WARRIORS OF THE NORTH Read online

  ‘Very good, Cyning, but that’s a quarter of what’s here. Can I take one of these two with me to spread the bidding?’

  ‘Good idea. Take Jarlath. And Dunstan.’

  ‘Yes, Cyning?’

  ‘I’m going to appoint you as my horse marshal. From now on all the horses and ponies I own will be your responsibility, as will teaching my gesith to ride. You’ll rank as a thegn.’

  ‘Thank you, Cyning.’

  As he walked away Dunstan had a broad grin on his face.

  On the second day of the fair the lookout on the tower inside the fortress sounded the alarm bell. Oswald rushed up to see what the sentry had seen whilst his warriors donned their armour. The traders started to pack up in a hurry and the men, women and children who had come from far and wide rushed towards the gates into the fortress.

  As soon as Oswald arrived at the platform on top of the tower he called down that all was well. He’d recognised the distinctive sail of Eochaid on the leading ship and the other three birlinns displayed the yellow and red stripes of Northumbria.

  ‘You did the right thing by sounding the alarm if you were uncertain,’ he told the hapless sentry, who was a youth of sixteen, ‘but you need to recognise friendly sails.

  ‘Yes, Cyning, sorry.’

  Seeing how contrite the boy was, Oswald clapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘It’s not your fault. I’ll make sure that the custos teaches all the garrison to recognise sails; it’s important.’

  Oswald was about to descend and make his way to the beach to greet Eochaid and his mother when he turned back to the sentry.

  ‘What’s your name, boy?’

  ‘Beorhtwulf, Cyning.’

  ‘And are you bright, my little wolf?

  ‘Hardly, Cyning, or I wouldn’t have sounded the alarm.’ The boy smirked at him. His name meant Bright Wolf.

  Oswald laughed and left Beorhtwulf to his lonely task.

  He was waiting on the beach when his mother was carefully lifted down from one of the ships. The first thing that struck him was how grey her hair had become. It had been streaked with strands of silver when he’d left six months previously, but now there was no other colour left in it. He splashed through the small waves breaking on the shoreline and hugged her to his breast. He was surprised how light she seemed. She had always been a well-built woman; now she seemed almost frail.

  ‘I’m so proud of you,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘and so would your father have been. Now let go of me; it’s unseemly.’

  ‘And proud of Oswiu too, I’m sure you meant to add. I couldn’t have done it without him,’ he rebuked her mildly as he released her.

  ‘Perhaps,’ was all she’d said. She and Oswald’s younger brother had enjoyed a fairly tempestuous relationship in the past. He felt a little guilty when he realised that he was glad that Oswiu was away in Goddodin at the moment. He didn’t want the family reunion spoilt by an argument. Just then Oslac arrived and embraced his mother briefly and somewhat diffidently, not sure if that was becoming behaviour for a priest. She returned his hug perfunctorily.

  ‘I was upset to hear about Osguid. He would have been a great asset to you in bringing Christianity to these heathens.’

  She didn’t seem to notice how much her thoughtless words had hurt Oslac. He’d always been the quiet one – though not as quiet as the youngest brother – Offa – who now lived as an anchorite on Iona. Osguid had ever been the extrovert and introverted Oslac had always suffered by comparison to him.

  ‘I have Oslac to help me at the moment and I had hopes that a monk from Iona will be sent as bishop, however I don’t see anyone on the beach.’

  Acha shook he head. At that moment both Keeva, Oswald’s concubine and Fianna, Oswiu’s, came and joined them. Acha waited impatiently for her son to stop hugging and kissing his lover, then apologising to Fianna for his brother’s absence.

  ‘Ah, here’s Eochaid,’ she said with some relief. She wasn’t a women who was much in favour of outward displays of affection. ‘He might be able to tell you more. He certainly hasn’t said anything to me though.’

  Eochaid joined them and the two old friends embraced, slapping each other heartily on the back, before walking with Acha and the other two women up to the gatehouse and into the fortress.

  ‘I’ve put you in your old bedchamber, mother.’

  ‘No, that’s the king’s chamber. It’s yours now.’

  ‘I’m happy enough in the smaller chamber we slept in as boys for now, and I know that Keeva won’t mind. It’ll only be for a day or so anyway. We need to talk about Deira. I want to consolidate my position as King of Northumbria, not just Bernicia, as quickly as possible and that means getting the Witan in Eoforwīc to accept me before they appoint some other idiot to succeed the inept Osric.’

  Osric had been the last King of Deira who had besieged Cadwallon in Eoforwīc the previous year with a larger army. However, he had been foolish enough to divide his men into three camps. Cadwallon had defeated each third in turn, then caught the fleeing Osric and killed him.

  ‘Oswald, I need to tell you about Aidan,’ Eochaid told him as soon as the women had left them.

  ‘Aidan? Is he the monk that Ségéne has selected to be my bishop?’ Oswald asked thoughtfully. ‘He’d be ideal. Why isn’t he with you?’

  ‘Yes it’s to be Aidan, but it’s not as simple as that. He’s somewhere in Strathclyde and there’s been no word of him, or his acolyte Ròidh, for several months now.’

  The two looked at each other and a smile slowly grew on Eochaid’s face.

  ‘You want me to go and find him, don’t you?’

  Oswald laughed briefly.

  ‘It seems that you can read my mind.’

  ~~~

  Beorhtwulf had felt a fool when he’d sounded the alarm but the king had been very understanding; not so Ethelbald, the newly appointed custos, who gave him a week of extra sentry duty. The man was a noble who had remained at Bebbanburg to serve Edwin and his appointment was more of a sop to those whose loyalty Oswald now needed rather than because of any particular qualities in the man. In fact, Oswald didn’t like him much. He was too much of a cold fish who never smiled.

  Thankfully Beorhtwulf’s first night of extra duty was in the warm and not up on the parapet where the cold wind from the east froze your hands and face now that winter was approaching. It would be even worse once the snow and ice appeared in a month or so.

  Although Bebbanburg was a large fortress by comparison to most of the duns of other kings, its layout was similar except in one important regard. Most kings and their families lived in a chamber off the main hall where the single warriors ate, caroused and slept. Those men with families generally built themselves their own hut but often joined their younger companions to feast, drink and listen to heroic tales in the evenings.

  However Oswald’s father had given in to Acha’s complaints about the revellers keeping her and her children awake at night and had built a large hut away from the hall which had been divided into a number of individual chambers: one for him and his queen, one for the children and one for important guests. Eochaid had been given the guest chamber and Oswald occupied his old room.

  Beorhtwulf was posted at the door of the chamber occupied by Oswald whilst two more guards were stationed outside the only entrance into the timber building. Whilst he was grateful to be inside, he was feeling tired. He’d already done a stint of six hours in the watchtower and the comparative warmth of his present post was making it difficult to stay awake. He therefore decided to pace up and down to combat his lethargy. He was walking past the leather curtain that divided Lady Acha’s chamber from the communal area when he heard the sounds of a muffled struggle.

  At first he hesitated and then, when he heard someone say ‘bitch’ loudly and clearly he pulled aside the curtain and peered into the darkened room. He could just make out someone struggling with someone else on the pile of furs that served as a bed when the moonlight coming in throug
h the open window glinted off a knife blade. The assailant was about to stab the person on the bed, presumably Acha.

  Without thinking, Beorhtwulf thrust his spear into the neck of the putative assassin and the man dropped his blade, which clattered harmlessly to the floor. The man clasped his neck and shrieked in agony as Beorhtwulf pulled the point of his spear clear and, dropping it, he pulled his seax from its scabbard. Grasping the man’s long hair, he pulled his head back so that he could cut his throat. Just before his heart stopped beating, it send a spray of blood from the severed carotid artery which covered Acha’s body and face.

  Beorhtwulf pulled the body off the bed before asking if Acha was injured.

  ‘No, I’m fine, thank you, apart from being bathed in blood.’

  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom in the room the boy could just make out her face and saw that she was smiling, indicating that the remark had been in jest.

  ‘Yes, my apologies, síþwíf, I didn’t think.’

  ‘It was a good job you didn’t, or I’d be dead.’

  Just at that moment Oswald burst in followed by Eochaid and the two sentries from the external door to the building. Keeva peered around him, uttered a little squawk, and ran back to their bedchamber.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Oswald asked, standing just inside the room naked and holding his sword in his hand. Eochaid had at least put on a tunic before grabbing his sword.

  ‘This young man had just saved my life, Oswald. I suspect that he thought it was you in this bed not me, good job too knowing how soundly you sleep. By the way I don’t know your name?’

  ‘It’s Beorhtwulf, síþwíf.’

  ‘You again!’ Oswald blurted out. ‘Well, Beorhtwulf, you lived up to your name this time.’

  Then something occurred to the king.

  ‘If you were guarding the entrance to my chamber, how did you hear what was happening in this room and get here so quickly?’

  ‘Never mind that, Oswald. Just be thankful that the boy has good hearing and reactions to match. Now I think I need to bathe, and some clean furs for the bed would be welcome. If someone could throw this creature onto the midden I’d be grateful too.’

  At that moment Ethelbald arrived with several more guards and some torches. When Acha explained what had happened, the custos examined the dead assassin and muttered that he was a druid. It wasn’t until much later that Oswald had realised that Ethelbald hadn’t seemed very surprised.

  Beorhtwulf had wandered over to examine the window, which was just an open embrasure with wooden shutters to keep out the cold. These now stood open.

  ‘The leather thong that holds the shutters closed has been cut, Cyning,’ he told Oswald.

  ‘That explains how he got into the chamber but not how he got into a seemingly impregnable fortress,’ the king mused.

  ‘It seems we have a traitor in our midst,’ Ethelbald said grimly.

  ‘Well, time for that in the morning. We must get this place cleaned up. Call the servants to heat some water so my mother can scrub herself clean. I suggest you sleep in my room with Keeva for the rest of tonight. We’ll get the shutters nailed shut and Beorhtwulf can guard the entrance with one other. I’ll share with Eochaid for now.’

  Acha was about to protest about being asked to sleep with her son’s lover but she bit her tongue. He turned to Beorhtwulf who was nursing the vain hope that his service might be rewarded by being allowed to get some sleep. It was not to be, it seemed.

  ‘I’ll not forget this, Beorhtwulf. I’d like you to join my gesith.’

  The boy was overwhelmed. He had only just graduated from a boy under training to become a young warrior; all the other members of the gesith were seasoned men with battle experience.

  ‘I’m honoured, Cyning, but I’m worried how the other members of the gesith will react.’

  ‘Hmmm, they may well give you a hard time at first, given your youth, but they’ll respect you for saving my mother’s life and killing the assassin. However, you’ll have to stand up for yourself. I can’t help you there. Well, do you accept?’

  ‘Yes, Cyning, thank you.’

  ‘Good, report to Rònan in the morning.’

  ‘Who needs sleep, eh lad?’ Ethelbald muttered in his ear. ‘Well, done. I’ll let you off the rest of your extra guard duties.’

  Beorhtwulf was just about to say that the gesith didn’t do normal guard duties when he realised that Ethelbald was teasing him. It was so unlike the normally sombre custos that he wasn’t sure that he’d heard him correctly.

  ~~~

  Oswiu gloomily studied the fortified hall of the Eorl of Dùn Barra on its rocky islet. It was even more of a problem than he’d been led to believe. The sea broke against the rocks on three sides of the fortress and the narrow channel between the hall and palisade and the mainland was spanned by a wooden bridge with a section at one end that could be raised to the near vertical by two ropes attached to the far end. It was in the up position now. The only positive aspect was that it couldn’t be resupplied by sea except on the calmest of days and the two birlinns that had shadowed his march up the east coast could prevent that happening. However, starving the garrison out could take a long time.

  He turned from his contemplation of Dùn Barra as Cenhelm, one of his senior commanders joined him. They stood together observing the seabirds dive into the sea and re-appear, usually with a fish in their mouths. As they watched a couple of seals made their ungainly way onto the rocks near the short cliff at the top of which the palisade was built. Once they had found a flat rock they stretched out in the sun and seemed to fall asleep. Suddenly a volley of arrows with thin ropes attached struck the seals and they were quickly hauled up the palisade and over the top out of sight.

  ‘Barbed heads,’ Cenhelm muttered.

  ‘We could wait a long time to starve them out,’ Oswiu replied.

  ‘Quite. So what do we do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Let me think.’

  At that moment a group of his warriors mounted on hill ponies appeared in the distance bringing with them a petrified villein from the vill surrounding the fortress, his thirteen year old son, a few sheep and a cart laden with root vegetables.

  ‘Go and stop them, Cenhelm. I don’t want them to be seen from Dùn Barra. I think I have an idea.’

  Three weeks later, at the start of November, the Bernician war band gave up the siege and even the birlinns patrolling off the coast withdrew. The eorl breathed a sigh of relief. Their food stocks were nearly exhausted and he thanked his gods that the threat of the oncoming winter had persuaded the Bernicians to give up the siege.

  That afternoon the eorl sent out a patrol to confirm that Oswiu really had withdrawn but they hadn’t gone very far when they encountered a villein bringing two dozen sheep and a cart full of carrots and turnips towards the fortress. He had two boys with him helping him to herd the sheep whilst he drove the ox-drawn cart.

  ‘Where are you going?’ the patrol leader asked suspiciously.

  ‘To Dùn Barra,’ the farmer replied nervously. ‘I saw the war band that was besieging you withdraw south and thought you might be in need of food.’

  ‘Doubtless you thought you could get an inflated price for it too, you dog,’ the horseman replied with a sneer.

  ‘A man has to live.’

  ‘These your two boys then?’

  The boys nodded without saying anything.

  ‘What’s in the cart?’

  ‘Carrots and parsnips.’

  The horseman lifted the corner of the oiled canvas that covered it, then dropped it after a cursory glance.

  ‘Right, on you go then. Good luck screwing more than the basic value out of the eorl’s wife though. She’s a tough old woman and no mistake.’

  For a moment the man thought about turning his men around to accompany the villein back to the fortress; they were all starving and the thought of a decent meal was very tempting. No more seals had been foolish enough to sunbathe within arrow shot and prov
isions were nearly exhausted. However, he still had to check that the besiegers had indeed headed back to Berwic. Ten minutes later he found out that they hadn’t. The ambush was effective and the members of the patrol were either killed or captured.

  The sentry on the parapet by the gate saw the villein in his cart followed by the sheep and their drovers and yelled excitedly to his comrades that supplies had arrived. The parapet was soon lined with cheering warriors. The garrison had been fifty five men but, with thirty out in the patrol, only twenty five were left to defend the fortress. The custos and the eorl were just coming out of the hall when they saw the drawbridge being lowered. The custos ran forward and got to the gate just as the cart started across the bridge.

  ‘Who ordered the drawbridge lowered?’ he bellowed. ‘Get it raised again!’

  He didn’t get a chance to say any more before the cart completed its journey into the fortress and the sheep followed on. It was now impossible to raise it. Before the man realised what was going on, the tarpaulin covering the thin layer of vegetables was thrust aside and ten members of Oswiu’s war band leaped out of the cart. The custos was one of the first men to die as the attackers charged into the few men in the bailey. The eorl tried to rally his men but most were still up on the walkway around the top of the palisade.

  One of the Bernicians thrust his sword into his neck and he fell to the ground. The men on the parapet tried to descend but the bailey was now full of sheep milling about and bleating piteously. As they struggled through them one of the Bernician warriors reached the gateway and cut one of the ropes by which the drawbridge was raised. Oswiu and his mounted gesith cantered into the fortress and, leaping from their horses, they waded into the fight.

  They were followed by Cenhelm and the rest of Oswiu’s war band, but there was nothing left for them to do. Those Goddodin who were still alive surrendered and Oswiu did as he’d done at Berwic. As he’d promised, he made Kenric the new eorl and, leaving him twenty men to garrison the fortress, he recruited what was left of the garrison into his war band and marched south, back to Bebbanburg before winter set in. Dùn Èideann would have to wait until next year.