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 He smiled at me expectantly.

      ‘A reeve’s daughter,’ I said flatly. ‘The king’s reeve? The shire reeve?’

      ‘Her father was reeve of southern Defnascir,’ Beocca said, sliding the man down the social ladder, ‘but he left Mildrith property. A fair piece of land near Exanceaster.’

      ‘A reeve’s daughter,’ I repeated, ‘not an Ealdorman’s daughter?’

      ‘She’s sixteen, I believe,’ Beocca said, gazing at the shingled beach sliding away to our east.

      ‘Sixteen,’ I said scathingly, ‘and unmarried, which suggests she has a face like a bag of maggots.’

      ‘That is hardly relevant,’ he said crossly.

      ‘You don’t have to sleep with her,’ I said, ‘and no doubt she’s pious?’

      ‘She is a devoted Christian, I’m happy to say.’

      ‘You’ve seen her?’ I asked.

      ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘but Alfred has talked of her.’

      ‘This is Alfred’s idea?’

      ‘He likes to see his men settled, to have their roots in the land.’

      ‘I’m not his man, father. I’m Uhtred of Bebbanburg, and the lords of Bebbanburg don’t marry pious maggot-faced bitches of low birth.’

      ‘You should meet her,’ he persisted, frowning at me. ‘Marriage is a wonderful thing, Uhtred, ordained by God for our happiness.’

      ‘How would you know?’

      ‘It is,’ he insisted weakly.

      ‘I’m already happy,’ I said. ‘I hump Brida and I kill Danes. Find another man for Mildrith. Why don’t you marry her? Good God, father, you must be near thirty! If you don’t marry soon you’ll go to your grave a virgin. Are you a virgin?’

      He blushed, but did not answer because Leofric came back to the steering deck with a black scowl. He never looked happy, but he appeared grimmer than ever at that moment and I had an idea that he had been arguing with Alfred, an argument he had plainly lost. Alfred himself followed, a serene look of indifference on his long face. Two of his priests trailed him, carrying parchment, ink and quills and I realised notes were being taken. ‘What would you say, Uhtred, was the most crucial equipment for a ship?’ Alfred asked me. One of the priests dipped his quill in the ink in readiness for my answer, then staggered as the ship hit a wave. God knows what his writing looked like that day. ‘The sail?’ Alfred prompted me. ‘Spears? Archers? Shields? Oars?’

      ‘Buckets,’ I said.

      ‘Buckets?’ He looked at me with disapproval, suspecting I was mocking him.

      ‘Buckets to bail the ship, lord,’ I said, nodding down into Heahengel’s belly where four men scooped out sea water and chucked it over the side, though a good deal landed on the rowers. ‘What we need, lord, is a better way of caulking ships.’

      ‘Write that down,’ Alfred instructed the priests, then stood on tiptoe to look across the intervening low land into the sea-lake where the enemy ships had been sighted.

      ‘They’ll be long gone,’ Leofric growled.

      ‘I pray not,’ Alfred said.

      ‘The Danes don’t wait for us,’ Leofric said. He was in a terrible mood, so terrible that he was willing to snarl at his king. ‘They aren’t fools,’ he went on, ‘they land, they raid and they go. They’ll have sailed on the ebb.’ The tide had just turned and was flooding against us now, though I never did quite understand the tides in the long waters from the sea to Hamtun for there were twice as many high tides there as anywhere else. Hamtun’s tides had a mind of their own, or else were confused by the channels.

      ‘The pagans were there at dawn,’ Alfred said.

      ‘And they’ll be miles away by now,’ Leofric said. He spoke to Alfred as if he were another crewman, using no respect, but Alfred was always patient with such insolence. He knew Leofric’s worth.

      But Leofric was wrong that day about the enemy. The Viking ships were not gone, but still off Heilincigae, all seven of them, having been trapped there by the falling tide. They were waiting for the rising water to float them free, but we arrived first, coming into the sea-lake through the narrow entrance which leads from the northern bank of the Solente. Once through the entrance a ship is in a world of marshes, sandbanks, islands and fish traps, not unlike the waters of the Gewæsc. We had a man aboard who had grown up on those waters, and he guided us, but the Danes had lacked any such expertise and they had been misled by a line of withies, stuck into the sand at low tide to mark a channel, which had been deliberately moved to entice them onto a mudbank on which they were now firmly stuck.

      Which was splendid. We had them trapped like foxes in a one-hole earth and all we had to do was anchor in the sea-lake entrance, hope our anchors held against the strong currents, wait for them to float off and then slaughter them, but Alfred was in a hurry. He wanted to get back to his land forces and insisted we return him to Hamtun before nightfall, and so, against Leofric’s advice, we were ordered to an immediate attack.

      That too was splendid, except that we could not approach the mudbank directly for the channel was narrow and it would mean going in single file and the lead ship would face seven Danish ships on its own, and so we had to row a long way to approach them from the south, which meant that they could escape to the sea-lake’s entrance if the tide floated them off, which it might very well do, and Leofric muttered into his beard that we were going about the battle all wrong. He was furious with Alfred.

      Alfred, meanwhile, was fascinated by the enemy ships, which he had never seen so clearly before. ‘Are the beasts representations of their gods?’ he asked me, referring to the finely carved prows and sterns that flaunted their monsters, dragons and serpents.

      ‘No, lord, just beasts,’ I said. I was beside him, having relinquished the steering oar to the man who knew these waters, and I told the king how the carved heads could be lifted off their posts so that they did not terrify the spirits of the land.

      ‘Write that down,’ he ordered a priest. ‘And the wind-vanes at the mastheads?’ he asked me, looking at the nearer one which was painted with an eagle, ‘are they designed to frighten the spirits?’

      I did not answer. Instead I was staring at the seven ships across the slick hump of the mudbank and I recognised one. Wind-Viper. The light-coloured strake in the bow was clear enough, but even so I would have recognised her. Wind-Viper, lovely Wind-Viper, ship of dreams, here at Heilincigae.

      ‘Uhtred?’ Alfred prompted me.

      ‘They’re just wind-vanes, lord,’ I said. And if Wind-Viper was here, was Ragnar here too? Or had Kjartan taken the ship and leased it to a shipmaster?

      ‘It seems a deal of trouble,’ Alfred said pettishly, ‘to decorate a ship.’

      ‘Men love their ships,’ I said, ‘and fight for them. You honour what you fight for, lord. We should decorate our ships.’ I spoke harshly, thinking we would love our ships more if they had beasts on their prows, and had proper names СКАЧАТЬ