floor of the Roman hall.
It was the fyrd that did most destruction. The household troops had discipline and stayed together, and it was those trained troops who chased the Northmen out of Lundene. I stayed on the street next to the river wall, the street that we had followed from our half-swamped ships, and we drove the fugitives as though they were sheep running from wolves. Father Pyrlig had attached his cross banner to a Danish spear and he waved it over our heads to show Æthelred’s men that we were friends. Screams and howling sounded from the higher streets. I stepped over a dead child, her golden curls thick with the blood of her father who had died beside her. His last act had been to seize his child’s arm and his dead hand was still curled about her elbow. I thought of my daughter, Stiorra. ‘Lord!’ Sihtric shouted, ‘lord!’ he was pointing with his sword.
He had seen that one large group of Northmen, presumably cut off as they retreated towards their ships, had taken refuge on the broken bridge. The bridge’s northern end was guarded by a Roman bastion through which an arch led, though the arch had long lost its gateway. Instead the passage to the bridge’s broken timber roadway was blocked by a shield wall. They were in the same position I had been in Ludd’s Gate with their flanks protected by high stonework. Their shields filled the arch, and I could see at least six ranks of men behind the front line of round overlapping shields.
Steapa made a low growling noise and hefted his axe. ‘No,’ I said, laying a hand on his massive shield arm.
‘Make a boar’s tusk,’ he said vengefully, ‘kill the bastards. Kill them all.’
‘No,’ I said again. A boar’s tusk was a wedge of men that would drive into a shield wall like a human spear-point, but no boar’s tusk would pierce this Northmen’s wall. They were too tightly packed in the archway, and they were desperate, and desperate men will fight fanatically for the chance to live. They would die in the end, that was true, but many of my men would die with them.
‘Stay here,’ I told my men. I handed my borrowed shield to Sihtric, then gave him my helmet. I sheathed Serpent-Breath. Pyrlig copied me, taking off his helmet. ‘You don’t have to come,’ I told him.
‘And why shouldn’t I?’ he asked, smiling. He handed his makeshift standard to Rypere, laid his shield down, and, because I was glad of the Welshman’s company, the two of us walked to the bridge’s gate.
‘I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I announced to the hard-faced men staring over their shield rims, ‘and if you wish to feast in Odin’s corpse-hall this night then I am willing to send you there.’
Behind me the city screamed and smoke drifted dense across the sky. The nine men in the enemy’s front rank stared at me, but none spoke.
‘But if you want to taste the joys of this world longer,’ I went on, ‘then speak to me.’
‘We serve our earl,’ one of the men finally said.
‘And he is?’
‘Sigefrid Thurgilson,’ the man said.
‘Who fought well,’ I said. I had been screaming insults at Sigefrid not two hours before, but now was the time for softer speech. A time to arrange for an enemy to yield and thus save my men’s lives. ‘Does the Earl Sigefrid live?’ I asked.
‘He lives,’ the man said curtly, jerking his head to indicate that Sigefrid was somewhere behind him on the bridge.
‘Then tell him Uhtred of Bebbanburg would speak with him, to decide whether he lives or dies.’
That was not my choice to make. The Fates had already made the decision, and I was but their instrument. The man who had spoken to me called the message to the men behind on the bridge and I waited. Pyrlig was praying, though whether he beseeched mercy for the folk who screamed behind us or death for the men in front of us, I never asked.
Then the tight-packed shield wall in the arch shuffled aside as men made a passage down the roadway’s centre. ‘The Earl Erik will speak with you,’ the man told me.
And Pyrlig and I went to meet the enemy.
‘My brother says I should kill you,’ Erik greeted me. The younger of the Thurgilson brothers had been waiting for me on the bridge and, though his words held menace, there was none in his face. He was placid, calm and apparently unworried by his predicament. His black hair was crammed beneath a plain helmet and his fine mail was spattered with blood. There was a rent at the mail’s hem, and I guessed that marked where a spear had come beneath his shield, but he was evidently unwounded. Sigefrid, though, was horribly injured. I could see him on the roadway, lying on his bear-fur cloak, twisting and jerking in pain, and being tended by two men.
‘Your brother,’ I said, still watching Sigefrid, ‘thinks that death is the answer to everything.’
‘Then he’s like you in that regard,’ Erik said with a wan smile, ‘if you are what men say you are.’
‘What do men say of me?’ I asked, curious.
‘That you kill like a Northman,’ Erik said. He turned to stare downriver. A small fleet of Danish and Norse ships had managed to escape the wharves, but some now rowed back upstream in an attempt to save the fugitives who crowded the river’s edge, but the Saxons were already among that doomed crowd. A furious fight was raging on the wharves where men hacked at each other. Some, to escape the fury, were leaping into the river. ‘I sometimes think,’ Erik said sadly, ‘that death is the real meaning of life. We worship death, we give it, we believe it leads to joy.’
‘I don’t worship death,’ I said.
‘Christians do,’ Erik remarked, glancing at Pyrlig, whose mailed chest displayed his wooden cross.
‘No,’ Pyrlig said.
‘Then why the image of a dead man?’ Erik asked.
‘Our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead,’ Pyrlig said energetically, ‘he conquered death! He died to give us life and regained his own life in his dying. Death, lord, is just a gate to more life.’
‘Then why do we fear death?’ Erik asked in a voice that suggested he expected no answer. He turned to look at the downstream chaos. The two ships we had used to shoot the bridge’s gap had been commandeered by fleeing men, and one of those ships had foundered just yards from the wharf where it now lay on its side, half sunken. Men had been spilled into the water where many must have drowned, but others had managed to reach the muddy foreshore where they were being hacked to death by gleeful men with spears, swords, axes and hoes. The survivors clung to the wreck, trying to shelter from a handful of Saxon bowmen whose long hunting arrows thudded into the ship’s timbers. There was so much death that morning. The streets of the broken city reeked of blood and were filled with the wailing of women beneath the smoke-smeared yellow sky. ‘We trusted you, Lord Uhtred,’ Erik said bleakly, still staring downriver. ‘You were going to bring us Ragnar, you were to be king in Mercia and you were to give us the whole island of Britain.’
‘The dead man lied,’ I said, ‘Bjorn lied.’
Erik turned back to me, his face grave. ‘I said we should not try and trick you,’ he said, ‘but Earl Haesten
