The Reluctant Berserker

Dedication

To Regia Anglorum, from whom I learned so much about being a Saxon. I owe almost all the worldbuilding in this novel to you.

Chapter One

Wulfstan’s doom came upon him in a music too angelic for this world. It happened like this:

“A little to steerboard,” Wulfstan called out as he piloted his lord’s ship,
Ganet
, through the shifting sandbanks outside the salt market of Uisebec. To his right slipped past the long, low coastline of the land of the East Angles. Before, behind, and to his left, the world was as white as the meat of an egg. A sky of high pale clouds met a sea coloured like milk.

That was when the breeze fell off. The steerboard creaked against the side, and the oars groaned together as they were pulled back. The wind withdrew and, in the great silence that followed, Wulfstan heard music, ghostly with distance, achingly sweet.

Was this Man’s music, enchanted by distance, or was it truly the voices of Heaven’s messengers meant to speak some word that only he might hear?

He stood breathless, listening hard for what felt like an age, and his heart thudded under his breastbone like horse’s hooves on a stone floor. No clearer understanding came, and finally he rebuked himself—
God deals out men’s fates as He wills. It is not for them to know their wyrd until it has come to pass.
Furtively, hiding the movement behind his cloak in case Cenred should see it and mock, he crossed himself for protection.

The gesture worked—the wind swung back, bringing with it the scent of the shore, seaweed and smoke, the blown murmur of a horde of chatting voices and the clap of wet rope on masts. They rounded the sandbank and saw ahead the harbour of Uisebec, crowded with ships, seething with folk and merry with market-day colour.

A flick of fluttering blue cloth snapped against Wulfstan’s thigh as Cenred came up beside him. “The lord says I am to bring us in. You are to stand with the horses and calm them.”

Cenred had a round face, smooth and guileless as a child’s, which he held before him like a shield, protecting and defending his thoughts rather than revealing them.

Son of a coward, but none himself, Cenred had need of armour against his fellows’ scorn. Wulfstan felt…not sorry for him, for that would be an insult, but a wary, tentative kinship. He too knew what it was to be, by gift of some mischief in God, that little bit too misshapen to fit his place.

Cenred was also good looking, and Wulfstan was aware enough of his own weaknesses to know he would not have smiled so readily but for the hint of wickedness in those half-veiled eyes. He allowed himself to reach out and curl his hand around Cenred’s arm in a friendly cuff of acknowledgment. Cenred’s smile broadened in return, and his eyes narrowed until they were scarcely more than slits of glimmering lapis against the white sky. As Wulfstan ran down the keelboard, to the pregnant hollow of the ship where the horses were lying, folded down and tied, it was with a red racing of blood and a tingle over his skin as though he had slicked it all over with nettle oil.

The oarsmen put their backs into the stroke. Wulfstan threw himself to his knees in the centre of the hobbled animals and leaned over the lead stallion’s neck to calm it as
Ganet
ran rattling onto the brown beach of loam and pebble at the very edge of high tide. Impact jarred through the ship, throwing forward many unsecured things: a seax—the single-edged knife from which the Saxons took their name—the tack of Ecgbert’s horse, and the youngest of the lady’s maids Ecgbert’s wife had brought with her.

A bright young creature with a plump, dimpled smile and the edge of a raven curl peeking out of her veil, the maid clutched at a rower to steady herself. Laughter burst forth all around when the rower seized her by the waist and murmured something ribald. Though she slapped him in the face for it, the smack was playful as a kitten’s swipe, and they both looked delighted when he let her go.

Wulfstan indulged himself long enough to sigh as he watched them—dealing with the horses requiring nothing more now the movement of the ship had ceased.

“Envying him?” Ecgbert’s voice startled him, made him scramble up and brush horsehair from his tunic, trying to look brave and keen and steady.

Envying her
, Wulfstan thought. He straightened his shoulders and raised his eyes to around the level of Ecgbert’s moustache. “My lord?”

“You are of an age to marry.” Ecgbert’s smile was a tucked-in little thing, scarcely to be seen behind his plaited white beard. “It is good that you are finally giving it some thought.” He stroked the up-flip of his moustache, aligning all the hairs more neatly. “In truth I’m glad to see you have the appetite. You have been so chaste since boyhood I thought I was raising a monk.”

Wulfstan let go of his scabbard to fiddle with his belt buckle while he thought of a way to answer his lord that did not involve lying. “Not chaste, my lord, just private.”

He looked up to gauge the older man’s reaction to this. Ecgbert had been young with Wulfstan’s father, that epitome of everything a man should be. He had fostered all Wulfstan’s brothers before him and had raised Wulfstan himself for the past ten years. Wulfstan would sooner tear off his right arm than let his lord down.

“Well.” Ecgbert’s small smile broadened into humour. “The wise man gives his enemies no cause to tattle. But I’ve never known a youth who could school himself quite so well as you. Discretion is a virtue I’ve yet to master myself.”

As they spoke, servants sidled up to untie the horses’ bonds. There came the snap of a whip and the tug of a long leading rein from the shore, and with a violent surge and clatter, the first of the horses half scrabbled, half jumped over the side onto the soft wet sand.

“I thought you liked my Ecgfreda.” Ecgbert’s observation came sidelong, his lord turning away to watch the unloading.

Wulfstan slumped, noticed that the green linen thread of Ecgbert’s red shoes had worn to snapping where he pulled them on. He sighed again. “I do, my lord.”

“So why are you not courting her? You have my favour.”

He kept his head bowed but dared to look up through the fringe of his flame-red hair. Favour in this matter tasted just like shame. “I do not have hers. I spoke of it with her, but she was wroth with me. She still is—we have not talked since.”

“Well, I will not force her. She should know her own mind. Yet you two were shoulder companions growing up. Always at some game together. I thought it a certain thing.”

Wulfstan hunched a little more. “I thought so too, but she—”

Ecgbert shook his head, his tone hardening. “Stand up straight, boy. For God’s sake, how many times must you be told? You are always trying to make yourself small. Stand up, take up space. You are a large man, let the world know it.”

Wulfstan straightened, raising an apologetic look to his lord. Ecgbert’s expression was an interesting blend of fatherly disapproval and fondness, and Wulfstan noted with satisfaction that—when he did stand tall—the old man had to look up at him.

“I would not have the world undervalue you,” Ecgbert said, watching out of the corner of his eye as the slaves made all tidy in
Ganet
’s belly, curling the ropes, passing the travelling chests and sacks out to their fellows on the bank. He turned his face aside to watch as the Port Reeve worked his way through the crowd towards them.

“Son of my friend,” Ecgbert finished—a little distracted, but warm—“take advantage of my wisdom, hard won, when it comes to women. If she is angry with you, you have done something terrible—”

“I—”

“Which, being a man, you are not subtle enough to understand. The first thing to do is to find out what it is, and that I will help you with. Isn’t that so, my dear?”

Judith, Ecgbert’s wife, had emerged from the tent amidships as it was folded down around her, and was adjusting her wimple against the wind. She smiled at Wulfstan, though he thought it was a cooler smile than her husband’s. Always more thought, more judgment behind her eyes than ever made it out in public speech. “What’s that?”

“We will help Wulfstan here find out what he did to make Ecgfreda angry, so that he can put it right.”

Her smile gained undertones of honest amusement. “Is he frightened of asking her himself? I was not aware my daughter was such a fiend, to be approached only by messenger.”

“Lady, she won’t speak to me, either to explain or to forgive. I cannot make reparation if I don’t know what I’ve done.”

Judith shrugged the folds of her mantle back into the crooks of her elbows and linked her hands over her stomach. “Yet I think you do know,” she said. “Or would, if you thought on it. It is not my secret to give away.”

She tugged at Ecgbert’s arm. “Come, my lord, here is Reeve Alfric. Let us declare ourselves and find lodging. If we don’t get to the market soon, all the bargains will be gone.”

With one last look to see that all in
Ganet
lay lashed and secure, safe to be left in the care of the reeve’s men, Wulfstan followed Ecgbert over the side, waited for Judith to leap down and for her husband to catch her, cushioning her fall. Then he joined the household to walk in procession up the thronging streets of the town to Alfric’s great hall, where they would pass the night.

As the beach fell behind him and the empty white world was closed in by houses and workshops, the music came again—a different strain this time, martial and noble. He could almost feel it tightening his sinews, bracing up his soul. It was closer now, close enough to distinguish the joined voices of mellow harp and sharp, clean pipe. Looking over his shoulder to see who was making it, he almost stumbled on the rutted mud of the street. Cenred caught him and hauled him upright, and laughed about it all the way into the burh.

When Ecgbert and Judith’s things had been settled in private chambers, and a space assigned for each of the warriors in the hall, Judith unlocked the smallest of the chests and took out two leather pouches of coin. She kept the larger for herself and gave the smaller to her husband. “Give me a couple of slaves to carry the bags, and I will leave you for the day.”

“We could accompany you,” Wulfstan offered, still at Ecgbert’s shoulder. He had come prepared to do the office of a son.

Judith grimaced. “I will be half the day haggling over the salt and the other half buying spices and Frankish wine. Neither thing being a fit occupation for warriors. Go, spend money rashly. Gamble on the horse races. Get drunk. Fight. Whatever it is that you boys do out of the sight of your womenfolk, of which you like to believe us fondly ignorant.”

This was his lady in her old age, saddened by time and the suffering of life. It came to him in a flash what a sharp creature she must have been in her youth. As he followed Ecgbert out onto the streets once more, he spared a moment’s regret for the prospect of a day browsing among the market stalls. He would have enjoyed sipping new wine and running his fingers over bolts of silk brought all the way from Byzantium.

He and Ecgbert returned past Alfric’s hall and picked up Cenred and the other warriors who were leaning there in the porch. Dressed for peace, they wore neither mail nor helm, and their shields were left inside, lining the walls. No one would mistake them for lesser men even so. Tall and well fed and well muscled, they wore the best of cloth, the highest of colours. Their belts were gilded, their swords ornamented with jewels.

They walked together back down to the shore, the other youths coming behind Wulfstan, jostling and jabbing him at intervals as they would have poked at a bear to prove their courage. He took the mobbing peaceably, accustomed to it.

“Wait,” Ecgbert said, stopping in his tracks. A fat-bellied knarr lay on the beach beside
Ganet
, listing over a little on her side. Around her clustered merchants and farmers and a selection of youths from other lords’ households, vaguely recognised as allies across the battle lines. They were drawn up in a loose circle. On the sand in the centre of it, a seaman with a beaten face and a blue herringbone cloak held the leash of a young man of surpassing beauty.

If it had not been for the stubble of his hair, fallow like a new-mown wheat field, and the iron collar about his throat, Wulfstan would have sworn he was a warrior. He had the physique of a man trained to kill, shoulders heavy from bearing the mail and the linden shield, deep chested for wind enough to fight all day. The muscles had begun to pare away into slenderness for lack of use, and it gave him a half-made look, like a coltish boy. The shaved head made the nape of his neck stand out, vulnerable and exposed, and with no hair to hang forward into his face, he could not veil his fine features or his downcast eyes.