of your own crew—Gauti, who walks with a limp. The first time I tried to harness horses he walked by and told me what a fool I was. Then he showed me how you do it in Halogaland, where you always plough with horses. Not new knowledge—old knowledge. Old knowledge not everyone knows. But we worked out how to hitch up the catapults ourselves.”
“Well and good,” said Brand. “But answer me this: Catapults or no catapults, horse-teams or no horse- teams: how many of your English are fit to stand in a battle-line against trained warriors? Warriors half their weight again and twice their strength? You cannot make front-fighters out of kitchen boys. Better to recruit some of those well-fed thanes we saw. Or their sons.”
Shef crooked a finger and two halberdiers hustled a prisoner forward. A Norseman—bearded, pale-faced beneath windburn, a head taller than his two escorts. He held his left wrist awkwardly in his right hand, like a man whose collarbone is broken. The face was half-familiar: a man whom Brand had seen once at some forgotten campfire when the Viking army had still been as one.
“His three crews tried their luck raiding our lands near the Yare two weeks ago,” Shef remarked. “Tell them how you got on.”
The man stared at Brand with a kind of plea. “Cowards. Wouldn't fight us fair,” he snarled. “They caught us coming out of our first village. A dozen of my men down with great darts through them before we could see where they were coming from. When we charged the machines they held us off with the big axes. Then more of them came round from behind. After they had dealt with us they took me along—my arm was broken so I could not lift shield—to see them attack the ships we had left offshore. They sank one with the stone-throwers. Two got away.”
He grimaced. “My name is Snaekolf, from Raumariki. I did not know you men of the Way had taught the English so much, or I would not have raided here. Will you speak for me?”
Shef shook his head before Brand could reply. “His men behaved like beasts in that village,” he said. “We will have no more of it. I kept him to say his piece and he has said it. Hang him when you can find a tree.”
Hoofbeats came from behind them as the halberdiers hustled the silent Viking away. Shef turned without haste or alarm to meet the rider cantering down the muddy track. The man reached them, dismounted, bowed briefly and spoke. The men of the Wayland army, English and Norse together, stretched their ears to listen.
“News from your
“Good news,” said Brand thoughtfully. “A friend in power is always good.”
“You said ‘expected’?” said Shef. “Who could oppose him? There is no other of that royal house left.”
Chapter Two
The young man stared out from a narrow window in the stone. Behind him, very faintly, he could hear the sound of the monks of the Old Minster singing yet another of the many masses he had paid for, masses for the soul of his last brother, King Ethelred. In front of him, all was activity. The wide street that ran east to west through Winchester was crowded with traders, stalls, customers. Through them pushed carts laden with timber. Three separate gangs of men were working on houses either side of the street, digging foundations, driving beams into the soil, fitting planks over timber frames. If he lifted his eyes he could see, round the edge of the town, many more men strengthening the rampart his brother had ordered, driving in the logs and fitting the fighting-platforms. From all directions came the sound of saws and hammers.
The young man, Alfred the atheling, felt a fierce satisfaction. This was his town: Winchester. The town of his family for centuries, for as long as the English had been on their island, and longer even than that, for he could number ancestors among the British and the Romans too. This Minster was his. His many greats-grandfather King Cenwalh had given the land on which it was to be built to the Church two hundred years before, as well as the land to support it and provide its revenues. Not only his brother Ethelred was buried here, but his father Ethelwulf as well, and his other brothers, and uncles and great-uncles in number more than a man could count. They had lived, they had died, they had gone back to the earth. But it was the same earth. Last of his line, the young atheling did not feel alone.
Strengthened, he turned to face the saw-edged voice that had been grating away behind him in competition with the sounds from outside. The voice of the bishop of Winchester, Bishop Daniel.
“What was that you said?” demanded the atheling. “
The bishop's face set mulishly. “What is this talk of Woden, the god of the pagans? That is no qualification for a Christian king. And what the
“You cannot be king till you have been anointed with the holy oil, like Saul or David. Only I and the other bishops of the realm can do that. And I tell you—we will not. Not unless you satisfy us you are a true king for a Christian land. To prove this you must cease your alliance with the Church-despoilers. Remove your protection from the one they call the Sheaf. Make war on the pagans. The pagans of the Way!”
Alfred sighed. Slowly he walked across the room. He rubbed with his fingers at a dark stain on the wall, a mark of burning.
“Father,” he said patiently. “You were here two years ago. It was the pagans then who sacked this town. Burned every house in it, stripped this minster itself of all the gifts my ancestors had put in it, drove off all the town-folk and priests they could catch to their slave-marts.
“Those were true pagans. And it was not even the Great Army that did it, the army of the sons of Ragnar, of Sigurth the Snakeeye and Ivar Boneless. It was just a troop of marauders.
“That is how weak we are. Or were. What I mean to do”—his voice rose suddenly and challengingly—“is see to it that bane never comes on Winchester again, so that my long fathers can rest in peace in their graves. To do that I must have strength. And support. The men of the Way will not challenge us, they will live in fellowship, pagans or no pagans. They are not our enemies. A true Christian king cares for his people. That is what I am doing. Why will you not consecrate me?”
“A true Christian king,” said the bishop, slowly, carefully, “A true Christian king cares first and above all for the Church. The pagans may have burned the roof from this minster. But they did not take its land and revenues forever. No pagan, not the Boneless One himself, has taken all the Church land for his own, and given it to slaves and hirelings.”
That was the reality, thought Alfred. Gangs of marauders, the Great Army itself, might come down on minster or monastery and strip it of its goods, its treasures and relics. Bishop Daniel would resent it bitterly, torture to death every last stray Viking he caught. But it was not yet to him a matter of survival. The Church could re-roof its minsters, restock its lands, breed new parishioners and even ransom back its books and holy bones. Pillage was survivable.
Taking away the land that was the basis of permanent wealth, land the Church had booked to itself from death-bed donations over many centuries, that was more dangerous. That was what the new alderman, no, the jarl of the Way-folk had done. That had taught Bishop Daniel a new fear. Daniel feared for the Church. He himself, Alfred realized: he feared for Winchester. Rebuilding or no, ransoms or no, long view or short view—he would never see it ravaged and burned again. Church was less important than city.
“I do not need your holy oil,” he said peremptorily. “I can rule without you. The aldermen and the reeves, the thanes and the councillors and the warriors. They will follow me as king whether I am consecrated or not.”
The bishop stared unwinkingly at the set young face before him, shook his head with cold anger. “It will not be. The scribes, the priests, the men who write your royal writs and book your leases: they will not aid you. They will do as I tell them. In all your kingdom—if king you call yourself—there is not one man who can read and write who is not a member of the Church. What is more—you cannot read yourself! Much though your holy and pious mother wished you to learn the craft!”
