The Burning Land

“How much is it?”

“Enough,” he said. “So do you yield?”

“Wait outside,” I told him, “and you’ll find out.”

“What of them?” he asked, nodding toward the local men who had been trapped inside the Goose with us. None held any value as a hostage and so I sent them away with Guthlac. They ran into the back yard, doubtless relieved they were not to be part of the slaughter they expected to redden the tavern’s floor.

Guthlac was a fool. What he should have done was charge into the tavern and overwhelm us, or, if he merely wanted to trap us until trained troops arrived, he should have barricaded both doors with some of the giant ale barrels from the yard. As it was he had split his troops into two bands. I estimated there were fifty waiting between us and Seolferwulf, and as many again in the back yard. I was thinking that my score of men could fight their way through those fifty on the quay, but I knew we would take casualties reaching the ship. The bows would kill a handful of men and women before we got among the enemy, and none of us wore mail. I wanted to escape without any of my people being killed or wounded.

I ordered Sihtric to keep a watch on the back yard, which was easily done through a gap in the wattle wall. Another man watched the quay. “Tell me when they leave,” I said.

“Leave?” Finan asked, grinning, “why would they leave, lord?”

“Always make the enemy do what you want them to do,” I said, and I climbed the ladder to the whore-loft where three girls clung to each other on one of the straw mattresses. I grinned at them. “How are you, ladies?” I asked. None of the three answered, but just watched as I attacked the underside of the low thatched roof with Wasp-Sting. “We’re leaving soon,” I said to them, speaking English, “and you’re welcome to come with us. A lot of my men don’t have a woman. Better to be married to a warrior than whoring for that fat Dane. Is he a good master?”

“No,” one of them said in a very low voice.

“He likes to whip you?” I guessed. I had ripped out a great bundle of reeds and the smoke from the tavern fire began to drift through the new smoke-hole I had made. Guthlac would doubtless see the fresh hole I had made in his roof, but it was unlikely he would send men to block it. He would need ladders.

“Finan!” I called down, “bring me fire!”

An arrow thumped into the roof, confirming that Guthlac had indeed seen the hole. He must have thought I was trying to lead my men out of the torn thatch and his archers now shot up at the roof, but they were in the wrong place to send their arrows through the new gap. They could only shoot across the ragged hole, which meant that any man trying to escape would have been hit as soon as he clambered through the thatch, but that was not why I had torn down the moldering reed. I looked back to the girls. “We’ll be leaving very soon,” I said. “If you want to come with us then get dressed, go down the ladder, and wait by the front door.”

After that it was simple. I hurled burning scraps of driftwood from the tavern fire as far as I could and watched them fall onto the thatched roofs of the nearby cottages. I burned my hand, but that was a small price to pay as the flames caught the reeds and flared bright. A dozen of my men were passing the fiery brands up the ladder, and I threw each flaming timber as far as I could, trying to set fire to as many houses as I could reach.

No man could watch his town burning. Fire is a huge fear, for thatch and timber burn easily, and a fire in one house will quickly spread to others, and Guthlac’s men, hearing the screams of their women and children, deserted him. They used rakes to pull the burning thatch off the rafters and they carried pails of water from the river, and all we had to do was open the tavern’s front door and go to the ship.

Most of my men and two of the whores did just that, running down the pier and reaching the safety of the ship, where Osferth’s men were armored and armed, but Finan and I dodged into the alley beside the Goose. The town was lurid with flames now. Men shouted, dogs barked, and woken gulls screamed. The fire was noisy, and panicking folk screamed contrary orders as they desperately tried to save their property. Heaps of burning thatch filled the streets while the sky was red with sparks. Guthlac, intent on saving the Goose, was shouting at men to pull down the house nearest to the tavern, but in the confusion no one was taking any notice of him. Nor did they notice Finan and me as we emerged into the street behind the tavern.

I had armed myself with a log from the tavern, one of those waiting to be put on the fire, and I just swung it hard so that it smashed into the side of Guthlac’s helmet, and he went down like an ox that had been spiked between the eyes. I took hold of his mail coat and used it to haul him back into the alley, then down the pier. He was heavy, so it took three of my men to carry him across the trading ship and throw him onto Seolferwulf, and then, satisfied that all my crew was safe, we loosed the mooring lines. The ship drifted upstream on the incoming tide, and we countered it with oar strokes, backing water as we waited for the ebb to start.

We watched Dumnoc burn. Six or seven houses were alight now, their flames roaring like a furnace and spewing sparks high into the night sky. The fires lit the scene, throwing a raw shaky light across the river. We saw men pull down houses to make a gap over which they hoped the flames would not jump and we saw a chain of folk passing water from the river, and we just watched, amused. Guthlac recovered his senses to find himself sitting on the small prow platform, stripped of his mail and bound hand and foot. I had put the wolf’s head back on the bows. “Enjoy the view, Guthlac,” I said.

He groaned, then remembered the purse at his waist into which he had put the silver I had paid him for our supplies. He felt inside, and found no coins left. He groaned again and looked up at me and this time saw the warrior who had killed Ubba Lothbrokson beside the sea. I was in full war-gear, mailed and helmeted, with Serpent-Breath hanging from my silver-studded belt.

“I was doing my duty, lord,” Guthlac said.

I could see mailed men ashore and guessed the household troops of whoever was Guthlac’s lord had arrived, but they could do nothing to hurt us unless they decided to crew one of the moored ships, but they made no attempt to do that. They just watched the town burning, and sometimes turned to gaze at us. “They could at least piss on the flames,” Finan said reprovingly, “do something useful!” He frowned down at Guthlac. “What do we do with this one, lord?

“I was thinking of giving him to Skade,” I said. Guthlac looked at her, she smiled, and he shuddered. “When I first met her,” I told Guthlac, “she’d just tortured a thegn. She killed him and it wasn’t pretty.”

“I wanted to know where his gold was,” she explained.

“It wasn’t pretty at all,” I said. Guthlac flinched.

Seolferwulf hung in the slack tide. It was high-water now and the river looked wide, but that was deceptive because beneath the shivering red-reflecting surface were shoals of mud and sand. The current would help us soon, but I wanted to wait until there was sufficient daylight to see the channel markers, and so my men stirred their oars to keep us lingering off the burning town. “What you should have done,” I told Guthlac, “is brought your men right into the tavern while we were drinking. You’d have lost a few, but you’d at least have stood a chance.”

“You’re going to put me ashore?” he asked plaintively.

“Of course I am,” I said pleasantly, “but not yet. Look at that!” A house had just collapsed into its own flames and the great beams and rafters exploded gouts of flame, smoke, and sparks toward the clouds. The roof of the Goose had caught the fire now and, as it flared bright in the sky, my men cheered.

We left unmolested, sliding down the river in the day’s first wan light. We rowed to the channel’s end where the water fretted white and wide on the long shoals, and it was there that I untied Guthlac’s bonds and pushed him to Seolferwulf ’s stern. I stood beside him on the steering platform. The tide was taking us farther out to sea, and the ship was shuddering and bucking to the wind-driven waves. “Last night,” I said to Guthlac, “you told us we were welcome in Dumnoc. You gave us leave to spend the night in peace, remember?”

He just looked at me.

“You broke your word,” I said. He still said nothing. “You broke your word,” I said again, and all he could do was shake his head in terror. “So you want to go ashore?”

“Yes, lord,” he said.

“Then make your own way,” I said, and pushed him overboard. He gave a cry, there was a splash as he fell, then Finan rapped the order for the oars to bite.

Later, many days later, Osferth asked me why I had killed Guthlac. “He was harmless, surely, lord?” he asked, “just a fool?”