‘We’re here to bring the hunters across the river,’ he said, ‘in case the prey crosses.’
I pretended to look pleased. ‘So you can take us across?’
‘The horses can swim?’
‘They’ll have to,’ I said. It was easier to make horses swim than try to coax them on board a ship. ‘We’ll fetch the others,’ I said, turning my horse.
‘The others?’ Ivann was immediately suspicious again.
‘Her maids,’ I said, jerking a thumb at Sigunn, ‘two of my servants and some packhorses. We left them at a steading.’ I waved vaguely westward and indicated that my companions should follow me.
‘You could leave the girl here!’ Ivann suggested hopefully, but I pretended not to hear him and rode back to the trees.
‘The bastards,’ I said to Finan when we were safely hidden again.
‘Bastards?’
‘Eohric lured us here so Sigurd could slaughter us,’ I explained. ‘But Sigurd doesn’t know which bank of the river we’ll use, so those boats are there to bring his men over if we stay on this side.’ I was thinking hard. Maybe the ambush was not at Eanulfsbirig at all, but farther east, at Huntandon. Sigurd would let me cross the river and not attack until I was at the next bridge, where Eohric’s forces would provide an anvil for his hammer. ‘You,’ I pointed at Sihtric, who gave me a surly nod. ‘Take Ludda,’ I said, ‘and find Osferth. Tell him to come here with every warrior he has. The monks and priests are to stop on the road. They’re not to take a step farther, understand? And when you come back here, make damned sure those men in the boats don’t see you. Now go!’
‘What do I tell Father Willibald?’ Sihtric asked.
‘That he’s a damned fool and that I’m saving his worthless life. Now go! Hurry!’
Finan and I had dismounted and I gave Sigunn the reins of the horses. ‘Take them to the far side of the wood,’ I said, ‘and wait.’ Finan and I lay at the wood’s edge. Ivann was clearly worried about us because he stared towards our hiding place for some minutes, and then finally walked back to the moored ship.
‘So what are we doing?’ Finan asked.
‘Destroying those two ships,’ I said. I would have liked to have done more. I would have liked to ram Serpent-Breath down King Eohric’s fat throat, but we were the prey here, and I did not doubt that Sigurd and Eohric had more than enough men to crush us with ease. They would know precisely how many men I had. Doubtless Sigurd had placed scouts near Bedanford, and those men would have told him exactly how many horsemen rode towards his trap. Yet he would not want us to see those scouts. He wanted us to cross the bridge at Eanulfsbirig, and then get behind us so that we would be caught between his forces and King Eohric’s men. It would have been a raw slaughter on a winter’s day if that had happened. And if, by chance, we had taken the river’s northern bank, then Ivann’s ships would have ferried Sigurd’s men across the Use so that they could get behind us once we had passed. He had made no attempt to hide the ships. Why should he? He would assume I would see nothing threatening in the presence of two East Anglian ships on an East Anglian river. I would have marched into his trap on either bank and news of the slaughter would have reached Wessex in a few days, but Eohric would have sworn that he knew nothing of the massacre. He would blame it all on the pagan Sigurd.
Instead I would hurt Eohric and taunt Sigurd, then spend Yule at Buccingahamm.
My men came in the middle of the afternoon. The sun was already low in the west where it would be dazzling Ivann’s men. I spent some moments with Osferth, telling him what he must do and then sending him with six men to rejoin the monks and the priests. I gave him time to reach them, and then, as the sun sank even lower in the winter sky, I sprang my own trap.
I took Finan, Sigunn and seven men. Sigunn rode, while the rest of us walked, leading our horses. Ivann expected to see a small group, so that is what I showed him. He had taken his ship back across the river, but his oarsmen now rowed the long hull back to our bank. ‘He had twenty men in the ship,’ I said to Finan, thinking how many we might have to kill.
‘Twenty in each ship, lord,’ he said, ‘but there’s smoke in that copse,’ he nodded across the river, ‘so he could have more just warming themselves.’
‘They won’t cross the river to be killed,’ I said. The ground was soft underfoot, squelching with each step. There was no wind. Beyond the river a few elms still had pale yellow leaves. Fieldfares flew from the meadow there. ‘When we start killing,’ I told Sigunn, ‘you take our horses’ reins and ride back to the wood.’
She nodded. I had brought her because Ivann expected to see her and because she was beautiful and that meant he would watch her rather than look towards the trees where my horsemen now waited. I hoped they were hidden, but I dared not look back.
Ivann had clambered up the bank and tethered the ship’s bows to a poplar’s trunk. The current swept the hull downstream, which meant the men aboard could leap ashore easily enough. They were twenty of them, and we were only eight, and Ivann watched us, and I had told him we were bringing maidservants and he could not see them, but men see what they want to see and he only had eyes for Sigunn. He waited unsuspectingly. I smiled at him. ‘You serve Eohric?’ I called as we drew near.
‘I do, lord, as I told you.’
‘And he would kill Uhtred?’ I asked.
The first flicker of doubt crossed his face, but I was still smiling. ‘You know about…’ He began a question, but never finished it because I had drawn Serpent-Breath, and that was the signal for the rest of my men to spur their horses from the trees. A line of horsemen, hooves throwing water and clods of earth, horsemen holding spears and axes and shields, death’s threat in a winter afternoon, and I swung my blade at Ivann, just wanting to drive him away from the boat’s mooring line, and he stumbled to fall between the ship and the bank.
And it was over.
The bank was suddenly milling with horsemen, their breath smoky in the cold bright light, and Ivann was shouting for mercy while his crew, taken by surprise, made no attempt to draw their weapons. They had been cold, bored and off-guard, and the appearance of my men, helmed and carrying shields, their blades sharp as the frost that still lingered in shadowed places, had terrified them.
The crew of the second ship watched the first surrender, and they had no fight either. They were Eohric’s men, Christians mostly, some Saxon and some Dane, and they were not filled with the same ambition as Sigurd’s hungry warriors. Those Danish warriors, I knew, were somewhere to the east, waiting for monks and horsemen to cross the river, but these men on the ships had been reluctant participants. Their job had been to wait in case they were needed, and all of them would rather have been in the hall by the fire. When I offered them life in exchange for surrender they were pathetically grateful, and the crew of the far ship shouted that they would not fight. We rowed Ivann’s boat across the river, and so captured both vessels without killing a soul. We stripped Eohric’s men of their mail, their weapons and their helmets, and I took that plunder back across the river. We left the shivering men on the far bank, all but for Ivann, who I took prisoner, and we burned the two ships. The crews had lit a fire in the trees, a place to warm themselves, and we used those flames to destroy Eohric’s ships. I waited just long enough to see the fire catch properly, to watch the flames eat at the rowers’ benches and the smoke begin to thicken in the still air,
