Eadred said, ‘and gold, and jewels.’
‘Women?’ a man asked.
‘Eoferwic is a sink of corruption,’ Eadred announced, ‘it is a haunt of devils and a place of lascivious women. It is a city of evil that needs to be scoured by a holy army.’ Most of the Danes cheered up at the prospect of lascivious women, and none made any more protest at the thought of attacking Eoferwic.
Once the city was captured, a feat Eadred took for granted, we were to march north and the men of Eoferwic, he claimed, would swell our ranks. ‘Kjartan the Cruel will not face us,’ Eadred declared, ‘because he is a coward. He will go to his fastness like a spider scuttling to his web and he will stay there and we shall let him rot until the time comes to strike him down. Ælfric of Bebbanburg will not fight us, for he is a Christian.’
‘He’s an untrustworthy bastard,’ I growled, and was ignored.
‘And we shall defeat Ivarr,’ Eadred said, and I wondered how our rabble was supposed to beat Ivarr’s shield wall, but Eadred had no doubts. ‘God and Saint Cuthbert will fight for us,’ he said, ‘and then we shall be masters of Northumbria and almighty God will have established Haliwerfolkland and we shall build a shrine to Saint Cuthbert that will astonish all the world.’
That was what Eadred really wanted, a shrine. That was what the whole madness was about, a shrine to a dead saint, and to that end Eadred had made Guthred king and would now go to war with all Northumbria. And next day the eight dark horsemen came.
We had three hundred and fifty-four men of fighting age, and of those fewer than twenty possessed mail, and only about a hundred had decent leather armour. The men with leather or mail mostly possessed helmets and had proper weapons, swords or spears, while the rest were armed with axes, adzes, sickles or sharpened hoes. Eadred grandly called it the Army of the Holy Man, but if I had been the holy man I would have bolted back to heaven and waited for something better to come along.
A third of our army was Danish, the rest was mostly Saxon though there were a few Britons armed with long hunting bows, and those can be fearful weapons, so I called the Britons the Guard of the Holy Man and said they were to stay with the corpse of Saint Cuthbert who would evidently accompany us on our march of conquest. Not that we could start our conquering just yet because we had to amass food for the men and fodder for the horses, of which we had only eighty-seven.
Which made the arrival of the dark horsemen welcome. There were eight of them, all on black or brown horses and leading four spare mounts, and four of them wore mail and the rest had good leather armour and all had black cloaks and black painted shields, and they rode into Cair Ligualid from the east, following the Roman wall that led to the far bank of the river and there they crossed by the ford because the old bridge had been pulled down by the Norsemen.
The eight horsemen were not the only newcomers. Men trickled in every hour. Many of them were monks, but some were fighters coming from the hills and they usually came with an axe or a quarterstaff. Few came with armour or a horse, but the eight dark riders arrived with full war-gear. They were Danes and told Guthred they were from the steading of Hergist who had land at a place called Heagostealdes. Hergist was old, they told Guthred, and could not come himself, but he had sent the best men he had. Their leader was named Tekil and he looked to be a useful warrior for he boasted four arm rings, had a long sword and a hard, confident face. He appeared to be around thirty years old, as were most of his men, though one was much younger, just a boy, and he was the only one without arm rings. ‘Why,’ Guthred demanded of Tekil, ‘would Hergist send men from Heagostealdes?’
‘We’re too close to Dunholm, lord,’ Tekil answered, ‘and Hergist wishes you to destroy that nest of wasps.’
‘Then you are welcome,’ Guthred said, and he allowed the eight men to kneel to him and swear him fealty. ‘You should bring Tekil’s men into my household troops,’ he said to me later. We were in a field to the south of Cair Ligualid where I was practising those household troops. I had picked thirty young men, more or less at random, and made sure that half were Danes and half were Saxons, and I insisted they made a shield wall in which every Dane had a Saxon neighbour, and now I was teaching them how to fight and praying to my gods that they never had to, for they knew next to nothing. The Danes were better, because the Danes are raised to sword and shield, but none had 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
