LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Because I liked his uncle,’ I said, and that was true. I had loved Leofric and, for his sake, I would be kind to his nephew.

      ‘Or are you just trying to annoy the king, lord?’ Finan asked, then grinned and strode away without waiting for an answer. ‘Hook and pull, you bastard!’ he shouted at Osferth. ‘Hook and pull!’

      Osferth turned to look at Finan and was immediately struck on the head by an oak cudgel wielded by Clapa. If it had been an axe the blade would have split Osferth’s helmet and cut deep into his skull, but the cudgel just half stunned him, so he fell to his knees.

      ‘Get up, you weakling!’ Finan snarled. ‘Get up, hook and pull!’

      Osferth tried to get up. His pale face looked miserable under the battered helmet that I had given him. He managed to stand, but immediately wobbled and knelt again.

      ‘Give me that,’ Finan said, and snatched the axe out of Osferth’s feeble hands. ‘Now watch! It isn’t difficult to do! My wife could do this!’

      The five new men were facing five of my experienced warriors. The youngsters had been given axes, real weapons, and told to break the shield wall that opposed them. It was a small wall, just the five overlapping shields defended by wooden clubs, and Clapa grinned as Finan approached.

      ‘What you do,’ Finan was speaking to Osferth, ‘is hook the axe blade over the top of the enemy bastard’s shield. Is that so difficult? Hook it, pull the shield down, and let your neighbour kill the earsling behind it. We’ll do it slowly, Clapa, to show how it’s done, and stop grinning.’

      They made the hook and pull in ludicrously slow motion, the axe coming gently overhand to latch its blade behind Clapa’s shield, and Clapa then allowing Finan to pull the shield’s top down towards him. ‘There,’ Finan turned on Osferth when Clapa’s body had been exposed to a blow, ‘that’s how you break a shield wall! Now we’ll do it for real, Clapa.’

      Clapa grinned again, relishing a chance to clout Finan with the cudgel. Finan stepped back, licked his lips, then struck fast. He swung the axe just as he had demonstrated, but Clapa tilted the shield back to take the axe head on the wooden surface and, at the same time, rammed his cudgel under the shield in a savage thrust at Finan’s groin.

      It was always a pleasure to watch the Irishman fight. He was the quickest man with a blade that I ever saw, and I have seen many. I thought Clapa’s lunge would fold him in two and drive him to the grass in agony, but Finan sidestepped, seized the lower rim of the shield with his left hand and jerked it hard upwards to drive the top iron rim into Clapa’s face. Clapa staggered backwards, his nose already red with blood, and the axe was somehow dropped with the speed of a striking snake and its blade was hooked around Clapa’s ankle. Finan pulled, Clapa fell back and now it was the Irishman who grinned. ‘That isn’t hook and pull,’ he said to Osferth, ‘but it works just the same.’

      ‘Wouldn’t have worked if you’d been holding a shield,’ Clapa complained.

      ‘That thing in your face, Clapa?’ Finan said, ‘thing that flaps open and closed? That ugly thing you shovel food into? Keep it shut.’ He tossed the axe to Osferth who tried to snatch the handle out of the air. He missed and the axe thumped into a puddle.

      The spring had turned wet. Rain sheeted down, the river spread, there was mud everywhere. Boots and clothes rotted. What little grain was left in store sprouted and I sent my men hunting or fishing to provide us with food. The first calves were born, slithering bloodily into a wet world. Every day I expected Alfred to come and inspect Coccham’s progress, but in those drenched days he stayed in Wintanceaster. He did send a messenger, a pallid priest who brought a letter sewn into a greased lambskin pouch. ‘If you cannot read it, lord,’ he suggested tentatively as I slit the pouch open, ‘I can …’

      ‘I can read,’ I growled. I could too. It was not an achievement I was proud of, because only priests and monks really needed the skill, but Father Beocca had whipped letters into me when I was a boy, and the lessons had proved useful. Alfred had decreed that all his lords should be able to read, not just so they could stagger their way through the gospel books the king insisted on sending as presents, but so they could read his messages.

      I thought the letter might bring news of Æthelred, perhaps some explanation of why he was taking so long to bring his men to Coccham, but instead it was an order that I was to take one priest for every thirty men when I marched to Lundene. ‘I’m to do what?’ I asked aloud.

      ‘The king worries about men’s souls, lord,’ the priest said.

      ‘So he wants me to take useless mouths to feed? Tell him to send me grain and I’ll take some of his damned priests.’ I looked back to the letter, which had been written by one of the royal clerks, but at the bottom, in Alfred’s bold handwriting, was one line. ‘Where is Osferth?’ the line read. ‘He is to return today. Send him with Father Cuthbert.’

      ‘You’re Father Cuthbert?’ I asked the nervous priest.

      ‘Yes, lord.’

      ‘Well you can’t take Osferth back,’ I said, ‘he’s ill.’

      ‘Ill?’

      ‘He’s sick as a dog,’ I said, ‘and probably going to die.’

      ‘But I thought I saw him,’ Father Cuthbert said, gesturing out of the open door to where Finan was trying to goad Osferth into showing some skill and enthusiasm. ‘Look,’ the priest said brightly, trying to be of assistance.

      ‘Very likely to die,’ I said slowly and savagely. Father Cuthbert turned back to speak, caught my eye and his voice faltered. ‘Finan!’ I shouted, and waited till the Irishman came into the house with a naked sword in his hand. ‘How long,’ I asked, ‘do you think young Osferth will live?’

      ‘He’ll be lucky to survive one day,’ Finan said, assuming I had meant how long Osferth would last in battle.

      ‘You see?’ I said to Father Cuthbert. ‘He’s sick. He’s going to die. So tell the king I shall grieve for him. And tell the king that the longer my cousin waits, the stronger the enemy becomes in Lundene.’

      ‘It’s the weather, lord,’ Father Cuthbert said. ‘Lord Æthelred cannot find adequate supplies.’

      ‘Tell him there’s food in Lundene,’ I said and knew I was wasting my breath.

      Æthelred finally came in mid April, and our joint forces now numbered almost eight hundred men, of whom fewer than four hundred were useful. The rest had been raised from the fyrd of Berrocscire or summoned from the lands in southern Mercia that Æthelred had inherited from his father, my mother’s brother. The men of the fyrd were farmers, and they brought axes or hunting bows. A few had swords or spears, and fewer still had any armour other than a leather jerkin, while some marched with nothing but sharpened hoes. A hoe can be a fearful weapon in a street brawl, but it is hardly suitable to beat down a mailed Viking armed with shield, axe, short-sword and long blade.

      The useful men were my household troops, a similar number from Æthelred’s household, and three hundred of Alfred’s own guards who were led by the grim-faced, looming Steapa. Those trained men would do the real fighting, while the rest were just there to make our force look large and menacing.

      Yet in truth Sigefrid and Erik would know exactly how menacing we were. Throughout the winter and early spring there had been travellers coming upriver from Lundene and some were doubtless the brothers’ spies. They would know how many men we were bringing, how many of those men were true warriors, and those same spies must have reported back to Sigefrid on the day we had last crossed the river to the northern bank.

      We made the crossing upstream of Coccham, and it took all day. Æthelred grumbled about the delay, but the ford we used, which had been impassable all winter, was running high again and the horses had to be coaxed over, and the supplies had to be loaded on the ships for the crossing, though not on board Æthelred’s ship, which he insisted could not carry cargo.

      Alfred

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