Bernard Cornwell - Warriors of the Storm

And this time he did look up at me and there were tears on his cheeks and misery in his eyes. ‘I think he was my son,’ he said.

‘He was what?’ I asked, aghast.

‘Son or nephew, I don’t know. Christ help me, I don’t know. But I killed him.’

He walked away.

‘I’m sorry,’ Æthelstan said again, sounding as miserable as Finan. He stared at the smoke drifting slow above the river. ‘They came in the night,’ he said, ‘and we didn’t know until we saw the flames. I’m sorry. I failed you.’

‘Don’t be a fool,’ I snarled. ‘You couldn’t stop that fleet!’ I waved towards the bend in the river where the last of the Sea King’s ships had disappeared behind a stand of trees. One of our burning ships gave a lurch, and there was a hiss as steam thickened the smoke.

‘I wanted to fight them,’ Æthelstan said.

‘Then you’re a damned fool,’ I retorted.

He frowned, then gestured towards the burning ships and at the butchered carcass of a bullock. ‘I wanted to stop this!’ he said.

‘You choose your battles,’ I said harshly. ‘You were safe behind your walls, so why lose men? You couldn’t stop the fleet. Besides, they wanted you to come out and fight them, and it isn’t sensible to do what the enemy wants.’

‘That’s what I told him, lord,’ Rædwald put in. Rædwald was an older Mercian, a cautious man who I had posted in Brunanburh to advise Æthelstan. The prince commanded the garrison, but he was young and so I had given him a half-dozen older and wiser men to keep him from making youth’s mistakes.

‘They wanted us to come out?’ Æthelstan asked, puzzled.

‘Where would they rather fight you?’ I asked. ‘With you behind walls? Or out in the open, shield wall to shield wall?’

‘I told him that, lord!’ Rædwald said. I ignored him.

‘Choose your battles,’ I snarled at Æthelstan. ‘That space between your ears was given so that you can think! If you just charge whenever you see an enemy you’ll earn yourself an early grave.’

‘That’s …’ Rædwald began.

‘That’s what you told him, I know! Now be quiet!’ I gazed upstream at the empty river. Ragnall had brought an army to Britain, but what would he do with that army? He needed land to feed his men, he needed fortresses to protect them. He had passed Brunanburh, but was he planning to double back and attack Ceaster? The Roman walls made that city a fine base, but also a formidable obstacle. So where was he going?

‘But that’s what you did!’ Æthelstan interrupted my thoughts.

‘Did what?’

‘You charged the enemy!’ He looked indignant. ‘Just now! You charged down the hill even though they outnumbered you.’

‘I needed prisoners, you miserable excuse for a man.’

I wanted to know how Ragnall had come upriver in the darkness. It had either been an incredible stroke of fortune that his great fleet had negotiated the Mærse’s mudbanks without any ship going aground, or else he was an even greater ship-handler than his reputation suggested. It had been an impressive feat of seamanship, but it had also been unnecessary. His fleet was huge, and we had only a dozen boats. He could have brushed us aside without missing an oar stroke, yet he had decided to attack in the night. Why risk that?

‘He didn’t want us to block the channel,’ my son suggested, and that was probably the truth. If we had been given just a few hours’ warning we could have sunk our ships in the river’s main channel. Ragnall would still have got past eventually, but he would have been forced to wait for a high tide, and his heavier ships would have had a difficult passage, and meanwhile we would have sent messengers upriver to make sure more barricades blocked the Mærse and more men waited to greet his ships. Instead he had slipped past us, he had wounded us, and he was already rowing inland.

‘It was the Frisians,’ Æthelstan said unhappily.

‘Frisians?’

‘Three merchant ships arrived last night, lord. They moored in the river. They were carrying pelts from Dyflin.’

‘You inspected them?’

He shook his head. ‘They said they carried the plague, lord.’

‘So you didn’t board them?’

‘Not with the plague, lord, no.’ The garrison at Brunanburh had the duty of inspecting every ship that entered the river, mainly to levy a tax on whatever cargo the ship carried, but no one would board a ship that had sickness aboard. ‘They said they were carrying pelts, lord,’ Æthelstan explained, ‘and they paid us their fees.’

‘And you left them alone?’

He nodded miserably. The prisoners told me the rest. The three merchant ships had anchored where the Mærse’s channel was narrowest, the place where a fleet faced the greatest danger of running aground, and they had burned lanterns that had guided Ragnall’s ships past the peril. The tide had done the rest. Let a vessel drift and it will usually follow the swiftest current in the deepest channel and, once past the three merchant ships, Ragnall had simply let the flood carry him to our wharf. There he had burned both wharf and ships, so that his own vessels could now use the river safely. Reinforcements could now come from his sea kingdom. He had ripped apart our defence of the Mærse and he was loose in Britain with an army.

I let Æthelstan decide what to do with the prisoners. There were fourteen of them, and Æthelstan chose to have them executed. ‘Wait for low tide,’ he ordered Rædwald, ‘then tie them to the stakes.’ He nodded at the charred pilings that jutted at awkward angles from the swirling river. ‘Let them drown in the rising tide.’

I had already sent Beadwulf eastwards, but would not expect to hear his news for at least a day. I ordered Sihtric to send men south. ‘They’re to ride fast,’ I said, ‘and tell the Lady Æthelflaed what’s happening. Tell her I want men, a lot of men, all her men!’

‘At Ceaster?’ Sihtric asked.

I shook my head, thinking. ‘Tell her to send them to Liccelfeld. And tell her I’m going there.’ I turned and pointed to Æthelstan, ‘and you’re coming with me, lord Prince. And bringing most of Brunanburh’s garrison with you. And you,’ I looked at Rædwald, ‘will stay here. Defend what’s left. You can have fifty men.’

‘Fifty! That’s not enough …’

‘Forty,’ I snarled, ‘and if you lose the fort I’ll cut your kidneys out and eat them.’

We were at war.

Finan was at the water’s edge, sitting on a great driftwood log. I sat beside him. ‘So tell me about that,’ I said, nodding at the corpse that was still fixed by the spear.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Whatever you choose to tell me.’

We sat in silence. Geese flew above us, their wings beating the morning. A flurry of rain spat past. One of the corpses farted. ‘We’re going to Liccelfeld,’ I said.

Finan nodded. ‘Why Liccelfeld?’ he asked after a moment. The question was dutiful. He was not thinking about Ragnall or the Norsemen or anything except the spear-pierced corpse at the river’s brink.

‘Because I don’t know where Ragnall’s going,’ I said, ‘but from Liccelfeld we can go north or south easily.’

‘North or south,’ he repeated dully.

‘The bastard needs land,’ I said, ‘and he’ll either try to take it in northern Mercia or from southern Northumbria. We have to stop him fast.’

‘He’ll go north,’ Finan said, though he still spoke carelessly. He shrugged, ‘Why would he pick a fight with Mercia?’

I suspected he was right. Mercia had become powerful, its frontiers protected by burhs, fortified towns, while to the north were the troubled lands of Northumbria. That was Danish land, but the Danish lords were squabbling and fighting amongst themselves. A strong man like Ragnall could unite them. I had repeatedly told Æthelflaed that we should march north and take land from the fractious Danes, but she would not invade Northumbria until her brother Edward brought his West Saxon army to help. ‘Whether Ragnall goes north or comes south,’ I said, ‘now’s the time to fight him. He’s just arrived here. He doesn’t know the land. Haesten does, of course, but how far does Ragnall trust that piece of weasel-shit? And from what the prisoners said, Ragnall’s army has never fought together, so we hit him hard now, before he has a chance to find a refuge and before he feels safe. We do to him what the Irish did, we make him feel unwanted.’