Bernard Cornwell - The Burning Land

‘Tell Harald his whore is here!’ I called over the river, ‘and that she’s noisy! Maybe we’ll cut out her tongue and send it to Harald for his supper!’

‘Goat turd,’ she spat at me, then reached over the palisade’s top and plucked out an arrow that had lodged in one of the oak trunks. Steapa immediately moved to disarm her, but I waved him back. Skade ignored us. She was gazing fixedly at the arrow head which, with a sudden wrench, she freed from the feathered shaft, that she tossed over the wall. She gave me a glance, raised the arrow head to her lips, closed her eyes and kissed the steel. She muttered some words I could not hear, touched her lips to the steel again, then pushed it beneath her gown, hesitated, then jabbed the point into one of her breasts. She gave me a triumphant look as she brought the blood-stained steel into view, then she flung the arrow head into the river and lifted her hands and face to the late summer sky. She screamed to get the attention of the gods, and when the scream faded she turned back to me. ‘You’re cursed, Uhtred,’ she said with a tone she might have used to remark on unremarkable weather.

I resisted the impulse to touch the hammer hanging about my neck because to have done so would have shown that I feared her curse, which instead I pretended to dismiss with a sneer. ‘Waste your breath, whore,’ I said, yet I still moved my hand to my sword and rubbed a finger across the silver cross embedded in Serpent-Breath’s hilt. The cross meant nothing to me, except it had been a gift from Hild, once my lover and now an abbess of extraordinary piety. Did I think that touching the cross was a substitute for the hammer? The gods would not think so.

‘When I was a child,’ Skade said suddenly, and still using a conversational tone as though she and I were old friends, ‘my father beat my mother senseless.’

‘Because she was like you?’ I asked.

She ignored that. ‘He broke her ribs, an arm and her nose,’ she went on, ‘and later that day he took me to the high pastures to help bring back the herd. I was twelve years old. I remember there were snowflakes flying and I was frightened of him. I wanted to ask why he had hurt my mother, but I didn’t like to speak in case he beat me, but then he told me anyway. He said he wanted to marry me to his closest friend, and my mother had opposed the idea. I hated it too, but he said I would marry the man anyway.’

‘Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?’ I asked.

‘So I pushed him over a bluff,’ she said, ‘and I remember him falling through the snowflakes and I watched him bounce on the rocks and I heard him scream. His back was broken.’ She smiled. ‘I left him there. He was still alive when I brought the herd down. I scrambled down the rocks and pissed on his face before he died.’ She looked calmly at me. ‘That was my first curse, Lord Uhtred, but not my last. I will lift the curse on you if you let me go.’

‘You think you can frighten me into giving you back to Harald?’ I asked, amused.

‘You will,’ she said confidently, ‘you will.’

‘Take her away,’ I ordered, tired of her.

Harald came at midday. One of Steapa’s men brought me the news and I climbed again to the ramparts to discover that Harald Bloodhair was on the river’s farther bank with fifty companions, all in mail. His banner showed an axe blade and its pole was surmounted by a wolf-skull that had been painted red.

He was a big man. His horse was big too, but even so Harald Bloodhair seemed to dwarf the stallion. He was too distant for me to see him clearly, but his yellow hair, long, thick and unstained with any blood, was plainly visible, as was his broad beard. For a time he just stared at Æscengum’s wall, then he unbuckled his sword belt, threw the weapon to one of his men and spurred his horse into the river. It was a warm day, but his mail was still covered by a great cloak of black bear fur that made him appear monstrously huge. He wore gold on his wrists and about his neck, and more gold decorated his horse’s bridle. He urged the stallion to the river’s centre where the water surged over his boot tops. Any of the archers on Æscengum’s wall could have shot an arrow, but he had ostentatiously disarmed himself, which meant he wanted to talk and I gave orders that no one was to loose a bow at him. He took off his helmet and searched the men crowding the rampart until he saw Osferth in his circlet. Harald had never seen Alfred and mistook the bastard for the father. ‘Alfred!’ he shouted.

‘The king doesn’t talk with brigands,’ I called back.

Harald grinned. His face was broad as a barley-shovel, his nose hooked and crooked, his mouth wide, his eyes as feral as any wolf. ‘Are you Uhtred Turdson?’ he greeted me.

‘I know you’re Harald the Gutless,’ I responded with a dutiful insult.

He gazed at me. Now that he was closer I could see that his yellow hair and beard were dirt-flecked, ropy and greasy, like the hair from a corpse buried in dung. The river surged by his stallion. ‘Tell your king,’ Harald called to me, ‘that he can save himself much trouble by giving me his throne.’

‘He invites you to come and take it,’ I said.

‘But first,’ he leaned forward and patted his horse’s neck, ‘you will return my property.’

‘We have nothing of yours,’ I said.

‘Skade,’ he said flatly.

‘She’s yours?’ I asked, pretending surprise. ‘But surely a whore belongs to whoever can pay her?’

He gave me a look of instant hatred. ‘If you have touched her,’ he said, pointing a leather-gloved finger at me, ‘or if any of your men have touched her, then I swear on Thor’s prick I’ll make your deaths so slow that your screams will stir the dead in their caves of ice.’ He was a fool, I thought. A clever man would have pretended the woman meant little or nothing to him, but Harald was already revealing his price. ‘Show her to me!’ he demanded.

I hesitated, as if making up my mind, but I wanted Harald to see the bait and so I ordered two of Steapa’s men to fetch Skade. She arrived with the rope still around her neck, yet such was her beauty and her calm dignity that she dominated the rampart. I thought, at that moment, that she was the most queenlike of any woman I had ever seen. She moved to the palisade and smiled at Harald, who kicked his horse a few paces forward. ‘Have they touched you?’ he shouted up to her.

She gave me a mocking look before answering. ‘They’re not men enough, my lord,’ she called.

‘Promise me!’ he shouted, and the desperation was plain in his voice.

‘I promise you,’ she answered, and her voice was a caress.

Harald wheeled his horse so it was sideways to me, then raised his gloved hand to point at me. ‘You showed her naked, Uhtred Turdson.’

‘Would you like me to show her that way again?’

‘For that you will lose your eyes,’ he said, prompting Skade to laugh. ‘Let her go now,’ Harald went on, ‘and I won’t kill you! Instead I’ll keep you blind and naked, on a rope’s end, and display you to all the world.’

‘You yelp like a puppy,’ I called.

‘Take the rope from her neck,’ Harald ordered me, ‘and send her to me now!’

‘Come and take her, puppy!’ I shouted back. I was feeling elated. Harald, I thought, was proving to be a headstrong fool. He wanted Skade more than he wanted Wessex, indeed more than he wanted all the treasures of Alfred’s kingdom. I remember thinking that I had him exactly where I wished him to be, on the end of my lead, but then he turned his horse and gestured towards the growing crowd of warriors on the river bank.

And from the trees that grew thick on that far bank emerged a line of women and children. They were our people, Saxons, and they were roped together because they had been taken for slavery. Harald’s men, as they ravaged through eastern Wessex, had doubtless captured every child and young woman they could find, and, when they had finished amusing themselves, would ship them to the slave markets of Frankia. But these women and infants were brought to the river’s edge where, on an order from Harald, they were made to kneel. The youngest child was about the age of my own Stiorra, and I can still see that child’s eyes as she stared up at me. She saw a warlord in shining glory and I saw nothing but pitiable despair.