earth walls and timber palisade were both in good condition, and Ragnar marvelled that the town’s garrison had chosen to march downriver to fight us, rather than stay behind their well-tended defences. The Mercian soldiers were plainly gone now, probably fled south, for the gates were open and a dozen townsfolk were kneeling outside the wooden arch and holding out supplicant hands for mercy. Three of the terrified people were monks, their tonsured heads bowed. ‘I hate monks,’ Ragnar said cheerfully. His sword, Heart-Breaker, was in his hand and he swept her naked blade in a hissing arc.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Monks are like ants,’ he said, ‘wriggling about in black, being useless. I hate them. You’ll speak for me, Uhtred. Ask them what place this is?’
I asked and learned that the town was called Gegnesburh.
‘Tell them,’ Ragnar instructed me, ‘that my name is Earl Ragnar, I am called the Fearless and that I eat children when I’m not given food and silver.’
I duly told them. The kneeling men looked up at Ragnar who had unbound his hair which, had they known, was always a sign that he was in a mood for killing. His grinning men made a line behind him, a line heavy with axes, swords, spears, shields and war hammers.
‘What food there is,’ I translated a grey-bearded man’s answer, ‘is yours. But he says there is not much food.’
Ragnar smiled at that, stepped forward and, still smiling, swung Heart-Breaker so that her blade half severed the man’s head. I jumped back, not in alarm, but because I did not want my tunic spattered with his blood. ‘One less mouth to feed,’ Ragnar said cheerfully. ‘Now ask the others how much food there is.’
The grey-bearded man was now red-bearded and he was choking and twitching as he died. His struggles slowly ended and then he just lay, dying, his eyes gazing reprovingly into mine. None of his companions tried to help him, they were too frightened. ‘How much food do you have?’ I demanded.
‘There is food, lord,’ one of the monks said.
‘How much?’ I demanded again.
‘Enough.’
‘He says there’s enough,’ I told Ragnar.
‘A sword,’ Ragnar said, ‘is a great tool for discovering the truth. What about the monk’s church? How much silver does it have?’
The monk gabbled that we could look for ourselves, that we could take whatever we found, that it was all ours, anything we found was ours, all was ours. I translated these panicked statements and Ragnar again smiled. ‘He’s not telling the truth, is he?’
‘Isn’t he?’ I asked.
‘He wants me to look because he knows I won’t find, and that means they’ve hidden their treasure or had it taken away. Ask him if they’ve hidden their silver.’
I did and the monk reddened. ‘We are a poor church,’ he said, ‘with little treasure,’ and he stared wide-eyed as I translated his answer, then he tried to get up and run as Ragnar stepped forward, but he tripped over his robe and Heart-Breaker pierced his spine so that he jerked like a landed fish as he died.
There was silver, of course, and it was buried. Another of the monks told us so, and Ragnar sighed as he cleaned his sword on the dead monk’s robe. ‘They’re such fools,’ he said plaintively. ‘They’d live if they answered truthfully the first time.’
‘But suppose there wasn’t any treasure?’ I asked him.
‘Then they’d tell the truth and die,’ Ragnar said, and found that funny. ‘But what’s the point of a monk except to hoard treasure for us Danes? They’re ants who hoard silver. Find the ants’ nest, dig, and a man’s rich.’ He stepped over his victims. At first I was shocked by the ease with which he would kill a defenceless man, but Ragnar had no respect for folk who cringed and lied. He appreciated an enemy who fought, who showed spirit, but men who were weakly sly like the ones he killed at Gegnesburh’s gate were beneath his contempt, no better than animals.
We emptied Gegnesburh of food, then made the monks dig up their treasure. It was not much; two silver mass cups, three silver plates, a bronze crucifix with a silver Christ, a bone carving of angels climbing a ladder and a bag of silver pennies. Ragnar distributed the coins among his men, then hacked the silver plates and cups to pieces with an axe and shared out the scraps. He had no use for the bone carving so shattered it with his sword. ‘A weird religion,’ he said, ‘they worship just one god?’
‘One god,’ I said, ‘but he’s divided into three.’
He liked that. ‘A clever trick,’ he said, ‘but not useful. This triple god has a mother, doesn’t he?’
‘Mary,’ I said, following him as he explored the monastery in search of more plunder.
‘I wonder if her baby came out in three bits,’ he said. ‘So what’s this god’s name?’
‘Don’t know.’ I knew he had a name because Beocca had told me, but I could not remember it. ‘The three together are the trinity,’ I went on, ‘but that’s not God’s name. Usually they just call him God.’
‘Like giving a dog the name dog,’ Ragnar declared, then laughed. ‘So who’s Jesus?’
‘One of the three.’
‘The one who died, yes? And he came back to life?’
‘Yes,’ I said, suddenly fearful that the Christian god was watching me, readying a dreadful punishment for my sins.
‘Gods can do that,’ Ragnar said airily. ‘They die, come back to life. They’re gods.’ He looked at me, sensing my fear, and ruffled my hair. ‘Don’t you worry, Uhtred, the Christian god doesn’t have power here.’
‘He doesn’t?’
‘Of course not!’ He was searching a shed at the back of the monastery and found a decent sickle that he tucked into his belt. ‘Gods fight each other! Everyone knows that. Look at our gods! The Aesir and Vanir fought like cats before they made friends.’ The Aesir and the Vanir were the two families of Danish gods who now shared Asgard, though at one time they had been the bitterest of enemies. ‘Gods fight,’ Ragnar went on earnestly, ‘and some win, some lose. The Christian god is losing, otherwise why would we be here? Why would we be winning? The gods reward us if we give them respect, but the Christian god doesn’t help his people, does he? They weep rivers of tears for him, they pray to him, they give him their silver, and we come along and slaughter them! Their god is pathetic. If he had any real power then we wouldn’t be here, would we?’
It seemed an unassailable logic to me. What was the point of worshipping a god if he did not help you? And it was incontrovertible that the worshippers of Odin and Thor were winning, and I surreptitiously touched the hammer of Thor hanging from my neck as we returned to the Wind-Viper. We left Gegnesburh ravaged, its folk weeping and its store-houses emptied, and we rowed on down the wide river, the belly of our boat piled with grain, bread, salted meat and smoked fish. Later, much later, I learned that Ælswith, King Alfred’s wife, had come from Gegnesburh. Her father, the man who had failed to fight us, was Ealdorman there and she had grown up in the town and always lamented that, after she had left, the Danes had sacked the place. God, she always declared, would have his revenge on the pagans who had ravaged her home town, and it seemed wise not to tell her that I had been one of the ravagers.
We ended the voyage at a town called Snotengaham, which means the home of Snot’s people, and it was a much greater place than Gegnesburh, but its garrison had fled and those people who remained welcomed the Danes with piles of food and heaps of silver. There would have been time for a horseman to reach Snotengaham with news of Gegnesburh’s dead, and the Danes were always happy for such messengers to spread fear of their coming, and so the larger town, with its walls, fell without a fight.
Some ships’ crews were ordered to man the walls, while others raided the countryside. The first thing they sought was