The Lords of the North (17 page)

Kjartan answered. I was sure it was him, though I could not see his face, but his voice was
a roar. 'Kick them away!' he shouted, and the two men obeyed, kicking the heads off the path so
that they rolled down into the long grass where the trees had been felled.

They came closer until there was only one of the seven heads left and, just as they
reached it, I stepped from the trees.

They saw a shadow-faced warrior, gleaming and tall, with sword and shield in hand. They
saw the dead swordsman, and I just stood there, ten paces from them, and I did not move and I
did not speak, and they gazed at me and one made a sound like a kitten mewing and then,
without another word, they fled.

I stood there as the sun rose. Kjartan and his men stared at me and in that early light I
was dark-faced death in shining armour, death in a bright helmet, and then, before they
decided to send the dogs to discover I was not a spectre, but flesh and blood, I turned back
into the shadows and rejoined Sihtric.

I had done my best to terrify Kjartan. Now Guthred had to talk him into surrender, and
then, I dared hope, the great fort on its rock would become mine, and Gisela with it, and I
dared hope those things because Guthred was my friend. I saw my future as golden as Guthred's.
I saw the bloodfeud won, I saw my men raiding Bebbanburg's land to weaken my uncle and I
saw Ragnar returning to Northumbria to fight at my side. In short I forgot the gods and spun
my own bright fate, while at the root of life the three spinners laughed. Thirty horsemen rode
back to Dunholm in mid morning. Clapa went ahead of us with a leafy branch to show we came in
peace. We were all in mail, though I had left my good helmet with Sihtric. I had thought of
dressing as the dead swordsman, but he had done his sorcery and now we would discover if it
had worked.

We came to the place where I had stood and watched the two men kick the seven heads off the
path and there we waited. Clapa waved the branch energetically and Guthred fidgeted as he
watched the gate. 'How long will it take us to reach Gyruum tomorrow?' he asked.

'Gyruum?' I asked.

'I thought we'd ride there tomorrow,' he said, 'and burn the slave pens. We can take hawks.
Go hunting.'

'If we leave at dawn,' Ivarr answered, 'we'll be there by noon.'

I looked to the west where there were ominous dark clouds. 'There's bad weather coming,' I
said.

Ivarr slapped at a horsefly on his stallion's neck, then frowned at the high gate. 'Bastard
doesn't want to speak to us.'

'I'd like to go tomorrow.' Guthred said mildly.

'There's nothing there,' I said.

'Kjartan's slave pens are there,' Guthred said, 'and you told me we have to destroy them.
Besides, I have a mind to see the old monastery. I hear it was a great building.'

'Then go when the bad weather's passed,' I suggested. Guthred said nothing because, in
response to Clapa's waving branch, a horn had suddenly sounded from the high gate. We fell
silent as the gates were pushed open and a score of men rode towards us.

Kjartan led them, mounted on a tall, brindled horse. He was a big man, wide-faced, with a
huge beard and small suspicious eyes, and he carried a great war axe as though it weighed
nothing. He wore a helmet on which a pair of raven wings had been fixed and had a dirty white
cloak hanging from his broad shoulders. He stopped a few paces away and for a time he said
nothing, but just stared at us, and I tried to find some fear in his eyes, but he just looked
belligerent, though when he broke the silence his voice was subdued.

'Lord Ivarr,' he said, 'I am sorry you did not kill Aed.'

'I lived,' Ivarr said drily.

'I am glad of it,' Kjartan said, then he gave me a long look. I was standing apart from the
others, off to one side of the path and slightly above them where the track rose to the
tree-covered knob before dropping to the neck. Kjartan must have recognised me, known I was
Ragnar's adopted son who had cost his own son an eye, but he decided to ignore me, looking
back to Ivarr. 'What you needed to defeat Aed,' he said, 'was a sorcerer.'

'A sorcerer?' Ivarr sounded amused.

'Aed fears the old magic.' Kjartan said. 'He would never fight against a man who could take
heads by sorcery.'

Ivarr said nothing. Instead he just turned and stared at me, and thus he betrayed the dead
swordsman and reassured Kjartan that he did not face sorcery, but an old enemy, and I saw
the relief on Kjartan's face. He laughed suddenly, a brief bark of scorn, but he still
ignored me. He turned on Guthred instead. 'Who are you?' he demanded.

'I am your king,' Guthred said.

Kjartan laughed again. He was relaxed now, certain that he faced no dark magic. This is
Dunholm, pup.' he said, 'and we have no king.'

'Yet here I am,' Guthred said, unmoved by the insult, 'and here I stay until your bones
have bleached in Dunholm's sun.'

Kjartan was amused at that. 'You think you can starve me out? You and your priests? You think
I'll die of hunger because you're here? Listen, pup. There are fish in the river and birds in
the sky and Dunholm will not starve. You can wait here till chaos shrouds the world and I'll be
better fed than you. Why didn't you tell him that, Lord Ivarr?' Ivarr just shrugged as though
Guthred's ambitions were no concern of his. 'So,' Kjartan rested the axe on his shoulder as
if to suggest it would not be needed, 'what are you here to offer me, pup?'

'You can take your men to Gyruum,' Guthred said, 'and we shall provide ships and you can
sail away. Your folk can go with you, except those who wish to stay in Northumbria.'

'You play at being a king, boy,' Kjartan said, then looked at Ivarr again.

'And you're allied to him?'

'I am allied to him,' Ivarr said tonelessly.

Kjartan looked back to Guthred. 'I like it here, pup. I like Dunholm. I ask for nothing
more than to be left in peace. I don't want your throne, I don't want your land, though I might
want your woman if you have one and if she's pretty enough. So I shall make you an offer. You
leave me in peace and I shall forget that you exist.'

'You disturb my peace,' Guthred said.

'I'll shit all over your peace, pup, if you don't leave here,' Kjartan snarled, and there was
a force in his voice that startled Guthred.

'So you refuse my offer?' Guthred asked. He had lost this confrontation and knew it.

Kjartan shook his head as if he found the world a sadder place than he had expected. 'You
call that a king?' he demanded of Ivarr. 'If you need a king, find a man.'

I hear this king was man enough to piss all over your son,' I spoke for the first time, 'and I
hear Sven crawled away weeping. You bred a coward, Kjartan.'

Kjartan pointed the axe at me. 'I have business with you,' he said, 'but this is not the
day to make you scream like a woman. But that day will come.' He spat at me, then wrenched his
horse's head about and spurred back towards the high gate without another word. His men
followed.

Guthred watched him go. I stared at Ivarr, who had deliberately betrayed the sorcery,
and I guessed that he had been told I was to hold Dunholm if it fell and so he had made certain
it did not fall. He glanced at me, said something to his son and they both laughed.

'In two days,' Guthred spoke to me, 'you start work on the wall. I'll give you two hundred
men to make it.'

'Why not start tomorrow?' I asked.

'Because we're going to Gyruum, that's why. We're going to hunt!'

I shrugged. Kings have whims and this king wanted to hunt. We rode back to Cuncacester
where we discovered that Jaenberht and Ida, the two monks, had returned from their search
for more of Ivarr's survivors. 'Did you find anyone?' I asked them as we dismounted.

Jaenberht just stared at me, as if the question puzzled him, then Ida shook his head
hurriedly. 'We found no one.' he said.

'So you wasted your time.' I said.

Jaenberht smirked at that, or perhaps it was just his twisted mouth that made me think he
smirked, then both men were summoned to tell Guthred of their journey and I went to Hild and
asked her if Christians pronounced curses, and if they did then she was to make a score of
curses against Ivarr. 'Put your devil onto him.' I said.

That night Guthred tried to restore our spirits by giving a feast. He had taken a farm in
the valley below the hill where Abbot Eadred was laying out his church, and he invited all
the men who had confronted Kjartan that morning and served us seethed mutton and fresh
trout, ale and good bread. A harpist played after the meal and then I told the tale of Alfred
going into Cippanhamm disguised as a harpist. I made them laugh when I described how a Dane
had thumped him because he was such a bad musician.

Abbot Eadred was another of the guests and, when Ivarr left, the abbot offered to say
evening prayers. The Christians gathered at one side of the fire, and that left Gisela with me
beside the farm's door. She had a lambskin pouch at her belt and, as Eadred chanted his words,
she opened the pouch and took out a bundle of runesticks bound with a woollen thread. The
sticks were slender and white. She looked at me as if to ask whether she should cast them and I
nodded. She held them above the ground, closed her eyes, then let them go. The sticks fell in
their usual disarray. Gisela knelt beside them, her face sharply shadowed by the fire's
dying flames. She stared at the tangled sticks a long time, once or twice looking up at me,
and then, quite suddenly, she began to cry. I touched her shoulder. 'What is it?' I asked.
Then she screamed. She raised her head to the smoky rafters and wailed. 'No!'

she called, startling Eadred into silence, 'no!' Hild came hurrying around the hearth and
put an arm about the weeping girl, but Gisela tore herself free and stooped over the
runesticks again. 'No!' she shouted a third time.

'Gisela!' Her brother crouched beside her. 'Gisela!'

She turned on him and slapped him once, slapped him hard about the face, and then she began
gasping as if she could not find breath enough to live, and Guthred, his cheek red, scooped up
the sticks.

They are a pagan sorcery, lord,' Eadred said, 'they are an abomination.'

'Take her away,' Guthred said to Hild, 'take her to her hut,' and Hild pulled Gisela away,
helped by two serving women who had been attracted by her wailing.

'The devil is punishing her for sorcery,' Eadred insisted.

'What did she see?' Guthred asked me.

'She didn't say.'

He kept looking at me and I thought for a heartbeat that there were tears in his eyes, then
he abruptly turned away and dropped the runesticks onto the fire. They crackled fiercely and
a searing flame leaped towards the roof-tree, then they dulled into blackened squiggles.
'What do you prefer,' Guthred asked me, 'falcon or hawk?' I stared at him, puzzled. 'When we
hunt tomorrow,' he explained, 'what do you prefer?'

'Falcon,' I said.

'Then tomorrow you can hunt with Swiftness,' he said, naming one of his birds.

'Gisela's ill,' Hild told me later that night, 'she has a fever. She shouldn't have eaten
meat.'

Next morning I bought a set of runesticks from one of Ulf's men. They were black sticks,
longer than the burned white ones, and I paid well for them. I took them to Gisela's hut, but one
of her women said Gisela was sick with a woman's sickness and could not see me. I left the
sticks for her. They told the future and I would have done better, much better, to have cast
them myself. Instead I went hunting.

It was a hot day. There were still dark clouds heaped in the west, but they seemed to be no
nearer, and the sun burned fiercely so that only the score of troops who rode to guard us wore
mail. We did not expect to meet enemies. Guthred led us, and Ivarr and his son rode, and Ulf
was there, and so were the two monks, Jaenberht and Ida, who came to say prayers for the monks
who had once been massacred at Gyruum. I did not tell them that I had been present at the
massacre that had been the work of Ragnar the Elder. He had cause. The monks had murdered
Danes and Ragnar had punished them, though these days the story is always told that the
monks were innocently at prayer and died as spotless martyrs. In truth they were malevolent
killers of women and children, but what chance does truth have when priests tell tales?

Guthred was feverishly happy that day. He talked incessantly, laughed at his own jests,
and even tried to stir a smile on Ivarr's skull face. Ivarr said little except to give his son
advice on hawking. Guthred had given me his falcon to fly, but at first we rode through
wooded country where a falcon could not hunt, so his goshawk had an advantage and brought
down two rooks among the branches. He whooped with each kill. It was not till we reached the
open ground by the river that my falcon could fly high and stoop fast to strike at a duck, but
the falcon missed and the duck flew into the safety of a grove of alders. 'Not your lucky
day,' Guthred told me.

'We might all be unlucky soon,' I said, and pointed westwards to where the clouds were
gathering. 'There's going to be a storm.'

'Maybe tonight,' he said dismissively, 'but not till after dark.' He had given his
goshawk to a servant and I handed the falcon to another. The river was on our left now and
the scorched stone buildings of Gyruum's monastery were ahead, built on the river bank where
the ground rose above the long salt-marshes. It was low tide and wicker fish traps stretched
into the river that met the sea a short distance eastwards.

'Gisela has a fever.' Guthred told me.

'I heard.'

'Eadred says he'll touch her with the cloth that covers Cuthbert's face. He says it will
cure her.'

'I hope it does.' I said dutifully. Ahead of us Ivarr and his son rode with a dozen of
their followers in mail. If they turned now, I thought, they could slaughter Guthred and me,
so I leaned over and checked his horse so that Ulf and his men could catch up with us.