The Burning Land

  “You have.”

  He smiled briefly. “Why do we fight?” he asked.

  “Because we were born,” I answered savagely.

  “To find a place we call home,” Ragnar suggested. “A place where we don’t need to fight anymore.”

  “Dunholm?”

  “It’s as safe a fortress as Bebbanburg,” he said, “and I love it.”

  “And Brida wants you to leave it?”

  He nodded. “She’s right,” he admitted wanly. “If we do nothing then Wessex will spread like a plague. There’ll be priests everywhere.”

  We seek the future. We stare into its fog and hope to see a landmark that will make sense of fate. All my life I have tried to under stand the past because that past was so glorious and we see remnants of that glory all across Britain. We see the great marble halls the Romans made, and we travel the roads they laid and cross the bridges they built, and it is all fading. The marble cracks in the frost and the walls collapse. Alfred and his like believed they were bringing civilization to a wicked, fallen world, but all he did was make rules. So many rules, but the laws were only ever an expression of hope, because the reality was the burhs, the walls, the spears on the ramparts, the glint of helmets in the dawn, the fear of mailed riders, the thump of hoofbeats, and the screams of victims. Alfred was proud of his schools and his monasteries and his silver- rich churches, but those things were protected by blades. And what was Wessex compared to Rome?

  It is hard to bring thoughts into order, but I sense, I have always sensed, that we slide from light to darkness, from glory to chaos, and perhaps that is good. My gods tell us that the world will end in chaos, so perhaps we are living the last days and even I might survive long enough to see the hills crack and the sea boil and the heavens burn as the great gods fight. And in the face of that great doom, Alfred built schools. His priests scurried like mice in rotting thatch, imposing their rules as if mere obedience could stop the doom. Thou shalt not kill, they preached, then screamed at us warriors to slaughter the pagans. Thou shalt not steal, they preached, and forged charters to take men’s lands. Thou shalt not commit adultery, they preached, and rutted other men’s wives like besotted hares in springtime.

  There is no sense. The past is a ship’s wake etched on a gray sea, but the future has no mark. “What are you thinking?” Ragnar asked, amused.

  “That Brida is right.”

  “I must go to Wessex?”

  I nodded, yet I knew he did not want to go where so many had failed. All my life till that moment had been spent, one way or another, in attacking or defending Wessex. Why Wessex? What was Wessex to me? It was the bastion of a dark religion in Britain, it was a place of rules, a Saxon place, and I worshiped the older gods, the gods the Saxons themselves had worshiped before the missionaries came from Rome and gave them their new nonsense. Yet I had fought for Wessex. Time and again the Danes tried to capture Wessex, and time and again Uhtred of Bebbanburg had helped the West Saxons. I had killed Ubba Lothbrokson beside the sea, I had screamed in the shield wall that broke Guthrum’s great army, and I had destroyed Harald. So many Danes had tried, and so many had failed, and I had helped them fail because fate had made me fight for the side with the priests. “Do you want to be King of Wessex?” I asked Ragnar.

  He laughed. “No! Do you?”

  “I want to be Lord of Bebbanburg.”

  “And I want to be Lord of Dunholm.” He paused. “But.”

  “But if we don’t stop them,” I finished for him, “they’ll come here.”

  “That’s worth fighting for,” Ragnar said reluctantly, “or else our children will be Christians.”

  I grimaced, thinking of my own children in AEthelflaed’s household. They would be learning about Christianity. Maybe, by now, they had already been baptized, and that thought gave me a surge of anger and guilt. Should I have stayed in Lundene and meekly accepted the fate Alfred wanted for me? But Alfred had humiliated me once before, forcing me to crawl on my knees to one of his damned altars, and I would not do it again. “We’ll go to Wessex,” I said, “and make you king, and I’ll defend you like I defended Alfred.”

  “Next year,” Ragnar said.

  “But I won’t go naked,” I said harshly. “I need gold, I need men.”

  “You can lead my men,” Ragnar suggested.

  “They’re sworn to you. I want my own. I need gold.”

  He nodded. He understood what I was saying. A man is judged by his deeds, by his reputation, by the number of his oath- men. I was reckoned a warlord, but so long as I only led a handful of men, so long could people like my uncle afford to insult me. I needed men. I needed gold. “So you really will make a winter voyage to Frisia?” Ragnar asked.

  “Why else did the gods send me Skade?” I retorted, and at that moment it was as if the fog had cleared and I could at last see the way ahead. Fate had sent me Skade, and Skade would lead me to Skirnir, and Skirnir’s gold would let me raise the men who would fight with me through the burhs of Wessex, then I would take the silver of the Christian god and employ it to forge the army that would capture Bebbanburg.

  It was all so clear. It even seemed easy.

  We turned our horses and rode toward Dunholm.

  Seolferwulf’s prow slammed into a wave and the water exploded into white shards that whipped down the deck like ice missiles. Green sea surged over the bows and swilled cold into the bilge. “Bail!” I shouted, and the men not working the oars frantically scooped water over the side as our wolf’s- head prow reared into the sky. “Row!” I bellowed, and the oars bit the water and Seolferwulf fell into a trough of the ocean with a crash that made her timbers tremble. I love the sea.

  My forty- three men were on board, though I had allowed none of their women or children to accompany us, and Skade was only on board because she knew Zegge, the sandy island where Skirnir had his treasure hoard. I also had thirty- four of Ragnar’s men, all of them volunteers, and together we sailed eastward into the teeth of a winter wind. This was no time to be at sea. Winter was when ships were laid up and men stayed in fire- bright halls, but Skirnir would expect me in the spring so I had risked this winter voyage.

  “Wind’s rising!” Finan shouted at me.

  “It does that!” I shouted back, and was rewarded with a skeptical look. Finan was never as happy as I was at sea. For months we had shared a rowing bench, and he had endured the discomfort, but he had never reveled in the sea’s threat.

  “Shouldn’t we turn and run?” he asked.

  “In this little blow? Never!” I yelled at him over the wind’s howl, then flinched as a slap of cold water hit my face. “Row, you bastards,” I shouted, “if you want to live, row!”

  We rowed and we lived, reaching the Frisian coast on a morning of cold air, dying winds, and sullen seas. The improving weather had released ships from the local harbors and I followed one into the intricate channels that led to the inner sea, a stretch of shallow water that lies between the islands and the mainland. The ship we followed had eight oarsmen and a cargo hidden beneath a great leather cloth, which suggested she carried salt, flour, or some other commodity that needed to be protected from the rain. The steersman was terrified by our close approach. He saw a wolf- headed ship crammed with fighting men and he feared he was about to be attacked, but I shouted that we merely needed guidance through the channels. The tide was rising, so even if we had gone aground, we would be safe enough, but the cargo ship led us safely into the deeper water, and it was there we first encountered Skirnir’s reach.

  A ship, much smaller than Seolferwulf, lay waiting a half- mile beyond the place where the channel emptied into the inner sea. I reckoned she had a crew of around twenty men and she was plainly watching the channels, ready to pounce on any shipping, though the sight of Seolferwulf made her cautious. I guessed she would normally have intercepted the incoming cargo ship, but instead she stayed motionless, watching us. The cargo ship’s steersman pointed at the waiting boat. “I have to pay him, lor
d.”

  “Skirnir?” I asked.

  “That’s one of his ships, lord.”

  “So pay him!” I said. I spoke in English because the language of the Frisian people is so close to our own.

  “He’ll ask me about you, lord,” he called back, and I understood his terror. The waiting ship would be curious about us, and they would demand answers from the trading ship’s master, and if he had no satisfactory explanation they might well attempt to beat it out of him.

  “Tell him we’re Danes on our way home,” I said. “My name is Lief Thorrson and if he wants money he must come and ask me.”

  “He won’t ask you, lord,” the man said. “A rat doesn’t demand supper from a wolf.”

  I smiled at that. “You can tell the rat we mean no harm, we’re just going home, and we merely followed you through the channel, nothing more.” I tossed him a coin, making sure it bore the legend Christiano Religio, which meant it came from Frankia. I did not want to betray that we had come from Britain.

  I watched the cargo ship row to Skirnir’s vessel. Skade had been in the small space beneath the steering platform, but now joined me. “That’s the Sea- Raven,” she said, nodding at Skirnir’s ship. “Her master is called Haakon. He’s a cousin to my husband.”

  “So he’ll recognize you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then don’t let him see you,” I said.

  She bridled at that direct order, but did not argue. “He won’t come near us,” she said.

  “No?”

  “Skirnir leaves fighting ships alone, unless he outnumbers them by four or five to one.”

  I gazed at the Sea- Raven. “You said he had sixteen ships like that?”

  “Two years ago,” she said, “he had sixteen about that size, and two larger boats.”

  “That was two years ago,” I said grimly. We had come into Skirnir’s lair where we would be grossly outnumbered, but I reckoned he would still be wary of us. He would learn that a Viking ship was in his waters, and he would fear that an attack on us might bring other Vikings to take revenge. Would it cross his mind that Uhtred of Bebbanburg might have risked a winter voyage? Even if not, he would surely be curious about Lief Thorrson, and would not relax till that curiosity had been satisfied.

  I ordered the wolf’s head taken from the prow, then turned Seolferwulf toward the mainland shore. The Sea- Raven made no move to intercept us, but she did start to follow us, though when I checked the oars, as if waiting for her to catch up, she veered away. We rowed on and she fell out of sight behind us.

  I wanted a place to hide, but there was too much shipping for that to be possible. Wherever we took shelter some local boat would see us, and the report would be passed from ship to ship until it reached Skirnir. If we were indeed a Danish ship on passage, going home for the dark winter nights, he would expect us to be gone from his waters in two or three days, so the longer we lingered, the greater his suspicion. And here, in the treacherous shoal waters of the inner sea, we were the rat and Skirnir the wolf.

  We rowed north and east all day. We went slowly. Skirnir would hear that we were doing what he anticipated, making passage, and he would expect us to seek shelter for the night. We found that shelter in a creek on the mainland shore, though the tangle of marsh, sand, and inlets hardly deserved to be called a shore. It was a place of waterfowl, reeds, and hovels. A small village lay on the creek’s southern bank, merely a dozen cottages and a small wooden church. It was a fishing community, and the folk watched Seolferwulf nervously, fearing we might come ashore to steal what little they possessed. Instead we purchased eel and herring from them, paying with Frankish silver, and we carried a barrel of Dunholm’s ale to the village.

  I took six men with me, leaving the remainder on Seolferwulf. All the men I took were Ragnar’s Danes and we boasted of a successful summer cruise in the lands far to the south. “Our ship has a belly of gold and silver,” I crowed, and the villagers just stared at us, trying to imagine the life of men who sailed to steal treasure from far shores. I let the ale- loosened conversation turn to Skirnir, though I learned little enough. He had men, he had ships, he had family, and he ruled the inner sea. He was evidently no fool. He would let fighting ships like Seolferwulf pass unmolested, but any other vessel had to pay to use the safe channels inside the islands where he had his lair. If a shipmaster could not pay, then he forfeited his cargo, his ship, and probably his life. “So they all pay,” a man said glumly.

  “Who does Skirnir pay?” I demanded.

  “Lord?” he asked, not understanding the question.

  “Who allows him to be here?” I asked, but they did not know the answer. “There must be a lord of this land,” I explained, gesturing at the darkness beyond the fire, but if there was such a lord who permitted Skirnir to rule the sea then these villagers did not know of him. Even the village priest, a fellow as hairy and dirt- matted as his parishioners, did not know if there was a lord of the marshes. “So what does Skirnir want of you?” I asked him.

  “We have to give him food, lord,” the priest said.

  “And men,” one of the villagers added.

  “Men?”

  “The young men go to him, lord. They serve on his ships.”

  “They go willingly?”

  “He pays silver,” a villager said grudgingly.

  “He takes girls too,” the priest said.

  “So he pays his men with silver and women?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  They did not know how many ships Skirnir possessed, though the priest was certain he only had two the size of Seolferwulf. We heard the same things the next night when we stopped at another village in another creek on that treeless shore. We had rowed all day, the mainland to our right and the islands to our north and west. Skade had pointed to Zegge, but from our distance it looked little different from any other island. Many of them had mounds, the terpen, but we were so far off that we could see no detail. Sometimes only the shimmering dark shape of a terpen showing at the sea’s edge betrayed that there was an island just beyond the horizon.

  “So what do we do?” Finan asked me that night.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  He grinned. The water lapped at Seolferwulf ‘s hull. We slept aboard her and most of the crew had already swathed themselves in cloaks and had lain down between the benches while Skade, Finan, Osferth, and Rollo, who was the leader of Ragnar’s men, talked with me on the steering platform.

  “Skirnir has around four hundred men,” I said.

  “Maybe four hundred and fifty,” Skade said.

  “So we kill six men apiece,” Rollo said. He was an easygoing man like Ragnar, with a round and guileless face, though that was deceiving for, though he was young, he had already earned a reputation as a formidable fighter. He was called Rollo the Hairy, not just because he wore his fair hair down to his waist, but because he had woven the locks of hair cut from his dead enemies into a thick sword belt. “I wish Saxons would grow their hair longer,” he had grumbled to me as we crossed the sea.

  “If they did,” I had said, “you’d have ten sword belts.”

  “I already have seven,” he said, and grinned.

  “How many men on Zegge?” I now asked Skade.

  “No more than a hundred.”

  Osferth spat out a fish bone. “You’re thinking of attacking Zegge directly, lord?”

  “It won’t work,” I said, “we won’t find our way through the shoals.” One thing I had learned from the villagers was that Zegge was surrounded by shallow waters, that the channels shifted with the sand and tide, and that none of the passages was marked.

  “What then?” Osferth asked.

  A star fell. It scratched a flicker of light across the darkness and was gone, and with its fall the answer came to me. I had been thinking that I would attack Skirnir’s ships one by one, destroying the small ships and so weakening him, but within a day or two he would realize what was happening and he would use his larger s
hips to destroy us. There was no safe way to attack Skirnir. He had found a perfect refuge in the islands, and I would need ten ships like Seolferwulf to challenge him there.

  So I had to lure him out of his perfect refuge. I smiled. “You’re going to betray me,” I told Osferth.

  “I am?”

  “Who’s your father?”

  “You know who my father is,” he said resentfully. He never liked being reminded that he was Alfred’s bastard.

  “And your father is old,” I said, “and his chosen heir is scarcely weaned, and you are a warrior. You want gold.”

  “I do?”

  “You want gold to raise men, because you want to be King of Wessex.”

  Osferth snorted at that. “I don’t,” he said.

  “You do now,” I said, “because you’re the bastard son of a king and you have a warrior’s reputation. And tomorrow you betray me.”

  I told him how.

  Nothing great is done without risk, but there are times I look back on those days and am amazed at the risk we ran in Frisia. It was, in its small way, like luring Harald to Fearnhamme, because again I divided my forces, and again I risked everything on the assumption that my enemy would do exactly what I wished him to do. And once again the lure was Skade.

  She was so beautiful. It was a sinuous dark beauty. To look at her was to want her, to know her was to distrust her, but the distrust was ever conquered by that extraordinary beauty. Her face was high- boned, smooth- skinned, large- eyed, and full- mouthed. Her black hair was lustrous, her body was languorous. Of course many girls are beautiful, but life is hard on a woman. Childbirth racks her body like storms, and the never- ending work of pounding grains and spinning yarn takes its toll on that early loveliness, yet Skade, even though she had lived longer than twenty years, had kept her fresh beauty. She knew it too, and it mattered to her, for it had carried her from a widow’s poor house to the high tables of long- beamed mead halls. She liked to say that she had been sold to Skirnir, but in truth she had welcomed him, then been disappointed by him because, for all the treasure he amassed, he had no ambitions beyond the Frisian Islands. He had found a plump patch for piracy, and it made no sense to Skirnir to sail far away to seek a plumper patch, and so Skade had found Harald, who promised her Wessex, and now she had found me.