The Last Kingdom Series Books 1 and 2: The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman

I learned Guthrum the Unlucky was an Earl from Denmark who had been wintering at Beamfleot, a place that lay a good distance east of Lundene on the northern side of the Temes estuary, and once he had greeted the men bunched about the altar he announced that he had brought fourteen ships upriver. No one applauded. Guthrum, who had the saddest, sourest face I had ever seen, stared at the assembly like a man standing trial and expecting a dire verdict. ‘We had decided,’ Ragnar broke the uncomfortable silence, ‘to go west.’ No such decision had been made, but nor did anyone contradict Ragnar. ‘Those ships that are already through the bridge,’ Ragnar went on, ‘will take their crews upstream and the rest of the army will march on foot or horseback.’

‘My ships must go upstream,’ Guthrum said.

‘They are through the bridge?’

‘They will still go upstream,’ Guthrum insisted, thus letting us know that his fleet was below the bridge.

‘It would be better,’ Ragnar said, ‘if we went tomorrow.’ In the last few days the whole of the Great Army had assembled in Lundene, marching in from the settlements east and north where some had been quartered, and the longer we waited, the more of the precious food supply would be consumed.

‘My ships go upstream,’ Guthrum said flatly.

‘He’s worried,’ Ravn whispered to me, ‘that he can’t carry away the plunder on horseback. He wants his ships so he can fill them with treasure.’

‘Why let him come?’ I asked. It was plain no one liked Earl Guthrum, and his arrival seemed as unwelcome as it was inconvenient, but Ravn just shrugged the question off. Guthrum, it seemed, was here, and if he was here he must take part. That still seems incomprehensible to me, just as I still did not understand why Ivar and Ubba were not joining the attack on Wessex. It was true that both men were rich and scarcely needed more riches, but for years they had talked of conquering the West Saxons and now both had simply turned away. Guthrum did not need land or wealth either, but he thought he did, so he came. That was the Danish way. Men served in a campaign if they wished, or else they stayed at home, and there was no single authority among the Danes. Halfdan was the Great Army’s ostensible leader, but he did not frighten men as his two older brothers did and so he could do nothing without the agreement of the other chieftains. An army, I learned in time, needs a head. It needs one man to lead it, but give an army two leaders and you halve its strength.

It took two days to get Guthrum’s ships past the bridge. They were beautiful things, those ships, larger than most Danish boats, and each decorated at prow and stern with black painted serpent heads. His men, and there were many of them, all wore black. Even their shields were painted black, and while I thought Guthrum to be one of the most miserable men I had ever seen, I had to confess his troops were impressive. We might have lost two days, but we had gained the black warriors.

And what was there to fear? The Great Army had gathered, it was midwinter when no one fought so the enemy should not be expecting us, and that enemy was led by a king and a prince more interested in prayer than in fighting. All Wessex lay before us and common report said that Wessex was as rich a country as any in all the world, rivalling Frankia for its treasures, and inhabited by monks and nuns whose houses were stuffed with gold, spilling over with silver and ripe for slaughter. We would all be rich.

So we went to war.

Ships on the winter Temes. Ships sliding past brittle reeds and leafless willows and bare alders. Wet oar blades shining in the pale sunlight. The prows of our ships bore their beasts to quell the spirits of the land we invaded, and it was good land with rich fields, though all were deserted. There was almost a celebratory air to that brief voyage, a celebration unspoiled by the presence of Guthrum’s dark ships. Men oar-walked, the same feat I had watched Ragnar perform on that far off day when his three ships had appeared off Bebbanburg. I tried it myself and raised a huge cheer when I fell in. It looked easy to run along the oar bank, leaping from shaft to shaft, but a rower only had to twitch an oar to cause a man to slip and the river water was bitterly cold so that Ragnar made me strip off my wet clothes and wear his bearskin cloak until I was warm. Men sang, the ships forged against the current, the far hills to north and south slowly closed on the river’s banks and, as evening came, we saw the first horsemen on the southern skyline. Watching us.

We reached Readingum at dusk. Each of Ragnar’s three ships was loaded with spades, many of them forged by Ealdwulf, and our first task was to start making a wall. As more ships came, more men helped, and by nightfall our camp was protected by a long, straggling earth wall which would have been hardly any obstacle to an attacking force for it was merely a low mound that was easy to cross, but no one did come and assault us, and no Wessex army appeared next morning and so we were free to make the wall higher and more formidable.

Readingum was built where the River Kenet flows into the Temes, and so our wall was built between the two rivers. It enclosed the small town which had been abandoned by its inhabitants and provided shelter for most of the ships’ crews. The land army was still out of sight for they had marched along the north bank of the Temes, in Mercian territory, and were seeking a ford which they found further upstream so that our wall was virtually finished by the time they marched in. At first we thought it was the West Saxon army coming, but it was Halfdan’s men, marching out of enemy territory which they had found deserted.

The wall was high now, and because there were deep woods to the south, we had cut trees to make a palisade along its whole length that was about eight hundred paces. In front of the wall we dug a ditch that flooded when we broke through the two rivers’ banks, and across the ditch we were making four bridges guarded by wooden forts. This was our base. From here we could march deep into Wessex, and we needed to, for, with so many men and now horses inside the wall, there was a risk of hunger unless we found supplies of grain, hay and cattle. We had brought barrels of ale and a large amount of flour, salt meat and dried fish in the ships, but it was astonishing how fast those great heaps diminished.

The poets, when they speak of war, talk of the shield wall, they talk of the spears and arrows flying, of the blade beating on the shield, of the heroes who fall and the spoils of the victors, but I was to discover that war was really about food. About feeding men and horses. About finding food. The army that eats wins. And, if you keep horses in a fortress, it is about shovelling dung. Just two days after the land army came to Readingum, we were short of food and the two Sidrocs, father and son, led a large force west into enemy territory to find stores of food for men and horses, and instead they found the fyrd of Berrocscire.

We learned later that the whole idea of attacking in winter was no surprise to the West Saxons after all. The Danes were good at spying, their merchants exploring the places the warriors would go, but the West Saxons had their own men in Lundene and they knew how many men we were, and when we would march, and they had assembled an army to meet us. They had also sought help from the men of southern Mercia, where Danish rule was lightest, and Berrocscire lay immediately north of the West Saxon border and the men of Berrocscire had crossed the river to help their neighbours and their fyrd was led by an Ealdorman called Æthelwulf.

Was it my uncle? There were many men called Æthelwulf, but how many were Ealdormen in Mercia? I admit I felt strange when I heard the name, and I thought of the mother I had never met. In my mind she was the woman who was ever kind, ever gentle, ever loving and I thought she must be watching me from somewhere, heaven or Asgard or wherever our souls go in the long darkness, and I knew she would hate that I was with the army that marched against her brother, and so that night I was in a black mood.