the snow to chase
one man, and so I was able to find the paddocks where their horses shivered. I spent the day
counting. Most of the horses were in fields beside the royal compound and there were
hundreds of them. By late afternoon I had estimated that there were twelve hundred, and
those were only the ones I could see, and the best horses would be in the town, but my
reckoning was good enough.

It would give Alfred an idea of how large Guthrum's force was. Say two thousand men? And
elsewhere in Wessex, in the towns the Danes had occupied, there must be another thousand.
That was a strong force, but not quite strong enough to capture all the kingdom. That would
have to wait until spring when reinforcements would come from Denmark or from the three
conquered kingdoms of England.

I rode back to the watermill as dusk fell. There was a frost and the air was still. Three
rooks flew across the river as I dismounted. I reckoned one of Alfred's men could rub my
horse down; all I wanted was to find some warmth and it was plain Alfred had risked lighting a
fire, for smoke was pouring out of the hole in the turf roof.

They were all crouched about the small fire and I joined them, stretching my hands to the
flames.

'Two thousand men,' I said, 'more or less.'

No one answered.

'Didn't you hear me?' I asked, and looked around the faces.

There were five faces. Only five.

'Where's the king?' I asked.

'He went,' Adelbert said helplessly.

'He did what?'

'He went to the town,' the priest said. He was wearing Alfred's rich blue cloak and I
assumed Alfred had taken Adelbert's plain garment.

I stared at him. 'You let him go?'

'He insisted,' Egwine said.

'How could we stop him?' Adelbert pleaded. 'He's the king!'

'You hit the bastard, of course,' I snarled. 'You hold him down till the madness passes.
When did he go?'

'Just after you left,' the priest said miserably, 'and he took my harp,' he added.

'And when did he say he'd be back?'

'By nightfall.'

'It is nightfall,' I said. I stood and stamped out the fire. 'You want the Danes to come and
investigate the smoke?' I doubted the Danes would come, but I wanted the damned fools to
suffer.

'You,' I pointed to one of the four soldiers, 'rub my horse down. Feed it.'

I went back to the door. The first stars were bright and the snow glinted under a sickle
moon.

'Where are you going?' Adelbert had followed me.

'To find the king, of course.'

If he lived. And if he did not, then Iseult was dead.

I had to beat on Cippanhamm's western gate, provoking a disgruntled voice from the far
side demanding to know who I was.

'Why aren't you up on the ramparts?' I asked in return.

The bar was lifted and the gate opened a few inches. A face peered out, then vanished as I
pushed the gate hard inwards, banging it against the suspicious guard. 'My horse went lame,'
I said, 'and I've walked here.'

He recovered his balance and pushed the gate shut. Who are you?' he asked again.

'Messenger from Svein.'

'Sveinl' He lifted the bar and dropped it into place. 'Has he caught Alfred yet?'

'I'll tell Guthrum that news before I tell you.'

'Just asking,' he said.

'Where is Guthrum?' I asked. I had no intention of going anywhere near the Danish
chieftain for, after my insults to his dead mother, the best I could hope for was a swift
death, and the likelihood was a very slow one.

'He's in Alfred's hall,' the man said, and pointed south. 'That side of town, so you've
still farther to walk.'

It never occurred to him that any messenger from Svein would never ride alone through
Wessex, that such a man would come with an escort of fifty or sixty men, but he was too cold
to think, and besides, with my long hair and my thick arm rings I looked like a Dane. He
retreated into the house beside the gate where his comrades were clustered around a hearth
and I walked on into a town made strange. Houses were missing, burned in the first fury of the
Danish assault, and the large church by the market place on the hilltop was nothing but
blackened beams touched white by the snow. The streets were frozen mud, and only I moved there,
for the cold was keeping the Danes in the remaining houses. I could hear singing and
laughter. Light leaked past shutters or glowed through smoke-holes in low roofs.

I was cold and I was angry. There were men here who could recognise me, and men who might
recognise Alfred, and his stupidity had put us both in danger. Would he have been mad enough
to go back to his own hall? He must have guessed that was where Guthrum would be living and he
would surely not risk being recognised by the Danish leader, which suggested he would be
in the town rather than the royal compound.

I was walking towards Eanflaed's old tavern when I heard the roars. They were coming from
the east side of town and I followed the sound which led me to the nunnery by the river wall.
I had never been inside the convent, but the gate was open and the courtyard inside was lit
by two vast fires which offered some warmth to the men nearest the flames. And there were at
least a hundred men in the courtyard, bellowing encouragement and insults at two other
men who were fighting in the mud and melted snow between the fires. They were fighting with
swords and shields, and every clash of blade against blade or of blade against wood brought
raucous shouts. I glanced briefly at the fighters, then searched for faces in the crowd. I was
looking for Haesten, or anyone else who might recognise me, but I saw no one, though it was
hard to distinguish faces in the flickering shadows. There was no sign of any nuns and I
assumed they had either fled, were dead or had been taken away for the
conquerors' amusement.

I slunk along the courtyard wall. I was wearing my helmet and its face-plate was an
adequate disguise, but some men threw me curious glances, for it was unusual to see a
helmeted warrior off a battlefield. In the end, seeing no one I recognised, I took the
helmet off and hung it from my belt. The nunnery church had been turned into a feasting hall,
but there was only a handful of drunks inside, oblivious to the noise outside. I stole half
a loaf of bread from one of the drunks and took it back outside and watched the fighting.

Steapa Snotor was one of the two men. He no longer wore his mail armour, but was in a
leather coat and he fought with a small shield and a long sword, but around his waist was a chain
that led to the courtyard's northern side where two men held it and, whenever Steapa's
opponent seemed to be in danger, they yanked on the chain to pull the huge Saxon off
balance. He was being made to fight as Haesten had been fighting when I first discovered
him, and doubtless Steapa's captors were making good money from fools who wanted to try
their prowess against a captured warrior. Steapa's current opponent was a thin, grinning
Dane who tried to dance around the huge man and slide his sword beneath the small shield, doing
what I had done when I had fought Steapa, but Steapa was doggedly defending himself,
parrying each blow and, when the chain allowed him, counterattacking fast. Whenever the
Danes jerked him backwards the crowd jeered and once, when the men yanked the chain too hard and
Steapa turned on them, only to be faced by three long spears, the crowd gave him a great cheer.
He whipped back to parry the next attack, then stepped backwards, almost to the spear points,
and the thin man followed fast, thinking he had Steapa at a disadvantage, but Steapa
suddenly checked, slammed the shield down onto his opponent's blade and brought his left
hand around, sword hilt foremost, to hit the man on the head. The Dane went down, Steapa
reversed the sword to stab and the chain dragged him off his feet and the spears threatened him
with death if he finished the job. The crowd liked it. He had won.

Money changed hands. Steapa sat by the fire, his grim face showing nothing, and one of the
men holding the chain shouted for another opponent. 'Ten pieces of silver if you wound
him! Fifty if you kill him!'

Steapa, who probably did not understand a word, just stared at the crowd, daring
another man to take him on, and sure enough a half drunken brute came grinning from the
crowd. Bets were made as Steapa was prodded to his feet. It was like a bull-baiting, except
Steapa was being given only one opponent at a time. They would doubtless have set three or
four men on him, except that the Danes who had taken him prisoner did not want him dead so
long as there were still fools willing to pay to fight him.

I was sidling around the courtyard's edge, still looking at faces. 'Six pennies?' a voice
said behind me and I turned to see a man grinning beside a door. It was one of a dozen
similar doors, evenly spaced along the lime washed wall.

'Six pennies?' I asked, puzzled.

'Cheap,' he said, and he pushed back a small shutter on the door and invited me to look
inside.

I did. A tallow candle lit the tiny room which must have been where a nun had slept, and
inside was a low bed and on the bed was a naked woman who was half covered by a man who had
dropped his breeches. 'He won't be long,' the man said.

I shook my head and moved away from the shutter.

'She was a nun here,' the man said. 'Nice and young? Pretty too. Screams like a pig
usually.'

'No,' I said.

'Four pennies? She won't put up a fight. Not now she won't.'

I walked on, convinced I was wasting my time. Had Alfred been and gone? More likely, I
thought grimly, the fool had gone back to his hall and I wondered if I dared go there, but the
thought of Guthrum's revenge deterred me. The new fight had started. The Dane was crouching
low, trying to cut Steapa's feet from under him, but Steapa was swatting his blows easily
enough and I sidled past the men holding his chains and saw another room off to my left, a
large room, perhaps where the nuns had eaten, and a glint of gold in the light of its dying
fire drew me inside. The gold was not metal. It was the gilding on the frame of a small harp
that had been stamped on so hard that it broke. I looked around the shadows and saw a man lying
in a heap at the far end and went to him. It was Alfred. He was barely conscious, but he was
alive and, so far as I could see, unwounded, but he was plainly stunned and I dragged him to
the wall and sat him up. He had no cloak and his boots were gone.

I left him there, went back to the church and found a drunk to befriend. I helped him to his
feet, put my arm around his shoulders and persuaded him I was taking him to his bed, then
took him through the back door to the latrine yard of the nunnery where I punched him three
times in the belly and twice-in the face, then carried his hooded cloak and tall boots back
to Alfred.

The king was conscious now. His face was bruised. He looked up at me without showing any
surprise, then rubbed his chin.

'They didn't like the way I played,' he said.

'That's because the Danes like good music,' I said. 'Put these on.' I threw the boots
beside him, draped him with the cloak and made him pull the hood over his face. 'You want to
die?' I asked him angrily.