The Flame Bearer (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 10) (25 page)

‘Probably Frankish,’ I said, ‘and you’ll find it more useful than that piece of rusty iron you call a sword.’

He smiled. ‘I can keep it?’

‘Keep it, sell it, do what you like with it. But keep the blade greased. It’s a pity to let a good sword turn to rust.’

He pushed it back into the narrow space. ‘So you’re going to Bebbanburg, lord?’

I shook my head. ‘We’re going to Frisia.’

‘Which is why you went to Dumnoc first?’ he asked shrewdly.

‘I had business in Dumnoc,’ I said harshly, ‘and now we’re leaving for Frisia.’

‘Yes, lord,’ he said, plainly disbelieving me.

We ran before the wind, though in truth the
Rensnægl
never ran. She lumbered heavily as Einar’s fleet steadily drew ahead of us. I watched his ships sail through a sparkling sea lit by a sun shining between ragged clouds that scattered to the north and east. I instinctively tried to touch my hammer as a way of thanking Thor for the miracle, and my fingers found the cross, and I wondered if that symbol had brought me good fortune. That was one of Christianity’s strongest arguments, that fate smiled on Christians. A Christian king, their sorcerers argued, won more battles, received higher rents, and spawned more sons than a pagan ruler. I hoped that was not true, but I took care in that moment to mutter a prayer of thanks to the Christian god who had arranged for fate to smile on me in the last few hours. ‘Æthelhelm won’t be sailing today,’ I said.

‘He’ll need more than a day or two to recover from that morning surprise,’ Renwald agreed. ‘He lost some good ships.’

‘He won’t be happy,’ I said happily. My miracle had come. Einar had given me what I so desperately needed, time. Æthelhelm had planned to take food and reinforcements to Bebbanburg, but most of the food and many of his ships were now destroyed.

Then fate smiled on me again.

Just north of Dumnoc the River Wavenhe empties to the sea. A few fishing families lived in driftwood hovels built at the river’s mouth, which was marked by a wide stretch of fretting waves, a hint to a sailor that the anchorage beyond, though inviting, was dangerous to approach. Inland, bright under the sun, was a great lake, and beyond that, I knew, was a tangle of lakes, rivers, creeks, mudbanks, reeds, and marshland that was home to birds, eels, fish, frogs, and mud-covered folk. I had never sailed into the Wavenhe, though I had heard of shipmasters who had risked the entrance shoals and lived, but now, as Einar’s fleet drew level with the river’s mouth, a ship came from the anchorage.

I had heard that Ieremias, the mad bishop, was a brilliant seaman, and so he must have been because he had left Dumnoc late in the afternoon and had surely entered the Wavenhe in the encroaching darkness, and now the
Guds Moder
came from the river, sailing through the shoals with a confident assurance. Her sail, bellying away from us, was decorated with a cross. She came fast, sliding into the open sea with her tattered rigging flying ragged to the wind. I could just see Ieremias’s white hair lifting to that same wind. He was the helmsman.

I had wondered why Ieremias had left Dumnoc early instead of waiting for Æthelhelm’s fleet to sail, and now I had the answer. I had assumed he was allied to Æthelhelm, a natural supposition after I had seen the warm greeting that Æthelhelm had given him. I had also heard Ieremias boast of Æthelhelm’s gift, the stained girdle that had supposedly belonged to Christ’s mother and was most probably a strip of dirty cloth torn from a kitchen slave’s tunic. And an alliance between Æthelhelm and Ieremias made sense. Ieremias might be mad, but he still possessed an anchorage and a fort at the mouth of the River Tinan, and so long as Constantin claimed Bebbanburg’s land, then so long did Ieremias own the northernmost fort of Northumbria. He also had ships and men, and best of all he knew the Northumbrian coast as well as any man alive. I doubted the West Saxon shipmasters knew where the shoals and rocks lurked, but Ieremias did, and if Æthelhelm planned a voyage to the fortress he would do well to have Ieremias as his guide. I had not questioned my assumption that he was Æthelhelm’s ally until now, when I saw his dark-hulled ship come from the River Wavenhe to join Einar’s fleet. I saw him wave to the
Trianaid
, then the
Guds Moder
turned north to sail in company with Æthelhelm’s enemies.

‘He scouted Dumnoc for them,’ I said.

‘I thought he was Lord Æthelhelm’s ally,’ Renwald was as surprised as I was.

‘So did I,’ I admitted. And now, it seemed, Ieremias was allied with the Scots. I gazed at his ship and reflected that it did not really matter whose ally he was, he was certainly my enemy.

The Scots were my enemies.

The West Saxons were my enemies.

Bebbanburg’s garrison was my enemy.

Ieremias was my enemy.

Einar the White was my enemy.

So fate had better be my friend.

We sailed on northwards.

Grimesbi was smaller than Dumnoc, but had the same weatherbeaten houses, the same homely smells of salt, wood fires, and fish, and the same sea-hardened folk struggling to haul a living from the long cold waves. There were wharves, piers, and a shallow anchorage, while beyond the town’s ditch lay a bleak marsh. Grimesbi, though, was Northumbrian, which, in that year, meant that the reeve was a Dane; a hard-faced, strong-fisted man called Erik, who treated me with a wary civility. ‘So you’re leaving, lord?’ he asked me.

‘For Frisia,’ I said.

‘That’s what I heard,’ he said, then paused to pick something out of his broad nose. He flicked whatever he discovered onto the tavern floor. ‘I’m supposed to levy a charge on everything you take out of the port,’ he went on. ‘Horses, household goods, trade goods, everything except your victuals and your people.’

‘And you pay that levy to King Sigtryggr?’

‘I do,’ he said cautiously, because he knew that I knew that he only paid a part of what he owed to the king and that, probably, a criminally small part. ‘I pay that and the wharfage fees to Jorvik.’

‘Of course you do,’ I said, and laid a gold coin on the table. ‘I think Sigtryggr would forgive me if I didn’t pay, don’t you?’

His eyes widened. The last time I had laid up in Grimesbi the wharf fee had been a penny a day, and the coin on the table would pay for a fleet to stay a whole year. ‘I reckon he would forgive you, lord,’ Erik said. The coin vanished.

I laid a silver coin where the gold had been. ‘I’m taking three of my ships to sea,’ I told him, ‘and I’ll be gone for a fortnight, maybe longer. But I’m not taking my women and children with me. They’ll stay here.’

‘Women bring ill luck at sea, lord,’ he said, eyeing the coin and waiting to discover what it was meant to buy.

‘The women need to be protected,’ I said. ‘I could leave warriors here, but I need all my men. We’re sailing for Frisia to take land.’ He nodded to show that he believed me, which maybe he did or maybe he didn’t. ‘I don’t need women and children aboard,’ I went on, ‘not if I’m fighting some Frisian lord for a patch of defensible land.’

‘Of course not, lord.’

‘But the women must be safe,’ I insisted.

‘I have a dozen good men to keep order,’ he said.

‘So when I return,’ I said, ‘or when I send for the families, they’ll all be safe and unmolested?’

‘I swear it, lord.’

‘Sigtryggr is sending men to guard them,’ I said. I had sent a message to Sigtryggr, and I was sure he would send some warriors, ‘but those men won’t arrive for a day or two.’

He reached for the coin, but I placed a hand over it. ‘If my women are molested,’ I said, ‘I will come back here.’

‘I swear their safety, lord,’ he said. I moved my hand, and the second coin vanished. We each spat on a palm and shook on the agreement.

My son had brought six ships to Grimesbi, which was now crowded by my people. The women, children, and heavy cargo had travelled downriver on the ships, while my men had ridden their horses from Eoferwic. Every tavern was full, and some families were living aboard the three warships that were tied to the town’s longest wharf. Nearby, on a pier, were three big trading ships that my son had purchased. ‘There’s not enough room for two hundred horses,’ he told me gloomily, ‘we’ll be lucky to ship sixty. But they were the only ships for sale.’

‘They’ll do,’ I said.

Berg was now equipping the three ships to carry horses. ‘Lots of folk have asked why, lord,’ he told me, ‘and I tell them what you told me to say. That I don’t know. But they all seem to know we’re going to Frisia.’

‘That’s good,’ I said, ‘that’s very good. And you don’t need to keep that a secret any longer.’ Berg was building stalls in the ships’ bellies, a necessary precaution to keep frightened horses still while they were at sea, and, because Berg was in charge, the work was being done well and I did not have the heart to tell him that the ships would probably never be needed. They were just a part of the deception, an attempt to persuade folk that I really had abandoned any thought of recapturing Bebbanburg and instead planned to take my people and their livestock to a new land. Doubtless, I thought morosely, I could eventually sell the three ships, but almost certainly for less than I had paid for them. A dozen men were working in the nearest boat, their hammers and saws loud as they rigged the stout stalls. ‘But stop the work now,’ I told Berg, ‘and take the beast-heads off the three warships.’

‘Take them off, lord?’ He sounded shocked. Two of the war boats had fine dragon-heads, newly carved, while the third and largest ship had a magnificent wolf’s head. Berg had made them to please me, and now I was demanding that he lift them off the prows.

‘Take them off,’ I said, ‘and put Christian crosses in their place.’

‘Crosses!’ Now he really was shocked.

‘Big ones,’ I said. ‘And the folk living on those three boats? They have to leave today. They can camp in the trading ships instead. We’re setting sail at dawn tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow,’ he echoed me excitedly.

‘And one last thing,’ I said, ‘the horses are here?’

‘Stabled all through the town, lord.’

‘You have a grey, don’t you?’

‘Hræzla! He’s a good horse!’

‘Dock his tail,’ I said, ‘and bring me the hair.’

He stared at me as if I was mad. ‘You want Hræzla’s tail?’

‘Do that first,’ I said, ‘then make the crosses. My son will provision the boats.’ My son already had men bringing supplies to the wharf. I had told him he needed to buy two weeks’ supply of food and ale; enough to feed one hundred and sixty-nine men.

Because that was the number I was taking northwards. One hundred and sixty-nine warriors to fight against my cousin, against the forces of Æthelhelm, and against the King of Scotland. They were good men, almost all of them battle-hardened with just a smattering of young ones who had yet to stand in a shield wall and learn the terror of fighting an enemy who is close enough for you to smell the ale on his breath.

I had paid Renwald handsomely. I had few coins left, so I had given him one of my arm rings, a fine piece of silver carved with runes. ‘I took that one,’ I said, ‘in a fight just north of Lundene. That’s the name of the man I killed,’ I pointed to the runes, ‘Hagga. He shouldn’t have died. Not that day, anyway.’

‘He shouldn’t?’

‘They were just scouting. Six of them and eight of us. We were hawking. Hagga chose to fight.’ I remembered Hagga. He had been a young man, well mounted, with a fine helmet that was too big for him. The helmet had cheek-pieces and was decorated with a snarling face etched onto its crown. I suppose he had thought we would be easy prey because none of us was in mail and two of our hunting party were women, and he had screamed insults, challenged us, and we had given him the fight he wanted, though it was soon over. I had hit the helmet hard with Serpent-Breath and, because it was too big for him, it had turned and half blinded him. He had screamed pathetically as he died.

I had looked over at the
Rensnægl
, moored against one of Grimesbi’s piers. ‘Buy yourself a faster ship,’ I told Renwald.

He had shaken his head. ‘She serves me well, lord. She’s like me, slow but sure.’

‘Dependable,’ I said. ‘And when this is all over,’ I went on, ‘you can depend on me as a friend.’

‘In Frisia, lord?’ he asked, smiling.

‘In Frisia,’ I said, returning the smile.

‘You’ll go with my prayers, lord.’

‘For that,’ I said warmly, ‘and for all you did, thank you.’

At sunset I walked with Finan, following a path that led beside a drainage ditch outside the town. I had told him much of what had happened in Dumnoc, but he was eager to know more, though first I asked him about Æthelstan and was assured that the young prince was safe in Sigtryggr’s hall. ‘He wanted to come with us,’ Finan said.

‘Of course he did.’

‘But I told him it was impossible. Christ, can you imagine the trouble if he died while he was a hostage? God save us!’

‘He knows he can’t come,’ I said.

‘He still wanted to.’

‘And get himself killed? Then I’d be blamed for that and the truce would be over and we’d all be up to our necks in shit.’

‘You mean we’re not?’

‘Maybe up to our armpits,’ I allowed.

‘That bad, eh?’ We walked in silence for a few paces. ‘So?’ he asked, ‘Lord Æthelhelm was in Dumnoc?’

‘Giving away silver,’ I said, and then told Finan more of the tale, and ended by describing how I planned to capture Bebbanburg.

He listened, saying nothing till I had finished, and then, ‘King Edward told you there were four hundred Scots at Bebbanburg?’

‘Led by a man called Domnall.’

‘He’s said to be a beast in a fight.’

‘So are you.’

He smiled at that. ‘So four hundred Scots?’

‘That’s what Edward said. But that might include the garrisons Constantin left on the wall forts, so I reckon he has at least two hundred and fifty men at Bebbanburg.’

‘And how many men does your cousin have?’

‘I’m not sure, but he can muster at least three hundred. Edward reckoned he had two hundred in the fort.’

‘And Einar?’

‘He lost a ship and men at Dumnoc, but he still has four crews left.’