The Last Kingdom Series Books 4-6: Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings. Bernard Cornwell
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vipers’ nest being built on the southern bank.
‘No,’ I said, because for once my eyes had proved sharper than the Irishman’s. ‘No,’ I said, ‘they’re not making a camp.’ I touched my amulet.
Finan saw the gesture and heard the anger in my voice. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘The ship on the left,’ I said, pointing, ‘that’s Rodbora.’ I had seen the cross mounted on the stem-post.
Finan’s mouth opened, but he said nothing for a moment. He just stared. Six ships, just six ships, and fifteen had left Lundene. ‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ Finan finally spoke. He made the sign of the cross. ‘Perhaps the others have gone upriver?’
‘We’d have seen them.’
‘Then they’re coming behind?’
‘You’d better be right,’ I said grimly, ‘or else it’s nine ships gone.’
‘God, no.’
We were close now. The men ashore saw the eagle’s head on my boat and took me for a Viking and some ran into the shallows between two of the stranded ships and made a shield wall there, daring me to attack. ‘That’s Steapa,’ I said, seeing the huge figure at the centre of the shield wall. I ordered the eagle taken down, then stood with my arms outstretched, empty-handed, to show I came in peace. Steapa recognised me, and the shields went down and the weapons were sheathed. A moment later Sea-Eagle’s bows slid soft onto the sandy mud. The tide was rising, so she was safe.
I dropped over the side into water that came to my waist and waded ashore. I reckoned there were at least four hundred men on the beach, far too many for just six ships and, as I neared the shore, I could see that many of those men were wounded. They lay with blood-soaked bandages and pale faces. Priests knelt among them while, at the top of the beach, where pale grass topped the low dunes, I could see that crude driftwood crosses had been driven into newly dug graves.
Steapa waited for me, his face grimmer than ever. ‘What happened?’ I asked him.
‘Ask him,’ Steapa said, sounding bitter. He jerked his head along the beach and I saw Æthelred sitting close to the fire on which a cooking pot bubbled gently. His usual entourage was with him, including Aldhelm, who watched me with a resentful face. None of them spoke as I walked towards them. The fire crackled. Æthelred was toying with a piece of bladderwrack and, though he must have been aware of my approach, he did not look up.
I stopped beside the fire. ‘Where are the other nine ships?’ I asked.
Æthelred’s face jerked up, as though he were surprised to see me. He smiled. ‘Good news,’ he said. He expected me to ask what that news was, but I just watched him and said nothing. ‘We have won,’ he said expansively, ‘a great victory!’
‘A magnificent victory,’ Aldhelm interjected.
I saw that Æthelred’s smile was forced. His next words were halting, as if it took a great effort to string them together. ‘Gunnkel,’ he said, ‘has been taught the power of our swords.’
‘We burned their ships!’ Aldhelm boasted.
‘And made great slaughter,’ Æthelred said, and I saw that his eyes were glistening.
I looked up and down the beach where the wounded lay and where the uninjured sat with bowed heads. ‘You left with fifteen ships,’ I said.
‘We burned their ships,’ Æthelred said, and I thought he was going to cry.
‘Where are the other nine ships?’ I demanded.
‘We stopped here,’ Aldhelm said, and he must have thought I was being critical of their decision to beach the boats, ‘because we could not row against the falling tide.’
‘The other nine ships?’ I asked again, but received no answer. I was still searching the beach and what I sought I could not find. I looked back at Æthelred, whose head had dropped again, and I feared to ask the next question, but it had to be asked. ‘Where is your wife?’ I demanded.
Silence.
‘Where,’ I spoke louder, ‘is Æthelflaed?’
A gull sounded its harsh, forlorn cry. ‘She is taken,’ Æthelred said at last in a voice so small that I could barely hear him.
‘Taken?’
‘A captive,’ Æthelred said, his voice still low.
‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ I said, using Finan’s favourite expletive. The wind stirred the bitter smoke into my face. For a moment I did not believe what I had heard, but all around me was evidence that Æthelred’s magnificent victory had really been a catastrophic defeat. Nine ships were gone, but ships could be replaced, and half of Æthelred’s troops were missing, yet new men could be found to replace those dead, but what could replace a king’s daughter? ‘Who has her?’ I asked.
‘Sigefrid,’ Aldhelm muttered.
Which explained where the missing ships from Beamfleot had gone.
And Æthelflaed, sweet Æthelflaed, to whom I had made an oath, was a captive.
Our eight ships rode the flooding tide back up the Temes to Lundene. It was a summer’s evening, limpid and calm, in which the sun seemed to linger like a giant red globe suspended in the veil of smoke that clouded the air above the city. Æthelred made the voyage in Rodbora and, when I let Sea-Eagle drop back to row alongside that ship, I saw the black streaks where blood had stained her timbers. I quickened the oar strokes and pulled ahead again.
Steapa travelled with me in the Sea-Eagle and the big man told me what had happened in the River Sture.
It had, indeed, been a magnificent victory. Æthelred’s fleet had surprised the Vikings as they made their encampment on the river’s southern bank. ‘We came at dawn,’ Steapa said.
‘You stayed all night at sea?’
‘Lord Æthelred ordered it,’ Steapa said.
‘Brave,’ I commented.
‘It was a calm night,’ Steapa said dismissively, ‘and at first light we found their ships. Sixteen ships.’ He stopped abruptly. He was a taciturn man and found it difficult to speak more than a few words together.
‘Beached?’ I asked.
‘They were anchored,’ he said.
That suggested the Danes had wanted their vessels to be ready at any state of the tide, but it also meant the ships could not be defended because their crews had been mostly ashore where they were throwing up earth walls to make a camp. Æthelred’s fleet had made short work of the few men aboard the enemy vessels, and then the great rope-wrapped stones that served as anchors had been hauled up and the sixteen ships were towed to the northern bank and beached there. ‘He was going to keep them there,’ Steapa explained, ‘till he was finished, then bring them back.’
‘Finished?’ I asked.
‘He wanted to kill all the pagans before we left,’ Steapa said, and explained how Æthelred’s fleet had marauded up the Sture and its adjacent river, the Arwan, landing men along the banks to burn Danish halls, slaughter Danish cattle and, when they could, to kill Danes. The Saxon raiders had caused panic. Folk had fled inland, but Gunnkel, left shipless in his encampment at the mouth of the Sture, had not panicked.
‘You didn’t attack the camp?’ I asked Steapa.
‘Lord Æthelred said it was too well protected.’
‘I thought you said it was unfinished?’
Steapa shrugged. ‘They hadn’t built the palisade,’ he said, ‘at least on one side, so we could have got in and killed them, but we’d have lost a lot of our own men too.’
‘True,’ I admitted.
‘So