Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [116]
‘But didn’t your angels say you were to die?’ Haesten asked, amused.
‘My angels?’
‘A clever idea,’ Haesten said, ‘young Sigurd here brought them back to us. Two such pretty girls! He enjoyed them! So did most of our men.’
So the horseman with Haesten was Sigurd’s son, the puppy who had wanted to fight me at Ceaster, and the raid on Turcandene had been his doing, his initiation as a leader, though I did not doubt his father had sent older and wiser men to make sure his son made no fatal errors. I remembered the flies around Ludda’s body and the crudely drawn raven on the Roman plaster. ‘When you die, puppy,’ I told him, ‘I’ll make sure you have no sword in your hand. I’ll send you to Hel’s rotten flesh instead. See how you enjoy that, you dribble of bat shit.’
Sigurd Sigurdson drew his sword, he drew it very slowly as if to demonstrate that he was not issuing an immediate challenge. ‘She is called Fire-Dragon,’ he said, holding the blade upright.
‘A puppy’s blade,’ I scoffed.
‘I want you to know the name of the sword that will kill you,’ he said, then wrenched his stallion’s head around as if to drive the beast into me, but the horse half reared and young Sigurd had to cling to the mane to stay in the saddle. Haesten again leaned over and took hold of the stallion’s bridle.
‘Put the sword away, lord,’ he told the boy, then smiled at me. ‘You have till evening to surrender,’ he said, ‘and if you do not surrender,’ his voice was harder now, riding over the comment I had been about to make, ‘then every one of you will die. But if you yield, Lord Uhtred, we shall spare your men. Till evening!’ He turned his horse, dragging young Sigurd with him. ‘Till evening!’ he called again as he rode away.
This was the war that passeth understanding, I thought. Why wait? Unless Haesten so feared losing a quarter or a third of his force. But if this truly was the vanguard of a great Danish army then it had no business loitering at Scrobbesburh. They should be pushing fast and hard into the soft underbelly of Saxon Mercia, then crossing the Temes to ravage Wessex. Every day that the Danes waited now was a day to assemble the fyrd and bring house-warriors from the Saxon shires, unless my suspicion was right and this Danish thrust was intended to deceive because the real attack was taking place somewhere else.
There were more Danes nearby. Late in the morning, as the rain at last ended and a watery sun showed weak through the clouds, we saw more smoke in the eastern sky. The smoke was thin at first, but thickened fast, and within an hour two more plumes appeared. So the Danes were harrying the nearby villages, and another band had crossed the river and were patrolling the great loop that trapped us. Osferth had found two boats, just skins stretched over willow frames, and had wanted to make a big raft like the one we had found to cross the Use, but the presence of the Danish horsemen ended that idea. I ordered my men to stiffen the barricade across the neck, raising it with beams and rafters to protect the men of the fyrd and channel any attack into my shield wall. I had small hope of surviving a determined assault, but men must be kept busy and so they pulled down six of the cottages and carried the timbers to the neck where the barrier slowly became more formidable. A priest who had taken refuge in Scrobbesburh walked along my defensive line giving men small scraps of bread. They knelt before him, he placed the crumbs on their lips, then added a pinch of soil. ‘Why’s he doing that?’ I asked Osferth.
‘We come from the earth, lord, and that’s where we’ll go.’
‘We’ll go nowhere unless Haesten attacks,’ I said.
‘He fears us?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s a trap,’ I said, and there had been so many traps, from the moment the men tried to kill me on Saint Alnoth’s day and the summons to seal a treaty with Eohric, and my burning of Sigurd’s ships, and the creation of the angels, but now I suspected the Danes had sprung the largest trap and it had worked because in the afternoon there was a sudden