Warriors of the Storm Read Online Free

the river. ‘They came in the night,’ he said, ‘and we didn’t know until we saw the flames. I’m sorry. I failed you.’
    ‘Don’t be a fool,’ I snarled. ‘You couldn’t stop that fleet!’ I waved towards the bend in the river where the last of the Sea King’s ships had disappeared behind a stand of trees. One of our burning ships gave a lurch, and there was a hiss as steam thickened the smoke.
    ‘I wanted to fight them,’ Æthelstan said.
    ‘Then you’re a damned fool,’ I retorted.
    He frowned, then gestured towards the burning ships and at the butchered carcass of a bullock. ‘I wanted to stop this!’ he said.
    ‘You choose your battles,’ I said harshly. ‘You were safe behind your walls, so why lose men? You couldn’t stop the fleet. Besides, they wanted you to come out and fight them, and it isn’t sensible to do what the enemy wants.’
    ‘That’s what I told him, lord,’ Rædwald put in. Rædwald was an older Mercian, a cautious man who I had posted in Brunanburh to advise Æthelstan. The prince commanded the garrison, but he was young and so I had given him a half-dozen older and wiser men to keep him from making youth’s mistakes.
    ‘They wanted us to come out?’ Æthelstan asked, puzzled.
    ‘Where would they rather fight you?’ I asked. ‘With you behind walls? Or out in the open, shield wall to shield wall?’
    ‘I told him that, lord!’ Rædwald said. I ignored him.
    ‘Choose your battles,’ I snarled at Æthelstan. ‘That space between your ears was given so that you can think! If you just charge whenever you see an enemy you’ll earn yourself an early grave.’
    ‘That’s …’ Rædwald began.
    ‘That’s what you told him, I know! Now be quiet!’ I gazed upstream at the empty river. Ragnall had brought an army to Britain, but what would he do with that army? He needed land to feed his men, he needed fortresses to protect them. He had passed Brunanburh, but was he planning to double back and attack Ceaster? The Roman walls made that city a fine base, but also a formidable obstacle. So where was he going?
    ‘But that’s what you did!’ Æthelstan interrupted my thoughts.
    ‘Did what?’
    ‘You charged the enemy!’ He looked indignant. ‘Just now! You charged down the hill even though they outnumbered you.’
    ‘I needed prisoners, you miserable excuse for a man.’
    I wanted to know how Ragnall had come upriver in the darkness. It had either been an incredible stroke of fortune that his great fleet had negotiated the Mærse’s mudbanks without any ship going aground, or else he was an even greater ship-handler than his reputation suggested. It had been an impressive feat of seamanship, but it had also been unnecessary. His fleet was huge, and we had only a dozen boats. He could have brushed us aside without missing an oar stroke, yet he had decided to attack in the night. Why risk that?
    ‘He didn’t want us to block the channel,’ my son suggested, and that was probably the truth. If we had been given just a few hours’ warning we could have sunk our ships in the river’s main channel. Ragnall would still have got past eventually, but he would have been forced to wait for a high tide, and his heavier ships would have had a difficult passage, and meanwhile we would have sent messengers upriver to make sure more barricades blocked the Mærse and more men waited to greet his ships. Instead he had slipped past us, he had wounded us, and he was already rowing inland.
    ‘It was the Frisians,’ Æthelstan said unhappily.
    ‘Frisians?’
    ‘Three merchant ships arrived last night, lord. They moored in the river. They were carrying pelts from Dyflin.’
    ‘You inspected them?’
    He shook his head. ‘They said they carried the plague, lord.’
    ‘So you didn’t board them?’
    ‘Not with the plague, lord, no.’ The garrison at Brunanburh had the duty of inspecting every ship that entered the river, mainly to levy a tax on whatever cargo the ship