The Empty Throne

Kill them. This is what the poets sing about. At night, in the hall, when the hearth smoke thickens about the beams and the ale-horns are filled and the harpist plucks his strings, the songs of battle are sung. They are the songs of our family, of our people, and it is how we remember the past. We call a poet a scop and scop means someone who shapes things and a poet shapes our past so we remember the glories of our ancestors and how they brought us land and women and cattle and glory. There would be no Norse song of Haki, I thought, because this would be a Saxon song about a Saxon victory.

And we charged. Spear held tight, shield close, and Hearding, my horse, brave beast, was pounding the earth with hard hooves, and to my left and right the horses galloped, the spears held low, horse breath steaming, and the enemy turned, astonished, and the men at the rear of their shield wall did not know what to do. Some ran towards their horses and others tried to make a new shield wall to face us and I saw the gaps opening and knew they were dead men already. Beyond them, on the mound, the waiting Saxon warriors were fetching their own horses, but we would start the slaughter.

And we did.

I fixed my eyes on a tall, black-bearded man wearing fine mail and a helmet crested with eagle feathers. He was shouting, presumably to call men to lock their shields with his own shield that was painted with a spread eagle, but he saw my gaze, knew his fate and braced himself with his eagle-shield raised and his sword drawn back, and I knew he would strike at Hearding, hoping to blind my horse or shatter his teeth. Always fight the horse, not the rider. Wound or kill the horse and the rider becomes a victim, and the shield wall was breaking, scattering in panic, and I heard the shouts as men tried to rally the fugitives and I leaned into my spear, aiming her, then touched Hearding with my left knee and he swerved as the black-bearded man swung. His sword cut across Hearding’s chest, a savage enough cut that drew blood, but it was not a killing blow, not a crippling cut, and my spear went through his shield, splintering the willow boards and thrusting on to break his mail. I felt her blade shatter his breast-bone and I let the ash shaft go and drew Raven-Beak and turned Hearding back to drive Raven-Beak’s blade into another man’s spine. The blade, made by a sorcerer, broke through mail as if it was tree bark. Hearding crashed between two men, spilling them both to the ground and we turned again, and the whole field was a chaos of panicked men among whom the riders spurred to kill, and more riders came from the mound, our whole force killing and shouting, and above us the banners waved. ‘Merewalh!’ a high voice called sharply. ‘Stop the horses.’

A handful of Norsemen had reached their horses, but Merewalh, a hard warrior, led men to kill them. Haki still lived, surrounded now by thirty or forty of his men, who had formed a shield barrier about their lord, and those men could only watch as their comrades were cut down. But some of our men were down too. I could see three riderless horses and one dying horse, its hooves beating as it lay in a mess of blood. I turned towards it and cut down at a man who had just struggled to his feet. He was dazed and I dazed him more with a slash across his helmet and he went down again, and a man bellowed from my left, swinging an axe two-handed, and Hearding twisted, lithe as a cat, and the axe-blade glanced from my shield, we turned again and Raven-Beak sliced once and I saw the blood bright. I was shouting, exhilarated, screaming my name so that the dead would know who had sent them to their doom.

I spurred on, sword low, looking for the white horse called Gast and saw him fifty or sixty paces away. His rider, sword in hand, was spurring towards Haki’s shield-guarded remnant, but three other horses swerved into Gast’s path to check his rider. Then I had to forget Gast because a man swung a sword at me with an overhead slash. The man had lost his helmet, and half his face was smothered with blood. I could see more blood seeping at his waist, but he was grim-faced, hard-eyed, battle-forged, and he bellowed death at me as he swung, and I met the sword with Raven-Beak and she split his blade in two so that the upper half speared into my saddle’s pommel and stayed there. The lower half tore a gash in my right boot and I felt the blood welling as the man stumbled. I thrust Raven-Beak down to shatter his skull and rode on to see Gerbruht had dismounted and was thrashing an axe at a dead or nearly dead man. Gerbruht had already disembowelled his victim, now he seemed intent on separating flesh from bone and was screaming in rage as he slashed the heavy blade down to spatter gobbets of flesh, blood, shattered mail and splintered bone onto the grass.

‘What are you doing?’ I shouted at him.

‘He called me fat!’ Gerbruht, a Frisian who had joined our war-band during the winter, shouted back. ‘The bastard called me fat!’

‘You are fat,’ I pointed out and that was true. Gerbruht had a belly like a pig and legs like tree trunks and three chins under his beard, but he was also hugely strong. A fearful man to face in a fight and a good friend to have beside you in the shield wall.

‘He won’t call me fat again,’ Gerbruht snarled and drove the axe into the dead man’s skull, splitting the face and opening up the brain. ‘Skinny bastard.’

‘You eat too much,’ I said.

‘I’m always hungry, that’s why.’

I turned my horse to see that the fight was over. Haki and his shield companions still lived, but they were outnumbered and surrounded. Our Saxons were dismounting to kill the wounded and strip the corpses of mail, weapons, silver and gold. Like all the Northmen, these warriors liked arm rings to boast of their prowess in battle, and we piled the rings, along with brooches, scabbard decorations and neck chains onto a sword-ripped, blood-soaked cloak. I took one arm ring from the corpse of the black-bearded man. It was a chunk of gold, incised with the angular letters the Norsemen use, and I slipped it over my left wrist to join my other rings. Sihtric was grinning. He had a prisoner, a scared boy who was almost a man. ‘Our one survivor, lord,’ Sihtric said.

‘He’ll do,’ I said. ‘Cut off his sword hand and give him a horse. Then he can go.’

Haki watched us. I rode close to the remaining Norsemen and stopped to stare at him. He was a squat, scar-faced man with a brown beard. His helmet had come off in the fight and his straggly hair was dark with blood. His ears stood out like jug handles. He stared back, defiant. Thor’s hammer, shaped in gold, hung at his mail-clad chest. I counted twenty-seven men around him. They made a tight circle, shields outwards. ‘Become a Christian,’ I called to him in Danish, ‘and you might live.’

He understood me, though I doubted Danish was his language. He laughed at my suggestion, then spat. I was not even sure I had told him the truth, though many defeated enemies were spared if they agreed to conversion and baptism. The decision was not mine to make, it belonged to the rider mounted on the tall white horse called Gast. I turned towards the ring of horsemen who now surrounded Haki and his survivors, and the rider of the white horse looked past me. ‘Take Haki alive, kill the rest.’

It did not take long. Most of the bravest Norsemen were already dead and only a handful of experienced fighters were with Haki, the rest of them were youngsters, many of whom shouted that they surrendered, only to be cut down. I watched. Merewalh, a good man who had deserted Lord Æthelred’s service to follow Æthelflaed, led the attack, and it was Merewalh who dragged Haki out of the bloody heap, stripped him of his sword and shield, and forced him to his knees in front of the white horse.

Haki looked up. The sun was low in the west so that it was behind Gast’s rider and thus dazzling Haki, but he sensed the hatred and scorn that looked down on him. He shifted his head till his eyes were in the rider’s shadow, so now, perhaps, he could see the polished Frankish mail, scrubbed with sand till it shone like silver. He could see the white woollen cloak, edged with a weasel’s silky, white winter fur. He could see the tall boots, bound in white cord, and the long sword scabbard dressed with polished silver, and, if he dared raise his eyes higher, the hard blue eyes in the hard face framed by golden hair held by a helmet polished to the same high sheen as the mail. The helmet was ringed with a silver band and had a silver cross on the crown. ‘Take the mail from him,’ the white-clothed rider on the white horse said.

‘Yes, my lady,’ Merewalh said.

The lady was Æthelflaed, daughter of Alfred who had been King of Wessex. She was married to Æthelred, the Lord of Mercia, but everyone in Wessex and in Mercia knew she had been my father’s lover for years. It was Æthelflaed who had brought her men north to reinforce Ceaster’s garrison, and Æthelflaed who had devised the trap that now had Haki on his knees in front of her horse.

She looked at me. ‘You did well,’ she said, almost grudgingly.

‘Thank you, my lady,’ I said.

‘You’ll take him south,’ she said, gesturing at Haki. ‘He can die in Gleawecestre.’

I thought that a strange decision. Why not let him die here on the pale winter grass? ‘You will not go back south, my lady?’ I asked her.

It was plain she thought the question impertinent, but she answered anyway. ‘I have much to do here. You will take him.’ She held up a gloved hand to stop me as I turned away. ‘Make sure you arrive before Saint Cuthbert’s Day. You hear me?’

I bowed for answer, then we tied Haki’s hands behind his back, mounted him on a poor horse, and rode back to Ceaster where we arrived after dark. We had left the Norsemen’s bodies where they fell, food for ravens, but we carried our own dead with us, just five men. We took all the Norse horses and loaded them with captured weapons, with mail, with clothes and with shields. We rode back victorious, carrying Haki’s captured banner and following Lord Æthelred’s standard of the white horse, the banner of Saint Oswald, and Æthelflaed’s strange flag which showed a white goose holding a sword and a cross. The goose was the symbol of Saint Werburgh, a holy woman who had miraculously rid a cornfield of marauding geese, though it was beyond my wits to understand why a job any ten-year-old could have done with a loud voice was considered a miracle. Even a three-legged dog could have rid the field of geese, but that was not a comment I would have dared make to Æthelflaed, who held the goose-frightening saint in the highest regard.

The burh at Ceaster had been built by the Romans so the ramparts were of stone, unlike the burhs we Saxons built that had walls of earth and timber. We passed under the high fighting platform of the gateway, threading a tunnel lit by torches and so into the main street that ran arrow straight between high stone buildings. The sound of horses’ hooves echoed from the walls, then the bells of Saint Peter’s church rang out to celebrate Æthelflaed’s return.

Æthelflaed and most of her men went to the church to give thanks for the victory before gathering in the great hall that stood at the centre of Ceaster’s streets. Sihtric and I put Haki into a small stone hut, leaving his hands tied for the night. ‘I have gold,’ he said in Danish.

‘You’ll have straw for a bed and piss for ale,’ Sihtric told him, then we shut the door and left two men to guard him. ‘So we’re off to Gleawecestre?’ Sihtric said to me as we went to the hall.

‘So she says.’

‘You’ll be happy then.’

‘Me?’

He grinned toothlessly. ‘The redhead at the Wheatsheaf.’

‘One of many, Sihtric,’ I said airily, ‘one of many.’

‘And your girl in the farm near Cirrenceastre too,’ he added.

‘She is a widow,’ I said with as much dignity as I could muster, ‘and I’m told it’s our Christian duty to protect widows.’

‘You call that protecting her?’ he laughed. ‘Are you going to marry her?’

‘Of course not. I’ll marry for land.’

‘You should be married,’ he said. ‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-one, I think.’

‘Should be long married, then,’ he said. ‘What about Ælfwynn?’

‘What about her?’ I asked.

‘She’s a pretty little mare,’ Sihtric said, ‘and I dare say she knows how to gallop.’ He pushed open the heavy door and we walked into the hall that was lit by rushlights and by a huge fire in a crude stone hearth that had cracked the Roman floor. There were not enough tables for both the burh’s garrison and for the men Æthelflaed had brought north, so some ate squatting on the floor, though I was given a place at the high table close to Æthelflaed. She was flanked by two priests, one of whom intoned a long prayer in Latin before we were allowed to start on the food.

I was scared of Æthelflaed. She had a hard face, though men said she had been beautiful as a young woman. In that year, 911, she must have been forty or more years old, and her hair, which was golden, had pale grey streaks. She had very blue eyes and a gaze that could unsettle the bravest of men. That gaze was cold and thoughtful, as if she was reading your thoughts and despising them. I was not the only person who was scared of Æthelflaed. Her own daughter, Ælfwynn, would hide from her mother. I liked Ælfwynn, who was full of laughter and mischief. She was a little younger than I was and we had spent much of our childhood together, and many people thought the two of us should be married. I did not know whether Æthelflaed thought that a good idea. She seemed to dislike me, but she seemed to dislike most people, and yet, for all that coldness, she was adored in Mercia. Her husband, Æthelred, Lord of Mercia, was acknowledged as the ruler of the country, but it was his estranged wife people loved.

‘Gleawecestre,’ she now said to me.

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘You’ll take all the plunder, all of it. Use wagons. And take the prisoners.’

‘Yes, my lady.’ The prisoners were mostly children we had taken from Haki’s steadings during the first days of our raiding. They would be sold as slaves.

‘And you must arrive before Saint Cuthbert’s Day,’ she repeated that command. ‘You understand?’

‘Before Saint Cuthbert’s Day,’ I said dutifully.