Sword Song

Serpent-Breath. Pyrlig copied me, taking off his helmet. “You don’t have to come,” I told him.

“And why shouldn’t I?” he asked, smiling. He handed his makeshift standard to Rypere, laid his shield down, and, because I was glad of the Welshman’s company, the two of us walked to the bridge’s gate.

“I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” I announced to the hard-faced men staring over their shield rims, “and if you wish to feast in Odin’s corpse-hall this night then I am willing to send you there.”

Behind me the city screamed and smoke drifted dense across the sky. The nine men in the enemy’s front rank stared at me, but none spoke.

“But if you want to taste the joys of this world longer,” I went on, “then speak to me.”

“We serve our earl,” one of the men finally said.

“And he is?”

“Sigefrid Thurgilson,” the man said.

“Who fought well,” I said. I had been screaming insults at Sigefrid not two hours before, but now was the time for softer speech. A time to arrange for an enemy to yield and thus save my men’s lives. “Does the Earl Sigefrid live?” I asked.

“He lives,” the man said curtly, jerking his head to indicate that Sigefrid was somewhere behind him on the bridge.

“Then tell him Uhtred of Bebbanburg would speak with him, to decide whether he lives or dies.”

That was not my choice to make. The Fates had already made the decision, and I was but their instrument. The man who had spoken to me called the message to the men behind on the bridge and I waited. Pyrlig was praying, though whether he beseeched mercy for the folk who screamed behind us or death for the men in front of us, I never asked.

Then the tight-packed shield wall in the arch shuffled aside as men made a passage down the roadway’s center. “The Earl Erik will speak with you,” the man told me.

And Pyrlig and I went to meet the enemy.

SIX

My brother says I should kill you,” Erik greeted me. The younger of the Thurgilson brothers had been waiting for me on the bridge and, though his words held menace, there was none in his face. He was placid, calm and apparently unworried by his predicament. His black hair was crammed beneath a plain helmet and his fine mail was spattered with blood. There was a rent at the mail’s hem, and I guessed that marked where a spear had come beneath his shield, but he was evidently unwounded. Sigefrid, though, was horribly injured. I could see him on the roadway, lying on his bear-fur cloak, twisting and jerking in pain, and being tended by two men.

“Your brother,” I said, still watching Sigefrid, “thinks that death is the answer to everything.”

“Then he’s like you in that regard,” Erik said with a wan smile, “if you are what men say you are.”

“What do men say of me?” I asked, curious.

“That you kill like a Northman,” Erik said. He turned to stare downriver. A small fleet of Danish and Norse ships had managed to escape the wharves, but some now rowed back upstream in an attempt to save the fugitives who crowded the river’s edge, but the Saxons were already among that doomed crowd. A furious fight was raging on the wharves where men hacked at each other. Some, to escape the fury, were leaping into the river. “I sometimes think,” Erik said sadly, “that death is the real meaning of life. We worship death, we give it, we believe it leads to joy.”

“I don’t worship death,” I said.

“Christians do,” Erik remarked, glancing at Pyrlig, whose mailed chest displayed his wooden cross.

“No,” Pyrlig said.

“Then why the image of a dead man?” Erik asked.

“Our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead,” Pyrlig said energetically, “he conquered death! He died to give us life and regained his own life in his dying. Death, lord, is just a gate to more life.”

“Then why do we fear death?” Erik asked in a voice that suggested he expected no answer. He turned to look at the downstream chaos. The two ships we had used to shoot the bridge’s gap had been commandeered by fleeing men, and one of those ships had foundered just yards from the wharf where it now lay on its side, half sunken. Men had been spilled into the water where many must have drowned, but others had managed to reach the muddy foreshore where they were being hacked to death by gleeful men with spears, swords, axes, and hoes. The survivors clung to the wreck, trying to shelter from a handful of Saxon bowmen whose long hunting arrows thudded into the ship’s timbers. There was so much death that morning. The streets of the broken city reeked of blood and were filled with the wailing of women beneath the smoke-smeared yellow sky. “We trusted you, Lord Uhtred,” Erik said bleakly, still staring downriver. “You were going to bring us Ragnar, you were to be king in Mercia, and you were to give us the whole island of Britain.”

“The dead man lied,” I said. “Bjorn lied.”

Erik turned back to me, his face grave. “I said we should not try and trick you,” he said, “but Earl Haesten insisted.” Erik shrugged, then looked at Father Pyrlig, noting his mail coat and the well-worn hilts of his swords. “But you also tricked us, Lord Uhtred,” Erik went on, “because I think you knew this man was no priest, but a warrior.”

“He is both,” I said.

Erik grimaced, perhaps remembering the skill with which Pyrlig had defeated his brother in the arena. “You lied,” he said sadly, “and we lied, but we still could have taken Wessex together. And now?” he turned and looked along the bridge’s roadway, “now I don’t know whether my brother will live or die.” He grimaced. Sigefrid was motionless now and for a moment I thought he might have gone to the corpse-hall already, but then he slowly turned his head to give me a baleful stare.

“I shall pray for him,” Pyrlig said.

“Yes,” Erik said simply, “please.”

“And what shall I do?” I asked.

“You?” Erik frowned, puzzled by my question.

“Do I let you live, Erik Thurgilson?” I asked. “Or kill you?”

“You will find us difficult to kill,” he said.

“But kill you I will,” I responded, “if I must.” That was the real negotiation in those two sentences. The truth was that Erik and his men were trapped and doomed, but to kill them we would need to hack our way through a fearsome shield wall, and then batter down desperate men whose only thought would be to take many of us with them to the next world. I would lose twenty or more men here, and others of my household troops would be crippled for life. That was a price I did not want to pay, and Erik knew it, but he also knew that the price would be paid if he was not reasonable. “Is Haesten here?” I asked him, looking down the broken bridge.

Erik shook his head. “I saw him leave,” he said, nodding downriver.

“A pity,” I said, “because he broke an oath to me. If he had been here I would have let you all go in exchange for his life.”

Erik stared at me for a few heartbeats, judging whether I had spoken the truth. “Then kill me instead of Haesten,” he said at last, “and let all these others leave.”

“You broke no oath to me,” I said, “so you owe me no life.”

“I want these men to live,” Erik said with a sudden passion, “and my life is a small price for theirs. I will pay it, Lord Uhtred, and in return you give my men their lives, and give them Wave-Tamer,” he pointed to his brother’s ship that was still tied in the small dock where we had landed.

“Is it a fair price, father?” I asked Pyrlig.

“Who can set a value on life?” Pyrlig asked in return.

“I can,” I said harshly, and turned back to Erik. “The price is this,” I told him. “You will leave every weapon you carry on this bridge. You will leave your shields. You will leave your mail coats, and you will leave your helmets. You will leave your arm rings, your chains, your brooches, your coins, and your belt buckles. You will leave everything of value, Erik Thurgilson, and then you may take a ship that I choose to give you, and you may go.”

“A ship that you choose,” Erik said.

“Yes.”

He smiled wanly. “I made Wave-Tamer for my brother,” he said. “I first found her