‘Aye, he’ll be in Lundene,’ Finan said grimly. ‘He’ll have run home to his master with his tail between his legs.’
‘Æthelhelm,’ I said, naming my enemies.
‘We’re told he’s there too. With his nephew.’
‘Ælfweard.’
‘That’s three men you have to kill, and you’ll not do that while your arse is in bed.’
I opened my eyes again. ‘What news from the north?’
‘None,’ Finan said curtly. ‘King Æthelstan blocked the great road at Lindcolne to keep the plague from spreading south. Every other road too.’
‘The plague,’ I repeated.
‘Aye, the plague, and the sooner we’re home to find out who’s dead and who lives the better, but I’ll not let you slink home like a beaten man. You fetch Serpent-Breath, lord, you kill your enemies, and then you lead us home.’
‘Serpent-Breath,’ I said, and the thought of that great blade in my enemy’s hands made me sit up. It hurt. Every muscle and bone hurt, but I sat up. Benedetta put out a hand to help me, but I refused it. I swung my legs onto the floor rushes and, with an agonising lurch, stood. ‘Help me dress,’ I said, ‘and find me a sword.’
Because we were going to Lundene.
‘No!’ Merewalh said the next day. ‘No! We are not going to Lundene.’
There were a dozen of us, sitting just outside Werlameceaster’s great hall, which looked much the same as Ceaster’s hall, which was no surprise because both had been built by the Romans. Merewalh’s men had dragged benches into the sunlight where the twelve of us sat, though around us, sitting in the dust of the big square that lay in front of the hall, were close to a hundred men who listened. Servants brought us ale. Some chickens scratched by the hall door, watched by a lazy dog. Finan sat to my right while Father Oda was to my left. Two priests and the leaders of Merewalh’s troops made up the rest of the company. I hurt still. I knew my body would hurt for days. My left eye was still half closed and my left ear clogged with scabbed blood.
‘How many men garrison Lundene?’ Father Oda asked.
‘At least a thousand,’ Merewalh said.
‘They need two thousand,’ I said.
‘And I have only five hundred men,’ Merewalh said, ‘and some of those are ill.’
I liked Merewalh. He was a sober, sensible man. I had known him since he was a youngster, but his beard and hair had turned grey now and his shrewd eyes were surrounded by deep wrinkles. He looked anxious, but even as a young man he had always appeared worried. He was a good and loyal warrior who had commanded Æthelflaed’s household troops and had led them with unshakeable loyalty and an admirable caution. He was no risk-taker, and perhaps that was good in a man who saw defence as his deepest responsibility. Æthelstan plainly trusted him, which was why Merewalh had been given command of the fine troops who had captured Lundene, but then Merewalh had lost the city, tricked by a false report that an army was advancing through Werlameceaster.
Now he held these walls instead of Lundene’s massive ramparts. ‘What are your orders now?’ I asked him.
‘To stop reinforcements reaching Lundene from East Anglia.’
‘Those reinforcements don’t go by road,’ I said, ‘they go by ship, and we saw them arrive. Ship after ship loaded with men.’
Merewalh frowned at that, but it was surely no surprise to him that Æthelhelm was using ships to strengthen Lundene’s garrison. ‘Mercia has no ships,’ he said as if that excused his failure to stop the reinforcements.
‘So you just guard the roads coming from East Anglia?’ I asked.
‘Without shipping? That’s all we can do. And we send patrols to watch Lundene.’
‘And to watch Toteham?’ I pressed him. I was not sure where Toteham was, but from what I had overheard it must have been between Lundene and Werlameceaster.
My assumption proved to be right because the question provoked an awkward silence. ‘Toteham has only a small garrison,’ a man called Heorstan finally said. He was a middle-aged man who served as Merewalh’s deputy. ‘They’re too few to cause us trouble.’
‘Small?’
‘Maybe seventy-five men?’
‘So the seventy-five men at Toteham don’t cause you trouble,’ I said caustically, ‘so what do they do?’
‘They just watch us,’ one of Merewalh’s warriors answered. He sounded surly.
‘And you just ignore them?’ I was looking at Merewalh.
There was another awkward silence and some of the men sitting in the sunlight shuffled and stared at the dusty ground, suggesting to me that they had already proposed attacking Toteham and that Merewalh had rejected the idea.
‘If Æthelhelm sends an army out of Lundene to attack King Æthelstan,’ one of the priests spoke up, evidently trying to save Merewalh from embarrassment, ‘we are to follow them. Those are also our orders. We are to fall on their rear as the king assaults their vanguard.’
‘And where is King Æthelstan?’ I asked.
‘He guards the Temes,’ Merewalh said, ‘with twelve hundred warriors.’
‘Guards!’ the priest stressed the word, still attempting to defend Merewalh’s inactivity. ‘The king watches the Temes as we watch the roads to Lundene. King Æthelstan insists that we do not provoke a war.’
‘There’s already a war,’ I put in harshly. ‘Men died two days ago.’
The priest, a plump man with a circlet of brown hair, waved as if those deaths were trivial. ‘There is skirmishing, lord, yes, but King Æthelstan will not invade Wessex, and thus far the armies of Lord Æthelhelm have not invaded Mercia.’
‘Lundene is Mercian,’ I insisted.
‘Arguably, yes,’ the priest said irritably, ‘but since the days of King Alfred it has been garrisoned by West Saxons.’
‘Is that why you left?’ I asked Merewalh. It was a brutally unkind question, reminding him of his foolishness in abandoning the city.
He flinched, conscious of all the men who sat listening to our discussion. ‘You’ve never made a bad decision, Lord Uhtred?’
‘You know I have.
