The Flame Bearer (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 10) (32 page)

Swithun was capering on the sand and screaming up at the ramparts. I was still on board
Guds Moder
, standing in her prow and watching the Sea Gate. If it stayed closed we were doomed. Over a hundred of my men were now ashore, carrying the barrels, crates, and sacks towards the stone archway. Berg climbed the steps to the gate and hammered on the solid wood with his sword hilt, while Finan came to the
Guds Moder
and looked up at me questioningly. ‘No one has thrown a spear yet,’ I said, looking up at the ramparts where I saw men gazing down at us. They were not throwing spears, but nor were they opening the gate, and I prayed that I had not utterly misjudged this day.

‘Open the gate!’ Swithun bellowed. Berg hammered again. A surge of waves crashed the stranded ships together. ‘In the name of the living God!’ Swithun shouted, ‘in the name of the Father, the Son, and the other one! Open the gate!’

I jumped overboard, splashing into the shallows, and looked eastwards and saw all the pursuing ships, both Æthelhelm’s and Einar’s, surging towards us through the tangled breakers of the offshore shallows. Two of them collided and I saw men thrusting spears at each other, but though they fought each other we were the real enemy of both and in a few minutes we would be trapped against Bebbanburg’s wall, we would be outnumbered and we would be slaughtered.

‘The gate!’ Swithun shouted up at the ramparts. ‘I command you in the name of God to open the gate!’

Gerbruht picked up a massive stone and climbed the steps. He evidently planned to batter the gate’s solid timbers into splinters, but even with his great strength we had no chance of entering the fortress before the enemy ships reached us. My son joined him, and, like Berg, beat on the closed gate with his sword’s heavy pommel. Swithun was on his knees now, the long white horsehair whipping about his face. ‘Have pity, Christ!’ he wailed. ‘By Thy great mercy make these men open their gate!’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ my son screamed desperately, ‘open the god-damned gate!’

I was about to order my men to return to the ships, to retrieve their shields and so make a shield wall. If we were to die then we would die in a way that would make the poets marvel and forge a song that would be chanted in Valhalla’s mead hall.

But then the gate opened.

Twelve

Berg and my son were first through the Sea Gate. They did not rush. My son sheathed Raven-Beak and helped the defender drag one of the heavy doors fully open before walking calmly into the gate’s tunnel. Berg kept his drawn sword low. There was a risk in sending a Norseman through the gate first, but Berg had borrowed a cross to wear over his mail, and presumably the guards merely thought he was a Christian who liked to wear his hair long like a Northman. I watched him vanish into the tunnel, closely followed by a group of men carrying sacks on their shoulders.

‘They’re in,’ Finan muttered.

‘Wait,’ I said, not to him, but to reassure myself.

We had rehearsed this moment. We had to capture the Sea Gate without raising suspicion because, beyond it, and approachable only by a steep flight of rock-cut steps, was a higher gate that pierced the wooden palisade guarding the northern edge of the high rock. That higher gate was far less formidable than the big gate below, and it stood open now, but if the enemy shut that gate we would have a desperate struggle to capture it, a struggle that would probably fail. I could see three men standing in the entrance, watching what happened beneath them. None of them seemed alarmed. They slouched, one leaning against the gatepost.

The temptation was to rush that higher gate and hope that my leading men would reach it before the enemy understood what was happening, but the steps were high and steep, and deception had seemed the better tactic, except now I could see just how close our pursuers were to trapping us. The
Ælfswon
was closing on the harbour entrance. I could see red-cloaked spearmen in her bows, water suddenly hiding them as a wave shattered on the pale ship’s prow. A mass of ships followed, all of them our enemies. I looked back to the high steps, but none of my men was in sight yet. ‘Where are you?’ I asked no one.

‘Christ help us,’ Finan prayed under his breath.

Then a man wearing a dark blue cloak and an expensive silver helmet appeared on the far steps. He was climbing, but was in no hurry. ‘That’s not one of our men, is it?’ I asked Finan. I could usually recognise any of my men by their clothes or armour, but I had never seen the long blue cloak before.

‘He’s one of the
Stiorra
’s crew,’ Finan said, ‘Kettil, I think.’

‘Been spending his money, hasn’t he?’ I asked sourly. Kettil was a young Dane with a love of flamboyant clothes. He was fastidious, almost dainty at times, and easily underestimated. He stopped now, turned, and spoke to someone behind him, then my son and Berg caught up with him and the three climbed to the upper gate together. ‘Quick!’ I urged them, and, as if he had heard me, Kettil suddenly drew his seax and leaped up the last three steps. I saw the short-sword ram into the belly of the man leaning against the gatepost, saw Kettil seize the man and haul him backwards before hurling him down the rocky slope. My son and Berg were through the gate, swords drawn now, and the men following them abandoned their straw-filled sacks and surged after them.

‘Go!’ I shouted to the men waiting outside the Sea Gate. ‘Go! Go! Go!’

I ran up the beach. I was alarmed by a man suddenly appearing on the stone rampart above the Sea Gate’s arch, but then saw it was Folcbald, one of my doughty Frisians. There had been no defenders on the fighting platform above that arch, and why should there have been? My cousin believed we were bringing food and reinforcements, and though he had sent men to this northern end of Bebbanburg’s long rock, most of them had crowded at the seaward corner of the ramparts to watch the running fight between Einar’s and Æthelhelm’s ships. Those ships were almost in the harbour channel, and one of my cousin’s men on the ramparts must have recognised the leaping stag banner flying from the
Ælfswon
’s masthead because I saw him cup his hands and shout towards the guards on the higher gate, but those guards were already dead. ‘I was asking them where they wanted the supplies,’ my son told me later, ‘and by the time they realised we weren’t friendly we were killing them.’ The rest of my men were streaming through the Sea Gate’s arch and pounding up the steps beyond. We had done it! We had captured a path through the outer ramparts, up the steep steps, through the inner palisade, and so into the heart of the fortress.

That makes it sound easy, but Bebbanburg is vast and we were few. My son, standing just inside the newly captured upper gate, could see a long open space rising in front of him to a tangle of small halls and storehouses built in the shadow of the high crag where the great hall and a church dominated the fortress. To his left, on the ramparts that faced the sea, there were scores of men and a few women, who had been watching the ships racing towards the harbour, and among them was one group who were distinctive because of the brilliance of their mail, and that finery made him think the group contained my cousin. A priest from among them was the first to run towards the captured gate, then he saw the sprawled corpses and the blood spilled on stone, and thought better of his impulse and turned back to the bright-mailed warriors. He was shouting a warning. More men were joining my son, making a line to defend the captured gate. ‘Bring our shields!’ my son called down to the Sea Gate. ‘We need shields!’

On the beach, men were throwing down the empty barrels and straw-filled sacks and jostling through the Sea Gate’s arch. The men who had stayed on board the ships, pretending to be ready to row to safety in the harbour, now came ashore carrying shields for the men already inside the fortress. Rorik struggled up the beach carrying our banner, my heavy shield, a thick cloak edged in bear fur, a horn, and my fine, wolf-crested helmet. I would fight in my war-glory. Bebbanburg deserved that, but before I could pull on the helmet or clasp the cloak at my throat, I needed to be inside the walls because the enemy’s ships were now dangerously close. I glanced back and saw
Ælfswon
’s pale hull just entering the channel, while the big Scottish ship,
Trianaid
, was not far behind her. Gerbruht ran past me, going back to the ships, and I seized his arm. ‘Get inside! Now!’

‘We need more shields, lord!’

‘Take them from the enemy. Now, inside!’ I raised my voice. ‘All of you, inside!’

The last of my men ran through the gate. The
Ælfswon
was close! I saw her sail fly crazily as the sheets were loosened and her prow turned towards the beach. Armed and mailed warriors were crowded at her bows, staring at me as I kicked an empty barrel out of the archway. I shouted at my men to shut the gate, and a dozen willing men dragged the ponderous doors closed. The weight of those doors was testimony to my cousin’s fears, each was a hand’s breadth thick with the inner face braced by long squared timbers, and both hung from massive hinges that squealed as the two gates were hauled shut. Gerbruht lifted the vast locking bar and dropped it into the brackets with a thunderous crash. Beyond the gate I heard the violent scrape of keel wood on sand, heard the
Ælfswon
’s bows splinter into the abandoned
Eadith
, and knew Æthelhelm’s warriors were leaping onto the beach, but Æthelhelm’s crew, like the three men who had guarded the higher gate, were too late.

I left Gerbruht and a dozen men to defend the Sea Gate. ‘Stay up high,’ I told them, pointing to where Folcbald stood alone on the fighting platform above the masonry arch, ‘and drop rocks on any bastard trying to break in.’

‘Big rocks!’ Gerbruht responded with relish. He shouted at his men to start collecting stones, of which there were plenty, and to carry them up the steps. ‘We turn their brains into pottage, lord,’ he promised me, then turned as a second and even louder splintering noise sounded beyond the gates. I heard men shouting in anger, heard a blade hit another, and reckoned the heavy Scottish ship had rammed the
Ælfswon
. Let the bastards fight it out, I thought, and climbed the steep steps into Bebbanburg.

Into Bebbanburg. Into my home!

For a moment I was overwhelmed. I had dreamed of coming home for my whole life, and now, standing inside Bebbanburg’s ramparts, it did seem like a dream. The sound of the fighting below, the cry of the gulls, the voices of my men faded. I just stared, scarcely daring to believe that I was home again.

It had changed. I knew that, of course, because I had seen the fortress from the hills, but it was still a surprise to see the unfamiliar buildings. At the fort’s summit was a new great hall, twice the size of the one my father had inherited, while just this side of the hall was a church built of stone, its western gable surmounted by a tall wooden cross. There was a squat tower at the church’s eastern end, and I could see a bell hanging in the roofed wooden frame on the tower’s summit. Lower, on a rock ledge between the hall and the seaward ramparts, there was a burned-out building. All that was left were ashes and a few scorched pillars, and I supposed that must have been the granary that had caught fire. Other granaries, storehouses, and barracks, many of them new and all made of timber, filled the rest of the space between the great hall’s high crag and the fortress’s eastern walls. I heard more crashes as the boats piled up in the harbour channel, and glanced behind to see that two more of Æthelhelm’s ships had joined the vicious fight that had broken out on the beach. Einar’s ships were coming fast to support the Scots, who had overrun the
Ælfswon
, but who now faced West Saxon reinforcements. That fight was none of my business so long as Gerbruht and his men held the Sea Gate safe.

My business was to deal with my cousin’s men inside the fortress, and, to my surprise, there were none to be seen. ‘They ran away,’ my son said scornfully. He pointed to the huddle of storehouses built beneath the crag on which the church and the great hall stood. ‘They went to those buildings.’

‘They were on the ramparts?’ I asked.

‘About sixty of them,’ he said, ‘but only about a dozen were in mail.’

So they were not ready, and that was no surprise. Defending a fortress during a siege is a tedious business, mostly spent watching the encircling enemy, who, if they are attempting to starve the defending garrison, will do little except stare back. I had no doubt that my cousin had a large force, all in mail and all heavily armed, guarding the Low Gate, and a similar smaller group at the High Gate, both of which were at the fortress’s southern end, but what did he have to fear from the Sea Gate? It could only be approached from the ocean, or by men taking a long walk along the beach beneath the seaward ramparts, and the sentinels high above would have plenty of time to give warning if an enemy tried either approach. Those sentinels had thought we were friends. Now the first of them were dead.

‘Father?’ my son sounded anxious. I was gazing at the great hall, marvelling at its size, and amazed to find myself standing inside Bebbanburg’s ramparts. ‘Shouldn’t we move?’ my son prompted me. He was right, of course. We had surprised the enemy, who had withdrawn to leave all the northern part of Bebbanburg undefended, yet all I was doing was lingering at the gate.

‘To the hall,’ I said. I had decided we should take the fortress’s highest point and so force my cousin’s men to fight uphill in an attempt to dislodge us. I had put on my helmet, closing the cheek-pieces so that all an enemy would see were my shadowed eyes in the wolf-crested metal. I let Rorik tie the laces that held the cheek-pieces shut, then pulled the heavy cloak over my shoulders and clasped it with a gold brooch. I wore my arm rings, gold and silver, the trophies of battles past. I carried my heavy shield painted with the wolf’s head of Bebbanburg, and I drew Serpent-Breath. ‘To the hall,’ I said again, louder. My men were carrying their shields now. They looked fierce and wild, their faces framed by helmets. They were my hard and savage warriors. ‘To the hall!’