‘So if Constantine wins,’ I asked, ‘we just wait to be attacked?’
He stared at me scornfully. ‘And even if you do march,’ he ignored my question, ‘you’ll be too late! The battle will be over. Stay home, lord, stay home.’
He was a fool, I thought. There would be no peace in Britain if Constantine won, and if Æthelstan gained a victory then he would note who had helped him and who had shrunk from the fight. I left Wulfstan in his rich home, spent a fitful night in Eoferwic’s old Roman barracks, and led my men west in the morning. We travelled through the rich farmlands about the city, then slowly climbed into the hills. This was sheep country, and on the second day, as we neared Scipton, we met flock after flock being driven eastwards. They scattered off the Roman road as we approached, not just sheep and a few goats, but whole families. A shepherd was brought to me who spoke of Scottish raiders. ‘You saw them?’ I asked.
‘Saw the smoke, lord.’
‘Get off your knees, man,’ I said irritably. Far ahead I could only see piled grey clouds on the western horizon. Was there smoke there? It was impossible to say. ‘You say you saw smoke, what else?’
‘Folk running, lord. They say there’s a horde.’
But a horde of what? Other fugitives told the same confused story. A panic had spread on the western side of the hills and the only fact I could draw from the frightened folk was that they had come south to find the road that would lead them to the dubious safety of Eoferwic’s walls. That suggested Constantine’s forces were still ravaging Cumbria well north of the Mercian border.
Finan agreed. ‘Bastard should move faster. Can’t be much opposing him?’
‘Godric and Alfgar,’ I pointed out.
‘Who can’t have enough men! Silly bastards should retreat.’
‘Maybe Æthelstan has reinforced them?’
‘The archbishop would have known, wouldn’t he?’
‘Wulfstan can’t decide which side he’s on,’ I said.
‘He won’t be happy if Anlaf comes.’
‘Constantine will protect him.’
‘And maybe Constantine’s retreating? He’s smacked Æthelstan and reckons it’s enough?’
‘It doesn’t smell that way,’ I said. ‘Constantine’s no fool. He knows you don’t smack an enemy, you tear his damned guts out and piss on them.’
We camped near Scipton, a small town with two churches, both of which were dilapidated. There were Danish steadings nearby and local folk said that most of those men had left, gone west. But to fight who? I suspected they were joining Constantine’s forces, and many folk, hearing how many of my men spoke Norse or Danish, thought we were doing the same.
Next day we travelled on, heading south and west and still meeting fugitives who hurried out of our way. We talked to some and they told the same tale, that they had seen smoke and heard stories of a vast Scottish army that seemed to get larger with every report. One woman, who had two small children clinging to her skirts, claimed to have seen the foreign horsemen. ‘Hundreds of them, lord! Hundreds.’ There were still thick grey clouds to the north and west and I persuaded myself that some of the darker streaks were plumes of smoke. I hurried, haunted by Archbishop Wulfstan’s prediction that the battle would be fought by now. More and more of the fugitives were now travelling in the same direction as us, no longer trying to cross the hills, but heading south towards the stone ramparts of Mameceaster. I sent scouts ahead to clear the road that was left thick with sheep and cattle droppings.
We reached Mameceaster the next day. The garrison slammed the gates shut as we approached, doubtless fearing we were Constantine’s men and it took a tedious argument to persuade them that I was Uhtred of Bebbanburg and no enemy. The commander of the garrison, a man named Eadwyn, had the first real news since Cenwalh had ridden to Bebbanburg. ‘There’s been a battle, lord,’ he said gloomily.
‘Where? What happened?’
‘To the north, lord. Ealdorman Godric was killed. And Ealdorman Alfgar fled.’
‘Where in the north?’
He waved a hand. ‘North somewhere, lord.’
Fugitives from the defeated Saxon army had reached Mameceaster and Eadwyn summoned three of them. They told how Alfgar and Godric, the two men Æthelstan had appointed as ealdormen of Cumbria, had gathered their forces and marched north to face the Scots. ‘It was on a stream, lord. We thought it would stop them.’
‘And it didn’t?’
‘The Irish came round our left, lord. Howling savages!’
‘The Irish!’
‘Norsemen, lord. They had falcons on their shields.’
‘Anlaf,’ Egil said bluntly.
That was the first confirmation we had that Anlaf had crossed the sea and that we did not just face a Scottish army, but an alliance of Constantine’s men and the Norse of Ireland, and if Anlaf had persuaded the lords of the islands then we would also face the úlfhéðnar of the Suðreyjar and the Orkneyjar islands. The kings of the north had come to destroy us.
‘There were hundreds of Norsemen!’ one of the men said. ‘Crazy like devils!’ The three men were still shaken by their defeat. One of them had seen Godric cut down, then seen his body hacked into bloody ruin by Norse axes. Alfgar, they said, had fled the field before the battle ended, escaping on horseback as his surviving men were surrounded by Scots and Irish-Norse warriors. ‘We ran too, lord,’ one of the men confessed. ‘I can still hear the screaming. Those poor men had no escape.’
‘Where was the battle?’
They did not know, they only knew that Godric had marched them north for two days, had found the stream he thought would prove an obstacle to the invaders, and there had died. ‘He left a widow,’ Eadwyn said gloomily, ‘poor lass.’
Eadwyn had heard no news of Æthelstan. He urged me to stay in Mameceaster and add my men to his garrison,
