yet been taught the discipline of the shield wall.
‘Your shields have to touch!’ I shouted at them, ‘otherwise you’re dead. You want to be dead? You want your guts spooling around your feet? Touch the shields. Not that way, you earsling! The right side of your shield goes in front of the left side of his shield. Understand?’ I said it again in Danish then glanced at Guthred. ‘I don’t want Tekil’s men in the bodyguard.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t know them.’
‘You don’t know these men,’ Guthred said, gesturing at his household troops.
‘I know they’re idiots,’ I said, ‘and I know their mothers should have kept their knees together. What are you doing, Clapa?’ I shouted at a hulking young Dane. I had forgotten his real name, but everyone called him Clapa, which meant clumsy. He was a huge farm boy, as strong as two other men, but not the cleverest of mortals. He stared at me with dumb eyes as I stalked towards the line. ‘What are you supposed to do, Clapa?’
‘Stay close to the king, lord,’ he said with a puzzled look.
‘Good!’ I said, because that was the first and most important lesson that had to be thumped into the thirty young men. They were the king’s household troops so they must always stay with the king, but that was not the answer I wanted from Clapa. ‘In the shield wall, idiot,’ I said, thumping his muscled chest, ‘what are you supposed to do in the shield wall?’
He thought for a while, then brightened. ‘Keep the shield up, lord.’
‘That’s right,’ I said, dragging his shield up from his ankles. ‘You don’t dangle it around your toes! What are you grinning at, Rypere?’ Rypere was a Saxon, skinny where Clapa was solid, and clever as a weasel. Rypere was a nickname which meant thief, for that was what Rypere was and if there had been any justice he would have been branded and whipped, but I liked the cunning in his young eyes and reckoned he would prove a killer. ‘You know what you are, Rypere?’ I said, thumping his shield back into his chest, ‘you’re an earsling. What’s an earsling, Clapa?’
‘A turd, lord.’
‘Right, turds! Shields up! Up!’ I screamed the last word. ‘You want folk to laugh at you?’ I pointed at other groups of men fighting mock battles in the big meadow. Tekil’s warriors were also present, but they were sitting in the shade, just watching, implying that they did not need to practise. I went back to Guthred. ‘You can’t have all the best men in your household troops,’ I told him.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’ll end up surrounded when everyone else has run away. Then you die. It isn’t pretty.’
‘That’s what happened when my father fought Eochaid,’ he admitted.
‘So that’s why you don’t have all your best men in the household guard,’ I said. ‘We’ll put Tekil on one flank and Ulf and his men on the other.’ Ulf, inspired by a dream of unlimited silver and lasciviously evil women, was now eager to march on Eoferwic. He was not at Cair Ligualid when the dark horsemen arrived, but had taken his men to collect forage and food.
I divided the household troops into two groups and made them fight, though first I ordered them to wrap their swords in cloth so they wouldn’t end up slaughtering each other. They were eager but hopeless. I broke through both shield walls in the time it took to blink, but they would learn how to fight eventually unless they met Ivarr’s troops first, in which case they would die. After a while, when they were weary and the sweat was streaming down their faces, I told them to rest. I noticed that the Danes sat with the other Danes, and the Saxons with the Saxons, but that was only to be expected and in time, I thought, they would learn trust. They could more or less speak to each other because I had noticed that in Northumbria the Danish and Saxon tongues were becoming muddled. The two languages were similar anyway, and most Danes could be understood by Saxons if they shouted loud enough, but now the two tongues grew ever more alike. Instead of talking about their swordcraft the Saxon earslings in Guthred’s household troops boasted of their ‘skill’ with a sword, though they had none, and they ate eggs instead of eating eyren. The Danes, meanwhile, called a horse a horse instead of a hros and sometimes it was hard to know whether a man was a Dane or a Saxon. Often they were both, the son of a Danish father and Saxon mother, though never the other way around. ‘I should marry a Saxon,’ Guthred told me. We had wandered to the edge of the field where a group of women were chopping straw and mixing the scraps with oats. We would carry the mixture to feed our horses as we crossed the hills.
‘Why marry a Saxon?’ I asked.
‘To show that Haliwerfolkland is for both tribes,’ he said.
‘Northumbria,’ I said bad-temperedly.
‘Northumbria?’
‘It’s called Northumbria,’ I said, ‘not Haliwerfolkland.’
He shrugged as if the name did not matter. ‘I should still marry a Saxon,’ he said, ‘and I’d like it to be a pretty one. Pretty as Hild, maybe? Except she’s too old.’
‘Too old?’
‘I need one about thirteen, fourteen maybe? Ready to pup some babies.’ He clambered across a low fence and edged down a steep bank towards a small stream that flowed north towards the Hedene. ‘There must be some pretty Saxons in Eoferwic?’
‘But you want a virgin, don’t you?’
‘Probably,’ he said, then nodded, ‘yes.’
‘Might be one or two left in Eoferwic,’ I said.
‘Pity about Hild,’ he said vaguely.
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you weren’t with her,’ he said vigorously, ‘you might make a husband for Gisela.’
‘Hild and I are friends,’ I said, ‘just friends,’ which was true. We had been lovers, but ever since Hild had seen the body of Saint Cuthbert she had withdrawn into a contemplative mood. She was feeling the tug of her god, I knew, and I had asked her if she wanted to put on the robes of a nun again, but she had shaken her head and said she was not ready.
‘But I should probably marry Gisela to a king,’ Guthred said, ignoring my words. ‘Maybe Aed of Scotland? Keep him quiet with a bride? Or maybe it’s better if she marries Ivarr’s son. Do you think she’s pretty enough?’
‘Of course she is!’
‘Horseface!’ he said, then laughed at the old nickname. ‘The two of us used to catch sticklebacks here,’ he went on, then tugged off his boots, left them on the bank, and began wading upstream. I followed him, staying on the bank where I pushed under alders and through the rank grass. Flies buzzed around me. It was a warm day.
‘You want sticklebacks?’ I asked, still thinking of Gisela.
‘I’m looking for an island,’ he said.
‘Can’t be a very big island,’ I said. The stream could be crossed in two paces and it never rose above Guthred’s calves.
‘It was big enough when I was thirteen,’ he said.
‘Big enough for what?’ I asked, then slapped at a horsefly, crushing it against my mail. It was hot enough
