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

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СКАЧАТЬ I thought, he was not dear to me. That night, brooding on Beocca’s words, I was tempted to flee the swamp, to go away with Iseult, find a lord, give Serpent-Breath a new master, but Ragnar had been a hostage and so I had no friend among my enemies, and if I fled I would break my oath to Alfred and men would say Uhtred of Bebbanburg could never be trusted again and so I stayed. I tried to persuade Alfred not to go to Cippanhamm. It was, as Beocca had said, irresponsible, but Alfred insisted. ‘If I stay here,’ he said, ‘men will say I hid from the Danes. Others face them, but I hide? No. Men must see me, must know that I live, and know that I fight.’ For once Ælswith and I were in agreement, and we both tried to keep him in Æthelingæg, but Alfred would not be dissuaded. He was in a strange mood, suffused with happiness, utterly confident that God was on his side, and, because his sickness had abated, he was full of energy and confidence.

      He took six companions. The priest was a young man called Adelbert who carried a small harp wrapped in leather. It seemed ridiculous to take a harp to the enemy, but Adelbert was famed for his music and Alfred blithely said that we should sing God’s praises while we were among the Danes. The other four were all experienced warriors who had been part of his royal guard. They were called Osferth, Wulfrith, Beorth and the last was Egwine who swore to Ælswith that he would bring the king home, which made Ælswith throw a bitter glance at me. Whatever favour I had gained by Iseult’s cure of Edward had evaporated under the influence of the priests.

      We dressed for war in mail and helmets, while Alfred insisted on wearing a fine blue cloak, trimmed with fur, which made him conspicuous, but he wanted folk to see a king. The best horses were selected, one for each of us and three spare mounts, and we swam them across the river, then followed log roads until we came at last to firm ground close to the island where Iseult said Arthur was buried. I had left Iseult with Eanflæd who shared quarters with Leofric.

      It was February now. There had been a spell of fine weather after the burning of Svein’s fleet and I had thought we should travel then, but Alfred insisted on waiting until the eighth day of February, because that was the feast of Saint Cuthman, a Saxon saint from East Anglia, and Alfred reckoned that must be a propitious day. Perhaps he was right, for the day turned out wet and bitterly cold, and we were to discover that the Danes were reluctant to leave their quarters in the worst weather. We went at dawn and by mid morning we were in the hills overlooking the swamp which was half hidden by a mist thickened by the smoke from the cooking fires of the small villages. ‘Are you familiar with Saint Cuthman?’ Alfred asked me cheerfully.

      ‘No, lord.’

      ‘He was a hermit,’ Alfred said. We were riding north, keeping on the high ground with the swamp to our left. ‘His mother was crippled and so he made her a wheelbarrow.’

      ‘A wheelbarrow? What could a cripple do with a wheelbarrow?’

      ‘No, no, no! He pushed her about in it! So she could be with him as he preached. He pushed her everywhere.’

      ‘She must have liked that.’

      ‘There’s no written life of him that I know of,’ Alfred said, ‘but we must surely compose one. He could be a saint for mothers?’

      ‘Or for wheelbarrows, lord.’

      We saw our first evidence of the Danes just after midday. We were still on the high ground, but in a valley that sloped to the marshes we saw a substantial house with limewashed walls and thick thatch. Smoke came from the roof, while in a fenced apple orchard were a score of horses. No Dane would ever leave such a place unplundered, which suggested the horses belonged to them and that the farm was garrisoned. ‘They’re there to watch the swamp,’ Alfred suggested.

      ‘Probably.’ I was cold. I had a thick woollen cloak, but I was still cold.

      ‘We shall send men here,’ Alfred said, ‘and teach them not to steal apples.’

      We stayed that night in a small village. The Danes had been there and the folk were frightened. At first, when we rode up the rutted track between the houses, they hid, thinking we were Danes, but when they heard our voices they crept out and stared at us as if we had just ridden down from the moon. Their priest was dead, killed by the pagans, so Alfred insisted that Adelbert hold a service in the burned-out remnants of the church. Alfred himself acted as precentor, accompanying his chanting with the priest’s small harp. ‘I learned to play as a child,’ he told me. ‘My stepmother insisted, but I’m not very good.’

      ‘You’re not,’ I agreed, which he did not like.

      ‘There is never enough time to practise,’ he complained.

      We lodged in a peasant’s house. Alfred, reckoning that the Danes would have taken the harvest from wherever we visited, had laden the spare horses with smoked fish, smoked eels and oatcakes, so we provided most of the food and, after we had eaten, the peasant couple knelt to me and the woman tentatively touched the skirt of my mail coat. ‘My children,’ she whispered, ‘there are two of them. My daughter is about seven years old and my boy is a little older. They are good children.’

      ‘What of them?’ Alfred intervened.

      ‘The pagans took them, lord,’ the woman said. She was crying. ‘You can find them, lord,’ she said, tugging my mail, ‘you can find them and bring them back? My little ones? Please?’

      I promised to try, but it was an empty promise for the children would have long gone to the slave market and, by now, would either be working on some Danish estate or, if they were pretty, sent overseas where heathen men pay good silver for Christian children.

      We learned that the Danes had come to the village shortly after Twelfth Night. They had killed, captured, stolen and ridden on southwards. A few days later they had returned, going back northwards, driving a band of captives and a herd of captured horses laden with plunder. Since then the villagers had seen no Danes except for the few on the swamp’s edge. Those Danes, they said, caused no trouble, perhaps because they were so few and dared not stir up the enmity of the country about them. We heard the same tale in other villages. The Danes had come, they had pillaged, then had gone back north.

      But on our third day we at last saw a force of the enemy riding on the Roman road which cuts straight eastwards across the hills from Baðum. There were close to sixty of them, and they rode hard in front of dark clouds and the gathering night. ‘Going back to Cippanhamm,’ Alfred said. It was a foraging party, and their packhorses carried nets stuffed with hay to feed their war horses, and I remembered my childhood winter in Readingum, when the Danes first invaded Wessex, and how hard it had been to keep horses and men alive in the cold. We had cut feeble winter grass and pulled down thatch to feed our horses, which still became skeletal and weak. I have often listened to men declare that all that is needed to win a war is to assemble men and march against the enemy, but it is never that easy. Men and horses must be fed, and hunger can defeat an army much faster than spears. We watched the Danes go north, then turned aside to a half-ruined barn that offered us shelter for the night.

      It began to snow that night, a relentless soft snow, silent and thick, so that by dawn the world was white under a pale blue sky. I suggested we waited till the snow had thawed before we rode further, but Egwine, who came from this part of the country, said we were only two or three hours south of Cippanhamm and Alfred was impatient. ‘We go,’ he insisted. ‘We go there, look at the town and ride away.’

      So we rode north, our hooves crunching the newly fallen snow, riding through a world made new and clean. Snow clung to every twig and branch while ice skimmed the ditches and ponds. I saw a fox’s trail crossing a field and thought that the spring would bring a plague of the beasts for there would have been no one to hunt them, and the lambs would СКАЧАТЬ