The Last Kingdom Series Books 1-3: The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, The Lords of the North. Bernard Cornwell
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new guest. Ricsig of Dunholm, the man who had handed the captured monks to Ragnar, was declared the new king of Northumbria, and he rewarded Kjartan by allowing him to ravage any place that might have harboured rebels in league with Egbert. There had been no rebellion, of course, but Kjartan had invented one, and he savaged the few remaining monasteries and nunneries in Northumbria, thus becoming even wealthier, and he stayed as Ricsig’s chief warrior and tax collector.
All this passed us by. We brought in the harvest, feasted, and it was announced that at Yule there would be a wedding between Thyra and Anwend. Ragnar asked Ealdwulf the smith to make Anwend a sword as fine as Serpent-Breath, and Ealdwulf said he would and, at the same time, make me a short sword of the kind Toki had recommended for fighting in the shield wall, and he made me help him beat out the twisted rods. All that autumn we worked until Ealdwulf had made Anwend’s sword and I had helped make my own sax. I called her Wasp-Sting because she was short and I could not wait to try her out on an enemy, which Ealdwulf said was foolishness. ‘Enemies come soon enough in a man’s life,’ he told me, ‘you don’t need to seek them out.’
I made my first shield in the early winter, cutting the limewood, forging the great boss with its handle that was held through a hole in the wood, painting it black and rimming it with an iron strip. It was much too heavy, that shield, and later I learned how to make them lighter, but as the autumn came I carried shield, sword and sax everywhere, accustoming myself to their weight, practising the strokes and parries, dreaming. I half feared and half longed for my first shield wall, for no man was a warrior until he had fought in the shield wall, and no man was a real warrior until he had fought in the front rank of the shield wall, and that was death’s kingdom, the place of horror, but like a fool I aspired to it.
And we readied ourselves for war. Ragnar had promised his support to Guthrum and so Brida and I made more charcoal and Ealdwulf hammered out spear points and axe heads and spades, while Sigrid found joy in the preparations for Thyra’s wedding. There was a betrothal ceremony at the beginning of winter when Anwend, dressed in his best clothes that were neatly darned, came to our hall with six of his friends and he shyly proposed himself to Ragnar as Thyra’s husband. Everyone knew he was going to be her husband, but the formalities were important, and Thyra sat between her mother and father as Anwend promised Ragnar that he would love, cherish and protect Thyra, and then proposed a bride price of twenty pieces of silver which was much too high, but which, I suppose, meant he really loved Thyra.
‘Make it ten, Anwend,’ Ragnar said, generous as ever, ‘and spend the rest on a new coat.’
‘Twenty is good,’ Sigrid said firmly, for the bride price, though given to Ragnar, would become Thyra’s property once she was married.
‘Then have Thyra give you a new coat,’ Ragnar said, taking the money, and then he embraced Anwend and there was a feast and Ragnar was happier that night than he had been since Rorik’s death. Thyra watched the dancing, sometimes blushing as she met Anwend’s eyes. Anwend’s six friends, all warriors of Ragnar, would come back with him for the wedding and they would be the men who would watch Anwend take Thyra to his bed and only when they reported that she was a proper woman would the marriage be deemed to have taken place.
But those ceremonies would have to wait until Yule. Thyra would be wedded then, we would have our feast, the winter would be endured, we would go to war. In other words we thought the world would go on as it ever did.
And at the foot of Yggdrasil, the tree of life, the three spinners mocked us.
I have spent many Christmases at the West Saxon court. Christmas is Yule with religion, and the West Saxons managed to spoil the midwinter feast with chanting monks, droning priests and savagely long sermons. Yule is supposed to be a celebration and a consolation, a moment of warm brightness in the heart of winter, a time to eat because you know that the lean times are coming when food will be scarce and ice locks the land, and a time to be happy and get drunk and behave irresponsibly and wake up next morning wondering if you will ever feel well again, but the West Saxons handed the feast to the priests who made it as joyous as a funeral. I have never really understood why people think religion has a place in the midwinter feast, though of course the Danes remembered their gods at that time, and sacrificed to them, but they also believed Odin, Thor and the other gods were all feasting in Asgard and had no wish to spoil the feasts in Midgard, our world. That seems sensible, but I have learned that most Christians are fearfully suspicious of enjoyment and Yule offered far too much of that for their taste. Some folk in Wessex knew how to celebrate it, and I always did my best, but if Alfred was anywhere close then you could be sure that we were required to fast, pray and repent through the whole twelve days of Christmas.
Which is all by way of saying that the Yule feast where Thyra would be married was to be the greatest in Danish memory. We worked hard as it approached. We kept more animals alive than usual, and slaughtered them just before the feast so that their meat would not need to be salted, and we dug great pits where the pigs and cows would be cooked on huge gridirons that Ealdwulf made. He grumbled about it, saying that forging cooking implements took him away from his real work, but he secretly enjoyed it because he loved his food. As well as pork and beef we planned to have herring, salmon, mutton, pike, freshly baked bread, cheese, ale, mead, and, best of all, the puddings that were made by stuffing sheep intestines with blood, offal, oats, horseradish, wild garlic and juniper berries. I loved those puddings, and still do, all crisp on the outside, but bursting with warm blood when you bite into them. I remember Alfred grimacing with distaste as I ate one and as the bloody juices ran into my beard, but then he was sucking on a boiled leek at the time.
We planned sports and games. The lake in the heart of the valley had frozen and I was fascinated by the way the Danes strapped bones to their feet and glided on the ice, a pastime that lasted until the ice broke and a young man drowned, but Ragnar reckoned the lake would be hard frozen again after Yule and I was determined to learn the skill of ice-gliding. For the moment, though, Brida and I were still making charcoal for Ealdwulf who had decided to make Ragnar a sword, the finest he had ever made, and we were charged with turning two wagonloads of alderwood into the best possible fuel.
We planned to break the pile the day before the feast, but it was bigger than any we had made before and it was still not cool enough, and if you break a pile before it is ready then the fire will flare up with terrible force and burn all the half-made charcoal into ash, and so we made certain every vent was properly sealed and reckoned we would have time to break it on Yule morning before the celebrations began. Most of Ragnar’s men and their families were already at the hall, sleeping wherever they could find shelter and ready for the first meal of the day and for the games that would take place in the meadow before the marriage ceremony, but Brida and I spent that last night up at the pile for fear that some animal would scratch through the turf and so start a draught that would revive the burn. I had Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting, for I would go nowhere without them, and Brida had Nihtgenga, for she would go nowhere without him, and we were both swathed in furs because the night was cold. When a pile was burning you could rest on the turf and feel the heat, but not that night because the fire was almost gone.
‘If you go very still,’ Brida said after dark, ‘you can feel the spirits.’
I think I fell asleep instead, but sometime towards dawn I woke and found Brida was also asleep. I sat up carefully, so as not to wake her, and I stared into the dark and I went very still and listened for the sceadugengan. Goblins and elves and sprites and spectres and dwarves, all those things come to Midgard at night and prowl among the trees, and when we guarded the charcoal piles both Brida and I put out food for them so they would leave us in peace. So I woke, I listened, and I heard the small sounds of a wood at night, the things moving, the claws in the dead leaves, the wind’s soft sighs.
And then I heard the voices.
I woke Brida and we were both still. Nihtgenga growled softly until Brida whispered that he should be quiet.
Men were moving in the dark, and some were coming to the charcoal pile and we slipped away into the blackness under the trees. We could both move like shadows and Nihtgenga would make no sound without Brida’s permission. We had gone uphill because the voices were downhill, and we crouched in utter darkness and heard men moving around the charcoal