surging against the river’s current to bring new warriors to the unending struggle between the Northmen and the Saxons, but Brunanburh had stopped that traffic. We kept a fleet of twelve ships there, their crews protected by Brunanburh’s thick timber walls, and the Northmen had learned to fear those ships. Now, if they landed on Britain’s west coast, they went to Wales or else to Cumbraland, which was the fierce wild country north of the Mærse.
Except tonight. Tonight there were flames by the Mærse.
‘Get dressed,’ I told Eadith. There would be no more sleep this night.
She touched the emerald encrusted cross at her neck. ‘Æthelstan,’ she said softly as if she prayed for him while fingering the cross. She had become fond of Æthelstan.
‘He either lives or is dead,’ I said curtly, ‘and we won’t know till the dawn.’
We rode just before the dawn, rode north in the wolf-light, following the paved road through the shadowed cemetery of Roman dead. I took sixty men, all mounted on fast light horses so that if we ran into an army of howling Northmen we could flee. I sent scouts ahead, but we were in a hurry so there was no time for our normal precaution, which was to wait for the scouts’ reports before we rode on. Our warning this time would be the death of the scouts. We left the Roman road to follow the track we had made through the woods. Clouds had come from the west and a drizzle was falling, but still the smoke rose ahead of us. Rain might extinguish Loki’s fire, but not drizzle, and the smoke mocked and beckoned us.
Then we came from the woods to where the fields turned into mudflats and the mudflats merged with the river, and there, far to our west on that wide stretch of silver-grey water, was a fleet. Twenty, thirty ships, maybe more, it was impossible to tell because they were moored so close together, but even from far away I could see that their prows were decorated with the Northmen’s beasts; with eagles, dragons, serpents, and wolves. ‘Sweet God,’ Finan said, appalled.
We hurried now, following a cattle track that meandered along higher ground on the river’s southern bank. The wind was in our faces, gusting suddenly to send ripples scurrying across the Mærse. We still could not see Brunanburh because the fort lay beyond a wooded rise, but a sudden movement at the wood’s edge betrayed the presence of men, and my two scouts turned their horses and galloped back towards us. Whoever had alarmed them vanished into the thick spring leaves and a moment later a horn sounded, the noise mournful in the grey damp dawn.
‘It’s not the fort burning,’ Finan said uncertainly.
Instead of answering I swerved inland off the track onto the lush pasture. The two scouts came close, their horses’ hooves hurling up clods of damp turf. ‘There are men in the trees, lord!’ one shouted. ‘At least a score, probably more!’
‘And ready for a fight,’ the other reported.
‘Ready for a fight?’ Finan asked.
‘Shields, helmets, weapons,’ the second man explained.
I led my sixty men southwards. The belt of young woodland stood like a barrier between us and Brunanburh, and if an enemy waited then they would surely be barring the track. If we followed the track we could ride straight into their shield wall hidden among the trees, but by cutting inland I would force them to move, to lose their order, and so I quickened the pace, kicking my horse into a canter. My son rode up on my left side. ‘It’s not the fort burning!’ he shouted.
The smoke was thinning. It still rose beyond the trees, a smear of grey that melted into the low clouds. It seemed to be coming from the river, and I suspected Finan and my son were right, that it was not the fort burning, but rather the ships. Our ships. But how had an enemy reached those ships? If they had come by daylight they would have been seen and the fort’s defenders would have manned the boats and challenged the enemy, while coming by night seemed impossible. The Mærse was shallow and barred with mudbanks, and no shipmaster could hope to bring a vessel this far inland in the dark of a moonless night.
‘It’s not the fort!’ Uhtred called to me again. He made it sound like good news, but my fear was that the fort had fallen and its stout timber walls now protected a horde of Northmen. Why should they burn what they could easily defend?
The ground was rising. I could see no enemy in the trees. That did not mean they were not there. How many enemy? Thirty ships? That could easily be a thousand men, and those men must have known that we would ride from Ceaster. If I had been the enemy’s leader I would be waiting just beyond the trees, and that suggested I should slow our advance and send the scouts ahead again, but instead I kicked the horse. My shield was on my back and I left it there, just loosening Serpent-Breath in her scabbard. I was angry and I was careless, but instinct told me that no enemy waited just beyond the woodland. They might have been waiting on the track, but by swerving inland I had given them little time to reform a shield wall on the higher ground. The belt of trees still hid what lay beyond, and I turned the horse and rode west again. I plunged into the leaves, ducked under a branch, let the horse pick its own way through the wood, and then I was through the trees, and I hauled on the reins, slowing, watching, stopping.
No enemy.
My men crashed through the undergrowth and stopped behind me.
‘Thank Christ,’ Finan said.
The fort had not been taken. The white horse of Mercia still flew above the ramparts and with it was Æthelflaed’s goose flag. A third banner hung from the walls, a new banner I had ordered made by the women of Ceaster. It showed the dragon of Wessex, and the dragon was holding a lightning bolt in one raised claw. It was Prince Æthelstan’s symbol. The boy had asked to have a Christian cross on his flag, but I had ordered the lightning bolt embroidered there instead.
I called Æthelstan a boy, but he was a young man now. He had grown tall, and his boyish mischief had been tempered by experience. There were men who wanted Æthelstan dead, and he knew it, and so his eyes had become watchful. He was handsome too, or so Eadith told me, those watchful grey eyes set in a strong-boned face beneath hair black as a raven’s wing. I called him Prince Æthelstan, while those men who wanted him dead called him a bastard.
And many folk believed their lies. Æthelstan had been born to a pretty Centish girl who had died whelping him, but his father was Edward, son of King Alfred and now king of Wessex himself. Edward had since married a West Saxon girl and fathered another son, which made Æthelstan an inconvenience, especially as it was rumoured that in truth he was not a bastard at all because Edward had secretly married the girl from Cent. True or not, and I had good cause to know the story of the first marriage was entirely true, it did not matter because to many in his father’s kingdom Æthelstan was the unwanted son. He had not been raised in Wintanceaster like Edward’s other children, but sent to Mercia. Edward professed to like the boy, but ignored him, and in truth Æthelstan was an embarrassment. He was the king’s eldest son, the ætheling, but he had a younger half-brother whose vengeful mother wanted Æthelstan dead because he stood between her son and the throne of Wessex. But I liked Æthelstan. I liked him enough to want him to reach the throne that was his birthright, but to be king he first needed to learn a man’s responsibilities, and so I had given him command of the fort and of the fleet at Brunanburh.
And now the fleet was gone. It was burned. The hulls were smoking beside the charred remnants of the pier we had spent a year building. We had driven elm pilings deep into the foreshore and thrust the walkway out past the low water mark to make a wharf where a battle fleet could be ever ready. Now the wharf was gone, along with the sleek high-prowed ships. Four of those ships had been stranded above the tide mark and were still smouldering, the rest were just blackened ribs in the shallow water, while, at the pier’s end, three dragon-headed ships lay
