LITMIR.BIZ

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into the winter willows, and returned to their feast when we had passed. There were more corpses piled by the bridge where the young folk captured for slavery were being made to dig a grave. The Danes guarding them were drunk and none challenged us as we went across the wooden span and under the gate arch that was still hung with holly and ivy in celebration of Christmas.

      The fires were dying now, damped by rain or else extinguished by the Danes who were ransacking houses and churches. I stayed in the narrowest alleys, edging past a smithy, a hide-dealer’s shop and a place where pots had been sold. Our boots crunched through the pottery shards. A young Dane was vomiting in the alley’s entrance and he told me that Guthrum was in the royal compound where there would be a feast that night. He straightened up, gasping for breath, but was sober enough to offer me a bag of coins for Iseult. There were women screaming or sobbing in houses and their noise was making Leofric angry, but I told him to stay quiet. Two of us could not free Cippanhamm, and if the world had been turned upside down and it had been a West Saxon army capturing a Danish town it would have sounded no different. ‘Alfred wouldn’t allow it,’ Leofric said sullenly.

      ‘You’d do it anyway,’ I said. ‘You’ve done it.’

      I wanted news, but none of the Danes in the street made any sense. They had come from Gleawecestre, leaving long before dawn, they had captured Cippanhamm and now they wanted to enjoy whatever the town offered. The big church had burned, but men were raking through the smoking embers looking for silver. For lack of anywhere else to go we climbed the hill to the Corncrake tavern where we always drank and found Eanflæd, the red-headed whore, being held on a table by two young Danes while three others, none of them more than seventeen or eighteen, took turns to rape her. Another dozen Danes were drinking peaceably enough, taking scant notice of the rape.

      ‘You want her,’ one of the young men said, ‘you’ll have to wait.’

      ‘I want her now,’ I said.

      ‘Then you can jump in the shit-pit,’ he said. He was drunk. He had a wispy beard and insolent eyes. ‘You can jump in the shit-pit,’ he said again, evidently liking the insult, then pointed to Iseult, ‘and I’ll have her while you drown.’ I hit him, breaking his nose and spattering his face with blood, and while he gasped I kicked him hard between the legs. He went down, whimpering, and I hit a second man in the belly while Leofric loosed all his day’s frustration in a savage attack on another. The two who had been holding Eanflæd turned on us and one of them squealed when Eanflæd grabbed his hair and hooked sharp fingernails into his eyes. Leofric’s opponent was on the floor and he stamped on the boy’s throat and I head-slapped my boy until I had him by the door, then I thumped another in the ribs, rescued Eanflæd’s victim and broke his jaw, then went back to the lad who had threatened to rape Iseult. I ripped a silver loop from his ear, took off his one arm ring and stole his pouch that clinked with coins. I dropped the silver into Eanflæd’s lap, then kicked the groaning man between the legs, did it again, and hauled him out into the street.

      ‘Go jump in a shit-pit,’ I told him, then slammed the door. The other Danes, still drinking on the tavern’s far side, had watched the fight with amusement, and now gave us ironic applause.

      ‘Bastards,’ Eanflæd said, evidently talking of the men we had driven away. ‘I’m sore as hell. What are you two doing here?’

      ‘They think we’re Danes,’ I said.

      ‘We need food,’ Leofric said.

      ‘They’ve had most of it,’ Eanflæd said, jerking her head at the seated Danes, ‘but there might be something left in the back.’ She tied her girdle. ‘Edwulf’s dead.’ Edwulf had owned the tavern. ‘And thanks for helping me, you spavined bastards!’ She shouted this at the Danes, who did not understand her and just laughed at her, then she went towards the back room to find us food, but one of the men held out a hand to stop her.

      ‘Where are you going?’ he asked her in Danish.

      ‘She’s going past you,’ I called.

      ‘I want ale,’ he said, ‘and you? Who are you?’

      ‘I’m the man who’s going to cut your throat if you stop her fetching food,’ I said.

      ‘Quiet, quiet!’ an older man said, then frowned at me. ‘Don’t I know you?’

      ‘I was with Guthrum at Readingum,’ I said, ‘and at Werham.’

      ‘That must be it. He’s done better this time, eh?’

      ‘He’s done better,’ I agreed.

      The man pointed at Iseult. ‘Yours?’

      ‘Not for sale.’

      ‘Just asking, friend, just asking.’

      Eanflæd brought us stale bread, cold pork, wrinkled apples and a rock-hard cheese in which red worms writhed. The older man carried a pot of ale to our table, evidently as a peace offering, and he sat and talked with me and I learned a little more of what was happening. Guthrum had brought close to three thousand men to attack Cippanhamm. Guthrum himself was now in Alfred’s hall and half his men would stay in Cippanhamm as a garrison while the rest planned to ride either south or west in the morning. ‘Keep the bastards on the run, eh?’ the man said, then frowned at Leofric. ‘He doesn’t say much.’

      ‘He’s dumb,’ I said.

      ‘I knew a man who had a dumb wife. He was ever so happy.’ He looked jealously at my arm rings. ‘So who do you serve?’

      ‘Svein of the White Horse.’

      ‘Svein? He wasn’t at Readingum. Or at Werham.’

      ‘He was in Dyflin,’ I said, ‘but I was with Ragnar the Older then.’

      ‘Ah, Ragnar! Poor bastard.’

      ‘I suppose his son’s dead now?’ I asked.

      ‘What else?’ the man said. ‘Hostages, poor bastards.’ He thought for a heartbeat then frowned again. ‘What’s Svein doing here? I thought he was coming by ship?’

      ‘He is,’ I said. ‘We’re just here to talk to Guthrum.’

      ‘Svein sends a dumb man to talk to Guthrum?’

      ‘He sent me to talk,’ I said, ‘and sent him,’ I jerked a thumb at the glowering Leofric, ‘to kill people who ask too many questions.’

      ‘All right, all right!’ The man held up a hand to ward off my belligerence.

      We slept in the stable loft, warmed by straw, and we left before dawn, and at that moment fifty West Saxons could have retaken Cippanhamm for the Danes were drunk, sleeping, and oblivious to the world. Leofric stole a sword, axe and shield from a man snoring in the tavern, then we walked unchallenged out of the western gate. In a field outside we found over a hundred horses, guarded by two men sleeping in a thatched hut, and we could have taken all the beasts, but we had no saddles or bridles and so, reluctantly, I knew we must walk. There were four of us now, because Eanflæd had decided to come with us. She had swathed Iseult in two big cloaks, but the British girl was still shivering.

      We walked west and south along a road that twisted through small hills. We were heading for Baðum, and from there I could strike south towards Defnascir and my son, but it was clear the Danes were already ahead of us. Some must have ridden this way the previous day for in the first village we reached there were no cocks crowing, no sound at all, and what I had taken for a morning mist was smoke from burned cottages. Heavier smoke showed ahead, suggesting the Danes might already have reached Baðum, a town they knew well for they had negotiated one of their truces there. Then, that afternoon, a horde of mounted Danes appeared on the road behind us and we were driven west into the hills to find a hiding place.

      We wandered for a week. We found shelter in hovels. Some were deserted while others still had frightened folk, but every short winter’s day was smeared with smoke as the Danes ravaged Wessex. One day we discovered a cow, trapped in its byre in an otherwise deserted homestead.

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