The Pale Horseman (35 page)

'Your son.' Harald said flatly.

'He's here, isn't he?'

'Yes.' Harald flinched. He turned away to look at the moon and I thought he would say no
more, but then he summoned his courage and looked back to me. 'Your son, Lord Uhtred,' he said,
'is in the churchyard.'

It took a few heartbeats for that to make sense, and then it did not make any sense at all,
but left me confused. I touched my hammer amulet. 'In the churchyard?'

'It is not my place to tell you.'

'But you will tell me,' I said, and my voice sounded like Steapa's growl.

Harald stared at the moon-touched river, silver-white beneath the black trees. 'Your son
died,' he said. He waited for my response, but I neither moved nor spoke. 'He choked to
death.'

'Choked?'

'A pebble,' Harald said. 'He was just a baby. He must have picked the pebble up and
swallowed it.'

'A pebble?' I asked.

'A woman was with him, but ...' Harald's voice tailed away. 'She tried to save him, but she
could do nothing. He died.'

'On Saint Vincent's Day,' I said.

'You knew?'

'No,' I said, 'I didn't know.' But Saint Vincent's Day had been the day when Iseult drew
Alfred's son, the Ætheling Edward, through the earth. And somewhere, Iseult had told me, a
child must die so that the king's heir, the Ætheling, could live.

And it had been my child. Uhtred the Younger. Whom I had hardly known. Edward had been
given breath and Uhtred had twitched and fought and gasped and died.

'I'm sorry,' Harald said. 'It was not my place to tell you, but you needed to know before
you saw Mildrith again.'

'She hates me,' I said bleakly.

'Yes,' he said, 'she does.' He paused. 'I thought she would go mad with grief, but God has
preserved her. She would like ...'

'Like what?'

'To join the sisters at Cridianton. When the Danes leave. They have a nunnery there, a
small house.'

I did not care what Mildrith did. 'And my son is buried here?'

'Under the yew tree,' he turned and pointed, 'beside the church.'

So let him stay there, I thought. Let him rest in his short grave to wait the chaos of the
world's ending.

'Tomorrow,' I said, 'we raise the fyrd.'

Because there was a kingdom to save.

Priests were summoned to Harald's hall and the priests wrote the summons for the fyrd. Most
thegns could not read, and many of their priests would probably struggle to decipher the few
words, but the messengers would tell them what the parchments said. They were to arm their men
and bring them to Ocmundtun, and the wax seal on the summons was the authority for those
orders. The seal showed Odda the Elder's badge of a stag.

‘It will take a week,' Harald warned me, 'for most of the fyrd to reach here, and the
Ealdorman will try to stop it happening at all.'

'What will he do?'

'Tell the thegns to ignore it, I suppose.'

'And Svein? What will he do?'

'Try to kill us?'

'And he has eight hundred men who can be here tomorrow.' I said.

‘And I have thirty men,' Harald said bleakly.

'But we do have a fortress,' I said, pointing to the limestone ridge with its palisade.

I did not doubt that the Danes would come. By summoning the fyrd we threatened their
safety, and Svein was not a man who would take a threat lightly, and so, while the messages
were carried north and south, the townsfolk were told to take their valuables up to the fort
beside the river. Some men were set to strengthening the palisade, others took livestock
up onto the moor so the beasts could not be taken by the Danes, and Steapa went to every
nearby settlement and demanded that men of fighting age go to Ocmundtun with any weapon
they possessed, so that by that afternoon the fort was manned by over eighty men. Few were
warriors, most had no weapons other than an axe, but from the foot of the hill they looked
formidable enough. Women carried food and water to the fort, and most of the town reckoned to
sleep up there, despite the rain, for fear that the Danes would come in the night.

Odda the Elder refused to go to the fort. He was too sick, he said, and too feeble, and if
he was supposed to die then he would die in Harald's hall. Harald and I tried to persuade
him, but he would not listen. 'Mildrith can go,' he said.

'No,' she said. She sat by Odda's bed, her hands clutched tight under the sleeves of her
grey robe. She stared at me, challenge in her eyes, daring me to give her an order to abandon
Odda and go to the fortress.

'I am sorry,' I said to her.

'Sorry?'

'About our son.'

'You were not a father to him,' she accused me. Her eyes glistened. 'You wanted him to be
a Dane!

You wanted him to be a pagan! You didn't even care for his soul!'

'I cared for him,' I said, but she ignored that. I had not sounded convincing, even to
myself.

'His soul is safe,' Harald said gently. 'He is in the Lord Jesus' arms. He is happy.'

Mildrith looked at him and I saw how Harald's words had comforted her, though she still
began crying. She caressed her wooden cross, then Odda the Elder reached out and patted
her arm.

'If the Danes come, lord,' I said to him, 'I shall send men for you.'

I turned then and went from the sickroom. I could not cope with Mildrith crying or with the
thought of a dead son. Such things are difficult, much more difficult than making war, and
so I buckled on my swords, picked up my shield and put on my splendid wolf-crested helmet so
that, when Harald came from Odda's chamber, he checked to see me standing like a warlord by
his hearth.

'If we make a big fire at the eastern end of town,' I said, 'we'll see the Danes come. It
will give us time to carry Lord Odda to the fort.'

'Yes.' He looked up at the great rafters of his hall, and perhaps he was thinking that he
would never see it thus again, for the Danes would come and the hall would burn. He made the
sign of the cross.

'Fate is inexorable,' I told him. What else was there to say? The Danes might come, the hall
might burn, but they were small things in the balance of a kingdom, and so I went to order the
fire that would illuminate the eastern road, but the Danes did not come that night. It rained
softly all through the darkness, so that in the morning the folk in the fort were wet, cold
and unhappy. Then, in the dawn, the first men of the fyrd arrived. It might take days for the
farther parts of the shire to receive their summons and to arm men and despatch them to
Ocmundtun, but the nearer places sent men straight away so that by late morning there were
close to three hundred beneath the fort. No more than seventy of those could be called
warriors, men who had proper weapons, shields and at least a leather coat. The rest were farm
labourers with hoes or sickles or axes.

Harald sent foraging parties to find grain. It was one thing to gather a force, quite
another to feed it, and none of us knew how long we would have to keep the men assembled. If
the Danes did not come to us, then we would have to go to them and force them from Cridianton,
and for that we would need the whole fyrd of Defnascir. Odda the Younger, I thought, would
never allow that to happen.

Nor did he. For, as the rain ended and the noontime prayers were said, Odda himself came
to Ocmundtun and he did not come alone, but rode with sixty of his warriors in chain mail and
as many Danes in their war glory. The sun came out as they appeared from the eastern trees and
it shone on mail and on spear points, on bridle chains and stirrup irons, on polished helmets
and bright shield bosses. They spread into the pastures on either side of the road and
advanced on Ocmundtun in a wide line, and at its centre were two standards. One, the black
stag, was the banner of Defnascir, while the other was a Danish triangle and displayed the
white horse.

'There'll be no fight,' I told Harald.

'There won't?'

'Not enough of them. Svein can't afford to lose men, so he's come to talk.'

'I don't want to meet them here,' he gestured at the fort. 'We should be in the hall.'

He ordered that the best armed men should go down to the town, and there we filled the muddy
street outside the hall as Odda and the Danes came from the cast. The horsemen had to break
their line to enter the town, making a column instead, and the column was led by three men.
Odda was in the centre and he was flanked by two Danes, one of them Svein of the White Horse.
Svein looked magnificent, a silver-white warrior. He rode a white horse, wore a white
woollen cloak, and his mail and boar-snouted helmet had been scrubbed with sand until they
glowed silver in the watery sunlight. His shield bore a silvered boss around which a white
horse had been painted. The leather of his bridle, saddle and scabbard had been bleached
pale. He saw me, but showed no recognition, just looked along the line of men barring the
street and seemed to dismiss them as useless. His banner of the white horse was carried by
the second horseman who had the same darkened face as his master, a face hammered by sun and
snow, ice and wind.

'Harald.' Odda the Younger had ridden ahead of the two Danes. He was sleek as ever,
gleaming in mail, and with a black cloak draping his horse's rump. He smiled as though he
welcomed the meeting.

‘You have summoned the fyrd. Why?'

'Because the king commanded it,' Harald said.

Odda still smiled. He glanced at me, appeared not to notice I was present, then looked to
the hall door where Steapa had just appeared. The big man had been talking with Odda the
Elder, and now he stared at Odda the Younger with astonishment.

'Steapa!' Odda the Younger said. 'Loyal Steapa! How good to see you!'

'You too, lord.'

'My faithful Steapa,' Odda said, plainly pleased to be reunited with his erstwhile
bodyguard. 'Come here!' he commanded, and Steapa pushed past us and knelt in the mud by
Odda's horse and reverently kissed his master's boot.

'Stand,' Odda said, 'stand. With you beside me, Steapa, who can hurt us?'

'No one, lord.'

'No one,' Odda repeated, then smiled at Harald. 'You said the king ordered the fyrd
summoned? There is a king in Wessex?'

'There is a king in Wessex,' Harald said firmly.

'There is a king skulking in the marshes!' Odda said, loudly enough for all Harald's men
to hear.

'He is the king of frogs, perhaps? A monarch of eels? What kind of king is that?'

I answered for Harald, only I answered in Danish. 'A king who ordered me to burn Svein's
boats. Which I did. All but one, which I kept and still have.'

Svein took off his boar-snouted helmet and looked at me and again there was no
recognition. His gaze was like that of the great serpent of death that lies at the foot of
Yggdrasil.

'I burned the White Horse,' I told him, 'and warmed my hands on its flames.' Svein spat for
answer.

'And the man beside you,' I spoke to Odda now, using English, 'is the man who burned your
church at Cynuit, the man who killed the monks. The man who is cursed in heaven, in hell and
in this world, yet now he is your ally?'

'Does that goat-turd speak for you?' Odda demanded of Harald.

'These men speak for me,' Harald said, indicating the warriors behind him.

'But by what right do you raise the fyrd?' Odda asked. 'I am Ealdorman!'

'And who made you Ealdorman?' Harald asked. He paused, but Odda gave no answer. 'The king
of frogs?' Harald asked. 'The monarch of eels? If Alfred has no authority then you have lost
yours with his.'

Odda was plainly surprised by Harald's defiance, and he was probably irritated by
it, but he gave no sign of annoyance. He just went on smiling. 'I do believe,' he said to
Harald, 'that you have misunderstood what happens in Defnascir.'

'Then explain to me,' Harald said.

'I shall,' Odda said, 'but we shall talk with ale and food.' He looked up at the sky. The
brief sun was gone behind cloud and a chill wind was gusting the thatch of the street. 'And we
should talk under a roof,' Odda suggested, 'before it rains again.'

There were matters to be agreed first, though that was done soon enough. The Danish
horsemen would withdraw to the eastern end of the town while Harald's men would retreat to
the fort. Each side could take ten men into the hall, and all of those men were to leave their
weapons heaped in the street where they were to be guarded by six Danes and as many Saxons.

Harald's servants brought ale, bread, and cheese. There was no meat offered, for it was the
season of Lent. Benches were placed at either side of the hearth. Svein crossed to our side of
the fire as the benches were brought and at long last deigned to recognise me.

'It was really you who burned the ships?' he asked.

'Including yours.'

'The White Horse took a year and a day to build,' he said, 'and she was made of trees from
which we'd hung Odin's sacrifices. She was a good ship.'

'She's all ash on the seashore now,' I said.

'Then one day I shall repay you,' he retorted, and though he spoke mildly, there was a
world of threat in his voice. 'And you were wrong,' he added.

'Wrong?' I asked. 'Wrong to burn your ships?'

'There was no altar of gold at Cynuit.'

'Where you burned the monks,' I said.

'I burned them alive,' he agreed, 'and warmed my hands on their flames.' He smiled at that
memory. 'You could join me again?' he suggested. 'I shall forgive you burning my ship, and
you and I can fight side by side once more? I need good men. I pay well.'

'I am sworn to Alfred.'

'Ah,' he nodded. 'So be it. Enemies.' He went back to Odda's benches.

'You would see your father before we talk?' Harald asked Odda, gesturing towards the
door at the hall's end.

'I shall see him,' Odda said, 'when our friendship is repaired. And you and I must be
friends.' He said the last words loudly and they prompted men to sit on the benches. 'You
summoned the fyrd,' he spoke to Harald, 'because Uhtred brought you orders from Alfred?'