The Last Kingdom Series Books 1–8: The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, The Lords of the North, Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings, The Pagan Lord, The Empty Throne

What he had thrown onto the path was my brother’s severed head. It was brought to my father who stared at it a long time, but betrayed no feelings. He did not cry, he did not grimace, he did not scowl, he just looked at his eldest son’s head and then he looked at me. ‘From this day on,’ he said, ‘your name is Uhtred.’

Which is how I was named.

Father Beocca insisted that I should be baptised again, or else heaven would not know who I was when I arrived with the name Uhtred. I protested, but Gytha wanted it and my father cared more for her contentment than for mine, and so a barrel was carried into the church and half filled with sea water and Father Beocca stood me in the barrel and ladled water over my hair. ‘Receive your servant Uhtred,’ he intoned, ‘into the holy company of the saints and into the ranks of the most bright angels.’ I hope the saints and angels are warmer than I was that day, and after the baptism was done Gytha wept for me, though why I did not know. She might have done better to weep for my brother.

We found out what had happened to him. The three Danish ships had put into the mouth of the River Aln where there was a small settlement of fishermen and their families. Those folk had prudently fled inland, though a handful stayed and watched the river mouth from woods on higher ground and they said my brother had come at nightfall and seen the Vikings torching the houses. They were called Vikings when they were raiders, but Danes or pagans when they were traders, and these men had been burning and plundering so were reckoned to be Vikings. There had seemed very few of them in the settlement, most were on their ships, and my brother decided to ride down to the cottages and kill those few, but of course it was a trap. The Danes had seen his horsemen coming and had hidden a ship’s crew north of the village, and those forty men closed behind my brother’s party and killed them all. My father claimed his eldest son’s death must have been quick, which was a consolation to him, but of course it was not a quick death for he lived long enough for the Danes to discover who he was, or else why would they have brought his head back to Bebbanburg? The fishermen said they tried to warn my brother, but I doubt they did. Men say such things so that they are not blamed for disaster, but whether my brother was warned or not, he still died and the Danes took thirteen fine swords, thirteen good horses, a coat of mail, a helmet and my old name.

But that was not the end of it. A fleeting visit by three ships was no great event, but a week after my brother’s death we heard that a great Danish fleet had rowed up the rivers to capture Eoferwic. They had won that victory on All Saints’ Day, which made Gytha weep for it suggested God had abandoned us, but there was also good news for it seemed that my old namesake, King Osbert, had made an alliance with his rival, the would-be King Ælla, and they had agreed to put aside their rivalry, join forces and take Eoferwic back. That sounds simple, but of course it took time. Messengers rode, advisers confused, priests prayed, and it was not till Christmas that Osbert and Ælla sealed their peace with oaths, and then they summoned my father’s men, but of course we could not march in winter. The Danes were in Eoferwic and we left them there until the early spring when news came that the Northumbrian army would gather outside the city and, to my joy, my father decreed that I would ride south with him.

‘He’s too young,’ Gytha protested.

‘He is almost ten,’ my father said, ‘and he must learn to fight.’

‘He would be better served by continuing his lessons,’ she said.

‘A dead reader is no use to Bebbanburg,’ my father said, ‘and Uhtred is now the heir so he must learn to fight.’

That night he made Beocca show me the parchments kept in the church, the parchments that said we owned the land. Beocca had been teaching me to read for two years, but I was a bad pupil and, to Beocca’s despair, I could make neither head nor tail of the writings. Beocca sighed, then told me what was in them. ‘They describe the land,’ he said, ‘the land your father owns, and they say the land is his by God’s law and by our own law.’ And one day, it seemed, the lands would be mine for that night my father dictated a new will in which he said that if he died then Bebbanburg would belong to his son Uhtred, and I would be Ealdorman, and all the folk between the Tuede and the Tine would swear allegiance to me.

‘We were kings here once,’ he told me, ‘and our land was called Bernicia.’ He pressed his seal into the red wax, leaving the impression of a wolf’s head.

‘We should be kings again,’ Ælfric, my uncle said.

‘It doesn’t matter what they call us,’ my father said curtly, ‘so long as they obey us,’ and then he made Ælfric swear on the comb of Saint Cuthbert that he would respect the new will and acknowledge me as Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Ælfric did so swear. ‘But it won’t happen,’ my father said. ‘We shall slaughter these Danes like sheep in a fold, and we shall ride back here with plunder and honour.’

‘Pray God,’ Ælfric said.

Ælfric and thirty men would stay at Bebbanburg to guard the fortress and protect the women. He gave me gifts that night; a leather coat that would protect against a sword cut and, best of all, a helmet around which Ealdwulf the smith had fashioned a band of gilt bronze. ‘So they will know you are a prince,’ Ælfric said.

‘He’s not a prince,’ my father said, ‘but an Ealdorman’s heir.’ Yet he was pleased with his brother’s gifts to me and added two of his own, a short sword and a horse. The sword was an old blade, cut down, with a leather scabbard lined with fleece. It had a chunky hilt, was clumsy, yet that night I slept with the blade under my blanket.

The next morning, as my stepmother wept on the ramparts of the High Gate, and under a blue, clean sky, we rode to war. Two hundred and fifty men went south, following our banner of the wolf’s head.

That was in the year 867, and it was the first time I ever went to war.

And I have never ceased.

‘You will not fight in the shield wall,’ my father said.

‘No, father.’

‘Only men can stand in the shield wall,’ he said, ‘but you will watch, you will learn, and you will discover that the most dangerous stroke is not the sword or axe that you can see, but the one you cannot see, the blade that comes beneath the shields to bite your ankles.’

He grudgingly gave me much other advice as we followed the long road south. Of the two hundred and fifty men who went to Eoferwic from Bebbanburg, one hundred and twenty were on horseback. Those were my father’s household men or else the wealthier farmers, the ones who could afford some kind of armour and had shields and swords. Most of the men were not wealthy, but they were sworn to my father’s cause, and they marched with sickles, spears, reaping hooks, fish gaffs and axes. Some carried hunting bows, and all had been ordered to bring a week’s food which was mostly hard bread, harder cheese and smoked fish. Many were accompanied by women. My father had ordered that no women were to march south, but he did not send them back, reckoning that the women would follow anyway, and that men fought better when their wives or lovers were watching, and he was confident that those women would see the levy of Northumbria give the Danes a terrible slaughter. He claimed we were the hardest men of England, much harder than the soft Mercians. ‘Your mother was a Mercian,’ he added, but said nothing more. He never talked of her. I knew they had been married less than a year, that she had died giving birth to me, and that she was an Ealdorman’s daughter, but as far as my father was concerned she might never have existed. He claimed to despise the Mercians, but not as much as he scorned the coddled West Saxons. ‘They don’t know hardship in Wessex,’ he maintained, but he reserved his severest judgment for the East Anglians. ‘They live in marshes,’ he once told me, ‘and live like frogs.’ We Northumbrians had always hated the East Anglians for long ago they had defeated us in battle, killing Æthelfrith, our king and husband to the Bebba after whom our fortress was named. I was to discover later that the East Anglians had given horses and winter shelter to the Danes who had captured Eoferwic, so my father was right to despise them. They were treacherous frogs.

Father Beocca rode south with us. My father did not much like the priest, but did not want to go to war without a man of God to say prayers. Beocca, in turn, was devoted to my father who had freed him from slavery and provided him with his education. My father could have worshipped the devil and Beocca, I think, would have turned a blind eye. He was young, clean-shaven and extraordinarily ugly, with a fearful squint, a flattened nose, unruly red hair and a palsied left hand. He was also very clever, though I did not appreciate it then, resenting that he gave me lessons. The poor man had tried so hard to teach me letters, but I mocked his efforts, preferring to get a beating from my father to concentrating on the alphabet.

We followed the Roman road, crossing their great wall at the Tine, and still going south. The Romans, my father said, had been giants who built wondrous things, but they had gone back to Rome and the giants had died and now the only Romans left were priests, but the giants’ roads were still there and, as we went south, more men joined us until a horde marched on the moors either side of the stony road’s broken surface. The men slept in the open, though my father and his chief retainers would bed for the night in abbeys or barns.

We also straggled. Even at nine years old I noticed how we straggled. Men had brought liquor with them, or else they stole mead or ale from the villages we passed, and they frequently got drunk and simply collapsed at the roadside and no one seemed to care. ‘They’ll catch up,’ my father said carelessly.

‘It’s not good,’ Father Beocca told me.

‘What’s not good?’

‘There should be more discipline. I have read the Roman wars and know there must be discipline.’

‘They’ll catch up,’ I said, echoing my father.

That night we were joined by men from the place called Cetreht where, long ago, we had defeated the Welsh in a great battle. The newcomers sang of the battle, chanting how we had fed the ravens with the foreigners’ blood, and the words cheered my father who told me we were near Eoferwic and that next day we might expect to join Osbert and Ælla, and how the day after that we would feed the ravens again. We were sitting by a fire, one of hundreds of fires that stretched across the fields. South of us, far off across a flat land, I could see the sky glowing from the light of still more fires and knew they showed where the rest of Northumbria’s army gathered.

‘The raven is Woden’s creature, isn’t it?’ I asked nervously.

My father looked at me sourly. ‘Who told you that?’

I shrugged, said nothing.

‘Ealdwulf?’ He guessed, knowing that Bebbanburg’s blacksmith, who had stayed at the fortress with Ælfric, was a secret pagan.

‘I just heard it,’ I said, hoping I would get away with the evasion without being hit, ‘and I know we are descended from Woden.’

‘We are,’ my father acknowledged, ‘but we have a new God now.’ He stared balefully across the encampment where men were drinking. ‘Do you know who wins battles, boy?’

‘We do, father.’

‘The side that is least drunk,’ he said and then, after a pause, ‘but it helps to be drunk.’

‘Why?’

‘Because a shield wall is an awful place.’ He gazed into the fire. ‘I have been in six shield walls,’ he went on, ‘and prayed every time it would be the last. Your brother, now, he was a man who might have loved the shield wall. He had courage.’ He fell silent, thinking, then scowled. ‘The man who brought his head. I want his head. I want to spit into his dead eyes then put his skull on a pole above the Low Gate.’

‘You will have it,’ I said.

He sneered at that. ‘What do you know?’ he asked. ‘I brought you, boy, because you must see battle. Because our men must see that you are here. But you will not fight. You’re like a young dog who watches the old dogs kill the boar, but doesn’t bite. Watch and learn, watch and learn and maybe one day you’ll be useful. But for now you’re nothing but a pup.’ He dismissed me with a wave.

Next day the Roman road ran across a flat land, crossing dykes and ditches, until at last we came to where the combined armies of Osbert and Ælla had made their shelters. Beyond them, and just visible through the scattered trees, was Eoferwic, and that was where the Danes were.

Eoferwic was, and still is, the chief city of northern England. It possesses a great abbey, an archbishop, a fortress, high walls, and a vast market. It stands beside the River Ouse, and boasts a bridge, but ships can reach Eoferwic from the distant sea, and that was how the Danes had come. They must have known that Northumbria was weakened by civil war, that Osbert, the rightful king, had marched westwards to meet the forces of the pretender Ælla, and in the absence of the king they had taken the city. It would not have been difficult for them to have discovered Osbert’s absence. The trouble between Osbert and Ælla had been brewing for weeks, and Eoferwic was filled with traders, many from across the sea, who would have known of the two men’s bitter rivalry. One thing I learned about the Danes was that they knew how to spy. The monks who write the chronicles tell us that they came from nowhere, their dragon-prowed ships suddenly appearing from a blue vacancy, but it was rarely like that. The Viking crews might attack unexpectedly, but the big fleets, the war fleets, went where they knew there was already trouble. They found an existing wound and filled it like maggots.

My father took me close to the city, he and a score of his men, all of us mounted and all wearing mail or leather. We could see the enemy on the wall. Some of the wall was built of stone, that was the Roman work, but much of the city was protected by an earth wall, topped by a high wooden palisade, and to the east of the city part of that palisade was missing. It seemed to have been burned for we could see charred wood on top of the earthen wall where fresh stakes had been driven to hold the new palisade that would replace the burned fence.

Beyond the new stakes was a jumble of thatched roofs, the wooden bell towers of three churches and, on the river, the masts of the Danish fleet. Our scouts claimed there were thirty-four ships, which was said to mean the Danes had an army of around a thousand men. Our own army was larger, nearer to fifteen hundred, though it was difficult to count. No one seemed to be in charge. The two leaders, Osbert and Ælla, camped apart and, though they had officially made peace, they refused to speak to each other, communicating instead through messengers. My father, the third most important man in the army, could talk to both, but he was not able to persuade Osbert and Ælla to meet, let alone agree on a plan of campaign. Osbert wished to besiege the city and starve the Danes out, while Ælla urged an immediate attack. The rampart was broken, he said, and an assault would drive deep into the tangle of streets where the Danes could be hunted down and killed. I do not know which course my father preferred, for he never said, but in the end the decision was taken away from us.

Our army could not wait. We had brought some food, but that was soon exhausted, and men were going ever farther afield to find more, and some of those men did not return. They just slipped home. Other men grumbled that their farms needed work and if they did not return home they would face a hungry year. A meeting was called of every important man and they spent all day arguing. Osbert attended the meeting, which meant Ælla did not, though one of his chief supporters was there and hinted that Osbert’s reluctance to assault the city was caused by cowardice. Perhaps it was, for Osbert did not respond to the jibe, proposing instead that we dug our own forts outside the city. Three or four such forts, he said, would trap the Danes. Our best fighters could man the forts, and our other men could go home to look after their fields. Another man proposed building a new bridge across the river, a bridge that would trap the Danish fleet, and he argued the point tediously, though I think everyone knew that we did not have the time to make a bridge across such a wide river. ‘Besides,’ King Osbert said, ‘we want the Danes to take their ships away. Let them go back to the sea. Let them go and trouble someone else.’ A bishop pleaded for more time, saying that Ealdorman Egbert, who held land south of Eoferwic, had yet to arrive with his men.

‘Nor is Ricsig here,’ a priest said, speaking of another great lord.

‘He’s sick,’ Osbert said.

‘Sickness of courage,’ Ælla’s spokesman sneered.

‘Give them time,’ the bishop suggested. ‘With Egbert’s and Ricsig’s men we shall have enough troops to frighten the Danes with sheer numbers.’

My father said nothing at the meeting, though it was plain many men wanted him to speak, and I was perplexed that he stayed silent, but that night Beocca explained why. ‘If he said we should attack,’ the priest said, ‘then men would assume he had sided with Ælla, while if he encouraged a siege, he would be seen to be on Osbert’s side.’

‘Does it matter?’

Beocca looked at me across the campfire, or one of his eyes looked at me while the other wandered somewhere in the night. ‘When the Danes are beaten,’ he said, ‘then Osbert and Ælla’s feud will start again. Your father wants none of it.’

‘But whichever side he supports,’ I said, ‘will win.’

‘But suppose they kill each other?’ Beocca asked, ‘who will be king then?’

I looked at him, understood, said nothing.

‘And who will be king thereafter?’ Beocca asked, and he pointed at me. ‘You. And a king should be able to read and write.’

‘A king,’ I answered scornfully, ‘can always hire men who can read and write.’

Then, next morning, the decision to attack or besiege was made for us, because news came that more Danish ships had appeared at the mouth of the River Humber, and that could only mean the enemy would be reinforced within a few days, and so my father, who had stayed silent for so long, finally spoke. ‘We must attack,’ he told both Osbert and Ælla, ‘before the new boats come.’

Ælla, of course, agreed enthusiastically, and even Osbert understood that the new ships meant that everything was changed. Besides, the Danes inside the city had been having problems with their new wall. We woke one morning to see a whole new stretch of palisade, the wood raw and bright, but a great wind blew that day and the new work collapsed, and that caused much merriment in our encampments. The Danes, men said, could not even build a wall. ‘But they can build ships,’ Father Beocca told me.

‘So?’

‘A man who can build a ship,’ the young priest said, ‘can usually build a wall. It is not so hard as shipbuilding.’

‘It fell down!’

‘Perhaps it was meant to fall down,’ Beocca said, and, when I just stared at him, he explained. ‘Perhaps they want us to attack there?’

I do not know if he told my father of his suspicions, but if he did then I have no doubt my father dismissed them. He did not trust Beocca’s opinions on war. The priest’s usefulness was in encouraging God to smite the Danes and that was all and, to be fair, Beocca did pray mightily and long that God would give us the victory.

And the day after the wall collapsed we gave God his chance to fulfil Beocca’s prayers.

We attacked.

I do not know if every man who assaulted Eoferwic was drunk, but they would have been had there been enough mead, ale and birch wine to go round. The drinking had gone on much of the night and I woke to find men vomiting in the dawn. Those few who, like my father, possessed mail shirts pulled them on. Most were armoured in leather, while some men had no protection other than their coats. Weapons were sharpened on whetstones. The priests walked round the camp scattering blessings, while men swore oaths of brotherhood and loyalty. Some banded together and promised to share their plunder equally, a few looked pale and more than a handful sneaked away through the dykes that crossed the flat, damp landscape.

A score of men were ordered to stay at the camp and guard the women and horses, though Father Beocca and I were both ordered to mount. ‘You’ll stay on horseback,’ my father told me, ‘and you’ll stay with him,’ he added to the priest.

‘Of course, my lord,’ Beocca said.

‘If anything happens,’ my father was deliberately vague, ‘then ride to Bebbanburg, shut the gate and wait there.’

‘God is on our side,’ Beocca said.

My father looked a great warrior, which indeed he was, though he claimed to be getting too old for fighting. His greying beard jutted over his mail coat, above which he had hung a crucifix carved from ox bone that had been a gift from Gytha. His sword belt was leather studded with silver, while his great sword, Bone-Breaker, was sheathed in leather banded with gilt-bronze strappings. His boots had iron plates on either side of the ankles, reminding me of his advice about the shield wall, while his helmet was polished so that it shone, and its face-piece, with its eyeholes and snarling mouth, was inlaid with silver. His round shield was made of limewood, had a heavy iron boss, was covered in leather and painted with the wolf’s head. Ealdorman Uhtred was going to war.

The horns summoned the army. There was little order in the array. There had been arguments about who should be on the right or left, but Beocca told me the argument had been settled when the bishop cast dice, and King Osbert was now on the right, Ælla on the left and my father in the centre, and those three chieftains’ banners were advanced as the horns called. The men assembled under the banners. My father’s household troops, his best warriors, were at the front, and behind them were the bands of the thegns. Thegns were important men, holders of great lands, some of them with their own fortresses, and they were the men who shared my father’s platform in the feasting hall, and men who had to be watched in case their ambitions made them try to take his place, but now they loyally gathered behind him, and the ceorls, free men of the lowest rank, assembled with them. Men fought in family groups, or with friends. There were plenty of boys with the army, though I was the only one on horseback and the only one with a sword and helmet.

I could see a scatter of Danes behind the unbroken palisades on either side of the gap where their wall had fallen down, but most of their army filled that gap, making a shield barrier on top of the earthen wall, and it was a high earthen wall, at least ten or twelve feet high, and steep, so it would be a hard climb into the face of the waiting killers, but I was confident we would win. I was nine years old, almost ten.

The Danes were shouting at us, but we were too far away to hear their insults. Their shields, round like ours, were painted yellow, black, brown and blue. Our men began beating weapons on their shields and that was a fearsome sound, the first time I ever heard an army making that war music; the clashing of ash spear shafts and iron sword blades on shield-wood.

‘It is a terrible thing,’ Beocca said to me. ‘War, it is an awful thing.’

I said nothing. I thought it was glorious and wonderful.

‘The shield wall is where men die,’ Beocca said, and he kissed the wooden cross that hung about his neck. ‘The gates of heaven and hell will be jostling with souls before this day is done,’ he went on gloomily.

‘Aren’t the dead carried to a feasting hall?’ I asked.

He looked at me very strangely, then appeared shocked. ‘Where did you hear that?’

‘At Bebbanburg,’ I said, sensible enough not to admit that it was Ealdwulf the smith who told me those tales as I watched him beating rods of iron into sword blades.

‘That is what heathens believe,’ Beocca said sternly. ‘They believe dead warriors are carried to Woden’s corpse-hall to feast until the world’s ending, but it is a grievously wrong belief. It is an error! But the Danes are always in error. They bow down to idols, they deny the true God, they are wrong.’

‘But a man must die with a sword in his hand?’ I insisted.

‘I can see we must teach you a proper catechism when this is done,’ the priest said sternly.

I said nothing more. I was watching, trying to fix every detail of that day in my memory. The sky was summer blue, with just a few clouds off in the west, and the sunlight reflected from our army’s spear points like glints of light flickering on the summer sea. Cowslips dotted the meadow where the army assembled, and a cuckoo called from the woods behind us where a crowd of our women were watching the army. There were swans on the river that was placid for there was little wind. The smoke from the cooking fires inside Eoferwic rose almost straight into the air, and that sight reminded me that there would be a feast in the city that night, a feast of roasted pork or whatever else we found in the enemy’s stores. Some of our men, those in the foremost ranks, were darting forward to shout at the enemy, or else dare him to come and do private battle between the lines, one man on one man, but none of the Danes broke rank. They just stared, waited, their spears a hedge, their shields a wall, and then our horns blew again and the shouting and the shield-banging faded as our army lurched forward.

It went raggedly. Later, much later, I was to understand the reluctance of men to launch themselves against a shield wall, let alone a shield wall held at the top of a steep earthen bank, but on that day I was just impatient for our army to hurry forward and break the impudent Danes, and Beocca had to restrain me, catching hold of my bridle to stop me riding into the rearmost ranks. ‘We shall wait until they break through,’ he said.

‘I want to kill a Dane,’ I protested.

‘Don’t be stupid, Uhtred,’ Beocca said angrily. ‘You try and kill a Dane,’ he went on, ‘and your father will have no sons. You are his only child now, and it is your duty to live.’

So I did my duty and I hung back, and I watched as, so slowly, our army found its courage and advanced towards the city. The river was on our left, the empty encampment behind our right, and the inviting gap in the city wall was to our front and there the Danes were waiting silently, their shields overlapping.

‘The bravest will go first,’ Beocca said to me, ‘and your father will be one of them. They will make a wedge, what the Latin authors call a porcinum caput. You know what that means?’

‘No.’ Nor did I care.

‘A swine’s head. Like the tusk of a boar. The bravest will go first and, if they break through, the others will follow.’

Beocca was right. Three wedges formed in front of our lines, one each from the household troops of Osbert, Ælla and my father. The men stood close together, their shields overlapping like the Danish shields, while the rearward ranks of each wedge held their shields high like a roof, and then, when they were ready, the men in the three wedges gave a great cheer and started forward. They did not run. I had expected them to run, but men cannot keep the wedge tight if they run. The wedge is war in slow time, slow enough for the men inside the wedge to wonder how strong the enemy is and to fear that the rest of the army will not follow, but they did. The three wedges had not gone more than twenty paces before the remaining mass of men moved forward.

‘I want to be closer,’ I said.

‘You will wait,’ Beocca said.

I could hear the shouts now, shouts of defiance and shouts to give a man courage, and then the archers on the city walls loosed their bows and I saw the glitter of the feathers as the arrows slashed down towards the wedges, and a moment later the throwing spears came, arching over the Danish line to fall on the upheld shields. Amazingly, at least to me, it seemed that none of our men was struck, though I could see their shields were stuck with arrows and spears like hedgehog spines, and still the three wedges advanced, and now our own bowmen were shooting at the Danes, and a handful of our men broke from the ranks behind the wedges to hurl their own spears at the enemy shield wall.

‘Not long now,’ Beocca said nervously. He made the sign of the cross. He was praying silently and his crippled left hand was twitching.

I was watching my father’s wedge, the central wedge, the one just in front of the wolf’s head banner, and I saw the closely touching shields vanish into the ditch that lay in front of the earthen wall and I knew my father was perilously close to death and I urged him to win, to kill, to give the name Uhtred of Bebbanburg even more renown, and then I saw the shield wedge emerge from the ditch and, like a monstrous beast, crawl up the face of the wall.

‘The advantage they have,’ Beocca said in the patient voice he used for teaching, ‘is that the enemy’s feet are easy targets when you come from below.’ I think he was trying to reassure himself, but I believed him anyway, and it must have been true for my father’s formation, first up the wall, did not seem to be checked when they met the enemy’s shield wall. I could see nothing now except the flash of blades rising and falling, and I could hear that sound, the real music of battle, the chop of iron on wood, iron on iron, yet the wedge was still moving. Like a boar’s razor-sharp tusk it had pierced the Danish shield wall and was moving forward, and though the Danes wrapped around the wedge, it seemed our men were winning for they pressed forward across the earthen bank, and the soldiers behind must have sensed that Ealdorman Uhtred had brought them victory for they suddenly cheered and surged to help the beleaguered wedge.