The Pagan Lord (26 page)

‘A hundred and fifty men would be enough most of the time,’ Finan said.

A hundred and fifty men would not have been enough to stop a determined attack on two or more of the four walls, but they would have been more than sufficient to defeat an assault coming across the long bridge against the southern gate. If the town was threatened by war then more men could be brought in to stiffen the garrison. King Alfred, who had always been precise in his calculations, demanded that four men should be stationed for every pole of a burh’s wall. A pole was six paces, more or less, and I tried to reckon the length of Ceaster’s ramparts and decided they would need a thousand men to defend against a determined attack, but how likely was such an attack? Æthelred had been supine, and now he was far away, and Cnut was on the rampage somewhere, and Cnut would want every available man for the battles he knew he must fight. Ceaster, I suspected, was very lightly defended.

‘We just ride in,’ I said.

‘We do?’ Merewalh sounded surprised.

‘They’re not expecting an attack,’ I said, ‘and I doubt there’s as many as a hundred and fifty men there. Maybe eighty?’

Eighty men could stop us if we tried to assault the wall, though without ladders such an assault was unthinkable. But would they try to stop us if we rode peaceably up the road? If we looked like all the other bands of men who had obeyed Cnut’s summons?

‘Why eighty?’ my son asked.

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, ‘I made the figure up. There could be five hundred men in there.’

‘And we just ride in?’ Finan asked.

‘You have a better plan?’

He shook his head, grinning. ‘Just like Bebbanburg,’ he said, ‘we just ride in.’

‘And pray for a better ending,’ I added grimly.

And so we did.

We just rode in.

The road leading to the fortress’s northern gate was paved with wide slabs, most of which were now cracked or canted. Grass grew thick on either verge, dunged by the hundreds of horses that had passed before us. There were rich farms on either side where slaves were using sickles to cut tall rye and rain-beaten barley. The farmhouses were made of stone, though all were patched with wattle and mud, and usually re-roofed with thatch. They, like the town, were Roman. ‘I’d like to go to Rome,’ I said.

‘King Alfred went,’ Merewalh said.

‘Twice, he told me,’ I replied, ‘and all he saw were ruins. Great ruins.’

‘They say the city was made of gold.’ Merewalh sounded wistful.

‘A city of gold on a river of silver,’ I said, ‘and once we’ve defeated Cnut we should go there and dig it all up.’

We were riding slowly, like tired men on weary horses. We wore no mail and carried no shields. The packhorses with the long battle-axes and heavy round shields were at the back of our column, while I had put my Danes at the front. ‘Keep your Saxon mouth shut when we get to the gate,’ I told Merewalh.

‘A river of silver?’ he asked. ‘Is that true?’

‘It’s probably more like our rivers,’ I said, ‘full of piss, shit and mud.’

A beggar with half his face eaten by ulcers crouched in the ditch. He mewed as we passed and held out a crooked hand. Wissian, our Christian priest, made the sign of the cross to ward off any evil that the beggar might harbour and I snarled at him. ‘The Danes will see you do that, you fool. Save it till we’re out of their sight.’ My son dropped a piece of bread close to the beggar who scrabbled after it on all fours.

We passed the great bend in the river east of the fortress and the road now turned south to run straight as a spear-shaft towards the town. There was a Roman shrine at the road’s bend, just a stone shelter where, I supposed, the statue of a god had once stood, but now the small building housed an old one-legged man who was weaving baskets from willow wands. ‘Has Jarl Cnut gone?’ I asked him.

‘Gone and gone,’ he said. ‘Half the world’s gone.’

‘Who’s left?’ I asked.

‘None that matters, none that can row, ride, fly or crawl.’ He cackled. ‘Half the world went by and half the world has gone. Only the elf now!’

‘The elf?’

‘The elf is here,’ he said very seriously, ‘but all else is gone.’ He was mad, I think, but his old hands wove the willow deftly. He tossed a finished basket onto a pile and took up more withies. ‘All else is gone,’ he said again, ‘and only the elf be left.’

I spurred on. A pair of posts flanked the road, and on both posts a skeleton was lashed with hemp twine. They were warnings, of course, a warning that thieves would be killed. Most men would be content with a pair of skulls, but it was typical of Haesten to want more. The sight of the bones reminded me of Saint Oswald, and then I forgot that saint because our road ran straight towards Ceaster’s northern gate and, even as I watched, that gate was pulled shut. ‘That’s a welcome,’ Finan said.

‘If you saw horsemen approaching, what would you do?’

‘I thought the bastards would leave it open and make it easy for us,’ he said.

The gate was formidable. A pair of stone towers flanked the gate’s arch, though one of the towers had partially collapsed into the ditch that was crossed by a timber bridge. The fallen tower had been rebuilt in wood. The top of the arch was a platform where one man stood watching our approach, but as we drew nearer another three men joined him.

The gates, there were a pair, stood about twice the height of a man. They looked solid as rocks. Above them was an open space because the gates did not reach all the way up to the high fighting platform, which was protected by a timber wall and a stout-looking roof. One of the men in the shadow of the roof cupped his hands. ‘Who are you?’ he called.

I pretended not to hear. We ambled on.

‘Who are you?’ the man shouted again.

‘Rolla of Haithabu!’ Rolla called out the answer. I was deliberately staying behind my leading men and keeping my head down because it was possible some of these men had been at Tameworþig and would recognise me.

‘You’re late!’ the man called. Rolla made no answer. ‘You came to join the Jarl Cnut?’ the man asked.

‘From Haithabu,’ Rolla shouted.

‘You can’t come in!’ the man said. We were very close now and he had no need to shout.

‘What are we supposed to do?’ Rolla asked. ‘Stay here and starve? We need food!’

Our horses had stopped just short of the bridge, which was as wide as the road and about ten paces long. ‘Ride around the walls,’ the man ordered, ‘to the southern gate. Cross the bridge there and you can buy food in the village.’

‘Where’s Jarl Cnut?’ Rolla demanded.

‘You’ll have to ride south,’ the man said. ‘But cross the river first. Leiknir will tell you what to do.’

‘Who’s Leiknir?’

‘He commands here.’

‘But why can’t we come in?’ Rolla asked.

‘Because I say so. Because no one comes in. Because the jarl gave orders.’

Rolla hesitated. He did not know what to do and glanced back at me as if seeking guidance, but at that moment my son spurred his horse past me and onto the bridge. He looked up at the four men. ‘Is Brunna still here?’ he asked. He spoke in Danish, the language he had learned from his mother and from me.

‘Brunna?’ The man was puzzled, as well he might be because Brunna was the name of Haesten’s wife, though I doubted my son knew that.

‘Brunna!’ my son said as if everyone would recognise the name. ‘Brunna!’ he said again. ‘You must know Brunna the Bunny! The sweet little whore with bouncy tits and an arse to dream about?’ He made a pumping motion with a fist.

The man laughed. ‘That’s not the Brunna I know.’

‘You should meet her!’ my son said enthusiastically. ‘But only when I’ve finished with her.’

‘I’ll send her across the river,’ the man said, amused.

‘Whoa!’ Uhtred shouted, not in excitement, but because his horse was skittering sideways. It looked accidental, but I had seen him rowel a spur, and the horse reacted by jerking away from the pain and the motion took Uhtred beneath the fighting platform so that he could not be seen by the four men above. Then, to my amazement, he kicked his feet from the stirrups and stood on the saddle. He did it smoothly, but it was a dangerous move because the horse was not his own, it had been borrowed from Merewalh’s men and Uhtred could not have known how it would react to his strange behaviour. I held my breath, but the horse just tossed his head and stayed still, letting my son reach with both hands to the gate’s top. He pulled himself up, straddled the gate and then dropped over. It took almost no time.

‘What …’ The man on the gate-tower leaned over, trying to see what was happening.

‘Will you send all the town’s whores across the river?’ I called, to keep his attention.

Uhtred had vanished. He was inside the town. I waited to hear a shout, or a clash of swords, but instead heard the scrape of the locking bar being lifted from its brackets, a thump as it was dropped, and then one of the gates was being pushed open. The heavy iron hinges squealed. ‘Hey!’ the man called from above.

‘Go!’ I called. ‘Go!’

I spurred my horse, driving Uhtred’s riderless stallion ahead of me. We had planned what we would do if we got inside the town and those plans needed to be changed. The Romans built their towns to a pattern, with the four gates in the four walls and two streets running between the pairs of gates to make a crossroads at the town centre. My idea had been to go fast to that centre and make a shield wall there, inviting men to come and be killed. I would have then sent twenty men to the southern gate, to make sure it was closed and barred, but now I suspected most of the defending garrison would be concentrated at that southern gate, so that was where we would go to make our shield wall. ‘Merewalh!’

‘Lord?’

‘Twenty men to guard this gate. Shut it, bar it, hold it! Finan! South gate!’

My son ran alongside his horse, reached for the pommel and leaped up into the saddle. He drew his sword.

And I drew mine.

Our hooves sounded loud on the paved street. Dogs barked and a woman screamed.

Because the Saxons had come to Ceaster.

A street was ahead of me. A long, straight street, while behind me horsemen were bursting through the gates. They began whooping as they spurred into the town.

Ceaster suddenly seemed vast. I remember thinking that this was stupidity, that I needed three times the number of men to take this place, but we were committed now. ‘You’re a fool!’ I shouted at my son. He turned in his saddle and grinned. ‘And well done!’ I called to him.

The long street was edged with stone buildings. Ducks fled the leading horsemen and one bird was trampled by a heavy hoof. There was a squawk and white feathers flying. I kicked my heels to quicken my stallion as two armed men came from an alley. They stopped, astonished, and one had the sense to dart back into the shadows while the other was ridden down by Rolla, his sword slicing once, hard, and the pale stone of the nearest house was suddenly splattered with red. Blood and feathers. A woman screamed. Over a hundred of us were charging down the street. It had been paved once, but in places the stone slabs had gone and the hooves thumped in mud, then clattered on stone again. I had expected to see the southern gate at the street’s far end, but a big pillared building blocked the view, and as I drew closer I saw there were four spearmen behind the pillars, running. One turned to face us. Eldgrim and Kettil, riding stirrup to stirrup, pushed their horses up the two stone steps leading onto the arcade that surrounded the huge building. I swerved left, heard a wail as one man was cut down, then wrenched my horse to the right and saw more men, maybe half a dozen, standing at a vast door that led into the pillared building. ‘Rolla! Twelve men. Keep those bastards here!’

I slewed right again, then left, and we crossed a wide square and galloped into another long street that ran spear-straight towards the southern gate. Five men were running ahead of us and lacked the sense to turn into an alleyway. I spurred behind one, saw his frightened face as he turned in panic, then Serpent-Breath slashed into the nape of his neck and I kicked my heels again and saw my son chop another of the men down. Three cows were at the street’s edge. A red-faced woman was milking one and she stared at us with indignation, but kept on tugging at the udders as we crashed past. I could see spears and blades on the rampart above the southern gate. Cnut’s banner of the axe and broken cross was flying there. The gate’s arch was flanked by a pair of stone towers, but the rampart above was wooden. There were at least a score of men on the platform, and more were joining them. I could see no way up to the rampart and guessed the stairway was inside one of the towers. The big gates inside the arch were closed and the locking bar was in place. I was close to the gate now, still galloping, and saw an arrow whip from the gate’s high platform to skid along the road’s paving. I saw a second archer taking aim, and wrenched the reins and kicked my feet from the stirrups. ‘Cenwalh!’ I shouted at one of my younger Saxons. ‘Look after the horses!’

I dismounted. A stone was hurled from the fighting platform to crash and break a paving slab. There was a doorway in the right-hand tower and I ran to it as a second stone narrowly missed me. A horse screamed as an arrow struck. There were stone stairs curving upwards into shadow, but they stopped after a few steps because much of the tower’s inward face had collapsed. The masonry had been replaced by heavy oak timbers and the tower steps by a stout timber ladder. I climbed a few of the old Roman stairs, then peered upwards and had to jump back as a heavy stone crashed down. The stone hit the ladder’s lowest rung, bounced off without breaking it, and rolled down beside me. An arrow followed, only a hunter’s arrow, but as I was not wearing mail it could easily have pierced my chest.

‘Finan!’ I bellowed as I went back to the tower’s doorway. ‘We need shields!’

‘They’re coming!’ he shouted back. He had led my dismounted men into an alleyway because more arrows were flicking down from the high rampart. We were not carrying shields because I had not wanted to arouse the suspicions of the guards on the northern gate, which meant our best protection against the arrows was still heaped on the packhorses.