The Last Kingdom Series Books 1-3: The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, The Lords of the North. Bernard Cornwell
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his one eye, but while the enmity between us, and between Ragnar and Kjartan, was obvious, no one made trouble and we left. The ships were hauled onto shore, the silver fetched from Readingum was shared out among the crews, and we went home carrying Rorik’s ashes.
Sigrid wailed at the news. She tore her dress and tangled her hair and screamed, and the other women joined her, and a procession carried Rorik’s ashes to the top of the nearest hill where the pot was buried, and afterwards Ragnar stayed there, looking across the hills and watching the white clouds sail across the western sky.
We stayed home all the rest of that year. There were crops to grow, hay to cut, a harvest to reap and to grind. We made cheese and butter. Merchants and travellers brought news, but none from Wessex where, it seemed, Alfred still ruled and had his peace, and so that kingdom remained, the last one of England. Ragnar sometimes spoke of returning there, carrying his sword to gain more riches, but the fight seemed to have gone from him that summer. He sent a message to Ireland, asking that his eldest son come home, but such messages were not reliable and Ragnar the Younger did not come that year. Ragnar also thought of Thyra, his daughter. ‘He says it’s time I married,’ she said to me one day as we churned butter.
‘You?’ I laughed.
‘I’m nearly fourteen!’ she said defiantly.
‘So you are. Who’ll marry you?’
She shrugged. ‘Mother likes Anwend.’ Anwend was one of Ragnar’s warriors, a young man not much older than me, strong and cheerful, but Ragnar had an idea she should marry one of Ubba’s sons, but that would mean she would go away and Sigrid hated that thought and Ragnar slowly came around to Sigrid’s way of thinking. I liked Anwend and thought he would make a good husband for Thyra who was growing ever more beautiful. She had long golden hair, wide-set eyes, a straight nose, unscarred skin, and a laugh that was like a ripple of sunshine. ‘Mother says I must have many sons,’ she said.
‘I hope you do.’
‘I’d like a daughter too,’ she said, straining with the churn because the butter was solidifying and the work getting harder. ‘Mother says Brida should marry as well.’
‘Brida might have different ideas,’ I said.
‘She wants to marry you,’ Thyra said.
I laughed at that. I thought of Brida as a friend, my closest friend, and just because we slept with each other, or we did when Sigrid was not watching, did not make me want to marry her. I did not want to marry at all, I thought only of swords and shields and battles, and Brida thought of herbs.
She was like a cat. She came and went secretly, and she learned all that Sigrid could teach her about herbs and their uses. Bindweed as a purgative, toadflax for ulcers, marsh marigold to keep elves away from the milk pails, chickweed for coughs, cornflower for fevers, and she learned other spells she would not tell me, women’s spells, and said that if you stayed silent in the night, unmoving, scarce breathing, the spirits would come, and Ravn taught her how to dream with the gods, which meant drinking ale in which pounded redcap mushrooms had been steeped, and she was often ill for she drank it too strong, but she would not stop, and she made her first songs then, songs about birds and about beasts, and Ravn said she was a true skald. Some nights, when we watched the charcoal burn, she would recite to me, her voice soft and rhythmic. She had a dog now that followed her everywhere. She had found him in Lundene on our homeward journey and he was black and white, as clever as Brida herself, and she called him Nihtgenga, which means night-walker, or goblin. He would sit with us by the charcoal pyre and I swear he listened to her songs. Brida made pipes from straw and played melancholy tunes and Nihtgenga would watch her with big sad eyes until the music overcame him and then he would raise his muzzle and howl, and we would both laugh and Nihtgenga would be offended and Brida would have to pet him back to happiness.
We forgot the war until, when the summer was at its height and a pall of heat lay over the hills, we had an unexpected visitor. Earl Guthrum the Unlucky came to our remote valley. He came with twenty horsemen, all dressed in black, and he bowed respectfully to Sigrid who chided him for not sending warning. ‘I would have made a feast,’ she said.
‘I brought food,’ Guthrum said, pointing to some packhorses, ‘I did not want to empty your stores.’
He had come from distant Lundene, wanting to talk with Ragnar and Ravn, and Ragnar invited me to sit with them because, he said, I knew more than most men about Wessex, and Wessex was what Guthrum wished to talk about, though my contribution was small. I described Alfred, described his piety, and warned Guthrum that though the West Saxon king was not an impressive man to look at, he was undeniably clever. Guthrum shrugged at that. ‘Cleverness is overrated,’ he said gloomily. ‘Clever doesn’t win battles.’
‘Stupidity loses them,’ Ravn put in, ‘like dividing the army when we fought outside Æbbanduna?’
Guthrum scowled, but decided not to pick a fight with Ravn, and instead asked Ragnar’s advice on how to defeat the West Saxons, and demanded Ragnar’s assurance that, come the new year, Ragnar would bring his men to Lundene and join the next assault. ‘If it is next year,’ Guthrum said gloomily. He scratched at the back of his neck, jiggling his mother’s gold-tipped bone that still hung from his hair. ‘We may not have sufficient men.’
‘Then we will attack the year after,’ Ragnar said.
‘Or the one after that,’ Guthrum said, then frowned. ‘But how do we finish the pious bastard?’
‘Split his forces,’ Ragnar said, ‘because otherwise we’ll always be outnumbered.’
‘Always? Outnumbered?’ Guthrum looked dubious at that assertion.
‘When we fought here,’ Ragnar said, ‘some Northumbrians decided not to fight us and they took refuge in Mercia. When we fought in Mercia and East Anglia the same thing happened, and men fled from us to find sanctuary in Wessex. But when we fight in Wessex they have nowhere to go. No place is safe for them. So they must fight, all of them. Fight in Wessex and the enemy is cornered.’
‘And a cornered enemy,’ Ravn put in, ‘is dangerous.’
‘Split them,’ Guthrum said pensively, ignoring Ravn again.
‘Ships on the south coast,’ Ragnar suggested, ‘an army on the Temes, and British warriors coming from Brycheinog, Glywysing and Gwent.’ Those were the southern Welsh kingdoms where the Britons lurked beyond Mercia’s western border. ‘Three attacks,’ Ragnar went on, ‘and Alfred will have to deal with them all and he won’t be able to do it.’
‘And you will be there?’ Guthrum asked.
‘You have my word,’ Ragnar said, and then the conversation turned to what Guthrum had seen on his journey, and admittedly he was a pessimistic man and prone to see the worst in everything, but he despaired of England. There was trouble in Mercia, he said, and the East Anglians were restless, and now there was talk that King Egbert in Eoferwic was encouraging revolt.
‘Egbert!’ Ragnar was surprised at the news, ‘he couldn’t encourage a piss out of a drunk man!’
‘It’s what I’m told,’ Guthrum said, ‘may not be true. Fellow called Kjartan told me.’
‘Then it’s almost certainly not true.’
‘Not true at all,’ Ravn agreed.
‘He seemed a good man to me,’ Guthrum said, obviously unaware of Ragnar’s history with Kjartan, and Ragnar did not enlighten him, and probably forgot the conversation once Guthrum had travelled on.
Yet Guthrum had been right. Plotting was going on in Eoferwic, though I doubt it was Egbert who did it. Kjartan did it, and he started by spreading rumours that King Egbert was secretly organising a rebellion, and the rumours became so loud and the king’s reputation so poisoned that one night Egbert, fearing for his life, managed to evade his Danish guards and flee south with a dozen companions. He took shelter with King Burghred of Mercia who, though his country was occupied by Danes, had been allowed to keep