‘Guthrum tried to take a Saxon kingdom,’ I said, silencing the murmurs. So this man was Anlaf, King of Dyflin, which meant he was Guthrum’s grandson, ‘and I was in the army that drove him to panicked flight and left a hillside sodden with the blood of his Northmen.’
‘Do you deny that I am your king?’ he asked.
‘Constantine has troops in Cumbria,’ I said, ‘and Æthelstan occupies Jorvik. Where are your troops?’ I paused, but he did not answer. ‘And soon,’ I went on, ‘King Æthelstan’s men will occupy Cumbria too.’
He sneered at that. ‘Æthelstan is a whelp. He yelps like the bitch he is, but he will not dare go to war with Constantine.’
‘Then you should know,’ I said, ‘that the whelp’s army is already north of the River Foirthe, and his fleet is coming up the coast.’
Both Anlaf and Thorfinn just stared at me. The hall was silent. They had not known. How could they? News travels no faster than a horse or a ship can carry it, and I was the first ship to come to Orkneyjar since Æthelstan had invaded Constantine’s land.
‘He speaks the truth,’ Egil put in drily.
‘There is war?’ Thorfinn recovered first.
‘King Æthelstan,’ I said, ‘is tired of Scottish treachery. He is tired of Norsemen claiming kingship over his land, so yes, there is war.’
Anlaf sat. He said nothing. His claim to the throne of Northumbria was based on kinship, but to make that claim true he had depended on chaos reigning in the north, and my news suggested that the chaos was being settled by Æthelstan’s army. Now, if Anlaf was to make good on his claim to Northumbria’s throne, he would have to fight Æthelstan and he knew it. I could see him thinking, and I could see he did not like his own thoughts.
Thorfinn frowned. ‘You say the whelp’s fleet is coming north?’
‘We left it in the Foirthe, yes.’
‘But Constantine’s ships passed these islands three days ago. Going west.’
That, at least, confirmed what I had thought; that Constantine, unaware of Æthelstan’s plans, had sent most of his ships to harry the Cumbrian coast. ‘They had not heard the news,’ I said.
‘A bench,’ Thorfinn said, then sat and slapped the table, ‘for my guests,’ pointing to the end of the high table.
Anlaf watched us as we sat and as ale was brought to us. ‘Did you kill Guthfrith?’ he demanded suddenly.
‘Yes,’ I said carelessly.
‘He was my cousin!’
‘And you didn’t like him,’ I said, ‘and your claim to his throne, such as it is, depended on his death. You can thank me.’
There were chuckles from the hall, quickly stilled by Thorfinn’s fierce gaze. Anlaf plucked the knife from the table. ‘Why should I not kill you?’
‘Because my death will achieve nothing, because I am a guest in Thorfinn’s hall, and because I am not your enemy.’
‘You are not?’
‘All I care about, lord King,’ I gave him that honorific because he was the King of Dyflin, ‘is my home. Bebbanburg. The rest of the world can descend into chaos, but I will protect my home. I don’t care who is king in Northumbria so long as they leave me alone.’ I drank some ale, then took a roasted leg of goose from a platter. ‘Besides,’ I went on cheerfully, ‘I’m old! I’ll be in Valhalla soon, meeting a lot of your other cousins who I put to death. Why would you want to send me there early?’
That provoked more amusement, though not from Anlaf who ignored me and instead talked quietly to Thorfinn, while a harpist played and maidservants brought more ale and food. The messenger who had summoned us to the hall had claimed a shortage of ale, but there seemed to be plenty and the noise in the hall grew raucous until Egil claimed the harp. That brought cheers till Egil struck the strings to demand quiet.
He gave them a song of his own making, a song full of battle, of blood-soaked ground, of ravens gorged with the flesh of enemies, but nowhere in the song did he say who fought, who won, or who lost. I had heard it before, Egil called it his slaughter-song. ‘It warns them,’ he had told me once, ‘of their fate, and it reminds us that we are all fools. And, of course, the fools love it.’
They cheered him when the last chord of the harp had faded. There were more songs from Thorfinn’s harpist, but already some men were falling asleep and others stumbling into the northern darkness to find their beds. ‘Back to the ship?’ Egil asked me quietly. ‘We learned what we came to find out.’
We had learned that most of Constantine’s ships had gone west and that would be good news for Æthelstan, and I supposed I should deliver it. I sighed. ‘So we leave on the morning tide?’
‘And hope the wind veers,’ Egil said, because it would be a long hard slog if the wind stayed in the south-west.
Egil stood. He was about to thank Thorfinn for his hospitality, but the big man was already asleep, slumped on the table, so the two of us jumped down from the dais and walked to the door. ‘Had you met Anlaf before?’ I asked him as we went into the night’s clear air.
‘Never. He has a reputation though.’
‘So I hear.’
‘Savage, clever and ambitious.’
‘A Norseman, then.’
Egil laughed. ‘My only ambition is to write a song that will be sung till the world ends.’
‘Then you should spend less time chasing women.’
‘Ah, but the song will be about women! What else?’
We left Thorfinn’s settlement, walking slowly between strips of seal meat drying on racks, then out to the barley fields. The moon was being chased by clouds. Behind us a woman screamed, there was men’s laughter and a dog howling. The wind was light. We stopped when we came in sight of the southern water and I gazed at Spearhafoc. ‘I shall miss her,’
