Death of Kings

Maybe I saw danger where there was none.

‘Have you been to Cytringan?’ I asked Ludda.

He looked surprised, perhaps because Cytringan was very far from the other places I had asked him about. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said.

‘What’s there?’

‘The Jarl Sigurd has a feasting-hall there, lord. He uses it when he hunts in the woods there.’

‘It has a palisade?’

‘No, lord. It’s a great hall, but it’s empty much of the time.’

‘I hear Sigurd is spending Yule there.’

‘That could be, lord.’

I nodded, then put the coins back in my pouch and saw the look of disappointment on Ludda’s face. ‘I’ll pay you,’ I promised him, ‘when we come back.’

‘We?’ he asked nervously.

‘You’re coming with me, Ludda,’ I said, ‘any warrior would be glad of a magician for company, and a magician should be mighty glad of warriors for an escort.’

‘Yes, lord,’ he said, trying to sound happy.

We left next morning. The monks were all on foot, which slowed us, but I was in no great hurry. I took almost all my men, leaving only a handful to guard the hall. There were over a hundred of us, but only fifty were warriors, the rest were churchmen and servants, while Sigunn was the only woman. My men wore their finest mail. Twenty of them led us and almost all the rest formed a rearguard, while the monks, priests and servants walked or rode in the centre. Six of my men were out on the flanks, riding ahead as scouts. I expected no trouble between Buccingahamm and Bedanford, and nor did we find any. I had not visited Bedanford before, and discovered a sad, half-deserted town that had shrunk to a frightened village. There had once been a great church north of the river, and King Offa, the tyrant of Mercia, was supposedly buried there, but the Danes had burned the church and dug up the king’s grave to seek whatever treasure might have been interred with his corpse. We spent a cold, uncomfortable night in a barn, though I spent part of the darkness with the sentries, who shivered in their fur cloaks. The dawn brought mist across a wet, drab, flat land through which the river twisted in great lazy bends.

We crossed the river in the morning mist. I sent Finan and twenty men across first and he scouted the road ahead and came back to say there was no enemy in sight. ‘Enemy?’ Willibald asked me. ‘Why would you expect enemies?’

‘We’re warriors,’ I told him, ‘and we always assume there are enemies.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s Eohric’s land. It’s friendly, lord.’

The ford was running deep with bitterly cold water and I let the monks cross by using a great raft, which was tethered to the southern bank and was evidently left there for just such a purpose. Once across the river we followed the remnants of a Roman road that ran through wide waterlogged meadows. The mist melted away to leave a sunlit, cold and bright day. I was tense. Sometimes, when a wolf pack is both troublesome and elusive, we lay a trap for the beasts. A few sheep are penned in an open place while wolfhounds are concealed downwind, and then we wait in hope that the wolves will come. If they do, then horsemen and hounds are released and the pack is hunted across the wild land till it is nothing but bloody pelts and ripped meat. But we were now the sheep. We were walking north with banners aloft, proclaiming our presence, and the wolves were watching us. I was sure of it.

I took Finan, Sigunn, Ludda, Sihtric and four other men and broke away from the road, leaving Osferth with orders to keep going until he reached Eanulfsbirig, but not to cross the river there.

While we scouted. There is an art to scouting land. Normally I would have two pairs of horsemen working either side of the road. One pair, watched by another, would go forward to investigate hills or woodlands, and only when they were certain that no enemy was in sight would they signal their comrades who, in turn, would investigate the next stretch of country, but I had no time for such caution. Instead we rode hard. I had given Ludda a mail coat, a helmet and a sword, while Sigunn, who rode a horse as well as any man, was in a great cloak of otter fur.

We passed Eanulfsbirig late in the morning. We went well to the west of the small settlement and I paused in dark winter trees to stare at the glint of river, the bridge and the tiny thatched houses that leaked a small smoke into the clear sky. ‘No one there,’ Finan said after a while. I trusted his eyes better than mine. ‘At least no one to worry about.’

‘Unless they’re in the houses,’ I suggested.

‘They wouldn’t take their horses inside,’ Finan said, ‘but you want me to find out?’ I shook my head. I doubted the Danes were there. Maybe they were nowhere. My suspicion was that they watched Eanulfsbirig, though perhaps from the river’s far bank. There were trees beyond the far river meadows and an army could have been hidden in their undergrowth. I assumed that Sigurd would want us to cross the river before he attacked, so that our backs were to the stream, but he would also want to secure the bridge to prevent our escape. Or perhaps, even now, Sigurd was in his hall drinking mead and I was just imagining the danger. ‘Keep going north,’ I said, and we pushed the horses across the furrows of a field planted with winter wheat.

‘What are you expecting, lord?’ Ludda asked me.

‘For you to keep your mouth shut if we meet any Danes,’ I said.

‘I think I’d want to do that,’ he said fervently.

‘And pray we haven’t passed the bastards,’ I said. I worried that Osferth might be walking into ambush, yet my instincts told me we still had not found the enemy. If there was an enemy. It seemed to me that the bridge at Eanulfsbirig was the ideal place for Sigurd to ambush us, but as far as I could see there were no men on this side of the Use, and he would surely want them on both banks.

We rode more cautiously now, staying among trees as we probed northwards. We were beyond the route that Sigurd would expect me to take and if he did have men waiting to cut off our retreat then I expected to find them, yet the winter countryside was cold and silent and empty. I was beginning to think that my fears were misplaced, that no danger threatened us, and then, quite suddenly, there was something strange.

We had gone perhaps three miles beyond Eanulfsbirig and were among waterlogged fields and small coppiced woods with the river a half-mile to our right. A smear of smoke rose from a copse on the river’s far bank and I gave it no thought, assuming it was a cottage hidden among the trees, but Finan saw something more. ‘Lord?’ he said, and I curbed the horse and saw where he pointed. The river here made a great swirling bend to the east and, at the bend’s farthest point, beneath the bare branches of willows, were the unmistakable shapes of two ship prows. Beast-heads. I had not seen them until Finan pointed to them, and the Irishman had the sharpest eyes of any man I ever met. ‘Two ships,’ he said.

The two ships had no masts, presumably because they had been rowed beneath the bridge at Huntandon. Were they East Anglian? I stared, and could see no men, but the hulls were hidden beneath the thick growth of the river bank. Yet the rearing prows told me two ships were in a place where I had expected none. Behind me Ludda was again saying how Danish raiders had once rowed all the way to Eanulfsbirig. ‘Be quiet,’ I told him.

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Maybe they’re wintering the ships there?’ Finan suggested.

I shook my head. ‘They’d drag them out of the water for the winter. And why are they showing their beast-heads?’ We only put the dragon or wolf heads on our ships when we are in enemy waters, which suggested these two ships were not East Anglian. I twisted in the saddle to look at Ludda. ‘Remember to keep your mouth closed.’

‘Yes, lord,’ he said, though his eyes were bright. Our magician was enjoying being a warrior.

‘And the rest of you,’ I said, ‘make sure your crosses are hidden.’ Most of my men were Christians and wore a cross just as I wore a hammer. I watched as they hid their talismans. I left my hammer showing.

We kicked the horses out of the wood and crossed the meadow. We had not gone halfway before one of the prow-mounted beasts moved. The two ships were moored against the farther bank, but one of them now came across the river and three men scrambled up from its bows. They were in mail. I held my hands high to show I was not holding a weapon, and let my tired horse walk slowly towards them. ‘Who are you?’ one of them challenged me. He shouted in Danish, but what puzzled me was the cross he wore over his mail. It was a wooden cross with a small silver figure of Christ pinned to the crossbar. Maybe it was plunder? I could not imagine any of Sigurd’s men being Christians, yet the ships were surely Danish. Beyond him I could now see more men, maybe forty altogether, waiting in the two ships.

I stopped to let the man look at me. He saw a lord in expensive war gear with silver trappings on his harness, arm rings glinting in the sun, and a hammer of Thor prominent about my neck. ‘Who are you, lord?’ he asked respectfully.

‘I am Haakon Haakonson,’ I invented the name, ‘and I serve the Jarl Haesten.’ That was my story, that I was one of Haesten’s men. I had to assume that none of Sigurd’s followers would be familiar with Haesten’s troops and so would not question me too closely, and if they did then Sigunn, who had once been part of Haesten’s company, would provide the answers. That was why I had brought her.

‘Ivann Ivarrson,’ the man named himself. He was reassured that I spoke Danish, but he was still wary. ‘Your business?’ he asked, though still in a respectful voice.

‘We seek Jarl Jorven,’ I said, choosing the name of the man whose homestead we had skirted with Beortsig.

‘Jorven?’

‘He serves Jarl Sigurd,’ I said.

‘And is with him?’ Ivann asked, and did not seem in the least surprised that I sought one of Sigurd’s men so far from Sigurd’s territory, and that was my first confirmation that Sigurd was indeed nearby. He had left his lands and he was on Eohric’s country where he had no business except to prevent the treaty from being signed.

‘That’s what I was told,’ I said airily.

‘Then he’s across the river,’ Ivann said, then hesitated. ‘Lord?’ His voice was full of caution now. ‘Might I ask you a question?’

‘You can ask,’ I said grandly.

‘You mean Jorven harm, lord?’

I laughed at that. ‘I do him a service,’ I said, then twisted in the saddle and pulled the cloak-hood from Sigunn’s head. ‘She ran away from him,’ I explained, ‘and Jarl Haesten thinks he would like her back.’

Ivann’s eyes widened. Sigunn was a beauty, pale and fragile looking, and she had the sense to look frightened as Ivann and his men examined her. ‘Any man would want her back,’ Ivann said.

‘Jorven will doubtless punish the bitch,’ I said carelessly, ‘but maybe he’ll let you use her first?’ I pulled the hood back, shadowing her face again. ‘You serve Jarl Sigurd?’ I asked Ivann.