Бернард Корнуэлл: War Lord

WAR LORD

Bernard Cornwell

Copyright

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2020

Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2020

Map © John Gilkes 2020

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

Cover photography © CollaborationJS/Arcangel Images

Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008183950

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2020 ISBN: 9780008183974

Version: 2020-09-15

Dedication

War Lord

is for Alexander Dreymon

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Place Names

Map

Part One : The Broken Oath

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Part Two : The Devil’s Work

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Part Three : The Slaughter

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Historical Note

Author Note

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Bernard Cornwell

The SHARPE series

About the Publisher

PLACE NAMES

The spelling of place names in Anglo-Saxon England was an uncertain business, with no consistency and no agreement even about the name itself. Thus London was variously rendered as Lundonia, Lundenberg, Lundenne, Lundene, Lundenwic, Lundenceaster and Lundres. Doubtless some readers will prefer other versions of the names listed below, but I have usually employed whichever spelling is cited in either the Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names or the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names for the years nearest or contained within Alfred’s reign, AD 871–899, but even that solution is not foolproof. Hayling Island, in 956, was written as both Heilincigae and Hæglingaiggæ. Nor have I been consistent myself; I have preferred the modern form Northumbria to Norðhymbralond to avoid the suggestion that the boundaries of the ancient kingdom coincide with those of the modern county. So this list of places mentioned in the book is, like the spellings themselves, capricious.

Bebbanburg

Bamburgh, Northumberland

Brynstæþ

Brimstage, Cheshire

Burgham

Eamont Bridge, Cumbria

Cair Ligualid

Carlisle, Cumbria

Ceaster

Chester, Cheshire

Dacore

Dacre, Cumbria

Dingesmere

Wallasey Pool, Cheshire

Dun Eidyn

Edinburgh, Scotland

Dunholm

Durham, County Durham

Eamotum

River Eamont

Eoferwic

York, Yorkshire

Farnea Islands

Farne Islands, Northumberland

Foirthe

River Forth

Heahburh

Whitley Castle, Cumbria

Hedene

River Eden

Hlymrekr

Limerick, Ireland

Jorvik

Norse name for York

Lauther

River Lowther

Legeceasterscir

Cheshire

Lindcolne

Lincoln, Lincolnshire

Lindisfarena

Lindisfarne Island, Northumbria

Lundene

London

Mærse

The Mersey

Mameceaster

Manchester

Mön

Isle of Man

Orkneyjar

Orkney Islands

Rammesburi

Ramsbury, Wiltshire

Ribbel

River Ribble

Scipton

Skipton, Yorkshire

Snæland

Iceland

Snotengaham

Nottingham, Nottinghamshire

Sumorsæte

Somerset

Strath Clota

Strathclyde

Suðreyjar

Hebrides

Temes

River Thames

Tesa

River Tees

Tinan

River Tyne

Tuede

River Tweed

Wiltunscir

Wiltshire

Wir

River Wyre

Wirhealum

The Wirral, Cheshire

Map

PART ONE

The Broken Oath

One

Chain mail is hot in summer, even when covered with a pale linen shift. The metal is heavy and heats relentlessly. Beneath the mail is a leather liner, and that is hot too, and the sun that morning was furnace hot. My horse was irritable, tormented by flies. There was hardly any wind across the hills that crouched under the midday sun. Aldwyn, my servant, carried my spear and my iron-bound shield that was painted with the wolf’s head of Bebbanburg. Serpent-Breath, my sword, hung on my left side, her hilt almost too hot to touch. My helmet, with its silver wolf’s head crest, was on the saddle’s pommel. The helmet would encase my whole head, was lined with leather, and had cheek-pieces that laced over my mouth so all an enemy would see were my eyes framed in battle-steel. They would not see the sweat or the scars of a lifetime of war.

They would see the wolf’s head, the gold about my neck, and the thick arm rings won in battle. They would know me, and the bravest of them, or the stupidest, would want to kill me for the renown my death would bring. Which is why I had brought eighty-three men to the hill, because to kill me they would have to deal with my warriors too. We were the warriors of Bebbanburg, the savage wolf pack of the north. And one priest.

The priest, mounted on one of my stallions, wore no mail nor carried a weapon. He was half my age, yet already showed grey at his temples. He had a long face, clean-shaven, with shrewd eyes. He wore a long black robe and had a golden cross hanging from his neck. ‘Aren’t you hot in that dress?’ I growled at him.

‘Uncomfortably,’ he said. We spoke in Danish, his native language and the tongue of my childhood.

‘Why,’ I asked, ‘am I always fighting for the wrong side?’

He smiled at that. ‘Even you can’t escape fate, Lord Uhtred. You must do God’s work whether you wish it or not.’

I bit back an angry retort and just stared into the wide treeless valley where the sun glared off pale rocks and shivered silver from a small stream. Sheep grazed high on the eastern hillside. The shepherd had seen us and was trying to move his flock south away from us, but his two dogs were hot, tired and thirsty and they panicked the sheep rather than herded them. The shepherd had nothing to fear from us, but he saw riders on the hill and saw sunlight glinting from weapons and so he feared. Deep in the valley the Roman road, now little more than a track of beaten earth edged with half-buried and overgrown stones, ran straight as a spear-haft beside the stream before bending west just beneath the hill where we waited. A hawk circled above the road’s bend, the still wings tilting to the warm air. The far southern horizon shimmered.

And from the shimmer one of my scouts appeared, galloping hard, and that meant only one thing. The enemy was coming.

I took my men and the one priest back so we were behind the skyline. I pulled Serpent-Breath a hand’s breadth from her scabbard, then let her rest again. Aldwyn offered me the shield, but I shook my head. ‘Wait till we see them,’ I told him. I gave him my helmet to hold, dismounted, and walked with Finan and my son to the crest where we lay staring southwards. ‘It all feels wrong,’ I said.