Bernard Cornwell - The Burning Land

She was beautiful. Even now I can close my eyes and see that long body standing in the buttercup-bright grass. The Danes in the valley were staring up, my men were gazing, and Skade stood there like a creature from Asgard come to the middle-earth. I did not doubt Harald would pay for her. Any man might have impoverished himself to possess Skade.

Finan gave me the rope’s end and I kicked my stallion forward and led her a third of the way down the slope. ‘Is Harald there?’ I asked her, nodding at the Danes who were two hundred paces away.

‘No,’ she said. Her voice was bitter and tight. She was ashamed and angry. ‘He’ll kill you for this,’ she said.

I smiled. ‘Harald Bloodhair,’ I said, ‘is a puking, shit-filled rat.’ I twisted in the saddle and waved to Osferth, who brought the surviving Danish prisoner down the slope. He was a young man and he looked up at me with fear in his pale blue eyes. ‘This is your chieftain’s woman,’ I said to him, ‘look at her.’

He hardly dared look at Skade’s nakedness. He just gave her a glance then gazed back at me.

‘Go,’ I told him, ‘and tell Harald Bloodhair that Uhtred of Bebbanburg has his whore. Tell Harald I have her naked, and that I’ll use her for my amusement. Go, tell him. Go!’

The man ran down the slope. The Danes in the valley were not going to attack us. Our numbers were evenly matched, and we had the high ground, and the Danes are ever reluctant to take too many casualties. So they just watched us and, though one or two rode close enough to see Skade clearly, none tried to rescue her.

I had carried Skade’s jerkin, breeches and boots. I threw them at her feet, then leaned down and took the rope from her neck. ‘Dress,’ I said.

I saw her consider escape. She was thinking of running long-legged down the slope, hoping to reach the watching horsemen before I caught her, but I touched Smoka’s flank and he moved in front of her. ‘You’d die with a sword in your skull,’ I told her, ‘long before you could reach them.’

‘And you’ll die,’ she said, stooping for her clothes, ‘without a sword in your hand.’

I touched the talisman about my neck. ‘Alfred,’ I said, ‘hangs captured pagans. You had better hope that I can keep you alive when we meet him.’

‘I shall curse you,’ she said, ‘and those you love.’

‘And you had better hope,’ I went on, ‘that my patience lasts, or else I’ll give you to my men before Alfred hangs you.’

‘A curse and death,’ she said, and there was almost triumph in her voice.

‘Hit her if she speaks again,’ I told Osferth.

Then we rode west to find Alfred.

The first thing I noticed was the cart.

It was enormous, big enough to carry the harvest from a dozen fields, but this wagon would never carry anything so mundane as sheaves of wheat. It had two thick axles and four solid wheels rimmed with iron. The wheels had been painted with a green cross on a white background. The sides of the cart were panelled, and each of the panels bore the image of a saint. There were Latin words carved into the top rails, but I never bothered to ask what they meant because I neither wanted to know nor needed to ask. They would be some Christian exhortation, and one of those is much like any other. The bed of the cart was mostly filled by woolsacks, presumably to protect the passengers from the jolting of the vehicle, while a well-cushioned chair stood with its high back against the driver’s bench. A striped sailcloth awning supported by four serpentine-carved poles had been erected over the whole gaudy contraption, and a wooden cross, like those placed on church gables, reared from one of the poles. Saints’ banners hung from the remaining three poles.

‘A church on wheels?’ I asked sourly.

‘He can’t ride any more,’ Steapa told me gloomily.

Steapa was the commander of the royal bodyguard. He was a huge man, one of the few who were taller than me, and unremittingly fierce in battle. He was also unremittingly loyal to King Alfred. Steapa and I were friends, though we had started as enemies when I had been forced to fight him. It had been like attacking a mountain. Yet the two of us had survived that meeting, and there was no man I would rather have stood beside in a shield wall. ‘He can’t ride at all?’ I asked.

‘He does sometimes,’ Steapa said, ‘but it hurts too much. He can hardly walk.’

‘How many oxen drag this thing?’ I asked, gesturing at the wagon.

‘Six. He doesn’t like it, but he has to use it.’

We were in Æscengum, the burh built to protect Wintanceaster from the east. It was a small burh, nothing like the size of Wintanceaster or Lundene, and it protected a ford which crossed the River Wey, though why the ford needed protection was a mystery because the river could be easily crossed both north and south of Æscengum. Indeed, the town guarded nothing of importance, which was why I had argued against its fortification. Yet Alfred had insisted on making Æscengum into a burh because, years before, some half-crazed Christian mystic had supposedly restored a raped girl’s virginity at the place, and so it was a hallowed spot. Alfred had ordered a monastery built there, and Steapa told me the king was waiting in its church. ‘They’re talking,’ he said bleakly, ‘but none of them knows what to do.’

‘I thought you were waiting for Harald to attack you here?’

‘I told them he wouldn’t,’ Steapa said, ‘but what happens if he doesn’t?’

‘We find Harald and kill the earsling, of course,’ I said, gazing east to where new smoke pyres betrayed where Harald’s men were plundering new villages.

Steapa gestured at Skade. ‘Who’s she?’

‘Harald’s whore,’ I said, loud enough for Skade to hear, though her face showed no change from her customary haughty expression. ‘She tortured a man called Edwulf,’ I explained, ‘trying to get him to reveal where he’d buried his gold.’

‘I know Edwulf,’ Steapa said, ‘he eats and drinks his gold.’

‘He did,’ I said, ‘but he’s dead now.’ Edwulf had died before we left his estate.

Steapa held out a hand to take my swords. The monastery was serving this day as Alfred’s hall, and no one except the king, his relatives and his guards could carry a weapon in the royal presence. I surrendered Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting, then dipped my hands in a bowl of water offered by a servant. ‘Welcome to the king’s house, lord,’ the servant said in formal greeting, then watched as I looped the rope about Skade’s neck.

She spat in my face and I grinned. ‘Time to meet the king, Skade,’ I said, ‘spit at him and he’ll hang you.’

‘I will curse you both,’ she said.

Finan alone accompanied Steapa, Skade and I into the monastery. The rest of my men took their horses through the western gate to water them in a stream while Steapa led us to the abbey church, a fine stone building with heavy oak roof beams. The high windows lit painted leather hides, and the one above the altar showed a white-robed girl being raised to her feet by a bearded and haloed man. The girl’s apple-plump face bore a look of pure astonishment, and I assumed she was the newly-restored virgin, while the man’s expression suggested she might soon need the miracle repeated. Beneath her, seated on a rug-draped chair placed in front of the silver-piled altar, was Alfred.

A score of other men were in the church. They had been talking as we arrived, but the voices dropped to silence as I entered. On Alfred’s left was a gaggle of churchmen, among whom were my old friend Father Beocca and my old enemy Bishop Asser, a Welshman who had become the king’s most intimate adviser. In the nave of the church, seated on benches, were a half-dozen ealdormen, the leaders of those shires whose men had been summoned to join the army that faced Harald’s invasion. To Alfred’s right, seated on a slightly smaller chair, was his son-in-law, my cousin Æthelred, and behind him was his wife, Alfred’s daughter, Æthelflæd.