style="font-size:15px;"> ‘You’re to leave Wessex,’ I said stubbornly, ‘you’re to leave Mercia untroubled, you’re to accept missionaries, and you are to give Alfred hostages.’
‘Ah,’ Haesten smiled, ‘the hostages.’ He stared at me for a few heartbeats, then appeared to forget the matter of hostages, waving seawards instead. ‘And where are we to go?’
‘Alfred is paying you to leave Wessex,’ I said, ‘and where you go is not my concern, but make it very far from the reach of my sword.’
Haesten laughed. ‘Your sword, lord,’ he said, ‘rusts in its scabbard.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the south. ‘Wessex burns,’ he said with relish, ‘and Alfred lets you sleep.’ He was right. Far to the south, hazed in the summer sky, were pyres of smoke from a dozen or more burning villages, and those plumes were only the ones I could see. I knew there were more. Eastern Wessex was being ravaged, and, rather than summon my help to repel the invaders, Alfred had ordered me to stay in Lundene to protect that city from attack. Haesten grinned. ‘Maybe Alfred thinks you’re too old to fight, lord?’
I did not respond to the taunt. Looking back down the years I think of myself as young back then, though I must have been all of thirty-five or thirty-six years old that year. Most men never live that long, but I was fortunate. I had lost none of my sword-skill or strength, I had a slight limp from an old battle-wound, but I also had the most golden of all a warrior’s attributes; reputation. But Haesten felt free to goad me, knowing that I came to him as a supplicant.
I came as a supplicant because two Danish fleets had landed in Cent, the easternmost part of Wessex. Haesten’s was the smaller fleet, and so far he had been content to build his fortress and let his men raid only enough to provide themselves with sufficient food and a few slaves. He had even let the shipping in the Temes go unmolested. He did not want a fight with Wessex, not yet, because he was waiting to see what happened to the south, where another and much greater Viking fleet had come ashore.
Jarl Harald Bloodhair had brought more than two hundred ships filled with hungry men, and his army had stormed a half-built burh and slaughtered the men inside, and now his warriors were spreading across Cent, burning and killing, enslaving and robbing. It was Harald’s men who had smeared the sky with smoke. Alfred had marched against both invaders. The king was old now, old and ever more sick, so his troops were supposedly commanded by his son-in-law, Lord Æthelred of Mercia, and by the Ætheling Edward, Alfred’s eldest son.
And they had done nothing. They had put their men on the great wooded ridge at the centre of Cent from where they could strike north against Haesten or south against Harald, and then they had stayed motionless, presumably frightened that if they attacked one Danish army the other would assault their rear. So Alfred, convinced that his enemies were too powerful, had sent me to persuade Haesten to leave Wessex. Alfred should have ordered me to lead my garrison against Haesten, allowed me to soak the marshes with Danish blood, but instead I was instructed to bribe Haesten. With Haesten gone, the king thought, his army might deal with Harald’s wild warriors.
Haesten used a thorn to pick at his teeth. He finally scraped out a scrap of fish. ‘Why doesn’t your king attack Harald?’ he asked.
‘You’d like that,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘With Harald gone,’ he admitted, ‘and that rancid whore of his gone as well, a lot of crews would join me.’
‘Rancid whore?’
He grinned, pleased that he knew something I did not. ‘Skade,’ he said flatly.
‘Harald’s wife?’
‘His woman, his bitch, his lover, his sorceress.’
‘Never heard of her,’ I said.
‘You will,’ he promised, ‘and if you see her, my friend, you’ll want her. But she’ll nail your skull to her hall gable if she can.’
‘You’ve seen her?’ I asked, and he nodded. ‘You wanted her?’
‘Harald’s impulsive,’ he said, ignoring my question. ‘And Skade will goad him to stupidity. And when that happens a lot of his men will look for another lord.’ He smiled slyly. ‘Give me another hundred ships, and I could be King of Wessex inside a year.’
‘I’ll tell Alfred,’ I said, ‘and maybe that will persuade him to attack you first.’
‘He won’t,’ Haesten said confidently. ‘If he turns on me then he releases Harald’s men to spread across all Wessex.’
That was true. ‘So why doesn’t he attack Harald?’ I asked.
‘You know why.’
‘Tell me.’
He paused, wondering whether to reveal all he knew, but he could not resist showing off his knowledge. He used the thorn to scratch a line in the wood of the table, then made a circle that was bisected by the line. ‘The Temes,’ he said, tapping the line, ‘Lundene,’ he indicated the circle. ‘You’re in Lundene with a thousand men, and behind you,’ he tapped higher up the Temes, ‘Lord Aldhelm has five hundred Mercians. If Alfred attacks Harald, he’s going to want Aldhelm’s men and your men to go south, and that will leave Mercia wide open to attack.’
‘Who would attack Mercia?’ I asked innocently.
‘The Danes of East Anglia?’ Haesten suggested just as innocently. ‘All they need is a leader with courage.’
‘And our agreement,’ I said, ‘insists you will not invade Mercia.’
‘So it does,’ Haesten said with a smile,’ ‘except we have no agreement yet.’
But we did. I had to yield the Dragon-Voyager to Haesten, and in her belly lay four iron-bound chests filled with silver. That was the price. In return for the ship and the silver, Haesten promised to leave Wessex and ignore Mercia. He also agreed to accept missionaries and gave me two boys as hostages. He claimed one was his nephew, and that might have been true. The other boy was younger and dressed in fine linen with a lavish gold brooch. He was a good-looking lad with bright blond hair and anxious blue eyes. Haesten stood behind the boy and placed his hands on the small shoulders. ‘This, lord,’ he said reverently, ‘is my eldest son, Horic. I yield him as a hostage,’ Haesten paused, and seemed to sniff away a tear, ‘I yield him as a hostage, lord, to show goodwill, but I beg you to look after the boy. I love him dearly.’
I looked at Horic. ‘How old are you?’ I asked.
‘He is seven,’ Haesten said, patting Horic’s shoulder.
‘Let him answer for himself,’ I insisted. ‘How old are you?’
The boy made a guttural sound and Haesten crouched to embrace him. ‘He is a deaf-mute, Lord Uhtred,’ Haesten said. ‘The gods decreed my son should be deaf and mute.’
‘The gods decreed that you should be a lying bastard,’ I said to Haesten, but too softly for his followers to hear and take offence.
‘And if I am?’ he asked, amused. ‘What of it? And if I say this boy is my son, who is to prove otherwise?’
‘You’ll leave Wessex?’ I asked.
‘I’ll
