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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      ‘There’s some good in her then,’ Ælswith said grudgingly. She helped herself to one of the soft-boiled eggs. ‘But what will you do,’ she demanded of her husband, ‘if the Danes accuse you of rescuing the children?’

      ‘I shall lie, of course,’ Alfred said. Ælswith blinked at him, but the bishop mumbled that the lie would be for God and so forgivable.

      I had no intention of going to Winburnan. That was not because I was suddenly avid to be a Dane, but it had everything to do with Serpent-Breath. I loved that sword, and I had left it with Ragnar’s servants, and I wanted her back before my life took whatever path the spinners required of me and, to be sure, I had no wish to give up life with Ragnar for the scant joys of a monastery and a teacher. Brida, I knew, wished to go back to the Danes, and it was Alfred’s sensible insistence that we be removed from Baðum as soon as possible that gave us our opportunity.

      We were sent away next morning, before dawn, going south into a hilly country and escorted by a dozen warriors who resented the job of taking two children deep into the heartland of Wessex. I was given a horse, Brida was provided with a mule, and a young priest called Willibald was officially put in charge of delivering Brida to a nunnery and me to Abbot Hewald. Father Willibald was a nice man with an easy smile and a kind manner. He could imitate bird calls and made us laugh by inventing a conversation between a quarrelsome fieldfare with its chack-chack call and a soaring skylark, then he made us guess what birds he was imitating, and that entertainment, mixed in with some harmless riddles, took us to a settlement high above a soft-flowing river in the heavily wooded countryside. The soldiers insisted on stopping there because they said the horses needed a rest. ‘They really need ale,’ Willibald told us, and shrugged as if it was understandable.

      It was a warm day. The horses were hobbled outside the hall, the soldiers got their ale, bread and cheese, then sat in a circle and threw dice and grumbled, leaving us to Willibald’s supervision, but the young priest stretched out on a half-collapsed haystack and fell asleep in the sunlight. I looked at Brida, she looked at me, and it was as simple as that. We crept along the side of the hall, circled an enormous dungheap, dodged through some pigs that rooted in a field, wriggled through a hedge and then we were in woodland where we both started to laugh. ‘My mother insisted I call him uncle,’ Brida said in her small voice, ‘and the nasty Danes killed him,’ and we both thought that was the funniest thing we had ever heard, and then we came to our senses and hurried northwards.

      It was a long time before the soldiers searched for us, and later they brought hunting dogs from the hall where they had purchased ale, but by then we had waded up a stream, changed direction again, found higher ground, and hidden ourselves. They did not find us, though all afternoon we could hear the hounds baying in the valley. They must have been searching the riverbank, thinking we had gone there, but we were safe and alone and high.

      They searched for two days, never coming close, and on the third day we saw Alfred’s royal cavalcade riding south on the road under the hill. The meeting at Baðum was over, and that meant the Danes were retreating to Readingum and neither of us had any idea how to reach Readingum, but we knew we had travelled west to reach Baðum, so that was a start, and we knew we had to find the River Temes, and our only two problems were food and the need to avoid being caught.

      That was a good time. We stole milk from the udders of cows and goats. We had no weapons, but we fashioned cudgels from fallen branches and used them to threaten some poor old man who was patiently digging a ditch and had a small sack with bread and pease pudding for his meal, and we stole that, and we caught fish with our hands, a trick that Brida taught me, and we lived in the woods. I wore my hammer amulet again. Brida had thrown away her wooden crucifix, but I kept the silver one for it was valuable.

      After a few days we began travelling by night. We were both frightened at first, for the night is when the sceadugengan stir from their hiding places, but we became good at traversing the darkness. We skirted farms, following the stars, and we learned how to move without noise, how to be shadows. One night something large and growling came close and we heard it shifting, pawing the ground, and we both beat at the leaf mould with our cudgels and yelped and the thing went away. A boar? Perhaps. Or perhaps one of the shapeless, nameless sceadugengan that curdle dreams.

      We had to cross a range of high, bare hills where we managed to steal a lamb before the shepherd’s dogs even knew we were there. We lit a fire in the woods north of the hills and cooked the meat, and next night we found the river. We did not know what river, but it was wide, it flowed beneath deep trees, and nearby was a settlement where we saw a small round boat made of bent willow sticks covered with goatskin, and that night we stole the boat and let it carry us downstream, past settlements, under bridges, ever going east.

      We did not know it, but the river was the Temes, and so we came safe to Readingum.

      Rorik had died. He had been sick for so long, but there were times when he had seemed to recover, but whatever illness carried him away had done so swiftly and Brida and I reached Readingum on the day that his body was burned. Ragnar, in tears, stood by the pyre and watched as the flames consumed his son. A sword, a bridle, a hammer amulet and a model ship had been placed on the fire, and after it was done the melted metal was placed with the ashes in a great pot that Ragnar buried close to the Temes. ‘You are my second son now,’ he told me that night, and then remembered Brida, ‘and you are my daughter.’ He embraced us both, then got drunk. Next morning he wanted to ride out and kill West Saxons, but Ravn and Halfdan restrained him.

      The truce was holding. Brida and I had only been gone a little over three weeks and already the first silver was coming to Readingum, along with fodder and food. Alfred, it seemed, was a man of his word and Ragnar was a man of grief. ‘How will I tell Sigrid?’ he wanted to know.

      ‘It is bad for a man to have only one son,’ Ravn told me, ‘almost as bad as having none. I had three, but only Ragnar lives. Now only his eldest lives.’ Ragnar the Younger was still in Ireland.

      ‘He can have another son,’ Brida said.

      ‘Not from Sigrid,’ Ravn said, ‘but he could take a second wife, I suppose. It is sometimes done.’

      Ragnar had given me back Serpent-Breath, and another arm ring. He gave a ring to Brida too, and he took some consolation from the story of our escape. We had to tell it to Halfdan and to Guthrum the Unlucky, who stared at us dark-eyed as we described the meal with Alfred, and Alfred’s plans to educate me, and even grief-stricken Ragnar laughed when Brida retold the story of how she had claimed to be King Edmund’s bastard.

      ‘This Queen Ælswith,’ Halfdan wanted to know, ‘what is she like?’

      ‘No queen,’ I said, ‘the West Saxons won’t have queens.’ Beocca had told me that. ‘She is merely the king’s wife.’

      ‘She is a weasel pretending to be a thrush,’ Brida said.

      ‘Is she pretty?’ Guthrum asked.

      ‘A pinched face,’ Brida said, ‘and piggy eyes and a pursed mouth.’

      ‘He’ll get no joy there then,’ Halfdan said, ‘why did he marry her?’

      ‘Because she’s from Mercia,’ Ravn said, ‘and Alfred would have Mercia on his side.’

      ‘Mercia belongs to us,’ Halfdan growled.

      ‘But Alfred would take it back,’ Ravn said, ‘and what we should do is send ships with rich gifts for the Britons. If they attack from Wales and Cornwalum then he must divide his army.’

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