The Last Kingdom Series Books 1–8: The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, The Lords of the North, Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings, The Pagan Lord, The Empty Throne. Bernard Cornwell

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ that you and Steapa will fight.’

      ‘Where?’

      ‘In a field on the other side of the river,’ he said, then pushed the pot of ale towards me. ‘He’s left-handed.’

      I could not remember fighting against a man who held his sword in his left hand, but nor could I see a disadvantage in it. We would both have our shields facing the other man’s shield instead of his weapon, but that would be a problem to both of us. I shrugged.

      ‘He’s used to it,’ Harald explained, ‘and you’re not. And he wears mail down to here,’ he touched his calf, ‘and he has an iron strip on his left boot.’

      ‘Because that’s his vulnerable foot?’

      ‘He plants it forward,’ Harald said, ‘inviting attack, then chops at your sword arm.’

      ‘So he’s a hard man to kill,’ I said mildly.

      ‘No one’s done it yet,’ Harald said gloomily.

      ‘You don’t like him?’

      He did not answer at first, but drank ale then passed the pot to Leofric. ‘I like the old man,’ he said, meaning Odda the Elder. ‘He’s foul-tempered, but he’s fair enough. But the son?’ he shook his head sadly. ‘I think the son is untested. Steapa? I don’t dislike him, but he’s like a hound. He only knows how to kill.’

      I stared into the feeble fire, looking for a sign from the gods in the small flames, but none came, or none that I saw. ‘He must be worried though,’ Leofric said.

      ‘Steapa?’ Harald asked, ‘why should he be worried?’

      ‘Uhtred killed Ubba.’

      Harald shook his head. ‘Steapa doesn’t think enough to be worried. He just knows he’ll kill Uhtred tomorrow.’

      I thought back to the fight with Ubba. He had been a great warrior, with a reputation that glowed wherever Norsemen sailed, and I had killed him, but the truth was that he had put a foot into the spilled guts of a dying man and slipped. His leg had shot sideways, he had lost his balance and I had managed to cut the tendons in his arm. I touched the hammer amulet and thought that the gods had sent me a sign after all. ‘An iron strip in his boot?’ I asked.

      Harald nodded. ‘He doesn’t care how much you attack him. He knows you’re coming from his left and he’ll block most of your attacks with his sword. Big sword, heavy thing. But some blows will get by and he won’t care. You’ll waste them on iron. Heavy mail, helmet, boot, doesn’t matter. It’ll be like hitting an oak tree, and after a while you’ll make a mistake. He’ll be bruised and you’ll be dead.’

      He was right, I thought. Striking an armoured man with a sword rarely achieved much except to make a bruise because the edge would be stopped by mail or helmet. Mail cannot be chopped open by a sword, which was why so many men carried axes into battle, but the rules of trial by combat said the fight had to be with swords. A sword lunge would pierce mail, but Steapa was not going to make himself an easy target for a lunge. ‘Is he quick?’ I asked.

      ‘Quick enough,’ Harald said, then shrugged. ‘Not as quick as you,’ he added grudgingly, ‘but he isn’t slow.’

      ‘What does the money say?’ Leofric asked, though he surely knew the answer.

      ‘No one’s wagering a penny on Uhtred,’ Harald said.

      ‘You should,’ I retorted.

      He smiled at that, but I knew he would not take the advice. ‘The big money,’ he said, ‘is what Odda will give Steapa when he kills you. A hundred shillings.’

      ‘Uhtred’s not worth it,’ Leofric said with rough humour.

      ‘Why does he want me dead so badly?’ I wondered aloud. It could not be Mildrith, I thought, and the argument over who had killed Ubba was long in the past, yet still Odda the Younger conspired against me.

      Harald paused a long time before answering. He had his bald head bowed and I thought he was in prayer, but then he looked up. ‘You threaten him,’ he said quietly.

      ‘I haven’t even seen him for months,’ I protested, ‘so how do I threaten him?’

      Harald paused again, choosing his words carefully. ‘The king is frequently ill,’ he said after the pause, ‘and who can say how long he will live? And if, God forbid, he should die soon, then the Witan will not choose his infant son to be king. They’ll choose a nobleman with a reputation made on the battlefield. They’ll choose a man who can stand up to the Danes.’

      ‘Odda?’ I laughed at the thought of Odda as king.

      ‘Who else?’ Harald asked. ‘But if you were to stand before the Witan and swear an oath to the truth about the battle where Ubba died, they might not choose him. So you threaten him, and he fears you because of that.’

      ‘So now he’s paying Steapa to chop you to bits,’ Leofric added gloomily.

      Harald left. He was a decent man, honest and hard-working, and he had taken a risk by coming to see me, and I had been poor company for I did not appreciate the gesture he made. It was plain he thought I must die in the morning, and he had done his best to prepare me for the fight, but despite Iseult’s confident prediction that I would live I did not sleep well. I was worried, and it was cold. The rain turned to sleet in the night and the wind whipped into the byre. By dawn the wind and sleet had stopped and instead there was a mist shrouding the buildings and icy water dripping from the mossy thatch. I made a poor breakfast of damp bread and it was while I was eating that Father Beocca came and said Alfred wished to speak with me.

      I was sour. ‘You mean he wants to pray with me?’

      ‘He wants to speak with you,’ Beocca insisted and, when I did not move, he stamped his lamed foot. ‘It is not a request, Uhtred. It is a royal order!’

      I put on my mail, not because it was time to arm for the fight, but because its leather lining offered some warmth on a cold morning. The mail was not very clean, despite Iseult’s efforts. Most men wore their hair short, but I liked the Danish way of leaving it long and so I tied it behind with a lace and Iseult plucked the straw scraps from it. ‘We must hurry,’ Beocca said and I followed him through the mud past the great hall and the newly built church to some smaller buildings made of timber that had still not weathered grey. Alfred’s father had used Cippanhamm as a hunting lodge, but Alfred was expanding it. The church had been his first new building, and he had built that even before he repaired and extended the palisade, and that was an indication of his priorities. Even now, when the nobility of Wessex was gathered just a day’s march from the Danes, there seemed to be more churchmen than soldiers in the place, and that was another indication of how Alfred thought to protect his realm. ‘The king is gracious,’ Beocca hissed at me as we went through a door, ‘so be humble.’

      Beocca knocked on another door, did not wait for an answer, but pushed it open and indicated I should step inside. He did not follow me, but closed the door, leaving me in a gloomy half darkness.

      A pair of beeswax candles flickered on an altar and by their light I saw two men kneeling in front of the plain wooden cross that stood between the candles. The men had their backs to me, but I recognised Alfred by his fur-trimmed blue cloak. The second СКАЧАТЬ