Because we were shooting down at them, there was little exposed skin visible and any further shots would be wasting arrows so I ordered everyone to cease shooting. As soon as I did that the young firebrand ordered his men to charge the gate and batter it down with their axes.

  The gates were made of stout oak studded with steel bolts attached to bracing on the inside. Given time they might have been able to get through them, but it would have taken hours using battle-axes. They didn’t have hours though. Although those close to the gates were out of sight of those on the walls, the watch tower jutted out about four feet. I climbed down to make room for Lambert and he and Beornric started to pick off the axemen at an almost leisurely pace.

  Of course, the Vikings had some archers of their own but they hadn’t bothered to bring their bows with them from the ships. By the time they’d retrieved them Lambert and Beornric had killed ten more men at the gate and the rest had hurriedly retreated.

  The boy Viking was screaming at his men to attack again until one of the older warriors back handed him across the face and told him to shut up. His father might have been their Hersir or Jarl but that didn’t mean that his son would inherit his mantle. I knew that their Thing – the equivalent of a Witan except that every free man could vote – would choose their next leader in due course, and it was unlikely to be a boy.

  We waited to see what the Vikings would do next. Nothing happened for an hour or more and then men appeared from the village carrying a pitcher of fish oil. I knew what that meant; they were about to use fire arrows to set the monastery ablaze. That might put their prospective plunder at risk, but I had a feeling that it was now more a question of honour and revenge.

  I climbed back up the ladder and whispered in Beornric’s ear.

  ‘Can I try too?’ Lambert asked eagerly.

  ‘Yes, no harm in that, but don’t release until Beornric has.’

  Their archers took up position over a hundred yards away from the palisade. They must have thought that they’d be safe at that range. What they planned to do was light the oil soaked wadding and then run forward and fire at a high trajectory over the wall and into the thatch of the nearby huts. It would still be damp from the snow but the strong wind might well have dried out the top layer.

  When the first archer dipped his arrow in the oil and another man lit it Beornric let fly. It wasn’t a perfect shot and it was at maximum range. It lodged in the man’s thigh and he dropped the flaming arrow. As luck would have it, it fell into the open pitcher of fish oil, which went up with a whoosh. He and two other Vikings standing nearby were splashed with burning oil and screamed as their clothes ignited.

  The Vikings were now furious and eager to kill us, no matter what the cost, but someone evidently had a cool head. They did what they should have done at the beginning. They went and found every ladder they could in the village and prepared to make an assault on the walls. Our numbers were roughly equal by this stage but it wasn’t just a question of numbers; the enemy had the better fighters in the main, but we had the defensive palisade. I had a feeling that it would be a close run thing.

  The Vikings had found ten ladders but not all were long enough to reach the top of the palisade. They had overcome this problem by making platforms from the walls of some of the huts on which to place the short ladders. As they ran forward carrying the ladders and three platforms the raiders ran into a hail of arrows which caused half a dozen casualties, despite the shields the leading men held in front of them.

  Once the ladders were in place the Vikings started to swarm up them. Lambert and Beornric killed another five men on the nearer two scaling ladders from their vantage point and the fyrd managed to use pitchforks to push two of the ladders away from the walls. A few more were killed as they tried to climb over the top of the palisade but over forty Vikings managed to get a foothold.

  My men retreated leaving them in possession of the parapet to the left of the gate. They started to celebrate thinking they’d taken the monastery but then the four archers I’d sent up onto the roof of the church started to pepper them with arrows. The church was a mere thirty yards from the perimeter so they could hardly miss.

  It wasn’t long before the Vikings scrambled back down their ladders and left us in possession of the monastery. Of course, we too had our casualties, but at the cost of eight dead and nine wounded we’d managed to halve the Vikings’ numbers.

  In the middle of the afternoon their two ships cast off but evidently they didn’t have enough men to man both of them. They sunk the snekkja in the middle of the estuary and the drakar sailed away to the south. The storm had blown itself out and they hoisted the sail to catch the light breeze. There was still quite a swell running though and, as I watched the longship, it would appear on the crest of a wave and then disappear completely in the trough.

  The abbot was full of gratitude for the salvation of his monastery but the archbishop just scowled at me and muttered that I’d been lucky.

  ‘You think that this is over do you?’ I asked them.

  ‘Yes, of course. They’ve sailed away with their tails between their legs,’ Wulfhere replied scornfully.

  ‘Karl, Fiske; come here. Do you think we’ve seen the last of the Vikings?’

  Both shook their heads.

  ‘No, lord. They are Norsemen. They won’t give up that easily.’

  ‘Pah, what do these boys know about anything,’ Wulfhere asked scornfully.

  ‘Both of them are Norse. They may be Christians, but they know how their fellow Norsemen think.’

  The archbishop said something in reply but I was no longer listening.

  ‘Go and get your horses’ I told the boys, and take Leowine with you. I want you to find where they’ve landed.’

  I turned to the abbot.

  ‘Where is the nearest place where they could beach their ship to the south of here?’

  ‘Just around the next headland,’ he asked, evidently surprised by my question. ‘Why? Do you think they’ll return, Drefan?’

  ‘I’m certain of it. They’ll come back at night thinking that we’ll be busy celebrating our victory. One or two will climb over the walls silently and open the gates for the rest.’

  Wulfhere had gone pale whilst I was speaking but the abbot was looking tranquil.

  ‘You have a plan?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied.

  -℣-

  ‘We soon found them, lord,’ Leowine told me a few hours later. ‘They had beached the drekar in the big curving bay where you told us it would be. The waves were crashing onto the sand so they pulled the ship as far as they could up the beach.’

  ‘The tide has washed part of the beach clear of snow and they’ve set up camp near the high water mark, gathered firewood and cooked a meal of some sort; we couldn’t see what,’ Lambert put in, eager to add his bit.

  Leowine gave him an irritated look before continuing.

  ‘We waited until they gathered up their weapons and started up the path through the dunes and then rode back here.’

  ‘How far is this bay from here?’ I asked.

  ‘About three quarters of a mile.’

  ‘The snow will slow them down a bit but I should think that we can expect them in about half an hour or so. Right, you know what to do; off you go.’

  I went back up the watch tower. The night was overcast but the snow reflected what light there was. It was enough to see perhaps fifty yards once your eyes were accustomed to the dark.

  As I waited it was eerily quiet at first. Then I heard the rustle of the monks’ habits as they made their way quietly towards the church for the last service of the day. After the door of the church had closed I heard nothing further until the crunch of a foot in the snow alerted me to the presence of someone outside the palisade.

  I touched Leowine on the shoulder and he struck a flint a few times until the collection of shavings in a metal pot caught. Once a few twigs and then small pieces of wood were added, the fire in the pot had caught sufficiently for him to light a torch soaked in oil. Once it was well alight Leowine threw it high in the air.

  It turned lazily end over end as it sailed through the air before landing forty yards from the palisade. There was a whoosh as the oil soaked grass caught light and then the flickering flames spread outwards like the ripples on a still pond do when a stone is thrown into it. The fire not only illuminated the Vikings creeping towards the monastery, but it set light to half a dozen of those in the immediate area.

  The archers, who had been waiting crouched below the palisade, leaped to their feet and sent arrow after arrow towards the figures silhouetted by fire below them. The Vikings lucky enough to still be in the shadows turned tail and fled, but they didn’t get very far.

  They encountered the thegn’s warriors, backed up by his fyrd, as they ran back through the snow to the beach and the men of Whitby weren’t inclined to be merciful. They took no prisoners.

  Meanwhile Tancred and Bran came running up to the gatehouse with our horses and my warriors and I rode out of the gates and along the path taken by the fleeing Vikings. I had impressed on everyone the importance of keeping one eye shut when the fire trap was sprung so we didn’t lose our night vision. We passed the scene of the thegn’s ambush and he called out that all but a few who had escaped inland were dead. I thanked him and we rode on towards the bay where the longship lay.

  When we got there six boys and two older warriors were still sitting around one of the fires. Doubtless they thought that we were their men returning until they realised that we were mounted. There was no possibility of so few pushing the longship back off the beach so they bravely grabbed their weapons and prepared to make a fight of it.

  ‘Surrender and you shall live,’ Karl called out to them in Norse. ‘Refuse and you will die like the rest of your crew.’

  One of the old warriors replied that it was time he went to join his comrades in Valhalla but asked us to spare the boys. Then he and the other man ran at us and we cut them down. The ship’s boys sullenly threw down their spears and daggers and it was all over.

  -℣-

  ‘So did you manage to get any useful information out of that fat fool Wulfhere?’ Ricsige asked me after I’d ridden up to Bebbanburg to report.

  ‘Not much. He’d fled Ripon as soon as the Heathen Army appeared. He did say that Halfdan and Guthrum detested each other and that, when he looked back after they’d reached the safety of the hills, he saw that they’d established two separate camps outside the monastery. It’s an indication that the army has split.’

  ‘That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, for Mercia as they will be facing fewer Vikings next year, I suppose. Not so good for us if Halfdan comes back our way.’

  ‘But he’ll have far fewer men if he parts company from Guthrum and Ubba surely?’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. Perhaps we can risk facing him on the battlefield if that’s the case.’

  He nodded his head and then surprised me by saying ‘tell me about Whitby.’

  I’d mentioned that there had been an attack on the monastery whilst I was there and that we’d beaten it off but hadn’t given him any details. It had seemed irrelevant.

  As he’d asked, I gave him a brief account.

  ‘I suspect that you are being far too modest. What did you do with the ships’ boys? Did you bring them back to turn them into more Christian Norsemen for your warband?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said with a smile. ‘I suspect that Karl and Fiske are rather special cases. I left them there to become slaves and work in the fields.’

  I returned to Alnwic for the winter but in the middle of March I sent Hybald and Karl back towards Ripon to try and find out if my supposition about the army splitting was true. They returned in early April to say that it was as I suspected, but Halfdan wasn’t heading for Deira, or even Bernicia; he was making for Cumbria.

  Chapter Twelve – In Ivar’s Footsteps

  874 to 875

  ‘Why Cumbria?’ Ricsige asked as he paced the floor of my hall at Alnwic. It was May and he was making his annual visit to each of his ealdormen.

  ‘Well, according to the reports we’ve received, only just over a thousand warriors chose him as their leader when the army split up at Repton. Most of those were Norse and there are a lot of Norse settlers in Cumbria. Perhaps he’s seeking to recruit some of them?’

  ‘Why would they join him? They are already settled on their own farms with families for the most part. What can he offer?’

  Karl coughed politely from the door where he was on guard duty.

  ‘If I may speak, Cyning?’

  Ricsige waved his hand in assent and Karl cleared his throat.

  ‘Whilst Norsemen, like the Danes and Swedes, want to own land they can call home, they are essentially raiders. It’s a lot easier to take what you want with the sword than to have to work hard on the land in order to produce food that barely sustains you and your family.’

  ‘Thank you, Karl. So where does he plan to raid? Northumbria?’

  ‘Perhaps, although I’ve heard a rumour that he covets the throne of Duibhlinn which his brother Ivar held for three years before he was killed,’ Ricsige said thoughtfully.

  ‘Karl? What do you think?’ I asked him.

  ‘When I was with the heathen army it was generally believed that Halfdan was jealous of Ivar. He was the youngest of the four and Ivar the eldest. Perhaps it’s not surprising that Halfdan is always seeking to outdo him.’

  ‘Let’s hope that he turns westwards towards Ireland then, and not eastwards into Northumbria,’ Ricsige said in conclusion.

  We heard nothing more for a while then rumours began to reach my ears that Halfdan was besieging Caer Luel, the former seat of the Ealdorman of Cumbria before the shire fell to the Strathclyde Britons a decade or more ago.

  Cumbria, together with Luncæstershire, had once formed the Kingdom of Rheged, populated by the Britons – the same people who inhabited Strathclyde. However, when King Oswiu had married the heiress to the throne centuries ago he had incorporated it into Northumbria and Angles and Saxons began to settle there. Now these people were fleeing eastwards into what was left of Northumbria.

  Their individual stories differed, of course, and often conflicted with one another, but gradually I began to piece together what was happening. Halfdan had been joined by the Norse settlers along the coast of Cumbria and by five hundred more from Ireland. The new King of Strathclyde, Rhun ab Arthgal, son of the man defeated by Ivar the Boneless, was in no position to reinforce Cumbria and, when Caer Luel fell, the remaining Britons fled north across the River Lynne, which had been the traditional border.

  Halfdan had settled more of his Norsemen in Cumbria but the bulk of his forces had accompanied him and the Irish Norse across the sea. From what I could gather Eysteinn Óláfsson, son of Olaf the White who had helped Ivar to seize the throne in 870, was embroiled in a dynastic struggle with the supporters of Barith, Ivar’s four year old son. I don’t suppose for a moment it was as simple as that. The jarls who claimed to support Barith were no doubt struggling for power amongst themselves and using the young boy as a figurehead.

  If the stories were true it seemed that Ivar had sired two more sons with his Strathclyde princess before he was killed - twin boys called Sigfrøðr and Sigtryggr Ívarrsson. I was surprised that Halfdan wanted to get involved in such a complex struggle for power until I remembered the smouldering jealousy between him and Ivar. Perhaps it extended to his nephews as well?

  I heard nothing more until a monk from Iona visited Lindisfarne. Ricsige sent me a message to let me know that Halfdan had prevailed and had now been enthroned by the Irish Norsemen as King of Duibhlinn. I made the mistake of thinking that he would now stay across the sea. I was wrong. In March 876 he landed back in Cumbria with an army two thousand strong. That could only mean one thing: he was intent on invading Northumbria once more.

  -℣-

  Ricsige and I stood on the parapet of the stronghold known as Dùn Èideann with Theobald, the ealdorman of the shire that stretched along the south bank of the Firth of Forth. Below us lay the village of the same name, now deserted by its inhabitants and occupied by the invading Norse. Halfdan had marched north from Caer Luel through the hills, pillaging Selkirkshire on his way north. He had learned his lesson from the failed incursion of 874. We had little or no warning and this time he seized livestock and grain stores as he went.

  We didn’t even have time to muster the complete strength of Northumbria to oppose Halfdan. It was doubtful if the ealdormen of Deira would have responded in any case. They were nervous about Guthrum and Ubba, who were still in Mercia to their south, although the latest reports said that they were advancing towards Cambridge where King Burghred had mustered his army to oppose them. Furthermore, they had suffered the most from Ricsige’s scorched earth campaign two years previously and resented his transfer of the capital back to Bebbanburg. Consequently he was unpopular in the south of the kingdom.

  We had five hundred trained warriors and another two thousand men of the Bernicia fyrd inside the fortress. Food stocks would only last for about a month as four hundred women and children from the settlement of Dùn Èideann had also taken refuge with us. We stood little chance of winning an engagement in the open. Our only hope was to stay bottled up in the impregnable fortress and hope that the rest of Northumbria would come to our rescue before it was too late. It wasn’t much of a hope.

  I was also worried about Eadgifu and my children, Agnes and Edgar. They were still at Alnwic and I wished now that I had told them to take refuge at Bebbanburg.

  ‘I don’t want to just sit here,’ Ricsige told me two nights later. ‘Our one hope is the Picts.’

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22