The Flame Bearer (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 10) (34 page)

And then the mess grew worse. Because I had forgotten about Waldhere.

Waldhere was the commander of my cousin’s household troops, the man who had confronted me on the day Einar’s ships had first arrived at Bebbanburg. I knew him to be a dangerous enemy, a warrior almost as experienced as I was myself. He had not fought in the great shield wall battles that had driven the Danes out of Wessex and harried them across Mercia, but he had spent years confronting the savage Scottish raiders who thought Bebbanburg’s land was their larder. It takes a hard man to fight the Scots for so long and to survive, and there was many a widow in Constantin’s country who cursed Waldhere’s name. I had last seen him at Dumnoc, where, carried south by Ieremias, he had gone to escort Æthelhelm and Æthelhelm’s daughter Ælswyth back to Bebbanburg. They had travelled north on the
Ælfswon
, the largest of the ealdorman’s ships and the first of the West Saxon vessels to run ashore in Bebbanburg’s harbour channel where she had been rammed and attacked by the Scottish
Trianaid
. Moments later more ships had piled up in the narrow channel, provoking a three-sided fight between Scots, Norsemen, and West Saxons. It had been chaos, and I had thought that chaos could only assist me.

But I had forgotten about Waldhere, and forgotten that he knew Bebbanburg much better than I did. I had only spent the first nine years of my childhood in the fortress, but Waldhere had lived here much longer, his life dedicated to keeping Bebbanburg safe from enemies. Safe from me.

As Waldhere approached the harbour he had seen what was about to happen, that the
Ælfswon
would be attacked by the big
Trianaid
, which, in turn would be assaulted by the ships that crowded behind, and, intent on avoiding that chaotic bloodletting, he had assembled Æthelhelm, Ælswyth, and her maids, with the best part of Æthelhelm’s red-cloaked household troops on the
Ælfswon
’s prow. The
Trianaid
had rammed the
Ælfswon
, stoving in one side and crushing warriors beneath the heavy Scottish prow, then the struggle began as the Scots leaped onto the half-wrecked
Ælfswon
, and the savagery spread as more ships piled into the tangle and as the fighting extended onto both shores of the harbour channel. Waldhere ignored the whole struggle, instead leaping from the
Ælfswon
’s bows and leading his group first westwards, then southwards, taking them along the rocky beach under Bebbanburg’s landward ramparts. Gerbruht saw them go. ‘I thought they were running away,’ he was to tell me.

But Waldhere knew Bebbanburg, and he knew that no attack was ever likely on those landward ramparts that were built on the slope of the crag where it rose from the harbour’s water. Even if attackers landed from ships they would find the climb dauntingly steep, but all the same there was an entrance there. It was not a gate, there were no steps, just two massive oak trunks that looked exactly like the rest of the wooden palisade. That palisade was built on rock and was not buried in the ground like most ramparts, but instead the massive oak trunks rested directly on the crag’s stone. The wall was old and needed constant repair. Those repairs were expensive because the great trunks had to be brought from deep inland, or else shipped from the south, and it was a week’s work to replace even one of them. ‘One day,’ my father had said, ‘we’ll make the wall of stone. The whole wall! All the way around.’ My cousin had started that work, but never finished it, and the west-facing ramparts above the harbour, which was the least likely place to be attacked, was where the two trunks stood. They were not pegged to the rest of the wall nor strengthened by lateral beams, which stiffened the rest of the ramparts, instead they were held in place by massive iron nails that were driven into the high fighting platform, but by seizing their lower parts the two trunks could be pulled outwards to make a small hole through which a man could crawl. The approach to the two oak trunks was steep and made even less inviting because the fortress’s latrines were on the ramparts above. When the wind came from the west the stench was dreadful, but that same stench kept folk away from the secret entrance. A besieging enemy would watch Bebbanburg’s gates, not knowing that the garrison had another place from which men could sally or, as on that day, infiltrate the fortress.

I knew of the old sallyport beneath the sea-facing ramparts. My father had made it, and I had considered the chances of sneaking into the fortress by climbing from the beach to that secret opening. That was how I had captured Dunholm, by ignoring the massive defences at the fort’s entrance and slipping men through a small gate that gave the garrison access to a spring, a gate the defenders had thought too difficult to approach. But my father’s old sallyport truly was too difficult. Reaching it meant a long and steep climb from the beach, almost impossible for a man in mail carrying a shield and weapons. Besides, once the fortress was under attack, it was a simple job to block the sallyport from the inside, and so I had dismissed the idea of even trying to use it.

But I did not know of the new entrance on the western side. I had no men spying for me inside Bebbanburg, no one to tell me of the new sallyport, or to tell me that the new one was even more dangerous than the old because, once through the gap, a man was hidden by the rock that climbed sharply inside the wall. So now, unknown to me, Waldhere dragged the trunks outwards and Æthelhelm and his red-cloaked warriors filed through. They gathered in the shadowed space beneath the fighting platform, close to the great hall, and we did not see them, smell them, hear them, or know they were there.

Because we were trying to clear up the first mess I had made. We were fighting to regain the Sea Gate.

Gerbruht had never impressed me as a clever man. He was huge, he was strong, he was loyal, and he was cheerful and there were very few men I would rather have beside me in a shield wall, but he was not a quick thinker like Finan, nor decisive like my son. I had left him to guard the Sea Gate because I had thought it a straightforward task, well suited to Gerbruht’s stubborn, slow nature, and I had never anticipated that he would have to make a swift and crucial decision.

But he made it. And he made the right decision.

Neither Æthelhelm’s men, nor the Scots with their Norse allies, had attempted to storm the Sea Gate. It would have been a massive task, though not impossible if they had used the ships’ masts as makeshift ladders. That would have taken the rest of the day to organise, and they had no time, they were too busy fighting each other, and the few who had strayed up the rock steps had been met by more rocks hurled down by Gerbruht and his men high above.

Now, suddenly, Gerbruht saw my cousin’s men streaming down from the higher gate and he understood the danger immediately. The panicked men could unbar the lower gate and let in a horde of enemy, and so Gerbruht abandoned his high platform and took his men down to make a shield wall in the archway.

My cousin’s men had been bloodied in the alleyways where they had been torn apart by the sheer savagery of our assault, and now they were looking for refuge. They could not reach the great hall, I had barred their route to the southern gates, where, I suspected, my cousin was gathering his forces, and so they had fled northwards. The great stone fortifications of the Sea Gate promised them safety, and so they headed that way, and then they saw Gerbruht’s wall forming. It was a small shield wall, but it filled the width of the gate’s archway and it offered death to the first men brave enough to make an assault. The fugitives hesitated. No one led them. No one told them what to do. The church bell was still ringing its panic, there were sounds of fighting beyond the Sea Gate, and so, leaderless and scared, they paused.

And Finan struck them from behind.

Finan, knowing better than anyone what slaughter would follow if the Sea Gate was opened, did not wait to form his men into a wall, instead he just fell on the enemy with Irish fury, keening his crazed battle song. He had the advantage of the high ground, he sensed the enemy’s fear, and he gave them no time to understand the advantage they possessed. They had allies in Æthelhelm’s hard-pressed survivors beyond the gate, and all they needed to do was overcome Gerbruht’s dozen men, unbar the doors, and push them outwards, but instead they died. Finan’s men, with the cruelty of warriors finding a terrified enemy at their mercy, showed none. They turned the rock steps into a flight of blood, and Gerbruht, seeing the slaughter, led his men out of the arch and attacked uphill. By the time I reached the upper gate my cousin’s men were all either dead or captive. ‘Do we want prisoners?’ Finan shouted up to me. There were about thirty men kneeling, most holding out their hands to show they had no weapons. About half that many were dead or dying, cut down by Finan’s ferocious attack. Not one of his men, so far as I could see, had even been wounded.

I did not want prisoners, but nor did I want to kill these men, some of whom were scarcely more than boys. Many were doubtless the sons of Bebbanburg’s tenants, or the grandsons of folk I had known as a child. If I won this day then they would be my people, my tenants, even my warriors, but before I could shout an answer to Finan there was a hammering on the gate. ‘Gerbruht!’ I shouted. ‘Get your men back on the fighting platform!’

‘Yes, lord!’

‘And Gerbruht! Well done!’

A voice shouted from outside the Sea Gate. ‘For pity’s sake! Let us in!’ The man beat on the gate again. I suspected that he was a survivor from among those of Æthelhelm’s men who had stayed to defend the ships and who had been cut down by the Scots and by Einar’s Norsemen. I shared Finan’s pity for them. They had been brought to this raw coast only to find themselves thrown into a merciless battle against savage northerners. It would have been a mercy to open the gate and let the last survivors inside, and some of those West Saxons might even have fought for me, but that was a risk I dared not take. The Sea Gate had to stay closed, and that meant Æthelhelm’s men trapped outside the wall must die and that our prisoners had to remain inside the fortress. ‘Finan,’ I called, ‘strip the prisoners naked! Throw their weapons over the wall!’ I would have preferred to send the captives out of the fortress, but that would have condemned them. Stripping and disarming them would be enough. It would leave them helpless.

The hammering on the gate had stopped and I heard a bellow of rage as Gerbruht hurled a stone from the ramparts. A man shouted a curse in Norse, which told me that only Einar’s men and the Scots, both of them my cousin’s enemy, were now outside the Sea Gate. ‘Guard it well!’ I shouted to Gerbruht.

‘They’ll not get inside, lord!’ he called back. I believed him.

‘Father,’ my son had pushed through the men crowded at the upper gate and touched my mailed arm, ‘you’d better come.’

I followed him back through the upper gate to see that a shield wall had formed across the centre of the fortress. The wall began just beneath the high crag on which the church and the great hall were built and stretched all the way to the sea-facing ramparts. A banner flew at the line’s centre, my banner of the wolf’s head, and beneath it was my cousin who had at last assembled his forces. His men were clashing their swords against their shields and stamping their feet. There were still more men making a smaller shield wall by the church, and both walls were uphill of us. ‘How many?’ I asked.

‘A hundred and eighty on the lower rock,’ my son said, ‘and thirty up by the church.’

‘Just about equal numbers then,’ I said.

‘It’s a good thing you can’t count,’ my son said, sounding more amused than he had any right to be, ‘and there’s more of the bastards,’ he added as a large group of men pushed into the centre of my cousin’s shield wall, which spread apart to make room for them. I guessed those men had been garrisoning the High Gate, and my cousin had summoned them, trusting the guards at the Low Gate to deter any assault by the Scots. I could see my cousin more clearly now. He had mounted a horse and was joined by three other riders, all of them behind the banner at the centre of the larger shield wall on the lower rock. ‘He’s become fat,’ I said.

‘Fat?’

‘My cousin.’ He looked heavy on his big horse. He was too far away for me to see his face framed by his helmet, but I could see he was just staring at us as his men clashed their blades against their shields. ‘We’ll take him first,’ I said vengefully. ‘We’ll kill the bastard and see if his men have any fight left in them.’

My son said nothing for a heartbeat. Then I saw he was staring at Bebbanburg’s summit. ‘Oh, sweet galloping Christ,’ he said.

Because the leaping stag had come to Bebbanburg.

‘How in God’s name did they get inside?’ my son asked, no amusement in his voice now, only astonishment, because Æthelhelm’s red-cloaked men were appearing on the fortress’s high crag. They were in mail, they made a new shield wall, and they cheered when they saw how few we were. Finan’s men were still out of their sight, down the steps by the Sea Gate, and Æthelhelm’s troops must have believed we numbered fewer than a hundred men. ‘How in God’s name did they get inside?’ my son asked again.

I had no answer, so said nothing. Instead I counted the red-cloaked warriors and saw there were at least sixty men, and still more men were coming from the fortress’s southern end to join my cousin’s shield wall. My cousin, heartened by the arrival of his ally, was shouting at his men, as were two priests who harangued the thickening wall, doubtless telling them it was the nailed god’s wish that we should all die. Above him, on the heights of the fortress, Æthelhelm stood tall in a dark cloak and bright mail. He too had a priest, who walked along the growing shield wall offering his god’s blessing on the household warriors who were readying to kill us.

There were vengeful Norsemen waiting outside the gate, and death making two shield walls inside. I had fought badly so far, leading my men in wasteful attacks, and then been forced into a panicked retreat. Worse, I had given my enemy time to recover from his surprise and form his troops, but suddenly, as I saw that enemy ready and waiting, I felt alive. I had been wounded in the right thigh, stabbed by the spearman who had died screaming in the alley, and I touched my fingers to the wound and they came away bloody. I touched the blood to my cheek-pieces and then held the fingers to the sky. ‘For you, Thor! For you!’