The Last Kingdom

by Bernard Cornwell

  It was not a clean thrust, nor did I have the weight to hurl him back, but the spear point punctured his belly and then his weight pushed me back as he half snarled and half gasped, and I fell, and he fell on top of me, forced sideways because the spear was in his guts, and he tried to take a grip of my throat, but I wriggled out from beneath him, picked up his own eel spear, and rammed it at his throat. There were rivulets of blood on the earth, droplets spraying in the air, and he was jerking and choking, blood bubbling at his ripped throat, and I tried to pull the eel spear back, but the barbs on the points were caught in his gullet, so I ripped the war spear from his belly and tried to stop him jerking by thrusting it down hard into his chest, but it only glanced off his ribs. He was making a terrible noise, and I suppose I was in a panic, and I was unaware that Ragnar and his men were almost helpless with laughter as they watched me try to kill the East Anglian. I did, in the end, or else he just bled to death, but by then I had poked and stabbed and torn him until he looked as though a pack of wolves had set on him.

  But I got a third arm ring, and there were grown warriors in Ragnar’s band who only wore three. Rorik was jealous, but he was younger and his father consoled him that his time would come. “How does it feel?” Ragnar asked me.

  “Good,” I said, and God help me, it did.

  It was then that I first saw Brida. She was my age, black haired, thin as a twig, with big dark eyes and a spirit as wild as a hawk in spring, and she was among the captured women and, as the Danes began dividing those captives among themselves, an older woman pushed the child forward as if giving her to the Vikings. Brida snatched up a piece of wood and turned on the woman and beat at her, driving her back, screaming that she was a sour-faced bitch, a dried up hank of gristle, and the older woman tripped and fell into a patch of nettles where Brida went on thrashing her. Ragnar was laughing, but eventually pulled the child away and, because he loved anyone with spirit, gave her to me. “Keep her safe,” he said, “and burn that last house.”

  So I did.

  And I learned another thing.

  Start your killers young, before their consciences are grown. Start them young and they will be lethal.

  We took our plunder back to the ships and that night, as I drank my ale, I thought of myself as a Dane. Not English, not anymore. I was a Dane and I had been given a perfect childhood, perfect, at least, to the ideas of a boy. I was raised among men, I was free, I ran wild, I was encumbered by no laws, I was troubled by no priests, I was encouraged to violence, and I was rarely alone.

  And it was that, that I was rarely alone, which kept me alive.

  Every raid brought more horses, and more horses meant more men could go farther afield and waste more places, steal more silver, and take more captives. We had scouts out now, watching for the approach of King Edmund’s army. Edmund ruled East Anglia and unless he wished to collapse as feebly as Burghred of Mercia, he had to send men against us to preserve his kingdom, and so we watched the roads and waited.

  Brida stayed close to me. Ragnar had taken a strong liking to her, probably because she treated him defiantly and because she alone did not weep when she was captured. She was an orphan and had been living in the house of her aunt, the woman whom she had beaten and whom she hated, and within days Brida was happier among the Danes than she had ever been among her own people. She was a slave now, a slave who was supposed to stay in the camp and cook, but one dawn as we went raiding she ran after us and hauled herself up behind my saddle and Ragnar was amused by that and let her come along.

  We went far south that day, out of the flatlands where the marshes stretched, and into low wooded hills among which were fat farms and a fatter monastery. Brida laughed when Ragnar killed the abbot, and afterward, as the Danes collected their plunder, she took my hand and led me over a low rise to a farm that had already been plundered by Ragnar’s men. The farm belonged to the monastery and Brida knew the place because her aunt had frequently gone to the monastery to pray. “She wanted children,” Brida said, “and only had me.” Then she pointed at the farm and watched for my reaction.

  It was a Roman farm, she told me, though like me she had little idea who the Romans really were, only that they had once lived in England and then had gone. I had seen plenty of their buildings before—there were some in Eoferwic—but those other buildings had crumbled, then been patched with mud and reroofed with thatch, while this farm looked as though the Romans had only just left.

  It was astonishing. The walls were of stone, perfectly cut, square, and close-mortared, and the roof was of tile, patterned and tight-fitting, and inside the gate was a courtyard surrounded with a pillared walkway, and in the largest room was an amazing picture on the floor, made up of thousands of small colored stones, and I gaped at the leaping fish that were pulling a chariot in which a bearded man stood holding an eel spear like the one I had faced in Brida’s village. Hares surrounded the picture, chasing one another through looping strands of leaves. There had been other pictures painted on the walls, but they had faded or else been discolored by water that had leaked through the old roof. “It was the abbot’s house,” Brida told me, and she took me into a small room where there was a cot beside which one of the abbot’s servants lay dead in his own blood. “He brought me in here,” she said.

  “The abbot did?”

  “And told me to take my clothes off.”

  “The abbot did?” I asked again.

  “I ran away,” she said in a very matter-of-fact tone, “and my aunt beat me. She said I should have pleased him and he’d have rewarded us.”

  We wandered through the house and I felt a wonder that we could no longer build like this. We knew how to sink posts in the ground and make beams and rafters and roof them with thatch from rye or reed, but the posts rotted, the thatch moldered, and the houses sagged. In summer our houses were winter dark, and all year they were choked with smoke, and in winter they stank of cattle, yet this house was light and clean and I doubted any cow had ever dunged on the man in his fish-drawn chariot. It was an unsettling thought, that somehow we were sliding back into the smoky dark and that never again would man make something so perfect as this small building. “Were the Romans Christians?” I asked Brida.

  “Don’t know,” she said. “Why?”

  “Nothing,” I said, but I had been thinking that the gods reward those they love and it would have been nice to know which gods had looked after the Romans. I hoped they had worshipped Odin, though these days, I knew, they were Christians because the pope lived in Rome and Beocca had taught me that the pope was the chief of all the Christians, and was a very holy man. His name, I remembered, was Nicholas. Brida could not have cared less about the gods of the Romans. Instead she knelt to explore a hole in the floor that seemed to lead only to a cellar so shallow that no person could ever get inside. “Maybe elves lived there?” I suggested.

  “Elves live in the woods,” she insisted. She decided the abbot might have hidden treasures in the space and borrowed my sword so she could widen the hole. It was not a real sword, merely a saxe, a very long knife, but Ragnar had given it to me and I wore it proudly.

  “Don’t break the blade,” I told her, and she stuck her tongue out at me, then began prising the mortar at the hole’s edge while I went back to the courtyard to look at the raised pond that was green and scummy now, but somehow I knew it had once been filled with clear water. A frog crawled onto the small stone island in the center and I again remembered my father’s verdict on the East Anglians: mere frogs.

  Weland came through the gate. He stopped just inside and licked his lips, tongue flickering, then half smiled. “Lost your saxe, Uhtred?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Ragnar sent me,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

  I nodded, said nothing, but knew that Ragnar would have sounded a horn if we were truly ready to leave.

  “So come on, boy,” he said.

  I nodded again, still said nothing.

  His dark eyes gl
anced at the building’s empty windows, then at the pool. “Is that a frog,” he asked, “or a toad?”

  “A frog.”

  “In Frankia,” he said, “men say you can eat frogs.” He walked toward the pool and I moved to stay on the far side from him, keeping the raised stone structure between us. “Have you eaten a frog, Uhtred?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to?”

  “No.”

  He put a hand into a leather bag that hung from his sword belt, which was strapped over a torn mail coat. He had money now, two arm rings, proper boots, an iron helmet, a long sword, and the mail coat that needed mending, but was far better protection than the rags he had worn when he first came to Ragnar’s house. “This coin if you catch a frog,” he said, spinning a silver penny in the air.

  “I don’t want to catch a frog,” I said sullenly.

  “I do,” he said, grinning, and he drew the sword, its blade hissing on the scabbard’s wooden throat, and he stepped into the pool, the water not reaching the tops of his boots, and the frog leaped away, plopping into the green scum, and Weland was not looking at the frog, but at me, and I knew he was going to kill me, but for some reason I could not move. I was astonished, and yet I was not astonished. I had never liked him, never trusted him, and I understood that he had been sent to kill me and had only failed because I had always been in company until this moment when I had let Brida lead me away from Ragnar’s band. So Weland had his chance now. He smiled at me, reached the center of the pool, came closer, raised the sword, and I found my feet at last and raced back into the pillared walkway. I did not want to go into the house, for Brida was there, and I knew he would kill her if he found her. He jumped out of the pond and chased me, and I raced down the walkway, around the corner, and he cut me off, and I dodged back, wanting to reach the gateway, but he knew that was what I wanted and he took care to keep between me and my escape. His boots left wet footprints on the Roman flag-stones.

  “What’s the matter, Uhtred,” he asked, “frightened of frogs?”

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Not so cocky now, eh, ealdorman?” He stalked toward me, sword flashing from side to side. “Your uncle sends his regards and trusts you will burn in hell while he lives in Bebbanburg.”

  “You come from…” I began, but it was obvious Weland was serving Ælfric so I did not bother to finish the question, but instead edged backward.

  “The reward for your death will be the weight of his newborn child in silver,” Weland said, “and the child should be born by now. And he’s impatient for your death, your uncle is. I almost managed to track you down that night outside Snotengaham, and almost hit you with an arrow last winter, but you ducked. Not this time, but it will be quick, boy. Your uncle said to make it quick, so kneel down, boy, just kneel.” He swept the blade left and right, his wrist whippy so the sword hissed. “I haven’t given her a name yet,” he said. “Perhaps after this she’ll be known as Orphan-Killer.”

  I feinted right, went left, but he was quick as a stoat and he blocked me, and I knew I was cornered, and he knew it, too, and smiled. “I’ll make it quick,” he said, “I promise.”

  Then the first roof tile hit his helmet. It could not have hurt much, but the unexpected blow jarred him backward and confused him, and the second tile hit his waist and the third smacked him on the shoulder, and Brida shouted from the roof, “Back through the house!” I ran, the lunging sword missing me by inches, and I twisted through the door, ran over the fish-drawn chariot, through a second door, another door, saw an open window and dove through, and Brida jumped down from the roof and together we ran for the nearby woods.

  Weland followed me, but he abandoned the pursuit when we vanished in the trees. Instead he went south, on his own, fleeing what he knew Ragnar would do to him, and for some reason I was in tears by the time I found Ragnar again. Why did I cry? I do not know, unless it was the confirmation that Bebbanburg was gone, that my beloved refuge was occupied by an enemy, and an enemy who, by now, might have a son.

  Brida received an arm ring, and Ragnar let it be known that if any man touched her he, Ragnar, would personally geld that man with a mallet and a plank-splitter. She rode home on Weland’s horse.

  And next day the enemy came.

  Ravn had sailed with us, blind though he was, and I was required to be his eyes so I described how the East Anglian army was forming on a low ridge of dry land to the south of our camp. “How many banners?” he asked me.

  “Twenty-three,” I said, after a pause to count them.

  “Showing?”

  “Mostly crosses,” I said, “and some saints.”

  “He’s a very pious man, King Edmund,” Ravn said. “He even tried to persuade me to become a Christian.” He chuckled at the memory. We were sitting on the prow of one of the beached ships, Ravn in a chair, Brida and I at his feet, and the Mercian twins, Ceolnoth and Ceolberht, on his far side. They were the sons of Bishop Æthelbrid of Snotengaham and they were hostages even though their father had welcomed the Danish army, but as Ravn said, taking the bishop’s sons hostage would keep the man honest. There were dozens of other such hostages from Mercia and Northumbria, all sons of prominent men, and all under sentence of death if their fathers caused trouble. There were other Englishmen in the army, serving as soldiers, and, if it were not for the language they spoke, they would have been indistinguishable from the Danes. Most of them were either outlaws or masterless men, but all were savage fighters, exactly the kind of men the English needed to face their enemy, but now those men were fighting for the Danes against King Edmund. “And he’s a fool,” Ravn said scornfully.

  “A fool?” I asked.

  “He gave us shelter during the winter before we attacked Eoferwic,” Ravn explained, “and we had to promise not to kill any of his churchmen.” He laughed softly. “What a very silly condition. If their god was any use then we couldn’t have killed them anyway.”

  “Why did he give you shelter?”

  “Because it was easier than fighting us,” Ravn said. He was using English because the other three children did not understand Danish, though Brida was learning quickly. She had a mind like a fox, quick and sly. Ravn smiled. “The silly King Edmund believed we would go away in the springtime and not come back, yet here we are.”

  “He shouldn’t have done it,” one of the twins put in. I could not tell them apart, but was annoyed by them for they were fierce Mercian patriots, despite their father’s change of allegiance. They were ten years old and forever upbraiding me for loving the Danes.

  “Of course he shouldn’t have done it,” Ravn agreed mildly.

  “He should have attacked you!” Ceolnoth or Ceolberht said.

  “He would have lost if he had,” Ravn said. “We made a camp, protected it with walls, and stayed there. And he paid us money to make no trouble.”

  “I saw King Edmund once,” Brida put in.

  “Where was that, child?” Ravn asked.

  “He came to the monastery to pray,” she said, “and he farted when he knelt down.”

  “No doubt their god appreciated the tribute,” Ravn said loftily, frowning because the twins were now making farting noises.

  “Were the Romans Christians?” I asked him, remembering my curiosity at the Roman farm.

  “Not always,” Ravn said. “They had their own gods once, but they gave them up to become Christians and after that they knew nothing but defeat. Where are our men?”

  “Still in the marsh,” I said.

  Ubba had hoped to stay in the camp and so force Edmund’s army to attack along the narrow neck of land and die on our short earthen wall, but instead the English had remained south of the treacherous lowland and were inviting us to attack them. Ubba was tempted. He had made Storri cast the runesticks and rumor said that the result was uncertain, and that fed Ubba’s caution. He was a fearsome fighter, but always wary when it came to picking a fight, but the runesticks had not predicted disaster and so he
had taken the army out into the marsh where it now stood on whatever patches of drier land it could find, and from where two tracks led up to the low ridge. Ubba’s banner, the famous raven on its three-sided cloth, was midway between the two paths, both of which were strongly guarded by East Anglian shield walls, and any attack up either path would mean that a few of our men would have to attack a lot of theirs, and Ubba must have been having second thoughts for he was hesitating. I described all that to Ravn.

  “It doesn’t do,” he told me, “to lose men, even if we win.”

  “But if we kill lots of theirs?” I asked.

  “They have more men, we have few. If we kill a thousand of theirs then they will have another thousand tomorrow, but if we lose a hundred men then we must wait for more ships to replace them.”

  “More ships are coming,” Brida said.

  “I doubt there will be any more this year,” Ravn said.

  “No,” she insisted, “now,” and she pointed and I saw four ships nosing their way through the tangle of low islands and shallow creeks.

  “Tell me,” Ravn said urgently.

  “Four ships,” I said, “coming from the west.”

  “From the west? Not the east?”

  “From the west,” I insisted, which meant they were not coming from the sea, but from one of the four rivers that flowed into the Gewæsc.

  “Prows?” Ravn demanded.

  “No beasts on the prows,” I said, “just plain wooden posts.”

  “Oars?”

  “Ten a side, I think, maybe eleven. But there are far more men than rowers.”

  “English ships!” Ravn sounded amazed, for other than small fishing craft and some tubby cargo vessels the English had few ships, yet these four were warships, built long and sleek like the Danish ships, and they were creeping through the mazy waterways to attack Ubba’s beached fleet. I could see smoke trickling from the foremost ship and knew they must have a brazier on board and so were planning to burn the Danish boats and thus trap Ubba.