The Lords of the North (16 page)

'No!'

Then where?'

Nowhere. I had ridden away from Wessex and would not ride back except to fetch my hoard
when I had a safe place to bring it. Fate had me in its grip and fate had given me enemies.
Everywhere.

We forded the River Wiire well west of Dunholm and then marched the army to a place the
locals called Cuncacester which lay athwart the Roman road five miles north of Dunholm. The
Romans had built a fort at Cuncacester, and the walls were still there, though by now they
were little more than worn-down banks in green fields. Guthred announced the army would stay
close to the decrepit fort, and I said the army should keep marching south until it reached
Dunholm, and we had our first argument, because he would not change his mind.

'What is the purpose, lord,' I asked, 'of keeping an army two hours' march from its
enemy?'

'Eadred says we must stop here.'

'Abbot Eadred? He knows how to take fortresses?'

'He had a dream,' Guthred said.

'A dream?'

'Saint Cuthbert wants his shrine here,' Guthred said. 'Right there,' he pointed to a small
hill where the coffined saint was surrounded by praying monks.

It made no sense to me. The place was undistinguished, except for the remnants of the
fort. There were hills, fields, a couple of farms and a small river, altogether a pleasant
enough spot, though why it was the right place for the saint's shrine was quite beyond my
understanding. 'Our job, lord,' I said, 'is to capture Dunholm. We don't do that by
building a church here.'

'But Eadred's dreams have always been right,' Guthred said earnestly, 'and Saint Cuthbert
has never failed me.'

I argued and I lost. Even Ivarr supported me, telling Guthred that we had to take the army
closer to Dunholm, but Abbot Eadred's dream meant that we camped at Cuncacester and the
monks immediately began working on their church. The hilltop was levelled, trees were
felled, and Abbot Eadred planted stakes to show where the walls should go. He wanted stone for
its foundations, and that meant searching for a quarry, or better still an old Roman
building that could be pulled down, but it would have to be a large building because the
church he planned was bigger than the halls of most kings.

And next day, a late summer's day, under high scattered clouds, we rode south to Dunholm.
We rode to confront Kjartan and to explore the fortress's strength.

One hundred and fifty men made the short journey. Ivarr and his son flanked Guthred, Ulf and
I followed, and only the churchmen stayed at Cuncacester. We were Danes and Saxons,
sword-warriors and spearmen, and we rode under Guthred's new banner that showed Saint
Cuthbert with one hand raised in blessing and the other hand holding the jewelled
gospel book of Lindisfarena. It was not an inspiring banner, at least not to me, and I
wished I had thought to ask Hild to make me a banner, one showing the wolf's head of
Bebbanburg. Earl Ulf had his banner of the eagle's head, Guthred had his flag, and Ivarr rode
under a ragged banner showing two ravens that he had somehow rescued from his defeat in
Scotland, but I rode without any standard.

Earl Ulf cursed when we came in sight of Dunholm for it was the first time he had ever seen
the strength of that high rock girdled by a loop of the River Wiire. The rock was not sheer,
for hornbeams and sycamore grew thick on its steep slopes, but the summit had been cleared and
we could see a stout wooden palisade protecting the height where three or four halls had been
built. The entrance to the fort was a high gatehouse, surmounted by a rampart where a
triangular banner flew. The flag showed a serpent-headed ship, a reminder that Kjartan
had once been a shipmaster, and beneath the banner were men with spears, and hanging on the
palisade were rows of shields. Ulf stared at the fortress. Guthred and Ivarr joined him and none
of us spoke, for there was nothing to say. It looked impregnable. It looked terrible. There
was a path up to the fortress, but it was steep and it was narrow, and very few men would be
needed to hold that track as it twisted up through tree stumps and past boulders to the high
gate. We could throw all our army up that path, but in places the way was so constricted that
twenty men could hold off that army, and all the while spears and rocks would rain down on our
heads. Guthred, who plainly believed Dunholm could not be taken, threw me a mute look of
pleading.

'Sihtric!' I called, and the boy hurried to my side. That wall,' I said, 'does it go all the
way around the summit?'

'Yes, lord,' he said, then hesitated, 'except

'Except where?'

'There's a small place on the southern side, lord, where there's a crag. No wall there. It's
where they throw the shit.'

'A crag?' I asked, and he made a gesture with his right hand to show that it was a sheer slab
of rock. 'Can the crag be climbed?' I asked him.

'No, lord.'

'What about water?' I asked him. 'Is there a well?'

'Two wells, lord, both outside the palisade. There's one to the west which they don't often
use, and the other's on the eastern side. But that one's high up the slope where the trees
grow.'

'It's outside the wall?'

'It's outside, lord, but it has its own wall.'

I tossed him a coin as reward, though his answers had not cheered me. I had thought that if
Kjartan's men took their water from the river then we might post archers to stop them, but no
archer could pierce trees and a wall to stop them reaching the well.

'So what do we do?' Guthred asked me, and a flicker of annoyance tempted me to ask him why
he didn't consult his priests who had insisted on making the army's camp so
inconveniently far away. I managed to stifle that response.

'You can offer him terms, lord,' I said, 'and when he refuses you'll have to starve him
out.'

'The harvest is in,' Guthred pointed out.

'So it will take a year,' I retorted. 'Build a wall across the neck of land. Trap him. Let
him see we won't go away. Let him see starvation coming for him. If you build the wall,' I
said, warming to the idea, 'you won't have to leave an army here. Even sixty men should be
enough.'

'Sixty?' Guthred asked.

'Sixty men could defend a wall here,' I said. The great mass of rock on which Dunholm stood
was shaped like a pear, its lower narrow end forming the neck of land from where we stared at
the high walls. The river ran to our right, swept about the great bulge of stone, then
reappeared to our left, and just here the distance between the river banks was a little less
than three hundred paces. It would take us a week to clear those three hundred paces of trees,
and another week to dig a ditch and throw up a palisade, and a third week to strengthen that
palisade so that sixty men would be sufficient to defend it. The neck was not a flat strip
of land, but an uneven hump of rock, so the palisade would have to climb across the hump.
Sixty men could never defend three hundred paces of wall, but much of the neck was
impassable because of stone bluffs where no attack could ever come, so in truth the sixty
would only have to defend the palisade in three or four places.

'Sixty.' Ivarr had been silent, but now spat that word like a curse. 'You'll need more than
sixty. The men will have to be relieved at night. Other men have to fetch water, herd cattle
and patrol the river's bank. Sixty men might hold the wall, but you'll need two hundred more
to hold those sixty men in place.' He gave me a scathing look. He was right, of course. And if
two to three hundred men were occupied at Dunholm, then that was two to three hundred men
who could not guard Eoferwic or patrol the frontiers or grow crops.

'But a wall here,' Guthred said, 'would defeat Dunholm.'

'It would.' Ivarr agreed, though he sounded dubious.

'So I just need men.' Guthred said. 'I need more men.'

I walked Witnere to the east as if I were exploring where the wall might be made. I could
see men on Dunholm's high gate watching us. 'Maybe it won't take a year.' I called back to
Guthred. 'Come and look at this.'

He urged his horse towards me and I thought I had never seen him so out of spirits. Till
now everything had come easily to Guthred, the throne, Eoferwic and Ivarr's homage, but
Dunholm was a great raw block of brute power that defied his optimism. 'What are you
showing me?' he asked, puzzled that I had brought him away from the path.

I glanced back, making sure that Ivarr and his son were out of earshot, then I pointed to
the river as if I were discussing the lie of the land. 'We can capture Dunholm,' I told
Guthred quietly, 'but I won't help you if you give it as a reward to Ivarr.' He bridled at
that, then I saw a flicker of guile on his face and knew he was tempted to deny he had ever
considered giving Dunholm to Ivarr. 'Ivarr is weak,' I told him, 'and so long as Ivarr is
weak he will be your friend. Strengthen him and you make an enemy.'

'What use is a weak friend?' he asked.

'More use than a strong enemy, lord.'

'Ivarr doesn't want to be king,' he said, 'so why should he be my enemy?'

'What Ivarr wants,' I said, 'is to control the king like a puppy on his leash. Is that what
you want? To be Ivarr's puppy?'

He stared up at the high gate. 'Someone has to hold Dunholm.' he said weakly.

'Then give it to me,' I said, 'because I'm your friend. Do you doubt that?'

'No, Uhtred,' he said, 'I do not doubt it.' He reached over and touched my elbow. Ivarr was
watching us with his snake-like eyes. 'I have made no promises.' Guthred went on, but he
looked troubled as he said it. Then he forced a smile. 'Can you capture the place?'

'I think we can get Kjartan out of there, lord.'

'How?' he asked.

'I work sorcery tonight, lord,' I told him, 'and tomorrow you talk with him. Tell him that
if he stays here then you will destroy him. Tell him you'll start by firing his steadings and
burning his slave pens at Gyruum. Promise that you'll impoverish him. Let Kjartan
understand that nothing but death, fire and misery wait for him so long as he stays here.
Then you offer him a way out. Let him go across the seas.' That was not what I wanted, I
wanted Kjartan the Cruel writing under Serpent-Breath, but my revenge was not so
important as getting Kjartan out of Dunholm.

'So work your sorcery.' Guthred told me.

'And if it works, lord, you promise you won't give the place to Ivarr?'

He hesitated, then held his hand to me. 'If it works, my friend,' he said,

'then I promise I will give it to you.'

'Thank you, lord.' I said, and Guthred rewarded me with his infectious smile. Kjartan's
watching men must have been puzzled when we rode away late in the afternoon. We did not go
far, but made a camp on a hillside north of the fortress and we lit fires to let
Kjartan know that we were still close. Then, in the darkness, I rode back to Dunholm with
Sihtric. I went to work my sorcery, to scare Kjartan, and to do that I needed to be a
sceadugengan, a shadow-walker. The sceadugengan walk at night, when honest men fear to
leave their houses. The night is when strange things stalk the earth, when shape-shifters,
ghosts, wild men, elves and beasts roam the land.

But I had ever been comfortable with the night. From a child I had practised
shadow-walking until I had become one of the creatures men fear, and that night I took
Sihtric up the path towards Dunholm's high gate. Sihtric led our horses and they, like him,
were scared. I had trouble keeping to the path for the moon was hidden by newly arrived
clouds, so I felt my way, using Serpent-Breath as a stick to find bushes and rocks. We went
slowly with Sihtric holding onto my cloak so that he did not lose me. It became easier as
we went higher, for there were fires inside the fortress and the glow of their flames above the
palisade acted as a beacon. I could see the shadowed outlines of sentries on the high gate,
but they could not see us as we reached a shelf of land where the path dropped a few feet before
climbing the last long stretch to the gate. The whole slope between the brief shelf and the
palisade had been cleared of trees so that no enemy could creep unseen to the defences and
attempt a sudden assault.

'Stay here,' I told Sihtric. I needed him to guard the horses and to carry my shield,
helmet and the bag of severed heads which I now took from him. I told him to hide behind the
trees and wait there.

I placed the heads on the path, the closest less than fifty paces from the gate, the last
very near to the trees which grew at the lip of the shelf. I could feel maggots squirming
under my hands as I lifted the heads from the sack. I made the dead eyes look towards the
fortress, positioning the rotting skulls by feel so that my hands were slimy when at last I
was finished. No one heard me, no one saw me. The dark wrapped about me and the wind sighed
across the hill and the river ran noisily over the rocks below. I found Sihtric, who was
shivering, and he gave me the black scarf that I wrapped about my face, knotting it at the
nape of my neck, and then I forced my helmet over the linen and took my shield.

Then I waited.

The light comes slowly in a clouded dawn. First there is just a shiver of greyness that
touches the sky's eastern rim, and for a time there is neither light nor dark, nor any
shadows, just the cold grey filling the world as the bats, the shadow-fliers, skitter home.
The trees turn black as the sky pales the horizon, and then the first sunlight skims the world
with colour. Birds sang. Not as many as sing in spring and early summer, but I could hear
wrens, chiff-chaffs and robins greeting the day's coming, and below me in the trees a
woodpecker rattled at a trunk. The black trees were dark green now and I could see the bright
red berries of a rowan bush not far away. And it was then that the guards saw the heads. I heard
them shout, saw more men come to the rampart, and I waited. The banner was raised over the
high gate, and still more men came to the wall and then the gate opened and two men crept out.
The gate closed behind them and I heard a dull thud as its great locking bar was dropped into
place. The two men looked hesitant. I was hidden in the trees, Serpent-Breath drawn, my
cheek-pieces open so that the black linen filled the space between the helmet's edges. I wore
a black cloak over my mail that Hild had brightened by scrubbing it with river-sand. I wore
high black boots. I was the dead swordsman again and I watched as the two men came cautiously
down the path towards the line of heads. They reached the first blood-matted head and one of
them shouted up to the fortress that it was one of Tekil's men. Then he asked what he should
do.