The Last Kingdom Series Books 4-6: Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings. Bernard Cornwell
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is he doing there?’ Haesten asked.
‘Making a sacrifice, lord,’ the steward said.
‘Then we’ll join him,’ Haesten said, looking at me for confirmation.
‘We will,’ I said.
We rode the short distance. Beggars shrank from us. We had money, and they knew it, but they dared not ask for it because we were armed strangers. Swords, shields, axes and spears hung beside our horses’ muddy flanks. Shopkeepers bowed to us, while women hid their children in their skirts. Most of the folk who lived in the Roman part of Lundene were Danes, yet even these Danes were nervous. Their city had been occupied by Sigefrid’s crewmen who would be hungry for money and women.
I knew the Roman arena. When I was a child I was taught the fundamental strokes of the sword by Toki the Shipmaster, and he had given me those lessons in the great oval arena that was surrounded by decayed layers of stone where wooden benches had once been placed. The tiered stone layers were almost empty, except for a few idle folk who were watching the men in the centre of the weed-choked arena. There must have been forty or fifty men there, and a score of saddled horses were tethered at the far end, but what surprised me most as I rode through the high walls of the entrance, was a Christian cross planted in the middle of the small crowd.
‘Sigefrid’s a Christian?’ I asked Haesten in astonishment.
‘No!’ Haesten said forcefully.
The men heard our hoofbeats and turned towards us. They were all dressed for war, grim in mail or leather and armed with swords or axes, but they were cheerful. Then, from the centre of that crowd, from a place close to the cross, stalked Sigefrid.
I knew him without having to be told who he was. He was a big man, and made to look even bigger for he wore a great cloak of black bear’s fur that swathed him from neck to ankles. He had tall black leather boots, a shining mail coat, a sword belt studded with silver rivets, and a bushy black beard that sprang from beneath his iron helmet that was chased with silver patterns. He pulled the helmet off as he strode towards us and his hair was as black and bushy as his beard. He had dark eyes in a broad face, a nose that had been broken and squashed, and a wide slash of a mouth that gave him a grim appearance. He stopped, facing us, and set his feet wide apart as though he waited for an attack.
‘Lord Sigefrid!’ Haesten greeted him with forced cheerfulness.
‘Lord Haesten! Welcome back! Welcome indeed.’ Sigefrid’s voice was curiously high-pitched, not feminine, but it sounded odd coming from such a huge and malevolent-looking man. ‘And you!’ he pointed a black-gloved hand towards me, ‘must be the Lord Uhtred!’
‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I named myself.
‘And you are welcome, welcome indeed!’ He stepped forward and took my reins himself, which was an honour, and then he smiled up at me and his face, that had been so fearsome, was suddenly mischievous, almost friendly. ‘They say you are tall, Lord Uhtred!’
‘So I am told,’ I said.
‘Then let us see who is taller,’ he suggested genially, ‘you or I?’ I slid from the saddle and eased the stiffness from my legs. Sigefrid, vast in his fur cloak, still held my reins and still smiled. ‘Well?’ he demanded of the men nearest to him.
‘You are taller, lord,’ one of them said hastily.
‘If I asked you who was the prettiest,’ Sigefrid said, ‘what would you say?’
The man looked from Sigefrid to me and from me to Sigefrid and did not know what to say. He just looked terrified.
‘He fears that if he gives the wrong answer,’ Sigefrid confided to me in an amused voice, ‘that I would kill him.’
‘And would you?’ I asked.
‘I would think about it. Here!’ he called to the man, who came nervously forward. ‘Take the reins,’ Sigefrid said, ‘and walk the horse. So who’s taller?’ This last question was to Haesten.
‘You are the same height,’ Haesten said.
‘And just as pretty as each other,’ Sigefrid said, then laughed. He put his arms around me and I smelt the rank stench of his fur cloak. He hugged me. ‘Welcome, Lord Uhtred, welcome!’ He stepped back and grinned. I liked him at that moment because his smile was truly welcoming. ‘I have heard much of you!’ he declared.
‘And I of you, lord.’
‘And doubtless we were both told many lies! But good lies. I also have a quarrel with you.’ He grinned, waiting, but I offered him no response. ‘Jarrel!’ he explained, ‘you killed him.’
‘I did,’ I said. Jarrel had been the man leading the Viking crew I had slaughtered on the Temes.
‘I liked Jarrel,’ Sigefrid said.
‘Then you should have advised him to avoid Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said.
‘That is true,’ Sigefrid said, ‘and is it also true that you killed Ubba?’
‘I did.’
‘He must have been a hard man to kill! And Ivarr?’
‘I killed Ivarr too,’ I confirmed.
‘But he was old and it was time he went. His son hates you, you know that?’
‘I know that.’
Sigefrid snorted in derision. ‘The son is a nothing. A piece of gristle. He hates you, but why should the falcon care about the sparrow’s hate?’ He grinned at me, then looked at Smoca, my stallion, who was being walked about the arena so he could cool slowly after his long journey. ‘That,’ Sigefrid said admiringly, ‘is a horse!’
‘It is,’ I agreed.
‘Maybe I should take him from you?’
‘Many have tried,’ I said.
He liked that. He laughed again and put a heavy hand on my shoulder to lead me towards the cross. ‘You’re a Saxon, they tell me?’
‘I am.’
‘But no Christian?’
‘I worship the true gods,’ I said.
‘May they love and reward you for that,’ he said, and he squeezed my shoulder and, even through the mail and leather, I could feel his strength. He turned then. ‘Erik! Are you shy?’
His brother stepped out of the crowd. He had the same black bushy hair, though Erik’s was tied severely back with a length of cord. His beard was trimmed. He was young, maybe only twenty or twenty-one, and he had a broad face with bright eyes that were at once full of curiosity and welcome. I had been surprised to discover I liked Sigefrid, but it was no surprise to like Erik. His smile was instant, his face open and guileless. He was, like Gisela’s brother, a man you liked from the moment you met him.
‘I am Erik,’ he greeted me.
‘He is my adviser,’ Sigefrid said, ‘my conscience and my brother.’
‘Conscience?’
‘Erik would not kill a man for telling a lie, would you, brother?’
‘No,’ Erik said.
‘So he is a fool, but a fool I love.’ Sigefrid laughed. ‘But don’t think the fool is a weakling, Lord Uhtred. He fights like a demon from Niflheim.’ He slapped his brother on the shoulder, then took my elbow and led me on towards the incongruous cross. ‘I have prisoners,’ he explained as we neared the cross, and I saw that five men were kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs. They had been stripped of cloaks, weapons and tunics so that they wore only their trews. They shivered in the cold air.
The cross had been newly made from two beams of wood that had been crudely nailed together and then sunk into a hastily dug hole. The cross leaned slightly. At its foot were some heavy nails and a big