beasts and fire would consume the great tree of life, Yggdrasil. In other words everything would stay the same until it was all no more. That was what Rorik thought, and doubtless Ragnar thought so too. Destiny, Ravn said, is everything.
News came in the high summer that the Mercian army was marching at last, and that King Æthelred of Wessex was bringing his army to support Burghred, and so we were to be faced by two of the three remaining English kingdoms. We stopped our raids into the countryside and readied Snotengaham for the inevitable siege. The palisade on the earth wall was strengthened and the ditch outside the wall was deepened. The ships were drawn up on the town’s riverbank far from the walls so they could not be reduced to ash by fire-arrows shot from outside the defences, and the thatch of the buildings closest to the wall was pulled off the houses so that they could not be set ablaze.
Ivar and Ubba had decided to endure a siege because they reckoned we were strong enough to hold what we had taken, but that if we took more territory then the Danish forces would be stretched thin and could be defeated piece by piece. It was better, they reckoned, to let the enemy come and break himself on Snotengaham’s defences.
That enemy came as the poppies bloomed. The Mercian scouts arrived first, small groups of horsemen who circled the town warily, and at midday Burghred’s foot soldiers appeared, band after band of men with spears, axes, swords, sickles and hay-knives. They camped well away from the walls, using branches and turf to make a township of crude shelters that sprang up across the low hills and meadows. Snotengaham lay on the north bank of the Trente, which meant the river was between the town and the rest of Mercia, but the enemy army came from the west, having crossed the Trente somewhere to the south of the town. A few of their men stayed on the southern bank to make sure our ships did not cross the river to land men for foraging expeditions, and the presence of those men meant that the enemy surrounded us, but they made no attempt to attack us. The Mercians were waiting for the West Saxons to come and in that first week the only excitement occurred when a handful of Burghred’s archers crept towards the town and loosed a few arrows at us and the missiles whacked into the palisade and stuck there, perches for birds, and that was the extent of their belligerence. After that they fortified their camp, surrounding it with a barricade of felled trees and thorn bushes. ‘They’re frightened that we’ll make a sally and kill them all,’ Ragnar said, ‘so they’re going to sit there and try to starve us out.’
‘Will they?’ I asked.
‘They couldn’t starve a mouse in a pot,’ Ragnar said cheerfully. He had hung his shield on the outer side of the palisade, one of over twelve hundred bright-painted shields which were displayed there. We did not have twelve hundred men, but nearly all the Danes possessed more than one shield and they hung them all on the wall to make the enemy think our garrison equalled the number of shields. The great lords among the Danes hung their banners on the wall; Ubba’s raven flag and Ragnar’s eagle wing among them. The raven banner was a triangle of white cloth, fringed with white tassels, showing a black raven with spread wings, while Ragnar’s standard was a real eagle’s wing, nailed to a pole, and it was becoming so tattered that Ragnar had offered a golden arm ring to any man who could replace it. ‘If they want us out of here,’ he went on, ‘then they’d best make an assault, and they’d best do it in the next three weeks before their men go home and cut their harvest.’
But the Mercians, instead of attacking, tried to pray us out of Snotengaham. A dozen priests, all robed and carrying cross-tipped poles, and followed by a score of monks carrying sacred banners on cross-staffs, came out from behind their barricades and paraded just beyond bowshot. The flags showed saints. One of the priests scattered holy water, and the whole group stopped every few yards to pronounce curses on us. That was the day the West Saxon forces arrived to support Burghred, whose wife was sister to Alfred and to King Æthelred of Wessex, and that was the first day I ever saw the dragon standard of Wessex. It was a huge banner of heavy green cloth on which a white dragon breathed fire, and the standard-bearer galloped to catch up with the priests and the dragon streamed behind him. ‘Your turn will come,’ Ragnar said quietly, talking to the rippling dragon.
‘When?’
‘The gods only know,’ Ragnar said, still watching the standard. ‘This year we should finish off Mercia, then we’ll go to East Anglia, and after that, Wessex. To take all the land and treasure in England, Uhtred? Three years? Four? We need more ships though.’ He meant we needed more ships’ crews, more shield-Danes, more swords.
‘Why not go north?’ I asked him.
‘To Dalriada and Pictland?’ he laughed. ‘There’s nothing up there, Uhtred, except bare rocks, bare fields and bare arses. The land there is no better than at home.’ He nodded out towards the enemy encampment. ‘But this is good land. Rich and deep. You can raise children here. You can grow strong here.’ He fell silent as a group of horsemen appeared from the enemy camp and followed the rider who carried the dragon standard. Even from a long way off it was possible to see that these were great men for they rode splendid horses and had mail coats glinting beneath their dark red cloaks. ‘The King of Wessex?’ Ragnar guessed.
‘Æthelred?’
‘It’s probably him. We shall find out now.’
‘Find out what?’
‘What these West Saxons are made of. The Mercians won’t attack us, so let’s see if Æthelred’s men are any better. Dawn, Uhtred, that’s when they should come. Straight at us, ladders against the wall, lose some men, but let the rest slaughter us.’ He laughed. ‘That’s what I’d do, but that lot?’ He spat in derision.
Ivar and Ubba must have thought the same thing, for they sent two men to spy on the Mercian and West Saxon forces to see if there was any sign that ladders were being made. The two men went out at night and were supposed to skirt the besiegers’ encampment and find a place to watch the enemy from outside their fortifications, but somehow they were both seen and caught. The two men were brought to the fields in front of the wall and made to kneel there with their hands tied behind their backs. A tall Englishman stood behind them with a drawn sword and I watched as he poked one of the Danes in the back, as the Dane lifted his head and then as the sword swung. The second Dane died in the same way, and the two bodies were left for the ravens to eat. ‘Bastards,’ Ragnar said.
Ivar and Ubba had also watched the executions. I rarely saw the brothers. Ubba stayed in his house much of the time while Ivar, so thin and wraithlike, was more evident, pacing the walls every dawn and dusk, scowling at the enemy and saying little, though now he spoke urgently to Ragnar, gesturing south to the green fields beyond the river. He never seemed to speak without a snarl, but Ragnar was not offended. ‘He’s angry,’ he told me afterwards, ‘because he needs to know if they plan to assault us. Now he wants some of my men to spy on their camp, but after that?’ He nodded at the two headless bodies in the field. ‘Maybe I’d better go myself.’
‘They’ll be watching for more spies,’ I said, not wanting Ragnar to end up headless before the walls.
‘A leader leads,’ Ragnar said, ‘and you can’t ask men to risk death if you’re not willing to risk it yourself.’
‘Let me go,’ I said.
He laughed at that. ‘What kind of leader sends a boy to do a man’s job, eh?’
‘I’m English,’ I said, ‘and they won’t suspect an English boy.’
Ragnar smiled at me. ‘If you’re English,’ he said, ‘then how could we trust you to tell us the truth of what you see?’
I clutched Thor’s hammer. ‘I will tell the truth,’ I said, ‘I swear it. And I’m a Dane
