Sword Song (13 page)

Steapa had been thinking, always a slow process, but now he posed a shrewd question. “Why not land upriver of the bridge?” he suggested. “There must be gates through the wall?”

“There are a dozen gates,” I said, “maybe a score, and Sigefrid will have blocked them all, but the last thing he’ll expect is for ships to try and run the gap in the bridge.”

“Because ships die there?” Steapa said.

“Because ships die there,” I agreed. I had watched it happen once, watched a trading ship run the gap at slack water, and somehow the steersman had veered too far to one side and the broken pilings had ripped the planks from the bottom of his hull. The gap was some forty paces wide and, when the river was calm with neither tide nor wind to churn the water, the gap looked innocent, but it never was. Lundene’s bridge was a killer, and to take Lundene I had to run the bridge.

And if we survived? If we could find the Roman dock and get ashore? Then we would be few and the enemy would be many, and some of us would die in the streets before Æthelred’s force could ever cross the wall. I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt and felt the small silver cross that was embedded there. Hild’s gift. A lover’s gift. “Have you heard a cuckoo yet?” I asked Steapa.

“Not yet.”

“It’s time to go,” I said, “unless you want to kill me?”

“Maybe later,” Steapa said, “but for the moment I’ll fight beside you.”

And we would have a fight. That I knew. And I touched my hammer amulet and sent a prayer into the darkness that I would live to see the child in Gisela’s belly.

Then we went back south.

Osric, who had brought me away from Lundene with Father Pyrlig, was one of our shipmasters, and the other was Ralla, the man who had carried my force to ambush the Danes whose corpses I had hanged beside the river. Ralla had negotiated the gap in Lundene’s bridge more times than he could remember. “But never at night,” he told me that night when we returned to the island.

“But it can be done?”

“We’re going to discover that, lord, aren’t we?”

Æthelred had left a hundred men to guard the island where the ships lay and those men were under the command of Egbert, an old warrior whose authority was denoted by a silver chain hanging about his neck, and who challenged me when we unexpectedly returned. He did not trust me and believed I had abandoned my northern attack because I did not want Æthelred to succeed. I needed him to give me men, but the more I pleaded the more he bristled with hostility. My own men were boarding the two ships, wading through the cold water and hauling themselves over the sides. “How do I know you’re not just going back to Coccham?” Egbert asked suspiciously.

“Steapa!” I called. “Tell Egbert what we’re doing.”

“Killing Danes,” Steapa growled from beside a campfire. The flames reflected from his mail coat and from his hard, feral eyes.

“Give me twenty men,” I pleaded with Egbert.

He stared at me, then shook his head. “I can’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“We have to guard the Lady Æthelflaed,” he said. “Those are the Lord Æthelred’s orders. We’re here to guard her.”

“Then leave twenty men on her ship,” I said, “and give me the rest.”

“I can’t,” Egbert insisted doggedly.

I sighed. “Tatwine would have given me men,” I said. Tatwine had
been the commander of the household troops for Æthelred’s father. “I knew Tatwine,” I said.

“I know you did. I remember you.” Egbert spoke curtly and the hidden message in his tone was that he did not like me. As a young man I had served under Tatwine for a few months, and back then I had been brash, ambitious, and arrogant. Egbert plainly thought I was still brash, ambitious, and arrogant, and perhaps he was right.

He turned away and I thought he was dismissing me, but instead he watched as a pale and ghostly shape appeared beyond the campfires. It was Æthelflaed, who had evidently seen our return and had waded ashore wrapped in a white cloak to discover what we did. Her hair was unbound and fell in golden tangles over her shoulders. Father Pyrlig was with her.

“You didn’t go with Æthelred?” I asked, surprised to see the Welsh priest.

“His lordship felt he needed no more advice,” Pyrlig said, “so asked me to stay here and pray for him.”

“He didn’t ask,” Æthelflaed corrected him, “he ordered you to stay and pray for him.”

“He did,” Pyrlig said, “and as you can see, I am dressed for praying.” He was in a mail coat and had his swords strapped at his waist. “And you?” he challenged me. “I thought you were marching to the city’s north?”

“We’re going downriver,” I explained, “and attacking Lundene from the wharf.”

“Can I come?” Æthelflaed asked instantly.

“No.”

She smiled at that curt refusal. “Does my husband know what you’re doing?”

“He’ll find out, my lady.”

She smiled again, then walked to my side and pulled my cloak aside to lean against me. She wrapped my dark cloak over her white one. “I’m cold,” she explained to Egbert, whose face showed surprise and indignation at her behavior.

“We are old friends,” I said to Egbert.

“Very old friends,” Æthelflaed agreed, and she put an arm around my waist and clung to me. Egbert could not see her arm beneath my cloak. I was aware of her golden hair just beneath my beard, and I could feel her thin body shivering. “I think of Uhtred as an uncle,” she told Egbert.

“An uncle who is going to give your husband victory,” I told her, “but I need men. And Egbert won’t give me men.”

“He won’t?” she asked.

“He says he needs all his men to guard you.”

“Give him your best men,” she said to Egbert in a light, pleasant voice.

“My lady,” Egbert said, “my orders are to…”

“You will give him your best men!” Æthelflaed’s voice was suddenly hard as she stepped from beneath my cloak into the harsh light of the campfires. “I am a king’s daughter!” she said arrogantly, “and wife to Mercia’s Ealdorman! And I am demanding that you give Uhtred your best men! Now!”

She had spoken very loudly so that men all across the island were staring at her. Egbert looked offended, but said nothing. He straightened instead and looked stubborn. Pyrlig caught my eye and smiled slyly.

“None of you have the courage to fight alongside Uhtred?” Æthelflaed demanded of the watching men. She was fourteen years old, a slight, pale girl, yet in her voice was the lineage of ancient kings. “My father would want you to show courage tonight!” she went on, “or am I to return to Wintanceaster and tell my father that you sat by the fires while Uhtred fought?” This last question was directed at Egbert.

“Twenty men,” I pleaded with him.

“Give him more!” Æthelflaed said firmly.

“There’s only room in the boats for forty more,” I said.

“Then give him forty!” Æthelflaed said.

“Lady,” Egbert said hesitantly, but stopped when Æthelflaed held up one small hand. She turned to look at me.

“I can trust you, Lord Uhtred?” she asked.

It seemed a strange question from a child I had known nearly all her life and I smiled at it. “You can trust me,” I said lightly.

Her face grew harder and her eyes flinty. Perhaps that was the reflection of the fire from her pupils, but I was suddenly aware that this was far more than a child, she was a king’s daughter. “My father,” she said in a clear voice so that others could hear, “says you are the best warrior in his service. But he does not trust you.”

There was an awkward silence. Egbert cleared his throat and stared at the ground. “I have never let your father down,” I said harshly.

“He fears your loyalty is for sale,” she said.

“He has my oath,” I replied, my voice still harsh.

“And I want it now,” she demanded and held out a slender hand.

“What oath?” I asked.

“That you keep your oath to my father,” Æthelflaed said, “and that you swear loyalty to Saxon over Dane, and that you will fight for Mercia when Mercia asks it.”

“My lady,” I began, appalled at her list of demands.

“Egbert!” Æthelflaed interrupted me. “You will give Lord Uhtred no men unless he swears to serve Mercia while I live.”

“No, lady,” Egbert muttered.

While she lived? Why had she said that? I remember wondering about those words, and I remember, too, thinking that my plan to capture Lundene hung in the balance. Æthelred had stripped me of the forces I needed, and Æthelflaed had the power to restore my numbers, but to win my victory I had to lock myself in yet another oath that I did not want to swear. What did I care for Mercia? But I cared that night about taking men through a bridge of death to prove that I could do it. I cared about reputation, I cared about my name, I cared about fame.

I drew Serpent-Breath, knowing that was why she held out her hand, and I gave the blade to her, hilt first. Then I knelt and I folded my hands around hers that, in turn, were clasped about the hilt of my sword. “I swear it, lady,” I said.

“You swear,” she said, “that you will serve my father faithfully?”

“Yes, lady.”

“And, as I live, you will serve Mercia?”

“As you live, lady,” I said, kneeling in the mud, and wondering what a fool I was. I wanted to be in the north, I wanted to be free of Alfred’s piety, I wanted to be with my friends, yet here I was, swearing loyalty to Alfred’s ambitions and to his golden-haired daughter. “I swear it,” I said, and gave her hands a slight squeeze as a signal of my truthfulness.

“Give him men, Egbert,” Æthelflaed ordered.

He gave me thirty and, to give Egbert his due, he gave me his fit men, the young ones, leaving his older and sick warriors to guard Æthelflaed and the camp. So now I led over seventy men and those men included Father Pyrlig. “Thank you, my lady,” I said to Æthelflaed.

“You could reward me,” she said, and once again sounded childlike, her solemnity gone and her old mischief back.

“How?”

“Take me with you?”

“Never,” I said harshly.

She frowned at my tone and looked up into my eyes. “Are you angry with me?” she asked in a soft voice.

“With myself, lady,” I said and turned away.

“Uhtred!” She sounded unhappy.

“I will keep the oaths, lady,” I said, and I was angry that I had taken them again, but at least they had provided me with seventy men to take a city, seventy men on board two boats that pushed away from the creek into the Temes’s strong current.

I was on board Ralla’s boat, the same ship that we had captured from Jarrel, the Dane whose hanged body had long been reduced to a skeleton. Ralla was at the stern, leaning on the steering-oar. “Not sure we should be doing this, lord,” he said.

“Why not?”

He spat over the side into the black river. “Water’s running too fast.
It’ll be spilling through the gap like a waterfall. Even at slack water, lord, that gap can be wicked.”

“Take it straight,” I said, “and pray to whatever god you believe in.”

“If we can even see the gap,” he said gloomily. He peered behind, looking for a glimpse of Osric’s boat, but it was swallowed in the darkness. “I’ve seen it done on a falling tide,” Ralla said, “but that was in daylight, and the river wasn’t in spate.”

“The tide’s falling?” I asked.

“Like a stone,” Ralla said gloomily.

“Then pray,” I said curtly.

I touched the hammer amulet, then the hilt of Serpent-Breath as the boat gathered speed on the surging current. The riverbanks were far off. Here and there was a glimmer of light, evidence of a fire smoldering in a house, while ahead, under the moonless sky, was a dull glow smeared with a black veil, and that, I knew, was the new Saxon Lundene. The glow came from the sullen fires in the town and the veil was the smoke of those fires, and I knew that somewhere beneath that veil Æthelred would be marshalling his men for their advance across the valley of the Fleot and up to the old Roman wall. Sigefrid, Erik, and Haesten would know he was there because someone would have run from the new town to warn the old. Danes, Norsemen, and Frisians, even some masterless Saxons, would be rousing themselves and hurrying to the old city’s ramparts.

And we swept down the black river.

No one spoke much. Every man in both boats knew the danger we faced. I edged my way forward between the crouching figures, and Father Pyrlig must have sensed my approach or else a gleam of light reflected from the wolf’s head that served as the silver crest of my helmet because he greeted me before I saw him. “Here, lord,” he said.

He was sitting on the end of a rower’s bench and I stood beside him, my boots splashing in the bilge water. “Have you prayed?” I asked him.

“I haven’t stopped praying,” he said seriously. “I sometimes think God must be tired of my voice. And Brother Osferth here is praying.”

“I’m not a brother,” Osferth said sullenly.

“But your prayers might work better if God thinks you are,” Pyrlig said.

Alfred’s bastard son was crouching by Father Pyrlig. Finan had equipped Osferth with a mail coat that had been mended after some Dane had been belly-gutted by a Saxon spear. He also had a helmet, tall boots, leather gloves, a round shield, and both a long-and a short-sword, so that at least he looked like a warrior. “I’m supposed to send you back to Wintanceaster,” I told him.

“I know.”

“Lord,” Pyrlig reminded Osferth.

“Lord,” Osferth said, though reluctantly.

“I don’t want to send the king your corpse,” I said, “so stay close to Father Pyrlig.”

“Very close, boy,” Pyrlig said, “pretend you love me.”

“Stay behind him,” I ordered Osferth.

“Forget about being my lover,” Pyrlig said hurriedly, “pretend you’re my dog instead.”

“And say your prayers,” I finished. There was no other useful advice I could give Osferth, unless it was to strip off his clothes, swim ashore and go back to his monastery. I had as much faith in his fighting skills as Finan, which meant I had none. Osferth was sour, inept, and clumsy. If it had not been for his dead uncle, Leofric, I would have happily sent him back to Wintanceaster, but Leofric had taken me as a young raw boy and had turned me into a sword warrior and so I would endure Osferth for Leofric’s sake.

We were abreast of the new town now. I could smell the charcoal fires of the smithies, and see the reflected glow of fires flickering deep in alleyways. I looked ahead to where the bridge spanned the river, but all was black there.