Sword Song

‘You have blood!’ Haesten shouted again. ‘Do you need more blood?’

I thought nothing was going to happen. That I had wasted a journey.

And then the grave moved.

Two (#ulink_2d22f13f-b435-5d66-be61-95e3b48d42db)

The grave mound shifted.

I remember a coldness gripping my heart and terror consuming me, but I could neither breathe nor move. I stood fixed, watching, waiting for the horror.

The earth fell in slightly, as though a mole was scrabbling out of its small hill. More soil shifted and something grey appeared. The grey thing lurched and I saw the earth was falling away faster as the grey thing rose from the mound. It was in half darkness, for the fires were behind us and our shadows were cast across the phantom that was born out of that winter earth, a phantom that took shape as a filthy corpse that staggered out of its broken grave. I saw a dead man who twitched, half fell, struggled to find his balance and finally stood.

Finan gripped my arm. He had no idea he did such a thing. Huda was kneeling and clutching the cross at his neck. I was just staring.

And the corpse gave a coughing, choking noise like a man’s death rattle. Something spat from his mouth, and he choked again, then slowly unbent to stand fully upright and, in the shadowed flamelight, I saw that the dead man was dressed in a soiled grey winding sheet. He had a pale face streaked with dirt, a face untouched by any decay. His long hair lay lank and white on his thin shoulders. He breathed, but had trouble breathing, just as a dying man has trouble breathing. And that was right, I remember thinking, for this man was coming back from death and he would sound just as he had when he had taken his journey into death. He gave a long moan, then took something from his mouth. He threw it towards us and I took an involuntary step backwards before seeing that it was a coiled harp string. I knew then that the impossible thing I saw was real, for I had seen the guards force the harp string into the messenger’s mouth, and now the corpse had shown us that he had received the token. ‘You will not leave me in peace,’ the dead man spoke in a dry half-voice and beside me Finan made a sound that was like a despairing moan.

‘Welcome, Bjorn,’ Haesten said. Alone among us Haesten seemed unworried by the corpse’s living presence. There was even amusement in his voice.

‘I want peace,’ Bjorn said, his voice a croak.

‘This is the Lord Uhtred,’ Haesten said, pointing at me, ‘who has sent many good Danes to the place where you live.’

‘I do not live,’ Bjorn said bitterly. He began grunting and his chest heaved spasmodically as though the night air hurt his lungs. ‘I curse you,’ he said to Haesten, but so feebly that the words had no threat.

Haesten laughed. ‘I had a woman today, Bjorn. Do you remember women? The feel of their soft thighs? The warmth of their skin? You remember the noise they make when you ride them?’

‘May Hel kiss you through all time,’ Bjorn said, ‘till the last chaos.’ Hel was the goddess of the dead, a rotting corpse of a goddess, and the curse was dreadful, but Bjorn again spoke so dully that this second curse, like the first, was empty. The dead man’s eyes were closed, his chest still jerked and his hands made grasping motions at the cold air.

I was in terror and I do not mind confessing it. It is a certainty in this world that the dead go to their long homes in the earth and stay there. Christians say our corpses will all rise one day and the air will be filled with the calling of angels’ horns and the sky will glow like beaten gold as the dead come from the ground, but I have never believed that. We die and we go to the afterworld and we stay there, but Bjorn had come back. He had fought the winds of darkness and the tides of death and he had struggled back to this world and now he stood before us, gaunt and tall and filthy and croaking, and I was shivering. Finan had dropped to one knee. My other men were behind me, but I knew they would be shaking as I shook. Only Haesten seemed unaffected by the dead man’s presence. ‘Tell the Lord Uhtred,’ he commanded Bjorn, ‘what the Norns told you.’

The Norns are the Fates, the three women who spin life’s threads at the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of life. Whenever a child is born they start a new thread, and they know where it will go, with what other threads it will weave and how it will end. They know everything. They sit and they spin and they laugh at us, and sometimes they shower us with good fortune and sometimes they doom us to hurt and to tears.

‘Tell him,’ Haesten commanded impatiently, ‘what the Norns said of him.’

Bjorn said nothing. His chest heaved and his hands twitched. His eyes were closed.

‘Tell him,’ Haesten said, ‘and I will give you back your harp.’

‘My harp,’ Bjorn said pathetically, ‘I want my harp.’

‘I will put it back in your grave,’ Haesten said, ‘and you can sing to the dead. But first speak to Lord Uhtred.’

Bjorn opened his eyes and stared at me. I recoiled from those dark eyes, but made myself stare back, pretending a bravery I did not feel.

‘You are to be king, Lord Uhtred,’ Bjorn said, then gave a long moan like a creature in pain. ‘You are to be king,’ he sobbed.

The wind was cold. A spit of rain touched my cheek. I said nothing.

‘King of Mercia,’ Bjorn said in a sudden and surprisingly loud voice. ‘You are to be king of Saxon and of Dane, enemy of the Welsh, king between the rivers and lord of all you rule. You are to be mighty, Lord Uhtred, for the three spinners love you.’ He stared at me and, though the fate he pronounced was golden, there was a malevolence in his dead eyes. ‘You will be king,’ he said, and the last word sounded like poison on his tongue.

My fear passed then, to be replaced by a surge of pride and power. I did not doubt Bjorn’s message because the gods do not speak lightly, and the spinners know our fate. We Saxons say wyrd bið ful ãræd, and even the Christians accept that truth. They might deny that the three Norns exist, but they know that wyrd bið ful ãræd. Fate is inexorable. Fate cannot be changed. Fate rules us. Our lives are made before we live them, and I was to be King of Mercia.

I did not think of Bebbanburg at that moment. Bebbanburg is my land, my fortress beside the northern sea, my home. I believed my whole life was dedicated to recovering it from my uncle, who had stolen it from me when I was a child. I dreamed of Bebbanburg, and in my dreams I saw its rocks splintering the grey sea white and felt the gales tear at the hall thatch, but when Bjorn spoke I did not think of Bebbanburg. I thought of being a king. Of ruling a land. Of leading a great army to crush my enemies.

And I thought of Alfred, of the duty I owed him and the promises I had made him. I knew I must be an oath-breaker to be a king, but to whom are oaths made? To kings, and so a king has the power to release a man from an oath, and I told myself that as a king I could release myself from any oath, and all this whipped through my mind like a swirl of wind gusting across a threshing floor to spin the chaff up into the sky. I did not think clearly. I was as confused as the chaff spinning in the wind, and I did not weigh my oath to Alfred against my future as a king. I just saw two paths ahead, one hard and hilly, and the other a wide green way leading to a kingdom. And besides, what choice did I have? Wyrd bið ful ãræd.

Then, in the silence, Haesten suddenly knelt to me. ‘Lord King,’ he said, and there was unexpected reverence in his voice.

‘You broke an oath to me,’ I said harshly. Why did I say that then? I could have confronted him earlier, in the hall, but it was by that opened grave I made the accusation.

‘I did, lord King,’ he said, ‘and I regret it.’

I paused. What was I thinking? That I was a king already? ‘I forgive you,’ I said. I could hear my heartbeat. Bjorn just watched and the light of the flaming torches cast deep shadows on his face.

‘I thank you, lord King,’ Haesten said, and beside him Eilaf the Red knelt and then every man in that damp graveyard knelt to me.

‘I am not king yet,’ I said, suddenly ashamed of the lordly tones I had used to Haesten.

‘You will be, lord,’ Haesten said. ‘The Norns say so.’

I turned to the corpse. ‘What else did the three spinners say?’

‘That you will be king,’ Bjorn said, ‘and you will be the king of other kings. You will be lord of the land between the rivers and the scourge of your enemies. You will be king.’ He stopped suddenly and went into spasm, his upper body jerking forward and then the spasms stopped and he stayed motionless, bent forward, retching drily, before slowly crumpling onto the disturbed earth.

‘Bury him again,’ Haesten said harshly, rising from his knees and speaking to the men who had cut the Saxon’s throat.

‘His harp,’ I said.

‘I will return it to him tomorrow, lord,’ Haesten said, then gestured towards Eilaf’s hall. ‘There is food, lord King, and ale. And a woman for you. Two if you want.’

‘I have a wife,’ I said harshly.

‘Then there is food, ale and warmth for you,’ he said humbly. The other men stood. My warriors looked at me strangely, confused by the message they had heard, but I ignored them. King of other kings. Lord of the land between the rivers. King Uhtred.

I looked back once and saw the two men scraping at the soil to make Bjorn’s grave again, and then I followed Haesten into the hall and took the chair at the table’s centre, the lord’s chair, and I watched the men who had witnessed the dead rise, and I saw they were convinced as I was convinced, and that meant they would take their troops to Haesten’s side. The rebellion against Guthrum, the rebellion that was meant to spread across Britain and destroy Wessex, was being led by a dead man. I rested my head on my hands and I thought. I thought of being king. I thought of leading armies.

‘Your wife is Danish, I hear?’ Haesten interrupted my thoughts.

‘She is,’ I said.

‘Then the Saxons of Mercia will have a Saxon king,’ he said, ‘and the Danes of Mercia will have a Danish queen. They will both be happy.’

I raised my head and stared at him. I knew him to be clever and sly, but that night he was carefully subservient and genuinely respectful. ‘What do you want, Haesten?’ I asked him.

‘Sigefrid and his brother,’ he said, ignoring my question, ‘want to conquer Wessex.’

‘The old dream,’ I said scornfully.