LITMIR.BIZ

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Exanceaster’s stone walls. There were more ships than I had suspected, suggesting that a good part of Guthrum’s fleet had survived by staying in the Poole when the storm struck, and a few of those ships were still arriving, their crews rowing up the narrow river. We counted hulls and reckoned there were close to ninety boats, which meant that almost half of Guthrum’s fleet had survived, and I tried to distinguish Wind-Viper’s hull among the others, but we were too far away.

      Guthrum the Unlucky. How well he deserved that name, though in time he came close to earning a better, but for now he had been unfortunate indeed. He had broken out of Werham, had doubtless hoped to resupply his army in Exanceaster and then strike north, but the gods of sea and wind had struck him down and he was left with a crippled army. Yet it was still a strong army and, for the moment, safe behind Exanceaster’s Roman walls.

      I wanted to cross the river, but there were too many Danes by their ships, so we walked further north and saw armed men on the road which led west from Exanceaster, a road which crossed the bridge beneath the city and led over the moors towards Cornwalum, and I stared a long time at those men, fearing they might be Danes, but they were staring east, suggesting that they watched the Danes and I guessed they were English and so we went down from the woods, shields slung on our backs to show we meant no harm.

      There were eighteen men, led by a thegn named Withgil who had been the commander of Exanceaster’s garrison and who had lost most of his men when Guthrum attacked. He was reluctant to tell the story, but it was plain he had expected no trouble and had posted only a few guards on the eastern gate, and when they had seen the approaching horsemen the guards had thought they were English and so the Danes had been able to capture the gate and then pierce the town. Withgil claimed to have made a fight at the fort in the town’s centre, but it was obvious from his men’s embarrassment that it had been a pathetic resistance, if it amounted to any resistance at all, and the probable truth was that Withgil had simply run away.

      ‘Was Odda there?’ I asked.

      ‘Ealdorman Odda?’ Withgil asked. ‘Of course not.’

      ‘Where was he?’

      Withgil frowned at me as if I had just come from the moon. ‘In the north, of course.’

      ‘The north of Defnascir?’

      ‘He marched a week ago. He led the fyrd.’

      ‘Against Ubba?’

      ‘That’s what the king ordered,’ Withgil said.

      ‘So where’s Ubba?’ I demanded.

      It seemed that Ubba had brought his ships across the wide Sæfern sea and had landed far to the west in Defnascir. He had travelled before the storm struck, which suggested his army was intact, and Odda had been ordered north to block Ubba’s advance into the rest of Wessex, and if Odda had marched a week ago then surely Odda the Younger would know that and would have ridden to join his father? Which suggested that Mildrith was there, wherever there was. I asked Withgil if he had seen Odda the Younger, but he said he had neither seen nor heard of him since Christmas.

      ‘How many men does Ubba have?’ I asked.

      ‘Many,’ Withgil said, which was not helpful, but all he knew.

      ‘Lord,’ Cenwulf touched my arm and pointed east and I saw horsemen appearing on the low fields which stretched from the river towards the hill on which Exanceaster is built. A lot of horsemen, and behind them came a standard-bearer and, though we were too far away to see the badge on the flag, the green and white proclaimed that it was the West Saxon banner. So Alfred had come here? It seemed likely, but I was in no mind to cross the river and find out. I was only interested in searching for Mildrith.

      War is fought in mystery. The truth can take days to travel, and ahead of truth flies rumour, and it is ever hard to know what is really happening, and the art of it is to pluck the clean bone of fact from the rotting flesh of fear and lies.

      So what did I know? That Guthrum had broken the truce and had taken Exanceaster, and that Ubba was in the north of Defnascir. Which suggested that the Danes were trying to do what they had failed to do the previous year, split the West Saxon forces, and while Alfred faced one army the other would ravage the land or, perhaps, descend on Alfred’s rear, and to prevent that the fyrd of Defnascir had been ordered to block Ubba. Had that battle been fought? Was Odda alive? Was his son alive? Were Mildrith and my son alive? In any clash between Ubba and Odda I would have reckoned on Ubba. He was a great warrior, a man of legend among the Danes, and Odda was a fussy, worried, greying and ageing man.

      ‘We go north,’ I told Leofric when we were back at Oxton. I had no wish to see Alfred. He would be besieging Guthrum, and if I walked into his camp he would doubtless order me to join the troops ringing the city and I would sit there, wait, and worry. Better to go north and find Ubba.

      So next morning, under a spring sun, the Heahengel’s crew marched north.

      The war was between the Danes and Wessex. My war was with Odda the Younger, and I knew I was driven by pride. The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation and the Danes understood that. Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.

      What do we look for in a lord? Strength, generosity, hardness and success, and why should a man not be proud of those things? Show me a humble warrior and I will see a corpse. Alfred preached humility, he even pretended to it, loving to appear in church with bare feet and prostrating himself before the altar, but he never possessed true humility. He was proud, and men feared him because of it, and men should fear a lord. They should fear his displeasure and fear that his generosity will cease. Reputation makes fear, and pride protects reputation, and I marched north because my pride was endangered. My woman and child had been taken from me, and I would take them back, and if they had been harmed then I would take my revenge and the stink of that man’s blood would make other men fear me. Wessex could fall for all I cared, my reputation was more important and so we marched, skirting Exanceaster, following a twisting cattle track into the hills until we reached Twyfyrde, a small place crammed with refugees from Exanceaster, and none of them had seen or heard news of Odda the Younger, nor had they heard of any battle to the north, though a priest claimed that lightning had struck thrice in the previous night which he swore was a sign that God had struck down the pagans.

      From Twyfyrde we took paths that edged the great moor, walking through country that was deep-wooded, hilly and lovely. We would have made better time if we had possessed horses, but we had none, and the few we saw were old, sick and there were never enough for all our men and so we walked, sleeping that night in a deep combe bright with blossom and sifted with bluebells, and a nightingale sang us to sleep and the dawn chorus woke us and we walked on beneath the white mayflower, and that afternoon we came to the hills above the northern shore and we met folk who had fled the coastal lands, bringing with them their families and livestock, and their presence told us we must soon see the Danes.

      I did not know it but the three spinners were making my fate. They were thickening the threads, twisting them tighter, making me into what I am, but staring down from that high hill I only felt a flicker of fear, for there was Ubba’s fleet, rowing east, keeping pace with the horsemen and infantry who marched along the shore.

      The folk who had fled their homes told us that the Danes had come from the Welsh lands across the wide Sæfern sea, and that they had landed at a place called Beardastopol which lies far in Defnascir’s west, and there they had collected horses and supplies, but then their attack eastwards into the West Saxon heartland had been delayed by the great storm which had wrecked Guthrum’s fleet. Ubba’s ships had stayed in Beardastopol’s harbour until the storm passed and then, inexplicably, they had still waited even when the weather improved and I guessed that Ubba, who would do nothing without the consent of the gods, had cast the runesticks, found them unfavourable, and so waited until the auguries were better. Now the runes must have been good for Ubba’s army was on the move. I counted thirty-six ships which suggested an army of at least twelve or thirteen hundred men.

      ‘Where are they going?’ one of my men asked.

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