The Empty Throne (The Warrior Chronicles, Book 8) (36 page)

‘Now,’ I called down.

And the men waiting under the arch pushed open the heavy gate.

And so the Norsemen came. They were quick, so quick that the four of my men who unbarred and pushed open the heavy gates were almost caught by Sigtryggr’s horsemen who were first through the arch. Those horsemen must have thought themselves lucky, for no spears were hurled down from the gate’s top. I did not want to check the charge, I wanted as many Norsemen in the blocked street as possible, and so the horses charged through unimpeded, their hooves suddenly loud on the old stone, and behind them came a swarm of warriors on foot. The men pretending to attack the corner bastions now abandoned their feint and streamed towards the open gateway.

And Sigtryggr was now inside the city, and for a heartbeat or two he must have thought he had the great victory, but then he saw the high barrier in front of him and he saw the men waiting on the barricades to the east of the street, and he turned his horse fast, knowing his attack was already doomed, and the horsemen following collided with his stallion. ‘Now,’ I shouted, ‘now! Kill them!’ And the first spears flew.

The horses had almost reached the high barricade that barred the street, and they stood no chance. They screamed as they fell, screamed as the heavy spears came and the throwing axes whirled from three sides. There was blood on the paving stones, thrashing hooves, and riders trying to extricate themselves, and behind them a rush of Norsemen crowding through the gate, still oblivious of the trap beyond.

And this, I thought, is how my father died. How Northumbria fell. How the Danes had started their conquest of Saxon Britain, which had so nearly come to success. Like a flood they had spread south, and their victories brought the Norse in their wake, and now we had to fight back, shire by shire, village by village, taking back our land from south to north.

‘Lord?’ Gerbruht asked eagerly.

‘Yes,’ I said, and Gerbruht and his companions hurled down the thick tree trunks to make an obstacle in the gate, and then, with glee, hurled the shit pots into the milling Norsemen. More Norsemen were crowding outside the gate now, not understanding what delayed them, not comprehending the horror that we had readied for them, and four of my men began hurling down the big stones, each one capable of crushing a helmeted skull.

It was a pitiless, one-sided slaughter. Some of Sigtryggr’s men tried to climb the barricades, but our men were above them, and a climbing man cannot protect himself from a spear thrust, let alone an axe blow. I was watching from the top of the gate, content to let the young men fight this battle. The Norsemen tried to fight back, but only added dead men to the barricades. A dozen warriors tried to break into the long house, hoping to escape through its rear doors. They shattered the street door with axes, but Osferth had already ordered the flaming torches hurled into the room and the thickening smoke and sudden fiery heat drove the men back from the new opening.

Some of Sigtryggr’s men wanted to flee through the open gate, but others were still trying to enter, and Gerbruht and his four companions were hurling down the big stones. Men shouted to clear the gate, others tried to escape the masonry blocks, and then Finan struck from the big barricade that blocked the street.

He had refused to let me fight. ‘You’re not strong enough yet, lord,’ he had insisted.

‘He’s right,’ my son had added.

So I had stayed on the fighting platform above the gate and from there I watched as Finan and my son led fifty men across that high barricade. They jumped down into the street, into a space cleared by spears and stones, a space littered with the bodies of men and horses, a space where they made a shield wall, and the Norsemen, infuriated, wounded, frightened, and confused, turned on them like maniacs. But the furious Norsemen did not form their own shield wall, they just saw an enemy and attacked, and Finan’s overlapping shields and levelled spears met them. ‘Forward!’ Finan shouted. ‘Slow and calm! Forward!’

There was a clash of shield on shield, but the Norsemen, still in panic, were assailed by more missiles coming from the edge of the street, and as soon as Finan’s men had advanced a few paces so more men came from the barricade to support them. From the gate’s top all I could see was that line of overlapping shields with helmets above, and the long spears reaching forward and the whole line advancing slowly, very slowly. It had to be slow. There were too many dead or dying men in their path, and dying horses were still kicking where they lay on the street. To keep the shield wall tight Finan’s men had to step over those obstacles. They were chanting as they came. ‘Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!’ And whenever the Norsemen tried to make a wall to oppose them, so a stone would thump into them from the street’s eastern side. The heat of the burning house was driving them from the west and Finan and my son were leading a killing band from the south.

Then I saw Sigtryggr. I thought he must have died in the first moments of our ambush, or at least been wounded as his horse went down, but there he was, still without a helmet, his long hair darkened by blood. He was in the centre of the enemy, and he bellowed at men to follow him. He shouted at others to clear the gate. He knew that Finan’s grinding shield wall would turn slaughter into butchery, and so he ran, I thought to the gate, but at the last moment he swerved and leaped at the barricade, which blocked the narrow alley running between the north wall and the closest house.

He leaped like a deer. He had lost his shield, but he was still clothed in heavy mail and leather, yet he leaped to the barricade’s top. The swerve had been so sudden, so unexpected, and the leap so fast that the three men guarding that barricade were taken by surprise, and Sigtryggr’s sword took one in the throat and his speed carried him past that man to crash into another. That man went down, and now Norsemen were following Sigtryggr. I saw the third man hack at him with a sword, but his mail stopped the cut, and then that third man screamed as a Norseman chopped with an axe. There were a half-dozen Norsemen on the barricade now, and Gerbruht and his companions hurled stones to stop more men joining them, but Sigtryggr had jumped from the tree trunks onto the steps that led to the ramparts. He was grinning. He was enjoying himself. His men were being crushed, killed, burned, and beaten, but he was a warlord at war, and his eyes were bright with battle-joy as he turned and saw us at the very top of the long steps.

He saw me.

What he saw was another lord of war. He saw a man enriched by battle, a man with a fine helmet and glittering mail, a man whose arms were thick with the rings that come from victory, a man whose face was hidden behind armour plates chased with silver, a man with gold about his neck, a man who had doubtless planned this ambush, and Sigtryggr saw he could snatch one triumph from this disaster and so he came up the steps, still grinning, and Gerbruht, quick-thinking, threw a stone, but Sigtryggr was also quick, so very quick, and almost seemed to dance out of the missile’s way as he came to me. He was young, he was in love with war, he was a warrior. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted as he climbed the last steps.

‘I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I told him.

He shouted for joy. Reputation would be his.

And so he came to kill me.

We have known peace. There are times when we sow our fields and know we will live till harvest, times when all that our children know of war is what the poets sing to them. Those times are rare, yet I have tried to explain to my grandchildren what war is. I am dutiful. I tell them it is bad, that it leads to sorrow and grief, yet they do not believe me. I tell them to walk into the village and see the crippled men, to stand by the graves and hear the widows weep, but they do not believe me. Instead they hear the poets, they hear the pounding rhythm of the songs that quickens like a heart in battle, they hear the stories of heroes, of men, and of women too, who carried blades against an enemy who would kill and enslave us, they hear of the glory of war, and in the courtyards they play at war, striking with wooden swords against wicker shields, and they do not believe that war is an abomination.

And perhaps those children are right. Some priests rant against war, but those same priests are quick to shelter behind our shields when an enemy threatens, and there are always enemies. The dragon-headed ships still come to our coasts, the Scots send their war-bands south, and the Welsh love nothing more than a dead Saxon. If we did as the priests want, if we beat our swords into ploughshares, we would all be dead or enslaved, and so the children must learn the strokes of the sword and grow into the strength needed to hold a shield of iron-rimmed willow against the fury of a savage enemy. And some will learn the joy of battle, the song of the sword, the thrill of danger.

Sigtryggr knew it. He revelled in war. I can still see him coming up those stone stairs, his face alive with joy and his long-sword reaching. Had I looked like that when I killed Ubba? Had Ubba seen my youth and eagerness, my ambition, and in those things seen his death? We leave nothing in this world but bones and reputation, and Sigtryggr, his sword already reaching for me, saw his reputation shining like a bright star in the darkness.

Then he saw Stiorra.

She was behind me, just to one side, her hands held to her mouth. How do I know that? I was not looking at her, but all that happened was told to me later, and she was there, and I was told she clasped her hands to stifle a scream. I had pushed Gerbruht back, not willing to let the Frisian fight my battle, and Stiorra was now closest to me. She uttered a small cry, more of shock than fear, though she should have been terrified, seeing how eagerly death leaped up the steps towards us. Then Sigtryggr saw my daughter and for an instant, for the blink of an eye, he kept his gaze on her. We expect to see men on a battlefield, but a woman? The sight of her distracted him.

It was only a heartbeat’s hesitation, but it was enough. He had been watching my eyes, but seeing Stiorra he kept looking at her for that instant, and in that instant I moved. I was not as fast as I had been, I was not as strong as I once was, but I had been in battle all my life, and I smashed my shield arm to the left, catching the tip of his blade to sweep his sword aside, and he looked back at me, bellowed a challenge and tried to bring the sword back over the top of my shield, but Serpent-Breath was moving, rising, and I moved too, going down a step and still lifting the shield to keep his sword high and he saw my blade coming for his belly and he twisted desperately to avoid the lunge and missed his footing on the steps, and the shout of battle-rage became a cry of alarm as he stumbled. I flicked Serpent-Breath back just as he recovered to thrust his blade beneath my shield. It was a good lunge, a fast move made by a man who had still not regained his balance, and that stroke deserved to rip the flesh from my left thigh, but my shield dropped on the blade and took the force from it as I swept Serpent-Breath, meaning to cut his throat open, and he jerked his head away.

He jerked his head an instant too late. He was still trying to find his balance and his head came back down as his foot slipped on the step, and Serpent-Breath’s sharp tip took his right eye. She took just the eye and the skin on the bridge of his nose. There was a small spurt of blood, a gush of colourless liquid, and Sigtryggr reeled away as Gerbruht pushed me aside to finish the job with his axe. That was when Sigtryggr leaped again, but this time he jumped clean off the rampart steps and down to the ditch, a long fall. Gerbruht shouted in anger at his escape, and thrust the axe at the next man, who took the blow on his shield and staggered back, and then the six Norsemen who had followed their lord fled like him. They jumped from the ramparts. One was impaled on a stake, the others, including Sigtryggr, scrambled up the ditch’s far side.

And thus I defeated Sigtryggr and took one of his eyeballs.

‘I am Odin!’ Sigtryggr roared from the ditch’s edge. He had tipped his ravaged face to look at me with his one eye, and he was smiling! ‘I am Odin,’ he called to me, ‘I have gained wisdom!’ Odin had sacrificed an eye to learn wisdom and Sigtryggr was laughing in his defeat. His men dragged him away from the spears that were being hurled down from the wall, but he turned again when he was just a dozen paces away and saluted me with his sword.

‘I could have killed him if he hadn’t jumped,’ Gerbruht said.

‘He would have gutted you,’ I said, ‘he would have gutted both of us.’ He was a god come to earth, a god of war, but the god had lost, and now he went back out of range of our spears.

Finan had reached the gate. The surviving Norse ran, going back to where they had started their charge, and where they formed a shield wall about their wounded lord. The feint attack on the north-western bastion had long been abandoned, and all the Norse were now on the road, some five hundred men.

They still outnumbered us.

‘Merewalh,’ I ordered, ‘time to release your horsemen.’ I leaned over the inner rampart. ‘Finan? Did you see Eardwulf?’

‘No, lord.’

‘Then we’re not done.’

It was time to take the battle outside the walls.

Merewalh led two hundred horsemen into the fields to the east of the Norsemen. The riders stayed a good distance away. They were a threat. If Sigtryggr tried to retreat to Brunanburh he would be harried all the way and he knew it.

Yet what choice did he have? He could throw men at the walls, but he knew he would never capture Ceaster by assault. His only chance had been treachery, and the chance was gone, leaving fifty or sixty of his men dead in the street. A dozen of Finan’s men were moving among those corpses, slitting the throats of the dying and stripping mail from the dead. ‘A good day for plunder!’ one of them called cheerfully. Another pranced down the blood-soaked stones wearing a helmet crowned with a great eagle’s wing.

‘Was he mad?’ Stiorra asked me.

‘Mad?’

‘Sigtryggr. To come up these steps?’

‘He was battle-mad,’ I said, ‘and you saved my life.’