Dunholm’s wall, we must have looked like a dark army. All of us were muddy, our horses were filthy, but Kjartan’s men could see our spears and shields and swords and axes. By now they would know we were the enemy and that we had cut their only road, and they probably laughed at us. We were so few and their fortress was so high and their wall was so big and the rain still crashed on us and the drenching dark crept along the valleys on either side of us as a slither of lightning crackled wicked and sharp across the northern sky.
We picketed the horses in a waterlogged field. We did our best to rid the beasts of mud and pick their hooves clean, then we made a score of fires in the lee of a blackthorn hedge. It took forever to light the first fire. Many of our men carried dry kindling in leather pouches, but as soon as the kindling was exposed to the rain it became soggy. Eventually two men made a crude tent with their cloaks and I heard the click of steel on flint and saw the first trace of smoke. They protected that small fire as though it were made of gold, and at last the flames took hold and we could pile the wet firewood on top. The logs seethed and hissed and crackled, but the flames gave us some small warmth and the fires told Kjartan that his enemies were still on the hill. I doubt he thought Guthred had the courage to make such an attack, but he must have known Ragnar was returned from Wessex and he knew I had come back from the dead and perhaps, in that long wet night of rain and thunder, he felt a shiver of fear.
And while he shivered, the sceadugengan slithered in the dark.
As night fell I stared at the route I had to take in the darkness, and it was not good. I would have to go down to the river, then southward along the water’s edge, but just beneath the fortress wall, where the river vanished about Dunholm’s crag, a massive boulder blocked the way. It was a monstrous boulder, bigger than Alfred’s new church at Wintanceaster, and if I could not find a way around it then I would have to climb over its wide, flat top which lay less than a spear’s throw from Kjartan’s ramparts. I sheltered my eyes from the rain and stared hard, and decided there might be a way past the giant stone at the river’s edge.
“Can it be done?” Ragnar asked me.
“It has to be done,” I said.
I wanted Steapa with me, and I chose ten other men to accompany us. Both Guthred and Ragnar wanted to come, but I refused them. Ragnar was needed to lead the assault on the high gate, and Guthred was simply not warrior enough. Besides, he was one of the reasons we fought this battle and to leave him dead on Dunholm’s slopes would make a nonsense of the whole gamble. I took Beocca to one side. “Do you remember,” I asked him, “how my father made you stay by my side during the assault on Eoferwic?”
“Of course I do!” he said indignantly. “And you didn’t stay with me, did you? You kept trying to join the fight! It was all your fault that you were captured.” I had been ten years old and desperate to see a battle. “If you hadn’t run away from me,” he said, still sounding indignant, “you would never have been caught by the Danes! You’d be a Christian now. I blame myself. I should have tied your reins to mine.”
“Then you’d have been captured as well,” I said, “but I want you to do the same for Guthred tomorrow. Stay by him and don’t let him risk his life.”
Beocca looked alarmed. “He’s a king! He’s a grown man. I can’t tell him what to do.”
“Tell him Alfred wants him to live.”
“Alfred might want him to live,” he said gloomily, “but put a sword into a man’s hand and he loses his wits. I’ve seen it happen!”
“Then tell him you had a dream and Saint Cuthbert says he’s to stay out of trouble.”
“He won’t believe me!”
“He will,” I promised.
“I’ll try,” Beocca said, then looked at me with his one good eye. “Can you do this thing, Uhtred?”
“I don’t know,” I told him honestly.
“I shall pray for you.”
“Thank you, father,” I said. I would be praying to every god I could think of, and adding another could not hurt. In the end, I decided, it was all up to fate. The spinners already knew what we planned and knew how those plans would turn out and I could only hope they were not readying the shears to cut my life’s threads. Perhaps, above everything else, it was the madness of my idea that might give it wings and so let it succeed. There had been madness in Northumbria’s air ever since I had first returned. There had been a slaughterous madness in Eoferwic, a holy insanity in Cair Ligualid, and now this desperate idea.
I had chosen Steapa, for he was worth three or four other men. I took Sihtric because, if we got inside Dunholm, he would know the ground. I took Finan because the Irishman had a fury in his soul that I reckoned would turn to savagery in battle. I took Clapa because he was strong and fearless, and Rypere because he was cunning and lithe. The other six were from Ragnar’s men, all of them strong, all young, and all good with weapons, and I told them what we were going to do, and then made sure that each man had a black cloak that swathed him from head to foot. We smeared a mixture of mud and ash on our hands, faces, and helmets. “No shields,” I told them. That was a hard decision to make, for a shield is a great comfort in battle, but shields were heavy and, if they banged on stones or trees, would make a noise like a drumbeat. “I go first,” I told them, “and we’ll be going slowly. Very slowly. We have all night.”
We tied ourselves together with leather reins. I knew how easy it was for men to get lost in the dark, and on that night the darkness was absolute. If there was any moon it was hidden by thick clouds from which the rain fell steadily, but we had three things to guide us. First there was the slope itself. So long as I kept the uphill side to my right then I knew we were on the eastern side of Dunholm, and second there was the rushing hiss of the river as it curled about the crag, and last there were the fires of Dunholm itself. Kjartan feared an assault in the night and so he had his men hurl flaming logs from the high gate’s rampart. Those logs lit the track, but to produce them he had to keep a great fire burning in his courtyard and that blaze outlined the top of the ramparts and glowed red on the belly of the low rushing clouds. That raw light did not illuminate the slope, but it was there, beyond the black shadows, a livid guide in our wet darkness.
I had Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting hanging from my belt and, like the others, I carried a spear with its blade wrapped in a scrap of cloth so that no stray light could reflect from the metal. The spears would serve as staffs on the uneven ground and as probes to feel the way. We did not leave until it was utterly dark, for I dared not risk a sharp-eyed sentry seeing us scramble toward the river, but even in the dark our journey was easy enough at first, for our own fires showed us a way down the slope. We headed away from the fortress so that no one on its ramparts would see us leave the firelit camp, and then we worked our way down to the river and there turned southward. Our route now led across the base of the slope where trees had been felled and I had to feel my way between the stumps. The ground was thick with brambles and with the litter of tree-felling. There were small branches left to rot and we made a lot of noise trampling them underfoot, but the sound of the rain was louder still and the river seethed and roared to our left. My cloak kept catching on twigs or stumps and I tore its hem ragged dragging it free. Every now and then a great crack of lightning whipped earthward and we froze each time and, in the blue-white dazzle, I could see the fort outlined high above me. I could even see the spears of the sentries like thorny sparks against the sky, and I thought those sentries must be cold, soaked, and miserable. The thunder came a heartbeat later and it was always close, banging above us as if Thor were beating his war hammer against a giant iron shield. The gods were watching us. I knew that. That is what the gods do in their sky-halls. They watch us and they reward us for our daring or punish us for our insolence, and I clutched Thor’s hammer to tell him that I wanted his help, and Thor cracked the sky with his thunder and I took it as a sign of his approval.
The slope grew steeper. Rain was running off the soil which, in places, was nothing but slick mud. We all fell repeatedly as we edged southward. The tree stumps became sparser, but now there were boulders embedded in the slope and the wet stones were slick, so slick that in some places we were forced to crawl. It was getting darker too, for the slope bulged above us to hide the fire-edged ramparts and we slid and scrambled and cursed our way into a soul-scaring blackness. The river seemed very close and I feared sliding off a slab of rock and falling into the hurrying water.
Then my groping spear cracked against stone and I realized we had come to the huge boulder which, in the dark, felt like a monstrous cliff. I thought I had seen a way past on the river’s edge and I explored that way, going slowly, always thrusting the spear shaft ahead, but if I had seen a route in the twilight I could not find it now. The boulder appeared to overhang the water and there was no choice but to climb back up the slope beside the great rock and then slither over its domed top, and so we inched our way upward, clinging to saplings and kicking footholds in the sopping earth, and every foot we climbed took us closer to the ramparts. The leather ropes joining us kept catching on snags and it seemed to take forever to reach a spot where the firelight glowing above the
