Gerbruht sailed the coast in Spearhafoc, pointedly buying fish from boats that had come from Guthfrith’s land, while I rode into the hills with twenty men, two packhorses and a king’s ransom in gold. I wore an old coat of mail, carried a plain helmet, but I did have Serpent-Breath at my side. We rode fast, reaching the high valley on the fourth afternoon beneath lowering skies.
Finan had made a palisade on the valley’s lip. It was a crude wall of roughly trimmed pine logs and behind it were branch and turf shelters for his men. He had dug trenches as if preparing to make three more walls to complete a square fort that overlooked the Tesa’s valley. ‘They’ve noticed you?’ I asked, nodding down at the nearest village.
‘They’ve noticed us, right enough!’ Finan sounded pleased. ‘And I reckon Guthfrith has too.’
‘You know that?’ I asked, surprised.
‘It took a week, only a week. Then horsemen came, three of them, all Danes. They rode up here and asked what we were doing. They were friendly.’
‘And you told them?’
‘I said we were building a fort for Lord Uhtred, of course.’ Finan grinned. ‘I asked if they lived on your land and they just laughed.’
‘You let them look around?’
‘They looked at the graves, laughed at the wall, and didn’t see our swords. They saw men digging trenches and trimming logs. And they rode off that way.’ He nodded east towards the road in the deeper valley, the road that led eventually to Eoferwic.
Guthfrith knew, I was sure of it. Little could be hidden in the countryside, and Finan had made sure some of his men drank in the village tavern. I suspected the three Danes had indeed come from Guthfrith, but even if not they would have spread the news that I was building a fort in the hills above the Tesa, and Guthfrith was probably laughing. He might have ceased his raiding, but would reckon that the new fort in the Devil’s Valley would do me little good if he started again. And it would do me no good at all if Æthelstan came with an army.
‘You need to make pitch soon,’ I told Finan.
‘Easy enough, plenty of pine here. Why do I need it?’
I ignored the question. ‘If anyone asks say you’ll caulk the wall with it.’
Guthfrith knew, because we could not hide what we were doing, nor did we want to, but I desperately needed to hide the jaws of the trap we were making. I had sent word to Egil, asking him to be ready to send men, and had told Sihtric that I would need half his garrison, and ordered them to ride north first as though heading for the Scottish border before they turned west into the hills and then south to the Tesa. And I had to bring my own men from Bebbanburg, and all those men, travelling through the hills, would be noticed. They would assemble in a shallow dip of land west of the Devil’s Valley, and it would be impossible that such an army could be hidden for long. Yet if Guthfrith and Ealdred were dazzled by the bait, and if they responded as quickly as greed could goad them, then there was a chance.
So early next morning Finan and I laid that bait. We dug into the northernmost mound, chopping through the stubborn earth with sharp spades. We had dug into the barrows years before and found only bones, antlers, flint arrowheads and the single gold cup, but that morning, as a half-moon paled in a cloudless sky, we hurled the treasure of Bebbanburg into the new hole we had made. We covered it roughly, then dug another ragged hole in the ground beside the mound, throwing the spoil onto the scar we had made in the mound. ‘Tell your men this new hole is for pitch-making,’ I suggested, ‘then give it two days before you find the gold.’
‘And three or four days for Guthfrith to hear about it?’
‘That sounds right,’ I said, hoping it was.
‘A lord digging a hole?’ Oswi, who had been standing guard, had wandered up with a big grin on his face. ‘You’ll be cooking for us next, lord!’
‘This hole is for you,’ I told him.
‘Me, lord?’
‘We need to make pitch.’
He grimaced at the thought of that foul job, then nodded at the scar in the mound. ‘Did you dig there too, lord?’
‘Years ago,’ I said, ‘we found a gold cup in this mound.’
‘It’s meant to be bad luck to disturb the mounds, lord. That’s what they say in the village.’
I spat, then touched my hammer. ‘We were lucky last time.’
‘And this time, lord?’ He laughed when I shook my head. ‘You know the villagers are calling it the Devil’s Fort now?’
‘Then let’s hope the devil protects us.’
Finan touched his cross, but Oswi, who had about as much religion as a chicken, just laughed again.
I left before midday. I sent two men to Dunholm with orders for Sihtric. He was to send his sixty men in three days, taking care that they went north before coming to the Devil’s Fort. And, once home in Bebbanburg, I sent Vidarr Leifson to tell Egil that I would need his men at the Devil’s Valley in five days. Vidarr had accompanied me to the Devil’s Fort and was confident he could guide Egil’s Norsemen back to the high valley. ‘Five days from now,’ I told him, ‘not a day before or after.’
Then I had two days to ready my own men. I would leave just thirty to guard Bebbanburg under the command of Redbad, one of my son’s warriors. He was a steady and reliable man, and thirty men were sufficient to man the ramparts when no attack was expected. I gave Gerbruht my helmet and cloak, then sent him down the coast again with orders to buy fish from Guthfrith’s boats and to take Spearhafoc deep into
