Harald probably wanted a throne, but above all he wanted everything that glittered. He wanted silver, gold and women. He was like a child that sees something pretty and screams until he possesses it. The throne of Wessex might fall into his hands as he greedily scooped up his baubles, but he did not aim for it. He had come to Wessex because it was full of treasures, and now he was ravaging the land, taking plunder, while Haesten just watched. Haesten hoped, I think, that Harald’s wild troops would so weaken Alfred that he could come behind and take the whole land. If Wessex was a bull, then Harald’s men were blood-maddened terriers who would attack in a pack and most would die in the attacking, but they would weaken the bull, and then Haesten, the mastiff, would come and finish the job. So to deter Haesten I needed to crush Harald’s stronger forces. The bull could not be weakened, but the terriers had to be killed, and they were dangerous, they were vicious, but they were also ill-disciplined, and I would now tempt them with treasure. I would tempt them with Skade’s sleek beauty.
The fifty men I had posted in Godelmingum fled from that town next morning, retreating from a larger group of Danes. My men splashed their horses through the river and streamed into Æscengum as the Danes lined the farther bank to stare at the banners hanging bright on the burh’s eastern palisade. Those banners showed crosses and saints, the panoply of Alfred’s state, and to make certain the enemy knew the king was in the burh I made Osferth walk slowly along the wall dressed in a bright cloak and with a circlet of shining bronze on his head.
Osferth, my man, was Alfred’s bastard. Few people knew, even though Osferth’s resemblance to his father was striking. He had been born to a servant girl whom Alfred had taken to his bed in the days before Christianity had captured his soul. Once, in an unguarded moment, Alfred had confided to me that Osferth was a continual reproof. ‘A reminder,’ he had told me, ‘of the sinner I once was.’
‘A sweet sin, lord,’ I had replied lightly.
‘Most sins are sweet,’ the king said, ‘the devil makes them so.’
What kind of perverted religion makes pleasures into sins? The old gods, even though they never deny us pleasure, fade these days. Folk abandon them, preferring the whip and bridle of the Christians’ nailed god.
So Osferth, a reminder of Alfred’s sweet sin, played the king that morning. I doubt he enjoyed it, for he resented Alfred, who had tried to turn him into a priest. Osferth had rebelled against that destiny, becoming one of my house-warriors instead. He was not a natural fighter, not like Finan, but he brought a keen intelligence to the business of war, and intelligence is a weapon that has a sharp edge and a long reach.
All war ends with the shield wall, where men hack in drink-sodden rage with axes and swords, but the art is to manipulate the enemy so that when that moment of screaming rage arrives it comes to your advantage. By parading Osferth on Æscengum’s wall I was trying to tempt Harald. Where the king is, I was suggesting to our enemies, there is treasure. Come to Æscengum, I was saying, and to increase the temptation I displayed Skade to the Danish warriors who gathered on the river’s far bank.
A few arrows had been shot at us, but those ended when the enemy recognised Skade. She unwittingly helped me by screaming at the men across the water. ‘Come and kill them all!’ she shouted.
‘I’ll shut her mouth,’ Steapa volunteered.
‘Let the bitch shout,’ I said.
She pretended to speak no English, yet she gave me a withering glance before looking back across the river. ‘They’re cowards,’ she shouted at the Danes, ‘Saxon cowards! Tell Harald they will die like sheep.’ She stepped close to the palisade. She could not cross the wall because I had ordered her tied by a rope that was looped about her neck and held by one of Steapa’s men.
‘Tell Harald his whore is here!’ I called over the river, ‘and that she’s noisy! Maybe we’ll cut out her tongue and send it to Harald for his supper!’
‘Goat turd,’ she spat at me, then reached over the palisade’s top and plucked out an arrow that had lodged in one of the oak trunks. Steapa immediately moved to disarm her, but I waved him back. Skade ignored us. She was gazing fixedly at the arrow head which, with a sudden wrench, she freed from the feathered shaft, that she tossed over the wall. She gave me a glance, raised the arrow head to her lips, closed her eyes and kissed the steel. She muttered some words I could not hear, touched her lips to the steel again, then pushed it beneath her gown, hesitated, then jabbed the point into one of her breasts. She gave me a triumphant look as she brought the blood-stained steel into view, then she flung the arrow head into the river and lifted her hands and face to the late summer sky. She screamed to get the attention of the gods, and when the scream faded she turned back to me. ‘You’re cursed, Uhtred,’ she said with a tone she might have used to remark on unremarkable weather.
I resisted the impulse to touch the hammer hanging about my neck because to have done so would have shown that I feared her curse, which instead I pretended to dismiss with a sneer. ‘Waste your breath, whore,’ I said, yet I still moved my hand to my sword and rubbed a finger across the silver cross embedded in Serpent-Breath’s hilt. The cross meant nothing to me, except it had been a gift from Hild, once my lover and now an abbess of extraordinary piety. Did I think that touching the cross was a substitute for the hammer? The gods would not think so.
‘When I was a child,’ Skade said suddenly, and still using a conversational tone as though she and I were old friends, ‘my father beat my mother senseless.’
‘Because she was like you?’ I asked.
She ignored that. ‘He broke her ribs, an arm and her nose,’ she went on, ‘and later that day he took me to the high pastures to help bring back the herd. I was twelve years old. I remember there were snowflakes flying and I was frightened of him. I wanted to ask why he had hurt my mother, but I didn’t like to speak in case he beat me, but then he told me anyway. He said he wanted to marry me to his closest friend, and my mother had opposed the idea. I hated it too, but he said I would marry the man anyway.’
‘Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?’ I asked.
‘So I pushed him over a bluff,’ she said, ‘and I remember him falling through the snowflakes and I watched him bounce on the rocks and I heard him scream. His back was broken.’ She smiled. ‘I left him there. He was still alive when I brought the herd down. I scrambled down the rocks and pissed on his face before he died.’ She looked calmly at me. ‘That was my first curse, Lord Uhtred, but not my last. I will lift the curse on you if you let me go.’
‘You think you can frighten me into giving you back to Harald?’ I asked, amused.
‘You will,’ she said confidently, ‘you will.’
‘Take her away,’ I ordered, tired of her.
Harald came at midday. One of Steapa’s men brought me the news and I climbed again to the ramparts to discover that Harald Bloodhair was on the river’s farther bank with fifty companions, all in mail. His banner showed an axe blade and its pole was surmounted by a wolf-skull that had been painted red.
He was a big man. His horse was big too, but even so Harald Bloodhair seemed to dwarf the stallion. He was too distant for me to see him clearly, but his yellow hair, long, thick and unstained with any blood, was plainly visible, as was his broad beard. For a time he just stared at Æscengum’s wall, then he unbuckled his sword belt, threw the weapon to one of his men and spurred his horse into the river. It was a warm day, but his mail was still covered by a great cloak of black bear fur that made him appear monstrously huge. He wore gold on his wrists and about his neck, and more gold decorated