shields, and corpses. I saw a dog swimming frantically, eyes white, and for a moment I thought it was Nihtgenga, then saw this dog had black ears while Nihtgenga had white. The clouds were the color of iron, ragged and low, and the water was being shredded into streams of white and greenblack, and theHeahengel reared to each sea, crashed down into the troughs, and shook like a live thing with every blow, but she lived. She was well built, she kept us alive, and all the while we
watched the Danish ships die and Father Willibald prayed.
Oddly his sickness had passed. He looked pale, and doubtless felt wretched, but as the storm pummeled us his vomiting ended and he even came to stand beside me, steadying himself by holding on to the steering oar. “Who is the Danish god of the sea?” he asked me over the wind’s noise.
“Njor !” I shouted back.
He grinned. “You pray to him and I’ll pray to God.”
I laughed. “If Alfred knew you’d said that you’d never become a bishop!”
“I won’t become a bishop unless we survive this! So pray!”
I did pray, and slowly, reluctantly, the storm eased. Low clouds raced over the angry water, but the wind died and we could cut away the wreckage of mast and yard and unship the oars and turnHeahengel to the west and row through the flotsam of a shattered war fleet. A score of Danish ships were in front of us, and there were others behind us, but I guessed that at least half their fleet had sunk, perhaps more, and I felt an immense fear for Ragnar and Brida. We caught up with the smaller Danish ships and I steered close to as many as I could and shouted across the broken seas. “Did you seeWindViper ?”
“No,” they called back. No, came the answer, again and again. They knew we were an enemy ship, but did not care for there was no enemy out in that water except the water itself, and so we rowed on, a mastless ship, and left the Danes behind us, and as night fell, and as a streak of sunlight leaked like seeping blood into a rift of the western clouds, I steeredHeahengel into the crooked reach of the river Uisc, and once we were behind the headland the sea calmed and we rowed, suddenly safe, past the long spit of sand and turned into the river and I could look up into the darkening hills to where Oxton stood, and I saw no light there.
We beachedHeahengel and staggered ashore and some men knelt and kissed the ground while others made the sign of the cross. There was a small harbor in the wide river reach and some houses by the harbor and we filled them, demanded that fires were lit and food brought, and then, in the darkness, I went back outside and saw the sparks of light flickering upriver. I realized they were torches being burned on the remaining Danish boats that had somehow found their way into the Uisc and now rowed inland, going north toward Exanceaster, and I knew that was where Guthrum must have ridden and that the Danes were there, and the fleet’s survivors would thicken his army and Odda the Younger, if he lived, might well have tried to go there, too.
With Mildrith and my son. I touched Thor’s hammer and prayed they were alive. And then, as the dark boats passed upstream, I slept.
In the morning we pulledHeahengel into the small harbor where she could rest on the mud when the tide fell. We were fortyeight men, tired but alive. The sky was ribbed with clouds, high and graypink, scudding before the storm’s dying wind,
We walked to Oxton through woods full of bluebells. Did I expect to find Mildrith there? I think I did, but of course she was not. There was only Oswald the steward and the slaves and none of them knew what was happening.
Leofric insisted on a day to dry clothes, sharpen weapons, and fill bellies, but I was in no mood to rest so I took two men, Cenwulf and Ida, and walked north toward Exanceaster, which lay on the far side of the Uisc. The river settlements were empty for the folk had heard of the Danes coming and had fled into the hills, and so we walked the higher paths and asked them what happened, but they knew nothing except that there were dragon ships in the river, and we could see those for ourselves. There was a stormbattered fleet drawn up on the riverbank beneath Exanceaster’s stone walls. There were more ships than I had suspected, suggesting that a good part of Guthrum’s fleet had survived by staying in the Poole when the storm struck, and a few of those ships were still arriving, their crews rowing up the narrow river. We counted hulls and reckoned there were close to ninety boats, which meant that almost half of Guthrum’s fleet had survived, and I tried to distinguishWindViper ’s hull among the others, but we were too far away.
Guthrum the Unlucky. How well he deserved that name, though in time he came close to earning a better, but for now he had been unfortunate indeed. He had broken out of Werham, had doubtless hoped to resupply his army in Exanceaster and then strike north, but the gods of sea and wind had struck him down and he was left with a crippled army. Yet it was still a strong army and, for the moment, safe behind Exanceaster’s Roman walls.
I wanted to cross the river, but there were too many Danes by their ships, so we walked farther north and saw armed men on the road that led west from Exanceaster, a road that crossed the bridge beneath the city and led over the moors toward Cornwalum, and I stared a long time at those men, fearing they might be Danes, but they were staring east, suggesting that they watched the Danes and I guessed they were English and so we went down from the woods, shields slung on our backs to show we meant no harm.
There were eighteen men, led by a thegn named Withgil who had been the commander of Exanceaster’s garrison and who had lost most of his men when Guthrum attacked. He was reluctant to tell the story, but it was plain that he had expected no trouble and had posted only a few guards on the eastern gate, and when they had seen the approaching horsemen the guards had thought they were English and so the Danes had been able to capture the gate and then pierce the town. Withgil claimed to have made a fight at the fort in the town’s center, but it was obvious from his men’s embarrassment that it had been a pathetic resistance, if it amounted to any resistance at all, and the probable truth was that Withgil had simply run away.
“Was Odda there?” I asked.
“Ealdorman Odda?” Withgil asked. “ Of course not.”
“Where was he?”
Withgil frowned at me as if I had just come from the moon. “In the north, of course.”
“The north of Defnascir?”
“He marched a week ago. He led the fyrd.”
“Against Ubba?”
“That’s what the king ordered,” Withgil said.
“So where’s Ubba?” I demanded.
It seemed that Ubba had brought his ships across the wide S?fern sea and had landed far to the west in Defnascir. He had traveled before the storm struck, which suggested his army was intact, and Odda had been ordered north to block Ubba’s advance into the rest of Wessex, and if Odda had marched a week ago then surely Odda the Younger would know that and would have ridden to join his father. Which suggested that Mildrith was there, wherever there was. I asked Withgil if he had seen Odda the Younger, but he said he had neither seen nor heard of him since Christmas.
“How many men does Ubba have?” I asked.
“Many,” Withgil said, which was not helpful, but all he knew.
“Lord.” Cenwulf touched my arm and pointed east and I saw horsemen appearing on the low fields that stretched from the river toward the hill on which Exanceaster is built. A lot of horsemen, and behind them came a standard bearer and, though we were too far away to see the badge on the flag, the green and white proclaimed that it was the West Saxon banner. So Alfred had come here? It seemed likely, but I was in no mind to cross the river and find out. I was only interested in searching for Mildrith. War is fought in mystery. The truth can take days to travel, and ahead of truth flies rumor, and it is ever hard to know what is really happening, and the art of it is to pluck the clean bone of fact from the rotting flesh of fear and lies.
So what did I know? That Guthrum had broken the truce and had taken Exanceaster, and that Ubba was in the north of Defnascir. Which suggested that the Danes were trying to do what they had failed to do the previous year, split the West Saxon forces, and while Alfred faced one army the other would ravage the land or, perhaps, descend on Alfred’s rear, and to prevent that the fyrd of Defnascir had been ordered to block Ubba. Had that battle been fought? Was Odda alive? Was his son alive? Were Mildrith and my son alive? In any clash between Ubba and Odda I would have reckoned on Ubba. He was a great warrior, a man of legend among the Danes, and Odda was a fussy, worried, graying, and aging man.
“We go north,” I told Leofric when we were back at Oxton. I had no wish to see Alfred. He would be besieging Guthrum, and if I walked into his camp he would doubtless order me to join the troops ringing the city and
