The Lords of the North (35 page)

Sihtric still led us. We dropped east off the hill's summit, hiding ourselves from the
fortress, then rode into a valley where a stream foamed westward. We forded it easily
enough, climbed again, and all the time we pounded past miserable hovels where frightened
folk peered from low doorways. They were Kjartan's own slaves, Sihtric told me, their job to
raise pigs and cut firewood and grow crops for Dunholm.

Our horses were tiring. They had been ridden hard across soft ground and they carried men
in mail with heavy shields, but our journey was almost done. It did not matter now if the
garrison saw us, because we had come to the hill on which the fortress stood and no one could
leave Dunholm without fighting their way past us. If Kjartan had sent warriors west to find
us then he could no longer send a messenger to summon those men back because we now
controlled the only road that led to his fastness.

And so we came to the neck where the ridge dropped slightly and the road turned south before
climbing to the massive gatehouse, and we stopped there and our horses spread along the
higher ground and, to the men on Dunholm's wall, we must have looked like a dark army. All of
us were muddy, our horses were filthy, but Kjartan's men could see our spears and shields and
swords and axes. By now they would know we were the enemy and that we had cut their only road,
and they probably laughed at us. We were so few and their fortress was so high and their wall
was so big and the rain still crashed on us and the drenching dark crept along the valleys on
either side of us as a slither of lightning crackled wicked and sharp across the northern
sky. We picketed the horses in a waterlogged field. We did our best to rid the beasts of mud
and pick their hooves clean, then we made a score of fires in the lee of a blackthorn hedge. It
took forever to light the first fire. Many of our men carried dry kindling in leather
pouches, but as soon as the kindling was exposed to the rain it became soggy. Eventually
two men made a crude tent with their cloaks and I heard the click of steel on flint and saw the
first trace of smoke. They protected that small fire as though it were made of gold, and at
last the flames took hold and we could pile the wet firewood on top. The logs seethed and hissed
and crackled, but the flames gave us some small warmth and the fires told Kjartan that his
enemies were still on the hill. I doubt he thought Guthred had the courage to make such an
attack, but he must have known Ragnar was returned from Wessex and he knew I had come back
from the dead and perhaps, in that long wet night of rain and thunder, he felt a shiver of
fear.

And while he shivered, the sceadugengan slithered in the dark. As night fell I stared at
the route I had to take in the darkness, and it was not good. I would have to go down to the
river, then southwards along the water's edge, but just beneath the fortress wall, where the
river vanished about Dunholm's crag, a massive boulder blocked the way. It was a monstrous
boulder, bigger than Alfred's new church at Wintanceaster, and if I could not find a way
around it then I would have to climb over its wide, flat top which lay less than a spear's throw
from Kjartan's ramparts. I sheltered my eyes from the rain and stared hard, and decided
there might be a way past the giant stone at the river's edge.

'Can it be done?' Ragnar asked me.

'It has to be done,' I said.

I wanted Steapa with me, and I chose ten other men to accompany us. Both Guthred and
Ragnar wanted to come, but I refused them. Ragnar was needed to lead the assault on the
high gate, and Guthred was simply not warrior enough. Besides, he was one of the reasons we
fought this battle and to leave him dead on Dunholm's slopes would make a nonsense of the
whole gamble. I took Beocca to one side. 'Do you remember,' I asked him, 'how my father made
you stay by my side during the assault on Eoferwic?'

'Of course I do!' he said indignantly. 'And you didn't stay with me, did you? You kept
trying to join the fight! It was all your fault that you were captured.' I had been ten years
old and desperate to see a battle. 'If you hadn't run away from me,' he said, still sounding
indignant, 'you would never have been caught by the Danes! You'd be a Christian now. I blame
myself. I should have tied your reins to mine.'

'Then you'd have been captured as well,' I said, 'but I want you to do the same for Guthred
tomorrow. Stay by him and don't let him risk his life.'

Beocca looked alarmed. 'He's a king! He's a grown man. I can't tell him what to do.'

'Tell him Alfred wants him to live.'

'Alfred might want him to live,' he said gloomily, 'but put a sword into a man's hand and
he loses his wits. I've seen it happen!'

'Then tell him you had a dream and Saint Cuthbert says he's to stay out of trouble.'

'He won't believe me!'

'He will.' I promised.

'I'll try.' Beocca said, then looked at me with his one good eye. 'Can you do this thing,
Uhtred?'

'I don't know.' I told him honestly.

'I shall pray for you.'

'Thank you, father.' I said. I would be praying to every god I could think of, and adding
another could not hurt. In the end, I decided, it was all up to fate. The spinners already
knew what we planned and knew how those plans would turn out and I could only hope they were not
readying the shears to cut my life's threads.

Perhaps, above everything else, it was the madness of my idea that might give it wings and
so let it succeed. There had been madness in Northumbria's air ever since I had first
returned. There had been a slaughterous madness in Eoferwic, a holy insanity in Cair
Ligualid, and now this desperate idea. I had chosen Steapa, for he was worth three or four
other men. I took Sihtric because, if we got inside Dunholm, he would know the ground. I
took Finan because the Irishman had a fury in his soul that I reckoned would turn to
savagery in battle. I took Clapa because he was strong and fearless, and Rypere because he
was cunning and lithe. The other six were from Ragnar's men, all of them strong, all young,
and all good with weapons, and I told them what we were going to do, and then made sure that
each man had a black cloak that swathed him from head to foot. We smeared a mixture of mud and
ash on our hands, faces and helmets. 'No shields.' I told them. That was a hard decision to
make, for a shield is a great comfort in battle, but shields were heavy and, if they banged on
stones or trees, would make a noise like a drumbeat. 'I go first,' I told them, 'and we'll be
going slowly. Very slowly. We have all night.'

We tied ourselves together with leather reins. I knew how easy it was for men to get lost
in the dark, and on that night the darkness was absolute. If there was any moon it was hidden
by thick clouds from which the rain fell steadily, but we had three things to guide us. First
there was the slope itself. So long as I kept the uphill side to my right then I knew we were
on the eastern side of Dunholm, and second there was the rushing hiss of the river as it
curled about the crag, and last there were the fires of Dunholm itself. Kjartan feared an
assault in the night and so he had his men hurl flaming logs from the high gate's rampart.
Those logs lit the track, but to produce them he had to keep a great fire burning in his
courtyard and that blaze outlined the top of the ramparts and glowed red on the belly of the
low rushing clouds. That raw light did not illuminate the slope, but it was there, beyond
the black shadows, a livid guide in our wet darkness.

I had Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting hanging from my belt and, like the others, I carried
a spear with its blade wrapped in a scrap of cloth so that no stray light could reflect from the
metal The spears would serve as staffs on the uneven ground and as probes to feel the way. We
did not leave until it was utterly dark, for I dared not risk a sharp-eyed sentry seeing us
scramble towards the river, but even in the dark our journey was easy enough at first, for
our own fires showed us a way down the slope. We headed away from the fortress so that no one on
its ramparts would see us leave the firelit camp, and then we worked our way down to the river
and there turned southwards. Our route now led across the base of the slope where trees had been
felled and I had to feel my way between the stumps. The ground was thick with brambles and with
the litter of tree-felling. There were small branches left to rot and we made a lot of noise
trampling them underfoot, but the sound of the rain was louder still and the river seethed
and roared to our left. My cloak kept catching on twigs or stumps and I tore its hem ragged
dragging it free. Every now and then a great crack of lightning whipped earthwards and we
froze each time and, in the blue-white dazzle, I could see the fort outlined high above me. I
could even see the spears of the sentries like thorny sparks against the sky, and I thought
those sentries must be cold, soaked and miserable. The thunder came a heartbeat later and
it was always close, banging above us as if Thor were beating his war hammer against a giant
iron shield. The gods were watching us. I knew that. That is what the gods do in their
sky-halls. They watch us and they reward us for our daring or punish us for our insolence,
and I clutched Thor's hammer to tell him that I wanted his help, and Thor cracked the sky with
his thunder and I took it as a sign of his approval.

The slope grew steeper. Rain was running off the soil which, in places, was nothing but
slick mud. We all fell repeatedly as we edged southwards. The tree stumps became sparser,
but now there were boulders embedded in the slope and the wet stones were slick, so slick that
in some places we were forced to crawl. It was getting darker too, for the slope bulged above
us to hide the fire-edged ramparts and we slid and scrambled and cursed our way into a
soul-scaring blackness. The river seemed very close and I feared sliding off a slab of rock
and falling into the hurrying water. Then my groping spear cracked against stone and I
realised we had come to the huge boulder which, in the dark, felt like a monstrous cliff. I
thought I had seen a way past on the river's edge and I explored that way, going slowly,
always thrusting the spear shaft ahead, but if I had seen a route in the twilight I could
riot find it now. The boulder appeared to overhang the water and there was no choice but to
climb back up the slope beside the great rock and then slither over its domed top, and so we
inched our way upwards, clinging to saplings and kicking footholds in the sopping earth, and
every foot we climbed took us closer to the ramparts. The leather ropes joining us kept
catching on snags and it seemed to take for ever to reach a spot where the firelight glowing
above the palisade showed a way onto the rock's summit.

That summit was a stretch of open stone, pitched like a shallow roof and about fifteen
paces wide. The western end rose to the ramparts while the eastern edge ended in a sheer drop
to the river, and all that, I saw in a flicker of far-off lightning that ripped across the
northern clouds. The centre of the boulder's top, where we would have to cross, was no more
than twenty paces from Kjartan's wall and there was a sentry there, his spear blade revealed
by the lightning as a flash of white fire. We huddled beside the stone and I made every man
untie the leather rope from his belt. We would retie the reins into one rope and I would crawl
across first, letting the rope out behind me, and then each man must follow. 'One at a time,'
I said, 'and wait till I tug the rope. I'll tug it three times. That's the signal for the next
man to cross.' I had to half shout to make myself heard over the pounding rain and gusting
wind. 'Crawl on your bellies.' I told them. If lightning struck, then a prone man covered by a
muddy cloak would be far less visible than a crouching warrior. 'Rypere goes last,' I said,
'and he brings the rope with him.'

It seemed to me that it took half the night just to cross that short stretch of open rock. I
went first, and I crawled blind in the dark and had to grope with the spear to find a place where
I could

slither down the boulder's far side. Then I tugged the rope and after an interminable
wait I heard a man crawling on the stone. It was one of Ragnar's Danes who followed the rope
to join me. Then one by one the others came. I counted them in. We helped each man down, and I
prayed there would be no lightning, but then, just as Steapa was halfway across, there was a
crackling blue-white fork that slashed clear across the hilltop and lit us like worms trapped
by the fire of the gods. In that moment of brightness I could see Steapa shaking, and then
the thunder bellowed over us and the rain seemed to grow even more malevolent. 'Steapa!' I
called, 'come on!' but he was so shaken that he could not move and I had to wriggle back onto
the boulder, take his hand and coax him onwards, and while doing that I somehow lost count of
the number of men who had already crossed so that, when I thought the last had arrived I
discovered Rypere was still on the far side. He scrambled over quickly, coiling the rope as
he came, and then we untied the reins and again joined ourselves belt to belt. We were all
chilled and wet, but fate had been with us and no challenging shout had come from the
ramparts. We slid and half fell back down the slope, seeking the river bank. The hillside was
much steeper here, but sycamores and hornbeams grew thick and they made the journey easier.
We went on south, the ramparts high to our right and the river ominous and loud to our left.
There were more boulders, none the size of the giant that had blocked us before, but all
difficult to negotiate, and each one took time, so much time, and then, as we skirted the
uphill side of one great rock, Clapa dropped his spear, and it clattered down the stone and
banged on a tree.

It did not seem possible that the noise could have been heard up at the ramparts. The rain
was seething onto the trees and the wind was loud at the palisade, but someone in the fort
heard something or suspected something, for suddenly a burning log was thrown over the
wall to crash through the wet branches. It was thrown twenty paces north of us, and we
happened to be stopped at the time while I found a way past yet another rock, and the light of
the flames was feeble. We were nothing but black shadows among the shadows of the trees. The
flickering fire was swiftly extinguished by the rain and I hissed at my men to crouch. I
expected more fire to be thrown, and it was, this time a big twisted brand of oil-soaked
straw that burned much brighter than the log. Again it was thrown in the wrong place, but its
light reached us, and I prayed to Surtur, the god of fire, that he extinguish the flames. We
huddled, still as death, just above the river, and then I heard what I feared to hear.