Cynewulf shook his head. 'This is a testing age for Christianity. The Pope says so. We are caught between the pagans of the north and these unbelievers from the south. Do you seek to crush us, Moor?'
'That is for the emirs,' Ibn Zuhr said gently, 'not for me.'
Aebbe asked, 'What about prophecies? Can your God see into the past and future, even change it?'
'Allah is unknown and unknowable.'
Which was no answer, Cynewulf thought, and yet a very deep one. Fascinated, irritated, longing somehow to puncture the sleek hide of this very certain man, he tried to frame his next question.
And then the door was smashed down. Freezing air flooded in. The wall lamps flickered.
The invaders ran straight into the hall, roaring.
IV
Tall, helmeted men, they wore coats of leather, and they swung gleaming axes. They ran down the central aisle, between the great oak pillars. They even climbed on to the long tables, running. None had shields. Perhaps they believed no shield would be necessary.
And those cruel axes swung, lopping off heads and limbs with single strokes, and swords stabbed into crowded flesh. Suddenly there was blood everywhere, an iron stink, and a fouler smell of loosened bowels. The hall became a churn of flesh. And the English warrior nobility ran screaming, as panicked as sheep.
For Cynewulf, still sitting stunned on his bench, it was a transition from light to dark, from order to chaos, from humanity to something bloody and primeval, and it had happened in a heartbeat, less. And he was shocked by the youth of these rampaging men. Few of them looked much over twenty. There was an avidity about their work, a joy in killing.
Arngrim dragged Cynewulf to his feet and pulled him back against the wall, out of the crush. He was armed with a boar spear he had taken from the walls, and his expression was an iron mask. 'We have to move.'
'Arngrim, how can this have happened? There was a truce.'
'Broken. It doesn't matter. Are you listening to me? Ibn Zuhr, get him out of here.'
The Moor, calm as ever, took the priest's arm.
But in that moment Cynewulf saw Aebbe fall under the crush of the mob. He pulled at the Moor, but Ibn Zuhr's grip was strong, and he couldn't reach her.
One older man, a bovine brute in a coat of thick chain-mail, stood on a table and pointed to Alfred's throne. He spoke Danish, a tongue too many English had been forced to learn, and Cynewulf heard clearly what he called. 'There he is! The King! Follow me, Egil son of Egil! Follow me!' He went thundering down the tabletop, a mob behind him, scattering plates and cups as he went. He was like a bull, Cynewulf thought, horrified, a huge and heavy animal, not something human at all. And he was heading for the King.
Arngrim leapt up to face him. Without armour or helmet, armed with only the boar-spear, the thegn stood his ground on the tabletop. The assault was reduced to this fundamental essence, two men, one roaring forward, the other standing calm and resolute as a rock.
With his last pace Egil swung his bloody axe.
Arngrim ducked and slashed with his spear, aiming for the Dane's hip beneath his mail shirt.
Egil's axe deflected the spear's tip but its shaft slammed against his rib. Egil lost his balance and fell with a crash off the table into the churning crowd. In an instant he was on his feet, laying about him again, hacking through people as if through a bank of seaweed.
For an instant his eyes met Arngrim's. Cynewulf had been around warriors enough to understand the bleak promise in that gaze, a pact that could only be resolved in death.
But Cynewulf reached up and grabbed Arngrim's arm. 'Never mind him. The King! Save the King!'
Arngrim jumped to the floor and snatched a sword from a pile of armour on a bench. 'Get him out of here, Moor.'
'But Aebbe-'
'She is lost. For now, the King.' He yelled, 'Englishmen, with me!' And, sword raised, he ran down the hall towards the throne.
Alfred was struggling amid a mass of panicking warriors and priests, through which Northmen were hacking to get to him. Arngrim, huge amid the chaos, screamed for discipline. Gradually a bank of fighting men built up before the King.
And there was a stink of smoke. Cynewulf realised that the Danes had torched the building. As Ibn Zuhr dragged him away, Cynewulf was overwhelmed by the stench of blood and fear and death, dizzy at this sudden catastrophe – and bewildered by the loss of Aebbe.
V
His gut pressed to the cold earth, his face smeared with dank river-bottom mud, Arngrim crawled like a snake along the eroded ridge. He felt very exposed. This January morning, nature offered little cover, the trees bare, the undergrowth withered. He even tried to breathe shallowly, to avoid the steam of his lungs rising up and betraying him.
He reached the brow of the ridge, and overlooked the Danes' encampment.
The camp was set out like a letter 'D', with a half-circle of palisades and ditches pressed against a stretch of river bank. Arngrim could see tents of leather and sail-cloth, threads of smoke rising up from fires, horses corralled loosely. The ships had been hauled up on to the mud, their shallow draughts having enabled them to navigate even this far inland. The Danes always built their camps this way. They rode to battle on plundered horses and fought on foot, but they always preferred not to be too far away from their ships. Indeed it was said that you could wound a Dane more deeply by burning his ship than by striking down his son.
The warriors went about their business amid heaps of English treasure, extracted from the burned ruins of Alfred's hall. There were gangs of captives too, thegns, perhaps even ealdormen, great men of the kingdom of Wessex sitting in their own shit and tied together with lengths of rope like cattle. The Danes ignored the English save to prod them with their swords or piss on them, or they would pluck out a girl or a woman to be dragged into one of the tents.
Arngrim was close enough to hear scraps of the Danes' conversation. There was talk of taking the booty and captives back to Eoforwic – which the Danes called Jorvik, a captured town which was becoming a major market for the Danes. Meanwhile they were planning to use Cippanhamm as their base in Wessex for the rest of the winter. This riverside camp would serve as their river port, and a shelter for the ships. The assault on Cippanhamm was a classic example of the Vikings' way of working, Amgrim reflected, as every English thegn had learned from hard experience: surprise, attacks at night, the use of forests for cover, the ability to throw up rapid fortifications, their willingness to move into English settlements and use them as bases.
Amgrim did not see the Danes' leader, the petty king Guthrum. Nor did he spy Egil, the brutish leader of the war band.
'Hsst! Hsst!'
The call was loud enough to make Amgrim flinch. He looked back to the ragged copse at the bottom of this low ridge, where he had left Ibn Zuhr and Cynewulf. There was no sign of the Moor, but Cynewulf was standing in the open air, his habit streaked with dirt, filthy hair standing up around his tonsured scalp.
Furious, Arngrim waved him back. With one last glimpse down at the Danes he slithered on his belly down the ridge.
He met the others in the gloom of the forest. 'By Woden's eyes, what are you doing? Do you long for death, priest?'
Cynewulf, agitated, struggled for self-control. 'Oh, yes I do, you pagan oaf. I long to be free of the trials of this life, and to enter the peace of God which is forever beyond your hell-born understanding. But not today, not today. I must know. Is she there?'
'Aebbe? I did not see her. But she must be among the captives.' He described what he had seen of the camp.
'I don't understand,' Ibn Zuhr said, 'why they want all this plunder.'
Arngrim knew it was a sensible point. 'Among the Northmen the worth of a war leader is measured by the
