The Last Kingdom. Bernard Cornwell
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catch up,’ my father said carelessly.
‘It’s not good,’ Father Beocca told me.
‘What’s not good?’
‘There should be more discipline. I have read the Roman wars and know there must be discipline.’
‘They’ll catch up,’ I said, echoing my father.
That night we were joined by men from the place called Cetreht where, long ago, we had defeated the Welsh in a great battle. The newcomers sang of the battle, chanting how we had fed the ravens with the foreigners’ blood, and the words cheered my father who told me we were near Eoferwic and that next day we might expect to join Osbert and Ælla, and how the day after that we would feed the ravens again. We were sitting by a fire, one of hundreds of fires that stretched across the fields. South of us, far off across a flat land, I could see the sky glowing from the light of still more fires and knew they showed where the rest of Northumbria’s army gathered.
‘The raven is Woden’s creature, isn’t it?’ I asked nervously.
My father looked at me sourly. ‘Who told you that?’
I shrugged, said nothing.
‘Ealdwulf?’ He guessed, knowing that Bebbanburg’s blacksmith, who had stayed at the fortress with Ælfric, was a secret pagan.
‘I just heard it,’ I said, hoping I would get away with the evasion without being hit, ‘and I know we are descended from Woden.’
‘We are,’ my father acknowledged, ‘but we have a new God now.’ He stared balefully across the encampment where men were drinking. ‘Do you know who wins battles, boy?’
‘We do, father.’
‘The side that is least drunk,’ he said and then, after a pause, ‘but it helps to be drunk.’
‘Why?’
‘Because a shield wall is an awful place.’ He gazed into the fire. ‘I have been in six shield walls,’ he went on, ‘and prayed every time it would be the last. Your brother, now, he was a man who might have loved the shield wall. He had courage.’ He fell silent, thinking, then scowled. ‘The man who brought his head. I want his head. I want to spit into his dead eyes then put his skull on a pole above the Low Gate.’
‘You will have it,’ I said.
He sneered at that. ‘What do you know?’ he asked. ‘I brought you, boy, because you must see battle. Because our men must see that you are here. But you will not fight. You’re like a young dog who watches the old dogs kill the boar, but doesn’t bite. Watch and learn, watch and learn and maybe one day you’ll be useful. But for now you’re nothing but a pup.’ He dismissed me with a wave.
Next day the Roman road ran across a flat land, crossing dykes and ditches, until at last we came to where the combined armies of Osbert and Ælla had made their shelters. Beyond them, and just visible through the scattered trees, was Eoferwic, and that was where the Danes were.
Eoferwic was, and still is, the chief city of northern England. It possesses a great abbey, an archbishop, a fortress, high walls, and a vast market. It stands beside the River Ouse, and boasts a bridge, but ships can reach Eoferwic from the distant sea, and that was how the Danes had come. They must have known that Northumbria was weakened by civil war, that Osbert, the rightful king, had marched westwards to meet the forces of the pretender Ælla, and in the absence of the king they had taken the city. It would not have been difficult for them to have discovered Osbert’s absence. The trouble between Osbert and Ælla had been brewing for weeks, and Eoferwic was filled with traders, many from across the sea, who would have known of the two men’s bitter rivalry. One thing I learned about the Danes was that they knew how to spy. The monks who write the chronicles tell us that they came from nowhere, their dragon-prowed ships suddenly appearing from a blue vacancy, but it was rarely like that. The Viking crews might attack unexpectedly, but the big fleets, the war fleets, went where they knew there was already trouble. They found an existing wound and filled it like maggots.
My father took me close to the city, he and a score of his men, all of us mounted and all wearing mail or leather. We could see the enemy on the wall. Some of the wall was built of stone, that was the Roman work, but much of the city was protected by an earth wall, topped by a high wooden palisade, and to the east of the city part of that palisade was missing. It seemed to have been burned for we could see charred wood on top of the earthen wall where fresh stakes had been driven to hold the new palisade that would replace the burned fence.
Beyond the new stakes was a jumble of thatched roofs, the wooden bell towers of three churches and, on the river, the masts of the Danish fleet. Our scouts claimed there were thirty-four ships, which was said to mean the Danes had an army of around a thousand men. Our own army was larger, nearer to fifteen hundred, though it was difficult to count. No one seemed to be in charge. The two leaders, Osbert and Ælla, camped apart and, though they had officially made peace, they refused to speak to each other, communicating instead through messengers. My father, the third most important man in the army, could talk to both, but he was not able to persuade Osbert and Ælla to meet, let alone agree on a plan of campaign. Osbert wished to besiege the city and starve the Danes out, while Ælla urged an immediate attack. The rampart was broken, he said, and an assault would drive deep into the tangle of streets where the Danes could be hunted down and killed. I do not know which course my father preferred, for he never said, but in the end the decision was taken away from us.
Our army could not wait. We had brought some food, but that was soon exhausted, and men were going ever farther afield to find more, and some of those men did not return. They just slipped home. Other men grumbled that their farms needed work and if they did not return home they would face a hungry year. A meeting was called of every important man and they spent all day arguing. Osbert attended the meeting, which meant Ælla did not, though one of his chief supporters was there and hinted that Osbert’s reluctance to assault the city was caused by cowardice. Perhaps it was, for Osbert did not respond to the jibe, proposing instead that we dug our own forts outside the city. Three or four such forts, he said, would trap the Danes. Our best fighters could man the forts, and our other men could go home to look after their fields. Another man proposed building a new bridge across the river, a bridge that would trap the Danish fleet, and he argued the point tediously, though I think everyone knew that we did not have the time to make a bridge across such a wide river. ‘Besides,’ King Osbert said, ‘we want the Danes to take their ships away. Let them go back to the sea. Let them go and trouble someone else.’ A bishop pleaded for more time, saying that Ealdorman Egbert, who held land south of Eoferwic, had yet to arrive with his men.
‘Nor is Ricsig here,’ a priest said, speaking of another great lord.
‘He’s sick,’ Osbert said.
‘Sickness of courage,’ Ælla’s spokesman sneered.
‘Give them time,’ the bishop suggested. ‘With Egbert’s and Ricsig’s men we shall have enough troops to frighten the Danes with sheer numbers.’
My father said nothing at the meeting, though it was plain many men wanted him to speak, and I was perplexed that he stayed silent, but that night Beocca explained why. ‘If he said we should attack,’ the priest said, ‘then men would assume he had sided with Ælla, while if he encouraged a siege, he would be seen to be on Osbert’s side.’
‘Does it matter?’
Beocca looked at me across the campfire, or one of his eyes looked at me while the other wandered somewhere in the night. ‘When the Danes are beaten,’ he said, ‘then Osbert and Ælla’s feud will start again. Your father wants none of it.’
‘But whichever side he supports,’ I said, ‘will win.’
‘But suppose they kill each other?’ Beocca asked, ‘who will be king then?’
I looked at him, understood, said nothing.
‘And who will be king thereafter?’ Beocca asked, and he pointed at me. ‘You. And a king should