Warriors of the Storm. Bernard Cornwell

       ONE

      There was fire in the night. Fire that seared the sky and paled the stars. Fire that churned thick smoke across the land between the rivers.

      Finan woke me. ‘Trouble,’ was all he said.

      Eadith stirred and I pushed her away from me. ‘Stay there,’ I told her and rolled out from under the fleeces. I fumbled for a bearskin cloak and pulled it around my shoulders before following Finan into the street. There was no moon, just the flames reflecting from the great pall of smoke that drifted inland on the night wind. ‘We need more men on the walls,’ I said.

      ‘Done it,’ Finan said.

      So all that was left for me to do was curse. I cursed.

      ‘It’s Brunanburh,’ Finan said bleakly and I cursed again.

      Folk were gathering in Ceaster’s main street. Eadith had come from the house, wrapped in a great cloak and with her red hair shining in the light of the lanterns that burned at the church door. ‘What is it?’ she asked sleepily.

      ‘Brunanburh,’ Finan said grimly. Eadith made the sign of the cross. I had a glimpse of her naked body as her hand slipped from beneath the cloak to touch her forehead, then she clutched the heavy woollen cloth tight to her belly again.

      ‘Loki,’ I spoke the name aloud. He is the god of fire, whatever the Christians might tell you. And Loki is the most slippery of all the gods, a trickster who deceives, charms, betrays and hurts us. Fire is his two-edged weapon that can warm us, cook for us, scorch us, or kill us. I touched Thor’s hammer that hung from my neck. ‘Æthelstan’s there,’ I said.

      ‘If he lives,’ Finan said.

      There was nothing to be done in the darkness. The journey to Brunanburh took at least two hours on horseback and would take longer in this dark night, when we would be stumbling through woods and possibly riding into an ambush set by the men who had fired the distant burh. All I could do was watch from Ceaster’s walls in case an attack burst from the dawn.

      I did not fear such an attack. Ceaster had been built by the Romans and it was as tough a fortress as any in Britain. The Northmen would need to cross a flooded ditch and put ladders against the high stone walls, and Northmen have ever been reluctant to attack fortresses. But Brunanburh was aflame, so who knew what unlikely things the dawn might bring? Brunanburh was our newest burh, built by Æthelflaed who ruled over Mercia, and it guarded the River Mærse, which offered the Northmen’s boats an easy route into central Britain. In years past the Mærse had been busy, the oars dipping and pulling, and the dragon-headed boats surging against the river’s current to bring new warriors to the unending struggle between the Northmen and the Saxons, but Brunanburh had stopped that traffic. We kept a fleet of twelve ships there, their crews protected by Brunanburh’s thick timber walls, and the Northmen had learned to fear those ships. Now, if they landed on Britain’s west coast, they went to Wales or else to Cumbraland, which was the fierce wild country north of the Mærse.

      Except tonight. Tonight there were flames by the Mærse.

      ‘Get dressed,’ I told Eadith. There would be no more sleep this night.

      She touched the emerald encrusted cross at her neck. ‘Æthelstan,’ she said softly as if she prayed for him while fingering the cross. She had become fond of Æthelstan.

      ‘He either lives or is dead,’ I said curtly, ‘and we won’t know till the dawn.’

      We rode just before the dawn, rode north in the wolf-light, following the paved road through the shadowed cemetery of Roman dead. I took sixty men, all mounted on fast light horses so that if we ran into an army of howling Northmen we could flee. I sent scouts ahead, but we were in a hurry so there was no time for our normal precaution, which was to wait for the scouts’ reports before we rode on. Our warning this time would be the death of the scouts. We left the Roman road to follow the track we had made through the woods. Clouds had come from the west and a drizzle was falling, but still the smoke rose ahead of us. Rain might extinguish Loki’s fire, but not drizzle, and the smoke mocked and beckoned us.

      Then we came from the woods to where