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I spurred on, taking most of the men east of the settlement, and so cutting off the retreat of the surviving Danes. Finan had already sent scouts to the southern hill crest. Why, I wondered, had the Danes not posted sentinels on the hilltop from which we had first seen the fugitives?
There were so many skirmishes in those days. The Danes of East Anglia would raid the farmlands about Lundene, and we would retaliate, taking men deep into Danish territory to burn, kill and plunder. There was officially a peace treaty between Alfred’s Wessex and East Anglia, but a hungry Dane took no notice of words on parchment. A man who wanted slaves, livestock, or simply wanted an adventure, would cross into Mercia and take what he wanted, and we would then ride east and do the same. I liked such raids. They gave me a chance to train my youngest men, to let them see the enemy and cross swords. You can drill a man for a year, practise sword craft and spear skills forever, but he will learn more in just five minutes of battle.
There were so many skirmishes that I have forgotten most, yet I recall that skirmish at Edwulf’s hall. In reality it was nothing. The Danes had been careless and we took no casualties, yet I remember because, when it was over, and the swords were still, one of my men called me to the church.
It was a small church, hardly big enough for the fifty or sixty souls who lived or had lived around the hall. The building was made of oak and had a thatched roof on which a wooden cross stood tall. A crude bell hung at the western gable above the only door, while each side wall had two large timber-barred windows through which light streamed to illuminate a fat man who had been stripped naked and tied to a table that I assumed was the church’s altar. He was moaning. ‘Untie him,’ I snarled, and Rypere, who had led the men who captured the Danes inside the church, started forward as if I had just woken him from a trance.
Rypere had seen much horror in his few years, but he, like the men he led, seemed numbed by the cruelty inflicted on the fat man. His eye sockets were a mess of blood and jelly, his cheeks laced red, his ears sliced off, his manhood cut, his fingers first broken and then chiseled from his palms. Two Danes stood beyond the table, guarded by my men, their reddened hands betraying they had been the torturers. Yet it was the leader of the Danish band who was chiefly responsible for the cruelty, and that is why I remember the skirmish.
Because that was how I met Skade, and if ever any woman ate the apples of Asgard that gave the gods their eternal beauty, it was Skade. She was tall, almost as tall as I was, with a wiry body disguised by the mail coat she wore. She was maybe twenty years old, her face was narrow, high-nosed, haughty, with eyes as blue as any I have ever seen. Her hair, dark as the feathers of Odin’s ravens, hung long and straight to her slender waist, where a sword belt held an empty scabbard. I stared at her.
And she stared at me. And what did she see?
She saw Alfred’s warlord. She saw Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the pagan in service to a Christian king. I was tall, and in those days I had broad shoulders. I was a sword-warrior, spear-warrior, and fighting had made me rich so that my mail shone and my helmet was inlaid with silver and my arm rings glittered above the mail sleeves. My sword belt was decorated with silver wolf-heads, Serpent-Breath’s scabbard was cased with jet slivers, while my belt buckle and cloak clasp were made of heavy gold. Only the small image of Thor’s hammer, hanging around my neck, was cheap, but I had owned that talisman since I was a child. I have it still. The glory of my youth has gone, eroded by time, but that was what Skade saw. She saw a warlord.
And so she spat at me. The spittle landed on my cheek and I left it there. ‘Who is the bitch?’ I asked.
‘Skade,’ Rypere gave me her name, then nodded at the two torturers, ‘they say she’s their leader.’
The fat man moaned. He had been cut free and now curled his body into a ball. ‘Find someone to tend him,’ I said irritably, and Skade spat again, this time striking my mouth. ‘Who is he?’ I demanded, ignoring her.
‘We think he’s Edwulf,’ Rypere said.
‘Get him out of here,’ I said, then turned to look at the beauty who spat at me. ‘And who,’ I asked, ‘is Skade?’
She was a Dane, born to a steading in the northern part of their bleak country, daughter to a man who had no great riches and so left his widow poor. But the widow had Skade, and her beauty was astonishing, and so she had been married to a man willing to pay for that long, lithe body in his bed. The husband was a Frisian chieftain, a pirate, but then Skade had met Harald Bloodhair, and Jarl Harald offered her more excitement than living behind a rotting palisade on some tide-besieged sandbank, and so she had run away with him. All that I was to learn, but for now I just knew she was Harald’s woman, and that Haesten had spoken the truth; to see her was to want her. ‘You will release me,’ she said with an astonishing confidence.
‘I’ll do what I choose,’ I told her, ‘and I don’t take orders from a fool.’ She bridled at that, and I saw she was about to spit again, and so raised a hand as if to strike her and she went very still. ‘No lookouts,’ I said to her, ‘what leader doesn’t post sentries? Only a fool.’ She hated that. She hated it because it was true.
‘Jarl Harald will give you money for my freedom,’ she said.
‘My price for your freedom,’ I said, ‘is Harald’s liver.’
‘You are Uhtred?’ she asked.
‘I am the Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’
She gave a ghost of a smile. ‘Then Bebbanburg will need a new lord if you don’t release me. I shall curse you. You will know agony, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, even greater agony than him.’ She nodded at Edwulf, who was being carried out of the church by four of my men.
‘He’s a fool too,’ I said, ‘because he set no sentries.’ Skade’s raiding party had descended on the village in the morning sunlight and no one saw them coming. Some villagers, those we had seen from the skyline, escaped, but most had been captured, and of those only the young women and the children who might have been sold as slaves still lived.
We let one Dane live, one Dane and Skade. The rest we killed. We took their horses, their mail and their weapons. I ordered the surviving villagers to drive their livestock north to Suthriganaweorc because Harald’s men had to be denied food, though as the harvest was already in the barns and the orchards were heavy, that would be hard. We were still slaughtering the last of the Danes when Finan’s scouts reported that horsemen were approaching the hill crest to the south.
I went to meet them, taking seventy men, the one Dane I would spare, Skade and also the long piece of hemp rope that had been attached to the church’s small bell. I joined Finan and we rode to where the hill’s crest was gentle grassland and from where we could look far to the south. New smoke pyres thickened in the distant sky, but nearer, much nearer, was a band of horsemen who rode on the banks of a willow-shadowed stream. I estimated they numbered about the same as my men, who were now lined on the crest either side of my wolf’s-head banner. ‘Get off the horse,’ I ordered Skade.
‘Those men are searching for me,’ she said defiantly, nodding at the horsemen who had paused at the sight of my battle line.
‘Then they’ve found you,’ I said, ‘so dismount.’
She just stared at me proudly. She was a woman who hated being given orders.
‘You can dismount,’ I said patiently, ‘or I can pull you out of the saddle. The choice is yours.’
She dismounted and I gestured for Finan to dismount. He drew his sword and stood close to the girl. ‘Now undress,’ I told her.
A look of utter fury darkened her face. She did nothing, but I sensed an anger like a tensed adder inside her. She wanted to kill me, she wanted to scream, she wanted to call the gods down from the smoke-patterned sky, but there was nothing she could do. ‘Undress,’ I said, ‘or have my men strip you.’
She turned as if looking for a way to escape, but there was none. There was a glint of tears in her eyes, but she had no choice but to obey me. Finan looked at me quizzically, because I was not known for being cruel to women, but I did not explain to him. I was remembering what Haesten had told me, how Harald was impulsive, and I wanted to provoke Harald Bloodhair. I would insult his woman and so hope to force Harald to anger instead of sober judgement.
Skade’s face was an expressionless mask as she stripped herself of her mail coat, a leather jerkin and linen breeches. One or two of my men cheered when her jerkin came off to reveal high, firm breasts, but they went silent when I snarled at them. I tossed the rope to Finan. ‘Tie it round her neck,’ I said.
She was beautiful. Even now I can close my eyes and see that long body standing in the buttercup-bright grass. The Danes in the valley were staring up, my men were gazing, and Skade stood there like a creature from Asgard come to the middle-earth. I did not doubt Harald would pay for her. Any man might have impoverished himself to possess Skade.
Finan gave me the rope’s end and I kicked my stallion forward and led her a third of the way down the slope. ‘Is Harald there?’ I asked her, nodding at the Danes who were two hundred paces away.
‘No,’ she said. Her voice was bitter and tight. She was ashamed and angry. ‘He’ll kill you for this,’ she said.
I smiled. ‘Harald Bloodhair,’ I said, ‘is a puking, shit-filled rat.’ I twisted in the saddle and waved to Osferth, who brought the surviving Danish prisoner down the slope. He was a young man and he looked up at me with fear in his pale blue eyes. ‘This is your chieftain’s woman,’ I said to him, ‘look at her.’
He hardly dared look at Skade’s nakedness. He just gave her a glance then gazed back at me.
‘Go,’ I told him, ‘and tell Harald Bloodhair that Uhtred of Bebbanburg has his whore. Tell Harald I have her naked, and that I’ll use her for my amusement. Go, tell him. Go!’
The man ran down the slope. The Danes in the valley were not going to attack us. Our numbers were evenly matched, and we had the high ground, and the Danes are ever reluctant to take too many casualties. So they just watched us and, though one or two rode close enough to see Skade clearly, none tried to rescue her.
I had carried Skade’s jerkin, breeches and boots. I threw them at her feet, then leaned down and took the rope from her neck. ‘Dress,’ I said.
I saw her consider escape. She was thinking of running long-legged down the slope, hoping to reach the watching horsemen before I caught her, but I touched Smoka’s flank and he moved in front of her. ‘You’d die with a sword in your skull,’ I told her, ‘long before you could reach them.’
‘And you’ll die,’ she said, stooping for her clothes, ‘without a sword in your hand.’
I touched the talisman about my neck. ‘Alfred,’ I said, ‘hangs captured pagans. You had better hope that I can keep you alive when we meet him.’
‘I shall curse you,’ she said, ‘and those you love.’
‘And you had better hope,’ I went on, ‘that my patience lasts, or else I’ll give you to my men before Alfred hangs you.’
‘A curse and death,’ she said, and there was almost triumph in her voice.
‘Hit her if she speaks again,’ I told Osferth.
Then we rode west to find Alfred.
Three
The first thing I noticed was the cart.
It was enormous, big enough to carry the harvest from a dozen fields, but this wagon would never carry anything so mundane as sheaves of wheat. It had two thick axles and four solid wheels rimmed with iron. The wheels had been painted with a green cross on a white background. The sides of the cart were panelled, and each of the panels bore the image of a saint. There were Latin words carved into the top rails, but I never bothered to ask what they meant because I neither wanted to know nor needed to ask. They would be some Christian exhortation, and one of those is much like any other. The bed of the cart was mostly filled by woolsacks, presumably to protect the passengers from the jolting of the vehicle, while a well-cushioned chair stood with its high back against the driver’s bench. A striped sailcloth awning supported by four serpentine-carved poles had been erected over the whole gaudy contraption, and a wooden cross, like those placed on church gables, reared from one of the poles. Saints’ banners hung from the remaining three poles.
‘A church on wheels?’ I asked sourly.
‘He can’t ride any more,’ Steapa told me gloomily.
Steapa was the commander of the royal bodyguard. He was a huge man, one of the few who were taller than me, and unremittingly fierce in battle. He was also unremittingly loyal to King Alfred. Steapa and I were friends, though we had started as enemies when I had been forced to fight him. It had been like attacking a mountain. Yet the two of us had survived that meeting, and there was no man I would rather have stood beside in a shield wall. ‘He can’t ride at all?’ I asked.
‘He does sometimes,’ Steapa said, ‘but it hurts too much. He can hardly walk.’
‘How many oxen drag this thing?’ I asked, gesturing at the wagon.
‘Six. He doesn’t like it, but he has to use it.’
We were in Æscengum, the burh built to protect Wintanceaster from the east. It was a small burh, nothing like the size of Wintanceaster or Lundene, and it protected a ford which crossed the River Wey, though why the ford needed protection was a mystery because the river could be easily crossed both north and south of Æscengum. Indeed, the town guarded nothing of importance, which was why I had argued against its fortification. Yet Alfred had insisted on making Æscengum into a burh because, years before, some half-crazed Christian mystic had supposedly restored a raped girl’s virginity at the place, and so it was a hallowed spot. Alfred had ordered a monastery built there, and Steapa told me the king was waiting in its church. ‘They’re talking,’ he said bleakly, ‘but none of them knows what to do.’
‘I thought you were waiting for Harald to attack you here?’
‘I told them he wouldn’t,’ Steapa said, ‘but what happens if he doesn’t?’
‘We find Harald and kill the earsling, of course,’ I said, gazing east to where new smoke pyres betrayed where Harald’s men were plundering new villages.
Steapa gestured at Skade. ‘Who’s she?’
‘Harald’s whore,’ I said, loud enough for Skade to hear, though her face showed no change from her customary haughty expression. ‘She tortured a man called Edwulf,’ I explained, ‘trying to get him to reveal where he’d buried his gold.’
‘I know Edwulf,’ Steapa said, ‘he eats and drinks his gold.’
‘He did,’ I said, ‘but he’s dead now.’ Edwulf had died before we left his estate.
Steapa held out a hand to take my swords. The monastery was serving this day as Alfred’s hall, and no one except the king, his relatives and his guards could carry a weapon in the royal presence. I surrendered Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting, then dipped my hands in a bowl of water offered by a servant. ‘Welcome to the king’s house, lord,’ the servant said in formal greeting, then watched as I looped the rope about Skade’s neck.
She spat in my face and I grinned. ‘Time to meet the king, Skade,’ I said, ‘spit at him and he’ll hang you.’
‘I will curse you both,’ she said.
Finan alone accompanied Steapa, Skade and I into the monastery. The rest of my men took their horses through the western gate to water them in a stream while Steapa led us to the abbey church, a fine stone building with heavy oak roof beams. The high windows lit painted leather hides, and the one above the altar showed a white-robed girl being raised to her feet by a bearded and haloed man. The girl’s apple-plump face bore a look of pure astonishment, and I assumed she was the newly-restored virgin, while the man’s expression suggested she might soon need the miracle repeated. Beneath her, seated on a rug-draped chair placed in front of the silver-piled altar, was Alfred.
A score of other men were in the church. They had been talking as we arrived, but the voices dropped to silence as I entered. On Alfred’s left was a gaggle of churchmen, among whom were my old friend Father Beocca and my old enemy Bishop Asser, a Welshman who had become the king’s most intimate adviser. In the nave of the church, seated on benches, were a half-dozen ealdormen, the leaders of those shires whose men had been summoned to join the army that faced Harald’s invasion. To Alfred’s right, seated on a slightly smaller chair, was his son-in-law, my cousin Æthelred, and behind him was his wife, Alfred’s daughter, Æthelflæd.
Æthelred was the Lord of Mercia. Mercia, of course, was the country to the north of Wessex, and its northern and eastern parts were ruled by the Danes. It had no king, instead it had my cousin, who was the acknowledged ruler of the Saxon parts of Mercia, though in truth he was in thrall to Alfred. Alfred, though he never made the claim explicit, was the actual ruler of Mercia, and Æthelred did his father-in-law’s bidding. Though how long that bidding could continue was dubious, for Alfred looked sicker than I had ever seen him. His pale, clerkly face was thinner than ever and his eyes had a bruised look of pain, though they had lost none of their intelligence.
He looked at me in silence, waited till I had bowed, then nodded a curt greeting. ‘You bring men, Lord Uhtred?’
‘Three hundred, lord.’
‘Is that all?’ Alfred asked, flinching.
‘Unless you wish to lose Lundene, lord, it’s all.’
‘And you bring your woman?’ Bishop Asser sneered.
Bishop Asser was an earsling, which is anything that drops out of an arse. He had dropped out of some Welsh arse, from where he had slimed his way into Alfred’s favour. Alfred thought the world of Asser who, in turn, hated me. I smiled at him. ‘I bring you Harald’s whore,’ I said.
No one answered that. They all just stared at Skade, and none stared harder than the young man standing just behind Alfred’s throne. He had a thin face with prominent bones, pale skin, black hair that curled just above his embroidered collar, and eyes that were quick and bright. He seemed nervous, overawed perhaps by the presence of so many broad-shouldered warriors, while he himself was slender, almost fragile, in his build. I knew him well enough. His name was Edward, and he was the Ætheling, the king’s eldest son, and he was being groomed to take his father’s throne. Now he was gaping at Skade as though he had never seen a woman before, but when she met his gaze he blushed and pretended to take a keen interest in the rush-covered floor.
‘You brought what?’ Bishop Asser broke the surprised silence.
‘Her name is Skade,’ I said, thrusting her forward. Edward raised his eyes and stared at Skade like a puppy seeing fresh meat.
‘Bow to the king,’ I ordered Skade in Danish.
‘I do what I wish,’ she said and, just as I supposed she would, she spat towards Alfred.
‘Strike her!’ Bishop Asser yapped.
‘Do churchmen strike women?’ I asked him.
‘Be quiet, Lord Uhtred,’ Alfred said tiredly. I saw how his right hand was curled into a claw that clutched the arm of the chair. He gazed at Skade, who returned the stare defiantly. ‘A remarkable woman,’ the king said mildly, ‘does she speak English?’
‘She pretends not to,’ I said, ‘but she understands it well enough.’
Skade rewarded that truth with a sidelong look of pure spite. ‘I’ve cursed you,’ she said under her breath.
‘The easiest way to be rid of a curse,’ I spoke just as softly, ‘is to cut out the tongue that made it. Now be silent, you rancid bitch.’
‘The curse of death,’ she said, just above a whisper.
‘What is she saying?’ Alfred asked.
‘She is reputed to be a sorceress, lord,’ I said, ‘and claims to have cursed me.’
Alfred and most of the churchmen touched the crosses hanging about their necks. It is a strange thing I have noticed about Christians, that they claim our gods have no power yet they fear the curses made in the names of those gods. ‘How did you capture her?’ Alfred asked.
I gave a brief account of what had happened at Edwulf’s hall and when I was done Alfred looked at her coldly. ‘Did she kill Edwulf’s priest?’ he asked.
‘Did you kill Edwulf’s priest, bitch?’ I asked her in Danish.
She smiled at me. ‘Of course I did,’ she said, ‘I kill all priests.’
‘She killed the priest, lord,’ I told Alfred.
He shuddered. ‘Take her outside,’ he ordered Steapa, ‘and guard her well.’ He held up a hand. ‘She is not to be molested!’ He waited till Skade was gone before looking at me. ‘You’re welcome, Lord Uhtred,’ he said, ‘you and your men. But I had hoped you would bring more.’
‘I brought enough, lord King,’ I said.
‘Enough for what?’ Bishop Asser asked.
I looked at the runt. He was a bishop, but still wore his monkish robes cinched tight around his scrawny waist. He had a face like a starved stoat, with pale green eyes and thin lips. He spent half his time in the wastelands of his native Wales, and half whispering pious poison into Alfred’s ears, and together the two men had made a law code for Wessex, and it was my amusement and ambition to break every one of those laws before either the king or the Welsh runt died. ‘Enough,’ I said, ‘to tear Harald and his men into bloody ruin.’
Æthelflæd smiled at that. She alone of Alfred’s family was my friend. I had not seen her in four years and she looked much thinner now. She was only a year or two above twenty, but appeared older and sadder, yet her hair was still lustrous gold and her eyes as blue as the summer sky. I winked at her, as much as anything to annoy her husband, my cousin, who immediately rose to the bait and snorted. ‘If Harald were that easy to destroy,’ Æthelred said, ‘we would have done it already.’
‘How?’ I asked, ‘by watching him from the hills?’ Æthelred grimaced. Normally he would have argued with me, because he was a belligerent and proud man, but he looked pale. He had an illness, no one knew what, and it left him tired and weak for long stretches. He was perhaps forty in that year, and his red hair had strands of white at his temples. This, I guessed, was one of his bad days. ‘Harald should have been killed weeks ago,’ I taunted him scornfully.
‘Enough!’ Alfred slapped the arm of his chair, startling a leather-hooded falcon that was perched on a lectern beside the altar. The bird flapped his wings, but the jesses held him firm. Alfred grimaced. His face told me what I well knew, that he needed me and did not want to need me. ‘We could not attack Harald,’ he explained patiently, ‘so long as Haesten threatened our northern flank.’
‘Haesten couldn’t threaten a wet puppy,’ I said, ‘he’s too frightened of defeat.’
I was arrogant that day, arrogant and confident, because there are times when men need to see arrogance. These men had spent days arguing about what to do, and in the end they had done nothing, and all that time they had been multiplying Harald’s forces in their minds until they were convinced he was invincible. Alfred, meanwhile, had deliberately refrained from seeking my help because he wanted to hand the reins of Wessex and Mercia to his son and to his son-in-law, which meant giving them reputations as leaders, but their leadership had failed, and so Alfred had sent for me. And now, because they needed it, I countered their fears with an arrogant assurance.
‘Harald has five thousand men,’ Ealdorman Æthelhelm of Wiltunscir said softly. Æthelhelm was a good man, but he too seemed infected by the timidity that had overtaken Alfred’s entourage. ‘He brought two hundred ships!’ he added.
‘If he has two thousand men, I’d be astonished,’ I said. ‘How many horses does he have?’ No one knew, or at least no one answered. Harald might well have brought as many as five thousand men, but his army consisted only of those who had horses.
‘However many men he has,’ Alfred said pointedly, ‘he must attack this burh to advance further into Wessex.’