‘So they’ve found horses,’ I said. From what we had seen, and from our questioning of the prisoners we had taken, the enemy had brought very few horses on their ships, but the forage parties, I assumed that was what the horsemen were, proved that they had managed to capture a few, and those few, in turn, could ride further afield to find more, though by now the countryside was alerted to their presence. There were few steadings here because this was border country, land that belonged neither to the Danes of Northumbria nor to the Saxons of Mercia, and what folk lived here would already have left their homes and driven their livestock south to the nearest burh. Fear ruled this land now.
We rode on eastwards, dropping from the ridge into wooded country where we followed an overgrown drover’s path. I sent no scouts ahead, reckoning that Ragnall’s men did not have enough horses to send a war-band large enough to confront us, nor did we see the enemy, not even when we turned north and rode into the pastureland where we had glimpsed the horsemen earlier. ‘They’re staying out of our way,’ Sihtric said, sounding disappointed.
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘The more he kills of us, lord, the fewer to fight on Ceaster’s walls.’
I ignored that foolish answer. Ragnall had no intention of killing his men beneath Ceaster’s ramparts, not yet anyway. So what did he plan? I looked back in puzzlement. It was a dry morning, or at least it was not raining, though the air felt damp and the wind was chill, but it had rained hard in the night and the ground was sopping wet, yet I had seen no hoofmarks crossing the drover’s path. If Ragnall wanted horses and food then he would find the richer steadings to our south, deeper inside Mercia, yet it seemed he had sent no men that way. Perhaps I had missed the tracks, but I doubted I could have overlooked something so obvious. And Ragnall was no fool. He knew reinforcements must join us from the south, yet it seemed he had no patrols searching for those new enemies.
Why?
Because, I thought, he did not care about our reinforcements. I was staring northwards, seeing nothing there except thick woods and damp fields, and I was thinking what Ragnall had achieved. He had taken away our small fleet, which meant we could not cross the Mærse easily, not unless we rode even further eastwards to find an unguarded crossing. He was making a fortress on Eads Byrig, a stronghold that was virtually impregnable until we had sufficient men to overwhelm his army. And there was only one reason to fortify Eads Byrig, and that was to threaten Ceaster, yet he was sending no patrols towards the city, nor was he trying to stop any reinforcements reaching the garrison. ‘Is there water on Eads Byrig?’ I asked Sihtric.
‘There’s a spring to the south-east of the hill,’ he said, sounding dubious, ‘but it’s just a trickle, lord. Not enough for a whole army.’
‘He’s not strong enough to attack Ceaster,’ I said, thinking aloud, ‘and he knows we’re not going to waste men against Eads Byrig’s walls.’
‘He just wants a fight!’ Sihtric said dismissively.
‘No,’ I said, ‘he doesn’t. Not with us.’ There was an idea in my head. I could not say it aloud because I did not understand it yet, but I sensed what Ragnall was doing. Eads Byrig was a deception, I thought, and we were not the enemy, not yet. We would be in time, but not yet. I turned on Sihtric. ‘Take the men back to Ceaster,’ I told him. ‘Go back by the same path we came on. Let the bastards see you. And tell Finan to patrol to the edge of the forest tomorrow.’
‘Lord?’ he asked again.
‘Tell Finan it should be a big patrol! A hundred and fifty men at least! Let Ragnall see them! Tell him to patrol from the road to the river, make him think we’re planning an attack from the west.’
‘An attack from the …’ he began.
‘Just do it,’ I snarled. ‘Berg! You come with me!’
Ragnall had stopped us from crossing the river and he was making us concentrate all our attention on Eads Byrig. He seemed to be behaving cautiously, making a great fortress and deliberately not provoking us by sending war-bands to the south, yet everything I knew about Ragnall suggested he was anything but a cautious man. He was a warrior. He moved fast, struck hard, and called himself a king. He was a gold-giver, a lord, a patron of warriors. Men would follow him so long as his swords and spears took captives and captured farmland, and no man became rich by building a fortress in a forest and inviting attack. ‘Tell Finan I’ll be back tomorrow or the day after,’ I told Sihtric, then beckoned to Berg and rode eastwards. ‘Tomorrow or the day after!’ I shouted back to Sihtric.
Berg Skallagrimmrson was a Norseman who had sworn loyalty to me, a loyalty he had proven in the three years since I had saved his life on a beach in Wales. He could have ridden north any time to the kingdom of Northumbria and there found a Dane or a fellow Norseman who would welcome a young, strong warrior, but Berg had stayed true. He was a thin-faced, blue-eyed young man, serious and thoughtful. He wore his hair long in Norse fashion, and had persuaded Sihtric’s daughter to make a scribble on his left cheek with oak-gall ink and a needle. ‘What is it?’ I had asked him as the scars were still healing.
‘It’s a wolf’s head, lord!’ he had said, sounding indignant. The wolf’s head was my symbol and the inked device was his way of showing loyalty, but even when it healed it looked more like a smeared pig’s head.
Now the two of us rode eastwards. I still did not fear any enemy war-band because I had a suspicion of what Ragnall really wanted, and it was that suspicion that kept us riding into the afternoon, by which time we had turned north and were following a Roman road that led to Northumbria. We were still well to the east of Eads Byrig, but as the afternoon waned we climbed a low hill and I saw where a bridge carried the road across the river, and there, clustered close to two cottages that had been built on the Mærse’s north bank, were men in mail. Men with spears. ‘How many?’ I asked Berg, whose eyes were younger than mine.
‘At least forty, lord.’
‘He doesn’t want us to cross the river, does he?’ I suggested. ‘Which means we need to get across.’
We rode east for an hour, keeping a cautious eye for enemies, and at dusk we turned north and came to where the Mærse slid slow between pastureland. ‘Can your horse swim?’ I asked Berg.
‘We’ll find out, lord.’
The river was wide here, at least fifty paces, and its banks were earthen bluffs. The water was murky, but I sensed it was deep and so, rather than risk swimming the beasts over, we turned back upstream until we discovered a place where a muddy track led into the river from the south and another climbed the northern bank, suggesting this was a ford. It was certainly no major crossing place, but rather a spot where some farmer had discovered he could cross with his cattle, but I suspected the river was usually lower. Rain had swollen it.
‘We have to cross,’ I said, and spurred my horse into the water. The river came up to my boots, then above them, and I could feel the horse struggling against the current. He slipped once, and I lurched sideways, thought I must be thrown into the water, but somehow the stallion found his footing and surged ahead, driven more by fear than by my urging. Berg came behind and kicked his horse faster so that he passed me and left the river before I did, his horse flailing up the far bank in a flurry of water and mud.
‘I hate crossing rivers,’ I growled as I joined him.
We found a spinney of ash trees a mile beyond the river and we spent the night there, the horses tethered while we tried to sleep. Berg, being young, slept like the dead, but I was awake much of the night, listening to the wind in the leaves. I had not dared light a fire. This land, like the country south of the Mærse, appeared deserted, but that did not mean no enemy was near, and so I shivered through the darkness. I slept fitfully as the dawn approached, waking to see Berg carefully cutting a lump of bread into two pieces. ‘For you, lord,’ he said, holding out the larger piece.
I took the smaller, then stood, aching in every bone. I walked to the edge of the trees and gazed out at greyness. Grey sky, grey land, grey mist. It was the wolf-light