"Is Haesten strong enough to take Mercia?"

"Not at present. He has been joined by many of Harald's crews who fled your victory at Fearnhamme, but I don't doubt he needs more men."

"He'll seek them from Northumbria?" I asked.

"It's a possibility, I suppose," Offa said, and that answer told me what I wanted to know, that even Offa, with his uncanny ability to sniff out secrets, was ignorant of Brida's ambition for Ragnar to lead an army against Wess.e.x. If Offa had known of that ambition he would have hinted that the Northumbrian Danes might have better things to do than a.s.sault Mercia, but he had slid past my question without sensing any opportunity to take my silver. "But ships still join the Jarl Haesten," Offa went on, "and he may be strong enough by the spring. I'm sure he'll seek your help too, lord."

"I imagine so," I said.

Offa stretched his long thin legs under the table. One of the terriers whined and he snapped his fingers and the dog went instantly still. "The Jarl Haesten," he said cautiously, "will offer you gold to join him."

I smiled. "You didn't come here as a messenger, Offa. If Alfred wanted a letter sent to me he had cheaper ways of sending it than by satisfying your greed." Offa looked offended at the word greed, but made no protest. "And it was Alfred who ordered Father Beocca to write, wasn't it?" I asked, and Offa nodded slightly. "So," I said, "Alfred sent you to find out what I'm going to do."

"There is curiosity in Wess.e.x about that," he said distantly.

I laid two silver coins on the table. "So tell me," I said.

"Tell you what, lord?" he asked, gazing at the coins.

"Tell me what I'm going to do," I said.

He smiled at being paid for an answer I surely knew already. "Generous, lord," he said as his long fingers closed round the coins. "Alfred believes you will attack your uncle."

"I might."

"But for that, lord, you need men, and men need silver."

"I have silver."

"Not enough, lord," Offa said confidently.

"So perhaps I will join Haesten?"

"Never, lord, you despise him."

"So where will I find the silver?" I asked.

"From Skirnir, of course," Offa said, his eyes steady on mine.

I tried to betray nothing. "Is Skirnir one of the men who pays you?" I asked.

"I cannot bear journeying in ships, lord, so avoid them. I have never met Skirnir."

"So Skirnir doesn't know what I plan?"

"From what I hear, lord, Skirnir believes every man plans to rob him, so, being ready for all, he will be ready for you."

I shook my head. "He's ready for thieves, Offa, not for a warlord."

The Mercian just raised an eyebrow, a signal more silver was needed. I put one coin on the table and watched it vanish into that capacious purse. "He will be ready for you, lord," he said, "because your uncle will warn him."

"Because you will tell my uncle?"

"If he pays me, yes."

"I should kill you now, Offa."

"Yes, lord," he said, "you should. But you won't." He smiled.

So Skirnir would learn I was coming, and Skirnir had ships and men, but fate is inexorable. I would go to Frisia.

THREE.

I tried to persuade Ragnar to come with me to Frisia, but he laughed it away. "You think I want to get a wet a.r.s.e at this time of year?" It was a cold day, the countryside sodden from two days of heavy rain that had crashed in from the sea. The rain had ended, but the land was heavy, the winter colors dark, and the air damp.

We rode across the hills. Thirty of my men and forty of Ragnar's. We were all in mail, all helmeted, all armed. Shields hung at our sides or on our backs, and there were long scabbarded swords at our waists. "I'm going in winter," I explained, "because Skirnir won't expect me till spring."

"You hope," he said, "but maybe he's heard you're an idiot?"

"So come," I said, "and let's fight together again."

He smiled, but did not meet my gaze. "I'll give you Rollo," he said, naming one of his best fighters, "and whoever volunteers to go with him. You remember Rollo?"

"Of course."

"I have duties," he said vaguely. "I should stay here." It was not cowardice that made him refuse my invitation. No one could ever accuse Ragnar of timidity. Instead, I think, it was laziness. He was happy and did not need to disturb that happiness. He curbed his horse on the crest of a rise and gestured at the wide strip of coastland that lay beneath us. "There it is," he said, "the English kingdom."

"The what?" I asked indignantly. I was gazing at the rain-darkened land with its small hills and smaller fields with their familiar stone walls.

"That's what everyone calls it," Ragnar said. "The English kingdom."

"It isn't a kingdom," I said sourly.

"That's what they call it," he said patiently. "Your uncle has done well." I made a vomiting noise which made Ragnar laugh. "Think of it," he said, "the whole of the north is Danish, all except Bebbanburg's land."

"Because none of you could take the fort," I retorted.

"It probably can't be taken. My father always said it was too hard."

"I shall take it," I said.

We rode down from the hills. Trees were losing their last leaves in the sea wind. The pastures were dark, the thatch of the cottages almost black, and the rich smell of the year's decay thick in our nostrils. I stopped at one farmstead, deserted because the folk had seen us coming and fled to the woods, and I looked inside the granary to find the harvest had been good. "He gets richer," I said of my uncle. "Why don't you tear his land apart?"

"We do when we're bored," Ragnar said, "and then he tears ours apart."

"Why don't you just capture his land?" I asked, "and let him starve in the fortress."

"Men have tried that. He either fights or pays them to leave."

My uncle, who called himself aelfric of Bernicia, was said to keep over a hundred household warriors in his fortress, and could raise four times that many from the villages scattered across his realm. It was, indeed, a small kingdom. To the north its boundary ran along the Tuede, beyond which lay the land of the Scots who were forever raiding for cattle and crops. To the south of Bebbanburg's land was the Tinan, where Seolferwulf Seolferwulf now lay, and to the west were hills, and all the land beyond the hills and all to the south of the Tinan was in Danish hands. Ragnar ruled south of the river. "We sometimes raid your uncle's land," he said, "but if we take twenty cows he'll come back and take twenty of ours. And when the Scots are troublesome?" he shrugged, leaving the thought unfinished. now lay, and to the west were hills, and all the land beyond the hills and all to the south of the Tinan was in Danish hands. Ragnar ruled south of the river. "We sometimes raid your uncle's land," he said, "but if we take twenty cows he'll come back and take twenty of ours. And when the Scots are troublesome?" he shrugged, leaving the thought unfinished.

"The Scots are always troublesome," I said.

"His warriors are useful when they raid," Ragnar admitted.

So aelfric of Bernicia could be a good neighbor, cooperating with the Danes to repel and punish the Scots, and in return he asked only to be left in peace. That was how Bebbanburg had survived as a Christian enclave in a country of Danes. aelfric was my father's younger brother, and he had always been the clever one in the family. If I had not hated him so much I might have admired him. He knew one thing well, that his survival depended on the great fortress where I had been born and which, all my life, I have thought of as home. There had once been a real kingdom ruled from Bebbanburg. My ancestors had been the kings of Bernicia, ruling deep into what the Scots impudently claim as their land, and south toward Eoferwic, but Bernicia had been swallowed into Northumbria, and Northumbria had fallen to the Danes, yet still the old fortress stood and around it was the remnant of that old English kingdom. "Have you met aelfric?" I asked Ragnar.

"Many times."

"You didn't kill him for me?"

"We meet under a truce."

"Tell me about him."

"Old, gray, sly, watchful."

"His sons?"

"Young, cautious, sly, watchful."

"I heard aelfric was ill."

Ragnar shrugged. "He's close to fifty years old, what man isn't ill who lives that long? But he recovers."

My uncle's eldest son was called Uhtred. That name was an affront. For generations the oldest son in our family has been named Uhtred, and if that heir dies then, as had happened to me, the next youngest son takes the name. My uncle, by naming his eldest Uhtred, was proclaiming that his descendants would be the rulers of Bebbanburg, and their greatest enemy was not the Danes, not even the Scots, but me. aelfric had tried to kill me, and as long as he lived he would go on trying. He had put a reward on my head, but I was a hard man to kill and it had been years since any warrior dared the attempt. Now I rode toward him, my borrowed horse stepping high through the muck of the cattle-track we followed down from the hills. I could smell the sea and, though the waves were not yet visible, the sky to the east had the empty look of air above water. "He'll know we're coming?" I suggested to Ragnar.

"He knows. He never stops watching."

Hors.e.m.e.n would have sped to Bebbanburg and told of Danes crossing the hills. Even now, I knew, we were being watched. My uncle would not realize I was among the hors.e.m.e.n. His sentinels would have reported Ragnar's eagle's-wing banner, but I was not flying my own flag. Not yet.

We had our own scouts riding ahead and to our flanks. For so many years this had been my life. Whenever some restless East Anglian Dane had thought fit to steal a couple of sheep or s.n.a.t.c.h a cow from some pasture close to Lundene, we would ride in vengeance. This was very different country, though. Near Lundene the ground was flat, while here the small hills hid much of the landscape and so our scouts kept close to us. They saw nothing to alarm them, and they finally stopped on a wooded crest and that was where we joined them.

And beneath me was home.

The fortress was vast. It lay between us and the sea on its great lump of rock, connected to the land by a thin strip of sandy ground. To north and south were the high dunes, but the fortress broke the coast, its crag sheltering a wide shallow pool where a few fishing boats were moored. The village had grown, I saw, but so had the fortress. When I had been a child, a man crossed the sandy spit to reach a wooden palisade with a large gate surmounted by a fighting platform. That entrance, the Low Gate, was still there, and if any enemy fought through that archway he would still have had to climb to a second gate in another wooden palisade that was built on the rock itself, but that second palisade was gone entirely, and in its place was a high stone wall without any gate. So the old main entrance, the High Gate, was gone, and an attacker, if he breached the outer palisade to reach the smithy and the stables, would then have to scale that new stone wall. It was thick, high, and equipped with its own fighting platform, so arrows, spears, boiling water, rocks, and anything else the defenders could find would rain down on an attacking force.

The old gate had been at the fortress's southern end, but my uncle had made a path along the beach on the seaward side of Bebbanburg, and now a visitor had to follow the path to a new gate at the fort's northern extremity. The path began in the outer enclosure, so even to reach it, the old wall and its Low Gate had to be taken, then the attackers would have to advance along the new path beneath Bebbanburg's seaward ramparts, a.s.sailed by missiles, and then somehow fight through the new gate, which was also protected by a stone rampart. Even if the attackers somehow got through that new gate, a second wall waited with more defenders, and the attackers would need to capture that inner rampart before they broke through to Bebbanburg's heart, where two great halls and a church crowned the crag. Tendrils of smoke drifted above the fortress's roofs.

I swore softly.

"What are you thinking?" Ragnar asked.

I was thinking that Bebbanburg was impregnable. "I'm wondering who has Smoka now." I said.

"Smoka?"

"Best horse I ever owned."

Ragnar chuckled and nodded at the fort. "It's a brute, isn't it?" he said.

"Land ships at the northern end," I suggested. If ships came ash.o.r.e where the new gate was built then the attackers would have no need to fight through the Low Gate.

"The beach is narrow there," Ragnar warned, though I probably knew the waters about Bebbanburg better than he did, "and you can't get ships into the harbor," he added, pointing to where the fishing boats were moored. "Little ships, yes, but anything bigger than a wash tub? Maybe at a spring high tide, but only for an hour or so, and that channel is a b.i.t.c.h when tide and wind are running. Waves build there. You'd be lucky to make it in one piece."

And even if I could land a dozen crews close to the new gate, what was to stop the defenders sending a force along the new path to trap the attackers? That would only happen if my uncle had warning of an attack and could a.s.semble enough men to spare a force to make that counterattack. So the answer, I thought, was a surprise attack. But a surprise attack would be difficult. The sentries would see the ships approaching and call the garrison to arms, and the attacking crews would have to clamber ash.o.r.e in the surf, then carry ladders and weapons over a hundred rocky paces to where the new stone wall barred them. It would hardly be a surprise by then, and the defenders would have plenty of time to a.s.semble at the new gate. So two attacks? That meant starting a formal siege, using three or four hundred men to seal off the strip of land leading to the Low Gate. That would prevent reinforcements reaching the garrison and those besiegers could a.s.sault the Low Gate while the ships approached the new. That would split the defenders, but I would need at least as many men to attack the new gate, which meant I was looking for a thousand men, say twenty crews, and they would bring wives, servants, slaves, and children, so I would be feeding at least three thousand. "It has to be done," I said quietly.

"No one has ever captured Bebbanburg," Ragnar said.

"Ida did."

"Ida?"

"My ancestor. Ida the Flamebearer. One of the first Saxons in Britain."

"What kind of fort did he capture?"

I shrugged. "Probably a small one."

"Maybe nothing but a thorn fence guarded by half-naked savages," Ragnar said. "The best way to capture that place is to starve the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

That was a possibility. A small army could seal off the landward approach, and ships could patrol the waters to stop supplies reaching my uncle, but bad weather would drive those ships away, leaving an opportunity for small local vessels to reach the fortress. It would take at least six months to starve Bebbanburg into surrender. Six months of feeding an army and persuading restless Danes to stay and fight. I stared at the Farnea Islands where the sea fret ted white on rocks. Gytha, my stepmother, used to tell me tales of how Saint Cuthbert preached to the seals and the puffins on those rocks. He had lived on the islands as a hermit, eating barnacles and fern fronds, scratching his lice, and so the islands were sacred to Christians, but they were of little practical use. I could not shelter a blockading fleet there, for the scatter of islets offered no shelter, nor did Lindisfarena, that lay to the north. That island was much larger. I could see the remnants of the monastery there, but Lindisfarena offered no decent harbor.

I was still gazing at Lindisfarena, remembering how Ragnar the Elder had slaughtered the monks there. I had been a child, and that same day Ragnar the Elder had let me kill Weland, a man sent by my uncle to murder me, and I had hacked at him with my sword, cutting and slicing him, bleeding him to death in writhing agony. I stared at the island, remembering the death of enemies, when Ragnar touched my elbow. "They're curious about us," he said.

Hors.e.m.e.n were riding from the Low Gate. I counted them, reckoning there to be around seventy, which suggested my uncle was not looking for a fight. A man with a hundred household warriors does not want to lose ten in some meaningless skirmish, so he was matching our force with just enough men to deter either side from attacking the other. I watched the hors.e.m.e.n climb the hill toward us. They were in mail and helmeted, with shields and weapons, but they stopped a good four hundred paces away, all except three men who kept riding, though they ostentatiously laid aside their swords and shields before leaving their companions. They flew no banner.

"They want to talk," Ragnar said.

"Is that my uncle?"

"Yes."

The three men had curbed their horses halfway between the two armed bands. "I could kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.d now," I said.

"And his son inherits," Ragnar said, "and everyone knows you killed an unarmed man who had offered a truce."

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d," I said of aelfric. I unbuckled my two swords and tossed them to Finan, then spurred my borrowed horse. Ragnar came with me. I had half hoped my uncle was accompanied by his two sons, and if he had been I might have been tempted to try and kill all three, but instead his companions were two hard-looking warriors, doubtless his best men.

The three waited close to the rotting carca.s.s of a sheep. I a.s.sume a wolf had killed the beast, then been driven off by dogs, and the corpse lay there, crawling with maggots, torn by ravens, and buzzing with flies. The wind blew the stench toward us, which was probably why aelfric had chosen to stop there.

My uncle looked distinguished. He was slender and narrow-faced with a high hooked nose and dark, guarded eyes. His hair, the little that showed beneath his helmet's rim, was white. He watched me calmly, showing no fear as I stopped close. "I a.s.sume you are Uhtred?" he greeted me.