A strange noise split the sky. At the front of the train of carts, Cwicca, a thrall who had come in a few days before, escaped from the shrine of St. Guthlac at Crowland, had brought with him his treasured bagpipe. Now he led the carts along, cheeks puffed, fingers skipping briskly on the bone pipe. His mates cheered and stepped out harder, some of them whistling in unison.
A Viking from the vanguard turned his horse, scowling angrily, front teeth sticking out. It was Hjörvarth Sigvarthsson, Shef saw. His half brother. Sigvarth had volunteered instantly to join the expedition with all his crews, too quickly to be turned down, quicker even than Thorvin or the Hebrideans or the still-doubting Brand. Now Hjörvarth trotted back menacingly towards the piper, sword half-drawn. The music wailed discordantly and died.
Shef turned his pony between them, slipped off it and handed the reins to Padda.
“Walking keeps you warm,” he said to Hjörvarth, staring up at the angry face. “Music makes the miles go faster. Let him play.”
Hjörvarth hesitated, jerked his pony’s head round. “Suit yourself,” he flung over one shoulder. “But harps are for warriors. Only a hornung would listen to a pipe.”
Hornung, gadderling, thought Shef. How many words there are for bastard. It doesn’t stop men putting them in women’s bellies. Maybe Godive has one by now.
“Keep playing,” he shouted to the bagpiper. “Play ‘The Quickbeam Dance.’ Play it for Thunor, son of Woden, and to Hell with the monks.”
The piper started again to play the jerky quickstep tune, louder this time, backed by united defiant whistling. The carts rolled forward behind the patient oxen.
“You’re sure King Burgred means to take over the East Angles?” King Ethelred asked. His question ended in a fit of coughing—sharp, high-pitched, going on again after it had seemed to stop.
Ethelred’s younger brother, Alfred the atheling, looked at him with concern. Also, a reluctant calculation. Alfred’s father, Ethelwulf—king of Wessex, conqueror of the Vikings at Oakley—had had four strong sons: Ethelstan, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred. By the time the fifth came along it had seemed so unlikely that he would ever be called upon to rule that the royal mark of the house of Wessex, the Ethel-name, had seemed unnecessary. He had been called Alfred after his mother’s people.
By now the father and three of the strong sons were dead. None killed in battle, but all killed by the Vikings. For years they had marched in all weathers, lain in damp cloaks, drunk water from streams that flowed through the camps of armies careless of where they dumped their waste or relieved themselves. They died of the bowel-cramps, of the lung-sickness. Now Ethelred had contracted the wasting-cough. How long might it be, Alfred thought, till he was the last atheling of the royal house of Wessex? Till then, though, he must serve.
“Quite sure,” he replied. “He said so openly. He was mustering his men when I left. But he’s not making it too obvious. He has an under-king, an East Angle, to put in charge. That will make it easier for the East Angles to accept his rule. Especially as he has a totem. The man with no limbs, the one I told you of.”
“Does it matter?” Ethelred dabbed wearily at spittle-slimed lips.
“The East Angles have twenty thousand hides. That, added to what Burgred has already, will make him stronger than us, far stronger than the Northumbrians. If we could trust him to fight the heathens only… But he may prefer easier prey. He could say it was his duty to unite all the kingdoms of the English. Ours included.”
“So?”
“We must put in a claim. See, Essex is ours already. Now the border of Essex and the South-folk runs…”
The two men, the king and the prince, began slowly to thrash out a claim to territory, a likely dividing line. They had no image of the territory they were discussing, only knowledge that this river was north of that one, this town in this or that shire. The debate took even more toll of Ethelred’s waning strength.
“You’re sure they’ve split?” said Ivar Ragnarsson sharply.
The messenger nodded. “Almost half of them marched south. Maybe twelve long hundreds left behind.”