The Last Kingdom Series Books 4-6: Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings. Bernard Cornwell
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southern East Anglia, on the long intricate mudflats of the Temes estuary. ‘It isn’t much,’ he said, gesturing at his cargo. ‘I bought some hides and axe blades in Grantaceaster and thought I’d come upriver to see if you Saxons have any money left.’
‘You came upriver,’ I told him, ‘to see whether we’d finished the fortress. You’re a spy, Ulf, and I think I’ll hang you from a tree.’
‘No, you won’t,’ he said, unmoved by my words.
‘I’m bored,’ I said, putting the amber into my pouch, ‘and watching a Dane twitch on a rope would be amusing, wouldn’t it?’
‘You must have been laughing when you hanged Jarrel’s crew then,’ he said.
‘Was that who it was?’ I asked. ‘Jarrel? I didn’t ask his name.’
‘I saw thirty bodies,’ Ulf said, jerking his head downstream, ‘maybe more? All hanging from trees and I thought, that looks like Lord Uhtred’s work.’
‘Only thirty?’ I said, ‘there were fifty-three. I should add your miserable corpse, Ulf, to help make up the numbers.’
‘You don’t want me,’ Ulf said cheerfully, ‘you want a young one, because young ones twitch more than us old ones.’ He peered down at his boat and spat towards a red-haired boy who was staring vacantly across the river. ‘You could hang that little bastard. He’s my wife’s oldest boy and nothing but a piece of toad gristle. He’ll twitch.’
‘So who’s in Lundene these days?’ I asked.
‘Earl Haesten’s in and out,’ Ulf said, ‘more in than out.’
I was surprised by that. I knew Haesten. He was a young Dane who had once been my oath-man, but who had broken his oath and now aspired to be a warrior lord. He called himself an earl, which amused me, but I was surprised he had gone to Lundene. I knew he had made a walled camp on the coast of East Anglia, but now he had moved much closer to Wessex, which suggested he was looking for trouble. ‘So what’s he doing?’ I asked scornfully, ‘stealing his neighbours’ ducks?’
Ulf drew in a breath and shook his head. ‘He’s got allies, lord.’
Something in his tone made me wary. ‘Allies?’
‘The Thurgilson brothers,’ Ulf said, and touched his hammer amulet.
The name meant nothing to me then. ‘Thurgilson?’
‘Sigefrid and Erik,’ Elf said, still touching the hammer. ‘Norse earls, lord.’
That was something new. The Norse did not usually come to East Anglia or to Wessex. We often heard tales of their raids in the Scottish lands and in Ireland, but Norse chieftains rarely came close to Wessex. ‘What are Norsemen doing in Lundene?’ I asked.
‘They got there two days ago, lord,’ Ulf said, ‘with twenty-two keels. Haesten went with them, and he took nine ships.’
I whistled softly. Thirty-one ships was a fleet and it meant the brothers and Haesten together commanded an army of at least a thousand men. And those men were in Lundene and Lundene was on the frontier of Wessex.
Lundene was a strange city back then. Officially it was part of Mercia, but Mercia had no king and so Lundene had no ruler. It was neither Saxon nor Dane, but a mix of both, and a place where a man could become rich, dead, or both. It stood where Mercia, East Anglia and Wessex met, a city of merchants, tradesmen and seafarers. And now, if Ulf was right, it had an army of Vikings within its walls.
Ulf chuckled. ‘They’ve got you stopped up like a rat in a sack, lord.’
I wondered how a fleet had gathered and ridden the tide upstream to Lundene without my finding out long before it sailed. Coccham was the nearest burh to Lundene and I usually knew what happened there within a day, but now an enemy had occupied the city and I had known nothing about it. ‘Did the brothers send you to tell me this?’ I asked Ulf. I was assuming that the Thurgilson brothers and Haesten had only captured Lundene so that someone, probably Alfred, would pay them to go away. In which case it served their interest to let us know of their arrival.
Ulf shook his head. ‘I sailed as they arrived, lord. Bad enough having to pay you duty without giving half my goods to them.’ He shuddered. ‘The Earl Sigefrid’s a bad man, lord. Not someone to do business with.’
‘Why didn’t I know they were with Haesten?’ I asked.
‘They weren’t. They’ve been in Frankia. Sailed straight across the sea and up the river.’
‘With twenty-two ships of Norsemen,’ I said bitterly.
‘They’ve got everything, lord,’ Ulf said. ‘Danes, Frisians, Saxons, Norse, everything. Sigefrid finds men wherever the gods shake out their shit-pots. They’re hungry men, lord. Masterless men. Rogues. They come from all over.’
The masterless man was the worst kind. He owed no allegiance. He had nothing but his sword, his hunger and his ambition. I had been such a man in my time. ‘So Sigefrid and Erik will be trouble?’ I suggested mildly.
‘Sigefrid will,’ Ulf said. ‘Erik? He’s the younger. Men speak well of him, but Sigefrid can’t wait for trouble.’
‘He wants ransom?’ I asked.
‘He might,’ Ulf said dubiously. ‘He’s got to pay all those men, and he got nothing but mouse droppings in Frankia. But who’ll pay him ransom? Lundene belongs to Mercia, doesn’t it?’
‘It does,’ I said.
‘And there’s no king in Mercia,’ Ulf said. ‘Isn’t natural, is it? A kingdom without a king.’
I thought of Æthelwold’s visit and touched my amulet of Thor’s hammer. ‘Have you ever heard of the dead being raised?’ I asked Ulf.
‘The dead being raised?’ He stared at me, alarmed, and touched his own hammer amulet. ‘The dead are best left in Niflheim, lord.’
‘An old magic, perhaps?’ I suggested. ‘Raising the dead?’
‘You hear tales,’ Ulf said, now gripping his amulet tightly.
‘What tales?’
‘From the far north, lord. From the land of ice and birch. Strange things happen there. They say men can fly in the darkness, and I did hear that the dead walk on the frozen seas, but I never saw such a thing.’ He raised the amulet to his lips and kissed it. ‘I reckon they’re just stories to scare children on winter nights, lord.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, and turned as a boy came running along the foot of the newly raised wall. He jumped the timbers that would eventually make the fighting platform, skidded in a piece of mud, clambered up the bank and then stood, panting too hard to be able to speak. I waited until he caught his breath. ‘Haligast, lord,’ he said, ‘Haligast!’
Ulf looked at me quizzically. Like all traders he spoke some English, but haligast puzzled him. ‘The Holy Ghost,’ I translated into Danish.
‘Coming, lord,’ the boy gasped excitedly and pointed upriver. ‘Coming now!’
‘The Holy Ghost is coming?’ Ulf asked in alarm. He probably had no idea what the Holy Ghost was, but he knew enough to fear all spectres, and my recent question about the living dead had scared him.
‘Alfred’s ship,’ I explained, then turned back to the boy. ‘Is the king on board?’
‘His flag’s flying, lord.’
‘Then he is,’ I said.
Ulf pulled his tunic straight. ‘Alfred? What does he want?’
‘He wants to discover my loyalties,’ I said drily.
Ulf grinned. ‘So you might be the one who twitches on a rope, eh, lord?’
‘I