‘Why would I kill them?’ I asked.
‘They’re enemies.’
‘They’re helpless enemies,’ I said, ‘and I don’t kill the helpless.’
He looked at me defiantly. ‘And what about the priests you killed?’
I wanted to kill Awyrgan at that moment. ‘Anger leads to savagery,’ I said curtly, ‘and to stupidity.’ He must have felt my anger because he backed away. The priest was protesting that jumping into the water would give him a fever, but every moment we waited the wind was nudging Spearhafoc further onto the mud. ‘Get rid of him!’ I called to Berg.
Berg more or less threw the priest overboard. ‘Wade ashore!’ Berg called. ‘You won’t drown!’
‘Pole her off!’ I called, and the men in the bows shoved their oars into the sticky mud and heaved. For a heartbeat Spearhafoc seemed reluctant to move, then to my relief she lurched and slid back into safer, deeper water.
‘Same course, lord?’ Gerbruht asked me. ‘Hoist the sail and up the coast?’
I shook my head. ‘Lundene.’
‘Lundene?’
‘Oars!’ I shouted.
We turned west. We were not going home after all, but upriver to Lundene.
Because King Æthelstan’s troops were there and I had an oath to keep.
It was a hard row against the wind, against the tide, and against the river’s current, but it would become easier when the tide turned and the flood would carry us upriver. I knew these waters, knew the river, because when Gisela was alive I had commanded the Lundene garrison. I had become fond of the city.
We passed Caninga, a marshy island on the East Seax shore, beyond which was Beamfleot where, in Alfred’s reign, we had stormed the Danish fort and put a whole army to the sword. I remembered Skade and did not want to remember her. She had died there, killed by the man she had betrayed, while all around them the women screamed and the blood flowed. Finan stared and he too was thinking of the sorceress. ‘Skade,’ he said.
‘I remember,’ I said.
‘What was her lover’s name?’
‘Harald. He killed her.’
He nodded. ‘And we captured thirty ships.’
I was still thinking of Skade, remembering. ‘War seemed cleaner then.’
‘No, we were younger then, that’s all.’ The two of us were standing in the prow. I could see the hills rising beyond Beamfleot, and I remembered a villager telling me that the god Thor had walked the ridge there. He was a Christian, yet he had seemed proud that Thor had walked his fields.
We had taken the sparrowhawk’s head from the prow so that to a casual glance we were just another ship rowing upriver to the wharves of Lundene. Low hills of ripening wheat rose beyond the muddy banks. The oars creaked as they pulled. A man stretching a net to catch marsh birds stood from his task to watch us pass. He saw we were a ship of warriors and made the sign of the cross, then bent to his task again. As the estuary narrowed we began passing close to ships coming downriver, their sails bellying in the south-west wind, and we shouted for news as passing ships always do. Were there Mercian troops in Lundene? There were. Was King Æthelstan there? No one could say, and so, still largely ignorant of what happened in Lundene, let alone Wessex, we rowed on towards the wide smear of dark smoke that always hung above the city. The tide had turned and we were using just six rowers on each side to keep the boat’s heading. Berg had the steering-oar now, while Eadgifu, her children and her companions were huddled under the prow platform where Finan and I stood. ‘So it’s over,’ Finan said to me.
I knew he had been brooding over my sudden decision to go west to Lundene instead of north to Bebbanburg. ‘Over?’ I asked.
‘Æthelstan’s men are in Lundene. We join him. We fight a battle. We kill Æthelhelm. We go home.’
I nodded. ‘That’s my hope.’
‘The men are worried.’
‘About a battle?’
‘About the plague.’ He crossed himself. ‘They have wives and children, so do I.’
‘The plague wasn’t at Bebbanburg.’
‘It’s in the north. Who knows how far it’s spread?’
‘Rumour said it was at Lindcolne,’ I said, ‘but that’s a long way from Bebbanburg.’
‘That’s small consolation to men worrying about their families.’
I had been trying to ignore those rumours of the plague. Rumours are just that and most are not true, and the days around a king’s death provoke many rumours, but Sigtryggr had warned me of the sickness in Lindcolne, others had spoken of death in the north, and Finan had been right to remind me. My men wanted to be reunited with their families. They would follow me into battle, they would fight like demons, but a threat to their wives and children was far more important to them than any oath of mine. ‘Tell them,’ I said, ‘that we’ll be home soon.’
‘What’s soon?’ Finan demanded.
‘Let me find the news in Lundene first,’ I said.
‘And what if Æthelstan’s there?’ Finan asked. ‘And what if he wants you to march with him?’
‘Then I march,’ I said bleakly, ‘and you can take Spearhafoc home.’
‘Me!’ Finan said, sounding alarmed. ‘Not me! Berg can sail her.’
‘Berg can sail her,’ I agreed, ‘but you’ll command Berg.’ I knew Finan was no seaman.
‘I’ll command nothing!’ he retorted fiercely. ‘I’ll stay with you.’
‘You don’t have to—’
‘I took an oath to protect you!’ he interrupted me.
‘You? I never asked any oath of you!’
‘You didn’t,’ he agreed, ‘but I still swore an oath to protect you.’
‘When?’ I asked. ‘I don’t remember any such oath.’
‘I took it two heartbeats ago,’ he said, ‘and if you can be tied by a stupid oath, so can I.’
‘I release you from any oath—’
Again he interrupted me. ‘Someone has to keep you alive. Seems God gave me the task of keeping you away from barley fields.’
I touched the hammer and tried to convince myself that I was making the right decision. ‘There are no barley fields in Lundene,’ I told Finan.
‘That’s true.’
‘Then we shall live, my friend,’ I said, touching him on the
