The Flame Bearer (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 10) (31 page)

The shield wall reeks of shit, and all a man wants is to be home, to be anywhere but on this field that prepares for battle, but none of us will turn and run or else we will be despised for ever. We pretend we want to be there, and when the wall at last advances, step by step, and the heart is thumping fast as a bird’s wing beating, the world seems unreal. Thought flies, fear rules, and then the order to quicken the charge is shouted, and you run, or stumble, but stay in your rank because this is the moment you have spent a lifetime preparing for, and then, for the first time, you hear the thunder of shield walls meeting, the clangour of battle swords, and the screaming begins.

It will never end.

Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes. Some Christians speak of peace, of the evil of war, and who does not want peace? But then some crazed warrior comes screaming his god’s filthy name into your face and his only ambitions are to kill you, to rape your wife, to enslave your daughters, and take your home, and so you must fight. Then you will see men die with their guts coiled in the mud, with their skulls opened, with their eyes missing, you will hear them choking, gasping, weeping, screaming. You will see your friends die, you will lose your balance as your foot slips in an enemy’s spilt bowels, you will look into a man’s face as you slide your blade into his belly, and if the three fates at the foot of Yggdrasil favour you, then you will know the ecstasy of battle, the joy of victory, and the relief of living. Then you will go home and the poets will compose a song of the battle and perhaps your name will be chanted and you will boast of your prowess and the youngsters will listen in envious awe and you will not tell them of the horror. You will not say how you are haunted by the faces of the men you killed, how in their last gasp of life they sought your pity and you had none. You will not speak of the boys who died screaming for their mothers while you twisted a blade in their guts and snarled your scorn into their ears. You will not confess that you wake in the night, covered in sweat, heart hammering, shrinking from the memories. You will not talk of that, because that is the horror, and the horror is held in the heart’s hoard, a secret, and to admit it is to admit fear, and we are warriors.

We do not fear. We strut. We go to battle like heroes. We stink of shit.

But we endure the horror because we must protect our women, keep our children from slavery, and guard our homes. So the screaming will never end, not till time itself ends.

‘Lord?’ Swithun was forced to touch my arm to break my reverie, and I jumped, startled, to discover the wind blowing across our hull, the sail pulling well, my hand on the steering-oar, and our ship coursing straight and true. ‘Lord?’ Swithun sounded anxious. He must have thought I was in a trance.

‘I was thinking of those blood-puddings that Finan’s wife makes,’ I said, but he still gazed at me with a worried expression. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Look, lord,’ Swithun pointed over our stern.

I turned, and there on the southern horizon, faint against a heap of clouds that edged the world, were four ships. I could only see their sails, dirty and dark against the white clouds, but I would have wagered Serpent-Breath against a kitchen knife that I knew who they were. They were the remnants of Æthelhelm’s fleet, the larger ships that had been moored on the wharf at Dumnoc, and which had escaped Einar’s ravaging, and being big they would be faster than our four vessels. Not just faster, but with larger crews, and I did not doubt that Æthelhelm had at least two hundred and fifty men crammed into the long hulls that pursued us. For the moment, the four ships were a long way behind, but we still had a long way to go. It would be close.

My son hardened his sail so that the
Stiorra
quickened. He brought her close to our steerboard side and loosed the sheets so that he matched our speed. ‘Is that Æthelhelm?’ he shouted through cupped hands.

‘Who else?’

He looked as if he was about to shout another question, then thought better of it. There was nothing we could do unless we wanted to abandon our voyage by turning into one of the few harbours on this coast, and my son knew I would not do that. He let the
Stiorra
fall back.

By early afternoon I could see the hulls of the pursuing vessels, among which the pale timbers of the
Ælfswon
showed clearly. The four ships were catching us, though I reckoned we would still reach Bebbanburg first, but beating them to the fortress would not be enough. I needed time before Æthelhelm interfered. Then the gods showed that they loved us because the wind must have dropped to our south and I saw their big sails sag, fill, then sag again. After a moment the sun reflected from oar-blades, then the long banks began to dip and rise, but no crew could row as fast as our ships were reaching on that friendly east wind. For a while the four West Saxon ships lost ground, but the patch of calmer wind did not last, and their sails filled once more, the oars were taken inboard, and they again began to close relentlessly. By now Æthelhelm would have recognised Ieremias’s ragged ship, and he would guess the other three were mine. He would know I was ahead of him.

By mid afternoon I could see the Farne Islands breaking the horizon, and not long after the shape of Bebbanburg high on its rock. We were sailing fast, the wind was gusting high, the sails pulling us, and our cutwaters breaking the seas to send spray flying down our decks. My men pulled on mail coats, belted swords into place, touched their hammers or their crosses, and muttered prayers. Behind us the four West Saxon ships were near enough that I could see men aboard, could see the crosses on their prows, and see the criss-cross of ropes that stiffened their sails, but they had not quite closed enough. I would have a little time, enough time I hoped. I had pulled on a mail coat, my finest, its hems edged with gold, and Serpent-Breath now hung at my side. A glint of reflected sunlight showed where a man held a spear on Bebbanburg’s ramparts. I could see the Scots too; a small group of horsemen was galloping north along the beach. They had seen our ships, and, like the sentinels on Bebbanburg’s high walls, would have recognised the
Guds Moder
,
and the riders were now hurrying the news to Domnall.

So four of us were making ready. My small fleet was closing on the fortress, the seas hissing down our wind-driven hulls. My cousin could see us coming, and his men would be going to the ramparts to watch our arrival. Domnall would be ordering Einar to take his ships to sea, while Æthelhelm was in desperate pursuit. The chaos was about to be unleashed, but for the chaos to give me victory I needed everyone to believe that what they saw was what they expected to see.

My cousin expected a relief fleet led by Ieremias. He had been worried that Æthelhelm, who was providing the men and most of the food, would bring too large a force and so usurp ownership of the fortress, but he would see four smaller ships, one of them
Guds Moder
with the dark cross on her sail and with her distinctive tangle of dishevelled rigging, and he would see the crudely painted leaping stag on the
Hanna
’s mainsail, and he would surely believe that Ieremias was bringing the promised relief, and he would reckon, from the size of the ships, that the force coming to his aid numbered fewer than two hundred men. A large force, certainly, but not sufficient to overpower his garrison. Behind us, and still some distance from the foam-fretted Farne Islands, were Æthelhelm’s larger ships, and, so far as I could see, not one was flying a banner. My cousin might be puzzled by them, but he would surely have learned that I had purchased ships, and the easiest explanation for the trailing vessels was that they were mine, and that I was displaying crosses on their prows to mislead him. I had not reckoned on Æthelhelm taking any part in this day’s confusion, but now I realised his presence could be of help if my cousin assumed his ships were mine.

The Scots, and their allies led by Einar, expected something wholly different. They too had been told that a relief fleet was sailing, but Ieremias had persuaded them that he would make Æthelhelm’s fleet approach very slowly, under oars.

‘To give Einar’s ships time to intercept them?’ I had asked Ieremias in Gyruum.

‘Yes, lord.’

‘But how would you have persuaded Æthelhelm to slow down?’

‘I told him of the dangers,’ he had said.

‘What dangers?’ I had asked.

‘Rocks, lord! There are rocks between the Farnes and the mainland, you know that.’

‘They’re easily avoided,’ I had said.

‘You know that and I know that,’ he had answered, ‘but do the West Saxons? How many southerners have sailed that coast?’ He had grinned. ‘I’ve told them how many ships have been lost there, told them there are hidden rocks by the harbour entrance, told them they have to follow me very cautiously.’

That caution, and the creeping pace, would have given Einar’s ships and the Scottish vessel time to block the relief fleet’s approach. Æthelhelm would then have had a decision to make, either to fight his way through the enemy, or to refuse the offered sea battle and sail back down the coast. He still might have to make that decision, because, as we sailed between the islands and the fortress I could see Lindisfarena spreading across our bows and I could see Einar’s ships rowing out of the anchorage. They were having a hard time of it, fighting against a blustering east wind, but if I had slowed, if I had dropped the sail and used the oars to creep cautiously as though I feared shoals and rocks, then Einar would still have had time to intercept me. But I did not slow. The water was seething and breaking at our bow and the wind was driving us hard towards the harbour’s narrow channel. Soon, very soon, Domnall would know he had been deceived.

And what did I expect? I touched the hammer at my neck and then the cross on Serpent-Breath’s pommel. I expected to be the Lord of Bebbanburg by nightfall.

Or dead.

But the whole madness depended on one thing, just one thing, that my cousin would open the gates of his fortress to me. I touched the hammer again and called to Swithun. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘now.’

Swithun was wearing robes we had taken from Ieremias’s hall, which, in turn, Ieremias had looted from some church back when he was called Dagfinnr and had served Ragnar the Younger. ‘They’re all so pretty, lord,’ Ieremias had told me, lovingly fingering the embroidered hem of a chasuble. ‘This one is woven from the finest lamb’s wool. Try it, lord!’

I had not tried it, instead we chose the gaudiest of the vestments, and Swithun was now draped in a white cassock that fell to his ankles and was hemmed with golden crosses, in the shorter chasuble that was edged with scarlet cloth and decorated with red and yellow flames that Ieremias claimed were the fires of hell, and over it all a pallium, which was a broad scarf embroidered with black crosses. ‘When I am Pope of the North,’ Ieremias had confided in me, ‘I shall wear nothing but golden robes. I shall shine, lord, like the sun.’

Swithun did not quite shine, but he certainly looked flamboyant, and now he pulled on a helmet that had a lining of wool. Eadith had taken the long grey horsehairs of the tail we had docked from Berg’s stallion and sewn them to the lining’s rim. Once Swithun had pulled the helmet down over his skull he looked like a wild thing with his long white hair catching the gusting wind. He went to the bows of
Guds Moder
and waved his arms frantically towards the fortress.

And the men waiting in Bebbanburg saw Ieremias coming to their aid, just as he had promised and just as they expected. They saw Æthelhelm’s banner vast on the
Hanna
’s sail. They saw the crosses on our ships’ prows. They saw relief coming fast on the strong east wind.

We were now sailing straight towards the entrance. The sun was low in the west, dazzling me, but I could see men waving from the high ramparts, and I ordered my men to wave back. I could see Scotsmen standing on the dunes north of the channel, just watching us because there was nothing they could do to stop us. Behind them I could see that Einar’s ships had reached the open sea and were loosing their sails ready to turn south and intercept Æthelhelm’s fleet. They were too late to stop us, but Æthelhelm’s four ships were just reaching the islands. I prayed that they would strike the sunken rocks, but the east wind pushed them out of danger. I could see now that the
Ælfswon
was flying Æthelhelm’s banner, but the east wind streamed the banner directly towards the fortress, meaning the men on the walls could not make out the stag that leaped upwards on the flag. The crews of Æthelhelm’s ships were also waving to the fortress. If Æthelhelm had thought for a moment he would surely have realised that his best course was to run one of his ships aground on the beach beneath Bebbanburg’s high ramparts and shout up at the defenders to warn them of what was happening, but instead he kept pursuing us, though he could not catch us now. We were running landwards in front of that east wind, our prows were splitting the seas, and our sails were strained taut. I could almost smell the land. I could see my cousin’s banner flying at Bebbanburg’s summit. The sea floor shelved towards the beach, shortening the waves, and we drove into a patch of tumbling waters where wind and tide fought across the shallows, and still we ran, spray flying, and now Bebbanburg’s ramparts were high above us, close enough that a man could throw a spear onto our deck, and I steered the ship into the channel’s centre, and the gulls wheeled in the wind and screamed about our mast, and I thrust the steering-oar’s loom hard away from me, and
Guds Moder
drove herself onto the sand just paces from the rock-cut steps that led up to Bebbanburg’s Sea Gate.

Which was closed.

The
Stiorra
came next, grounding herself beside the
Guds Moder
, then came the
Hanna
, and
Eadith
, and all four ships were on the sand, blocking the harbour channel, and men were leaping from the bows with seal-hide ropes to hold the ships in place. Other men were hoisting empty barrels or sacks stuffed with straw, pretending to bring the promised supplies to replenish Bebbanburg’s storerooms. The men carrying those burdens wore helmets and mail and had swords at their sides, but none carried a shield. To the defenders on the high ramparts it must not appear as if we came for battle. Half my men were still on the ships, oars in their hands, as if we were readying to row into the safer waters of the harbour.