The Empty Throne

  ‘You too,’ Finan said to me. ‘You’re not well enough to fight.’

  I made no answer, but felt a surge of anger. He was right, of course, but that did not make the truth any easier to accept, and then we crossed the skyline and I slowed the pony. The Welsh were still galloping, already halfway down the slope that led into a deep river valley. This, I realised, was Abergwaun.

  To my right the river flowed through thick woods that filled much of the valley’s bed, while to the left it widened to meet the open ocean. Rognvald’s settlement was on the far bank, just where the river met the sea-reach, and that sea-reach, sheltered by hills, was filled with ships.

  There had to be thirty or more ships, far more than Rognvald would possess if, as Anwyn said, he could only muster a little over a hundred warriors. So the mysterious fleet from Ireland must have returned to Abergwaun and was now leaving again. The ships were heading to sea, their oars biting the water and their sails filling and falling as the gusts of a light east wind rose and stilled. And behind them, on the river’s northern shore, the settlement was ablaze.

  No enemy had set the fires. There was no evidence of any fighting, no corpses, and the men who were still running from hall to house, from house to barn, and hurling firebrands up onto the thatch were not dressed in mail. Rognvald was leaving and he was plainly determined to leave nothing useful behind. Fires had been set against the palisade, and the nearest gateway was already burning fiercely. Father Anwyn had been right, the Norsemen were running away, but not because King Hywel’s men were coming. Rognvald must have decided to join forces with the fleet from Ireland in its search for another place to settle.

  The fleet was moving seawards, but there were still two fighting ships by the beach. Those had to be the rearguard, the boats belonging to the men who were carrying fire from house to house. Both boats were manned by half a dozen men who hauled on stern lines to keep the bows from grounding in the falling tide.

  The Welsh were already in the valley bottom, hidden there by trees. We followed, plunging into the woods and hearing the shouts of Hywel’s men drawing ever further ahead of us. The track led to a ford. The river was tidal and, helped by the ebb tide, the shallow water was running fast. We splashed through and turned west on the river’s far bank, following an earthen road that led beside the hurrying river, then we were out of the trees and Rognvald’s burning settlement was ahead of us. Some of Hywel’s men were already inside the walls, their horses abandoned in the fields that surrounded the palisade. A whole section of that palisade had been pushed over, the timbers presumably weakened by fire, and more Welshmen were scrambling over the still smouldering trunks, shields on their arms and weapons in their hands. They vanished into smoke-wreathed alleys. I heard shouts, the clash of swords, and then I slid from the saddle and called to my men to stay together. The sensible thing would have been to stay outside the burning walls. We had no shields, no swords, no spears, only seaxes, and, being strangers, we could easily be mistaken for enemies, but I was as eager as Finan or any of the others to see what happened inside. ‘Stay with me,’ I told Eadith. An osprey flew through the smoke, wings fast, a pale streak of feathered glory flying north, and I wondered what omen that was. I touched the hilt of Wasp-Sting, my seax, then splashed through the shallow ditch that surrounded the settlement, climbed the bank, and followed Finan and my son over the smouldering timbers.

  Two men lay dead in the first alley. Neither wore mail and both had faces deeply marked with ink. They were dead Norsemen, presumably men who had been setting the fires and had been surprised by the speed of the Welsh attack. We walked cautiously through the alley. The houses on either side were blazing, the heat hammering us until we reached an open space where Hywel’s two standard-bearers were guarded by a dozen warriors. Father Anwyn was there and he called sharply to the men who had turned towards us and hefted their weapons. One flag showed a Christian cross, the other was blazoned with a scarlet dragon. ‘The king has gone to attack the boats!’ Father Anwyn shouted at me.

  A half-dozen prisoners were under guard. The open space was evidently where Hywel was sending captives, and not just captives but weapons too. There was a pile of swords, spears, and shields. ‘Help yourselves,’ I told my men.

  ‘God go with you!’ Father Anwyn called.

  Finan pulled swords from the heap, selected two and offered one to me. My son had found a long blade, while Gerbruht picked up a double-bladed axe and an ironbound shield. ‘Drop the shield,’ I told him.

  ‘No shield, lord?’

  ‘You want the Welsh to kill you?’

  He frowned, then realised there was a crude painting of an eagle on the shield’s willow boards. ‘Ah!’ he said, and threw the thing down.

  ‘Keep your crosses visible,’ I ordered my men before going into another alley which led between unburned houses onto a long beach, all green slippery stones, mud, and broken shells. Driftwood fires smouldered beneath empty fish-smoking frames. A single small fishing craft was stranded at the beach’s end, well above the high-water mark, while most of Hywel’s men seemed to be down at the water’s edge. I guessed they had scoured the settlement and driven the surviving Norsemen back to their two ships, which were now trapped. Welshmen were clambering aboard, outnumbering the enemy, who had retreated to the ships’ sterns where swords, axes and spears took them down in bloody slaughter. Some of the Norsemen leaped into the water, trying to wade or even swim out to the fleet that was in a chaotic tangle halfway down the sea-reach.

  It was chaos because some of the ships were trying to return, hampered by their sails, which drove them away from the shore, while other vessels still headed seawards. Three ships had managed to escape the chaos. None of the three had been under sail, all were driven only by oars, and now those three headed back towards the settlement. All three were crammed with helmeted warriors who were gathered beneath the high carvings of the prows. The oarsmen drove the ships fast, heading for the wide gap between the two beached vessels, then there was the scrape of a keel on stone and the first Norsemen leaped screaming from the ship’s dragon prow.

  Hywel had seen the ships coming and his men had made a shield wall on the beach that was more than strong enough to stop the Norsemen who came with anger, but no order, and the first men died in the shallow water at the river’s edge where blood swirled sudden. The Welsh on the boat nearest us had killed the last of its crew and they now scrambled back across the rowers’ benches to jump down onto the beach just as the second vessel arrived, its prow riding up the mud and its mast bending forward as the long hull shuddered to a halt. Men leaped from the bows, bellowing their war cries, joining the shorter Norse wall and driving their heavy spears hard into Welsh willow. The Norsemen had not expected a fight this day and few wore mail, though all had helmets and shields. The newly arrived boats were trying to rescue their comrades, but even after the third boat slammed into the beach there were not enough Norsemen to push back Hywel’s furious warriors. Both sides were screaming their war cries, but the Welsh shouts were louder, and Hywel’s men were wading into the small waves as they drove the Norsemen relentlessly back. Most battles of the shield walls begin slowly as men summon the nerve to go within lover’s reach of the enemy trying to kill them, but this battle had erupted in a moment.

  My son started towards the left flank of the Welshmen, but I called him back. ‘You don’t have a shield,’ I snarled, ‘and you don’t have mail. We were supposed to be pilgrims, remember?’

  ‘We can’t do nothing,’ he snarled back at me.

  ‘Wait!’

  The Welsh hardly needed our help. There were more than enough of them to stem the furious counter-attack of the three ships, and if that was all it was, a counter-attack that was doomed to be beaten down to bloody ruin in the shallows of the sea-reach, I would simply have sat and watched. But the rest of the Norse ships were now trying to return, and they would bring an overwhelming force that would butcher Hywel’s men, and all that was keeping the Welsh fro
m disaster was the chaos in that larger fleet. They had turned too soon, too eager to help, and in the haste their hulls had fallen foul of each other. Long oars were clashing, sails were backing and filling, hulls blocking other hulls, and the whole tangle was being carried seawards by the tide. But the Norse were good seamen and I knew it would take but a moment for the chaos to be resolved, and then Hywel’s men would be facing a horde of angry warriors eager for revenge. In short the slaughter would go the other way.

  ‘Fetch me fire,’ I told my son.

  He frowned at me. ‘Fire?’

  ‘Fetch fire, lots of fire! Kindling! Wood, fire! Now! All of you.’ The ship nearest to us had been stranded by the falling tide, but it had also been cleared of its crew. ‘Gerbruht! Folcbald!’ I called the two Frisians back.

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Get that ship off the beach!’

  They lumbered through the mud, both strong as oxen. The nearest ship was well grounded now, but it was our only chance of preventing a massacre. The closest Norsemen were twenty paces beyond, defending themselves from the Welsh shield wall, which was threatening to overlap them and drive them back into the river, but the Norse wall had found some security by anchoring the right-hand end of their line against the prow of another beached ship. Three men had climbed aboard and were using spears to stop the Welsh from clambering over the ship’s bows. The beleaguered wall was holding firm and it only had to survive a few more minutes before reinforcements poured in from the rest of their fleet.

  Folcbald and Gerbruht were heaving on the prow of the nearest ship and achieving nothing. The hull seemed stuck fast in the thick mud. Finan ran down the beach with a rusty iron pan filled with embers and burning wood. I assumed the shallow pan had been used to make salt, and Finan now reached up and tipped the contents over the ship’s side. More kindling and burning wood followed. ‘Help Gerbruht,’ I shouted to my son.

  Hywel was still on horseback, the only mounted man on the beach. He had been using his height to thrust a spear at the Norse line, but he saw what we were doing and understood immediately. He could see the approaching fleet. The tide had drifted them some way seawards, but the first ships were free of the tangle now and their oars were biting the small waves. I saw Hywel shouting, and then a dozen Welsh warriors came to help us, and the grounded ship began to move at last. ‘More fire!’ I shouted. Smoke was thickening from inside the hull, but I could see no flames yet. Eadith brought an armful of driftwood and threw it on board, then Finan added another pan of embers before clambering over the bows just as the ship slid off the mud and floated. Fire was showing at last, and Finan was wading through the blaze as he headed for the ship’s stern. ‘Finan!’ I shouted, fearing for him, and almost moaned aloud from the pain in my rib.

  Finan was engulfed in flame and smoke. The ship, when it caught the fire, did so with sudden hunger. It was dry wood, well cured, caulked with pitch that also coated the lines that held the mast, and the flames leaped up the rigging to the furled sail that had been hoisted out of the crew’s way. Then I saw why Finan had leaped aboard. The stern of the ship was held by a line that had to be connected to an anchor stone, and the tide was swinging the boat, but the ship would not leave her makeshift mooring so long as that anchor line held. Then Finan appeared on the high steering platform and I saw his sword slash down once, twice, and the anchor line parted with a sudden jolt. Finan jumped.

  ‘Now that ship!’ I pointed to the next along the beach, the one defended by the three Norse spearmen. ‘Hurry!’ I shouted again, and this time the pain was so severe that I bent over, and that made the pain worse. I gasped, then fell backwards so that I was sitting on the green-slimed rocks. My borrowed sword slid onto the mud, but the pain was such that I could not reach for it.

  ‘What is it?’ Eadith crouched beside me.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ I said.

  ‘But I am here,’ she said, putting an arm around my shoulder and looking out at the river. Finan was wading ashore, sword in hand, and beyond him, turning on the current and carried by the tide, the burning boat was drifting seawards. I guessed the ebbing tide was halfway between high and low water because the current was running fast, swirling and streaming, hurrying the blazing boat and slowing the approaching ships, who saw their danger, which was made worse because the sea-reach had one narrow place that crowded the Norsemen’s ships. One boat, its high prow showing an eagle’s beak, backed water, and was immediately rammed by another, and the blazing craft, its furled sail now a fury of flames and smoke, drifted ever closer.

  Finan had hauled himself onto the second boat. One of the spearmen saw him and leaped down the rowers’ benches, but a spear is no weapon to carry against a man skilled in sword-craft, and few were more skilled than Finan. It took him less time than a man needs to blink. He feinted to his right, let the spear slide past his waist, and rammed his blade into the Norseman’s belly, and then my son hurled fire into the boat and a dozen men followed him, and the two remaining spearmen leaped for safety as a pack of burly Welshmen thrust the boat back into the river. It was not yet burning like the first, but the smoke was thickening from the hull, and Finan cut the stern line and then jumped down into the shallows as the Welsh charged into the exposed flank of the Norse shield wall.

  The first fire ship had reached the fleet. Two of the enemy boats had gone ashore on the river’s farther bank, the rest were desperately trying to escape, and meanwhile the second fire ship was drifting seawards. Those Norsemen left on the shore were dying, being hacked and sliced and cut by angry Welshmen who had flanked their line and now attacked from front and rear. The second ship burst into flames, the fire flickering up the rigging and the smoke churning from the benches. The Norse fleet, at least twenty ships, was fleeing. Sailors fear fire more than they fear rocks, even more than they fear the anger of Ran, that jealous bitch of a goddess. I sat panting, the pain stabbing like a blade, and watched the boats flee and listened to the shouts of those enemy who survived on the beach pleading to be spared. The battle was over.

  The Norse fleet could still have returned. They could have rowed from the river, let the two fiery ships drift harmlessly out to sea, and then come back for their vengeance, but they chose to abandon Abergwaun. They knew the Welsh would retreat to high ground and taunt them, inviting them to attack up some harsh slope where they would die on Welsh blades already slick with northern blood.

  My son came back along the beach. His clothes were scorched and his hands burned, but he was grinning till he saw my face. He ran then and stooped in front of me. ‘Father?’

  ‘It’s just the wound,’ I said. ‘Help me up.’

  He hauled me to my feet. The pain was almost crippling. There were tears in my eyes, blurring my view of the exultant Welsh, who jeered the retreating enemy. Three of the Norse ships were left on the beach and Hywel’s men had invaded one of those and whatever they discovered aboard provoked more cheering. Others of Hywel’s men were guarding prisoners, at least fifty or sixty of them, who were being stripped of helmets and weapons. Rognvald himself had been captured, bellowing defiance until he had been driven so far back into the water that he had almost drowned. Now the prisoners were gathered into a pathetic huddle, and I limped towards them. I had thought the pain was going away, that my injury mended day by day, but it now felt worse than ever. I did not limp because my legs were wounded, but because the agony in my side made every move torture. Finan ran to help me, but I waved him away. There was a big boulder above the high-tide line, and I sat on its flat surface, flinching from the pain. I remember wondering if this was the end, wondering if the Norns had cut my thread at last.

  ‘Give me your sword,’ I said to Finan. If I died I would at least die with a sword in my hand.

  ‘Lord,’ Finan crouched beside me, sounding worried.

  ‘The pain will pass,’ I said, suspecting it would pass with death. It hurt to breathe. Father Anwyn and the king’s standard-bearers passed close to us, going to join the king.
‘He looks grim,’ I said, nodding at the priest. Not that I really cared, but I did not want Finan, Eadith, or my son to make a fuss over my weakness.

  ‘Grim as death,’ Finan agreed, and Father Anwyn, far from showing happiness at the victory the Welsh had just gained, looked like a man consumed by anger. He talked to Hywel for some time, then the king spurred his horse past us, going back into the burning settlement.

  I tried to breathe more deeply, tried to convince myself the pain was passing. ‘We need to look for Ice-Spite,’ I said, and knew I wasted my breath. The sword was probably going out to sea, pursued by the burning boats that smeared the ocean’s sky with smoke.

  Father Anwyn, still looking stern, crossed to us. ‘The king instructed me to thank you,’ he said stiffly.

  I forced a smile. ‘The king is generous.’

  ‘He is,’ Anwyn said, then frowned. ‘And God is generous too.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘The treasures of Saint Dewi were in Rognvald’s ship.’ He nodded towards the boat where the Welsh were celebrating, then looked back to me with a frown. ‘You were wounded, lord?’

  ‘An old injury which still hurts,’ I explained, ‘it will pass. You recovered the treasure?’

  ‘The gold reliquary of the saint, the silver crucifix, both there.’

  ‘And the sword?’ I asked.

  ‘And Rognvald is a prisoner,’ Anwyn said, apparently ignoring my question. ‘It was his boats that returned to the beach. The rest,’ he stared out to sea where the Norse fleet was disappearing behind a headland, ‘are commanded by Sigtryggr Ivarson.’ He said the name as though it tasted sour on his tongue. ‘He’s the more dangerous of Ivar’s sons. Young, ambitious and able.’

  ‘And looking for land,’ I managed to say as another stab of pain lanced into me.

  ‘But not here, thank God,’ Anwyn said. ‘And Rognvald agreed to join his search.’

  What choice had Rognvald had, I wondered. His settlement on the edge of Wales had hardly thrived. It had clung to its rocky shore for six years, but Rognvald had failed to attract more followers or conquer more land, and Sigtryggr had evidently persuaded Rognvald to join his larger forces. That agreement must have been reached a week or so before, when Sigtryggr’s fleet had first reached Wales, and Rognvald, knowing he would be abandoning his settlement, had tried to enrich himself at Saint Dewi’s expense before he left.