Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [29]
‘Only to look at him,’ I said.
In truth I was there to be looked at, though I dared not tell anyone my whole purpose. I wanted the Danes to know I was at Ceaster, and so I paraded my men south of the old Roman fort and flaunted my wolf’s head banner. I rode in my best mail, polished to a high shine by my servant Oswi, and I went close enough to the old walls for one of Haesten’s men to try his luck with a hunting arrow. I saw the feather flickering in the air and watched as the small shaft thumped into the turf a few paces from my horse’s hooves.
‘He can’t defend all those walls,’ Merewalh said wistfully.
He was right. The Roman fort at Ceaster was a vast place, almost a town in itself, and Haesten’s few men could never garrison the whole stretch of its decrepit ramparts. Merewalh and I might have combined our forces and attacked at night and maybe we would have found an undefended stretch of wall and then fought a bitter battle in the streets, but our numbers were too equal with Haesten’s to risk such an assault. We would have lost men in defeating an enemy who was already defeated, and so I contented myself with letting Haesten know I had come to taunt him. He had to hate me. Just a year before he had been the greatest power among all the Northmen, now he was cowering like a beaten fox in his den and I had reduced him to that plight. But he was a cunning fox and I knew he would be thinking how he might regain his power.
The old fort was built inside a great curve of the River Dee. Immediately outside its southern walls were the ruins of an immense stone building that had once been an arena where, so Merewalh’s priest told me, Christians had been fed to wild beasts. Some things are just too good to be true and so I was not sure I believed him. The remnants of the arena would have made a splendid stronghold for a force as small as Haesten’s, but instead he had chosen to concentrate his men at the northern end of the fort where the river lay closest to the walls. He had two small ships there, nothing more than old trading boats, which, because they were obviously leaky, were half pulled onto the bank. If he were attacked and cut off from the bridge then those ships were his escape across the Dee and into the wild lands beyond.
Merewalh was puzzled by my behaviour. ‘Are you trying to tempt him into a fight?’ he asked me the third day that I rode close to the old ramparts.
‘He won’t want a fight,’ I said, ‘but I want him to come out and meet us. And he will, he won’t be able to resist.’ I had paused on the Roman road that ran straight as a spear shaft to the double-arched gate that led into the fort. That gate was now blocked with vast baulks of timber. ‘You know I saved his life once?’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘There are times,’ I said, ‘when I think I’m a fool. I should have killed him the first time I saw him.’
‘Kill him now, lord,’ Merewalh suggested, because Haesten had just appeared from the fort’s western gate and now came slowly towards us. He had three men with him, all mounted. They paused at the fort’s south-western corner, between the walls and the ruined arena, then Haesten held out both hands to show he only wanted to talk. I turned my horse and spurred towards him, but took care to stop well out of bowshot of the ramparts. I took only Merewalh with me, leaving the rest of our troops to watch from a distance.
Haesten came grinning as though this meeting was a rare delight. He had not changed much, except he now had a beard that was grey, though his thick hair was still fair. His face was misleadingly open, full of charm, with amused bright eyes. He wore a dozen arm rings and, though the spring day was warm, a cloak of seal-skin. Haesten always liked to look prosperous. Men will not follow a poor lord, let alone an ungenerous one, and so long as he had hopes of recovering his wealth he had to appear confident. He also appeared overjoyed to meet me. ‘Lord Uhtred!