The Last Kingdom Series Books 4-6: Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings

‘I think you had better hear what the dead man says,’ Gisela spoke gravely.

‘If they send for me,’ I promised, ‘I will.’ And so I would, because a dead man was speaking and he wanted me to be a king.

Alfred arrived a week later. It was a fine day with a pale blue sky in which the midday sun hung low above a cold land. Ice edged the sluggish channels where the River Temes flowed about Sceaftes Eye and Wodenes Eye. Coot, moorhen and dabchicks paddled at the edge of the ice, while on the thawing mud of Sceaftes Eye a host of thrush and blackbirds hunted for worms and snails.

This was home. This had been my home for two years now. Home was Coccham, at the edge of Wessex where the Temes flowed towards Lundene and the sea. I, Uhtred, a Northumbrian lord, an exile and a warrior, had become a builder, a trader and a father. I served Alfred, King of Wessex, not because I wished to, but because I had given him my oath.

And Alfred had given me a task; to build his new burh at Coccham. A burh was a town turned into a fortress and Alfred was riveting his kingdom of Wessex with such places. All around the boundaries of Wessex, on the sea, on the rivers and on the moors facing the wild Cornish savages, the walls were being built. A Danish army could invade between the fortresses, but they would discover still more strongholds in Alfred’s heartland, and each burh held a garrison. Alfred, in a rare moment of savage elation, had described the burhs to me as wasps’ nests from which men could swarm to sting the attacking Danes. Burhs were being made at Exanceaster and Werham, at Cisseceastre and Hastengas, at Æscengum and Oxnaforda, at Cracgelad and Wæced, and at dozens of places between. Their walls and palisades were manned by spears and shields. Wessex was becoming a land of fortresses, and my task was to make the little town of Coccham into a burh.

The work was done by every West Saxon man over the age of twelve. Half of them worked while the other half tended the fields. At Coccham I was supposed to have five hundred men serving at any one time, though usually there were fewer than three hundred. They dug, they banked, they cut timber for walls, and so we had raised a stronghold on the banks of the Temes. In truth it was two strongholds, one on the river’s southern bank and the other on Sceaftes Eye, which was an island splitting the river into two channels, and in that January of 885 the work was nearly done and no Danish ship could now row upstream to raid the farms and villages along the river’s bank. They could try, but they must pass my new ramparts and know that my troops would follow them, trap them ashore and kill them.

A Danish trader called Ulf had come that morning, tying his boat at the wharf on Sceaftes Eye where one of my officials prodded through the cargo to assess the tax. Ulf himself, grinning toothlessly, climbed up to greet me. He gave me a piece of amber wrapped in kidskin. ‘For the Lady Gisela, lord,’ he said. ‘She is well?’

‘She is,’ I said, touching Thor’s hammer that hung around my neck.

‘And you have a second child, I hear?’

‘A girl,’ I said, ‘and where did you hear of her?’

‘Beamfleot,’ he said, which made sense. Ulf was a north­­erner, but no ships were making the voyage from Northumbria to Wessex in the depth of this cold winter. He must have spent the season in southern East Anglia, on the long intricate mudflats of the Temes estuary. ‘It isn’t much,’ he said, gesturing at his cargo. ‘I bought some hides and axe blades in Grantaceaster and thought I’d come upriver to see if you Saxons have any money left.’

‘You came upriver,’ I told him, ‘to see whether we’d finished the fortress. You’re a spy, Ulf, and I think I’ll hang you from a tree.’

‘No, you won’t,’ he said, unmoved by my words.

‘I’m bored,’ I said, putting the amber into my pouch, ‘and watching a Dane twitch on a rope would be amusing, wouldn’t it?’

‘You must have been laughing when you hanged Jarrel’s crew then,’ he said.

‘Was that who it was?’ I asked. ‘Jarrel? I didn’t ask his name.’

‘I saw thirty bodies,’ Ulf said, jerking his head downstream, ‘maybe more? All hanging from trees and I thought, that looks like Lord Uhtred’s work.’

‘Only thirty?’ I said, ‘there were fifty-three. I should add your miserable corpse, Ulf, to help make up the numbers.’

‘You don’t want me,’ Ulf said cheerfully, ‘you want a young one, because young ones twitch more than us old ones.’ He peered down at his boat and spat towards a red-haired boy who was staring vacantly across the river. ‘You could hang that little bastard. He’s my wife’s oldest boy and nothing but a piece of toad gristle. He’ll twitch.’

‘So who’s in Lundene these days?’ I asked.

‘Earl Haesten’s in and out,’ Ulf said, ‘more in than out.’

I was surprised by that. I knew Haesten. He was a young Dane who had once been my oath-man, but who had broken his oath and now aspired to be a warrior lord. He called himself an earl, which amused me, but I was surprised he had gone to Lundene. I knew he had made a walled camp on the coast of East Anglia, but now he had moved much closer to Wessex, which suggested he was looking for trouble. ‘So what’s he doing?’ I asked scornfully, ‘stealing his neighbours’ ducks?’

Ulf drew in a breath and shook his head. ‘He’s got allies, lord.’

Something in his tone made me wary. ‘Allies?’

‘The Thurgilson brothers,’ Ulf said, and touched his hammer amulet.

The name meant nothing to me then. ‘Thurgilson?’

‘Sigefrid and Erik,’ Elf said, still touching the hammer. ‘Norse earls, lord.’

That was something new. The Norse did not usually come to East Anglia or to Wessex. We often heard tales of their raids in the Scottish lands and in Ireland, but Norse chieftains rarely came close to Wessex. ‘What are Norsemen doing in Lundene?’ I asked.

‘They got there two days ago, lord,’ Ulf said, ‘with twenty-two keels. Haesten went with them, and he took nine ships.’

I whistled softly. Thirty-one ships was a fleet and it meant the brothers and Haesten together commanded an army of at least a thousand men. And those men were in Lundene and Lundene was on the frontier of Wessex.

Lundene was a strange city back then. Officially it was part of Mercia, but Mercia had no king and so Lundene had no ruler. It was neither Saxon nor Dane, but a mix of both, and a place where a man could become rich, dead, or both. It stood where Mercia, East Anglia and Wessex met, a city of merchants, tradesmen and seafarers. And now, if Ulf was right, it had an army of Vikings within its walls.

Ulf chuckled. ‘They’ve got you stopped up like a rat in a sack, lord.’

I wondered how a fleet had gathered and ridden the tide upstream to Lundene without my finding out long before it sailed. Coccham was the nearest burh to Lundene and I usually knew what happened there within a day, but now an enemy had occupied the city and I had known nothing about it. ‘Did the brothers send you to tell me this?’ I asked Ulf. I was assuming that the Thurgilson brothers and Haesten had only captured Lundene so that someone, probably Alfred, would pay them to go away. In which case it served their interest to let us know of their arrival.

Ulf shook his head. ‘I sailed as they arrived, lord. Bad enough having to pay you duty without giving half my goods to them.’ He shuddered. ‘The Earl Sigefrid’s a bad man, lord. Not someone to do business with.’

‘Why didn’t I know they were with Haesten?’ I asked.

‘They weren’t. They’ve been in Frankia. Sailed straight across the sea and up the river.’

‘With twenty-two ships of Norsemen,’ I said bitterly.

‘They’ve got everything, lord,’ Ulf said. ‘Danes, Frisians, Saxons, Norse, everything. Sigefrid finds men wherever the gods shake out their shit-pots. They’re hungry men, lord. Masterless men. Rogues. They come from all over.’

The masterless man was the worst kind. He owed no allegiance. He had nothing but his sword, his hunger and his ambition. I had been such a man in my time. ‘So Sigefrid and Erik will be trouble?’ I suggested mildly.

‘Sigefrid will,’ Ulf said. ‘Erik? He’s the younger. Men speak well of him, but Sigefrid can’t wait for trouble.’

‘He wants ransom?’ I asked.

‘He might,’ Ulf said dubiously. ‘He’s got to pay all those men, and he got nothing but mouse droppings in Frankia. But who’ll pay him ransom? Lundene belongs to Mercia, doesn’t it?’

‘It does,’ I said.

‘And there’s no king in Mercia,’ Ulf said. ‘Isn’t natural, is it? A kingdom without a king.’

I thought of Æthelwold’s visit and touched my amulet of Thor’s hammer. ‘Have you ever heard of the dead being raised?’ I asked Ulf.

‘The dead being raised?’ He stared at me, alarmed, and touched his own hammer amulet. ‘The dead are best left in Niflheim, lord.’

‘An old magic, perhaps?’ I suggested. ‘Raising the dead?’

‘You hear tales,’ Ulf said, now gripping his amulet tightly.

‘What tales?’

‘From the far north, lord. From the land of ice and birch. Strange things happen there. They say men can fly in the darkness, and I did hear that the dead walk on the frozen seas, but I never saw such a thing.’ He raised the amulet to his lips and kissed it. ‘I reckon they’re just stories to scare children on winter nights, lord.’