‘It has to be Æthelstan,’ Finan said. He was staring south across the wide river.
Merewalh had sent a messenger to Æthelstan, seeking permission for this madness, but had the message encouraged Æthelstan to join it? I stared at the troops on the opposite bank of the Temes. There were not many in sight, perhaps forty or fifty showing between the houses of Suðgeweork, which was the settlement built at the bridge’s southern end, but those men were plainly there to threaten the high wooden-walled fortress that protected the bridge itself. A dozen spearmen were hurrying south across the bridge, presumably to reinforce the fort’s garrison.
The men among Suðgeweork’s houses were too far away for me to make out any symbol on their shields, though I could see they were in mail and wore helmets. If they were Æthelstan’s men then they must have crossed the river above Lundene and marched downstream to surround the Suðgeweork fort. Those men, or at least the ones I could see, were not enough to capture the fort’s ramparts, and I could see no ladders, but their very presence was sufficient to draw defenders away from the walls of Lundene.
There were a score of men still manning the barricade at the bridge’s northern end. They were commanded by a red-cloaked man on horseback who stood in his stirrups to watch the southern bank, then turned as we drew near. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted. Father Oda gave his usual reply, that we were Lord Ealhstan’s men from Herutceaster, and again the names provoked no curiosity. ‘What are your orders?’ the man asked and, when none of us answered, he scowled. ‘So where are you going?’
I nudged Brihtwulf. I was too well known to too many men in Wessex and had no desire to draw attention to myself. ‘We don’t have orders,’ Brihtwulf answered, ‘we just got here.’
The horseman put two fingers between his lips and gave a piercing whistle to draw the attention of the men crossing the bridge. ‘How many do you need?’ he shouted.
‘Many as you’ve got!’ a man yelled back.
‘Lord who?’ the horseman asked, spurring towards us.
‘You,’ I muttered to Brihtwulf, who stepped forward.
‘I am Ealdorman Ealhstan.’
‘Then take your men across the bridge now, lord,’ the man ordered with scant courtesy, ‘and stop the bastards taking the fort.’
Brihtwulf hesitated. Like me he had not imagined for a moment that we would go to the southern bank of the Temes. We had come to kill Æthelhelm and Ælfweard and those two would be here, on the northern bank, but suddenly I knew that fate had offered me a chance of pure gold. ‘Over the bridge,’ I muttered to Brihtwulf.
‘For God’s sake, hurry!’ the horseman said.
‘What’s happening?’ Finan called.
‘What do you think, grandpa? The pretty boy is here! Now move!’
‘I’ll kill that earsling,’ Finan muttered.
I kept my head down. I was wearing the helmet I had kept on board Spearhafoc, the helmet that had belonged to my father. I had laced together the thick cheek-pieces of boiled leather to hide my face, yet I still feared that one of the West Saxons would recognise me. I had fought alongside them often enough, though on this hot day I was not dressed in my usual fine mail and crested helmet. Finan and I filed through the small gap in the barricade and the men who guarded it jeered us. ‘Keep walking grandpa!’
‘East Anglians!’
‘Mud babies!’
‘Hope you bastards have learned to fight,’ another added.
‘Enough!’ the horseman silenced his men.
We started across the bridge’s uneven planks. The piers had been built by the Romans and I guessed they would stay solid for a thousand years, but the roadway was constantly being repaired. The last time I had been on the bridge it had had a great jagged gap where the Danes had ripped up the timber road. Alfred had repaired the damage, but still some planks were rotten and others moved alarmingly as we trod on them. There were gaps between the roadway’s timbers through which I could see the seething river churning white as it was channelled between the stone piers, and I wondered, as I did so often, how the Romans had built so well. ‘What in God’s name is Æthelstan doing?’ Finan asked me.
‘Capturing Lundene?’ I suggested.
‘How in God’s name does he hope to do that?’
It was a good question. Æthelhelm had sufficient men to defend Lundene’s walls, yet Æthelstan had evidently appeared in front of the ramparts, and that could only mean that he meant to make an assault. The last I had heard was that Æthelstan was at Wicumun, which lay a long day’s march west of Lundene. I stared upriver as we crossed the bridge, but could see no movement beyond the city’s wall where the River Fleot poured the filth of tanneries, slaughteryards, and sewage into the Temes. The Saxon town, built beyond the valley of the Fleot, showed no sign of an army come to assault the city, but undoubtedly something had caused the city bells and horns to sound the alarm.
‘He’ll never get across those walls,’ Finan said.
‘We did.’
‘We got through them,’ Finan insisted, ‘we never tried to cross the ditch and wall. Still, it was a rare fight!’
I instinctively touched my chest where Thor’s hammer was hidden beneath the mail. It had been years since Finan and I, with a small band of men, had used deceit to capture the Roman bastion that guarded
