Lords of the North

There had to be tools up at the ruined monastery, for that was where Kjartan’s men manacled their slaves, and so Steapa sent two men to search for the means to strike off our chains and Finan amused himself by butchering Hakka because I would not let him slaughter Sverri. The Scottish slaves watched in awe as the blood swilled into the sea beside the stranded Trader. Finan danced with joy afterward and chanted one of his wild songs, then he killed the rest of Sverri’s crew.

“Why are you here?” I asked Steapa.

“I was sent, lord,” he said proudly.

“Sent? Who sent you?”

“The king, of course,” he said.

“Guthred sent you?”

“Guthred?” Steapa asked, puzzled by the name, then shook his head. “No, lord. It was King Alfred, of course.”

“Alfred sent you?” I asked, then gaped at him. “Alfred?”

“Alfred sent us,” he confirmed.

“But these are Danes,” I gestured at the crewmen who had been left on the beach with Steapa.

“Some are Danes,” Steapa said, “but we’re mostly West Saxons. Alfred sent us.”

“Alfred sent you?” I asked again, knowing I sounded like an incoherent fool, but I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. “Alfred sent Danes?”

“A dozen of them, lord,” Steapa said, “and they’re only here because they follow him.” He pointed to the shipmaster in his winged helmet who was striding back to the beach. “He’s the hostage,” Steapa said as though that explained everything, “and Alfred sent me to keep him honest. I guard him.”

The hostage? Then I remembered whose badge was the eagle wing and I stumbled toward the red ship’s master, inhibited by the ragged chains dragging from my ankles, and the approaching warrior took off his winged helmet and I could scarcely see his face because of my tears. But I still shouted his name. “Ragnar!” I shouted. “Ragnar!”

He was laughing when we met. He embraced me, whirled me about, embraced me a second time, and then pushed me away. “You stink,” he said, “you’re the ugliest, hairiest, smelliest bastard I’ve ever laid eyes on. I should throw you to the crabs, except why would a good crab want anything as revolting as you?”

I was laughing and I was crying. “Alfred sent you?”

“He did, but I wouldn’t have come if I’d known what a filthy turd you’ve become,” he said. He smiled broadly and that smile reminded me of his father, all good humor and strength. He embraced me again. “It is good to see you, Uhtred Ragnarson,” he said.

Ragnar’s men had driven Sven’s remaining troops away. Sven himself had escaped on horseback, fleeing toward Dunholm. We burned the slave pens, freed the slaves, and that night, by the light of the burning wattle hurdles, my shackles were struck off and for the next few days I raised my feet ludicrously high when I walked for I had grown so accustomed to the weight of the iron bonds.

I washed. The red-haired Scottish slave cut my hair, watched by Finan. “Her name’s Ethne,” he told me. He spoke her language, or at least they could understand one another, though I guessed, from the way they looked at each other, that different languages would not have been a barrier. Ethne had found two of the men who had raped her among Sven’s dead and she had borrowed Finan’s sword to mutilate their corpses and Finan had watched her proudly. Now she used shears to cut my hair and trim my beard, and afterward I dressed in a leather jerkin and in clean hose and proper shoes. And then we ate in the ruined monastery church and I sat with Ragnar, my friend, and heard the tale of my rescue.

“We’ve been following you all summer,” he said.

“We saw you.”

“Couldn’t miss us, could you, not with that hull? Isn’t she a horror? I hate pine-built hulls. She’s called Dragon-Fire, but I call her Worm-Breath. It took me a month to get her ready for sea. She belonged to a man who was killed at Ethandun and she was just rotting away on the Temes when Alfred gave her to us.”

“Why would Alfred do that?”

“Because he said you won him his throne at Ethandun,” Ragnar said and grinned. “Alfred was exaggerating,” he went on, “I’m sure he was. I imagine you just stumbled about the battlefield and made a bit of noise, but you did enough to fool Alfred.”

“I did enough,” I said softly, remembering the long green hill. “But I thought Alfred didn’t notice.”

“He noticed,” Ragnar said, “but he didn’t do this just for you. He gained a nunnery as well.”

“He did what?”

“Got himself a nunnery. God knows why he’d want one. Me, I might have exchanged you for a whorehouse, but Alfred got a nunnery and he seemed well enough pleased with that bargain.”

And that was when the story emerged. I did not hear the whole tale that night, but later I pieced it all together and I shall tell it here. It had all started with Hild.

Guthred kept his last promise to me and treated her honorably. He gave her my sword and my helmet, he let her keep my mail and my arm rings, and he asked her to be the companion of his new wife, Queen Osburh, the Saxon niece of the dethroned king in Eoferwic. But Hild blamed herself for my betrayal. She decided that she had offended her god by resisting her calling as a nun and so she begged Guthred to give her leave to go back to Wessex and rejoin her order. He had wanted her to stay in Northumbria, but she pleaded with him to let her go and she told him that God and Saint Cuthbert demanded it of her, and Guthred was ever open to Cuthbert’s persuasion. And so he allowed her to accompany messengers he was sending to Alfred and thus Hild returned to Wessex and once there she found Steapa, who had always been fond of her.

“She took me to Fifhaden,” Steapa told me that night when the hurdles burned beneath the ruined walls of Gyruum’s monastery.

“To Fifhaden?”

“And we dug up your hoard,” Steapa said. “Hild showed me where it was and I dug it up. Then we carried it to Alfred. All of it. We poured it on the floor and he just stared at it.”

That hoard was Hild’s weapon. She told Alfred the story of Guthred and how he had betrayed me, and she promised Alfred that if he sent men to find me then she would use all that gold and silver on his hall’s floor to build a house of God and that she would repent of her sins and live the rest of her life as a bride of Christ. She would wear the church’s manacles so that my iron chains could be struck off.

“She became a nun again?” I asked.

“She said she wanted that,” Steapa said. “She said God wanted it. And Alfred did. He said yes to her.”

“So Alfred released you?” I asked Ragnar.

“I hope he will,” Ragnar said, “when I take you back home. I’m still a hostage, but Alfred said I could search for you if I promised to return to him. And we’ll all be released soon enough. Guthrum’s making no trouble. King ?thelstan, he’s called now.”

“He’s in East Anglia?”

“He’s in East Anglia,” Ragnar confirmed, “and he’s building churches and monasteries.”

“So he really did become a Christian?”

“The poor bastard’s as pious as Alfred,” Ragnar said gloomily. “Guthrum always was a credulous fool. But Alfred sent for me. Told me I could search for you. He let me take the men who served me in exile and the rest are crewmen that Steapa found. They’re Saxons, of course, but the bastards can row well enough.”

“Steapa said he was here to guard you,” I said.

“Steapa!” Ragnar looked across the fire we had lit in the nave of the monastery’s ruined church, “you foul scrap of stinking stoat-shit. Did you say you were here to guard me?”

“But I am, lord,” Steapa said.

“You’re a piece of shit. But you fight well.” Ragnar grinned and looked back to me. “And I’m to take you back to Alfred.”

I stared into the fire where strips of burning wattle glowed a brilliant red. “Thyra is at Dunholm,” I said, “and Kjartan still lives.”

“And I go to Dunholm when Alfred releases me,” Ragnar said, “but first I have to take you to Wessex. I swore an oath on it. I swore I would not break Northumbria’s peace, but only fetch you. And Alfred kept Brida, of