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 said.

      ‘He can come by the fire.’

      ‘He cannot,’ I said harshly. ‘I’m punishing him.’

      ‘What did you do?’ Brida called to him in English. His face came up and he stared at her, but the hood still shadowed him.

      ‘Speak, you bastard,’ I said, ‘and I’ll whip you till your bones show.’ I could just see his eyes in the hood’s shadow. ‘He insulted me,’ I spoke in Danish again, ‘and I’ve sworn him to silence, and for every word he utters he receives ten blows of the whip.’

      That satisfied them. Ragnar forgot the strange hooded servant and told me how he had persuaded Wulfhere to send a messenger to Guthrum, promising to spare the hostages, and how Guthrum had warned Wulfhere when the attack would come to make sure that the ealdorman had time to remove the hostages from Alfred’s revenge. That, I thought, was why Wulfhere had left so early on the morning of the attack. He had known the Danes were coming. ‘You call him an ally,’ I said. ‘Does that make him just a friend? Or a man who will fight for Guthrum?’

      ‘He’s an ally,’ Ragnar said, ‘and he’s sworn to fight for us. At least he’s sworn to fight for the Saxon king.’

      ‘The Saxon king?’ I asked, confused, ‘Alfred?’

      ‘Not Alfred, no. The true king. The boy who was the other one’s son.’

      Ragnar meant Æthelwold, who had been heir to Alfred’s brother, King Æthelred, and of course the Danes would want Æthelwold. Whenever they captured a Saxon kingdom they appointed a Saxon as king, and that gave their conquest a cloak of legality, though the Saxon never lasted long. Guthrum, who already called himself King of East Anglia, wanted to be King of Wessex too, but by putting Æthelwold on the throne he might attract other West Saxons who could convince themselves they were fighting for the true heir. And once the fight was over and Danish rule established Æthelwold would be quietly killed.

      ‘But Wulfhere will fight for you?’ I persisted.

      ‘Of course he will! If he wants to keep his land,’ Ragnar said, then grimaced. ‘But what fighting? We just sit here like sheep and do nothing!’

      ‘It’s winter.’

      ‘Best time to fight. Nothing else to do.’ He wanted to know where I had been since Yule and I said I had been deep inside Defnascir. He assumed I had been making sure my family was safe, and he also assumed I had now come to Cippanhamm to join him. ‘You’re not sworn to Alfred, are you?’ he asked.

      ‘Who knows where Alfred is?’ I evaded the question.

      ‘You were sworn to him,’ he said reproachfully.

      ‘I was sworn to him,’ I said, truthfully enough, ‘but only for a year, and that year has long ended.’ That was no lie, I just did not tell Ragnar I had sworn myself to Alfred once again.

      ‘So you can join me?’ he asked eagerly. ‘You’ll give me your oath?’

      I took the question lightly, though in truth it worried me. ‘You want my oath?’ I asked, ‘just so I can sit here like a sheep doing nothing?’

      ‘We make some raids,’ Ragnar said defensively, ‘and men are guarding the swamp. That’s where Alfred is. In the swamps. But Svein will dig him out.’ So Guthrum and his men had yet to hear that Svein’s fleet was ashes beside the sea.

      ‘So why are you just sitting here?’ I asked.

      ‘Because Guthrum won’t divide his army,’ Ragnar said. I half smiled at that because I remembered Ragnar’s grandfather advising Guthrum never to divide an army again. Guthrum had done that at Æsc’s Hill and that had been the first victory of the West Saxons over the Danes. He had done it again when he abandoned Werham to attack Exanceaster, and the part of his army that went by sea was virtually destroyed by the storm. ‘I’ve told him,’ Ragnar said, ‘that we should split the army into a dozen parts. Take a dozen more towns and garrison them. All those places in southern Wessex, we should capture them, but he won’t listen.’

      ‘Guthrum holds the north and east,’ I said, as if I was defending him.

      ‘And we should have the rest! But instead we’re waiting till spring in hope more men will join us. Which they will. There’s land here, good land. Better than the land up north.’ He seemed to have forgotten the matter of my oath. I knew he would want me to join him, but instead he talked of what happened in Northumbria, how our enemies, Kjartan and Sven, thrived in Dunholm, and how that father and son dared not leave the fortress for fear of Ragnar’s revenge. They had taken his sister captive and, so far as Ragnar knew, they held her still, and Ragnar, like me, was sworn to kill them. He had no news of Bebbanburg other than that my treacherous uncle still lived and held the fortress. ‘When we’ve finished with Wessex,’ Ragnar promised me, ‘we shall go north. You and I together. We’ll carry swords to Dunholm.’

      ‘Swords to Dunholm,’ I said and raised my pot of ale.

      I did not drink much, or if I did it seemed to have little effect. I was thinking, sitting there, that with one sentence I could finish Alfred for ever. I could betray him, I could have him dragged in front of Guthrum and then watch as he died. Guthrum would even forgive me the insults to his mother if I gave him Alfred, and thus I could finish Wessex, for without Alfred there was no man about whom the fyrd would muster. I could stay with my friend, Ragnar, I could earn more arm rings, I could make a name that would be celebrated wherever Northmen sailed their long ships, and all it would take was one sentence.

      And I was so tempted that night in Cippanhamm’s royal church. There is such joy in chaos. Stow all the world’s evils behind a door and tell men that they must never, ever, open the door, and it will be opened because there is pure joy in destruction. At one moment, when Ragnar was bellowing with laughter and slapping my shoulder so hard that it hurt, I felt the words form on my tongue. That is Alfred, I would have said, pointing at him, and all my world would have changed and there would have been no more England. Yet, at the last moment, when the first word was on my tongue, I choked it back. Brida was watching me, her shrewd eyes calm, and I caught her gaze and I thought of Iseult. In a year or two, I thought, Iseult would look like Brida. They had the same tense beauty, the same dark colouring and the same smouldering fire in the soul. If I spoke, I thought, Iseult would be dead, and I could not bear that. And I thought of Æthelflaed, Alfred’s daughter, and knew she would be enslaved, and also knew that wherever the remnants of the Saxons gathered about their fires of exile my name would be cursed. I would be Uhtredærwe for ever, the man who destroyed a people.

      ‘What were you about to say?’ Brida asked.

      ‘That we have never known such a hard winter in Wessex.’

      She gazed at me, not believing my answer. Then she smiled. ‘Tell me, Uhtred,’ she spoke in English, ‘if you thought Ragnar was dead then why did you come here?’

      ‘Because I don’t know where else to be,’ I said.

      ‘So you came here? To Guthrum? Whom you insulted?’

      So they knew about that. I had not expected them to know and I felt a surge of fear. I said nothing.

      ‘Guthrum wants you dead,’ Brida said, speaking in Danish now.

      ‘He doesn’t mean it,’ Ragnar СКАЧАТЬ