Sons of the raven, p.8
Sons of the Raven, page 8
part #8 of Kings of Northumbria Series
We quickly threw water on the fires and took up defensive positions along what remained of the ramparts. I hoped that the riders would carry on past. As the road was a hundred yards away from the fort and the light was fading there was every chance we would remain undetected if they did so. However, I knew deep down that it was unlikely. It was the obvious place to spend the night.
As they swung off the road and walked their horses to where we lay on top of the earthen ramparts I debated what to do. Theobald, although a noble, had made it clear that he accepted me as leader of our combined forces and he was too young and inexperienced to be of much help in this situation. Of course, these riders might also be enemies of Ecgberht, but somehow I doubted it. This was no group of disposed people seeking refuge, they were a warband on patrol or on a mission somewhere.
Then Theobald hissed in my ear that he recognised the man riding at the head of the column.
‘That’s Bjarke, one of the Norse jarls who serves Ecgberht. He’s the man who’s been given my shire.’
‘Time for a little revenge then,’ I grinned.
I held up my hand and checked that all of our eighteen archers had their eye on me, then I dropped it.
Bjarke must have seen my raised hand because he halted his horse and yelled out a warning as he tried to pull his shield, which was hanging on his back, around to protect himself. He was too late. Sigmund’s arrow smashed into his right shoulder and Lambert’s went into his cheek and out of the side of his neck. The boys’ bows didn’t have the power of a man’s but I knew how accurate they could be, even in the deepening twilight.
He was lucky that Lambert’s arrow hadn’t hit anything vital. He groaned in pain and pulled his horse’s head round with his good arm. Perhaps he could have got away, wounded as he was, but Beornric’s arrow struck his horse at the bottom of the ribcage, just above the socket at the top of its foreleg. It was a difficult spot to hit but it was where the heart was and the animal crashed to the ground, trapping Bjarke’s right leg under it.
The other archers weren’t nearly as good but, at thirty to forty yards, they could hardly miss and half a dozen horses and as many men were killed or wounded by that first volley.
The rest of the Norsemen milled around in panic, some trying to turn their horses and escape whilst others kicked their heels into their mounts’ flanks to charge into the gap in the ramparts where the gate used to be. The second volley killed three of the braver warriors and brought down two horses. The remainder turned and joined the others in flight.
As they re-joined the road they ran into Wigestan, Leowine, Alcred and Hybald, who I’d sent out of the rear gate as soon as I’d been alerted to the party of strange riders. Normally four warriors would be no match for a dozen, but the latter had been routed and were panic stricken. Furthermore, my men had been trained since they were boys to fight on horseback; Vikings used horses for travel, not for combat.
They charged the first four Norsemen with their spears and killed them before unsheathing their swords to engage the rest. They managed to kill four more and Wigestan knocked another unconscious with a blow to his helmet, but the others got past them and sped away with the Northumbrians in pursuit.
It was now getting too dark to see much and we waited anxiously for them to return. We killed the wounded, both men and horses, but let the wounded Bjarke and the warrior who Wigestan had knocked unconscious live for now. Some of the unwounded horses ran off but we managed to round up a dozen. We stripped the dead of armour and weapons, as well as adding any silver they were carrying to my purse.
It was over an hour before we heard the sound of horses on the cobbles. Our men had managed to catch and kill every one of the Norsemen but Alcred had been wounded in the thigh. However, it wasn’t serious and Sigmund quickly cleaned the wound, sewed it up and bound it with part of a tunic taken from the dead.
Theobald seemed to derive great pleasure from hanging Bjarke from a nearby tree the next morning. The Norseman asked to be given a sword to hold as he died, which showed how superficial his conversion to Christianity was. His request was denied and the man swore and cursed Theobald until the rope cut into his windpipe. He kicked and struggled for so long I though he was never going to die, but eventually he hung limp and lifeless, his body twisting slowly to and fro in the slight breeze.
The one surviving Norseman was scarcely more than a boy – sixteen years old, if that.
‘Why are you keeping him alive?’ Theobald asked curiously.
‘To see what he can tell us about Ecgberht and what his intentions are, especially with regard to Bernicia, and to see if he knows anything about the movement of Ivar and the heathen army.’
‘What would he know,’ Theobald scoffed. ‘He’s only a boy.’
‘He has ears and, in my experience, warriors know more about their leaders than the latter think they do. He will have heard his companions discussing things it would be useful for us to know. For a start, where was Bjarke going?’
‘Oh, I see. How will you make him talk? Torture him?’
‘I hope that’s not necessary. He wet his trousers when we hanged Bjarke, if you noticed. He’s scared out of his wits and all alone.’
The young Norseman, whose name was Karl, proved only too willing to talk. I thought it an inappropriate name; it meant manly and it was difficult to imagine this cowering, fearful excuse for a warrior living up to his name.
His English was as good, if not better, than my Norse so I quickly switched to the former language so that Theobald and my friends could understand what he was saying. I started by asking him where he and his companions were heading.
‘To secure the ferry across some river called the Humber,’ Karl responded eagerly. ‘King Ecgberht intends to invade a region called Lindsey, which used to be part of Northumbria, or so Jarl Bjarke told us.’
I looked at Theobald and I could tell the same thought had crossed his mind as had occurred to me. Lindsey had been part of Mercia for centuries. If Ecgberht intended to try and capture the area it could only be because he’d been told to. Ivar might have agreed a truce with King Burghred but Ecgberht hadn’t. Ivar and the other leaders of the Viking army were using the so-called King of Jorvik as their proxy.
‘What do you intend to do?’ Theobald asked me.
I led him away from the fire and out of earshot of the others, including Karl.
‘I think we should return and burn the ferry boat,’ I told him. ‘Without it no one can cross directly into Lindsey. Without the ferry Ecgberht’s men would have to cross the Ouse into Mercia proper and then the River Trent to reach Lindsey.
‘Ivar presumably wanted him to seize Lindsey before the Mercians could do anything about it,’ I continued. ‘Burghred would doubtless think twice about launching a campaign to recover Lindsey with the Great Heathen Army still in Nottingham.’
‘It would take Ecgberht some time to ferry enough men across,’ Theobald said doubtfully.
‘Not if most were on foot. In two or three days he could have several hundred south of the Humber. Lindsey is sparsely populated so that would be more than enough to defeat their small warband and the fyrd.’
Theobald nodded his agreement.
‘What are you going to do with Karl?’
‘He seems biddable; perhaps I’ll keep him as a slave, unless you want him, lord?’
‘No,’ he shook his head vehemently. ‘I would never trust a pagan.’
I refrained from pointing out that Karl had a crucifix hanging from a leather thong around his neck.
-℣-
We left the fort before dawn and retraced our steps to the ferry. As usual I sent the twins forward to reconnoitre the hamlet around where the ferry docked and the rest of us sat down well clear of the road to eat some cheese and dried meat to break our fast.
‘The ferry is over the other side of the river,’ Sigmund and Lambert told me breathlessly. ‘However, there are three big knarrs anchored just offshore.’
They had sauntered towards the river on foot as that would attract less attention than two boys on horses, but they had come running back, full of excitement. I just hoped that no one had spotted them. After I had told them off for being stupid, I asked them for more details.
‘The knarrs are as big as the ones we use to trade with Frankia,’ Lambert explained. ‘Each could probably hold thirty horses and their riders or a hundred men.’
I felt a fool. Bjarke wasn’t interested in the ferry; his task had been to secure the embarkation point for the knarrs. The estuary was two and half miles across at that point. With a good easterly wind it would take more than half an hour to sail across. Allowing for loading, unloading and the return journey, Ecgberht could transfer a thousand men - a hundred of them mounted - to the south bank in perhaps five or at the most six hours.
The obvious thing was to capture the knarrs but, unlike the Vikings, few of the men at my disposal could swim. It was Karl who came up with the solution, much to my surprise. He had been tied to a horse with a leading rein held by Alcred to make sure he didn’t try to escape so he was close enough to hear our discussion.
‘You’ve the armour and clothing worn by Bjarke’s men. Why don’t you pretend to be him?’
Few of Theobald’s men could ride but we found enough, with my men, to produce a band of what looked like twenty Norsemen. We wrapped our cloaks around our faces to hide the fact that we wore moustaches, rather than the bushy beards favoured by the Norse, and rode confidently down to the jetty.
None of us could speak Norse well enough to sound genuine so I told Karl to hail the knarrs and bid them come in and moor their ships. Much to my relief the ships weighed anchor and used the few oars they carried for manoeuvring in harbour to bring them alongside.
Several ships’ boys leaped ashore to secure the mooring lines as my men and I clattered onto the wooden jetty. As soon as the boys had tied the ships up we knocked them unconscious with sword pommels and spear hafts. The rest of the crew gave us no trouble and half an hour later we had boarded all three ships and secured the crews.
I was thankful that we hadn’t killed the boys. We discovered that the knarrs were manned by Northumbrians, rather than Ecgberht’s Norsemen. They had obeyed their new king because of fears for their families’ safety. They told us that Ecgberht was extremely unpopular and revolt as in the air. However, fear of his Norse warband and the Great Heathen Army, who could return to Northumbria at any time, kept the populace subdued – for now.
We were still loading the horses onto the knarrs when Leowine and Beornric, who I’d left watching the road a mile north of the ferry point, came galloping in.
‘There’s an army approaching,’ Leowine said in a calm voice before his young companion could say anything. Beornric was excited and the last thing I wanted was for anyone to panic.
‘How many and how far away?’ I asked.
‘Difficult to say but there was a sizeable mounted group in front and hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more behind them. We didn’t stay to estimate exact numbers.’
‘You did the right thing.’
Turning to the men trying to coax the last few horses up the gangplank I told them to forget about them.
‘Everyone aboard now. There’s no great rush but we need to catch the tide.’
It was true that the tide was just starting to ebb, but we had several hours yet to clear the mouth of the Humber. It was my way of getting everyone to get a move on without alarming the women and children. Since we arrived the sixty inhabitants of the small settlement were fearful of what would happen to them and had elected to come with us.
I watched with amusement as Theobald went to help Osgern up the gangplank and then was equally solicitous of the servant holding Ædwulf’s small hand. I would have had to be blind not to notice that the young noble’s eyes seem to be drawn to the former queen whenever she was around. Although she had a four year old son I knew that Osgern was only just nineteen herself.
One of Theobald’s men had to whisper in his lord’s ear before he stopped staring after Osgern and rushed to escort his mother, sister and two younger brothers onto the knarr.
Thankfully the ferry had come back to our side as soon as a friend of the crew had signalled that it was safe to do so. Our last act before leaving was to set fire to the ferry boat and set it adrift.
-℣-
‘Two sails to the east,’ the piping voice of the twelve-year-old lookout called down from the masthead as we passed the point where the coast stopped heading north and ran north-west. The ship’s boys eased the sheets so that the wind from the south east now filled the sail from almost directly astern and the knarr picked up a little more speed.
The other two ships were inshore of us and so the two strange ships had probably not seen them yet.
‘They’re changing course,’ the boy called down again. ‘It looks as if they intend to intercept us.’
‘Can you see what size they are; how many oars a side?’
‘Not yet, but one looks bigger than the other. They’re probably five miles away as yet.’
I stopped craning my neck from my position at the prow. The horizon was just over three miles away from the deck of the knarr. The lookout could see two or three miles further from his lofty position.
I was glad now that I had loaded all the horses onto one knarr and the women and children onto the other. I had all the warriors, including some twenty five archers, on my ship.
Our sail was made up of red and white stripes with no emblem to give the oncoming ships a clue as to our identity. However, we did have a black Raven banner on board used by all Ragnar’s sons. Ivar had insisted that this device should also be adopted by the new Viking Kingdom of Jorvik. We hoisted this to the masthead but the longships kept heading on an interception course.
Evidently they wanted to make sure who we were; they wouldn’t be on their current course for any other reason. I had my warriors and archers get ready but made sure that they stayed out of sight below the gunwale.
I called Beornric to my side and told him what I wanted him to do and he scampered away to the stern. The steersman’s platform stood higher than the rest of the deck and from there the lad would have the best vantage point. The two longships were less than two miles away now and I could see that one was a drekar with thirty oars a side and the other a snekkja. They rolled more than Norse longships, which meant that they had a shallower draft, and were therefore probably Danes or Frisians.
The pattern on their sails were made up of red and white lozenges, which told me nothing. My best guess was that they intended to join the Great Heathen Army, presumably attracted by tales of the vast wealth that Ivar and his men were accumulating. I called Karl to my side and told him to be ready to reply to the inevitable challenge that would come our way once we were within hailing distance.
The boy had given me his word that he wouldn’t try to escape or betray me and I believed him. He seemed to have genuinely welcomed his change in master and I got the impression that I was some sort of hero to him. I learned later that Bjarke was a cruel jarl who like to tease and beat Karl as the youngest and weakest member of his band. The boy was an orphan whose uncle had been one of Bjarke’s hirdmen, but the man had never protected Karl or shown any interest in him. It wasn’t altogether surprising that the lad didn’t mourn his only living relative when he was killed in the fight at the Roman camp.
When the drekar got within a hundred yards of us a man in the prow called across to us, asking who we were and where we were bound. We lowered the sail and glided to a halt, bobbing up and down in the waves.
‘Danish, as we thought,’ Karl told me.
I had to smile at the ‘we’. It made it sound as if Karl considered himself my equal.
‘Tell him that we serve the King of Jorvik.’
‘Is he Norse or a Dane?’ the man in the prow of the drekar asked.
‘Neither, but he owes allegiance to Ivar the Boneless,’ Karl replied.
I had hoped that the mention of Ivar’s name would satisfy the inquisitive Dane, but his ship edged closer and I began to worry that he intended to board us. Perhaps he was just a pirate who saw us as an easy prey, regardless of our ownership or connections.
‘Why am I talking to a boy, is your captain a mute?’
The drakar was now less than fifty yards from us. It too had lowered its sail and the Danes were now pulling on their oars. Evidently they wanted to board us. I couldn’t allow them to get any closer.
‘Now,’ I yelled.
Beornric was the first to get an arrow away; it struck the steersman in the chest and he toppled overboard. The steering oar, now free of his control, swung this way and that and their captain nearly lost his footing. Not that it mattered, the boy’s second arrow took him in the neck. By now my other archers were sending arrow after arrow into the rowers as they tried to grab their shields to protect themselves.
Karl had raced to Beornric’s side and was now frantically striking his flint into some shavings in a helmet. The shavings caught and flared up, enabling Karl to light a torch which he held nervously aloft. Fire was not a good idea aboard ship but it was essential to my plan. Beornric picked up one of the arrows he’d prepared earlier and lit the oil-soaked wool tied to the end of the shaft.
The arrow streaked away to land on the deck of the drekar, just missing the furled sail. It wasn’t like the boy to miss, but he was probably nervous of the flames. His second arrow struck the sail, just as one of the Danes stamped out the fire started by the first one. A third fire arrow sealed the longship’s fate.
The Danes were desperately throwing grappling hooks, trying to pull the two ships together so that they could board us. Despite the number we’d already killed and wounded, they still outnumbered us by two to one. Our arrows were more or less ineffective now as the majority of the Danes were protected by their shields.
Suddenly the sail caught and the blaze flared up. The Danes frantically tried to put out the fire with helmets filled from their water butts but, in doing so they had exposed themselves and my archers had fresh targets.
