The Last Kingdom Series Books 1-6. Bernard Cornwell
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cloak from about Iseult’s neck. Beneath it she wore a black dress. I still had Serpent-Breath drawn and I used the bloodied blade to slash at the cloak until I could tear a strip from its hem. Iseult watched me, her face showing nothing. When the strip was torn away I gave her back the cloak, then tied one end of the cloth strip about her neck and tied the other end to my belt. ‘She’s mine,’ I said.
More Danes were coming into the hall and some stared wolfishly at Iseult, and then Svein arrived and snarled at his men to start digging up the hall floor to search for hidden coins or silver. He grinned when he saw Iseult’s leash. ‘You can have her, Saxon,’ he said. ‘She’s pretty, but I like them with more meat on the bone.’
I kept Iseult with me as we feasted that night. There was a good deal of ale and mead in the settlement and so I ordered my men not to fight with the Danes, and Svein told his men not to fight with us, and on the whole we were obeyed, though inevitably some men quarrelled over the captured women and one of the boys I had brought from my estate got a knife in his belly and died in the morning.
Svein was amused that we were a West Saxon ship. ‘Alfred sent you?’ he asked me.
‘No.’
‘He doesn’t want to fight, does he?’
‘He’ll fight,’ I said, ‘except he thinks his god will do the fighting for him.’
‘Then he’s an idiot,’ Svein said, ‘the gods don’t do our bidding. I wish they did.’ He sucked on a pork bone. ‘So what are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘Looking for money,’ I said, ‘the same as you.’
‘I’m looking for allies,’ he said.
‘Allies?’
He was drunk enough to speak more freely than he had when we first met, and I realised this was indeed the Svein who was said to be gathering men in Wales. He admitted as much, but added he did not have enough warriors. ‘Guthrum can lead two thousand men to battle, maybe more! I have to match that.’
So he was a rival to Guthrum. I tucked that knowledge away. ‘You think the Cornishmen will fight with you?’
‘They promised they would,’ he said, spitting out a shred of gristle. ‘That’s why I came here. But the bastards lied. Callyn isn’t a proper king, he’s a village chief! I’m wasting my time here.’
‘Could the two of us beat Callyn?’ I asked.
Svein thought about it, then nodded. ‘We could.’ He frowned suddenly, staring into the hall’s shadows, and I saw he was looking at one of his men who had a girl on his lap. He evidently liked the girl for he slapped the table, pointed to her, beckoned, and the man reluctantly brought her. Svein sat her down, pulled her tunic open so he could see her breasts, then gave her his pot of ale. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he told me.
‘Or are you thinking of attacking me?’ I asked.
He grinned. ‘You are Uhtred Ragnarson,’ he said, ‘and I heard about the fight on the river where you killed Ubba.’
I evidently had more of a reputation among my enemies than I did among my so-called friends. Svein insisted I tell the tale of Ubba’s death, which I did, and I told him the truth which was that Ubba had slipped and fallen, and that had let me take his life.
‘But men say you fought well,’ Svein said.
Iseult listened to all this. She did not speak our language, but her big eyes seemed to follow every word. When the feast was over I took her to the small rooms at the back of the hall and she used my makeshift leash to pull me into her wood-walled chamber. I made a bed from our cloaks. ‘When this is done,’ I told her in words she could not understand, ‘you’ll have lost your power.’
She touched a finger to my lips to silence me and she was a queen so I obeyed her.
In the morning we finished ravaging the town. Iseult showed me which houses might have something of value and generally she was right though the search meant demolishing the houses, for folk hide their small treasures in their thatch, so we scattered rats and mice as we hauled down the mouldy straw and sifted through it, and afterwards we dug under every hearth, or wherever else a man might bury silver, and we collected every scrap of metal, every cooking pot or fish-hook, and the search took all day. That night we divided the hoard on the beach.
Svein had evidently thought about Callyn and, being sober by the time he did his thinking, he had decided that the king was too strong. ‘We can easily beat him,’ he said, ‘but we’ll lose men.’
A ship’s crew can only endure so many losses. We had lost none in the fight against Peredur, but Callyn was a stronger king and he was bound to be suspicious of Svein which meant that he would have his household troops ready and armed. ‘And he’s got little enough to take,’ Svein said scornfully.
‘He’s paying you?’
‘He’s paying me,’ Svein said, ‘just as Peredur paid you.’
‘I split that with you,’ I said.
‘Not the money he paid you before the fight,’ Svein said with a grin, ‘you didn’t split that.’
‘What money?’ I asked.
‘So we’re even,’ he said, and we had both done well enough out of Peredur’s death, for Svein had slaves and we each now possessed over nine hundred shillings’ worth of silver and metal, which was not a fortune, especially once it was divided among the men, but it was better than I had done so far on the voyage. I also had Iseult. She was no longer leashed to me, but she stayed beside me and I sensed that she was happy about that. She had taken a vicious pleasure in seeing her home destroyed and I decided she must have hated Peredur. He had feared her and she had hated him, and if it was true that she had been able to see the future then she had seen me and given her husband bad advice to make that future come true.
‘So where do you go now?’ Svein asked. We were walking along the beach, past the huddled slaves who watched us with dark, resentful eyes.
‘I have a mind,’ I said, ‘to go into the Sæfern Sea.’
‘There’s nothing left there,’ he said scornfully.
‘Nothing?’
‘It’s been scoured,’ he said, meaning that Danish and Norse ships had bled the coasts dry of any treasure. ‘All you’ll find in the Sæfern Sea,’ he went on, ‘are our ships bringing men from Ireland.’
‘To attack Wessex?’
‘No!’ He grinned at me. ‘I’ve a mind to start trading with the Welsh kingdoms.’
‘And I have a mind,’ I said, ‘to take my ship to the moon and build a feasting hall there.’
He laughed. ‘But speaking of Wessex,’ he said, ‘I hear they’re building a church where you killed Ubba?’
‘I hear the same.’
‘A church with an altar of gold?’
‘I’ve heard that too,’ I allowed. I hid my surprise that he knew of Odda the Younger’s plans, but I should not have been surprised. A rumour of gold would spread like couch grass. ‘I’ve heard it,’ I said again, ‘but I don’t believe it.’
‘Churches have money,’ he said thoughtfully, then frowned, ‘but that’s a strange place to build a church.’
‘Strange, why?’
‘So close to the sea? An easy place to attack?’
‘Or perhaps they want you to attack,’ I said, ‘and have men ready to defend it?’
‘A lure, you mean?’ He thought about that.
‘And hasn’t Guthrum given orders that the West Saxons aren’t to be provoked,’ I said.
‘Guthrum