‘She is,’ I agreed.
‘Same colour all over,’ he said, grinning, and to prove it he yanked her dress down to reveal her breasts. ‘Stop whimpering, bitch,’ he said, slapping her again. He lifted one of her breasts. ‘See, lord? Brown tits.’
‘Let me,’ I said. I had drawn my knife and Halfdan assumed I was going to cut off the remains of the girl’s dress and so he stepped away.
‘Have a good look, lord,’ he said.
‘I will,’ I promised, and the girl was still whimpering as I turned and drove the blade up into Halfdan’s belly, but there was metal beneath his tunic and the blade was stopped dead. I could hear the whisper of Ludda’s sword sliding from the scabbard as Halfdan tried to head bang me, but I already had hold of his beard with my left hand and I pulled it down hard. I had turned the knife upright and I pulled Halfdan’s head down onto the point. The girls were screaming and one of the guards in the other room was hammering the bolted door. Halfdan was bellowing and then the bellow turned to a gurgle as the blade tore into his lower jaw and throat. There was blood brightening the room. Finan’s man was already dead, killed by the Irishman’s lightning speed, and then Finan slashed the blade across the back of Halfdan’s legs, hamstringing him, and the big man went to his knees and I finished the job properly by slitting his throat. His big beard soaked up most of the blood.
‘You took your time,’ Finan said, amused.
‘I’m out of practice,’ I said. ‘Ludda, tell the girls to be quiet.’
‘Four more,’ Finan said.
I sheathed the knife, wiped the blood from my hand on Halfdan’s tunic, and drew Serpent-Breath. Finan unbolted the door and it burst open. A guard ducked inside, saw the blade waiting for him and tried to back away, but Finan pulled him inside and I drove the sword deep into his belly, then brought a knee into his face as he buckled. He went down on the blood-soaked floor. ‘Finish him off, Ludda,’ I ordered.
‘Jesus,’ he murmured.
The other three guards were more cautious. They waited at the long room’s farther end and they had already called for help from the other slavers. It was in the traders’ interest to help each other, and their appeal brought still more men into the room. Four more, then five, all armed, and all eager for a fight. ‘Osferth always says we don’t think enough before we start a fight,’ Finan said.
‘He’s right, isn’t he?’ I said, but then there was a huge shout from the street. Weohstan had arrived with some of his garrison troops. Those troops forced their way into the shack and herded the slavers out into the street, where two traders were complaining to Weohstan that we were murderers. Weohstan bellowed for quiet, then explored the shack. He wrinkled his nose at the stench in the large room, then ducked into the smaller room and looked at the two corpses. ‘What happened?’
‘These two had an argument,’ I said, pointing to Halfdan and the guard Finan had slaughtered so quickly, ‘and they killed each other.’
‘And that one?’ Weohstan nodded at the third man who was curled on the floor and whimpering.
‘I told you to finish him,’ I said to Ludda, then did the job myself. ‘He was overcome with grief at their deaths,’ I explained to Weohstan, ‘so tried to kill himself.’
Two of the other slave traders had followed us into the shed and they protested fiercely that we were liars and murderers. They pointed out that their trade was legal and that they had been promised the protection of the laws. They demanded that I stand trial for manslaughter and that I pay a huge price in silver for the lives I had taken. Weohstan listened to them patiently. ‘You’d swear an oath at his trial?’ he asked the two men.
‘We will!’ one of the traders said.
‘You’ll tell what happened and swear to it on oath?’
‘He must compensate us!’
‘Lord Uhtred,’ Weohstan turned to me, ‘you’ll bring oath-givers to contest the evidence?’
‘I will,’ I said, but the mention of my name had been enough to drain the belligerence from the two men. They stared at me for an eyeblink, then one of them muttered that Halfdan had always been an argumentative fool.
‘So you won’t swear in court?’ Weohstan asked, but the two men were already backing away. They fled.
Weohstan grinned. ‘What I’m supposed to do,’ he said, ‘is arrest you for manslaughter.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said.
He looked at Serpent-Breath’s reddened blade. ‘I can see that, lord,’ he said.
I stooped to Halfdan’s body and slit his tunic open to find a mail coat, but also, as I expected, a pouch at his waist. It was the pouch that had stopped my first knife thrust and it was crammed with coins, many of them gold.
‘What do we do with the slaves?’ Weohstan wondered aloud.
‘They’re mine,’ I said, ‘I just bought them.’ I handed him the pouch after taking a few coins for myself. ‘That should buy oak trunks for a palisade.’
He counted the coins and looked delighted. ‘You’re an answer to prayer, lord,’ he said.
We took the slaves to a tavern in the new city, the Saxon settlement that lay to the west of Roman Lundene. The coins I had taken from Halfdan’s purse paid for food, ale and clothing. Finan talked to the men and reckoned a half-dozen would make good warriors. ‘If we ever need warriors again,’ he grumbled.
‘I hate peace,’ I said, and Finan laughed.
‘What do we do with the others?’ he asked.
‘Let the men go,’ I said, ‘they’re young, they’ll survive.’
Ludda and I spoke with the girls while Father Cuthbert just stared at them wide-eyed. He was entranced by the dark-skinned girl, whose name appeared to be Mehrasa. She looked the oldest of the six, she was perhaps sixteen or seventeen while the others were all three or four years younger. Once they realised they were safe, or at least not in any immediate danger, they began to smile. Two were Saxon girls, taken from the coast of Cent by Frankish raiders, and two were Franks. Then there was the mysterious Mehrasa, and the sick girl who was a Frisian. ‘The Centish girls can go home,’ I said, ‘but you take the others to Fagranforda.’ I was speaking to Ludda and Father Cuthbert. ‘Choose a pair of them. Teach them what they need to know. The other two can work in the dairy or kitchens.’
‘A pleasure, lord,’ Father Cuthbert said.
I looked at him. ‘If you mistreat them,’ I said, ‘I’ll hurt you.’
‘Yes, lord,’ he said humbly.
‘Now go.’
I sent Rypere and a dozen men to protect the girls on their journey, but Finan and I stayed in Lundene. I have always liked that city and there was nowhere better to discover what happened in the rest of Britain. I talked to traders and travellers and even listened to one of Erkenwald’s interminable sermons, not because I needed his advice, but to hear what the church was telling its people. The bishop preached well and his message was exactly what Archbishop Plegmund wanted. It was a plea for peace, to give the church time to enlighten the heathen. ‘We have been oppressed by war,’ Erkenwald said, ‘and we have been soaked by the tears of widows and of mothers. Every man who kills another man breaks a mother’s heart.’ He knew I was in the church and was staring into the shadows where I stood, then he pointed at a fresh painting on the wall that showed Mary, Christ’s mother, weeping at the foot of the cross. ‘What guilt those Romans had to bear, and what guilt we bear when we kill! We are the children of God, not lambs to be slaughtered.’
There had been a time when Erkenwald preached slaughter, urging us to ravage the pagan Danes, but the coming of the year 900 had somehow persuaded the church to enjoin peace on us, and it seemed their prayers were being answered. There were cattle raids on the borderlands, yet no Danish armies came to conquer. Later that summer Finan and I went aboard one of Weohstan’s ships and were rowed downriver to the wide estuary where I had spent so much time. We went close to Beamfleot and I saw that no Danes had tried to rebuild the burned forts and no ships lay in the Hothlege Creek, though we could see the blackened ribs of the vessels we had burned there. We went further east to where the Temes widened into the great sea and we nosed the boat across the shallows at Sceobyrig, another place where Danish crews liked to wait in ambush for trading ships travelling to and from Lundene, but the anchorage was empty. It was the same on the estuary’s southern bank. Nothing but wild birds and wet mud.
We rowed up the curving River Medw?g to the burh at Hrofeceastre where I saw that the timber palisade
