War of the Wolf

‘To serve her, and I did.’

‘You did,’ he agreed. ‘You served her well, and she loved you.’ He turned away, staring at the bare low branches of bog myrtle that grew in a damp patch beside a ditch. ‘You remember how the Lady Æthelflaed liked bog myrtle? She believed the leaves kept fleas away.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘And you remember this ditch, lord?’

‘I remember it. You killed Eardwulf here.’

‘I did. I was just a boy. I had bad dreams for weeks afterwards. So much blood! To this day when I smell bog myrtle I think of blood in a ditch. Why did you make me kill him?’

‘Because a king must learn the cost of life and death.’

‘And you want me to be king after my father?’

‘No, lord Prince,’ I said, surprising him. ‘I want Ælfweard to be king because he’s a useless piece of weasel shit, and if he invades Northumbria I’ll gut him. But if you ask me who ought to be king? You, of course.’

‘And you once took an oath to protect me,’ he said quietly.

‘I did, to the Lady Æthelflaed, and I kept that oath.’

‘You did keep it,’ he agreed. He was staring into the ditch where some skims of ice still lingered. ‘I want your oath, Lord Uhtred,’ he said.

So that was why he had summoned me! No wonder he had been nervous. He turned his head to look at me, and I saw the determination in his face. He had grown up. He was no longer a boy or even a youth. He had become as stern and unbending as Alfred, his grandfather. ‘My oath?’ I asked, because I was not sure what else to say.

‘I want the same oath you gave to the Lady Æthelflaed,’ he said calmly.

‘I swore to serve her,’ I said.

‘I know.’

I owed Æthelstan. He had been beside me when we recaptured Bebbanburg, and he had fought well there even though he had had no need to be in that fight. So yes, I owed him, but did he know he was asking the impossible? We live by oaths and we can die by them. To give an oath is to harness a life to a promise, and to break an oath is to tempt the punishment of the gods. ‘I swore loyalty to King Sigtryggr,’ I said, ‘and I cannot break that oath. How can I serve both you and him?’

‘You can swear an oath,’ he said, ‘that you will never oppose me, never thwart me.’

‘And if you invade Northumbria?’

‘Then you will not fight me.’

‘And my oath to my son-in-law?’ I asked. ‘If,’ I paused, ‘when you invade Northumbria my oath to Sigtryggr means I must oppose you. You would want me to break that oath?’

‘It is a pagan oath,’ he said, ‘and therefore meaningless.’

‘Like the oath you took from Ingilmundr?’ I asked, and he had no reply to that. ‘My oath to Sigtryggr rules my life, lord Prince,’ I spoke his title with condescension. ‘I swore to the Lady Æthelflaed that I would protect you, and I will. And if you fight Sigtryggr I will keep that oath by doing my best to capture you in battle and not kill you.’ I shook my head. ‘No, lord Prince, I will not swear to serve you.’

‘I am sorry,’ he said.

‘And now, lord Prince,’ I went on, ‘I am riding to find Brother Osric. Unless, of course, you choose to stop me.’

He shook his head. ‘I will not stop you.’

I watched him walk away. I was angry that he had asked for my oath. He should have known me better, but then I told myself he was growing into his authority, that he was testing it.

And I was pursuing Arnborg. Ingilmundr had told me that his uncle, Sköll Grimmarson, had received the allegiance of Norsemen settled south of the Ribbel, and I assumed Arnborg was one of those men. And Arnborg had sheltered Brother Osric, Brother Beadwulf, who had lied to me. I wanted to know why, and I suspected that Brother Beadwulf, after leaving us at Mameceaster, would have gone back to Arnborg’s steading. So to find the monk I needed to go north.

I needed to go into the wild lands.

We did not leave at once. We could not. Our horses needed more rest, a half-dozen of the beasts were lame, and even more required reshoeing. So we waited three days, then left to go north, though the first part of our journey took us east towards the brine pits that soured the land around the River Wevere. Great fires burned where men boiled the brine in iron vats and where salt made heaps like snowdrifts. The Romans, of course, had made the saltworks, or at least had expanded them so they could supply all Britain with salt, and to make that easy they had embanked a road across the water meadows, raising it on a great causeway of gravel.

I had scouts ranging ahead, though there was small need of them on the wide flat plain across which the road ran like a spear. I expected no trouble, though only a fool travelled Britain’s roads without taking precautions. In places we passed through thick woodland and it was possible that stragglers from Cynlæf’s forces might be looking for unarmed travellers, but no hungry or desperate men would dare attack my men, who wore mail and helmets and were armed with swords.

But hungry, desperate men might have attacked our companions, who were eighteen women on their way to establish the convent that Æthelstan wanted in Mameceaster and a dozen merchants who had been stranded in Ceaster by the siege. The merchants, in turn, had servants who led packhorses laden with valuable goods; tanned hides, silverware from Gleawecestre and fine spearheads forged in Lundene. One packhorse carried the corpse of a man who had followed Cynlæf. The head was separately wrapped in canvas, and both head and body would be nailed to Mameceaster’s main gate as a warning to others tempted to rebel against King Edward’s rule. Æthelstan, his manner cold and distant after I had refused to give him my oath, had asked me to protect the merchants, packhorses, nuns, and corpse all the way to Mameceaster. ‘I’m not going that far,’ I told him.

‘You’re going to the Ribbel,’ he had pointed out, ‘going by Mameceaster is your easiest route.’

‘I don’t want the settlers on the Ribbel to know I’m coming,’ I said, ‘which means I can’t use the roads.’ Roman roads would lead us to Mameceaster and another road left that fortress and went north to Ribelcastre, a Roman fort on the Ribbel. Following such roads made travel easy; there was little chance of getting lost in endless tracts of wooded hills, and, at least in the larger settlements, there were barns to sleep in, smithies to shoe horses, and taverns accustomed to feeding travellers. But Arnborg, who I suspected might have occupied the old Roman fort at Ribelcastre, would have men watching the road. So I planned to approach him from the west, through land settled by Norsemen.

‘The nuns need protection,’ Æthelstan had protested.

‘So protect them,’ I had said, and so twenty-two of Æthelstan’s spearmen rode to guard the travellers on the last part of their journey.

Sunngifu was one of the women. ‘What I don’t understand,’ I said to her, ‘is why you need a convent in Mameceaster.’

‘Nuns are needed everywhere, Lord Uhtred,’ she said.

‘Mameceaster,’ I said, ‘is a frontier burh. All the land around it is pagan, nasty and dangerous.’

‘Like you?’

I looked down at her. I had offered her one of my spare horses, but she had refused, claiming that Jesus’s disciples had walked everywhere, so she and the sisters should do the same. ‘I’m nasty?’ I asked. She just smiled. She was so breathtakingly beautiful even in a dark grey habit with a cowl covering her startling fair hair. ‘You’d better hope I am nasty,’ I told her, ‘because that will keep you safe.’

‘Jesus keeps me safe, lord.’

‘Jesus will be no damned use to you if a Danish war-band comes out of that wood,’ I nodded towards a stretch of leafless trees to the east, and thought of Abbess Hild, my friend now in far off Wintanceaster, who had been raped repeatedly by Guthrum’s Danes. ‘It’s a cruel world, Mus,’ I said, using her old nickname, ‘and you have to hope the warriors defending you are just as cruel as your enemies.’

‘Are you cruel, lord?’

‘I’m good at war,’ I told her, ‘and war is cruel.’

She looked ahead to where Æthelstan’s horsemen rode. ‘Will they be enough to protect us?’

‘How many other travellers have you seen on this road?’ I asked. We were going north, entering low hills and leaving the wide flat plain with its lazy rivers behind us.

‘Not many,’ she said.

‘Just three today,’ I said, ‘and why? Because this is dangerous country. It’s mostly Danish with just a few Saxons. Until Edward made his burh at Mameceaster it was ruled by a Dane, and that was only two years ago. Now that country is being settled by Norsemen. I think it’s madness sending you to Mameceaster.’

‘Then why won’t you protect us all the way?’

‘Because twenty-two warriors are enough to keep you safe,’ I said confidently, ‘and because I have urgent business somewhere else and it will be quicker for me to cut across country.’ I was tempted to escort the nuns all the way to Mameceaster, but the temptation was solely because of Mus. I wondered about her. When she had been married to Bishop Leofstan she had whored enthusiastically, but Æthelstan had been certain she was a reformed sinner. Maybe she was, but I did not like to ask her. ‘What will you do in Mameceaster?’ I asked instead.

‘Maybe I’ll take my vows.’