The Burning Land. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ said, and I touched the carving of Thor’s hammer which hung at my neck. Gisela smiled reassurance again. ‘I have been lucky with childbirth,’ she went on, which was true. Her births had been easy enough and all three children had lived. ‘You’ll come back to find a new baby crying,’ she said, ‘and you’ll get annoyed.’

      I answered that truth with a swift smile, then pushed through the leather curtain onto the terrace. It was dark. There were a few lights on the river’s far bank where the fort guarded the bridge, and their flames shimmered on the water. In the west there was a streak of purple showing in a cloud rift. The river seethed through the bridge’s narrow arches, but otherwise the city was quiet. Dogs barked occasionally, and there was sporadic laughter from the kitchens. Seolferwulf, moored in the dock beside the house, creaked in the small wind. I glanced downstream to where, at the city’s edge, I had built a small tower of oak at the riverside. Men watched from that tower night and day, watching for the beaked ships that might come to attack Lundene’s wharves, but no warning fire blazed from the tower’s top. All was quiet. There were Danes in Wessex, but Lundene was resting.

      ‘When this is over,’ Gisela said from the doorway, ‘maybe we should go north.’

      ‘Yes,’ I said, then turned to look at the beauty of her long face and dark eyes. She was a Dane and, like me, she was weary of Wessex’s Christianity. A man should have gods, and perhaps there is some sense in acknowledging only one god, but why choose one who loves the whip and spur so much? The Christian god was not ours, yet we were forced to live among folk who feared him and who condemned us because we worshipped a different god. Yet I was sworn to Alfred’s service and so I remained where he demanded that I remain. ‘He can’t live much longer,’ I said.

      ‘And when he dies you’re free?’

      ‘I gave no oath to anyone else,’ I said, and I spoke honestly. In truth I had given another oath, and that oath would come back to find me, but it was so far from my mind that night that I believed I answered Gisela truthfully.

      ‘And when he’s dead?’

      ‘We go north,’ I said. North, back to my ancestral home beside the Northumbrian sea, a home usurped by my uncle. North to Bebbanburg, north to the lands where pagans could live without the incessant nagging of the Christians’ nailed god. We would go home. I had served Alfred long enough, and I had served him well, but I wanted to go home. ‘I promise,’ I told Gisela, ‘on my oath, we will go home.’

      The gods laughed.

      We crossed the bridge at dawn, three hundred warriors with half as many boys who came to tend the horses and carry the spare weapons. The hooves clattered loud on the makeshift bridge as we rode towards the pyres of smoke that told of Wessex being ravaged. We crossed the wide marsh where, at high tide, the river puddles dark among lank grasses, and climbed the gentle hills beyond. I left most of the garrison to guard Lundene, taking only my own household troops, my warriors and oath-men, the fighters I trusted with my own life. I left just six of those men in Lundene to guard my house under the command of Cerdic, who had been my battle-companion for many years and who had almost wept as he had pleaded with me to take him. ‘You must guard Gisela and my family,’ I had told him, and so Cerdic stayed as we rode west, following tracks trampled by the sheep and cattle that were driven to slaughter in Lundene. We saw little panic. Folk were keeping their eyes on the distant smoke, and thegns had placed lookouts on rooftops and high among the trees. We were mistaken for Danes more than once, and there would be a flurry as people ran towards the woods, but once our identity was discovered they would come back. They were supposed to drive their livestock to the nearest burh if danger threatened, but folk are ever reluctant to leave their homes. I ordered whole villages to take their cattle, sheep and goats to Suthriganaweorc, but I doubt they did. They would rather stay until the Danes were breathing down their throats.

      Yet the Danes were staying well to the south, so perhaps those villagers had judged well. We swerved southwards ourselves, climbing higher and expecting to see the raiders at any moment. I had scouts riding well ahead, and it was mid-morning before one of them waved a red cloth to signal he had seen something to alarm him. I spurred to the hill crest, but saw nothing in the valley beneath.

      ‘There were folk running, lord,’ the scout told me. ‘They saw me and hid in the trees.’

      ‘Maybe they were running from you?’

      He shook his head. ‘They were already panicked, lord, when I saw them.’

      We were gazing out across a wide valley, green and lush beneath the summer sun. At its far side were wooded hills and the nearest smoke pyre was beyond that skyline. The valley looked peaceful. I could see small fields, the thatched roofs of a village, a track going west, and the glimmer of a stream twisting between meadows. I saw no enemy, but the heavy-leafed trees could have hidden Harald’s whole horde. ‘What did you see exactly?’ I asked.

      ‘Women, lord. Women and children. Some goats. They were running that way.’ He pointed westwards.

      So the fugitives were fleeing the village. The scout had glimpsed them between the trees, but there was no sign of them now, nor of whatever had made them run. No smoke showed in this long wide valley, but that did not mean Harald’s men were not there. I plucked the scout’s reins, leading him beneath the skyline, and remembered the day, so many years before, when I had first gone to war. I had been with my father, who had been leading the fyrd, the host of men plucked from their farmlands who were mostly armed with hoes or scythes or axes. We had marched on foot and, as a result, we had been a slow, lumbering army. The Danes, our enemy, had ridden. Their ships landed and the first thing they did was find horses, and then they danced about us. We had learned from that. We had learned to fight like the Danes, except that Alfred was now trusting to his fortified towns to stop Harald’s invasion, and that meant Harald was being given the freedom of the Wessex countryside. His men, I knew, would be mounted, except he led too many warriors, and so his raiding parties were doubtless still scouring the land for yet more horses. Our first job was to kill those raiders and take back any captured horses, and I suspected just such a band was at the eastern end of the valley. I found a man in my ranks who knew this part of the country. ‘Edwulf has an estate here, lord,’ he said.

      ‘Edwulf?’

      ‘A thegn, lord.’ He grinned and used a hand to sketch a bulge in front of his stomach. ‘He’s a big fat man.’

      ‘So he’s rich?’

      ‘Very, lord.’

      All of which suggested some Danes had found a plump nest to plunder, and we had found an easy prey to slaughter. The only difficulty was getting three hundred men across the skyline without being seen from the valley’s eastern end, but we discovered a route that was shrouded by trees, and by midday I had my men hidden in the woods to the west of Edwulf’s estate. Then I baited the trap.

      I sent Osferth and twenty men to follow a track that led south towards the smoke pyres. They led a half-dozen riderless horses and went slowly, as if they were tired and lost. I ordered them never to look directly at Edwulf’s hall where, by now, I knew the Danes were busy. Finan, who could move among trees like a ghost, had crept close to the hall and brought back news of a village with a score of houses, a church and two fine barns. ‘They’re pulling down the thatch,’ Finan told me, meaning the Danes were searching the roofs of all the buildings, because some folk hid their treasures in the thatch before they fled. ‘And they’re taking turns on some women.’

      ‘Horses?’

      ‘Just women,’ Finan said, then caught my glance and stopped grinning. ‘They’ve a whole herd of horses in a paddock, lord.’

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